Deadbolt (IC)

[Supercape]

"Well there is no shortage of dirt" complained Jack, pointing at the most horrible sludge on their boots. 

 

He turned his flashlight off. 

 

"Damn, I can't see a thing..." he hissed. 

 

But soon they both could - four powerful flashbeams, and the sound of four figures in front of them. It was hard to make them out in detail. They looked uniformed - white uniforms now filthy from the sewers. Carry some kind of weapons, and probably armoured, helmed. 

 

Their leader strode ahead - it was hard to make out whether he or she was bigger or different, or just was the one in command. 

 

"Any readings yet?" the leader asked. 

 

"No, ma'am. Just the same. Damn it. This sewer is worse than the ones back home". 

 

"Nothings worse than the sewers back home! Have you been down them recently?"

 

"No, we got enough $%£" on the surface"

 

The banter was reasonably good-natured, but the team of four were still focused. 

 

"He can't hide for ever"

 

"No he can't. But we have to find him first, bring him back" answered the leader. 

 

"Things going bad if one of our doctors went viral" muttered a nervous member of the team at the back. 

 

"It can always get worse..." replied the leader. "Now keep your heads. If he did go viral, he is going to be a handful..."

[R. Bluefish]

Echo had one hand warningly placed on Jack's chest, keeping him back. Great, stormtroopers. The good news was that they didn't seem to have thought to bring night-vision goggles any more than she did. The bad news was that now she was going go need to decide what to do, and decision-making wasn't her strong suit. As if that wasn't already apparent by this point.

 

Picking a fight here would, assuming she won, mean they hopefully wouldn't have to worry about Neutron finding Tin-Hat before they did. And they could search at their leisure without the risk of tripping over the goons. On the other hand, she wasn't exactly having the best of luck today when it came to fisticuffs, was she? One Capone-looking thug had already thrashed with nothing but a cut-the-cheese grenade.

 

Oh, better tuck in your shirt, Stein - your yellow belly is showing. They needed to find Tin-Hat, and right now, doing that looked to mean going through these guys. She wasn't about to let one bad turn of luck take away her confidence. "Get ready to move," she hissed into Jack's ear. "Things are about to get interesting."

 

With that, she was sprinting, hurling herself towards the group. "Howdy!" No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she was hammering the leader's torso with a flurry of blows, intent on being the one on the offensive this time. "Any of you folks seen my pet alligator? I flushed it down the toilet ages ago, and now I want it back."

[Supercape]

GM

 

The leader was thrown backwards, crashing against the crumbling masonry of the sewers with impressive force. There was not a groan from him - he was out cold before air escaped lung. His limp body fell forward, splashing into the muck at their feet. 

 

Now she was close, she could see the men. They were dressed in some kind of white costume, lightly armoured. They carries strange guns with odd barrels, light and white, like their uniform. And belts, full of medical equipment, and restraints. All this, she took in with a glance. 

 

"What the...!" came one gasp, a hint of fear. 

 

"Fast! Told you he was fast...must have got the virus...wait...this isn't the doc!!!!" said another, who was pulling the barrel of his gun towards Echo nonetheless. 

 

"Defend yourselves!" said the last, doing the same with his gun...

 

Their faces were hard to read - goggles, gas masks, and helmeted. But even through the clear plastic, she was pretty sure they were humans. Or, at the very least, humanoid...

[R. Bluefish]

The last man to have spoken barely got the words out before Echo's boot connected with the side of his head, so hard that cracks spread across the surface of his helmet. "Good advice!" Pivoting on the spot, she launched herself into the air, somersaulting over the second man, pushing off against him as she did so so that he was hurled into the side of the tunnel with wince-inducing force. "Can't say I was expecting to run into the Empire down here. I thought we were more doing the trash compactor scene, from the smell of it." Her gut punch doubled the third man over, just in time for her uppercut to the chin to knock him flat on his back.

 

A quick glance around confirmed it. Hey, I won. Change of pace. She nudged one with the toe of her boot. What a bunch of wusses. "All clear!" she called to Jack. "They weren't so tough. Although," she crouched down to examine one of the unconscious men, "weird gear loadout for a sewer search-and-locate op. Is this medical equipment?"

[Supercape]

GM

 

Jack turned back on his flashlight to examine the four prostrate bodies. 

 

"Never seen anything like that before. I mean, never seen anything like these guys before, and never seen anyone knock four people out in the space of time it takes me to scoop the shattered remains of my jaw off the floor" he explained. 

 

The four men (or in the case of the leader, woman) were wearing the same uniform. White. Clinical. And completely unmarked. Their guns seemed to fire darts, full of some clear fluid, rather than bullets, They did indeed carry medical equipment - something a little odd, or unusual, in their design. Handcuffs, restraints, tasers. All non-lethal. 

 

"Looks like a cross between a paramedic crew and snatch squad, if you ask me. Searching for a doctor? between this lot and radioactive zombies, this gotta be the weirdest day of my life..." he said, scratching his head. 

 

The men were out cold, but who knew for how long?

 

And in the almost pure dark, and certainly pure stench of the sewers, something else could be heard coming their way. Something quiet, full of echoes...

[R. Bluefish]

"Hey, stick around, stuff like this happens to me all the time." Perking up her ears, Echo stood to shine her flashlight in the direction she thought the noises were coming from. "Remind me when this is over, I'll tell you about the time I got sent back in time to fight a bunch of robot dinosaurs who were stealing trash from the present day." She shook her head. "Or something like that. I was never too clear on the details. I just hit the things people told me to hit."

 

Looking down at the unconscious soldier-types, she gestured for Jack to follow her. "Come on. We'll leave them here. With any luck, they'll be having Nap Time for a good long while, and they're going to need one hell of a hot shower when they wake up. In the mean time, we've got a guy to find and a zombie to deal with." She pointed off down the network of tunnels. "Hear that? I think it's coming from that way. Listen to the - heh - echoes." Do I have echo-sense as a secondary power? Need to experiment with that, that would be nice and fitting. "Let's go."

[Supercape]

GM

 

"What? Something coming...wait....?" said Jack, standing up straight. 

 

He pressed his finger to his ear again, concentrating. "Yeah, I hear..."

 

Even in the semi-dark, a glint could be seen. Something man-shaped, large and tall, came lurking. 

 

"Razzafrazin' what now? Come to get me, have ya? Come to get ol' Tin-hat? How ya find me?" came the mumbling. "I got protection...damn CIA put chips in ma head, ya picking them up? I can hear ya...I can hear ya...."

 

Tin hat was a large man, over six feet and broad too. His reputation as a street fighter was probably well deserved. His nose was broken, and he had more than one or two scars. He was filthy and ragged, carrying a cudgel that he leaned on, and which sloshed around the filth beneath him. 

 

"'Ol' tin hat knows! Ol' tin hat knows!"

 

He was about forty, although guessing the age of such a weathered man was difficult at best. His eyes glinted in the half light, but then again, so did the tin-foil helmet he had fashioned for himself, that fitted his scalp perfectly. 

[R. Bluefish]

Guessing that's him, then. Echo approached him slowly, stopping well before coming within arm's reach. She didn't want to come across as threatening. "Hi," she said, keeping her hands plainly visible. "Are you..." wish I knew his real name, "...Tin-Hat? My name's Echo, and this is Jack. We're...in a bit of a pickle, and we could really use your help with something."

 

Even as she spoke, she was watching his movements carefully from behind the opaque lenses of her mask. She didn't have any interest in hurting a mentally ill homeless man today, but at the same time, by all accounts this guy was not one to be trifled with, nor was he well in the head. If he came at her or Jack, she might not have much of a choice.

[Supercape]

"I ain't telling you my name" replied Tin Hat, suspiciously. "You might activate the microchip!" he explained, pointing between his eyes. 

 

"Who are you? What do you want? Stop reading my mind! You got the radiobeamatrons, don't you? Turn em off! Turn em off!" he said, angry, but with a hint of sadness and fear. 

 

He gripped his cudgel in both spade like hands, shaking it in a threatening manner, before spotting the four unconscious bodies lying in the sewer muck by Echo. 

 

"Who are they? What did you do to them? They come to take me away again? Restrain me? Inject me? Never again! Tin Hat knows the truth! Its all the psychomactics they put in the water!"

 

He paused for a moment, frowning, trying to concentrate. 

 

"You putting psychomactics in the sewers too, now?" he asked, half question, half accusation. 

 

[R. Bluefish]

"Me? No. Definitely not. I don't even know what a psychomactic is," Echo said truthfully, hands held out open in a placating gesture. "And I, uh, turned off my radiobeamatrons before coming down here. Just seemed polite."

 

She stepped aside slightly to afford Tin Hat a better view of the unconscious bodies. "Those people, on the other hand," she said, pointing, "did indeed come here to take you away. They were carrying restraints, and I'm pretty sure I saw some injectors as well. I just gave them a bit of a thumping - it's kinda my thing. They'll be fine in a little while, although I don't envy them the headaches they'll have when they wake up.

 

"Thing is," she continued, "there'll probably be more of them soon enough. They work for a company called Neutron - don't know if you know who they are - and they want you for some nefarious purposes of their own. I - we - came here to save you, because we need your help with something...potentially pretty big. Like, 'countless-innocent-lives-in-the-balance big." She reached out a hand, being careful not to make any sudden movements or draw too close to him. "Whaddaya say? If you come with us, we - well, I - can protect you from Neutron, and you can help us help a lot of people."

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Yeah, I can hear them.." said Tin Hat, suspicious but no longer so angry. He actually gave a grunt of approval about the beating Echo dished out. 

 

"Neutron? Sounds like radiowaves to me. Damn KGB" he explained. "I pick them up, you see, thanks to the microchip" he added, pointing to the point between his eyes again. 

 

"Try to block them out with my deflector hat. But damn Russians, they reversed the frequency....hrmmmm....the robots!" he spluttered. 

 

"You know hes crazy, right?" whispered Jack as softly as he could in Echo's ear. It was most soft indeed. And fortunately Tin Hat did not hear it. 

 

Recovering for a moment, he turned his hat and head to Echo and Jack once more. "

 

"Well, you ain't the psycholockers. Hmmm, I ain't trusting you though. I can still feel the radiomatonix. Ill smash you if you try to lock me away. I'm warning ya!" he hissed, angry momentarily once more. 

 

"Whats this pretty big ya talking about? Is it the radiomatonix? I seen some pretty crazy stuff down here last few days....."

[R. Bluefish]

"Cut him some slack, he's some poor mentally ill guy living in a damn sewer," whispered back Echo, glad that her mask hid the movement of her lips. "We're not exactly a hundred percent sure what's going on ourselves, actually," she said at regular volume to Tin Hat. "We'd appreciate any light you could help shine on what's going on - you seem pretty, uh, wired-in to everything that happens down here."

 

Hmm, how to sum all this up? "Okay, so here's the gist of what we've got," she said, looking to Jack and motioning for him to chime in if she missed anything. "Neutron is bad." There's an in-depth recap for ya. "They're after some kind of dimensional anomaly that's supposed to be down here in the sewers somehow. I've heard it called a...radioactive sewer zombie?" That ring any bells? "They seem to think they can harness its power somehow - maybe use it as an energy source - but it's supposedly done nasty things to the team they sent after it."

 

She jerked a thumb at Jack. "This here's Jack Longwheel. He's the reporter who cottoned on to the whole thing. And I, of course, am a superhero. We need to find this zombie-thing before Neutron does, or there's no telling what might happen. And word on the street is that nobody knows the sewers like you do." She looked at Jack. "That pretty much sum everything up?"

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Goddamn wires!" said Tinhat, pulling at the strands of grey hair around his temples, poking out from the foil. 

 

"The army, puts em in you when you sign up. They call it the medical. Haha!" he laughed, cynically. 

 

"Neutron, sounds bad, yeah, I bet. Sounds like radiowaves, or something" he conceded, turning Jack and Echo into co-conspirators, at least in his head. "And a zombie? yeah. Something came down here a few days ago. Still around. Looked like a zombie, like a goddamn corpse. But he didn't move like one. He was fast" conceded Tinhat. "Fast like nuthin' I seen. Laughing his goddamn head off all the time" he explained

 

"Free! I'm free! I'm free! - that was all he said, over and over again. Now, I ain't crazy..." he pleaded, all evidence to the conference. "And that guy, he looked mad. Ya know?" he asked, twirling his finger around his temple over and over again. "Maybe the Neutrononics got him, or the radiomatics. If had protection..." he explained, pointing at his tin hat "...maybe he woulda kept his marbles. Scared me to death. Hid. Nobody knows the sewers like 'ol tinhat!" he said, proudly. 

 

[R. Bluefish]

Fast? Great. Looks like it's about to get all 28 Days Later up in here. "Do you remember where you saw him?" she asked. "Even just a general direction? I'm not kidding when I say we need to find him before Neutron does." She cracked her knuckles. "Heck, if all of their goons are as wimpy as they were, I'd even settle for finding him at the same time Neutron does." Hesitating, she then added, "Unless they have gas grenades. I hate gas grenades now."

 

Belatedly, another problem occurred to her. Half-turning away from Tin Hat, she addressed Jack in a slightly muted tone. "Er, Jack...have we thought about what we're going to do when we actually find this guy? Or thing, or zombie, or whatever it is that Neutron's after? From the sound if it, he might not be entirely stable himself, and he's probably juiced up on powers just as much as I am or more." I really need to learn to start thinking ahead. "I mean, just beating the crap out of him might not solve anything, and he probably doesn't even deserve it. But we still need a way to keep Neutron from ever getting their hands on him." She ran a hand through her hair distractedly. "Or do we just cross that bridge when we come to it?"

[Supercape]

GM

 

"What are you asking me for? I can't sort out my mortgage, let alone a dimension hoping undead time bomb?" replied a bamboozled Jack. He wiped his brow, and considered for a moment. 

 

"I mean, maybe he doesn't deserve it. But maybe you have to beat the crap out of him. Maybe worse. Better than blowing up the city. Or worse. From what I heard, he is causing major distortions. Dangerous distortions. For once, Neutron might just be doing a public service, capturing him. Its just that its more likely they are juggling dynamite over a bonfire" he explained. 

 

"Whatever you do, I mean, whatever, I'll back you. Seems like everyones in an impossible situation. But inactivity is worse than a decision. Huh, mind you I wish I had taken that advice before I got bankrupted for slander..." he conceded. 

 

"You might be better asking Tinhat, for all I know" was the lamentable conclusion. 

 

"Just stop the beamatrons before they get in your head. Gotta watch out for the beamatrons! they are everywhere!" he whispered, carefully. From his filthy rags, he produced two spare tin foils hats, offering them to Jack and Echo. 

 

"Can't hurt" sighed Jack, putting it on. 

 

"Except for head lice" he whispered to Echo. 

[R. Bluefish]

It was emblematic of how strange her day had been that Echo hardly thought twice about putting on the proffered tin hat. Hey, I'm not going to argue with the expert when it comes to beamatrons. If she looked strange in her costume and wig before, adding a tinfoil hat to the ensemble pushed her appearance into "downright bizarre" territory. I hope none of the Interceptors see me wearing this.

 

"Okay," she said, fiddling with her new headgear - she could tell that incessant crinkling sound might get a little old, but it actually wasn't that uncomfortable - "we're all armored up." She was trying not to think about what she was going to have to do when they found the whatever-it-was. She'd never thought ahead before, and she wasn't going to start now. Addressing Tin Hat, she said, "Can you take us to where you last saw the zombie-guy?"

[Supercape]

"Yeah, sure. Just make sure you avoid the rats. The FBI have put cameras in their skulls" replied Tinhat, in a conspiratorial manner. 

 

A little later, with only a few rats to worry about...

 

"Here. We sure got the better of the FBI, huh? Damn commie bastards!" said Tin Hat, his first smile since Jack and Echo had met him. 

 

The journey had not been to long, but a little more arduous, not least because of the smell. The dank semi-light did not add to the ambience. 

 

"This place, huh, nobody knows about it, 'cept Tin Hat. Old bricks" he explained, tapping the crumbling masonry. "Something bad happened though. I found more than a few old bones down here. Human bones, that's what I'm talking about. Must be some government plot, or something" he added, with certainty that there was without question something underhand afoot with the government, but without clarity as to its nature. Or, it must be said, without evidence to support his delusion. 

 

There was a little something too. Perhaps it was a little hotter. Perhaps something of ozone in the air. Perhaps everything just swam in micro distortions. 

 

And, crouched in a huddle, was a man, now filthy, with grey skin and grey hair, dressed in a t shirt and slacks, chuckling in a most distressing way to himself. He was quite wrapped up in himself, or, at least, quite oblivious to what was going on around him. 

[R. Bluefish]

Okay... Echo took a deep breath. Here we go. "Hey. Hey there," she said, approaching the man slowly, even more cautious than she had been with Tin Hat. If the feeling in the air was anything to go by, she was going to need to tread very carefully here. She didn't feel like getting barbecued or whatever today.

 

She squatted down to put herself on the same eye level as him, still keeping her distance. As she did so, her mind was racing. What was her plan here? She was not qualified to be dealing with situations like this. Purse snatchings and Zippy Mart robberies were her thing, not radioactive mentally ill zombies living in the sewers. Heck, she got into a big barney with a jester outside a gym once, and it nearly killed her.

 

Probably should have thought of that several hours ago there, Stein. Swallowing, she spoke again. "Can...can you tell me your name?"

[Supercape]

GM

 

The man, for it was a man, looked up. 

 

He was wearing some crazy 1960s sunglasses. A hippy t shirt (emblazened in some filth stained logo that could no longer be read). He probably might have been a hippy. But now his skin was grey, creased, dead, his hair but strands. 

 

"My name? Hahaha!" he hissed. It was hard to tell if it was mirth or devoid of such quality. "Some call me doctor. My wife calls me love. But can't you see? I'm dead now! Free at last! Free but dead! haha! Oh sweet irony!"

 

He stood up, skin and bones, and withered iron muscles. There was probably not enough fat on him to fry an egg. 

 

"But who, woman, are you? Come to take me home? Drug me up, put me down? like all the other crrrrazzzies?" he hissed. "I spent my life trying to find a cure for them, you know, like a nurse in a leper colony. It was only a matter of time before I was infected too. Still, I did my duty. The human thing"

 

He turned his head, this way and that. 

 

"They are coming for me, I know it! The snatch squad. Well, they won't catch me!" he laughed, high pitched and fearful. 

 

"Who are you!" he demanded, pointing a finger at Echo's face. 

[R. Bluefish]

Echo had risen quickly to her feet when he did. "My name's Echo," she said, doing her best to keep her voice level. "I'm a superhero." In case you couldn't tell from the outfit and hair and, uh, tinfoil hat. Right now, calling herself a superhero felt a bit generous, but it wasn't the time for caveats. "I'm here to help you. I already ran into the snatch squad, and let's just say they're not going to be bothering anybody for a little while, if you know what I mean."

 

She tilted her head inquisitively. "Who's 'them?'" she asked. "What were you trying to cure?" There's also a bit of a "are you dead" elephant in the room, but we'll leave off that for the moment. They needed information badly right now, but it was probably best to take things one little baby step at a time. She wasn't even sure if they were safely past the "try to kill each other" phase yet.

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Echo!? A fine name. Yes, I like it. A name that defines one. I must follow. Hehe...yes! Call me Deadbolt. Because I was always turning locks. Because I am nearly dead. Because I have fled" he explained. 

 

"I fled to this strange place. I had too. They were going to lock me away..." he said, almost sad for a moment. "I left my wife, my daughter...to come here...."

 

He snapped back, almost angrily. 

 

"You don't understand, do you? My name is Doctor Woecroft. I am a psychiatrist in Freedom Fortress. A different dimension. A much less fortunate dimension. Something alien hit us. They released a virus onto the world and have been watching us tear each other apart for the last decade. It causes madness, psychosis, paranoid delusions. Hyperdopaminergic transmission in the fronto-limbic system. We tried everything!"

 

He put his grey fleshed head in his grey fleshed hands. 

 

"I was in charge of the asylum. So few of us left now. The virus, everywhere. I...was infected. I had no wish to submit myself to the very awful experiments I had performed. So I fled. Stole a dimensional lenser, and came here. I had to get away! They want me!" he blurted. 

[R. Bluefish]

Echo could feel a knot of tension in her gut, growing tighter with every word the man - Deadbolt - said. Alien madness virus? She was definitely getting in over her head. In so far over her head she needed a snorkel - or maybe a submersible. You know I was kidding about 28 Days Later, right, universe? "Okay," she said slowly. "That's a lot to take in right there. You're a doctor from a parallel universe that got torn apart by an alien violence-virus. And you got infected and escaped to our neck of the woods."

 

She rubbed her temple. "So where does Neutron come in to all this? What do they want with you? They think you have some sort of power that they can harness?" An unpleasant thought occurred to her. "And...you're infected. So this virus has now been introduced to our world?" Thanks for that, that was a real nice human civilization we had once.

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Neutron? Who are they?" asked Deadbolt, suspiciously. 

 

"Don't trust him!" whispered Tin Hat, pointing, pointedly, to his "protective" hat. 

 

"I am picking up psychotransbeams!" he explained, in a hissing voice. 

 

"I don't know anything about Neutron. I came down here to escape detection. Freedom City Sanitorium is sure to send their goon squad after me. I trained half of them myself!" he said, furiously. 

 

"Have you seen them? Medical guys, stun guns, sedatives, manacles...and looking like a bunch of clinical stormtroopers. To be frank, some of them seem to enjoy restraining our patients a little too much. But, its a brutal world, our world..."

[R. Bluefish]

Echo scratched her chin, digesting the new information. "Huh. So those weren't Neutron's goons I ran into." She jerked a thumb back over her shoulder. "You bet I saw them, though. They won't be a problem for a while, some violent person went and hit them all really hard." Who would do such a thing. "Neutron's a company. Presumably an evil company, I assume all companies are evil until proven not evil. Word is that they're mighty interested in...well, you, I guess." Making him any more paranoid than he already was wasn't on her list of things to do, but at the same time, it seemed like something he should know. "Frankly, I was kinda hoping you would know something about them. We're operating on precious little information here."

 

She took a deep breath, then immediately regretted it when she remembered the virus. Note to self: never breathe again. "But, er - back to my other question. Is this virus now present in our world? Am...am I infected now? Is anybody else? 'Cause offing myself and torching my own body to stop the spread is not how I envisioned the end of my superhero career."

[Supercape]

"Infected? I hope not" muttered Deadbolt through cracked, grey lips. It looked like the wasted flesh might peel from his face at any moment. 

 

"Before I left, I gave my self a bath in C-beams. Should have killed me. The virus is now inert, and I...." he looked at his dead flesh, and for the first time, a sense of horror at his own actions might have crawled into him. 

 

"I've spent twenty years studying the virus. I probably know more about it, or at least as much about it, as anybody else. Its unique, hard to kill, impossible to treat, but fortunately, not particularly easily transmitted either" he said, trying to be reassuring. 

 

Admittedly, from a zombie mouth that was not very reassuring. 

 

"Your friend there has got the right idea...don't want to pick up on the transmissions?" he said, referring to the increasingly nervous tin hat.