Pacific Station Vigilante (Book 2): The Negative Man [Stormfall] (16 page)

Chapter 27 –

Friday Evening; Crosby Airfield

We were at the abandoned airfield that sat on the edge of the Sierra Desert.  It was the perfect place to test the polarity accelerator as there wasn’t a soul for miles.  When Pacific International opened its doors, the usefulness of small airfields like Crosby became nonexistent.

I had the accelerator mounted in a chest harness.  As soon as I put it on and started pushing my negative energy into it, what exactly would happen I couldn’t be sure.  Heather looked on apprehensive, but she knew trying to talk me down from this wasn’t an option.  I highly doubted Titan would give me the same kind of opportunity I just had, so more power was going to be the key.

The accelerator was already humming, probably picking up energy waves from my slight nervousness.  There was a chance of course the thing would blow up, sending Heather and I sky high in a million pieces.  I’m sure Pacific Station would be okay with that.

“What’s the plan?  Are you just going to strap that thing to yourself and see what happens?”

That was exactly what I was going to do.  In my mind, I was worried that putting it that way would just worry her.  “Once it is in position, I’m going to carefully funnel small amounts of negative energy into it and see what the results are.”

I should’ve been a timeshare salesman.  “Okay, that doesn’t sound quite as dangerous.”

With her approval, I placed the harness on and immediately felt a pull towards the accelerator in the middle.  It was like it wanted as much of my power as possible.  I let just a small amount go, and even that was hard.  A flood of energy wanted to rush in and supercharge this thing.  “Heather, stand back.”

She took a few steps back.  “Jericho, that doesn’t look like a small amount of energy…”

“You either go big or go home.  I’m going to let it all go.”  She took two steps back.  “You may want to go just a bit further.”

Once I felt she was out of the immediate threat zone, I let go of my hold against the accelerator and let my energy flow.  I quickly fell to one knee as it felt like everything inside of me was being pulled away.  I barely had enough energy to stay upright.  The device of my chest whirled and began to glow a very bright white.  Then, in an instant, a new feeling flooded back into me.  It was energy, but nothing like I’d ever felt before.

My negative powers generally were blue with a faint black outline crackling.  When I brought some of this new power up and visible from my electron gauntlet, it was white – pure white.  “Positive energy!  It’s converted all the electrons in my body into protons…”

“Did it work?”

I heard her; I just didn’t know the answer yet.  With the positive energy glowing in my hand, I shot it forward towards one of the rickety old control towers.  A bright white explosion destroyed the bottom of the tower and sent the rest of the building crashing towards the runway.  I fired off another shot, and another, targeting various buildings around the airfield.  When the energy began to run out, the accelerator took more in and converted it at a far more efficient pace than I could ever dream.

With a good deal of my questions answered, I smiled at Heather.  “It’s working better than I could have ever anticipated.”  With the experiment over, I took the harness off.  “I should’ve looked into this-”  As soon as the accelerator was no longer touching me, I blacked out.

****

When I came to I was in the passenger seat of Heather’s car.  My head was thumping like I’d gone on an all-night bender.  “What happened?”

“I was hoping you could explain that to me.”  She looked worried, both hands gripping the steering wheel.  “One minute you were gloating over your success and the next you were out cold, not responding to anything.”

I rubbed my temples, trying to get this headache to go away.  “I don’t have a clue.  Maybe there was a reaction to the polarity accelerator we couldn’t have foreseen.”

She pulled up to a stoplight not too far from our house.  “The moment you took that thing off is when you went down.”  One of her hands left the steering wheel and wrapped around mine.  “Your eyes rolled back into your head and I thought you may have died or something.”

Nope – not dead.  At least I wasn’t yet.  “Maybe the accelerator pulled too much energy.  I honestly don’t know.  Either way, we know it works but that it has some pretty strong side effects.”

We pulled into the garage and she turned the car off.  “That’s the understatement of the year.”

“I know I say it a lot, but don’t worry.”  I reached into the backseat and grabbed the accelerator.  “I knew this could go bad, yet here we are.  I think a few minor adjustments are all that’s needed.”

Whether she believed me or not this time wasn’t the question; whether I believed that myself was a fair statement.  I was tired and aching all over.  “Enough of that for tonight.  Why don’t we go upstairs and let loose a bit?”

That was an idea she could get behind.  So for the rest of the night we went about more romantic business, as it’d been too long since that had happened.  Granted, we’re talking like two weeks or so, but that was still too long.  I fell asleep shortly after and woke in the morning feeling very refreshed.

Heather was still asleep when I woke up.  For some reason, as I wasn’t quite awake yet, I was about to call Hammerspace and make a game plan for what was to come next.  Realizing he was dead, a pang of guilt hit me.  Sure, he’d been a money hungry moron, but I knew that from day one.  Still, he’d become like a friend to me.  I tossed the Mercury Five on the couch and sat back.  With nothing else really to do at the moment, I turned on the television.

I’d been expecting some Saturday morning cartoons.  Instead, what I got was news about The Negative Man.  Brandon Howard (didn’t they have any other newsmen?  This guy was annoying) was in full on Doomsday Mode as he read the latest to everyone.  “Chief Grimes, after consulting with the Fire Department and Arson Division, is confident The Negative Man is responsible for the collapse of The Sea Hag and the murders that took place inside.  If you missed it earlier, here is Grimes’ press conference from this morning.”

Grabbing a bowl from the cabinet for some cereal, the scene shifted to the press room at the police station.  Grimes was there in all his glory, looking particularly mean.  I enjoyed seeing him like that.  “I’m not taking no damn questions today, so everyone sit back and listen.”

The hush bristled over the crowd.  It was plain to see that people weren’t fans of his thorny personality.  I had to give him credit though; he kept the crowd in check.  “I’ve been preaching this for the better part of a year, until The Negative Man is in police custody, this city isn’t safe.  Some of you here aren’t a fan of my way of doing things, made even worse when those idiot supers tried to strong-arm me into rushing after him.  Look what happened, they ended up dead.”

Someone broke his first and only rule: no questions.  “What about that technological terror you’ve been trotting out into the city?  You said Titan was the answer to our questions.”

Man, I really needed to watch the news more often.  I’d apparently missed a lot of banter between Grimes and the press.  “Until one of you assholes actually comes up with a plan that’s better than Titan, we stick to it.”  If looks could kill… “Are the streets safer?  Is crime down?  The answer is yes to both and that’s because of Titan.”

“Citywide damage is at an all-time high and panic has gripped the city.”  Geri Paisley was getting into the mix.  She’d never been shy about turning the screws on people.  “You might say things are better, but the taxpayers, the very citizens of Pacific Station, disagree strongly.”

His face was red with anger.  Mashing his teeth together and basically growling, “We’re losing the point here.  Once again, that mutant destroys one of our buildings and kills people without a care in the world.  The Sea Hag is the final straw.  I’m giving Titan free reign of the city to do what is necessary.  Consider Pacific Station under Martial Law.”

Chapter 28 –

Saturday Night; Wonder-Tech Tower

Martial law… Grimes was an idiot.  Even on my way over, the only thing he’d accomplished was making the citizens of the city even more panicked.  A Saturday night and Pacific Station looked like a ghost town.  Many probably disagreed with my methods, but was what I was doing even this bad?

I chose to do my investigation work at my office due to all the firewalls I’d set up.  Not that my home laptop was unsecure, far from it, I just preferred the set up in my office.  With one last glance out down to the empty streets, I turned to my desk and logged in.  I was hopeful with enough digging I could locate this mysterious super who we all knew as Titan.

Titan began popping up about three weeks ago.  With a good place to start, I began looking into prominent citizens that moved to the area about a month ago.  It had to be someone who was connected to the police station somehow.  I hacked into the PSPD and took a look at the officer hires.  No one was new to the department since Rebecca Larsen transferred in almost seven months ago.  I took a closer look at her file.

She had a reputation for being a hard ass to say the least.  In her old department, there were two documented events where she used excessive force on criminals.  Nothing happened further, but this cop sounded just like Chief Grimes kind of officer.

The problem was nothing on her record made her look like super.  There were emergency contacts listed, family in Freemont, and even a twenty-four year old daughter to an ex-husband.  Most supers tried to keep their families a secret, not flaunt them around like a normal person did.  Still, something about the hard look this woman had piqued my interest.  I was easily distracted, I know.  On a whim, I delved deeper into Ms. Larsen just to see.

There was nothing on interest except a locked file from sixteen years ago.  It was a redacted file that was attached to a government server.  I found that odd.  I wondered what the hell she’d been up to.  I broke the file down and rebuilt it solely on my end.  What I saw stopped me in my tracks.

Rebecca Larsen had been with a private security company that took a job with a government official to raid a secured testing facility.  Details were scarce on it – the raid had failed and there were numerous casualties recorded.  Sparks flew off my hand as even though it didn’t say it, I knew exactly what had happened.  I’d been there.

I scoured through the now accessible databases for anything that contained the words ‘Project Jericho’ or ‘Stormfall.’  Cooper had done a good job keeping a lot of this stuff off the books, for obvious reasons.  It was a black eye to both the government and to his legacy.  In the files that were still left over, no names were even used – not mine nor Dr. Staley’s.

Using the name Jericho Staley had always been a calculated risk.  It just meant so much to me, having an identity.  From time to time I’d check into it, never seeing it or even hearing any ghosts from the past whispering it.  In the back of my mind, though, I knew I hadn’t accessed everything.  Larsen’s records proved that.  There were a lot of missing puzzle pieces and they could stay that way for all I cared.

Because of her employment with the private security team, I saw her blood was clean, she was a normal.  That put me back in the position of starting over on the Titan mystery.  I expanded my search to include businesses and public services.

The newest business listed was a comic book shop down on Salt Water Cove.  Again, that place popped up.  The Krummels had opened Krum’s Comics four months ago.  They’d been citizens of the city for quite some time – Diana had been here fifteen years and Kim ten.  Even though I was sure this was an empty trail, I couldn’t ignore the coincidence anymore.

Nothing out of the ordinary came back on Kim.  He worked for Pacific Choppers until he opened the store with his wife.  There was a son listed who lived back east, and for all intents and purposes, he was just an average Joe.

At first, the same thing came back on Diana.  This was her second store, she had a comic book store eleven years ago, but it closed due to the economy.  Whereas Kim had always lived somewhere on the west coast, Diana grew up in the middle of the country.  Then a newspaper article changed it all – her name, well her maiden name, put her at the epicenter of a nuclear meltdown a number of years ago.  This slice of information changed everything.

As I looked deeper into this mysterious book store owner, certain things began to stand out that I never would’ve attached to super powers.  When she was thirty, she survived a head-on collision where everyone else died.  The doctors chalked it up to a miracle; I began to wonder if a metallic suit saved her.

Another article, this time at thirty-four years old tells her apartment was broken into.  The police apprehended the suspects, yet Diana was fine, even though there was evidence of gunshots being fired.  The first responder to the scene was none other than Officer Harvey Grimes.  I made the connection.  For emphasis, I circled the article and spelled out Titan on the screen.  Seeing it in front of me gave me a sense of pride at cracking the code.

With this new information in hand, I had a chance to go end things once and for all.  A sneak attack, at their home, would really put Titan in a bad spot.  Maybe even threaten her husband Kim so she surrenders without a fight.  With all these ideas running through my head, I was about to go and pay the Krummels a visit when a hacker’s message popped up on my screen.  The screen name in the message was StabbtyBnny.  ‘Who is this?’

How the hell did someone break through my firewalls?  I typed back, ‘You don’t want to know.’

The next message came across very quickly.  ‘I’ve been looking into this program for years.  The government is hiding stuff from all of us.’

‘Who are you?’

This time the hacker took a bit longer.  I tried to trace the IP address from the message, but it was pining all over the world.  This guy or gal was good.  ‘A friend.  If you’re looking into this, we have similar interests.’  My screen went back to the file on Rebecca Larsen and her involvement in the raid.

Time was being wasted, but I found myself lulled into this conversation.  ‘What interest do you have in a decades old government black program?’

‘Personal ones, that’s all I’ll say.  I can’t pinpoint you and I know you can’t pinpoint me, but here is a token of my trust.’  An imbedded file was attached to the message.  He sent one last message to me before disappearing.  ‘Help me expose these people for what they are – traitors.’

With the connection lost and the conversation box dead, the only thing I had left was the imbedded file he sent me.  I downloaded it and it became clear this was a recording.  There was only one thing left to do, hit play.

“Hey sis it’s Betzy.  I don’t know you’ll get this message in time; I just wanted to give you a quick heads up.  The electron generator is going live later today, there’s just something that bugs me about it.  General Bulger was walking by earlier with Ted along with some creepy guy named Dr. Cooper.  I think I overheard this Cooper say they want to be able to weaponize this, depending on how the tests go today.  I didn’t sign up for that kinda crap.  I’m contracted until the end of the month, so when my time is up, I’m hoping to move back to South Terrace.  Tell mom I said hi.  Well, gotta go; they want me to start getting some systems along.  Peace.”

When the message ended, all I could think was this StabbtyBnny couldn’t have had any idea who he sent this too.  This message from this Betzy showed that Cooper was involved long before I was even born.  Not that I ever regretted my decision to take his life, but this just proved I did the world a whole lot of good by removing him from it.

There was just one last thing of his out there.  This Stormfall that The Dark Lion’s son had was Cooper’s final legacy.  Once I destroyed the Wonderton line and the information he carried, nothing would be left of the villain Dr. Cooper.  But before I could do that, I had to pay a lady a visit – it was time for the Titan to fall.