The cork bobber bounced lazily on the surface of the lake, its repeated, hypnotic dance an invitation for my eyelids to get heavy. I yawned and closed my eyes for a moment, keeping my grip on the pole tight in case I got a nibble.

The last few days had been more vacation than exile. Stocking up on food for the winter kept me busy, but all doing enjoyable things. Rooting around for roots, fishing for fish, doing repairs and cleaning up around The Bunker, playing with DOG.

I felt guilty that I hadn’t made a lick of progress on AEGIS’ or Saga’s imprisonments, but at the same time, I’d went and visited each of them, and nobody seemed too upset about it. Saga had the patience born of a lifetime in solitude and was just happy to have some distraction, and AEGIS seemed more preoccupied working on DOG-E than on her own escape. I think she’d even been focusing on it over pouring over the data crystal.

Which left me here, fishing with my eyes shut in the brisk fall midday air. Even the sun felt sluggish in warming things up today.

So I guess it was only natural that something would come along to ruin it all.

I heard the distant churn of an engine and at first began scanning the skies for the blue trail of plasma which Karu left in her wake. As I stood and listened, I realized the noise was different, too low-pitch. Something else coming.

At the same time as my realization, I spotted it, a column of dust being thrown up from the trees. Something out there was driving through the woods, fast, and of course, towards me. I moved my fishing tackle to a safe spot and waited on a nearby hill for them to arrive.

It didn’t take long. Crashing through the underbrush effortlessly, a huge armored truck with a metal plow on the front. The windows were blocked with metal plates, leaving only a narrow slit at the driver’s eye level. Appallingly, despite the obvious pragmatism, the whole thing was painted a bright metallic christmas red. The vehicle rolled up to the base of my little hill and stopped.

Without hesitation, the driver hopped out. He was a thin man, wearing a black vest, slacks, and bow-tie and a long-sleeved white dress shirt. With long, swift strides, he walked to the back cabin of the truck and opened the door, allowing the guest of honor to slowly and dramatically emerge.

This was a level of pomp and sophistication I really was not expecting today.

The mystery passenger was wearing what looked like a racecar driver jumpsuit, white in the torso, and arms and legs all the same red to match his truck. A prodigious, black collar went up and around like a turtleneck, and I had to wonder if he needed it as a neck brace. Matching thick black cuffs at his ankles and wrists made it clear this wasn’t just a fashion accident, and was instead a tragedy by design.

Most obnoxious of all was the fact that starting from the sides of his legs and going all the way up to his silly black collar were emblazoned the logos of hundreds of different companies. Corporate sponsorship, and tons of it. I had to wonder what this guy did, and exactly how much he got paid for doing it.

Presumably nothing good, if he was coming out here to do it.

While I gawked, his butler-dressed servant had deployed what looked like a camera on a tripod. Captain Sponsorship was checking his hair in the side-view mirror, and nobody seemed interested in acknowledging me at all.

Well heck, two could play at that game. I abandoned my hilltop and went to get my fish.

“At-tat-tat-tat!” said the odd man as a means of interrupting me. “Do not leave. You will wait.”

“Why am I waiting?” I asked. The man looked at me like I’d just turned into bologna.

“Wilfried, explain,” said the man, taking over on the camera while the manservant strode swiftly over to me.

He looked me up and down and sniffed with disgust. “When you fight, please be sure not to touch the master. I have no desire to have to clean his uniform of your filth.”

“Great. Look, as much as I’d love to fight your master, I’m just gonna head out. Big day, things to do, you know how–“

“No, you will stay. Are you really so ignorant of what is going on here?”

I looked around at what was happening here. Looked to me like two morons had jumped out of a truck ready for a costume party. I told him as much.

“You sincerely do not recognize the great warrior Luminary?” scoffed the butler with disdain.

“I sincerely do not. Not sure why I’d care anyway.”

“Wait,” said Luminary walking up to me, leaving Wilfried to finish with the camera. “Luminary.” I waited for him to say more but he seemed to think his name was a sentence all on its own. I shook my head. He had a little bit of a northeast accent, maybe I was just hearing it wrong?

“Luminary,” he repeated. “Lu. Min. Air. Ey.”

“Yeah, I heard the word. No idea what that’s supposed to mean to me. Can I go now?”

“Truly, you are an uncivilized barbarian, how quickly the wilderness must have taken you. Write that down Wilfried, we’re using that in the shot.”

“Yes sir,” Wilfried said, already jotting notes down in a pad from his breast pocket.

“Yeah, okay,” Luminary said turning back to me. “Look, just sit here another couple minutes while we get the camera set up, okay kid?” He looked up at the grey sky. “Shit lighting but I guess it’ll have to do. Wilfried, take a note to have them fix it in post. I don’t want to come out looking all pale again.”

“So what the heck is this? Some kind of stupid reality holo?” I asked. Luminary flinched at the word stupid so I committed to start using that word in this conversation a lot more. He also completely ignored me instead of responding.

So, fuck that. I headed back towards my fish to collect them and leave. As soon as I took a step, I heard a gunshot and saw a puff of dirt from the ground in front of my feet.

“I do believe I told you to. Sit. Still.” Luminary growled at me. He didn’t even look angry, just annoyed, like I was a pool boy who’d missed a spot. He held the huge expensive pistol effortlessly pointed at me with one hand, even as he adjusted strands of his silky golden coif just so in the mirror.

The threats, even getting shot at, I was expecting. The rest of this bullshit? Unbearable.

I opened my mouth to give this guy a piece of my mind when Wilfried chimed in “Camera’s ready sir. Rolling in 5-4-3-2–“

Luminary dropped into a slight dynamic pose so he’d be all action-ey and low in the frame with me in the background. He began to speak, but with a completely flowery French accent instead of the hint of northeast he had before.

“Bonjour, mes amies, and welcome to anozzer episode of Incroyable Chasse. We are live at an undisclosed location in zee American wildernezz, doing what Luminaree doez bezt. We are hunting down yet another dangereux Exhuman.”

“What,” I said.

“Shoot some stock. Put a voiceover here with his kill count and powers. And then back to me.”

I wasn’t sure but I thought this was the worst thing that had ever happened to me.

“Luinaree would like to thank heez sponsours before we begin, especially zee Ur-Horizon Group, and off courze, zee XPCA, without whose charitable sponsourship, we would not be able to afford to protect zee world. Zee bounty today was posted by an anonymous client but we thank zem as well.”

“You’re a bounty hunter?”

“I am ze best bounty hunter. Truly you can see how zee months in the wild have…Wilfried, what did I say earlier?”

“Truly, you are an uncivilized barbarian, how quickly the wilderness must have taken you,” he recited dutifully.

“Right. Go in 3-2–I am ze best bounty hunter. You haff somehow not heard even of me?” He turned to the camera dramatically. “An uncivilized barbarian. Truly you can see how quickly the wilderness has taken him.” Wilfried gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up from behind the camera.

“Right. Well, if you’re here to claim my bounty, I suppose it’s ass-kicking time,” I said stepping forward.

“NO!” shrieked Luminary. “Not so close to the camera, idiot! Do you have any idea how expensive this is?”

I gave him the most unimpressed disgusted glare I could squeeze onto my face. This fucking guy. Almost casually, I made a tiny little lightning bulb and with a flick of my fingers, chucked it straight at the camera’s body. It streaked from my fingertips to the camera, where it made tiny little bolts of lightning arc everywhere through the frame, making it hiss and belch smoke. Both men turned towards me with incredulous offended expressions.

I gave an exaggerated grin and shrug. “Those dangereux Exhumans!” I said jovially. “You never know what they’ll destroy next!”

“Oh your butt is fucking toast, boy,” growled Luminary, pulling what looked like very high-tech brass knuckles from somewhere and advancing on me. Wilfried ran to the back of the truck for cover. “You’re lucky your bounty is so high, otherwise I’d have to take the cost of my camera out of your sorry flesh.”

“Isn’t…that the point of…never mind.” I dropped into a ready stance and summoned my swords, giving Luminary pause. I wasn’t sure what he’d heard about me from the XPCA or Karu, but apparently it wasn’t much.

“Wilfried?” he called.

“Coming, sir,” came Wilfried’s voice. Luminary and I waited for a few seconds before he popped back into view, toting what looked like a huge rocket launcher. As soon as he came into sight, he moved quickly to level it at me.

Whatever, I wasn’t going anywhere. I had the decency to tell Karu that kind of shit was dangerous, but these idiots deserved whatever my shield gave them. Though I didn’t relish the thought of having to give CPR to captain douche, I figured it’d be worth it to kill him.

Wilfried pulled the trigger and a rocket screamed towards me. All I could see was the head of it spiraling towards me, before it impacted my shield and a bolt of lightning arced through it, down the smoke trail, and into Wilfried, Luminary, their truck, and the stupid camera, which promptly exploded even more than it already had.

The two men screamed in unison and jolted violently, seizing and thrashing even before they hit the ground. The truck’s shiny paint job blistered where the lightning touched it. The rocket launcher erupted with a contained explosion, flying through the air and landing in a smoking heap near me. I kicked it down the hill where it bounced and rolled a few times before splashing into the lake.

I hoped it was also very expensive.

While the two were down, I went to the back of the truck and looked inside. It was a veritable armory in there, red-and-white exosuits, weapons of every shape and size, crates of ammo and explosives. I was tempted to just drive the car to The Bunker and unload it all. But that was a little crazy, and I had no need for most of it, already being super-powered and all. Still…

I found some heavy-duty restraints in the back and put them on the two. Both were breathing and would probably come to soon…or maybe they were both in a coma, I didn’t know. I wasn’t a doctor. Once they were nice and secured, I did a little shopping.

First thing I did was dump out a couple crates of ammo and took the now-empty crates and strapped them to the front and back of an exosuit at the waist. Then, stepping carefully over and around the crate, I boarded the exosuit, slipping my legs down into the exosuit’s legs and repeating the process with my arms. Finally, I pressed my torso forward, putting my face flush with the faceplate and activating the suit, which began to whir to life around me and sealed shut behind me.

“Welcome. Starting up.” Said the friendly, soothing-sounding female voice of the onboard AI. I hoped AEGIS wouldn’t be jealous of me bringing another girl home…or being inside one, I mused. “Your bio-signatures are unrecognized. Are you a new user?”

“Yes,” I said into the black blank mask in front of me.

“Welcome, new user. Calibrating morphology now.” The suit subtly adjusted around me, shortening or lengthening the internal space for limbs, flexing my spine in a slightly less awkward way. I felt the crotch stop poking me in the groin, which was a relief. “Calibration complete. State your name for user profile.”

“Athan.”

“Welcome user Athan. All documentation is available online or by using the help command.”

I waited for something more to happen but instead I just stood there paralyzed inside the suit, staring into the blackness. “Uh, help.”

“Potential help command parsed. To enable help, say ‘confirm.'”

“Confirm.” Okay, no way AEGIS would be jealous of this junk.

“Help command.” A tinny fanfare played. “Welcome to the help menu of your new Ur-Horizon TC-131 Exosuit. Please select one of the following options: New user manual. List of commands. Debugging information. Warranty inform–“

“New user manual.”

“New user manual.” Again with the tinny fanfare. Would it do that for every command?

After another few minutes of browsing the tree of menus with my whole body locked in position, I finally made some headway. I had gotten the screen online, and the outside world was projected on the inside of the suit’s faceplate as though nothing was there. Info callouts popped up, giving me detailed information on the guns in front of me and the ammo I’d dumped all over the floor. By turning my head slightly, I could pan the view around a full 360 degrees.

After releasing several locks and engaging systems, I could finally move. To Ur-Horizon’s credit, the TC-131 felt almost nonexistent after I’d gotten it working. It was a little limited in its movement not being exactly one-to-one with mine, but in general, I’d move, and the suit would move instantly with me, making the exosuit mirror my actions.

I’d have time to play around later though. For now, I wanted to loot these goons and get them out of my hair. I dumped several boxes of explosives in the crates on my front and back, and though I had no real use for them, picked up a few laser weapons so I didn’t have to haul tons of ammo. I still had a bit of room left over, and just grabbed anything else that caught my eye, including another couple pairs of the heavy restraints.

I stepped outside and found the two awake and sitting up, yelling at each other. Silently, from my perspective. Apparently external audio was another thing I had to enable, but I wasn’t going to mess with that now…plus I had very little interest in hearing what the idiots had to say. Luminary got to his feet and began yelling at me, but I sat him back down effortlessly with one of the huge metal hands of the exosuit.

I wanted to tell him to sit and stay, but figured talking was yet another suit command I hadn’t yet learned, so I settled for ripping the tripod off the remains of the camera and shoving the broken tip three feet in the ground as easily as if it were water…pinning Luminary’s restraints to the ground with it. I made a ‘sit down’ gesture at him and headed back to the bunker with my cargo.

A few minutes later, I was almost there, approaching the doorway when something came out of nowhere and knocked one of the exosuit’s feet out from under it. I looked down, but saw nothing, because small black objects had affixed themselves to all the external cameras.

Shit, I think AEGIS was attacking me. I tried to gesture her away and yell at her, but nothing was getting through.

“Enable talking,” I shouted at the suit.

“Unrecognized command,” replied the soothing, friendly voice.

“Enable external talking.”

“Unrecognized command.”

“Let me speak to the outside.”

“Unrecognized command.”

“Oh my god. Just let me talk to her already, damn it.”

“Unrecognized command.”

“You are useless. You are literally no help to anyone.”

“Potential help command parsed. To enable help, say ‘confirm.'”

Something knocked my other foot out from under me and I fell face-first, catching myself with my hands and the crate on my front. I felt a weight on the back of the suit. Probably DOG, probably about to tear out some very important components and leave me trapped in this damn suit like a coffin. I rolled sideways trying to crush it and it bounded off, succeeding only in crushing the crate of explosives on my back, scattering them everywhere and making a great minefield to roll around in. Meanwhile, the friendly tinny welcome music played for me again.

And so it was that I flailed around totally blind, defending myself from an invisible assailant as I yelled my way through the voice menus, trying to figure out how to make the damn thing less useless.

“Okay. Enable external comms,” I said, annoyed that I’d been so close this whole freaking time. The AI didn’t respond, presumably because I was now live.

“AEGIS, get your damn shit off me.”

“Athan?” I heard her say from inside The Bunker.

“It’s me. Call off your robot hit squad.” The attacks stopped and the drones lifted away from my cameras. I saw DOG had picked up a dropped laser weapon and was about one safety switch away from blowing a new hole in the suit, and maybe its driver.

“Why didn’t you say so when I asked?”

“I don’t know how to work this thing. I only just stole it. Why the hell did you attack me?”

“Because I don’t know, giant exosuit I don’t recognize carrying an entire arsenal of explosives straight at me maybe?”

“Okay, fair point. How do I get out of this?”

“You have to shut down the different systems and then do a system exit.”

“You are so much more helpful than the onboard AI.”

She walked me through the steps and one by one I got the onboard systems offline and then the back of the suit opened and allowed me egress. It wasn’t exactly hot or uncomfortable in there, but I found myself sweaty and sticky anyway.

“Wow, nice haul,” AEGIS let out a low whistle as DOG pawed through the debris of the crates. “Where’d you get all this?”

“Some idiot bounty hunter. I should go back and check on him. Luminary? You ever heard that name?” AEGIS shook her head. “He seemed to think it was a war crime I’d never heard of him.”

“Sounds a bit like a pompous asshole to me.”

“Yeah, well, he couldn’t even touch me, and I thought I’d help myself to some of the toys he brought.”

“For once, I approve of your interaction with bounty hunters. He’s…not dead, I assume?”

“You assume correctly.”

“Yeah, maybe go check on him. I’ll have DOG bring this in for us. Very excited to start interfacing with this exosuit too…”

“See if you can teach her some synonyms for comms!” I shouted as I jogged outside. I heard her laugh and urge me to stay safe again as I left earshot.

There was no reason to come back. The two men, the camera, the truck, all of it was gone, leaving nothing but tracks and some scorch marks as evidence they’d come at all. On one hand, I was glad I didn’t have to deal with them anymore, but on the other, I wasn’t too keen on the threat they represented. Unlike Karu, I was pretty sure these guys would kill me in my sleep given the chance, or just drop an air strike on me from orbit, if they could afford one after buying a new camera.

I’d ask AEGIS to keep an extra eye out for them, I know she could come up with something. In the meanwhile, however, I was excited to get home and play with some of my new toys.