Black Spade

"The police are such comedians, aren't they?" Black Spade said to Josh walking beside him. "They want us to release a few hostages as a sign of goodwill?" He dramatically raised his arms, making sure that the ends of his magenta tailcoat swished as he yelled at the concrete ceiling. "We're the bad guys here! What part of that is hard to understand? If we had an ounce of goodwill inside us, we wouldn’t be doing this at all!"

"Sir, uh, I think..." Josh hesitantly said.

"Spit it out! Share your thoughts. This is a free country. That’s what they want you to think anyway."

"Sir, maybe they want proof that we can be trusted during negotiations?"

"If that's the case, it's the police that should show proof that they can be trusted! Corrupt bastards leeching off the system while building a facade of being the good guys. Everyone knows they receive more money from Greaves than their government salaries!"

"Uh, yes, sir," Josh hurriedly replied. "I was just saying—"

"I know, Josh. And your assessment is correct; I was pointing out the hypocrisy. A gold star for you!" Black Spade drew the shape in the air with his finger. Josh looked left and right, seemingly confused. "Wait a sec," Black Spade said. "It's hard to tell because I made you all wear masks, and I apologize if I made a mistake. But, are you Josh?"

Josh, who turned out to be Not-Josh, shook his head. "No, sir, I'm—"

"I'm not asking who you are. Who the hell is Josh?"

“I don’t think we have a Josh, sir.”

"Hmm..." Black Spade twirled his mustache as he racked his memory. “That’s true, though I never did care for your names.” His heavy footsteps were like gongs echoing in the massive parking area beneath the Greaves convention center.

They set up their command post here so they'd have a tinge of safety if the BID decided to bomb them. And if the BID sniffed what was happening here, they would want to pulverize this place. Black Spade's job was to ensure this would remain only a police matter until they managed to transfer all specimens through Legba's doors connected to their hideout.

To that end, Black Spade played the part of a crazed terrorist. He made ridiculous demands to the police negotiators, such as having a plane land next to the building that they could use to escape.

But the situation shouldn't appear too much bullshittery, or the police might suspect some funny business going on. Releasing hostages didn't seem that bad of an idea to make the police think they were making progress. Maybe even a Greaves corporate officer or two to make Sheriff Bernardino feel like he was showing his worth to his Greaves overlords.

"I remember who Josh is!" Black Spade snapped his metallic fingers. It made a weird clang instead of the satisfying smack a normal palm would make—a downside of his bioaugmentronics. "He's from that romcom series I watched the other day." He turned to Not-Josh. "What was I talking about again?"

"My name, sir?"

"Before that."

"The hostages?"

"That's right. Another gold star for you." Black Spade held up five fingers. "We're going to release five Greaves employees. Just rank-and-file, grunt people, not the higher-ups. You go collect five and present them to me." Not-Josh gave him a clumsy salute before running off to the elevator.

Five sounds like a good number.

If they were all Greaves employees, it would keep the hopes of the police up that they'd eventually release officers. It would present a nice progression on the whole hostage negotiation matter, buying time before the police realized something fishy was going on.

Of course, they wouldn’t actually release important Greaves people because Euphonia wanted them for herself—she did have a revenge thing with them from what Black Spade heard.

Not my problem, and it wasn’t polite to pry into the personal business of others. He should stick to his own business, the business of gathering test subjects for the Supplier for reasons that weren’t his business. That was why they targeted the Greaves Tech Fair—they needed a large number of people from all walks of life, not merely random people they could kidnap off the streets.

Black Spade smirked, imagining the aftermath of this operation. The police storming in with their special forces, the ComExos stomping around, brandishing their weapons. Those idiots would charge through the building, breaking down doors, searching rooms.

And they'd find...nothing.

Everyone would be gone!

Black Spade would pay a hundred thousand dollars to see the sheriff's stupid perplexed face when he'd get the report that dozens and dozens of people vanished into thin air, including the Tea Party.

"Instead of paying that amount, we could just leave more cameras to see what'll happen," he muttered to himself.

"Black Spade, sir!" another Not-Josh called out as he approached the food delivery truck that was their command center. "You have to see this!"

"What is it? Something not according to my marvelous plan?"

"One of the monsters got out!"

"How is that possible?” Black Spade frowned. Then his eyes went wide, and he grabbed the man who just spoke. “And what the hell did you just say? Don’t you dare call them monsters, even though they are. They’re test subjects, get it?”

This other Not-Josh hurriedly answered, “Yes, sir! Test subjects.”

“In this day and age, we have to be politically correct in referring to others. Now, you’re telling me one of the test subjects got out of its room?”

The man nodded.

Black Spade exhaled in exasperation, pushed aside the panicking man, and strode inside the truck. Those inside were yelling at each other, pointing at screens. They instantly fell silent when they saw him enter. "Settle down, children,” he said. “Show me what the fuck is happening.”

They retreated to give him space. One pointed at the screen in the upper left, showing part of the corridor of the wing where the hostages were kept. The last time Black Spade had seen that area, it was empty, the hostages secured in the conference rooms.

Now...it wasn't.

A large humanoid with reddish skin, more muscular than any bodybuilder Black Spade had ever seen, was tearing down the door of one of the rooms. This man easily ripped apart the metal and thick wood as if they were made of cardboard. Then it ambled down the corridor and stood in the middle to block it with its huge body. Its raised arms were riddled with small bursts of red; someone outside the screen was shooting at it.

Another screen showed three of his men—the guards assigned to that floor—by the stairs, emptying their magazines at something further ahead. Obviously, the mysterious monster was their target. Bullets weren't working at all. They might as well be shooting a wall, a very beefy wall of flesh.

"What in Mother Core's name is going on?" Black Spade hurriedly covered his mouth. "Apologies. How insensitive of me to invoke the Mother Core when we're working with Adumbrae. Don't tell March Hare or Red Head that I mentioned the Mother Core, okay?"

His men behind him nodded.

Black Spades furrowed his brows as he glowered at them. How many times did he need to remind these idiots? It was impolite to only nod. His mother always told me to speak up. "Okay, people?" He repeated in a low voice through gritted teeth.

"Yes, sir!"

"We won't say anything, sir."

"Sir, okay, sir!"

"Back to the problem at hand, or on the screen," Black Spade said. "Guesses on what that thing is?”

"Uh, sir...I think it's one of those parasite monsters—"

“Test subject!” loudly interjected the man that Black Spade lectured outside. “A test subject somehow escaped, sir.”

“A test subject? That guy?" Black Spade pointed at the screen with the fleshy hulk. It disappeared from there. "That guy?" he repeated, pointing at the next screen. “I don’t think so, although it awfully looks like one.”

Two women entered the room with the destroyed door. A few moments later, several people came rushing out. Another camera pointing at a different part of the corridor showed that it was packed with more scared-looking people. Black Spade surmised that at least a couple of other rooms had been broken into, with their prisoners freed.

This fleshy hulk was freeing the hostages. Intentionally at that. It would’ve already attacked the people if this was a test subject. This was someone whose consciousness wasn’t controlled by the unconscionably expensive slugs that should’ve had a discount because of how putrid they were.

An enhanced human, perhaps? This guy should sue the morons who did his operation because he looked like he was stung by a trillion bees, not even looking remotely human anymore.

Or maybe this party gatecrasher was no longer human. An Adumbrae?

If this guy was an Adumbrae, he might be a new member of those blasted clowns who attacked their laboratory and had a part in Mad Hatter’s death. The Supplier told them that the pompous louts operating in La Esperanza also had a run-in with a group of Adumbrae playing heroes.

The fleshy hulk suddenly rushed down the corridor to the guards by the stairs. It caught two of them, tearing them to pieces like a hopeless romantic removing petals from a flower stalk.

“Okay, that’s gross,” Black Spade said, acting nonchalant despite the rage boiling inside him. “I take it back that we need higher resolution cameras. Oh wait, we’re just jacking into the building’s security feed, right? I expected more from Greaves.”

The last man didn’t take his chance to escape. Instead, he continued to shoot while the others were getting ripped apart. When he ran out of bullets, he whacked the monster with the butt of his gun with apparently no care for his safety.

But Black Spade couldn’t praise him for bravery, for he wasn’t actually a man or even human.

The fleshy hulk lashed out with a backhand, sending the not-human slamming against the wall. The punch that followed shattered the not-human into pottery shards, revealing its true nature—one of the flimsy, plaster men made by Finlay.

“Low-quality dregs. Only good for bolstering numbers like a fake crowd paid to attend a political campaign.”

“Sir, what should we do?”

Black Spade groaned as he stretched his neck. Extraordinarily irksome. Fucking life, throwing wrenches into the cogs of his well-laid plans. If his plans were to be ruined, might as well ruin it further himself. I should be in control.

“Which room is this one?” He tapped the screen with the escaping hostages. “Release the slugs in there.”

“Sir?” The man who spoke had his finger hovering over a button. “But they’ll spread and—”

Black Spade pressed the button himself. He allowed a slight smirk on his face as total pandemonium ensued. The parasites were too tiny to see on camera, but it was clear from the absolute riot in the corridor that they were loose and doing their best to burrow into people’s bodies. Fun, but smelly little shits, those slugs.

“Continue with the operation,” he said. “Keep in contact with Legba. Let’s transport as much as we can.” Black Spade exhaled as his anxiety fell. Things weren’t going well at all, but he threw the wrench right back at this bastard who popped out of nowhere.

Maybe they should try to capture this guy too, whoever this was? The Supplier might be interested in such a peculiar specimen.

The fleshy hulk didn’t seem perturbed by the whole mess. It had stopped destroying the door, dumbly looking at the people scrambling over each other.

“Wait a splendid minute.” Black Spade leaned forward and examined the monster on the screen. Then he looked over his shoulder and noted his men from head to toe as they looked at each other in confusion.

It was hard to tell because the fleshy hulk’s clothes were torn and stretched like the latest fashion craze the youngsters at the club wear, but he was sure it was the same attire as what his men had on. The clincher was that a ripped balaclava partially covered the monster’s bulbous head.

“Did you see where this guy came from?” Black Spade asked his men. Fleshy hulk here probably stole someone’s clothes and mask, and strolled here like he was part of their group. The plan to have his men conceal their faces to hide the presence of Finlay’s dummies spectacularly backfired.

“Uh, no, sir. I swear it just showed up on that floor!”

“This huge asshole? Look at how huge it is! You’re telling me he just showed up like a teleporting dick out of nowhere?”

“It-it’s the truth!” his underling stammered. “We di-didn’t see it-it on any other ca-camera. Our boys by the stairs also didn’t notice it.”

Another guy spoke up. “There was this room with crazy people. They were fighting each other, and we were all watching—”

“In case they tried to escape!”

The other man eagerly nodded. “Yes, we were watching closely because they might do some stupid shit like escaping.”

“The room with the hot blonde—?”

“No! We don’t know about any hot blonde.” All the Not-Joshes elbowed the Not-Josh who just spoke. These idiots weren’t doing their jobs. “Those crazies there destroyed the camera, so we released the worms in that room.”

“Yes, just like you told us, sir!”

“Sir, the instructions you left us were to check the mutations before calling Legba so he’ll know where to send it. We tried to get the camera back online, but no dice—”

“The sensors were also picking up something weird. And—”

“And that’s your excuse why you didn’t see what happened?”

Black Spade sighed while staring at the screen. Some of the parasites managed to find hosts. The hostages who got lucky retreated further down the hall, leaving behind the convulsing bodies of their short-term roommates on the floor. In the next minute or so, the slugs would have complete control of their hosts, and the mutations would start.

“Then we saw that on the cam! It also appeared out of nowhere! That big musclehead and this walking robot poofed there and started busting down doors!”

From the crowd, another curiosity emerged. “What fresh weirdness is this?” Black Spade sat up straight as a chrome figure strode forward.

“Swear, that robot was simply there the next moment we looked!”

“No, it wasn’t, you idiot.”

“Shut the hell up. You were just looking for the blondie!”

Black Spade’s first thought that it was someone wearing armor, but it was too slim. This metal lady, for it seemed to have a feminine form, pointed its finger at the fleshy hulk standing idly the whole time. Was it giving a command?

The fleshy hulk surged forward, almost diving at the infected bodies, and smooshed them to paste. Black Spade jolted at the brutal sight despite having witnessed much violence and perpetrated much of it. The Not-Joshes stopped bickering, watching in horrified silence.

The rest of the hostages fled the other way.

Black Spade chewed his tongue. I don’t know what to make of this. They had transported a hundred people already. That might be enough. It was probably unsafe to continue, for the enemy might be able to get inside Legba’s doors.

“Okay, people,” he clapped his hand to get their attention. “Change of plans. We’re going with Plan C. Pack up your shits and tell Legba what we’re doing. As for our two uninvited guests, contact Red Head and tell him to capture them.” They’d make an excellent gift to the Supplier if they were Adumbrae. Even if not, they looked like they were valuable specimens.

“Having a wee bit of trouble there, my twirly mustached friend?”

Black Spade turned to the door of the truck. One of his men stood there. No, it was Finlay’s puppet. It removed its visor and pulled down the front of its mask to reveal a ratty face. It was no longer a puppet—it was Finlay. This must be what Finlay told him earlier about being able to teleport freely among his puppets.

“A small hiccup, yeah.” Black Spade shrugged.

“Didn’t sound like a small hiccup to me,” Finlay said as he got on the truck. He was probably eavesdropping for some time.

“I suppose not so small if we’re going Plan C.” Black Spade might be misreading things, but he thought he saw a glint of recognition in Finlay’s eyes when he looked at the screen. “Do you know any about them?”

Finlay shook his head. “A robot of Greaves? Don’t know anything about those. Anyway, so we’re going Plan C, right?”

Black Spade paused, mentally noting that Finlay was a lying piece of slime, before answering, “Yes. Plan C. We’ll try what you guys did in La Esperanza.” Then he pressed the button to release the smelly slugs in all the remaining rooms.

“Uh…your guy is about to die.” Finlay pointed at the screen showing the stairs. Someone was going up to their doom.

Black Spade gasped when he realized it was Not-Josh that he sent to fetch Greaves employees to be released. “Oops. Too late to save him.”