Hostile Takeover (18 page)

As the car that had brought him drove away, the sound of wheels in the snow made Edwin sad. Alone at the end, as was fitting. He didn't have much experience with emotion, so he tried to put it from his mind by walking. Under the arc lights, his tall frame cast a long shadow. A man and his briefcase. The weight of the case pulled him off to his right side, but he didn't seem to notice. He just kept walking through the snow.

He remembered the first time he had come here. While it was now a storage facility, it had begun as a place he had created for the amusement of Dr. Loeb. Heir to a great fortune, and quite insane, Edwin had separated the boy from what he saw as valuable and wasted capital. In return, Edwin had created a fantasy world in which Eustace Eugene Reilly the 3rd could believe that he was a criminal mastermind.

And part of that had involved building him a lair. Dr. Loeb had referred to it as his secret lair, but the secret was ill-kept. Especially because Dr. Loeb had insisted on putting up a hand-painted sign that read "Secret Lair." But now the absurdity of it all, here at the bitter end, seemed harmless and sweet to Edwin. Emotion again. He quickened his steps through the snow.

Of course, Dr. Loeb's sign was gone now. It had replaced by a lighted one that proclaimed, "Self Storage—Affordable Rates!" into the grey twilight of a winter's evening. When Edwin had tired of Loeb, he ordered the extensive underground chambers to be converted into secure document storage for large companies with secrets to keep.

Edwin was pleased with the simple business plan and its execution. It was the conversion of something useless and wasteful into something productive and worthwhile. When he tired of bothering with Dr. Loeb—an increasingly expensive distraction for the head of a growing insurance company—he had set him free, as it were, with a few million. The last Edwin had heard, Loeb had disappeared into the wilds of Alabama. Edwin did not wish him well, but he didn't wish him harm either. This was closer to affection than Edwin got with most people.

The surface units were laid out in concentric circles around the central building that served as office and entrance to the underground complex. Edwin wandered through a labyrinth of other people's precious treasures and meaningless junk. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he did not take the shortest, most efficient route to his goal. He wandered through the clean silence and let the precious seconds of his life fall behind him.

This is a good business, Edwin thought. Not glamorous, but a steady cash flow. Regular hours. A sound model. Efficient, reasonable, sane. In another life, he might have been content with this site. Or perhaps a few thousand of them spreading across the country.

Edwin's spiraling, uncertain path brought him to the elevator at the center of the complex. He pushed the call button and waited. How strange it all was. For all that he’d struggled to avoid pointless confrontation, silly costumes and, most of all, underground lairs—now he was going to ground in one.

He had worked all the angles and made all of the possible combinations, and Edwin knew that there was no other way. How little choice was left to him at the end.

Edwin entered the elevator and set his metal case on the floor. The weight of it contacting the floor caused the metal of the elevator car to boom like a funeral bell. The doors closed and Edwin sank into the cold earth.

Five stories below the ground, he walked through room after room of files. The sound of his expensive shoes on the polished concrete sounded fateful, ominous, and massive. At the end of a long hallway, he punched a code into a keypad and a heavy metal door slid open. This was the "command center." The hardened concrete walls, the whisper of the 100-year air purifiers, the waiting store of food and water might lead another man to believe he was secure here. Here hope might grow in the dark like some strange mushroom. Perhaps his fate would not find him? Perhaps, if he was quiet and patient, he could wait out the dry months in the desert—live below the earth until the rains of Spring brought new life.

But Edwin knew that such fantasies would not happen. Long ago, he had ceased to trade in hope.

He powered up the surveillance equipment and sat in the command chair. It creaked ominously as he turned. What a horrible kind of movie set this was, thought Edwin. A concession to every teenage boy's fantasy of power without consequence, responsibility or logic. He longed for a cup of tea, but not enough to get up and get it himself. He sighed and let his weight settle into the cheap swivel chair.

The surveillance system beeped at him urgently, as if it expected Edwin to be able to do something to avert the inevitable. Edwin hoped that he wouldn’t have to wait long.

He landed so hard the snow was blown outward from around his feet. In front of him was the entrance to Windsor's underground lair. But between himself and the entrance was Gus, sitting in a wheelchair. He was slumped awkwardly across one arm, as if half of his body were sleeping. The force of will seemed drained from his frame, and Billy wouldn't have recognized his old friend, except for the eyes. The old man's eyes were still fierce and undimmed.

"You're here for Windsor?" Billy asked.

Gus shook his head. No.

"You can't have him," Billy said. "He's mine. I'm the hero. I get to get the bad guy. That's how it works."

"You can have him and welcome. But you ain't no hero and we both know it."

"C’mon Gus, aren't we both too old for this. I mean, whattaya want from me?"

"A reckoning."

"A what?" asked Billy. Of all the crazy shit.

"You and me boy. One punch each."

Enough of this, thought Billy. "If I hit you, you'd die!"

Gus twisted his head to the side and spit. "Yup."

"I'm not gonna hit a guy in a wheelchair. Can you imagine what would happen if somebody saw that?"

"Always about you, ain’t it?" Gus put both hands on the arms of the wheelchair and struggled to rise.

"Whoa, Gus, did you take your vitamins this morning?"

"Goddamn it, boy," Gus roared, "you're gonna take me seriously! I been fightin' since I was 19. One way or the other, if there was a scrap or a dust-up or a problem this country faced, I found my way into it. I have served, you chicken shit. SERVED!"

"And I haven't? Is that your point?"

"That's not what I'm sayin'. I never expected to live this long. Not by a damn sight. Better men than me have come and gone. And when I look back, I regret a lot of things. But most of all, I regret that I didn't die at their sides. That make any kinda sense to you?"

Billy looked at him for a long time. Finally he said, "Yeah, I think it does."

"If you ever loved me..." Gus choked with emotion. "Goddamn it, you Spandex-wearing sissy."

Billy looked at the old man struggling to stay standing on mutinous legs. He knew that what Gus was asking was more than Gus would ever have done for him. But he went ahead and did it anyway.

In the blink of an eye, Billy dashed forward and hit him. Not hard enough to crush his chest. Not hard enough to knock him backwards through a wall. Just hard enough to stop the old man's heart.

Gus staggered backwards and dropped to one knee.

As Billy watched, he blamed Windsor. Somehow he was behind it all. Billy didn't know how Windsor could have removed the gold from Fort Knox. Or how he could have turned Gus into a husk of man who wanted to die. He just knew that before Windsor, things had been fine. After Windsor, it had all gone to hell.

Gus looked up at him and said, "Thank you." Then he closed his eyes and slumped over dead in the snow. Somewhere, a mead-hall door opened and another warrior went to his just reward.

Screaming with rage, frustration and pain, Billy flew high into the sky. So high that he rose above the heavy snow clouds, into the sunlit brilliance of the thin air beyond. This was clean, high air, where he had always felt unencumbered and free to be himself. But now, the upper troposphere granted him no peace. He arced over backwards and accelerated towards the ground.

As he plowed downward through the cloud cover, the moisture streamed off his face. Some of it was snow melting against his skin. Some of it was tears. Billy couldn't tell the difference and he didn't want to find out.

He slammed into the ground so hard it registered as an earthquake up and down the Eastern seaboard.

"Windsor!" Billy cried, coughing dirt and reinforced concrete dust from his lungs, "Stand and face me."

"No."

"I'm here for the gold."

Edwin sighed. He said, "Then you should brace for disappointment. There is no gold here."

"You can't hide it from me," snarled Billy, as he used the full range of his vision to scan his surroundings.

"I'm not trying."

"Your briefcase! I can't see through it, it must be filled with gold."

"I told you," said Edwin, "There is no gold here."

"Give me the briefcase."

"You don't really want it," Edwin said, trying to be reasonable.

"Yes, I do. And if you don't give it to me I will kill you and take it anyway. Haven't you heard? I'm a villain now."

"Excelsior, if you strike me down you will still be an idiot."

"Billy! My name is Billy!"

"A rose by any other name would still be more cunning than you."

Excelsior slammed his foot into the floor so hard, most of the lights broke and chips of concrete rained down from the ceiling of the reinforced room. "I can make this your grave Windsor."

"Oh, very well. If you want my "treasure”—the gold at the bottom of the dungeon, the destructive serum at the heart of the mad scientist's lair, whatever foolishness you imagine this to be," he nudged the briefcase, "then take it."

Billy walked across the room. Their eyes locked, as he bent down very slowly and reached for the case. Edwin held his gaze calmly. Even though Billy's face was mere inches away from Windsor's, Edwin did not blink or flinch.

Case in hand, Billy stood up and took a step backward. Even though he could see no way that Edwin Windsor could have possibly been a physical threat to him, a feeling of relief flooded through him.

"I thought so, you ain’t got nothing!"

Edwin smiled at the double negative. Or perhaps he winced in pain. It was difficult to tell in the flickering, uncertain light.

Billy raised himself to his full height and made his pronouncement, "I will let you live, Windsor. Even as a villain, I'm a better man than you."

Edwin covered his eyes and waved Billy away. "Please forgive me if I don't show you out."

Billy left the room carrying his prize and feeling triumphant. But when the door to the command center shut behind him, curiosity got the best of him. What was in the case, anyway? He knew it was incredibly dense. He knew that he couldn't see through it. That made it either lead or gold. There certainly was nothing like it buried in the earth around him. Had he just stolen a briefcase full of lead? Better check, just to be sure Windsor wasn't pulling anything.

He put the case on a table and looked at it. It looked expensive. It was, in fact, the most expensive briefcase known to man. And that was before one took into account the contents. Underneath the expensive, hand-stitched leather was an expensive magnetic containment unit known as a Penning Trap. The irony of a trap that was actually a trap had not been lost on Edwin.

Inside the Penning Trap's swirling magnetic field was the most expensive substance known to man, an entire gram of anti-hydrogen. By NASA estimates it was worth $62.5 trillion dollars. Of course, that was absurd. To make a market, you need a buyer. $62.5 trillion was nearly five years of the Gross Domestic Product of the United States. Not the kind of money that one spent on a substance whose very nature ensured that it destroyed anything it came into contact with. Perhaps “destroyed” was the wrong word. “Destroyed” implied that struggle was possible. Antimatter simply negated the matter around it. No argument or struggle involved. It was Edwin's kind of weapon. Of course it was horrendously expensive, but when it was the only way to get the job done...

Excelsior released the clasps and the case opened on its own. Servos pushed the sides down and lifted a complex electromagnetic apparatus as if it was something to behold. In fact, it was not. It was grey, covered in wires, and looked a bit like a poorly conceived high school shop project that had gone terribly over budget. But it did have a bright red button on it that read "DANGER! OPEN."

Danger, scoffed Billy. What danger could there be to him? He was the most impervious thing he knew of. But as impervious as he was, he was still composed of matter. Very, very tough matter, but matter all the same.

For all the clever jokes that could be made here involving "mind" and "matter" there is one sure and certain variation you can take with you to the grave: "In the grand scheme of things you don't matter very much, and the laws of physics don't mind at all."

When Billy pushed the button, matter met antimatter and neither party was very happy about it.

As the first tremor reached Edwin in the command chair, he thought to himself, "And now I am dead, killed ridding the world of an unbalanced monster. A hero at the end?" This absurd pill was all the more bitter for being true. For all his struggles to be true to principle, his final realization came in the words of Shakespeare, "Men were deceivers ever. One foot in sea and one on shore. To one thing constant never." Perhaps he never really knew himself at all.

As the matter around the case was nullified, 500 Kv gamma rays irradiated the earth. On the surface, storage units buckled and rolled on a bubble of earth and light. Then they were sucked inward with sudden violence. As the roar subsided there was not even smoke. A crater filled with the irradiated detritus of storage unit junk was all that remained to mark what was surely the final resting place for Edwin Windsor and a once-innocent boy from the Midwest named Billy.