The Other Eight (15 page)

“Ah, yes, that brings us to Chloroplast. What
are your thoughts on him?”

“To be honest, I think he plays the snarky
bad-boy card a little heavy. He needs to start putting his money
where his mouth is, because he’s running out of time. Oh, speaking
of time, how much longer is this going to go? We’ve got another
endurance drill this afternoon, and I want to make sure I do my
stretches.”

“Just one more question. I’d like to talk to
you about your assigned partner, Non Sequitur.”

“Oof. Your guess is as good as mine with that
guy, Doc. I don’t know what his deal is. Sometimes it seems like
he’s got the stuff, but there’s just no
fire
in him, you
know?”

“And fire is important, you feel?”

“Are you kidding? It’s
everything.
In
the world of heroism, there are going to be dangers, temptations.
Your heart has to be in it, and it has to be in the right place, or
you’ll falter and then that’s it, the beginning of the end. The
downward spiral. Maybe even toward villainy. I’m hoping I can whip
him into shape for his own good, you know?”

Aiken jotted down a few more notes.

“Well, I think that’s all for now. Thank you
for sharing your thoughts.”

“No problem, Doc. Keep the Thin Mints on ice
and I’ll be in here every day.” She stood and approached the door,
but stopped and turned back. “Actually, fair’s fair, Doc. I spilled
the beans about my thoughts on the other candidates. How do you
think
I
stack up?”

“It isn’t really appropriate to share that
sort of information with—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cop out. Come on, Doc.
It’s just between you, me, and Private Summers. What’s your
professional opinion?”

He sighed and flipped down the cover on his
clipboard. “I believe you are a driven, dedicated, and talented
young woman. Of all of the candidates I’ve observed, no one else
has displayed a devotion not only to the style of super-heroism,
but to its spirit as well. You represent what many would define as
the quintessential meta-human.”

“Well, I’m glad
somebody
noticed,” she
said with a smirk. “So long, Doc.” She pushed the door open and
strutted outside.

Dr. Aiken stood and selected a cup marked
“Hot Apple Cider” from the rack beside the coffee machine and set
it to brewing.

“The next interview we’ve got lined up is
with The Hocker,” Summers said.

Dr. Aiken nodded. “Let’s make sure he hasn’t
got any seed packets on him this time. Tell me, were you serious
about the points?”

“Yes, sir. Special mandate from General
Siegel. It was in the appendix of the briefing.”

“I’ll never understand why people insist on
putting important information in the
appendix
of a
document.”

“I’ll get you a recent copy of the
briefing.”

“Thank you. Oh, and I must say, good call on
the cookies. It is amazing how effective they have been at greasing
the wheels of psychology.”

“Cookies are nothing, Doctor. If they’d
allowed me to requisition an espresso machine, we’d probably have
the MPs volunteering to talk about their childhood.”

“Something to keep in mind.”

“Explain to
me again why we are at a garden supply depot at 2 a.m.” said
Dentata.

She and the rest of the villains were sharing
the same rental car and had just pulled up to their destination. It
was a sprawling warehouse of a store, taking up most of a city
block and surrounded by a sturdy chain-link fence. They’d pulled up
to the rear of the building, where the employee parking lot and
entrance could be found, as well as a phalanx of wheeled racks
covered with seasonal flora. There was a gate in the fence in front
of them, locked with a heavy chain.

Showing logic uncharacteristic of most
villains, they had all decided that the best course of action would
be to cover up their costumes and forgo their masks until just
before their caper. A rented Volvo being driven by a man in a
chicken mask was likely to draw attention.

“We’re here at 2 a.m. because we hit
traffic,” Chicken Scratch grumbled, glaring at Bottleneck in the
backseat. “Otherwise we would have been here at 11 p.m. like the
plan called for.”

“I told you to plan for at least three hours
of delays. This is what you get for traveling at rush hour,”
Bottleneck said.

“Midnight is not rush hour, Porter,”
Pollinatrix said. “From now on, you travel separately.”

“Look, I don’t care why we’re late. I just
want to know what’s with the garden supply store. I can’t imagine
there are many crime sprees that start by ripping off a palette of
petunias.”

“We’re not here to steal petunias. We’re here
to steal a sack or two of ammonium nitrate,” Pollinatrix said.
“It’s a fertilizer.”

“Why is that any better?”

“Look, we’re working for a mastermind.
Masterminds operate on a whole different level. Take it from me,
I’ve masterminded some heists of my own. If you don’t have the big
picture, none of it will make sense. He’s probably got teams doing
different chunks of the plan all over the state. Maybe all over the
country. We all work on our own piece so that no one will be able
to put it together until it is too late. That’s how our minds
work.”

“Well, why wouldn’t he let
us
know?”

“Because if he did, then we’d just do the
caper ourselves,” Pollinatrix explained.

“Villainy is complicated,” Dentata said,
crossing her arms. “If I knew I’d have to climb the ranks like a
regular job, I would have asked for a bigger signing bonus from The
Adviser.”

“Hey, we lucked out with this gig. Most of
the time if you want to get approached with a job offer on a
mastermind’s caper, you’ve got to know how to fly a helicopter,”
Chicken Scratch said, readying his mask. “Now this is just going to
be a smash and grab. Bottleneck, your job is to slow down the
emergency response. The rest of us will get the stuff and get out,
and we’ll all meet back at The BaBoom.”

“Got it. See you guys there,” Bottleneck
said, stepping out of the car and heading back in the direction
they came from. As he approached the corner, a car’s engine started
to knock and spray steam while crossing the intersection,
sputtering to a stop in the middle of the road and causing four-way
gridlock.

Chicken Scratch gave a low whistle. “Gotta
give it to him. He’s not without his usefulness.” He slid on his
mask. “Okay, move out.”

The three remaining villains stepped out of
the car and approached the building. Chicken Scratch pulled a set
of bolt cutters from the trunk and clipped through the chain, but
before he could open it, he heard a low, echoing rumble and an odd
pattering sound. The rumble grew nearer and more distinct, suddenly
erupting into an explosion of barks. A pair of rottweilers came
barreling around the corner and clashed with the gate.

“Whoa! Okay, what kind of a garden store has
attack dogs?!” Chicken Scratch cried, holding the gate shut against
the vicious creatures.

Pollinatrix sneered. “I’ll take care of the
dogs. You might want to back off, Dentata.”

The leather-clad villain strutted up to the
gate and closed her eyes, snapping her fingers. A droning hum grew
steadily louder, and finally, out of the darkness came a veritable
fog of bees, rolling in from above.

“Ooh, there’s a lot of them today,” she
lamented with a squint of anticipation. Drawing in a deep breath,
she pushed Chicken Scratch free of the gate and kicked it open.

The dogs, first eager to tear into intruders,
were confronted with a legion of stinging insects with the same
intention and considerably greater numbers. Wisely, the dogs turned
tail and ran. Pollinatrix followed suit, running with impressive
speed for someone in spike heels, managing to stay just barely
ahead of a dense swarm. As she ran, she released something between
a battle cry and a scream of terror. Chicken Scratch and Dentata
rushed through the cleared gate, swatting at the stragglers of the
swarm and kicking open the rear door. Alarms began screeching in
their ears as they rushed inside.

The Adviser had provided a layout of the
store in his instructions. They were to head to the bulk section,
which was aisle after aisle of multistory shelves stacked with
everything from potting soil to lawnmowers. Most of the goods were
just sitting out on display, but ammonium nitrate was under
comparatively tight lock and key. A garage-sized section of floor
was caged off and locked up, the inside piled with the clearly
labeled bags of purified fertilizer. Chicken Scratch clipped
through the chain, pulled it open, and made ready to heft a bag
onto his shoulder.

“Wait, I nearly forgot!” he said.

He produced a top-bound spiral notepad and a
pen, scribbled out a note, and signed it with a stylized
C
and
S
made to look like a chicken’s head. Once it was
finished, he crammed it into the hinge of the door, where it would
not be missed.

“What was that?” Dentata asked.

“Calling card,” he said, grunting as he
shouldered a sack of fertilizer. “Can’t pull a job like this and
not give them an idea of who did it.”

“Well, should I do that?”

“Unless you’ve got something quick in mind, I
say skip it. Just grab a bag and let’s go.”

“Uh… okay, wait.”

The villain tore a hole in a bag of the
fertilizer, spilling small white pellets onto the ground. She then
nudged them around with her foot until they roughly formed the
shape of a tooth.

“Good enough,” she decided. “How much of this
stuff do we need?”

“He just said, ‘some,’ so grab a bag and
let’s go. I don’t know that Bottleneck can hold off the police
forever.”

Dentata briefly attempted to snag a
fifty-pound bag, but two fruitless tugs convinced her to take a
ten-pound bag instead, and she rushed off to follow Chicken
Scratch. The yellow-suited villain huffed and puffed down the
aisles and to the door. Sure enough, Bottleneck’s confounding
effect on traffic patterns had prevented cops, or anyone else, from
coming down the street. Chicken Scratch popped the trunk, and the
pair of robbers dumped their ill-gotten gains inside.

“Pollinatrix!” he called out. “It’s time to
make our escape!”

It was hardly necessary to call after her, as
the location of their partner was constantly marked by a drifting
cloud of bees and a continuous, yelping scream. The dogs had long
ago taken cover, leaving their tormentor to sprint in circles,
trying to stay ahead of the swarm.

“It’s about time!” she managed to call out in
the distance, shifting to run toward them. “Open the door and start
the engine!”

Dentata and Chicken Scratch piled into the
front seat, leaving the back door open. As their ally drew nearer,
Dentata desperately rolled up her window. In a practiced dive,
Pollinatrix torpedoed herself into the back seat.

“Drive, drive, drive!” she bellowed.

Tires squealing, the rental peeled away. The
speed of the getaway managed to leave most of the bees behind, and
those who made it into the car were deftly swatted by Pollinatrix.
At first the others were nervous about being stung, but it became
clear that the bees had no interest in either of them as long as
Pollinatrix was in the car. She’d received a few new welts, and was
badly out of breath, but overall they sensed that the whole process
was typical to the point of being mundane to her.

“We get”—she gasped—“what we were after?”

“Yep. Our first act of villainy is a
triumph!” Chicken Scratch said. “That was a lot of grunt work,
though. What do you say we pool our resources for the next gig,
maybe hire some minions? I’ve always wanted minions.”

“Me too!” Pollinatrix panted. “If this all
works out, maybe I can get them some matching outfits. We could
call ourselves The Hive.”

“Whoop!” Dentata hooted gleefully. “I’m
already better at this than at my last job! I’m going to like being
a villain.”

Each day of
testing had a few hours of downtime for the heroes. Due to the
hastiness of the boot camp’s construction, there were a few things
that had been overlooked, not the least of them being the proper
facilities to deal with this downtime. Retcon had brought along a
deck of cards, and he and the other jocks of the group tended to
while away the evenings with poker. Not surprisingly, it was a very
exclusive game. The others found themselves milling about the
courtyard, commiserating about the day’s activities and trying to
come up with something to kill the time.

“Honestly,” Gracias said, kicking a stone as
he trudged toward his cabin, “taking apart and putting together a
gun? What kind of a hero test is that?”

“It’s an army thing. Field stripping,
remember?”

Gracias snickered. “Yeah. I remember.” He
picked up another stone and tossed it in the air. “Still sounds
like something else. Something that would involve a pile of singles
and a pair of hiking boots… see, because…”

“Don’t.”

“Strippers, you know…”

“I said
don’t.
”

“In a
field…
”

“You need to stop explaining jokes. Good
jokes don’t need to be explained, and bad jokes aren’t worth
explaining.”

“You’re just cranky because it was cloudy all
day and now the sun’s going down, so you didn’t get your
between-meal snacks. I swear the only time you aren’t moody is when
you’re soaking up the rays. Then you’re all serene.” He tossed the
rock up and snatched it out of the air. “Hey, betcha I can hit the
flagpole with this rock from here.”

Chloroplast eyed the twenty feet between
Gracias and the flagpole doubtfully. “You’d miss it.”

“Bet you a buck I get it on my first
try.”

“You’re on.”

“Watch and learn.” Gracias lined up the throw
and released the stone like a basketball free throw. When it was
airborne, he leaned forward and cupped his hand to his ear. The
stone struck the pole with a tinny ring. “Oh, oh, you know what
that sound is? That’s the sound of me earning a dollar. Pay up,
partner.”