Greg Haden grumbled as his fingers danced over the delicate clockwork that he’d assembled in the lab he’d found deep underground, a mechanical haunt long abandoned. In every direction there was a clutter of gears, escapements, springs, chains, and casings, the remnants of his other creations. And they were his creations, even if some of them were older than he was.
Some of it he’d taken apart for the purpose of cracking the files on the magnetic tape Harkeem had provided, and paid handsomely for. The kind of pay Greg should be getting, for what he could do! The ideas on mechanical computation were genius – his genius – and easily could be translated to magnetic tape. All it required was a few stators and inductors, simply purchased from Component Shack.
He set the tape in the cradle, the magnets of the stators humming into life as gears started to move. Data was pulled off and fed into an abacus-like arrangement of miniature mechanical logic gates, clicking and clacking and transmitting into an antique monitor. Electricity was not his specialty, but he knew enough to translate outputs into a cathode-ray tube display.
The components of the file appeared as jumbled nonsense, junk characters rapidly cycling as the abacus clicked and whirred, doing calculations far more advanced than even softchip-based processors. Greg scoffed at the so-called modern technology, knowing he was capable of something far more impressive. The artifacts he had recovered from his other self demonstrated it was only a matter of time, as the gears and mechanisms made intuitive sense — though some of it made him queasy to contemplate, the visceral strangeness a repulsive strain on his mind that he preferred not to consider just yet.
While the decoder worked, he turned to the large spheres that occupied one corner of the lab. All but one were intact, as he needed them to gather more resources. After all, everything that Mechaniacal had left behind was his by right. Greg was Mechaniacal.
He’d known it the first time he’d laid eyes on one of the clockwork devices, knowing his own work as surely as he knew his own hand or foot. Mechaniacal was known to be from some alternate universe, some different timeline or remote future; Greg was just earlier in the process was all. He was just as good, just as smart, and it was only due to the carelessness of Glorybeam and her ilk in creating the Lost Generation that he hadn’t been given the time and resources that were his due. If anything, the other Mechaniacal had probably been spoiled, lavished with opportunity and attention.
Bits and pieces of Mechaniacal’s – his – technology, salvaged from the unworthy who had been holding onto it, hummed and ticked and rumbled, much of it still working despite no obvious power source. There were deep secrets there, mechanisms hooked into the mainspring of the universe, and while he couldn’t make them yet himself that hardly mattered. He had made them, so it was possible.
The half-disassembled – or half-assembled, depending on perspective – half-sphere had the power suppressor exposed, a manifold of crystal and steel with intricate, watch-like gearing. He had improved upon the design with a projector, a long tube clamped onto the power suppressor, to turn the effect from a local pulse to a directed beam. Obviously his other self hadn’t really been challenged enough if he hadn’t felt the need to properly weaponize such a thing, making it better than just a passive defense. If Greg had made such a modification to begin with, he wouldn’t have lost one of the precious drones trying to get his stuff back from the slums.
Of all people, it was some dreg ganger that took out one of his machines, not an actual superhero. Utterly infuriating, and not something he was going to allow. Those gangers were getting another visit, but only once he had more resources behind him. The money that Harkeem had fronted him would very much help with that, freeing him from the tyranny of commissions, repairs, and maintenance for a while. While he could steal money or food with the drones, that was absolutely a waste and a risk. And beneath his dignity.
Greg lost himself in the tinkering for a while, using tools to etch, crimp, cut, and assemble. The sprawl of parts would be a mess to anyone else, but to him it was a buffet of options from which to pick and choose. Small gearboxes were attached to resonance chambers, cogs and springs rotated prisms and thermal motors vibrated to produce heat. It was annoying that he hadn’t yet uncovered real weapons, since he would need something to deal with Star Central.
The idiot superheroes who couldn’t do anything right, who had killed his parents and who had forced him to submit to morons who were incapable of understanding his genius for most of his youth. People who didn’t even think his tinker ability was better than a common-class superpower! Mechaniacal was sovereign-class, so he was too.
Such injustice burned within him, pushing him to longer and longer hours in his lab, and directing his drones to riskier targets as he retrieved more of the misallocated technology. Soon he’d need to move out of the building he was renting. Maybe he’d take over that area in the slums, since Star Central clearly didn’t actually care what went on there. It’d be fitting, after they’d wrecked his drone. And taken it, after all the time he’d spent on the prototype range extension! Not that the idiots had any idea what they were looking at and, even though he’d lost the data, the projector was probably a better approach anyway.
A bell chimed as the decryption finished, and Greg pulled himself away from the machinery. He edged around a large steel casing, half-stripped and showing wires and pipes inside, and crossed to the monitor. The mechanical keyboard clicked in a satisfying pattern as he typed commands, the abacus-like innards of his computer shifting and sliding as it accessed the data.
Normally he wouldn’t have looked through the contents, only verified that they’d been decrypted into something comprehensible. He wasn’t responsible for making sure that the data was usable, or resolving any ciphers that may be involved. Just that the initial encryption was undone, something that had been surprisingly difficult for a machine as powerful as his.
For this particular task though, he was curious. Something that a man was willing pay so much for, and the hurry involved. He went into an entry at random, finding it to be a list of archived messages — clearly autogenerated, to judge by the date string. Nothing that would normally be too interesting, except for the name that popped up at his first, casual glance.
Glorybeam.
That was enough to make him delve further, intrigued in spite of himself, and the more he dug the more astounded he was. Greg had no idea who Harkeem was – who he really was – and didn’t really care, but the man had managed to get his hands on some seriously valuable intel from Blacktime’s people. Discussions, plans, and a few photostats of documents, including some physical photographs.
Most of it he didn’t care about. Blacktime was a villain; villains would always do what they did. But the heroes, that was the juicy bits. Mostly Glorybeam, who’d been the one responsible for the Lost Generation, but there were fragments of gossip on other heroes who had some contact with the villains. That was what he wanted, and even if there was an expectation of privacy Greg was hardly going to let the opportunity go.
He copied everything to his own private device, the mechanical data storage making a satisfied whir as it registered the contents, but he also sent a few things to print. When Harkeem returned, Greg would definitely give him the decoded documents, but if the man knew what was on those devices, he might be amenable to some cooperation. Coordination. Nothing to do with Greg’s real goals, but a nice bit of payback for what had happened some twenty years ago.
After all, someone had to pay for it.
***
Administrator Ike entered commands on the console of his life-support chair as he waited for everyone to arrive for the next briefing, loading information into the room’s display. It seemed like he spent virtually all his time in the briefing room these days — though that was just the way it was, sometimes. Crisis points came and went, and weeks where he could spend time resting and working on his own projects were balanced with weeks where the work never ended and even supers began to show raggedness from a lack of sleep.
Mocker was the first to arrive, the dark-featured warlock sweeping in with uncanny grace. Despite the unorthodox nature of his spellcasting, he was still one of the best experts on magical items and artifacts Star Central had. He looked the part, too, with a thin face and a pointed beard to complement the dark, sweeping clothing and tall hat. Steel Fist was next, and while some supers didn’t think much of the guy for doing mostly street work with the police, he was an invaluable liaison between the high-powered threats that Star Central dealt with and the day-to-day issues of a city that the mundane government took care of.
Skyfield and Hollydart were next, the patrol leads for the overnight issues, and finally he got a notification over the internal system that Thoughtstealer wasn’t attending, but did send along her results. Negative. No signs of mind control on any of his supers, which was something anyway.
“While I know your actions were more consequential,” he began, nodding to Skyfield and Hollydart. “I would like to begin with Steel First. This new vigilante.”
“Ravdia, yes,” Steel Fist said. “Seemed like a young girl, but with that armor and veil, who knows. From my observation and the testimony of those on site, she is an artifact-user. Certainly exhibited excessively more force than she should have been able to apply, but didn’t actually hurt people much. Came across as having been through real training, which is odd for someone that young.”
“And someone we don’t have any files on,” Administrator Ike noted. Star Central tried to keep documentation on all metas, for obvious reasons, but new ones did appear on occasion as people awoke powers suddenly, came across lost, hidden, or discarded secrets or items, or were the victims of such. “Mocker?”
“Nothing I recognize,” the warlock said, as Ike put the photostats from the police car and the warehouse security cameras on the large projector screen on the wall. “If anything, I’d say it’s all decoration. Meaningless in and of itself, probably hiding what the true artifact is. Those runes don’t adhere to any proper structure, and they look wrong. Like someone who had only seen moonie work in passing.”
“So the armor and weapons are fake?” Ike frowned, going in to revise the commentary on Ravdia’s brand-new file.
“Not necessarily.” Mocker flipped his hand, an obsidian gauntlet appearing on it, inlaid with gold. “Constructs often take the form the user imagines, consciously or not. The armor was apparently bulletproof; not simply a costume. I would suspect there is an artifact – an amulet, a ring, something of that nature – which produces it.”
“Noted,” Ike said, finishing the revisions. “Any way to track such an artifact? I am growing somewhat disturbed by the number of new supers in the past few weeks.” A power-armor user, a physical super, and a magical artifact holder. All different types, very different people, and none of them with a reasonable match to a known meta.
It wasn’t unusual for a meta to try their hand at vigilantism or villainy, but most of them didn’t last. As soon as the reality of extraordinary force set in, the overwhelming powers involved in such clashes, most people abandoned it. The romance and excitement of the idea of fighting or committing super-crime ran up against the hard reality of how dangerous, difficult, and violent it actually was, and the meta gave up on it. Usually the vigilantes were just watched and the villains often simply given a slap on the wrist – if they had restrained themselves – as they wouldn’t be trying again.
The pair that had decided to rob or assault the warehouse were, for example, known entities. Dame Beckham’s children, along with their minders. Given her vast fortune and the amount of media, charities, and supers that Beckham funded, nobody wanted to come down too hard on the kids. Ike was going to have to do something about that, especially since things could have gone far worse with a vigilante. Jasmine’s broken nose and Hawthorn’s broken arm were a small price to pay for the sort of humbling the kids desperately needed.
“I will do some divinations, but it’s unlikely I’ll be able to find anything useful,” Mocker warned. “There are just too many sources of magic in Star City, and that’s not including anything of Lunar origin.”
“Understood,” Ike sighed. Every city in the Five City Alliance had its share of relics, a consequence of being on the coast and having occasional traffic – or refugees, or just detritus – from the Sunken City. At least it kept its politics to itself, unlike the Lunar factions above. “My worry is that these events are connected. Brand new supers appearing from nowhere, someone digging up caches of Mechaniacal’s technology, and traces of mind control? I worry that there’s some clairvoyant behind it all, sitting back and pulling strings.”
The other supers winced. Clairvoyant was a class of power that was extremely rare, even among those with access to magic. The ability to pull secrets and information from nowhere, from the past or future, was incomprehensibly powerful in a world full of tinkers, wizards, ancient civilizations, and hidden masters. At least for someone smart enough to apply it — someone like Mocker, who was one of Star Central’s most valuable assets, and the one most disturbed by the possibility.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“If we really have a new clairvoyant super – vigilante or villain – then that needs to be our priority,” Skyfield said, the weather super narrowing storm-gray eyes as the small clouds that floated above his shoulders rumbled with miniature thunder. “The Mechaniacal attacks are an irritant, with the ability to suppress powers, but have yet to cause any significant damage or injury.”
“It’s just a guess, at the moment. A hypothetical,” Ike said, though he had an entire dossier being constructed with that possibility in mind. “But one serious enough that I’m going to request that you bring in any new super, vigilante or villain, that you run across. For their own protection, if nothing else. These kids might be the result of someone testing out what they can do, and heaven help us if someone is figuring out a way to make supers.”
That got several grunts of agreement. It wasn’t so bad that Ike was ready to sound the alarms and call everyone in; the evidence was circumstantial at best. The statistically unlikely appearance of several new supers in a short amount of time, coupled with the admittedly amateur employment of Mechaniacal’s technology, could be chance. No specific line could be drawn between them other than temporal proximity. And there were real, immediate issues to be dealt with.
“Then let’s move on to the Casque Museum robbery,” Ike said, touching the controls and pulling up the report from Hollydart. “Are we sure that nothing was taken?”
***
The public library was the first place where the identity of Harkeem had been even slightly questioned. The woman behind the counter was entirely skeptical when he asked for help, but she hadn’t done more than raise an eyebrow. Fortunately, as long as someone had no intention of actually taking any of the books, the librarian – or really, the Librarian, since she was a meta, even if she’d never been a super – was content to let anyone browse. Though woe betide anyone who damaged the books.
Finding the proper reference materials had taken nearly half the day, as Isaac delved deeper into ever more esoteric stacks. The amount that had been written on powers that affected abstract functions of the world rather than people or things was rather small — at least, the ones publicly available. The tomes and grimoires donated by those of a more mystical bent were, of course, behind restrictions he couldn’t meet.
Despite what many tinkers would have preferred, the science of mankind had long been forced to concede the existence of forces beyond those easily weighed and measured. Prophecy and portent; karma and kismet — such things could be consulted and directed by those with the proper knowledge or skill. Not that Isaac was doing magic. Sorcery was a deliberate thing, invoking the mysteries of crystal and spirit, but some powers edged into the same territory.
There was no true standardized way of testing powers. No transcendent artifact that listed out every facet of how things worked. Some things were obvious enough, like the ability to fly or a metal skin, but others were subtle and might take years for a dedicated meta to properly understand. If they ever did.
Originally, Isaac’s power was just considered some degree of enhanced strength. He could, after all, punch harder than he should be able to, even if he wasn’t able to lift anything beyond human normal. Once he figured out he could affect other objects, it had become rather more complicated and Isaac had spent a lot of time testing it out.
Even now, describing his power as one over the physical property of inertia wasn’t a completely certain thing. It seemed like it to him, after thorough and exhaustive testing had ruled out other things. He wasn’t making anything heavier or lighter; a simple scale showed that. Nor was he granting things any extra motion or energy, as objects that were already still didn’t start to move.
His ability to choose whether to treat things as if they had their original, unaltered properties or their altered ones was another wrinkle that made the testing difficult. The only person he could trust to help him do any of these tests was Cayleb, and given how dangerous some of it could be, Isaac hadn’t wanted to involve him in too much. Even now, Cayleb only vaguely understood that Isaac had something more complex than strength — though to be fair, Isaac had only the vaguest idea of what Cayleb’s tinkering could do.
The only thing he knew for absolute certain was that he could feel when his power flexed, investing or divesting, and that it made permanent changes on the world. The latter part was less common than most people thought, though in a way it hardly mattered. Someone’s super strength could build or break, and that was a permanent effect; things that were burned by summoned fire stayed burnt, but someone drinking conjured water often didn’t stay hydrated.
Often didn’t mean always, though. Some construction supers did have permanent creations, and wizards or sorcerers could apply transmutations that altered fundamental properties. He was certain there were more instances he wasn’t aware of, especially outside of Star City. The Deep Kingdoms, Tinkertown, the moonies — there was a whole wide world with different supers, and even different traditions of power.
Considering how non-standard his power was, Isaac was going back to the drawing board and seeing if he was wrong about what he was doing. Manipulating the way physical objects – even himself – acted was one thing, but applying that to something to do with identities was so sideways that he had to think he’d missed something. That his power was something else entirely, and it was just his application that had resulted in his initial conclusions.
It certainly didn’t help that, no matter how he tried to flex his power, he couldn’t figure out any way to invest – or remove – anything from Harkeem or his other personas. The brief feeling he’d gotten when introducing Ravdia had been ephemeral and difficult to understand, and recapturing it had proved to be impossible. He’d had similar issues when first trying to extend his power outside himself, though, as a brand new exercise was never easy. Clearly it would take more time, research, and experimentation.
Unfortunately, there was nothing conclusive in the books, even the more obscure and scholarly ones like Investigations of Non-Physical World Interactions, which had sounded promising but turned out to be mostly philosophical rather than practical. There was probably a philosophy-based meta out there, somewhere, but Isaac had always worked with his hands. After spending hours heads-down in ancient books, he needed a break, so he marked down what he’d looked at and returned the tomes to their places in the stacks.
He left the library, heading out to get lunch. There was enough in his notebooks that he could review over a burger, though he would have to start working out exercises for himself, the same way he had when he started dealing with objects. Isaac was no stranger to hard work, or to figuring things out on his own.
His pencil scratched out musings in his notebook as he ate, and by the time he was down to his last fries he had filled out another page of his notebook. He was just about ready to return to the self-storage to try a few things when a strange clicking, whirring noise came from his bag. He wiped the grease and salt off his hands with a napkin and reached into the bag to extract the coaster object that Greg had given him. The embossed flag was standing upright, a tiny hinge at the base showing where geared mechanisms had raised it. Exactly how it had gotten signal, or was powered, Isaac had no idea, but that was the nature of tinker work.
Isaac slammed back the last of his soda and hurried to the bathroom, doublechecking that all his Harkeem cosmetics were in place after the meal, and then left a few creds on the table and grabbed his miricycle. He found himself pedaling extra-hard, flying dangerously down the sidewalk before a passerby shouted obscenities in his direction. After which he checked himself, dialing down his speed and divesting himself of a little inertia, so if he did accidentally clip someone he wouldn’t lay them out flat on the sidewalk.
There were no flying supers that he noticed, but halfway to his destination, Stop Motion zoomed by. He didn’t move smoothly, but rather like a series of movie frames, appearing rapidly a few dozen feet apart and fading slowly like an afterimage. The bizarre monochrome man vanished out of sight around the block, and Isaac turned the other way at the intersection, shaking his head as he pedaled towards Greg’s apartment.
“Come in, come in!” Unlike last time, Greg was entirely friendly, something that seemed almost disturbing given how dour he usually was. Just in case, Isaac started pushing inertia into his clothes, but he stepped inside, closing the door behind him. The interior of the apartment had bits and pieces of clockwork rather than actual furniture, but none if it looked like a workspace.
“I take it that you were able to retrieve the data on that drive,” Isaac said, his hands clasped behind his back as he affected the pseudo-noble air that Harkeem demonstrated.
“Yeah, and that’s why I wanted to ask you in,” Greg said, a smile pasted onto his narrow face in a way that didn’t quite look genuine. “There’s a lot of stuff on that drive, and if you’re new here in Star City, you’re not going to be able to use most of it.”
“I take it you perused the contents?” Isaac asked, though there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He just figured Greg wouldn’t care, but no matter who he tapped to decrypt it, there had always been the risk someone would snoop.
“I had to make sure that the decryption worked,” Greg said, though Isaac doubted the explanation. “Anyway, I just glanced over it, and it seems like there’s a lot of juicy stuff there, so I assume you’re planning on trying to get it out there in some way. Or use it yourself? Either way, you’re going to need a newsie contact.”
“While of course I would admit to nothing, it does seem logical that the more options I have available to me, the better,” Isaac said cautiously. He didn’t know the tinker all that well, but the switch to being helpful seemed almost suspiciously sudden. But then again, Greg was a Lost Generation kid too, and seeing a chance to get some satisfaction might be appealing.
“Fantastic. I know a reporter, name of Becka Rogers, who’d be interested in anything you might want to send her on, say, the activities of certain criminals?” Greg chuckled, while Isaac frowned. The name sounded vaguely familiar, and it took him a moment to place it, but then it clicked. Another one of the Lost Generation, a year or two older than him. He had vague memories of a chatty, dark-haired girl, but that was about it.
“You assume I’m interested in the criminals,” Isaac said, trying to keep the conversation as neutral as possible.
“Oh, I hope so, ‘cause I’m interested in the heroes,” Greg sneered. “Prancing thugs pretending to be important. They need to be brought down a peg or two.”
Isaac regarded Greg with some uncertainty, but he broadly agreed. Not that all the heroes were that way, but at the very top they got away with a lot more than they should. He’d always put that as below all the havoc that Blacktime wreaked, however, as at least the heroes were trying, however imperfectly. Glorybeam was the only one he really wanted to see held to account, though any consequences would naturally be more social than physical. It wasn’t like anyone could make a Sovereign-class super do anything they didn’t want to.
Few of the Lost Generation had any reason to truly regard heroes in a positive light, especially given how many of the dreg types had been left to languish, their only real choice to go to the gangs. Some, like Cayleb, still idolized them, and others, like Isaac, had wound up with more complicated opinions. So he thought he knew where Greg was coming from, and really didn’t have the heart to deny him some closure. Or whatever it might be called.
“I accept,” he said at last. “It should not interfere with my purpose.” Not that he could have actually stopped Greg, since it was almost certain the tinker had a copy of everything, but tacit approval could change a lot. And Greg wouldn’t know exactly who and what Harkeem was or what he represented, so it wasn’t like Greg’s activities could do much to reflect back on him.
“Excellent!” Greg said, turning around and opening a random drawer. He handed over the original magnetic tape, as well as a small device Isaac didn’t recognize. The connector was familiar enough – the same type as the original tape drive – though attached to some dense glass-and-metal box of Greg’s own design. “Everything’s on here, and your original,” the tinker said.
“My thanks,” Isaac intoned, taking the two items, stowing them in his bag and then reaching out to take the small business card Greg offered.
“Becka’s information,” Greg said, and Isaac glanced at it before sliding the card into the breast pocket of his jacket. Of course, Isaac would do a little bit of checking on his own before ringing someone up about spilling details of a criminal empire, but if he could help a fellow member of the Lost Generation, he would. “And my own,” Greg added, offering a second card, this one metal rather than proper cardstock.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Isaac said, putting Greg’s card next to Becka’s, and offered back the signaling device. Greg blinked, clearly having forgotten about it, and mumbled something as he took it and then dropped it on a counter without putting much thought in it. Which was closer to the Greg that Isaac remembered, and perversely made Isaac relax a little bit. A confident, driven Greg was far more intimidating to work with than the sullen introvert that Isaac remembered.
With a few final words, Isaac escaped Greg’s apartment and got back on his miricycle, making a line straight for the self-store. Finally, he would be able to see what was going on. From Greg’s comments, there certainly was information of value in the files, and the whole thing hadn’t been some high-stakes snipe hunt.
The moment he got to his storage container he fumbled the clamshell out of its bag and plugged in Greg’s drive, typing the commands necessary to access it. The list of files popped up, all normal text and images – and a few spreadsheets – so Isaac simply started at the top. Communication logs from whatever program Crash and Blacktime used to chat when they weren’t using a phone.
Some of it he started transferring over to his computer, because it would certainly be useful. Mentions of companies and locations being used for drug smuggling, for example. Names of people who “owed” a favor to either Blacktime or Crash. Minor things, really, and just a tiny cross-section of what someone who controlled crime over the entire Five City Alliance had their fingers in.
Other stuff was definitely to be kept well away from the press. More than once, Crash referred to Smokeshow by her given name of Sarah, which Isaac made sure to fix in his mind as something entirely different from Smokeshow, and made reference to a few other family members. Not only did Isaac not want to make trouble for Smokeshow, but there was a certain separation between a criminal’s activities and their personal lives. It was one thing to sic the heroes on Blacktime’s illegal businesses, but if Isaac endangered people solely because they were related to Blacktime or Crash, someone would track him down with prejudice. Besides, there was a good chance the relatives didn’t really have anything to do with organized crime.
The documents that Crash had photostats of were generally older. Copies of deeds, pictures of handwritten essays or articles about artifacts. There didn’t seem to be any particular organization or even meaning to the stuff that was saved, as it ranged from what seemed to be a page from a grimoire to, amusingly, a hand-drawn picture of a stick-figure family from Sarah – aka Smokeshow – age four.
He added the stuff that seemed actionable to a single folder, then got out another tape drive from the eight-pack he’d purchased. At first he was going to copy everything, but then he remembered the stories he’d read on bulletin boards and in books. Maybe they weren’t the best guide from real life, but a low trickle of information was generally agreed to be better than a single dump — and there was a possibility that the reporter contact might not be as useful as hoped. Instead, he just selected a couple of communication logs, ones with specific dates and names, as a starting point. Ones that didn’t even target anything within Star City itself, but rather other places in the Five City Alliance.
Isaac consulted his watch, deciding there were still a few minutes until quitting time, and hastened out of the self-storage toward the closest pay-phone. He put a cred-tab in the slot and dialed the number on Becka’s card, listening to it ring five times until it clicked. For a moment he thought he was going to get an answering machine, but after another few clicks, as the switchboard did its thing, he heard a female voice.
“Hello, this is Rebecca Rogers.”
“Hello, Rebecca,” said Isaac. “My name is Harkeem Jural, and I have some information for you.”
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