“That’s gonna be very not good,” I muttered at my computer. I was staring at my throwaway reddit’s messages. I’d deleted the post on our page pretty much as soon as I’d noticed it, but I wasn’t the first of our army to see it. It was causing unease in some of the soldiers. Slick, especially. She didn’t like the implications of the ‘takes knight’ portion of the private message. She blamed herself, understandably, for pulling the small-time, mundane vigilante into this whole war. Fortunately, most of the people here didn’t know enough to be truly afraid. They only knew that whoever they stole from knew they were behind it. They didn’t know what terrified me. I could care less that someone had taken advantage of some guy who dressed up in a jumpsuit to beat up criminals. I gave a crap about the ‘queen’ part. Unlike them, I knew who we’d relieved of the cube. They scared me as much as the company did. I’d heard the rumors about the General. I didn’t want that happening to me. That meant we needed to keep her from knowing where we were.
“Alright, people,” I said, turning around to face the three teams stationed here with me, “We have to assume whoever is taunting us knows about this place, or will in no time. Let’s strike and head out.”
Numb groaned. “We can take them, no problem. Throw Boom and Shake on the entrance, pull back to me, Twist, Force, and Spin. You, Slick, and Blow suppress them while the rest of us work. I mean, not sure whether Voice and Shush can do much for us. Maybe Fright can do whatever she does to do her whole, brr.”
“Not going to work. Not against a company team. Or those other weirdos.” Slick, as usual, providing the voice of reason for her team. “I mean, we couldn’t even take a single vigilante. How are we going to take an army?”
“Speak for yourself,” Twist mocked, “We didn’t lose at anything. You and your team lost.” everyone started to bicker amongst themselves.
I cleared my throat and they all grew quiet. “We need to move. Twist, you’re right, but remember, we also lost to that pair of guys from the company. And before you speak up, Fright, your team couldn't take a single person from the Adversary’s crew. We move.” they all respected me enough to listen. I was technically in charge of our cell, though in charge is a very loose term. I kept us running fairly democratically, I like to think. “Fright, your team are on pack up. I want all our gear in the vans yesterday. Slick, your team’re on prep. I want enough supplies to drive to goddamned Portland without stopping for longer than five minutes at any point. That’s food, drink, gas, cash, whatever we’ll need. My team are on delay and cleanup. Let’s move, people. We’re wasting daylight.”
Fright and her team rushed back to our armory, to start packing up our stuff. Slick took her people and walked more casually out the side door of our safehouse, giving them all instructions as they moved. I looked at my people. They looked expectantly at me. “Alright, Zots,” Shush said to me quietly, “What’s the plan?”
I sighed. “Shush, take your radio and head out onto the street. Keep an eye out for anything suspect and radio in the moment you notice anything. Especially,” I finished the order with a nod, then moved on, “Shake, I want you on the roof across the street. If she radios in, make some quiet chaos on the street near her warning. Twist, you’re with me on cleanup.”
“I don’t get to do any of the fun stuff?” Twist complained to me as Shake started walking up the stairs to our roof and Shush vanished from all senses, sight, smell, sound, everything.
I smiled at Twist. “We both know why you don’t get to have fun,” I told her.
“Because you hate me?” Twist joked. She knew the real reason, though. I never appreciated people undermining the Third Army, even if it was somewhat justified. Slick took a risk, and it didn’t pay off. We’ve all done something like that at some point.
Shaking my head at her, I ignored her joke. “Alright, get the cleanup suits and start wiping everything down while I take care of our electronic footprint.” I sit down in my rolling chair and push myself over to our electronic set-up. Spin had already removed all the backups, all the data. I touched the router and reached out. First step, this Fist character’s computer. Just in case the girl left any information for him to find us. It was clear that he was either an enemy or compromised, whether or not he realized it. I followed the paths to his IP, and began to speed up the currents. Slowly, the motherboard’s resistors melted into the board itself, the hardware warping beyond function. Next, I burned out our actual connection. The idea was that it might delay discovery to some extent. It wouldn’t, I knew it wouldn’t, but it’s a part of our cleanup protocol.
Turning my head, I watched Twist, hard at work wiping down the walls. More specifically, I watched Twist sitting on the floor in the center of the warehouse, wearing her cleanup suit, as a rag wiped down the walls. Twist didn’t always like to actually put the work in, but I knew that. It might not be perfect, but it was going to be fast and in the moment, I’d take fast over perfect nine times out of ten.
Radio buzzed. Twice in quick succession, a signal to Shake. “Alright,” I say loud enough for the packing crew to hear, “Time’s up. Fright, get into your and the newbies’ vans and text Slick to meet us at the rally point.” The radio buzzed a third time, Shake confirming Shush’s signal. I continued, “Twist, keep up the work, but keep it up while walking to our van. I’m headed to the roof to scope things out, then I’ll meet up with you.” Heading out the side door into the alleyway, I took a breath and focused. Slowly, I pushed off the ground, keeping my charge and the ground’s charge the same and amplifying both. With a louder than I generally like crackle, I shot up to the rooftop, and looked out. Three blocks over, I saw Shake concentrating hard. Looking where he was vaguely pointed, I saw the Girl. She was walking like she was drunk, as were a whole lot of people around her. Shake was upsetting the area’s balance. Good. But the Girl was still headed straight for us. I texted Fright, ‘rpa’s a no go’. That would avoid any unpleasantness from having to drive past the Girl. I also messaged Slick, ‘Keep away from base, F will make contact’ for the same reason. Fright would head to B, and check if it was safe. If it was, she’d tell us. Else, she’d continue to C and so on.
Which left my team. Hopping off the building, I slid down one of the drainage pipes, then pushed off to land on our van. Rolled across the top of the van, and in through the passenger side door. “Alright,” I said to Twist, “Take us a block or so down that way,” gesturing towards Shake. I press the radio button three times in quick succession. That meant we were clear. Shake would head to ground level, Shush would meet up with him, and together they’d meet up with us. I quickly added as I climbed into the back of the van, “Keep us off the main roads, alleys and one-lanes only, got it?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Twist complained as she drove us down one of the alleys off our burned garage. The Girl would be headed directly there. She’d know we’d spotted her and cleared out. Shake’s quivering of inner ear liquid was effective, but if the girl knew about our team, then she’d know we were the ones messing with her balance. If not, we were in the clear and she’d just blame whatever she had for breakfast. That said, never take chances, not with someone as dangerous as the Girl.
Slowly, we meandered our way around the back-roads, alleys, and parking lots of the area to the building Shake had been on top of earlier. The passenger’s door opened on its own. I looked over at the empty seat. “Where’s Shake?” I asked the air.
Out of nowhere, Shush reappeared, and sank into the seat. “He’s good. He’s just keeping watch over there and snacking.” She gestured towards a different alley’s entrance to this office lot. Twist drove us over and I opened the panel door for him.
“What’s up?” Shake asked, climbing into the van.
I shrugged. “The usual. Twist complaining a bunch while everyone else just did their jobs.”
“Glad I missed it,” Shake replied. Slowly we began to drive away from the base, perpendicular to the Girl’s route. Fright would contact us with the rally point, and until then being far away was better.
“So,” Twist asked, “What was the big bad this time? Government agents? The company? Those weirdos with the suits?”
Shush looked at me, inquisitively. I shrugged in response. Whether or not she told was up to her. Shake, however, interrupted our deliberation. “No clue. Looked like a bunch of civvies to me. Has the company gotten better at disguising their teams, maybe?”
“Well, Shush?” Twist asked, “You called it in. What made you sound the alarm?”
I was curious how much she’d tell. “A Face. I recognized the face of one of those so called civilians from the box intel. And Zots was very specific that if anything was wrong, I radio the message.”
I smiled at her. “Good call,” I said, “if there’s one company agent, there’s many, and that call gave us time to clear out.”
“I didn’t finish cleaning up the place, though,” Twist groaned.
“Really?” Shake replied before I had the chance to, “You’re going to complain about not having to finish the job you complained about being assigned in the first place?”
Twist shrugged. “What can I say,” she answered, “I like to finish what I start.”
“That’s not what-” Shake began to make a joke, when a large box of something heavy flew out of the back of the van’s pile and knocked the wind out of the guy.
Twist chuckled. “Sorry, accident.”
“How about we avoid beating up our own guys in the future,” I scolded Twist, “I have enough on my plate. I don’t want to start having to worry about my own people killing each other.”
“Sorry, Zots,” Twist said, only halfway meaning it.
I gave Shake an expectant look. It took a couple moments for it to register with the man, but eventually he added, “Yeah, sorry, bossman. Won’t happen again.”
I chuckled at that thought. “I know it will,” I responded, “I just want you to be safer about it next time. And maybe if you could only try to hurt each other every-other day, that’d be great.”
“But what would we do all those extra days?” Twist asked.
Shake nodded. “I agree. What if we just pulled it down to six days a week. Six days a week sounds doable.” I sighed deeply, so Shake modified his offer. “What about six days a week, but only five on any op weeks.”
I muttered to myself, “Why did I have to get stuck with these two,” only kind of meaning it.
It was Twist’s turn to bargain. “I could see five days a week and one floater each month. You know, for when he does something egregious but we’ve already used up our five for the week.”
“YOu’re acting like I’m the one who causes this stuff?” Shake shouts at her, “I was nice and calm back here just making a good joke when you throw a box at me.”
“Yeah,” Twist shouts back, “Well maybe you should learn what humor is, because the joke you were about to make wasn’t funny.”
Shake shakes his head. “How could you know, you didn’t let me make it.”
As the two of them grew louder in their back and forth shouting, I looked helplessly at Shush and mouthed, ‘Sorry.’
She smiled and shrugged. After all, it was Twist and Shake in a confined space. Bickering and shouting was inevitable.
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