Fiction: The Adventures of Sidekick Carl, Part 18!

 It's the end of the month, and I decided it was a matter of self-respect to do an installment of Sidekick Carl. No intro this time, just links for first and previous installments.

The Toxo Warriors sat together in their lab. The TV showed a short clip of a damaged convention center. “Authorities have still not confirmed the identity of the individual or individuals responsible for the attack,” the announcer said. “However, sources say that a single attacker was taken into custody at the scene…”

The TV turned off. “Well, we know she failed,” said the one who had most of the plans. “We don’t know if she’s alive.”

“She could talk,” the second said. “She might have already. She know enough.”

The first shook his head. “She wouldn’t,” he said. “There’s nothing they can do to her that would matter. She never really cared about what we were doing.”

The second nodded. “Do we really want to finish?” he said.

“We’ve come too far not to,” said the first.

“That’s what they said,” the second countered.

“Well,” the first said, “at least we can see if it’s finished…”

He opened the door, and they emerged into the larger warehouse space. Before them was an enormous, vaguely serpentine metal form, colored blue-green, with wheels on its four feet. It was clear that it was missing only the head. The second one reluctantly removed a tarp from the mechanical dragon head. Now it, too, was a pristine sea green, without a hint of the corrosion and encrustations that had covered it. Its mouth flickered as it spoke but one word: “Excellent.” And the two Toxo Warriors looked nervously at each other.

* * *

 

Dana Shelton turned a laptop around to show the pictures of two men with dark hair. “These are… were… John Turner and Ian Chesterton. They were second cousins, or that was on record. There were rumors that they might have been half-brothers, but nobody would say who said so. Turner had a doctorate in chemistry, Ian was a construction and landscaping contractor who tried to get a chemical engineering degree. Turner got hired by some big companies and a couple schools, but never lasted more than a few years. He was married, too; his wife divorced him a year before the Toxo Warriors first appeared. I’m still working on what happened to her. She filed for a restraining order right before the divorce was finalized, then things go dark. She had a child, from a previous relationship. There’s a trail there, I just need time to run it down.”

Even through the camera, her gaze focused pointedly on Agent John Carter. He shrugged. “All right, we knew about them,” he said. “We put them on a list of persons of interest. It was a long list. We found the wife, too, once. She didn’t know anything.”

Carl nodded, though he frowned, and turned back to his partner’s daughter. “I’m sure you can tell us more,” he said. “What about the other one?”

“We have less on him,” she said. “He owned his own company, but he never made much of an impression, even on his employees. The only people he was close to talked about him differently. They say he was intense, into superhumans, cryptozoology, conspiracies, you know the drill. The big break is, he was a contractor for the companies that owned the properties where the Toxo Warriors operated. He even worked at one of the same sites.”

Carter nodded, and idly clasped his own Dana’s hand. “That was how he got on our radar,” he said. He looked back at Ms. Shelton. “Well, you might as well tell them the rest.”

She smiled. “Sure, so, after the lab blew up, both men completely disappeared. With Turner, nobody was really looking for him, so he wasn’t declared missing until he didn’t turn up for a court date. But Chesterton’s employees and partners were calling police within a few days. Most of them thought he had skipped out on paying them, so a lot of them called their lawyers first. There were a few who talked about whether he was a Toxo Warrior, but nobody really took it seriously. By then, he was supposed to be hundreds of miles from the lab, so there was nothing conclusive to connect him.”

“I know,” Carter said. “It still wasn’t more than we had on other people. So what’s different now?”

Shelton’s smile became a grin. Then, here’s what nobody knew,” she said. “He took a quarter-million dollar loan from one of the Raven’s shell companies. That was after the Toxo Warriors’ lab was built.”

Carl glanced sidelong at Carter. His face was nearly blank, which he knew was a sign of surprise or great concern. The agent glanced back. “No, we didn’t know,” he said. “Sure, that’s not noise level. But can you prove it means anything?”

“How about this?” the other Dana said. “He took out the loan after 3 different accounts the Toxo Warriors used were emptied. And, he had a meeting for the loan while the logs at one of their work sites said he was on the clock. That was why so many people thought he was just going to bail, but none of them knew about the money.”

“Fine,” Carl finally cut in. “We have a connection. But how does it help us now?”

That was when his Dana spoke up. “Well, we already know what  really happened to the Toxo Warriors, don’t we?” she said. “Everyone said they couldn’t have survived, nobody saw these guys again, so the simplest explanation is, they never got out of the lab. That means whoever is out there is another pair. Maybe they were part of the crew, maybe they’re just copying the original. Still, different.”

“Sure,” Carter said. “But I’d say, not different enough. They definitely know things we never released, and none of the copycats we caught before ever figured out. And they aren’t thinking small, either. They may not be building armies like Basiliskus or Dr. Hydro, but they aren’t just out to knock off a bank or a gold train. It might be even bigger than anything the original guys ever thought of. At least I have something to take home.”

Carter left, while Dana stayed on the line to catch up in earnest. The two woman chattered, notwithstanding the deep voice of the Nine Foot Woman. When they were finally done, Carl stepped outside while his wife prepared for bed. He looked back, and forth, and finally up. “Are you ready to talk?” he called out.

 

As he turned again, he saw no surprise at the sight of two shining red eyes already there.