Fiction: The adventures of Sidekick Carl, Part 23!

 To round out the month, I kind of had to get in Sidekick Carl. Nothing to say, beyond the acknowledgement that this could be the first chapter when Carl has done something. As usual, here's links for the first and previous chapters.

Again, John Carter flew into the night. This time, however, three other agents flew with him, all in the same powered armor. “We’re within 50 kliks of the installation,” he said. They followed a series of ridges that blocked their target from view. Still, a display inside his helmet highlighted the mall and the warehouse. He could see signs of the neomorph colony in the near distance. “Damn it, Audrey must have known there was something here all along,” he said to nobody in particular. “We’re making our final approach from the north. Get your weapons powered up...”

That was when the warehouse exploded, in a brilliant column of white. In the midst of the flame smoke and debris, he made out a twisted rag doll form pinwheeling through the air. “Carl,” he said. He added, “You idiot.”

* * *

Carl tumbled and rolled as he landed, though there would have been little risk of harm. He stayed in a crouch as he surveyed the warehouse. It was as empty as he had thought on arrival. However, there were offices that looked less certain. He found a door locked. At a touch, one of his wholly artificial fingers shaped itself into a perfect facsimile of a key. As he stepped inside, he called out, “I know someone’s in here.”

He advanced into another room, where a light shimmered just out of sight. It proved to be a small bank of monitors showing the feeds from the security cameras. Before he could turn his head, a voice said, “Yeah, you found me.”

He turned is head and beheld a rather slight man in the yellow suit and incongruous hat of the Toxo Warriors. Of course, he already wore a gas mask. “I know you,” he said after a moment. Already, the nanites had brought up a precisely recorded memory. “Back at the construction site, I saw one of you, alone, looking around. We figured we were spotted. Then we saw two of you, only they came out of that silly shed. I thought that was odd, but then I hadn’t seen anyone else, yet.”

“Like I said, you got me,” the Toxo Warrior said. “And I’m sure you can figure out, if I was supposed to kill you, I would have tried already. I just want to talk.”

“About what?” Carl said. “Old times?”

“No,” he said. “The past is in the past. Even back then, it was nothing personal. Not to me.”

“Maybe I do want to talk,” Carl countered. “Like the time you gassed all those people to get at a chemical that wasn’t any good. We knew you were cold, but it never made sense that you would make that kind of mistake. Except, we never thought about there being someone else.”

“Maybe I did the research, but I never did anything like that,” the Toxo Warrior said. “That was the other guys; you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know about them.”

“What about the lab?” Carl said. “That never made sense, either. Whatever the Hell the experiment was, somebody should have been watching it. And if it had been watched properly, there definitely wouldn’t have been a bucket left out.”

“So I bailed,” the Toxo Warrior said. “They could have done the same thing. They were the ones who got off on the supervillain schtick.”

“Then what about the other other guy?” Carl mused. He peered at the figure. The bright suit made him very visible, but also made it harder to discern details. Even so, it was clear there was a small chemical tank slung over his back. He could just make out a hose and a sort of pistol grip. “We know there’s two of you, again, and I can already tell you’re not the type who would just pop out of retirement. So did he find you, or was he in it all along?”

“Maybe, maybe, a little of both,” the Toxo Warrior equivocated. “We had help from a lot of people back then. Some knew more than others.”

“Listen to me,” Carl said firmly. “You know what you did then was wrong.  You know what you’re doing now is wrong, and dangerous, too. You can still put a stop to it all, if you surrender and come with us. We might even be able to help you stay out of prison.”

“To be honest?” the Toxo Warrior said. “I only do this because I’m a follower, not a leader.  What I am is curious. There’s big things happening, really, just wow. I’m giving you a heads up, just stay out of it. We won’t even try to kill you any more. Well, maybe not.”

“I can’t do that,” Carl said.

“No,” the Toxo Warrior said. “I suppose not.” He was already reaching over his shoulder. He came up with a long, thin nozzle. Carl had barely a second to weigh his options, which he knew was still far too long. He pivoted in a kick, narrowing his profile. A spray of liquid shot past him, close enough for perhaps a few dozen droplets to hit him. The chemical, which could only be acid, burned a line of tiny pinholes through the outer layers of his suit, which the nanites rushed to seal. The bulk of the spray hit the wall, melting plaster and brick into a uniform brown mass. Then his foot caught the Toxo Warrior’s hand, knocking the nozzle from his grip.

The Toxo Warrior cast the tank aside. A trail of drips followed its arc, ending in a small puddle that sizzled beneath the damaged nozzle. Carl sidestepped again, then he lunged forward. Already, the Toxo Warrior had another weapon in hand, a rusty but clearly effective axe. It crossed Carl’s mind that in the old days, he would have taken the blow just to entangle the the weapon; that, of course, was so Constructor or one of their allies could go for the real target. Now, he dodged a devastating blow that could have dismembered an ordinary man, so quickly that the villain gaped in surprise as the blade scraped the concrete. Carl countered with a second kick that caught his opponent in the abdomen, knocking him back with an audible groan. He closed for a punch that staggered the Toxo Warrior. There was a crack, and one glance confirmed that an eyepiece of the gas mask had broken.

But time was already against him. The pool of acid was still spreading, in fact doing so faster. Carl recognized that the floor beneath the tank must have already been reduced to an inert crust that the acid ran over without being absorbed. On examination, there were signs that the tank itself was taking damage. The Toxo Warrior had clearly made the same calculations even faster; he was darting for the door. Carl hopped over a long, thin rivulet of acid to continue the pursuit… and stepped in a bear trap.

“Seriously?” he said.

“It was what we could come up with,” the Toxo Warrior said. He had already opened a trapdoor. “For what it’s worth, I told them you’ll probably live.” The door slammed.

 

The blast came 10 seconds later.