The Works of Nick Hayden

Skirting away from New York City, he headed south, drawing near the coastline and hoping to pick up a signal. It was best to keep moving if they had his location, and he had no access to anything faster. The boat was guzzling gas though.

Molly hadn’t spoken for a time. He assumed she had been gagged. He still heard the remnant of sounds in his brain, like the noises of a old house at night

Suddenly, he sensed a connection reaching out for him. He opened the line. “Who’s this?”

“Buckethead, General Hugh. You’ve been compromised.”

“I figured that out, sir.” He must have finally made cellular range. “I need transport.”

“We have a helicopter heading your way now, Buckethead. Keep heading south. You’ll meet up with it.”

“Mol—Doctor Hendricks has been taken captive. I’m going to get her.”

“Those aren’t your orders, son. You’re to report to the Pentagon for a data dump. Terrorist chatter’s skyrocketed in the past three hours, and some of the super-villain hideouts have been stirring. We need your mainframe plugged into the systems here.”

“Great. Lovely. Maybe another time. But first I’m going back to base to rescue Molly. I’ll be ready when you need me.”

“We need you now. If you fall into enemy hands—“

Clint cut off the line, surprising himself. He always obeyed orders, because that’s what a soldier did. They could charge him with treason if they wanted to. He was their property; he knew the lawyers could make that case and win in front of a military court. But he didn’t care. He didn’t know what was happening, but he knew one thing: Molly was in danger. The idea of leaving her on her own turned his stomach.

“Molly, I’m coming for you.” He knew she heard him. “You’ll have to buy me a steak dinner, all right?”

He let the coast pass by without a second glance. He watched the sky, looking for the expected chopper. Perhaps they were under orders to shoot him. It wouldn’t be the first time today. The thought reminded him of his injuries, but he pressed the pain into ball and shoved it into the recesses of his mind, along with everything else. He wondered how much he could sweep under the carpet before it started affecting him.

Ode to Joy trumpeted from his lips, bombastic and triumphant now, in poor imitation of the double fugue. He loved that double fugue. It was one of the few things that pulled him out of the world and into a spiritual realm that soared with goodness, the sort of goodness that terrified and overwhelmed and ravished. The chaotic wicked world shrunk to a pinprick, until all the evil in the world seemed  no more than an ant crawling upon a flower in a field of beauty.

Softly, very softly, he heard the notes repeated. Molly was humming under her breath.

He knew then that he would rather die than let her be injured. And he knew he never wanted her to know that.

He fell silent, self-conscious, and Molly quieted. So much for that.

He sliced through the water, watching the fuel gauge hover just above the E. Imperceptibly it sank down, splitting the E in half, then sliding below. The boat sputtered and came to a stop. He cursed. Something about coming to a stop got under his skin. Where was the chopper?

There it was. Two of them. Reinforcements. The beat of their propellers grew steadily louder. Soldiers leaned out, guns evident, as they approached. Clint held his hands in the air, showing he wouldn’t resist. At least, not as long as he was stranded in a useless tub. Once he was on board….

The nearest began to lower a ladder as it maneuvered over his position. A motion caught Clint’s eye. Instinctively, he fell to the ground and covered his head. Heat flashed across his skin as the boom of an explosion filled the air. Looking up, he saw the remains of the helicopter spiral down to crash in the ocean just as another silvery dart impacted against the second. It erupted in a fireball that sent shrapnel flying.

Clint sensed the heat signature before he saw it. A spherical sub emerged from the water, its thousands of hair-like tentacles twitching like a sick anemone. The ones exposed to air began to thrash like fish thrown upon the ground.

“These guys? Seriously?”

Gaians, led by the charismatic and mentally unstable Conrad Alimar. They believed the Earth would destroy all mankind with flood and fire and storm and quake, and they had taken refuge in the bosom of Gaia, in the deep places of international water. But these weren’t international waters.

The sub propelled forward, its tentacles lashing out. Clint flung himself out of the boat. The tendrils grabbed it, covered it, crushed it to rubble, and let it sink into the sea.

The Gaians were big on protocol, believing that the Earth had rules and regulations that all men must follow. The rules tended to change to favor the Gaians.

“Parlay!” Clint shouted. No—that was wrong. He shook his head to dislodge the pop culture. It came to him. “Cease! Men must live at peace.”

The sub halted. The voice that emerged was condescendingly British. “Do you claim to be a man?”

“Yes! I am an American citizen and these are American waters. You have no authority to attack me.”

“Ah, yes, but are you a man? You are Clint McCleary, the robot abomination of the great Babylon. You are the idol that speaks and leads men astray. Every true and honest homo sapien has authority to dispatch you with unimpassioned justice.”

Clint ground his teeth. He didn’t have the patience to deal with nutcases right now. “Okay, we’re done talking. Have at me.”

It would have been a cool thing to say if he had had a plan.

The sub rushed forward, tentacles reaching forward. The first leeched around his wrist, then another. As they grabbed him, one after another, he ran through the list of his weapons and gadgets. He was a veritable Swiss army knife, except he was American, so his told were a little flashier and exploded. But in less than ten seconds he was surrounded in a cocoon of vibrating tendrils, hardly able to breath. He sensed the sub’s approach. The single hat signature sat in the center of the sphere, like a spider in a web, and Clint felt the eyes of that man examining him.

“This is the end, hmm?” The voice of the sub mused. The tendrils became to squeeze. “As I destroy you, perhaps I can see how you tick.” A few of the tendrils pressed tiny fibers between the seams of his joints, feeling out his neuro pathways. The pressure of the cocoon threatened to snap his limbs. Inside, he felt as if he was being hollowed out.

“The code,” he muttered, hoping Molly would understand. “Now.”

Molly did not answer, but he felt her probing presence.

“Now!” Clint screamed.

Without a word, he felt the first of the security shields fall. She had initiated his self-destruction. The tendrils hesitated, sensing some change in his inner workings. Even the crushing pressure relented for a moment.

“The next,” Clint managed. He had no idea how Molly was doing it without speaking. She had no equipment with her. Or did she?

There were three security clearances that needed overridden before Clint’s internal generator self-destructed, killing him and anything in a twenty foot radius. Mr. British Maniac couldn’t know that Molly only knew two.

The second security shield fell. A growing heat filled his chest. It was something like heartburn.

“What are you doing, Clint?” the British voice asked.

“Destroying you. The government won’t let me fall into foreign hands.”

The tendrils began to loosen. In a moment he had powered his micron blade. He called it his progressive knife. It shot out of its holster into his right hand, tearing through the tendrils. With a quick twist of the wrist, he freed his hand. Slicing his other hand free, he grabbed a handful and pulled himself toward the sub, slashing at this torso and feet to increase his mobility.

He had one magnet missile left. He let fly, turning his face away as it exploded just in front of him. It opened a gash in the sub’s hull and sent the tendrils in a panic. They came at him like birds from a Hitchcock film. He hauled himself into the gash, forming an alcoved, and swung his knife wildly, chopping off dozens of strands with each swing. The sub began to descend, the tendrils resuming defensive positions. Conrad Alimar had decided it was wiser to run than to fight.

Clint didn’t put much stock in wisdom.

Bracing himself, he sent his last missile into the crater his first had made. He was too close. Shrapnel grazed his arm, opening up a new wound. But the explosion had done its job. Water was rushing into the central command station. Clint let the flow of the water push him through the hole, just large enough for his lengthwise body. Conrad shouted at the computers, his delicate hands punching button on the high-tech control panels.

Interior tendrils had already begun to seal the hole. But Conrad hadn’t looked up in his efforts to save his ship. Clint crossed the distance, vaulted onto the raised control station, and clubbed Conrad with his metal arm. He fell limp upon the floor.

“We’ll talk later,” Clint said.

[note]Author’s Note: Okay, so some of this is 1960’s Marvel comic, but I’m having a blast writing it. This is pulpy stuff. I hope you’re enjoying it, because I am.[/note]

It took Clint a few minutes to organize his thoughts. Before the explosion that had ruined most of his body, he had been a marine. He was used to reacting instinctively in battle. Sometimes he only remembered what had happened after the fact. The pain would set in soon, too, unless the pain relief Molly had implanted was stronger than he suspected.

Wind ran through his closely shaved black hair and whipped the black operations outfit that covered his patched together body. It was hard to tell sometimes what was original and what was new; the skin grafts were very good. It all felt like him, in any case.

“Molly?” He tried to connect again. No luck. He needed someone to look him over and repair the damage, but if headquarters had been infiltrated….

“Molly?” Nothing. He didn’t like being the one in the dark.

Suddenly, intense pain pierced his head and shot down his spinal column. His whole body stiffened. He kept his hands steady on the wheel, forcing his eyes open against the pain. Was it another attack?

A barely contained shriek filled his head and reverberated in his chest. It wasn’t his. Something was in his mind—not his mind, his data core. They were distinct, but the two folded together into his sensory experience. Robocop, Darth Vader, Inspector Gadget…there was nothing that quite captured the essence of what he was. He was a biological machine, and something inside him was stifling a scream.

“Who is it?” Clint demanded. Verbalizing his desires and commands was essential to his makeup. Molly had been insistent that the man be separated from the machine wherever possible. Clint wasn’t sure if she admired her handiwork or feared it. She surely pitied it. “What are you?”

“Not so loud,” came a weak voice.

“Molly?”

“I only have a few minutes. They’re searching for me and I won’t be able to hide forever.”

“Who? And why do I feel like you shoved an ice pick up my nose?”

“Sorry. I meant to perfect it, but there’s no time. New mode of communication. It’ll take some time to sync  up.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You know how when you have a computer problem—not you. Other people. Civilians. They call up a tech who dials into their computer and takes a direct look. Something  like that.”

“You’re in my brain?”

“No! I mean, not technically. This was only meant for diagnostic purposes, but they’ve taken the satellite offline. I needed to talk to you.” Her whispered voice broke. He could hear her crying. He felt almost as if he saw them, in his mind’s eye.

“Quiet,” he ordered, more harshly than he had meant. That everyone at headquarters had been killed didn’t sink in. He would process it at another time. But he didn’t like to hear Molly cry. If anyone in the world attempted to treat him like a neighbor and not as a soldier, it was Molly. “Who did this?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did they know where the base was? Most of the military doesn’t know its location.”

“I don’t know.”

“Same group as the missile?”

“Probably. But we don’t know who that is.” Suddenly: “Clint, you’re hurt.”

“I got into a scrape.”

“You’re functioning at 70%.”

“I’m coming after you. Then you can fix me.”

“They’ll kill you.”

“Seriously? Is that all the confidence you have in me?”

“They’re coming.”

“Hide the communicator.”

“They won’t find it. Trust me.”

She went silent. Clint pushed the boat as fast as it would go. It would take at least 30 minutes to reach shore. He had no transportation. According to Molly, the entire support staff was dead. But Molly did exaggerate.

“Don’t move!” The voice came echoing in his head, a command to be obeyed. Molly had been discovered.

“Stand up. Are you Dr. Molly Hendricks?”

“Yes,” she said, with only a slight quaver. Good girl. He tried to will her strength.

“Come peaceably and you won’t be harmed.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“You are the head scientist of Project Buckethead?”

Buckethead? Clint grimaced. This was about him. The stupid name had been concocted by a general skeptical of Molly’s work. He thought he was clever, too, deriving it from the term jarhead.

“I prefer if you call him by his real name. It’s Clint. And I was project manager until about an hour ago. He died defusing a nuclear missile.”

A shock of sound, and a faded echo of pain. Molly had been slapped. “Lies! We know exactly where he is. Take her.”

Listening to the sound of her being escorted, to some holding place, no doubt, Clint tried to place a call to the Pentagon. Nothing. Maybe onshore he’d have a cellular connection. He didn’t know how he worked; maybe he only had satellite connection.

And they knew where he was. If they weren’t bluffing, that was bad news. His GPS transponder code was top secret and changed very two hours. But if they had gotten a hold of that information, it would explain how those thugs had found him in the middle of the ocean.

He began to whistle Ode to Joy. He didn’t do it very often, and only when things got bad.

He was whistling very loud and thinking furiously.

[note]Author’s Note: I actually wrote more than this last night, but #3 isn’t finished yet. Also, just so everyone knows, I view the 50,000 word goal very loosely. I want to write something substantial every day, but since I have a lot of other responsibilities I’m not bending over backwards to reach 50,000 words by the end of the month. At this point, that would take the fun out of the project. Still, we should end up with quite the wild story by the end of it all. Enjoy![/note]

Clint floated easily on top of the waves, staring into the almost cloudless sky. The brilliant blue seemed to envelop him.

The com had gone quiet after Molly chewed him out for no better reason than her own insecurities. That’s what he figured, anyway. It would take time for the boat to arrive. Or chopper. Whatever was fastest and available.

He let the waves take him where they would. They would find him regardless. He was property of the United States government, and the GPS tracker embedded in his skull kept it apprised of his location.

“Clint?”

“Yeah, Molly?”

“It’ll be a bit yet. The panic over the missile disrupted most of the normal channels. We’ll get Coast Guard out to you soon. You’re still pretty far out.”

“Sounds good.”

“You all right, Clint?”

“Yeah. Saved the world. Job well done and all that.”

Usually that convinced her. Usually, but not always. “You always get like this. What’s the matter?”

“Reporting to the brass today and what to make sure I’m still stable?”

“I reported to the general yesterday, that you very much. Gave you flying colors. After today, they’ll believe for sure.”

Clint was becoming bored with the conversation. He didn’t want to argue. He didn’t much care to talk. The sky was like a painted ceiling, impossibly high, or perhaps just within reach….

He lifted his mechanical arm. He could hear the servos as his fingers stretched. He launched his fist skyward, just to see if he could grab the sky.

“…answer me, Clint!”

“I need a way to shut your voice out.”

“What’s the matter? I know it’s not easy being…what you are. Are you in pain? Your system should be administering low doses of morphine if your ribs are actually cracked. I added that last upgrade. It’s not an elegant solution, but when I ran the models, it showed that a hint of painkiller helped your performance in extreme circumstances.”

“I’m fine.” He had forgotten completely about his ribs. He supposed it should frighten him, what the implanted parts of his body did without his knowledge, but it didn’t. He didn’t consider himself a monster or a freak. He thought his “upgrades” were pretty sweet. He wouldn’t tell Molly that in so many words, of course.

“I want to help you, Clint. You just saved New York from a nuclear explosion. No one else could have done that. Let me help you.”

“It’s nothing.” Really, it wasn’t. “It’s just that…saving the world’s kinda a bummer.”

Silence. Of course Molly wouldn’t understand that.

“I…um…you’re sad you defused a nuclear missile?”

“Yeah. Heartbroken.”

“I’ll see you at debriefing,” Molly said stiffly before cutting the connection.

Clint smiled. It was too natural for Molly to guess. When you’re jumping from airplanes and thwarting evil plans, there’s only one way to go after the excitement ends. Down. But at least he had the sky. What was it he’d read somewhere? Happiness is a sad song, Charlie Brown. It was melancholy joy to be alone in the blue sea, beneath a blue sky, separated from everybody and everything. He was glad Molly was gone.

He wasn’t alone for long.

He heard the boat a distance away. That wasn’t a mechanical enhancement; he’d always had sharp senses. They’d saved him more than once in combat, even before his encounter with the mine. He tuned the noise out like he used to when the alarm went off during his high school years. But it made him tense, waiting for them to find him, and it destroyed his peacefulness. They were earlier than Molly had suggested.

He tried connecting to base. No answer. Busy with the aftermath of paperwork, probably. Even top secret military programs needed files to black out. He tried again on Molly’s private line, using satellite links with a thought with the same technology that allowed parapalegics to communicate. He wasn’t sure why. He wouldn’t admit to wanting another hour of lounging time.

No connection. That was strange. Molly lived with her technology at her fingertips.

Abandoning his hope of reprieve, he raised his head and began treading water. The boats were closing fast. But they weren’t Coast Guard. Speedboats on steroids, they zipped across the water, something like gatling guns posted on front and back. The nearest opened fire.

Clint dove beneath the water, the bullets slicing through the water. He saw the trail of one pass before his eyes. One hit his metal leg. Another brushed his chest, drawing blood. MOLLY! he transmitted, using his brain like a text pad. The method hadn’t been perfected, but a single word should come across clearly he he kept repeating it. MOLLY! It was hard to concentrate on the word when his reflexes had taken control.

He pulled himself deeper, his lungs already aching for air. A boat passed overhead, churning the water above into a mass of froth. Bullets lanced toward him from another direction, ineffective at his depth, but keeping him below.

MOLLY!

The rain of bullets stopped suddenly. His infrared sensor alerted him to the new arrivals. Three men in scuba masks, harpoon guns in hand, reoriented themselves from their quick entry into the water. The boat passed over again.

His chest was going to explode. Next time Molly asks for upgrade suggestions, he was asking for a reserve tank of air.

Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure any of his weapons worked underwater.

He kicked for the surface, engaging the short burst thruster installed on both feet. They’d been meant to cushion jumps from absurd heights. An indelicate operation, to be sure.

He shot upwards, broke through into air, and gasped. Both boats were circling back toward him. He released two of his magnet missiles. Again, experimental tech—what about him wasn’t experimental? He dove below again, pushing away from the scuba hunters who had closed the distance. Even through the water he felt the concussive boom! as one of his missiles exploded.

A harpoon speared past him, nicking his shoulder. That shoulder was metal, too, but it tore through it effortlessly.

The second boat jetted close by. Desperate, Clint released his retractable hand. It sped through the water, slowing quickly, but managed to break the surface just as the boat passed. It grasped the mount of the rear gun. The metal cable tightened. Clint braced himself. He hated the—

Whiplash. From zero to ludicrous speed in a moment, the power of the boat’s engine jerked him out of the water. He skipped like a stone on the wake, twisting wildly at each smack against the water. He couldn’t separate up from down. Even with his infrared, he could only tell which way was forward. Two men were moving on the boat.

“Clint!” Molly’s voice broke urgently through the roar of engine and water.

“Not now!” he spluttered.

“I don’t have much time. We’ve been infiltrated. New York was a diversion.”

If she said anything else, he didn’t hear it. The machine gun opened fire, racing steadily closer with its aim. He tried to release his grip on the mount. It wouldn’t budge. They’d fastened it somehow. Not good.

He threw himself to the side, rolling into the outer wake, and retracted his hand at full speed. This heaved him violently forward, around and in front of the searching bullets. The force of the boat’s jets threatened to pull his arm from the socket. And it was a metal socket.

He bounded into the back of the speedboat at full blast, crashing into the gun mount and knocking the gunner to the ground. If his ribs hadn’t been broken before, they were now. The gunner was rising as Clint got his bearing. Metal hand plastered with some instantly hardening foam, he was like a dog on a leash, but he had plenty of leash. He kicked the man in the stomach, and wrenched him overboard. Another had his gun raised. Clint raised his leg and activated the thrusters just in time to disorient him. Lengthening his arm cable, he leapt forward, knocking the gun from his hand. In a quick succession of moves, he took him down too and launched him overboard.

The driver jerked the boat to the left, hoping to knock Clint off his balance, but he tightened his arm cable to steady himself. Running forward at full speed, he leapt over the driver onto the platform where the front gun mount stood. He turned it back on the boat. That was enough for the driver, who scrambled overboard. Clint took the wheel, spun it in a 180, and rocketed off toward the American coast, directed by the GPS in his head.

He took a deep breath and began conscious thought again. What had Molly said? Blowing up New York was a diversion?

This was some bad sushi.

[note]Author’s Note: This is hot off the press and probably riddled with grammatical and word choice errors. I may fix them. I may not. NaNoWriMo isn’t kind to rewriting. Hope you enjoy![/note]