The Sellouts (4 page)
“Yes, but all the prisoners seem to be transported and imprisoned here, right?”
“That’s classified, and your three minutes are up.” Chancer said as he reached for his beers.
“All I’m asking for is for you to look to see if something is going on! This isn’t the only doubles of supers I’ve found, they’re all in the envelope. Take it, I have copies.”
“If it’ll shut you up…” He said, grabbing the envelope and folding it to stuff it in his back pocket. He moved his coat to cover it, and finally grabbed his beers and left her standing there.
“Is everything all right?” Douser asked when he finally returned to his friends.
“Fine.” Chancer said, trying to make sense of why she had come to him.
“Struck out, eh? Seems your powers don’t extend to women, eh?” Jeremy said with a laugh.
“I guess not.” Chancer said as he watched the reporter leave the bar. She didn’t even glance back at him.
Chapter 4
April 3rd, 2015 09:15 AM
“And this is Human Resources, or as we’d like to call it, ‘HR’.” Chancer yawned as he spoke to the inspection team. This is Lisa Sparks, head of HR. She has an entire fun-filled day planned for you.” He said, introducing Lisa to the inspection team.
Lisa took the inspection team to a conference room she had already set up for them to use as they inspected her department, leaving Chancer in the main floor of the department, which only had cubicles. He walked around until he found a break room, which had a small TV and an old couch that wasn’t as comfortable as Chancer had first thought. He flipped through the channels fast, and only stopped occasionally when something caught his eye. He spent the better part of two hours flipping through channels, until he stopped on something he recognized - a picture of Alysha Gray.
He leaned forward and turned the volume up.
“… corpse was found in Central Park at three in the morning. If anyone has any details about this grisly murder, please call the number on the bottom of your screen.”
When the channel went back to a soap opera, he turned the volume down and leaned back, thinking about last night. He wondered if it was too coincidental, or if there was an actual conspiracy behind it. He wandered out of the break room and looked for Melody, the girl he always called in HR and hooked him up whenever he needed something.
He found the pimply face nineteen year old sitting in one of the middle cubicles, wearing hot pink headphones that could be seen a mile away – even without Eagle-Eye’s powers.
“Hey Melody.” He said while tapping her shoulder.
“WHAT?” she yelled as she pulled her headphones down to rest on her neck while turning around. “Matt! Hey!” she said awkwardly.
“Hey, how’s it goin’?” Chancer asked as he half leaned, half sat down on part of her desk.
“Great! What brings you down to the cubicle farm?” She asked.
“Cubicle farm?” He asked.
“It what I call it. Because we’re like a farm, of people. They put they food and water us, and out comes work!” She made a huge gesture with her hands. “Get it?”
“I think I have a friend who would be perfect for you.” Chancer said after rolling his eyes.
“Is this friend tall, dark, and mysterious?” She asked with a nudge.
“Not at all, actually he’s a short and fat balding man.” He said.
“Are you being serious?” She asked quickly, thinking he was just playing around. She knew he had that kind of reputation around the offices in the building.
“Yes and no.” He replied. “I need some help.” He said quietly, while leaning in to her.
“Why are we whispering?” She asked in a whisper.
“Because it’s something I need, but don’t want to tell anyone about.” He whispered.
“What do you need?” She whispered back, having too much fun at this whispering game.
Chancer sat up, looked around the ‘cubicle farm’ and then leaned back down to her. “Can you get details on the prisoners?” He asked.
“No, those are kept with security. We can only get information on employees of TSO.” She said.
Chancer sat up straight. “Ah well, worth a shot.”
“I know a guy in security though, he keeps asking me out, I could ask him for information.” She whispered to him.
Chancer leaned back down to her. “You’d do that for me?”
“Only if you take me out on a date. A real date, with dinner and a movie, and flowers, and drinking, and you wear a suit, and I wear a dress.” She whispered.
Chancer raised his eyebrows at her. “Dinner and a movie, no drinking or suit, dress optional.” He whispered.
“Deal!” She said a little too loudly. She held out her hand which Chancer shook. “What do you need?”
“I need all the information we have on two prisoners.” He whispered. He stood up and looked around, then leaned back down. “Ralph Foretta and Tony Blanchett.” He said as she wrote down the names.
“How do you want me to send what I get to you?” She asked.
“Email it to me.” He whispered.
“Can we stop whispering now?” She asked him.
“Sure.” He said in his normal voice. “And I’ll call you about that dinner and movie after I get your email.” He said as he walked off. He saw her whispering over her cubicle wall as he was knocking on the conference room door. He had to take the inspection team to the cafeteria.
“We ready for some lunch?” He asked, interrupting the lead inspector, who was talking to the head of HR. He got a dirty look from them both as the rest of the inspection team started to close their laptops and stack papers on them, obviously ready to go.
April 3rd, 2015 01:04 PM
Billy Tayler walked through the hallways of floor seventeen, nodding and tipping the hat of his security uniform at people as he passed. This was his floor to patrol, every weekday between six in the morning and six at night.
He knew a lot of people by name on this floor, and they knew his. He had even managed to befriend one of the managers who accepted his resume yesterday. He had high hopes of doing something other than walking a beat where nothing happened.
His pocket vibrated and he pulled out his cellphone as he walked. He smiled when he saw who it was from.
“Hey Billy, can you do me a favor?” Melody, the girl from Human Resources had texted him. He had more than a little crush on her.
“Sure, what’s up?” He texted back.
“Can you send me the files on Ralph Foretta and Tony Blanchett when you get a minute?” She had texted back.
“Why do you need them?” He texted back. She had asked for records only once before, and only because some government agency had ordered her to do it. He wondered if this was the same kind of thing.
“Are you busy right now?” She texted him back.
“Just walking the beat, about to take a lunch break. You?” He texted back.
“Wanna meet me on the roof for lunch?” She texted back.
His heart skipped a beat. “How about right now?” He texted back, having high hopes.
“Meet you in ten minutes.” She texted back.
He grabbed his radio and called in. “Floor seventeen to Operations.”
“Operations to Floor seventeen, go ahead.” The radio said back to him.
“Floor seventeen to Operations, heading out for my thirty minute lunch.” He said into it.
“Operations to floor seventeen, roger that, call in when you get back.
“Floor seventeen to Operations, roger that, out.” He said.
He practically ran to the stairs and bounded up them two at a time until he came to the roof access. He pushed open the door excitedly and rushed through.
He was immediately grabbed by the back of his shirt and part of his leg and buttocks and dragged across the roof. Something felt like it stung him in the back of the neck.
“What’s going on? Who are you?” He shouted as he tried to wriggle free. Whoever had grabbed him was incredibly strong. “What are you doing?” He shouted as he saw the edge of the roof getting closer and closer. “No!” He shouted. “Please!” He begged. He tried to twist to see who was carrying him, but he was being carried at an awkward angle, and he mostly tried not to scrape his face against the gravel on the roof. He was able to see sky, the gravel on the roof, and an occasional blue metallic boot – and that was it. He felt like he was suddenly getting woozy, but the adrenaline kept him going.
Whoever had him didn’t listen to his cries or his pleading. They just threw him over the edge of the roof.
Billy Tayler screamed the entire way to the ground.
April 3rd, 2015 01:15 PM
“Have you seen this?” Eagle-Eye asked Chancer as he was lounging in his office. He had just dropped off the inspection team back in HR.
“Seen what?” Chancer asked. He lifted his head up, but left his feet on his desk.
“Only history in the making for us Supers!” He said as he tossed down a newspaper on Chancer’s desk.
Chancer sighed as he took his feet down and read the paper. It read
Super with Impenetrable Skin Joins United States Army!
He scanned through the article.
“What about it?” Chancer asked.
“Think about it! Other organizations and companies are hiring supers! We’re becoming a part of everyday life!” He said with a smile.
“We’re already a part of everyday life. People know that Supers work for TSO.” Chancer said as he put his feet back on his desk.
“Yeah, but this was the
only
place we could work. This is the only place that had Supers because the public thought that this place controls us. With this,” Eagle-Eye tapped the paper, “We can start looking elsewhere for jobs!” He added, “Jobs which aren’t so dangerous for us.”
“Bah, this job isn’t dangerous. I have to go out what, once a week? If that? And to do what, catch bad guys? And all the other time I spend with my feet on my desk relaxing. So technically speaking, I work probably fifty days a year, and get paid extremely well for it.” Chancer said as he leaned back in his chair. “I mean, what’re you gonna’ do with your powers? You going to go work for a news company’s traffic copter and do traffic reports?” He asked.
“I could do that! That would be a good and safe job you know!”
“Or you could mysteriously die, like that reporter did in Central Park this morning.” Chancer added, watching his teammate for any sign of a reaction.
“What reporter?” He asked, confused.
“The one from the news,” He said with a pause and snapping his fingers, trying to act like he didn’t know her. “Alysha Gray, from Daily Six at Seven.”
“I’ve seen her on there before. She died?” He asked, still a little confused.
“Apparently.” Chancer said. “Watched it on the news this morning. And we all know everything on TV is real, right?” He said with a little laugh. He was pretty positive Eagle-Eye knew nothing about her death. He also thought he was getting paranoid, until he leaned back in his chair to look out the giant window that made up his wall. Someone just went screaming past it, heading down.
“Whoa! What the hell was that?” He said as he jumped out of his chair and looked as far down as he could. He saw a crowd starting to gather in front of the building.
“What happened? What did I miss?” Eagle-Eye said as he moved next to Chancer and looked down toward the street. “Hey, there’s a body down there!”
Chapter 5
April 3rd, 2015 01:35 PM
News crews and pedestrians started crowding around the scene of a body lying in the street. People were pointing and shoving each other as police had shown up and set up barricades to keep them out of the crime scene. Even the protestors from the other side of the building came around and started using the crowd to their advantage, yelling things like ‘See? The Sellouts even kill their own!’ and such.
Chancer flashed his TSO badge at one of the policemen and was waived through, Eagle-Eye following fast on his heels. He saw Jeremy Owens talking to Captain Ronald Priggs, and decided to join them.
“So now you’re catching and releasing?” The Captain said to Chancer as he walked up.
“Not our doing.” Chancer told him.
“Obviously, since he’s on top of the car, and not the other way around, right?” the Captain laughed. Jeremy chuckled at the ribbing, but stopped when Chancer looked at him.
“Is this a suicide, or was he pushed?” Chancer asked as he looked over at the body.
“Don’t know yet, we’re checking security footage.” Jeremy told him.
“Too bad he landed in the street. Five more feet towards your building and you would have had jurisdiction.” the Captain said out loud.
“Lucky for you…” Chancer mumbled as he approached the corpse. The body was crumpled, as a body does when it falls from a twenty two story building. He looked at the uniform. “Is he one of yours?” he asked Jeremy as he looked up to him.
“It would seem so, though we’ll have to wait for DNA confirmation.” Jeremy told him.
Chancer looked towards the roof of the building. “No windows look to be broken, so he came from the roof?”
“We got ourselves a regular Sherlock here, boys!” the Captain said. His officers laughed.
“Why don’t you go drive a boat or something, Captain Ron.” Chancer said as he stood up and left the crime scene. He heard his men laughing about how that joke never gets old as he left.
He immediately went for the elevators and pressed twenty-two. Eagle-Eye burst into the elevator, huffing and puffing.
“Where are we going?” Eagle-Eye managed to stutter out as he leaned against the side of the elevator, catching his breath.
“To the roof.” Chancer said. “I want to see if I can find anything.”
“Why you? Why don’t you just leave it to security and the cops?” Eagle-Eye said as he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat off his brow.
“I’m curious about something.” Chancer said.
“About what?”
“Maybe nothing, maybe something, I won’t know until we get up there.” he said as the elevator doors opened. He immediately got out and walked towards the door marked ‘Stairs’.
“We’re taking the stairs?” Eagle-Eye said.
“Only way to the roof.”
“How do you know?”
“I used to hang out up here, when I first came here.” Chancer said.
“What did you do up here?”
“Drank beer, sat in my lawn chair.” Chancer said, smiling at the memories. “I even snuck a golf club in here and started hitting balls towards central park for a while.”
“Really?” Eagle-Eye asked as they neared the roof entrance.
“Nah, but I should have. How fucking cool would that have been?” he said, pushing open the door to the roof. He pulled a cinder block that sat next to the door and put it in front of the door so they wouldn’t get locked out. “The beer and lawn chair thing was true though.” he said pointing to a ratty lawn chair that lay near the wall that made up the edge of the roof. “See?”
He ran around the small shed that made up the roof entrance they just came through and towards the edge of the building that faced the street.
“Can you use your vision to zoom in on the ground to see if you can find anything out of the ordinary?” Chancer asked.
“What would I be looking for?” Eagle-Eye asked as he caught up to Chancer.
“I don’t know, anything out of the ordinary.” Chancer said as he threw up his hands.
“Sure… why not…” Eagle-Eye said as he started looking at the ground. He slowly started scanning the area as Chancer used his normal vision to look around.
“What are you two doing up here?” Captain Priggs said as he, Jeremy, and a couple of policemen came around the shed entrance.
“Just looking around.” Chancer said as Jeremy pulled him aside. “What the fuck dude?”
“You need to back off this one.” Jeremy said quietly. “This is going to be all over the news. Mrs. Oslett has said the NYPD is in charge of this investigation and we are cooperating fully. If you know anything, now would be the time to speak up.”
Chancer looked down at Jeremy’s hand, which firmly gripped his arm, and back to his face. “I got nothing, just curious is all.” He said as Jeremy released him. “Besides, I have to go pick up the kids in HR.” he said while looking at his watch. He walked towards the shed and headed inside.
“Can I go too, Mr. Owens?” Eagle-Eye asked from a short distance away. Jeremy gave him the thumb gesture to leave as well.
The Captain started barking orders as Jeremy watched them leave, wondering what they were up to.
April 3rd, 2015 02:00 PM
“I thought you were going to use your powers and find something cool.” Eagle-Eye said as he finally caught up to Chancer. He wiped the sweat from his brow.
“I was trying. My powers don’t work all the time, or at least not like when we’re in the field taking on a Monster.” Chancer said as he took the stairs all the way down to HR’s level.
“Maybe it has something to do with the excitement?” Eagle-Eye asked. “And why aren’t we taking the elevator?” he said with a puff.
“Maybe, or maybe there was nothing up there to be found.” he stopped. “Why do you think Mrs. Oslett wants the NYPD to handle this one?”
Eagle-Eye nearly bumped into him. “I dunno, maybe she wants an outsider to do the investigation so the public doesn’t throw any more suspicion at us. You’ve seen the protestors; they’re out there every day!”
Chancer thought about it for a second, then continued descending the stairs. “Something just seems weird to me.” he said, stopping again. “First, this reporter comes to me and tells me some weird shit – and then she gets murdered in Central Park, which is near our building.” he continued down a few more stairs before stopping again. “Then today, a security guard does a horrible belly-flop off our building.”
“Wait, what did she tell you?” he asked.
Chancer decided not to tell him everything. “Just some weird conspiracy theories.” he said as he continued down the stairs. He stopped suddenly. “Has anyone ever asked you anything weird about this place?”
“No. I pretty much just come here and go home. I’m not much of a social person.” Eagle-eye said as Chancer started descending stairs again.
Chancer stopped at a landing and threw open a door, and suddenly stopped. “Not a word about any of this to anyone.” he whispered.
“A word about what?” he asked, confused.
“Exactly.” Chancer said with a wink. He went through the door to HR, and found it was a beehive of activity. “What the hell’s going on here?”
“Someone just jumped off the building!” a man answered him as they passed him.
“What’s it fucking matter to you guys?” he asked the man.
“We’re HR, duh.” he responded.
Chancer just shook his head as he watched the man run around with a stack of papers in his hands. “Well I hope when I die, people move faster than this.” he made clicking sounds with his tongue as he folded his arms. “Sad.”
Melody, his go-to girl in HR, came up to him crying and threw her arms around him, sobbing into his shoulder.
Confused, he pulled her off him and asked, “What’s wrong with you?”
“The guy who –“ she sobbed out. “The guy who jumped, he was the one who had a crush on me.” she sobbed harder and fell into his shoulder.
He pushed her off of him and held her in front of him. “Wait, is this the same guy that you asked to get files for me?”
She nodded between sobs and wiping her nose and eyes with the same tissue, and fell back into his shoulder. He moved her into the stairwell with Eagle-Eye following them.
“This is just getting too weird for me.” Chancer said.
“Why are we in the stairwell?” Melody asked.
“Because I didn’t want to talk with everyone around.” he said as he put his hand on her shoulders and faced her. “Who else did you ask about Ralph Foretta and Tony Blanchett?”
Melody wiped her nose. “No one, just Billy.” she reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone. “Here’s the conversation we had.” she said as she pulled up her texts with Billy. “See?”
Chancer took the phone and scrolled through it. “This is pathetic.”
“What?” asked Melody as she tried to see what he was looking at.
“He said yes instantly, without even knowing what favor you wanted of him!” he asked as he showed Eagle-Eye the texts. He gave Eagle-Eye a smile. “And what happened here? After you texted him ‘Just looking into something’?” Chancer said as he showed her the phone.
“I dunno, it was weird, my texts just wouldn’t go through any more.” Melody said as she looked through her phone. “I even had full bars.” she said, and then opened her eyes in shock. “Do you think that’s when he landed, I mean, when he, you know…” she trailed off.
“No, the times don’t match up. Your texts were a good ten minutes before I saw him falling, I remember, because I was about to take a nap when Mr. ‘I want a job somewhere else’ came in with some article about a super signing up for dance lessons or something.” he said as he pointed to Eagle-Eye.
“It was about a Super joining the Army, and it
will
open more doors for us.” Eagle-Eye said as he crossed his arms across his chest and looked away from Chancer.
“Stop pouting.” Chancer told him.
“I think we should ask Douser about these coincidences. She always has a level head.” Eagle-Eye said quietly.
“Let’s not involve anyone else yet, lest they get chucked off a building.” he said, and then looked at Melody, who started crying again. “Sorry girl.”
“So what’re we going to do?” Eagle-Eye asked.
“Nothing. You two go back to work like nothing ever happened.” Chancer said quickly.
“And what are you going to do?” Eagle-Eye asked.
“Get in trouble, like I always do.” he said with a smile.
“At least they won’t suspect anything’s different with you.” Eagle-Eye said.
“Are you gonna’ be OK?” Chancer asked Melody.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know what’s going on!” she cried.
“That’s good, play it just like that.” Chancer said as he pushed her back into the HR area. He stopped his team-mate. “Keep an eye on her. Let me know when she leaves the building. I’ll take her home.” he said quietly.
“You really think they’ll do something to her?” he asked.
“You seem to think so, you keep saying ‘they’”. Chancer said.
“Tell me this is just one of your stupid games.” Eagle-Eye said as Chancer was moving down the stairs.
“Nope, it’s a fucking conspiracy I’m tellin’ ya’!” he said with a laugh as he bounded down the stairs. He laughed maniacally and it echoed throughout the stairwell.
Eagle-Eye shook his head as he stared through the little window in the stairwell door to keep his good eye on Melody. “Great, now I feel like a peeping-tom.” he said to himself.
April 3rd, 2015 02:50 PM
Chancer took some time getting down to the basement elevator that would take him to the cell blocks beneath the building. Deciding it would be more fun to drive, he commandeered a golf cart in the parking garage and drove down the long tunnels to the entryway, pissing off every guard on duty by attempting to run over their feet. In this way, it would seem to be his normal activity, and hopefully he wouldn’t stand out to whoever was killing people – if there even was someone killing people.