The Machinist Part One: Malevolence (2 page)

“Oh?  I’m magnetic.  That’s why my zapper’s plastic.”  He pointed at his neck collar.  “The studs are where my armor and my razor discs attach.”

“Right, you been in the game long?  Ever hear of something called the Network?”  When McHenry asked that, Marlon Jones--the only black guy at the table--raised an eyebrow without saying anything.

“No, man.”  The
magnetic kid shook his head.  “No to both.  I got busted my first night out.  Didn’t even settle on a name yet.  Guess I got three years to think about it now.”

“Maybe
less,” said Jones, shifting his enormous, muscled frame.  He had Yakuza-style tattoos running up the entire length of both arms.  He used to call himself Stoneskin and ran a group of black villains called the Riot Squad in the 90’s.  He was a mutant; he could turn his body into different kinds of stone, including a thick sheathe of granite that would cover his entire body.  McHenry kicked himself—he should’ve asked Jones about the Network, because even though he was from the same “generation” of supervillain as himself, Jones had only been in Blackiron for two years.  He would’ve definitely known what the story was with the Network.

“Word is,” Jones leaned in and lowered his voice, “We all be getting out of here real soon.”

The magnetic kid’s sullen frown turned to a half-smile when he heard that.  He turned to face Jones.  So did everyone else at the table.

“
Getting out soon?  I know Nicholas is,” Krudoff laughed obliviously.  Then, between coughs, he exclaimed, “One more week!”

McHenry
glared at his cellmate.  Even though he was happy to finally be getting out of jail after nearly two decades, he didn’t want to gloat about it.  Some of the guys at the table where going to be in Blackiron for the rest of their lives.  In fact, Krudoff was one of them.  McHenry wondered,
Why the hell had the old man been so cheerful for the last few days?

The conversation
was interrupted by raucous laughter from the next table over.  Everyone at McHenry’s turned to see was going on: the inmates next to them were leering and pointing at the single television in the prison cafeteria.

“Look at the tits on that one, Mike!” one of them said, nudging the guy next to him.  They were watching a news report about an overnight raid against a human trafficking ring in California. 
The Titans of Liberty, the world’s top superheroes, were being interviewed.

Th
e prisoner pointed at the screen.  Ravencloak, a scantily-clad supernatural heroine who supposedly controlled shadows was giving a statement to the news.

Mike, the
inmate next to him, responded, “Yeah, they’re nice but Ravencloak is too …
goth
you know?”

McHenry tilted his head to the screen and took in the young heroine’s face and figure.  Not bad—but after fifteen years surrounded by other men he wouldn’t turn her down.  Her dark makeup made him recall Edie, the
first and only woman in his life after he had started down the path of the super crime.  Some shadowy government organization had given her similar cybernetic enhancements to his, and could zap the shit out of you with bolts of electricity—
what the hell stupid name did she call herself again?

McHenry
smiled, remembering how the two of them fucked like rabbits after the handful of jobs they’d pulled together.  He covered the bulge in his pants with his good arm and focused on the which-female-hero-is-hotter debate.  It was picking up in intensity.

The tits-pointer-outer
shouted gruffly. “What would you know, you’ve been here six years?”

“I know that kinda girl don’t know how to treat a man right,”
Said Mike in a matter-of-fact way.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, what you want is a woman like that Stormsoul chick.  She’s high-class, you know.  European.”

“Pfft,” another inmate at the second table interjected.  “I got pinched by her, she ain’t all that.  Cute, but there are hotter superbitches out there.”

“Fuck you!” Mike retorted.

“Oh, hell,” Jones muttered.
  “Morons gon’ get zapped.”

Magnetic kid looked confused.  He went to stand up but Krudoff grabbed his sleeve, saying, “Sit down, shut up, and don’t move, kid!”

All the inmates at McHenry and Krudoff’s table ducked their heads down.  Inmates at other tables stopped their chatter and did the same.  A wave of silence overtook the room.

Mike flipped his own tray over and took a swing at his table-mate.  The other inmate lunged forward with a growl, but was grabbed a third.  Mike kicked the interloper and tackled him.

Red lights started to strobe in the room.  The cafeteria became eerily quiet aside from the sounds the brawling inmates made.

“Cease altercation immediately,” a robotic voice blared over the intercom.  “Three
second warning.”

The
melee didn’t stop.  Mike’s opponent punched him in the forehead and there was the sound of celery snapping—the one felon’s hand breaking against the indestructible skin of the other.  The attacker cried in agony and clutched his wrist.

All
the three combatants suddenly yelped in pain. They cried out in unison as the hissing noise from their restraint collars grew in intensity.  Each grasped at their own throats and collapsed to the ground, twitching.  Armored security officers poured in through the reinforced doors of the room, surrounding the unconscious felons before dragging them off.

The silence in the room persisted for a few seconds after the security doors shut.  Then
the boisterous conversations and general bullshitting picked up again.  Jones continued what he had been saying before the fight broke out.  “They say the Master has something big coming up, and we all gonna get our licks in.”

“Bullshit,” interjected Duffy, a guy about the same age as magnetic
kid, but who’d been in the game for a few years.  He was on his third month in Blackiron.  “Everyone knows there ain’t no ‘Master.’  The Network used to be called the Brotherhood, right?”

McHenry
guessed that Duffy’s question answered his own.  When he was in the Brotherhood they’d always given him a fair shake.  There was no need, as far as he could tell, to worry about anything just because they changed their name.  He nodded, replying to Duffy’s question.  “When I was out there, yeah.”

“Yeah, and it’s all about getting a fair share, everyone’s equals and shit.  There ain’t no mastermind running
nothing.”  Duffy scratched the little soul patch on his chin.  “That ‘The Master’ shit is just to keep the heroes chasing ghosts and running down dead ends; keep them off our backs.”

“You’ll see, man.”  Jones leaned back
, shaking his head.  “You’ll see.”

***

Hours later, back in the cell, McHenry reclined in his bunk and drifted in and out of his thoughts.  Krudoff strained to evacuate himself in the toilet at the back wall of the tiny room.  After what felt to McHenry to be an eternity, there was a flush.  Krudoff stood up, fastening the buttons along the front of his jumpsuit.

“Damn,” he said.

McHenry turned his head and raised a quizzical eyebrow at the old man.

“I was hoping that all that
huffing and puffing would’ve given me a heart attack, so I could finally keel over.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I’m an old, old man, Nicholas.  It’s going to happen soon.”  Krudoff sat down on the mattress next to McHenry and patted his leg.  “Besides, it’ll be funny.”

“What could possibly be funny about dying in prison?” 
McHenry sat up.  “And more to the point, why the hell have you been so giddy this last week?”

“Well.”  Krudoff grinned evilly.  “You and I, we’re both scientists in our own ways. 
You’re an engineer, a gearhead, but I’m a biologist.  I owe so much of what I’ve accomplished to what I learned as a little sprout in medical school.”

“Uh huh.”

“After I die, I’ve donated my body to my old
alma mater
for dissection and study.”

“So
...,” McHenry started speculating, “It’s funny because … they kicked you out for grafting animal parts to cadavers before bringing them back to life?  And now … now, I guess, you’re forcing them to take you back, in a way?”

“Oh, no, no no.” 
Krudoff waved his hand dismissively.  “It’s much better than that.  Trust me.  It’ll be funny.”

“Just tell me, you coot.”

“Oh, just wait and see!  It won’t be much longer anyway.”  The old man’s face went stern.  “And I’m so damn happy because you’re my only friend in this world.  By the time I go, you’ll be a free man.  You won’t have to watch me die.”

McHenry
didn’t know what to say to that.  He frowned.

“Buck up, Nicholas.”  Krudoff leaned in and rubbed
McHenry’s hairless head as if the old man was a little league coach giving a kid a pep talk.  “Let’s just say, they’ll never forget Doctor Terror, even after he’s gone.”

***

The next few days were uneventful.  Routine.

Every morning, the usual twin blasts of the air horn
broke into McHenry’s sleep.  The same barely nutritious breakfast sat in his gut for hours.

The same jokes and stories were told at lunch
, and again at dinner.  Every night, as always, Krudoff’s hacking cough kept McHenry up for hours past the point he’d decided to try to sleep.

The
last day of McHenry’s vacation from the real world was less routine.

“Krudoff, H.”  O’Shea’s bored voice called out.

Hands pressed against the wall inside the glowing circles, Krudoff replied in a hushed voice.  “Here.”

“What’s the matter, doc?” O’Shea asked, looking up from his clipboard.  “Going to miss your buddy?”

Krudoff didn’t answer.  He just looked over at McHenry with a sullen demeanor.  McHenry met his gaze and made a facial expression to match.

“How sweet.  I’m moved.  Truly, I am,” O’Shea spat sarcastically.  “
McHenry, N.”

“Here.”

“Say your goodbyes at the mess, McHenry.  You’re getting evicted after breakfast.”

The guards left without bothering to even pat down either prisoner. 
After the cell door slid shut, the two men sat down on the bottom bunk next to each other.  Neither of them said a word.

***

“Suit.  Men’s size large,” Said the clerk who sat behind a bulletproof glass window, sliding a plastic bag through a small slot.  He continued reading off a list and pushing bags out the slot.  “Shoes, men’s size nine and a half.  Wallet, contents: driver’s license, thirty-five dollars forty-two cents.”

McHenry
signed his name and initials on what felt like a thousand pieces of paper acknowledging the proper return of his property from the time of his imprisonment.  Simultaneously, he started changing into his suit.  It was a little bit tight at the waist and armpits.

“Al
l right McHenry, here’s your transport voucher.”  The clerk slid a bus ticket through the slot.  “An officer will drive you to the bus station, and from there this ticket can be used to travel to any destination within the state of New York.”

McHenry
nodded and slipped it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

“One more thing,” the clerk looked up at him
, pointing at the computer screen on his desk.  “We have a note here.”

“Uh huh.”

“When you were convicted, it was stipulated that upon your release you would not be permitted within one hundred feet of any computer or computer-based device.”  The clerk made a face as if someone had just told him a hell of a zinger.

“What’s funny?”

“Nothing, forget it.  The judge rescinded that part of the terms of your release.”

Well, that greases the wheels a bit for me if I do decide to get back into the old game,
McHenry thought to himself. 
But what if this is some kind of entrapment, a scheme to get me to go out and get caught?

“Why the sudden change of heart?”

“It’s impossible to enforce a rule like that these days.”

McHenry
scratched the old burn scar that ran along his chin.  He had no idea what the clerk was on about.  He scrunched his nose as he questioned, “Okay?”

“You’ll see,” said the clerk, with a shrug.  “Al
l right, follow the officer out to the truck.”

A cop at the other end of the room beckoned McHenry
.  The door behind the officer buzzed and swung open.  Freezing November air blasted into the corridor and washed over McHenry’s hairless head.  He wished he’d been put away in the winter; he’d at least have had a hat waiting for him.

“Let’s get going, chromedome,” the officer sneered.  “It’s going to snow any minute now and I don’t wanna get fucked
over by it.”

As they crossed the parking lot towards a police SUV,
McHenry stopped and turned back to face Blackiron Federal Penitentiary.  He’d only seen it from the outside once before: that first night when he was brought in and processed fifteen years earlier.  There were seventeen stories of reinforced, explosion-proof concrete mixed with chemicals thought up by some super-genius in the early eighties.  It was designed to be a formidable structure; one built not only to house super-powered criminals but to keep them in there, too.  And maybe--to some degree--it had been designed to scare the shit out of them. Something built to look so intimidating that potential super crooks would simply give up their plans before they started just to avoid going there.