Unknown Read online

  When I’m done posting this I have to get in touch with different people to try getting fixed what I couldn’t clear away, a police report to file, and I’ve got to get in touch with those agents what are supposed to be my go-to people on Mr. Troll.

  Twenty says it’s some egghead that wanted to try copying the sort of genetics package granddad had and screwed up. Hope it’s reversible, because Troll didn’t seem too big on the brains department. Most of what he used on me was raw strength and little in the way of finessing.

  I KNEW THERE WOULD BE DAYS LIKE THIS.

  I’m not at home. Never went home today, since I’m pretty sure Troll has a handler of some sort, or at least I have to go under the assumption it wasn’t just a lone bruiser shoving his way through town to get to my neck. My name and face off hours isn’t much, but it’s my business and I don’t like the idea of having to wade through cameras just to get to my front door. It would probably piss off my landlord too.

  So. What did I do today? I went out of town for a bit. I promise I’m not running. Think of it as gathering information. While I was away I met with those agents that were working my case and explained what happened the night before, or is it this morning, not sure. They told me my assumption was partially correct. Mad Science afoot, but a minion turned monster instead of the man that made the formula.

  Why FBI instead of NSA? Actually now that ‘we’ are pretty sure it isn’t just some guy in a costume or a hired gun they might get involved. Until then this is being treated much like any other crime, investigate, interview, go over and over what facts are available, and try building a list of suspects from all that information. Great. Getting interviewed by two agents while at the same time being told off for tampering with the crime scene.

  Look. I’ll let you folks in on something since you’ re being such good sports about all this. Sure I get the occasional reward, but the money isn’t steady or a sure thing. Plus anytime something gets broke, like say a building or cars or whatever, I have to somehow cover costs. So I’ve been trying to keep collateral damage as low as I can and I’ve tried making it a habit to clean up after myself. Both of these things I had taken along with lessons on subduing armed and desperate men, the best way to punch a car to make it stop without hurting anyone inside, how best to take an explosion, and so on.

  In spite of the ‘OMG the sun is about to explode!’ moments, and cliché villains I could almost wish life were like the comics. None of them ever have to fill out claims forms or accident reports. Then again generally their romantic lives are in the toilet and they’re too wound up about keeping their precious secret identity from the people closest to them.

  So not a good day. Not a very productive day. I’m cranky, tired, and if tall, green, and stupid shows up again I’m probably going to try ramming a tree down it’s throat.

  BUSINESS HAS JUST GONE UP.

  Stopped a bank robbery. Two guys with automatic weapons and body armor. I’d heard about something like this going down in LA a few years ago, and as soon as I heard what was going on I told Agents Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum to shut up, let me work, and help keep everyone else clear.

  Quite happy to report they didn’t argue with me and by the time I got there a blockade had been formed. People were hit and the two gunmen could have hostages but this is the kind of thing I was born to do. I’ll update when this is over.

  CRANKY.

  One dead, the other in intensive care. For the record I think the guy bit down on a cyanide pill when I grabbed him. Kinda shows when he’s foaming at the mouth and such. Other guy tried taking a hostage, so I broke his hand. Got shot in the process and I probably could have been a little gentler when grabbing the guy, but they’re sure he’ll live. The only other injuries, thankfully, are relatively minor. At least everyone else will be alright save for a few scars. Sure I could have stayed when the news vans started showing up, but why bother? I don’t want the glory, and I sure as hell don’t want to take anything away from Winston’s Finest. I just stepped up so good men and women wouldn’t get hurt.

  Though if you look close enough you can see me in the background waving to the camera.

  I’m going to have to send Sergeant Laurie something nice when I get the money. She kept a clear head and if she hadn’t been as quick there might have been more people in there than the ones in the bank. Also gonna need to send something to the tellers at First and Union. Calm, didn’t budge or give in. They kept their heads about them.

  Dad’s one question to me, when he called, was ‘why did you let one of them kill themselves on national TV.’ Figures. We love each other, and the man busts himself to try keeping me and everyone else in my business safe. It just seems like there’s no making the man happy sometimes.

  To take matters from wishy washy to Fail for the day I come home to find somebody waiting for me. Thankfully I already changed out and such. It’s just annoying when Spooks show up, no sense of courtesy sometimes. He had out the bottle of whiskey I’d been saving since... well it was a gift for busting a couple of would-be-thieves that tried getting into some rich guy’s house. I don’t like bartering, but it’s good whiskey, and the bottle alone is a work of art. It felt insulting to have some stranger show up out of the blue pouring himself a glass and otherwise acting like he owned the place.

  We talked. He was blunt and to the point. People wanted me to try coming in one way or another on the political mudball that was going on in DC. Y’know, try getting me in somebody’s corner to try getting their bloc ahead. I told the man, calmly, I don’t do politics and if he didn’t get out of my home I was well within my right to shove him face first through the door.

  I know, a bit harsh since I’m sure he was just doing his job, but I wanted to make it clear that I will not be bought and bartered like so many others in the past. I don’t want to end up like poor Bill.

  History lesson: Not sure how many people studied Masks from the Cold War era. For awhile it seemed like any town of any real size had some sort of masked avenger. The bigger the town the more inflated the Mask’s reputation. Bill was DC’s in-town Mask, and he was actually pretty good at what he did. Trouble is he tried getting political, thought he could use the system to make positive changes if he played things right. He ended up on McCarthy’s lists for some reason or another, and even though the commie hunt ended up backfiring Bill was an early and dramatic casualty. Ended up feeling alienated by everybody he’d worked decades to defend and killed himself after years of soaking in cheap booze.

  I don’t want to end up like him, so that’s why I was so blunt about telling the guy to buzz off. Probably not a politically savvy move, but I don’t care what goes on with The Hill. I’m already up to my neck in trouble without adding that kind of mess to my life.

  No leads from the Feds on where Troll came from, so I decided to vent by putting my suit on and see what could be seen.

  No Murders (thank God.)

  Two Robberies (both surrendered peacefully.)

  One Rape (I caught the guy in the act. He no longer has those parts of his body anymore. I’m sure he’ll sue, but it’s not funny. It’s not a laughing matter. I catch anyone pulling that crap and I will gladly rip their jewels off to keep it from ever happening again, and that’s when I’m in a good mood.)

  FIVE domestic abuse calls (two ended peacefully. I ended up punching one guy in the face (gently!) after he kicked me in the sweets. Another guy tried stabbing me and I hauled him out for the cops to sort out after I left face sized holes in one of his walls. Fifth case ended up with the wife Macing me then trying to stab me in the neck with an ice pick while I down. I was raised to not ever hit a woman, but I sure as hell will if they want to start something.)

  Look. I know tempers flare up but please, c’mon people. If I show up that means show’s over. Stop trying to kill each other, and don’t try taking it out on me. I don’t like getting maced, stabbed, kicked in the danglies, or bit. It makes me irritable, and I’m not above breaking furniture
with your face before the boys in blue get there. I am generally well within my rights to subdue aggressive persons while making arrests, and I have enough training to do so without killing you but make you wish I had.

  /rant

  I’m goin’ to bed.

  BODIES IN MOTION.

  I have five names. Five people that the government knows of that are theoretically smart enough to have been behind Troll. I’m going to go question these people myself. I want to see how they react personally. Unless anyone tries anything I will be polite and nice. no sense in making more enemies than I probably already have.

  Me and my lady friend are keeping in touch via VoIP, webcam, and gaming sessions. It boggles my mind at the number of people that leave their wireless unsecured. Even basic WEP protection and not broadcasting your ID would offer a small measure of protection from casual passers by leaching off your bandwidth. I’m not guilty of this. Just imagine the headlines now. No, really. Leaching is illegal. I’m just pointing something out that the wider public might not be aware of. Thank you Sarah for pointing that one out to me. So, I’m going cross country to try flushing out whoever could send genetically engineered thugs after me, or at least supplied the concoction that got used in the process. I’m going to have to assume whoever this is could very well be a victim themselves, so no busting doors down or threatening to make all their shiny equipment go kaboom.

  How do I even begin to approach this? I was told it would be better if a professional handle matters, but something in my gut disagrees. Whoever this is will probably be prepared for a trained by the book sort of questioning. If this is someone that has disfigured someone to make them a weapon against me I want to be able to look them in the eyes when they try denying involvement. If whoever this person is has been used I still want to look them in the eye. My instincts have been wrong in the past, but I still trust them enough to point me in the right direction most days.

  Besides, there’s the practical considerations to take into mind. Whoever this is, if they’re violent, they might have lain traps out. I’m not invulnerable, but I can take far more than any normal person, even wrapped in layers of ceramics and bulletproof fabrics. I will go in and ask my questions, and I will give the recordings of these conversations to the agents accompanying me.

  Want a summary of what being on the road is like? Agents Toot and Tweet flip to see who drives first.We do a little work with what new material comes in, hit a rest stop around lunch, then back on the road with the agent that hadn’t been driving before now in the hot seat for another four hours. Check in at wherever and get in touch with the rest of the investigation, keep tabs on what Winston PD is facing while I’m gone, and pass the time until morning.

  I hear people out there wondering why we don’t just fly. Turns out being known internationally has the downside of making me a high profile person, enough so that me showing up at an airport could not only clog the place with gawkers, but turn the place into a giant blazing target for whoever wants my head. Sure me on the road with just two agents sounds like an even bigger risk, especially considering the amount of time it takes to get from Here to There, but we agreed it’s safer to be a single face amongst millions instead of risking airports or train terminals.

  The positive of having all this time on the road means I get to catch up on a bit of reading. Right now plowing my way through Tripod Invasion: Fact or Fiction? and after that I’ve got World War Z on my to read list. Not a bit fan of the whole Zombie thing in general, but I hear good things from all sorts of people about that book, so I figure why not.

  Beats yet another nutcase trying to convince the world that the Tripod Invasion at the turn of the century was intentionally covered up. Everyone who’s looked into the matter agrees that what wreckage was recovered from the two known invasions was so far beyond even what we have today that we can’t make sense of any of it, much less figure out how to reproduce the technology. Hell, the Germans tried with one of their wonder weapons and look where it got them.

  Sorry. Bit of a sore spot. Believe what you will on the matter. I had the misfortune of having family involved, so I got a bit of a crash course on the whole tripod bit when I was still small enough to sit in mom’s lap. So why read the obvious conspiracy nut book about them? I lost a bet and have to do a ten page writeup explaining why I think the book is stupid.

  By the way. Both Agents are fans of Dungeon Runners. Who’d have thought eh?

  CALIFORNIA, BRACE THINESELF.

  This is me wondering if they’ll let me do a walk-on cameo in one of the back lots in LA. Bah. Don’t think Hollywood is close enough to where we’re headed to make that one work. Headed to some middle of nowhere place that’s home to the first name on our list. Old Japanese guy. Must’ve moved here after the end of World War 2. By what the reports suggest he’s something of a community fixture, so best to be gentle.

  This is one time I’m glad Granddad isn’t here. He saw how the Japanese treated their prisoners. It... left marks on him. I’ll say no more on the matter.

  Beth, odd name for a place, but no worse than Hell, Tombstone, or Bugtussle. Might want to pick up a few things while I’m here. Hey might as well. My lady love would be a bit irritated if I didn’t manage to bring something back with me and all. That and if they sell those Navajo inspired rugs I might want one for my living room. Anyone have any advice on what sorts of patterns to look for? I’d rather avoid anything looking too ceremonial. I remember some documentary about how many of the weavers would start incorporating stuff into their designs that traditionally would never have been allowed in something so permanent because that’s what the customers kept demanding. Could be wrong or remembering wrong. Sooo guys. Help?

  Agent Toot has been tutoring me on the best ways to approach the old man. pity I don’t know Japanese, hope he knows English because otherwise this is going to get odd in a hurry.

  DISTURBING DOES NOT EVEN BEGIN TO COVER THIS.

  I shouldn’t believe what this man has told me. Both agents seem suspicious and thing his mind has gone, but they didn’t see the man. His eyes are clear and focused. He holds down a job, volunteers to read to the sick and infirm. He grows his own herbs, teaches cooking classes on a weekly basis. Ye Gods, for someone that’s got the oldest recorded person beat by a good thirty years this man’s active. Scratch that. The guy’s active for men in their seventies.

  I tried showing as much humility as someone wearing bright colors and layers of Kevlar can. He listened as I explained to him that I had been attacked sometime before by someone that had undergone such a dramatic and, at the same time, apparently effective, alteration that there were only a handful of people that could have managed it without killing the subject. I made it quite clear that right now I was fishing for information and had not come with my mind already made up on who’s guilty of what. We talked back and forth a bit, him feeding me little bits of his collected wisdom, and me explaining how it feels to be in my grandfather’s shadow while we worked his herb garden.

  He stood from picking some kind of stumpy leafy plant and he smiled at me before telling me he was the reason my grandfather was the man he was. He was of a sound mind when he said this. He told me the things he and five others did in the beginning of the last century are the reasons so many Masks are around today. Slowly, on aged and likely arthritic joints, he knelt and asked me to forgive him. In hindsight I have all sorts of explanations for his behavior, old man that’s getting on in years but still exceedingly brilliant wanting to unburden himself about things done way back when. I’ve heard stories of WW2 vets on all sides that had this kind of thing.

  At the time though I couldn’t believe he was anything but of sound mind and judgment. So I told him, with the sort of voice appropriate to the situation, that he owed no debts and that what was in the past should remain there. He smiled and thanked me for humoring him.

  After that we talked business. He couldn’t completely dismiss the idea that a student of his might have come up
with something that would work, but apparently making changes to an adult anything (fish, ant, plant, or human) was orders of magnitude more complicated than starting with a newly fertilized egg. The added advantage, apparently, of starting from the beginning was that if a working alteration the cell cluster could be split any number of times before they had a chance to start forming the different parts of whatever you’re growing. Have to admit even if the idea’s repulsive and disturbing, the man knows what he’s talking about.

  This led our conversation to trying to figure out several things:

  If Dr. Muckamuck grew Troll from a test tube how long would it reasonably have taken to grow up? We both had to guess that it was at least a teenager if not a full blown adult. Too aggressive to be a child, but it could have matured in as little as a couple years. Sure that’s awhile to try housing feeding and hiding something, but it also gives whoever’s behind this time to train and condition it.

  If all our guessing was right. How long would these things live? Elephants live, if left on their own, a Really Long Time. Humans, with good diet and such, also live a Really Long Time. Most other land critters... don’t . Generally thirty to forty years is the longest an active mammal can expect to live, and that’s with better than average food, medical care, and such.

  So. Likely dealing with something bred, raised, and trained to hunt me, or at the very least people like me. Groovy, I won’t be able to reason with it and Mr. Kabu said if it was grown to take me on it likely had the same sort of package I had grown into, only altered by drugs, training, and likely with no care for by-standards. All that would have been needed to work off of would be a blood sample, and my granddad gave blood twice a year for about forty years. Peachy.