Free Blackjack Villain by Ben Bequer Page B

to give him a clean slate.
    But I had to go, to take the chance, even if I didn’t know what it was about. This was my one shot and I was ready for it.
    My bow was unstrung in a six foot case that bounced on my back along with my full quiver of arrows. I even brought “the nuke.” Just having that arrow would put me in jail for twenty years. I also had my belt and boots, loaded with my gadgets and tricks, many of which were patently illegal.
    The bow, quiver and the costume were irrefutable proof that I was Blackjack. It was only the lack of evidence, and Atmosphero’s stupidity, that had kept me from Utopia prison the first time around. Sandy had engineered that deal, and thinking about it now was making me more nervous. I’d see the light of day in fifty years if Sandy was betraying me.
    Then I thought: what could they bring to stop me? If Atmo came alone, he was in trouble, and I think he knew it. No, he’d show with his crew, Rising Force, to minimize the damage to property and injuries to innocent civilians. Faced with a full super group, I’d have to back down, right? Yeah, they would expect me to hand over my stuff and do my fifty years quietly.
    But I wasn’t going to go down easy. I didn’t care what they brought, Blackjack would be ready. Blackjack wouldn’t back down.
    * * *
    As I approached the meeting location, I started feeling a bit more comfortable.
    Hyperion Avenue was bustling with rush hour traffic, and the sidewalks were replete with foot and bicycle traffic. It wasn’t isolated. And it was a terrible place for them to arrest me. I still kept my bow case handy, and my cowl and cape wrapped around my waist like a sash in case I needed to conceal myself quickly.
    I jogged up lightly and bought a water bottle from a vending machine as I looked at my watch. The run had taken twenty-three minutes and thirty two seconds, over a linear course of 6.51 miles.
    My watch was the Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean I had stolen, except highly modified. It was probably my most technically advanced creation. It had miniaturized a CPU, flash drive and HD display inside the shell. The display flashed and I swapped modes to input. A series of lights fired off from a sensor holo-emitter to the fleshy part of my forearm in the shape of keys from a keyboard. In this mode, my watch was a fully functioning wrist-mounted computer.
    I spent hours upon hours working on my inventions, and in particular, my combat gadgets, for the sheer joy of coming up with new and interesting things to disable or otherwise defeat my enemies. But there was also a more practical reason. Sandy had wondered why I bothered with the bow and gadgets. Well, using this stuff allowed me to forgo my strength for most things.
    Special magnetic armored car doors aside, my super strength could easily get me into trouble. A super like Atmosphero was made of the same stuff as me, so he could take a punch or two. But slugging a regular Joe, like a security guard or one of those cops from the park wouldn’t leave much for the medical examiner to identify. I may be the bad guy, but I didn’t want to kill anyone.
    A brown suburban with tinted windows made a big hubbub on Hyperion right in front of me. It turned from the opposing lane, did an illegal U-turn mid-traffic, and came up beside me.
    The rear passenger door opened and a woman greeted me. She was in her mid- thirties and while she was dressed conservatively, nothing could conceal her stunning beauty. Her hair was dark brown, almost black in a longer than bob-cut and parted to the left with a trail of bangs held seductively low and almost into her left eye. Her eyes were brown and serious, but with a hint of playfulness at the corners. Her full lips were pouty, and she pursed them in anticipation as I neared.
    “You must be Blackjack,” she said, holding the door open.
    I nodded.
    “Put your things in trunk and get in,” she said, and the driver popped the trunk.
    Once I had thrown everything in the