Chapter 173

  The convoy descended.

  Alexander let the automated systems do their work. Behind him, the remaining trucks followed in twos, the usually subtle humming of hovertech pitching to a slight roar as twenty-four armored transports packed into the enclosed space.

  Overhead, Droney had recalled the scattered drones and followed. Droney was transmitting audio and video to Augustus, maintaining a live feed so that the man could portal himself in or Alexander out at a moment’s notice.

  Alexander cycled Electrokinesis faster through his Core, pushing the power throughout his body. His physical senses sharpened. The effect was marginal, just enough to put a slight drain on his reserves. He didn’t want to push for more unnecessarily, but even a little increase might mean the difference in a battle between superhumans.

  He tightened his powered senses, reining them in. Instead of reaching everywhere, he focused them downward, concentrating on what waited at the bottom of the ramp.

  A third barrier.

  This one was different. The security mechanisms above matched the bulkheads he’d already bypassed, but the construction itself diverged sharply. Where the others had relied on thick reinforced concrete, this barrier featured layered metal composites throughout its structure. His senses traced complex mechanical components embedded deep within. A locking mechanism, something archaic compared to the electronic systems he’d dominated so far. Physical tumblers and precision-machined parts working in concert.

  And wrapped around the entire frame, he detected the largest suppression collar he’d ever encountered.

  The same technology as the prison bomb collars. No explosives this time, just the suppression field generator scaled up and integrated into the vault door’s frame instead of wrapped around someone’s throat.

  Alexander grinned. He wondered how many other superhumans in the world could challenge the exotic quantum fields calibrated to disrupt the neural pathways that channeled Will into reality.

  Alexander snapped his fingers for dramatic effect, targeting the suppression collar with a practiced pulse of Technopathy. Even after all this time, the fields were still partially effective, though it would require substantially more power than was being used here to disable his powers at this point.

  The suppression vanished.

  It was unfortunate for NYPMEX that their additional security simply made his job easier. A mostly metal vault door might as well be transparent to his powers. Metallokinesis could pass right through the material, and thanks to the Core’s ability to synergize his abilities, the others could piggyback along for the ride.

  The convoy came to a stop. Alexander opened the door and dropped to the ground. The impact of his heavy boots echoed back up the tunnel. Droney drifted down and took its usual position hovering near his shoulder.

  Alexander approached the vault door. He placed both hands against the vault’s surface, his cybernetic left connecting with a faint thunk.

  He closed his eyes and pushed his power into the barrier. Slow. Careful. Despite knowing he was on a clock, rushing would create mistakes. His senses traced along the metal composites, mapping the interior space beyond.

  Two superheroes were always rostered for night shifts. Tonight, according to the schedule Talia had provided, they were both technopaths. Alexander was counting on that vulnerability. Gambling that his own powers would be superior, even in a two-versus-one situation.

  He didn’t expect to find them on the other side of the door. The facility layout showed living quarters further inside. Bedrooms, a kitchen, bathrooms, an entertainment space. Everything needed to make long rotating shifts bearable while guarding a vault that had never been so much as attacked.

  Something that was about to change.

  Alexander continued, slowly reaching further into the facility beyond with his senses. With two technopaths on site, he wanted to avoid his powers conflicting with theirs. He’d prefer to pull off the job flawlessly, without the superheroes ever noticing what was happening. The layout of the vaults, loading bays, and temporary residences meant it was possible.

  If the supers were busy playing video games or something. Regular guards wouldn’t be a concern regardless.

  He traced the walls, finding electrical currents that led to lights. Cameras. Sensors. Alarms. Then more vault doors, over a dozen of them, though each individually smaller than the one before him.

  Alexander reached even further. And found vehicles parked at the end of the row of vaults, which gave him pause. He didn’t know why there were cars down here. Perhaps they belonged to the guards.

  He shrugged and pushed on, finally finding what he was expecting.

  The plans had said there was a security monitoring room. He’d found no bioelectric signatures within the loading area, the vaults…

  He frowned.

  There were none in the monitoring room either.

  Alexander considered the absence of bioelectric signatures. His first thought was tactical paranoia. A trap. Guards pulled back intentionally, creating a false sense of security. Bait to draw him deeper before springing the real defense.

  It was a strong possibility. AEGIS maintained entire departments dedicated to predictive analysis of superhuman threats. Behavioral modeling. Pattern recognition. Precognitive assets working in conjunction with advanced analytics. Alexander was exactly the kind of target they’d focus resources on. High-profile. Dangerous. One of the Eight prophesied Divines destined to rise during Earth’s coming cataclysm.

  If anyone could anticipate his moves, it would be them.

  Alexander shook his head.

  The beginnings of this plan were only days old. The racing bikes aside, everything else had been decided almost on a whim. The trucks. NYPMEX specifically. Even the timing. None of it had been locked in until he’d committed.

  The Sleipnir and their island were protected against diviners. The wards weren’t perfect. A Tier 3 psychic might penetrate them with enough effort. But even then, precognition couldn’t predict decisions that didn’t exist yet. That was something everyone agreed on. The future wasn’t fixed. A single person’s hesitation, a moment of indecisiveness, was enough to throw powered prediction into chaos.

  Perhaps the guards were simply taking a break. Or they’d grown complacent after years of nothing happening.

  Alexander hesitated.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Trap or lucky break.

  He breathed in. Chose ambition over caution. And exhaled.

  Technopathy pulsed outward through the facility. Security monitoring stations stopped receiving updates from cameras and sensors, but the systems themselves remained active. No alerts would trigger from the sudden silence. Alarm protocols disabled without shutting down, their status indicators reporting normal operations to anyone that might check.

  Metallokinesis reached into the vault door’s mechanisms.

  Alexander stepped back as the archaic locking system began to rotate. Physical tumblers turned deep within the barrier. Precision-machined components sliding into new configurations. Heavy mechanical clanks echoed back up the tunnel, reverberating off concrete walls.

  There was nothing he could do about the noise. If anyone was close enough to hear, they’d investigate regardless.

  The massive door began to open.

  Hydraulic arms engaged deep within the door’s frame. It pulled inward with a hiss of air, then slid sideways on tracks built into the surrounding concrete. Light spilled out from the space beyond, bright LED illumination flooding the tunnel.

  Alexander stepped forward and took it in.

  The loading bay stretched ahead, a wide corridor that ran nearly four hundred feet into the facility. The central drive was broader than the entry ramp, easily wide enough for three trucks to travel side by side. Raised platforms lined both sides, elevated a few feet above the ground with loading bay indentations cut into them at regular intervals.

  Then there were the vault doors. Sixteen of them. Eight on each side, numbered in pairs. 1A and 1B nearest to him, progressing down the corridor all the way to 8A and 8B at the far end. Each was identical. Same construction and security features as the one he’d just opened, though smaller.

  Beyond the vaults, he saw the parking area, and further still, the security station with its wide observation window overlooking the entire corridor. Beside the viewing window was a single door, leading to the guard’s accommodations.

  The ceiling rose seventy feet overhead. Industrial lighting arrays cast everything in stark white illumination. The whole space felt clean, almost sterile, like a high-end warehouse retrofitted with bank vault security.

  Alexander pulsed Metallokinesis. Oscillating waves lifted him off the ground, his duster flapping behind him as he rose into the air and flew forward. The drones spread out ahead in a loose shield formation, ready to react to threats.

  Below, the convoy began driving into the loading bay, trucks filing in two by two.

  Alexander reached the midpoint of the vault entrances and stopped, hovering twenty feet above the ground. His senses continued to sweep the facility. Still no bioelectric signatures in the security station. Still nothing of concern anywhere in the loading area.

  He remained cautious. Kept his powered senses from pushing deeper, still avoiding the risk of his powers colliding with theirs and announcing his presence.

  Alexander extended both hands. Metallokinesis reached out to all sixteen vault doors simultaneously.

  The locks began disengaging. One by one, rippling down the corridor in rapid sequence. 1A. 1B. 2A. 2B. Heavy mechanical clicks echoed through the space as tumblers rotated and failsafes released. 3A. 3B. 4A. 4B. The sound cascaded like falling dominoes, each vault unlocking in turn.

  5A. 5B. 6A. 6B.

  The doors began to swing open.

  7A. 7B. 8A. 8B.

  All sixteen vaults, unsealed in seconds.

  Alexander spun slowly in the air, arms still extended. A grin spread across his face as the vault doors swung fully open, revealing their contents.

  Light glinted off stacked pallets of metal. Bullion bars in neat rows, shrink-wrapped and secured. Industrial racks filled with sheets. Heavy-duty storage barrels. Climate-controlled containers with digital temperature readouts.

  The scale of it finally struck him. There were billions of credits worth of materials down here.

  Alexander’s Metallokinesis flooded into all sixteen vaults simultaneously. His senses traced across every room, through every container, every pallet, every ingot. Metal signatures resolved intuitively into precise identifications.

  Vault 1A was full of copper. Hundreds of tons of sheets stacked on industrial racks.

  Vault 1B. More copper. It was a common metal, something he could source anywhere and not worth the truck space. Or, more precisely, the weight.

  2A and 2B. Aluminum ingots packed floor to ceiling. A light metal, requiring massive volume for significant weight. But also common and easily purchased in large quantities.

  He kept turning.

  3A. Titanium. Alexander paused for a moment. Aerospace-grade billets arranged in neat rows. Useful for structural applications. Worth taking some, as long as he had enough volume and weight capacity.

  3B. Nickel and cobalt. Standard industrial metals. Not important.

  4A. Silver. Hundreds of tons, bullion bars catching the overhead lights and reflecting them in brilliant flashes. It was the best electrical conductor available, though only marginally better than copper. What made it valuable was its resistance to oxidation. Corrosion. Under normal circumstances, given silver’s greater density, copper might be the superior choice.

  But Alexander didn’t have normal circumstances in mind. The Machine God wasn’t planning to build toasters and coffee makers, after all.

  Even a marginal improvement in efficiency mattered.

  He turned to the next vault.

  4B. Platinum and palladium. Smaller ingots in sealed containers. Both were excellent catalysts, irreplaceable in certain chemical manufacturing processes. Platinum maintained stability at extreme temperatures. Palladium absorbed hydrogen like a sponge, making it critical for fuel cell applications.

  Then Alexander’s attention reached the back vaults. His grin widened.

  5A held rare earth elements. Rows of sealed containers with argon atmosphere warnings printed on their sides. He traced the contents. Neodymium. Dysprosium. Praseodymium. Europium. All exotic elements essential for permanent magnets and advanced electronics.

  The vault held less than a hundred tons, but that was more than enough. Even with access to serious supply chains, acquiring them in such quantities would take months or years.

  5B. Semiconductor materials. Individual containers and climate-controlled storage barrels with temperature monitors maintaining perfect conditions for what they held. Gallium, indium, germanium, tellurium. The building blocks of advanced computing and quantum systems.

  6A revealed gold bullion. Alexander’s senses swept through the vault and found it nearly empty despite containing several hundred tons. Pallets of bullion sat in one corner, barely occupying the available space. Even then, this one vault alone held billions of the precious metal.

  It just wasn’t as critical to acquire in bulk, given its easy availability elsewhere.

  He’d take some anyway. Gold had retained its value even after the adoption of the Galactic Credit, due to being a key element in advanced tech alloys.

  Alexander stopped spinning, focusing entirely on the next vault. 6B.

  Jackpot.

  The space was almost completely empty. A single pallet sat in the center, stacked high with sealed containers no larger than shoeboxes.

  His senses reached into the containers.

  Rhodium. Iridium. Ruthenium. Osmium. Rhenium.

  The platinum group metals. Materials that could handle temperatures and corrosive environments that nothing else could survive. Essential for quantum systems, advanced propulsion, fusion reactors, and any technology operating at the bleeding edge of what physics allowed.

  There were only perhaps twenty tons total. But they were more valuable per gram than everything else in the facility. Metals so rare that global supply was measured in single-digit tons per year.

  Asteroid mining had increased supply of all rare metals over the years, but most of what was extracted went straight to galactic markets, where prices were higher and demand never ended, or was used to support off-world expansion. The corporations controlling those operations sold to Earth at premium prices. Quantities like this would be nearly impossible to source, costing way more than he could afford. And that was before considering his supervillain status.

  This vault represented years of supply, taken in one night.

  This vault alone justified his entire plan. Justified all the risks.

  Not that Alexander was going to complain about all the other valuable materials he’d be taking with him.

  That would be ungrateful.

  Alexander’s senses swept through the remaining vaults. The 7s and 8s held reserves. Mixed industrial metals, overflow storage for materials that didn’t fit in their primary locations. Useful for a facility managing regular operations, but nothing he needed.

  He’d already found what mattered.

  He looked both ways, down the full length of the loading bay.

  Sixteen open vaults. Billions in materials ready to be loaded.

  It was time to get to work.

  The Machine God! Please consider following, favoriting, and rating. I appreciate all of the support you've given!

  Continue the Dream.