Boli barely glanced up from his worktable as a group of five stumbled in through the secret entrance in the east. Lecher tore off his scuba mask, leaving large pink indentations over his face. Heaving as he limped, he moved to the nearest wall to lean against. Coughing and wheezing, he slid down.

  “No chairs?” Lecher asked.

  His voice echoed around the room a dozen times as a high-pitched whine built up. The goggled visitors covered their ears, grimacing as the volume of echoes continued to escalate through speaker’s in Boli’s workshop.

  “Off!” Boli exclaimed. The echo continued. “Deactivate! Turn off! What was the phrase to turn off the headsets?” he knocked on his head.

  “Turn your headsets off boys!” Lecher screamed over the increasingly screechy replays of “NO CHAIRS?”

  With a few fumbles, four of the men tapped commands into their earpieces. Thugg groaned, both hands over his ears as the noises continued.

  “Manual override! Turn off audio headsets!” Boli screamed, slamming fists into his desk. “Stop doing that!”

  The speakers cut out abruptly, and Thugg groaned loudly in relief, lying down on the floor. His ski goggles popped when he tore them off, oblong red marks around bloodshot eyes. Boli barely looked at him. His workshop was full of metal workings and half-completed projects. His finished works were in a massive pile on one end, like a hoarder that did projects for the sake of it instead of having a true use for the idea. The bright luminescent lights buzzed faintly above as he looked over the crew.

  “Good work. You’ll receive payment by end of day. See you in the next one,” Boli said, tinkering with the android in front of him. It was a fully complete creation. A sleek, smooth droid with random protrusions where limbs should have been.

  “The next one?” Lecher asked, baffled.

  “Later. Thenceforth. Another occasion. During the next time I am in need of your services. Is that clearer?” Boli flinched at a spark leaping from the droid.

  “There’s not gonna be a next time!” Lecher screamed. “You sent me and my boys up against Apex! A little warning would have been nice!”

  Boli set down his screwdriver, looking at him over the droid.

  “You look fine to me. And it was a success. Mostly, anyway. Half a job, well done. Sounds like Apex is overstated? Nothing like Lightcrown?” Boli said, eyebrow raised.

  “How are we supposed to know what Lightcrown was like? No one else was Awakened before he died!” Lecher screamed to Boli’s annoyance.

  “Big A hits like a train with his gold punch,” Thugg said, a hand laid over his eyes. “At my Big Strength, I thought he’d crack my bones. He could if I gave him a few more tries.”

  “Big A,” Boli raised an amused eyebrow. “You mean Apex?”

  “Yes, but I can’t use words with more than one sound in it. It came with the Wake Up. Some think you can’t sound smart with a small word pool, but I make do.”

  “Disappointing,” Boli muttered, then saw Thugg’s expression. “The thing about Apex, not your speech impediment.”

  No one was like Lightcrown. It almost made his endeavors feel worthless. No. He had much larger plans. They would come to fruition as long as he stayed the course. Distant music played in his head as he daydreamed of that future. Scoffing with a smirk, he returned his focus to the android. “Feel free to find your way out. Until next time.”

  “I already said there won’t be a next time!” Lecher snapped.

  “I’m going to go ahead and assume you don’t speak for all of them. A job is a job, and I know we pay well. More than most others that would hire a ragtag team of Awakened. So, I’ll send the call out and everyone will make their decisions, independently,” Boli said, feeling very cool as he continued not to look at him. He wasn’t even working on any particular aspect of his bot, just needling a point that would produce a small spark every few pokes. The nonchalance must have looked very intimidating.

  “I don’t like the way you talk to me,” Lecher said, pushing himself up against the wall to a stand.

  “I’m pretty sure I’ve dismissed you multiple times,” Boli said in annoyance, snapping eyes up from his work desk.

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  “What’s to stop me from just robbing you dry and not needing any more of these silly jobs?”

  “Lecher,” Pendergast said nervously. “We finished the job. We can talk about this later. But can we at least know what the job was about? It still isn’t clear to me how it was a partial success.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Boli asked Lecher. He sincerely wasn’t sure, squinting with one eye.

  “Drop it, Lech,” Thugg said, rubbing the side of his head. “I don’t need more fights on this day. I have a big ache in my head and I need to get this noise bud out of my ear.”

  “No, I’m getting kinda sick of being talked down to like this. I’m ultra fast! Probably the quickest Awakened there is! I can run circles around anyone, even Apex!” Lecher screamed, taking a powerful step toward Boli.

  “Until you get tired,” Boli said in a tone that made it sound very unimpressive.

  “Everyone’s power makes them tired! Are you even Awakened?”

  “No, but I—”

  Boli shrieked a squeal when Lecher sprinted at top speed, blurring into an after-image and racing around the workshop toward Boli.

  The android on the work desk reacted immediately, racing into motion and appearing before Boli in an instant. Less than a heartbeat later, the droid blew back into a dozen pieces, smacked into by the speeding Lecher. The speedster fell back, blood running from his nose. Recovering from his cowardly scream, Boli stood confidently and raised a finger.

  “Even if I don’t have a power, I have many defensive measures in place to take care of annoying challengers like you! All I have to do is say ‘Fire!’ and…”

  A shrill noise powered up behind him and blasted a blinding red ray at Lecher, followed by three rockets firing from the ceiling, spinning erratically and crashing into him. Each bomb exploded only enough to envelop his body, leaving Boli unscathed. As the energies dissipated, a small pile of ash sat where Lecher once existed, a tiny wisp of smoke trailing from his remains. A small taser lowered itself from the ceiling attached to a long thin metal crane. It fired once into the pile of ash, then ascended back into the ceiling. Pursing his lips, Boli stared at the smoldering leavings.

  Mortified, Boli looked out at the horrified men that stood tensely. Not only had he forgotten what he was going to say — something menacing and cool for sure — he hadn’t even intended to have the additional defensive mechanisms go off. Lecher was supposed to be deterred, not destroyed. He lowered his finger and the other men flinched.

  “I don’t mind waiting until next time!” Pendergast said.

  “We won’t talk back to you, boss!” Thugg added, hand over one ear.

  The last men, Arano and Frank, stood with eyes wide and hands up, like a gun was held to them. Boli racked his brain for something cool to say in response, but thought of nothing. Knocking on his head twice to think, he looked at Thugg.

  “You want me to get the earpiece out of your ear?”

  Thugg hesitated, agitated eyes bouncing between Lecher’s ashes and Boli.

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” Boli scoffed, “I said I still need people for my next job. If you want that thing stuck in your ear just say so.”

  Thugg looked a little more receptive to the idea, squeezing his lips together in thought. The eyes of the room turned when they heard a metallic scratch against the ground next to Boli. The scattered pieces of the droid were rolling slowly around, moving as a broken unit toward Lecher’s ashes. Trying and failing to tie themselves together into a dust pan, they rolled around in the ashes, trying to clean up the mess.

  “No,” Boli chided. “Stop. Off. Undo. Stop it!”

  Ignoring him, the pieces ushered the pile of remains away with clumsy completeness.

  “What will you use to get the sound piece out with?” Thugg asked, worried expression on his face as he saw what was being done with Lecher.

  “I was just gonna offer you some long tweezers.” Boli held up a tool from his work desk.

  “That will do.”

  Once the piece was removed, Boli again tried to think of a powerful or menacing line, but nothing came to mind. Instead, he nodded and the four remaining men stumbled and limped out of the same hole they entered in. The lair was his again.

  “NIS! Was any of our business with HUE in the news?” Boli asked his Natural Intelligence System.

  “Searching for business hues,” NIS replied, its voice like a helpful NPC in a starting area.

  “No! News! News about the attack on HUE!” Boli said, annoyed.

  “I’m confused,” NIS said. “You want hues or news?”

  “HUE news!”

  “The Inter-Society Color Council has announced its pre-registration…”

  “You know the Hero Unification Entity?” Boli asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “Indeed. It is sometimes referred to as HUE.”

  “Any news on them, NIS?”

  “There was a new bold-faced, belligerent hero in HUE by the name of Sami, very agitated during his interview with the Slattery Network. He made the claim that news outlets are worthless. His powers are that of darkness, perhaps evil, suggests the article.”

  “Anything else? Maybe about an attack on the HUE headquarters?” Boli prompted.

  “Nothing in the last 48 hours.”

  “My God, news outlets are worthless,” Boli said, agitated as he put on a coat. “I have to go get pics of the proof myself. Tell our patron they’ll get the evidence soon.”

  “Will do,” NIS replied. “Anything else you’d like while you’re out?”

  “Yeah, turn off the lights and system except for yourself, save me the electricity,” Boli said as he exited the building, closing the door behind him.

  “What was that?” NIS asked. “Sorry, I totally zoned you out when I was sending the message.”

  The empty workshop didn’t reply.

  “Awkward,” NIS said. “I’ll leave everything turned on in case you have important functions running in the background.”