Agency 13 # 12
Wizardyne Assault, Part 3
Think about a robotics laboratory, you know, one chock full of all those shiny, sterile-looking servo-mechanisms that you wish you could get your grubby little hands on - if only to play with 'em. Now, imagine the place getting all smashed up by our Agency 13 operatives as they duke it out with three surly, top-of-the-line cyborgs. If any phrase comes to mind, 'grievous property damage' should be it.
(That should do for a 'cover', shouldn't it?)
Notice: for those of you that are faint of heart, the following tale isn't exactly what one would call G-rated in nature. It contains a plethora of bad language, excessive violence, sexual innuendo, and of course, things that would get this story burned, were it in a printed form, by the more fanatical elements of just about any religion on earth. In other words, if these things offend you - you've been warned.
(That should do for a 'disclaimer', shouldn't it?)
***
Back in their hotel room, the various members of Agency 13 cross-referenced all the data that they'd collected regarding their targets. Through various means, they'd determined that the Wizardyne corporation was behind most of their current woes, and that their cybernetic triumvirate was too dangerous to take lightly. Interestingly, however, the Jensen Congress was mostly useless to the Agency operatives, as this Wizardyne corporation had no known parallels anywhere else.
That were readily apparent, at least.
Despite this lack of support, Mike 013 had nonetheless managed to... acquire... schematics to the building, thanks to several handy contacts in the New York City government. Using these, the Agency men (and woman) were able to put together a competent plan of action to deal with these living weapons, even though their exact number was unknown; so far, the Agency had only dealt with three of the things, but there might be more lurking within Wizardyne Central.
This building, an eighty story edifice in the heart of Manhattan Island, is a relatively new affair, appearing out of nowhere in the last year to become a new powerhouse in robotics technology that rivals even Ariel-Shijitzu's influence. Of course, their raw computer technology and software development engine is what really rakes in the bucks for Wizardyne. And, as Mike is beginning to suspect, advanced cybernetics development - weapons grade cybernetics.
These goons, after all, may not be Wizardyne's first prototypes. However, after their homicidal little riots both here and back in Texas, Mike 013 planned to do everything he could to make 'em their last. "Okay, people, we're going to use the direct route tomorrow morning. It's safe to assume that they know we've put together where these cyborgs come from. However, if we do manage to catch 'em flat footed, so much the better.
"So, here's what we're gonna do..."
***
At about five in the morning, the van pulled up to Wizardyne Central's main entrance, a massive glass obscenity with the classic sets of mechanized revolving doors, whirring and whooshing in contrast to the sounds of traffic present all around them. Before they started, Mike handed each of his investigators a special wrist-band, devices that can scramble whatever readings an electronic sensor might make their wearers - audio, video, or otherwise.
Then the collective investigators of Agency 13 got out of the vehicle. Fully decked out in their 'business' suits, they walked right in the silly, robotic revolving doors, to be instantly challenged by three security guards. "What the hell do you think you're doing? Step off before we - Aargh!" That was Seņor Barnett smashing him in the jewels with his baseball bat. The other screams of agony were caused by Sticks inflicting her own brand of harm.
Suddenly, the revolving doors quit revolving, and a dull claxon could be heard over the intercom system. "I think they know we're here." After saying that, Agent Deathmonger pulled out his twin H+K pistols, while Mike 013 himself drew forth his laser shotgun.
"You think?" Moving towards the elevator shafts, the Agency men opened every available elevator door, and pulled the 'emergency stop' switch on them, causing most available security thugs to resort to the stairs. In one elevator, however, the entire bunch crammed themselves in.
Climbing up through the emergency hatch in the elevator, all six of the investigators then braced themselves while Chase used his staff to push the 'top floor' button. Closing the emergency hatch, the six intrepid detectives then rode the box all the way up to the top - or, at least, until the elevator stopped on level 32. At that point, they leapt to the emergency ladder hanging on the shaft's edge.
Watching the elevator continue its rise up, the two-fisted investigators then climbed all the way up to level 51, where Wizardyne's main robotics lab was situated - according to the building's blueprints, that is. Using Chase's staff as a lever, the team forced the elevator doors open, and then walked into what appeared to be the mechanical innards of a giant beast. The lab itself actually comprised over four floors of the Wizardyne building.
"Remember, guys, follow the plan." After Mike said that, the group fell silent, breaking up into small teams of two, each maximizing their destructive capability. Agent Deathmonger accompanied Seņor Barnett, Mike 013 walked with Chase Storey, and Sir Tophat scurried along behind Sticks McLellan, each group heading out in a different direction through the bizarre, almost alien-looking laboratory - at least, some devices in here looked like nothing from earth.
And the utter sterility was bothering everybody. You'd expect a little grease, now and then, especially in a lab full of essentially mechanical parts. Not here, however; the place gleamed with its steely, eerie cleanliness. Seņor Barnett was already twitching like mad, but when everything suddenly turned itself on, he couldn't help but scream out in pain - everything in his vicinity was suddenly bellowing at him in its unique, electrospiritual language.
"Aaargh!" Falling to his knees, Seņor Barnett managed to barely avoid being decapitated by the chrome man as he flew by, at neck height, right over him on a silver surf board. Unimpressed, Agent Deathmonger simply started plugging away at the man as he flew away, darting around the moving equipment at impossible speeds.
"Nice look. Read comics much?" This only made the chrome man angrier, causing him to make another swipe at the redheaded straight-man.
"Kill you!" Barely leaping aside at the last minute, Agent D fired off another large volley of rounds at the apparently angry cyborg, actually having to use his guns' ability to channel forth a seemingly endless amount of rounds for the very first time. It was sort of jarring at first, using a small handgun to fire off over fifty rounds like he did, but he got into the swing of things soon enough. One hundred rounds later, the cyborg was facing him again.
He didn't look all that damaged by the bullets.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the whirring cacophony of the laboratory, Sticks McLellan and Sir Tophat found themselves face to face with the cybernetic girl. She was grinning a manic grin, and through clenched teeth, she uttered a strained sentence or two. "You'd better run away... I can't resist the programming." Sticks looked at Sir Tophat with that look, the one that says something to the effect of 'I got this one'.
Nodding, he backed away in search of the others, knowing fully well that they were most likely being assaulted by cyborgs themselves - and more enthusiastic ones, at that. As he did so, Sticks pulled out her trademark weapons, and threw herself at the girl with reckless abandon. Though she did so unwillingly, the girl then returned the favor, and then the fight was on! Despite the clamor all around them, the sound of their blows rang throughout the laboratory.
Of course, despite her skill, Sticks was outclassed by her opponent's raw power.
Meanwhile again, Mike 013 walked with Chase Storey along the laboratory's walls, looking for any secret control rooms, etc., when a deadly beam of red light cut through the air between them. Instinctively diving away and looking to the left, both Agency men saw the source of the beam - but then, being seven foot tall and wearing a crimson suit is somewhat conspicuous, especially when you try to loom over your foes.
"Looks like I'll be evening the score with you sooner than I thought, ugly!" With that, the Cyborg in the Red Suit let loose with another shot, lasing the console Mike was using as cover. Looking over to Chase, Mike motioned with his head, giving the terrified reporter a hint that he should try to circle around the big-haired murderer. "Why so quiet, buddy? We're not... frightened, are we? Hah hah hah hah hah!"
Mike internally growled at the obnoxious git.
Elsewhere, Agent Deathmonger was facing down the furious, chromed cyborg who seemed invulnerable to his guns. "Drat." Attempting an approximation of a grin, the mechanized monstrosity laughed.
"Heh. Trying to figure out what to do with a bullet-proof robot, eh? Keep that in mind while Terminal Velocity flies right through ya, buddy!" Before the self-proclaimed Terminal Velocity could, in fact, do so, Sir Tophat appeared behind Agent Deathmonger.
Reaching into a pocket, he grabbed a handful of dust, and threw it into the air between them and the cyborg. "Quick, man, while this dust blocks his vision! Run for it!!" Cackling, Terminal Velocity flew forward.
"Hah! You think that stupid dust can block me? I'll -" His gloat was unceremoniously cut off by a teeth-grating sound that you might make by ramming a metal bar into an immobile object at over one hundred miles per hour. Like crushing a car in fast-forward.
But louder.
Elsewhere again, Sticks McLellan was laying on the ground, her face leaking blood from various cuts, nicks and bruises inflicted upon her person. She'd been beaten but good, but by golly, she gave some back, in turn. Her opponent was currently trying to wrench the fighting stick from her robotic arm with her natural one, and only succeeded in breaking the thing in half, leaving various bits of wood stuck in her cybernetic musculature.
Though her arm was useless, her leg wasn't. Seemingly realizing this after gumming the arm up beyond immediate repair, she began to stomp her way towards the prone Sticks in what appeared to be a deliberately spiteful way, one that implied what that mechanical leg was going to do to poor Sticks' body. Just then, however, the girl was flattened by a powerful blow issuing forth from a baseball bat - a rather spiky one.
And Seņor Barnett looked mad about having to do it.
Back on the edge of the laboratory, the Cyborg in the Red Suit pressed his advantage against Mike, slowly chopping away the man's cover with his laser until there was hardly anywhere else to hide. With that, Mike cranked up his deflector field and then leapt out to take a shot at the murderous, living weapon. Firing with his laser shotgun, he took the man totally by surprise, punching a hole clean through his arm.
"Agh! I'll make mince meat out of you for that!!" Returning fire, the man's laser beam struck Mike dead in the chest - though thanks to Mike's deflection field, the light itself bent around him in an eerie outline of his body, losing its phase state in the process and breaking up into ordinary, non-cutting light energy.
"Who's laughin' now, bunky? I'm comin' to get'cha!" Leaping towards the Cyborg, Mike tricked him into backing into Chase's Taser ™.
It made his wild hair stick up even more, if you can imagine that.
As Chase and Mike worked over the Cyborg in the Red Suit over, Agent Deathmonger and Sir Tophat poked and prodded their own fallen quarry. "Terminal Velocity, huh? Looks like he hit that cloud at like speeds. What'd you do, hide an anvil in that cloud?" Sir Tophat just laughed at that.
"No, my friend. Simply disguised my protective shield as my disguise powder. I assume he'll be feeling the sting of that little mistake for quite some time. I assume he was flying at over one hundred miles per hour."
Agent Deathmonger could only nod in approval, seeing how the cyborg's body was so bent up. It almost looked like he managed to wrap himself completely around the mystic shield hovering in mid-air. In fact, it was hard to tell which parts of him were which at this point, what with him being so mangled. The only thing that Agent Deathmonger was certain of was that the remains were twitching.
He couldn't help but laugh at that.
Pulling herself off the ground, the half-human girl swayed her shoulders back and forth, seemingly trying to shake some life into her limp, robotic arm, but to no avail. As such, she turned on Seņor Barnett with some menace, generally deciding to pin the blame for her misery on him, apparently. "Beat it, pal, I can't resist the computers. They're making me mad, even. Run!" Seņor Barnett shook his head in the negative.
"No way, girlie. Especially since I know where you've been - trust me." With that, Barnett reluctantly reached out with his mind despite the inherent risk to his sanity, and got in touch with the robotic parts of the cybernetic girl. Though his conscious mind reeled at first, his inherent psionic power took over, escorting him through the cyberspace generated by the robotic componentry, helping him to find exactly what he needed.
What he'd located was, in fact, a wireless modem installed in the girl's nervous system, one that was guiding her actions from elsewhere within Wizardyne Central. He tried to follow the signal path, but the transmission source was simply too well guarded, leaving nothing but Argyle patterns in his mind as he tried to penetrate it. Thinking nothing of this at the time, Seņor Barnett simply concentrated on the task at hand, and focused his will.
It took every last erg of mental strength he had, but Seņor Barnett was able to bend his mind to the purpose of utterly burning out that modem connection between the girl and her mysterious controller. Reeling from the effort, Barnett's consciousness withdrew back into his own body, though it didn't stop there. In fact, his mind withdrew totally, causing him to pass out abruptly in front of his cybernetic opponent.
Suddenly free of external control, the girl wobbled herself, falling down due to the strain of it all. Bursting out in tears, she held poor Barnett in her arms (well, her arm, at any rate), rocking him back and forth as the rest of Agency 13 assembled around her. "He saved me, but now he's dead. Dead!" Taking his pulse, Agent Deathmonger shook his head in the negative.
"Naah, he's still here... just out cold. I got him!"
With that, Agent Deathmonger picked up his fallen comrade and began to head for the elevator, followed by the others. Chase helped Sticks up, since she was wobbly after the beating she received, and Mike 013 simply followed behind with Sir Tophat, both of whom were holding a cybernetic arm - each of which was to be used for research, though the means each man planned on using were startlingly different.
Making their way to the roof, the Agency men, trailed by the girl that Seņor Barnett had liberated from computerized slavery, waved down a helicopter being piloted by none other than Michelle 232, who Mike had stand by for their withdrawal. Landing the oversized vehicle, she opened the cargo door to load the collective Agency up for transport - and the cyborg girl wanted to tag along. "Hey, what about me? I ain't got nowhere to go. Take me with you!"
Mike 013 looked at the girl, not quite sure what to make of her, and then shrugged. "Get in, already. In case you haven't noticed, we're about to have a whole lot of law-types on our tail. Hurry up!" The girl then did so with breakneck speed, and Michelle 232 flew off for greener pastures. As the investigators left New York City proper, Agent Deathmonger noticed the look on Mike's face.
"What's wrong? We accomplished what we came here for, didn't we?"
"I don't know." Looking back towards the Wizardyne building in the distance, Mike shrugged. "This just seems too easy to me. And I'm not talking about the girl, either - I mean the whole thing. We just got away with smashing up a billion dollar laboratory, and nobody's making a serious effort to arrest us or anything. Even with these armbands of ours. I think we'd better look real close at these little souvenirs of ours."
***
As the Agency 13 thugs flew off into the great blue yonder, Argyle listened in on the microphone he installed in the Cyborg in the Red Suit's index finger tip. "Excellent... he suspects. This bodes perfectly for my plan. If these 'Agency 13' people are as paranoid and as curious as I believe, they should figure out who's behind this silly company within a year or so. And then, that old fool Wiggins will regret ever striking me. How dare he...!"*
Just then, a loud crackle of electricity heralded the rejuvenation of his recently inoperative operative, that Cyborg in the Red Suit. "Whoa, boss! That jerk took my arms! My laser arms! When are we gonna go get him?!" Argyle looked down at his minion, smiling internally as he began to determine just how the fool could be used to further pique the interest of Mike 013.
"Soon, my friend, soon. We have to rebuild you, first.
"And of course, I have to redesign Terminal Velocity, there. I think I need to turn up the gain on his neural functions. The devices I placed in his skull to control his behavior seem to be limiting his higher mental functions. I must come up with a fine balance between his intellect and his independence before I can wield him in the field, again. Additionally, once I accomplish this, I must fulfill my end of the bargain we made.
"You allowed me to test my new cybernetics paradigm on your person, and now, I must give you aid in your little war against the religious factions of your world. So rest, now, while my technicians put you back together..." As his benefactor walked away, the Cyborg in the Red Suit couldn't help but mull over what Argyle had just said. That reference to 'your world' kept popping into his head. Just what had he gotten himself into?
* Argyle refers to events from Agency 13 #1!
***
Tune in next time for our numerological friend, our one and only issue 13, and watch with sheer terror as Agent Deathmonger and Mike 013 encounter a bizarre hero in Los Angeles. After that head back here to read up on the ramifications of this issue's battle with Wizardyne's prototype 'borgs. Also, just how does Agency 13 decide to deal with the comatose Seņor Barnett and his would-be girlfriend? Be here in thirty to find out!
***
Agency 13 # 12 - Wizardyne Assault, Part 3
Copyright 1999, 2004, 2012, 2023 Denny Hill 2
All rights reserved and so forth.
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