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City Streets
#12: Interludes and Extractions
cover: A three-panel split. The left shows Pete surrounded by wierd lights. The right shows Harnagorn hovering over a teenage girl strapped onto a medical cot. The bottom shows Allan and Heather in a crowded movie theatre.
"Jack! Your soda fountain needs new bottles! My Jolt's flat!"
Grumbling to himself about guests and their welcome, Jack set about changing the syrup canisters. His mind was still on the information these youngsters had brought back from DC, or he would have made one of them change the blasted cylinders themselves, poke the little cretins with sticks!
At the bar, Josh, Allan, and Pete were going over several of the more disturbing points in what they had retrieved.
"What exactly does this mean 'Intel 7 Alpha: Campaign 2. Strike confirmed, target aquired.'?" Pete asked. "I thought Harnagorn had taught me all the intellegence mumbo-jumbo."
"Back up!" Jack yelled. "Say that again?"
"'Intel 7 Alpha: Camp...'"
"^&*$* it!" Jack shouted, hurling a glass against the far wall. "The bastards are actually gonna do it! I *KNEW* Mussmoth wasn't gonna take 'no' for an answer!"
"'No' for an answer on what?" Josh asked, somewhat sheepishly. He had never seen one of Jack's rages, and even though Allan had, he knew Jack only got them when he was *really* nervous.
"'Intel 7 Alpha' is a code used only by a *very* select few," Jack explained. "I can count the number of people who use it on one hand. And none of them are what you would call good people. Whatever you've stumbled into, it's BIG."
"Well, Jack," Allan stated, "we aren't exactly the type to sit and do nothing. Who uses it?"
"Mussmoth, your friend Harnagorn, that Broderick fellow, a high-up in the CIA, and a scientist on the Left Coast. And, up until a few years ago, myself."
"WHAT?!" all three of them yelled.
"You were involved with those people?" Allan asked. "And you didn't tell us before?"
"I left the circle long before Harnagorn joined," Jack muttered. "A few weeks ago, I received a call from Mussmoth asking for my help in an operation. I refused. Victor Mussmoth is not one to take rejection lightly."
"We're in over our heads here," Allan muttered, leaning forward to rest his head in his hands on the counter.
"So we go back to plan 'A', roomie" Josh commented. "We put Harnagorn out of business."
"Easily taken care of," Pete remarked. "All I need is one bullet, and she's out of our misery."
"Chill, Pete."
"Why? One little bullet with her initials on it! That's all it takes! And I can get close enough to take her out without her noticing."
"And then what, kid?" Jack asked. "So you have your revenge, but it won't take the pain away."
"Maybe not," Pete admitted. "But it'll feel good."
Reaching over to the younger boy, Allan pressed a nerve in Pete's neck, and the boy slumped over on the counter.
"Thanks for teaching me that nerve pinch, Jack."
The rev of a motorcycle outside caught their attention. As they turned towards the door, Brooke entered the bar.
"Hi, guys! You won't believe what we bought off Runt!"
Giving his young friends a stern look, Jack disappeared into the back room.
"Take a seat, Brooke," Josh told her. "What did the little extortionist charge you this time?"
"Only three hundred."
"That low?" Josh chuckled. "Either it's not that important, or she gave you just a taste to make you come back for more."
"Probably just a taste," Brooke commented. "Anyways, she mentioned that Harnagorn has another plan, one involving a kidnapping. So far, she doesn't have any other information on who."
"Kidnapping isn't her style," Allan mentioned. "There's gotta be a reason she's doing that instead of turning to one of her brainwashed flunkies."
"Well, Runt did mention that the person Harnagorn wanted to kidnap had to have powers of some sort."
"Oh, shit...."
"What?" Josh asked.
"She's trying to find a replacement for Danette. Joe can't carry out her plot, he's stuck in a wheelchair. She's probabaly getting a lot of flak from Broderick and...whoever else she's working with." Allan could feel Jack's tension rise as he caught himself. No doubt Jack was listening intently via a set of bugs he kept lining the bar. "She's probably looking to save face."
"So what do we do?"
"We need Pete for this." Reaching over, Allan placed his hand over Pete's forehead. With a start, Pete woke up.
"Huh, whu?!"
"Easy, kid," Allan told him. "We need you to sneak back into the Orphanage."
"Good..."
"Without your pistol," Allan finished.
"You never let me have any fun."
"You ready, Heather?"
Allan stood in the doorway to Heather's room, watching as she pulled on a pair of boots.
"Almost."
"So, uh, exactly where are we going for this, uh, outing?"
Rolling her eyes to the ceiling, Heather breathed, "Please don't let him be so dorky all night." Then to Allan, "Movies, maybe out for coffee or dinner. Let's just go some place where we won't be bothered by all the usual 'business'."
"Okay. How about Titanic, or maybe Rainmaker?"
"Puh-leeze! James Bond all the way! Pierce has gotta be the best Bond ever. Much better than Tim Dalton ever was."
"Bronson's good, but he's nowhere near as good as Connory and Moore were."
"Dinosaur!" Still, she smiled as she called him this.
"Hey!" Jack called from his office. "You two lovebirds gonna argue about movie stars, or go make hookie?"
"Thank you, Jack. Blunt as ever." He turned to Heather. "You wanna kill him, please?"
"He's your friend," she countered.
The stars were out, giving the early evening a mystical feel, as the waning moon floated up from the horizon. The mood, however, was far from the romance of the cityscape in the South Bronx Orphanage's lower levels. In one of the labs occupying the basements four figures were strapped to medical tables, being kept under heavy sedation. Two of these for very good reasons.
The four were two boys and two girls, each in their mid-teens. Harnagorn watched as the doctors moved them into another chamber, a thin smile on her lips.
"Perfect," she whispered. "With these four in my organization, I finally have more than enough power to carry out my plans. The President is as good as dead."
Pete listened to this, nestled in the overhead ventilation duct.
That's what you think, he thought, crawling farther down the shaft. I wish I had my gun. Allan's playing too safe with the old bag.
After haggling over where to eat, Allan and Heather decided on a local McBurgers.
"Are you sure this food is safe?" Heather asked as they lounged in a booth. "Somehow, this makes the mess hall food look appetizing."
"Maybe you'd like it back at Jack's," he replied, trying hard to hide a smile. "That is military food."
"Ugh."
"How many did you see?"
"Four," Pete explained, answering Josh's question. Calling from a pay-phone, Pete was itching to get back into the Orphanage to hopefully do some damage. "Looked like they were headed for the brainwashing chamber."
"Damn. We gotta stop her."
"So what's the plan, Josh?" Pete heard Robin ask in the background.
"There's no time to get Allan and Heather back from their 'date'," he stated. "We kamikazi the Orphanage."
"It's about time," Pete muttered, hanging up the reciever. "And me without a gun."
Pete had gone back into the orphanage, and arranged a diversion, with Runt's help. It had only cost him a few twenties and his watch, but they were in. The group had so far managed to get as far as the first sub-level, a situation that was becoming dangerously common.
"This is getting too easy," Josh muttered, as they climbed down the Orphanage's central staircase. "There's gotta be a trick here. Harnagorn has to have gotten wiser from the last time."
"Tell me about it," Lee replied. "I have a really bad feeling about this. What if we're too late?"
A feminine scream reverberated from the level beneath them.
"Screw this!" Josh yelled, leaping over the guardrail and down a level. Crouching as he landed, he immediately kicked off the stairs and into a closed door, knocking it off it's hinges.
"So much for subtlety," Robin stated. "C'mon. We don't wanna miss all the fun."
As the team burst through the broken door, they found themselves in the sewers.
"Ninja Turtles, eat yer hearts out," Pete whispered. Before them, the sewers split off in four different directions.
"Okay," Josh stated, taking charge of the situation. "Pete, you take the far left. Lee, you get the one next to it. Rob, take the far right."
"Right!" the others said in unison, taking off down the tunnels. Josh turned to the remaining tunnel, and disappeared into it.
Grabbing a loose piece of piping as he ran down moved down the tunnel ahead of him, Pete wondered exactly how one made a zip-gun. He'd have to talk to Jack about that later, but for now he tried to keep his mind on the job at hand. Finding a door in the tunnel's left wall, he opened it just enough to see through it.
There were several men in white lab coats hovering over a set of monitors, and another at the controls of a machine that was doing something to a girl in what looked like an MRI unit.
"Spec-freaks," he muttered to himself. "Not much of a fight, but let's shake 'em up, anyway."
Kicking in the door, he burst into the lab yelling. He came up short as the room suddenly changed from a lab to a swirl of blaringly bright colors.
"What the hell?"
Closing his eyes, he envisioned the lab as it was before, and tossed the pipe with all his might in the general direction of the MRI unit. There was a clank of metal on metal, and the light show faded.
Blinking quickly, he barely noticed the girl in the unit as the techs froze, looking at the piece of piping lodged in the machine, causing a short in the wiring.
The machinery groaned and sparked wildly before collapsing inwardly, trapping the girl inside it. Before Pete could get close enough to attempt to free her, the machinery exploded.
Allan and Heather sat in the back row of the theatre, alternately cheering on James Bond and making fun of the stunts.
"That is so fake!" Heather yelled out, causing heads nearby to turn and glare at her before returning to the movie.
"You're incorrigable," Allan told her, smiling.
"Comes from being a military brat. What about you? Where does this 'mature and serious life outlook' of yours come from?"
"Losing both parents in a car crash, and then grandad from old age tends to do that to a person," Allan explained, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
"Oh. If... if you'd rather not talk about it...."
"Let's leave it for after the movie. Bond's just about to... aw, man!"
"Fake!" They smiled at each other as they shouted this in unison.
Pete crawled out of the rubble, clothes torn and bleeding in several places.
"I hope the others don't have this kind of luck...."