Chapter 30 – Drop Zone Pt. 4

July 22, 2010 - Isla Santa Prisca

Caribbean Sea

21:45:07

Things became quieter as Superboy and Bane crept along darkened corridors off the main factory floor. This only increased the tension he felt, though.

Stealth isn’t my strong suit. Being strong is my strong suit. And relying on Bane is stupid. But I know she’s smart and ruthless. She’s gonna doublecross us, it's just a matter of when.

But knowing the genius supervillain would betray him didn’t really help him predict when and how. And it didn’t stop him from needing her help. The factory was huge and she knew it intimately. He was forced to rely on her guidance, and just hope that their tenuous alliance held long enough to get the job done. After that, he could go back to relying on his strong suit.

Still got her outclassed, even if she’s smart.

They encountered no cultist guards or other workers, and Bane knew where all the security cameras were, so avoiding them was easy. Finally, they reached the end of a corridor with a reinforced steel door, with a similar thumbprint scanner as had been on the secret tunnel entrance into the factory. Bane tried her print, but with an angry beep, the lock stubbornly remained an unhelpful red.

“ ¡Mierda! ” She cursed, snarling at the control. “ Putas changed the security accounts already.”

Superboy looked around, closed his eyes and let his super hearing extend out. He heard the hiss of steam pipes and the whine of electrical conduits, the squeaking of rats but no humans nearby, and elected to take a risk. He moved up to the door and edged Bane out of the way.

“Let me try.” He said, and took hold of the edges of the door, his fingers sinking in with a light groan of metal.

I can do this. Just gotta do it quietly…

He planted his feet and slowly pulled the door backwards, peeling the reinforced steel out of its hinges and the heavy bolts of the lock. The whole thing tore like cardboard, with a shriek that echoed down the hall. Superboy winced, and tried to gently set the bent and torn door down but it still clanged louder than he expected. But the way was, definitively, open.

Bane looked at him, her eyes unreadable behind her mask’s lenses, making her true thoughts impenetrable. She shook her head in dismissal and headed inside, and warily he followed after her.

The lab was unexpectedly clean, modern and high tech. The concrete floor had been tiled, the walls whitewashed, and the annoying familiar overhead hospital lighting had been installed. Cabinets with glass doors covered the walls, as well as large machines of some kind of scientific use he couldn’t identify. Lab tables littered the place, with beakers and bunsen burners abounding. There weren’t any helpfully bubbling beakers of glowing green liquid he could see, which complicated things.

“Okay… what now?” Superboy inquired of Bane, but she simply snorted and headed over to a desktop computer on one of the tables and hunched over it, rapidly typing. He looked over her shoulder, and saw windows flick by at a rate he could only really perceive due to his supervision. But the way Bane studied them intently made him think she was actually reading and understanding what flicked across the screen. He could read some of it, even though it was mostly in Spanish, but he didn’t understand what he was seeing.

But she does…

The disquieting thought worried him. Bane was regarded as a genius in the comics, capable of outsmarting Batman. He had never thought of him as a scientific genius, but it made sense since he understood Venom well enough to reproduce it. Bane’s tactical genius was never in doubt, however.

“So, what is it?” Superboy asked, as Bane continued her rapid consumption of the data on the PC.

“This new Venom of theirs is something special, chico . They’ve cut it with something similar, but very different. But all of this data is about their work mass producing it.” Bane explained curtly.

“Damn, did they really…?” Superboy trailed off, realizing who he was talking to before he finished.

“They moved to production as fast as they could. Ran the equipment hard to do it, too. Tsk . They’re going to cost me a lot of money to replace what they’ve used up.” Bane continued, apparently confident enough in her eventual reconquest to start tallying the profits and loss. “Bad business.” She concluded.

“Business? That’s right. Kobra’s not in the narcotics trade. So why are they doing all this?” He asked, leaning over her shoulder again.

“I do not know, chico. I think that is more you and your friends’ job than mine.” Bane answered darkly.

Superboy frowned at her intransigence, trying to think of how to leverage her knowledge.

“How much have they produced?” He asked finally.

“50,000 doses. Bane would be impressed, if they had not done so at the expense of my factory. They doubled our usual production in a month.” She admitted, her annoyance clear in her tone.

“So they swoop in, take the factory, already have their own formula, and run the place till the wheels fall off to maximize production.” Superboy counted off on his fingers as he enumerated the steps Kobra had taken. “What does that mean?”

Bane grit her teeth, her annoyance growing.

“It means, chico , they do not intend to stay. Which is good for Bane. Not so good, I think, for you.”

He tensed, worried this was the moment, but Bane simply returned to her search. Looking away, he focused on the feathery touch of the mindlink to relay their findings so far.

Superboy : Bad news. We found the lab, but whatever they’ve been cooking up, they didn’t develop it here. Bane says they’ve been firing on all cylinders, made 50,000 doses. She doesn’t think they’ve set up here permanently. Probably making this batch, selling it off to their buyer, and getting out of Dodge.

Aqualass : That escalates our presence, then. There is no time to call in the Justice Guild. The buyer is here, and Kobra will not be for much longer.

Ms. Martian: I’m in position outside; the chopper is coming in now.

She shared her vision, which gave them all a strange, fish eye lens view of things from her perspective. Kobra cultists were assembled in serried ranks, rifles slung on their shoulders. Red flares had been cracked in a circle on the marshalling yard, smoke rising to signal the chopper where to land. The aircraft was coming in, a big one, the kind with a rotor at the front and another at the back, built for transport. Its rotor wash blew the smoke back down, and threw back the hem of one figure’s maroon cloak.

He stood at the forefront of the cultists, in similar if finer black pants, but no shirt, exposing a lean and perfectly chiseled male physique. But the skin he showed was fish belly pale, and his hood was still up. The hood came to twin points which fell over his shadowed face, like the fangs of a serpent swallowing his face. There was a gleam of serpentine eyes within those shadows.

Kobra himself. It had to be.

Behind the villain with delusions of godhood were two more figures flanking him. One was a wiry young woman with orange hair cut in an undershave, with a snake tattoo curling on that side of her scalp and around her ear. She was dressed similarly to the cultists, but in a blank tanktop and some kind of leather armor strapped across her shoulders and down her arms.

Beside her was a man who dwarfed her in every way. He was massive, towering over her and even Kobra, who was not a small man. He was bursting with muscle, so much so that there splits across his skin revealing corded wet muscle. The largest ran down his left shoulder and across his chest. It looked painful but he didn’t seem bothered by it. Curiously he had hair the same color as the woman, but his was cut short and with long, dangling sideburns. His face was animalistic, with a heavy brow, pug nose and he had teeth like a gorilla.

Aqualass: I think we have found Kobra’s ‘campeone’.

Kid Quick : And the man himself. So that’s who gave el luchadora a squash match, huh? He looks like it. Does he remind you gals of anyone?

Superboy: He’s looking better than Docbuster did after she injected the stuff, but not by much. Definitely more human, but a bit more mammoth than she was. Please don’t tell me they’ve made Blockbuster better…

Kid Quick: Oh, good timing! Found Robi, she’s doing her hacker thing in some kinda control room. Ms. M?

Ms. Martian: Right, mindlinking her now.

Robin: I’m in their systems. They’ve started a whole new production run. A new product, which is why they don’t care about the Venom in storage here.

Kid Quick: Oooh boy, this is getting worse and worse. I’m looking at these chemical formulas; they’ve mixed Venom and the Blockbuster formula from Cadmus! Mixed correctly, Kobra’s new juice is three times stronger than Venom… and permanent.

Superboy: That’s… much worse.

Ms. Martian : The chopper is landing! Moving into position.

With that, their telepathic conference ended as Ms. Martian required more of her focus. Time was running out. Superboy turned to Bane who was staring at him from her position by the computer. He wondered how long she had been while he was distracted updating the team.

“Your little green woman keeping in touch?” She asked sardonically, rising to her full height and stretching from her crouched position over the computer. Her back popped audibly and her deltoids flexed, thrusting her chest outward till it strained her tactical vest. It was, he was forced to admit,  impressive.

“...Yes. Buyer’s landing. We need to find those samples.” He said, trying to reorder his thoughts into some semblance of professionalism.

“But of course.” Bane said solictiously, and sashayed over to the gleaming stainless refrigerator units in one corner. He paused to watch her go and then hurriedly followed after.

I didn’t know she could sashay. She could fuse coal into a diamond with those glutes.

They began going through the refrigeration units, but one after the other was empty of anything but test tube trays. Some were locked, but that didn’t stop either of them. Bane popped the locks off with a grunt of effort and a tearing of metal, and Superboy simply wrenched doors off of them. The time for stealth was swiftly ending.

Finally, they found a unit that had something more in it than disappointment. A test tube tray that held two vials of some purple liquid. Bane reached for it but Superboy beat her to it. She glared at him behind her mask, and he met her stare fearlessly. After a moment, she smiled wryly and waved for him to proceed. Taking the vials, he saw they were similar to the Venom ampoules, meant to be slotted into an injector and taken intravenously. There were several boxes of clearly compatible injectors littered around the lab. Quickly, he stashed the vials in his backpack, wrapped in one of the t-shirts for safety.

Keep an eye on these, lil bro. He tried to mentally instruct Gizmo, but the genomorph only replied with a pleading image of a full bag of pork rinds.

Later, bud, we’re working here.

Gizmo’s disappointment was palpable.

He switched mental lines and informed the team via the mindlink of his success.

Superboy: Got the samples, only two left.

Ms. Martian: The buyer is coming out. They’re the only one on the chopper. Sending a telepathic image now.

They all saw what Ms. Martian saw; a tall figure, striding away from the chopper and its slowly spinning down blades. Athletic was an excellent way to describe them; broad shoulders, heavily muscled arms, trim waist and powerful legs. They wore a dark purple armored chest piece, like a baseball catcher’s chest protector, tight and padded dark green pants like football players wore, black boots and gloves. Black and grey elbow pads, matched shin guards, and an iron grey old style hockey mask. Blonde hair, buzzed short, peaked under the edges of the mask. A black, conical bag slung over their back, with a variety of handles sticking out.

Superboy: … I have no idea who that is.

Aqualass: Sportsmaster. She is the buyer.

Superboy: Sportsmaster!? The guy with the rocket skis and exploding baseball bats? That Sportsmaster?

Aqualass: …Sportsmaster is a woman.

Superboy: Oh. Really?

The collective wave of psychic disapproval shut his mental mouth up.

I’m gonna hear about that later…

Robin: What’s the plan?

Aqualass: Everyone rendezvous on the factory floor. We need to stop the buy now, before any of this Kobra Venom gets off Santa Prisca.

A chorus of wordless assent flowed through the mindlink, and Superboy slung the backpack on and let Bane know it was time to go. As he moved towards the door, her burly arm blocked his path, and he looked up at her in consternation. But the muscular supervillainess only smiled coyly and leaned down toward him, and he felt the warmth of her breath.

“I am curious, chico , and I must satisfy my curiosity before this fiesta reaches its climax. You say Bane is infamous where you come from, but I know you are not from Santa Prisca.” She said with a throaty laugh and a much friendlier tone than she had adopted previously. There was something in her voice that hadn’t been there before, and it was starting to make him uncomfortable.

“I’m… not from around here.” He said awkwardly.

Does she have to lean so close?

Now she was leaning so close to him, angled down to bring her face closer to his, he could see all the way down her singlet if he tore his gaze away from her eyes. It was very difficult not to do so.

“That, Bane already knew. But that does not answer where it is you do come from. And why Bane is so ‘infamous’ there. Because I have taken many pains to make sure few beyond Santa Prisca know who I am.” She continued, leaning very close now, eyes level with him. He could barely see her dark eyes behind the lenses of her mask, and there was something in them that both frightened and thrilled him. Her hand braced against the wall shifted so she was leaning her elbow against it, pressing him up against the wall by dint of her bust alone.

He swallowed, suddenly aroused but uncomfortable, trying to ignore the huge tracts of land in front of him and remember he was supposed to be on a mission. The strident nature of Bane’s questioning also raised his anxiety.

I’ve been a little too free with my meta-knowledge, especially around someone as dangerous as her. Damn, this would be easier if she was a guy! He thought as he desperately tried not to look down at the forest of cleavage. He could even see the mounds of her abs…

“Look, uh…” he began, trying to remember she was technically his prisoner and he was in charge here. “We need to rendezvous with the team-”

He was interrupted by her taking hold of his chin, lifting it up to look at her, and smiled lasciviously. It was aggressive yet alluring, and against everything he considered his better judgement, he felt a stirring down below.

“I am intrigued by you, chico. You are not like any man I have ever met. So strong… and yet so easily flustered.” She said, and forced her knee between his legs, the top of it brushing against his crotch. By her knowing grin, he knew she felt what he was feeling down there, and his face grew hot.

He opened his mouth to spout a denial when a spike of pain drove into his brain across the mindlink, and he flinched. Then the telepathic line went dead, and fear gripped him.

If you find any errors (non-standard content, ads redirect, broken links, etc..), Please let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.