Metropolis
Miles was good with computers, especially at hacking, but he couldn't spare all his time with it, and who better than a technopath to do the job?
Finding an individual from Kenya selling information on the dark corners of the internet wasn't particularly challenging, though they wanted the payment in person, rather than through banking, completely understandable to Miles.
He wasn't going unarmed though, so he had called Victor up.
"Victor, I hope I am not disturbing you and Nora?" Even if he was, Victor was going to have to make some time for Miles.
"No, of course not. How can I help you, Miles?" Victor answered, his voice warm, and Miles could faintly hear Nora asking for something.
"I have business in Kenya, and the slums there are dangerous to go unarmed, so I was wondering if you could make something for me?"
"Sure, what exactly do you need?" Victor was puzzled, as the scientist doubted Miles was asking for his expertise in the medical field.
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Metropolis International Airport
Private Jet
Acquiring two passports was easy, with a bit of incentive to grease the wheels, and hiring a private jet from the same company as last time since Miles did like their service, they were off to Kenya.
"That woman, Lorein, don't you think you trusted her a bit too fast?" Claire asked, putting down the remote after changing the TV to a news program.
"I checked her background, she is clean, and one constant matter the student counsellors say about her is that Marry-Anne is an ambitious young woman, one who wants to prove herself. I simply gave her the opportunity, though, I will be keeping an eye on her just in case." Miles wasn't going to hand anyone the task of starting up a company with five billion dollars capital without knowing the person in question extremely well.
"Ah, if you say so. So this Zalika, what makes her so special?" Claire remembered Miles mentioning her before, but he didn't give much in the way of details.
"Zalika is a technopath, a powerful one at that. I intend to liberate the wealth of less than desirable individuals, and use it for a good cause, and with the advanced tech I could give her, Zalika will be an extremely useful hacker in acquiring funds, evidence, and blackmail." With a technopath in his employ, the cyber front of his future operations would gain a valuable individual.
"How old is she?" She asked, because that sounded like a lot of responsibility and work.
"A teenager." To be honest, Miles wasn't sure of her age at all, since it was not mentioned, but by her appearance in the Suicide Squad comics, Zalika was in her twenties, since she had spent some time in prison after a Russian named Karla set a trap for the young technopath.
Right now though, she was still working for a gang, and if her brother was alive, there was a chance he could be useful as a hacker too, and if not, a way to earn the teenager's trust.
"What's the plan, then?" Claire naturally wanted to know how they were going to proceed to best protect Miles.
"She is working for a gang, forcibly, along with her brother. We take out the gang, offer the two of them a choice, and take them with us if they agree." Miles explained the barebones of his plan, as the details would be fleshed out later when they knew more about the gang.
"What if they refuse?" Claire might have agreed to join Miles, but that was because of the money he handed her, and the young pyrokinetic doubted he would just hand two teenagers the same amount of money.
"Not like they have anywhere to go." Miles said, as if the choices would be between working for him and moving to the States, or refusing and being out in the streets, where someone will definitely try to take advantage of them. The likely choice, especially if the brother was still alive was obvious, but if they refused, he wasn't going to force them.
"How are you going to get them to the states?"
"Getting out of Kenya is simple, as for entering the States, I made arrangements." Since this was 2003, the airport security was easier to handle and he already had a forger waiting for photos to prepare a passport, and creating an actual ID for Zalika, and her brother if he is still alive, would be simple.
"Alright, any idea what we are going to face when we hit the gang?"
"We'll be debriefed by the man I contacted." Depending on the numbers of the gang Zalika was being forced to work for, employing the weapons he had Victor built would be useful.
"How long are we going to stay there?" Claire realized that Miles was extra careful the ever since
"I just sold one thousand tonnes worth of gold, Claire. We are going to spend a couple of weeks outside the States while the heat dies." Selling that much gold wasn't a good idea, but Miles needed the initial capital, and spreading it over the years in smaller amounts wasn't possible as time was of the essence.
Alien invasions, super powered villains, and a myriad of other disasters wouldn't wait for his pleasure after all.
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Nairobi
Kenya
The private jet landed at the airport in the morning, and after going through customs, Miles and Claire were greeted by the guide he had hired, Juma Otieno who was waiting for them with a black sedan.
Miles had done his research, and chose the most trustworthy one, one well worth the price.
First impressions mattered, and Juma had come dressed in a three piece black suit, well groomed black hair and a bright smile.
"Mr. Beckett, welcome to Nairobi." Juma held out his hand to Miles, and then to Claire.
"My pleasure, Mr. Otieno, this young lady is Claire, my bodyguard." Juma was curious as to how a young woman like her was supposed to protect anyone, he kept it to himself.
"You are here on business, yes?" Juma asked, opening the door for Miles and Claire, and getting on the driver's seat.
"Yes, here is the first address we need to visit." Miles handed the guide a paper with the address written on it.
"Of course, right away."
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Miles had Juma stop the car away from the location his contact had given him, to keep the anonymity of the vehicle in case something went south.
Two muscled men were guarding the door to an unassuming building, looking quite bored out of their minds.
"Miles Beckett, I have a meeting with your boss." Miles introduced himself, and the guards looked at each other in the eyes, standing straight and alert now.
"Get in."The one on the right pushed the door open, allowing Miles and Claire to enter.
Entering through the door, they walked to the end of the hallway, where another guard was waiting, this one armed with an AK-47. He opened the door, and the duo came across the man Miles had contacted.
Sitting behind a desk with his feet up, dressed in khaki shorts, an aloha shirt and sandals, Joseph Masai was busy talking on the phone, while peeling an apple.
"Yes, yes, I told you, it will be done in time, now I have to go, there is a customer." He put down the phone, and then his feet, gesturing to them to sit.
"So, Miles Beckett, I have found the girl you are looking for, though I can't help but be curious as to why you want her."
"My dear parents, who have recently passed away, apparently owed her parents a debt, their last words were for me to find them and repay that debt. I don't have much to go other than the name of the girl, and that a gang had forced Zalika and her brother to work for them after their parents died." Miles fabricated a bullshit story, knowing the man wouldn't buy it, but in case either of them were questioned, they would have a cover story.
Not that he was going to be captured.
"Ah. I see, well, at any rate, here is the address of the gang's main hideout, along with everything you asked for. There are about fifty of them, so good luck getting them out." Joseph held out the dossier containing the information and Miles dropped the promised amount on the table.
"I am sure we can come to an agreement with them."
"Let me know if you need anything else." Joseph said, counting the stacks, happy with the haul.
"I will be sure to."
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"So, fifty armed gang members. How do we deal with them?" Claire, no matter how much she hated to admit it, had learned a lot about tactics in the Project Firestorm, and while the young pyrokinetic could take them all by herself, they would all end up dead, which they wanted to avoid.
"I had Victor Fries, a friend of mine and an expert in cryo-tech, build a cryo-bomb, capable of neutralizing an entire building. We are going to deploy it, take Zalika and her brother before the ice melts, and we will be out before anyone knows what happened." Miles had Victor build several cryogenic weapons, in fact, including a beam weapon, grenades, and the cryo bomb, which were all stored in the cargo section of the jet.
He began to examine the photos of the hideout. It was a warehouse before they took over it after the building was abandoned, and now it was too much trouble to get the gang out, so the owner didn't even bother.
There were patchwork of repairs, wooden boards covering the broken windows, steel and iron bars welded to nails to close the holes in the walls. A thick steel door guarded the entrance, the rooftop had barbed wire at the edges and guards with concealed weapons stood guard around the building.
There was a small hole in the roof, but climbing there with the guards around, and the barbed wire, would be a problem, and there wasn't a building close enough to zipline on the warehouse.
It was time to get creative.
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Buying a beat up truck, Miles had converted it to a self driving battering ram after duct taping the steering wheel with steel bars to ensure the truck would go straight and having two thick steel beams welded at the front to make it easier to punch through the wall of the warehouse.
"Ready?" He asked, waiting for confirmation from his bodyguard.
"Let's go!" Claire called out, sending two walls of fire through the roads, blocking the vehicles from crossing, and giving the truck a straight, empty line at the warehouse.
She had expected some sort of cunning plan from Miles, but citing something called the Occam's razor, her boss chose to go forward with brute force.
Already having secured the cryo bomb at the back with straps, Miles put a brick on the accelerator, and quickly closed the door.
Speeding up down the line and through the ineffective gun fire of the guards, the truck rammed through the wall, continuing inside the warehouse, before Miles pushed the button on the detonator, readying the Cryo Gun in case he needed it.
At first nothing happened, before a blizzard of ice and cold covered the building, blowing a hole through the middle of the roof, freezing everything in and around the hideout.
Quickly moving before the cold did any permanent harm, Claire melted the ice that had covered the hole left by the truck, followed by Miles. Ignoring the frozen but still alive gangsters, they quickly searched for the only female in the entire building.
Most of the members were gathered in the middle, where a man, the leader of the gang, who seemed to be beating a young man with a baseball bat, was frozen mid swing, his eyes darting around wildly, and their target was there, frozen while screaming, being held back by two gangsters.
"And just in time for the rescue." Miles said, motioning towards the girl, Zalika and the boy, whose name wasn't in the file since he didn't seem to be that important to the gang.
Claire melted the girl first, with Miles putting an emergency thermal blanket on her, followed by the boy, who didn't have the strength to stand because of the bruises on his face and body.
"Gentlemen, I will be taking those two with me, and while I would love to send you all to hell, I am a bit constrained for time." Miles winked, checking the remnants of the bomb, and deciding not to leave high tech like this laying around and ordered Claire to target the remaining parts.
Cold air and ice, exposed to Claire's fire, expanded too rapidly, causing an explosion that destroyed the remaining bomb parts.
Miles picked up the boy, and Claire hauled Zalika on her shoulders, heading outside so she could melt the ice to avoid any deaths.
They needed to hurry, because besides the chattering of their teeth due to the cold, Miles could hear the boy's wheezing, meaning he required immediate medical assistance.
Claire sat at the back with the teenagers, huddling them close to herself to raise their body temperature, and Miles hit the gas, speeding away from the crime scene before any law enforcement could even hope to arrive.
In the next chapter:
Baraka was going to be discharged today, so Miles and Claire made sure to pick up something extra nice for the occasion.
Entering through the clinic's door, the duo came across a pandemonium. Phones were ringing constantly, the computers were acting up, the screens were going on and off, and tabs were opening at random.
Heart monitors and every single digital medical equipment were operating on their own, and the staff panicked, unable to deal with the chaos.
"Come on." Miles hurried to Baraka's room, already having an idea of the cause.
Inside the room, Zalika was on the ground, heaving as she grasped her skull with both hands, and Baraka was shaking her, trying to bring his sister out of it.
"Zalika, look at me." Claire held the teen by both arms, looking deep into her eyes