Chapter Nine
Last time, Titan and I broke into Machine Head's residence by kicking the door in, so to speak, or rather, I simply smashed through the reinforced glass in this guy's penthouse using the carcass of Titan, who had taken his stone form in advance.
And I, of course, could have done it again, except this time a confrontation with Machine Head's gang was not part of my plans, so I had to choose a less audacious way to make an appearance.
At the entrance to the building—which, naturally, entirely belonged to the crime boss—there were, just as naturally, guards standing. It is very possible that the building's security includes something supernatural, after all, several criminals with abilities work for him, but I simply have no other option. I am still a fifteen-year-old boy, and simple disguises won't help—the moment I open my mouth, everyone will immediately realize they are dealing with a kid. No one will let me in for an audience with the boss without a corresponding instruction from him, which he, despite all his predictive abilities, simply could not leave. After all, Machine Head's talents are based on the analysis of input data. It's extremely advanced, on the verge of mysticism, but he is still not Spider-Man. He cannot know about my visit; I am simply out of his field of vision, he has no input data to analyze.
Consequently, I need to infiltrate his place and simultaneously demonstrate my power so that the mafia boss immediately understands he is dealing not just with an arrogant teenager, but with an arrogant teenager with dangerous abilities. No sooner said than done.
Waiting for a group of respectable-looking gentlemen to pass through the main doors—quite decent Wolves of Wall Street, as far as that description applies to them—I once again clutched the long-suffering Walmart bag to my chest and dashed through the door after the gentlemen at top speed.
And once again I am in a slow-motion world. The lobby, almost empty; the guards, calm for now, but soon they should notice something is wrong; the girls at the reception, smiling and making eyes at some guy with the looks of a movie star—although it's not so much about the looks themselves as the style—the cameras, monitoring the entrance where I no longer am. The elevator doors are closed to my displeasure, but there are stairs.
I fly up the stairs of a building unfamiliar to me—in my past life, I immediately broke into the upper floors and was taken away from there on a stretcher after the battle. The floors flash by like mirages, just try to keep count. Finally, the right floor, I tumble into the corridor, still accelerating. The guards, careless, believing that there is no one here but them, are propping up the walls by the doors leading to the boss's office. And no one will open these doors for me, so I'll have to do it myself.
"What the?!!!" In shock and panic, although you couldn't tell by his face, Machine Head jumps up from the sofa when I materialize in the middle of the room.
For the umpteenth time, I marvel at his nature: this guy literally has a mechanical head. Somewhere beneath the impeccably clean snow-white suit jacket, cybernetics connected with flesh—his hands were already quite human. I don't even know if he can be called a cyborg, because he doesn't have a human brain, he's more of a machine with a human body or an advanced robot who considers himself human—a sort of Terminator. But his ambitions and aspirations are quite understandable, human, even if he is guided by machine logic instead of emotions—so it is quite possible to deal with him—you just need to keep in mind that being a soulless bastard in his case is not an insult, but a statement of fact.
From the other end of the room, his deputy and simultaneously main insurance policy in case of an assassination attempt—Isotope—hastily teleports to his boss. Not a very remarkable guy in his late thirties with a long—the tuft of black hair sticking up to the sky further emphasized this effect—predatory face framed by a stylish horseshoe mustache, wearing a green jacket over a black t-shirt with a capital "I" on the chest. Even at this moment—when an unknown person with unclear intentions broke into the boss's office—the sly smile did not slip from his face. Isotope emerged from his first jump already behind the boss's back—hand on his shoulder, ready for the second jump—ready to instantly teleport him out of here as soon as the boss gave the signal. But Machine Head has a truly machine-like speed of thought and reaction; he saw that I not only stopped, in no way interfering with his escape, but also raised my hands in a conciliatory gesture, showing my peaceful intentions.
Moreover, it is not respectable for a crime boss to run away from an opponent who isn't even attacking him, while the room is filling up with his own henchmen. Not only the guards who missed the intrusion, but also a couple of supervillains familiar to me—apparently they were on duty along with the rest at the boss's room. One of them was Titan, who had already taken his stone form, the second was that guy with tentacles coming out of a device on his chest. What was his name? Tether Tyrant or something like that. However, despite the strange name and equally strange ability—that thing seems to be alive and exists in symbiosis with him—in the event of a serious brawl, this guy will be the main problem. Those tentacles out of his chest are damn strong... although, of course, they cannot be compared to Ave Maria.
"Negotiations?" I ask calmly, at gunpoint from a dozen pistols.
"A kid!" one of the muscle behind me couldn't hold back his surprise, but another guard immediately shushed him.
"Who are you?" Machine Head had already calmed down and, straightening his skewed tie, walked over to his desk. Isotope followed him, ready to save the boss at any moment. "And how did you get in here?"
"That doesn't matter. What matters is what I have." I swung the gold-stuffed bag.
"A Walmart bag?" the criminal sneered.
"Its contents," I answered sneer for sneer.
"Hmm," Machine Head turned on the console built into his desk, looked at the screen with his lenses for a couple of seconds. "You are very fast. The cameras practically didn't catch you."
"'He could easily have killed me if he wanted to'—that's what you thought, isn't it?"
"But now you can't," Isotope suddenly chimed in, peeking over the boss's shoulder.
"I already said that I didn't come here to spill blood," I shrug. "I'm offering a deal, and you, I've heard, value pragmatism and logic above all else, and, believe me, making a deal is the best and only mutually beneficial option for us."
"Don't tell me what to do, boy!" the mechanical head of my interlocutor suddenly flared with emotion. "I will figure out myself what is more logical and profitable for me. You are too self-confident, but with age, and most importantly, with experience, it passes. And my people are here to provide you with such experience, if you survive it."
"Oh..." I ostentatiously massaged the bridge of my nose with my free hand, showing that all their weapons pointed at me meant nothing.
He is supposed to be guided by cold machine logic, not emotions, what is wrong with this guy? He is too emotional for someone with a microchip instead of a brain.
"I wouldn't have come here with this if I wasn't sure that I was in no danger." I made another attempt to persuade my interlocutor. "You understand that, right?"
"Relying on your speed?" he seems to be trying to pull a confirmation out of me that my power is in speed... was the talk about cameras a bluff?
"There is no one in this room who poses a threat to me," I say calmly. "These two won't be able to hurt me or stop me, let alone the rest... pistols are completely unserious! Your assistant will most likely have time to pull you out, but this conflict will only bring you losses and a trashed office. You can test it if you don't take my word for it. So... you there with the forty-five caliber, shoot, just don't break my glasses, please."
The bandit I addressed, offering my face up to be shot, hesitated, shifted his gaze to the boss, and I was almost sure that he would give the corresponding order, and then I would just have to leave at maximum speed, because starting a massacre and attracting the attention of one of the heroes was definitely not part of my plans, but...
"What do you have there?" waving his hand at the guards, as if swatting away flies, Machine Head suddenly calmed down.
"Nothing special," I calmly stepped to his desk and, under the tense gazes of the bandits, hoisted my bag on top of some documents. "Just a pile of gold that I would like to sell."
The bag, having survived more adventures today than some do in a lifetime, finally gave way and tore, spilling its contents onto Machine Head's desk: gold coins, which almost certainly represented great collectible and cultural value, several ingots, and jewelry of varying degrees of intactness, along with a couple of mollusks in deep shock from what was happening. And all this was covered with a coating of silt, and in some places a film of microscopic green algae.
"Holy shit!" Tether Tyrant—that was the nickname of the guy with the tentacles—whistled at the sight of the gold.
"Did you pull it from the bottom of the sea or something?" Machine Head, with disgusted admiration, picked up a gold ingot from the pile and wiped it with his index finger. Green slime remained on the tip of his finger.
"A real sunken treasure," I chuckled. "Possibly even pirate gold."
Someone behind me swallowed a lump of greedy saliva in his throat.
"Hmm... alright, everyone except Tyrant and Titan get out," the mafia boss made his decision. "Isotope, what do you say?"
While the flunkies left the office, Machine Head's secretary took the gold ingot from the boss, looked at it carefully, and finally closed his eyes, as if listening to something. For about ten seconds nothing happened, then the bandit's hands began to glow with a green light.
"This ingot was cast three hundred to three hundred and fifty years ago," Isotope delivered his verdict.
And here I barely kept myself from whistling. This is gold, damn it. It's not so easy to date. I don't remember the details, but it seems the method for precise gold dating appeared literally just a few years ago. So if Isotope really managed to determine the age of the ingot thanks to his abilities, then he should have gone into science, not crime.
"Is that so..." no longer hiding his enthusiasm, Machine Head drawled, fishing out the largest piece of jewelry from the pile—an almost intact necklace with precious stones, rubies, it seems. "I think we can make a deal."
After which the negotiations took on a completely different tone. No, Isotope was still on duty at his boss's shoulder, ready to pull him out of harm's way at any moment, and Titan and Tyrant remained on alert to tie me up in a fight, but the general tone completely changed. From an unexpected and dangerous guest, I turned into the goose that lays the golden eggs. After all, this guy immediately imagined how much he could get if I started working for him. You know, the classic: together we can rule the world or something like that. Although he started small, asking me to help him with another little job. As far as I understood, it concerned a large shipment of drugs that he had recently lost at sea, and which I could easily lift right under the coast guard's nose.
I, of course, refused. Further cooperation with the criminal world was not part of my plans. More accurately, I didn't want to cooperate with him initially at all; I just needed to hand over the treasure raised from the bottom to someone. Actually, I would have gotten more by taking my find to the official authorities, but I simply couldn't afford to do that for quite obvious reasons.
So I firmly rejected all of Machine Head's proposals for further cooperation.
"I know people like you," he declared, flashing his lenses. "The money will run out, and you will come to me again... sooner or later. This is not our last meeting, be sure of it."
Oh, I know that without you telling me. But the next time we meet, I'll tear this place apart, and send you behind bars myself.
"We'll see," I didn't voice my thoughts, of course: moral satisfaction is not worth making an enemy ahead of time.
In the end, I left the crime boss's lair without the gold, but with a briefcase tightly packed with cash. We settled on a hundred thousand. Yes, I understand that I sold it incredibly cheap, but I don't care. This money will last me a long time—it's even more than my father's annual income from books.
Heading to another city, I bought myself a school backpack, into which I transferred the cash, and threw Machine Head's briefcase, undoubtedly equipped with tracking devices, into the ocean. After that, with a clear conscience, I returned home.
Note:
Since gold contains traces of uranium and holds helium well, it is possible to carry out absolute dating of gold and gold artifacts by assessing the concentration of helium and uranium/thorium in the metal, and determining the age of the artifact, or rather, the time elapsed since the last intense heating of this metal, since helium leaves the metal only at temperatures close to the melting point.