VIII. The Professor's Lesson
The Old & New School, Together At Last...
10 minutes.
She’d been back all of 10 minutes before the mayhem had begun. For Lita and the Red Devil, breaking back through the Haven border was a cinch. With the gas flat-out, the blood-colored Bug ripped clean through the chain link of the never-ending fence. It was easy.
Too easy, she thought to herself.
Lita noticed in the rearview how limply the stuff sagged onto the ground. Normally it would reform a moment or so after the initial impact, if not healed completely in all of five minutes. And yet, there it sat, split open wide as the night sky, barely snaking itself back together.
“Well, guess that’ll help ol’ Principal Leo,” she sighed, shifting gears.
And so she rode on. Minutes One thru Nine, cool as ice. That good city breeze with just a hint of musk slipped through the window as she puffed away on a cigarette. A normal one for once.
In fact, everything was normal for a change. The wolven punk had enjoyed a good time with the cowboy she loved, she had gotten out of the “hustle and bustle of big city life” as they used to call it. Her favorite overpowered VW was in as good a shape as he’d ever been. Everything had gone about as well as it could have.
Then came Minute Ten.
From out of an alley raced a quintet of bikes. They bolted from the shadows and in front of the Bug. She jammed on the brakes as quick as she could, the Red Devil grinding to a halt. His bull-bar bumper just graced the leg of a leather-clad lad. Hip to the gang-stalking tricks Mack Malten had tipped her off to, the Wildey Magnum was clenched tight in her half-gloved hand. She didn’t roll the window down when one of them pulled up to her.
“You roll with Malten’s boys?” the tan biker sneered.
“The fucksit to ya if I am?” she snarled back.
That awful gangster grin washed over the biker’s face. “Wanna give him a message or should we make one of you?”
That was all she needed to throw her Beetle into reverse and bolt from the group. It was then that she found more hounds on wheels at her back, not that it stopped her. Truth be told, even all that impromptu day-saving in the desert hadn’t quite filled the tank on her admittedly sadistic streak. A few crushed melons and a few more foes out of Mack’s way sounded like the fix she needed. Only problem was how bad the fix was in for her.
They banged on the Bug with pipe wrenches, blasts of old-school bullets, and threw everything including the kitchen sink at her. And worst of all, some of it finally got through the Little Man’s bonded shell, and the blood-red Bug finally started to take some damage. It was only when he finally took a bullet to the tire, the pop sending the mean machine spinning out of control that she went from mad to utterly enraged.
Cursing, screaming, and going as ballistic as she could, Lita tried to stiff arm the Bug back to course, only to spin out into an apartment complex. The shotgun side door nailed the corner with a bang. The shock knocked the poor Devil’s engine offline, and try as she might, cranking him like mad, he wasn’t turning over.
“C’mon tough guy, we ain’t licked!’ she encouraged, her sandalled paw clapping with each stomp of the gas, the V8 chugging and huffing, trying its damnedest to come through. With all the class of starved vultures, the bikers knew it was their move. And by God were they going to make a meal out of this bitch.
Or so they thought.
With all their backs turned and charging for the crimson apple of their eye, they couldn’t have seen what was coming up from behind. They certainly felt it when the surprise took four bikes, bikers included, onto its hood and at least one under its wheels. And when those who weren’t flying through the air turned to see it, they were met with the business end of a long, silver blade. And when it had finally come into view for Lita, she could hardly believe the spectacle of it all before her eyes.
The car was a convertible Jaguar E-Type, top down. A proper XK-E from around the same time as her spluttering Bug, painted a dark, glossy green, miraculously untouched by what would’ve been a kamikaze maneuver for anyone else’s paint job. And perhaps the cherry atop this unicorn of a sundae; it was right-hand drive.
Sat at the wheel where a passenger would normally reside was a white wolf she could scarcely believe the sight of. Adorned in a ruffled white shirt, a dark velvet smoking jacket, black slacks and boots, the tall, agile stranger flung himself from the driver’s seat and started in on anyone still standing. If he couldn’t get his claws on them, he took to his blade. And if they weren’t within reach of his blade, he drew a silver revolver and blew away anyone in his sights.
Though she feverishly kept trying to bring the Bug back to life, an expression of complete bewilderment sat square on her face as the whole ordeal played out to its blood-soaked conclusion; the beheading of the very tan wolf who had led the charge.
As the biker’s matted head spun off into the dark of the opposite alley from which it had all sprung, the stranger holstered his revolver, sheathed his blade in the back seat of the Jag, and pulled his slender beast up alongside the Red Devil, willfully careless as he barreled over the bodies of his slain adversaries.
When he spoke, he did so with a sharp British tenor, about as foreign an accent as could be managed in this part of the world. “Need a jump-start?” he asked quite casually.
Lita nodded and coaxed him over to the window. Rolling it down, the stranger leaned in. “Yes?” came the now-perplexed gentleman.
With all the innocence of a child, she stuck her index finger out and gently poked at the fellow’s right arm. Then the left. Then a few times in the stomach.
“It may come as a shock, but I am indeed real.” he sheepishly grinned. “Let’s get your soldier here back up and running first and then we’ll talk.”
Again, she nodded, and it wasn’t long before the Little Man was back on his wheels, V8 humming contently as they talked over the tableau of carnage.
The hippie-punk, with her jaw scraped off the ground and a freshly-rolled joint in her mouth, looked over the dandy-like savior curiously. “We’ll start with thank-yous first, then your name.” she sighed, the smoke rolling out of her snout. “Thanks for saving my ass back there and for helping my Little Man. I got an armory in the backseat, but wasn’t gonna let ‘em take the homeboy out if I could help it. Lita’s the name. No middle or last; just Lita.”
“Name’s Smith,” the stranger smiled. “Simply Smith, though you’ll catch a few associates calling me ‘Professor.’ Came out of the civilian tech sector. Guess I have enough brains to qualify, though I’ve never kept count meself.”
He managed to get a chuckle out of the denim-wrapped gray, and she managed to not choke on her dope smoke when doing so.
“What’s with…all this?” she gestured. “I feel like I own a coupla old dime novels with your face on ‘em.”
Smith shrugged. “Well, that’s part of the inspiration, but the accent’s authentic. They all talk like this in the Northern district. High society so-called. I just happen to like the clothes. They suit me, wouldn’t you say?”
He struck a noble pose, to which she rolled her eyes. “Seen better, seen worse.”
“Well we can’t all be so elegantly poised as yourself.” he dryly remarked.
“Where you cop the Jag?” quizzed Lita, letting the quip slide.
The white wolf looked over to this ride. “Oh, this she-beast. Built-to-specification by a chap out in the desert. Thought having her as a right-hand driver would be fun, shake things up.”
Lita couldn’t bear to turn her nose up at that machine; she was a stunner.
“So, watcha do?” she continued, patting the Wildey on her hip between hits off her blunt. “I paint houses.”
“With a car like this, what else?” he replied nonchalantly. “I borrow oil paintings for a living.”
That finally did her in, the pair lost it in a fit of hysterics. They couldn’t stop laughing no matter how hard they tried, though the distant wail of autocop sirens gave them reason to. The crusaders hoped in their respective rides and bolted down a side street.
“Where to next?” he called over their machines’ collective roar.
Lita had to give it some thought, but she knew just the place. “Follow me, we’ll game plan when we get there.”
“There” just so happened to be her cozy hole in the wall. Her literal hole in the wall, as the door to the Avenger’s sanctum opened.
“Room for two,” she coaxed, “Just mind your step getting out.”
Like a hand in a glove, the Jag slid into the berth beside the Bug. Smith hopped out to join Lita and the two picked up where they left off: chortling like school children.
Afterwards, they finally got down to some proper business.
“So there’s more of my kind running around,” Lita began. “First I commandeer a gang of bikers, now I got myself a good old-fashioned danger man.”
“I hope those fellows weren’t—”
“Aw hell nah,” she smiled. “Never met them in my life. My man’s Mack Malten. Apparently they had beef with him so you saved the pair of us a helluva lotta trouble.”
“My pleasure,” he bowed graciously. “I was just in the neighborhood and–”
“Heard that one before.”
“Well yes of course,” he deflected. “I was getting to that. I was in the neighborhood taking care of something for a client. The chap whose head went for a roll down the alley killed my client’s parents.”
“Good on ya,” she smiled. “Before I left I had to take care of the bastard who rubbed out a man’s wife and kid.”
Smith nodded solemnly, the seemingly stoic white wolf clearly affected by the thought. “Wish I could get to the root of this evil weed, kill it where it’s sown.”
“Some of it’s just the nature of the beast.” Lita sighed. “I got lucky, using my twist of Cain for good. Some bastards are just evil, born-n-raised. The big root you’re after is the Mutha-Brain running this city into the ground.”
Again came a sharp nod of agreement.
“Fancy hunting some of Her down?” he asked casually.
Now that was a thought to choke on her smoke. “You gotta be fuggin’ NUTS!”
“Well we don’t have to start THAT big m’dear,” he retorted, “Just ‘cause a man dresses five centuries behind his time doesn’t mean he has the ignorances to match. No, I mean let’s start jack-hammering the people that COUNT!”
“I’d love to,” the gray punk replied casually before turning heel into outrageous sarcasm. “But where the hell do we start!? You don’t just go knocking councilmen off on a whim. You run a White Coat down in the street and they’ll find fifty more.”
“I’ll tell you,” answered Smith, casually polishing his revolver with a handkerchief. “We start from where we are and work our way inward.”
“District organizers, you mean.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake no, they’re of no consequence.” he replied. “Go more myopic.”
Lita thought about it, pacing back and forth before the light-bulb went off. “Wait a sec, you talking enemies we’ve made in the state?”
Again he answered with the same damn nod.
“Y’know,” grinned the punk. “I got just the hound in mind.”
She whipped her Wildey out on the white wolf, finger on the trigger guard, rather than the trigger. “Prove to me you ain’t sent by him. All I gotta do is slip this lil’ ol’ bean down on the trigger.”
Smith stood still as a statue.
“How shall I?” he calmly inquired, the barrel staring him down. “Do I beg for mercy? Do I provide references? Or do I provide HAI!”
He slapped the gun out of her hand, pinning two fingers to the base of her neck. She slammed against the wall, teeth gnashing, Smith holding her in a paralytic grip with those two measly digits.
“Next question,” he sternly growled. “How many agents of the state can pull off a move like this? Recognize it? You don’t have much longer before it drops you out of this world.”
Lita rabbit-kicked the white wolf’s stomach. Smith went flipping through the air, landing square on his feet in the passenger seat of the Jaguar. “There. Was my torso organic enough for you?”
Lita took a beat to catch her breath. Normally, she’d have gone for the Mateba, but all she could do was bust up all over again.
“Yes. Yes it was.” she chuckled. “Hope the Birks didn’t dust the suit too bad.”
The white-furred gentleman looked down and patted it all off in a second. “All good m’dear. Pleased to have passed the smell test.”
They shook on the realization that both were flesh, fur, and blood as Lita plucked her gun off the floor. “Ight, here’s who I thought you were.”
She went over the whole case involving her eagle-eyed state agent. The attempted brainwashing, the attempted captures, the android assassins, everything she had dealt with so far and plenty of nonsense in-between. The part involving the client Varrick and the killer lit a righteous anger in her new associate.
“Of all the decadent degenerate swine I’ve ever heard of!” he roared. “And never in person, always sat back sniveling behind a desk no doubt.”
Lita did her best to quell him. “Save it for the field. If you can help me get to him, you gotta friend for life here in the East. I hope I got one from the North too.”
“You can count on me,” he saluted. “Let’s go hunt us a royal ham.”
Just as soon as they had entered the sanctum, they were back on the streets, ready for anything. And given the twists and turns the evening would take, it was a quality they desperately needed.
“GOOD GOD WOMAN!” roared Smith over the deafening whir. “DOES IT ALWAYS GO TO POT THIS FAST!?”
“YES!” Lita bellowed. “EVERY FUCKING TIME.”
“Of all the arrant nonsense,” he muttered to himself.
“JUST! KEEP! SHOOTING!”
Her “favorite fed” had opted to let slip the autocops of war, leaving the freshly-minted duo of Lita and Smith with their hot rods flat-out in a bid to evade and waste as many of the silver devils as they could. And leading the pack was the agent’s chosen megaphone, who (now firmly around the bend) was singing the phrase “Hurry up” to the tune of the William Tell Overture’s galloping finale.
Fortunately, the loudspeakers were the first things blown apart by the laser fire, Smith left muttering about the crime against Rossini he just heard. While it was all chaotic business as usual for Lita, an idea was creeping into the white wolf’s mind, seeing the long string of silver machines yet to be disposed of.
“Want to trip them up!?” Smith called.
Lita shot a quick glance his way. “I think I know the trick. Next intersection?”
“Ladies first of course,” the white-furred gentleman nodded.
The gruff gray punk got a kick out of that one. At the next crossroad, the Red Devil raced ahead and swung a left turn from the right lane, the deep green Jaguar, quick to brake, crossed from the left lane onto the right-hand side street. And sure as clockwork, the platoon of floating police cars tried to match the maneuver, only to go crashing into each other in a great metallic knot, bursting into an electric blue fireball as the pileup dragged on. When the duo reconvened a block later, the thrill of the chase having (mostly) dissipated, Smith was quite understanding of it all now.
“I’d ask what I’d have to do to get on the list you’re on,” he sighed. “But I have a very good feeling I'm on it now just having been with you for…good grief, only a quarter of an hour.”
Lita shrugged her shoulders. “Consider that the hazing ritual. Where do we go from here in hunting him down?”
With a few strokes of his chin, he had an answer. “Setting aside Round Two of that, I say we start laying the traps rather than falling into them.”
“Hey I don’t fall for–”
“Figure of speech, my child, I–”
“Hollup!” she snapped indignantly. “How much fucking older are you anyway?”
“Just turned 51 the other day, and you?”
With eyes wide as dinner plates, she muttered a bemused “20-something. Last I checked.”
Smith chuckled. “Right then, I won’t call you child so long as you don’t call me old man, deal?”
“Deal,” replied Lita. “Damn your quick at smoothing shit out.”
“Had plenty of time to learn the secrets of diplomacy.” he smiled, doffing an invisible hat. “Now, as I was saying, we need a trap that HE would risk coming out in the open for. Something irresistible.”
“You mean me?” she teased, batting her eyes with all five ounces of feminine wile left in her.
Smith raised an eyebrow at the proposition. “Dare I ask in what way?”
“I mean he got the hots for me.” she replied casually. “Don’t know why I didn’t think of a smoke show sooner.”
“What if he just sends another drone?” the wolven chevalier quizzed. “Ogles you up, gets his rocks off, and then kidnaps you via android?”
Again with the shrugging of shoulders. “Just one of those risks.”
“A bit foolhardy if you ask me.” came the frank reply.
“What, never had to deal with a dish like me?” she grilled.
The Professor’s frankness graduated to blunt-force rebuke. “Hooligans like you, yes. Anyone fool enough to become the first vigilante assassinated by erotic asphyxiation is another. Care to break new ground?”
At last, she conceded, at least for now. Strutting about the half-littered alleyway, Smith and Lita tried to drum up a half-decent idea in its stead. Lost in the thought, the slender white wolf felt himself bump into something. An invisible something a good three feet off the alley wall.
“Where’d this come from?” he asked quietly.
“And here we go.” Lita whirled around. “Lemme take a crack at it.”
She banged, kicked, and brawled with the invisible whatsit until her fists and paws were sore, but even the streetwise crusader couldn’t break it.
Smith, somewhere between impressed and puzzled, took her aside. “You ever try this instead?” he asked innocently, diving into his glove box. Out came a can of powder, and after a quick spin of the lid, he flung the contents at the structure and finally unveiled its form; a tall, oblong box, almost spire-like in a way that evoked the many networked towers that upheld the city’s force-field bubble and climate controls. She had to reach for it, but she patted her companion on the shoulder.
“Where do you get that stuff?” she asked, hurrying towards the box’s dusted door.
“That’s uh…that’s just baby powder actually.” the white hound blushed. “Bit easier on the snout than running around with a can of spray paint. Fumes get to me for whatever reason. Besides, powder covers a greater area.”
Explanations over, the task was the door itself. Lita went in to brute force it again, before she realized what exactly was on the front of the box. “Shit, it’s an ol’ dial lock. Ain’t seen one of them in ages.”
“Ah, nothing like a spot of safe-cracking, suits the witching hour.”
Smith set straight to work. Both wolves pressed their ears up to the door, the ever-subtle clicking ringing loud and clear while the elder street fighter worked his digits across the dial, hunting for that combination. It felt like ages, but once they got there, the final click was most satisfying.
Once they parted the door, they were greeted with another layer of perplexion. “Ah.” sighed the dandy. “Computer passcode. What in the blazes for? All the secrecy that is.”
“Lemme take a crack.” Lita cut in. “See if we can rule out any of my old favorites.”
She tried 1966, the model year of the Red Devil; no luck. She tried 2376, the big day A.C.E.S. came to full-flower; no luck. She tried 0607, the number of that confounded police station that gave her and Nic so much grief; still nothing.
“Alright, one last idea.” she growled. “Let’s see if they think I’m THAT stupid.”
Sure enough, she typed 1234 in and it came online.
“Those dicks.”
“You can blow it to kingdom-come after we get our intel from it, yes?” Smith soothed. Lita nodded, taking a great, deep breath.
What they got was a nice and neat list of causal procedures, rendered in gorgeous black-and-green. If X happens, then trigger Y, and so on. One such was “if File 476-D, target code ‘Urban Avenger,’ appears in Quadrant (never-ending digits), send full deploy of HOV-CRAFT. Capture if possible, kill on-site if necessary.”
The vigilantes looked at each other, a single, knowing nod between them. They kept scrolling through the laundry list of operations this small station seemed to house. One name kept popping up: “Hazel.” It would appear in certain phrases like, “if File 297-D, 476-D, or 898-D appear in X location, Hazel deploy agency resource.” The phrase would always be in that odd, slightly broken English.
“I think that’s where we start.” Lita said, closing up the keyboard and shutting the door. “It probably ain’t his real name, but it sounds like the code-name for his mission is Hazel. Least it gives us something to ask.”
“Right then.” Smith resolved. “Whose doors shall we start knocking on?”
The deafening pause from his denim-clad friend was a bit disconcerting. He gestured for an answer, and ultimately got one. “I dunno, I kinda feel like fucking up some more of the bots, seeing if they throw anything more at us.”
“We go through all that just for you to go gallivanting off?” he interrogated. “No sense of priorities, nothing more to it for the night?”
“It’s called quitting while you’re ahead.” she retorted. “If we know what’s best for us, we mark this joint by GPS, clean it off, and let it cool. Us rushing around is how we keep them from knowing. Give it a week, grill it some more, and then start hunting.”
Smith stewed on the thought, and realized she wasn’t as crazed as she liked to appear. “Alright, you got me for one more bombing run, then I’ll have to be back up to the North. We’ll trade numbers, and you can commandeer me for a little espionage once things have cooled to your liking. Deal?”
“GOD you’re smooth.” she exclaimed, shaking hands with an iron grip. “If you’re real good, I’ll take you scum-hunting next time too, and you can use that blade some more. Nothing like a good old-fashioned beheading to cut a crook down to size.”
“I’d admonish you for relishing in such barbarism if the cause weren’t so righteous.” he teased.
And just like that, back on the streets they were, terrorizing automated lawmen for the night, and biding their time before another round of code-breaking. But it wasn’t just the code that’d wind up broken.
“Huh. That’s a bit funky now, ain’it?”
They had given it a week, each terrorizing the H.P.D. and other assorted ne’er-do-wells in their own ways, but upon reaching the invisible terminal, all passcodes still operational, they discovered a change in the user-interface and the language used.
Instead of the standard Old World-styled look, they were treated to a nice, slick modern desktop, like a proper module any decent citizen would house in their apartment. And with this update came all the amenities like organized folders, application shortcuts, and a handsome wide shot of the city as a background.
“Guess dear old Ace sent the update out some time ago,” Smith remarked.
When Lita went to play Minesweeper, she caught the back of the white hound’s hand upside her head. “The arcade’s down the street.”
“Oh fuck off, you’re no fun.” she growled, lightly popping him one in the cheek. She figured the folder marked “Operations” was as safe a bet as any. When she opened it, a plain text document sat inside, and upon opening found a simplified stack of binary code. Lita searched for a translator on the machine, and sure enough, there was one. A quick bit of copy-and-paste later, and note read as follows:
HAZEL HERE YOUR DATA HOT PRESS THOSE KEYS
“Is he saying what I think he’s saying?” the gray punk asked. When a few more lines sprung up in the doc, she got her answer.
YES RIGGED TO REMOTE SENSORS HOW ABOUT SOME MORE STIMULATION?
“What a git!” Smith barked indignantly, drawing his revolver. Lita pulled out her Wildey, ready to light into the machine as well. If only it hadn’t gotten up.
The terminal decloaked, revealing itself to be a plain black box, which in turn raised itself to reveal two, crude hydraulic rods.
In other words, legs.
Another two sprouted from the side; arms with equally crude, claw-like hands. The machine slammed Smith with its loose door and slapped the gun out of Lita’s hand. The mobile terminal threw itself against the dark gray punk, claws pinning her arms to the chipped bricks of the alley wall. Wherever Hazel was, he was about to make his “moves” through this unruly bot.
Smith leapt back up, grabbed the back of the shuddering machine and ripped it away from Lita, throwing it against the wall where it had once stood. “GET YOUR GUN!” he roared, the machine slamming its back into his head. Smith fell to the ground once more, groping for his revolver from the mire of dusty trash bags and crumbling pavement. The second he grabbed it, the machine turned on a dime, stomping towards him with heavy footfalls. He drew and fired, and the second his round struck the glass monitor, it erupted into sparks and shrapnel. The black box dropped dead on the pavement. And standing behind it, boiling mad and her Magnum in hand, was Lita.
When her line of sight dropped to Smith, the two realized what they had just done.
“You think we’ll ever see timing that good again?” he smiled, picking himself up and dusting his smoking jacket off. “As my father used to say, never the twain shall meet again with luck such as ours.”
“Man, we gotta keep Kodak memories of this shit!” she guffawed. Lita helped the fair-furred hound to his feet, patting him down with swift, soft strokes. “There, nice-n-neat as ever.”
“Well, thank ‘Acc’ for incinerators,” he remarked dryly. “Only thing the bitch is good for. In the old days, I would’ve been wearing everyone’s half-eaten sandwiches falling into a pile like that.” Smith dusted the rest of his fur off before turning his attention to the felled robot. He peered down its blown-out top. His hand wrapped in a kerchief, he stuck it down into the machine. While its electric guts were thoroughly spilled, he managed to pluck two things out. One was a physically spared semiconductor from the motherboard, and the other was a note. Scorched, but not illegible.
“This appears to be yours,” he said, handing it off to Lita.
The young punk eyed the paper up before reading allowed.
“Clever clever girl you are. Wish I could have all that cleverness to myself, deep inside. If you ever want to share all that cleverness, bring it on down to [a number souffle of coordinates]”
Sensing the lady’s rage, it was now Smith’s turn to recommend the safe route. “Perhaps we see if we can get anything good out of this block of RAM before we start chasing after your unrequited beau.”
Lita took a deep breath. “You think waiting too long brought this on?” Smith flashed that charmed grin before replying.
“Frankly m’dear,” he answered calmly. “Things move so fast in this day and age, he probably switched it over the second we left. Rest assured though, your ‘friend’ has a rather nasty habit of thinking with the wrong head. It’ll be his undoing. Best to be there and undo it right.”
“Fine by me.” she smiled. “Want to fry some more electric bacon first?”
Smith bowed gracefully, the white-furred Englishman beckoning her with a flourish of his cape. “I never thought you’d ask.”
Leaving arm-in-arm, the killers and their souped-up European machines rocketed away, set to terrorize some more of the local electric authorities, with a fresh pack of potential leads in hand, ready to take the next step in nailing the grand architect of her current crop of miseries. A face-to-face meeting that none would soon forget…