The Phantom - 9. Chapter 9

They gave Gerry fifteen minutes, but they dared wait no longer. Viktor and Irv left first, the small man grabbing the cop by the hand and dragging him away. Mark and Bryce went the opposite way.

They met up again at the Lair, blending in with the other patrons spilling out of the restaurants and outside venues into the garden. Gerry had told them about a possible hidden entrance, so while Mark waited for the other two, Bryce scouted around the edge of the building. He did indeed find several service and emergency exits, but only one was unlocked.

Piling inside, they found an empty stairwell, and a little, bunny-shaped robot in the corner. Viktor immediately leaped for the thing, chasing it around the tiny space until Irv could get his hands on him.

"Shh!" hissed Mark.

Viktor hissed back, startling the reporter, but then Irv patted his head and he subsided.

The whirr of motors and servos from the robot attracted their attention again. Mark opened the door on the other side of the stairwell.

"Follow the white rabbit," he said, glancing back over his shoulder. "Come on."

With a glance at each other, Bryce and Irv drew their firearms and sandwiched the smaller men between them. They hadn't really been able to talk about this aspect of the plan too much; they did know that they had to grab control of the computer, and that was why they needed Viktor. Aside from Gerry, he was the only one who knew a thing about computers. At least, one assumed, considering he'd built a giant robot.

Bryce figured they'd go after the hostage after they secured the computer.

The bunny zoomed down the deserted hallways rapidly, making the four men trot to keep up. They went down a service elevator, around some more halls, and then stopped in front of another elevator.

"Are we going around in circles?" Mark asked quietly. "I swear we are!"

"We are." Bryce nodded.

Viktor pounced. "Gotcha!" The robot was about the size of a small cat, its outer plating of a light plastic material. Cameras were the eyes, and its ears had antenna sticking out of the top. An on-off switch was in between the inset wheels along the bottom.

Irv groaned, moving to take the toy, but Mark's soft word stopped him.

"Wait." He stared at the robot. The red lights of its eyes were gone. The wheels weren't running, either. "Shit!" He cast about for a place to hide.

Bryce spun at the sound of boots on the tile floor. Viktor wouldn't release the robot, so Irv grabbed him around the waist, shoving his gun in its shoulder holster, and pushed Mark backwards behind a stack of crates in the corner. Viktor already had the back panel off the robot by the time Bryce squeezed in on the other end.

The footsteps came closer. Peering through slats in the crate, Mark watched two indistinguishable figures stop in front of the elevator.

A wheel popped off the robot and rolled with a sickeningly loud clatter to a stop somewhere out of sight.

The two Grey Matter agents whirled, guns trained on the stack of equipment and boxes in the corner by the service elevator into the sub-basement.

Bryce and Irv exchanged horrified looks. Shoving his gun into Mark's hands, Irv grabbed Viktor by the collar, making him squawk indignantly, and kissed him. Bryce yanked Mark's arm and drew him further back into the shadows. The robot hit the ground with a crash.

A flashlight illuminated two men and the belly-up remains of one of the lab technicians' remote-controlled robots. The taller of the two had the shorter pressed up against the wall, legs around his waist, hands busily stripping off his partner's shirt.

The Grey Matter agents looked at each other. The one holding the flashlight snickered, getting what amounted to a dirty look from the other. A hand reached in and closed around a fistfull of Viktor's hair, dragging the dishevelled, snarling man from his hidden nook.

Viktor was unfazed by the gun waved in his face, crossing his arms over his chest in a pout not out of place on a five year-old. Irv, blushing bright red, fumbled with his shirt and stared at his toes.

"How did you get in here?"

"I --"

"The rabbit brought us," said Viktor, peevish. Spying the partially-dismantled toy, he swooped to grab it, but the nearest Grey Matter agent bashed him with the butt of his pistol.

"Hey!" yelped Irv, catching the dazed, groaning inventor before he could collapse. He kneeled on the floor, Viktor in his arms.

"How did you get in here?" the agent repeated, more grimly this time.

"Th-the door was unlocked," Irv stammered, telling himself not to look towards Bryce for help. "We're ... lost. We saw the ... the rabbit, and ..." He blushed and hugged Viktor close, despite his squirming.

The guns lowered and one of the greys checked his watch. They looked at each other, trying to decide what to do. The two young men seemed harmless enough, but --

Viktor struck!

Latching onto the nearest leg, the smallest Giarabaldi bit the nearest bit of skin, straight through the suit and perilously close to the groin in the meaty section of the inner thigh.

Hollering bloody murder, the grey dropped his gun, punching at his attacker's head. "GET IT OFF ME!"

That just made Viktor bite down harder.

Irv intercepted the other agent's grab for his gun, downing him with one anger-fueled uppercut to the gut and a follow-up blow to the side of the head. By then, Mark and Bryce were out of hiding.

"You are crazy!" whispered Irv, picking up Viktor and snuggling him with a mixture of awe and relief. "Are you okay?"

"Battshit crazy," Mark muttered, shaking his head.

Bryce said, loudly, "O-kay, you two! Let's go. Irv!" He stared until his partner came up for air, eyes starting to glaze over. "We've a job to do, Irv."

Viktor blinked as Irv set him down and petted the top of his head. "Right," said the cop, straightening his clothes. He turned his back slightly to adjust himself. "What do we do with these guys?"

Ignoring them all, Viktor retrieved the little robotic rabbit, tinkering with the toy as the other men dragged the Grey Matter agents behind the crates. He let Irv guide him over to the elevator and then inside.

There were only two buttons denoting floors, and as they went down the air started to cool. As they stepped from the elevator, lights flicked on. The room was bare concrete, filled to overflowing with black-painted, steel struts upon which flickered a city's worth of tiny LEDs. To Mark's uneducated eyes, it looked like the innards of his home computer, replicated by the hundreds and connected by enough wires to circle the globe. Twice.

"Wow!" gasped Viktor. He darted straight for the steel fence separating them from the computer mainframe and clung there, staring at the room beyond. The rabbit, trailing its guts, lay abandoned on the floor at his feet.

Mark sat down at the sole computer terminal. As soon as he touched the mouse, the screen activated and a familiar black text box appeared.

<Quickly> Nico told them. He deactivated the lock on the door which swung open under Viktor's weight.

Irv snagged Viktor's collar to keep him from darting inside the mainframe. The shorter man hissed at him and crossed his arms.

<Get inside!>

"What's happening?" Mark asked, typing at the same time. He blew on his fingers to warm them.

<^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>
<GM911>

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know," said Bryce, peering at the screen.

<MOVE!>

Nico could tell that the cop's phone hadn't left its current location, could track most of the Grey Matter agents by their own devices, but there were no cameras, no security system he could access aboard the cruise ship hotel. He traced the one phone call to a phone booth on the upper west side, so he hoped that meant Marcell was on his way. Given traffic, they had about ten more minutes.

"Are there any more of those grey guys?" asked Bryce. He gave Mark a nudge to type in the question.

All four of them turned when pounding sounded on a closed door with a lit sign above it saying "EXIT."

"Oh, shit," mumured Mark.

The Grey Agent with the broken arm had remained behind, using the Lair's computers to monitor the status of his agents. That was how Nico knew what was going on and what cell phone to call. It was the only one in the area with all the agents that wasn't theirs. He knew things went badly because the frequency of outbound calls continued to increase.

Watching the security cameras carefully, he also saw when Grey Matter realized they had intruders, and it certainly hadn't taken them long to figure out what they might be after.

<Get inside the mainframe and close the door behind you> No one would dare shoot a gun off in this room, and the only way to get through the gate once locked was to cut through. That would take time. It was the best option they had.

<Damn you, go!> He would never be able to forgive himself if something happened to these guys. They'd all just have to sit tight until help arrived.

Bryce dragged Mark out of his seat and they ran for the mainframe. The door clanged shut with a final sound as gunshots echoed in the chamber and Grey Matter agents poured through the door. The two cops pushed the civilians backwards and out of the immediate line of fire.

Mark recognized the sling and huddled futher behind his meager protection. "Shit!" he whispered.

The Grey Matter leader moved to the computer and turned it on, but the gate refused to respond to the code. Amusement vanishing, he typed, <This is pointless, Nico.>

<I won't let you hurt them>

The agent smiled grimly. <I have no interest in them.>
<No matter, I can erase those files from any computer in the system.>

<NO!> If they erased the computer, Nico would be erased as well, and this will have all been in vain. <NO! PLZ!>

"'Please' is it now?" asked the agent sadly. He shook his head. "Too late, my friend." Activating the computer's emergency fail-safe would scramble all the data in the machine into random ones and zeros. Erasing the actual hard drives had to be done from inside the mainframe and was the only definite way to remove the threat, but the agent knew he didn't have time for that.

His cell of Grey Matter was on scramble. They were dropping everything and would reorganize at their secondary location. He estimated they had another fifteen minutes before the cops (or worse, supers) started to show up. Things with the Vanzettis had gotten ... messy.

He went to the start menu and pulled up the RUN control box. Then he started to type.

Two Grey Matter agents paced in front of the metal cage. One limped, his hand tightening and loosening around the grip of his 9 mm.

Viktor couldn't help smirking a little.

"Oh, great," muttered Mark as the power went out. "This is just great."

In the pitch black darkness, the cursing from the Grey Matter leader sounded obscenely loud. He swiped the computer monitor from the desk and stood fast enough to send the stool flying.

"Aim at the stacks!" he snarled at his underlings.

"Get back!" shouted Bryce. "Everybody, get back!"

"Noooo!" screamed Viktor, as Irv dragged him further into the mainframe. "Not the computer!"

They ducked and ran to provide smaller targets, covering their ears against the resulting barrage of gunfire, and prayed that none of the ricochets would hit any of them.

Six shots from three guns, and then silence, quickly followed by the stamp of booted feet retreating up the stairs and the bang of the broken door against its frame.

The room was no longer as cold as it had been and they coughed on the smoke and acrid taste of burnt wiring. Viktor sobbed in Irv's arms, clinging like a burr. The beautiful machine! It was ruined! Ruined! And he hadn't gotten to play with it first!

Gerry didn't at first believe it when the gunfight ended. His ears still rang with the sounds and Vanzetti had to physically grab his arm to get his attention.

"Huh? What?" He couldn't even hear himself talk.

The mobster just dragged Gerry to his feet and towards the door, speaking rapid Italian to his men. The mob was in his blood. As soon as it was safe to do so, he moved. Leaving the usual clean-up crew to take care of the bodies and inevitable police, he gathered his family and abandoned their infiltrated hide-out. He sent most of his men to the Lair, to hunt down any more of the grey-clad assassins, and the rest followed him to find his nephew. They had no word from Marcell, Nico's bodyguard, and Vanzetti was worried.

They had the car brought round before the last of the plaster and glass finished falling from the ceiling and walls. They were out of the parking lot before the power went out.

"Conducete più velocemente!" Vanzetti barked at his driver.

The streets were chaos. The few street lights that worked blinked on and off rapidly, with no sense of order and there were traffic accidents on almost every corner. On the radio, the news reported a massive failure of the city's power grid. There were fires and looting as the criminal element took advantage of the loss of security alarms. The mob, already strung tauter than a tight rope, exploded en mass, rampaging in bloody action city-wide.

Gerry just sat in a corner of another big, black, car and stared at Bryce's cell phone. The lines to indicate a tower connection remained absent; he couldn't connect to any phone he knew, but he kept trying.

Next to him, the Vanzetti crime boss finished bandaging a wound on Gerry's arm, alternately cursing at his men to drive faster or go around the mess, and, lastly, to change course. With everything from phones to cable to electricity non-functional, they would have to go to the source.

The bodyguard in the front passenger seat flipped open a phone he hadn't used in weeks and started to relay their orders, including sending someone for Marcell, if he wasn't already on his way.

"It's him," said Gerry softly, looking up at Nico's uncle with a bleak expression. "He turned off the power. Why?"

Vanzetti shook his head silently. He turned to stare out at the dark, head- and tail light-swamped streets, and then began methodically pumping the tall, black stranger for information.

They piled out of the car at their destination in a haphazard fashion, but Vanzetti swept through his men in long strides. They fanned out around him, storming through the dark lobby heedless of the employees trying to keep them out.

"Basement," said Gerry, almost trotting to keep up. "I'm sure the servers are in the basement."

More orders sent men scurrying for blueprints in the manager's office. Vanzetti headed for the closest set of stairs. They went down and down, wandering the lower halls like rats in a maze, ever-searching another way down.

Emergency lights along the baseboards lit the way, but they were ready to give up by the time one of Vanzetti's men found the door into the mainframe. He shouted and Gerry almost ran him down, flinging the door wide.

"Mark!" he called. "Mark!"

The sub-basement was no longer at a chilly sixty degrees. Foam from the fire extinguishers flecked all four of the men who crowded against the metal grate at Gerry's hail.

"Over here!" shouted Mark. "Thank God! Gerry, are you okay? What's happened?"

"Fine, I'm fine, but the power's out. Guh, what a stink! What happened in -- oh, my God." He picked up the broken robot and stared at the white-covered CPUs. He stepped in closer to whisper, "Nico? Is he?"

Mark shook his head. "Don't know. He locked us in here, and then the power went out, and then those maniacs started shooting."

"Oh, my God," Gerry said again. The Phantom ...!

"Signore!" One of the mob came forward with a handful of flashlights and passed them around. "Stanno qui," he added quietly when he handed the mob boss one of the flashlights.

Vanzetti turned away from the mess on the other side of the gate and moved to the man bearing the limp form of his nephew. At his questioning look, Marcell shook his head.

In Marcell's arms, Nico looked as if he were asleep. In truth, perhaps he was, the body sleeping while the mind was absent. Vanzetti smoothed back the thick, dark hair and kissed his nephew's forehead before directing Marcell to the computer in the corner.

They sat and they waited for over two hours before the power came back on. By then, acetylene torches had freed the four trapped men, and others in Vanzettie's service had secured food and drink from one of the restaurants in the complex.

The mobsters let Bryce and Irv go, to handle affairs with the cops, and Viktor went with them. Vanzetti alone, with Marcell, Mark, and Bruce, sat vigil in the mainframe. The rest of his men stood guard on the floor above.

Mark had dozed off against the wall and Gerry's shoulder when the lights flickered a couple times before coming back on. Humming filled the room, accompanied by a ticking noise, a few sparks, and the smell of melting plastic. That was a smell Mark was all too familiar with. He sighed and grabbed one of the fire extinguishers to hunt down the shorting circuits, through the gate into the mainframe before his mind caught up with his body.

Rubbing his eyes, Gerry moved over to kneel beside the two mobsters. In the light, Nico had strong features, firm chin, a nose that seemed slightly too large for his face, and high cheekbones. There was a wide scar along his right jawline, by his ear, disappearing into the shadows of his neck. Another cut one of his eyebrows in half, blending into the olive tone of his skin. He had wide lips that looked like they would smile often, and little crinkles by his eyes suggested the same.

During the wait, Marcell had stripped the plastic coating away from the CAT5 internet cable and wrapped the wire around Nico's hand.

"Il suo tempo di svegliarsi, mi amico," he said in quiet Italian, patting Nico's cheeks. "Per favore, Nico."

Vanzetti clenched his hands into fists where they rested on his knees. He closed his eyes and bowed his head.

When Mark came out of the mainframe, they still sat there, tense and silent and unhappy. He sat down next to his friend to lend his support. Gerry didn't look at him. He avoided glancing into the mainframe. He didn't want to see how bad the damage was.

The minutes dragged on, the silence broken by a few whispered words in Italian, or the unobtrusive shifting of the men sitting on the rapidly-cooling concrete floor.

Then there was a sound, that almost went unnoticed but for Marcell leaning in so closely.

"Ung ...."

The corner of Nico's mouth twitched, his eyes struggling to open, and his chest began to rise and fall in an unsteady pattern. Nothing was working properly. Like muscles too little used, his mind was slow to settle into the tiny confines of his living flesh. He kept reaching for synapses and connections that did not exist. He had never been out of his body for so long.

Marcell shielded Nico's eyes as they slowly inched their way open, to blink at them blindly. His eyes were a murky green-brown, unfocused, the pupils dilated.

Recognizing his long-time bodyguard and friend, Nico smiled.

"Capisci?" asked Marcell, taking care to speak softly, but not soft enough, evidently, for Nico winced, still growing accustomed to old senses.

He nodded, however. Ever so slightly, but he moved. Marcell sighed with relief, smiling again for the first time in many days, and worked to untangle the cables. There were new burn marks, of course. Marcell would have been surprised not to find any. Scars criss-crossed Nico's hands and forearms. Most were his own doing, from sticking his hands into live wires and circuits.

"Bentornato," Vanzetti murmured, picking up his nephew's other hand to kiss him.

"Zio." The word slipped out and Nico smiled. He blinked in an effort to stay awake, but his body felt heavy and awkward and strange, just like his first forays into the world wide web.

Summoning the energy, he commanded his arm to move, managing to twitch the limb slightly, fingers crooking upwards at nothing. "Mnn," he groaned. A second try stretched his fingers towards a blurry shape just outside his immediate view, hovering in Marcell's shadow.

Seeing the direction of his gaze, Marcell lifted the hand for him, motioning Gerry closer and shaping Nico's hand into a loose clasp. Gerry cupped the weak hand in both of his. At Marcell's beckoning, he leaned in even closer.

Nico did indeed have a lovely smile, and an open, friendly face now that sentience gave him expression.

"Thank ... you," Nico whispered, speaking slowly so he did not slur his words. Specifics of Gerry's face escaped him, but he carried the beautiful eyes with him into sleep. I knew he was beautiful, he thought. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.