Stupidity

   The moment I came out of the water, I felt I was being allowed to live for some more time. It had been torture to swim to such depths in order to enter that cave, which acted as a secret hideout for those people. They appeared to have mastered the art of diving but I had no idea what was going to happen, so my reaction when we finally got there was entirely comprehensible. I think that even they thought so, because they let me cough and curse for a while, until everyone was inside the cave.

 Then, as before, they drew out their guns and pointed at me. They had kept them in tightly sealed bags and now they could use them again to threaten my life. The crazed man that had pushed into the water was the closest ones and water pressure had done nothing to eliminate the crazy face he was looking at me with. I knew he was just working for his boss, making sure everything happened according to plan. But I hated him nevertheless, for his weakness and his lack of interest for anything else than his boss.

 We started walking through the rock, the path illuminated with small lamps pierced into the cave itself. Someone had spent their time doing that, making the place seem like some sort of secret lair, which reminded me of movie villains, the kind that twist their moustaches and laugh in the most horrible and hilarious way. But this man was not one of those villains, he was much worse and he was capable of things no one would even imagine, things that no comic book villain would ever do.

 He had used the natural caves of that region of the Mexican coastline, to hide whenever someone came too close to his dealing and business. The amount of drugs he sent to every corner of the world was simply baffling. I had the chance of seeing some of the packages they were preparing and it was simply too much to send without the authorities noticing something strange. And yet, they managed to do it and sell millions and millions of dollars a year with such a rentable business. It was scary.

 And there I was, in the middle of all of it, just because of a mistake. Just because I had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but also because I had allowed someone to take advantage of my stupidity. I promised never to fall for that again, but those kinds of promises are always empty and stupid, because most times people do not learn from their mistakes and I have no reason to be the exception to the rule. This wasn’t the first time I did something wrong, but it was the first time it had such serious consequences. It was obvious I could be killed at any moment and why I hadn’t was making me uncomfortable.

 We finally got to a nice open gallery, where it was very cold and humid. The crazed man ordered me to stand still while some of the other men went ahead and checked if everything was fine. I just stood there, dripping wet still, trying to understand it all. Because it was obvious I should’ve been killed hours earlier but I hadn’t. Someone had prevented that from happening and I needed to know why. It was obvious their boss was the one who knew most, if not all, the answers and I had to speak to him.

 We were given clearance and moved ahead in moments. The next room was surprisingly lit by natural sunlight and had a pool of blue water in the middle. It was an outstanding view. So surprising in fact, that the crazy guy hit me with his gun because I had stopped to appreciate the space without his permission. He made my ribs feel broken, but I had to resist the pain and just walk on. We finally got to another illuminated room but this one was much larger and had no water in the middle. And he was there.

 Their boss was not the kind of man who I thought would be running an operation like that one. Maybe because the boss was not a man, but a woman. She had olive skin and curves that would have made her into a model in the eyes of any expert. However, she was delegating tasks and had a big gun strapped to her side. I also noticed a knife on her right sheen and a couple of scars all over her body. The woman had seen her fair share of battle and one would think that’s why she was fighting back.

 When she noticed me, she walked straight to the crazy eyed man and demanded her to tell him why they had taken so long. They started arguing about thing I did not understand, and I remembered I was in a place I didn’t fully comprehend.  I knew that they were dealing with drugs and that the man that had taken me there, to the coast, had been working with them, but that was it. It was not like he told me everything that was going on in his life. He had used deceit to take me there and I had fallen for it.

 She finally looked at me but didn’t say a word, she just smiled. Then, she ordered her men to bring a present she had prepared for me. I was very scared when I heard the word “present”. From someone like her, it was probably something not very pleasant and far from what a normal person would call “a present”. I stood frozen on the same spot, looking at her looking at me. It made me nervous but, somehow, it also disgusted me. It was as if I could feel what kind of person she was only by looking at her. And if my feeling were correct, she was simply the worst.

 Finally, the present was brought it. And it was none other than him, the man that had taken me with him to a luxurious vacation to the Mexican Riviera. I had been easy and stupid enough to accept, not seeing his probable true intentions. He was beaten up, his face all covered in bruises and cuts. But he was breathing and was apparently able to use his eyes because he stared at me and just said my name. He must have thought I was there to save him or something, as if I could do that.

 The woman came closer and explained that she knew everything that had happened. The man, a drug dealer, was her link to many mafias and other criminal organizations around the world. That’s why he travelled far and wide, making connections to strengthen their sales in other countries. He would often get men to help him, by making them think he was in love with them or at least very sexually attracted to him. And according to the woman, that ploy had worked surprising well for years.

 Apparently, many men had come before me, thinking they were there to enjoy the beach and the beauty of the region, only to realize that they were going to be used as drug mules or would be forced to work as dealers, under threat against themselves and their families. Some of those men were even closeted and that was another way to pressure them into doing whatever the organization wanted them to do. And others were just junkies, that would do anything in order to have at least some of the merchandise.

 He didn’t say a word after she finished talking about him and his men and his boys. He didn’t say a word. And he could’ve, even if it was hard to understand him. But he didn’t say a word. I had no idea what to do. I was trapped and would have to do whatever they wanted me to do know. They owned me because I hadn’t been strong enough to refuse his advances. I had been distracted by his looks and his charm. Stupidity runs wild in humans and especially in jaded men.

 She looked at me and, without saying one more word; she pulled out her gun and blew his head off in front of me. I gasped, but did not scream. His body fell lifeless on the floor, staining the beautiful clear rock with the darkness of the blood. The crazy eyed man grabbed the body and soon disappeared.

 The woman walked towards me and grabbed my face. She wanted to take a good look. For a moment, I thought I was dead, but then she called two men and told them to escort me to the airport. I would leave and never talk of anything I had seen there. She didn’t threaten me, she just knew I wouldn’t talk.

Only a superhero

   I could see the city, all of its lights moving beneath me. The avenues looked like serpents, wiggling about in all directions. And people were undistinguishable in the darkness of the night. Street lamps illuminated some of the areas but not all of them, so it was pretty obvious that there were patches of greater darkness within the city. In one of those, I had been caught and brought to that place, to the highest point of a tower that overlooked everything, like the mighty lair of some comic book villain.

 But the person that had brought me there was not exactly that. He was actually one of the people you might call “a good guy”. It was me who was being thought of as a villain. According to him, and to the organization he worked for, what I did could be understood as an act of treason against my own country, for which I could be detained and processed, ultimately landing in some awful prison where my fortune would be sealed. I had already gone through it in my mind, again and again.

 However, I hadn’t predicted him to bring me to that place. True, the building held several offices for his government entity, but ordinary criminals would never go there, least of all to be incarcerated there temporarily. It was obvious that something else was going on and I had no idea what that was about. So I had to pretend I was very certain of everything and the best way to do that was avoiding answering questions that could let them know how much I didn’t know. It was some sort of cat and mouse game.

 Him and his partner, a younger woman, tried to interrogate me for what seemed like hours but I was too good for them. They couldn’t get anything from me, nothing more than what they already knew. I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t been the one to hack into many of their offices, but I wasn’t going to tell them anymore than that. After all, I lived in the shadows; I knew how to move among the scum of the Earth. They just thought they knew how, but they had barely seen a glimpse of what the world hides beneath the surface.

 They left me alone after a couple of hours. They held me in a room that overlooked the city. It must have looked like a normal office from the outside but from the inside it was pretty much like any other cell. It had bars and a bunk bed and somewhere to piss if I wanted to. It even had that kind of door that has the little window in order to pass food through. That reminded me I was very hungry, but I didn’t ask for anything because that could be used by them to try to pull things from me. So I decided to take a nap instead, trying to take advantage of the lack of sound around the cell.

 It was the next day when his companion came and brought me something to eat. She was very nice, very cute, obviously with no experience whatsoever in her field. Maybe she had passed the tests and all of the training, but it was obvious she wasn’t exactly the top agent around. As I grabbed the tray with food, she sat on the other side of the bars and told me that some others had been captured. I just ate, pretending I hadn’t heard her. But I did and I wanted to know everything. It was important to know.

 She told me about the raid on the warehouses we operated from and how many of our computers had been seized. Yet, she knew very well no one would get one document from all of those. Of course, we always knew when they were close and our systems would erase themselves in an instant if that were the case. But it was intriguing that she knew so much, for such a rookie agent. I kept on eating; it was toast and scrambled eggs with a small yogurt and a glass of orange juice. Much like a plane meal.

 I drank a bit of juice as she stood up and got closer to the bars, just looking at me. I looked back at her, defiant. I didn’t trust her at all and it was obvious she was posing as this silly little woman, when in reality she could be even more dangerous than the guy that had actually caught up with me. So I finished my meal as soon as I could and then just put the tray on the place in front of the little window. She looked at me for a bit longer and then grabbed the empty tray and left. I could hear her heels walking away.

 Lying on my back, I wondered what she could be up to. Maybe she had been set by her partner to intimidate me in some way, but it didn’t make any sense. He was the one with the experience to do so. Even if he wanted to throw me off, I believe he was the kind of man that wants recognition for getting things done. Besides, it was obvious he had a certain obsession with the whole case. There were men and women killing and raping all over town and he was obsessed with a few hackers trying to make things a bit better.

 When I began hacking computers, I did it for fun of course. In order to help friends get better grades in school or maybe just blackmail someone in order to give me some money. Yes, it was illegal and wrong and stupid. And I will never say those were my best moments. However, I discovered another layer to the whole thing when this chick in college introduce me to several of her friends and got into the real hacking world. Big bank accounts and the most private and so-called safe websites in the world. And we could just enter and take whatever we wanted. Just like that.

 At the start, they only wanted to go in for the money. And yeah, as a kid that had no money to pay for a decent school, I wanted to have my pockets filled with bills and coins. But then, I realized I could do so much more with all my skills. My first move was to get rid of my money problem, and I did that in a semi-legal way. I hacked into several stock market systems and found out the best way to make money in there. So I invested some money and saw it flourish in a few days. I can say I’m rich now, but I don’t.

 Because my next step was the one that got me where I am now. It was the step that made me run away from home and live with a bunch of strangers in filthy storage warehouses. I decided it was time to give something back to the community that I had use in my advantage. So I grabbed my keyboard and started going around the dark web, taking jobs as a hacker for hire. I would only do things that I thought were “good” or that they will make things fair and make justice prevail above all.

 I guess you could call it my Batman phase or something. The point is, I did that for at least two years. I helped parents get the men and women that had assaulted their children, I helped children find their parents in the midst of war and I even helped people get out of very difficult situations. I couldn’t be with them the whole time but it was my job as a hacker that saved their lives. I cannot shy away from the truth: I did save lives and made the world a better place. And yet, I end up in a cell.

 Maybe my earlier mistakes are too serious or maybe they just don’t like people being better than them. However, none of that explained why I was in that building or why was it taking them so long to send me to an actual jail. I was getting impatient and that’s not good for a person that expends his days sitting down in front of a computer, playing superhero on the information superhighway. When I heard the heels again, I stood up in a second and waited to see her face, her voice taunting me again.

 But she didn’t. She opened the door and asked me to step outside. Then, she asked that I follow her. I could have overpowered her but there were so many agents around, it would have been impossible to escape. I was free from shackles or handcuffs, but I was still a prisoner walking who knows where.

 She brought me in front of a bunch of people, mostly men, lead by the agent that had caught me. He was looking very pissed. It was the woman who talked. She said they were offering me work, in exchange for not putting me in jail. My reaction surprised more than one person there: I laughed out loud, proud.

From the gutter to the sky

   Grant Tower used to be a gigantic building located in the limit between downtown and the industrial districts. It had been abandoned for many years until it was bought by a mysterious person who recuperated its former splendor. In a city filled with strange things happening everyday, the destruction of Grant Tower did not go unnoticed. After all, it had been Captain Incredible the one to destroy it during his battle with his arch nemesis, Doctor Perdition.

 The battle had taken place all over the city. The superhero and the villain were able to fly, so they moved from one area to the other and the destruction was palpable all over the place. Captain Incredible had promised it would be the last battle to fight in the city as, according to him, every other gang and criminal organization had been dismantled. Only Doctor Perdition stood in the way of a pacified city. So every single person affected by the last battle, tried to understand what was as stake.

 Many inhabitants of the city fled beforehand, others just locked themselves home (if they had a basement). The battle took several hours and affected every single inhabitant in the same way. They knew what they would get in exchange, but many were already pissed at both the bad guy and the good one because for years and years, their battles against the other side had caused devastation once and again. People were tired of all of it and Captain Incredible knew he was risking a lot by saying that was going to be his last battle.

 Inspector Paulson was the first one to arrive to the site of the former Grant Tower. The battle was still going on but it had moved to the port, where they could be less damaging to the people. Pieces of the tower had fallen all over the neighboring streets and some of the neighbors were attempting to move the pieces by themselves. Others were looking for objects to recuperate from the destruction.

 Delia Paulson put on her gloves and entered the destroyed building. Only a couple floors were still standing. All the other seventy floors had disappeared. She used a mask to walk inside and join two men of her team who had gotten there before her. Neighbors had told them that a sound could be heard coming from the building, from below the ground. So they had to look where it was, probably a bomb made by Doctor Perdition.

 Inspector Paulson descended towards the lower levels of the building, that had received no damage, and encountered the noise was coming from a boiler room. The machine that used o heat up the water from the tower seemed to be about to explode. A rapid move by one of the policemen, helped to bring the pressure down.

 When he moved away from the boiler, with a face of triumph, the policemen pushed a pipeline that changed positions. But not only that, it also opened a door on the wall, just in front of the boiler. The inspector told everyone to be on the lookout and entered first; illuminating her path with a flashlight she took from her long coat.

 She walked slowly, covering her face because the air was charged with dust particles, probably because of the violent movement suffered by the building when it had been destroyed. It was a long corridor and then a path that seemed to descend in a spiral, down into the ground. Paulson ordered one policeman to stay at the entrance and was only joined by two of them, one being the one that had stopped the boiler from exploding.

 They walked slowly through the narrow passaged until finally they could see artificial light. They arrived at a massive room, carved into the natural rock. It was very humid but there wasn’t as much dust as there was above. They could breath at ease and not feel trapped anymore. The policemen were visibly scared because they remained just behind Paulson and she didn’t say anything because she was scared too. What was that place? Why was it there?

 On the wall, there were dozens, hundreds of screens showing different TV channels and also some footage from closed circuit cameras. Paulson saw the inside of the Central Bank, the security cameras from the police department building and the mayor’s office. It was all live. Someone had them all cornered and they hadn’t realized it.

 One of the policemen attracted her attention to one of the screens. It was a news channel reporting that the battle between the superhero and the villain had ended: good had one versus evil. The two men cheered but Paulson did not say anything. The existence of that room was proof that things did not stop with Doctor Perdition. She kept walking to find more clues and all she saw were plans of every building in the city, including Grant Tower, weapons of every kind and a diary hidden on the drawer of a work table.

 She started reading and, at first, it didn’t make much sense. It was all about a boy telling his sad high school stories. Apparently he was mocked because of the way he dressed and the way he looked. He hated people for laughing at him but would only find solace in one friend he had away from school, another kid. Paulson kept on reading as the policemen looked around, still happy that the last evil plaguing their city had finally been defeated and was dead for good.

 Paulson kept on reading and realized the diary belonged to no other than Doctor Perdition. She then raised her head and told her men to stop walking round and touching everything. She did so just in the moment were one of the weapons fired a set of arrows against a wall, piercing the wall with incredible strength. The men decided to get closer the inspector, who told them to bring their scientific team in order to bag every single thing in that lab.  She told them they had probably gotten the big prize of the night.

 The two men went back upstairs but Delia stayed behind to wait for the science team and in order to keep reading. She didn’t excuse Doctor Perdition for what he had done; after all he was a felon that had served time after killing people and doing the most unspeakable acts of violence. But she kind of felt sorry for him, as she read more and more of the diary. Apparently, he was the only son in a family of only women and he had been mistreated by his parents because he wasn’t the man they wanted him to be.

 He also hated his family. Paulson wondered if he had them killed at some point but the diary didn’t say. It only spoke about his childhood and the most beautiful pages, because they actually were, were dedicated to his encounters with a friend that shared his vision of the world. He was a bit younger but seemed older than him because of his convictions. He was a strong believer that people that did wrong should pay, no matter what is was that they had done.

 She stopped reading and looked for more diaries in the drawer but it was the only one. When the scientific team arrived, she ordered them to scan the room for hidden compartments and traps. They found a small hiding space beneath a huge metal table, which the inspector moved by herself. There, covered in dust, she found something else. There were no diaries but papers that assigned this property to the kid she had been reading about. If the kid was Doctor Perdition, the building must have been his. He was the one to renew it, all those years ago.

 There was also an electronic book, which could be turned on but had a password to protect it. A member of the scientific team helped Paulson bypass the password in order to read whatever it was she had on her hands. And when she was able to read it, she almost dropped it on the floor. Because what was in that book was not only a diary or some legal papers. There were pictures, and statements and videos and text that talked about that other kid, the one that had been Perdition’s friend when he had been bullied in school.

 That friend had helped him seek revenge, which had resulted in the death of at least two children and it had been Perdition who had put a stop to it.

 That kid… That kid was Frederick Edwards AKA Captain Incredible.