On the Job

One by one, more and more members of the human logistics team flood the compound where the battle took place until the whole structure is secure. Lazar is escorted by two men through one of Leo's tunnels. People start bringing reinforced, metal containers, trackers, listening devices and more.

"Start with the corpses. Search for any sign of Oortian technology implanted into their bodies." A man wearing a full hazmat suit gives orders.

"You there, page to the 89th, we've got orders for you. We're to receive a full report over the events that took place in as many details as possible. After which we've been instructed to take you with us to the Technology Containment Center for further instructions. Are you going to cooperate?"

"Yes sir, of course."

"Very well, here's pen and paper, start writing."

"Right here? On the spot?" Simon asks surprised.

"Exactly. No item which has been in contact with Oortian technology, or individual may leave the premise without first being thoroughly analysed for any traces of corruption. Oortian technology is especially invasive to our own and when further mixed with Kuiper biological instability it might attack a human host without him even realising. We'll have to run tests on you since there's always a risk."

"If that's so, will Lazar be fine? I don't know how this corruption works but he was severely wounded and if it gets though the blood stream and ..."

"No, the corruption doesn't affect humans with powers."

"Oh, I see, then I'm fine then. I have powers as well."

"Have you engaged in combat? You do not appear neither tired nor wounded."

"I did not, I'm not a combatant, I'm just..."

"What do you mean you're not a combatant?" The man says loud enough for the other workers to hear holding back laughter. "Did they finally find a second Lion? Bless his soul, he has been worked to the bone poor bastard."

"I've entered the Century Tower as a labourer." The men do a double take now interested in hearing out Simon's story.

"So, what do you do. Do you work with logistics, such as taking heroes from one place to the other? Do you..."

"Today's my first day and all I did was carry Lazar's tea box."

"What can you do though?"

"I can store melee weapons inside my body and..."

"So there's nothing related to transport, infrastructure or supplies." The men interrupt him together.

"No. I'm just a worker which just so happens to have powers." Simons says defensively and the men's expression somewhat sour.

"Look at this bastard, having powers but running away from responsibility." "Is this some form of mockery? What, are heroes so plenty now they can afford to waste themselves like this?" The men were whispering under breath.

"Forget the report." The man in the hazmat suit says taking the clipboard back from Simon. "Start packing the boxes with the rest." He says giving Simon a weird device which identified alien technology. "Whatever you find whole, into the boxes with yellow tape on them. Whatever you find broken into the boxes with orange tape. Whatever is covered in blood in the boxes with red tape. Grab a pair of gloves as not to contaminate the contraband."

At that point Simon gets up and starts working as instructed with the containment unit. It went on for five hours without stopping. The whole building had to be thoroughly scanned through and through for any traces of alien technology and when that was done they used their scanning devices to look for other hidden rooms, secret passages and more. Just so it happened that out of curiosity, while looking for secret passages, Simons pointed the scanner at one of Leo's doors and it didn't registered on it. While right in front of the door, it did appear on the scanner but when pointing at it from the side, the tunnel appeared as if not there.

"Curious about my powers?" Leo says appearing out of the tunnel just as Simon was toying around with the scanner. He was sandpapering a piece of wood.

"I'm sorry. Curiosity got the better of me."

"If that device was enough to understand my powers then I wouldn't stand a chance against the invaders now, would I?"

"You don't stand a chance either way Lion. What are you going to do, build them a fancy wall to smash you through?"

"I might as well Richard!" While hostile with Simon, the men are incredibly friendly with Leo. He then changes his attention back to Simon again and asks him to follow his lead.

"Have they been giving you a hard time?"

"Surprisingly here it's the other way around. Humans hate heroes while where I came from it is the other way around."

"Is that so?"

"Bought and sold as merchandise to satisfy the desires of rich and powerful men without actual powers. If and I say if, by chance you buy an orphan from the outer fortresses and that orphan just so happens to have magnificent powers, just strong enough to enter the Century tower, how would one's life change from that point on? All you need is one orphan and you can be set for life."

"So people buy those like us in order to have them fight for a place in the Tower?"

"Buy us? No, they create us. I know my parents died trying to enter the Tower, but how many times have I seen it? Children, newborns, snatched away before one could even tell if they have powers or not. Children turning from Billy and Sam and Robin into 106784. They become numbers and they are being bought and sold so often and stolen too, that children which were taken away in the morning might return to the same place in the evening after being stolen by five different people."

"And you hate them for that. It is understandable."

"I do not. I hate their actions, their greed, their desperation. I can hate one person, two, three, ten, one hundred but I cannot hate humanity as a whole."

"Do you think us different from them? Heroes and humans, what are we?"

"We are the inheritors of this planet. If I start hating them, they will start hating me and they are a lot far more than we are. Still, I know a great deal of people and civilizations were eradicated when the Saviour contained the spread of devastation. I wish I could have seen what our world had to offer before we were set back, before we were invaded, before... Could it be said, before we were returned to nature?"

"Returned to nature?" Leo asks with a hidden smile on his lips.

"When there were predators but we could fight, but we could also end up dead during the battle. When humans were made equal through suffering and mortality. When both the smart and the strong were just as likely to die from an infection or a wound as the small and the stupid."

"And that's exactly what us humans do best. We go against our nature every single day. I want to be afraid, I want to run, I want to be lazy and be left alone, but every day I raise my head to face them." Leo puts his hand on Simon's shoulder. "You'll do..."

"Kuiper incursion imminent. Kuiper incursion imminent." Leo's eyes widen as an emergency broadcast starts playing. A small Kuiper vessel is approaching Earth with great speed. That was very suspicious since the Kuiper are never sent out without Oortian support and supervision.

"I have to go. You go with the containment team, I'll come pick you up when it is all over." Leo says disappearing into one of his gates as Simon is left behind with the containment team. A few more minutes pass and then half an hour after which the trucks have been loaded and ready to leave for the processing factory. What can be salvaged will be reverse engineered in order to fight the Oortians. What can be recycled will be processed into materials and used for future projects. What is unsalvageable will be destroyed. Simons was pushed on one of the many trucks and they left for the processing factory. While the vault where all the finished weapons are contained, is relatively close to the tower, because of the extreme requirements to process Oortian technology and Kuiper biological tissue, the factory has to be outside the city. Therefore they take the highway and move towards a set of hills, around twenty or so kilometres from the city. The facility is not built on the hills but rather inside the crevice underneath them. Long ago, as everywhere on Earth, that was the place of a historical battle and the ground was torn out by the clash. A deep scar was left inside the Earth where water flooded everything. Luckily, high quantities of water are needed for the process and since the river passing through the Century City is not enough to satisfy the demand, the factory had to be build elsewhere. Anywhere further and it would take too long to process and deliver the weapons. Anywhere else and there would be need of immense conducts to transport the water. There is little to delineate the facility, besides the thick upper walls which frame the crevice and keeps undesirable people at bay. Being filled with the most advanced technology available, many would like to infiltrate the structure and that cannot be allowed. Furthermore the only visible, above ground structure is a large heliport with numerous platforms from which armed helicopters are sent out to distribute the goods. An underground network is under work but Leo is severely understaffed himself and the sea of grass is so vast, even with his help it would take a very long while to complete the project.

The trucks are brought immediately inside where a large elevator lowers them one by one into the loading area. As everyone gets off the trucks, they are all forced to wear a special wristband which continuously keeps them supervised and will send out an alarm if they are removed. Once done, Simons starts helping with unloading the boxes on platforms which are then taken inside the factory proper. There are large gates, up to forty centimetres in thickness protecting the inside area and armed guards everywhere. Once everything was done the men gather in line and six armed guards arrive.

"Unloading completed, proceed to the final operation." A man says and the labourers start walking in line towards a smaller gate. One by one they are put on a list and allowed inside.

"Name and serial number." The guard says not recognising Simon and even then the name and serial number were still needed.

"Simon Klinge."

"Serial number?"

"I do not have one. I was instructed to come here after I witnessed and battle between Lazar and the thieves who took the alien artifacts."

"Who instructed you?" The man asks as guards are approaching their position with their weapons ready.

"Mister Leo Mauer did so."

"Do you have his recommendation card?"

"Recommendation card? I do not..."

"There we are." The guard says pointing to his fellow men to stop. He picked up a small card off of Simon's shoulder. There was a toy soldier holding it up on Simon's left shoulder.

"Very well, proceed to the cleansing room." As instructed Simon moves forward into the facility where and elevator takes him deep down underground. As he steps out he passes through a hallway filled with scanners and devices meant to intercept any alien technology on his body.

"Proceed to the showers. A new set of clothing will be provided to you." A voice says on an intercom. The smell of the water was terrible and it was blue and minty. Once done a man was waiting for Simon in order to hand him over a new set of clothing.

"As we were not instructed of your presence, there is no locker present for you to occupy. Please dress up and follow us into the recreational room. He does and just as yesterday, Simon is left to wait inside an empty room alone.

"I wish I could have brought my phone with me. It would be easier to pass time like this. Hm... maybe there is no signal inside here." He thinks staring blankly at the floor.

"So kid, the Lion is favouring you?" A voice calls out to him. The men from work were down there as well.

"Favour is a big word. I just started working, for him."

"With him. You're practically doing the same job but for different masters. You're with 89?"

"I followed him today but he got hurt and has been extracted while I was left behind to work."

"That's a good sign. If you're working odd jobs while also working directly with the numbers, it means you'll be taken in by one of them soon enough."

"Is that how it happened to Leo?"

"Nah, the Lion started big since he was the only one doing what he's doing. He's number 6's personal assistant though."

"Can you blame him? That's the best woman on Earth!"

"With the personality of sandpaper and the fuse of a dynamite."

"I don't care if she bets me up every day. With those legs of hers I might even like it." The men start gushing over number 6, the highest ranking woman in the tower and according to them an incredibly erotic beauty.

"I... I wouldn't know. I'm not familiar with the heroes."

"How could you not be? She's all over the news, she's invited everywhere!"

"By the Saviour, it is terrifying to be in her presence since you can feel something bad is going to happen, oh, oh... but her armour is an all black and red bodysuit so tight you could swear it's body paint!"

"She can use her legs as the hands of a clock, Full 360 movement and she can hold the position!"

"I see, she must be very popular."

"How come you've never heard of her?"

"I grew up in a fortress city and the orphanage where I lived didn't had many amenities so to speak. We weren't allowed to stray far off either since we could be stolen so I had no way of coming into contact with her."

"That's an injustice. An absolute injustice. No red blooded man should live without gazing upon her at least once...a day."

"I see, I see."

"What? You don't believe us? Could it be you're more into someone like number 28?"

"Again, I don't know who that is?"

"A creepy mix between an woman and a bug."

"The Lion told me about a clean up job after 28 was done. She chewed her way through an Oortian ship. There was metal and gore mixed together everywhere!"

"That can't be worse than number 4. He's the absolute worse in everything."

"They deserve it."

"What is so terrible about him?"

"Besides the fact he'll walk through you if he feels like it? He doesn't kill the Oortians or Kuiper outright. He pinches pieces of flesh off their bodies and leaves them like that. You need to go armed in order to do one of his clean up since he leaves them all alive! Unable to recover and mortally wounded but alive."

"Is that so?"

"I'm telling you. The best to work with are number 52 and 36. With number 52, as long as you keep your mouth absolutely shut he won't bother you at all and he takes care of all the blood himself. Number 36 just hands you a drink as his team does everything in your place."

"Man, I wish I could work with the top 10, number 4 excluded. You'd get the best of the best, you'd get to work with number 6, with number 5, with number 2."

"There's a chance you'll get paired up with number 3."

"I don't know who all these numbers are."

"Number 2 is the Star Gazer. He can manifest space phenomenons."

"He's also dressed as an astronaut and is the size of a large teddy bear."

"Number 3 is constantly looked after by the Lion. He's called The Last Survivor and he's too dangerous to be approached. Wherever he goes chaos follows."

"Planes would appear and fall from the sky when he's around. Even if there was nothing there, even if the sky is clear as crystal, even if he's alone in the desert."

"Number 4 is the biggest asshole on the planet. He has absolute power."

"He's called Super Human but he likes calling himself just Human since he sees everyone else beneath him. I wish I could say he must have a small penis but one his favourite pass-times is having his way with women and mutilating them because of his power."

"Number 5 is the most tranquil person on Earth. He is called Apex and he's very kind. His super power is taking the form of animals."

"Not just that. He takes the form of a human-animal hybrid which evolves constantly to kill whatever is in front of him. There was a picture boing around of him becoming an enormous half-human half-crocodile monster with 100 heads and the length of the Century Tower, wrapped around an Oortian ship."

"Number 6 is number 6 but you'll never get the chance to work with her."

"She has it all, super strength, speed, agility, she can breath and control fire."

As they were speaking. Suddenly the power flickered for an instant.