Junk Man part 2 (of 2)

Jennifer Sawyer stared into a set of green eyes. “Gratitude is not an expression I’m used to showing but I must thank you in spite of how frivolous it seems in this moment. I wasn’t sure you would consider me and in full disclosure, I felt insulted. Unimportant. Those thoughts were almost crippling and I feel safe admitting that. And then you came and restored my sense of self, so once again, thank you. It was a memorable night and I thoroughly enjoyed killing you.”

Sawyer knew the U’ntari Silencer was long dead but a small amount of vulnerability was allowed as Sawyer rarely felt strong swells of emotion. When the Resurgence began, she stayed in her LA office despite LA being one of many targets of the U’ntari. “Ma’am, the helicopter will be lifting off soon,” her bodyguard Hank told her, “I suggest we get on it.” She waved him off, “You’re off the clock, Hank. Please take shelter.” Hank left and she continued to stare out the window at the Commander Ship hovering above the city. She knew the aliens had been targeting metahumans up until that moment. With her technological breakthroughs and the strange events surrounding her, she suspected she would he a target and her ego turned that suspicion into hope and then into desperation. Within 24 hours of the invasion, a U’ntari assassin broke into her building. He proved to be a skilled opponent but Sawyer’s morphed blades eventually found their way through his skull.

After the invasion, she secretly kept the body in her private lab to find ways to use its power and once she was finished with the alien cadaver, she incinerated it, leaving no trace. While she did not have raw Neutronium, she did find a way to extract the rare energy from the body and synthesize it into a nano-infused serum over the course of the next few weeks. One of the issues with Neutronium experimentation was that only certain people had DNA that was fully compatible with the energy source. Her nanotechnology would ensure that a person’s genetic structure would be altered to accept Neutronium while also negating the need for any filtration chambers. All she needed was a teat subject.

She found the perfect specimen in her New Jersey laboratory: a lone security guard who often left a cup of coffee unattended on his desk as he made rounds. After the destruction of the Montauk lab, she bought a building in order to maintain her East Coast presence and ensured it would be close to where Astra Machina was supposedly residing. The nano-serum was designed to allow a user to absorb inorganic material, particularly metals and plastics, similar to Astra’s ability to break down material to build a body. The user would have an insatiable urge to absorb this material which would help create the sort of mindset that could easily be manipulated. Sawyer used her shapeshifting abikity to disguise herself as one of the head scientists and everything else fell into place.

“You sent Tetsuo after me,” Astra said angrily, “What did you tell him?”

“That you were to blame for his condition and that he needed to absorb your essence in order to extract a cure,” she answered casually.

“You’re still trying to find a way to use me for your own gains.”

“I likely won’t be able to obtain your source code but I can try to salvage information from the nano-bots you control once I extract your remains from the security guard.”

“His name is Tetsuo,” Astra shouted angrily, “And your plan is crazy. You could have found some other way to come after me without hurting someone who had nothing to do with any of this!”

“I’m aware,” Sawyer began to pace around the room, “Although I admit that this is partially an experiment, the product of coming into contact with a dead U’ntari and seeing what I could do with alien DNA. I’m proud to say it was a success.”

Astra shook her head, “And what if he accomplished his goal? Removing all that junk in his body would probably kill him.”

“Of course it would,” her words were cold and logical as if Astra’s sentence was such a foregone conclusion, there was no point in saying it.

“He’s a human being!”

Astra launched herself across the room, enlarging her fist to several times its original size before slamming it into Sawyer’s face. The punch sent her across the office, tearing through multiple desks and cubicles. Sawyer’s wrist stretched out as her fingers grew into massive, silver claws. She tore into the tile floor to stop her momentum, then pulled herself back to Astra to deliver a kick to her chest. Astra hit a pillar, denting it, and when she stood up, Sawyer had already wrapped her tendril-like arm around a desk and swung it into her side. The blow threw her into the elevator doors behind her and hard enough that they caved in. Sawyer flew at her again as she formed twin mallets and slammed them into Astra, then the doors gave way. Astra fell down the shaft while hitting the walls on the way to the bottom where she hit the roof of an elevator.

Just then, a figure came in through the stairwell door and Sawyer quickly changed shape to resemble a bespectacled scientist. “Dr. Wilkes?,” Tetsuo called out, “I’m back just like you asked.” As he entered the office, Sawyer could see that he had absorbed far more material than she had seen previously. His body was now several times larger and resembled a walking scrapyard; lead pipes, bits of machinery and twisted coils covered him with only his face and parts of his neck now visible. He stopped and starred at the partially destroyed office area but said nothing.

“Your condition has gotten worse,” Sawyer said in Wilkes’ voice.

“I ran from the cops and ended up in a factory,” Tetsuo sadly explained, “I… couldn’t stop,” he looked around at the destroyed desks and cubicles around him, “What happened here?”

“Astra Machina is in the building. She’s trying to stop us!”

Just then, Astra emerged from the destroyed elevator doors, “Tetsuo, that’s not Dr. Wilkes!”

Tetsuo roared in anger and charged her. His strength had now increased and his mental state had deteriorated further. His attack once again pushed Astra down the elevator shaft with Tetsuo holding on tightly. As they fell several stories, Astra could feel him absorbing her body into his. She shot an arm out several feet and formed a clamp before taking hold of the elevator cable. Once she stopped herself from falling, her body snapped back and Tetsuo was thrust into the wall and dropped the rest of the way. Noticing that he had torn some chunks out of her torso, Astra began to absorb the cables as she slid down and quickly patched herself up. The bottom portion of the cables began to dissolve, then fell loose and landed on top of the elevator below. Because she no longer had anything to hold onto, she dropped down as well.

Below, Tetsuo attempted to leap up after her but she formed a round shield from the bottom portion of her body and they collided in mid-air. He was sent to the elevator roof again while Astra backflipped away from him. “I don’t wanna fight,” she backed up to the wall of the shaft. “You should’ve thought about that before you came to this planet,” Tetsuo reached down to grab what was left of the cable and a second later, he absorbed the end and raised it like a whip before striking Astra across her face and then across her chest. Astra formed a laser from her shoulder and blasted the portion of his hand holding the whip. Now without a weapon, Tetsuo rushed forward and because of the cramped quarters, she had nowhere to go when he pinned her against the wall. Her face was smashed into metal and concrete and she once again felt Tetsuo absorbing her. There was little to be done that wouldn’t result in his death or serious injury so she opted for inflicting the smallest amount of damage to force him to let go. A blade formed out of her stomach and stabbed into his hip, bypassing chunks of metal to hit something soft.

He screamed and fell to the hard surface of the elevator roof as blood began to trickle down his leg. It wasn’t a critical injury but it was painful enough to stop him. Astra formed a jetpack and shot up the shaft while she launched a grappling-line down to Tetsuo. The claw snagged a piece of rebar jutting out of his shoulder and pulled him along. As she exited out of the broken doors, she yanked Tetsuo into the office and released him; he rolled along the floor, finally coming to a stop amidst some broken desks and busted computers. “Damn,” Tetsuo grabbed a broken piece of tile, then shoved it into his wound and after a quick absorption, his bleeding stopped. Likewise, Astra absorbed a shattered laptop and repaired the damage done to her.

“I could have left you down there,” Astra explained, “And I could have stabbed you in a much worse place. Or shot you. Now do you believe I don’t want to kill you?”

Tetsuo ignored her for the moment and began to look around, “Dr. Wilkes?”

“He’s not here. The person you’ve been talking to is Jennifer Sawyer.”

“That’s insane! You’re lying!,” Tetsuo shouted again.

“I know it sounds pretty nuts but she’s using you to get to me. Listen, if you don’t believe me, we can go to Dr. Wilkes’ s house. The real one,” she cocked her head to the side as she performed a brief search, “I know where he lives. We can go there and if he doesn’t know anything about this situation, you’ll know I was telling the truth.”

“I just want to be okay so I can go home,” Tetsuo slumped to the floor, “This hunger keeps gnawing at me and won’t let up.”

“I know,” Astra placed a hand on his shoulder. Astra suddenly sensed an approaching aircraft and was reminded of the helipad on the roof, “Tetsuo, if you don’t believe me, I think I can prove it to you.”

“Why should I even listen to you?,” he stood up and once again, the hungry look returned in his eyes.

“There’s a helicopter approaching and I’m pretty sure it belongs to Sawyer,” she began to race toward the stairwell, “Come on up here if you don’t believe me.”

She vaulted up the stair to the rooftop entrance and Tetsuo gave chase. Once Astra burst through the door, they saw a helicopter landing on the helipad as expected. Sawyer was waiting for it while her bodyguard piloted; as the two figures emerged from the stairwell, she turned and gave them an annoyed look. A large claw stretched out from her wrist once again and pushed the two of them into one another and down the stairs before leaping into the copter.

“That’s her!,” Astra told Tetsuo as they climbed back up, “Now do you believe me?” Tetsuo ignored her and cleared the steps in one leap and made a mad-dash across the landing pad, then made one final leap during take-off. As the copter began to take off, metal hands gripped a skid tightly. Within seconds, he was dangling from the sky as the helicopter was attempting to flee. Astra created thrusters in her palms and heels and flew after them, quickly catching up in a few moments.

She looked around to the front of the copter and flattened herself against the windshield where she could clearly see Sawyer and Hank. Spiked hands and feet allowed her to latch on while metal tendrils emerged from her forearm and dug into the copter, allowing complete control of the aircraft. “Ma’am?,” Hank turned to Sawyer nervously once he realized he was no linger piloting, but she was undaunted. “Get the flight harnesses,” she stood up and went to a crate at the back with Hank soon following. Below the copter, Tetsuo began to eat away at the underside, quickly stripping away chunks of metal in hopes of crashing the aircraft. It wasn’t long before Sawyer and Hank opened the side-hatch wearing flight harnesses. A moment later, they shot off into the horizon. Astra noticed and began to redirect the helicopter to give chase but soon realized how damages it was. Tetsuo was eating away at the underside, gradually tearing a hole through the copter. “Tetsuo, you have to stop,” Astra yelled at him, “Sawyer’s not in there anymore. I’m trying to catch up to her!” It was no use. Not only did he not see them escaping but he also couldn’t hearing Astra over the strong winds and helicopter rotors.

Soon, the aircraft received enough damage that it began to falter and drop from the sky. Astra let go of it and hovered as it began to fishtail to the dark surface below. In the distance, she could still see Sawyer and her bodyguard flying into the night but she opted to help Tetsuo instead and flew down to rescue him. The copter hit the tree-tops and because of a cut fuel-line and sparks shooting out of frayed wires, the vehicle erupted in a furious blaze. The force of the explosion knocked Astra into the air but she recovered quickly, flipped over, and made her way to the remains of the copter in the middle of a wooded field.

Once there, she saw no signs of Tetsuo but she did pick up life signs fleeing the area several yards away. He was alive but she knew it wasn’t a good idea to chase after him in the moment as he likely didn’t trust her anymore than he trusted Jennifer Sawyer. She surmised they would likely meet again in the future and hopefully, they would be able to find a cure.

She knew she shouldn’t but she blamed herself for Tetsuo Miki’s condition. If Sawyer hadn’t had an interest in her, none of this would have happened to him. She left the Nantox building some time later to return to Wally and Kim. With Sawyer attacking people who had nothing to do with their rivalry, she worried that one day, her closest friends would be affected as well. It seemed as though she was a danger to them simply by existing.

Epilogue …

Sky Darkly checked his account on the floating screen in front of him and smiled. The generous amount of credits had been transferred and he was a rich man that would soon be richer.

“The second half will be transferred upon delivery,” came a voice from within the containment suit, “You claim to know where Astra Machina is and for your sake, you had better not be lying.”

“I’m a man of my word,” Sky Darkly assured him, “I’ll deliver her unharmed as requested. But you should know she’s a lot to deal with so if I hand her over and she escapes…”

“Leave that to us.”

“Then I should have her by the end of the cycle,” he turned and left the dark alley, “Pleasure doing business with you.”

Next: The Neon Supremacy