Soul Walker: #ONC Finalist

Mission 20: Collusion

IRON MAN--Black Sabbath

Charlie paced back and forth in his workshop. He was stuck in more ways than one. The H.I.V.E. was in shambles on his workbench. Metallic shards and scattered wires littered its surface. Driven by an unconscious force his hands seized his nonexistent hair and pressed hard onto his skull. He had been working for hours on a way to make the device nearly invisible. What happened at the police station could not happen again. Not if he had any hope of saving his only remaining family member, and the one reason he had left to live.

Sarah's robotic arms worked in a calculated and unrelenting rhythm. Her delicate maneuvers are what it took to slowly reincarnate the H.I.V.E. into a soul-wrenching terrifying code. One that would strike fear in even Charlie if he had been unfortunate enough to be on the wrong side of this war. The only reason Charlie could even supervise her work was because of the microscopic projection that hovered in the air above it.

This second edition of the H.I.V.E. was his only hope to save his daughter, and he had only hours to figure out if the damn thing would even work. Charlie hated limitations, and his life was speckled with them, the one thing he could make sure was flawless were his inventions. Perfection took time, research, and persistence. He had a day, a single day, to reinvent the wheel.

Darrel had been surprisingly absent during this whole ordeal. Even his own ghostly Jimminy Cricket had no answers for him. He dared himself to look at the clock. It was two-o-clock in the morning. He had been awake nearly 24 hours and had made minimal progress toward any kind of solution.

Of course, his first instinct had been to go find Meg himself. After he left Derrick's house he searched the city. He scoured the walls, the sewers, abandoned warehouses, and everything in between to find his little firework. In fact, he had spent the better part of the day, searching for her. His fury had enabled him to haunt his way through every sunken basement, decrepit warehouse, and empty lockup in the city, and he had found nothing. Even now he hunted for her within the safety of his warehouse. His drone army was scouring the city, the foothills, the oceans, and even surrounding locations in pursuit of any infinitesimal sign of her. Each drone was equipped with a lunar charger. This device enabled them to charge from even the weakest light source, the sun's reflection off of the moon. Still, there was nothing. No sign of his favorite snarky redhead anywhere.

His phone buzzed to life "You have fourteen hours and fifty-eight minutes." He clenched his fists. He hated these impromptu reminders. They never appeared at regular time intervals. No, he was never prepared for his own reaction when the Elementalist would rear his vicious unrelenting head. It was a special kind of torture that tied up and frayed his emotions in a complex ball of hatred, pain, and vengeance. He felt his arm act of its own volition as it released a heavy metal object. The glass wall that gave his workshop the nickname, think tank, had shattered. His wrench lay in the shattered rubble beneath it. He ignored the damage.

His phone lit up again, this time it was his security app. Someone was at the door. "Who the --" He said and was cut off by the image on his screen. The innocent man the Elementalist wanted him to kill was at his door.  He was not as he remembered. His clothes were torn and fresh scars littered his hands and face. Carmine was at his door and he was the living personification of Charlie's emotions.

He felt his anger and fear wrack at his nerves. Questions bombarded his mind, he stepped through the shattered crystalline rubble and made his way up the stairs. Each step felt heavier than the last and his heart pounded harder and harder in his chest. Charlie was an honorable monster, this was not what he wanted. This was too easy and too wrong. He held his hand at the door. His eyes never left the image on his phone. He pressed his cheek to the cool oak and allowed himself the gentle reassurance of the hard cold wood against his cheek.