Catherine and I went back down the stairs. She'd made a detour to the van for rope - I vaguely remembered that. To tie up the survivors.
My hands shook slightly as we descended. That probably wasn't good.
The basement rec room looked the same. Pool table still moved. Wall panel still open. The warm red walls reminded me of the bleeding corpse that I-
No. Work now. Spiral later
Walking over to the hatch, I knelt,and attempted to pull it up by the handle. After a rather futile 60 seconds,I looked to Catherine. "Could use some help." Catherine came over and lent a hand, and we popped it open. This revealed a ladder descending into a dimly lit tunnel.
I gestured at Catherine. "Ladies first."
She gave me a flat look. "How chivalrous." But she went first anyway, her boots ringing on the metal rungs.
After a short climb down, we arrived in a wide concrete tunnel. The air was noticeably cooler here, and there was a distinctive mechanical whirring noise coming from further down the passage, accompanied by the hum of ventilation. The tunnel itself was about eight feet wide, lit by flickering fluorescent strips mounted to the ceiling at regular intervals. The concrete walls were bare. Thick bundles of electrical conduit ran along one wall, and I could feel a faint vibration through the floor.
We walked down the corridor, our footsteps echoing off the concrete. The muffled whirring grew louder with each step, punctuated now by the occasional mechanical click. At the end of the hall was a reinforced door. The door was heavy steel with a circular wheel lock in the center, like something off a submarine. A small placard next to it read "ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY" in faded stenciled letters.
Catherine grabbed the wheel and spun it counterclockwise. There was a solid clunk as the bolts retracted, and she pulled the door open. It swung on heavy hinges with surprising smoothness, revealing a thick rubber seal around the frame. A wave of cold air rolled out into the tunnel, and the mechanical whirring suddenly became much louder.
The pressure door opened into a computer room straight out of the 70's
The first thing I noticed was the temperature change. Climate control was still running, and the room was significantly colder than the tunnel,maybe 65 degrees Fahrenheit. The air had that particular smell of ozone and warm electronics that old computer rooms always had.
The room itself was maybe twenty by fifteen feet, with the same bare concrete walls as the tunnel. Most of the space was dominated by equipment. On the left wall stood what I was pretty sure was a PDP-11 cabinet. It was a massive beige tower about six feet tall, covered in switches, indicator lights, and ventilation grilles. Several lights blinked steadily on its front panel in red.
Next to the PDP-11 were two massive disk drives producing most of the noise. Each was about the size and shape of a top-loading washing machine, with a small status panel on the front. They hummed and whirred constantly, the sound of magnetic platters spinning at 3,600 RPM inside their sealed enclosures. Every few seconds, one would make a sharp seeking noise—click-whirrrr-click—as the disk heads repositioned. They'd been making that sound, I realized, for quite some time. Just sitting here in the dark, spinning away, waiting.
Against the right wall was a rack containing what looked like tape drives. The drives were 9-track units, bulky and industrial. Below them were shelves with boxes of tapes, neatly labeled with dates and alphanumeric codes. A couple of tape reels sat on top of the rack, probably the most recent backups.
In the center of the room sat a console terminal on a small desk.Its CRT screen was dark but glowing faintly with residual charge. The keyboard was a dinosaur, beige plastic yellowed slightly with age. Next to it was a notepad with some handwritten notes in faded blue ink, a coffee mug ring staining the corner of the paper, and an ashtray that hadn't been emptied the last time someone was down here. A desk lamp with a flexible arm pointed at the keyboard.
The whole scene had an eerie quality to it. Everything was functional, utilitarian, designed to work and keep working regardless of what happened on the surface. The blinking lights reflected off the concrete, casting strange shadows. The constant whirring of the disk drives filled the space with white noise, broken only by those periodic seeking clicks.
Striding into the center of the room, I flicked the terminal on. The CRT came to life with a high-pitched whine, the screen glowing green as phosphor warmed up. The boot message scrolled past, dumping me to a terminal.
An ancient computer to coax into giving up some data. I could work with that.
Fortunately, the PDP-11 seemed to be running something UNIX-like. Probably an early BSD variant. The command syntax felt familiar enough. After some fumbling with unfamiliar directory structures and abbreviated commands, I navigated to what appeared to be the database directory. Files with names like ASSETS.DAT, CONTACTS.IDX, OPS_LOG.87, and similar.
I looked around for some kind of portable storage medium. My eyes fell on a cabinet next to the tape rack. Opening it revealed shelves of 9-track tapes.
I then wanted to slap my forehead. Idiot. The 9-track tapes were obviously the backup media for the system. Each one could hold about 140 MB, if my vintage computing knowledge held up. More than enough for the whole database. But they were also bulky—dinner-plate-sized reels—and we'd need the right equipment to read them later.
If I remembered correctly, conventional floppies could only hold about 1.44 MB in the 80s. Not nearly enough. With that said, however...
I checked the bottom shelf of the cabinet and found a cardboard box. Inside were several plastic cases containing disks that looked like 3.5-inch floppies, but thicker, with a distinctive translucent window on the casing. I pulled one out and examined the label.
Floptical FD-50. 50 MB capacity. Laser-guided recording.
50 MB?
What the hell, sure. This was the Marvel universe after all.
I walked back to the terminal and checked the login banner. The message of the day displayed in green phosphor:
Code:STRIKE-NODE-01 - Authorized Access Only
INGRES v1.2 - Multi-user Relational DBMS
Last login: 15-MAR-1982 14:23:17
I blinked. A relational database? In 1978?
"Catherine," I said slowly. "When was this safehouse established?"
"Seventy-eight," she replied, examining the tape rack. "Why?"
"No reason."
INGRES existed in my timeline, but it was still a Berkeley research project in the late 70's - wouldn't go commercial until the early 80s. Yet here was STRIKE running it in production in 1978.
I filed that away with the floptical disks and the over-the-wire firmware attestation in the bunker I now called home. The 616 universe looked like the 1980s on the surface - same cars, same fashion, same CRT monitors - but underneath, the baseline technology was quietly more advanced. All those super-geniuses - Pym, Octavius, Starr - their innovations didn't just stay in their labs. They trickled down into the commercial sector, pushed the entire tech industry forward, created an everyday tech landscape that was subtly ahead of what I remembered.
Not the obvious stuff - power armor, cyborgs, androids. But the mundane things: data storage density, computer architectures, materials science. The foundation was just... better. A few years ahead here, a decade there. Enough to notice if you were paying attention.
"Something wrong?" Catherine asked.
"No," I said, pulling up the database schema. "Just thinking."
I navigated to the database directory and typed out the command,my hands completely steady now:
tar cf - /strike_db | compress > /mnt/floptical/strike_backup.tar.Z
The system churned to life. Files scrolled past on the terminal as tar bundled the relation files, indices, and system catalogs into a stream, compressing them before writing to the floptical drive. The RM05 disk drives' seeking noises intensified—click-whirr-click—as the read heads jumped around pulling data.
"How long?" Catherine asked, watching the progress.
I checked the file counter and did some mental math. The database was around thirty-five, maybe forty megabytes uncompressed. "Ten minutes, maybe twelve. The PDP-11's going to chug when it's compressing files."
Catherine looked at me pointedly. "We just had a firefight upstairs. I guarantee you that some local busybody has already called the police."
I shrugged. "You have any idea what the response time is?"
"For gunshots in a quiet suburb? Eight to twelve minutes if we're lucky."
I sighed,rubbing my eyes. "Let's just hope we get lucky. Couldn't be helped."
We waited in tense silence, the only sound the mechanical whirring of the disk drives and the occasional click as the read heads repositioned. Catherine kept checking her watch, then glancing at the pressure door, listening for any sounds from above.
I found myself counting the clicks. Seven. Twelve. Nineteen. Anything to keep my mind on the present problem.
Finally, the terminal beeped. Transfer complete.
I ejected the floptical disk and slipped it into its protective case. "Got it."
"Then we move. Now." Catherine was already at the door.
We climbed back up the ladder, moving quickly but quietly. Back through the basement game room, up the stairs to the main floor. The corpse of the redhead still lay in the foyer where he'd fallen. The other bodies were exactly where we'd left them.
Catherine looked around. "We need to re-seal the hidden room before we leave." I nodded. "I think if I re-transmit the card swipe, it should seal the hidden entrance." Firing up the Kaypro once again, and hooking up the same leads to the adapter, I retransmitted the sequence of bytes.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the keypad's LED flickered from green to red.
The pool table began sliding back into position, but it wasn't moving alone. A section of concrete floor, seamlessly integrated to look like regular basement flooring moved with it on hidden tracks. The hatch disappeared beneath the table, and then the floor segment locked into place around the table's base with a soft click.
How'd I miss that before?
My obliviousness aside, I was impressed. Unless you really looked, you couldn't spot the seam..
Catherine went straight to the van as soon as the basement floor was closed, returning with the cardboard box we'd brought. I grabbed the Kaypro, the programmer, my notepad and promptly started repacking the box.
As we cleaned up after ourselves, a question nagged at me. "What about them?" I gestured upward, toward where the tied-up survivors were.
Catherine paused, her expression unreadable. "What about them?"
"The ones we left alive. And the..." I hesitated. "The bodies."
"The police will find them when they arrive." She kept packing. "Vixen's problem, not ours."
"That's it?" I said, more incredulity bleeding into my voice than I had meant to show.
"What would you suggest?" Her tone was flat.
Touché
Catherine headed up the basement stairs without waiting for a response. I grabbed the equipment box and followed, taking one last look at the sealed game room. You really couldn't tell. Just a dusty basement with a pool table and some tacky pub signs.
At the top of the stairs, Catherine did a quick visual sweep of the main floor. Bodies, blood, shell casings, shattered furniture and the tied men remained as we left them. She nodded to herself, apparently satisfied, then moved to the front door.
"Check the street," she said quietly.
I peered through the window beside the door. The suburban street was still quiet. There were no twitching curtains, and no curious neighbors venturing outside. "Clear" I said.
Catherine opened the door and we walked to the van with the same unhurried confidence we'd arrived with. Just two utility workers finishing a service call. I wondered if Catherine had a plan to play off the bloodstains on her boiler suit.
She seemed utterly unconcerned about it, but that seemed to be her default state.
Snapping myself out of my thoughts,I slid into the passenger seat of the van and pulled the door shut. Catherine started the engine and pulled away from the curb at a perfectly sedate speed.
We'd made it three blocks when a squad car hurtled past us going the opposite direction, sirens blaring and lights flashing. Then another. Catherine kept her eyes forward, her speed steady.
I looked at her. "Cutting it close."
She shrugged. "Ten minutes slower than I expected."
We spent the rest of the drive back to the plumbing company's parking lot in silence. The adrenaline had fully drained away now, leaving behind a hollow exhaustion and the persistent image of the redhead's body hitting the floor on loop in my head.
Catherine parked the van in the same spot we'd taken it from. "Strip out of the boilersuit and leave everything in the van," she said, her tone businesslike. "Someone will be along to handle the gear."
I peeled off the boilersuit, folded it mechanically, and left it on the van's floor along with the cap. The fabric still smelled faintly of gunpowder. Catherine did the same, transforming back into the well-dressed woman I'd first met.
We walked back to the Camaro in silence. I slid into the passenger seat, and Catherine started the engine.
As we drove back toward New York, I found myself stuck in my own mental fog. The morning replayed in fragments: the lock-picking, the computer room's green phosphor glow, the basement door slamming open, the redhead turning toward me with his gun rising-
"Quince." Catherine's voice cut through the haze. "Are you still with me?"
I blinked, realizing we were already crossing back into Manhattan. "Yeah. Sorry."
"Don't apologize." She glanced at me, then back at the road. "Your first kill stays with you. That's normal."
I didn't respond.
"I'll be in New York for a while," she continued, her tone deliberately conversational now, pulling me back to the present. "I'll be analyzing the database and running down leads. It could take me a week or longer, depending on the contents." She paused. "I'll get in touch if I need your help with anything."
"What kind of help?"
"Technical support with some risk of combat." She navigated through morning traffic with practiced ease. "It depends on what assets are still active and what condition they're in."
We drove in silence for a few more blocks before Catherine spoke again. "You did well today."
"I killed someone."
"You defended yourself. There's a difference." Her voice was matter-of-fact, neither condoning nor condemning. "You'll process it however you need to. Just don't let it paralyze you."
I looked out the window at New York City passing by. Pedestrians crossing roads, a repair team working on a pothole, street vendors. It all seemed so disconnected from what I had just done.
Catherine pulled up to the same cross street where we'd met that morning. It felt like days ago that I had hopped into her car, instead of just hours.
She reached into the glove box and pulled out a manila envelope, handing it to me. "A little on the lower side for this job, but part of your payment was in the skills."
I took the envelope. It had weight to it, cash probably. I didn't open it. "Seems fair."
"I'll be in touch." She met my eyes. "Don't let it paralyze you."
I nodded and stepped out of the Camaro. The door shut with that same solid thunk, and the car disappeared into traffic.
The two-block walk back to the warehouse felt longer than usual. My legs were heavy, and my mind kept circling back to the same moments: the gunfight, the bodies, Catherine's cold efficiency as she kicked a man in the temple.
It gets easier, she'd said.
I wasn't sure I wanted it to get easier.
The warehouse's side entrance was exactly as I'd left it. I slipped inside, checked that no one was watching, and made my way to the cargo elevator. The familiar bone-shaking descent felt almost comforting after the morning's chaos.
The bunker's harsh lighting greeted me as the doors opened.
I needed to think. To process. To figure out what the hell I was going to do next.
I turned right down the operational wing, past the communications room and the equipment staging area with its stolen uniforms, past the changing stalls and the R&D room where the Rocketeer suit stood silent on its display stand. At the end of the corridor was the armory.
The blast door was already open—I'd left it that way. Inside, weapons lined the walls in careful organization: conventional firearms on one side, energy weapons in their charging cradles on the other. The needle pistol I'd used this morning was still in my jacket holster, but I found myself staring at the other weapons as if they might have answers.
They didn't, of course.
I pulled out the envelope Catherine had given me and finally opened it. Twenties and fifties, neatly bundled. I did a quick count—three thousand dollars. Not bad for a day's work, even if part of the payment had been the psychic skill transfer/implant.
Three thousand dollars and a body count of one.
I sat down on the armory's floor, back against the wall, the envelope still in my hands. The concrete was cold through my jeans, but I didn't move.
I needed another job. Something to keep me busy while Catherine worked her way through the STRIKE database. Something to keep my mind occupied so I wouldn't keep replaying the redhead's face as he flopped to the ground.
But right now, in the harsh fluorescent lights of an abandoned bunker, all I could do was sit and think about the fact that I'd killed someone today.
And that I hadn't hesitated.