The first Goodwill on Curtner had nothing. Men's dress section was picked clean of anything below a 44 chest, and the one jacket that might have worked had a odd stain on the left lapel
The second, off Stevens Creek, was worse. Not a single suit in sight.
The drive up toward SF gave me time to think. I'd been turning over the masked mastermind problem since I'd decided I needed one, and my brain kept pulling up examples from Earth-616 that were not, on reflection, encouraging.
The Masked Marauder. Building manager. Mechanical genius, to be fair, but his plan had been to take over the Maggia by building a robot that could absorb the skills of three criminals, which was exactly the kind of convoluted bullshit that got you defeated by Daredevil in the second act. He'd survived that (somehow), pivoted to Iron Man as a target, and that had gone about as well as one would expect.
Nick Lewis Senior had been more disciplined, at least in concept. Mask, coat, gun. No convoluted use of robotics. The alliance with the Green Goblin was a mistake, but I still gave him partial credit. He'd died in a shootout with police, which was (still) a bad outcome.
Nick Lewis Junior had put the costume back on a decade later to avenge his father and establish himself as lord of the underworld, and had shot his own girlfriend by accident in the process because he didn't check who was under the Big Man mask before pulling the trigger. The lady who had gotten shot had been Foswell's daughter, maybe. I didn't recall the details.
The point was that the historical baseline for this archetype was not exactly inspiring.
I merged onto 101 north.
On the more successful side of things, there was the Rose, but he had a LOT going on.
The Goodwill in Daly City had a parking lot full of minivans and a men's section that took up most of the back wall. I grabbed a cart out of habit, which was stupid since I wasn't buying furniture, put it back, and started working the racks.
The suits were mostly bad. A powder blue polyester three-piece from the late seventies. Something in brown houndstooth that smelled like a storage unit. A double-breasted suit in gray that looked like moths had been at it.
I almost missed it because someone had hung it in with the sport coats. Black wool, two-button, peak lapels, no visible staining. I pulled it off the rack. The shoulders were close. The chest ran slightly large, which I could work with. There was a faint shine on the elbows from wear, but that read as lived-in rather than shabby at the right distance.
I wasn't very familiar with men's suiting, but it seemed reasonably well made.
The trousers were on the same hanger, safety-pinned. Same fabric, matching black, flat front, full break. Someone had bought this as a set and worn it until they'd grown out of it, or gotten out of whatever business required a black suit.
I draped it over my arm and kept moving. Found a white dress shirt in a 16-35 that would do. A black tie, silk, no pattern. A leather belt in black with a plain buckle.
My total at the register came to fourteen dollars and change.
I carried the bag back to the van and sat in the driver's seat for a moment. The suit jacket and pants would need pressing. The shirt smelled of stale sweat. Neither of those was hard to fix.
I still needed the mask and the vocoder. Those were going to be interesting problems.
I started the van and pulled out of the lot, back toward 101 south. The bay was flat and gray to my left, slightly choppy. It mirrored my slightly pensive mood at the prospect of dipping my toes back into crime
I looked out at the bay meditatively. I needed to figure out an "in" to the local criminal scene, and thusly, needed to count what I knew.
As far as California went, LA was being run by the Pride at this point, and the SF bay area was run by the General, but everything other then that was foggy.
The General was also Karma's uncle, and if my timing was right, was going to pull up stakes and head for Madripoor after getting foiled by Jessica Drew one too many times at some point in the not too distant future.
I was pretty sure he hadn't left yet. I wasn't planning on staying involved in crime, but getting a sense of what the scene was like around here could only help me.
That evening, I idly browsed the shelves of the electronics store where I had sourced most of my gear for my basement lab. I was looking for a modulator, but was coming up short. Nothing I could build out of off-shelf parts would fit under a mask.The smallest viable build was still too bulky.
Evidently, this time the relatively advanced nature of Earth-616 wasn't going to bail me out. On my way out, the owner looked up from his book. He was an older white guy, retired electrical engineer. I had never quite caught his name.
"Found what you're looking for?"
"Unfortunately not."
He grunted and went back to his magazine.
I pushed out into the parking lot, still deep in thought, second soldering iron under my arm.
I'd need something a bit more (for lack of a better word) analog. Plug my nose, maybe. Something to throw my voice off just enough that it'd be harder to match it to me. Gait recognition wasn't really a problem at this point in time, but I'd also need to switch up my shoe choices, just in case.
The Halloween supplies at the back of a costume shop on Stevens Creek provided a selection of masks. I idly walked. I wasn't attracted to any concept in particular for a mask, it just needed to hide my identity. As I browsed, I came across a selection of more theatrical masks,instead of costume-grade ones.
I had come in not attached to any design in particular, but that full face plague doctor's mask was too perfect not to use. I hadn't come up with a name yet, and some people would argue it clashed with the suit, but the suit was black, and the mask was black. Fashion wasn't one of my talents, so it was good enough for me.
I took my purchases back home to my rental. Firstly, I tried everything on. The suit was fine, but the mask would require some tinkering to improve visibility. I planned on widening the eyeholes,and swapping in some tinted lenses. The nose wasn't too bad, since it was on the shorter side.
I put the mask down and started preparing dinner, which was rice, some roasted vegetables and leftover rotisserie chicken, still wracking my brain as to how exactly I could make a connection.
Three days later I was back at the electronics store. I needed another soldering iron after burning out the tip on my current one, and I had decided to get some absent-minded browsing in as well. I was still turning over the criminal connection problem without much progress. The HUD work was going well, I had refined things on the software side. but the calibration hardware for the armor wasn't going to source itself.
I came around the end of an aisle and walked directly into someone studying the oscilloscopes.
Blinking, I looked at the man. He was older than me, early thirties,around 5'10. Mostly bald, short-sleeve button-down. He took a step back and blinked.
"Sorry," I said.
"No, my fault." He stuck out his hand. "Roy Caswell."
The owner materialized from somewhere. "Roy, this is Nathan Smith. Nathan, Roy knows more about power systems than anyone who's come through here. Nathan's more on the software side." He delivered this last part as a mild disclaimer and went back to his counter, re-opening his ever-present book.
Roy did not appear to register the disclaimer as meaningful. He launched immediately into the oscilloscope he'd been looking at, why the bandwidth spec was misleading, what he actually needed versus what was on the shelf. I asked one question about the sampling rate and that was essentially it for the next hour. I found myself actually engaged, even though I lacked some of the requisite background.
After a while, I interjected.
"What do you do for work?"
Roy shrugged. "For my day job, I work at Sheridan Industries as an electrical engineer."
I shrugged. "Haven't heard of them. What do they do?"
Roy smiled. "We're an integrated energy services company. We do drilling, infrastructure, manufacturing, the whole chain. I work on pipeline monitoring, control systems, and..."
Roy trailed off, his face dropping slightly, "Wrangle vendors...."
Roy seemed knowledgeable. I might as well float my current problem at him.
"That's pretty interesting stuff." I paused. "On an unrelated note, I've been having trouble sourcing something proprietary for a side project. The usual channels haven't been helpful."
Roy opened his mouth, then glanced at his watch. Something shifted in his expression.
"Ah, hell." He was already patting his pockets for a pen. "Diane's going to kill me." He found a receipt, wrote two numbers on it, held it out. "That's my line, and that's a BBS."
He paused again. "People post some interesting sourcing leads there, might help with your problem." He was already moving toward the door. "Nice meeting you, Nathan."
I thanked him and walked back to the van. Finally, I had something I could follow up on. The drive seemed to take forever, every red light a unacceptable delay.
After what seemed like an eternity, I pulled into the driveway and immediately went downstairs to my workstation. After getting a busy signal the first time, the second time I successfully dialed into the server. I would never get used to the warbling of the modem when I was connecting to remote systems. I couldn't wait for broadband...
A ASCII art display titled "Kirby Cove" greeted me. It was a bay area BBS. After some arrow key paging,I made my way to the hardware subforum.
I started reading back through the last month of posts. It took about ten minutes to find Roy. He typed like he talked. Enthusiastically.
Looking through the list of boards, I stumbled across something interesting. There was a board for swaps, and some of them were sourced in...interesting ways.
Someone was moving a lot of R-1000 processors, "surplus from a recent lab closure,"
Someone else had an industrial laser, "lightly used, no questions about prior application."
The final post that caught my eye was from a handle called BaySpelunker, selling a mainframe he described as "liberated from an abandoned facility, full operational condition, some water damage to the housing, cosmetic only." He added, in what read as genuine regret, that he'd had to move fast and the police had locked down the site before he could get back for a second trip with his boat. "Lot of interesting hardware there a year back," they wrote. "What a waste."
Making my way through the swap section, I ran across an interesting one day old post. Someone was trying to be subtle about energy weapons.
Looking to acquire directed energy hardware. Plasma based systems preferred. Serious buyer, cash available. No reply necessary. Thursday evenings, corner of Sixth and Minna, SoMa, 9pm. Ask for Prof.
I had a SHIELD issue plasma rifle sitting in the basement workshop doing nothing useful. Sourcing power packs for it was going to be a problem regardless. The cells looked complex and I knew my limits. I wasn't going to be able to reverse engineer the charger. I'd be more than happy to exchange it and some of the cells for cash and more importantly some facetime with someone who had a better read on the Bay Area criminal scene then I did. I could use the gyrojet pistol as a stopgap in the interim, or just buy something boring like a Glock.
Thursday evening. Sixth and Minna.
I logged off and went upstairs to find the suit.
The next two days blurred by. I dedicated some time to figuring out the issue of my voice. My first thought was a clothespin (cheap) but it would be painful to wear longterm. I ended up stuffing one nostril with a folded piece of medical gauze and taping it in, which shifted my voice enough to be noticeable. It gave my voice a head cold effect that I couldn't entirely fix. It would have to do. Most people would be hopefully distracted with the mask.
The rest of the kit came together on impulse. Different watch, a cheap Timex. Black leather gloves. Black loafers instead of my usual sneakers.
I briefly considered a cane. Something with a handle, a bit of visual weight to the overall silhouette. Too over the top.
On Thursday evening, I packed my costume in a sports bag, swaddled the SHIELD plasma rifle(a H&K PEW-2) in some cloth and plopped it in a second sportsbag, and shuttled both out to the driveway and into the van. I was wearing a tshirt and sweatpants with the SHIELD bodysuit under it, just in case. I planned to change properly once I arrived. Once I figured out sourcing, I'd probably incorporate a bulletproof plate into my costume as well. Better to have and not need...
During the uneventful drive up 101 from San Jose to SF. I mentally took stock.
I had the gyrojet pistol in its holster in my costume bag and the plasma rifle wrapped in a separate bag, I had my full costume, and I planned to park the van several blocks away from the proposed meeting location. I would then walk two blocks, change, then walk the rest of the way, approaching the meeting location from the opposite direction.
I was forgetting something, but I couldn't put my finger on what. Ah well. I had everything important. It couldn't be too significant.
A bit later, I pulled onto Howard Street and found parking without much difficulty. The block was warehouse district on the downswing. Loading shutters were chained down, there was a industrial supply that looked like it hadn't shipped anything in two years, a trucking depot with three trucks where there should have been twenty. The streetlights threw everything orange. The few pedestrians hustled by quickly. The bay was close enough that the salty air tickled my nose.
I had been to SF in my old life, (although I had spent less time there then I had in NYC), and seeing the urban wastelands pre gentrification would never fail to give me a sense of dislocation.
I killed the engine and sat for a moment.
Then I grabbed the sports bags off the passenger seat and got out.
The loading dock alcove two blocks over was dim enough. I changed quickly. I stripped my tshirt and sweats off into the suit bag,and pulled on the dress pants, button-down over the SHIELD bodysuit. Once that was done, I strapped on the chest rig/holster over the button down,then tossed on the suit jacket. I wasn't printing too much. Then it was time for the loafers, gloves, and watch. Then the gauze and the tape, out of a package in the suit jacket pocket and packed into my right nostril. The plague doctor mask last, settling it over my face and adjusting the eyehole inserts until my sightlines were workable. My small modifications made it better than it had been to see out of.
I picked up the bag, which now held my sports clothes, grabbed the second bag with the plasma rifle in my other hand, and walked out of the alcove.
The corner of Sixth and Minna was a brisk three minute walk away. One sodium light. A dumpster. A loading dock with the shutter down.
And one person.
Young black guy, early twenties probably, light skinned. His hair was cut into a flattop and he wore a loose off the shelf letterman jacket over a 49ers shirt and jeans. Leaned against the warehouse wall with the quiet stillness of someone who'd been watching the block for a while.
I had only seen about ten pedestrians total on my walk. This was probably the titular Prof.
He seemed a bit young for tenure.
I sized up Prof more as I drew closer. The jacket was loose enough that I filed 'probably armed' and moved on. He was an inch shorter than I was, and whatever build he was carrying stayed hidden under the letterman. I might be able to take him if it came to violence. Probably.
I closed the distance and stopped at conversational range.
"I'm looking for Prof."
I sounded like someone with a head cold. Fuck me.
He looked at the mask for a moment. Then he pushed off the wall and extended his hand.
"That's me."
I set down my bags. We shook.
"You got a name?"
Shit. That's what I had forgotten. I hadn't thought of a street handle for the mystery man yet. The thought had come up, but I had punted it over the past week. I scrambled. Ghost was cool, but was taken. If I tried using that name, I'd probably end up phased into a wall head-first.
Think. I was starting from scratch on the west coast, a blank...
"Call me ... Slate."
Not my best work.
Prof nodded, seemingly satisfied.
"Assuming you have the goods."
I patted the bag on my left. "Right here. You're welcome to inspect it."
He took the bag, crouched, and unwrapped the moving blanket with the careful hands of someone who'd handled things worth handling before. A low whistle.
"Quality shit." He turned it over once, checking the receiver. "SHIELD issue too."
I stayed quiet.
"Don't see energy weapons this mint on the street too often," he murmured.
He paused again, brow slightly furrowed.
"You're from the NY metro area, aren't you? Or used to work thereabouts anyways"
What.
"What?" I said, trying to not sound like a mildly surprised Donald Duck(fucking nose plug) and failing.
"Chill" Prof gestured. "A mysterious type shows up while the whole NYC crime scene is blowing up, with access to top-shelf energy weapons...not hard to put two and two together."
I remained silent.
He nodded slowly. "I got a grand for the piece. Cash." He let that sit for a moment. "Not gonna lie, that's light for a SHIELD issue energy weapon."
I cut in. "It is."
It was about half of what Vito had paid back in NYC, all those months ago.
He turned, clapping. "But. You need a network here, right, and you're touchy about your identity judging by..." he gestured at my mask.
"I can tell you the shit that's happening on the ground. Who's who, who's doing what." He paused. "I can also make introductions."
I considered it. At this juncture I didn't really need the money that the sale would net me. I had a steady income stream, around $1000 a month after costs. The Swiss account was less flush post outlays, but it still had around $650,000. I needed a sense of what was happening on the ground here. Turk wasn't here for me to conveniently pump for info, and I could eat a month's income as the cost of learning something.
I cleared my throat. "Sounds good enough for me."
We shook hands.