Vessell is friends with Timeslide and Granite Phantom, too, so he’d managed to get the room time-proofed and phase-sealed. Or at least he said he had. You never know how much is bullshit with him.
He’d made an effort, I’ll say that for him. There was wine and beer, and a party plate from Marks and Sparks with little sausage rolls and vol-au-vents on it: everything except massage chairs. Vessell seemed to want to make the planning of the robbery a festive occasion, whereas mostly they tend to be fairly task-centered affairs.
So there was a good atmosphere, as far as that went. But when we ran through the plan, it was obvious it still had a serious flaw. Probably more than one, if the truth be told, but certainly one that kind of jumped up, grabbed you by the collar, and screamed “serious fucking flaw!”
We could get into the building at night when it was empty. We could break the vault and get our hands on a good proportion of what was in it. With Naseem on board, we could even stow the goods where they couldn’t be found until the heat died down and it was safe to sell them on.
But we didn’t have a strong guy. None of us, not even George, had the serious offensive capability that would allow us to walk away after the job through the shitstorm of superpowered cops who would come down on us out of a clear sky, bringing to bear such a ridiculous variety of powers that our feet would not touch thefucking ground. We needed at the very least the Rainbow Bandit or Ultravox, and preferably one or more of the four Apocalypse Boys. Otherwise there was no way we were getting out of that vault in units of more than one molecule across.
I should say here that this stuff hurts me. It hurts me in my heart. I was a career criminal back in the old days, before all this bullshit, when all you needed was a crowbar and a hopeful disposition. These days, you can’t even knock over a post office without Doctor Doom, Lex Luthor, and the marching band of the radioactive zombie death-ray commandos on your team. And even then, it’s ten to one that one of the really big hitters like Saint Seraph or the Epitome will amble along and you’ll go to the wall anyway.
It’s not the endoclasm that’s the problem, you know? It’s human nature. The endoclasm gave about one in ten people superhuman powers, but most people are scared shitless when microwaves shoot out of their arses or their chins sprout adamantium bristles or they wake up one morning lying upside down on the ceiling. They fall apart quickly, burn out in some really nasty superpowered suicide, or else repress their abilities so deeply they effectively depower themselves: psychic castration, the experts call it. Two kinds of personality ride the crisis out okay: the deeply criminal and the deeply moral, or, as you might say, the walking ids and the walking superegos. And those law-and-order bastards seem to outnumber us enhanced villains by about a hundred to one.
I don’t mean supervillains, you understand: I mean good, old-fashioned burglars, bank robbers, and stick-up merchants who just happen to have picked up powers during the endoclasm. We’re not interested in ruling the world, or destroying it, or having a big, pointless punch-up with a bunch of twats in tights. We just ply our trade, when we’re allowed to, do the job, and then clock off.
So yeah, anyway, we’re contemplating the ruin of Vessell’s plan, and we’re thinking too bad, because it’s a nice bank vault full of all kinds of good stuff, and it would be a pleasant thing indeed to get in there and have a rummage around. Then Vessell said, “In case you’re wondering about the getaway, I’m thinking we’ll use Gallo.”
There was a blank silence. It was just amazement at first, but then I went right on through to being angry. Seems I was wrong about why Vessell had brought me in: it wasn’t because I’m Lockjaw, it was just because I used to be friends with Gallo.
“Gallo?” Gruber echoed.
He’d made an effort, I’ll say that for him. There was wine and beer, and a party plate from Marks and Sparks with little sausage rolls and vol-au-vents on it: everything except massage chairs. Vessell seemed to want to make the planning of the robbery a festive occasion, whereas mostly they tend to be fairly task-centered affairs.
So there was a good atmosphere, as far as that went. But when we ran through the plan, it was obvious it still had a serious flaw. Probably more than one, if the truth be told, but certainly one that kind of jumped up, grabbed you by the collar, and screamed “serious fucking flaw!”
We could get into the building at night when it was empty. We could break the vault and get our hands on a good proportion of what was in it. With Naseem on board, we could even stow the goods where they couldn’t be found until the heat died down and it was safe to sell them on.
But we didn’t have a strong guy. None of us, not even George, had the serious offensive capability that would allow us to walk away after the job through the shitstorm of superpowered cops who would come down on us out of a clear sky, bringing to bear such a ridiculous variety of powers that our feet would not touch thefucking ground. We needed at the very least the Rainbow Bandit or Ultravox, and preferably one or more of the four Apocalypse Boys. Otherwise there was no way we were getting out of that vault in units of more than one molecule across.
I should say here that this stuff hurts me. It hurts me in my heart. I was a career criminal back in the old days, before all this bullshit, when all you needed was a crowbar and a hopeful disposition. These days, you can’t even knock over a post office without Doctor Doom, Lex Luthor, and the marching band of the radioactive zombie death-ray commandos on your team. And even then, it’s ten to one that one of the really big hitters like Saint Seraph or the Epitome will amble along and you’ll go to the wall anyway.
It’s not the endoclasm that’s the problem, you know? It’s human nature. The endoclasm gave about one in ten people superhuman powers, but most people are scared shitless when microwaves shoot out of their arses or their chins sprout adamantium bristles or they wake up one morning lying upside down on the ceiling. They fall apart quickly, burn out in some really nasty superpowered suicide, or else repress their abilities so deeply they effectively depower themselves: psychic castration, the experts call it. Two kinds of personality ride the crisis out okay: the deeply criminal and the deeply moral, or, as you might say, the walking ids and the walking superegos. And those law-and-order bastards seem to outnumber us enhanced villains by about a hundred to one.
I don’t mean supervillains, you understand: I mean good, old-fashioned burglars, bank robbers, and stick-up merchants who just happen to have picked up powers during the endoclasm. We’re not interested in ruling the world, or destroying it, or having a big, pointless punch-up with a bunch of twats in tights. We just ply our trade, when we’re allowed to, do the job, and then clock off.
So yeah, anyway, we’re contemplating the ruin of Vessell’s plan, and we’re thinking too bad, because it’s a nice bank vault full of all kinds of good stuff, and it would be a pleasant thing indeed to get in there and have a rummage around. Then Vessell said, “In case you’re wondering about the getaway, I’m thinking we’ll use Gallo.”
There was a blank silence. It was just amazement at first, but then I went right on through to being angry. Seems I was wrong about why Vessell had brought me in: it wasn’t because I’m Lockjaw, it was just because I used to be friends with Gallo.
“Gallo?” Gruber echoed.
Similar Books
