No Hero by Tom Andry

Author:Tom Andry [Andry, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: pulp, comic fiction, contemporary, detective, noir, hero, super hero, mystery and suspense, comic heroes, comic book heroes, comic crime
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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I spent the majority of the day upstairs sipping the doctor's scotch. After about an hour and no hint of a buzz, I finally questioned Butler. Turned out the good doctor abhors alcohol and keeps on hand synthetic substitutes, which mimic perfectly the taste without the deleterious effects. He had the real stuff too, but Butler had been ordered not to give it to me. Seems Ignaro not only didn't want me drunk, he wanted me alert. Butler had been spiking my drinks with caffeine all afternoon. He didn't have much going on that day and was working all afternoon in his lab on God knows what. I practically gave myself a blister using the rotary phone as I checked in with Khan way more than was necessary to see how the rest of the patients were doing. So far, everyone we were tracking was still around and moving. I let him know that we'd definitely be finishing tonight and to pass that on to our people in the field.

Khan was happy to hear it. The good doctor had given him news about his condition a few days after his experiment. Something to do with electrolytes or some such thing having to do with salt and water. I even looked it up on the Network and couldn't find anything on it. Medico, of course, was all excited. Said that Khan's body was shutting down to protect itself and that the long sleep was necessary for his body to replenish itself. Other bodily systems were as fast as his legs but apparently not this one. Medico had devised some supplements that he could take to counteract the effects as a stopgap measure. He was supposed to be working on something more permanent. Early experiments by Khan with the pills had been promising. His parents were ecstatic. I was less so, but then, I was the one who would be losing an assistant.

I spent some time pacing around the doctor's house and lab, though I didn't learn anything useful. I found out how to switch off the hologram in the freezer that hid the stairway. I could walk through it if I wanted, but I just about killed myself missing the first step when I tried. I discovered that the force field paired with the Butler hologram was fairly weak. It could serve drinks and carry groceries, but it couldn't, say, catch a man who was about to break his neck falling down a set of stairs. I saw the Doc's daughter a few times, mostly playing alone or with Butler. She asked me about Assistant but I didn't know when the Doc would be done with it. I tried to scope out the security systems, just to get an idea of what he had, but everything was so foreign, so alien to anything I'd seen before, it was pretty much useless to me. Ted would have given his pinky to get his hands on nearly any of it, I'd have bet.

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