The Machinist Part One: Malevolence Read Online Free

but decided to take the forty-or-so-block hike anyway.  He needed to see how the city had changed in his absence.   To get a feel for her again.  With his good arm, he pushed his way through the crowded bus terminal and started walking.
    As he navigated the sea of tourists, businessmen, hot dog vendors, and degenerates, McHenry made note of a few things: Gone, it seemed, were pagers.  Cellphones had gotten significantly smaller, which was not surprising.  Televisions he saw in shop windows had gotten bigger, thinner, and clearer.  Movies had gotten stupider. 
    There wasn’t a single phone boot h in sight.  McHenry chuckled as he wondered where the heroes where changing clothes these days.
    I t also appeared that the psychiatric hospitals had emptied their wards into the streets; a man in a suit was talking loudly to himself as he walked, gesturing as if he were talking to some invisible person.  No one else seemed to take any notice.  McHenry looked around and realized that this man wasn’t unique: dozens of New Yorkers walked around, flapping their mouths at no one in particular.
    A thought crossed his mind: Maybe one of McHenry’s villainous brethren had released some kind of neurotoxin, and this was the start of some scheme to hold the city hostage.
    Shit .
    Shit .
    H e wanted to get back in the game, sure, but he didn’t want to get caught up in the middle of somebody else ’s Big Plan.  He blinked and activated his HUD, setting it to scan the air for toxins, gases, anything he could think of.  The HUD reported no biological or viral anything , aside from the usual Manhattan air pollution.  Interestingly, though, it recognized hundreds—no, thousands—of tiny devices transmitting on low-band radio frequencies.  Although they were poorly encrypted by McHenry’s standards, there appeared to be no malicious nature to them.  What he was more suspicious of, actually, was the fact that they were demonstrating compatibility with his systems.  He resisted the urge to connect to something calling itself “Tommy’s uPad.”
    It didn’t take long for him to figure out what was going on; a woman carrying on a conversation with an unseen partner started poking at her ear saying, “Hello?  Hello?  Susan?”  She fiddled with her hair, extracted an earpiece then repeatedly jabbed her finger against a power button on it.  She cursed the whole time.
    Of course , he thought to himself.  They’re wireless headsets for phones.
    And based on the pings he was getting, the phones must have some kind of wireless data transmission protocol now as well.  McHenry made a mental note find a computer with a secure modem line later so he could investigate further.
    ***
    It wasn’t even fifteen blocks before McHenry saw his first superhero since leaving Blackiron Penitentiary.
    The first one he’d seen in person, that is.  The televisions scattered all over the city were broadcasting news and celebrity gossip about the capes-and-spandex crowd.  Newly-divorced, forty-year-old hero Silver Streak was dating a heroine half his age from Wisconsin.  Was Stargazer gay?  And so on.
    A motorcycle weaved through traffic on Broadway.  The bike’s passenger held on to the rider with one arm while twisting backwards to fire a handgun into the air.  Seconds after the bike sped past McHenry’s position, a hero flew by only a dozen feet above the traffic.
    From what McHenry could see, the hero wore a blue bodysuit, yellow gloves and cape, and was muscled like a wrestler.  There was a stylized yellow star on the flier’s chest.  The few bullets that came close to the hero as he rocketed through the air were deflected by a translucent golden force field.
    T he hero closed in and snatched the driver and the gunner off of the bike, leaving it to careen into the back of a delivery truck.  Both vehicles exploded, but the hero didn’t take notice.  He flew off holding the two badly bruised thugs by their shirt collars, one in