Day 1
I sat in my bed, eyes firmly on the bottom of the other bed. The day passed by slowly, time dragging by. My day was only broken by my occasional slow trips to the bathroom, and eating the blandest meals imaginable. Mainly rice and tofu. I hadn't stocked much in terms of flavorful food int he bunker because I had assumed I'd always be able to make a trip out. The most flavorful item I had was the Emergen-C I had with meals. I missed flavor.
I'd already worked my way through every book in the bunker and bitterly regretted not buying more books to read while I was able. This was agonizing.
Day 5
I was still alone with my thoughts and my (extremely itchy) slowly mending ribcage. Deciding to make some productive use of the time, I began to think about what I'd do once I had the startup capital. I'd need to build a whole graphical environment or use a preexisting one, then build an early web browser. Did HTML come into existence earlier here?
I determined that I'd need to do more research once I was done with the Stane job and had some startup capital. I needed to figure out the state of GUIs. In my timeline the Apple 2 was already a going concern in 1984, and I had to assume that newer consumer PC's then the ones I had interacted with so far had graphical userspaces. Graphical interfaces probably looked somewhat similar here, if trends continued, but were probably slightly ahead of where they had been in my dimension.
Moving on from unproductive technical speculation that had only resulted in the conclusion "more research needed" I decided to think about future funding rounds.
Who would I go to for followup rounds of funding once I burned through my initial capital? While I didn't need an answer for that question now, I'd need one eventually.
Day 10
While thinking about my startup again, my mind drifted to the Termite. The Termite was a very minor-league supervillain who Stane had hired to harass companies associated with Tony Stark. The existence of superhumans who specialized in that sort of chicanery opened up a worrying can of worms when it came to corporate competition in Earth 616. My startup could end up being open to some of the same risks of more.....tactile coercion. I'd need something to prevent that.
Sadly, Maverick Solutions didn't exist in this part of the multiverse.
I'd think about it some more, and something would come up. If you let a problem percolate at the back of your head, you'd usually come up with something.
Day 14
A thought intruded the day of the appointment as I moved towards the bunker elevator. I was missing my needle pistol. I must have left it in the DRC building, and I had been in no condition to remember that at the time. I groaned, palm gently meeting my face. That left me with limited sidearm options. I couldn't exactly go unarmed. I'd need to pull something else out of the armory.
I painstakingly made my way over to the armory, the fluorescent lights of the bunker beating down on me. My ribs still twinged as I moved, only slightly deadened by the painkillers.
The two ruined Glocks were still present, but I made a beeline for the gyrojet pistol. The submachine gun wouldn't fit in my shoulder rig. I picked up the pistol, feeling the heft. After clearing it, I dry-fired it a few times, getting a feel for the trigger pull. Different from anything I was used to.
I laid out the ammunition next, pulling one of each type from their respective boxes. Standard rounds, explosive, and heat-seeking. I lined them up on the workbench and actually looked at them for the first time.
They weren't what I expected.
The rounds from my timeline had been crudely stabilized by angled exhaust ports. Spin stabilization, like rifling but achieved through thrust vectoring. These? The rounds had actual fins. The fins were recessed into grooves along the rocket body, presumably deploying after launch. I could see the machining marks where they'd been fitted.
I picked up one of the heat-seeking rounds, turning it in the light. The nose cone was darker, almost black. Some kind of sensor array, probably. The fins on this one looked more complex, with what might have been micro-actuators at the base.
How did they get this type of tech in the 70's while mainframes were still in use. I'd have to take one of these rounds apart at some point, just out of sheer curiosity.
The rounds all looked expensive. That explained why there were only thirty-five rounds total in the cache. At a guess, I was looking at several hundred dollars per standard round, and I'd hate to see what the specialized rounds cost.
I carefully returned the rounds to their boxes, except for a magazine's worth of standard rounds. Six rounds. That's all the Gyrojet held per magazine. I loaded them carefully, each one a small investment sliding into place. 1 explosive, 1 heatseeker and 4 standards to complete the magazine. I grabbed the two extra magazines, and loaded them with the standard rounds.
After tenderly refitting my chest rig and the SHIELD bodysuit, I draped my jacket over it and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. The gyrojet pistol definitely created more of a bulge under my jacket. It was noticeably chunkier than the needle pistol had been. They were around the same length, but the gyrojet had more girth to it.
I adjusted the jacket, trying to minimize the printing. It would have to do.
On that note, I slowly made my way over to the elevator, and prepared myself for the ride to the clinic.
After taking a while to traverse my way through the NYC public transit system (stairs were slower when you were injured), and even longer to walk to the warehouse, I finally arrived at the warehouse in Tribeca. I buzzed at the back door.
"Afternoon. It's Quince. I'm here for my 3 PM checkup."
Dr. Simmons promptly responded. "Excellent. Come on up." The door clicked open. I walked in.
After making the pilgrimage into her office, I wasn't left waiting long. Doctor Simmons entered the room. "Let's get you checked up."
She led me back to the same exam room. The examination was efficient and professional. She had me breathe deeply while she palpated my ribs, checking for tenderness and alignment. I winced a few times, but nothing like the agony from two weeks ago.
"Good news," she said, stepping back. "The ribs are knitting well. You're right on schedule. Keep taking the anti-inflammatory, keep it light for another week or two."
She checked my eyes with the penlight, and asked about headaches, dizziness, nausea.
"Concussion symptoms are resolving nicely. No lingering cognitive issues that I can detect. You got lucky. Things could have been much worse."
"So I'm cleared?"
"For light activity, yes. Don't go getting into any more fights for at least another three weeks. After that, you should be mostly functional." She smiled. "Come back if anything changes. Sharp pain, breathing problems, anything unusual. Otherwise, you're good to go."
She handed me another bottle of anti-inflammatories. "Finish these out. You're healing well."
I thanked her and made my way back out to the street.
Day 20
My mind had again drifted to the startup. Dr.Simmons had said I could walk around, so I managed to buy a copy of UNIX review at a electronics store.This was so I could learn a bit more about the basis of computing here, (and also I was going to go insane if I had to be alone with my thoughts anymore). What I had found had been a bit surprising.
Besides the relative popularity of reduced instruction set computing and the overall higher baseline level of advancement in terms of processing muscle, GUI's hadn't taken off as widely as I expected. Miniaturization was well ahead of where it would be in my 1984, but a proper portable computer was expensive. The computer that Mills had let me use for the safehouse job had cost around $4,000 new. More pertinently, the X Window System had been released in 1982, not 1984, which meant graphical environments were already being deployed. I could build on top of whatever version of X was in use instead of reinventing the wheel. Writing my own windowing system from scratch would be a herculean undertaking, especially with my lack of familiarity with the hardware architectures here.
My ribs twinged as I shifted position, and my mind drifted back to the problem of physical security. The sharp reminder of my own vulnerability made it impossible to ignore.
Superhuman corporate saboteurs were a real threat in this world. Off the top of my head: Termite, Ghost, Saboteur—creative name—,Spymaster, and some obscure Namor villain whose powerset I couldn't quite recall. I wasn't even sure if the last three were active right now, but the point remained. Someone could hire any of them to absolutely RUIN my business.
Who provided protection against that kind of threat? Silver Sable International was the first name that came to mind. Professional, effective, expensive. Worth checking her rates, at least. See what the market looked like.
But even as I thought it, I knew that I probably couldn't afford her rates.
What did I have that Silver Sable didn't?
The answer came unbidden. Meta knowledge.
She had resources, reputation, and infrastructure. But I knew things. I knew which infrequently seen characters, or characters who'd disappear off panel had good powers. I had a vague idea of when some of them would come onto the scene.
I could open a small-scale mercenary company, nothing too large, and just hire some minor league superhumans and ex-military types. It'd diversify my income streams, and I'd have an idea of where to find some.
The idea was taking shape, but I forced myself to slow down. Run it through properly. Pros and cons.
Cons. This was crime-adjacent. I specifically wanted to be done with this side of things. Better for my health, happiness, and general longevity to get out and stay out of this racket entirely. It would also reflect badly on my startup if I was associated with this sort of thing. The whole point was going legitimate. Clean money, clean business.
Pros.It gave me access to corporate security that could actually handle superhuman threats. Brinks guards were fine for keeping out burglars, but they wouldn't do anything to someone like Saboteur or Ghost. Your average rent-a-cop wasn't stopping anybody on that level.
A team of low-level superhumans augmented by ex-mil types would be vastly more expensive than traditional security. But it would actually work against the threats that mattered in this universe. And if I structured it right, I could farm them out to other clients. Corporate security consulting, executive protection, asset recovery. The kind of work Silver Sable International did, just smaller scale. It might even pay for itself eventually.
More than that, it further leveraged the one real advantage I had in this world. I knew things. I could pick up assets for this hypothetical PMC with relative ease.
But that made me pause. Why was I considering this? I'd been hurt more in the past few months than in my entire previous life combined. Every venture had ended with me injured, traumatized, or both. My ribs were still healing from the last disaster. Why would I want to keep that door open?
The answer, when I let myself acknowledge it, was uncomfortable.
Control.
I'd always had control freak tendencies. Valued control and agency above almost everything else. It's what drew me to computer engineering in the first place. A desire to understand how things worked, paired with the need for control.
But this universe was a far more dangerous place than the one I'd left behind. The sheer unpredictability of it all was terrifying in a way I hadn't fully processed.
And when faced with that kind of chaos, I was grasping for anything familiar. Anything I could control.
I shook myself back to practicalities. I didn't have to decide anything now.
But it was worth researching. Corporate structure, holding companies, whatever laws covered PMCs. Questions for a lawyer, eventually. For now, I just needed to let the idea simmer on the backburner.
More pressingly, I needed to figure out what I was going to do for muscle on the heist. I didn't know anybody I trusted enough, and more importantly, I didn't know anyone competent enough for something like this.
I was an engineer, not a spy. My knowledge of physical infiltration began and ended with what I'd seen in movies and read in thriller novels. Corporate Intelligence Gathering: A Practical Guide did have some helpful pointers, but that was mostly theory I hadn't ever put into practice. The book mostly served to underline how much I didn't know. The Stane job would require professionals, even with the support of the AIM cell. I needed people who actually knew how to breach secure facilities and get out clean.
Vito's roster probably trended towards low-level mob legbreakers who were good for roughing up debtors but would probably get us all killed trying to crack a corporate R&D facility.
Reynolds had access to that higher class of muscle. But I didn't trust him further than I could throw him. Working with him again felt like placing a sign on my back that said "stab here please".
That left me with limited options. I'd need to keep my ears open. Maybe once I was fully healed, I could call Vito and fish for information. See if he knew anyone, or knew someone who knew someone. It was a long shot, but it was the best I could do for now.
These problems could wait until I could walk without wincing.
Day 30
After successfully distracting myself from the one constant source of misery since I had been translocated with this dimension,at the end of my convalescence I finally had to address it. My family.
I missed them. That was a sentiment that had undergirded my whole presence in this universe. It hadn't informed every decision I had made, but it had been a constant background radiation of misery. I loved all of them and it was a hole in my heart knowing that I'd never see them again.
My mother's advice—some of which I'd half-listened to because I thought I'd hear it a thousand more times. My brother's jokes that I'd rolled my eyes at. My father's quiet presence at the dinner table, the way he'd nod when you said something he agreed with, never needing to fill the silence with words.
All of those moments I'd taken for granted, assumed would always be there. Gone in an instant. And I'd never get them back.
Their presence was a constant absence. The grief would ambush me at random. Jimmy mentioning his mother in passing, a family laughing together on the street corner, the smell of something my mom used to make. Each time the pang would strike sharp and sudden, and I'd have to force myself to push through it.
It was horrid. But I couldn't afford to sit with it. Not yet. Not when I was still this vulnerable, still this exposed.
I'd have time to properly unpack all of this later. Long drives across the country were good for that kind of reflection. Miles of empty road with nothing but your thoughts. I'd deal with it then.
Right now, the wheels were already in motion. I needed to push forward until I completed the heist and had the beginnings of my startup fund in hand. Once I was out, once I was safe, once I had some stability, then I could afford to grieve properly.
The only way out was through.
Day 35
Exactly 5 weeks after my injury, I decided it was time to get moving.
I made my way out of the warehouse into the Hell's Kitchen morning. The air was crisp, almost cold, with that particular quality early summer mornings had in New York. The street was already coming alive, a few early risers heading to work, a delivery truck idling at the curb, someone walking their dog.
It felt good to move without pain. Good to walk at a normal pace instead of the careful shuffle I'd been reduced to. My body felt like my own again, not a collection of injuries held together by painkillers.
I'd call Vito,and see what he knew about finding muscle.
Dialing the number I had now memorized, I experimentally moved my shoulders. My body felt fine. I was still impressed with how completely my ribs had healed.
Vito picked up on the second ring.
"Morning." he grunted, seemingly still half-awake.
Before I could ask him anything further, he bulldozed onwards.
"Glad you called. Ava called and left a number two weeks back. She wanted you to call her. Seemed hurried."
Well, that was interesting.
After taking down the number, I hung up and fed more coins into the payphone, my previous goal set aside. My interest was definitely piqued.
Dialing Catherine's number, I heard her pick up.
"Hello?"