Countdown, Issue #005

Issue #005 – – – – – controlled by Rene Sawatzki – – – – – Credits 0

Countdown was pleased to look normal again.  Not that he minded being a superhero, but when you’re trying to be stealthy and subtle a discrete appearance is usually the best plan.  After his long (and very refreshing) sleep, Countdown had made his way to the nearest store and purchased himself a simple non-heroic outfit.  Black shoes, grey slacks, light blue shirt and tie.  With the superhero costume stashed safely in his room at the hotel, he set about gathering information.

First port of call was the library where he looked up the address of the Blue Star Casino.  It wasn’t too far away on the edge of Downtown.  He planned to follow Old Father Time’s instructions and pay it a visit this evening.  But first, he wanted to check out some other details.  He used the internet to look up Officer Phil Lawrence and identified the man as a city law officer.  His career was chequered with a couple of awards and a couple of disciplinaries.  Two years ago he’d been promoted to Special Operations, whatever that was.  A news story from yesterday revealed he had been badly injured in a fight with a new super-villain who had identified herself as Got Gal.  This was odd because Countdown remembered Got Gal from the old reality.  She wasn’t any sort of villain.  Had she changed so utterly in the brave new world or was something else going on?

Next, Countdown looked up the Bull Corporation.  That turned out to be a rather bigger proposition than he had expected.  This gigantic corporation, one of the ten largest in the world, owned holdings, interests and shares in everything from A to Z.  Although it was originally a German company, it’s base of operations was Helix City and it’s public headquarters was the Bull Building in Helix Point.  The C.E.O of Bull was a man called Doctor Hans Stier.  Countdown cocked an eyebrow when he read that the police across America were now privatised and that the entire force in Helix City was owned and run by Bull.  Apparently the corporation also controlled two dozen other city forces in other states and a fair portion of the F.B.I.  Clearly, he’d need to tread carefully if he was going to mess with this monolithic organisation.

After picking up a spicy vegetable sub and a Coke, Countdown made his way to the address he’d found for the Blue Star.  As evening closed in the purple and red lights of the casino flickered uncertainly in the approaching gloom.  This was not an expensive joint.  Several rows of motorcycles outside suggested it might be quite a tough place (though Countdown preferred not to believe every stereotype in every circumstance, stereotypes did happen for a reason.)

Inside he bought a light beer from the bar, planning to nurse it and sip it in order to make sure his head remained clear.  Then he strolled down towards the open casino area. Sure enough, tough-looking tattooed men and pierced women in leathers and chains played at the slots and the tables laid out before him.  A biker’s casino?  Well, why not?  His outfit, carefully purchased in order to fit in, no longer provided quite the level of anonymity Countdown would have liked.  Still, he hoped he wouldn’t be here long.  He took the remaining sixty bucks he had left over and placed a bet on the roulette table according to Old Father Time’s instructions.  The bet did not come up and he lost all his money.

“Oh,” Countdown muttered.  “I’m pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“I’m sorry?” A young lady who was standing nearby asked: “Did you say something?”  She was dressed in leather trousers and a tight white t-shirt with the words: “Hell Bitch” on the chest above a flaming skull.   Her soft voice and educated politeness were a surprise.
“No, no,” Countdown explained.  “I was just thinking aloud.”
The girl laughed: “I do that a lot,” she grinned.  “Any luck tonight?”
“Nope,” Countdown said.  “I was just going to leave.”
“But you only just got here,” The girl said.  “You’ve only had one bet.”
“I bet all the cash I had and I lost.  I’m not much of a gambler.”  The girl chuckled and placed chips on the next spin of the wheel, duplicating the exact bet she had just seen Countdown make.  It came in!  “Looks like you missed your luck by one spin,” She told him.  “Your loss, my gain.”
“Do it again,” Countdown said, with a flash of inspiration.
“Huh?” The girl asked.
“Place the same bet again.”
“It’ll never come up again straight away,” She pointed out.  “The odds against it are immense.”
“The odds are the same,” Countdown told her.  “The odds of predicting two in advance are greater, but the chance of a repeat now after the fact are unaltered.”
The girl shrugged and put some chips on the same bet.  “More,” Countdown said.  “Bet more.”

A group of other bikers had gathered around the girl and were watching events.  “The man likes to roll the dice,” Said a huge bearded biker.  He put a mound of coins on the bet.  Half a dozen other bikers also stacked their cash on the bet and, belatedly, the girl pushed her entire pile of chips over.  “Okay then,” She told Countdown.  “I hope you’re right.”
“I’m right,” Countdown said.  He wasn’t though.  As he watched the ball bounce around the roulette wheel it was pretty clear that it was wasn’t going to fall as he had expected.  He didn’t need to use his linear powers to know that his newfound biker friends weren’t going to be very happy about that.  So Countdown froze time.

Putting a freeze on such a wide area and so many people was really taxing.  Countdown had an immense energy pool for this sort of thing but every well has its limits and he could feel his power depleting very quickly.  The hero had to move fast.  As the people around him stood locked in their paralysed stasis he nipped over, picked up the ball and dropped it into the right slot, being sure to press it down and quell the kinetic energy that was driving its movement.  Then, gently, gently, he let time take up its normal pace.

“Yes!”  Shouted the bearded biker while the others leapt and jumped and roared their approval.  It wasn’t Countdown’s finest work, to be fair.  To everybody in the room it looked like the ball had jumped erratically from one side of the wheel to the other and fallen straight into the winning place.  It was not a natural movement and given that quite a sum of money was probably going to be involved, Countdown thought he should probably make himself scarce.  Casinos didn’t take well to cheating – and he had a feeling that in a place like Helix City they’d have see their fair share of abnormal action.

His fears were confirmed when a trio of burly security men led by a woman in a smart white business suit began cutting their way through the crowd.  The bikers saw this too and he could feel the angry mood come on fast.  Clearly they didn’t take well to authority (which wasn’t a huge surprise) and any attempt to confiscate their not-inconsiderate winnings was going to meet with violence.  Countdown considered using his powers to get the hell out of Dodge, but something kept him back.  He had been instructed to come here and participate in this.  Perhaps he needed to see how it played out?  The question was, which side to take?