Hope Rides Alone

[Proto Man]

Rounding the corner of the apartment, Proto Man furrowed his brow at the sight before him. His door was lying on its side across from where it should have been. Although he was occasionally prone to some haziness if he didn’t defragment every once in a while, he was certain he would have remembered punching his door off its pneumatic track. The preteen android flexed his hand, and as he released it, the Proto Buster replaced it in a swirl of white lights. He extended his other hand, and once his shield materialized, he placed it onto his back in the event that this went sour.

With his equipment readied, he advanced on his apartment—his breath short and shallow as he racked his mind for what might be inside. When he reached the threshold, he paused to collect himself and then swung around, his gun leading the way as he stepped inside. After sweeping the immediate room, he noted that his bathroom door was equally smashed and lying on pieces in the middle of his living/bedroom.

“Both these doors are smashed outward…” He spoke aloud as he walked over to his bathroom and peered inside. As he surveyed the little room, he wished he would have owned anything, because he could tell if there’d be any sort of scuffle, and none of the surfaces were altered to indicate a break-in. Had someone teleported into his bathroom and then proceeded to bust their way out? Were they hoping to get a jump on him, or had they just miscalculated and wound up in his apartment?

“Not a good way to start the week,” Proto Man muttered as he pressed the intercom to summon some assistance. After a short while, he received an automated prompt requesting the nature of his problem. “Yea, I think someone broke out of my apartment.”

“You had a break-in, Sir?”

“Uh, no…” the robot started as he glanced over his shoulder at the chunks of wood that used to be his bathroom door. “Someone got into my bathroom and damaged my furniture.”

“I see…I will send a maintenance droid and a security officer up to your room, Mr. Man.”

Proto Man rolled his eyes and let go of the button. Turning away from his open doorway, he walked over to the small balcony and glanced through the glass door. From the look of things, there was nothing out of the ordinary, although it seemed as if his fire-escape was open. Was that the work of a lazy building supervisor or something a little more insidious?

About a minute after his intercom conversation, the robot was greeted by a young-looking man in a robe. “Are you the tenant of this apartment?” He asked as he extended a slender hand.

“That would be me, Mister?” The robot reached out and grasped the man’s hand.

“Gashon, Gashon Blastmor. I’m the security man for this building.”

“Okay,” Proto Man said as he glanced at the robed figure. Something about the slender, pale-skinned man didn’t scream ‘small-time guard.’ Shrugging it off for the moment, he pointed to the door in the hallway. “I take it you’ve seen my front door? The bathroom door is in pieces behind me.”

Gashon nodded his head and walked over to the mess of wooden shards and dust. The man reached into his robe and produced a strange device that made a series of strange noises as it swept it over the floor and former doorway to the bathroom. “No signs of any sort of cosmic disturbances. Usually teleportation devices will leave behind a sort of residual energy, but there’s nothing here.” The guard glanced over his shoulder at the preteen. “You don’t suffer from any night terrors or weird alternate personalities, right?”

“Not at all.”

“You bother to check the cameras?” Gashon asked, pointing to a corner of the ceiling.

Proto Man followed his finger to a small, seemingly nondescript sphere that would have been virtually invisible under normal lighting. “What the hell is that?”

“That’s a micro-camera,” the guard answered in the most matter-of-fact tone possible. “Someone probably wanted to make sure you didn’t get into any trouble. There’s probably one in the kitchen and bathroom as well. You didn’t know about those?”

“Why would I be aware that this place was filled with surveillance cameras?” Proto Man demanded as he climbed onto his bed to get closer to the tiny device in the corner. He put his index finger up against it and pushed until he felt the glass shatter beneath his gloved digit. “Is this common?”

The guard shrugged his shoulders. “Up here on the top tiers? It’s not something you should be surprised by, that’s for sure. You’re a Prime, why do you think they’d let you wander around unsupervised?”

“Son of a…” Proto Man clenched his fists as he swallowed the last word of that remark. When he went to speak again, an indicator popped up on his screen to inform him that the Jubilee parade was underway. “I have to go,” he muttered as he moved passed the guard and into the hallway. As he stormed away, he failed to catch the slightly open door of the cleaning closet.

With the little Prime gone, Gashon put away the sweeper and grabbed a small communications device. “Yea, I think he’ll be a ripe one for the picking. Just needs a little more time. Over.” Rising up from the floor, the robed man made his way out of the apartment. He immediately noted that he hadn’t locked the cleaning cabinet, and the door had swung open just a little. “Sloppy.”

Before shutting the cabinet, Gashon glanced at the limp form of the building’s security guard that he’d crammed in there before meeting the adolescent Prime. The portly little man’s face was still twisted up in the same shocked expression he’d been wearing when the lightsaber had cauterized its way through his heart and out the front of his chest. “Sleep tight, Officer Joe.” With that, the door clicked shut and the bolt slid into place.