Unheroic Life of a Certain Cape-Chapter 65 Shitty Heist

Chapter
65 Shitty Heist
March 14, 2025. Friday. 11:02 p.m.
Seven hours. That was all the time I had left before Vanguard and the SRC marched in to gut Pride from the inside. Their clean-up operation would hit at exactly six in the morning. Which meant I had until then to sneak into Seamark, assassinate the Captain, and make sure the entire balance of Markend tipped my way. My plan was messy, fragile, stitched together with desperation and arrogance, but I didn’t need it perfect. I just needed it done, or come close to it.
I stared at my reflection in the tinted glass of a bus stop. Black suit, crisp shirt, plain pants that looked too professional to be comfortable, and an SRC identification card clipped to my pocket. The ID looked almost legitimate. My picture, my name, stamped with all the bureaucratic gloss of the Commission, the shorthand for the Superhuman Regulation Committee. Of course, my ID wasn’t real. Crow had given it to me at my request. He definitely had SRC agents working for him, but I have no idea just how high.
The Captain couldn’t be killed with what I had on hand, so I had to rely on this… secret armory I’ve read so much about.
Rows of fences layered with tripwires stretched in front of me, silent as a spider’s web. Cameras swiveled with predatory precision. Guards in black uniforms patrolled in patterns too disciplined to be casual. And behind all of it, squatting like a concrete leviathan, the compound itself: faceless walls, steel doors, and windows tinted into unreadable blackness. It reeked of secrecy and control, a fortress built to keep the public ignorant of what weapons the SRC kept inside.
The ‘voice’ whispered at the back of my head, amused. “You'd better make it count, because I want results, and you'd better deliver.”
I breathed in, straightened my jacket, and walked toward the first gate. My hand slipped into my pocket, fingers brushing the edge of the ID. My pulse quickened despite myself. For all the fences and cameras and guards, this would be the test. Not of strength, not of cunning. Instead, just a card. One simple card that said I belonged here.
I stepped into the scanner’s light. The gate beeped, scanned, hummed. The guard glanced at me, then at the ID. He didn’t even frown. “SRC business?” he asked.
“Classified,” I replied, keeping my voice steady.
He waved me through. Just like that.
The next layer, the same. The scanners hummed, the ID blinked green, and the guards barely looked at me. Level after level, door after door, no alarms, no suspicion. I could almost hear Crow’s laughter echoing in the silence, amused at how the world’s greatest watchdogs could be fooled by a piece of plastic with the right logo.
By the time I reached the third checkpoint, realization struck like a cold knife. The SRC trusted their system so blindly that one forged ID was all it took to waltz past hell’s front door.
Finally, I reached the last checkpoint. The door before me was steel-plated, reinforced to withstand a bomb. Guarding it was a woman whose appearance would’ve been laughable if not for the pressure she radiated. Dark blazer. Straight posture. And a paper bag over her head, crudely cut holes where her eyes should have been. She didn’t fidget. She didn’t even breathe too loud. This was Paperbag, the telepath who single-handedly kept intruders from touching the SRC’s armory.
Her voice was even, almost casual. “ID.”
I handed it over. She held the card in gloved fingers, her gaze behind the bag piercing deeper than sight. “Is your name Nicholas Caldwell?”
“Yes.” I kept my tone flat. My real name had to be used; I couldn’t rely on my Enhancer ratings alone, even if I had enough training. A telepath could peel through lies like skin, and one wrong answer would get my brain fried before I even touched a trigger.
Silence stretched long enough for me to feel my spine stiffen. Finally, she asked, “What’s the bag for?”
I blinked. “None of your damn business.”
Her head tilted slightly, paper crinkling with the motion, as if amused by my bluntness. For a heartbeat, I thought I had slipped. Then she let the moment pass, her tone sharpening into the crisp authority of someone who had done this dance a hundred times. “If you are going to take something out from the armory, then you'd better have signed a form.”
Inwardly, I grimaced. That meant there’d be no easy exit. Whatever I chose to take tonight would be flagged, and when I walked out, I’d get searched. No hiding a rifle under a coat or slipping out with a rocket launcher. This wasn’t going to be about clever smuggling; I’d have to count on something else entirely.
I straightened my shoulders, forcing myself into the mask I wore best. “Noted.”
She pressed her thumb to the biometric scanner beside the vault. The panel hummed, lights shifting from red to green. The steel doors shuddered and began to part.
“Fine,” she said, stepping aside. “Go on.”
And just like that, I was in.
Honestly, if I had my way of stealing from this place, I would’ve done it with violence. Waltz in here dressed in full costume, cards thrown, phasing through every bullet they could fire, and tearing out anyone who dared to block my path. It would’ve been messy, bloody, and satisfying. But I couldn’t risk getting hurt, not with what still lay ahead. I needed the weapon, not scars, so I had to play this smart.
Buying from the black market had been another option. But the problem with the black market was time. I didn’t have it. No weeks to cultivate a connection, no days to haggle or bribe. I had hours, and Crow’s backdoor into the Commission’s armory was the fastest, surest way I had left. That fact alone pissed me off, and how neatly I had been cornered into his hands again.
The hallways stretched long and white, sterile like a hospital, except for the cameras. They were everywhere, their glass eyes never blinking. I walked under them with a casual stride, noting every shadow and blind spot I could find, memorizing escape routes. The water plant on the west side had a dispenser; behind it was a cavity barely wide enough to hide something long, thin, and deadly. That was one spot. I committed it to memory.
This place wasn’t just a vault. It was also a research center. Mundanes in lab coats mixed with researcher-rated capes, moving between terminals and secured labs. They studied weapon design, experimental munitions, and even nonlethal deterrents. Office workers added to the clutter, with rows of cubicles stacked like a beehive. Their chatter drifted out into the halls, careless, as if the air itself was sterile enough to keep secrets.
“Did anyone already take care of the Windbreaker PR disaster?” a man groaned from across a cubicle wall.
“I just did the Leverage PR yesterday,” another replied. “And the one involving Promise last week. You deal with it.”
Further down, two office girls giggled, whispering about missing Nightgard when he used to visit the lab, apparently helping them “work out.”
I frowned at their voices, sharp and pointless against the hum of fluorescent lights. Loose mouths in the middle of the Commission’s most guarded research facility. Maybe the walls here really did make them feel safe. Maybe they’d forgotten what kind of monsters sat at the edges of their city. People like me.
I reached the armory. The door was a slab of steel bolted into the wall, a keypad glowing faintly at its side. Nine digits were required. The code refreshed every fifteen minutes. I stared at the screen, knowing I had no way in.
“Crow,” I murmured, teeth gritted. “The number.”
His voice threaded through my mind as if he’d been waiting. “Zero, nine, nine, nine, one, seven, three, six, two.”
I punched the sequence in before I could think twice. The panel blinked green. The locks disengaged, the mechanisms groaning as the doors began to slide apart. The air inside was colder and heavier. I stepped in, and the world sealed behind me.
The walls shimmered with embedded nullifier alloys, layered thick enough to choke the air of powers. No phasing through. No bending tricks. If I wanted something out of here, I’d need to walk it out in plain sight.
That was when I noticed I wasn’t alone.
A man in a lab coat stood by the racks, clipboard in hand, eyes narrowing as he looked me up and down. His voice was sharp, suspicious. “What are you doing here? Who are you?”
“Inspection,” I said, voice clipped and flat.
The man in the lab coat stared at me like I had just spat in his drink. He looked down at his clipboard, then back up at me, suspicion sharpening his gaze. He didn’t buy it, not for a second. I was already moving. The back of my palm smacked into the side of his neck. Movies made it look so simple: a single strike and the victim folded like paper. He didn’t. He staggered, blinked twice, and frowned at me.
“What the hell was that for!?”
I hit him again, harder, aiming around his carotid artery, delivering a shock to the carotid sinus. This time, his knees buckled and he collapsed to the floor, the clipboard clattering away. My heart hammered, breath shallow, but the room remained silent. No cameras. Of course, there wouldn’t be any. A facility like this couldn’t risk a teleporter using line of sight to breach containment. In here, it was just walls, racks, crates, and the kind of ordnance meant to level city blocks.
I scanned the room until my eyes caught what I wanted, sitting by itself in a far corner and locked in a glass box with so little security.
The W54 fission device. Pocket nuke. The warhead wasn’t impressive at first glance. It looked almost crude compared to the sleek rifles and precision gear around it. Barely two feet long, squat, and cylindrical, with olive drab casing and warning stencils faded from age. It weighed close to fifty pounds, but the destructive yield it carried was obscene. Small enough to carry in a backpack, powerful enough to erase entire blocks of Seamark’s defenses if detonated properly. It was a civilian’s nightmare in a neat little package.
“That ought to do real damage,” I muttered. Damage was too mild a word. Overkill was closer. “If the Captain doesn’t die from this, I don’t know what would it take then… Maybe a bigger nuke? Yeah, probably…”
I shoved the device into my backpack, the weight dragging against my shoulders as I zipped it shut. No time to hesitate. I moved out, grabbing a flimsy plastic cup as I passed the water dispenser. A potted plant sat beside it, inconspicuous, except for the rectangular device buried under its soil. I dug it out with quick fingers and pressed the button, not even sure what it triggered.
The answer came seconds later.
Red lights blazed overhead. A harsh alarm shredded the silence, and a voice over the intercom barked, “Attention all civilian personnel. Evacuate in an orderly fashion. This is not a drill.”
“Elegant,” Crow’s whisper coiled in my head, smug and deliberate. “In the event of communication loss, likely caused by a jammer, the SRC prioritizes evacuation. Security sweeps the facility while agents secure the perimeter. You’ll slip out with the crowd, no questions asked. They might detain you along with the other personnel, though.”
I smirked, even as the sirens pounded in my skull. “And if they do search?”
“Then pray you’re clever enough to hide.”
Personnel flooded the hallways, a tide of lab coats and blazers pouring toward the exit. I moved with them, blending in. Outside, SRC troopers in full black tactical gear were already forming ranks, rifles slung and visors down. Their response time was terrifyingly fast.
And then I saw her.
Paperbag stood at the forefront, blazer crisp, a brown paper sack covering her head like always. She tilted her head slightly as if sniffing the crowd. “You’re in an awful hurry,” she said, her voice calm but cutting.
I hunched over, clutching my stomach. “Food poisoning. Stomach’s killing me.”
Her hand flicked toward a guard. “Bag check.”
My pulse spiked. Crow’s chuckle slid into my ear. “You exited too early. Sloppy.”
The guard reached for my bag. My body tensed, but I phased the warhead before his fingers touched the zipper, sliding it into my intangible body where no one could ever find it. I bent further, groaning theatrically, curling myself into pain, while I maintained intangibility on myself and the damn pocket nuke.
The guard opened the backpack and rummaged around them, turning the bag inside out. “Clear,” he called out. “There’s nothing here.”
Paperbag’s head turned toward me. Her voice was flat, but edged with something heavier than doubt. “Strange. You don’t feel sick.”
If they frisked me, I’m done.
“Bad dinner,” I muttered, forcing a grimace onto my face. My Enhancer ratings kicked in, making me sweat. I hadn’t sweated in years as my body simply didn’t, but the water I’d gulped earlier gave me enough to push out a sheen across my forehead. The trick was making it look effortless, like I was a man ready to bolt for the bathroom rather than one hiding a pocket nuke inside his body.
Paperbag tilted her head, voice flat. “Still doesn’t answer why your bag is empty. Why bring an empty bag?”
I swore under my breath. “To acquire an item, of course.”
“Form,” she demanded.
Shit. I froze, fumbling for an answer. “I… I forgot it.”
Her eyes raked me up and down. “ID.”
My heart dropped. I couldn’t reach for it. Not like this, not while my body was curled to hide the warhead phasing inside me. One wrong move and they’d know. Fuuuck. This wasn’t some corner store I could walk out of with stolen gum or a shovel. I had a nuke inside me, and I was about to be undone by bureaucratic procedure.
So I did the humiliating thing.
I leaned deeper into my Enhancer ratings, forcing my body to betray me further. My stomach churned, muscles tightened, and then… I farted. Loud, wet, and unignorable. Several civilian personnel turned our way, some stifling laughter.
The guard gagged, covering his nose. The hallway was filled with awkward silence.
Crow’s laughter exploded in my skull, cruel and hysterical. “Hahahahahahahahaha~! Oh, beautiful. Truly, you are poetry in failure.”
Paperbag didn’t speak for several long, crushing seconds. Then, flatly: “Fine. Go.”
The guard shoved my backpack back at me, nose still wrinkled. My hands trembled slightly as I carefully deposited the phased device inside, careful not to let it brush fabric. The last thing I needed was for this farce to end with me detonating myself and probably half the city.
I walked stiffly, still acting, holding the posture of a man clenching more than just his nerves. The crowd swallowed me up, and as the SRC compound shrank behind me, I finally straightened, restoring my composure.
Except… I think I really did shit my pants just a little.
It sold the lie. That was all that mattered.
Crow’s voice slithered back in, mocking, delighted. “From murderer of kings to pants-shitting thief. Oh, Eclipse… you never cease to amaze me.”