The Marvel Knights Group presents: Slyde #3

Slyde usually liked to plan his heists way in advance, and in minute detail – how to get in and out of key locations, especially if they were enclosed, how many hostiles he was likely to encounter, what the potential pitfalls of any given situation might be. Most criminals – well, most successful criminals – would say the same. As well as having to worry about police or private security forces, there was often the consideration that the individuals he was stealing from would themselves be armed, and none too pleased to be seeing a man in a gleaming silver suit making off at high speed with their valuables. And then there were the added complications caused by the suit itself – namely that costumed characters tended to attract the attention of other costumed characters.

Thankfully, that was one thing Slyde didn't have to worry about here. A guy could find whatever he wanted in Vegas, except for one thing - superheroes. Divesting Amadeus Rocco of the fabled jewelled mask known as The Rainbow of Zanzibar in a back room of the Moonlight Sonata hotel was going to be a tricky and audacious affair, involving nerves of steel, precision timing and a lot of luck, but at least there wasn't a chance that Spider-Man was going to poke his webbed nose in and ruin everything. That always sucked.

Beneath his mask, Slyde was actually smiling as he skated down the corridor leading to the room where Rocco was in the middle of selling The Rainbow to Alicia Manfredi for a cool ten million dollars. His friend and partner in crime, Sawyer Quinn – the man who was dressed as a bellhop and holding the door open for him – was the brains behind this particular venture, and the premise was simple. Get in, grab The Rainbow – contained in a black case, according to Sawyer's reconnaissance – and get out again. Head to the basement lot, where there was a getaway car waiting. And then, Aruba.

Ten million dollars bought one long vacation in Aruba.

Slyde was still smiling as he shot into the room. It would be the last time he smiled for a long while.

It was the mirrors that lined the east-west walls, floor to ceiling, that did for him. He was travelling at such a high speed, and concentrating so fiercely on not bumping into any obstacles that might affect his balance, that for a good ten seconds he thought that there were actually eighty men in suits drawing their guns and trying to get a bead on him instead of eight. It was enough to throw anyone off their game. And then there was the beautiful redhead from the lounge, billed as Blue Rose but whose real name was Delilah Monroe. She was cowering in a corner, frightened out of her wits by the absolute chaos that had suddenly descended. Slyde hadn't expected her to be there. It changed things. And changes to the plan were never good…

Rocco gasped, his eyes shooting wide as Slyde appeared in a flash of silver. Across from him, Alicia swore, then leapt from her seat at the table, clutching the black case containing The Rainbow to her chest. From all around them came the sound of revolvers exiting leather holsters, and the shouting of men practised in the art of using them. And Slyde? Well, Slyde… slid. As if his life depended on it. Which, of course, it did.

He slid along the floor, then angled left. He slid up one of the non-mirrored walls, then flipped in mid-air and landed on one end of a polished oak bar. He kept sliding, along the length of the bar, in a crouch, then shot off the far end. He angled right, and ascended one of the mirrored walls, finally coming to terms with the size and manner of the area in which he found himself. Slid almost to the ceiling, then down again. Back along the floor, then up the far wall. In the eyes of the crowd watching him, mesmerised, he was riding the room like one of those old carnival attractions where leather-clad daredevils on motorcycles circled a ring, held aloft by centrifugal force – and that impression wasn't far from the truth.

Slyde was a slave to gravity as much as any one of them – what made him different was the special chemical in which his bodysuit was coated, rendering contact between him and any surface utterly frictionless. Thus he was able to concentrate on balance and direction whilst being propelled along, effortlessly, by sheer momentum. That momentum dipped any time gravity took a hold but it built again, instantly, whenever he began to drop once more. Although he was currently travelling at speeds of no more than ten miles an hour, compared to a maximum pace of almost three times that, he still resembled a streak of living mercury to those who were all but hypnotised by him, as motionless as statues in contrast.

"He's after The Rainbow!" Alicia yelled, astutely gauging the situation in an instant. "Bring him down!"

Her four guards wavered, hesitant to fire when it was practically impossible to draw aim on their target.

"Do it!" Alicia screamed.

And so, the guards fired. And mirrors shattered. And the noise, of the bullets and the glass, was deafening.

Slyde cursed inwardly, angling back and forth along the floor and up and down another wall. The was very little danger of his being wounded unless the shooters started to fire blindly – they were highly trained, and it was in their nature to try and hit their target, which meant that they were always firing a good five to ten feet in his wake. The law of averages stated they would have better luck closing their eyes and pulling the trigger at random. However, the one innocent in the room – Delilah – would likely not be so fortunate. He had to end this now.

Alicia was running for the door in the south wall, opposite the one Slyde had entered by. Her long, cherry red dress was flashing about her long legs and her black hair was streaming out behind her, having come loose on one side from the rose that had clipped it in place. She still had the black case in her possession. Slyde gently pressed down on the outside of his right foot, using the faint ridge on the underside of his boot to propel him away at a right angle from his current trajectory and onto a new course – heading straight across the room, toward Alicia.

There was another burst of gunfire, and someone yelled and fell, clutching a wound in their thigh. One of Alicia's guards. Slyde hurtled towards the table at the centre of the room and timed his jump to perfection. The suit in itself, despite the genius inherent in its creation, was not enough to make Slyde the man he was; he'd also spent many years strengthening his body and developing his reactions after realising that he needed to be at the peak of physical prowess to be able to perform even the most basic of stunts. A simple hurdling exercise like this – and the subsequent ducking beneath someone's swinging fist at the moment of landing – was really no problem at all.

Alicia, dead ahead. Slyde angled slightly away from her, then drew alongside, just as she was reaching out for the handle of the door.

"Excuse me, ma'am – help you with your bag?" He snatched at the case in her arms – grabbed it – and then was shooting upwards, ascending the wall, on a sheer vertical line. A heartbeat later, he was riding the ceiling. This is where gravity really took hold. His momentum carried him on, even as his feet came away from the flat surface underfoot, and for two seconds – three – he was sailing through the air, upside down. Then, clutching the black case tightly in one hand and compensating for its weight, he twisted at the hips in mid-air, swung on the crystal chandelier, and performed a graceful somersault. When he came to land it was on his feet, on the bar – and still travelling.

"Hoo ya!" he yelled, delighted with his own manoeuvre. "Six point zero from the Austrian judge! Six point zero from the Brazilian judge! But what's this...? Five point eight from the French judge? Ladies and gentlemen, just one more reason to be hating the French..."

As Slyde reached the end of the bar, he made a move to kick back to recapture the speed that his mid-air flip had cost him. With a grunt, one of Alicia's hired bruisers took that split second of opportunity to lunge – and he wrapped his arms around Slyde's legs just as he shot off the end of the bar. The guard instinctively tensed his muscular upper torso, tightening his grip...

...and Slyde squirted away from his clutches with a distinct hiss, like an eel in butter. The guard was left holding thin air, and blinking in astonishment.

Slyde hit the ground, kicked with one foot and then the other like a speed skater, and was off and sliding once more. His suit had never failed him. No one could hold him. No one could catch him. Not even Spider-Man, with all his amazing agility and his infernal webbing, could get the best of him if his luck was on the money. At times like this, he felt immortal.

And then, he heard the scream. His head darted up and he saw her – Delilah – directly ahead, and behind her... another of Alicia's gunmen, carefully taking aim. His target was Slyde, but Delilah was in the way. Slyde kicked viciously, and shot forward at incredible speed. With the black case containing The Rainbow in one hand, he reached out with the other and gathered Delilah to him, curling his arm around her slender waist, then speared away to the left just as the thug opened fire. The bullet whistled past, too close for comfort, and Slyde almost lost the redhead as she slipped from his grasp just as he had wriggled free of the guard's attempted grapple moments earlier. This time, however, Slyde used the ridges on the palm of his glove to snap Delilah firmly in place, like they were dancing a Samba.

"Oh," Delilah gasped, feeling strong fingers press into the small of her back. She looked up at Slyde's masked face, half terrified, half fascinated; her green eyes smouldered, and there was a spark there that Slyde felt crackling on his skin beneath his suit like electricity. He saw the small cut on her cheek, the mark of Rocco's ring where he had backhanded her earlier that evening, and suddenly his blood was boiling. Across the room, the north door through which he had entered still stood open, even though Sawyer had shrewdly taken his leave when the bullets had started flying. That was Slyde's escape route. It was time he followed Sawyer's lead and beat a retreat. But there was one last matter to take care of first.

Slyde's frictionless nature meant that even with Delilah's added weight, only his balance was affected, and not the effort he needed to expend to achieve a high velocity. He shot forward now in the direction of Amadeus Rocco, who was cowering behind one of his suited gunmen – the same gunman who had threatened Slyde in the lounge earlier that evening. Two birds in one stone.

Slyde whipped past them, and snapped out a leg as he did so. He wore golden pads on his knees that protected him from incurring major damage to his joints in the event of accidental high speed collisions – or, as in this instance, purposeful ones. He struck the guard in the groin first, and then a split second later the same knee plate glanced off Rocco's face. The guard went down like a sack of stones, his face flushing purple and his mouth open in a tiny, perfect 'O'. Rocco followed him, blood streaming from what must have been a broken nose.

"Nng," Slyde huffed, grimacing beneath his mask. Even in spite of the padding, that had hurt. But it had been worth it.

With Delilah in his arms he darted out of the room and down the long corridor beyond, skating purposefully from side to side with extreme sway so that the gunmen racing after him still couldn't draw a bead, and accelerated around the corner at the far end. By the time his pursuers reached that same corner, he was long gone.

Sawyer had divested himself of the miserable bellhop uniform and was now lurking impatiently in the Moonlight Sonata's open-air car lot, smoking cigarettes and glancing at his watch every few seconds. It was a warm Vegas night, with a lusty breeze slinking in from the desert, and the sky was so bright with lurid neon it was as if the day had never ended. Sawyer was sitting in the driver's berth of a black Corvette convertible, the engine purring in anticipation. Ahead of him was a wide expanse of asphalt that quickly became a long, straight ribbon of black heading out of the city. Everything was set. All he needed now was...

Slyde catapulted through the double doors that formed the entrance to the Moonlight Sonata at top speed, a lick of silver amidst the neon and the glitz. In his right hand, the black case containing The Rainbow. And, over his shoulder and supported by his left arm, a truly spectacular pair of shapely legs extending from a blue velvet dress currently ruffled up to mid-thigh.

Sawyer's jaw dropped, his expression aghast. He knew full well whom those legs belonged to. This wasn't in the plan.

"This ain't in the plan!" Sawyer squawked as Slyde skidded to a halt alongside the Corvette and deposited a breathless and bedraggled Delilah Monroe in the back seat, along with the black case. Sawyer looked over his shoulder, his cigarette hanging forlornly from his lower lip. "This so ain't in the plan!"

"Just drive!" Slyde commanded, leaping over Sawyer's head and slotting into the passenger seat.

"But you don't understand," Sawyer yapped, waving his hands. "Steal Rocco's girl, he'll go nuts!"

"Oh, like he'll be happy that we took his ten million dollars worth of jewels, and I broke his nose?"

Sawyer made a strangled noise. "You broke his nose? Oh, we're dead. We're so dead."

"Are you going to drive, or what?"

"Dammit, Jalome, this is so messed up. You were only supposed to take the case. It should have been so easy."

Slyde gazed up at the sky, growling in frustration. "Come on, Sawyer," he barked. "What's wrong with you? You're acting like... like..."

He trailed off. Sawyer looked at him, glumly. Slyde looked at Sawyer.

"Oh," said Slyde, "My. God."

Sawyer closed his eyes.

The head of Delilah Monroe leaned forward between the two men, her red hair falling down about her face and her green eyes wild. Her perfume was bewitching. "Why aren't we leaving?" she breathed. "I'm assuming this is a getaway vehicle..."

"I wasn't supposed to take you," Slyde said, slowly. "I wasn't supposed to break Rocco's nose. I was just supposed to snatch the case. That was the plan. But not the plan my friend here arranged with me. It was the plan he arranged... with Rocco."

Sawyer winced.

"This wasn't a heist," Slyde continued. "This was a sting. You set all of this up, didn’t you Sawyer? Everything. The information about The Rainbow, about the exchange – the time, the place – you got all of that from Rocco. And you didn't tell me, about any of it, because you knew I'd beat you like you were a rug on a warm Sunday morning, and that I wouldn't want anything to do with it."

Sawyer's face crumpled.

"Rocco has The Rainbow. Wants to sell it – but also wants to keep it. So he sets up a sale to Alicia Manfredi. But not for ten million – that's just our cut, right Sawyer? So what... if that's a standard twenty per cent... are we talking fifty million dollars here?"

Sawyer nodded, eyes still closed.

"Rocco wants a stooge," Slyde said through gritted teeth. "You offer me. Rocco and Alicia make the exchange, so now the jewels officially belong to her and Rocco has fifty million. Then I bust in, and take The Rainbow. Alicia can't claim her money back – that's not how these things are done. I've stolen from her, not Rocco. But that had to be timed perfectly, didn't it? What, did Rocco give you some kind of signal I wasn't aware of so that I'd enter the room as soon as possible after the transaction had taken place? And then, his goons were under instruction not to shoot me?"

Sawyer nodded again.

"And so. Rocco has the money, we have the jewels. We head out of the city, lie low, then return when Alicia Manfredi has left town. Give Rocco back The Rainbow, he gives us ten million. We flee the country, and Alicia never finds us, because...?"

Sawyer opened one eye. "’cos Rocco gives her false information he claims to have found out about us, and she ends up chasin' her tail ‘til she looses interest or dies of old age, whichever comes first," he said, meekly. "Are you mad at me? I get the feelin' you're mad at me."

"Mad at you?" Slyde said, quietly. "Let's see. Alicia Manfredi, a Maggia boss, wants me dead for stealing what belongs to her. Amadeus Rocco, he wants me dead because I took his girl and broke his nose – and because now we're going to go on the run with Delilah and The Rainbow, which he thinks still belongs to him, just as Alicia thinks it belongs to her. And, Rocco knows who we are, and now he's got no reason to lie to Alicia. We can't sell the mask because word will get back to someone and we'll be dead the instant we try and spend a dime. So we're fugitives, and have no money to show for it. Mad at you, Sawyer? Mad at you? I'm going to take you out into the desert, shoot you, cut off your fingers to go with your thumbs, shoot you again, then leave you for the snakes, you stupid, sorry son of a - "

From the entrance to the Moonlight Sonata there finally came the sound of men approaching – lots of men, very likely with guns.

"Looks like we're out of options," said Slyde. "Better drive, Sawyer."

"But - "

"I'm really not kidding about the fingers. You should make the most of them."

Sawyer grimaced.

"Well, okay," he said, miserably, flooring the gas. "But I'm bettin’ we don't get as far as Mexico..."