This was in response to a Fiction Challenge at The Prose

The basis of the challenge: Superheroes!

As usual I wanted to spin it a little…

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I drive a white panel; well rusted grey panel now, 30 year old Dodge Van.  It reeks of butt sweat, an electrified sulfur blend and genuinely old death. The sweat comes from me, the sulfur emanates from the $26,000 worth of devolving mixed generation technology and the death… that’s another story.

I’ve been living in this beat-up, multi-dented, exhaust-smoking, commonly back-firing hunk of metal for almost 4 years now. This damn thing took me a few months to modify before I left my crappy apartment behind. Looking at the shoddy state it’s in now you wouldn’t think so, but it did originally take me that long to setup the six double decker workstations, the twelve-set director computer for the fibre channel switch powering the storage area and the dual mobile satellite system. I threw my 5’5” thick Vietnam War era Military mattress in one corner and the portable toilet in the other. I hate that thing; the toilet not the mattress. The bed, even though it sits directly on the ridged floor metal, is actually surprisingly comfortable.

Do I want better living arrangements? Would I like a nice vehicle? Hell, do I want working plumbing?

No; I have everything I need to subsist.

I have come to accept who I am, what I want and acknowledge the lines I’m willing to cross to get it.

I’m listed as a high-value criminal in all 50 states and 36 foreign countries around the world, but in name only. However the name listed is one of my many aliases; they have no face, no physical description and no biological evidence.

Am I a criminal? It’s complicated. Yes, probably.

Inside the van I do have 18 illegally procured non-licensed firearms, and yes mounted behind the driver’s seat is a triply reinforced binding bolt with a short length of chain hard welded to an adjoining set of 4 cuff shackles; for both hands and feet. I’m going to need to replace those soon as they are not stainless steel and the hinges are getting quite an array of ever-aging dried blood in them.

Am I violent? Absolutely.

I’m on the go non-stop, traveling from point-to-point with specific targets in mind. It’s quite a complicated pipeline to choose the person I want, but I won’t go into it here. To keep it simple; I find who I want, grab them by any means necessary, then *get* what I want.  How it ends is up to them; life or death.

I’ve had 67 “victims,” as the FBI enjoys labeling them. The agencies can call “them” what they like, I know what “they” really are.

By hacking into the multinational mainframes I’ve estimated that there are now close to 100 law enforcement agents, through probably 30 different agencies, spending their entire workday hunting me down. That is honestly a very intimidating concept; the mind-boggling idea that somewhere between 800 to 1,200 man-hours are spent *daily* on just *me.* I’d imagine if I can keep this going a few of them will consider me the official focus of their careers.

I know I’ll get caught sooner-or-later. I know I’ll easily get 30 non-concurrent life sentences by just the evidence in this stupid van alone. I also understand there is even a fairly likely chance that when I’m caught I’ll be shot on sight.

But I’m not done. My personal mission isn’t over. Not by a long shot.

Crouched over my main terminal, which runs my own version of Black Dragon Linux, with a customized kernel, I cycle through the seemingly endless open-port security screens. All this has become so repetitious my mind can’t help but wander back to my first target. It was this exact situation; me trying to simulate a fire alarm in the building directly outside the van.

I worked for a Fortune 500 Company whose entire employment base had their life savings wiped out in a single day by two corrupt executives. $225,763.94 was stolen from me in a blink of an eye. Like everyone, the loss was hard for me and had common results; I lost my home, my marriage went to divorce, and I was diagnosed with depression.

My supervisor turned to heavy alcohol abuse, our human resources manager just disappeared and my cube-mate shot himself.

That’s when I decided to do something.

I had roughly $18,000 left in an old 401k from my 1st employer. I spent some of it trying to save my marriage by paying for group counseling, yeah that was a waste. The rest I spent on what and how I live now; this damn van. I’m a computer science expert, which means I find these pricks however I can; social or electronic hacking, pure phishing and sometimes by simple force. If you look closely enough you can see these types of news reports almost daily.

These cold bastards steal from their own employees, retirees, sick people, and even veterans for Christ’s sake. While they live in their huge homes with their fleet of cars, bought with the stolen money; they pay back a little [here] to an investment complainer [there,] or fill out official documentation showing market losses on bad investments that were never really made.

What’s worse? When they get caught the punishment for “white collar” crimes are a mere slap on the wrist compared to what I call equivalent “violent” crimes. But what really is the difference between someone who “strong arm” robs someone for $20 or someone who tricks a disabled war veteran out of his life savings?

When I find these people I tend to do things I’m not particularly proud of. I really don’t even think about it anymore; my actions are almost autonomic now.

I force “them” to return the stolen money to the rightful owners.  By any means necessary.

Am I Robin Hood? Some say yes; I say no.

Am I a Super Hero? Some say yes; I say uh no.

Am I a Vigilante? Some say yes; I say I don’t think so.

Some say these “white-collar” criminals are really intelligent; I say I’m a helluva lot smarter than they are, so what *does* that make me?

My eye catches something on the security screen bringing me abruptly back to the ‘now.’

Ah, got it! I simply hit the [return] key over the node labeled { @‌_alarm.fire.main } and away we go. The fire siren blares and within seconds hordes of folks dressed in formal business wear pour out of the building’s main exit. I electronically locked all of the other exists. I’m getting too old to multitask all exists let alone physically chase anyone down for any great distance.

There’s my mark now; 49, 5’10”, 215lbs, douchey haircut, wearing a $2,000 custom tailored Italian suit. He was the main player in a $200M loss via Health Care fraud causing thousands of individuals and families to lose coverage.

He clogged the system for months by laundering it all through his own off-shore telemarketing companies while hundreds of people lost their lives due to countless procedure rejections. I saw a news article on CNC-online where one of the fatal cases involved a 12 year old girl who needed a kidney transplant.

Through the crowd I notice he’s fortuitously stepping closer to the van on his own, he looks a little freaked-out.

Good.

I can feel the inevitable; my face heating up and my heart start to pick-up the pace.

I think after I beat the bank codes out of this guy I’m just going to shoot him in the face.