by Mia Archer
“I think I’m going to call it a night for now,” I said. “One close brush with certain defeat is more than enough for one night.”
“Yes, that does seem to be happening to you quite a bit lately,” CORVAC said.
I bit back a couple of choice words that would’ve let him know exactly what I thought of his assessment of my abilities. There’d been a time when I was at the top of my game in this city without his help, thank you very much, and sometimes I had to remind him that he would be so many dead circuits gathering dust in the bowels of some long forgotten evil lair if it weren’t for me coming along and resurrecting him.
I didn’t have the energy to get into the same old argument with him tonight though. No, I was still shaken from that encounter with Shadow Wing and more than anything I wanted to get somewhere where I didn’t have to think. Where I could check out for the night and not think about how I was losing my grip on this city and quickly ruining my reputation with every new fight I went into.
First I’d lost to Fialux repeatedly, and then I let some normal with a parlor trick power get the best of me? What was wrong with me?
If this kept up then I really wouldn’t deserve to have the title of the best villain in the city. I might as well go to doing petty crime.
Unfortunately it was the distractions of thinking about how my career in villainy was in serious danger that caused the next misstep.
One moment I was flying along over the city minding my own business, and the next I heard something thump. It was a sound that I recognized even through the audio scrubbers in my mask earpieces that helped filter out the kind of loud noises inherent in this job that were part of the reason why tinnitus was such a big problem with heroes and villains in the city.
Especially the ones with super hearing, ironically enough.
Yeah, I knew what that thump was. It was none other than the sound of a sonic boom. Moving in low and fast over the city.
The only question now was whether or not that sonic boom was meant for me. It could only mean one thing. They didn’t allow jets to fly that fast over the city unless it was maybe the military trying to fight one of the aforementioned irradiated lizards.
The problem was it was notoriously difficult for the FAA to regulate anyone who had super powers, and I had a feeling I’d finally found Fialux.
The only problem with that was it was more that she’d found me rather than the other way around, and she wouldn’t be completely oblivious to an ambush if she was gunning for me.
Just great. I pulled up to a stop and scanned the skies looking for the telltale atmospheric disturbance that meant she was coming in hot to ruin my night.
Even as it was going to make my night just that little bit brighter being close to her. Damn it.
17
Heroine Distress
“What are you looking for mistress?” CORVAC asked.
“I just heard the signs of Fialux moving in over the city somewhere,” I said. “Could’ve sworn that was her. Are we getting anything on the overhead or the drones?”
I was bracing for the impact. Usually the drones picked her up, but she moved so fast that she was on me before I could use that information to do anything about it.
Only she was taking her sweet time now for some reason. I couldn’t figure out what was going on here.
Usually I heard the sonic boom that said she was out there somewhere about to open a world of hurt on me. Then the world of hurt hit me and next thing I knew I was limping back to the lab after barely making an escape and trying to figure out what the repair bill was going to be this time around.
It was a good thing I built and repaired all my equipment on my own. If I had to pay for the labor instead of just the parts on all of this stuff it would’ve bankrupted me, and that was saying something considering that my principle source of income was robbing other people.
“I’m picking her up on the satellite feed, but she isn’t operating in your vicinity,” CORVAC said.
“Really,” I said, more musing to myself than anything. “Show me what she’s up to.”
CORVAC obliged and a moment later the live feed we piggybacked off of government spy satellites that totally weren’t supposed to be pointed at the good old U.S. of A. and weren’t supposed to be able to change their orbital position as easily as they did popped up.
The civil liberties pukes could worry about that stuff. All I care about was the government was footing the bill to give me a view of the city that made a bird’s eye look like nothing in comparison.
“Activity near the university,” I muttered. “I hate those assholes.”
Stupid fucking Applied Sciences department. They didn’t know true genius when they saw it. There weren’t many things in this world that could get me going off on a ranting monologue tangent, but thinking about getting kicked out by the Applied Sciences people was one of them.
“Is now really the time to go over that again mistress?” CORVAC asked in what I’d come to recognize as his long suffering voice.
It was difficult to tell sometimes. He’d gotten a lot better than the ‘80s Apple advertisement voice he’d used when I first found him and dusted him off, but there were times when the nuance of human communication still eluded him.
“What would she be doing over by the university?” I asked.
I wasn’t expecting an answer. It was more a rhetorical question than anything else. Of course rhetorical questions were another form of human communication that CORVAC seemed to have trouble with, and so he obliged me and answered the question by zooming in.
There was a time when I would’ve yelled at him for doing that and potentially tipping off the government types that the spy satellites they were using weren’t exactly one hundred percent under their management, but I didn’t care these days.
They never tried to kick me out, and I never tried to take over the satellites bristling with nuclear missiles or simple long chunks of steel for orbital bombardment that really weren’t supposed to exist.
The view showed something that was odd. Very odd indeed. There were lances of light shooting out in every direction and it seemed that Fialux was going straight for it.
Odd. They weren’t anywhere near the Applied Sciences building, but the weapons being used, at least from what I could see from the satellite picture, were exactly the kind of toys that would come out of the Applied Sciences department.
At least from the parts of the department the university didn’t want the world to know about. The parts where I’d made my home when I was still in grad school.
Back before they kicked me out for taking things too far. The fucking hypocrites.
I smiled as I saw the scene playing out in front of me.
“Looks like somebody had some trouble with their stuff getting boosted,” I said.
It was difficult to keep the joy out of my voice, so I didn’t bother. Security had always been lax in that building. It was one of the reasons why I’d been able to squirrel away so many of my toys before they took them away from me.
Sure all of that stuff going missing had been one of the reasons they gave me for kicking me out of the program, but I figured it would’ve only been a matter of time before they did that anyways and destroyed all my babies in the process.
Better to get out while the getting was good, and now it looked like someone else had made that same calculation.
Only they were making their breakout by using their toys. Not good. Amateur hour, really. Still, I figured it would be worth a look.
“I think I’m going to mosey on over there and see what there is to see,” I said.
“Really mistress?” CORVAC said. “You’re going to voluntarily move closer to Fialux?”
“CORVAC,” I said, using my sweetest voice even though I knew the intricacies of human voice were likely lost on him. “I’m going to go ahead and ignore that slight against yours truly and go over to have a look at what Fialux is up to instead of taking some plastic explosives
to your processor and having a little fun. How does that sound?”
There was a pause. It lasted long enough that I found myself wondering if he was taking me seriously or if he was simply trying to think of ways that he could take me out without causing too much of a fuss.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’d threatened to completely take him offline, but there was something about that filter going bad that had me a little jumpy.
It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last, but I knew from experience that it would be a little while before I trusted the bastard computer again.
“I’ll plot the best route for you to get over there,” he finally said.
“No need CORVAC,” I replied. “I know how to get over there just fine on my own.”
Flying back to Starlight City University reminded me of the good old days when I’d been a bright-eyed young kid leaving home for the first time and looking forward to pursuing a career in the applied sciences that would allow me to finally achieve the goal I’d been hoping for since I was a little girl.
Taking over the world.
Hey. What can I say? I’m one of those people who’s known what she wants to do with her life since the very early days, and nothing had stopped me from trying to live that dream in the years since.
So many had tried, but they’d all failed. Just like Fialux was going to fail. As soon as I figured out her weakness.
Everyone had a weakness. It was simply a matter of figuring out what the heck that weakness was.
I flew over the campus and came to rest on a bell tower that had a nice view of the spot where the laser battle was taking place.
Sure I knew on some level they weren’t lasers. Lasers would be invisible unless the idiots down thee tossing blasts around were having their fight in the middle of a fog bank.
I’d decided long ago that I wasn’t going to be a pedantic evil genius. There was evil, and then there was just being an asshole. So what was going on down there looked a lot like a laser battle from some movie and that’s how I thought of it.
Odd. The people down there were dressed in some sort of battle uniform that didn’t look all that different from early drafts of some of my own suits.
They were sloppy, of course. Fialux swooped down and put her hand out as one of the weapons blasted and the energy from the feedback slammed back into the person doing the firing causing them to fly back.
When they landed the front of their suit was charred and burned and it was pretty clear they weren’t going to be getting up any time soon.
Amateur hour. I would’ve never been taken unawares like that. I really wouldn’t have put myself in a suit that didn’t have safeguards against that kind of thing happening.
Still, it was unsettling to see a bunch of assholes leaping around with vaguely enhanced movements wearing suits that looked an awful lot like the first draft of some of the stuff I’d put together in my university days and then improved upon when they kicked me out.
It tickled something in the back of my mind. It almost made me wonder if…
But no. That was impossible. I’d stolen everything interesting related to my work on my way out and I’d destroyed anything I couldn’t take with me. There wasn’t a chance they were working with my tech, early draft or not.
One of the guys snuck up behind her and raised his weapon, but he didn’t try to fire on her like I figured he would. Instead a little extension came out of the thing and some sort of strange bright purple energy arched between tongs on the end of it.
I zoomed in on the view. There was something about that that seemed different. More dangerous than the laser blasts that weren’t actually laser blasts that were getting tossed around. I squinted as I had a look.
He brought it down and she fell to her knees with a cry.
Ice formed in the pit of my stomach. Had that actually worked on her? It seemed impossible, and yet there she was on her knees crying out in obvious pain.
For the first time that evening a different sort of worry started worming its way through my mind. Not the worry of whether or not I’d ever run into Fialux, but the worry that someone might figure out her weakness before I had a chance to figure it out and exploit it!
Not on my watch! I held up my wrist blaster, more in annoyance than anything else, and fired off a quick shot. The gun in the guy’s hand exploded and he went flying back.
Fialux fell forward on her hands and knees. It was a pose I could get used to. A pose that I’d hoped to see her using with me when she admitted that I was the best and she was well and truly beaten.
I didn’t like seeing that pose with a bunch of other upstarts using tech that was obviously modeled after my stuff even if they hadn’t stolen it directly.
I’d taken care of that one, surreptitiously of course, but the others looked like they’d taken heart from Fialux crying out in pain and going down. Even if it was only temporarily.
She got to her feet. She was a little wobbly at first, but it looked like she was regaining some of her composure.
All of them flipped out those little cattle prod things on the end of their guns. All of the prods arced with electric purple energy that looked down right nasty.
Fialux actually looked worried. She knelt down in a pose I’d come to recognize in our battles. The air seemed to shimmer around her and in a moment she would be flying through the air and well away from these assholes.
It struck me that this might be the perfect time to try out the anti-Newtonian field. The only problem was I wanted to try that out in a place where I could rest assured I’d be able to capture her.
The last place I wanted to try it was in a place where I had to worry about some other asshole getting her first.
Because it was clear these guys had orders to capture. Not to kill. That made me wonder who the hell they were and what the hell they thought they were doing moving in on my territory.
“Fialux.”
The voice was clear and rang out across the quad. It was enough to stop Fialux. She stared, and there was recognition there on her face. Recognition and more than a little bit of horror.
I was feeling some of the same emotions right about now, to be honest. I recognized that voice too. The owner didn’t shout, but it carried across the quad regardless.
Professor Laura Anderson. Head of the Applied Sciences Department at Starlight City University, and the woman who was responsible for kicking me out of the program when she thought I was meddling with powers beyond mankind’s understanding.
My eyes narrowed. What the hell was she doing here? Did that mean the jokers down there holding those purple cattle prods were working for the department?
If she was out there that had to be the case. And it left me wondering what her game was. What she was doing out here, and why Fialux seemed to know her.
So many questions.
“Isn’t that…”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Don’t you…”
“Not right now CORVAC,” I said. “The show is just getting good!”
18
Not On My Watch
Laura, I refused to refer to her by her name or her title after the bullshit she pulled on me, advanced across the quad. Her familiar heels clicked in an echo that filled my brain with residual terror from the days when I’d had to listen for the sound of her heels clicking down the tile hallway.
I’d learned pretty early on that it was a good idea to not be anywhere she was when she was on the warpath. Considering her personality that meant it was a good idea to not be anywhere near her ever.
But right now she had an uncharacteristic smile on her face. If anything that unnerved me even more than seeing her out there in the first place.
If she was smiling that meant she was happy about something. I wanted nothing to do with anything that made Laura Anderson happy.
“Fialux,” she said, stepping through the circle.
The minions, that’s how I was thinking of them now that I�
��d seen how they responded to her, parted and then the circle closed again. None of them were moving in close though.
It was just Fialux and Anderson in the middle of a dangerous circle.
“I’m picking up something moving over them mistress,” CORVAC said. “Very faint, but it’s there.”
I looked up but didn’t see anything out there. I checked the radar signature and didn’t see anything either. Finally I flipped over to infrared and blinked a couple of times.
“Huh. She hid it from the visual spectrum and radar but she didn’t bother to hide the heat signature?” I asked.
“Where is she going to dump the heat mistress?” CORVAC asked. “You destroyed your teleportation technology before you left, and I doubt they’ve managed to copy that even if they have managed to make crude copies of everything else you created while you were there.”
I smiled. A faint smile, but it was there. It was always nice to know my work was appreciated, and it was very nice to know that CORVAC could recognize my work.
He hadn’t been around during my university days, after all. I hadn’t found him and brought him back to digital life until well after I’d left the Applied Sciences department for good.
“How much do you want to bet they’ve got another one of those weird purple energy things loaded on that drone and they’re waiting on her to fly away?” I asked.
“I’d say that’s a safe bet. I noticed the anomaly coming in at high speed while they were fighting. I would imagine Professor Anderson is stalling for time, as you humans put it.”
“Don’t call her that,” I snapped under my breath.
“Excuse me mistress,” CORVAC said. “I would imagine the head of the goddamn doublecrossing motherfuckers at the Applied Sciences Department is stalling for time, as you so eloquently put it.”
I grinned. It never ceased to amuse me when CORVAC used salty language.
“That’s better CORVAC.”
“Tune in the ears on what’s going on down there. I want to hear that conversation,” I said.