by Mia Archer
I wasn’t sure what was going on between Fialux and the Applied Sciences department, but I figured it couldn’t be any good.
This seemed like something out of my playbook. Something they would try because they were interested in getting a tissue sample or something that they could use for their own nefarious purposes.
Sure Laura went on and on about how there wasn’t anything nefarious going on in her department, that was a big reason why she ended up kicking yours truly out of the program, but I couldn’t shake the weird feeling I got around her.
She was a dictator, but there’d also always been something off about her. The phrase “it takes one to know one” came to mind when I thought about her. I was an evil supergenius. She gave off a vibe.
You do the math.
“Fialux, it doesn’t have to be this way,” Laura said.
Fialux, for her part, looked downright confused about everything going on around her. I’m sure she was used to people trying to take her out, I’d been tilting at that particular windmill nearly nonstop since our first confrontation for example, but she seemed like she didn’t know why Laura was talking to her like that.
Another layer to the mystery. Laura was talking to Fialux like they were old friends. Fialux was looking at her like she was crazy.
What the hell was going on here?
“We have a lot to talk about,” Laura said. “Please.”
Fialux started shimmering again. Like she was going to do that cool thing where she lifted off and caused a minor earthquake that registered in a limited fashion around where she took off, I knew because I’d hacked into the USGS and had a look at the seismographs.
The minor earthquake she caused every time she took off into the air was nothing compared to the little puff that always followed as she inevitably broke the sound barrier faster than any flying object ever made by man.
“I don’t know you,” she said. “And I don’t know why you’re attacking me or why you felt the need to draw me here with lies.”
My eyes narrowed at that. Draw her there with lies? What was she talking about?
On instinct more than anything else I looked around the quad, and that’s when I saw something I hadn’t noticed before. A girl standing off to the side with a guy who was dressed all in black complete with one of those ridiculous black caps you see robbers wearing in movies even though it was the middle of summer here and not the kind of weather for those kind of clothes.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered.
“Problem mistress?” CORVAC asked.
“They used my play and they managed to get her in here with it,” I grumbled.
“Well at least you know your plan was a good one even if it didn’t work exactly as you’d planned,” CORVAC replied.
“Stop trying to make me feel better,” I growled.
“I believe you’re missing the show mistress,” CORVAC said.
“Right,” I said, looking back down to the drama playing before me.
It was weird, but this almost reminded me of what it had been like when I’d been kicked out of the department. It was bringing back some very unpleasant memories that I would’ve rather put behind me for good, thank you very much.
“Please, Fialux. I can help you. I know that you’re very confused about what’s going on here, but I’m the only person in the city who can make this better,” Laura said.
What the hell was she going on about? Did she think she was going to be able to get Fialux all to herself by acting like she wanted to help her or something?
I had to admit that was a good angle too. I wondered what would’ve happened if I’d come at her acting like I simply wanted to study her and try to make the world a better place instead of coming at her with all the best super strength augments and advanced weapons I could come up with.
Too late to second guess myself on that decision though.
“I’m sorry, but you attacked me and that means you’re not someone I can trust,” Fialux said.
She glanced around her and there was something there that I wasn’t used to seeing. She looked like she was downright nervous being surrounded by all those people in their cut-rate knockoffs of some of my best stuff.
Interesting. I’d been wondering if that purple stuff actually hurt her or if she was just playing along, but she seemed like she was genuinely worried.
Either she was playing the long con with these guys trying to make it seem like they’d found her weakness or she really was worried they’d be able to take her out.
Given what I knew about your classical heroic types, do-gooders who couldn’t stand the idea of telling a lie, I was willing to bet there was something to whatever the fuckers in the Applied Sciences department had come up with.
That made me want to get my hands on one of those toys. It made me want to get my hands on it real bad.
The shimmering around Fialux was reaching a fever pitch now. It was about to happen. The whole impressive shebang. A localized earthquake followed by thunder in the sky as she broke the sound barrier above the city in violation of a bunch of FAA regulations and local noise ordinances.
Not that many of the noise ordinances were ever enforced around these here parts even if they were frequently violated. The thing was it was difficult for the cops to ticket a giant radioactive lizard or a giant death robot or any of a number of other things that rolled through the city on the regular increasing the average decibel level by a few hundred in very short bursts.
“You need to go,” she said.
“I can’t leave,” Laura said. “But you need to make the right choice here. Or else.”
“I don’t respond well to threats. I don’t know who you are, but I’m not going with you,” Fialux said.
I wanted to say something. I wanted to tell her to watch out. That she was treading dangerous ground. That they were laying a trap.
But I couldn’t cry out. Not because I didn’t want to, but because she moved so fast that there was no time to say anything before she sprang the trap.
It played out in slow motion in front of me. The little puff of air around her which caused the pavement to crack.
Unfortunately it wasn’t followed by all the other stuff that usually accompanied her going up, up, and away. She went up, but the up and away part eluded her this time around.
Like I said, it was like watching a wreck in slow motion. The hidden drone they’d put above her, I guess her super vision didn’t extend to seeing in the infrared, exploded with a spectacular purple sparkle as she slammed into it.
Tines of electricity wrapped around her. Again it was all that strange purple color and it looked like she was in serious pain as it hit her. He body arched and she threw her head back and screamed as it hit her.
I winced. That looked like it hurt. More important, it was actually working. The stupid fucking Applied Sciences department had come up with a way to take Fialux out.
She fell to the ground and lay there for a long moment. I worried that maybe they’d actually managed to kill her.
It wouldn’t be the first time someone died because somebody in the Applied Sciences department got a little overeager with some little toy they were working on.
A couple of my projects that eventually got me kicked out came to mind.
“They actually did it,” CORVAC said.
Now I know he’s a computer, but I couldn’t help but note that there seemed to be just the faintest touch of disbelief in his synthesized voice as he said that.
And I felt something that surprised me as I looked down at the scene playing out before me.
Anger.
I should’ve been happy. If someone took out Fialux then it meant there was less for me to worry about, after all. With her out of the way I could go back to dominating the city. I could continue with my plots to eventually take over the world.
Only I knew that wouldn’t be possible.
For one I’d always know that I wasn’t the one who took out the greatest her
o this city had ever seen. I’d always have it gnawing at the back of my mind that it was someone else who’d struck the killing blow and that meant I wasn’t the best. I hadn’t been able to rise to the challenge.
And as I watched the scene playing out before me something added to the anger boiling inside me. The anger that someone would dare to try and overtake my position as the preeminent villain in the world.
It was a cold rage. A rage that fueled me far better than any ambition to take over the world.
I told myself it was simply the rage of someone out there doing better than I did, but I knew it was more than that. It was the rage of knowing that she was in danger.
For some reason that was the more pressing concern. Far greater than the thought that someone might beat my greatest enemy.
Because there was a part of me that was having trouble thinking of her as my greatest enemy, and that part was getting good and pissed off watching her lying on the ground weak and exposed.
“Not on my watch,” I muttered.
“Mistress?” CORVAC asked.
I ignored him. I knew he’d have things to say about what I was about to do. I’d hear them regardless once I put my plan into motion, but in the meantime I could have a moment of silence while he worked out what I was doing.
I deactivated the cloaking device surrounding me. Not that anyone was looking in my direction to see that I was suddenly visible. No, the people moving in around Fialux were far more concerned with the danger right in front of them and Fialux was too stunned to pay close attention.
I smiled. That would be their mistake. People in this city underestimated me at their own danger, and I’d been itching for some revenge against those assholes at the Applied Sciences department for a good long time.
I jumped in the air, reveling as I always did when the antigrav kicked in and the wind caught my cape.
It was time to show these assholes who was the real greatest villain in this city.
19
Snazzy Entrance
The wind whipped through my hair. CORVAC was always going on about how dangerous it was for me to have my hair out like that. People could grab it in a fight. It wasn’t aerodynamic enough when I was out flying around.
He’d even done wind tunnel simulations and everything and tried to show them to me, but the plain truth was that just like a good cape there really was no substitute for making a dramatic landing with your hair whipping in the wind.
Just like I did now. The pavement didn’t crack under me like it did when Fialux came in with a landing, but I figured that was fair. Even with all the enhanced stuff I had going in my suit it’s not like I had the molecular density she had to be packing to pull off some of her tricks.
I looked up at Professor Laura Anderson. It had been far too long since we’d seen each other, though of course she had no way of connecting Night Terror to a wayward student who’d been kicked out of their precious program once upon a time for messing with powers beyond man’s understanding.
Though I was pretty sure from the shocked look on her face that she had some suspicions about who I was. It’s not like there were many people in this city with a knack for the sort of megalomaniacal superscience that had always interested me.
“Night Terror!”
The whispers went up all around me. I basked in them. Welcomed them. Reveled in them. They were the whispers of an adoring public. Of normies who knew they were facing down their true doom.
They might have special toys that helped them take on Fialux, but they also had to know that I was a little more ruthless than the beautiful hero of Starlight City.
“You can’t have her,” Dr. Laura said.
I cocked an eyebrow at her. She couldn’t see my eyes and I’d long ago learned how to use my eyebrows to substitute for a dangerous gleam in my eyes that couldn’t be seen through the mask.
“Funny. I was about to say the same to you,” I replied.
“You can stop right there Dr. Laura,” I said, holding up my wrist blaster. Tines of electricity arced telling the good doctor exactly what would happen if she crossed me.
The ominous hum helped. There was nothing like the ominous hum of the sort of energies that turned the universe at the atomic level charging up ready to be unleashed on whoever was irritating me at the moment.
And at this moment the person irritating me was Dr. Laura.
She frowned at my cavalier use of her name. Or maybe it was the comparison to a love doctor of the same name. Either way I knew it irritated the fuck out of her, that people in her department knew better to use it, and that I was no longer in that department so I was going to do whatever I could to irritate the hell out of her.
“I’d like to see you try Night Terror,” she said.
I shook my head and clicked my head a couple of times. I wanted to make it clear that I was more disappointed in her than anything.
“Come on Dr. L,” I said. “We both know that the best you can come up with is cheap copies of my best stuff. There’s no way for you to stand up to the original.”
Now it was her turn to arch an eyebrow. She was a study in being perfectly poised and in control of a situation that she shouldn’t have any control over whatsoever.
Then again if she was the one who was stupid enough to send her university goon squad out against a woman who was the next best thing this city had to a living god then I guess I could understand why she might have a little more self-confidence than was strictly good for your long term survival prospects in a city like this where living gods were a dime a dozen and often more than willing to crush the normals without breaking a sweat.
I’d always been unique in my mania regarding collateral damage.
“Who said anything about making cheap copies of your stuff?” she asked.
I narrowed my eyes. I felt like there was something that came very close to an implied threat with what she was saying there, but I didn’t have time to react to that implied threat.
No, she pulled her arms out from behind her back and right there was a blaster that was the same as the one I had on my own hand. Right down to the last detail.
Well then. So much for cheap copies. That looked very much like the real thing, and the ominous hum it gave off sounded just as threatening when it was pointed at me as I’d always imagined it sounded when pointed at someone who didn’t have all the armor and toys I had.
Mostly because of all the armor and toys I did have at my disposal, the one thing I didn’t have was a way to easily counter the firepower she was pointing in my direction.
Damn it!
I cursed and dove for the ground. Hey. I might be the greatest villain this city has ever known, but I got that way because I survived where a lot of other people didn’t on their rise to the top.
You couldn’t very well rise to the top if you were stupid enough to let someone cut you off before you had a chance to spread your wings and really soar.
Energy crackled through the air where I’d been standing moments ago. A damn good thing I decided to duck and roll when I did.
There was a familiar hitch to the ominous hum that made it sound decidedly less ominous for a moment. As I came out of my roll, judo was a terribly useful skill to hone if you were going to go into heroism or villainy, I couldn’t help but smile.
Dr. Laura pointed the weapon at me again. It made the odd noise again. A noise that was maddeningly familiar to me because I’d spent so many sleepless nights trying to figure out how to overcome the problem that came with that noise when I first left the Applied Sciences department and struck out on my own in the private sector.
The other goons around me raised their weapons as well. Sure they were designed to take down Fialux and whatever the hell she was, I was going to have to get one of those guns before I blew this popsicle stand, but I had no doubt that they would do some nasty damage to yours truly under the right circumstances.
And it looked like they were hoping the right circumstances were right a
bout now. I could understand the eagerness.
Take out the greatest hero and the greatest villain the world had ever known and do it all in one night? And taken out by a bunch of university goons using technology that was developed by the Applied Sciences department or stolen from yours truly?
Well that would be a recipe for selling that program to people for at least the next couple of generations.
“I have you covered Night Terror,” Laura said. “And I think you’re going to come in and have a chat with me. There’s a lot of unfinished business between us.”
My smile turned to a full on grin. Teeth showing and all. Sure I knew it was so much bullshit that showing your teeth triggered some ancient monkey brain where bared teeth were considered a threat, but I couldn’t help but do it from time to time.
Besides, right now I wanted her to know that a threat was the last thing on my mind. Especially from her.
“You’ve got it all wrong,” I said. “I’m giving you this one chance to give it up. Otherwise this is going to turn into an evening you’re going to seriously regret for a long time running.”
Laura rolled her eyes. About what I expected from her. The confident cocky head of one of the most prestigious programs in the country was so sure of her wonderful little toys that she couldn’t imagine a scenario where one of those toys might not work.
That was the problem with letting yourself become a glorified administrator working off the stuff other people reverse engineered instead of doing the work yourself.
She squeezed her hand. The wrist blaster crackled, sputtered, and fizzled out.
“That’s going to be getting pretty hot right about now,” I said. “Would you mind taking it off?”
“Never,” she hissed.
“Look,” I said. “Remember a few years back when there were all those airbursts over the city that didn’t actually rain down any electromagnetic interference or bust any electronics?”
Her eyes narrowed. Oh yeah. She remembered. I remembered one interview in particular where she tried to play it off as a natural phenomena and nearly got laughed off by Rex Roth when it became obvious she didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.