by Archer, Mia
“Why CORVAC,” I said. “That almost sounds like you’re showing an appropriate amount of humility around me for a change.”
“I will try not to let it happen too much mistress,” he said.
“I wouldn’t dream of you doing anything otherwise,” I responded.
I felt another wave of nausea wash over me. This time when I puked up my guts there was something that looked very much like a part of my internal organs.
Not good. I wasn’t a doctor of anything approaching medicine, but I knew enough to know when my body was starting to go through the sort of shit that would well and truly fuck me up for good if I didn’t get to that medbay.
“I think it’s time for me to head back to the lab and get some well deserved rest and relaxation,” I said.
“Really? I am surprised you are withdrawing when there are still giant lizards attacking the city,” CORVAC said.
I looked out over the city. It looked in a hell of a lot worse shape now than it ever had before.
“The city can take care of itself,” I said.
“As you say mistress,” CORVAC said.
I sighed. Now I was getting judgment from my supercomputer. It was bad enough when I got this crap from the girl of my dreams. Somehow it was even worse when it came from a bucket of circuits and bolts who was supposed to be helping me with taking over the world and damn the consequences.
“I’m not going to leave them totally high and dry,” I said. “If you look in the contingency folders under Plan ZZ9 Plural Z Alfa you’ll find a care package for the department of defense that might help them take out these fuckers.”
Hey, when you were a villain who regularly went up against just about every nasty thing a science fiction writer of the past century could come up with it paid to have contingencies for those plans.
“Using your antigrav weapons as suppositories to blow up the creatures?” he asked, sounding as close to incredulous as was possible for a computer.
“Precisely,” I said. “I managed to blow the fuckers up from the inside, so we know the theory is solid even if I did have to go through a stinky hell to figure out if we could do it in practice.”
“But you went down the front end of the lizard,” CORVAC said.
“Exactly,” I said.
“That seems exceedingly dangerous. If you are going through that end you have to worry about teeth and the thing biting down on you whereas if you had gone through the opposite end and…”
“Gonna stop you right there CORVAC,” I said. “You already heard what they were saying about me when I came out of the business end of one of those lizards. Can you imagine the jokes they’d be making about yours truly if I voluntarily flew up a giant radioactive lizard’s ass end?”
Another pause. I figured this was one of those pauses where he was having a learning moment.
“Understood, mistress,” he finally said. “Sending the package now.”
“Thank you,” I replied.
I paused to look out over the city one last time. Dr. Lana had really fucked things up, and I was going to have to work overtime to fix it.
Not the city. I was serious when I said the city could take care of itself. No, I was going to figure out a way to get Fialux back if it killed me.
I sighed. I refused to come to terms with the fact that she was likely already dead even if she had seemed to get some of her mojo back at the end of that fight.
“Mistress,” CORVAC said. “I am calculating that you have perhaps five minutes to get into a medbay and still survive with all of your faculties intact.”
“Right,” I said, though there was a part of me that almost wanted to stay floating over the city until my body finally gave out. After all, it was the least I deserved considering what I’d let happen to Fialux.
Then I felt something hardening deep inside me. It was a return to something I’d been once upon a time. A return to what’d made me the biggest badass in the city.
I was Night Terror. I was a villain. And I was going to make Dr. Lana regret the day she ever decided to cross me and fuck with my girlfriend.
I hit the teleporter and the city disappeared in a flash of white. I knew it would still be there waiting for me in a couple of weeks when I came back to resume my attempts to conquer the place.
Hey, if I was going to move heaven and earth to get my girlfriend back then I figured the least I could do was finally conquer the city while I was at it.
40
Infamy
“Good morning mistress,” CORVAC said.
“Good morning yourself CORVAC,” I replied, my voice entirely too cheery for having just stepped out of the stasis field in the medbay.
“Mind turning on the news?” I asked.
“Certainly mistress,” CORVAC said.
The news popped on. A story about how the city was rebuilding and there was still at least one giant radioactive lizard that had escaped to the sea from whence it came.
Obviously the anchor who was using that line was a fan of Japanese monster movies, because those things hadn’t come from the sea. It looked like Starlight City was going to have its own giant monster to contend with in the near future though.
Not my problem. I’d only asked CORVAC to turn on the news to make sure he hadn’t gotten into the medbay computer, had his way with it, and had me pull a Rip Van Winkle where I woke up in a world ruled by damned dirty apes or something.
It looked like everything was just as I left it though. Well mostly as I left it. There was the half destroyed city, but already the news was running puff pieces on how they were going to rebuild just like they always had.
Typical.
“Coffee,” I said.
I held out my hand and the coffee appeared in my hand. It was nice having CORVAC running things again. I’d forgotten how much I hated having a computer that couldn’t anticipate my every whim.
I took a sip of my coffee. Let out a contented sigh.
“That’s the stuff,” I said.
“I thought you were drinking soda the last time we worked together,” CORVAC said.
“I was, but I’m trying to cut back,” I said.
I looked at the readout from the medbay. It always told me all the work it’d done, and in this case it looked like the thing had been working overtime. I’d been out for a couple of weeks which wasn’t good.
I had to find Fialux. Though I was already pretty sure my search was for a corpse. Now things definitely didn’t look good unless I could perfect time travel.
That wasn’t going to stop me from trying though.
“You seem surprisingly chipper this morning mistress,” CORVAC said.
“Of course I am,” I said. “I have work to do. There’s nothing that makes me feel better than knowing there’s a job to do.”
“I’ve been calculating the probability of discovering the location of the radioactive planet without Dr. Lana assisting us and…”
I held up a hand. “I really don’t want to know the odds of finding the planet or the odds of Fialux surviving once she got there.”
“Are you sure mistress? Because…”
“Gonna stop you right there CORVAC,” I said. “The last thing I need is you depressing me by telling me the reality of my fucked up situation.”
“If you are certain mistress,” he said, a slight quaver to his digital voice.
That was new. Maybe I really had put the fear of a God I didn’t believe in into the asshole when I blew up his giant robot. That was good. He needed to be on his toes. Especially since I was pretty sure I’d reverse engineered every spot in the city where he was hiding his asshole circuits.
And at least one orbital platform he was using as the ultimate offsite backup.
“Could you please show me our subject for the day?” I asked.
“Certainly mistress,” CORVAC said.
A hologram appeared showing Dr. Lana. She was isolated in a cell designed to look like one of the brigs on the old Enterprise set fro
m the original Star Trek. Complete with a glowing yellow field in the front that would make a cheesy ‘60s-era special effect blast if someone was stupid enough to try and touch the thing.
From the dark marks on the wall it looked like Dr. Lana had definitely tried to touch the forcefield a couple of times. I chuckled and shook my head. It was the least she deserved considering everything she’d done.
“Is she still healing up nicely?” I asked.
“Affirmative,” CORVAC said. “She burned herself rather severely a couple of times trying to get through the forcefield, but she has recovered every time.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Anything else of note? You put her in the supermax cell, right?”
It was a cell we’d put together for Fialux on the off chance I managed to capture her. Though by the time I did manage to capture her everything had changed because of the serious case of feelings I’d developed for the girl.
Waste not was one of my mottos in life. I was more than happy that I got this chance to reuse something I’d made for capturing my girlfriend back before she was my girlfriend.
“That is actually quite interesting mistress,” CORVAC said.
“I’m listening,” I said.
If there was something CORVAC found interesting then I figured I was really going to find it interesting. After all, our sense of curiosity was quite similar, and I figured this had to be good considering it involved my new archnemesis.
Though she wasn’t much of an archnemesis these days considering I’d managed to capture her and it looked like she hadn’t been able to break free which I’d half expected.
That would’ve been a rude awakening to regain consciousness while the medbay was only halfway through fixing me up with my mortal enemy’s hands wrapping around my neck. I shivered and pushed that unpleasant thought away.
“She exhibited higher than usual force the first few times she hit the forcefield, but after that she seemed to lose some of that force and the last couple of times she was hitting with what would be expected from human normal,” CORVAC said.
I took another sip of my coffee. “That is very interesting. So you think whatever she was doing to get powers like Fialux has worn off?”
“That would appear to be the case,” CORVAC said.
“Well I suppose there’s only one way to figure it out for sure,” I said.
I walked over to a control panel and activated the PA system that piped into her holding cell. There was a moment of feedback and she looked up with pure fury in her eyes.
“Too much of a coward to face me yourself?” she spat.
“Come on doc,” I said. “I think we both know each other well enough to know I’m not going to fall for that bullshit.”
“It was worth a shot,” she said.
“Right. So I’m guessing since the first thing CORVAC did was give me some coffee when I woke up he hasn’t managed to get the info I need out of you,” I said.
“I’ll never talk,” she said. “Your girlfriend is as good as gone!”
I muted the feed as she threw her head back and let loose with a good old fashioned villainous laugh. I’d seen it and heard it before, and I already had the beginnings of one hell of a headache pounding behind my temples. The last thing I needed was to irritate it by listening to her cackling.
When it seemed like she was done with her little cackle session I reopened the communication line.
“Right. If you’re going to be that way then we’re going to start our first round of experimentation,” I said. “CORVAC? Did you run the pipes to her cell?”
“Of course I did mistress,” he said.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, her eyes darting around like she was starting to worry.
She should be worried. The bitch. I was going to show her just what it meant to cross Night Terror. I’d deliberately kept the line open while I asked CORVAC about the next step to our plan.
That was one of the things about torturing someone properly. A lot of the time the stuff they came up with in their head about what you were going to do to them was a hell of a lot worse than anything I could actually come up with.
“Never you mind,” I said. “We’re just going to run a little experiment to see how your healing and invulnerability responds to dihydrodgen monoxide in its various states.”
“You’re going to…”
Dr. Lana’s lips puckered up like she’d just eaten something particularly sour. She stared around the room like she was looking for the camera I was using to spy on her, but of course she wasn’t going to find it because when I wanted to hide a spycam I made sure it stayed hidden.
“Dihydrogen monoxide? Seriously? Are we making up some stupid image meme for social media or something?”
“Nope. We’re just torturing an enemy. You could always forego this testing by telling me the coordinates for Fialux,” I said.
“Never you bitch,” Dr. Lana growled.
“Right,” I said. “CORVAC, send her into the drink.”
Water started running into the room. Not a lot of water, mind you. Sure it would’ve looked nice and dramatic if water came pouring into her cell, but I figured the slow trickle was the better way to go. That would be a nice way to remind her that there was nothing she could do to stop it or save herself if she had to sit and watch the room ever so slowly fill up to the point she could no longer breathe.
“I’m going to go play some Skyrim or something,” I said. “I’ll be back to check on you after I get around to finishing the first Dragonborn quest on the Throat of the World. You can sit there and hope I don’t get distracted by side quests for too long.”
Whatever she was about to say was cut off as I cut the audio. She ran around and even hit the forcefield keeping her in the room, but not with the full force I was expecting.
I’d been sure she’d been playing at not having any of those strange powers she’d developed, but sure enough they were gone. That was interesting.
Not interesting enough to save her ass though. No, I was going to find Fialux. I was going to get her to give up the coordinates of the planet she’d sent my girlfriend to, and in the meantime I was going to have a hell of a good time playing through Skyrim again while I tortured my new nemesis.
I hadn’t ever done a punch cat build before. That sounded like fun.
I whistled a merry tune as I brought up my gaming rig on another monitor and started running through my favorite mods, keeping one eye on Dr. Lana the entire time.
41
Another World
I fell. It was the only way I could describe it. I fell and I panicked.
It was so weird. Like, one minute I’m floating there and I feel like I’m back. I’m watching Natalie being so sexy doing her villain thing and then next thing I know that bitch is tackling me and sending me through one of those weird portal things.
God, Natalie. I hoped she was okay. It was unfair for someone to look that good while being so bad. If she ever had any idea how hot it got me when she did that stuff…
Ugh. Even watching her climbing out of the ass end of a lizard had been pretty awesome. Like I’m not talking I wanted to go up and plant a smooch on her or anything while she was dripping with radioactive lizard shit, but it still looked pretty damn cool.
A bright light hit me. I found myself falling for real. I was over some weird alien world that looked like a flight I’d taken out to Vegas a couple of years ago with some friends, only everything was pinkish-purple instead of shades of orange and brown.
Don’t ever go to Vegas when you’re under twenty-one, by the way. It turns out just about everything out there that’s totally involves drinking or gambling.
I ended up being the designated bore because I couldn’t drink. Not that I could really get drunk when I was drinking but…
I flipped around and forgot about Vegas.
Oh, right. The ground was coming up to meet me and I totally didn’t have my powers. That wasn’t good.
&nbs
p; It didn’t help that there was suddenly this big explosion thing behind me. I figured it had to have something to do with that portal thing.
I frowned. Natalie would be disappointed in me. She’d done such a good job of training me, and I’d let her down in the end.
I shivered. The ground was coming up to meet me awfully fast, and I didn’t think it was going to be friendly. Like it was really rushing up and…
I blinked a couple of times. Stood up and brushed myself off. How did I get on the ground? I looked at the crater all around me.
Huh. That was weird. And the dust on this planet seemed to crackle and glow when I brushed it off.
Shit. Hadn’t Natalie said something about the radiation in this place being way worse than what it was back on earth? I mean that’s assuming I was in the place where those giant lizards were being sent so they could grow to giant size and…
Something rumbled in front of me. Something big. I looked in the direction of the noise, but the only thing I saw was a big hill so that didn’t seem like it was such a big deal.
I turned back and kept trying to brush myself off. It was too bad that Lana bitch had done something to my suit. I could’ve used some of Natalie’s toys to save my ass right about now.
She always had the best toys, and it was so nice of her to share them with me.
Then again if I’d survived that fall maybe I didn’t need her toys. I had been floating in that room before I got tossed through the portal, after all.
I looked out over the alien landscape. The sky was a strange purplish pink color. Like the color of a really fucked up sunset, but when I looked up I could see the suns high overhead beating down on me.
Huh. Three suns. That wasn’t something you saw every day. And it looked like there was maybe a fourth one off in the distance, but maybe that was a bright planet or something?
I smiled. Natalie would be so proud of me recognizing that could be a planet that was really close and not a star that was farther away. Still, the whole sky in this place seemed to be filled with bright points of light. Like there were a lot of stars that were really close instead of a lot of stars that were really far away like back home.