Planet Hero- Civilian

by M. A. Carlson

  Part of me wanted to be a petulant child about this whole thing but felt that approach could very well lead to them ‘accidentally’ pushing me out of the invisible flying car from a few miles up.

  Ignoring the impulse to play it safe, I grinned and asked, “Are we there yet?”

  I could feel Kidnap getting annoyed with me. I still wanted to push it, but I felt I had done enough, at least for now anyway. It was just a matter of waiting for us to arrive wherever it was they were taking me.

  25

  Travelling for hours in the invisible flying car was annoying. The zigzag path they took was even more annoying. And none of it did anything to hide the fact that we were flying above the wilds, the green of the jungle below us was something even the blurred windows couldn’t block out whenever Kidnap banked to the left or right.

  When the vehicle finally stopped, evening had set in. I also noted that when we stopped, we were still rather high up in the air. The windows unblurred at last, finally giving me a darkened view of where I was, right up until intense light spilled into the night, completely filling the sky and blinding me momentarily. Ahead of us, a very bright slit of light had appeared and slowly began to part. After blinking a few times, I was impressed to see the opening in the sky led to some kind of hangar bay.

  With a small surge the car began moving again, into the hangar where it parked next to three matching cars. I could only watch as the giant doors slid closed behind us.

  A loudspeaker announced, “Beginning Pressurization!”

  I started to ask, “How long-” when I was interrupted by the same loudspeaker.

  “Pressurization Complete!”

  The doors opened and I followed Ransom, or was it And? Anyway, I followed one of them out of the vehicle. I still didn’t know which was which. For now, I decided I would call the bigger of the two Ransom. Neither of them said a word during the trip and eventually Kidnap raised a divider between himself and the backseat.

  Finally breaking the silence, Kidnap gave me a simple order, “Follow,” and began walking.

  As we walked, I paid attention to my surroundings, not that there was much to see. A single long hallway and the occasional closed door. “It’s a bit of a ghost town,” I commented, hoping for a little information.

  Kidnap just kept walking.

  I tried to listen for any signs of people but there was nothing. I couldn’t even hear the sound of fans circulating air or the hum of engines like I would have in an airplane. And of course, my Spatial Awareness was limited by the hallway and couldn’t find any gaps aside from a few small vents. It was frustrating.

  Kidnap eventually entered an elevator and inserted a key card.

  “Ooh, can I get one of those?” I asked. I really hoped that my act as Dr. Portal was working. A lot of this was guess work on my part. One of the things I noticed from watching Dr. Portal on film, he never seemed to take anything seriously. He was ostentatious to the point of almost being comical . . . very comic book like.

  Kidnap still didn’t respond as the elevator began moving up. It wasn’t long before the elevator stopped, and the doors opened to what could only be called a throne room. The room was long and empty, aside from an unoccupied throne. At least, the room appeared . . . empty. At the very limit of my awareness, I could sense someone.

  “Am I late?” I asked. “Or did you take me to the wrong throne room?” While I could sense someone, they didn’t need to know that I sensed whoever it was.

  “Leave us,” a surprisingly female voice ordered, though I couldn’t see her. I only knew that she was behind the throne, leaning against it.

  Kidnap bowed and slowly backed up into the elevator, disappearing from view behind the closing doors.

  “Dr. Portal,” the still hidden female said. “I was surprised you came so willingly.”

  “I have questions,” I said. “If I was going to get answers, this is where I needed to be.”

  “Interesting,” she replied. “And what questions do you have?”

  “My questions are for Terminus,” I said, crossing my arms.

  The woman’s voice rang out with laughter that echoed all around the throne room.

  “What’s so funny?” I demanded, halting the woman’s laughter.

  Finally, the woman stepped out from behind the throne. She was young. I put her in her early twenties. She wore a skintight black bodysuit with a silver T spanning across her collarbone and down to her belt. “You are,” she said lightly, her hips sashaying from left to right as she moved to sit in the throne. “I heard your brain got scrambled by the device. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you would confuse the former Terminus with his successor.”

  “You?” I asked, trying to get a better look at the young woman.

  “Me,” Terminus replied with a wicked grin and amusement dancing in her eyes.

  “And who are you?” I asked. I didn’t know what the original Terminus looked like. And I didn’t know if the woman in front of me was related to him. But based on her age and the timeline I got from Major Miracle, she could have been his daughter or niece.

  “I’m the daughter of a murdered genius,” Terminus declared proudly.

  “Murdered genius? So Terminus really did die?” I asked.

  “Precisely,” Terminus replied. “And now, I intend to finish what he started. But to do that, I needed my power amplification device. A device you stole.”

  “Did I steal it?” I asked, trying to play dumb.

  Terminus’s amusement vanished. “You know you did. You can stop playing dumb.”

  “That’s the funny thing,” I said. “I really can’t be sure if I did steal it. Did I steal it for you? Was I forced to use it to escape? Or did you force me to use it as a test, expecting me to die? I really don’t remember. So, help me understand. What exactly . . . did I do?”

  “It is very simple. You stole the power amplifier I spent billions of cubes developing. You ruined years of my hard work and careful planning,” Terminus paused as a rage briefly overtook her features. “Because of you, I was forced to drastically change my plans. Because of you, the heroes are now aware there even is a plan.”

  “What plans would those be?” I asked. Another bit of Para’s coaching encouraged me to get villains to monologue. He said it was because all villains seem to like the sound of their own voice. I suspected it was more due to a superiority complex and a compulsion to prove how much smarter they believed themselves to be than everyone else.

  “With that device, I will finally tear down the hero association that murdered my father. The same association that oppresses non-heroes and treats them like slaves. I will change the world for the better. And I’ll start by permanently stripping away the Ability of Major Miracle, the false king of New Haven. The butcher who murdered my father,” Terminus boasted.

  “And you would rule this world once the heroes were gone?” I asked.

  “Of course, I will. I’ll create a utopia. Everyone will be truly equal. Once abilities are gone from this world, when everyone is truly equal, there will be peace,” Terminus said.

  I could hear the belief in her voice. She truly believed that if there were no abilities, then everyone would be equal, and then peace would be achieved. There was only one problem. As Earth’s history had taught me time and again, there was no such thing as a utopian society. Even without abilities, people were never equal. Even in my country, a place that espoused equality for all, no one was truly equal. All it ever took was one corrupt person to destroy peace and prosperity, thus allowing all manner of evil back into society. And let’s be honest, with so many villains running rampant in this world already, there was already more than enough corruption and evil to go around.

  “But now, because of you. I have been forced to adjust. I needed to take the engineers before the heroes could get to them, small grace though it was,” Terminus continued. “They are here, rebuilding the power amplifier in secret. Still, the heroes are on to me, even if they do not know
who I am or what exactly my plans are.”

  “And you still haven’t said exactly what your plan is?” I asked, getting an angry glare. “Don’t glare at me. So far, your plan sounds overly simple. Where is the flare? Where is the twist? Where are the timetables? Blueprints? Maps? It seems clear to me that you have none of that. But . . . maybe I can help you.”

  “You? Ha!” Terminus laughed a clearly fake laugh. “As for my plans, you don’t need to know anything about them.”

  “Okay, then why am I here? Was it just so you could gloat and then kill me? Or did you actually need something from me?” I asked. “Or . . . did we-” I started to ask, pointing from her to me and back again.

  Terminus grit her teeth. “I am going to kill you,” she said. “But first, the engineers want to know how you survived using the device.”

  “And how would I know that?” I asked. I was sure that if I had actually survived using the power amplification device, I could have eventually figured out how I survived with ample use of the scientific method and experimentation. I might have even been able to help them figure out how to increase the survival rate, if given enough time and the right tools.

  “If you are saying you are not useful, then I will kill you now,” Terminus said, licking her lips in anticipation.

  “I didn’t say that I wasn’t useful,” I said. “I only said I don’t know how I survived.”

  “Oh, and just how do you think you can be useful?” Terminus asked.

  “How much do you actually know about me?” I asked, curious about what another villain knew about Dr. Portal.

  Terminus narrowed her eyes, judging me. “You are a middling villain of the 31st Milestone. Violent but not deadly, a weakness that would have gotten you killed one day if I wasn’t going to kill you today. You’re clever but not devious, another weakness that would have gotten you killed one day. You’ve never been caught. You’re a planner, which means you think you have an escape plan, or you would never have come along so willingly. Let me assure you now, your portals won’t open while you’re inside my negation field. And my negation field covers the entirety of this fortress.”

  I hadn’t tried opening a portal since I’d been ‘captured’, but if she said I wasn’t going to be able to open one, then I was inclined to believe her. I tested it anyway, and just as she said, nothing happened.

  “Oh no, I’m caught,” I said, putting both hands on my face and acting shocked. My portals might have been sealed off, but it didn’t seem to affect my Spatial Awareness. I could still feel everything around me, including a subtle wave of energy that was pulsing outward from the woman. I could feel the energy pass out of the maximum range of my senses. More importantly, I could sense gaps in those energy waves.

  “You are also strange,” Terminus added. “You should be terrified right now, but you’re not. You’re not even taking me seriously. It is . . . both insulting and infuriating at the same time.”

  “Oh no, you saw through my act,” I said, pointing a finger at her. “Whatever shall I do now?”

  “Stop that!” Terminus shouted, standing from her throne. “Stop treating me like I’m some random civilian. I am a villainess of the 88th Milestone. I will not be looked down on by you or anyone else!”

  “But . . . you’re so short. If I do not look down on you, how will I see you?” I asked.

  “I’ll kill you!” Terminus shouted, storming across the room until she was standing in front of me. “How dare you treat me this way!”

  I grinned. Her anger was making her sloppy. The gaps in the waves of energy were getting larger. I could have tried to attack her then, but at the 88th Milestone, there was no telling just how tough she was.

  “It’s been fun. It’s been real. But it hasn’t been real fun,” I said, giving her a brief farewell wave before opening a portal under my feet in time with one of the larger gaps in her negation waves. I smiled a little wider when I heard her cry of disbelief before my portal fizzed out above me.

  I landed on the other side of the portal with a thud and pain shooting up my legs, which was accompanied by a very small dip in my red health bar. Her negation field did manage to throw off the trajectory of the portal’s other end. Still, I was in the hangar, exactly where I wanted to be. Or, I thought I wanted to be. Facing the surprised looking Ransom, at least I thought it was Ransom, was definitely not where I wanted to be.

  I ran at him, using my Below Good Speed to close on him very quickly. I punched him and felt two cracks, his nose and my fist, which also included another dip in my health bar. Thankfully, the punch did its job. The large goon was unconscious.

  “Now, I just need to steal one of these invisible cars and get out of here,” I said to myself just in time to see red lights start flashing.

  The loudspeaker crackled to life again. A robotic voice booming out, “Lockdown Procedures Now Activated!”

  Which was followed by a loud metallic clank. The hangar doors now had another door covering it from the inside, giving me the impression, I wasn’t going to be getting out that way.

  I supposed I could have tried opening a portal to the outside, but my Spatial Awareness was telling me that the erratic gaps were fixed. I could still do something between the gaps if I used my Time Compression, but it wouldn’t be enough time to open a portal and go through the other side.

  I looked around the hangar for a way to escape, any way to escape, but other than the door I came in, and the door that led to the hall and back to Terminus’s throne room, I was coming up short. Then I saw what I needed. Just above the door was a vent and beyond the vent was an airduct just begging to be crawled through.

  I waited for a gap in the waves of negation to activate my Time Compression, then I used Teleport and put myself safely in the airduct . . . that was way too small. I barely fit. It was a struggle even to breathe. And there was no light. There was no way I was going to be crawling through the airducts.

  I used my Time Compression again and teleported further into the ventilation system, this time to an intersection I could barely see in the dark of the ducts. Then again to another place in the ventilation system where I felt a small room was located. I was very thankful my Spatial Awareness still worked, or I would have gotten well and truly lost in that place. And finally, into the room where I gasped for breath and tried to get my heartbeat to calm down. I was never affected by small spaces before, but after that experience, I might have become a little bit claustrophobic. At least I was safe for the time being.

  I really wished I could open a Portal, but the waves of Terminus’s negation field made that all but impossible. As it was, I was going to need to rely on Teleporting to get around and even that would only be useful with Time Compression active so I could Teleport during the small gap between the negation waves.

  26

  Supply closets are not the most comfortable place to hide out. More comfortable than an airduct but not by much. I tried to make the best of my situation. Using a combination of my Time Compression, Spatial Awareness, and Portals, I began opening and closing several keyhole-sized portals. Just little holes in space that were just large enough to look through. I considered using my time while I waited for my ability to recharge to cultivate, but someone might notice the absence of Nanos, which would not be good for me if someone followed it to the source.

  My goal was a simple one, figure out where I was inside the fortress and then try to figure out a way to escape. In the process of my exploration, I discovered the fortress was flying, slowly moving above the wilds. I had no idea where it was moving to or how long it would take to get there. And while the fortress was nowhere close to the size of a fortress city, it was large enough that it could house hundreds of people, probably a lot more. I also discovered that the whole ship was pressurized after I opened a small portal outside and almost got my eye sucked through. Thank you, Time Compression, for giving me just enough time to close the portal before it was too late. Unfortunately, it made it pretty clear that
I would not be using a portal to get outside due to the pressurization differential. If I wanted out, I was going to need to commandeer one of those invisible flying cars . . . after getting the place out of lockdown . . . and opening the doors . . . but most importantly, not getting caught while doing any of it.

  In the meantime, I was trying to build a map of the place . . . or find a map of the place. So far, I hadn’t found anything resembling a command center or control room. I feared that it was someone’s ability that made the place fly and move. And if that were true, then it also meant Terminus had enough control over her negation field that she could choose whose ability she negates. I really hoped that wasn’t the case.

  I spotted the first place of interest, the cafeteria, about an hour into my exploration. There were maybe a dozen people in the cafeteria, most of them wore uniforms that suggested they were guards or soldiers. Then I spotted Kidnap and his cohort. The big guy I punched out had his mask slightly off kilter. I guessed his nose was very swollen under his mask. I would have bet he had two black eyes as well. I gleaned one other important detail from looking at him. He wasn’t healed. This fact suggested Terminus didn’t have a healer on the ship. Either that or the guy was being punished for failing to catch me.

  I continued my exploration, hoping to find something more useful than the cafeteria. After a few fruitless hours of searching, I was ready to groan in frustration, but any noise might have given my location away. There were too many variables that went along with a flying fortress populated by villains and henchmen. Which brought up another mental point. Just where were the heroes? I thought they were supposed to be tracking me or something?

  My shoulders sagged then tensed as I heard the door to my room start moving. I quickly activated my Time Compression and used Teleport to get back into the very cramped and uncomfortable airduct. I made a note to sue Hollywood when I got home. Talk about false advertising. The airducts that heroes are always crawling through in the movies are just not that big or as clean in real life. That or Terminus saw large airducts as a weakness and purposely put in smaller ones.