by Skyler Grant
A door was sealed with a keypad. With a touch of one paw Uma unlocked it and allowed us entry. A dark stairway led us down to a well-lit hall.
There was only a sound of someone typing, coming through one of the doors. Mostly this floor seemed to be empty.
"I'm still trying to cut through their security to get us a proper layout. They're good. The most secure information is regarding the basement," Uma said.
We'd entered on the second floor.
"Ox," Ox said. "When I toiled my days in labor to this lair I did so underground. There are no stairs. To the box of movement I will guide."
Especially after STRONG I was wary of elevators. Once we triggered any underground alarm it would make getting out just that much more difficult. Still, what could we do?
Ox led us through the halls and as we approached some elevator doors we saw our first people. A pair of armed guards.
"Two C section, unknowns sighted," one said into a microphone before advancing. "Identify yourselves."
Ox charged. They didn't even have a chance to grab their guns before he plowed into them and sent them slamming against the doors.
One had a knife in hand almost immediately, a blade that shimmered with an orange intensity. An arrow from Jules pierced the guard's hand and impaled it to the wall.
I hit the guard with a stun charge even as the second rolled away and got his gun up in time to fire at Ox. Charged energy rounds drove Ox backwards, clothes smoldering.
Energy weapon met energy weapon as Niles blew the guard's head off with a charged blast.
As soon as the guard died, alarms began to sound.
"Security Breach. Level Two, Section C. Begin isolation procedures," came an announcement over the speakers.
Jules headed for the elevator doors, her muscles straining as she forced them apart. Fortunately, the elevator was on this floor and we headed inside.
The panel was completely dark.
Uma reached out to touch it and frowned. "They completely killed the interface. I can't hack what isn't connected."
Niles tore a panel off the wall exposing the circuitry inside. Kneeling down, he flickered for a moment, like he usually did when he was freezing time. My cameras caught bursts of movement.
Sparks flew and the panel lights came back on. Uma was there in an instant, her paw pressing to it, and the elevator began to move.
Jets hissed from the ceiling and a pink gas sprayed out.
"I can hold my breath," Jules said.
Uma didn't need oxygen, and neither did I. Niles' suit had atmospheric containment so he'd be safe. If Jules could hold her breath our only problem was Ox.
"Ox is tough. Cut off his airflow," I said.
Niles took the metal panel he had torn off and slammed it against Ox's face. On his other hand a finger sparked with a plasma torch. With quick efforts Nile's welded it onto the man's flesh, completely sealing his face and cutting off his air supply.
The elevator was still moving. Wherever this basement was going, it was deep.
20
After two minutes and seven seconds of steady movement the air flickered and we were elsewhere.
Not just an elevator, but a teleporter. Although I suspect the latter wasn't typical given how we appeared in the middle of a room and on a raised platform.
This was obviously a laboratory, with over two dozen people in lab coats standing around the perimeter and an array of equipment along the walls. In one corner of the room an immense glass sphere held a small pinpoint of light, constantly shifting colors.
Niles tore the metal away from Ox's mouth, taking a bit of his jaw with it.
An older man with wild gray hair and holding some sort of energy rifle grimaced at the sight. He said to Ox, "Really, Henry. You should have anticipated the gas. Your companions certainly should have when entering a closed environment."
I had to admit that he had a point. Some sort of oxygen mask capable of at least filtration should be mandatory on any outside expedition for our organics and any henchmen we brought along. I'd have to shop for some later.
"Ox," Ox said, gurgling a bit of blood in the process. "Did not think you would use it on an old friend. Your disloyalty compounds and expands like a fish."
The scientist looked surprised, "You can talk now? Some sort of multidimensional translation matrix? Not finely tuned, no—still, brilliant work." He told the rest of us, "I'm Doctor Kento, head of the facility."
Jules already had her bow drawn and pointed at him. "We don't need to hurt anyone else. We just want to know what you know about dimensional technology."
"Well, of course you do," Kento said with a beaming smile. "Why else would you be here? Don't worry about hurting anyone, you'll find it's quite impossible. Also don't try leaving the platform—for your own protection."
Jules didn't hesitate, shifting her aim slightly and letting an arrow fly. It hit the space surrounding the edge of the platform and flickered out of existence.
"Ox," Ox said. "You got the shields across the realms to work. Impressed am I by your advancements, but sad you did not spare such efforts on my own shattered voice."
Kento looked sheepish for a moment. "Yes, well, we weren't nearly as far along then. We offered you a position as janitor until we could get it sorted, and you really should have stuck around instead of running off."
I said, "I'm Walter, head of Lair for Rent and Hench for Hire and currently representing Gloom, who rules over Mastermind Isle during the current Omega level crisis."
Why not try diplomacy, Jules had gotten it to work before.
"If you were here officially I'd care. Instead you played havoc on our defenses, killed a guard, and tried a hostile incursion on this lab," Kento said. "I'd be well within my rights to shoot you all."
Ox tried to form more words but just gurgled more blood. Perhaps I'd overestimated his durability a bit.
"Do you think you could at least manage medical care for your old associate?" Jules asked.
Kento sighed. "Fine. Focus on Henry. Injury distribution across ... oh ... let's say the two hundred range. Initiate shift."
Ox's wounds took on a distinct, and familiar, sort of rainbow shimmer for a moment before the flesh was restored.
Normally healing worked from the outside of the wound inward, detectable by my cameras. Here the wounds appeared to heal all at once.
"That is clever," Jules said.
"Everything we do here is clever, that is rather the point of this whole facility, cleverness," Kento said. "If you villains were half so clever as you think, you wouldn't have to break in here and try to steal ours."
"Boss, we really do need a science division," Jules said to me.
Kento said, "Henry there was quite the scientist before he became the experiment. Perhaps he could manage it for you? Now, if we are quite done I am going to dump you either in the channel or an alternate dimension. The odds of the last are, relatively, low."
I thought Ox was hard enough to understand even when he wasn't spouting technobabble. I was reminded just how much worse things could get.
I moved to perch my drone atop Uma's head. I didn't want to risk a standard wireless signal in here. We connected. Kento didn't seem aware what we were doing.
"Are there any systems you are able to access through the platform?" I silently asked her.
"It is wired. I don't know what the system does, but I have some control. What do you need?"
"If I signal, hit every shutdown command you can find. Something is keeping us contained. When I lift off, connect with Niles and let him know that, if I give the signal, to take out the guards," I said.
"Got it," Uma said.
I was still open to trying diplomacy, but if they weren't interested in playing I wanted the option to fight our way out of this and get what we needed. Diplomacy was always better when you had the leverage of shooting people's kneecaps. Humans really cared about that sort of thing.
"What do you know about the Swarm?" I asked K
ento.
"Nothing. It wasn't us that played around with a dimensional artifact and opened a door to dimensional invaders. Our portal is pin-point size, heavily monitored and controlled."
How self-righteous, and correct. I really hated it when people got to be both.
"But you've been studying them, I know you must have. Your side was hiding that you existed at all, even in a crisis where we all need to know what is happening. This can still be mutually profitable. Or it can be a one-sided bloodbath," I said.
"Perhaps you've misunderstood who has the leverage here," Kento said.
Right, diplomacy was tough when one person thought they held every card.
"Go," I said.
Around us there was a brief shimmer of rainbow light.
The two guards in the room collapsed, their faces disfigured messes from the energy blasts they'd taken at point-blank range.
Kento fired his rifle. Rippling blasts of energy shot towards Jules, who rolled out of the way. The blasts caught scientists on the other side of the room, ripples of energy running over their bodies before there were simply parts of them missing. Massive holes opened in their flesh and they slumped down dead.
Jules fired a concussion arrow that hit Kento's hands and exploded, sending the rifle flying.
Kento stumbled backward, stunned, and a moment later Niles had the rifle in hand.
"So," I said. "Uma, find their database. I want everything they have. Niles, find us anything else worth stealing. Ox, figure out how to work this teleporter."
"You'll set our efforts back," Kento said with a grimace as he massaged his hands. "This is foolishness."
"We tried to play nice and you refused. You can still try, but this time it is your bargain to strike," I said.
Kento glanced around at the other scientists, all of whom appeared rather upset by this turn of events. I suppose not many villains managed to make it past all their security.
Kento said, "We've learned a few things. The Swarm are coming from multiple dimensions, but all of the traces regarding their teleportation of our powerful suggested a single dimensional destination for them."
They'd taken everyone to the same place.
"Do you have the ability to retrieve them?" I asked.
"Even opening a pinhole dimensional shift requires huge power. To do something that they did on such a scale? Not just do we not know how, my professional opinion is that we won't ever be able to figure it out. We've been working towards small-scale teleportation hoping we might be able to retrieve just a few of those taken," Kento said.
That explained why they hadn't talked to us. They had no intention of trying to rescue the S-Class villains.
"That pinhole breach you've achieved? Can it translate energy efficiently?" Jules asked.
"Highly efficiently. Unfortunately, matter is a different problem," Kento said.
Jules shot me a look and I understood why. A corridor that could allow for energy transmission, but not matter. We knew of something that could transform matter to energy on a massive scale and vice versa, and Mastermind had already pointed us in that direction. Patriot. This was why we needed it.
Working for Mastermind was so maddeningly frustrating sometimes. What he'd seen in a few seconds were things it was taking us days to work out, and might take us even longer to put into practice.
"Thank you, Doctor," I said, before adding. "Kill them all."
Energy blasts and arrows flew, slaughtering every scientist in the lab.
"Wipe the records of this encounter. We have three days until any of them will come back. Let's put them to good use," I said.
21
We used the lab's teleporter to return to our base. The equipment we'd stolen went to our new R&D division which I put Ox in charge of, and copies of the research data went to Voltara who was much appreciative.
Gloom and Bouncy made their own way back on the airship. They'd seemed to have bonded even more from their time spent together, it was really quite sickening.
We weren't back for long when we started to see some reaction to our strikes. Six hours after we hit the hive we had airships closing in on us from five different hives around the world. We'd gotten the attention of the Endless Swarm.
If we were going to be attacked, we were in a relatively good position for it. Gloom had gotten a lot of attention on the streams, as had our attack on the hive, and the very fact that we'd used Mastermind's tower to hit them helped to add to our aura of us being his successor.
Our first floor was filled with people hoping to enlist or otherwise seeking licenses. Violence in the city was down about twenty percent as some of the power struggles stopped. Still, we had some problems.
The city had a few new powerful A-Classes who were organizing people around them. Our old enemy the Hogfather was among them, although he was also, strangely enough, a bit of an ally right now. It seemed he and Gloom were dating.
I wondered how her husband would take it, if he ever managed to escape from his pit of eternal darkness. And how her father would feel about it, if we rescued him.
There were others. Fireheart, Triple Threat, Magum Opus. A whole new group of powerful villains, each of which were building their own organizations. They'd been polite, but curt, whenever we'd reached out about joining up. None wanted to directly challenge us, yet, but they all were obviously waiting for someone else to make the first move and see what happened.
We had around one hundred and fifty supers and over a thousand henchmen as part of the Gloom organization. The numbers actually working for us as a company were far smaller, but we were still well-staffed.
Those villains who had signed up were giving us the standard cut of their take that Mastermind had always demanded. We had an income stream coming in, which was good, as city defenses were pretty much trashed.
I was doing my best to get things in good order without spending cash, and where we had to dip into our own funds I was making sure to draw up a hefty interest rate for the Gloom organization.
Right now though, our focus had to be on the Swarm. They were coming.
"Let's not make it easy for them. Offer a bounty of one hundred thousand for each ship taken down," I said.
To the big names it wasn't much. It was enough of a payday to inspire the small names to band together. It would normally inspire us.
Everyone had gathered in the command center. I'd deploy them for combat against the invaders as needed.
"Why bother? Just send me out. I'll kill them all. I'll tear those ships out of the sky and then go tear their homes to pieces too," Gloom said with a manic grin.
"Last time you fought them they weren't expecting you. Now they are. You'll get your chance, but first we want to get an idea who they are," I said.
"Should I contact the Council?" Jules asked.
Did we want the heroes involved in this? On the one hand they had a lot of firepower, and right now they were far better organized than we were. On the other hand, their assistance would make us look weak when we needed to project strength.
"Ask them to engage any ships in their territory and to break off before entering ours. If we need assistance we'll call," I said.
"There is a lot of Endless Swarm. We really pissed them off," Niles said.
That had kind of been the point. Still, he was right. There were over thirty airships converging on this city, and they were all of the larger types that the Swarm used.
22
We only wanted some of those ships to get through. All of them would overwhelm not just our base, but the city defenses too.
Fortunately, so far the heroes were punching above their weight limit. They really were organized, unlike the villains, who were in a nonstop brawl to figure out who was in charge.
Every major hero organization had their junior leagues, and as far as I could tell on that side of the channel everybody had gotten a promotion. The B-Class organizations were staffing the lairs of the elites. Even without their powers, they had so
me first-rate equipment and resources being brought to play.
It looked like around twelve of the ships were going to make it through.
We could count on the bounty to take out a few. That was still a lot of guests we were about to have.
I'd love to know what these ships were saying to each other. So far we hadn't been able to figure out how they were communicating, much less translate whatever language they were using.
One of the city's perimeter cannons got a lucky hit and sent a ship into the ocean. Another three bounties got paid out over the next few minutes, leaving eight ships to soon hover above our headquarters.
"They're launching something," Niles said.
Small bulbous shapes were streaking down, burying themselves into the streets. With a hiss and a burst of yellowish gas they opened, spilling out ... something.
It was hard for me to get any visual read on them, because they were entirely bright light. It overloaded every sensor that I had, and I could tell from the way the humans squinted at the displays they weren't having any better luck.
"Attempting to filter," Niles said, running his hands over the keys. The visual went several shades darker. The figures still couldn't be defined although you could at least see that there were separate figures.
"Some sort of light-emitting armor. We've seen nothing like this from them before. It has to be an anti-Gloom measure," Jules said.
"I've got my own anti-me measures? Yes!" Gloom said with a fist-pump.
I said, "Don't get too excited. We were hoping to have you do cleanup, if needed. If they've got an effective defense and offense against you, this just got a lot more dangerous."
Some of the Swarm stayed outside our building, forming a circle around it. Others came in through the front doors, right into the middle of reception.
There were around eighty villains in there waiting for permits. Not all of them seemed that eager to fight at once, but the Swarm wasn't waiting to see who was a non-hostile. Lances of light flashed out and where they hit, flesh burned and electronics exploded.