“You know he’ll kill you, right?” I demanded.
“Oh, and I’m sure you’d love to kill me, too,” the Maniac cackled,
“but you see, the thing about this lovely little bomb is that it’s pressure-sensitive, so if you move away from it, it will explode and blast that beautiful body of yours to fucking pieces.”
Fuck.
“So,” the supervillain continued, “if you’re thinking about breaking free from that chair, I’d think again.”
The more I told myself not to panic, the harder it became not to. I knew that Miles was only silent because he didn’t want to do anything that would give away the fact that I could hear him, at least not until he was ready to make his move against the Maniac, but it was hard not to just say fuck it, break out of the chair, and explode myself along with this psychopath.
But that wouldn’t do anything to help the citizens of Grayville, and as much as I didn’t want to be a pawn that the Maniac could use however he wanted, I trusted that Miles would be able to find a way around the bomb.
“Well, haven’t you just thought of everything?” I grunted.
“I do pride myself on having a plan,” the Maniac replied with a wide grin. “And that’s exactly why I plan to wait until Miles shows up before I touch you. I couldn’t decide about it at first, you know.”
“Couldn’t decide about what?” I asked as I continued to scan the warehouse to try to get a clear layout in my head.
“Oh, whether to go ahead and kill you as soon as I captured you, or if I should wait and do it in front of Miles,” the Maniac said with a shrug. “I
would have recorded it if I did it right away, of course, so I could have played it back for him to watch later, but then…”
“Then what?” I demanded.
“Then I would also have needed to capture Miles’ other women,” the Maniac replied. “I decided it would be much easier if I just captured you and led Miles to me, so I could defeat him and then make him watch what I have planned for you.”
I clenched my fists before I remembered to relax them so I didn’t accidentally trigger the bomb that I was tied to.
“Besides, he’ll bring his other women with him to try to save you, won’t he?” the supervillain asked. “Then it’ll just be like taking candy from a baby. I only wonder who I should start with after I’m through with you.
Perhaps that little air-head blondie who used to hang around the Shadow Knight, or maybe that little mousy assistant of his. She seems a little boring, but after I’m through with her, she--”
“You’re sick,” I cut him off.
“I prefer to think of myself as awake,” the supervillain said as he grinned at me with his pointed teeth. “Awake to the fact that there are only two types of people in the world… the gods, and the sacrifices to said gods, and I imagine you can guess which type I consider myself to be.”
“Don’t pretend like you have any big grand vision for what you want the world to be,” I said. “You’re just a fucking psychopath who wants to torture and kill people. That doesn’t make you interesting or special. It just makes you--”
“Do not tell me what I am!” the Maniac screeched as he jumped to his feet. “If you want to see what I am, then I’ll show you, but do not pretend that you know me.”
Apparently, I had touched a nerve.
The supervillain jumped forward, grabbed the back of my chair, and spun me around to face the back of the warehouse. I braced myself for the bomb to go off, but the Maniac was careful when he set the chair back down, so the beeping just continued at the same rate as it had before.
But now that I faced the back of the warehouse, I suddenly didn’t give a shit about the bomb anymore. All I could think about was how to keep the contents of my stomach down at the sight in front of me.
There was a long glass box on the floor at the back of the warehouse, and the glass must have been thick enough to keep the smell contained because inside the box, there were half a dozen corpses in various stages of decay, and not one of them looked like they had gone peacefully.
Two on the end had the skin on their faces clawed off, but it was impossible to tell if they had done it to themselves or each other. Another corpse looked like he had broken every limb in his body, and the others were a similar mix of torn skin and crushed bones. The floor of the glass box was slick with dark blood, and there was even half of a brain that had spilled out the back of someone’s crushed skull and then gotten mashed underfoot from one of the other prisoners.
“This, dearest Dynamo, is what I am,” the Maniac said as he strode toward the glass box and then stroked it like it was a pet. “This… well, this is art, wouldn’t you say?”
“We must have different definitions of art,” I said through gritted teeth.
“You don’t like my little box of experiments?” the supervillain laughed. “You’re allowed to have your own opinion, of course, although I did think that you would like the one who broke all his own limbs when he tried to escape my cage for him.”
“Is this a sample of what your toxic gas will do to people?” I asked.
“Just a small sample, but yes,” the Maniac replied. “Impressive, isn’t it?”
“And just how the fuck do you expect to make every person in the city inhale it?” I asked and then held my breath.
This was the moment of goddamn truth. He would either tell me his plan now, or he wouldn’t, and even though either way still meant that he would end up dead, it would be a lot easier to save Grayville if he talked now.
“What a wonderful question,” the Maniac said as he continued to brush his fingers against the glass box. “I suppose I might as well tell you, since we both know we’re just waiting for Miles to come to your rescue at the moment.”
I hoped Miles would wait long enough to hear the psychopath’s plan before he busted into the warehouse with guns blazing.
“The key is something that no one would be suspicious of,” the supervillain continued. “What’s the one thing that everybody looks to for safety? The military, dear Dynamo. No one would question a henchman in a convincing uniform, and in fact, they’d all throw themselves at him to try to save their asses, wouldn’t they?”
“You mean the military choppers?” I asked. “Did you hijack all of them, not just the mayor’s helicopter?”
“Precisely,” the Maniac cackled. “The police choppers are too small for my purposes, but the National Guard helicopters… those can really hold a lot of gas, and it was surprisingly easy to take over all of them.”
I knew he was telling the truth, so I just hoped that Miles had heard that part, so he could adjust his plans if he needed to.
“So what, you’ll just give the word to release the gas as soon as your timeline runs out?” I asked.
“Oh, sooner than that, I imagine,” the Maniac replied. “As soon as Miles shows up, I’ll have to show you and his other women a good time, of course, but then once I’m finished with you all, I’ll set off the gas and let Miles watch as the whole city rips each other apart. And only then, will I finally let him join in on the fun.”
“It sounds like you’ve got everything all planned out,” I growled. “It must be nice to feel so confident.”
“Hm?” The Maniac turned toward one of the metal shelves to my right and then skipped over to grab something that I couldn’t see.
“Won’t you be bored when everyone in Grayville is dead?” I demanded to bring his attention back to me.
“So sorry, but someone wanted to say hello,” the supervillain said as he moved back in front of his glass box with something in his hands.
It was almost impossible to tell what it was at first, but as the Maniac moved toward me, I realized that it was a partial skull. The jawbone was mostly intact, but the skull itself was just a hollowed-out bowl with a handful of feathers that looked like they had melted into the bone.
“You remember Dynamo, I’m sure,” the Maniac told the skull and then turned the skul
l to face me. “But does the lovely Dynamo remember you, Shadow Knight?”
“Holy shit,” I murmured. “You--”
“Hm, what’s that?” the Maniac asked and then held up the Shadow Knight’s partial skull like it had just said something. “Oh, no, the Shadow Knight says that there’s no chance that we’ll be bored after we’re done with Grayville. We’ll just move on to some other town… some better town.
More sacrifices for us. More meat for the stomach. More screams for my ears.”
The Maniac moved the Shadow Knight’s jaw back and forth as he leaned his ear toward him, and after a few seconds, he let the jawbone go slack and turned to face me again.
“The Shadow Knight says that we can just take our act on the road,”
the Maniac said, “perhaps even to Miles Nelson’s hometown. Wouldn’t that be something?”
“What about the Wardens?” I asked.
“Ah, yes, the Wardens,” the Maniac sighed and then tilted his head like the Shadow Knight’s skull was speaking again. “They are pests, aren’t they? Yes, I know. Well, perhaps we should take our little act somewhere else first for another practice round, and then Pinnacle City will be… oh! It will be my pinnacle!”
The Maniac cackled so hard that he doubled over, fumbled the Shadow Knight’s partial skull, and only managed to catch it just before it hit the ground. He moved the jawbone back and forth, whispered something into the skull’s empty cavity, and then laughed again, while I just watched silently.
This asshole really was crazy.
He might be a supervillain and a psychopath, but at the end of the day, he was really just another fucking unhinged bastard, only he just so happened to hold the fate of an entire city in his hands.
“Hurry, Miles,” I whispered. “Please, hurry.”
Chapter 14 - Norma
As soon as Miles realized that the Maniac was going to release the hallucinogenic gas from the helicopters, I knew that he was going to change our plans. He would still go to help Dynamo against the Maniac, so Aileen would go with him, but since I had a feeling that Penumbra and I might be given a different mission, I immediately started to slow down the car.
“Norma, I need you and Penumbra to head back to the mansion,” my boss said just a few seconds later as I expected. “Here’s the new plan.”
Sometimes, it seemed like we were so connected that I almost felt like Aileen, even though I never would have admitted that to the beautiful android. She would have told me that was impossible because she was his creation, not me, even though I was kind of, sort of, his creation.
Okay, so he hadn’t created my consciousness out of nothing or designed my body out of chrome, but Miles had made me more of a superhero than I’d ever been before. He had designed my super suit, and he had made me start to think about my powers in new and different ways, so I had been able to go toe-to-toe in a fight with someone as impressive as the Shadow Knight.
“Norma!” Miles snapped.
“I’m listening,” I said instantly, and then I swung the car into a sharp U-turn. “What do you need us to do?”
“Call Beacon for back-up,” my billionaire boss said, “and then all three of you meet at the mansion to go airborne.”
“Beacon can take the glider, and Penumbra and I can take the four-person plane,” I said.
“Yeah, and I can drop out of it whenever I need to kick some ass,”
the blonde superheroine added beside me.
“Good, do it,” Miles replied. “You can go ahead and get up into the air, but before you head toward where all the choppers are, wait for my signal.”
“Shouldn’t we, um, go ahead and get started?” Penumbra asked. “It might take a minute to take down all those helicopters, even if the three of us work together.”
“I know, but you’ll just have to wait,” Miles said. “I only want you to attack the choppers once Aileen and I go in after the Maniac. I want him to be distracted when you attack, so he won’t see what you’re doing.”
“You’re afraid that he would go ahead and give the signal to trigger the gas,” I guessed.
“Yeah, and then none of the rest of our plans would matter,” my boss said. “But between Aileen, Elizabeth, and me, we should be able to keep him busy enough that he won’t see you go up against all the choppers.”
“Do we need to worry about any civilian casualties on the helicopters?” I asked. “Or should we assume that they’re all working for the Maniac?”
“Just assume that everyone in the choppers works for him,” Miles said. “I’ll let you know if I find out anything different, but it’ll be better to lose a couple innocent lives than take the risk that even one helicopter might release its gas onto the city and kill millions of people.”
“Got it, boss,” I said. “I’ll let you know when we’re up in the air, and then you just give us the word when we can go in.”
“Copy that,” Miles replied.
As soon as my boss went silent, I pressed down on the gas pedal even harder. Then I glanced over at Penumbra to tell her to call Beacon, but the slender blonde had already pulled out her phone. She plugged it into the USB so the sound would come through the speakers of the car, and then she called him.
“Penumbra!” Beacon said after the first ring. “I was hoping that I would hear from you all soon. After the Maniac came on TV again and--”
“No time,” the blonde superheroine cut him off. “Meet us at the mansion, ASAP. We need your help, and you’re gonna get to fly a glider.”
“I’m on my way,” Beacon said immediately. “I can be there in seven minutes with no traffic.”
“Make it five,” I said.
“I’ll do my best, Norma,” Beacon said, and then the line went dead.
“How many choppers do you think are up there?” Penumbra asked as she unplugged her phone and slipped it back into her suit.
“Just enough to make it a challenge,” I joked, but I tried to think back to the news coverage that we’d been watching. “Maybe… ten? No, I think it was eight?”
“I’ll look it up,” Penumbra replied and then pulled her phone right back out.
It didn’t take me long to get back to the mansion, but I was so eager to get to the aerial vehicles in the garage that I damn near forgot to put the car into park before I jumped out. As soon as I put the parking brake on in the driveway, I hopped out and hurried toward the garage. Penumbra stayed right behind me, but she still had her eyes glued to her phone to try to get as much information as possible.
“Eight choppers,” the blonde announced when we reached the garage. “Six are from the National Guard, and two are the Grayville police department. And one of the military choppers is the one that just kidnapped the mayor and everything.”
“So six military choppers and two that belong to the police?” Miles suddenly asked over the comms.
“Yes, why?” I replied. “Did you--”
“The police choppers don’t matter,” my billionaire boss said.
“Pretend they don’t exist unless they get in your way. Elizabeth just found out which choppers have the gas, and it’s only the ones that belong to the National Guard.”
“Is everybody on board working for the Maniac?” Penumbra asked.
“Or, like, are there hostages or anything?”
“They’ve been completely hijacked as far as I know,” Miles replied,
“so take everybody out, except for the mayor and city council members…
unless, you know--”
“They get in our way?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” Miles said.
“Don’t worry, we’ll do everything we can to take them down before they can trigger the gas,” I said. “We’ll do whatever it takes.”
“I know, you will,” my boss said, “otherwise I wouldn’t leave such an important job in your hands. Did you get in touch with Beacon?”
“Yes, he--” I paused when I heard an engine roar down the driveway toward us, and when I lo
oked up, I saw Beacon’s car as it flew down the asphalt toward us. “He’s here now.”
“Good, then get up into the air and wait for my signal,” Miles said.
When Beacon hopped out of his car, he only had half his super suit on, but he quickly pulled on the rest of it as he hurried down the driveway to join us in the garage. He paused just long enough to slip on both his boots, and then he straightened up and panted to catch his breath.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“The six National Guard choppers are actually the Maniac’s,” I said,
“and he’s gonna use them to release the gas all over the city if we don’t stop them in time.”
“Shit,” Beacon said and bit his lip. “Okay, what’s the plan?”
“Well, there’s six choppers and three of us,” I said, “since Miles, Dynamo, and Aileen are all a little tied up at the moment.”
“So we each take on two of them?” Beacon asked.
“That’s the idea,” I replied. “We don’t know what the mechanism is to release the gas, so I think the safest way to disable the choppers is to just
destroy them.”
“Like blow them up?” Penumbra asked.
“Yeah, but away from the city, so there’s no risk of the gas going off,” I said. “I think we should try to take them all down into the river or the lake, so even if the gas goes off, it’ll be underwater.”
“I can probably take out all the people on my two choppers,”
Penumbra said, “and then I can float the helicopters far away or just straight into the water.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” I said. “Your job will just be a little more dangerous since you won’t be protected by a vehicle once you drop out of the plane.”
“I can handle it,” the blonde superheroine said with a nod.
“Beacon, you’ll take the glider,” I said, “so make sure you fire on them just enough to get them to follow you. Don’t actually make them crash and burn over downtown Grayville or anything.”
“I understand,” Beacon said. “Are you two taking the four-person plane?”
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