Ray, Lucyfar, and I formed a triangle. Ray yelled past the alarm’s buzz, “Four guards. I saw one in a turret, three with blasters, one of those in power armor.”
Blasters? Really, Ray? I forced myself to not chew him out over that ridiculously inaccurate description. I didn’t know what those guns were, but the mad scientist in me insisted that they worked by some devious technological principle of Red Eye’s discovery, and deserved a bit more respect!
Ah, well. How could I expect people without crazy inventing super brains to understand?
Lucyfar, of course, did not share my objections to this mangling of the beautiful art of technological innovation. She kept discussing strategy with Ray as if he hadn’t done anything wrong. “The hard part is the turret. It can’t be lured into the open, and will have armor and extra defenses. Red Eye is enthusiastic in her excess.” Straightening up, she crossed her arms and gave us a severely disapproving stare. “Of course, the real hard part is that someone promised we’d try not to kill these dufuses. Dufii. Dufates.”
I would have liked to help plan, but it was really hard to think with the alarm going WAAK WAAK all the time.
At which gloriously appropriate moment, the alarm shut off.
Silence. Sweet, beautiful silence.
Well, except for a man’s voice downstairs shouting, “Ow! Help! Get me out of this thing!”
Someone else yelled, “Preston? Preston, are you okay?”
The heavy clang that followed suggested that Preston was not okay.
In the silence, it was much easier to think.
“Two guys left. One distracted,” Ray whispered.
I grabbed onto his shoulder. “Jump down. Go.”
He didn’t question. Ray took two steps forward, lifting me up by the waist to pull me along, and jumped down the elevator shaft.
Two guys in security uniforms. One suit of power armor on the ground. One turret trying to withdraw into the ceiling with a guard trapped inside.
I focused right behind the one guard raising a gun. We were going there.
My view skipped. I heard Ray’s feet hit the floor before I caught up with where I’d teleported us both. Ray, expecting this and with those crazy reflexes, let go of me and spun around in a circle. His kick knocked the guard’s legs out from under him, and Ray bolted forward three steps to grab the other guard’s wrist. That poor fool had been bent over the immobilized power armor, and hadn’t even had time to stand up.
Lucyfar dropped down the elevator shaft, landing in a sleek crouch. She might not be as crazy enhanced as Ray, but a drop that would have broken a human’s legs didn’t bother her. One of her knives appeared, blade pressed against the throat of the guard Ray knocked down. That guy’s gun had flown over by the forklift anyway, way out of reach.
Claire skipped out of the stairwell, jingling keys. “These were useful. There were all kinds of defense controls in the security office to shut off. I also destroyed the security tapes. Check this out!” With the other hand, she threw me an old VHS tape.
I caught it, but I was mostly busy sitting in one place very carefully. Carrying someone else on even a short teleport was not fun. Now all my muscles ached, not just my stomach.
I looked at the tape. Yes, an old VHS tape. I spooled out some magnetic tape, and looked back up at Claire. “Seriously?”
The guy whose wrist Ray held started grumbling. “Ten million on high-tech automatic defenses. Everything else is bargain basement. Even Preston only makes twice minimum wage.” A moment’s reflective pause, and he added bitterly, “Made.”
Quietly, trembling and trying not to press against the blade against his neck, the guard in front of me asked, “Excuse me? Did you say you destroyed the security tapes?”
I yanked the magnetic tape out as far as it would go, crushing it and winding it around my wrist, and pulled. Criminy, this stuff was tough! It stretched and stretched before it finally snapped.
That had taken several seconds longer than the dramatic gesture I’d intended, but the guards still got the point. The guy Ray held sagged, letting go of the rifle so that it clattered onto the floor. “Thank heavens. Okay, we surrender.”
“Yes, please!” Echoed the guard with the knife at his neck.
“I surrender! Please get me out of here?” Called the guard stuck in the turret.
The wearer of the power armor said something I couldn’t even begin to make out.
“It’s that or lie there, stuck, until the cops arrive. You know they’ve just been waiting to bust this place,” the guy Ray held argued.
I didn’t hear the response at all, but apparently the guard did. “It’s your funeral, Preston. Regional’s going to make you a scapegoat, not their one loyal hero.”
The power armor did have a little ‘Preston’ tag on it. It made sense that the armor would go to the security chief. It was ugly, clunky stuff. It looked like some of Mech’s oldest designs, but obviously wasn’t as good if it could be deactivated this easily.
Come to think of it, they did reverse engineering of mad science here, right? How they’d gotten ahold of an old suit of Mech’s armor I had no idea, but that must be a bad copy. Still, it would probably shrug off bullets and whatever Red Eye’s rifles fired.
“Can we run away before the cops arrive?” Ray’s captive asked hopefully.
Ray looked at me. I shrugged and nodded. Lucyfar spread her hands.
The blade disappeared from the neck of the guard in front of me. Ray let go of his guard, and put his shoe on the dropped rifle. When the rifle bent and cracked, that probably made a point.
Apparently, the guards had decided I was in charge, because Ray’s looked over at me. “I know I’m pushing my luck, but can we get Sammy out and take him with us?” He nodded at the turret.
“I’ll cut him loose.” Walking past the frightened guards, Lucy created about a dozen knives, inserting them into every crack I could see in the turret, and some I couldn’t but she could. A metal panel popped off. Something sizzled and groaned.
Yanking on the transparent shield pinning the guard into his cockpit, Lucyfar inquired, “Antipersonnel weapons lab behind you?”
The guard grunted, then gasped in relief as something came loose. “Yes.”
“Your facility has a biolab, right?” Lucyfar heaved on the shield. Something snapped, and while it didn’t come off, it bent way back out of the way.
The guard in front of me pointed at a side door. “That hallway.”
Lucyfar nodded. “Cool.” Fabric ripped, and the guard in the turret slid out of a shredded seat and onto the floor. “You three get out while the getting is good. I guess our good buddy Preston waits for the authorities.”
None of them waited for us to change our minds. They scrambled on all fours, rose, and ran for the stairwell. They didn’t even bother with the elevator. As the door shut behind them, I just caught, “I’m gonna call Mamie. She didn’t ask for this. She just wanted a research job.”
Lucyfar dusted off her hands, while her knives still squealed and sawed inside the broken turret. “Well, I’ve got an inventory to destroy, and a box of angel killing bullets to pick up. You kids go have fun.”
We weren’t letting a line like that just disappear. “Really angel killing bullets?” Claire asked.
Lucyfar shrugged. “Who knows? But if they’re called angel killers, I want them. And I think here is the best place to leave this.” Pulling a card out of her sleeve like a magician, she dropped it into the cab of the mutilated turret. Then she turned and walked down the hall, laughing with distinctly malicious satisfaction.
Curiosity overcame us, of course. I climbed to my feet and peered into the shredded seat, with Claire and Ray looking over my shoulders. The stiff sepia card read in elegant black letters, ‘I’ve made my point.’ The signature was a little black generic man symbol like on a bathroom, but with the arms, legs, and head detached.
“That’s the mark of the Butchered Man,” Claire said, who probably knew the B
utchered Man’s shoe size, before and after losing his feet.
“I thought the Council of Seven and a Half owned this place?” The Butchered Man was on that council. He’d hired Lucyfar to attack his own weapons lab?
“Corporate politics, I guess. Those poor saps are just collateral damage to the bosses.” Ray gave a nod back upstairs, and sounded regretful. I admit, that made me smile. He didn’t like to see regular people hurt any more than I did.
Claire’s chuckle was only the slightest bit grim. “Their board meetings must be a hoot.”
Ray gave a snort, seriousness gone. “All in favor, raise your doomsday remotes. All against, open fire.”
His snicker cut off, and he made a zipping motion over his mouth. Good boy, Ray. He had an unmistakable accent we did not want anyone we knew hearing from the supervillain Reviled.
I eyed the side door to the biolabs, and smiled. “Time for what we came here for.”
My smile got bigger with every step towards the door, until it hurt, until it felt like I’d split my face in half. My other aches faded. Finally. Finally, I was here!
I pushed my way into another white corridor, now with yellow smiling suns and slogans I didn’t care about defacing the walls. Pictures flashed through my head. Cells dividing? DNA codes? The map of a city? I didn’t know, or need to know. Words would scare this inspiration off, and I’d put too much work into it already.
We passed side rooms. Monitoring equipment. Whiteboards covered in diagrams. A roomful of caged animals, cats and dogs and rabbits and birds and goats and more. A locked room opposite, with metal grids in the glass to render it bulletproof. More cages in there. The man-sized beast padding back and forth in one pen had two heads.
That left only the doors at the end of the hall. They opened up in front of us automatically into a small chamber like an airlock. The inner door didn’t want to open, even when we were all inside, but that was fine. I knew everything. I knew how to make any machine I wanted. I punched buttons on the security keypad, watching the electrical pulses move back and forth in my mind like waves, combining, becoming self-sustaining, until they broke through a barrier and created what I needed. The keypad let out a despairing buzz, the smoke drifted out, and the inner door opened. It would obey me automatically now.
I could barely see the floor as I floated through a haze of beautiful images towards the tanks and cages and computers. First, I had to prime them, but second, I needed a… cat. All of the pictures revolved around a cat. Where was my cat?
I clamped down on my impatient shaking. We’d just passed an entire petting zoo, right? “Bring me a cat!” I barked at my minions.
Words. Claire’s voice. What did she say? “You’re not going to hurt it, are you?”
Why would she ask such a stupid question? Couldn’t she see the pictures? “No! It’s just a sample. It takes too long to design an animal from scratch. Bring me a cat!”
No need for impatience, Penny. I could get the machines ready while I waited. My creation would grow too fast for normal flesh, but these wonderful devices would help me.
Claire showed up again, holding a wriggling cat. I took the animal from her arms, stroking its fur the correct way to calm it down, and lowered it into the sample tank. The cat meowed and danced as the floor pricked its paw, gathering for me a few cells, a little blood. The tank’s lid began 3-D imaging of the subject’s organs.
“Yes! Ha ha ha ha! Yes!”
All I saw were the pictures in my head. I was in the pictures, and I was part of the machine of creation.
My last shreds of self-control let go.
woke up leaning against the linoleum counter in the biolab. My legs felt like clouds, and about as stable. Oh, Tesla’s Wind-Up Widgets, that was the worst creative fit yet, maybe worse than when I’d built Vera. Penny, no matter how much it hurts, do not hold onto an inspiration that long again, okay? Break it, make it go away.
I looked up, and saw my reward for enduring madness. She was glorious. She had short, sleekly black fur, a head too big for a regular cat, and a tail much too long.
A gentle hand touched my shoulder, and a soft voice suitable for dealing with mad girls asked, “Are you back, Bad Penny?”
I nodded. “I am. I am. Sorry, guys. That must have looked pretty freaky.”
Looking over my shoulder, I saw Claire’s wry grin, her blue eyes amused behind wing-shaped glasses. “We’ve seen you build before, but yeah, this was a big one. I was a bit worried.”
Ray lifted a black-sleeved arm and pointed a black-gloved finger. “I’m more worried about what’s behind that door.”
Yikes. I’d been so obsessed I’d missed it. This room had another of those sliding security doors. The smiling suns sat in the middle of green biohazard symbols, and writing on both halves of the metal door read ‘For Your Comfort And Safety, Please Do Not Taunt.’
Okay, okay. First thing’s first. I opened the plastic hatch of the sample tank, and let my specimen jump out. “Run away, little girl! The police will be here soon. Maybe you can get out the front door while they poke around.”
Claire jerked a thumb towards the airlock. “I already took the other cages up the elevator and opened them up. By myself. Somebody had to stay and guard you.”
Ray folded his arms over his chest, raised his chin, and looked downright smug in response to Claire’s accusing tone. The Lutras weren’t the only people weak on shame.
Since there was no winning that exchange, Claire leaned over my shoulder to peek at the cloning tank, or whatever it was. Now that my inspiration had ended, I had no clue what any of these devices did. Whoever made them really liked red liquid and red blobs, that was all I could tell you.
And yet in front of me, in one of these plastic vats, lay my beautiful feline creation.
Claire asked the sixty-four million dollar question. “So, what did you make?”
I had only one answer. “Time to find out.”
Lightly, reverently, I reached into the tank and scooped up my creation. Her eyes opened, glittering red like rubies. Four legs locked around my right forearm. She really wasn’t heavy at all. Her long tail unwound, hooked around my neck, and closed like a collar.
I could feel her. She was part of my body. I could see through her―okay, no, the room swam when I tried to make sense of what she saw. I would just have to leave that alone. For one thing, my kitty symbiote had serious color blindness going on. Everything she saw looked red.
Well, she didn’t need to see. I could feel her, and make her muscles twitch, but she didn’t do anything herself. “She’s a bioweapon. Mindless. She’s an extension of my nervous system, but with fur.”
“So, what does she do?” Claire prodded, since I’d avoided the real question.
“I’d like to know, myself,” said a croaking woman’s voice.
Oh, criminy. We’d all got caught up in my new creation, and hadn’t heard the airlock doors cycle. A woman stood in the entrance, dressed neck to boots in white leather crisscrossed by straps. The thick leather couldn’t hide her unhealthily slim shape, but her face worried me a lot more. It might have been pretty if not for the blotchy yellow skin and long, lank white hair.
Mourning Dove. The last hero I ever wanted to meet. We would be lucky to get out of here alive.
“Don’t fight! Run!” I yelled at Ray and Claire, swinging my creation up to point at Mourning Dove.
My kitty symbiote meowed. Mourning Dove straightened, went stiff, and turned maybe an inch towards the door.
Wow. I’d built a mind control cat!
A not good enough mind control cat. Mourning Dove turned her bloodshot green eyes back to me, and started walking. “Stop! Stop! Surrender! Guys, run!” I shouted. Every command made Mourning Dove jerk, but she kept walking, each step smoother than the last. My left hand dug automatically in my belt pouch. I bet my cursed pennies would drop her defenses.
My belt pouch was empty. Where had my pennies gone?
I’d added them to the clon
ing process. I could just barely remember dropping them into a tank full of red goo, one at a time. Why, only my superpower knew.
Mourning Dove reached for me. I’d run out of time. I stepped backwards―and teleported into the airlock. Hurry up, Ray and Claire!
I didn’t even have time to see if they were coming. Shadows flickered, and fingers as cold and strong as iron closed around my neck. Oh, great. Mourning Dove could teleport too, and I was the only one who hadn’t known.
Behind us, Claire yelled, “Please! You have to let her go! Please! She didn’t do anything wrong!”
I looked, and so did Mourning Dove. Claire had hold of Mourning Dove’s other hand, tugging on it ineffectually. Fat tears welled up in the corners of Claire’s eyes, and her normally pretty lips trembled with despair. She was going to pieces. Claire had been my best friend for most of my life, but I hadn’t known she cared this much. It made my heart ache. Claire’s golden hair bounced with every helpless tug on Mourning Dove’s hand.
Even Mourning Dove had to be moved by that, but she stared at Claire with a puzzled frown. Yellow-stained teeth clenched, and Mourning Dove’s forehead furrowed in effort. I’d seen people naturally immune to Claire’s power. I’d tried to avoid it, and think past it. I’d never seen anyone just fight it.
Why was Ray standing next to us, holding a metal stool?
What just went boom behind the security door?
Everything went black. Not the black of unconsciousness, black like a dark room. I fell on my butt on the cold floor. No, the cold was me. I shivered. My body felt thick and slow. I’d been tired to begin with from too many teleports, but now I felt made of clay. Ray and Claire lay on their backs. Only Mourning Dove and I remained conscious.
Well, us and whatever hit the security door again.
The Machine’s legs prickled, shifting position on my wrist. I’d been hit by some sort of energy, and the Machine sucked it up. That was why I was still awake.
Did I have the strength to fire my bioweapon? Could I even lift her?
Mourning Dove said the last thing I ever expected. “I’m not here to hurt you children. You’re not villains.”
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