I watched Louis glance down at Bunny’s phone, as the vibrations ticked his palm. He raised it to his ear. “That you Doctor?”
“Still is, yes. Ah, quick question. You know that Dire’s a supergenius, yes?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well, she’s deduced the situation. No need to discuss it further.”
“Ah, alright. I appreciate that, I’m a busy man.” He leaned back in the chair. “So, what’s your answer?”
“First, Dire has something to say to Carson. Could you hand him the phone, please?”
I watched on the display, as Carson took the phone, held it up to his ear. “Yeah?”
I slipped my earplugs in, held the screamer grenade I’d pulled out of my armor up to the phone, dialed it down to minimum radius, and triggered it.
Carson’s head exploded.
I nodded in satisfaction, as I studied the red and gray sprays across the upper part of the room. Splatters of Carson were dripping on the paintings, staining the floor, smearing the desk, and covering the gaping, stunned faces of the mafiosos.
I’d rather thought the principle was workable. The key had been identifying Bunny’s phone, and adjusting the hardware speakers via my hacked control of the device. They’d amplified and focused the sonics nicely. Though it had burned out the hardware, more’s the pity.
I checked my tap on the casino’s audio systems, and turned on the room’s intercom. “Well, that was easy. So, Louis, Dire assumes she has your undivided attention, now? Good. Listen closely.” I plucked the earplugs from my ears.
One of the gunmen was bent over in a corner, vomiting on a statue. The other one had dropped his gun, was frantically mopping his face, mopping his clothes, trying to get the fragments of Carson off of him.
Thud!
Carson’s body fell over, and Louis jumped out of his seat as blood sprayed from the stump of the fat man’s neck, pumping and spurting, splattering all over the floor, the desk, and the lower back wall. Louis took a step back, another, shaking as he fumbled for a handkerchief, and mopped his face. Some mixture of anger and fear? Hard to say.
“Here’s the first part of this deal, Louis. You’re going to give Bunny a set of car keys. Yours, or one of your men’s, it doesn’t matter. They’ll have to be currently present in the room, though, because—” I hit the lockdown button, and the office’s door went ‘clunk’, and settled in its frame. “—none of you are leaving this room until we’re done here.”
“How about a different deal?” Louis snarled, pulling a silvery gun from a shoulder holster. “How about you fucking can’t take all of us before we plug your dyke girlfriend here?”
“Well, before you try that, here’s something to consider, Louis.” I tapped in more commands on the phone system, and sent calls to every phone in the room.
The vomiting gunman scrabbled for his pocket, couldn’t coordinate his hands, and ripped his jacket off, hurling it into the corner. The one who had been mopping his face was crying now, hands lowered, standing there sobbing as his phone rang, and rang, and rang. And Louis? He lowered the gun, as his own phone chimed incessantly, closed his eyes as he realized just how fucked he was.
I silenced the phones. “Yep, that’s about the size of it. Any phone, any time. Any one of them can be an instant death sentence for you. No matter how you try to hide, no matter what precautions you take, if you ever, ever try to go after Dire or one of her friends ever again, it’ll be one short scream, then beef stroganoff all over the place. Now give her keys.”
He reached into his breast pocket, fished out a pair, and tossed them to Bunny. She caught them, stood.
“Alrighty!” I said, grinning. “Second part of the deal! One of your boys here escorts Bunny to the car. She drives off with his phone. Once she calls Dire and confirms that she’s happy and safe, Dire lets the rest of you live. Er, leave. Did Dire say live there? Hahahahaha. Well, that too.”
Louis opened and closed his mouth, pausing to spit out some of Carson. The gunmen who’d thrown away his coat stared, then turned, and emptied the rest of his stomach into the corner.
“Dire, can you hear me?” Bunny asked.
“Oh yes. Could before, quite easily.”
Louis facepalmed.
“Awesome. You mind if I change the deal?”
“Not at all.” I hoped she didn’t press her luck. I didn’t have any screamer grenades left, and didn’t have any way to stop them if they tried to hurt her. Not that they knew that, they were pretty well sold by the kayfabe, couldn’t tell it was a bluff.
“I’d like to clean up and get a change of clothes before we hit the road. Think that can be arranged?” She smiled at Louis.
Louis sat back in his chair, opened and shut his mouth again. He flapped a hand at the crying gunman. “Do it.”
“I— I— Snrfl—”
“Fucking do it!” Louis screamed, throwing a mass of bloody papers at the guy. He cringed, and I laughed. “Boss of the year!” I cheered, as I unlocked the door. “Okay, off you go then. Give Dire a call when you’re clear.”
I watched Bunny and the gunman leave, and smiled as I killed the display. Tapping into the computer, I withdrew my hacking efforts one by one. And as I did so, I noticed that the codebreakers had finally borne fruit. Part of Morgenstern’s files had been decrypted, and were awaiting my perusal.
Whistling a happy tune, I headed downstairs. “Hey, Martin?”
“Yeah? Everything work out okay? I heard something like feedback.”
“Oh yes. Bunny will be calling in a bit. Could you drive out toward the Boardwalk, and wait for her call?” I handed him the phone. “Just pick her up and bring her back, okay? We’ll work out the business with the Doctor when she gets here.”
He raised an eyebrow, as he took the device. “Can we trust her?”
I smiled, and it faded as old memories of treachery stirred in the back of my mind. Of how Abes had betrayed me to my worst enemy, at the moment of my triumph. “Yeah,” I whispered. “She’s got no-one else to turn to.”
Martin studied my face for a moment, and nodded. “Aight. You want I should grab dinner while I’m out?”
“Please.”
He departed and I glanced over to Vorpal. She looked to be asleep, or trying to become so. I left her to it, and headed back upstairs to read through the newly-cracked files. A quick browse showed quite a bit of music, most of it classical, with a good dose of jazz. Not important, not sure why he encrypted that. I checked through his business pages, and stock trackers, found them dull. Some insider information there I could use, maybe. Inner company decisions, nothing major. Stuff he wouldn’t want released, but nothing really embarrassing— ooh, speaking of that—
Sure enough, he had some pornography on there. Most of it well-hidden, and through a browser that didn’t use his company’s network. Smart, that. Particularly if it was the nasty stuff. But as I browsed through it, I found it non-nasty. His tastes mirrored mine, actually, with less preference for cowboys and more for medical personnel. Interesting. Would explain his company’s policy of tolerance where homosexuality was concerned. Nothing to blackmail him over, though. Embarrassing at best.
And then I found it. A single folder, labelled ‘Algernon’. I dug into it and found the secret of the flowers, and as I read, the horror built within me.
“Morgenstern, you fool,” I whispered. “This will doom the world, it won’t save it.”
I leaned back, rubbed my eyes, and felt fatigue in my bones. How long had I been sitting here? It had been a while. I rose, grabbed some bottled water from where Martin had stored it next to the supercomputer’s coolant sinks... and I paused.
The other bottles were quivering, the water inside trembling.
What? What was causing this? Possibilities flooded my mind, and in seconds my intellect ruled them out, until the last one arose.
Dispersed gravitational thrust, from an advanced aircraft. But there weren’t any craft like that in this city, except for o
ne. One specific vehicle.
“Doctor Dire!” A voice boomed out over a loudspeaker, a voice I knew and I hated. “We’ve found you, and there’s no escape. Will you come peacefully?”
The bottled water was shaking because the Tomorrow Jet was hovering outside.
Tomorrow Force had found me.
CHAPTER 17: TOMORROW FORCED
“She's dangerous, I'm afraid. An intellect to match my own, a certain undeniable charisma, and the burning conviction that she's in the right, no matter what atrocities she commits. And the worst of it is that she sounds entirely reasonable, until you look at the big picture, and realize just how unfeasible and damaging her efforts will be if she remains unchecked.”
--Commentary by Doc Quantum concerning Doctor Dire
The metal handrail shook, sending spikes of pain through my injured hand as I pounded my feet on the steps. “Vorpal! Heroes!” I yelled, and darted past her as she stirred and flailed her arms. I reached the armor, popped the back hatch, and tried to clamber in.
I slipped. My foot caught on a spot of oil that had seeped out from a damaged joint, and I flailed for balance, caught the side of it with my broken fingers, and screamed in pain, dropping to one knee.
What the hell?
I reached up again, pulled myself up against the armor, and started to clamber through again—
—and lost my grip, as the room shuddered. I was stuck hopping on one foot, the other stuck inside my armor.
Finally I managed to get inside—and a gyro failed for no reason I could tell, sending it crashing to the ground.
By then I had figured out what was happening, and a sick feeling was rising in the pit of my stomach.
This was Schrodinger’s power. I remembered my conversation with Arachne, and through my pain and nausea, I knew that I couldn’t win this one. All he needed was thirty seconds to survey a situation, and he could shift reality over to a point where he got the result he wanted. I blinked my contacts on, synched them to the armor. Couldn’t use the mask. I tore it off, dropped it in my utility compartment, and searched the room.
There, in the corner. A glint of metal that hadn’t been there before. A camera drone, a thin spindle of wires, propellers, and a round visual sensor. They’d maneuvered it through a window slit, and now they were making their move.
“Vorpal!”
“Uh?” She paused, her armored jumpsuit half on, rapier in one hand.
“We can’t win this one! Escape!”
“Where? How?”
I’d given it some thought, when we took this as our new lair. I crawled over, my armor’s battered joints and servos whining with every motion, and grabbed ahold of the manhole cover in the center of the floor. I half-expected my gauntlet to break when I dug fingers into the metal, but no. The already-mangled cover creaked and whined as I bent it free, tossed it aside. “There. Go! Dire will cover you!”
She hesitated, and I screamed again. “Go!”
I was already pretty well fucked, but she had a chance to escape. Odds were good they didn’t know her powers, hadn’t accounted for everything she could do. If she could get out of their sight, she might be able to flee.
She sheathed her rapier, limped over the the hole. I took her right hand, started lowering her down—
—And she was torn from my grasp, as a massive silvery metal hand came up, grabbed her, and pulled her below.
“No!” I struggled to get to my feet, and the ground gave way beneath me as concrete crumbled, and my leg pushed through into a hollow. I knew who that arm belonged to.
Siegebreaker rose from the manhole, the concrete edges around it crumbling and breaking as he pushed his bulk through, blue electronic eyes glaring as he surveyed me. He held Vorpal in one hand, and as she struggled, he casually flicked her head with one finger. She went limp.
“No!” I roared, thrusting a gauntlet toward him in a wild punch. He took it with no real effect, and sparks flew up from my actuators as the stressed shoulder unit finally blew out.
“Sooner you surrender, the less this hurts, Dire.” He rumbled through the grille of his mouth, as he tossed Vorpal aside, and pushed his bulk up into the room. Silver and blue-painted metal, he was easily my height, and much, much thicker. My servos and motors allowed me enhanced strength, but his could bench-press tanks. And he was fresh, while my suit was damaged... no, this wouldn’t go well.
I opened up with the particle beams, sending him backward for a second, but it wouldn’t last. No place to go in this room. No easy means of escape, he was in front of the door. And my flight systems were damaged, too. And even if they weren’t, Quantum’s jet was out there.
My mind raced, at a speed unmatched by the unpowered, and I knew my course of action. I was going to lose the fight in here regardless of my actions. The only thing I could do was ensure that I didn’t lose the tools I needed to continue the fight in the future. To that end, I’d have to destroy the pieces of evidence I’d gathered. If Tomorrow Force got them, then any hopes of blackmailing Morgenstern were out the window. They’d do the hero thing, go after him in public, and probably bungle the job. Thirty seconds of prescience wasn’t much of an edge against someone who had an entire corporation at his back.
The computer was the first priority. I jerked an arm to the side, keeping one gauntlet’s fire focused on Siegebreaker, and set my free gauntlet’s beam to maximum dispersal. And as I ducked under a wide punch, I pointed my arm up, and triggered the beam.
BLAM!
A circular hole punched through the ceiling, the ceiling above it, and probably a satellite or two in low orbit, with as much juice as I’d given the beam. It took out most of the second floor, and my supercomputer, with Morgenstern’s attached hard drive.
One down. Next up, the flowers. I brought my phlogiston projector online, and half-turned toward the corner, readied to burn them, crates and all.
But that split-second of distraction cost me, as with only one particle beam blasting him, Siegebreaker was able to push toward me, and catch me with a sweeping backhand. I went ass over teakettle, ending up with a crunch, as something that shattered me.
Something that smelled of lilacs.
I froze in horror, as dust puffed up in the air, a veritable cloud of it. No, not dust.
Pollen.
He’d knocked me into the crates, and they’d broken open.
“No no no no no...” I started, trying to find my feet, and slipping, crushing another crate.
“I said give up!” Siegebreaker was on me in strides, grabbing my arm, and hurling me into another wall. My harness took the brunt of the impact, but I still felt it, as my head rattled in the armor, and I sprouted a new crop of fresh bruises along my back. My legs twitched as my spine spasmed, and I fell to the ground, coughing in pain. I was breathing the pollen, and I knew what that meant!
“No! No no no no no!” I was beyond thought, beyond rational sense, pounding the ground with my fist in a fit of rage It had all been for nothing.
Strong metal hands the size of hubcaps caught me, one about the midsection, and the other gripping the top of my helmet. Metal fingers scraped against my forehead, gashing it open, and with a heave of his servos, and a squeal of strained metal, Siegebreaker ripped the helmet from my armor.
“Give up!” He yelled, head inches from my own. I stared back, as the blood poured down my face, the horror of my situation fully visible on my face.
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” I said, simply. “She surrenders.”
He paused, one massive silver fist cocked back as he studied my face. “Alright. I’m peeling you out of there.”
“No need.” I popped the hatch, and clambered out as best I could, collapsing onto the ground. My legs weren’t working properly; for some reason they were numb. My back throbbed, a solid mass of pain to go with my nose as it flared up, and the ripped skin on my forehead. I lay there, listless on the ground, as around me the golden pollen drifted and settled.
Lilacs. My career, my
hopes, my dreams. All of those were done now, ended, in a puff of lilac-scented bioagent.
The door opened, and I chuckled weakly as a blonde woman in a white jacket and a blue jumpsuit entered. “Hello, Doctor Dire. Remember me?”
“Kinetica.” I said, with no particular emotion behind it. “Get it over with.” The pollen wouldn’t affect her of course.
She moved to me, caution in her step as a trio of ball bearings whirled above one outstretched palm. She had the power to control motion, trajectories, momentum, and similar things. If I resisted, then she’d use the bearings to beat me senseless.
I didn’t resist. Instead I gathered myself, forced past the horror, and raised my head, neck screaming in more pain, as I caught her eyes beneath her mask. “The flowers. Burn them.”
“What are you talking about? Those things? Yeah, you’re not distracting me here. Roll over and put your hands together.”
“Burn them. Then get a hazmat team in here, scrub the place down. They’re bioagents. Professor Vector’s work.”
A flicker of hesitation... then her mouth hardened. “Yeah. You nearly fried my husband the last time we listened to you. Not going to happen. Roll over and put your hands together.”
I stared at her, mouth falling open in shock. How the hell could she be so petty? He’d survived! The mask wasn’t even on his face when I triggered the charge, I’d made sure it would only incapacitate him. “Kinetica,” I whispered. “She’s not lying.”
“Siegebreaker?”
He rolled me over, and I screamed, nearly passed out, as my back ground across the floor. This was more than bruises. It felt like my spine was being ripped apart. My legs were numb, and getting number. Something was wrong, and it was getting worse. But I forced past the pain, and persisted. “You have to burn the flowers! It’s the only hope!”
She pulled tight cord around my wrists, and I yelled again, as my head throbbed in agony. “The flowers!”
“Fuck. Your. Flowers.” Kinetica ground out, kneeling down to glare at me. “I’ll fucking send you some in jail.”
DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2) Page 26