by Mia Archer
“That’s a very good point about the world not working like some story,” Dr. Lana said. “Besides, even if the world did work like that, did you ever stop to think that maybe the reason you keep getting your ass kicked is because you’re the villain? I know you’ve been doing this whole anti-hero thing lately, but villains aren’t supposed to win.”
“I’ve about had it with you,” I said, hitting a couple of buttons on my wrist computer.
Dr. Lana’s eyes went wide and then she disappeared from her holographic projection. Which I had to admit looked kind of cool. Like that subtle little moment in Empire Strikes Back where one of the imperial officers chatting with Darth Vader suddenly falls back and disappears because of an asteroid hit to the bridge.
A moment later she did something straight out of Star Trek and reappeared in front of us as the teleporter brought her in. She dusted herself off, looking annoyed, and then glared at me.
“That’s really annoying,” she said.
“Yeah, well you should’ve put up a teleportation interdictor if you were really that worried about people transporting you around your lair,” I said. “Now tell me how this gun works.”
“Why should I do that?” she asked.
“Because if you don’t I’m going to kill you?” I said, pointing my wrist blaster at her.
Dr. Lana rolled her eyes.
“You seriously think that’s going to bother me? Haven’t I already made it clear that I can come back from the dead whenever I want? This goes beyond simple healing,” she said.
I sighed. I wanted to fire a couple of shots into her gut to give her a painful prolonged death, but what was the fucking point? She was just going to come back again and again. At least now I could ask her a few questions.
“What’s that alien tech doing in there?” I asked. “All the other weapons I captured from you were stuff that was definitely of terrestrial origin, so what’s that alien bullshit doing in the thing?”
“Oh that?” she asked. “That’s pretty simple. I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out considering how much you use teleporters to mess with things.”
My eyes went wide as the dawning realization hit me.
“You swapped out the insides of whatever weapon I captured before I got away with it,” I said.
“Yeah, a little emergency thing I had if one of the things ever fell out of my hands. Do you like?”
“So what happens if we try to use this one?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “I filled the others with used pinball parts when they fell out of my hands, but this one hasn’t been armed. Go ahead. Try and use the thing.”
I hated that I was going to give her the satisfaction of trying to use the weapon, but at the same time it was something that had to be done. The rumbling moving through the walls and the floor was proof enough that Fialux was doing a repeat of all the destruction she’d caused back when she was tearing shit apart in my lab, and I needed a way to take her out, damn it.
“Hand it to me,” I said.
Technomancer handed it over and I pointed it at Dr. Lana. I figured if ever there was someone who deserved to get shot by her own weapons then it was her. She didn’t seem particularly worried that I was pointing her weapon at her either, and that couldn’t be good.
I pulled the trigger, and of course nothing happened.
“Yeah, I’m afraid that thing isn’t going to arm if you don’t have the code that’s between my ears. Might want to not kill me in the future. You don’t know how many times I can come back from the dead, after all,” she said.
I raised my wrist blaster and fired. She disintegrated while Nancy and Technomancer looked on in surprise.
“Why would you do that?” Nancy asked. “She just said she was the only one who could make it work!”
“She was annoying me,” I said. “And I don’t really believe she’s the only one who can make it work. I’m sure as hell not going to dance for her just to see if she’ll give me the code to get it to work.”
“Seems like a hell of a risk,” Nancy said.
“Yeah, well I’m also willing to bet she’s still alive somewhere in the Applied Sciences Department waiting for her chance to show up and gloat again. We haven’t seen the last of her, mark my words.”
“If you say so,” Nancy said.
“Trust me on this,” I said. “It always works out like that.”
“So you’re back to trusting nonsensical storytelling rules to rule your life?” Nancy asked.
“Something like that,” I said. “You have to believe in something, even if that something is believing in my power to destroy everything around me.”
“Y’know, did you ever stop to think that maybe the reason those narrative rules of heroes and villains always worked was because you had a bunch of heroes and villains who were following them, and the moment you start going up against someone who doesn’t know about those rules or doesn’t care about them is the moment you’re going to have your ass handed to you?” Nancy asked.
I stopped just short of telling her how ridiculous that notion was. Because there was a certain terrifyingly elegant logic to what she said. What if the reason I’d been having so much trouble lately was because I was playing by an old set of rules, and someone else had come along and changed the game?
It was a chilling thought, and it was enough to make me wonder if I was making a huge mistake playing by those old rules. Whether I was doing it consciously or subconsciously.
Whatever. I didn’t have time for that now. I needed to…
The ceiling above us cracked. I winced, because that was something I’d seen very recently. A moment later it exploded down and Fialux stood on a very cracked floor looking between me, Nancy, and Technomancer.
Her mouth turned to a sneer.
“What the hell is going on in here?”
I looked at Technomancer and Nancy Norris who were the target of her ire. I guess I could see why she’d be annoyed that I had a couple of pretty ladies helping me seek out the one weapon in the city that could destroy her.
Though admittedly Nancy Norris hadn’t been doing much to help since we got down here, but she was nice to look at so I wasn’t going to knock her being down here too much.
Then there was CORVAC. My partner in crime. My life partner, even though he was a soulless computer hellbent on world domination and not the pretty things I usually liked having around since meeting Fialux and discovering what I truly wanted in my love life.
I looked back at Fialux.
“Um. We’ve sort of got a whole united villains thing going,” I said.
“Villains united?” she said with an unhinged sneer that said she was still every bit as fucked up now as she’d been when I sent Sabine packing. “Pathetic. I’ll destroy all of you just like I’m going to destroy those idiots you’re sending after my invasion.”
She shot towards me, but unfortunately for her I was sort of prepared for her to do something like that. I held up my wrist blaster and fired off a couple of shots.
The anti-Newtonian bubble that surrounded her started turning blue immediately. Technomancer and Nancy stared in amazement, and I rolled my eyes. We didn’t have time for them to stop and stare at the pretty super science on display. Not when stopping and staring could mean the end of all of us if we didn’t get the fuck out of here.
“What the fuck are you waiting for?” I growled. “Run!”
26
Chamber of Horrors
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing here,” Dr. Lana said, her hologram appearing in front of me.
A moment later Dr. Lana appeared in front of me in person via the flash of a teleporter rather than in holographic form. I raised my wrist blaster and fired off a shot, and the weird screaming noise she made as she disintegrated was music to my ears.
“How many times are you going to do that?” Nancy asked.
“As many times as it takes,” I said.
We rounded a corner to f
ind a wall of flames was moving towards us. I gritted my teeth and held my shields out in front of me at their maximum setting even as I wondered if this would work.
I would’ve been okay if I went shields up up at maximum setting around my person, but that was the trouble. I had a team now, and that meant I had to worry about protecting their asses as well as protecting my own ass.
It was a weird change of pace.
The wall of flame sputtered and went out in a puff of fire suppression system. A forcefield not created by me appeared in front of us, and presumably the oxygen was being sucked out of the place behind it.
“Thanks CORVAC,” I said.
“No problem mistress,” CORVAC said, his orb pulsing. “I must admit it is frustrating attempting to stop her from regaining access to her systems.”
“And you’re never going to stop me!” Dr. Lana shrieked, appearing next to me in holographic form.
I rolled my eyes. Reached out and yanked at her hologram. A moment later the real Dr. Lana, or at least the Dr. Lana who was the current real Dr. Lana, appeared in front of me. I hadn’t actually grabbed her hologram and pulled the real her in front of me, it was some clever use of teleporters to make it look like I’d pulled the real her out, but it looked impressive and that’s what I was going for.
I had an audience, after all. Even if it was an audience of two. And one supercomputer floating in a glowing orb who already knew all my tricks, so why bother trying to impress him?
“I’m getting sick of your shit,” I growled, wheeling her around just in time for a turret that’d come down out of the ceiling to fire on her rather than on me.
She coughed a couple of times and smoke came out of her mouth. Which was weird, but about what I’d expect from someone who suddenly had their midsection blasted out. I tossed her to the ground and kept running.
“I don’t mean to be a downer here,” Nancy said. “But can you please tell me what the hell we’re doing?”
“We’re looking for something,” I said.
“And what are we looking for?” Nancy asked.
“CORVAC. If I’m reading this map right then we’re about to come to one of the big off limits areas, right?”
“Affirmative, mistress. I will warn you that the countermeasures that are waiting for us on the other side of that wall may be quite vigorous.”
“I’m hoping that’s the case,” I said. “Means we’re on the right track.”
Dr. Lana appeared next to me. I couldn’t be entirely sure since she was projecting herself through a hologram and everything, but I was fairly certain she was worried.
“You really shouldn’t go in there,” she said. “I’ve rigged up an atomic weapon to go off in the event of someone breaking into my sanctum sanctorum.”
“All I’m hearing from you is we’re on the right track,” I said. “Besides. If you really did set this up to go in a puff of indiscriminate radioactive glory it means I’m taking you out right along with me.”
Her mouth worked like she was trying to come up with something, but couldn’t quite figure out what to say to that. Clearly she hadn’t expected to go up against a villain who didn’t care about her own well being.
Though the people with me seemed to care about their own well being. Another one of those problems with working with a team.
“Um, do we get a say in this?” Nancy asked. “Because I really don’t want to go up in a mushroom cloud just so you can defeat your biggest enemy.”
“I don’t know,” Technomancer said, her voice taking on that absentminded singsong thing that she had whenever she was dipping into the crazy. “It seems like a hell of a way to go. The building block of life being used to turn us back into the building blocks of life, and all that!”
“You’re crazy,” Nancy said. “I like having all my atoms in a shape that looks and sounds and thinks like me, and if you think for a moment that I’m going to… hey! What are you doing?”
I walked up to the door and blasted it open. The fact that we continued existing after I’d blasted the door open seemed like a good indication that Dr. Lana had, in fact, been bluffing when she said she’d set a nuke to go off the moment someone busted in.
And there she was down at the bottom of a set of grand stairs that looked like something out of some cheesy set designer’s idea of a villainous lair for a movie made in the ‘70s. We’re talking something that hit right after Star Wars came out and suddenly everyone was scrambling to get themselves a piece of that pie.
“Damn it!” Dr. Lana screeched, in the flesh and not as a hologram. “I told you not to fucking come in here!”
“Yeah, and I’m bad at following directions,” I said, floating down to her.
The room beyond her was vast, and what I saw in there was disturbing, to say the least. But I figured I needed to concentrate on her for the moment.
“Technomancer, would you be a dear and give your little touch of tech to the panels she’s hiding behind? I’m willing to bet you’ll find everything you need to translate what she did with that gun to our tech,” I said.
Technomancer took the steps two at a time. She was bouncing along like a little kid who’d just been told there was a puppy waiting for them, and it was cute. She put her hands on the panel in front of Dr. Lana and got a far off look.
“What are you…”
I held my wrist blaster up and fired. Dr. Lana looked down in surprise as a massive hole was opened and cauterized right in her midsection. It was the kind of wound that brought to mind one of our fights on the Starlight City University campus.
“That’s a good look for you,” I said. “Pity you’re not going to live long enough to enjoy it.”
Dr. Lana fell over with a thump. Nancy walked over to her and shook her head.
“You really need to stop killing her like that,” she said.
“Why?” I asked. “There’s another one coming along. I could do this all fucking day long!”
Nancy turned and her mouth fell open. It seemed she was finally noticing for the first time exactly what had been waiting for us in this chamber of horrors.
At least it was a chamber of horrors for me. It was an ingenious piece of work for Dr. Lana, though.
Rows and rows of naked Dr. Lanas floated in test tubes. Which actually wasn’t all that bad to look at. Clearly Dr. Lana kept herself in shape so it’s not like she was any slouch to look at. It’s just that seeing her floating in a tank that looked like something straight out of Empire Strikes Back wasn’t exactly the hottest scenario.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Nancy asked.
“Something I’ve been suspecting for awhile now,” I said. “Dr. Lana kept coming back, and I was pretty sure it had something to do with her having a large supply of spares lurking somewhere. I also figured if we found the center of her secret lair Technomancer could get direct access to her systems instead of CORVAC fighting her in a technological sense.”
“Talk about fucked up,” Technomancer said, cursing for I think the first time since I’d met her. At least she didn’t seem to have too much of a potty mouth.
“Yeah, and look. Here comes the latest model.”
As we watched one of the giant tubes holding a Dr. Lana clone moved forward. The light inside the thing turned from blue to green, and the liquid inside drained. A moment later the glass dissolved in the front, creative use of a teleporter there, and a fresh new Dr. Lana stepped out and blinked a couple of times.
Then she dove for the deck when she realized I was standing right there holding my wrist blaster up ready to take her out.
“What the hell are you doing here?” her voice carried from the other side of the panel she’d disappeared behind.
She went silent for a moment, and then there was a scream. I wondered if there was something getting her on the other side, but then she stood and slumped over the panel. Not a comfortable position considering she was wearing almost nothing after coming out of that cylinder.
“Rig
ht,” she muttered. “That info dump always hurts like a motherfucker.”
“Looks like she’s doing some sort of retraining program on her clones so they have a continuous update of her most recent memories and can pick up where they left off.”
I stared at the Dr. Lana clone with slowly dawning horror. The crazy woman had been cloning herself and then throwing those clones into the meat grinder every time she got killed, and if she was constantly updating her new bodies with experiences from old bodies that meant she just got the memories of being killed in multiple messy and painful ways uploaded into her mind.
It was immortality of a sort, but if there was an afterlife out there somewhere then whatever the hell was running that afterlife was likely getting confused as fuck as all these identical copies of a crazy woman kept coming through to the other side.
Having a situation where I was frequently dying only to have my consciousness reappear inside another clone seemed like my own personal idea of hell, but I guess it was working for her.
“Is this how you were doing it all along?” I asked. “Repairing yourself? You weren’t actually healing yourself, were you? You figured out a way to use a teleporter to reconstitute any part of your body that was destroyed.”
Dr. Lana stared at me for a long moment, blinked, then shrugged.
“Sure, that’s what was going on,” she said.
It was almost too quick for me to believe her. I hated that there was a piece of technology Dr. Lana had come up with that was operating on principles I didn’t understand. I hated that she was standing there looking all smug and refusing to give me the answers I wanted.
It was enough to almost make me vaporize her, but that’d be a bad idea. Vaporizing her meant risking destroying all the knowledge that’d been transferred into the brain she was currently occupying.
I needed to keep that in one piece so I could torture it out of her later.