My Evil Ex Girlfriends

by Mia Archer

  It made sense that we were being bathed in that eerie light, of course, because there was a massive portal at the far end of the vast room. A portal that had a bunch of plumbing running into it, like someone was pumping something from the other side, and I figured that wasn’t good. Those portals had never meant anything good was about to happen to me.

  I floated into the room and stared at the chamber of horrors before me with my mouth hanging open.

  “Son of a bitch,” Nancy muttered as she stepped in next to me.

  “You’ve got that right,” I whispered.

  “This is amazing!” Technomancer opined, demonstrating her usual complete and utter lack of the ability to appreciate the gravitas of a moment.

  I stared out over another room full of clones that were all completed and ready to go. Only those clones weren’t Dr. Lana. They were far worse.

  I walked up to one of the tubes and looked at the nude figure floating there in glowing pink water. It was a figure I knew all too well, because it was a figure I’d gotten to know pretty damn well in the brief time we’d been dating. Back before she was thrown through a portal to a strange new world that’d caused her to come back to earth just a little unhinged with a taste for taking over the world that would’ve had a genetically modified superintelligent lab mouse telling her to dial it back just a little.

  Fialux. Fialuxes. The whole place was wall to wall clones of her.

  Except for one cylinder that was located near the front of the thing. At the spot where the clone would’ve stepped out, if what I’d seen of the Dr. Lana chamber of horrors up above was anything to go on. That one cylinder was empty.

  As though there was one lab grown Fialux that was already out in the world. I glanced up to where the ceiling was starting to cave in and wondered if my Fialux was the original, or if she was merely another clone.

  “What did you do?” I whispered, my voice low and threatening.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know, Night Terror?” Dr. Lana asked. “But I’m not telling!”

  I wasn’t quite sure what happened next. One moment Dr. Lana was gloating about the villainous thing she’d just done, and the next moment I’d thrown her to the ground. I was on top of her punching her smarmy face over and over and creating one hell of a bruise.

  I wasn’t hitting her hard enough to cause permanent damage though. No, I was well aware that my suit’s augments gave me the ability to punch clean through her head if I wanted to, but I wanted her alive.

  No, scratch that. Given everything I’d just learned about what she’d been up to in the deep and secret parts of the Applied Sciences Department I needed to keep her alive. I needed to know exactly what she’d done down here and exactly how she’d done it.

  “What did you do?” I screamed.

  Dr. Lana’s cackle grew more and more unhinged every time I landed a hit. Like she enjoyed it. Either she was a masochist, or she was enjoying finally causing her archenemy to lose it.

  I was putting my money on the latter. That’s how these things worked, after all.

  “What the fuck did you do!”

  Something grabbed my arm, but I kept right on with the punching. There wasn’t anything that could…

  Huh. That was odd. Apparently there was something that could stand up to the force of me using all the strength in my suit to try and break free. It’s probably a good thing something could hold up to all the strength in my suit. Letting loose with that much power would be more than enough to turn Dr. Lana’s face, skull, and brains into pulp.

  The bitch deserved it, but I needed her alive. I didn’t need her getting the easy way out just because someone grabbed my arm and I had to dial it up to eleven to try and break free.

  I looked up. Saw Nancy standing there glaring down at me. She had both her hands on my arm, but she didn’t look like she was struggling to hold my augmented punch.

  That was a nice trick, that.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Saving the one lifeline we have to figuring out what the hell’s going on here,” she said. “The last thing we need is you killing her again before she can tell you what you need to know.”

  Tension drained from my arm, and from my suit. Nancy held on. Clever girl.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not going to try and kill her. No tricks.”

  I turned back to Dr. Lana. Looked her up and down. She disgusted me with that satisfied look. She was so proud of herself for pulling this off and getting away with it.

  “Yet,” I added.

  That wiped some of the smarm off of her face. Not all of it, but enough that she knew she was still potentially deep in the shit.

  “So this is where Fialux came from,” Nancy said, looking out across the place.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’m not sure I believe it yet. She had so many memories of growing up on earth. I was convinced she was an alien for the longest time, but now…”

  I floated up to have a look at the Fialux farm. All the cylinders glowed bright pink, suffused with the same light as those portals, and each and every one of them had a naked Fialux inside. Which was a touch distracting.

  Hey, you try being surrounded by a bunch of completely naked representations of the hottest woman you’ve ever known and see how you do. Not that it was all that distracting considering the superscience aspect of it made the whole thing just a little clinical for me, but still.

  I also wasn’t sure how much I bought the idea that Fialux’s memories of growing up on earth meant she had to be from earth. I’d gotten an unfortunate firsthand introduction to just how good Dr. Lana could be at implanting false memories into someone’s head, after all. False memories I didn’t even realize were there until the real version of those memories showed up to try and take over the world, so how was some girl fresh out of the cloning vat supposed to be able to counteract that sort of thing?

  She wouldn’t be able to.

  “You’re a monster,” I said, glaring down at Dr. Lana.

  “I know you are, but what am I?” she said, then stuck her tongue out.

  Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to respond. No, another loud earthquake shook the room. An earthquake that had several of those bright pink tubes o’ Fialux rattling around.

  I cried out in worry. Sure it was the same thing as what I’d seen in the chamber of horrors up above, but it was different somehow. These were clones of the fucking love of my life, damn it. I didn’t care that the love of my life was technically doing her best to kill my ass right now.

  Another loud thud shook the room around us. It felt like the big one was happening, and that was saying something since we were pretty far from any faults that might do some serious damage.

  The first earthquake was followed by another loud explosion as the ceiling screeched with the sound of torn armor plating. A human-sized missile came crashing down into the room.

  Fialux, of course, and as she looked around the room I could tell we were about to see some serious shit.

  29

  Dawning Horror

  Fialux stared around the room. It was easy to tell the moment she realized exactly what she was looking at. Exact copies of herself floating in vats of pink water that was being steadily irradiated by plumbing leading from the Fialux tubes to whatever was on the other side of that portal.

  Something told me it was a portal to that other world, but I couldn’t be completely sure of that. Not without going to the other side, and I had no intention of doing that since I knew there was a whole new world of blue skinned aliens waiting to kick my ass on the other side of the portal.

  “What the hell is this?” Fialux shrieked, the power of her voice sending cracks spiderwebbing through the glass in the cylinders closest to her.

  Hell, even the cylinders that were pretty far from her rocked back and forth under the fury of her voice.

  She turned to face us, and then she was moving so fast that I could barely track her.

  Oh yeah. Spending
time on the other side of that portal soaking in whatever that radiation was had really beefed her up in the super powers department.

  I held up a hand. No time to use my wrist blaster or to try and stop her with my strength. No, I had to hope for reason.

  I tried not to think about how reason had been in short supply when it came to Fialux lately. Especially since she’d gone a little crazy after I sent her new girlfriend packing to the edge of the solar system.

  That thought filled me with enough irritation to give my voice a little extra irritated boost.

  “Stop!” I shouted.

  And for a wonder she actually did stop. Her fist was held up like she was seriously considering following through, but she wasn’t attacking. No, she was aimed right at Dr. Lana, who was smiling a little knowing smile that said she was enjoying the fuck out of this.

  “What did you do?” she growled.

  “This has been her plan all along,” I said.

  Fialux turned to me, and for a moment it seemed like she was the old Fialux. For a moment she seemed as confused and out of it as she’d been the day Dr. Lana relieved her of her powers. Though the more I thought about that the more I suspected there was a hell of a lot more to Dr. Lana and Fialux than simply coming up with a weapon that could take away her powers.

  “She’s been running experiments on you,” I said. “She’s been doing something to give you your powers. You said it yourself. They only started to really manifest when you got to college. As in they only started to really work when you were in close proximity to Dr. Lana.”

  “I don’t…”

  “Think about it,” I said. “Search your feelings. You know it to be true!”

  That was good for a few irritated glances from the assembled women, but I didn’t care. There were times when shit was so serious that you needed to rely on a good Star Wars line to really convey the gravity of the situation.

  Plus it’s not like Fialux would even realize that’s what I was doing. Sure she’d sat down and watched Star Wars with me, grudgingly, but we’d been pretty hot and heavy by the time we got around to the big paternity reveal that’d shocked several generations.

  “But nothing has ever been able to hurt me,” she said. “I’ve always had that going on. I always had to hide it.”

  This was good. She was having a little bit of a crisis. A crisis meant she was thinking things through rather than raging out. A crisis meant my Fialux was still in there somewhere, as hack and cliched as that thought was, and the old Fialux was starting to come to the surface and poke her head out to see what was going on out here.

  “Maybe that’s the case,” I said. “But what about the flying? The strength? All that stuff? It’s not like you were lifting cars off of your dad when you were a toddler, right?”

  “Well no,” she said. “But I did get bit by a rattler on a hike when I was a kid and they said I should’ve been dead by the time help got to me and I felt fine.”

  Huh. I was learning more about Fialux and her past here in this conversation than I ever had while trying to get something out of her while we were living together. Maybe seeing a room full of clones of herself had been enough to blue screen her, and she was getting talkative now that her mind was doing a reboot.

  “Whatever it is, Dr. Lana has done this to you. She’s done all of this to you. These clones. Throwing you through that portal. Giving you your powers,” I said. “We can fix it though. We can figure out what she was doing and reverse it! I know I can help you!”

  “Just like you were able to help me when I lost my powers?” she asked, sending a bullet of guilt straight to my heart. “Just like you were supposed to help me when this bitch threw me through a portal and left me stranded on some world on the other side of the universe? Is that how you’re going to help me, Natalie?”

  Her face was contorted in pure rage. So much for reason winning out.

  Admittedly she had a pretty good reason for feeling some pure rage. Everything she’d said was true. I’d failed her, utterly and completely, and hearing her talking about my failure in terms so raw was even more painful than any physical blow she’d ever hit me with.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I haven’t been the best girlfriend. I know I haven’t been there for you even though I’ve tried. I do know that I’m going to keep doing whatever I can to save you though. I don’t care what it takes.”

  For a moment I thought it might’ve worked. It was a real American Werewolf in London last ditch alley speech moment where she seemed like she almost wasn’t going to go crazy and kill me.

  Unfortunately things worked out about as well for me as they did for the hot nurse at the end of that classic of ‘80s horror cinema. Fialux looked almost understanding for a moment, almost as though she was going to go along with this and let me help her, then her face contorted to a look of such pure fury that it had me taking a step back.

  If ever there was a being on this world whose looks could kill, Fialux was that being. And right then she looked like she was ready to take me out.

  “No!” she said, a low growl. “No! No! No!”

  The “no” grew in intensity with every pronouncement until she was shouting it loud enough to put more cracks in the cylinders holding unconscious versions of her.

  “No more!” she screamed. “It’s not happening ever again! People have been controlling my life for too long and I haven’t been able to do anything, but it’s not happening anymore!”

  Fialux started to twitch. It took me a moment to realize that was something I’d seen before.

  “CORVAC. Would you be a dear and run a quick scan on her? Particularly on the worm that’s making its way through her brain?”

  “Affirmative, mistress,” he said, speaking into the earpiece so only I could hear him.

  Good computer. He still knew when it was a good idea to shut his fucking mouth.

  “It would appear that she is having a reaction similar to the cats who were startled or otherwise introduced to negative stimuli while fighting you, mistress,” CORVAC said.

  “Damn,” I said. “We might be getting Fialux back after all.”

  I could hope she’d return to normal once that worm controlling her brain was no more. It’d taken a profound negative stimulus to get rid of the other worms possessing Starlight City’s feline population. For those cats it was something as simple as hitting them with a loud noise or a squirt bottle, but for an intelligent thinking being like Fialux it looked like it took something more existentially fucked up.

  Like being confronted with a room full of herself suspended in test tubes ready to be unleashed on the world.

  She fell to the ground. I made a move to comfort her, but a hand on my chest held me back. Nancy using her super strength to hold me back, of course. I was using all the power I had in my antigrav and strength augments to get to Fialux, and Nancy was holding me back like it was nothing.

  She shook her head ever so slightly. “That’s not your Fialux.”

  I hesitated, then nodded. She was right, of course. As much as I hated that she was right. That wasn’t my Fialux, for all that she was twitching and maybe finally breaking free of that damn worm’s influence.

  She lashed out and sent several of the cylinders crashing to the ground. The glass shattered and the Fialuxes inside the things slid across the floor through shattered glass, though sliding through shattered glass didn’t seem to bother them.

  That would make sense if those cylinders were being pumped with radiation from that strange world that gave her all of her powers. The copies would have the same powers she did, though maybe not quite as intense depending on how long Dr. Lana had been baking these clones.

  Fialux twitched a few more times, but the damage was mostly localized to where she’d landed. A worm wiggled out of her ear and fell to the ground with a plop. It was a real Wrath of Khan vibe.

  The thing was bigger than some of the worms I’d seen controlling cats, and it seemed to know it was in troub
le where the cat worms had been mostly helpless without their host.

  The worm stretched out, looking for all the world like a prehensile brown turd having a look around, and then it started trying to wiggle its way away from Fialux, who’d gotten up and was floating looking just a touch confused. Too confused to do anything about the worm, for the moment.

  Too bad Fialux wasn’t who it had to worry about. I raised my wrist blaster and fired. It vanished in a flash of teleportation.

  “Got it?” I asked.

  “Affirmative, mistress,” CORVAC said. “I anticipate this and the scans we got while the thing was being knocked out of her will be very useful in finding a way to cure Sabine.”

  A cure. It seemed impossible, and yet there was Fialux floating in front of us looking every bit the same magnificent beauty she’d been on that very first day we met each other.

  A day when she’d kicked my ass, to be sure, but still. It was one hell of a memory and I was getting echoes of it now.

  “Fialux?” I asked. “Is that you?”

  30

  Goddess in Fury

  Fialux stared at me as time slowed down. I’d had moments where time seemed to slow to a crawl before, and unfortunately it was always when I was getting my ass kicked or about to get my ass kicked and never because, say, the Chronometric Flux Capacitative Time Dilator I was testing was actually doing its job.

  I got the feeling I was on the verge of one hell of an ass kicking if Fialux came down on the wrong side of the whole good/bad thing now that she’d been dewormed.

  I never thought I’d find myself hoping Fialux would recover and become heroic again rather than villainous, but here we were. The world had changed a lot in the past couple of months.

  Her face hardened, and my stomach sank even as it twisted into knots. That wasn’t a good look. Especially on someone like Fialux who was an “always look on the bright side of life” person, complete with the whistling that should be playing in your head after reading that line.