by Logan Jacobs
“Miles Nelson’s home,” I finally admitted, but as soon as the words left my mouth I felt my heart start to beat a bit faster, and a pleasant warmth spread through my stomach.
“As you wish, Miss Dynamo,” my car replied, and for better or worse, we were off.
Off toward the man who was the source of all my present troubles.
Off toward the man who I couldn’t seem to stay away from.
What the fuck was I doing?
Miles Chapter Fifteen
While Dynamo was off on her daily Warden business, Norma, Aileen, and I busied ourselves in The Cellar. I was so single mindedly focused on my mission to take down the crocodile-masked bastard who called himself The Chief that I had been pushing off all the other engagements that usually crowded my calendar. No rubbing shoulders with politicians. No meeting with reporters for magazine interviews. No threesomes with supermodels. Not even any tinkering on any of my other inventions that were unrelated to the mission at hand.
Aileen was not only researching the power grid, she was also doing a deep dive investigation on every known supervillain that had any possible connection to The Chief. It wasn’t public knowledge who most of his associates were, but by using the identities of the six who attacked at the Gala, The Virus, the traits of two supervillains that had fallen into our trap with The Virus, and by resorting to hacking into the Warden databases to read their files on The Chief, my beautiful AI was able to assemble a list of probable candidates for the occupants of his lair.
Norma, meanwhile, was in charge of making arrangements for the poison gas. I left it up to her to figure out which of our business entities she could obtain it through without arousing government suspicion, and she also calculated the quantities we would need along with the delivery mechanism that would pump it through the lair’s ventilation system.
I spent my day working on some night vision contact lenses for once we entered the powerless lair to take down the last survivors post gas attack. I felt they would be less cumbersome than goggles and be useful in many future situations. I also made some weapons enhancements on Elizabeth’s and my suits based on what Aileen briefed me about the specific superpowers of the supervillains that she thought could potentially be working for The Chief.
When Dynamo arrived late that night, she had a slight residual limp from what she said had been a broken leg half an hour ago.
“Yikes, well, I won’t ask,” I said.
“Good, because I can’t tell you,” she replied. Then she walked into the bathroom in her red Warden uniform, only to reemerge a few minutes later in the dark teched out super suit that I had built for her.
I raised my eyebrows slightly. “You, er, expecting trouble tonight?”
“Nope, not unless you cause any,” she replied with a wink.
“Well, the suit looks fantastic on you, but er, if you wanted to change into something a bit more comfortable, athleisure wear I believe the young ladies call it, I could provide--”
“I’m wearing this to get used to it,” she interrupted me. “So that when the time comes that I really need it, it will already feel like a second skin to me.”
“Ah, I see,” I said. I was in cuffed black sweats and a thin tee shirt bearing the logo of one of my companies across the chest. “Well, okay. Just don’t blow anything up in here by accident. You break it, you buy it. And some of this stuff is priceless.”
“I’m not a klutz,” she said as she rolled her eyes. “People have called me plenty of things in my life, but never that.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Take a look at this.” I showed her what I was up to with the night vision contact lenses and how she could help me construct them. She didn’t really have any engineering expertise at all, less than Norma did, but the Wardens seemed to have shown her some of the basics, and she was smart, so she understood how the small devices would work once I had finished them.
Then, when we were an hour into happily working all together as a team of four, Dynamo’s phone rang. She glanced at it, and then she froze as a brief flash of panic passed over her face.
“The Wardens?” I guessed.
She nodded and whispered, “My boss’ boss.” She hesitated for a second, let it ring again, and then she reluctantly answered.
After listening to the person on the other end, she asked calmly, “What is the concern?”
After they said their piece, she replied, “What I do after hours is personal. Not the organization’s business.”
“Well, it wasn’t,” she said next, emphatically. “Nothing like that.”
Then she exclaimed, “No, I’m not a supervillain! Of course not! How could you--”
There was a long pause after that, and her brow furrowed as she listened to the other person’s lengthy rant. Then she said, “No, I do not consent to that. I’m not your property. That wasn’t in the contract that I signed, none of the conditions that you’re suggesting-- I don’t think they’re even constitutional, you can’t just--”
“You won’t have the chance to do that, because I quit,” she announced.
Norma and I looked at each other with wide eyes.
“Yes, that’s right,” Dynamo said furiously into the phone.
I knew Aileen’s hearing would be able to pick up what the other person was saying, but for now I had to rely on rather obvious context clues.
“Fine, I will,” she agreed. “I don’t care. About any of it. None of that was what mattered to me. But that’s all that ever seemed to matter to you! I told you, I’m not a villain,” she repeated. “I’m just… a super. Operating independently. I’m on my own side now. Maybe you’ll hear from me again, and maybe you won’t. But I’m fighting on my own terms now.”
There was a furious, but barely audible response from her boss’ boss, and Dynamo’s eyes narrowed.
“We’ll see about that,” she hissed, and hung up.
Norma and I stared at her in shock for a moment. Then, we both applauded.
The tension evaporated from her face, and she started to laugh, I think mainly with relief.
“Well, I might have just fucked myself over,” she said. “I most definitely threw my career out the window, anyway. But I feel… free.”
I hadn’t even asked her to do it, but it seemed that Aileen had gathered enough data on my past behavior patterns by that point that she decided of her own accord to wheel over and pour drinks for all three of us humans and superhumans.
“To freedom,” I said, and it was the best damn drink I’d had in a long while.
After that, we sat around and talked about the supervillains that Aileen predicted we might encounter and what our strategies would be for dealing with each of them. Even Dynamo, who had studied all of Pinnacle City’s currently active supervillains in Warden school, didn’t recognize all of their names, which I thought was actually a good sign because it meant that they were still lower tier supervillains, not the major players. But one name that she did recognize was Creepycrawler.
“That sounds like an insect,” Norma said as she wrinkled her nose in revulsion. “Does he have like, extra legs or something?”
“No, he can stand upright and pass for a human with the right disguise on, but his joints are all wrong, and he can drop down and scuttle really fast with his limbs bent like an insect’s,” Dynamo replied. “And he’s very pale and looks like an albino but his eyes aren’t pink, they’re solid black like an insect’s, and he can see in the dark. In fact, he prefers the dark. All of his attacks are sneak attacks. Most of his victims never even see him coming, they just feel his fangs and then it’s too late. And he’s… he’s killed superheroes. Great superheroes.”
“I thought supervillains didn’t do that,” Norma said. “Just like you guys-- I mean, the Wardens-- don’t do it to them.”
“Usually not, but…” she sighed and then turned her blue eyes to me.
“Go on,” I prompted gently, since I knew she was about to agree with my entire philosophy.
&n
bsp; “Well, some of them are total psychopaths who just have no boundaries or self-control,” Dynamo continued with a heavy sigh. “And Creepycrawler is one of them.” There was apprehension in her voice, but the stronger element was hatred.
“Were they superheroes that you knew?” I asked.
“No, they were before my generation, but they were superheroes that I idolized,” Dynamo said. “One of them was Raptor. He was one of the biggest influences that made me want to grow up to be a Warden.”
“I think maybe the Warden organization was different in Raptor’s day,” I said. “It didn’t always used to be so social media obsessed. It didn’t always used to be so intent on monetizing everything. And it didn’t use to keep its superheroes on such a short leash, not letting them kill villains and stuff. Used to be it would just hand you guys suits and badges and whatever weapons you asked for and kind of just let you do your own thing.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Dynamo sighed. “I just don’t want to think that the dream is dead; that the era of superheroes is over. You know?”
“It doesn’t have to be,” I said. “The era of The Wardens, what the Wardens were intended to be, that’s over. But where there is a great evil there will always be superheroes. It’s like a natural law or something. The only way to keep an ecosystem balanced. You can still be everything Raptor was and more. On your own terms, without a badge.”
“Yeah, that or I’ll end up in prison, in a cell neighboring yours,” she said wryly.
“Eh, we could learn Morse code and keep ourselves entertained,” I said. “Rise to become king and queen of the cell block. Orchestrate prisoner riots and terrorize the living shit out of the guards, until they decide it’s easier to just become our puppets. Negotiate for extra cigarettes and more time in the yard.”
“… So I’m not the only one that the prison possibility has occurred to,” Dynamo said.
“It’s worth joking about, nothing more,” I scoffed. “If you ever ended up in prison, you’d get out right away. I mean, you’re a sexy as hell ex-Warden. You could probably just bat your eyes at a couple of the guards, and they’d look the other way, but also, if you called up The Wardens and pretended to be contrite and said you wanted to work for them again, I’m sure they would be all too eager to pull some strings. There’s nothing the public loves better than a redemption story. And as for me, I can afford the kind of lawyers that can make an axe murderer doubt his recollections of his own crime. Anyone would be only too eager to settle with me out of court.”
“In another life, maybe you could’ve been a lawyer,” Dynamo remarked.
I laughed. “Not a chance. I always like finding new ways to solve old problems. The way lawyers do things is so formulaic. Fuck precedent is what I say.”
“What have I gotten myself into?” Dynamo muttered to herself.
“You’ve gotten yourself the funding, resources, and logistical and administrative support to go after any supervillain you want, any way you want,” I replied. “And the pleasure of my company, and Norma’s, and Aileen’s.”
“Hmm, fair enough,” Elizabeth said as she glanced at my other team members. “Once The Wardens find out where I am, though, and they will find out, sooner or later, they might decide to make you pay for ‘corrupting’ me.”
“Make me pay because you chose me over them?” I asked. “That doesn’t sound very heroic to me. That sounds like a possessive, entitled supervillain mentality.”
“I just want you to be warned,” she said. “It’s not too late. I could just go rogue on my own. I mean, I might keep the suit, but I wouldn’t have to tell anyone where I got it.”
“Ha, as if the quality of my work doesn’t have my name written all over it!” I scoffed. “Nah. I need you. I like to think I’m decently intelligent, but I’m hopelessly weak and slow by super standards. Tech enhancements might be able to change that eventually, but even so. Look at me and look at you in his and hers versions of a pretty similar suit. What I can do in it might kick ass by normal human standards, but it still doesn’t compare to what you’ve got naturally.”
“So, you just need me for my body?” She smirked and raised a perfect eyebrow.
“Amongst other alluring qualities,” I replied as I stared deep into her azure eyes.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Sorry,” I laughed lightly. “Did you just join the team? I didn’t quite hear you.”
“Maybe.” Dynamo raised her glass, half ironically but half sincerely. “You’ve got me for this mission. Happy, Miles?”
“Very,” I said as I looked to Norma. “We are both happy.”
“Welcome,” my assistant said as she smiled at Elizabeth.
“Yes,” Aileen chimed in. “I predicted this would happen, so I am both happy that you joined and happy that my predictive decision tree is in good working order.
“Just this one mission,” Elizabeth corrected. “Then I’ll give you a final decision after. Deal?”
“Deal,” I said as I raised my glass again so that the three of us could drink. “To making the world a better and safer place.”
They all raised their glasses, and then we drank.
After we completed the contact lenses, Norma, Dynamo, and I tested them out with a game of hide and seek throughout my mansion. They didn’t just have night vision, they auto adjusted to any light condition within a second, which also protected the user’s vision from any blinding flashes. I put Aileen in charge of switching up the lighting so that it really would be unpredictable for all of us, and had her test that with the strobe lights that I had installed in a few rooms, and some harmless lasers that were just light without any heat. However, I noticed that Dynamo instinctively ducked and jumped to avoid them, probably based on her experience fighting supervillains such as The Evil Eye. She was already head and shoulders above the rest of the female population on just looks alone, but her supernatural athleticism and cat-like reflexes made her even sexier.
I had to restrain myself from hitting on her for now, since I didn’t want her to think that I’d had ulterior motives for trying to recruit her to my team or that I didn’t take her crime-fighting prowess seriously.
But I was more than fine playing the long game and letting our relationship blossom into something more nuanced. After spending the last several days with her, I realized that I wasn’t very interested in supermodels any more.
When we stopped in the cellar for a break between rounds, Dynamo picked up a weapon from my work table and asked, “What is this, for paintball? A BB gun or something? It doesn’t look like any rifle I’ve ever seen before. Should we bump the hide and go seek up a notch?”
“What, no!” I exclaimed. “Put that down. I’d like to have some mansion left, please.”
“This is the one with the armor-piercing rounds for Stoneskin and The Chief himself, right?” Norma asked.
“Yup,” I said.
As Dynamo put it back on the table, Norma went over and started to pick it up. Then she gasped in surprise and let go. “It’s so heavy!”
“Dynamo can carry that one,” I said.
“What are you calling it?” Norma asked.
“It’s an anti-supervillain gun,” I replied. “Patent pending.”
“Well, if you’re not going to let me play with it,” Dynamo said with a mock pout, “I’m going to head back to my place now.”
“You could just stay here,” I offered as I kept my poker-face. “I have plenty of room.”
“I’d prefer to go home tonight,” Elizabeth said after a few moments of hesitation. “Just… you know. I have stuff to think about. What’s the plan for tomorrow? I can stay the night then.”
“Tomorrow we rehearse the attack, double-check all our gear, and hopefully enjoy a home cooked dinner courtesy of Norma and Aileen,” I said. “And the day after that? We pay The Chief a visit. We avenge the victims of the Gala. And you can play with that new toy all you want.”
“Great.” Dynamo nodded.
“I suppose that is true,” she said.
Then she returned my grin.
Miles Chapter Sixteen
The next day, besides preparing for the attack, I also found time to complete Aileen’s hands and arms.
Once they were attached and fully synced up, she examined them admiringly. The ends of her arms transformed in a dizzying, metallically clanging sequence from pincers to electric drills to a whistle and a corkscrew to scissors to elegant chrome piano player’s hands. She reached out, picked up an orange, and started juggling it as if she’d been juggling all her life. Then she skewered the orange with a drill, snipped the skin off with her scissors without even nicking the fruit, tweezed off the stringy pith, and handed it to me.
“Magnificent.” I put a juicy segment in my mouth and handed segments to Dynamo and Norma too.
“Now I can take over the world,” Aileen murmured huskily.
“What?” I asked.
“I mean, facilitate your takeover of the world, Creator,” Aileen said sweetly.
“That’s more like it,” I said.
“Well, it’s a delicious orange,” Dynamo said as she raised her eyebrows at my AI assistant. The former Warden was clad in the skin-tight dark super suit I had built for her and kicked back in a swivel chair with her boots up on the table next to a keypad. I had started mentally picturing her in that one now instead of in the lipstick red one that she wore only a day ago.
I guessed I didn’t really have a personal theme color, I tended to just stick to tasteful grays and blacks in my wardrobe. I didn’t see any need to pick a vivid color that would stand out to my enemies, or to the authorities for that matter. The longer my activities remained a secret, the better. So with Dynamo adopting my palette now, and with Aileen being naturally silver and having no need for clothes, at least not until the stage of development came when she could actually pass for human, the only member of my team who provided a pop of color was actually Norma, but my assistant didn’t really have a favorite color.