Each of our cells is different. Mine is fenced in front with ordinary bars, but when I walk up to touch them, there’s something, a lock in my software, that stops me. My arms and legs seize up, there’s a queasy moment when I seem to be trying to step out of my own armor, and I nearly fall before the gyros right me. I couldn’t walk through it if my life depended on it, which, ha ha, ironically it does.
I congratulate you on your usual fine showing. However, as you must by now have realized, none can defeat the might of Doctor Impossible. By means of a scheme so brilliant only I could have devised it, I have taken control of our planet’s orbit.
“Has anybody got their communicator still?” Rainbow’s voice again. Silence as everybody checks. “Jesus.”
It all began so well, eighteen hours ago. Feral was still in the hospital, but Rainbow Triumph was there, itching to come along for once. Her mood was infectious. We’d piled into the jumpjet, fired up and armed to the teeth, everyone with their own reasons for wanting to smash something big and delicate. No more vague conspiracies, no more poking around in bars and prisons and magic shops. Even without CoreFire, we were the greatest heroes in the world. All we needed was a fair fight.
The island looked the same, the same ruined base, but now sprinkled with a few functioning lights. He’d started things up again, underground where the heroes hadn’t reached all the way in last time.
We split up to take him, the classic approach. The last I saw of them, Blackwolf was firing a grappling-hook gun with perfect accuracy, preparing to scale the outer cliff, with Rainbow Triumph following up the line. Damsel tore the cover off an accessway, and Elphin flitted off down the main hallway. Mystic vanished as I watched, flashing his enigmatic grin. Left alone, I waded into a sewage tunnel to find a way up through the septic system. It wasn’t hard—most of Doctor Impossible’s traps are pretty transparent to my vision—trapdoors, lasers, shifting walls all show up clearly marked when you look with the right frequencies.
The place was enormous. After about an hour and a half, I heard the sounds of what could only be the decisive battle. I sprinted through one metal gallery, then another, until I found the central control room. We had him cornered, and it was all over. He’s only a technician, after all. He looks like he weighs 120 pounds.
I took a film of the last battle as it happened, taped out of my left eye. I run it back, reliving the moment—as I came into the hall, I could see the battle unfolding about 150 feet away. The Champions had cleared a circle in a swarming army of cybernetic minions, and they were throwing down with the Doctor. I was the last to arrive. And I could see right away that I was the world’s last hope.
I stopped for maybe three seconds to watch. Damsel was closing in on the Doctor, looking quite simply like the wrath of God. Whatever my feelings about her, I never quite considered what it would be like to have her angry at me. Watching the tape, I saw Blackwolf dodge a first and then a second energy blast, twisting his body, banking on sheer athletic ability. Mister Mystic was whispering alien syllables, his low and resonant voice carrying through the chamber.
And the Doctor beat them. It was barely even a fight. Rainbow went down before I could even power all the way up and start my sprint. It reminds me of nothing so much as footage of CoreFire dispatching some helpless nobody.
Doctor Impossible looked happy. No, he looked like he was having the best day of his entire life. He had a new weapon, a hammer held in his left hand; Mister Mystic conjured an eerie walking shadow, but it shattered like glass when the hammer touched it. Bullets, punches, bolts of energy—nothing could touch him, and he seemed a hundred times as strong. By the time I got there he was using its handle to pin Damsel against the wall by her neck, holding her off the ground like a naughty puppy.
Blackwolf looked genuinely shocked, angrier than I’d ever seen him. He managed a fancy duck and roll that carried him past the blaster fire and almost to Doctor Impossible himself, who then clubbed him to the ground one-handed with the butt of a ray gun, not even seeming to think about it. The blaster was in his right hand; he spun it in his fingers, then sprayed shot after shot at Elphin, who dodged madly, faster than a hummingbird, her cutie-pie face drawn with concentration.
He let Damsel drop, choked out, then managed to grab Elphin’s spear just behind the blade. That’s my cue, I remember thinking.
The room blurred as I accelerated to my top speed, pounding across the cavernous room, dodging robotic minions like a broken-field runner. Everyone else slowed down as all my systems kicked up to their highest level. I ducked a cybernetic ogre’s swinging steel fists and bulled straight through a crowd of smaller scrimmagers with a sound like a refrigerator dropped from a crane. Chips of metal, plastic, and glass sprayed from the impact, but I didn’t slow. A proximity alarm beeped and I reached one arm back to shred a diving drone helicopter with depleted-uranium slugs—no rubber bullets this time. For good or ill, this is what I was made for. The next generation of warfare.
Sixty feet away, and Elphin had lost her spear, the last heavy hitter still standing. I knocked Impossible’s last defender to the floor, stepped over Blackwolf’s prone form, and made ready to settle this for good. Elphin had fallen to her knees, stunned by a right cross; he yanked her off the ground. She was fading.
I was thirty feet away, then fifteen. Even Elphin stopped to watch when she saw me, mesmerized by this oncoming disaster. I was coming for my maker. Tactical computer sized up the fight, estimated a five-second outcome. Half a dozen bone-breaking combat scenarios scrolled across my onboard display. I cracked my knuckles theatrically.
“Doctor Impossible,” I growled. “This ends now.”
He looked up from his work as I started my leap, left ankle pivoting as my hips cranked around, ready to deliver a digitally calibrated, fusion-powered titanium-alloy side kick like the crack of doom.
At the last instant, his gaze flicked up to me and he saw me distinctly for the first time. He was still holding Elphin off the floor left-handed, but he found just a moment to pluck an oblong piece of plastic off his belt and point it at me. In playback, it looks like the little black remote you get with your car keys. He pressed the button and it was over. My little home movie ends in an extreme close-up of the laboratory’s scarred marble floor. He’s a professional. He knew exactly who I was and how I worked, and unlike me he came prepared. He took me down in less than a second, frozen like the Tin Woodman in the rain.
My first act will be to demand the surrender of all the governments of Earth, via the United Nations Security Council. You have no alternative. Legal details of this process can be found on my web site.
Across from me, Elphin sits in her own special cell, a low stone platform three feet on each side, her arms hugging her knees. Apart from the platform, the room is cold iron. A wooden cross hangs on each wall, the door, floor, and ceiling. Her spear is outside, propped against the wall with Damsel’s swords. She looks around without speaking, her huge eyes all pupil.
“What’s the plan? Does anyone have a plan?” I ask.
Blackwolf shushes me, points at the walls. Listening devices.
But at this point, I don’t care much. I glare at him. “I thought you said we could beat him!”
He shrugs. “This was way outside the usual parameters. It may not have been him, you know. Could’ve been a shape changer.”
“No metamorphs. I saw hard skeleton in there. It was him.”
“He is no warrior,” whispers Elphin, sullen. Another quarter heard from.
A deep thrumming comes through the rock, engines turning in the depths. Would he actually throw us into the Sun? How crazy is he, exactly? And how exactly do we get out of this one?
Two doors down from me, Mister Mystic is bound and gagged. Beyond him is the empty cell, fitted with reinforced manacles.
Whatever those machines are doing, they’re running at a fever pitch. Damsel is sleeping on the floor, curled up in a corner, bathing in the amber lamplight. Rainbow Triumph stares s
traight ahead, not moving. Every few minutes, she swallows, as if trying to get rid of a nasty taste in her mouth.
“Anyone hear from Lily?” I ask, breaking the silence.
Blackwolf shrugs awkwardly. “Not since her little walkout. Not unless you have. I put her up on the usual lists, but you know how she is. Just about invisible when she wants to be.”
“Great,” Rainbow chimes in. “And who asked her to join, again?”
Blackwolf’s neck is in a simple collar welded to the wall. No lock to pick, or chain to break. He can’t even sit down. It’s like Doctor Impossible’s making fun of his lack of powers. Any of the rest of us could have broken it in a second.
“Who said ‘split up’? Was that my idea?”
Blackwolf strains at the collar for a second, then gives up. “That’s it. Now I’ll never avenge my brother and sister. Fuck!”
Not moving, Damsel looks up. “Give it a rest, Marc. We’re all in the same boat here.”
“That’s fine, Damsel. You rested now? You want to break us out of here?”
She doesn’t answer.
Rainbow takes something from a pouch at her neck and eats it.
“What? It’s my meds. I need them every twelve hours. Basically in seventy-two hours I’ll be dead, if anyone cares.”
Silence reigns. We must be way under the ruined laboratory by now. I can hear the ocean, faintly.
Across the hall from me, Elphin still isn’t moving off of her little platform.
“What are you looking at?” She must have caught me looking. But I have to ask.
“Well…why doesn’t Elphin do it?”
“She’s a fairy.” Even Blackwolf sounds a bit on edge.
“I cannot break the bars, Fatale. These symbols restrain me, nor can I touch cold iron. I’ll never fulfill Titania’s mission.”
“What mission? What was it? Why didn’t you go ahead and do it, if you’ve really been around for centuries?”
“It isn’t time yet. And I’m not…I’m not entirely sure what it is.”
“So those crosses are really holding you back? What about a Buddha, or a Star of David? Would that bother you as much?”
“I heard Doctor Impossible was Jewish,” Rainbow puts in.
“Seriously, how much would it hurt you to break out of there?” I want to push her. Just once, I want her to behave like an ordinary person, drop the act and get us out of here.
“I cannot,” she says flatly.
“Is it, like, a phobia? Are you afraid?”
“I am of the Legion of the Western Sidhe. I do not know fear. But I’m governed by our law.”
Damsel wearily intervenes. “Fatale? Let it go.”
“No, I’m not going to die because a fake elf won’t cross an imaginary line. I know what’s holding me, and it’s not something I made up.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Why don’t you walk out of here yourself if you can, clockwork lady.”
“It’s a software lock! It’s electricity and metal. That’s what I am. I’m the next generation of warfare.”
“And I am twenty generations of war. What is it you’re so proud of, that makes you walk about and twitch and strut that way, like the bronze guardsman who strikes the hours on the clock at St. Clement’s?”
“I’m a super-soldier!”
“You’re no one!”
“Fatale, just shut up,” Blackwolf adds, helpfully.
But I’m on my feet now, and I turn to the rest of them. “She’s not a fairy! She’s just not. She’s a genetic experiment, or an alien. And it would be nice if Tinker Bell here dropped the pretense, just this once, before Doctor Impossible, you know, throws our entire planet into the Sun.”
Group silence. I can see I don’t have everyone’s support in this.
Having accepted your surrender, I will begin the launch of the new Ice Age, the Age of Doctor Impossible. An era of science and marvels and, of course, my total domination of the world.
“God, when is he going to shut up?” Rainbow sighs. She isn’t looking so good.
I try to change the subject. “Blackwolf? I thought you said he needed a power source for this.”
“He could be bluffing.” He doesn’t bother looking at me.
“He didn’t look like he was bluffing when he beat the crap out of you.” Rainbow won’t leave it alone.
“Jeez.” Blackwolf mock-cringes. “Thought you were my sidekick.”
Silently, Rainbow gives him the finger.
“He had a new weapon, damn it. Did anyone else see that hammer he was holding?”
“We all saw the hammer. Nobody knows what it is.”
“It looked magical.”
“That’s what Mystic said before he went down. The Doctor took him out first.”
“Forget it,” Damsel says. “We couldn’t even save CoreFire.”
Our fearless leader. In the amber glow of an overhead light, Damsel sits at the back of her cell, her knees up. She’s loose in there—I can’t see anything restraining her. He took her swords, but otherwise I can’t see any reason why she doesn’t smash her way out. I’m too embarrassed to ask what the problem is. Without the swords, she looks like a different person—a slight, greenish, surprisingly young brunette. She has the cell next to Blackwolf’s.
“This was such a mistake. The military would have prepared properly, instead of just jetting off after lunch. This should have been a ground assault.”
“Come on, Ellen. You’ve seen what Doctor Impossible does to conventional forces. We’re the logical counterforce.”
“You mean CoreFire was. Without him, Doctor Impossible’s beaten us twice this week. The first time, he didn’t even have his costume. Let’s face it, the New Champions was a stupid name, and kind of a stupid idea. We shouldn’t have tried it.” Damsel punches the wall hard. It should crack the concrete; it should smash it to powder. There’s just a dull smack.
“That’s easy for you to say, Miss Stormcloud. It’s not as if the rest of us had anywhere to go.”
“And I did? Didn’t you ever wonder why I didn’t join the Supers?”
He holds up a black-gloved hand. “Don’t start.”
“I can’t believe you never figured it out. CoreFire knew; I guess he could sense stuff. The one date we had, he worked it out. After that he wouldn’t go near me. Fucking racist.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have slept with him then.” Blackwolf’s tone is low and bitter. He’s smart; he knows we’re listening. Maybe he doesn’t care.
“You remember what happened to my mother?” Damsel sounds like she really wants to know.
“Your mother?”
“You know…the alien princess?” she says, her voice acid now. “Remember her? Stormcloud’s first wife. It was one of those superhero marriages—he saves her planet; she goes back to the stars.”
“I know. But…”
“Think about it. She wasn’t human, even if she looked a little like us. She wasn’t even a mammal. No one even thinks about the fact that I look human. My hands are a little big, see? And my ears, that’s why I wear my hair long.
“I shouldn’t exist at all. Her people have an advanced gene science, and my mother’s father donated his expertise as a wedding present. I’m mostly a clone of my father—they switched the gender, probably so it would be less obvious. They managed to include a few of my mother’s traits—my biology is less human than you think. Why do you think I throw up all the time?
“I know my nervous system reads funny, and my blood type’s irregular, a one-off. I’m red-green color-blind. Did you know that?
“My father did his best to hide it. They raised me human, but my mother was always an alien. Green skin, of course. Her breath always smelled like cinnamon. Her eyes were huge. Cold hands, and she loved to swim. She went back when I was nine, when she succeeded to the throne on her world. We spoke English together when we could, over the hyperwave communicator. I never learned her language, only a few words. It’s dif
ficult for humans to learn, but I thought I should.
“At first, they thought I didn’t have any powers. My father raised me pretty strictly. I was in private school under a secret identity, God, until eleventh grade. I hated it. Then on my sixteenth birthday, I walked out onto the Peterson quad and screamed. I broke windows. Fucking Regina was pissed.
“After that, at night I’d be flying above the city in a blaze of light, but I’d retreat afterward into my secretary job. And afterward, after the Champions, there was nothing to stop me from being Damsel all the time. And the reality was, I had no idea who Damsel was, not really. Not when she wasn’t saving people. All I wanted was to be in the Super Squadron.
“I still have my title. I’m even still a princess. My mother rules an ocean planet somewhere; it’s in my passport. But the Super Squadron wouldn’t take off-worlders. And I failed the goddamn blood test.”
“It doesn’t make any difference. Not to me,” Blackwolf says. He looks calmer than I thought he’d be. Like he’s finally understood something, a missing piece. CoreFire must have seen it first, with those eyes of his.
She gestures weakly at the overhead lamp. “Her sun’s radiation takes away my powers anyway. That’s what the lamp is for, smart guy. I guess Doctor Impossible knew it, too. Face it, I’m a mistake.”
Yes, in the coming era I shall rule your puny world, as is my right. I will be just but fair, and above all, scientific. It will be my pleasure to keep you alive to witness your total and utter defeat.
And Elphin stirs on her platform and makes the longest speech I’ve ever heard from her.
“You know how they found me? I was starving and I passed out. A couple of hunters—they thought their luck was in.”
“Jesus,” I say. She flinches at the name. “Sorry.”
Soon I Will Be Invincible Page 24