DIRE:SINS (The Dire Saga Book 5)

by Andrew Seiple

  Vector took a long breath. “He used to be a hero. Or a villain, before Maestro M. edited him out of history. His costume name was Big Brother. Worked behind the scenes, he’s a clairvoyant... he can see distant things just by concentrating on them.”

  “How does he fix on people? Names, faces, or something more esoteric?” If it was by name, then I was stuck. But faces could be changed, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t done that before.

  “Damned if I know. That was one of those things that would have looked really suspicious if I was too interested. I thought you knew about him, had a way of blocking his power.”

  “Have you seen him use it?”

  “Once. He projected his remote viewing onto a television. I watched Maestro M’s goons hunt down a hero and capture her that way, after she started digging into one of his operations. Never heard anything about her after that. I assumed the worst.”

  I took a breath. “Real winner you hooked up with.” Traffic stopped entirely. In my night vision, I could see men in suits holding flashlights, working in pairs and checking in the windows of the stopped cars. Hard to tell how many there were, given the press of bodies. We were out of the lightless zone by now, but it was causing a pedestrian buildup on the sidewalks, as people followed their instincts and went all looky-loo, filming the chaos on their phones or standing around and yakking at each other a mere couple of hundred feet from the obviously dangerous area.

  “Wasn’t my idea,” Vector said. “I can say that now with a straight face. Jesus, the thing he wanted to turn me into... the sleepless nights I’ve gone through, the shit I had to do. It never felt right, and now I know why.”

  “Uh-huh.” I whispered, clicking the universal remote and setting the truck to auto-drive. I slipped out the side door, and walked briskly down the street, doing my best to look casual and keeping the crowd between me and the suits.

  It worked for about two minutes, then I saw the suits start shifting around. A few had their hands up to their ears. Obviously a comm system.

  Well, I could fix that, couldn’t I?

  I flipped the universal remote out, clicked it on the nearest mook, and amped volume up to maximum. Then I transferred his settings over to the entire network.

  “Ah, what’s the dumb bitch doing!” Maestro M’s voice roared throughout the street, and every suited bastard screamed, scrabbled at their heads, tried to get their headset off. “Oh fuck me running!” Maestro cursed, and I fought the urge to laugh as I used the chaos to move to my destination.

  Knightsbridge Station, on the Piccadilly line. Big Brother would recognize this landmark, so I would have to move fast.

  I got down the stairs without a problem. I pulled out my Underground pass, waved it at the turnstiles, and moved through, still no trouble. Then the intercom hissed to life as I was heading down the escalator to the platform, and Maestro’s voice echoed around the concrete and tile walls. “You think you’re so bloody clever. But here’s the thing, Doctor, you vastly underestimate my control, and overestimate my ability to give three fucks for any of these two-legged cattle.”

  I pointed the remote at the nearest speaker, tried to turn it off. That particular speaker turned off, but when I tried to move up to the subway’s intercom network, my HUD errored out. He’d set up a shell network, something separate from the main system, curled inside it like a parasite. Also good enough to resist my remote, which was troublesome in its own right.

  “Perhaps an expanded demonstration is in order,” he mused. “Right then, you lot! Every blonde woman in this tube station needs to die! Throw them onto the third rail, see if you can get them to bounce!”

  Oh that son of a bitch.

  The escalator around me turned into a sea of grabbing hands, and unlike Harrod’s, everything was enclosed. I had nowhere to go. Men screamed at me, hoisted me by the sweater, carried me like a surfer in a mosh pit, working together to get me to a zappy doom. Ahead of me flashes of yellow hair moved as screaming women fought for their lives, self-preservation evidently overriding their compulsion to throw themselves on the tracks. At least I thought that might be what was going on, I was too busy trying to avoid getting mauled.

  And as I struggled, I felt my anger rise. This was not right, and this would not be.

  I was Dire, and I’d had enough of this indignity.

  I reached to the iron chain around my neck, popped the earplugs out of the seemingly-decorative cylinder that was the centerpoint of the necklace, and tucked them into my eardrums. Then I blinked my HUD over to the offensive options, and toggled ‘Screamer’.

  Years ago I’d developed these tiny sonic emitters as a potential nonlethal, low-damage solution. Spoilers: they aren’t. Prolonged exposure can cause permanent hearing loss, even death if the acoustics are wrong, or the individual affected doesn’t have enough body mass.

  This late in the evening, though, there weren’t many children in the station. So I gave them a full three seconds, and rode the collapsing, shrieking wave of bodies to the floor as they fell around me. And then, as the sound died, I stood among the groaning, twitching heaps of flesh as I turned slowly around, keeping my face free of expression. Letting my eyes speak every word I wanted to say, in smoldering silence.

  “Maestro,” I called, low and toneless, drawing the word out as I popped the earplugs out. “Is this the best you can muster? You disappoint.”

  The intercoms crackled again. “Three women are twitching on the third rails, Doctor. Dead because of you. And oh, won’t the heroes come after you, hammer and tongs, to bring you to justice. And once you’re in jail, you’re mine. Dead in a day, dead in a week, dead in a heartbeat. You’ll go in, but you won’t come out. Or maybe I’ll have Envy fix your brain, when I’ve got you. Turn you into a drooling lackwit, give you some horrible disease that’ll reduce everything you were to a flailing, crying, pissing brute. You can’t save any of them, and every innocent dead is blood on your hands, Doctor Dire. Every one is your failure.”

  “No. They’re dead because you’re sloppy, Maestro.” I hardened my heart, didn’t even look at the twitching, charred forms in the rails. “You’re used to going up against heroes. People who are stopped by civilian deaths.” I kept my face locked, as I headed down the tunnel.

  “Bah! Don’t you try to pretend you don’t care! I’ve read your bio. I’ve studied how you worked, from your little stint at getting hobos slaughtered to your fucking bullshit fake regime. You’re a fraud, woman! A pathetic little tinkerer who thinks herself a noble demon of a villain, but you’re just another stupid hero who couldn’t cut it with a proper cape, so you went all dark and edgy! You’re nothing!”

  “Then why is there fear in your voice, Murder Maestro?” I smiled, at the edge of the platform.

  And then I stepped off, alighting on the third rail. Where I completely failed to die horribly.

  “Oh you’ve got to be kidding me!” he howled.

  It’s good to be grounded, when you aspire to villainy. I’m not talking emotionally, I’m speaking of literal matters. The soles of my shoes would not permit me to fry. Just one of the nifty tricks I’d built into them. Perhaps a little unwise to reveal this trick without need, but that edge of frustration in his voice made me laugh out loud, and I kept it up as I faded into the darkness.

  It took a few hours, jogging through the tunnels. He had men down here, but few enough that I could avoid them. My night vision gave me the edge, and in a few cases, my pistol finished the job when I couldn’t escape. Every time I rerouted, backtracked to another tunnel.

  Finally my internal direction sense matched up with the GPS coordinates on my second burner phone, and I ascended to the street, shoving away a manhole and emerging into a quiet alley. I smelled musty and dusty, and ached all over. But the night wasn’t done yet.

  And as I rounded the alley and stared three blocks over to my apartment building, once more Maestro M’s damnable voice rose to the skies from some loudspeaker or the other.

  “So clos
e, and yet so far.” He’d regained some of his composure. “Now what’s that thing you like saying? Checkmate in one? Well check this—”

  Then nothing but sound and fury, as the shock wave tumbled me over, so loud it was silent and when I could think again rubble was falling around me. My much-abused forcefield ate a few hits.

  But I was smiling.

  I was smiling, as a golden glow shone through the dust and collapsing stone.

  The apartment building was gone, but to no avail. I’d given Alpha more than enough time to enact Plan D.

  The dust cleared, to reveal a square block, the size of two apartments, one on top of the other, hovering in midair like they were fixed there, like Shinecraft blocks left behind from a massive TNT burst.

  “Oh Maestro,” I said, though my voice sounded tiny to my abused eardrums. “You’re not even on the board.”

  CHAPTER 12: TAG TEAMS

  “The first time we encountered her, attrition failed. Which necessitated a change of strategy against Doctor Dire. We knew we had to hit her hard and fast... which also meant that she knew the same thing, and would expect it. So we'd give it a try, but at the same time we'd be analyzing the situation, looking for a flaw we could exploit. A double-blind, more or less. Show the villain what they expect, until you've got the data you need to proceed with the real strategy...”

  Miss Maskelyne, leader of Queensguard

  We’d considered the possibility of collateral damage, when Acertijo and I had put our lair in the middle of London. It had factored into the location, an apartment building amidst a few offices, so that bombs like this wouldn’t kill too many people... at least not during the night, anyway. Given Maestro’s proclivities we figured that daylight assault was unlikely.

  It had also been the reason I’d reinforced the workshop walls with forcefields linked directly to the reactor. And supplemented them with a few gravitic stabilizers, essentially fixing them at their coordinates with a force so strong that nothing short of Crusader would move them.

  “You know who else is off the board?” Maestro said, his voice choked with raw emotion, practically growling. “All your damn neighbors! How d’ya like that, you fucking cunt!”

  “Well, if that had actually happened, then as Dire has said before it would be on your head, not hers. You seem to be forgetting that she’s not a hero.” I strolled down the street, ignoring the patter of rubble on my forcefield. “But it didn’t happen.”

  “Like hell it didn’t happen. You’ve got rocks raining on your head, woman.”

  “She really has to explain this?” I shrugged. “Pathetic, but all right. What makes you think her teleportation system is limited to her team?”

  A long silence. My smile grew. I stuck my fingers in my jean pockets and whistled, as I strolled through the chaos, and the overturned cars, and the screaming. No way to cut out all the collateral, not truly. There would be injuries, and there would be deaths from tonight.

  But not for my neighbors. The reason I’d spent so much time running around Knightsbridge and the subways had been to give Alpha the time to crank the teleporter up to maximum yield, and beam every civilian in the apartment buildings to Mariposa. An act we’d calculated would take twenty minutes, give or take, depending upon whether or not Mrs. Witherspoon was walking her stupid dogs at the time. I’d given them sixty.

  And yes, I’d even arranged for the pets to be teleported, too. Jesus Joseph and Mary the hate I’d gotten for my act of destruction a few years back... they didn’t care so much about the property damage, or that I’d teleported every human, cat, or dog to safety, but for the stupid little pets left behind in the rubble. The sheer amount of hatred I got over all those dead rats and chinchillas and goldfish had amazed me. Not like you couldn’t get plenty more of those things, and they barely lived any time at all...

  “You think you’ve won, do you?” Maestro’s voice had calmed again. It was definitely an intercom, of some sort. City emergency services? Seemed likely. He was probably using his power as he spoke, implanting mental triggers to everyone who heard it, commanding them to forget it or hate me or whatever. He didn’t need to vocalize his commands; he’d only done that back in the department store to taunt me.

  “Won? Bah. The game’s not yet over, Maestro. Although she is getting tired of your desperate attempt to send pawns to take out a queen.”

  “I’ll see if I can’t scare you up a few bishops,” he chuckled. “Although I expect I won’t have to lift a finger, there. Tick tock, Dire. Tick, bloody, tock.”

  I kept a pleasant smile on my face, but I knew he was right. It was time to evacuate. Explosions on this scale draw heroes, period. That’s kind of what they do, is go find the people responsible and punch them a lot. And here I was, the villain on the scene...

  “Can you see her? She’s waving.” I subvocalized, and lifted a languid hand, flopping it back and forth. The dust would be settling soon, I was thankful for the respirator in my pocket. Glad I had thought to tuck it away during the subway scramble.

  “I’ve got a fix. Hey boss!” Alpha said.

  “Alright, it’s time to evac. Port us to, hmm, site C.”

  “Wish we could.”

  I stopped waving. “Say what?”

  “Remember that part of the teleportation grid we routed through the apartment complex’s circuitry?”

  “Aw fuck.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Didn’t like the looks of that wiring. Bad time to be proven right.” We couldn’t have changed it without alerting the inspectors. And the building was new enough that we couldn’t risk early discovery. It had been a gamble, with only a fifteen percent chance of failure. But like an errant sniper in that Ycom video game, even the smallest odds of failure could roll into being at the worst possible time.

  “Yeah, it collapsed. Had to burn some of it out to make sure everyone got out. Including that nosy lady with the shih-tzus.”

  “Witherspoon,” I said. “How long until it’s fixed?”

  “Six minutes.”

  I closed my eyes. “Damn it. Alright. Got enough for a short-range hop?”

  “Yeah. Want to come in?”

  “Hell no. Send the suit. She’ll buy you time.”

  “Seriously, we can fort up here, and—”

  The air rippled across the way, and the shadows twisted. “Queensguard is here.”

  “Fuck.” Alpha sighed. “Sending the suit. Hold out two minutes, I’ll have reinforcements for you.”

  “No! Do not let Vector out! And Janissary’s without alchemy.”

  “I’m not talking about them.”

  And then I held perfectly still, as the air in front of me shimmered, and everything went dark as my body was compressed, surrounded by an unyielding mass...

  ...and my suit’s HUD flickered online, helmet appearing to go translucent from my point of view, alleviating my discomfort somewhat.

  Gods, I ached. Gods, I didn’t want to do this, not after the last hour or so.

  But I waited, synching up my systems and checking over the repairs while Queensguard slid out of their portal, this time joined by the glowing form of a translucent man wearing an eighteenth-century sailor’s suit. He’d come over the buildings, not through the teleporter, and he was pointing my way. Because of course he was.

  He was Rumjack, and he was both a ghost and a major problem. Good mobility, intangible to damn near everything I had, and able to punch people through their power armor. He’d done it before, and I had every reason to expect that he’d try that trick on me here. And apparently he had some sort of super spooky vision, because he led the way straight toward me, through the curtains of dust that were falling like snow, through the darkness now that all the power collectors and lights of the nearby buildings had been hit by shrapnel.

  “Oi, you!” he called, waving a bottle in my direction. “Gonner surrender or we doin’ this the hard way?”

  I answered with golden light, and my particle beams blasted chunks out of distant buildings as
the team scattered. There was no point to banter; they wouldn’t listen. I know heroes, I know how their minds work. I was the obvious punchable solution to a seemingly punchable problem. And after last time they wouldn’t be going for a rope-a-dope strategy. No, they’d be aiming to take me out hard and fast, before I could change the battlefield.

  It’s what I would have done, after all.

  I took to the air to avoid the Green Knight’s loping charge, and the Human Harrier unloaded into me with a hissing spray of micromissiles. The forcefield saw to those, but he charged through them, arms locked and outstretched in a classic paragon double punch. I twisted aside, gave him an elbow to the shoulder to knock him off track, and almost got him to crash into a parked car. Almost. He managed to pull out with a twisting roll, and went up. I targeted him, tried to get a lock-on—

  —and spun ass-over-teakettle as something hit me, sent four damage alerts straight to yellow, and punched me through a wall.

  Ah, right. That’s where Punching Judy had gotten to.

  I rose, casting aside what was left of the wall with one sweeping backhand. Judy danced along the bricks, almost too fast to follow, darting up the spray.

  I point-blanked a concussion missile into the ground at my feet and she leaped, rode the blast wave back, whirling in mid-air to land perched on an exposed girder. “What the ’ell was the point o’ this!” she yelled, waving at the devastation. “What did any of this do for you! You’re supposed to be merciful, fer a vill! All that a lie, then?”

  “THIS WAS NOT DIRE’S DOING.” I sent blasts her way, all easily evaded as she flipped and turned. And in my peripheral vision I caught the Green Knight lumbering up on one side, as the Human Harrier lined up for another strafing run. Cute. I deduced the strategy, decided it was time to change the paradigm. I took to the sky—

  —and a horde of glowing blue playing cards swarmed me, falling down from above where Miss Maskelyne was pulling them out of a hat as fast as she could throw. They didn’t do much, but they set my forcefield stuttering and fluttering, interfering with the gravitics. I lurched up bit by bit, knowing I wouldn’t make it.