She knew us. She lowered the mug she’d been gulping down and yelled something at us. I didn’t even recognize the language. It sounded like a friendly, exuberant greeting, right up until she threw her mug at my head.
She threw it hard, fast, and way too accurately. I got to watch it coming straight for my face, but I’d already lifted my foot. A little push, and I blinked several feet safely to the side.
I’d have been safe anyway. Ray stepped in the way and caught the mug in an open hand.
The Amazonian villainess laughed a booming, raucous laugh, clapped, and yelled at us in her unidentified language again.
Claire hitched up her rag doll and gave the woman a skeptical, sidelong stare. “I’m pretty sure that was ‘You kids are all right.’“
Ray let out one low chuckle. “I’m pretty sure she’s drunk. Whatever’s in that drink must hit like Bull’s fist.”
The big woman picked up another mug off the stand and waved it at us, grinning hugely. She did everything hugely. She didn’t have any choice. Ray held up his hands and shook his head. She shrugged, refilled the mug, and drank it herself as we walked past.
The street remained quiet until we got into the central mall. Last night’s crowds had thinned out to half a dozen occupied stalls and the same number of villains looking them over. Three of those stalls had what looked like regular Chinese imports like they sold during the week. I saw jars and canisters of more types of tea than I’d known existed. The food table was still open, and, after invading Mech’s lab, I desperately needed to eat. They had all kinds of different stuff, but I didn’t recognize any of it. I’d try something new later. I grabbed another bun because I already knew I liked it. Ray and Claire did the same.
Of course, the best laid plans of mice and men go aft agley. I bit through the soft rice breading of this one into the center, and it wasn’t sweet and sour pork at all. Jelly that tasted like beans? I didn’t know what it was, but it was sweet and went with the bun well, so I had no complaints.
Only one of the technology stands remained open. Of all villains, Lab Rat sat at it. He even had a customer. I slipped my goggles out of my pouch and hung them around my neck as I wandered over, trailing my minions.
The customer was more interesting than the wares, although since Lab Rat’s wares included a jar of cockroaches and a full body suit of iridescent hexagonal scales that said something. Not a man, but an android. Hardly convincing. It looked like a department-store mannequin, down to the ill-fitting suit.
Claire grabbed my elbow, pulling me up short. “Uh, that’s—”
She was too late. Lab Rat saw me at the same moment and began hopping up and down, shouting, “Bad Penny! Yes! Tasty, tasty chance! You come see!” Then he began to whistle, a piercing sound that echoed up and down the mall.
Well, that dispensed with any chance of remaining incognito. With the mannequin watching us, I walked up to Lab Rat’s table.
The mannequin greeted us with a nod of his head and a voice that would have been pleasant except for the metallic edge. “The Inscrutable Machine.”
Claire took the lead, switching her rag doll to her left arm so that she could use her right hand to gesture back and forth. “Bad Penny, Reviled, this is the Butchered Man. You would know him as the ‘half’ of the Council of Seven and a Half.”
Huh. Well, if he still had a beef, he’d be in trouble trying to take it out on us alone. His permanent plastic smile didn’t say much about his feelings toward us, but his voice sounded friendly as he explained, “My associates prefer to think of themselves as businessmen who have interests in our community. I handle purchases and direct negotiations personally.”
I furrowed my brow. “What does Lab Rat sell, anyway?” I saw goggles, and the scaled skin, and a lot of little electronic boxes with dials and readouts, but that didn’t tell me anything. It told my super power plenty, but the diagrams rolling through my imagination remained inscrutable.
The Butchered Man had exactly the charm of a robot salesman, just a little too friendly. “His best work is in stealth technology and echolocation, or other sensor systems designed for enclosed places.”
“Like sewers, yes,” Lab Rat filled in, his head bobbing eagerly. Was that a hint of sly amusement in his tone? Maybe the joke was on us after all.
The Butchered Man picked up a box, watching the readout blur as he rubbed a thumb over a nondescript rubber cone on the tabletop. “The technology is not only advanced and reliable, it can be deviously clever. After your recent raid on one of our warehouses, the Council has become more receptive to my arguments that conventional security is not enough.”
He sounded as pleasant as if he were discussing the weather. If he was implying a threat, he was too subtle for me.
My pause had been obvious. He set the box back down and gave it an approving pat, but looked at me directly. “I hold no grudges. I did not support sending you a physical warning, and the results convinced the Council that you cannot be easily intimidated. My colleagues are intelligent men, and they are adapting quickly to a world where freelance superhumans are more efficient and effective than traditional organized crime. It is in our interests to employ the best, and I hope to offer you work in the future.”
It seemed like he meant it. I extended a hand, and we shook. I had zero experience sounding like a businesswoman, but I gave it a shot. “If you don’t hold a grudge, neither will we. Anything else, we’ll decide when the time comes.”
His handshake was, well, robotic. I was guessing there wasn’t much human flesh left in that cyborg shell. I wasn’t sure how to formally say goodbye, so I turned my attention to something more interesting. I looked over Lab Rat’s equipment. Slim, sturdy boxes. I flicked one on and got a classic radar screen image like in any movie. It showed a complicated, moving blob right next to the center.
A complicated, moving blob? I reached out and pushed the cockroach jar a foot down the table. The blob on the screen moved. I barked in glee, “Lab Rat, you twisted little genius! Is this a cockroach tracker? That’s diabolical!”
“Better and worse. Better and worse,” Lab Rat gabbled. He rubbed his hands together like a rat washing itself and bobbed up and down with a proud grin on his face. “Cockroaches have many senses. Stealth systems, invisibility, sneaky ninja tactics, all no good against bugs. I have chemical, vermin get it on themselves, generates signal when they move. Sudden change in pattern, you know something different, something not right. Is tasty, very tasty, yes?”
“It’s brilliant! I wish I’d thought of it myself.” He wriggled, let out a squeak, and set to hopping up and down like a spastic flea. It looked like my opinion on technology was the last word to the little guy. The little guy who was twice my size and age.
We were popular today in general. “Kids! Did you get an invitation, too?” I looked around just in time to see Lucyfar descend on me like a swooping bat. She picked me up, hugged me painfully, and dropped me onto my feet again.
“An invitation to what?” I asked, maybe a bit wheezily. She might not be Ray, but Lucyfar definitely had more than human strength.
Claire got her head rubbed through the pajama bear hood, and Ray got a punch in the shoulder, both in rapid succession. “I got a message from Spider saying to come quick, she wanted to have a big meeting and I’d get a real kick out of it.”
Claire took over, since I was less than conversational while my ribs still twinged. “No invitation, but we do want to see Spider. We’re here to deliver this.” She pulled the hard drive out of her costume and held it up to Lucyfar.
Lucyfar raised a coy eyebrow. “Which is…?”
“The hard drive from Mech’s computer,” Claire answered.
As smug as Claire sounded, it was nothing compared to Lucyfar’s reaction. She didn’t stop laughing all the way down the stairs to Spider’s office.
Spider’s home had changed, if only a little. It remained a parking garage level strung with a giant spider web with a gigantic black widow lurking
threateningly nearby, and Claire lowered her hood over her eyes before stepping inside. Hugging her rag doll, she stayed back against the wall by the door, listening rather than watching.
The place had been made slightly more comfortable. Glowing balls hung from spider web strands from the ceiling, providing more and friendlier light than the fluorescent recessed lighting that came with the garage. Couches and chairs, even a coffee table had been arranged in the empty area before the web. They were needed. No fewer than twelve supervillains besides The Inscrutable Machine sat, stood, or crouched around the room. I had to go with ‘no fewer’ because I wasn’t sure if the twitching shadowy mass in the corner was a supervillain, or the high school girl curled up next to it, or both.
“Ah, the villains of the hour,” Spider greeted us. “I hear you were successful. So successful that I don’t know how successful. You did sufficient damage Mech was unable to confirm how much before returning home.”
“Not completely successful,” I corrected Spider. I reached out a hand close enough to Claire that she could see it under her hood. She handed me the hard drive. I tossed it into Spider’s web. Like a striking snake her gleaming black bulk twisted, and a back leg lashed out to snag the drive with webbing and hang it in front of Spider’s face. I was glad that Claire hadn’t seen that. “You’ll have to decode his hard drive yourself.”
Settling back into place, Spider fiddled with the hard drive with the tiny little legs by her fangs. “Acceptable. You have performed to my expectations, and my expectations were very high. There is one detail I did not specify ahead of time. I would like the maps and technical details your replicated Conqueror orb recorded about Mech’s base.”
Translation: Just a little more bullying to keep us under her claw. My response remained the same. I’d have fun with it until I needed to rebel. It was only bullying if I let her scare me.
I didn’t care about this, so sure. “Vera, give it to her.”
I didn’t see anything happen, but one of Spider’s legs reached out to do what sounded suspiciously like typing on a keyboard behind one of the garage support columns. I shouldn’t have been surprised Spider had a computer. Just because I didn’t appreciate arachnid decor didn’t mean this was a hovel.
Spider withdrew her arm and nibbled on its claws a bit. This still didn’t seem to affect her speech at all. “Excellent. I have saved the files provided, and I have compatible applications already. Please stay for the rest of the presentation. Meeting you has reminded me that I always wanted to own a Conqueror orb. I more than earned the opportunity, then was unfairly cheated out of my prize when the war ended.”
Aside from Lucyfar, the only villains here I knew were Witch Hunter and Evil Eye, and she leaned forward sharply now. “You’ve located a functioning orb?”
“Only one,” Spider answered.
She’d sounded prim, even teasing. Lucyfar got the joke first, and her face lit up in a crazed smile. “You’re hiring us to steal the Orb of the Heavens.” Then she burst out laughing, doubling forward and clapping her hands in spasmodic approval.
Nobody else seemed to think this was funny. The faces I could see frowned in worry.
The shadow in the corner said, “The usurer of life keeps the Orb in her very counting house.” It sounded like it had been crying. That hoarse, tired, feminine voice should have belonged to the teenage girl next to it, the girl sitting against the wall with her arms around her knees and rocking slowly. She looked eerily like me in four or five years, down to the glasses and the brown, braided pigtails. I didn’t expect to be wearing a Catholic school outfit or be such a rumpled, disheveled mess. I hoped I never had bloodstains around my eyes and fingernails. She looked miserable enough to have that voice, but she plainly wasn’t talking or even looking at anything but her own hands.
“Mourning Dove plays rough. If she’s guaranteed to be there, it’s not worth the risk,” echoed one of the two women sitting side by side on a couch. They might have been sisters, except one’s buzz cut hair was fire engine red, and the other’s wild spikes royal blue. They both looked tough, and their black leather and spike themed punk outfits didn’t create that impression half as much as the silver symbols all over their arms and legs. Tattoos? Magic? Cybernetics? I didn’t know.
Spider folded her forelegs in front of her. “Mourning Dove will not be an issue. A criminal in her book will be performing an unnecessary and brutal murder at the time of the operation, or he would be if I hadn’t forwarded his target to Mourning Dove as a courtesy.”
The purple-haired woman who asked the question nodded. The redhead next to her grunted.
Still, nobody looked happy. Evil Eye objected next. “Five seconds after we get near the Orb of the Heavens, Mech will activate it against us.”
“Mech will also not be in attendance. The Inscrutable Machine has temporarily removed him from play, making this operation possible.” If Spider expected a stir, she got it. Most of the supervillains looked over at us. Several mumbled to each other. Nobody quite looked like they’d been asked to do the impossible anymore.
They merely looked grim. One of the three men in identical robes sitting together on their own couch argued, “That merely leaves us facing down the Librarian in the very center of her power, the Los Angeles Main Branch Public Library.” Whoever the Librarian was, she was bad enough news that a whole room full of supervillains thought this was a tough fight.
Wait, the public library? The downtown public library? A Conqueror orb called the Orb of the Heavens was kept there?
I’d seen it. I’d seen it a hundred times. I liked the library, but I’d never thought the pink ball floating above a pedestal was anything but one more abstract decoration donated by a superhero. I could even see the dedication plaque in my head, “In Memory Of Legrange.” Someone who must have died in the invasion.
The Orb of the Heavens was right out on public display. It was also the size of a beach ball. A beach ball. A Conqueror orb with Vera’s powers was supposed to be the size of someone’s head. A boss-level orb was the size of a basketball. The Orb of the Heavens was nearly three times that big, diameter not volume.
Yikes and criminy.
I dragged myself back to what Spider was saying. “I cannot remove the Librarian from play. Instead my plan is to overwhelm her with numbers and exotic powers. We do not need to defeat her. We only need for one villain to retrieve the Orb, get it out of the library, and bring it to me. Everyone’s pay in this operation is contingent on that happening.”
Spider pulled herself forward in the web until her gleaming chitinous thorax stuck out, forelegs pawing the ceiling impatiently. I reached over to pull Claire’s hood down further, taking no chances on her seeing this. It spooked me enough and held everyone’s attention, even Lucyfar’s. Spider wanted us to take what she was saying very seriously.
“We all know this is a competitive profession, but there is no bonus or recognition for the villain who brings me the Orb. You all succeed, or you all fail. If you succeed I will make my next priority rescuing anyone who was captured during the operation. Can I trust you to put aside your personal and professional rivalries until the job is over?”
I nodded automatically. So did Ray and Lucyfar. Everyone did, except Claire and the curled up girl in the corner.
Her point made, Spider withdrew into her web where she was merely a deadly, alien predator larger than most cars. Her forelegs took solid grips in the netting lining the ceiling, and she went absolutely still. Her tone returned to business casual. “The Librarian will be a difficult enough challenge without further superheroes interfering. Several of you will be sent on diversionary missions to capture targets that will be convenient to me once I have the Orb. At noon on Monday, the Cabal will hit Voidworks and steal as much exoatmospheric construction equipment as possible. Witch Hunter will steal the Dragon’s Pearl from the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Spark and Ground Pounder will procure the experimental fractal batteries from Substation Twelve, and we will
hope that they work as well as Brian Akk predicts. Evil Eye will steal the lenses from Echo’s tower, a task I’m sure she will enjoy.”
She did look pleased. I could tell who was who by the way they nodded and sagged in relief, starting with the three guys in robes, then Witch Hunter I already knew, then the imp made of lightning riding the giant dirt golem’s shoulder, and finally Evil Eye who smiled as she leaned back in her chair and laid one of her arms over the back.
“That will clear the way for Lucyfar’s team, Entropy, Rage and Ruin, and She Who Wots to invade the library simultaneously at twelve fifteen.” Spider said it with finality, but she wasn’t finished. She turned slightly in her web and waved a foreleg in my direction. “I would like to thank The Inscrutable Machine for making this theft possible, but as the junior supervillains here they will have to take the role of bait. At ten minutes after noon on Monday, they will stage the largest distraction they can manage. I’m confident of Bad Penny’s judgment in this regard, and, given how the superheroes at the conference reacted to the attack on Mech’s lab, I am also confident they will divert far more resources to The Inscrutable Machine than is wise or necessary. For everyone in a distraction role, remember that keeping any superhero you encounter busy is more important to your being paid than stealing the secondary target assigned to you.”
That got another round of nods, and Spider sounded pleased as she concluded, “Finally, other than the detail of your payment being dependent on successful retrieval of the Orb of the Heavens, you have all worked with me before and know the terms of our relationship. They still hold.”
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