by David Reiss
(An intergalactic gladiator had once come to Earth and challenged Valiant; that fight had lasted half an hour and shattered a mountain in West Virginia. That day, even the villains gathered at Lassiter's watched their screens with quiet apprehension…but the gladiator lost and left, never to be heard from again. Doctor Fid, on the other hand, remained on-planet to strike terror into the hearts of civilians and weak-willed heroes alike.)
The Mk 35 was superior to the Mk 11 in every conceivable way. It was painfully tempting to immediately head towards Washington D.C. and attempt to break the dozen-minute mark! The difficulty was that (due to recent events and a twenty-four-hour news cycle calling for my blood) far too many heroes would congregate and interfere and thus disrupt any possible interrogation.
A month ago, the majority would have stood aside and enjoyed the schadenfreude as the world's mightiest hero whittled down the infamous villain. But now...the field would be crowded by spandex-clad daredevils that were sufficiently riled to risk carving away their own chunk of Doctor Fid.
Sadly, it seemed as though a public battle floating above Washington DC was not in my immediate future. A more nuanced approach would be required; I was certain that opportunities would reveal themselves with further study, but in the meantime there were other important tasks towards which I could dedicate my time.
◊◊◊
The psionic activity detection device was an intriguing bit of alien technology. It was bulky and relied upon maintaining extremely accurate tolerances in the machine’s construction but required remarkably little power in order to operate. Sadly, its size and delicacy made the apparatus entirely non-portable. If I wanted to replicate the functionality in Doctor Fid's armor (and I most certainly did! Warning of an enemy's presence is always useful) then significantly more experimentation would be required.
The apparatus appeared to be monitoring for specific fluctuations at the point of intersection of multiple spinning energy fields. If I was correct about the cause, then the Legion's telepathy took advantage of multidimensional membrane vibrations to propagate. Many superpowers (and, indeed, many of my own technologies) relied upon similar behavior.
It seemed increasingly likely that the Legion had been responsible for the shift in physical constants that facilitated the existence of superpowered beings on Earth; whatever they’d done had rung the boundaries between universes like a bell, fundamentally altering the laws of physics. The barriers separating dimensions were made permeable, more detectable and easier to manipulate. A carefully modulated energy field could now torque the interdimensional skein like a lever, yielding sometimes dramatic results. My antigravitics and inertial-displacement technologies simply would not have functioned if not for the modified conditions.
The alien apparatus relied upon the same awareness and was elegant in its simplicity…but simplicity was also its greatest flaw. False positives were a worry. Thus far, I'd already demonstrated three separate methods of artificially tripping the psionic activity detecting device and identified four more theoretical possibilities. I could not be certain which (if any) of those mechanisms accurately emulated telepathy! It was going to be challenging to design a more compact sensor without being certain as to which specific phenomena to be on the lookout for.
The next time that I happened across a Legion officer, I should probably consider capture rather than annihilation. Or at least, leaving sufficient volumes of body-mass intact for further study.
The Red Ghost's death—and, perhaps, my lingering terror from the recently-suffered psychic assault—had left Doctor Fid more bloodthirsty than usual.
The FTW had ousted me without even asking my side of the story. There had been no point, LuckySeven had commented privately; they would not trust my word. It was just as well. I mourned the loss of community (poor fit though I’d been), and I lamented the abandonment of my oaths.
Nyx would, I was sure, understand. His path, the non-violent path…it was better. Superior! I still believed that. But Starnyx had been a superior human being, and I was not.
I was Doctor Fid.
There may have been regrets for breaking my word, but no such reservations existed about planning a return to violence. My wrath was aimed with laser-like focus upon those who had thoroughly earned their eventual fate.
The Legion’s telepathic officers were responsible for the Red Ghost’s death. The Legion’s telepathic officers were most-likely responsible for Starnyx’s death. In a roundabout way, the Legion was responsible even for Bobby’s death! If it truly had been their meddling that had led to the origin of superpowers on Earth, then blame for every cackling villain and tragically flawed ‘hero’ could be laid at their feet.
I wanted to fight Valiant, who appeared to have aided and abetted plans to keep the Legion’s presence on Earth a dangerous secret. I wanted to defeat Peregrine, the so-called ‘hero’ that was responsible for the death of Kenta Takuma (once known as Beazd) and thousands more. And I wanted to humiliate Sphinx, who maneuvered to hide her compatriot’s crimes and was at the center of a conspiracy whose true aims I had yet to uncover.
A far darker fate was awaiting any Legion representatives that crossed my path.
But first...science. Planning and research. Work! And, of course, taking turns reading the last chapter of book nine in 'The Tales of the Red Sorceress' series.
◊◊◊
Assuming there were no world-shaking threats or natural disasters that required his immediate assistance, Valiant preferred to spend at least one day per week visiting children's hospitals. He brought gifts donated by different charities and played with the young patients and spoke to their families. The hero sat by the children's sides, listened to their stories and tried to give them whatever joy and hope that he could manage.
“It's the best part of my job,” he'd said years ago, speaking on some late-night television talk-show. “And sometimes it's the worst. These kids, they're great. I love 'em all, every last one of them! But it hurts to be so powerless. I can make them smile, but I can't save them. I can't...There was this boy named Tyler with brain cancer...every time I came by, his smile lit up the room. Every time...”
And then the man who had once thrown a Buick into orbit broke down into tears and couldn't finish his interview.
The Make-A-Wish foundation keeps Valiant alerted towards any special cases, kids that don't have long, who have special needs, etc. They keep the schedule secret to avoid paparazzi and to keep families from suffering from false-hope if some tragedy pulled the hero away from his visit; their computer security was surprisingly decent, considering that they were a non-profit organization whose focus was decidedly non-technical.
But not good enough to keep Doctor Fid at bay.
My microdrones were watching as Valiant signed an eight-year-old blond girl's cast. She'd been climbing, she said, because she wanted to be a cat when she grew up. His expression was gravely serious as he meowed to her. She meowed back, and they made playful cat noises at each other while the girl's parents giggled and took photos.
I'd forgotten how large he was.
Dark skinned, with just-beginning-to-gray hair cropped short in a buzz-cut, and broad features matched by a wide and honest smile. At seven-and-a-half feet tall, Valiant had needed to duck and twist sideways to fit into the hospital room. He towered over the girl's parents and she seemed a delicate doll in comparison to the mighty champion. The man was built broadly, thick with muscle even for his prodigious height; his white and sky-blue skin-tight costume served only to emphasize his extraordinary physique.
I'd fought against taller opponents. Gamma would had stood head and shoulders over Valiant. But there was a solidity to the African-American hero, a strange sense of density. It wasn't merely my own perception; others had commented on it. In Valiant's presence, there was an instinctive awareness of his nearness, his power. And yet, he seemed completely at ease when shaking the purring little girl's hand goodbye.
No matter which suit of power
ed armor I chose to encase myself within, Valiant made me feel small.
And then to another room, another child. A teenage boy, this one bald from chemotherapy and painfully thin. They talked about sports and Valiant gave the boy a baseball glove. “It was my Dad's,” the big man said. “So, take good care of it. Next time, maybe we'll throw a ball around?”
But Valiant's eyes were wet when he carefully squeezed out through the doorway. He'd read the boy's charts.
And then another room, and then another. Some moments were heartbreakingly beautiful and others just heartbreaking. Valiant maintained his friendly smile through it all, making sure to get every child's name right and look every youngster in the eye. As the afternoon turned to evening, he visited the common area and carefully settled into an old couch to watch part of a movie with the excited youths, then read them a story and answered a few questions.
A sense of relief settled inside me. Whatever part he'd played in the Sphinx's cabal, this was a good man. One of the few truly worthy of the title, 'hero'! Our eventual battle would be...mythic.
As visiting hours came to a close, Valiant left via the courtyard. It was his habit, so that as many children as possible could watch him lift up to the skies...to see him wave one last time. This hospital was shaped like a giant 'U' so he was surrounded by windows upon three sides.
It had taken a swarm of small construction-drones several days to surreptitiously burrow under the sod and construct a teleportation platform in the appropriate place. It hummed as it was activated and Valiant was suddenly alert; his gaze darted from side to side as he sought any possible threat, but the sound was too unfocused, the platform too perfectly hidden for him to triangulate the tone's origin.
There was a flash of dark and a perfect circle was burned into the well-maintained lawn. Valiant took a surprised step back, eyes widening with fear...not for himself, but for the innocent lives watching on in horror.
Doctor Fid, twelve and a half feet tall, broad and intimidating, had appeared between Valiant and the hospital's entrance. Pinpricks of light drifted slowly across the Mk 35's black surface, with crimson energy bleeding like smoke from barely-visible seams at the armor's joints. In the moment of confused recognition, I summoned my recently-rebuild warstaff and gripped it one hand.
“Valiant!” I intoned, vocoder making my voice deeply menacing. “I have questions for you.”
“Doctor,” he began carefully. “If you start a fight here...”
“Of course not.” Never near a hospital. Here, neither of us would dare risk the chaos of an unrestrained conflict. And here, no other heroes or villains would dare interfere. “I'm here for an interrogation, not a battle.”
“So you're holding the children hostage, to make me talk? That's low, even for you.” Valiant's expression warred between disappointment and rage. “You'll never be forgiven. Not for this.”
“I somehow doubt that forgiveness was ever an option. Not really.” My chuckle was melancholy as I remembered an early morning comment made by the Red Ghost. “But no. If you do not wish to answer, then I will leave.”
“Leave, then,” he growled. I could have sworn that gravity seemed to flex around him, a singularity straining to restrain itself, but my sensors showed no visible change at all.
“Are you certain that's what you want?” I asked quietly. “Absolutely certain?”
The dark-skinned man paused; he'd been playing this game a while, he knew a monologue cue when he heard one. “Why do you ask?”
“Doctor Fid has been a villain for more than two decades. In that time, I've suffered countless injuries and have used technology far beyond what is available to the public to repair the body inside this armor. Some inventions were my own, but many others were stolen and improved upon.” I paused. “One such treatment can cure many forms of cancer.”
The hero's gaze twitched towards the windows that he knew faced the oncology ward.
“The company that produced this technology has only recently begun human testing. It is years away from being offered to the public,” I continued. “No ethical medical professional would consider prescribing it, now.”
“But you would?” Valiant frowned, but there was hope in his eyes too.
“No one has ever accused Doctor Fid of being ethical,” I laughed darkly. “But I've seen the process work without side effects. Improvement in all subjects and complete remission in sixty percent. I was able to make ten doses. Shall we say one child treated per question?”
Not by coincidence, there were ten children in the hospital who were currently not responding well to traditional treatments. Truthfully, I'd already sneaked medical nanites into their medications; when word of this confrontation leaked, some reporters would certainly investigate from whence the villainous Doctor Fid had stolen a cancer-treatment. It could only mean positive publicity for AH Biotech.
“And there were no side effects? None at all?” Valiant was understandably suspicious.
“You have my word,” I responded simply.
“Given recent events, I'm not sure how much your word is worth.”
My grip on my warstaff clenched painfully tight and I grit through clenched teeth: “I wasn't responsible for the Red Ghost's death.”
Valiant scoffed, and I had to admit that hurt more than his most explosive punch.
“I was there when he died. We fought,” I acknowledged; the evidence for that certainly had been unassailable. “But his death was caused by telepathic assault. My questions are about the Legion.”
The strongest man in human history winced, shoulders sagging as though weary from bearing an incredible weight. Whatever knowledge he held about the Legion had obviously not sat well with him. Even so, he looked hesitant. “I'll answer what I can.”
“When you brought Sphinx back from the edge of Legion space, it hadn't been mere luck. You'd been looking for her.” I watched Valiant carefully to see if he'd flinch, but he only sighed resignedly. “How did you know where to find her?”
“Sphinx had managed to send a message via subspace-relay to a friend of mine in a nearby system.” He looked as though he was about to offer more detail but bit the information back to force me to use up another question. What Sphinx communicated, who received the broadcast, and how the report was delivered...These things, while interesting, were likely not relevant to my investigation.
“Then, why the subterfuge?” I used up my second question for clarity's sake.
“Sphinx was worried that there might be Legion spies on Earth and didn't want them to know that she'd been in their region of the galaxy.”
I didn't need to follow up and ask if her fears had been justified. There existed ample proof that the Legion had a presence here, after all.
“I've now sent probes to seventeen different alternate dimensions. In any scenario in which the Earth had caught the Legion's eye, our planet had either been conquered or destroyed.” I gestured with my warstaff, as though pointing towards two options on a blackboard. “Never simply left alone. Do you know why this planet is different?”
“Yes,” he stated simply, then smirked and waited for my fourth question.
“Very well,” I couldn't help but chuckle. “Why hasn't the Legion invaded?”
“The officers are slaves to procedure,” he rolled his eyes. “There 're tests and calculations that they need to run before they make a final decision. We're in a gray area right now. Some of us heroes are immune to their mind control, on account of our powers...And we're dangerous enough that it'd be an expensive fight. Sphinx knows their math a heck of a lot better than I do, you should ask her.”
“So, major changes to the status quo could push the Legion officers to decide in one direction or the other,” I mused. “Is that the reason she tried to destroy the colony ship full of refugees from Legion space, before their craft could land?”
“What...?” Valiant looked visibly unbalanced. “What are you talking about?”
“You didn't know?” I paused
and frowned, wondering if that counted as a fifth question. No matter. “The refugees were broadcasting a mayday message in a language Sphinx certainly should have been able to interpret before she ordered you all to attack. When someone else (Cuboid, I think?) translated and the attack was aborted, she had Peregrine damage the craft's engine. That's why it crashed in Colorado.”
“You're lying.” Valiant's hands had clenched to fists, and I was reasonably certain that a pummeling would already have commenced were my back were not facing a hospital wall.
“I'm not,” I shook my head. “If my suspicions are correct, the Sphinx has been diligently working to keep our planet safely within that 'gray area'. No matter what the cost in human lives.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I've very little evidence thus far. Only...from the moment I expressed my desire to join the FTW, it was weeks before my application was voted upon and I was asked to film my oaths. And yet, the same day my video became public knowledge, Sphinx and Peregrine publicly admitted culpability for Beazd's death. She'd begun working on her plea deal on the same day that I first contacted a member of the hacker collective.”
“So?” Valiant was angry, but not belligerently so.
“So, she must have had an informant inside the FTW to get that information,” I pointed out. “And I should tell you...before the explosion that killed the FTW's leadership, Starnyx was working on exposing a scandal connecting the Shield to the Legion refugees. And the man who caused the explosion was sweating, shaking and apologizing repeatedly when he reached into the force-emitter's reactor housing.”
“You think that a Legion officer puppetted that poor man into committing suicide, taking the entire building with him?”