“‘Mistress?’” She looks over at me and smiles. “No. I never called myself that. Blame the newspapers. I was only Malice. But that was another life.”
“Doesn’t look like it.” My voice is thready. My chest aches with the effort of speech. One lung feels heavy with fluid, a strong, steady pull at the ligaments. Everyone knows what pain on their skin is like. But this pain, it’s different. It’s inside me. There’s no escaping it. It fills me up.
“I told you, this is to save us all. Nemesis is coming.”
“Keep telling yourself that. Murderer.” Every word is a battle. I can feel myself slipping back into the darkness, and I know this time I won’t come back.
“Danielle?” She sounds so far away. “Danielle, listen to the sound of my voice. Stay with me. Please. If you die—well, it would be a waste. It would make the next phase of this needlessly difficult.”
In the blackness of the lattice, I see the damage accelerate. It won’t be long now. My pattern begins to slump apart, to fray and snap under the strain. I’m not just dying, I’m breaking up.
No.
No, I don’t think I’m going to accept this.
I’m not going to die on my first day of freedom.
There. That thread is linked to the others around it. I can see the other half of it, see where it tore apart and began to unravel. A strange focus comes over me, and I just…grab them. I grab the threads and I yank them together—
—a spurt of blood—
—a flash of new pain—
—and the snapped thread leaps back together, like magnets.
Nausea flushes through me. But the thread holds. And now, one of those holes in my pattern has a bright white line crossing it. I seize another broken thread, and join it together again. Ice and knives saw at my bones. Every thread I pull on comes with a new injury. I’m better at handling the lattice directly now than I was when I saved the jetliner, but I’m still not good enough to keep from hurting myself. I pull on another, and another. Match-head flares of pain each time, burning brighter with every tug of the lattice. A new pain, a different kind. Cold and deep, erupting in strange places. My kneecap. My chin. My toe. It’s too much. A rib snaps, and I’m sure it must have been audible. I cry out.
Utopia is looking at me.
“It hurts,” I say. “I’m scared.”
Two lies, both true.
“Hold on, Danielle,” says Utopia. She taps some commands into the computer. “Listen to my voice. If you can stay with me for a little while longer, I can save you.”
“How does…” I swallow back some nausea. “How does taking over the internet help me with the holes in my body?”
Got to keep her talking. Got to keep myself present. I grab another snapped thread, pull it tight, join it with its severed half, and watch it twist itself back into shape. The agony is astounding. Something cracks and grinds in my wrist. Every repair comes at a cost. Every cost comes with interest. But it’s only pain, and pain doesn’t kill.
Utopia looks up. “Oh, is that what my daughter thinks I’m doing? She lacks vision. I suppose I only have myself to blame for that. No, once I’ve uploaded myself, then I will then upload everyone else.” She gestures at the computer core, a giant construct of gleaming steel and faceted crystal. “This is all hypertech now, but I’ve been developing methods to deploy this process with baseline technology. Nobody will be left behind. By necessity, the mass production process will be more destructive than the one I’m using here, but by the end of the year even the most recalcitrant subjects will be brought to heel. We’re all going to leave our bodies behind and live in a simulated environment of my own design. Virtual reality of the purest sort, indistinguishable from the physical world except there will be no crime. No hunger. No death.”
“A utopia.” I clench as a particularly nasty spasm takes me, and then relax, gasping and full of cold, spiky aches.
She smiles. “Precisely. And it will save us from Nemesis, too. Nemesis is dangerous because of the quantum instabilities it causes. Those instabilities are triggered by observer effects. No observers, no effects. In the world I’m building, humanity will only be able to observe what I allow them to, only think what I give them permission to think. Until I am God, nobody is safe.”
“Doc was right. You are a narcissist.” Pull another thread. My left pinky cracks and I hiss.
“It’s not ego if you can back it up, dear. In a few minutes, I’m going to be deity, and you will be my first priestess. Even if I have to edit your personality to fit.”
“Yeah, no, I don’t think I’m really down for that,” I say. Something is wet and salty on my upper lip. I wipe my nose and my hand comes away smeared scarlet with blood. Eh. Whatever. Finish the rest later. I get to my feet. My gut and chest are tight and painful, but it’s the dull throbbing of a wound beginning to heal. “But tell you what, I’ll fight ya for it.”
Utopia turns to look at me. She takes a step back and her chest plate snaps open. The world goes to streaks around me and then she’s stumbling back against the railing, my fist inches deep in her chest, gripped around the glowing azure speck hanging between her lungs. It’s heavier in my hand than I expected.
We lock eyes. Utopia’s face twists with the kind of fury that kills people.
With a sharp tug, I rip the weapon straight out of her chest. A tangle of tubes and wires comes with it, wet and snapping. Her back arches; she goes up on her toes with a rattling gasp of pain. The fragment of exotic matter flares in my hand, painfully hot, and I toss it away. I hit her, once, twice. Dents in her metal. Cracks in her plastic. She crumples, and I tear the wire crown from her head, rip its cable from the computer. Utopia’s eyes are glassy, her jaw is slack, and she’s twitching randomly. I smash her arms. I break her legs.
And then…
…and then it’s over.
The holographic screen is flashing big red PROGRAM ERROR warnings. Sparks jump from the ripped cable. Utopia, Malice, whatever you want to call her, seems to reboot and tries to sit up. With my boot on her neck I helpfully direct her face back to the floor.
I’ve won. My body begins to unclench, and little jags of pain run through me. Wounds and injuries hurrying to make their report. But I’ve won. The relief is overwhelming.
I tap my earbud radio. “All right, Doc. I saved the world. Can I get some food now?”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Doc Impossible retakes control of Legion Tower’s systems and flushes the nerve gas from the briefing room. Her robots go in and spray everything down with a decontamination agent, and then the paramedics pour in to see if they can save anyone.
Valkyrja is dead. So is Carapace. Magma is alive, barely, and eight paramedics strain themselves to heave him up onto a creaking gurney and rush him out of the building. He’ll be flown to Hawaii and dunked in a volcano to recuperate. Doc tells me he’ll be up and about in a month or so. Chlorophyll is alive, too, but brain damaged. It’s unclear if he’ll make a full recovery. His sister Aloe is on her way to take custody of him, which might get a little interesting when she arrives, what with being a supervillain on parole and everything. Graywytch came out of the whole business without much worse than a slash on her arm, a slash she gave herself to power a spell. She disappears into her condo on one of the lower levels without so much as a thank you. Bitch.
I come out of my first battle with five broken bones, three bone bruises, a dozen lacerations (mostly on my knuckles), deep bruising across forty percent of my soft tissue, two second-degree burns, and four perfectly circular scars. Two in front. Two in back. Most of the bone injuries were self-inflicted. Healing by yanking on the lattice isn’t something I’ll ever do for fun.
The Navy is sweeping Puget Sound, but I don’t think they’ll find anything. I doubt there was ever a real escape plan in place. When the mecha got to the shore and realized they’d been set up, whatever they would have done about it would have still played into Utopia’s desire to use them as a sideshow. All tho
se lives tossed away, just to distract any capes she didn’t take care of on her own. Whatever excuses she makes for herself, even if she believes them, Utopia is no different from Malice. I’m looking forward to testifying at her trial.
The police insist on coming inside and taking a statement from me while I stuff bulging mouthfuls of pizza and salad in my face. I’m not bothering with single slices and starving myself right now. If this body is my physical ideal, then it’s my ideal, and right now that means I’m going to eat as much as I want. Who cares if I stop looking like a supermodel? I just saved the whole goddamn world.
The painkillers Doc gave me have me a little bit floaty, and at first I don’t want to tell the cops my real name. One of the detectives rolls her eyes, pulls out her phone, and brings up CNN.com. It turns out that photographer’s memory card survived what I did to his camera. Oops. The front page is splashed with a huge photo of me standing atop a defeated mecha. One foot is higher than the other, resting on the boxy bulge of an ammo rack, and in a real-life cliché that’s almost too twee to believe the breeze has pulled my cape back behind me a ways. It’s tattered with cannon holes, one corner sliced off by a beam saber. I’m looking straight at the camera. My lip is split and the eyes belong to someone I don’t recognize. The headline shouts DREADNOUGHT RETURNS.
There was heavy fighting in downtown New Port today as a teenage girl wearing Dreadnought’s livery squared off with five walking tanks…no comment from the Legion Pacifica, but police and paramedics have responded to Legion Tower…the death toll currently stands at—
I stop reading.
That’s it, I guess. Every news organization in the world is going to be trying to find out more about me, and it’s only a matter of time before someone recognizes my face and calls in to claim the bounty on my name. So much for a secret identity. So much for ever backing out of this life. Maybe I should feel worse about this, but I don’t. A thrill of giddy fear, and then it’s gone. I’m Dreadnought now. No takebacks. Might as well get on with it.
I give them my statement and ask them to send some cops to protect my parents until I can work something out with the Feds to get them into witness protection. They’re quick to agree, and it occurs to me that right now I could ask the city government for just about anything and get away with it.
Almost the instant after the cops are gone, Calamity slips in and sits down next to me. She’s got her pants on, scorch marks and all, but the shirt is some cheap disposable thing Doc printed up for her. It was white but has gone zebra-striped with grime. I hadn’t realized how much I wanted to see her until she showed up, but now she has, and everything seems brighter.
“You did it,” she says.
“We did it.” I gesture at the pizza box and mumble around an enormous bite something to the effect that she can have some of she wants. She takes a slice and picks at it.
Now that there’s no tension keeping her tight and wired, Sarah begins to slump.
“How are you doing?” I ask.
Her eyes get wet and she screws her mouth shut. I go to hug her, and she shifts away from me. So instead, I take her hand and I squeeze it, and after a moment she squeezes back. We stay like that for a long time.
“I lost my arm, Danny,” says Sarah. Her voice shakes. “What am I going to do without my arm?”
“Keep saving the world, I imagine.”
Calamity doesn’t cry, and that’s why I look the other way just now. So she can keep saying that, like it was true.
• • •
Doc Impossible finds Sarah and me curled up together on a couch in the lounge. Doc’s new body moves stiffly, and her skin seems almost translucent in places. When she enters the room I try to sit up straighter, but Sarah is draped over me and fast asleep. She’s heavy and warm. Her face is at peace.
“Your suit is next in the fabber,” says Doc. Her voice sounds wet, like she hasn’t broken it in yet. “Should be ready in about ten minutes.”
“Cool,” I say, trying not to blush. “Uh, cool.”
Doc holds up a phone. “Also, your parents have been calling nonstop. Do you wanna talk to them?”
Again, I hear the door slamming behind me. Time to slam one right back. “Fuck no.”
Doc nods and takes the phone off hold, turning on her heel to head back down the hall. “No, she can’t come to the phone right now. Yeah, superhero stuff. I know, I know, kids these days. Anyhow, have you considered getting a lawyer? Restraining orders can be so embarrassing…”
• • •
My new supersuit reeks of matter fabricator emulsion, and it’s still warm to the touch. This one has a high collar, but no mask. There’s no point anymore, after all. The breaks in my bones have already begun to fuse, the pain receding to a dull throb in the background. Still, I can’t walk without a limp yet, so for now I’m flying everywhere, just a few inches off the ground. I’ve practiced the speech twice, and I hope that will be enough. The street in front of Legion Tower is crammed with news vans, police cars, even a SWAT truck. The cops have kept the media away from the building, but when they see me floating down the broad steps, the horde of reporters and camera crews simply duck under the police tape and rush to meet me. They flow around the outmatched cops like a river around rocks. Long before I’m ready for them, they’ve crowded around me. Cameramen jostle for position, and field correspondents shout questions. Their boom mics are like a cage hanging over me. It takes a moment for the initial rush of questions to subside. When it’s more or less quiet, I begin.
“My name is Danielle Tozer. I’m Dreadnought.” Pause while the photographers strobe their flashes and the reporters shout more questions. I lift one hand for silence, willing it not to tremble. The reporters quiet and the camera flashes drop off in frequency. I look down at the notecards in my hands and see how they’re jittering. Stop that, I think, and they do. “I have a statement to make about today’s attack, and then I’ll answer a few questions. Mistress Malice didn’t die in 1961; she went underground. Earlier this month, she reemerged calling herself Utopia, and murdered the previous Dreadnought. Today, she attempted to begin the process of turning the entire human species into software simulations that she could control. Depending on your definition of death, this would have involved the murder of everyone. Had she succeeded, whatever remained of us would have been forced to worship her as a god. I stopped her, and she is now in police custody. While I was fighting her troops downtown, she ambushed the Legion. Carapace and Valkyrja are—” My voice hitches. The cameras strobe in ecstasy. A deep breath steadies me, and I can continue. “They’re dead. Magma and Chlorophyll have both been seriously wounded. Doctor Impossible is resigning from the Legion Pacifica for personal reasons. According to the Legion’s bylaws, further decisions about the team’s status will have to be deferred until a quorum can be assembled.
“I want people to know that even with the Legion out of action for the time being, they still have someone looking out for them. I’ve lived in New Port all my life, and I’m not going anywhere.”
For some stupid reason, they start clapping. My eyes get a little wet and itchy.
That’s it. That’s the end of the speech. Here’s where I’m supposed to start taking questions. But there’s something else, something I wasn’t sure until just now I was going to say. “And one more thing. I’m not telling you this because it’s important, but because I know you’ll hear about it eventually and I don’t want anyone to think I have something to hide.”
The clapping dies off and they push the microphones in closer.
“I’m transgender, and a lesbian, and I’m not ashamed of that.”
More camera flashes. More shouted questions. A few reporters rush off to get a head start on writing, as if they suddenly know all they need to about me. Idiots. The headlines, some of them at least, are going to be gross. Too many people are going to react like Graywytch. And if I ever wanted to reconcile with my family, that chance has been likely just been sunk. But it doesn’t matter
. Saying it out loud gives it power and my nervousness fades away. I feel good. Whatever happens now, I can deal with it.
Because I’m Dreadnought.
And I think maybe I could be a good person.
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