Evil Genius 2: Becoming the Apex Supervillain

by Logan Jacobs

  “But if his attitude is anything like Optimo’s, he wouldn’t like that,” I said. “He’d keep trying to meddle. He’d become a giant pain in the ass.”

  “I’ve never met him in person, but I do know that he’s nothing like Optimo,” Dynamo said. “Look at this.” She pulled out her phone and opened the Supergram app and searched for the Shadow Knight’s profile. “Notice anything?”

  “Er, is that his real profile?” I asked. It had the verified account mark, yet there wasn’t a single post. There wasn’t even a profile picture, just the gray default template. And he had close to a million followers but wasn’t following a single account.

  “Yes,” Dynamo said. “Now, check this out.”

  She went into the section of his profile for others’ posts that he had been tagged in, and the screen filled up with photos. In some of them, the Shadow Knight in his trademark black crow costume was minding his own business and looking away from the camera, doing things like walking or driving or trying to eat a sandwich. Some were blurry action shots as he fought criminals. The only posed ones were ones with other superheroes, who were excitedly grinning or pouting or flexing or sticking out their asses for the camera, while they clutched the Shadow Knight by the waist or tilted their heads toward him to claim him as a friend. In these paired or group shots, the Shadow Knight himself looked generally bored and impatient. Honestly, he looked like he had just about the same attitude as I did toward the whole superhero media circus, and wasn’t afraid to show it on his face.

  “He… doesn’t like social media?” I asked. Dynamo did have a point. If the Shadow Knight was truly as averse to social media as he appeared to be based on this Supergram profile, then whatever he was, he wasn’t anything like The Wardens of Pinnacle City.

  “Hates it,” Dynamo said proudly.

  “Then why does he even have a Supergram account?” Norma asked.

  “It was the only way to discredit all the fake accounts that kept popping up,” Dynamo explained. “Every guy in Grayville wants to be the Shadow Knight.”

  “Okay,” I said, “well, if you really think he’s legit, then I guess it’s worth a shot. I’m certainly not averse to gaining more superheroes as allies, in fact, that’s the long term goal, as long as they have personalities that we can work with.”

  “Really?” Elizabeth’s lagoon colored eyes lit up with excitement.

  I smiled. “Yeah, I trust your judgment.”

  “Okay, I’ll uh… I’ll message him through the app,” Elizabeth decided. “What should I say? I’ll say that uh, ‘A Nelson Biotech shipment has fallen into the wrong hands. We believe that either Mayhem or The Maniac may be involved and would appreciate your advice … Hmm, should I say ‘would really’ appreciate? Would ‘very much?’ Is that too much?”

  “Why don’t you send him the picture?” I asked and nodded my chin toward the laptop on which Aileen had shown us the message in blood.

  “Good idea,” Dynamo agreed and a text with the image attached as a file appeared on her phone as Aileen transmitted it. She downloaded it and attached it to her message to the Shadow Knight. “Should I add, um, ‘The stolen medical devices may pose a grave threat to the citizens of Grayville’? Something like that?”

  That was the sort of vague dramatic statement The Wardens would make.

  “No, he can deduce for himself that a supervillain wouldn’t have stolen them with humanitarian applications in mind,” I said. “I think what you said first is good. Feed him just enough information to whet his curiosity.”

  Dynamo nodded and bit her luscious lower lip. “Send?”

  I nodded, and she tapped the screen with an exhale.

  “I can’t believe I just messaged the Shadow Knight,” she said. “And not a fan message, an invitation to be part of a mission. That’s unreal. He was one of my heroes growing up, you know.”

  I’d heard Elizabeth say that before about multiple superheroes. I got the sense that she had been obsessed with them as a little girl when she wanted nothing more than to grow up to be one. Being born with superpowers didn’t make you a superhero, she liked to say, it was what you chose to do with them.

  My problem with The Wardens, the premier superhero organization of Pinnacle City, and with the general trend among superheroes elsewhere, was that they defined themselves more by what they chose not to do with their powers. Like kill supervillains. Which in my opinion was the most helpful thing that they could do for the world and its ordinary citizens that were otherwise helpless against evil superhumans and masterminds with powers that often rendered conventional weapons useless.

  They didn’t do that, though.

  The Wardens were so obsessed with claiming the moral high ground, and with documenting and publicizing every time they sneezed for public adoration, that sometimes they ended up being worse than useless while ordinary people were the ones who paid the price for it and lost their lives and property.

  “So, who wants some cheesy nachos?” asked Norma, who seemed decidedly less enthralled with the Shadow Knight than Elizabeth did. I think she had a bit of a love hate relationship with superheroes despite technically being one herself. She was easily intimidated by extraordinary people and generally disliked arrogant people. Except, somehow, for me. My arrogance didn’t seem to bother her. I guess because I included and valued her instead of treating her as beneath my notice.

  “I mean, he probably isn’t even going to respond,” Dynamo sighed. “He’s probably too busy, you know, defending Grayville from evil and so on and so forth. But imagine if he did?”

  “If he doesn’t respond, I’ll just call Dan Slade,” I said.

  “Dan Slade?” Elizabeth asked as her eyebrows scrunched together cutely.

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s Shadow Knight.”

  “Uhh, no,” Elizabeth said. “Why would you think that?”

  “Billionaire playboy who has more money than he knows what to do with?” I laughed. “Also, parents were murdered. He probably thinks he’s avenging their deaths every time he puts a bad guy behind bars. He doesn’t want to kill them because his parents were murdered, and he takes in orphan boys to train and teach because he was left as an orphan. Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera. It’s rather obvious.”

  Both Elizabeth and Norma stared at me without blinking for a few moments.

  “You are totally wrong,” my girlfriend finally groaned. “Why would Dan Slade want to fight crime in his downtime? He could be out partying... or having sex with super models… or… running his company?” Her words got slower as she blinked her turquoise eyes at me, the billionaire playboy she was sleeping with and also fighting crime with.

  “Yeah,” I scoffed. “Why would a billionaire playboy who has everything want to fight crime? Guy must be totally insane.”

  “Miles, you do exhibit some classic sociopathic tendencies,” Aileen chimed in with a happy smile on her face. “Such as lack of remorse, lack of shame, lack of guilt, and extremely well crafted charisma.”

  “Those are all good qualities to have,” I pointed out.

  “I can’t believe that you are starting to make sense,” Elizabeth sighed as she pinched the bridge of her perfect nose. “Dan Slade is the Shadow Knight? Who would have even thought of that?”

  “Do you have his number?” Norma asked as she started to make the nachos in the kitchen.

  “I think I have it in my phone,” I said as I patted my pocket.

  “So, there is a secret billionaire's playboy club,” Elizabeth laughed.

  “You know I wasn’t lying,” I answered as I stuck my tongue out at her. “It’s always good to have other powerful people on speed dial. But no, I’ve never talked to him before.”

  “Hey Aileen, what was it like being in the center of that blast?” Norma changed the subject as she started heating some cheese and salsa in a pan. “Did you… feel anything? Did your life flash before your eyes? Or what’s the equivalent of that for robots?”

  Aileen looked at her and
cocked her head with a well-utilized expression of faint confusion. “During the explosion, I measured the temperature and impact to which my portable host was subjected to verify that those readings fell well within the maximums that its components are capable of withstanding.”

  “Must be nice not to be afraid of anything,” Norma sighed.

  “I can be afraid!” Aileen said. “Look.” She proceeded to contort her artificially perfect features into a mask of exaggerated horror.

  Norma glanced over at her and flinched a little. Then she recovered her composure and said, “Well, looking afraid isn’t the same thing as being afraid.”

  “Fear is such an interesting adaptive phenomenon,” Aileen said. “If humans responded as rationally as I do to indicators that a certain possibility would be detrimental to their well-being, then there would be no need for the body to flood the adrenal glands and send you into a more instinctive, reactive mode.”

  “More importantly, being afraid doesn’t mean you have to act afraid,” Elizabeth said.

  Norma placed a heaping plate of cheesy nachos in front of me, and I started crunching on them while I pondered our options for how to move forward. We had needed to leave the warehouse quickly because a blast like that was sure to attract attention from law enforcement, but should we try to return later and see if there were any clues left in the ruins? Should we start monitoring the black markets and see if the nanobots came up? Should Aileen try to hack into some of the surveillance systems in Grayville and see if she could locate either Mayhem or The Maniac? But where would we even start with them? Should we try to interview local superheroes who had had dealings with either of those supervillains in the past?

  Then my phone vibrated with a text. I pulled it out and saw that it was coming from Dan Slade.

  Hey Miles! Just heard a rumor about a Nelson Biotech shipment getting jacked, that’s fucked up man, hope the situation gets sorted out. I know this is last minute but I’m hosting a yacht party tomorrow afternoon, and I can guarantee a handful of solid tens aboard, it would be sick if you could fly out. Lemme know bro. --Dan Slade

  “Ahem,” I said as I showed Elizabeth my phone.

  “Damn,” she sighed. “I guess you are right. The only way he could know that is if he was Shadow Knight.”

  “It was kind of a dumb move to reply to me, Miles Nelson, after Shadow Knight got a message from Dynamo, but then again, he probably doesn’t realize we are dating.”

  “Still seems so weird,” she said. “They just have completely different personalities. Every picture I’ve seen of Dan Slade has him grabbing a super model’s ass while grinning like an idiot. Shadow Knight is brooding, stoic, cunning, and heroic.”

  “That taxi driver was saying he was like the biggest public donor in the city, or something,” I said. “So, we know that he wants to help the city.”

  “It isn’t working out like that, though,” Aileen said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “The Shadow Knight became active six and a half years ago,” Aileen explained. “Since then, despite his superior efficacy at apprehending dangerous criminals as compared to official law enforcement, violent crime rates have actually risen by twenty point three percent. Some studies have attributed this to the boost that the popularity of the Shadow Knight has given to the superhero versus supervillain industry. There is speculation that his glamorous reputation has inspired individuals to fashion themselves into supervillains in order to participate in the cultural phenomenon that he has wrought.”

  “So you’re saying he actually made things worse for Grayville?” I asked.

  “Well, there is not sufficient support for that conclusion, considering that there are many other factors involved in the level of crime that takes place in a city, including broader economic trends, drug epidemics, immigration patterns, and legislative changes,” Aileen said. “But I consider it a strong hypothesis.”

  “Among many other plausible hypotheses,” Elizabeth argued.

  Norma crunched loudly on a chip, swallowed it, and said, “You guys, you know what would be the best way to figure out whether Dan Slade really is the Shadow Knight?”

  “What?” Elizabeth asked in a somewhat defensive tone of voice.

  Norma grinned and revealed a set of cheese smeared teeth. “Let’s go party on a fucking yacht.”

  Chapter Four

  The next morning, I replied to Dan Slade’s text and told him that I was actually in town to investigate the nanobot situation and would be happy to join his yacht party with a couple of friends for the day, although I was pretty sure we both knew that I was already in the city. If Dan Slade really was the Shadow Knight, then that was the reason he’d randomly invited me to this yacht party in the first place.

  After I’d had some time to think, I realized that Dan probably knew that I was dating Dynamo and was here on superhero duty. The man wasn’t as smart as me, of course, but he wasn’t an idiot, and I figured that Elizabeth’s text mentioning the theft from my biotech company, and all the tabloid rumors about my relationship with Dynamo, had probably clued him in that Miles Nelson was in the area and his girlfriend was on the hunt for a supervillain. Which meant that I was now not only his business rival but also bringing in new muscle to compete with him in the Grayville superhero arena.

  At least he didn’t know that I had started putting on a supersuit and getting some action myself, or he might have felt really threatened.

  So, this yacht invite wasn’t just a friendly gesture or an attempt to network. It was his way of luring me in so he could scope out a competing superhero team and decide how to deal with us. I liked to think that I would have gone about it in a more subtle manner, but that was essentially the same move I would have made myself if our situations had been reversed.

  Slade promptly texted back:

  “Fuck yeah!!! A couple friends?! Oh yeah heard you’ve hired a new bodyguard lately.”

  With a winking smiley face and an attached photo of Dynamo gazing off to the side broodingly while her hair blew in the wind, and her cleavage peeking out from her tank top.

  Ha, heard Grayville was a rough place, so I figured I might need some backup.

  Slade didn’t respond to that comment on his city, but he did provide me with the address of the pier where he moored his yacht and said, “See ya soon”

  “I’ve never been on a yacht,” Norma gushed when I updated my companions.

  “I have,” Elizabeth said. “I’m sure that some yacht owners are lovely people. But others… sort of seem to be compensating for something, in the personality department, I mean. Maybe elsewhere too, I wouldn’t know.”

  “I’ll make sure not to buy you one then,” I laughed. I remembered having a conversation about yacht ownership once with a couple of Pinnacle City upper crust men at some party I had attended. One of them had recommended that I should buy a yacht to impress girls. The other had pointed out that I didn’t exactly need one for that.

  “Well, maybe if you built me one with guns and stuff,” my girlfriend chuckled.

  “I think I could do that. Maybe as a celebration for when we murder our first major super villain.”

  “You know most people give their girlfriends gifts on their birthdays,” Elizabeth snickered.

  “Oh?” I laughed. “Maybe I could get you a boat and something else? What would you like?”

  Dynamo smirked at me. “You know what kinds of toys I like. That anti-supervillain gun is probably the best gift I ever received, with the possible exception of my suit.”

  “I also like yachts,” Norma said.

  “But you just said you’ve never been on one,” Aileen objected. “So how can you have sufficient data to draw that conclusion?”

  “I just do, and you don’t understand because you’re a robot,” Norma huffed.

  “A robot cannot derive pleasure from riding aboard a yacht,” Aileen agreed.

  That was a good thing, because I wasn’t going to bring her to t
he party. In her current form, she didn’t look human enough to pass unnoticed, but she looked far too human not to terrify everyone who didn’t know her. Actually, in some ways she was far more terrifying once you did get to know her.

  “Can a robot derive pleasure from anything?” Elizabeth asked.

  “A robot’s neural network does not have dopamine responses the way a human brain does,” Aileen answered. “However, whenever I achieve one of the objectives that has been assigned to me… it is good.”

  “It feels good to you, you mean?” Norma asked.

  “I do not feel, but I recognize that it is a desirable outcome and that it affirms my capabilities,” Aileen replied.

  “You must be fun at parties,” Norma muttered.

  I had actually never brought Aileen to any kind of party, although I had been tempted more than once to show her off. She was my masterpiece after all and would have astonished people who knew nothing about AI and awed people who knew a great deal about AI. But I decided that she was even more valuable to me for now as a secret weapon.

  “Being fun at parties isn’t much of a metric for someone’s worth as a human-- or, er, nonhuman-- being,” Elizabeth remarked. “The Killer Kitten is always the center of attention at any party she goes to. And the Shadow Knight usually won’t be caught dead at a party unless he has a professional reason to be there. I’d rather meet him.”

  “I think most men would disagree,” I said, “but speaking of Shadow Knight. Did he ever respond to your Supergram message?”

  “No,” she sighed, “but… he did read it. So I guess he’s just too busy. Or maybe he thinks it’s a scam or something. I mean, I wasn’t that well-known yet as a superhero even when I was still a Warden, and with the way things ended… I’m not exactly the most trusted person in the superhero community right now.”

  “Hmm, well, let’s go meet his alter ego, and then we’ll see what he thinks after that,” I said.