I didn’t know that. Luke had told me about the robot attacks. I even pulled up some footage. I have my suspicions about what they are, but I’ve played it close to the vest for now. It’s hard to believe the attack on me and the giant robots aren’t related.
I point at the stool next to the computer. “Have a seat.” Since they took all my stuff I had to redesign much of this from memory. I decided instead of using a helmet to program compatibility with the animetal, I could just use a circlet and glasses.
“Do I need to put on this tiara for your present to work?”
“Yep.” I wheel up next to her and grab the metal band with its adjustable size. After a few seconds, I have it placed firmly on her head. “Now the glasses.” They are flat black and shielded like the shades skiers use.
“This would be easier if you told me what you’re doing,” Kate asks.
“Take off your coat.” I purposely waited until she couldn’t see to do this part.
“Amelia…”
“Kate, a year may have passed by since you saw me last, but I’m still your best friend. Trust me?”
She nods and unbuttons her coat before sliding it off her arm. She pulls it off awkwardly over her missing arm. I bite my lip to keep from making a sound. It looks worse than I remember. It isn’t like she has a stump. They surgically removed her entire arm all the way to the shoulder. Bastards. Now for the tricky part. The last gift I gave her was well-intentioned, but I didn’t expect her to never take it off. Now I have to ask her to never use it again.
“Okay, last thing. Turn off the necklace.”
She hesitates, grasping the necklace and running her fingers over the gem. “Amelia, I… I don’t know. I’ve gotten out of the habit of listening to other people’s emotions. I don’t think I want to go back. Not even for a few minutes.”
I sigh. “I’m sorry, Kate, truly. But what I’m doing has to interface with your specific powers to work. Your necklace blocks those and if it’s on, this won’t work.”
She nods awkwardly through her circlet and glasses. “And what exactly, is this?”
“Can I let it be a surprise?” I ask. I’ll tell her if she wants. I would prefer it to be a surprise, for several reasons.
She hesitates for a second, then disables her necklace. Her chest heaves and I can tell she’s having some trouble. I’ve got the lab shielded, no telepathy or empathy can pass through. Her trouble comes from me.
“Amelia… why didn’t you say something?”
Tears instantly well up and I drag my hand across my eyes to wipe them away. “Because it was my fault. And I wanted to fix it before I said anything. Hold still.” She’s reading my guilt. Guilt and pain. They took her, experimented on her, and it was my fault.
“Epic, initiate.”
I know what she’s seeing. A hundred images flash in front of her. Epic records her brain wave reaction to the images in a sort of neural fingerprint. Her face twitches as she focuses on the images. I watch her brain waves fluctuate. This serves two purposes. One, it makes sure she’s the only person who can control the animetal she’s about to receive. Two, it links her with it. When I wear a suit, like my MK III or IV, I have either synthsuit or a neural connection to the suit. She won’t have either for what I’m doing. She’ll need another way to control it.
“Amelia, how much longer?” she asks through gritted teeth.
“A few more seconds and…. Done.” The images stop, and she immediately jerks off the glasses followed by the circlet. Of course, her hair and makeup are perfect, not mussed up at all by the tears I see in her eyes or the metal I strapped to her noggin. My perfect Kate. Well, except for the missing arm.
“Can I have my coat back?” she asks.
“Uh, no I need you to leave it off for the next part.”
She nods. I wheel over to the dispenser above the sink. “Okay, this is going to feel a little weird. What I want you to do is close your eyes and concentrate on making a fist, okay?”
She nods, weariness obvious on her face. “Amelia… is this what I think it is?” she asks in a whisper.
I nod, not trusting my voice. She sits in front of the sink, leaning over until her waist is pushed up against the lip. Then, she holds her one arm under the dispenser and makes a fist. She closes her eyes and nods.
“Epic.”
Initing in three… two… one…
Animetal pours out of the faucet, it’s shiny silver surface looks like a mirror flowing onto her. I get why Carlos was so freaked out by this. She’s not going to be covered head to toe, though. The liquid covers her arm before flowing under her clothes to the other side. It’s supremely weird watching it crawl across her skin. She suppresses a shiver as it moves across her.
“The only reason I’m not freaking out is I can sense how calm you are,” she says.
“Quiet, focus.”
The animetal makes it to the other side, forming upon her shoulder. As I watch a new arm sprouts flowing down until it is an exact mirror of her left arm. This was the tricky part, programming it to be a mirror instead of a duplicate. She sucks in a breath as the animetal flows into her from her stump, attaching to her the way an actual arm would. Tendons are coated and extended inside of her, the ball joint, everything about her shoulder and arm is perfectly replicated. With so little surface area to work with, I had to make it work like a regular arm, attachments and all.
“Can I open my eyes yet?”
“Give it a few more seconds.” I turn to the monitor to watch the internal progress. Pulling up my AR keyboard I type a string of instructions… as I finish, the arm solidifies; showing muscle definition, bones, knuckles, the whole bit. Once the shape forms, the arm ripples as it sets its final form and color. Starting from her shoulder, the color and texture flow down like water. When it gets to her hand, it is indistinguishable from her other arm. I can’t even see where it connects.
“Amelia… my God. How?” She opens her eyes, watching me as I examine her new arm.
“Well, science, duh,” I give her an eyebrow waggle.
She lifts her new arm, staring at it in amazement as she opens and closes her hand. “Amelia, I can… I can feel it? This isn’t just a prosthetic, is it?”
I shake my head, sending my hair whipping around me. I’m too excited about this stuff. I brush my hair back and smile. “It’s you, now. Part of your neural musculature. For all intents and purposes, anyway. You’d be surprised how hard it was to program. I designed the stuff to be malleable but figuring out how to make it match you was a pain. Thankfully, you’re so dang perfect, I didn’t have to program in a lot of flaws.”
She reaches over and lightly punches me with her new arm. “Thank you. For real, thank you. I’ve been… lost since I got back. This helps. More than helps.”
I try not to tear up, I’m almost successful. “I’m glad you like it because now I need your help.”
“Wait a sec… I thought The Armory damaged your armor. How did you build this and repair your suit?”
I giggle. “I didn’t repair my suit. You’re wearing it on your arm. The MK VI is fresh from the ground up with a little animetal reinforcement. I had to go old-school for this with a few alien improvements. After the fight, I didn’t have a lot left that was usable. Epic and I went back to the drawing board and this is what we came up with, a hybrid suit.” I wheel over while I talk, glancing over my shoulder at Kate. She marvels at her new arm, raising it, making fists, waving it back and forth as she walks over.
“How did you combine the tech?” she asks.
“There’s some irony here. I came up with the idea based on how muscles work—”
You came up with the idea?
“Right. We came up with the idea on how to increase the strength of the suit on a more permanent basis. Let me show you.”
“Thank you, Amelia. Thank you, Epic. Really.”
I smile at her when she surprises me with a hug. She smells like jasmine and vanilla. It’s crazy how she lights up a
s we talk. I pat her on the shoulder and she lets me go. She must see how I antsy I am to show her the suit since she sighs and motions for me to go ahead.
Normally it takes weeks to book a visit to the Pentagon. This is where saving the President’s life comes in handy. Kate and I showed up outside, bright and early, and asked to see our liaison in person. While it took an hour of confirming our identity and making sure we weren’t carrying any weapons (no armor for me and Kate is a weapon) we were then granted access. They had me change chairs, which is annoying because they use the standard hospital wheelchairs and those always make me feel less mobile than the ones with the angled wheels that I favor.
The Pentagon itself is huge. Vast hallways that go on forever. Door after door down uniformly large halls. I feel like I could drive a truck down these things. I’d probably have trouble getting it inside the walls though. When the uniforms took a decidedly green turn I figured we were closing in on where the US Army kept our liaison officer.
He looks up when we enter, surprise and worry clear on his face. I don’t need to be an empath to see someone look trapped. His eyes go from me to Kate in an instant. Despite the picture on his desk with a pretty wife and daughter, he lingers on Kate a little longer than is appropriate. Not that it is his fault. Kate always looks stunning. Today is no different. Dressed in green slacks over four-inch heels and with a gray top that hugs her chest and shows just a peek of her cleavage, all wrapped in an awesome leather jacket. She has the I just stepped out of a fashion magazine look. Me? I’m wearing jeans, a t-shirt and the fluffiest down coat I could find in my closet. It’s only sixty degrees in Virginia. After a lifetime in Arizona that might as well be freezing.
“Ms. Lockheart, Ms. Petrenelli? What a surprise. I’m honored.”
“Major Nelson, I know you can’t give me back my immorally seized gear, but do you understand you people took my original armor? Not just the technology I acquired from the aliens. Now, that armor is out there in the hands of people who are using it to hurt others. As you can imagine, I’m pretty pissed about the situation.” Despite my best efforts, I’m sure my anger is obvious. He’s totally taken back by my attack. He was half standing to shake our hands when I unloaded on him.
“I didn’t know about that Ms. Lockheart—” Kate taps me once on the shoulder in our pre-arranged signal. He’s telling the truth. “I was assured that we only confiscated the items related to the Th’un invasion per the treaty the US signed with the security council nations.” Truth.
I nod, slipping on my glasses giving me access to Epic. He’s not currently breaching the Pentagon’s firewalls and scanning their files for the location of my gear. I swear. Part of why we wanted to surprise him was so Kate could get a clean read on him. He may have known we were in the building, but he didn’t have long enough to prepare any kind of mental defense. Not that he could have against my Kate.
“Major, can you find out who was in charge of the operation?” Kate asks. She’s turning up the juice, I can feel it. The Major swallows hard, reaching up and loosening his collar. His office is small, a few pictures of him in fatigues adorn the wall, plus a plaque of his degree. The picture of him with a young woman and a baby is facing him. I forget where I read it, but I know if a picture is facing the guest, it means the person wants others to see it, and if it is facing them, it’s because they want to see it. It’s mostly facing him. Which I guess is a good thing.
“Possibly. The whole thing was kept hush and hush and need-to-know,” he says.
“But…?” Kate says.
He smiles, sitting all the way down and pulling himself closer to the desk. “But… you two are part of the premiere super team in the world. Bear in mind, Ms. Lockheart,” he says to me. “There is no possibility of finding out where it was taken. It’s not that I don’t want you to know, it is that no one knows. Part of the deal we made with all the other nations is only the team handling the actual tech could know.”
I raise an eyebrow at his choice of words. “When you say team, it wasn’t military?”
He shakes his head as he types a few keys pulling up the information we want. “No. What military could be trusted? Everyone wanted the weapons for themselves. We all agreed on a neutral non-profit organization. Not a private military contractor or even a weapons company. These people make a living disposing of dangerous materials in third world countries. Like leftover landmines, unexploded ordinances, that sort of thing.” He loses focus on us for a moment as he searches his computer.
“How very humanitarian,” Kate says with feeling. Considering my tech is out there, I don’t share her same sentiment. The Armory had to acquire my armor from somewhere. Since these were the people who took it, this is a good place to start.
“Here we go, Superhumans for a Super world,” he tells me with a grin on his face.
“I think I just threw up a little in my mouth,” I whisper. Kate just smiles back and reaches over to take the card he offers.
Ricardo Rico Rafael
Super Humans for a Super World
Buenos Aires, Argentina
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Kate murmurs. I don’t think Nelson hears her or can tell she’s upset. It’s only because I know her so well. Her shoulders slump ever so slightly as she hands me the card.
“You know this guy?” I ask.
“We’ve met,” she says to me then turns to Major Nelson. “Are you telling me, the world handed the most advanced technology humans have ever seen, to a stage magician?”
The social temperature in the room drops to match Kate’s tone. I’m glad I’m wearing a coat.
“His non-profit was the only one everyone could agree on. I’m not sure you realize how close to all-out war the world was at. I speak with no hyperbole when I say, this close.” He holds up his fingers and I can’t see a space in between them. “This deal was brokered at the eleventh hour. We had the entire Enterprise carrier group steaming for the Baltic Ocean. Believe me, this is the better compromise.”
Kate shakes her head. “Thank you for your time, Major. I hope you are right, but since her armor is out there now, I can’t imagine you are.” She turns and marches out leaving me to smile at the officer and play catch up. When I finally do she’s walking at near top speed.
“Kate, I can’t keep up in this crappy chair, slow down, will you?”
She turns and sighs. “Sorry, hon. I just can’t believe… never mind. I’ll tell you about it on the flight home.”
“Home? Nope. Buenos Aires here we come!”
Cruising at thirty-five thousand feet flying at Mach 3 isn’t as much fun when I’m not the one doing the flying. Epic has control of the Emjet as we make our way to Argentina. This isn’t the same jet we had before, but an MK II version with, what I would consider, luxury accommodations. Plush chairs, carpet on the walls, a big TV, kitchen, mini-bar (not that I drink), and a full bathroom suite including a rainfall shower. It’s wide enough two people can easily walk past each other, as long as one of them is willing to turn sideways.
I glance out the window, the wings are in their swept back configuration for maximum speed. At this velocity, we don’t exactly need a lot of thrust. Kate sits opposite me, sipping her coffee.
“What’s eating you about this guy?” I ask after I can’t take the silence anymore.
“Epic?” she asks.
I am here.
“Can you pull up all footage and news about a super team called, ‘The Fabulous Five’ and put it on the big screen.”
On it.
“I know you never followed super-news, Amelia, but honestly how do you not know this guy’s name?” she asks. I glance down at the card. Ricardo… Ricardo…
“The only person I know who’s named ‘Ricardo’ is an awesome actor who is sadly no longer with us. Why?”
She huffs in exasperation, folding her arms across her chest and turning to stare out the window. “You’ll see.”
Requested information loaded.
“Play
it,” Kate tells my AI.
As the images load, I scratch at the black bracer wrapped around my left wrist. Who knew how hard it would be to get used to wearing something like this. I need it for my new delivery system, but dang if it isn’t annoying.
Images replace the darkness of the screen, five people appear, each in a different color costume. “Holy primary colors, Sun Tzu,” I say with a grin. Kate gives me a blank stare.
“It’s funny because of the quote… you know, from the Art of War?” Her blank look turns into a scowl.
“Keep watching.”
Their leader is the brightest, dressed all in red, he reminds me of Mr. Perfect a little. Too manicured beard, perfect suit. The other four are just like him. Three men, two women, all in different colors. The two women are twins, one dressed all in black the other, all in white. The footage shows them fighting supervillains and taking down monsters. I recognize a few of the bad guys, but the clothing and the… oh, it’s the 80’s. A while before I was even born.
“They were a magic super-team?” I ask her.
“Keep watching, Amelia.”
I turn back to the screen in time to see the headlines. Fabulous Five Under Investigation. Followed by the twins being led away in cuffs. Yellow, Blue, and Red are photographed at a funeral. Then more tragedy, two members involved in a murder-suicide? Wow, sounds like a real mess.
When the screen goes black I look over at Kate, her scowl hasn’t gone away. “I take it you know more than just what’s on the screen?” She nods.
“Epic, maximum privacy mode, please?” she asks. The lights flicker to blue letting us know that full ECM is underway.
“What happened?” I ask her.
She takes a second, sipping her expensive French coffee before turning to me. “Two of the team. Yellow and Blue are dead. Yellow, Gruffen Serebryannikov
murdered Blue, then killed himself. The sisters were caught practicing…” she closes her eyes for a second. “What Pierre would call, soul magic. They started off sacrificing animals but quickly moved up to people.”
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