Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis

by P. T. Dilloway

Then Aggie closed her eyes. Sometime later, as if in a dream, she thought she heard Sylvia whisper goodbye to her.

  ***

  With the armor on, Emma didn’t have to worry about the guards anymore. Their bullets pinged harmlessly off of her. The only danger was that one of these bullets might accidentally hit Jim or one of the rats with him. “Just stay back,” she told him. “I’ll take care of it.”

  They’d taken the elevator back to Tim’s lab only to find a dozen guards waited for them. Emma bolted out of the elevator and used the armor to shield Jim. In a lightning quick series of moves she took down half of the guards. The other six fell back towards the lab doors, where some of their comrades had hastily erected a barricade out of desks, chairs, and lab equipment.

  Jim and the rats scattered to cross-corridors to let her handle the situation. She took the Sword of Justice from her belt, but this time kept the blade in her hand. She gauged the distance between her and the barricade, as well as that of the ceiling; she took a few steps forward and then jumped.

  Emma came down behind the barricade and for once even managed to stay upright. The guards stared at her in shock as she used the sword to dismember their weapons. “Now, are you going to surrender or are we going to do this the hard way?”

  The guards wisely chose to surrender; they allowed her to zip cuff them and then turn them over to Jim, who herded them into a closet. Meanwhile, she bolted into Tim’s lab in search of Harry Ward, the one who’d caused all of this mess.

  When she saw him bent over a computer, she felt a nervous tremor in her stomach. “I’m not much of a scientist,” Ward said. “I’ve always been in the retail end of things. Maybe you can tell me, Dr. Earl, what will happen when this gadget of Mr. Cooper’s overloads?”

  “A lot of people are going to die—including you,” she said. Unless there was some magic in the reactor, the armor would probably save her life, though she had no desire to put this theory to the test.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” he said and then pressed a button. Immediately red lights began to flash and klaxons began to sound.

  Emma darted forward and knocked Ward away from the console, but she was too late. He’d already fed in the instructions that would cause the anti-matter reactor to overload, which would unleash the power of another Big Bang, only this one would be centered in the heart of Rampart City. She frantically punched the keys to find some way to stop it.

  “Is there an override?” she asked. When she turned around, she saw Ward had gone. “Oh no.” She hurried from the lab, where she found Jim. “Did you see Ward go by here?”

  “No.”

  Emma looked back at the lab. It was unlikely Ward had an override code in any case. “You have to go upstairs and tell Tim to get down here. Tell him the reactor’s going to overload. I need his help to stop it.” She did a mental estimate and then added, “We have three minutes.”

  “I go,” he said. Before he did, he stood on his toes to kiss her again. It was a much shorter kiss than their previous ones, more of a dry peck. “In case.”

  “I love you,” she whispered to him.

  “I love you too,” he said and then hurried away to the stairs.

  She went back into the lab and ignored the computer to study the device itself. From what she could tell, it was self-contained, which meant she would have to open up the outer shell to try to stop the reaction. Without time for niceties like wrenches, she used the Sword of Justice to slice a hole into the copper shell. Without time for niceties like consulting schematics, she hacked at a cluster of wires, only to find herself embedded in a wall twenty feet away a few seconds later.

  A hand reached out to take hers and pull her back to her feet. She saw Sylvia had helped her up. Tim stood behind her, hunched over the console for his reactor. Sylvia patted Emma’s back. “I’d better get out of the way of you geniuses.” With a flash, Sylvia disappeared again.

  Emma hurried over to stand beside Tim. “How do we stop it?” she asked him.

  He examined the hole she’d made and then glumly looked at his feet. “We can’t stop it.”

  “What? There has to be a way. Is there a safeguard—?”

  “No, there wasn’t time to build in safeguards or overrides or anything like that,” he said. “Once the reaction’s started, there’s no way to stop it.”

  Her mental clock indicated they had only thirty seconds left before the reaction completed and the anti-matter created an explosion that would destroy not only Rampart City, but possibly the world as well. Even if she could survive the initial explosion with the armor, the anti-matter might create a miniature black hole that would destroy the earth from the inside out. “We have to do something,” she said.

  As the last few seconds ticked away, she thought of Jim and how just as they’d realized and embraced their love, they would both die. It seemed her entire life the people she loved were torn away far too soon: her parents, Aunt Gladys, Percival Graves, Dan Dreyfus, and now Jim Rizzard. The worst part was they didn’t even have time for her to hold him one final time, to give him a proper kiss goodbye—

  There was a flash of light and then silence.

  ***

  Sylvia and Akako had just dragged Aggie over to the desk, where they set the chair on the floor to use it as a headrest while Aggie slept. A year ago, Aggie had overextended herself to restore Emma and Becky to their rightful bodies. It had been days before she awoke from her coma. This time Sylvia feared it would be even worse. Aggie might never wake up this time.

  “She’ll be fine,” Sylvia said. She put a hand on Akako’s shoulder. “She just needs some time to rest.”

  “I know.” It still made Sylvia cringe to see the way Akako caressed Aggie’s cheek, the way she loved Aggie the same way Alejandro had—probably better, she amended, given the way Alejandro had cheated on her.

  Sylvia felt a sob rise in her chest at the thought Aggie had risked her own life, despite what Sylvia had told her. If the situations were reversed, Sylvia didn’t know if she could be so forgiving, but then she had always been the black sheep of the family. She felt someone touch her shoulder and turned to see Tim behind her. The love in his eyes told her he would forgive her as well, even though she didn’t deserve it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is all my fault. He said he’d kill you—”

  “No, it’s my fault. He said he’d kill you if I didn’t build what he wanted.”

  “That lying weasel. If I get my hands on him—”

  Right on cue, the elevator opened and there stood Harry Ward. Like one of the Sewer Rat’s friends, his beady eyes darted around and then he scurried out of the elevator. “You son of a bitch!” Sylvia roared. She found the revolver she’d won off Samuel Colt. She carefully aimed her shot before she pulled the trigger.

  Perhaps she’d been around Emma too long as she didn’t aim for his heart or his head. Instead, the bullet hit him in the knee. He pitched forward onto the floor in front of the portal that had brought Aggie and her friend back here. Sylvia stepped out from behind the desk, the gun aimed at his head. “The next one will take your damned head off,” she said.

  “I doubt that,” Ward said. “Oh, and now might be a good time to say your last goodbyes. See you in the next world.” With a mock-salute, he rolled to his right, into the portal.

  “That son of a bitch,” she said.

  Tim took her arm and spun her around. “Sylvia, he’s done it.”

  “Done what?”

  “He’s triggered an overload in the reactor—”

  “English, please.”

  “He’s going to blow us all sky high! I’ve got to get down to the reactor. Maybe I can still do something.”

  “Tim—”

  “I have to, Sylvia. A lot of people are going to die otherwise.”

  “Hold on,” she said. Then in a flash they were both in his lab.

  “Oh shit,” Sylvia whispered when she saw Emma inside a wall. Before she rushed over to help her friend up,
she gave Tim a kiss on the cheek. “You can do this,” she told him.

  “I’m not sure—”

  “I believe in you, Tim. I always have.”

  “Thanks.”

  She helped Emma up and waited until the girl seemed to have regained her senses. Sylvia vanished herself back upstairs to check on Aggie. Akako still tended to Aggie, which left Sylvia to feel like a fifth wheel, despite that she had caused all of this.

  Sylvia cleared off the top of Ward’s glass desk and then waved her hand over the surface. As with the fish bowl in Tim’s apartment, it became a makeshift crystal ball to show her Tim’s lab. If anyone knew how to disarm whatever Ward had set into motion, it would be Tim and Emma. But from their conversation, Sylvia knew there was nothing either of them could do. The reaction could not be stopped; the reactor could not be shut down.

  Sylvia looked down at the floor where her sister still lay unconscious. There was only one thing she could do to save Agnes, Tim, and all the other people she cared about. She supposed it would be only fitting after the way she’d betrayed all of them. She’d started it and she’d finish it.

  “Goodbye, Agnes,” she whispered.

  “Sylvia, what—” Akako started but Sylvia never heard the end of it. She closed her eyes and concentrated as hard as she could, harder than she ever had before to keep Tim’s face in her mind’s eye. As she did, she felt her body tingle. When she opened her eyes, she realized she was glowing. Time froze for her so she could walk down the stairs at a leisurely place to where the globe sat. Emma and Tim faced it, their mouths frozen in screams.

  Sylvia put her hand to Emma’s cheek and then whispered, “Goodbye, Emma. You’ve been the best friend anyone could want.” Then she turned to Tim to kiss him on the lips one final time. “I’m sorry, Tim. It has to be this way. I love you.”

  She stroked the side of his face one last time and then stepped over to the globe. Sylvia stepped through the hole Emma had cut into it. She didn’t know much about science or astronomy, but she knew how to dispose of this thing. Tears ran down her cheeks as she vanished herself for the last time.

  Epilogue

  There was no body to bury. Nor were there any ashes to scatter anywhere. Akako said Sylvia had disappeared from Ward’s office. No one saw her again.

  Emma knew only that one moment she and Tim had stood in front of the reactor, about to die, and the next the reactor had completely vanished, to leave only a hole in the room. The strangest part was that Emma thought she’d felt Sylvia’s hand touch her cheek and her voice whisper goodbye. Tim said he’d felt Sylvia kiss him.

  Then she was gone, along with the reactor.

  Along with Harry Ward.

  Emma barely had time to recover and stuff the red helmet on her head before the SWAT team stormed into the lab, Captain Donovan at their head. From a clock on the wall, Emma saw it was precisely midnight, the exact time she’d told Donovan to move in. The captain was nothing if not punctual.

  “What the fuck happened in here?” Donovan asked.

  In the Scarlet Knight’s voice, Emma said, “TriTech was a front for the bombings. Its CEO is a man named Harry Ward. He set off those bombs using robotic rats in the sewers.”

  “Robotic rats?”

  “They’re called Remote Automated Travelers,” Tim said softly. “I designed them.”

  “Then I guess you’re in pretty deep shit.”

  “He wasn’t responsible,” Emma said. “He didn’t know—”

  “No, it’s my fault. I designed them.” Tim held out his hands for someone to cuff him.

  Donovan shook her head and then looked over at one of the SWAT members. “Take him downtown. We’ll question him there.” Before Tim was hauled away, she poked him in the chest. “Make sure you get yourself a good lawyer.” She waited until Tim was gone before she asked, “So where’s this Ward guy? I’m taking him in too.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You’re not sure? What kind of superhero are you?”

  “I had my hands full,” Emma said. “He was going to set off an anti-matter reactor.”

  “A what?”

  “Never mind.”

  Emma had gone upstairs with Donovan to find Aggie unconscious on the floor with Akako at her side. There was no sign of Harry Ward, Sylvia, or Jim. The former two were never seen again. As for the latter, she found him in a storm drain a block away; he waited for her as if knowing she’d show up there.

  “Had to go,” he said. “Police everywhere.”

  “I know. It’s all right.” She got down on her knees so she could kiss him. Then he’d gone back to the sewers with the rats. She sat in the alley for a long time, to stare at the storm drain and wonder about the future.

  She didn’t see him over the next two days; she had too many other things to do. First was to find Tim Cooper a lawyer. He was prepared to go to prison for his role in the bombings, the RAT Bombings as they would come to be known. When she’d gone to visit him, he looked better rested, but still haggard. “You can’t let them pin this on you,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I gave Ward the technology. Without me this wouldn’t have happened.” He looked down at the glass that separated them. “She would still be here if it wasn’t for me.”

  “Tim, you can’t blame yourself,” she said, though the words sounded hollow to her own ears. Almost twenty years after her parents died she still blamed herself for it. The pain had subsided a little, but the hole in her heart could never fully heal. Nor would the hole in Tim’s heart for Sylvia’s loss.

  “Everything that happened was because of me. If I hadn’t been such a naïve idiot and believed that sick fuck, none of this would have happened.”

  “He used you, Tim, just like he used Sylvia. If you take the blame for this, you’re only letting him win again.”

  He hung up the phone. She’d left after that to visit a criminal attorney. “Unless they find this Ward guy, they’re going to want to pin it on someone,” the lawyer explained to her. “Your friend is the best candidate, along with this Jane Fielding and Enrique Stone. They aren’t going to cut an easy plea, I can tell you that much.”

  “What if Tim testifies against the other two? Can you get him a deal then?”

  “Maybe, but as the guy who made those things, he’s going to be the one they want the most,” the lawyer said. He reached across the desk to hand a tissue to her. “From the sound of it, your friend is a good guy. Not so much as a parking ticket, but two hundred people died; someone’s got to pay for it.”

  Emma dabbed at her eyes; she felt like such an idiot. As the Scarlet Knight she’d come to understand justice. In this case, there was none of it to be had. Someone had to pay, as the lawyer had said. Even if he weren’t responsible, it would be Tim who did and not Ward, the one truly at fault.

  Two days after the bombings and Tim was still in jail, unable to attend the memorial in France for Sylvia. The court had already refused to let him out for the memorial back in Rampart City, at Sylvia’s salon, which would pass into the hands of Val, who promised to keep everything the same and to not let anyone use Sylvia’s styling chair or her favorite shooting booth ever again. Sylvia’s coworkers and favorite customers had fired off a twenty-one gun salute in her honor, which had brought a smile to Emma’s face; she could think of no better way to pay tribute to Sylvia than to fire weapons in the salon.

  Aggie had not gone to that memorial service. She had gone to Sylvia’s salon only on the day it opened. “She didn’t want me there,” Aggie said. “She didn’t think she could be herself if her big sister was there.”

  Aggie was at the second memorial in France, which was held on the Joubert estate, which she now owned entirely. She had woke up about sixteen hours after Sylvia’s death; she immediately began to cry and hug Akako before her friend could say anything. “I knew,” she said to Emma later. “I had a feeling she was gone.”

  Emma had visited France once briefly when on the run from Bykov but
she’d never seen the old Joubert estate. The memorial was held on a hill that overlooked the vineyards, which still continued to produce wine. On the hill were tombstones for Sylvia’s mother and her sister Sophie.

  The rest of the coven was there along with Aggie, Akako, and Becky. Aggie leaned against Akako for support as Glenda and some of the other witches reminisced about Sylvia. These stories invariably revealed that while on the surface she was gruff, beneath she was one of the most caring and noble people on the planet. Emma felt a fresh wave of tears at the thought of so many people missing from this memorial. Not only Tim, but also all those who had been helped from the weapons Sylvia had sold them to oppose tyranny.

  Once the others had spoken, Aggie toddled forward and wiped her eyes from beneath a black veil. “There’s so much I could say about her after all these years, but I suppose the best thing I can say is that she’s my sister.”

  Emma waited for Aggie to say more, but the witch turned away and began to sob to the point where Akako had to collect her and walk her down the hill. The memorial wound down after that, but Emma stayed up on the hill. Sylvia’s tombstone contained only her name and the inscription, “Beloved Sister.” From her pocket, Emma took out one of the daggers she’d taken from the vault in Aggie’s house. She planted this in front of the tombstone, where its hilt caught the setting sun to reflect the light into the valley below.

  ***

  The road turned to a dirt trail so bumpy Emma considered stopping her rented car to walk. She had never visited this part of the state, where the city was only a distant memory in favor of ancient forests. She checked her map again and hoped she found the place soon, before the car fell to pieces.

  At last the trees thinned out to reveal a log cabin in a clearing. “Cabin” wasn’t really the right word since it was bigger than Becky’s house in Rampart City, with three stories, a deck complete with hot tub, and a satellite dish on the roof. Emma stopped her car in the driveway; she supposed if she were going to run away, this would be a good place to hide out.

  There was no other car in the driveway. Nor a bike, motorcycle, or any other means of transportation. The local sheriff had already searched the cabin and found no sign of anyone having lived in it recently. That hadn’t stopped Emma from driving two hundred miles, much of it through rugged terrain, to the cabin.