The Knight of Disks (Villainess Book 4)

by Alana Melos

  I leaned back and whispered to Alistair, though I was sure she could hear me anyway, “Cyborg, and one of the most advanced I’ve ever seen.” Most cyborgs had one or two pieces replaced or augmented in some way. Technically, my mother was a cyborg though I’d never thought of her as one. She’d had some surgery back in the day, though she had never spoke of it to me personally. My father had one very old picture of her taped to his mirror when she still had both her eyes instead of the hunk of grey metal I was so used to in one of her sockets.

  The upshot was that a good part of the time you could tell someone was cybernetically enhanced. When coupled with a good flesh hack, however, people could augment themselves and no one would ever know it. To my untrained eye, it appeared Jeneva had had everything replaced, including her skin. I shifted uncomfortably as she reminded me of Harry and his nanotech, though she chose to keep her changes up front and honest where he had hid his behind a façade of meekness.

  She turned to look at us fully, and beamed. Her teeth were perfect and even, highlighted by the garish faux pink lipstick. “Wuzzon?!”

  Alistair looked at me and I shook my head, not knowing that one. Jeneva watched us impatiently, then gave an aggrieved sigh. She offered a hand to us and raised her perfectly arched brows. We took turns shaking it and introducing ourselves.

  “Designation: Next Jenna,” she chirped with her ethereal echoey voice, giving us her name. “Genescan complete.”

  “Genescan?” I asked, anger overtaking me in a heartbeat. I didn’t like anyone knowing anything about me, much less my whole genetic makeup. It didn’t matter; she didn’t hear me. Loud music erupted from nowhere and she started headbanging enthusiastically while the harsh lyrics of an oldtime tune played, “Come on, get down with the sickness!”

  I tapped my foot as I strove to keep my temper under control. Even cyborgs needed heads. My grip tightened around the sheath of my sword and my hand itched to draw my weapon. The music ended as abruptly as it stopped. “Raidin’?” she asked, her already bright eyes gleaming.

  “Sort of,” I said, not quite getting what she was inquiring. “You might have noticed the plant life outside.”

  “Project: Pangea,” she said, shrugging her thin shoulders. “Oldtime genement.”

  Frowning, I nodded slowly. “Ah, yeah. We’re here to give you warning that this isn’t all that it’s going to do.” I paused to take a breath and launch into the explanation, but stopped as she snickered loudly.

  “That shiznit’s done, man,” she said between laughs.

  “I give up,” Alistair said behind me, shaking his head as he ran his hand over his jaw. “I can’t follow this.”

  “You need to learn more slang,” I said, but she’d lost me on a couple of things too. “You mean to say you negated the threat? It’s going to crush buildings, you know. Kill people? Your people?”

  Even though her eyes were orbs of blue light, I still saw them rolling in their sockets. “Oh em gee, oldtimeys clock up, kay-kay?” She turned and moved her hand over the three dimensional display. The lines of numbers and pictures which had made no sense to me changed. I still couldn’t read the writing, but I saw pictures of the laboratory where we’d found Rory back in its heyday, complete with the sign for Nox Laboratories. A deep, male voice erupted from her like the music.

  “Project: Pangea was a genegineering project created by Nox Laboratories which attempted to meld animal and vegetative genetic structures together in such a way to--” The voice cut off as suddenly as it began and she looked at us, one brow arched as if to say ‘you wanna tell me something I don’t know?’.

  “How do you know all this?” I asked, anger dissipating under waves of confusion.

  Jenna slapped her forehead so hard I thought she was going to leave a dent. “UGH GAWD!” she exclaimed, then lowered her hand and smiled at me like I was the village idiot. “Hard reboot, gotz it,” she said. “Obom ampersand me went raidin’ past o’clock to be leet crew, but dirt napped home timeline.”

  “Dirt na…” I started, then blinked in realization. “You’re from a future, but you screwed up your own timeline.”

  “Bingo was his name-o,” she said, looking relieved. “Classification: archivist, not leet raider. Dee elled oldtimey waypoints and logs, sooooo….”

  Alistair made a rude sound and crossed his arms. I translated as best I could, “She’s saying she’s from the future. She and someone else came back to steal stuff, but they altered their timeline. And she knows about things she shouldn’t because she has files from our time downloaded, probably in prep for whatever jobs they were going to pull.”

  “That’s all very well, but you realize what else she’s saying,” he replied. “They already neutralized the threat here. At least I believe so, since she said it was done.”

  That had somehow escaped me. Jeneva nodded with him. “Zacts.”

  “You neutralized Pangea? No, you couldn’t have,” I protested. “Your neighborhood, Alistair, that wasn’t neutralized.”

  “Only home base,” Jeneva corrected me. “Eff why eye.”

  “Only here? What about the rest of the city?” I demanded, my grip on my sword tightening again.

  “Since you very nice and pleasant people can’t seem to understand what I’m saying in plain speech, then perhaps let me elucidate for your primitive brains to comprehend in full,” she said, the reverb still there, but plain English coming out. I sighed in relief. Translating what she meant was annoying and made me want to chop her tongue out, though I had a feeling she’d still be able to speak anyway.

  “Thank you,” Alistair said, startled by the change in speech. “That would be appreciated.”

  She made a loud, rude sound, glancing over her shoulder before turning back to address us. “The rest of the city is of no matter to me or my companions. This neighborhood is my home now, and so, it is the territory I, among others, defend since so many of us refugees and metahumans have nowhere else to call home.” She stopped and looked at us, her head bobbing side to side as if she’d just issued some sort of ghetto street challenge.

  “How? How did you do it?” I leaned forward and smiled. This was better than I originally had planned. For once, things were going to work out with a minimal amount of effort.

  “Zif,” she said, shaking her head. “What I mean to say is that the survival of the rest of the personages of Imperial City is none of my concern. Thus, I must invite you to vacate the vicinity, and in a timely manner. Please.” Her hands made a little shooing motion, then dusted each other off, washing her hands of us. She leaned back in the metal chair, which groaned with the action, and looked at us coolly victorious.

  Even more confused now, I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

  “You have been asked to vacate, now do so,” Jeneva said once more, raising a brow. “Unless you are forcing me to use violence, in which case, I will certainly win.”

  Alistair held up his hands, one to each of us, forestalling me from taking action. “We will leave,” he said to her, “but first consider this: is there anything you want to trade us for? And keep in mind, we have access to resources outside of those here.”

  That seemed to spark some sort of interest, and she clacked her fingertips against her hard, smooth jaw. Bits of her skin flaked off here and there with the action. “Unpossible,” she said, her voice losing the rigid formality from earlier. “Whut I need, primies ain’t got.”

  “Try us,” I said.

  “Too exe ell for your teensy boards to handle,” she replied, shaking it off. “Scat, leave, vamooses.” Turning her back on us, she went back to the display to continue whatever it was she had been doing previously.

  “Well, where’s your partner? Maybe we’ll talk it over with them,” I said. She had said her and Obom had come back in time. Maybe they would be more amenable to discussion.

  Jeneva jerked a thumb over her shoulder, pointing to a smooth glass tube almost hidden among the tech and books here. Things had piled up
over the tube during the course of time. I moved over to inspect it, but she tsked loudly. “Obom’s dirt nappin’,” she said, dismissing it.

  Frowning, I cleared off the glass. Was she storing a corpse in here? Inside the tube was a young man, with black marks looking like tattoos down one side of his face. He was less perfect than Jeneva, but more outlandish at the same time. It wasn’t just that he looked older and more human, less doll like, but that he had been damaged. Parts of his skin on his face and bare chest were missing, showing the bone structure and organs underneath. Scorch marks rimmed the wounds, so it appeared he got blasted with some kind of energy, or that it had erupted from him. It was impossible to tell which. However, were he animated and in perfect health, his black leather pants, bright blue faux hawk hair, and darkened tattoos over his arms and chest, he would have been a perfect match for Jeneva, just done masculine instead of feminine. He even shared the same kind of whirling logo in the middle of his chest.

  “There has to be something that you want, that you can use to fix him,” I said, not giving up. I didn’t think we’d be able to take the information from her. There had to be something she wanted.

  “Ugh, go aggro a nubile,” she said. “Teck ain’t snuffed up.”

  “You mean the technology isn’t up to … par here, right?” I pressed. “You mean nanotech.” That had to be the only explanation. She was obviously a cyborg, hell, maybe even a full out robot like William upstairs. Technology always got smaller the further you went in time. Just look at televisions from the nineteen forties and fifties as compared to the ones today for an example.

  “Shyeah, whatevs meatbag,” she said, her words scornful, but her voice interested.

  “I know where they’re developing nanotech,” I said. “And I know the layout of the place. And I’ve broken in there before. Twice.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “Deets.”

  “If you trade, I’ll not only help you with the snatch and grab, I’ll recruit people to do the break in.” I shrugged. “Even if it’s not compatible, it’s a matter of reprogramming, right? And this tech has already been proven to be compatible with human tissue. A guy I knew used it to fly, to generate blasts… to regenerate.”

  The last made her blue eyes sparkle--by which I meant they literally had sparkles in them--and she sat up straighter. “Spill,” she demanded.

  “Only if you agree to trade the solution to Pangea,” I replied. “It’s fair.”

  “Hmph,” she grunted, her fingers dancing over the keyboard made of light. “Accepted.”

  After that, it was a matter of details. We traded the information required along with a promise of helping jack up Titan Industries, where the nanotech was. There were other public companies which developed and sold nanotech, but nothing this far advanced. The ‘bots being sold now were specialized, made for one specific purpose such as repairing a heart or destroying a cancerous tumor. As far as I knew, that tech couldn’t handle an electrical charge more than what a human body generated already. The nanotech Harry had possessed could. I’d seen it first hand, and they’d had more tubes than just his in the building, so there had to be more experiments. They’d beefed up their security since I broke in. That would be a worry for a future day. We struck the deal and I got the “cure” to Pangea.

  It really wasn’t a “cure”. All it was was a way to paralyze the vines for a while, attack the genetic markers unique to Pangea. It was a matter of time, she explained. What worked great the first time, wouldn’t work so hot the next, and would be less and less effective the more it was used. While the plant was immobilized by the chemical she’d concocted, the rest of the ghouls set to work freeing the buildings from the branches and vines which had surrounded them. It only worked in a limited area, and the spray had to be applied directly to the plant, as close to the root source as possible. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was something I could work with.

  As Alistair and I exited the dark basement of the public building, he cleared his throat. I turned to him and waited, arching a brow. “Are you sure this is the wisest course?” he asked. “It doesn’t sound as… effective as it could be.”

  “Are you going to give me another way to go?” I asked him, my lip curling up.

  He shook his head, “No, but… she said it got less effective with each dose. The inference that I read between the lines was that there wasn’t many doses before it wouldn’t work hardly at all.”

  “Pangea’s adaptive, we’ve seen that,” I agreed. “So I’d say that’s a pretty reasonable assumption.” I ran my free hand through my hair. “You’re right, though. We can’t go in sections. After the first couple…” My face screwed up in a grimace as I realized what I was going to have to do.

  As I pulled out my phone, Alistair watched me. “Who are you calling?”

  “Septimus,” I said, then clarified as he didn’t know who Tim was. “A white hat I know.”

  At that, Alistair looked taken aback. “I thought you hated them. Whyever are you calling one?”

  “To arrange a meeting with someone.”

  “Who could be that important?”

  As the phone rang, I gave Alistair a tight smile. “Imperius.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  After the Fall of Uptown, the United Nations had broken apart. In a lot of ways, the world had broken apart. No longer did the U.N. have the strong arm to bend the world to its will. The Sentinels no longer patrolled America’s skies. The hero team--those who managed to stay alive, that was--had broken up, retired, and pretty much written off what they’d been trying to do. It wasn’t just my parents and their crew who had risen against them, but a lot of metahumans… and a lot of regular people too. They could always arrest then execute the metahumans blocking them at every turn, but they couldn’t stop the protests going on in the country. Well, they couldn’t and still call themselves a free republic.

  The Sentinels had been up to some shady shit anyway and, for us black hats, it wasn’t a stretch to go from committing crimes of greed to crimes of passion to crimes of rebellion. When public opinion had flipped from supporting the “good” guys to agreeing with the “bad” guys, the U.N. pushed the vote for the one world government. After that vote succeeded--I always thought it was with a rigged election, but no one knew for sure--the Fall of Uptown happened immediately after… and that was that. No new government. No New World Order.

  At the same time, a lot of New Yorkers had been killed during the Fall, which sort of crushed any kind of support the villains had been getting. Anarchy had ruled for several months after that. North America split apart at the seams. Thus, instead of the United States, there were nine different countries now, all from that old Republic for which they’d stood and fallen. Even Canada and Mexico got in on the restructuring a little bit.

  Here, in the remnant of the good old United States, the original thirteen held true… or at least that was the party line. In reality, Imperius happened. He flew in, said he was taking over, and did. The entire city was under his protection, and by extension, the entire eastern seaboard. He organized the metahumans who wanted to be heroes and subsumed them into the police force, so they could be held accountable for their actions. He was instrumental in building the Citadel to hold metahuman crooks. He promised rehabilitation instead of the death penalty for people using powers to commit crimes. He got metahumans to integrate into society, and enforced equality for all in a benevolent dictatorship, once which Tim evidently had been blind to, according to our discussion.

  Metahumans weren’t loved at that point. Hell, we were downright hated. After the Fall, it was a cage match survival of the fittest type situation, which he dismantled. He forced the criminal element underground again, to hide and skulk around in the slums and sewers. Once the city was more or less safe, he gave up his power. And let me tell this to you straight: no one gives up power voluntarily. Absolutely no one. Public elections were renewed, and the people were free to govern themselves again. He simply put th
ings to order like a parent might do, then stepped back to see if their kids would fuck it all up again. Parades were thrown in his honor. Libraries were named after him. Hell, he was so loved, they voted to change the name of New York to Imperial City. A lot of longtime residents of NYC were pissed as hell about that, but the vote still went through in favor.

  There weren’t many criminals who could stand against him, but most of them didn’t want to. The longtime crooks were in jail, dead, or retired. The newcomers were still in awe over what he did, quaking in their newbie boots over it. It was the middle-ground miscreants and trouble makers like myself which kept the underground going strong. That, and there was always and would always be a criminal element to any city. People like us rebelled against the squeaky clean image of Imperial City. We knew the rotted cream would rise to the top in time. Corruption had begun to run rampant in our society once more. Some people held their breath to see if Imperius would take over as he’d done before, but so far, he’d done nothing, usually too busy with the big fights to bother with the petty shit. Personally, I thought he sat back in disgust, watching what he’d built fall apart, and washed his hands of everything except things which were a city or nation wide threat.

  This was definitely a city wide threat. As Alistair, Rory, and I waited on top of a roof near the meeting place--you always scouted your meeting place first--I paced to walk off nervous energy. Septimus had arranged the meeting and I didn’t necessarily trust him, but I didn’t think he was going to have me arrested. I was pretty sure, not when I said I had the solution for the plant taking over the city.

  I rubbed my temple, staving off a headache. “You should sit,” Rory said, watching me go back and forth. “You need to relax.”

  Glancing at him, I remembered the last time I’d ‘relaxed’ with him. This was not the place for sex, which had always centered me, though I longed to crawl into bed and hide under the covers. Even as I thought that, I bared my teeth and shook my head tightly, keeping the spark of anger going, fanning the flames of rage.