by Kipjo Ewers
Her hairstyle was similar to Lady Tech’s, but colored pink with white streaks. The pink lipstick she wore matched her hair along with her large pink glowing eyes, which were clearly not human. They also matched her body, which was also not human. Aside from her head, the upper part of her thighs and shoulders appeared human. The rest of her body from the neck down, along with legs and arms were hard cybernetic metal in a pink and white color scheme. Blue lights glowed silently from different parts of her limbs, body, and neck indicating an unknown power source allowing for her animation. Mendes pinched his arm to ensure he was not dreaming.
“Thank you Maxine,” Erica smiled.
“I thought you said she was a computer?” a fascinated, yet disturbed, Graves snapped.
“The term is A.I.” She rolled her eyes. “This is her cybernetic android form that she uploads into in order to do physical tasks when necessary to assist me.”
She walked up to Maxine looking up at her near six-foot form with motherly pride.
“Cybernetic battle chassis built out of dark metal,” Erica explained.
“And her power source?” asked an inquisitive Graves.
“Ionized liquid mercury, or what I like to call Liquid Ion,” she smirked, “a mixture of mercury, saline water, and a compound gelatin that can generate electricity on the level of a nuclear submarine. Several miniature pulmonary generators circulate the liquid through her circulatory and central nervous system giving her a constant cycle of power.”
“Like a human,” said a fascinated Mendes, who moved forward to get a better look, “is it a self-sustaining power source?”
“Not yet,” Lady Tech shook her head. “The mercury eventually evaporates requiring a transfusion every eight months, which is great progress considering the first batch I made only lasted for twenty-four hours. Her eyes are constructed with microscopic solar panels providing her with a secondary power source, putting less of a strain on her main power supply. The goal is to make it self-sustaining once I either find a bonding agent to prevent the mercury from turning to vapor, or a replacement for it altogether capable of holding and cycling a charge of that capacity indefinitely. All in all, she cooks, cleans, and is proficient in all forms of combat. She is also an excellent pilot and driver.”
“Why the human parts?” questioned Mendes.
“It looks cool.” Erica looked at him as if he asked a stupid question. “Not to mention, I’d get creped out always talking to something out of a Schwarzenegger movie.”
“So why not make her look completely human?” Mendes asked.
“Because it looks cool!” she responded in a loud and slow tone, acting as if Mendes was either deaf or mentally challenged.
Mendes wore a face expressing that he too was tired of her displays of disrespect.
The round metal door parted again, forcing Mendes to spin around and jump backwards bouncing off a wall known as Rogers. The cause of his startle was two more female android creatures similar to Maxine. A bubbly one with long orange hair and big glowing orange eyes had a rustic red and orange color scheme to the metallic parts of her cybernetic body, while her molded bust was slightly larger than Maxine’s metallic bosom. The female droid adjacent to her wore a cynical look on her face with her arms folded, her hair was cut similar to Erica’s and Maxine’s but dyed purple with black streaks matching her deep glowing purple eyes; her color scheme was a gothic gunmetal gray with light yellow accents. Unlike Maxine and her companion, the glowing lights on her limbs and body were an orange color. She frame was more slender with a smaller chest as opposed to her other two “sisters.”
“You built more than one,” Graves asked with a hint of displeasure.
“Well, I couldn’t just build one,” Lady Tech shrugged. “The one in orange with the fire top is Angie and the brooding one in purple and gray is Jennifer, my lovely dolls.”
“Dolls…” Graves’ tone became more displeased by the second.
“Uh… yeah… I’m a girl.” She gave him the same look that she gave Mendes a minute ago as if he too was slow. “I like dolls. I specifically designed their A.I.s for each of their bodies, but they can also upload into the main system like Maxine or into other bodies. Angie was designed for heavy lifting, while Jennifer was built for speed using lighter armor and ridiculously fast lightning speed processors.”
“Again, using this facility as your personal little playground,” Graves frowned.
“Actually, I built them because I don’t trust normal stupid people to work on my projects with me,” returned Erica with a flat tone. “Considering all of their A.I’s were mapped from my brain, it’s like having three more of me to execute the tasks I need done so I’m not wasting your little 2.5 billion that I could make ten times over if I decide to rejoin the private sector.”
The awkward silence returned as new school and old school locked eyes again giving neither an inch nor a quarter.
“Why don’t you stick your tongue down her throat, you perv?” The android, designated as Jennifer, broke the silence with her raspy voice. “Isn’t that the reason you’re staring her down so hard?”
“Jennifer! That’s rude!” Angie scolded her sister with her high-pitched Valley Girl voice. “He’s the Secretary of Defense!”
“Well, he’s acting like Bill Clinton, damn lolicon!” Jennifer sneered.
The comment made Rogers grunt, Mendes forced himself to choke on his chuckle, and Dr. Alexander just shook his head. Graves slowly turned to the android who wore a look of disgust as she glared at him, and decided he had his fill, specifically of Lady Tech’s company.
“I believe we’ve seen all we need to see of this facility,” Graves dryly began his exit speech, “and I have more pressing matters to attend.”
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Eight minutes later everyone, excluding the androids, were topside once again. Dr. Alexander and Mendes boarded the helicopter while the Secretary, now flanked by his agents, addressed Abe and Erica.
“As I stated earlier Rogers, the rest of your team should be arriving tomorrow at 1100 hours,” said Graves. “I’ll take it I don’t have to worry about you getting them squared away in the six months time required.”
“No sir.” Rogers kept it tight and formal with Graves.
“I know we got off to a rocky start.” The Secretary cracked a fake smile. “But I have every faith that I have chosen the right man for this position.”
“I’ll do my job.” Rogers’ granite exterior cracked a fake smirk. “Sir.”
Before Graves could extend his hand for a shake, Rogers snapped a crisp salute bidding him farewell. Graves smirked and nodded.
“Ms. Champion,” Graves addressed Erica without making eye contact with her.
“Secretary,” she returned with a bright cheese grin.
Graves turned and walked up the steps followed by his entourage with derogatory thoughts about jarheads and today’s youth running through his mind, while Rogers watched him leave with derogatory thoughts of pencil pushing bureaucrats.
They observed as the Secretary’s helicopter ascended into the air and took off; neither cared where it went.
“So,” Erica sighed, “Just you and me now.”
“You know that thing where you were whispering in my head,” said Rogers looking up at the sky.
“Don’t do it again,” she answered also still looking up.
“Also, if you think you’re going to run roughshod over me like you did the Secretary,” said Rogers still looking up, “you will lose.”
“Fair enough,” she smiled. “Care to return to the Batcave and get settled in?”
He glanced at her before about facing back to the hanger. Erica turned and skipped, following him from behind.
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Another eight minutes later they returned underground to the main central comman
d accompanied by the android sisters.
“So,” Lady Tech got down to business, “what do you want to know about the Source?”
“Everything,” Abe answered.
“Maxine,” Erica addressed her android form.
Upon command, an onscreen image of a prison record appeared on the theatre size screen before Rogers.
“Sophia Dennison, formerly Sophia Matheson,” introduced Erica, “widow, thirty-nine years old, United States Citizen born in Mount Vernon, New York, originally resided in Houston, Texas. She graduated from Texas Southwestern with honors, formally a licensed doctor and skilled surgeon. Sentenced to death by lethal injection, which was carried out in 2008 for the murder of her husband, a former highly decorated United States Marine veteran.”
“I know her,” nodded Rogers. “The super woman from the incidents in Texas and DC back in 08.”
“Very good,” Erica nodded, “she is also the reason why you and I are the way we are now. She is the Source, the first EVO, or EVO Zero, and the cause of what we now call the Big Bang 2 incident. She was the one who stopped that nuclear warhead from wiping out the West Coast.”
“A General went down for that, Bernard Matheson.” Rogers began putting the pieces together, “He’s…”
“Her father-in-law,” Erica filled in the blanks. “Don’t know any of the stories between the two of them, but I image there was some pretty nasty family history there.”
“How is she the reason we are who we are?” Rogers asked.
“Maxine,” Erica requested again, “please bring up sequence theory 091312.”
The holographic globe in the middle of the room disappeared as a simulated projection of Sophia flying toward a nuclear warhead appeared.
“It’s all just a theory, but when our girl slammed into that nuke she must have taken some considerable damage. I’m thinking deep tissue damage, maybe even more,” she began her explanation, “those cells, however, didn’t burn up and die, they regenerated into a viral form, multiplied, and went airborne allowing the winds to take it to the four corners of the earth thereafter contaminating our air, food, and water supply. As it infected a host, it either killed, remained dormant, or in the case of you and I, systematically destroyed our normal cells while replicating new ones in its place rewriting our DNA; turning us into who we are now. She is our “mother” so to speak, responsible for giving birth to the entire superhuman race.”
The holographic image changed displaying her abilities in detail.
“EVOs are designated classes one to ten based on their ability to cause destruction from a city block to an actual city with the scale being Manhattan,” Erica pointed out. “Ms. Dennison has no designated class, since her powers can devastate on a continental, maybe even planetary level. She is stronger and faster than any EVO on this planet, impervious to conventional firepower including energy based weapons and nuclear armament, immune to any and all diseases, and for all intense and purposes immortal.”
“Where is she now?” Abe inquired.
Erica pulled up the holographic globe once again.
“Right there,” she pointed to a lit up blip, “one thing she can’t do is hide; she emits some kind of bio-energy signature that lights up like a dwarf star. She raised her own island the size of half of Brazil from out of the ocean in the middle of the Pacific…”
“Wait,” Rogers paused her. “What do you mean “raised?”
“I mean she descended to the deepest depths of the ocean,” explained Erica slowly, “where she either plowed or blasted her way underneath the Earth’s crust all the way down to the tectonic plates, broke a piece free and pushed it up to the surface. Then she started terraforming it. She began with swiping trees from different forests around the planet, especially ones that would have been the victims of big business. The whole process took about six to eight months to complete, which is nothing for someone who does not need to sleep.”
Erica projected a detailed image of the large ghost land mass. The first thought she could tell was swimming in his head based on his facial expression was why this was not headlining news anywhere.
“No one knows about this?” asked Rogers looking at the globe.
“The majority of the general public around the planet does not know about this,” Erica said. “Every government and scientist on the planet does know about this. They also attempted to show Ms. Dennison how unpleased they were with her little project.”
The holographic globe disappeared again as another video began to play.
“Behold the ass kicking never televised,” Lady Tech narrated, “Russia and the U.S. in a joint Co-Op mission sends in the Siberian Machine, the leader of the Russian superhuman unit Утюг Спецназ, which stands for “Iron Spetsnaz” and Captain Omega, who for some reason volunteered for this harebrained scheme, to either capture or terminate Ms. Dennison on sight. Both are Class 10 ranked Titans with exceptional durability, endurance, and strength lifting within or above the eighty-five thousand to one hundred thousand ton range. Parts of the footage were slo-moed over a thousand times just to see what actually happened. Oh, by the way, I have it on good knowledge the fight actually started due to the Siberian Machine saying some very disparaging things about Ms. Dennison and her mother.”
The audio system boomed with the sounds of gods warring. Rogers watched as a woman with dreads in a black and yellow wetsuit, was in the middle of fending off two of the most powerfully recorded EVO Titans on the planet with a combination of Muay Thai and Krav Maga techniques.
“For a doctor, she has some moves,” Rogers respectfully nodded.
“That’s thanks to her photographic and muscle memory,” Erica smirked.
“What do you mean?” Rogers turned to her.
“She can retain anything she sees, hears, or reads like a super computer,” she explained, “probably works with scent too. Anyway, this not only allows her to obtain a vast amount of knowledge and speak basically every language on the planet, but it also allows her to duplicate a physical movement just by seeing it performed one time as long as it’s within her physical capability, which as you can see are pretty vast. She’s also immune to mental attacks and mind reading.”
Blows capable of reducing a skyscraper to rubble she blocked and defended, but that was not all that Abe saw. Even the most trained combatant ducked or evaded a blow to either get some breathing room or mount an offense. Sophia not only blocked every punch and kick thrown at her, she stepped into the blows, which was an offense on its own as she knocked each man backwards every time they struck her.
It was similar to watching toddlers playfully pushed around by a larger adult.
She was controlling the fight. Her offensive maneuvers were positioning the Captain and the Machine where she wanted them to be.
As she purposely allowed them to flank her on both sides, both men with a split second eye contact came up with the idea to shoot and tackle her at the same time. That one unified attack defined the difference in power between the three combatants.
Sand exploded into the air as Sophia charged the Siberian Machine shattering his shoot attempt with an NFL style shoulder tackle, which knocked a man twice her size backwards almost six feet into the air, and twenty yards across the three-day-old beach.
As the Russian went crashing in a painful and awkward way, Captain Omega who regained his footing after missing his initial shoot attempt, kicked up sand of his own as he attempted another tackle. As the former All American from Virginia came in for a sack that could derail a freight train, Sophia dug her toes into the sand assuming a football stance of her own. With a burst of force with a distance of only three inches per Erica’s readings, she derailed the unstoppable force known as Captain Omega.
To Rogers it was like watching a motorcyclist from one of those reality television shows slamming into a brick wall going sixty miles an hour and wondering how they survived. The Captain’s neck snapped back violently as he too was lifted off his feet before coming
down on the upper part of his shoulders. As the rest of his body came down, he folded like a lawn chair. Erica who viewed the footage multiple times still winced from watching the brutal blow.
It was clear to Rogers what Sophia was doing. With her speed and apparent hand-to-hand combat skill, she could easily have dismantled the super-powered duo with a couple of well-placed strikes.
She, however, was looking to etch this fight into their skulls.
As the Captain groaned slowly unfolding himself from his painful position, Sophia continued her lesson on the slow rising Russian. This time she took the offense blasting across the sand with a sonic boom sprint on her newly raised island darting straight towards the Machine. Just before impact, she had to hop to hit her six inches taller target. With a clothesline that would make the legendary Stan Hansen wet himself in Rogers’ eye, Sophia dismantled the Machine turning him inside out. He crashed back down to the semi-moist sand once again never to rise. Only a fluttering groan signified that he was still breathing.
As she looked down at the semi-conscious Russian, a roaring Captain Omega back up on his feet came out of nowhere using his pistons for legs to propel him back into the fight hitting Sophia across the face with an earth quaking superman punch. He followed up with a full on assault of lefts and rights delivering face and body shots staggering her.
Rogers knew it was not the case; she saw him coming a mile away and could have swatted him out of midair. Instead, she chose to drop her guard allowing him to wail away at her. Readings showed that the Captain had struck Sophia over twenty times and counting with thunderous blows that could total a tank. It appeared as if the Captain was winning with each blow.
The grin on her face said otherwise.
Even with Sophia’s tremendous durability and endurance, the sand she stood on could not hold her in place to withstand Captain Omega’s devastating hits causing her to slide around every time he struck her.
The tale ended with her catching one of his missile blows in mid strike. She followed up with a brutal gut check to a man he saw single handily pull two aircraft carriers to shore with just a steel chain for a charity benefit a year ago. It echoed throughout the central command with the distinct sound of hammered bone cracked by a sledgehammer.