by Wyatt Kane
With a banshee shriek that cut through even Bain’s bellow, Lilith reappeared with another huge chunk of masonry, and let that one fall as well. This time, Bain was quick enough to swing his cannon around. He blasted the masonry into pieces before it landed.
Even so, huge blocks of concrete veined with steel rained down all around the man, and Ty scrambled back to his feet. He now knew that Bain’s photon cannon couldn’t really hurt him. As fast as he could, he willed his plasma blade to emerge from his flesh and activated it.
Then he launched himself at Bain as fast as he could.
Distracted by the boulders crashing about him, this time Bain was slow to respond. When he did, he reacted with fury, swinging his cannon around and taking careful aim. Perhaps he expected Ty to try to duck out of the way, but if he did, he would have been disappointed.
Ty’s only focus was to get to him, and he no longer cared about getting shot with Bain’s cannon. He would survive that. All that mattered was preventing the monstrous man from doing further harm.
Bain bellowed as if doing so would give his cannon greater power and pulled the trigger. At the last moment, Ty twisted to the side to avoid most of the blast but kept going, closing the distance between them in leaps and bounds. Bain continued to fire, and Ty tanked a few hits, but his momentum carried him forward.
When he was close enough, he swung his blade, and all of a sudden Bain stopped firing.
It wasn’t that the monstrous villain didn’t want to keep firing. He simply couldn’t fire any more. Ty had sliced through the photon cannon as if it was made out of wet paper rather than steel and plastic.
Bain had a brief moment to stare at Ty in surprise, then curled his free hand into a fist and smashed it into Ty’s shield with all of his strength.
Ty went sailing. He couldn’t tell if Bain’s fist or the photon cannon packed more of a punch. All he knew was that he wound up more than twenty feet away, and would have landed in a heap if his shield hadn’t caught him again.
Even so, he couldn’t help but grin. As he clambered back to his feet to meet Bain’s charge, he had his crawlers out and ready. Without his photon cannon, Bain had little defense. Ty flung his crawlers at the man and used his shield’s skidding feature to quickly dart out of the way.
Ty’s actions caught the monstrous man by surprise.
“What the hell?” he said, and then a third chunk of masonry, this one a bit smaller, crashed down on his head.
37: Crawlers
This time, Lilith didn’t disappear right away. Instead, she floated down to land beside Ty, who was studying the chunk of masonry on the ground. It moved about as Bain sought the leverage he needed beneath, and they could both hear his angry cursing.
Then, all at once, the man must have gotten his feet beneath him. The huge slab of masonry reared up and over, toppling on to one side, leaving Bain glaring at them, on his feet once more.
“Do you think you have won?” the massive man demanded. “Just because you destroyed my cannon? Well, guess again! I can do this all day! Can you?”
Yet, even as he spoke, Ty could see that the monstrous man was wrong. The crawlers were doing their job. The device on his wrist already looked rough around the edges.
As Ty watched, it broke in two, and the pieces fell to the ground.
“Yes. I do think we’ve won,” Ty said. “But not because of the photon canon.”
Bain stared at his wrist in shock.
“What the fuck?” he said, and then grimaced in pain as the withdrawal symptoms started to kick in.
Ty and Lilith both watched, impassive. Even the might of someone like Bain couldn’t stand up to the agony of withdrawal from the device. He cried out in pain and sank to his knees.
“What have you done!” he bellowed.
“I would have thought that was obvious,” Ty returned. “We’ve taken away much of your power. The only question is how much more we should take.”
Bain clenched his remaining fist and grimaced. He looked like he wanted to surge back to his feet and strangle them both. But while he still had the AZT-407 in his system, he was already largely diminished.
Like a wounded animal, Ty knew the man could still be dangerous, so he turned to Lilith.
“How about you drop him up into the sky for a few more times?” he said. “Knock some of the belligerence out of him. Then we can take him back to the mansion.”
Lilith agreed to Ty’s proposed course of action, and in moments, Ty listened to the ongoing song of Bain bellowing from a great height, only to stop with a thud when he hit the ground.
To Ty, it was the most beautiful music. He would have listened to it forever, knowing that it was the sound of Bain suffering.
It took nearly ten minutes of that treatment for Bain to be stunned enough for Ty to be happy. The man’s durability was astonishing. Far beyond what Ty would have expected without the device on his wrist.
But even that durability had its limits.
Bain stared at them through glassy eyes, the rage having fled from his face. While not completely unconscious, he wasn’t exactly present any longer. If this had been a fighting game, Bain’s character might have still been on his feet, but there would have been small birds circling his head, and his health bar would have been done.
Ty looked at Lilith. “It might pay to make sure Vixen has the cryo chamber ready. I’ll watch him until you get back.
Lilith agreed, and vanished. While she was gone, Ty approached the fallen monster and blasted him a few times in the head. He knew Bain would survive such treatment, but couldn’t resist doing what he could to hurt him.
“That’s for Tempest, you son of a bitch,” he said.
38: Noob Mistake
Vixen had indeed managed to fabricate a cryo chamber large enough to store Bain. She’d also fabricated another, to get Spit Bitch out of the med bay. All three of the chambers, including Tempest’s, remained in the Architect’s workshop, and Ty was happy enough with them there for the time being.
In fact, he was happy enough with how much of the day had played out. Brad was still alive, and they’d managed to capture the Master’s right-hand man. Literally, because Bain was missing part of his left. As well, Vixen was proving herself to be a valuable part of the team, although thinking of her as such was a bit premature.
The only downsides of the day were that Ty still didn’t know where Brad actually was, and Ty’s failure with Tempest.
The question of Brad would have to wait, Ty knew. It had been a long day, and Ty was exhausted, already starting to come down from his AZT-407 high. When Dinah looked at him and suggested they wait until the morning before questioning Bain, Ty had agreed willingly enough.
As for Tempest, Ty spent the rest of the evening wondering what he and Vixen could have done differently.
He thought of little else even when Dinah presented a feast fit for a king for the four of them, and still had it playing in the back of his mind when Lilith took her leave, suggesting that it had been a while since she’d spent any real time with her father. He still hadn’t come up with any conclusions as he, Dinah and Vixen set up one of the unused rooms for Vixen to sleep in, and only really put it aside as he and Dinah made love before going to sleep.
Perhaps he should have let his subconscious do the work from the start, because at some point during the night, he woke up with a clear understanding of what he’d done wrong.
He sat up in the dark with the deerkin beside him, and Gremlin down near his feet.
“Idiot,” he muttered to himself. Yet, at the same time, he felt a sense of jubilation even as he chastised himself for such a rudimentary mistake.
“Ty? What’s the matter?” Dinah breathed from the bed from beside him, still sounding mostly asleep.
“Nothing,” Ty said. He even grinned into the darkness. “In fact, everything is amazing! I think I’ve figured out how to wake Tempest.” He tried to keep his voice low, to give the deerkin the chance to keep sleeping if she
wanted to. But he should have known better. The deerkin immediately sat up, wide awake, and looked at him, but Gremlin just stretched and stayed where she was.
“You have?” Dinah asked.
Ty nodded. “I think so.”
“Well, what are you waiting for?”
Together, Dinah and Ty clambered into their clothes. They headed down into the workshop, where Ty brought up the holographic display of Tempest’s consciousness as it appeared in the cradle he’d made.
It looked exactly the same as it had before. A shapeless, gray mass that indicated a lack of true thought, the minimal brain activity that Tempest had displayed ever since she was injured.
Yet Ty couldn’t help but grin.
“When Vixen suggested we copy the spark of consciousness as it appears in my mind and hers across to Tempest’s, it seemed like a good idea. I thought it would work, and couldn’t understand why it didn’t.”
Dinah blinked at him. “And now? What’s changed?” she asked.
“Nothing. It’s still a good idea. I still think it’ll work. But there’s a reality with a lot of technology that doesn’t hold true with people. For a lot of it, when you make changes, they aren’t actually applied until you reboot the system.”
Dinah stared at him for a moment. “Are you saying you haven’t rebooted the cradle since you made the changes?”
Ty felt a little sheepish. It was an amateur mistake that he shouldn’t have made. And yet, he’d done so.
“Exactly,” he said.
“And you think…?”
Ty grinned even more broadly. “Let’s see, shall we?”
The cradle of consciousness Ty had made for Tempest had the appearance of any other high-end computer. Trying not to feel too excited, Ty reached out and hit the off button, waited a few seconds, then turned it on once again.
The holographic image of Tempest’s consciousness floating over the workbench vanished when the cradle was off, but reappeared shortly thereafter.
This time, it wasn’t gray and featureless. This time, it was full of color and fragments of images.
Ty activated the vocal interpreter on the neural link, as he had done before when trying to communicate with the Architect. This time, it was Tempest’s voice that echoed throughout the workshop.
“Why can’t I see anything?” she said, her voice filled with uncharacteristic uncertainty and confusion. “Am I dreaming? Why can’t I feel anything?”
Ty’s heart could have exploded with sheer joy. As for Dinah, her expression said it all. As soon as they heard Tempest’s disembodied voice, tears welled up in the deerkin’s eyes, and she started to make small noises that mixed hope with disbelief.
Ty watched the visual representation of Tempest’s consciousness swell with different colors, and knew the blonde superhero was starting to get worried. But he and Vixen had thought of this, and had built a vocal interface into his design.
Ty activated that interface, and, with his heart in his mouth, spoke to one of the women he loved.
“Tempest, it’s me, Ty. You’re okay. Everything is going to be all right.”
Here ends book 5 in the Enhancer series.
Author’s Note
Well. Things are getting interesting now, aren’t they? Ty’s friend Brad has developed superpowers, but seems to be working for the Master. Bain has been caught and stuffed into a cryo chamber. And Tempest … well. Tempest is both stuck in a cryo chamber with part of her torso missing, and at the same time, her consciousness is alive and well, in digital form.
But that’s not all. We’re just at the start of a massive change within New Lincoln. Brad can’t possibly be the only one to develop powers on the Upgrade drug, can he? If not, how will that impact things from this point forward?
Also, if you remember, Tempest’s consciousness isn’t the only one Ty has safely stored away electronically. He’s also got his own, and Vixen’s as well. Just think about the possibilities of that.
And, while we’re talking about Vixen, sure, she’s rubbed everyone up the wrong way, but maybe there’s hope for her as far as the team is concerned. She’s proved her worth to Ty, at least, but as for the others?
I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Anyway, once again, I do very much hope you enjoyed this latest book in my Enhancer series. If you did, please do leave a review. You’d be amazed at how important those are – they really can mean the difference between a series being able to continue, and not.
I really want to continue with Ty’s ongoing adventure, and I hope you’re having as much fun following along as I am doing the writing. So, please pop back to where you got this book and let others know what you thought. And, as usual, please remember not to include any spoilers. :-)
And one more thing. If you think the people you hang out with might like my series, then tell them about it! Post about it on your Facebook page or in your Reddit group, if it makes sense to do so. Tweet about it, mention it on Instagram, or wherever you hang out most. Just like with the reviews, word of mouth really does help.
Speaking about reviews (again), here’s the generic bit about them I typically include: I understand that Amazon is making it harder for people to leave a review, so if you can’t, I understand, but if you can, a short sentence or two is as useful as a full-on, in-depth analysis.
Other than that, I’m already in the planning stages of book 6, and hope to have that out fairly soon.
As usual, if you have any questions or just want to say, “Hi!” drop me a line at:
[email protected]
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Until next time,
Wyatt.
Acknowledgments
I used to think being a novelist was a completely solitary exercise, but it isn’t. The efforts of many people have helped me make this book what it is. There’s my wife, who is always one of the first to read it, and I have a number of beta readers and editors as well. And then there is my illustrator, who is about the most talented artist I’ve ever known.
You all know who you are. Thank you, one and all. You are appreciated beyond words.