Queen's Move (Lilith's Shadow Book 3)

by Benjamin Medrano

  Spark’s mood improved slightly, and she opened her mouth to speak, but before she did, their last team member spoke softly, and her words were like a bucket of ice water.

  “Unless Dreamer chooses to discard them,” Archon interjected, a note of concern in her voice as she looked at the images. “She’s ruthless enough to do that, and if these are small-time criminals… there are always more of them to bully into working for her. I wouldn’t anticipate them being found alive or outside of a coma.”

  The words somewhat ruined the effect of Archon’s appearance, Spark thought, but the woman had never asked to look like an angel. Instead, the bronze-skinned woman, whose parents had immigrated from Brazil, had grown wings at the age of sixteen, while her hair and eyes both blazed like they were made of fire. Not that they were even warm, as she’d allowed Spark to touch her hair once. The heroine wore relatively normal clothing at the moment, but along with her transformation she’d found the ability to reinforce armor and melee weapons, as well as to envelop the latter with fire, so she used them when in the field. Not that the beautiful woman could be used for any sort of surveillance most of the time, with how obvious she was. On the other hand, she was one of the handful of class S heroes in the country, which often made Spark feel better having her around.

  “That… doesn’t make me feel better, but you’re probably right. Still, if we can find them fast enough, maybe we can track her down. Dreamer is a scary lady, from everything I’ve heard,” Spark said, shivering as she added, “Did you hear about her fight with Morgan? I didn’t know she could create copies of the people she’d drained.”

  “Assuming that Morgan was right about the ability, I agree. We can’t treat her as a simple class A villain. Certainly not as weak as she was believed to be,” Shade agreed, even if Spark thought he was slightly condescending. “I do wonder if she’s here for Lilith, though.”

  “I’d guess she’s after Morgan, if she’s holding a grudge,” Decarin interjected, shaking his head. “She might be after Lilith, but from what I heard they didn’t really interact. That doesn’t mean she might not go after her to hurt Morgan or draw her out, though. Assuming she isn’t after the bounties Lilith mentioned, I suppose…”

  “That isn’t a lot to go on… but I’ll certainly keep an eye out for her when on patrols. At least Dreamer is really distinctive. That should give me time to evacuate if she’s in the area,” Spark said, letting out a sigh of frustration. “Is that everything, though?”

  “Oh, I wish. I’ve also heard a few rumors that I wanted to tell everyone about. I don’t know if you heard about the satellite that had a catastrophic malfunction on the seventeenth?” Decarin asked, raising his eyebrows as he looked around.

  Spark frowned, then shook her head. “No, I didn’t. Why would that matter?”

  “Well, it was pulverized, and some people originally thought that it got hit by a meteor or the like. However, according to the rumors I’ve been hearing, the military got a bit more of a shock than that. Apparently, they caught sight of objects descending through the atmosphere immediately afterward, and they landed all over the western US,” Decarin said, his explanation rousing Spark’s curiosity as he pulled up a map. “Supposedly there were five. One landed in Wyoming, another in northern Nevada, another in the mountains of Colorado, and two in Utah, one south of Vernal and another in the Dugway Proving Grounds. They all touched down, then exploded a couple of minutes later.”

  For an instant they were all silent, and Spark’s eyes widened a little. It was Archon who groaned softly, though, covering her eyes.

  “Dec… please tell me that you aren’t suggesting we may have aliens in the area?” Archon asked, her voice almost pained.

  “I’m not suggesting anything! I’m saying that the military thinks there is and has all of the sites cordoned off and under hermetically sealed tents,” Decarin replied quickly, sounding just the tiniest bit irritated. “It’s still all rumors, of course. It could be some secret military ship that crashed, or even that of a villain. I’m just trying to let you know now, rather than when it could bite us in the ass.”

  “Hmm… well, it’s better to know than not,” Shade conceded, his voice grudging. “I believe it’s unlikely to be aliens, as we’ve only had a handful of visitors since the Advent, but it’s always possible. Thank you for the information, Decarin.”

  “Personally, I’m hoping for friendly aliens,” Spark said, her eyes bright with growing enthusiasm as she thought about some of the movies she’d seen, her excitement increasing as she did so. “I’ve always wondered what the rest of the galaxy is like!”

  “Probably chaotic and dangerous, if Earth is anything to go by,” Decarin said, relaxing and grinning at her response. “Just keep an eye out, alright? If you see any little green men or women, I want to know about it.”

  “Right!” Spark said, but her smile vanished as a chirping sound echoed through the room and Decarin swore, spinning to his control console.

  A moment later he grimaced and spoke up. “We’ve got a mage breaking into the Paragon City Museum! Wards are holding her off for the moment, but I’ve no idea how long that’ll last.”

  “On it!” Spark said, springing to her feet and glancing at Shade. “You coming?”

  “Of course. I’ll be right behind you,” Shade said, standing a bit more slowly.

  “Be safe out there,” Archon cautioned, climbing to her feet as she added, “I’ll get ready, so call for backup if you need it.”

  “Sounds good!” Spark replied, and dashed toward the door, not going at full speed quite yet. She really wished that Decarin could build secure doors that could keep up with her speed, but he hadn’t managed it yet.

  Still, at least she had a villain to vent some frustrations on.

  Chapter 7

  Tuesday, April 22nd, 2031

  Fairfield, Utah

  Okris didn’t like its situation, even if it was currently quite secure. None of the local species had picked up its trail, though some of the law-keepers were trying to track it down with pathetic efficiency. It was easy to avoid them, with how loud their thoughts tended to be.

  Despite that, Okris also knew better than to underestimate the savages native to this world, not after one of them had ripped its pod apart. A full pod was considered to be stronger than virtually any psychic in the local sector, yet the alien mind had crushed them. Oh, it hadn’t been easy for the mind to do so, but it’d been simultaneously distracted and far from its home world, which was enough to spark fear in Okris’s mind. It was only the distraction that had allowed Okris to reach an escape pod in time, and it’d been able to feel it as the Dominant’s mind had failed at last, crushed by the horrid alien intelligence.

  Fortunately, that mind appeared to be an extreme outlier among the local savages. Unfortunately, the local species also appeared to be freaks of the highest order, to Okris’s shock. After infiltrating the minds of the locals and plumbing them for the details of the world, Okris had learned that their power-users, what they called superheroes and supervillains, were a minimum of ten times more common than among the vast majority of other species in the local sector, if not even more common. Worse, they had a proportionately higher number of incredibly powerful power-users… and there was a dragon on the planet as well. That didn’t bode well at all.

  For now, it was taking its time, though. There was no need to rush since it could find nutrients that suited it easily on the planet, and it was easy to convince locals to allow it to use space in their structures to work. The main problem, from Okris’s point of view, was that it needed to return to the Multitude and warn them about this world. A species such as this one could not be allowed to grow into a greater power, not unless they were a properly subjugated slave-species.

  So Okris sat at the primitive computer, laboriously typing as it searched for the information it needed. It would find a way to return to the Multitude, one way or another.

  It was somewhat more secure in the kn
owledge that it was far more powerful than the vast majority of savages on this world. Those without powers were startlingly weak, and Okris most certainly wasn’t.

  Tuesday, April 22nd, 2031

  Undisclosed Location, Utah

  “Congratulations, you can walk again.”

  The woman who spoke had a slightly sharp voice, pretty but with something subtly off about it, and Amber paused, looking up and toward the door as she smiled thinly.

  In the door was a woman who was just as subtly wrong as her voice. She had long red hair and a beautiful face with bright green eyes, but every feature was almost a hair too sharp-edged, or even too perfect in some cases. She looked like more of an idealized sculpture of a person made by someone who didn’t quite understand what made a person look fully real. On the other hand, Black Emerald was rather insane to begin with, which made the wrongness a little more understandable. She was also rather short, standing only four inches past five feet. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the pantsuit she wore was a dark green that was almost black. The woman wasn’t terribly subtle most of the time.

  “Yes, I can. Thank you for cloning this body for me; it saved me an enormous amount of effort,” Amber said, forcing herself to smile more fully, and keeping her mind well away from her host’s. The last time she’d gotten near Emerald’s mind, the woman’s wards had been quite unpleasant. Even if she’d gotten past them, the horrific mess of the woman’s consciousness wouldn’t have been something she’d want to touch. It was odd that the insane were so much more resistant to her powers.

  “Pfft. You’d have found someone to mind control eventually, and I know you can do the work yourself. Your so-called daughter proves that much. I’m sure the main reason you came to me was because I already had a sample from you,” Emerald said, waving her hand dismissively. “There’s no need to try to flatter me, Shadowmind. You offered payment for a service, and I delivered. It’s as simple as that.”

  Amber winced, looking around as she spoke. “Must you use that name here? This isn’t exactly private.”

  The room they were in was a nice one, better than the hospital room she’d initially been housed in. It had a balcony viewing a sparkling blue lake, green fields, and the mountains beyond, which was a nice touch. Amber was mostly impressed that her host had managed to operate the clinic and pharmacy for as long as she had without being unmasked. Or, more likely, those who knew were too scared of the villain to try to do something about it.

  “No, but that doesn’t matter. Everyone here either willingly serves me or is a thrall, so they wouldn’t tell anyone about you even if they overhear. At worst they’ll ask me questions about you,” Emerald said calmly, shrugging. “Not that I’ll tell them anything about you, of course. You’re currently a guest.”

  Amber opened her mouth to reply, then paused, thinking for a few moments before shrugging internally. While she still hated the idea of anyone hearing her name here, it wasn’t as though she could easily do anything about it, and Emerald had a point. While Emerald was insane, at least by the standards of most anyone else in the world, she also was the type to keep her word when it came to bargains. Particularly when someone offered her something she desperately wanted.

  “If that’s what you say, then so be it,” Amber said, picking up her jacket. “I’m not quite as confident in them as you are, but I’ll trust you to deal with the problems if anything crops up.”

  “Oh, I most certainly will,” Emerald said, her smile growing a bit more, and the woman tilted her head as she asked, “That said, about my payment… how much longer will it take?”

  “Mm, about a week, at a guess. I found an appropriate FBI agent and planted the knowledge of where to look in his head, and he thinks he just had a hunch. They’ve been digging into Justin’s records for a few months now, and are about ready to pounce. Once they’re done, he’ll be lucky to avoid prison, and even if he does, he won’t have a pot to piss in,” Amber replied, though internally she did wonder what Justin Fielden had done to enrage Emerald so much.

  The request had been startling, as instead of the millions of dollars that Amber had offered her, Black Emerald had instead asked Amber to ruin the man’s life in exchange for a new body. Justin had been breaking the law for years, though, which had made the task easy to carry out. He was also on the board of directors of Alliance Pharmaceuticals, which made a little more sense, as Emerald had seemed to have a grudge against them for as long as she’d been a villain.

  “Excellent. That’s the last of them,” Emerald said, her smile turning oddly contented, and she relaxed visibly for the first time since Amber had met the villainess. It was startling, and Amber stared at her for a moment, trying to decide whether to ask the question running through her mind or not. In the end, she couldn’t help her curiosity.

  “The last of them? What does that mean?” Amber asked curiously, though she was ready to defend herself if Emerald overreacted. Not that it was necessary, though, as Emerald smirked at her lazily.

  “The last of the board. Not the current one, but the original board that ruined my life. If it weren’t for them, the Black Emerald would never have existed,” Emerald said, her tone modestly caustic. “I simply decided to return the favor. Of the nine, the lives of eight are in shambles. Only Justin is left, and once he’s dealt with… I will be content.”

  “Oh?” Amber’s eyebrows rose suddenly at the explanation, both startled by the revelation and even more curious. “Are you planning to retire, then?”

  “Retire? Me? Of course not!” Emerald looked a little startled at the question, then laughed as she smiled brightly. “I intend to go almost entirely inactive, but I’m not going to retire. For good or ill, I am what they made me into.”

  “Ah, I was curious if I needed to find another contact for biological work, but if I don’t… well, that’s for the best,” Amber said, relaxing a little again. Volatile as Black Emerald could be at times, the woman was an artist when it came to biological constructs, and somehow she wove magical abilities into them most of the time as well. It was something that Amber couldn’t do, which was occasionally frustrating.

  “Mm, you’ll have to at some point, so if I were you, I’d start looking,” Emerald said, and pushed away from the doorframe as she grinned. “Still, have fun in your new body! Try not to get it crippled or killed, hm?”

  “I’ll certainly try not…” Amber started, then let her voice trail off as Emerald turned and walked out of the room, not even bothering to listen. Then the villainess rolled her eyes as she murmured, “Typical. Well, vacation’s over. Time to get back to work.”

  Amber stretched, then picked up her bags and turned toward the door. She had a nearby teleportation chamber just for her occasional business deals with Black Emerald, so she’d be able to get to a secure facility quickly and would be able to be back to work in hours at most.

  Imagining the reaction of the heroes if they knew, Amber slowly smiled and said, “I’m back. I can’t wait to see them trembling with fear.”

  And with that, she headed for the door, humming a ditty to herself, and with a distinct spring to her step.

  Chapter 8

  Thursday, April 24th, 2031

  SuperNet HQ, Paragon City

  The previous two days had been busy for Lilith, and not in the same way as her meeting with Spark, to her relief. Glendale City had scheduled a different inspector to come examine the house the day before, and Lilith had met the diffident woman that morning, taking her on a tour of the house to ensure it was within the bounds of her agreement with the city. It was, of course. She’d also been relieved to hear that the real inspector that Mountain Razor had replaced had been found unconscious at home and would make a full recovery.

  Lilith had also been practicing with her power armor, and she was relieved that no one had been around for it. The first flights had been… educational. At least she’d given the inertial sump a thorough stress-test and learned that flying power armor was not as easy as it looked. S
he’d had to take a break a few times for Circe to repair the obstacle course, too. At least she was starting to get the hang of it, and Lilith was beginning to wonder why anyone would build a suit and jump straight into crime-fighting. It was more liable to destroy everything around them, or the pilot themselves, in her opinion.

  Still, that was mostly a method of distracting herself from the absence of Gina and Rachel, Lilith knew. She didn’t like being alone, and with the concerns about going out in public, she wasn’t leaving the lair often… except for appointments, like today. Lilith really wasn’t sure what to expect from the interview, but SuperNet’s local headquarters seemed like a reasonably good place to meet.

  On the other hand, she couldn’t say she wasn’t garnering a lot more attention than she expected, and she paused in the entryway, pulling off her sunglasses as she looked around, a touch uncomfortably.

  This particular SuperNet building was far larger than most of the others in the state, which wasn’t surprising when the majority of Utah’s population lived in the region. It had also been built after Megadeath had destroyed Salt Lake City, which had forced them to rebuild virtually the entire city. There were broad glass windows allowing a view of the street, along with several screens showing different news stations around the foyer, which had nice tiles made to look like stone. Or maybe they were stone, though Lilith wasn’t certain.

  In the center of the foyer was a statue of a man in overalls and with a pair of mechanical wings extending from his back. Lilith recognized Commander Hawk, a former hero who’d helped spearhead the rescue attempts in the aftermath of Megadeath’s explosion, and who’d retired to help LANCE build the equipment they needed to face supervillains. Her brief on the region had included mention of him, and that he was still working nearby.