Evil Genius 4: Becoming the Apex Supervillain

by Logan Jacobs

  “What if we drew him out with a supervillain or something?” Penumbra suggested. “He’s still out there trying to fight crime, so he’d probably respond.”

  “Yup, so let’s see what we can find,” I said, and then I started to scroll through Slade’s files again.

  “Are you thinking of any supervillain in particular?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Hold on,” I said as I studied the files. “Something here doesn’t quite add up.”

  “What do you mean?” Beacon asked.

  “Well, there are a lot of files in here, but not nearly as many as there should be based on the amount of space this took up on my drive,” I explained. “Something’s missing.”

  “What?” Norma blinked. “You think he hid files even deeper on his secret hidden computer?”

  “He might be pretty paranoid, but…” Beacon frowned. “Not that paranoid.”

  I disagreed.

  Of course, now that I knew there were still hidden files, I could figure out how to make them visible, so the first thing I did was run a few cracking programs to de-encrypt any extra data. It worked quickly to make the hidden information visible and to push past any passwords that were set in place, but when it finished, I was surprised to see that it revealed only one hidden folder.

  A folder named MANIAC.

  “Maniac…” Elizabeth trailed off.

  “That guy again?” Norma asked.

  “Of course,” Beacon sighed. “Of course he’d protect his files on Maniac.”

  In hindsight, it was painfully obvious.

  The Shadow Knight had been obsessed with the Maniac even before we’d come along and pushed him over the edge. In reality, we’d probably only sped up the clock on his insanity because Slade’s obsession with Maniac would have been his downfall sooner or later.

  After all, no sane man kept this much information on his archnemesis and didn’t use it to kill him. The data in this file on the mad villain was far more extensive than any of the other villains, and it was even organized into sub-folders on every aspect of the Maniac’s life that Slade had discovered.

  One folder surprised me, and that was the one that contained all Slade’s theories about the Maniac’s abilities. Maniac didn’t seem like he used superpowers in his chaotic acts of violence and destruction around the city, but Slade seemed certain that the Maniac had a superpower of some kind. It could be some kind of insane delusion because of how easily the Maniac seemed to evade him and get the better of him, but it was something to keep in mind.

  I was certain that we would end up having to go after the Maniac sooner or later, so all of this would be useful at some point. But for right now, it was at least a good indication of Slade’s mental state.

  “Look at this.” I grinned as I opened up another folder full of voice clips and recordings. “I wonder how often he listens to these?”

  “Probably too often,” Penumbra sighed. “It’s kind of creepy…”

  “Way creepy,” Beacon agreed. “But I always thought his obsession with the Maniac was creepy.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked as I gathered up the voice files to send over to Aileen so she could cobble together a perfect copy of the Maniac’s voice.

  “Well,” Beacon started, “whenever we, uh, asked about the Maniac or anything, Slade would freak out. He said things like the Maniac is his and only his to fight, and that we needed to stay out of it. We weren’t allowed to mention his name at all or the Shadow Knight would totally lose it, and…”

  “And?” Norma asked when Beacon didn’t continue.

  “I got really angry once,” Beacon murmured as he looked away from us. “The Maniac makes a habit out of killing the Shadow Knight’s Silver Squires. The second time, just after I became Beacon, Slade had picked up a new apprentice, some young kid named Brad. The Maniac killed him really soon after he started his apprenticeship, but Slade refused to let us go after him, so I got really mad.”

  “Was that why you fought him?” Penumbra asked with a tilt of her head. “I remember you two really got into it one time.”

  “Yeah.” Beacon nodded. “I wanted to go after the Maniac, because it was really disturbing to see someone I knew die like that. I kept thinking that it could have been me. But Slade refused, and he didn’t even seem upset about the Silver Squire’s death. He just seemed upset because he’d lost.”

  “Lost?” I asked. “You mean because he lost a squire?”

  “No,” Beacon growled. “I mean because he lost a round in whatever game he’d been playing with the Maniac. He wasn’t upset about the kid’s death at all, or at least, he definitely didn’t seem like he was.”

  “Maybe he was just hiding it?” Elizabeth suggested.

  “I don’t think so,” Beacon replied. “I fought Shadow Knight because I wanted to go after Maniac and kill him for what he’d done to Brad, but Slade fought me to protect the Maniac from me.”

  “I remember him spouting off some stuff about how we need to be above people like him and not kill in return, but now that I think about it… it was really like he was protecting the Maniac,” Penumbra admitted.

  The further I browsed through Slade’s files and notes on the Maniac, the more deranged they got. His obsession appeared to have grown exponentially over time, to the point where it definitely seemed like Beacon was right about the fact that Slade had some sort of twisted protective relationship with the Maniac.

  If I had this amount of information on one of my enemies, they’d already be long dead.

  The Maniac was the Shadow Knight’s weakness, and he’d never risk bringing one of his overpowered, armored tanks into a fight against him. He’d want to fight on equal footing.

  That did leave the issue of what Slade would do once we started to fight and he found out that it was just me, and not the Maniac. Based on the design blueprints, his vehicles could be called over to him at any time, as long as they were unoccupied.

  So I’d just have to make sure they were occupied.

  “Okay.” I leaned back again and swiveled the chair around to address the rest of the group. “I know what our plan is.”

  “We’re using the Maniac, right?” Norma guessed with an excited gleam in her eyes.

  “You got it,” I said with a grin. “So this is my plan: we make a recording with the voice clips that I sent Aileen, and we send a taunting message to the Shadow Knight to lure him out to a specific location. We’ll set up one of Grayville’s many abandoned warehouses to look like something the Maniac would use as a hideout, and Dynamo and I will wait there to ambush him.”

  “Sounds good,” Beacon replied and rubbed his hands together. “But what about the rest of us?”

  “You and Penumbra will take the tank, and Norma can take my armored car,” I continued. “And you’ll need to distract the Shadow Knight’s AI-controlled vehicles. We’ve tracked him for long enough that we know where most of his vehicles tend to be stationed, and it looks like he only has a few of them that are still functional.”

  “Plus, two of them are pretty minor,” Norma added. “They’re both just upgraded motorcycles, so they’re fast but also shouldn’t be a huge issue. Slade only has two actual tanks left, so we can split up and go after them.”

  “I can handle the motorcycles,” Penumbra volunteered. “I don’t really need to accompany Beacon in the tank, do I? As long as I can get close enough to touch the smaller vehicles, I can crush them under their own weight.”

  “If you think you can manage that,” I told her, and I was surprised but also pleased to see her take such initiative.

  “I can, definitely!” The blonde clapped her hands together. “Probably not against the bigger tanks, I mean, but I should be able to handle the smaller ones on my own, no problem.”

  “Good girl,” I praised her.

  Penumbra just blushed and twirled a lock of blonde hair around her finger.

  “So Norma will distract one of the big tanks he has left, and I’ll distract the other one
?” Beacon asked.

  “You got it,” I said.

  “And that means Miles and I will fight the Shadow Knight directly,” Elizabeth said. “Between the two of us, we should be able to handle him.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ll make sure the warehouse we take over is prepared with traps and weapons anyway, and I’ll secure the doors to keep him trapped in there with us. He won’t be able to escape.”

  I intended to go into this way more prepared than usual, with multiple backup plans set up in case the Shadow Knight managed to think ahead of me. I doubted that would be the case, but I had to be prepared for absolutely everything he could throw at us. Without his armored vehicles to back him up, he was significantly less of a threat to Elizabeth and me, and I had faith in Beacon and Norma’s abilities to keep Slade’s tanks distracted while Penumbra took care of the smaller remote-operated vehicles.

  I also could implement a signal jammer inside the warehouse we took over, just to ensure that Slade couldn’t call his tanks to smash through the walls even if he wanted to. That might take a little longer to set up, but if he couldn’t contact his vehicles to control them remotely, that would also make it easier for Norma, Penumbra, and Beacon to destroy them.

  It also meant Elizabeth and I might not be able to contact the rest of our team from inside the warehouse, but I could code in some kind of exception for my own communication devices. At any rate, it was worth looking into.

  “Alright,” I announced as I stood up from the chair. “Let’s split up and start to work on our respective pieces of this plan.”

  “Okay, Miles.” Norma nodded. “I’ll go through every updated satellite picture of Grayville to keep tabs on the tanks.”

  “I can help,” Beacon suggested. “I’ll check the news reports and go through the blueprints some more.”

  “Penumbra, you can train with me,” Elizabeth told the blonde heroine. “You should get some practice in.”

  “Okay!” the blonde said with a grin.

  I could tell that Elizabeth was also a little bit worried about our upcoming fight against the Shadow Knight and wanted to get some practice in for herself, but I just smiled and let the two superheroines go train.

  While everyone else got to work on their parts of our plan, I headed back to the garage to help Aileen with the preparations on my own tank and armored car. The plane-glider stood off to one side in the garage, but it would have to wait there until another battle since I didn’t want to make any improvements to it right now.

  Instead, I decided to open it up and pick apart the inner workings of the propulsion system. If I could add the power of flight to my suit, then I would really be at an advantage in our next fight with the Shadow Knight. Even if I couldn’t fully fly, I wanted to at least be able to jump up several stories and then smoothly land back on the ground.

  It took some time, but I did manage to reverse-engineer the propulsion system of Norma’s glider, and then I installed it into the thrusters of my boots and gauntlets. Combined with my pre-existing blaster technology, the result was a more stabilized hover when I used it to jump, and my palm-blaster now practically vaporized the sandbag test targets.

  I was incredibly excited to test it out on the Shadow Knight’s face.

  I also made a few improvements to Elizabeth’s suit. I’d enhanced and streamlined the design, so her gauntlets were less bulky but could still pack just as hard of a punch. I hoped it would allow her to be more agile, since the Shadow Knight’s fighting style tended to be quick jabs rather than slow, solid punches.

  Even with all the time I spent on the improvements to our suits, it still only took a few days of work to get the tank up to a level that I considered satisfactory. I didn’t install any sort of complicated systems in it because instead, I prioritized its offensive capabilities.

  We outfitted the tank with three mounted cannons in a triangular pattern balanced on top, and we protected the cannons with a layer of the same sturdy steel alloy that the body of the tank had been made out of. Several gatling guns were now on the front hood of the tank, so they could all fire at once to rain down a massive stream of bullets. The barrels of the guns could swivel around with some basic controls, so the driver of the tank could fire the gatling gun at most angles. And finally, the back of the tank was outfitted with a rocket launcher that would cause a hell of a lot of destruction if it was aimed at the wrong target, so it was only meant to be used in case of pursuit.

  The idea of firing a rocket point-blank into another tank was a very exciting thought, and I was almost jealous that I wouldn’t be the one who drove it.

  But then again, I would be the one who killed the Shadow Knight, so it was a fair trade-off.

  “I think we’re finally ready,” I told Aileen once I’d run a couple diagnostic tests on the new improvements we’d made not only on the tank, but on the similar ones made to the armored car.

  “I believe so,” my AI agreed in a sultry tone. “This is far deadlier than Slade’s original design.”

  “As it should have been all along,” I scoffed. “How far along are you on the Maniac taunt?”

  “It is also complete,” Aileen said. “The preparations on the warehouse have also been finalized. We should be ready for action within the next several hours.”

  “Alright,” I said and glanced at one of the windows to see that it was only about noon. “We should go make sure everyone else is ready, too. I want to do this tonight.”

  “My calculations show that tonight will be the best time to attack,” Aileen agreed as we headed back toward the mansion together. “The Shadow Knight has increased his operations, and most of his villains have gone into hiding to escape his wrath. It will not be much longer before he decides to come attack us directly, so it is a good choice to go after him now.”

  “He’s desperate,” I said, “but that works in our favor, too. Has there been any movement from the Maniac?”

  “Nothing,” Aileen confirmed. “He has been inactive, and based on the extensive information we now have on him, he is likely sitting back to enjoy the chaos.”

  “How typical,” I laughed and pushed open the door to enter the mansion. “He won’t be enjoying it for very long. He’s on my list of assholes to murder, too.”

  The rest of my team was scattered around the living room and adjacent kitchen, as they usually were. My entrance drew all of their attention to me, but that was also pretty typical.

  “I think we’re ready, Miles,” Norma said with a surprising show of confidence.

  “Good timing,” I replied. “Because we’re ready, too.”

  We all caught up on everything we had finished in preparation for our showdown with Slade, and Norma and Aileen made a huge pot of pasta and meatballs to fuel us in our fight. By the time we had made sure everything was ready and filled our bellies with food, the sun had started to set, so I gathered everyone around the kitchen table.

  It was finally time to send the manipulated message to Slade. I’d told Aileen to use the voice clips that the Shadow Knight had hoarded from his archnemesis to create a perfect mimic of his voice, and we’d crafted exactly the kind of message that the lunatic was likely to send in order to draw Slade out of hiding.

  Even though we had already used this tactic before, I knew that Slade wouldn't be able to resist the Maniac. Rational thought immediately went out the window whenever he was involved.

  “Ready?” I scanned the faces of my gathered team.

  “Ready,” they all said together.

  Every single one of them seemed confident, all thanks to my careful planning. Even the two ex-apprentices that I’d rescued from the Shadow Knight seemed more confident than they ever had before, and so did Norma. Elizabeth was always confident, but she seemed more relaxed than she usually was before a fight, and I knew that was because of how much I had prepared this time.

  “Calling Dan Slade’s personal answering machine,” Aileen announced.

  “I doubt he’d answer, bu
t it’s better to send a direct message than to actually get him on the phone,” I explained to the rest of the team.

  As the voicemail beeped to allow the message to begin, Aileen made a sound like she was clearing her throat, but I knew that was purely to be dramatic like the Maniac would be.

  “Oh, Shadow Knight!” the Maniac’s voice echoed through my kitchen perfectly as Aileen relayed the message. “It’s been so long since you’ve come out to play with me. I know you’re just sooooo busy these days, but won’t you join me? These warehouse workers won’t last very long if you don’t come to help them! I’ll even include the coordinates for you-- isn’t that kind of me?”

  The message ended with the Maniac’s voice rattling off coordinates to the warehouse I’d taken over, and then it ended.

  I couldn’t have asked for a better message. Stage one, complete.

  This time we were more prepared than ever, so there was no way the Shadow Knight could possibly win.

  Chapter 16 - Norma

  I had never really liked the Shadow Knight.

  I wasn’t a fan of him like Dynamo had been, and the best thing I’d ever thought about him was that he was a worse version of Miles. At first it seemed like maybe he had some promise, since he wasn’t as image-obsessed as the Wardens were, but it turned out he was even worse than them. The Shadow Knight was dangerous and a liability to everyone except the criminals he tried so hard to protect.

  Besides, Slade had never bothered to learn my real name, and the fact that he always called me ‘Nora’ irritated me almost more than anything else.

  Ever since I started working with Miles, I couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t fight crime the way he did. What was the point of filling up the prisons with supervillains? The way that the Wardens and the Shadow Knight dealt with criminals just made it so that the worst kinds of people were never really punished for their actions.

  Miles was completely right-- all supervillains deserved to die.