by Logan Jacobs
I needed to shoot down the stun-gun at the same time I continued to lead the tank toward our trap.
I was an average shot, just like I was an average driver, but I knew I might only have one chance to get this right before civilians were put into danger. I had an idea, but it would require some serious multitasking skills, and I wondered if my idea required higher than average skills.
Miles always told me that all I needed was a little more confidence in myself, so I just hoped that average multitasking abilities would be enough.
I swiveled the gatling guns on the right side of the car to get ready for my plan, just as another stun-gun bolt sparked over the top of the car and flickered dangerously close to the first row of houses that we passed. I saw a good corner to take up ahead that would roughly keep me on my planned route, and as I approached it, I readied the auto-lock function of the gatling guns.
Now all I needed to do was wait for the tank to fire its stun-gun again, and as soon as it lit up with electricity, I would hope that my guns could automatically lock on to the light and take out the stun-gun before it did any more damage to the city or to Miles’ car.
I swerved the car to the left to swing out into a wide turn toward a less-populated street to the right. I slowed down enough that the tank would be able to shoot at my side before I disappeared down the street, and then as soon as I saw the bright spark of the stun-gun as it readied to fire, I engaged the auto-lock function on my own guns.
My gatling guns screamed to life as they spat out a hail of bullets toward the tank, and they all exploded directly into the target. The stun-gun burst apart in a spray of metal and sparking electricity, and it must have been enough to surprise the AI system because the whole tank immediately veered off course and destroyed the front lawn of a whole row of houses before it regained control over itself.
I sped down the side street as the houses began to grow further and further apart, but the tank stayed right behind me. We were already on the outskirts of the city, so we just had to travel a little further before we passed the city limits and made it to the killing fields.
As the tank continued to chase after me, I kept glancing in the rear-view mirror to make sure that it wasn’t about to fire some new weapon at me. I wondered how long it would take the AI to realize that the stun-gun no longer worked, and when it did, I wondered what it would try next.
I didn’t think it would change tactics all that much. After all, the AI system was a robot, not a person, and a human might panic and make stupid decisions, but a robot would never do that. It would just switch to the next logical plan, and since Slade’s AI was much less intelligent than Aileen, I didn’t figure that it would be overly complicated.
So if one gun failed, it would probably just swap it for another one.
Another portal opened up on the hood of the tank behind me, and the gun that slid out of it looked identical to the last one, and that meant I could destroy it in exactly the same way. I swung out again to take the next left, glanced in my mirrors to see electricity gather around the barrel of the new stun-gun, and then I activated the auto-lock on the gatling gun along the other side of my car.
The second stun-gun exploded into a shower of sparks as soon as my bullets met their target, and the tank swerved up onto the sidewalk. This time, it corrected itself before it plowed through another row of suburban lawns, but the tank opened another gun portal on its roof before I could celebrate my victory.
As soon as we passed the next row of houses, we passed the city limits, and that meant there was only open road in front of us. There were no civilians, no private property, and no collateral damage to worry about out here, so before the AI-controlled tank could fire its third gun at me, I decided to carry out a little bit of target practice.
I knew that I was supposed to wait for Beacon and Penumbra to finish our plan against the remotely operated vehicles, but I didn’t think it would hurt to do a little more damage while I led the tank toward our meeting point. And ever since I’d seen Miles use the rocket launcher on the roof of the car the last time he drove it, I had really wanted to try it out myself.
As soon as I kicked the car into a higher gear to put some distance between me and the heavy tank, I activated the rocket launcher. The cannon slid up from the trunk and secured itself to the roof, and the screen beside me switched to show the auto-aim out the back of the car.
The moment the tank came close enough for the auto-lock, it beeped to indicate that it was in place, and then I fired.
A rocket shot out of the cannon toward the front of the tank. The recoil shook the whole car, but the detached wheels stabilized it fast enough that I was able to look behind me to get a full view of my handiwork. There was a massive explosion at the front of the tank, and the force of the blast trembled the ground all the way from the tank to my car.
If a human had been driving the tank, they probably wouldn’t have been able to survive such an impact, but as soon as the Shadow Knight’s AI recovered from the initial blast, it sped forward again and continued after me.
I slammed down on the gas again to put some more distance between us, and I just hoped that we would make it to the fields with Beacon and Penumbra before it caught up to me.
The tank’s third gun that was positioned on its roof suddenly opened fire, but instead of a stream of electricity, it spewed out actual bullets at the back of my armored car. The armor alloys were tougher now than they had been, but so many bullets sprayed into the back of the car that the metal slowly started to dent under the heavy fire.
“Did you guys make it yet?” I yelled through the comms.
“Almost there!” Beacon shouted. “Penumbra, are you ready?”
“I’m already here,” the blonde said. “The small bikes were easy, so they’re all balled up into one giant hunk of metal, and I’m ready to crush something!”
“Perfect,” I said. “I’m bringing you my tank now!”
I took a sharp turn off the highway and down a smaller dirt road toward the large empty field that we’d picked as our killing grounds. As I reached the edge of the field, I saw Penumbra where she floated high above the ground, and a massive chunk of metal floated just in front of her.
As soon as I came a little closer, Penumbra levitated herself a little higher into the air, and the scrap-metal of the Shadow Knight’s two motorbikes floated along with her.
I hit the brakes and made another sharp turn across the field, but the AI-controlled vehicle followed right behind me so fast that it didn’t notice the floating superheroine or the huge ball of metal she had suspended in the air. It just barreled after me and then passed directly underneath Penumbra.
I skidded to a stop and spun the car around so I could watch what happened next.
The moment the tank drove under the giant hunk of crushed up metal, Penumbra tapped the top of her weapon, and the scrap-metal plunged down toward the roof of the tank with the force of a dozen more armored tanks.
Metal screeched against metal as Penumbra increased the weight of the crushed vehicles until the tank itself started to sink into the soil. The tank’s wheels whirred and grinded against the dirt, but after a few more seconds of crushing weight, it collapsed into itself with a final crunch of metal.
“Pulling off the highway now,” Beacon told us.
Sure enough, I looked up to see the ex-apprentice as he led his own tank onto the killing fields, and I knew that Penumbra wouldn’t get a chance to rest. Instead, the blonde heroine flew down to the metal wreckage, levitated the tank and the smaller crushed vehicles all together, and floated back up into the air just in time for the second tank to roll into position.
Penumbra smashed it all down onto the second tank, and it crumpled even faster than the first one.
I cheered inside my armored car as the heap of metal hissed and spat, but I jumped out of the armored sports car as soon as Penumbra staggered to the ground.
“Are you okay?” I demanded as I wrapped one of her arms
around my shoulder for support.
“Y-yeah, I’m fine,” she gasped. “J-just need to catch my breath. Wow. That was tough.”
“It was amazing,” Beacon said as he climbed out of his own tank.
“It really was,” I said. “You put all of the Shadow Knight’s AI-controlled vehicles permanently out of commission.”
“Well, I couldn’t have done it without you,” Penumbra said with a shaky grin.
“Team effort,” I said.
After Penumbra regained her breath, she dropped her arm from my shoulder and straightened her posture.
“You haven’t heard from Miles, have you?” she asked as she bit her lip.
“No, but that doesn’t mean anything,” I assured her. “He always comes out on top, remember?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true…” Penumbra trailed off.
“Besides, he warned us this would happen with the signal jammer,” Beacon said. “So we just have to trust him.”
“Exactly,” I said, even though I felt a pit of worry in my own stomach. “He’s tough, so he’ll be fine. Plus, he has Dynamo with him.”
“So what do we do now?” Penumbra asked. “Please don’t tell me we have to just sit around and wait again.”
“Well, we could get this stuff back to the mansion before any police officers decide to show up,” I said.
“The police never show up anymore,” Beacon scoffed. “They’re all too afraid of the Shadow Knight to try to help.”
“Do you think Miles could use any of this?” Penumbra asked.
I glanced at the wrecked tanks, and they looked like toy trucks that had gotten chewed up with their back ends completely crushed. There probably wouldn’t be a lot left for Miles to salvage, but he’d been able to reverse-engineer so much from what he’d already taken from Slade that I figured we might as well bring them back with us.
“It’s worth a try,” I said with a shrug.
Most of the work was going to be on Penumbra, since Beacon and I couldn’t carry one busted tank, let alone two, and it wasn’t like we could just tow them behind our own vehicles. After Penumbra made both tanks light enough to float, she balanced them on top of Beacon’s tank, and then she followed us as we took the long way around the city and back toward the mansion.
There were still no emergency alerts from Aileen about the situation with the Shadow Knight and Miles, so even though I knew it had to be close to an end, all I could do was trust him.
Because if anyone could kill the Shadow Knight, it was Miles Nelson.
Chapter 17
Elizabeth and I were hidden on the rooftop of a smaller building just next to the warehouse we’d taken over, and I had to admit that I was pretty proud of my handiwork.
I’d had Aileen study all records of previous Maniac hideouts that the Shadow Knight had extensive notes on. From that information, she’d used a predictive algorithm to create a design for the outside of the warehouse that the Maniac was likely to take over. He tended to get pretty over-dramatic with the chaotic paint splashes and over-the-top drawings of cheshire cat smiles once he took over a place for his hideout, and even though that wasn’t the best way to keep a secret hideout very secret, I guessed that all of the Maniac’s hideouts were meant to be found.
After all, they had to be obvious from the outside so the Shadow Knight knew where to go.
It made our plan a little easier, at least.
In all likelihood, the Maniac probably had an actual secret base hidden somewhere that wasn’t related to his dramatic takeovers. The Shadow Knight’s deranged notes had indicated something like this existed, but we had no need to involve the actual Maniac, so I didn’t look too into it. We just had to make a good copy of his methods, and we definitely had.
So now all we had to do was wait for the Shadow Knight to take the bait.
Our vantage point from the adjacent building gave us a perfect view of the front door of the warehouse, so we could wait there and watch for whenever the Shadow Knight finally showed up. It was also easy to leap from the roof of our building to the roof of the warehouse, and that gave us access to the door on the roof that we could enter through once Slade arrived.
And then as soon as he was inside, we would enter the warehouse from the roof and activate the security system to seal us all inside. While we locked the building down, Aileen would play a pre-recorded broadcast of the Maniac’s voice to keep the Shadow Knight’s attention. She had already hooked herself up to the warehouse’s systems, so it should be a smooth process.
Of course, if we needed to, Elizabeth and I could both escape out through the same door on the roof, but I didn’t think that would be necessary.
“He should be here soon,” my dark-haired girlfriend said from where she crouched at my side.
“Yup,” I replied. “Get ready.”
We were both braced against the ledge of the rooftop as we waited for the Shadow Knight to show up. It was dark enough outside that we wouldn’t be visible, but I doubted Slade would be looking for us, anyway. He had a single-minded focus when it came to the Maniac, and that obsession was what we were counting on.
I had a few extra weapons at my disposal, along with my signal jammer that I would use to keep the Shadow Knight from contacting his tanks and other rescue vehicles. I was hesitant about using it since I’d only had an exception coded in for Aileen to be able to reach me, and it would cut off all contact between us and Norma’s group.
“Norma will do fine on her own,” Elizabeth assured me as if she could tell what I was thinking.
“I know.” I grimaced. “She’s plenty capable, but so is the Shadow Knight.”
“It’ll be easier for her group to fight his tanks if they’re only controlled by an AI,” Elizabeth said.
“But it could help us distract him if he’s focused on remotely controlling his tanks at the same time he’s trying to fight us,” I said but then shrugged. “No, we’ll stick to the original plan. We can’t change it now.”
I wasn’t the kind of person to ever second-guess myself, but the Shadow Knight was by far my hardest opponent yet. Keeping myself one continued step ahead of him meant that I constantly had to think about and adjust my plans against him. And it wasn’t like he’d outsmarted me or anything close to it, but Slade was annoyingly good at finding ways to escape from the jaws of death. He was just as much of a pest as the crow that he’d themed his entire heroic identity around.
I couldn’t wait to pluck the feathers out of his ridiculous cape one by one.
Since the Shadow Knight was very good at getting in close for hand-to-hand combat, and since he’d already shown that he could dodge my blasters with his suit’s advanced technology, I had refined the design of my own suit specifically to counter his strengths.
Instead of spending time on something pointless like a cape, I had added a few more subtle spikes to the shoulders, plus a line of razor-sharp points down each forearm. The spikes along my forearm were created specifically to tear through his protective suit and to make it more difficult to fight me in close quarters.
Besides, I thought they looked pretty damn cool.
“Miles,” Elizabeth whispered. “I think he’s here.”
I peered over the ledge of the roof and noticed a high-tech, armored car approaching. It had a similar design to the one I’d taken over and rebuilt in my own image, so I knew it had to be the Shadow Knight in the final upgraded version of his car.
I was itching to get my hands on it to tear it apart and dissect whatever new tech he’d added to it, but that could be my prize after we ended Slade’s life.
Just as we expected, Slade approached the entrance, tore open the door, and slammed it shut behind him, all before he even bothered to observe his surroundings.
“That was almost too easy,” Elizabeth said with a frown.
“Don’t forget that the Maniac turns the Shadow Knight into a totally different person,” I said with a shrug.
“That’s true, but we still
better hurry,” Elizabeth said.
“He’s in,” I said through the second channel in our comm system. “I repeat, he’s in. Strike now.”
“We’re on it,” Norma responded.
I immediately shut off the comms and activated the signal jammer. It wouldn’t last for very long, but it would hopefully be long enough for the rest of my team to fully engage the Shadow Knight’s AI-operated vehicles.
I trusted that Norma could handle herself, and I knew that Beacon and Penumbra should be able to do their jobs, too. I had to trust them, since I couldn’t afford to be distracted by anything right now. They would carry out their part of the plan, and Elizabeth and I would take care of ours.
“Let’s go,” I hissed.
We both took a small running start, leaped across the gap between roofs, and landed solidly on top of the warehouse. As soon as we entered through the roof door, Elizabeth shut the door silently behind us while I moved toward our security system. We kept ourselves low on the steel rafters where they overlooked the main warehouse floor, but the Shadow Knight was too distracted to look up.
“I’ve got you this time, Shadow Knight!” the Maniac giggled through the warehouse speakers.
Aileen had really outdone herself with her imitation of Slade’s archenemy.
“Come out where I can see you, coward!” Shadow Knight bellowed.
I reached the security system we’d installed and immediately activated it.
A loud, cheerful alarm blared throughout the warehouse, and it sounded exactly like the kind of alarm the Maniac would actually use. As the alarm shrieked through the speakers, a steel barrier dropped down over every single door and window of the warehouse. The barriers were made of the same kind of metal that we’d reverse-engineered from the sides of Slade’s tank, and even though he might not realize that, it made me a little giddy.
Once the door and window barriers were all in place, the alarm fell silent, and the Shadow Knight just continued to shift around on the dark warehouse floor. He raised his arms as he waited for his beloved enemy to join him, and it almost looked like he wanted to embrace him instead of fight him.