by Wyatt Kane
Even the devices stacked on the workbench, the ones Ty, Tempest and Lilith had taken from Bain and the others, were a testament to the Architect’s skills rather than Ty’s. The Architect had dreamed them up and turned that dream into a reality.
In this room, Ty was no more than a visitor. Or perhaps he was an interloper, entering the domain of someone he actively revered without his permission.
For a brief moment, Ty simply stood at the doorway, one of Dinah’s sheets wrapped around him like a toga. Both he and the girls had been asleep when Dinah’s alert had gone off, and no one had yet taken the time to get properly dressed.
Perhaps, Ty thought, he should do that now. At least then, when he came back to the workshop, he would be respectfully attired.
Then he shook his head and laughed at himself. What was he thinking? he wondered. He did have permission to be there. Tempest had given it to him. And anyway, he had come with a purpose, that of saving the Architect’s life.
Ty Wilcox wasted no more time. He entered the workshop with a greater sense of reverence than he might have before, and activated the fabricator that perched at one end of the workbench.
The plans for what he wanted were ready and waiting for him. Even the petri dish was in place.
“Fabricate medical nanites,” he said.
As usual, the fabricator was obedient to Ty’s commands. It whirred into life, and Ty sat on a stool to wait and to contemplate what the drug he’d taken had done.
He intended to bring up his character sheet again to check what his stats now showed. The AZT-407 had acted like a buff across the board. He had been smarter, stronger and more durable than usual, but most importantly, his technological enhancement skill had taken a serious boost. It had been like his brain was full of sparks. Like he was firing on all cylinders, with the turbo kicking in. Like he could see things with a clarity far beyond normal.
But now, in comparison, his brain felt like a lump of old clay. No buzz remained, and if he’d been able to think at light speed before, now he had to push each thought through the mud.
The buzz was over, yet the skill remained, and he wanted to check how that was reflected.
He was reaching for the button on his device when Lilith popped into existence in front of him.
Ty’s first instinct was to smile at the beautiful demon woman. Sporting perfectly integrated wings, horns, hooves, and a tail, Lilith was a flawless representation of a succubus, and yet there was an innocence about her as well. Like Ty, she had draped one of Dinah’s sheets around her when the alert had gone off, and hadn’t yet changed into her normal clothes.
Lilith wasn’t smiling. She seemed to have recovered from the effort required to teleport both Tempest and the Architect in through Ty’s shield, but her expression was worried.
“What’s wrong?” Ty asked.
“Sorry,” she said. “I just had to get away. It felt a little too personal, you know? And I wasn’t helping anything by being there.”
Ty understood. Lilith was the most recent addition to their superhero team, with the arrangement being consummated only a few hours earlier. If it had been Ty, no doubt he would have felt a little awkward as well, especially if Tempest had been as antagonistic to him as she had been with Lilith.
Yet the blonde superhero had come around in the end. Once she accepted Lilith had been acting under duress, the demon woman’s natural charms had done the rest. Ty thought Lilith would have been beautiful even without the device on her wrist. With it, the demon woman was irresistible, and not just to himself. Dinah and Tempest felt it as well.
It was just how things worked.
Ty nodded his understanding. “I get it,” he said. He might have said more, might have mentioned that the nanites the fabricator was busily creating would make all the difference, but Lilith spoke first.
“Ty, who is he? The old man from the alley, who Tempest cares so much about?” Lilith asked.
3: Medical Nanites
The question hit Ty like a bucket of cold water to the face. Lilith had become so integral to the team in such a short time that he often forgot she didn’t have the same knowledge as he did. She was also naturally quiet, apparently preferring to figure things out for herself than to ask.
As briefly as he could, he filled her in. “They call him the Architect. He was the first superhero, and even now, most of the world doesn’t believe he was real. He invented these devices we wear.” Ty indicated the small stack of devices on the workbench.
“We thought all along that the device Bain wore could only be his. So we knew the Master must have had something to do with the Architect’s disappearance. Tempest even thought they could have been one in the same, for a while.” Ty paused and looked at Lilith, who still hadn’t put it all together. There was something else the demon woman didn’t know.
“He’s Tempest’s father,” Ty said, and watched the light of understanding dawn in Lilith’s eyes.
“Oh,” she said.
Ty nodded. “Yeah. Everyone thought he was dead. Now it seems the Master had him all along.”
“Poor Tempest,” she said. “I don’t know what she must be feeling.”
The demon woman didn’t have to continue. Ty found himself staring at her, just taking in her contradictions. The appearance of a devil combined with an innocence pure enough to be called angelic. A strong internal desire only to help others, yet with such power that Bain and the Master had sought to use her as a weapon.
Nor had her life been easy even before then. Ty hadn’t asked her about it, but knew that Lilith had once been arrested, and had worked as a stripper.
Perhaps the trauma she had endured was why, when she had a reason, she could fly into a towering rage—a rage Ty and Dinah had faced once before.
Ty didn’t ever want to have to face it again.
“Fabrication complete,” the fabricator announced.
It was enough to shift Ty’s train of thought back onto the original tracks. Wasting no time, he plucked the petri dish from its spot on the workbench and placed the cover over the top, then held it up to show Lilith.
Inside the petri dish was a pool of shiny liquid, like mercury but paler, more translucent. The demon woman stared at it with a confused expression.
Before she could ask what it was, Ty grinned. He didn’t like the cold of the abyss they travelled through while being teleported, and the idea of being trapped there induced a visceral terror like none he’d ever known before. Nor was it a long way from the workshop to the med bay. Yet Tempest was one of the women he loved. He would do anything for her, and the Architect’s life was at stake. A few seconds one way or another might make a difference, and he wanted to make up for his hesitation at the door.
“Let’s get this to them as fast as we can,” he said.
This time, Lilith returned his smile, and Ty reflected that there was an upside to travel by teleportation. As Lilith drew him into her warm embrace, his senses filled with her softness, her strength, and her scent. It was a sensation he could easily get used to.
Then, with an audible popping noise, they blinked out of existence.
The moment of cold as Lilith transported them between two disparate points of existence was mercifully brief. Ty barely had time to grit his teeth against it when they blinked back into the world just outside the med bay.
Their sudden appearance startled Gremlin, who had apparently been standing guard outside. The cat flinched, then scampered away, her claws finding little purchase on the tile floors. For a moment, it was like she was from a cartoon, her legs working furiously for little result. Then, either by design or good luck, she gained traction and disappeared into the depths of the mansion.
It would have been funny if their mission hadn’t been so urgent.
Lilith held onto Ty for a second before letting him go. When he’d first met the demon woman, she hadn’t done that, preferring to separate as swiftly as possible. But since Lilith’s place among them had been confirmed, she�
�d begun to relax. Caring and thoughtful by nature, now she made sure Ty had found his feet before stepping away.
Both Tempest and Dinah had looked up at Lilith and Ty’s sudden arrival. A single glance was enough to tell Ty that nothing had changed. For all her power and strength, Tempest looked distraught, and Dinah’s expression was more serious than usual.
Without hesitation, Ty stepped forward with his petri dish held high.
“This will help him,” he said.
“What is it?” Tempest asked.
“Nanites,” Ty said. “I was working on them yesterday. Downloaded a medical database to get them to work. I wanted to replicate your healing ability as best as I could.” As he spoke, Ty heard his roommate’s voice in his mind. Brad was a professional gamer, and tended to think in terms of gaming terminology. He would say Ty’s nanites offered an HP buff.
“Do they work?” Tempest asked, and Ty could see real hope on her face.
He grinned. “Remember how I got burned by Steam a couple of days ago? The Dura-Dermis helped, but within a couple of hours of introducing these into my system, the wounds were healed.”
Now Dinah returned Ty’s smile. “Ty, you’ve been holding out on us,” the deerkin said. “What other secrets have you been hoarding?”
The stunning woman said it lightly, her intention no more than to voice pride and approval at what Ty had created. Yet he couldn’t help but remember there was something else he’d been hiding. Or, maybe not hiding, exactly, but he had yet to say anything about it.
AZT-407. The drug that had made his health nanites possible, and which even now lingered in the pain behind his eyes. He really should tell them about it, he thought. But the time wasn’t right. Instead, he accepted Dinah’s words as they were meant and made his way to the Architect’s side.
Without another word, he removed the petri dish lid and poured the nanites directly onto the Architect’s head wound.
Ty had expected the nanites to drip like a liquid, but the shimmering glob was more viscous than that. Instead of dripping or even falling in a coherent blob, it became attenuated, stretching out while adhering to the petri dish at the same time. Instead of a true liquid, it was a silvery mass that reached for the dying man’s skull.
Ty sensed Tempest hold her breath as the silvery mass touched the edge of the Architect’s wound. Then, as if that was a signal, the nanites flowed with greater speed, letting go of the petri dish all at once. For a moment, it looked to seal the wound all by itself, but Ty knew that to be a false impression. The nanites worked by moving into the bloodstream and lymphatic system, spreading like an infection throughout the host’s body. It wasn’t a bandage or sealant by itself, but rather a vehicle for repair.
In seconds, every last trace of the silvery nanites had vanished.
“Now what?” Tempest asked.
“Now, the nanites will replicate and seek out unhealthy tissue to repair it.”
Tempest looked as if she couldn’t believe it. “Will it work? How long will it take?”
“It worked for me, but your father isn’t in good shape. The nanites should be able to repair the wound in his head and the damage to his organs. I’m not sure about the rest.” Ty shrugged. “As for how long, you should start seeing improvements shortly. The gash in his head – maybe that will take a couple of hours to heal.”
All at once, Tempest offered him a smile that would have made a film star jealous. She’d been standing on the other side of the surgical table to Ty, but she moved around it to be close to him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and brought him down far enough to kiss him soundly on the lips.
“Ty Wilcox, you never cease to amaze me,” she said. “Thank you for this. For everything.”
Ty grinned, enjoying the embrace. “You are very welcome. But it isn’t a miracle cure. I don’t think the nanites will do anything about the degenerative toxin the med bot mentioned. It was never designed for that type of thing. But everything else, it should work pretty well.”
Some of the lightness faded from Tempest’s expression. She nodded. “I understand.”
Then Dinah spoke. “But even that buys us some time. We’ll have Gregory scan him again in a couple of hours to see what we are dealing with. But this is good. Ty, you did good.”
She might have been going to say something more, but before she did, the med bay screen pinged an alert.
4: A Chance to Help
Ty’s first thought was that there was a medical emergency with the Architect. Tempest’s reaction suggested she thought the same. She whirled from Ty with an expression of alarm on her face and stared at the screen as if the intensity of her gaze alone was enough to give her the answers she sought.
But Dinah knew better. “Don’t worry,” she said to Tempest. “That isn’t anything to do with your father. Remember, the screens are all networked, including this one. That’s just an alert I had set up to let me know if anything was happening in New Lincoln that required our attention.”
Tempest visibly relaxed, yet she still seemed surprisingly brittle, as if her strength had been turned into glass.
“What is it?” she demanded.
“Give me a moment,” Dinah murmured as she approached the screen.
The med bay screen was less sophisticated than those in Dinah’s communication room. It didn’t respond to gestures or vocal commands. Instead, Dinah operated it as if it was an oversized tablet, touching the alert message to open it.
The Architect’s vital information disappeared, to be replaced by a scene that to Ty looked like a war zone.
Ty stared at the screen, not comprehending. “What is it?” he asked, repeating Tempest’s question from moments before.
Nor was he the only one confused by the image. Both Tempest and Lilith stared at the screen as well, trying to reconcile what they were seeing with something that made rational sense.
Dinah drew a deep breath. When she let it out, she began to speak, her words measured and slow.
“I have algorithms set up to detect unusual news or activity,” she said. Despite the destruction on-screen that looked like the results of an earthquake, the deerkin managed a smile. “You didn’t think I spend all my time visually searching for trouble, did you?” she asked.
Ty had thought exactly that. But he should have known. In the short time he had known her, Dinah had proved herself a model of efficiency. Even when cooking, there were no wasted movements, and everything worked like clockwork. Was it really a surprise to learn that her efficiency extended to her talent for information control as well?
The deerkin’s smile faded. She touched the screen, swiping across, sifting through different views of the same scene. Some were stills, but most were shaky videos taken from people on the ground.
She grew serious. “I don’t know what has happened, but this is real. The destruction—something has happened in New Lincoln in the past few minutes,” she said. “I can’t see what caused it. We would have felt it if it was an earthquake. Maybe a bomb? I don’t know, the destruction looks wrong for that, somehow. Some other sort of detonation?”
Dinah looked away from the screen, toward Ty and Tempest. “Either way, people need help. Who wants to be a superhero?”
The question caught Ty by surprise. All at once, he realized that ever since he’d put on his device, he’d spent his time fighting battle after battle. It was like he was in some kind of video game where everyone was trying to kill him. As a superhero, he’d had only one job: trying to stay alive.
But this was different. This was, in Ty’s mind, what a superhero was meant to do. He was not there just to fight bad guys, but to help those in need.
It was time to man up. Hero up. Superhero up.
“What do I need to do?” he asked.
Dinah didn’t even try to answer. She took his question as an indication he was up to the task, and turned her attention to Tempest.
But the blonde superhero was shaking her head, a look of determination on her face.
“Not this time,” she said. “I’m staying here.”
Dinah didn’t argue. She simply accepted Tempest’s response with a nod. Ty couldn’t blame her, yet he didn’t want to face the destruction shown on-screen all alone. To begin with, he didn’t even know how to get there.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to worry. “I’ll help,” said Lilith.
Dinah managed a smile. “Good. It’ll take me a moment to work out where this is. In the meantime, perhaps you two had better change into your clothes. Unless you want the newscasts to be filled with pictures of you as you are now?”
Ty and Lilith did as Dinah suggested, the demon woman once again blinking them through a moment of non-existence to save a few precious seconds. They emerged into Dinah’s bedroom, and once again Lilith held onto Ty for just long enough to make sure he had his balance.
Ty appreciated it and didn’t want her to let him go. But she did anyway, looking about for her regular clothes.
Finding them swiftly, she unwound the sheet she had been wearing and cast it aside, standing briefly naked in front of Ty.
He forgot about everything else and just stared.
“Wow,” he said. He hadn’t intended to. It was an involuntary reaction, much like another that had begun the moment Lilith dropped her sheet. It didn’t matter how much he’d leveled up, didn’t matter that he was now in a relationship with her, Dinah and Tempest all at once. To Ty, the demon woman was a vision of pink-haired perfection, and he would have stared at her all day if he’d had the time.
Perhaps surprisingly given that she had worked as a stripper, Lilith blushed at Ty’s response. But she made no move to cover herself, instead eyeing him up and down in return.
“Thank you,” she said, acknowledging the inherent compliment in his exclamation. Then she returned to what she was doing. “We have to hurry,” she said. “People need our help.”