by Wyatt Kane
Despite the debilitating effects of the EMP grenade, Sparkles’ expression suggested he wasn’t yet done. Even as the man winced in pain and crumpled against the withdrawal of his device, he offered Ty a glimpse into his soul.
“Fucking bastard!” the man snarled, showing teeth that had been sharpened into points. “I’ll fucking kill you for that!”
By then, he was on his side on the ground, barely in control of his limbs. Nevertheless, he managed to pull a blaster from somewhere and bring it to bear.
There was nothing Ty could do. At this distance, the man couldn’t miss. Ty had no strength to dodge, and his shield had vanished with the EMP blast.
At least, he thought, it would be quick. At this distance, the blaster would tear him apart.
Accepting his fate, Ty waited for the end to come.
Then Tempest was there, standing above them like a goddess, full of power and strength. She had been outside the blast zone and her powers were intact. In one swift movement, she reached down and gripped the blaster in her fist. Without any appearance of effort at all, she crushed it and threw it aside. Then, with casual efficiency, she kicked Sparkles in the head.
He uttered a grunt of pain and started to swear, so Tempest kicked him again.
This time, the villain fell silent, knocked unconscious by the impact with Tempest’s foot.
Then the blonde superhero turned her attention to Ty. She knelt and held him with surprising tenderness. “That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen. And the most foolish. Are you okay?”
Despite everything, Ty managed to nod. “I will be,” he said. “I just need to get back to the workshop.”
Tempest nodded. “I’ll give Lilith a call,” she said. “It’ll be quicker. And that will leave me free to deal with him.”
Ty really wasn’t looking forward to being teleported anywhere. Yet he didn’t object. He didn’t want to experience this type withdrawal any longer than absolutely essential, and no matter how fast Tempest could fly, Lilith would always be faster.
As he waited for the demon woman to pop into existence, he couldn’t help but look at his hand. It felt fine. Perfectly normal. But the used EMP grenade was still merged with his flesh. His palm looked the same as it always had, but the back of his hand looked like a shiny cylinder made of metal. And the top part of the grenade where the pin had been stuck out between Ty’s thumb and first finger.
He tried to will the grenade to separate from his hand once again, but it stubbornly refused. And then Lilith was there.
◆◆◆
As soon as Lilith saw him on the ground, her expression became one of horror and she hurried toward him.
“What happened? Is he going to be okay?” she asked, directing her questions not to him but to Tempest.
“I’ll be okay,” he managed. “Just get me back to the mansion.”
The demon woman didn’t hesitate. She bent down and took Tempest’s place at his side. “The med bay?” she asked.
But Ty shook his head. “Workshop,” he said.
The demon woman’s beautiful face creased in confusion. “But –” she began.
“What I need is in the workshop,” Ty insisted.
It was enough. Lilith glanced at Tempest, and the blonde answered her unspoken question.
“I’ll make my own way,” she said. She nodded in the direction of Sparkles. “I have something I have to do first,” Tempest said.
Lilith asked no more questions. “Are you ready?” she said to Ty.
“Yes,” he managed. Then, “No, wait. We need to take the devices as well. We can’t risk them falling into the wrong hands, and I want to see if I can activate them again.” It was amazingly difficult to string so many words together in one go.
Fortunately, Lilith didn’t say anything else. She just did as he asked, then used her power once again.
Ty gritted his teeth and clenched his eyes shut. He willed himself not to feel the biting cold of that indefinable place between two disparate points. He tried not to think of the endless nothing, or the sensation of being watched by the void itself. Instead, he focused his thoughts on what he could sense of Lilith holding him close, and tried his very best not to throw up.
The dull ache behind his eyes didn’t react well to the cold. Between one heartbeat and the next, it grew from a murmur to a roar, and Ty would have bet good money that his head was due to explode.
He opened his mouth to let out a wordless cry of agony mixed with fear, and then they were back in the world once again, in the Architect’s lab.
Ty and Lilith were in the same positions they’d been when they left, with Lilith cradling Ty as best he could as he lay on the floor.
“We’re here,” Lilith said.
Ty drew a deep, shuddering breath. He’d intended to stand, to do what he needed to do by himself, but just at that moment, he lacked the strength.
“The devices on the workbench,” Ty managed. “Could you get them for me?
Lilith was clearly unwilling to leave Ty alone even for a moment. At her hesitation, Ty tried to explain.
“I’m suffering withdrawal,” he said. “This is what happens when a device wearer loses their device.”
Lilith understood. “Oh. Why didn’t you say so?” she said. With that, she stood to do as Ty asked, and gathered the three spent devices from the workshop table.
When she knelt back down to Ty, she asked, “But will these even work?” she asked.
“One of them will. The one you took from Bain. It was never disabled by my EMP grenades.”
Lilith nodded. She looked at the devices in her hands. “Which one is it?” she asked.
Ty shook his head and immediately wished that he didn’t. It was like there was a steel ball in his skull sloshing back and forth through his brain.
“Just try them one at a time,” he managed.
Of course, the device formerly belonging to Bain was the last one she tried. The first one didn’t want to close around Ty’s wrist, and even though he knew the reason behind it, Ty still started to worry. When the second one failed as well, he feared that none of the devices still worked.
But the last one snapped shut just as he knew it would, and Ty immediately felt new strength as the nanites surged into his system.
Still lying on the floor, Ty breathed a huge sigh of relief. Within just a few seconds, much of his nausea went away, as did the pain of withdrawal. At every heartbeat, the new infusion of nanites made their way through his system, and very quickly, Ty felt he was able to stand. He did so, with Lilith lending a hand, and when he was fully upright, he knew that all would be right with the world.
He offered Lilith a grin. “That’s better,” he said.
Surprisingly, Lilith engulfed him in a hug, and Ty realized that the demon woman had been very worried about him. She held him for long moments, and even when she stepped away, it was like she didn’t really want to let him go.
He smiled, and some of her worry seemed to go away, but not all.
“You’ll be okay?” she asked, her concern both genuine and in keeping with the goodness at her core.
Ty nodded. “Yes,” he said.
Then he thought about what had been happening, with the Master’s superpowered minions causing havoc in New Lincoln. Ty knew it had only just begun, and that he didn’t want Tempest and Lilith to have to face it alone.
“But I need to get back to work.” Ty said with a sigh. “The EMP blast took out my shield, along with the power supplies. And, I suspect, my healing nanites as well.” He shrugged. “I’ll have to fabricate them all over again,” he said. Nor was that the extent of the damage. Ty had recently integrated his old smartphone into the device on his wrist, and that too would have to be redone.
He was still tired, still had a headache, and still had a used EMP grenade embedded in his hand, but none of that mattered. He was alive and could still function, albeit not as his best. And there was work to be done.
But Lilith still wasn’t
satisfied. “What about your burns?” she asked.
With so much to deal with, so much pain coming from every direction, Ty had almost forgotten about them.
“They will take care of themselves when I fabricate more of my healing nanites,” he said.
21: Coming Clean
Much to Ty’s surprise, Lilith showed no sign of leaving him to it. Instead, she seemed curious about what he was doing. Or perhaps she was still worried about his health.
Either way, as Ty activated the fabricator and set it to work, he obliged the demon woman by describing what he was doing.
First on Ty’s list was his healing nanites. In his mind, they were important not just for his own health, but as an aid to any future victims of the Master’s chaotic plans they might come across. It took only a minute or two to replicate a few million of them in another petri dish, and as soon as he was done, Ty dipped his fingers into the metallic-looking liquid.
Once again, he felt the coolness of the nanites as they worked their way into his skin, and only realized how closely Lilith was watching when she spoke.
“Shouldn’t we all have some of those in our system?” she asked.
Ty was as surprised at the suggestion as he was that he hadn’t already thought of it himself. Of course they should! Particularly Tempest and Lilith, who were more likely than Dinah to face possible injuries. But the deerkin as well, because even though she spent most of her time in the mansion, that didn’t mean she was immune to danger.
“Absolutely!” Ty agreed. His only excuse for not having offered the women his invention already was the pressure building inside his skull. Ever since the AZT-407 had started to leave his system, his brains had been operating at half speed.
Without a further word, he ordered the fabricator to whip up another batch, and in moments it was ready.
“Separate it into thirds,” Ty said. “They replicate within your system, so theoretically a single nanite is all you really need. The several million the fabricator just created is overkill.”
As Lilith followed his instructions, Ty began working on the next item on his list of tasks. The power supplies that powered his shield had been knocked out by his blast, and of all his tech, he needed them the most. And the shield itself. It wasn’t a passive system, coming complete with a simple neural link that enabled Ty to control it.
He placed one of the power supplies on the workbench and ordered the Stark imager to scan it. He wanted to know if it could be repaired or if he needed to replace it, and that would be the easiest way to find out.
At the same time, he wondered about the neural link he had created. Could that be the key to communicating with the Architect? It was a simple design, not really built for anything more than controlling his shield. But perhaps he could enhance its sophistication to the point where it might do what he wanted.
“Scan complete,” the imager said in its metallic voice.
“Display in holographic form. Expand and explode. Let me see what I’m looking at.”
The imager did as Ty commanded, and Lilith made a noise of surprise as an oversized hologram of the power supply appeared floating above the work bench.
“Wow,” the demon woman said.
Ty replied with a grin, but he could see that much of the power supply had been burnt out. It was wasn’t beyond repair, not precisely, but the effort required to do so would have dwarfed that of simply replacing it all together.
He decided that’s what he would do. As he set the fabricator to the task, he wondered if the devices Massive, Sparkles, and the others had worn would be similarly damaged.
Before he could find out, he heard a commotion from the stairs, and then Dinah and Tempest appeared at the workshop entrance. Both of them stepped toward him, sizing him up, identical expressions of worry on their faces turning into relief as they saw him standing without assistance. Yet that wasn’t enough to reassure them completely.
“Ty, are you okay?” Tempest asked.
Even though he was still feeling decidedly shabby, Ty nodded. He held up his wrist to show them the replacement device. “The device we took from Bain still works. I’m fine,” he said.
Tempest wasn’t satisfied. “What happened out there?” she said. “It looked like the grenade had merged with your hand…”
As the blonde superhero spoke, Ty couldn’t help but look at the appendage in question. He flexed his fingers, showing that he still retained most of his normal range of movements. It was just that his hand had absorbed the grenade.
“It’s my new skill,” Ty said. “I’m not sure it’s working properly. Or what it’s supposed to do.”
Of the three women in Ty’s life, only Dinah had been aware of this development. Lilith was staring at his hand with an expression of astonishment, but it was again Tempest who spoke.
“New skill? How–?” she began. Then she frowned and asked an entirely different question. It was as if she understood that there might be some sort of link. “And what about those villains we faced?” she asked. “How did they become so much more powerful in such a short time?”
Ty nodded. He had been keeping his experience a secret too long. It was time to tell the women what he knew. But first, he had a question of his own. “What did you do with him? Sparkles, I mean?”
“Sparkles?” Tempest gave him a look partway between puzzlement and amusement. “You call him, ‘Sparkles’?”
Ty managed a grin in return. “Well, he’s got to be called something, doesn’t he?”
Tempest nodded, and despite everything that had happened, Ty saw that she was starting to relax. It was like the vaguely irreverent name pleased her on some level.
“I tried to question him briefly,” the blonde superhero said, answering Ty’s question. “But he wasn’t in any real condition to answer. I might have kicked him a little too hard. So I took him to the safe house. The same place I took you when you gained Zach’s device. He is suffering withdrawal, and I chained him to the bed. He isn’t going anywhere.”
“I take it the cryo chambers haven’t arrived?” Ty asked.
Dinah shook her head, and might have wanted to say something as well, but Tempest cut the deerkin off before she began.
“Ty?” she said. “Tell us what you know.”
Ty nodded again. He gestured to the stools that lined the side of the workbench. “Take a seat,” he said, and he waited for them to do so. When they had all settled in, and to the background music of the fabricator doing its work, Ty started to talk.
He told them everything. The drug trial. How it had resulted in an immediate buff to his primary skill, and how that in turn had led directly to the nanites that had accelerated his healing far beyond what was normal for him.
Their reactions varied from no more than concern from Lilith through to disbelief from Tempest, who was outraged and wanted to know how he could think to put himself at risk like that.
“I thought it was worth the risk,” he said. “I wasn’t having much luck with some of the things I needed to do, and this offered a potential solution. At the same time, I thought it was the type of thing we should investigate. I needed to know it could do what it claimed, or if it was something harmless.”
His answer seemed to satisfy Tempest, at least to some degree, but Dinah’s reaction that was more profound.
“Forgetting for a moment that it could have killed you, or that it seems to have done what it offered, I have to say I am disappointed.” She paused, and her expression conveyed no more than sadness. “I thought you would have trusted us with something like this.”
The way she said it made Ty feel like the worst kind of fool. He nodded, accepting her words completely. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have. I don’t know why I didn’t.”
Yet he did know why, at least in part. He needed the money, as simple as that.
Dinah looked at him for a moment more, then slowly nodded. “Just don’t keep stuff like this to yourself again,” she said. “Please. It’s impo
rtant.” She took a deep breath and relaxed a little, changing her focus on what Ty had done to what he’d said.
“Now, let’s follow this through. You think the Master somehow has access to this drug as well as the devices? You think that’s why three of his pets had been causing such havoc? That they both took this drug, and it has resulted in a huge increase in power?”
Ty nodded. “It makes sense, doesn’t it? The only thing I can’t figure out is how the Master even knew about it.”
Dinah lapsed into silence, but, surprisingly, Tempest was able to answer. “Who said he had to find out about it? Couldn’t he have been behind the drug in the first place?”
Ty just stared at her. “What do you mean?”
The blonde superhero uttered a sigh. “A long time ago, before he focused on the devices we wear, my father was going in a different direction. He had a partnership with a geneticist, and, if I remember rightly, they were working on something like this drug. Something that could make changes to your genetic code, and bring out a skill that didn’t exist.” She tilted her head to the side a little.
“It would also enhance whatever skills were already there. Kind of like a chemical version of the device. I don’t know why he stopped pursuing that option. Maybe the side effects would have been too much. But in the end, he went in a different direction.”
For some reason, as Tempest spoke, an image of Bain appeared in Ty’s mind. He didn’t understand why, but Tempest’s words reminded him of the dream Lilith had woken him from.
He frowned, puzzled, then dismissed the image from his mind. “So, the Master could be behind everything. The new devices, the drug, everything. All because he had access to the Architect’s knowledge,” he said.
“Yes,” Tempest said.
“We need to talk to the Architect,” he said.
Nobody disagreed. Nor did they state the obvious, that the Architect was in no state for a conversation. The cryo chamber was keeping him alive, and they couldn’t easily communicate with him while he was in stasis.