Enhancer 4

by Wyatt Kane

  Ty wondered if the sort of twisted thinking was part of the Master’s plan all along, or if it was no more than chance. Then he shook his head. Either way, he was happy to spend his energy trying to help Tempest’s father. He just hoped it would result in success.

  “Try now,” Dinah said.

  Even as the deerkin spoke, Ty could see a difference in the images being displayed over the workbench. Nothing substantive as yet, just faceless people and a shape that could have been the device on Ty’s wrist, but it was already a long way from the formlessness of even a few moments before.

  Again, Tempest approached the Architect’s cryo chamber.

  “Can you hear me?” she asked him. “It’s me, Tempest. I’m here. We got you back,” she said.

  This time, the response was dramatic.

  Almost at once, the image over the workbench coalesced into the three-dimensional depiction of Tempest herself, looming large and with an uncharacteristic smile on her face. Nor was that the end of it. More images of Tempest appeared, showing her at different times in her life. In moments there were dozens of them, maybe even hundreds, images that reflected different times in her life.

  Ty didn’t know where to look. He saw Tempest as a girl, very obviously herself, angrily thumping a broken doll on the floor. At the same time, a slightly older version could be seen hugging a tall, faceless man’s legs with an expression of joy. There was a puppy in the some of them, a golden retriever at various stages of life, and an image that spoke of such overwhelming pride as Tempest stood on stage with a diploma in her hands.

  Ty was astounded. He’d sought to open the memories of a man lost to cryo suspension, and had succeeded beyond words. He saw Tempest as a baby, identifiable only because of the wisps of blonde hair on her head and the association with all other images. Somehow, they all added together into an expression of love that Ty found difficult to look at, and he wasn’t surprised at all to see tears start to run down the blonde superhero’s face.

  Nor was she the only one affected. Lilith had brought up a hand to cover her mouth, and she made small, subconscious sounds of empathy. Dinah was the closest of them to Tempest, and she reached out to grab hold of the blonde woman’s hand.

  Quietly, unsure what would happen, Ty reactivated the vocal aspect of the neural imager device.

  Just like before, the workshop became filled with the sound of a voice. Not Dinah’s this time, but the deep, rich, baritone of a man echoing back and forth.

  “Tempest,” “Daughter,” “Is it really you?” “I missed you so much,” “Tempest, my daughter.”

  And on, mostly just repetition, yet the effect was profound.

  The images of love combined with a father’s voice was almost too much. Tempest had been looking at the images to the exclusion of all else, but just for a moment she looked at Ty instead. With eyes filled with tears, she mouthed a silent, “Thank you,” and Ty understood much more than just her words.

  She didn’t know if her father would ever be able to exit the chamber. She hadn’t known if she would ever get to speak to him again, or hear his voice. And now, she could do so. She could see as clear as daylight that he still knew her, and still kept her in his heart.

  It was beyond touching. A heartfelt moment that Ty would never forget. Nor was it close to finished.

  Tempest turned back to the cryo chamber and hugged it as if it was the man’s real flesh.

  “Father,” she said. “I’ve missed you so much.”

  Despite the pressing need for information on the Master, none of those watching even thought to interrupt. This was Tempest’s chance to be with her father, and all of them understood its importance. They simply gave Tempest the time she needed, and accepted that her needs came first.

  For long minutes, Tempest spoke with her father, and in his own way, the old man spoke back. While words and images were used, what they said transcended both. It was the feelings that mattered. The connection. The bond between father and daughter, and Ty felt privileged to be included.

  Finally, it was Tempest herself who brought the conversation back on track.

  She glanced around at Ty and the others, and hesitated only a moment.

  “Father,” she said. What can you tell me about the Master?”

  36: The Master’s Intention

  All at once, the images above the workbench changed once again. No longer were his thoughts dominated by images of love, but were instead a whirling black mass of fear, anger, and hate. Though mostly nebulous, Ty caught flickers of more coherent images, like scalpels glinting from within the mass.

  “No!” the Architect said, his voice booming throughout the workshop. “You can’t make me!” “I won’t do it!” “They are not for you!” “How dare you?” “Get out!” “What are you doing to my mind?”

  It was hideous to hear, and for a moment, Ty thought the Architect was railing against his daughter’s question. But then he understood. The Architect was just replaying how he had felt under the Masters control.

  Nor was Ty the only one to misunderstand. Tempest took a step back, aghast at the response, then she too figured it out. She approached the chamber again and spoke soothingly.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m here. You’re safe. The Master can’t hurt you anymore.”

  That was all it took for the Architect’s thoughts to calm down again. Once more, Tempest, now at teenager beginning to show the beauty that would define her as an adult, stood in center stage.

  “That’s better,” the blonde superhero said. “Remember, I’m here with you.” She glanced around at the others again, and Dinah gave her a nod. Tempest drew a deep breath. “But I have to know. We have to know. Who is the Master? Where can we find him?”

  Ty braced himself for another visual and auditory onslaught, but this time it didn’t come. The walls echoed with Tempest’s question in the Architect’s voice.

  “The Master,” “Who is he?” “Who is the Master?”

  But there were no answers. Nor did the imagery offer any clues. While an image of Tempest still stood in the middle, the rest was no more than darkness.

  “Father?” Tempest asked, but the Architect’s voice held little hope.

  “I’m sorry, dearest daughter,” “Forgive me.”

  There was one more question Tempest had to ask. Once more, she sought courage from Ty and the rest

  “Father, do you know what the Master intends to do? What are his plans?”

  At this, the most extraordinary sound emerged from the speakers. Still in the Architect’s voice, it was a wail of agony and grief that filled the whole workshop. Nor was that the only indication of the Architect’s answer. The images displayed were stark and clear. Instead of a nebulous, formless cloud of uncertainty, or the loving memories of Tempest growing up, the images were those of destruction.

  It was apocalyptic. The destruction of everything. Like what Concussion had been able to manage in a small part of town, but all over New Lincoln as a whole.

  Ty knew what it meant. It matched with what the Master had said before. This was no villain with a half-baked plan to snap his fingers and rid the world of one person in two.

  The Master had an all or none approach that could wipe them all out.

  ◆◆◆

  The only one in the workshop who wasn’t disturbed by what they’d seen was Gremlin, who had vanished for several hours before returning to her spot in the middle of the work bench, oblivious to everything that had happened.

  After the Architect responded to Tempest’s last question, the blonde superhero had taken it upon herself to reinstall the cryo chamber back in the conservatory.

  She had declined all offers of assistance, and Ty understood why.

  The blonde superhero needed to spend some time with the Architect, just to be with him for a while. And to make sure he was okay after seeing the horrendous images that lived in his mind.

  As soon as Tempest left, carrying the cryo chamber as if it weighed next to
nothing, Lilith had reached for Dinah and pulled her into an embrace. The demon woman was visibly shaken by what she’d seen and sought comfort. For a long time, the two women clung to each other, not saying anything.

  The vision the Architect had granted them was truly awful. That anyone would seek to consciously bring it about defied belief. Yet from what Ty knew of the Master, he wasn’t completely surprised.

  Shocked. Aghast. Incredulous that any mind could think this was a good option. But not surprised.

  He would have been happy to join the embrace, or simply give the women time to recover from what they had all seen. But their task was only part done.

  “Should we wait for Tempest to get back?” Ty asked. “Or should we carry on with these two?”

  It was enough to draw both women back into the present. Lilith didn’t exactly let Dinah go, not entirely, but she did step to the side. But it was the deerkin who spoke.

  “I’m not sure Tempest will be back any time soon,” she said. Then she drew a deep breath, as if stealing herself for what was to come. “Let’s see if these two have anything more to add,” she finished.

  Ty nodded, and got back to work.

  His neural imaging tech worked just as well on Sparkles and Spit Bitch as it had on the Architect. But where the Architect’s mind was filled with affection for his daughter, memories of love and positive times, and anger and loathing at anything to do with the Master, both Spit Bitch’s and Sparkles minds were like open sewers.

  Yet each of them was different. Sparkles proved to be no more than a small, nasty little man with dreams of hurting anyone and everyone whom he perceived to have hurt him in the past. His voice was harsh and grating, and everything in his mind carried a shade of negativity that Ty found revolting to look at.

  When asked of the Master’s plans, Sparkles knew nothing. Nor did he have any insight as to who the shadowy villain might be.

  As for Spit Bitch, her mind was different. It was a world of jarring colors and images that Ty couldn’t make sense of at first, but which he soon started to understand. The woman connected images in a way that made little sense. In her mind, people weren’t consistent, but from one moment to the next could turn into demonic creatures filled with violence and hate.

  Nor did these images seem to be symbolic. Spit Bitch truly believed that demons walked among the people of New Lincoln.

  Like Sparkles, her images were filled with violence and unpleasantness, and her voice, before Ty turned off the vocal synthesizer, would have made a banshee envious.

  Throughout all of the images, one thing remained consistent. At first, Ty thought it might be her mother, but Dinah suggested it might be an idealized version of Spit Bitch herself.

  And idealized was the right word. In her own mind, Spit Bitch was smiling and beautiful, untouched by the ravages of the world about her.

  Of those who watched the images unfold, it was Lilith who figured out why they seemed so jarring and incoherent.

  “She’s insane,” the demon woman said.

  All at once, Dinah’s expression became one of understanding, and Ty had to let out a laugh.

  “Batshit crazy!” he agreed.

  Yet, of the two of them, it was Spit Bitch who added to their pool of knowledge. Like Sparkles, she didn’t know what the Master’s plans were. But when Dinah asked her who the shadowy villain was, the images above Gremlin took on a coherent, specific flavor.

  Mega-corporate buildings. Vast structures taking up multiple city blocks and extending into the sky hundreds of stories above. Dark buildings that served as the seat of power for the city’s wealthy and powerful.

  At first, Ty couldn’t see the relevance to Dinah’s question, but then the image faded, shoved to one side by another that could only be a family.

  Dinah was the first to put it into words.

  “The Master is a member of one of the mega-corporate families?” she asked.

  The mega corporations and the people behind them were largely outside of Ty’s understanding. Yet even he knew that many of the massive corporations that governed the lives of the New Lincoln residents were ruled by powerful, extended families. In this, they weren’t so different from Rubio’s crime family, except that the megas mostly operated on the legal side of the line.

  Yet that didn’t mean they were innocent of any wrongdoing. In Ty’s mind, while mostly adhering to the letter of the law, they flouted everything else.

  Ethics. Human decency. The limits of greed.

  Things like that.

  But that didn’t seem to be what Spit Bitch meant. The images above the work bench took on a combative tone, where most of family members on-screen turned on one of their number.

  The specific facial characteristics of that one weren’t clear in the image. Perhaps Spit Bitch was only guessing. Perhaps she didn’t know exactly who it was. Yet one thing was certain: the isolated family member was crippled some way. They used crutches as they defended themselves against the other family members.

  Then the image faded, to be replaced by something entirely random.

  Dinah followed up with more questions, but nothing else Spit Bitch offered had much value. In the end, they had to admit they were done.

  Ty deactivated his tech.

  “So,” he said. “The Master may or may not have something to do with one of the mega-corporate families.”

  “He’s crippled, and had a falling out with the others,” Lilith added.

  Dinah nodded in agreement. “Yes.” She looked around the room as if assessing, and then breathed a sigh. “I think we’re done for the night. Ty, you are amazing. Thanks to you, we now have a pretty good idea of what the Master has planned, and we might even have enough clues to figure out who he is.”

  Ty couldn’t help but be flattered by Dinah’s complement. Yet his focus was on the pragmatic.

  “Yeah,” he said, replying to the deerkin’s thoughts on the Master. “He’s a madman bent on mindless destruction. And he has to be stopped.”

  Both Dinah and Lilith nodded, the latter with an expression of determination on her face.

  “The only question is how?” Ty finished.

  “However we can,” the deerkin said, and Lilith agreed.

  37: A Call to Arms

  It wasn’t long after that when Tempest rejoined them. As the immediate need for Lilith and Tempest to seek out victims of the epidemic had past, Dinah suggested a late evening bite to eat, and they all headed to the kitchen. The deerkin brought out the waffle batter she’d put aside before, and in just a few minutes the scent of fresh waffles filled the air.

  As they each bit into the delicious morsels, they talked in somber tones about what they had learned.

  Everyone agreed that the recent spate of attacks was just the start, and that the AZT-407 epidemic was no more than an opening gambit. What might happen next, they couldn’t know, but none of them would be surprised if it amounted to chaos, with the potential for destruction on a citywide scale.

  As the conversation progressed, Lilith voiced the question uppermost in Ty’s mind.

  “How can we stop whatever is to come?” she asked between delicate nibbles of waffle. Ty knew that after a day like she’d had, he would have wolfed down the waffles as if he was starving. But Lilith was right at the end of the femininity scale, and didn’t seem to have the same needs.

  Her question was the same one Ty had asked before, but Lilith was looking for details. “There are just four of us,” she continued. “What if the Master is able to create an army of hundreds?”

  At this, Tempest and Dinah shared a glance, and the blonde superhero gave the deerkin a brief nod. “It’s time,” she said cryptically.

  Dinah seemed to agree. “It isn’t just the four of us,” she said. “There are others who wear devices like ours, and we’ve planned for this. Well, not this exactly, but for situations that go beyond our individual abilities to solve. We’ll put out a call and ask them to come.” She gave half a shrug. “I don�
��t know how many will be able to, or how long it might take. But we won’t be alone.”

  It wasn’t the first time Ty and Lilith had heard of the others Dinah was talking about. Yet the demon woman wasn’t satisfied. Ty knew she had questions about how anyone new might impact their relationship, but that wasn’t what she asked about.

  “How many are there?” she said.

  Dinah smiled, a bit sadly. “Not as many as I’d like. A few. But well short of hundreds. I think we might also have to recruit, if the AZT-407 drug delivers the results we’re expecting.”

  The conversation drifted then, with Lilith asking about who Dinah and Tempest might contact and what they could do. But Ty’s head was still buzzing with AZT-407. He’d spent most of the day in the workshop and was starting to tire, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t think about solutions to his various technical problems.

  The neural imager was just the start. He’d already thought about how he could use it as a communication device, but there was so much more he could do. He could use it to replace the synaptic controller in his shield, to enable greater control. And he had a random desire to see what Gremlin was thinking.

  But even that was just scratching the surface. With just a few tweaks, instead of simply reflecting the minds of others, his neural imager might well become a mind in itself. Or at least, a duplicate of one.

  Ty might be half a step away from being able to download the Architect’s consciousness in its entirety.

  Despite the problems they faced with the Master, Rubio, and others, Ty couldn’t help but be excited by that particular prospect. Because even that might be just the first step among many.

  As the last of the waffles disappeared from the plate and the evening seemed to be drawing to a close, Dinah looked around at each of them.

  “It’s been another long day,” she said. “I don’t know about all of you, but I feel a need to not be alone.” Then she smiled, as if laughing at herself. “Actually, that’s not what I mean. I want sex, and I want it now. Who’s up for it?” As she spoke, she looked pointedly at Lilith, Ty, and Tempest as well.