by Mia Archer
"What the…”
I turned to look out into the common room. I wanted to make sure no one saw that. I had a feeling if someone saw this girl with her door open they’d bring down a world of hurt on us.
That world of hurt might be the guards, or it might be our fellow prisoners who’d probably beat the crap out of her, and maybe me, the next time we were in the commissary to figure out exactly how she got the door open.
Either way, I didn't want this girl to get hurt. Not only had she just figured out a way to get around the security, but she was also my only conversational companion.
I hated that I was so hard up for conversation that I was willing to protect this girl, but what could I do? I was actually starting to miss having CORVAC's sarcastic voice in my ear all the time.
She stepped in front of my cell. Put her arms and hands around the bars in a mirror image of what I was doing. She leaned in close enough that I could almost lean in and kiss her through the bars, and I wondered why the hell I was thinking about leaning in and kissing this girl. She might be the only conversational companion I had, but it was conversation that drove me insane. I was not interested in sucking face with her!
Even if it had been a while. Even if being with Fialux had awakened something long dormant in me, and now that I’d scratched that itch once it was there demanding more scratching.
No. In the middle of a prison I was trying to escape was hardly the time or the place to worry about kissing a pretty girl. Even if her purple eyes were quite fascinating. Intoxicating, even.
I didn't have time. Things like this didn’t happen in prison, late night movies on Cinemax notwithstanding.
"Night Terror always works alone," she said. "I suppose that means you're going to be stuck in here forever while you try to figure out a way to get around this security."
I lick my lips. "You could unlock this for me now and we could both get out of here.”
The girl shrugged. "I could, but what good would that do? Do you have a plan? I could let both of us out, and it wouldn't do a damn thing because it wouldn't help us get through security. What did you plan on doing once you get out into the city? I don't know if you've noticed, but there's an invading alien army who sort of runs things now. How are you going to fight them?"
I opened my mouth to tell her exactly how I was going to fight them, but she was right. I was a woman who always had a plan, or at the very least I'd gotten pretty good winging it based on past experience, but I had nothing now. I had no past experience that’d help me wing it against an invading alien army that’d reached earth. I mean sure I had things I could do that would scour them from the face of the planet, weapons I used on aliens out at the edge of the solar system and all that, but the problem with that approach was there was a reason those weapons were used out in deep space where the only thing they could hurt was the occasional chunk of ice the size of Texas.
Using those weapons closer in would get rid of the aliens, sure, but it would also render a big chunk of the planet uninhabitable.
Not to mention I didn't know enough about this prison to get out of here even if I did manage to escape this cellblock. If I couldn’t escape then I couldn’t begin to contemplate what I could do to fight off the aliens once I was out.
"That's what I thought," she said. "The great Night Terror is no more. She ended the moment you were defeated over the city.”
My grip tightened on the bars. I was hit with an emotion that wasn’t like anything I’d dealt with since I realized Dr. Lana was stealing my shit and trying to experiment on my girlfriend. Who was now my ex-girlfriend. I think. It was all a little complicated.
No, “it's complicated” didn't even begin to describe my current romantic situation.
"I'll be back in my cell if you need me," she said.
"Whatever," I said.
True to her word, the girl moved back to her cell. Her door slid shut. There was a click that had a surprising amount of finality to it. We were locked in again. My brief hope of escape was gone.
Not that it had been much of a hope to begin with. After all, she was right. Even if I did manage to escape I didn’t have a plan.
I realized something in that moment. I'd been in a funk. I'd allowed my defeat over the city to send me into a downward spiral of villainous depression. I’d let that defeat get to me. I’d started thinking there wasn't anything I could do to get out of here.
Well I wasn't going to make any more mistakes like that. Not when I knew what I had to do. The odd thing was, the more I thought about it the more I realized there'd been a plan forming in the back of my mind this entire time. All the pieces were there. It was just a matter of reaching out and molding them together in a way that would allow me to do what had to be done.
I retreated to the back of my cell. I didn't want to be within sight of my neighbor’s self-satisfied smirk. No, I needed to be alone in the darkness as I considered my next move.
I'd been right in a way. My two chief superpowers were my superior intellect and my ability to make the kind of tech toys that were decades if not centuries ahead of where mankind was currently.
I might not have any of those toys at the moment, but I sure as hell still had that superior intellect. That had been enough back when I was starting out, and damn it that would be enough to get me out of here now!
I was discounting myself if I was relying on those tech toys alone to get out of here. If I didn't have what I needed to break out then it was time to use that brain of mine to get what was needed.
Night Terror was back, and it was time to take that vague plan that’d been percolating in the back of my mind and turn it into something that was going to bring this prison to its knees.
First SuperMax, then Starlight City. Night Terror was back, bitches.
18
Inciting Incident
"Is that the pork? That was delicious!"
"Turkey today," the lunch lady said.
“Gotcha,” I said.
I couldn't help but think of her as the lunch lady. Even though that probably wasn't her job title. I'm sure there was something about culinary artistry or some bullshit like that since every job listing in the world these days seemed to put on airs to make boring old-fashioned jobs seem like something more than what they were.
She grinned. "I can understand the confusion. The stuff all looks the same. We get it from the same government supplier. Better if you don’t ask exactly what it is and just go with what’s on the tin.”
"Thanks," I said as she put some of the surprisingly good mystery meat on my plate.
I was used to the prison commissary at this point. It was a way too nice, but I wasn't going to knock it. Besides, there were more villains than heroes in the room today. That was usually a blessing, but it was the last thing I needed today.
There was always trouble when the heroes came in. The pricks were always trying to settle old grudges from the outside or acting like they were still saving the city from the forces of evil or some ridiculous notion like that by beating up villains who were already in prison where they, by definition, couldn’t threaten the outside world.
That rock guy had been right, though. We were all in this together now. Anyone who said otherwise was full of it. Though most of the heroes still didn’t seem to realize just how boned they were. It didn’t help that stupid Firebrand was still doing her best to rile up the heroes every chance she got.
I frowned as I looked around. Come to think of it, I hadn't been that big rock guy since he was carried off yesterday. Not in the commissary and not in the common room.
I'd have to look for him in his cell. When they’d dragged him off I was well aware that it might be for good, but it’d be good to have confirmation that getting dragged out of this place with aliens pointing their guns at your back meant you weren’t coming back.
I moved over to my traditional spot in the corner. Away from everyone else. Where I couldn't be the focus of any trouble and where it would be o
bvious that I wasn't trying to start any trouble.
I didn't want to give Sabine any excuse to try and extricate me from this place. Not before I was ready. Especially if leaving meant never coming back. I had a plan to get the hell out of here, and the last thing I needed was to start that plan from square one because they moved me to a new undisclosed location.
What I had here still wasn't great, but it was better than nothing.
Swirling colors from the other side of the room drew my attention. It was the special alert bulletin from the Starlight City News Network. I looked up in time to see what looked like Starlight City Arena where the Starlight City Heroes got paid obscene sums of money to throw orange balls through hoops, but the view on the screen now was way different from any game I'd ever seen before.
Not that I’d seen many games before. Sports had never been my thing. Selena had forced me to watch them from time to time though.
There were murmurs from the gathered villains. The headline was just a little unsettling. I had a feeling I’d just discovered where the disappeared heroes and villains were disappearing to, and I wasn’t sure if it was better or worse than being carted off to be experimented on.
"New gladiator arena? What the…”
Captioned text scrolled across the bottom of the muted screen as the anchor blathered on about what was happening, but I didn’t read. Now wasn’t the time for reading pointless SCNN blather.
No, I was more interested in the shot of two familiar people in the middle of the Starlight City Arena. A person who looked like he was made entirely from rock, and a silver haired old women who looked like she had no business being in any sort of gladiatorial arena, let alone facing down a hulking monstrosity made exclusively from rock.
My eyes narrowed. I thought about all the ways she’d tried to fuck up as many villains as possible in that riot. I still wasn't sure if she'd succeeded in killing anyone or not. Some of the villains she'd attacked hadn't reappeared, and I took that to mean she'd been successful to some degree.
Up on the screen it looked like there might be a repeat of their fight in the prison commissary. At least I hoped it would be a repeat of their performance in the prison commissary. Firebrand had gotten in a couple of good shots in that fight, to be sure, but ultimately the two of them had been pretty evenly matched. So evenly matched that they’d mostly been trading punches when the guards arrived to break them up.
When the guards arrived. I smiled as I thought of my plan. I wasn’t sure if now was the right time, but if the angry muttering from the villains in here was anything to go on then it would be the perfect moment if a hero would oblige and show up to add some fire to the kindling.
Up on the screen the sound came on.
"Repeating the big story from this afternoon's gladiatorial games," a pretty anchor, not Nancy Norris, said.
I looked around, wondering who was responsible for suddenly making the sound available. There in the back was a security guard with a mean smirk on his face. The kind of asshole who enjoyed petty positions of power and making those he had authority over feel like shit.
He’d unmuted the TV on purpose. Because he knew something bad was coming. Something that was going to upset everyone in this room. I braced myself, not wanting to believe things could really be that bad as I watched in horror, but also secretly stoked because this was just what I needed.
Up on the screen Firebrand started to smolder. Just like she had during the prison riot that’d been a cover for beating the shit out of so many villains. Just like she had in her fight with the rock guy in the commissary. Just like she had when I tripped her and almost started a prison fight of my own.
The smolder only lasted for a few moments before she erupted into flames and shot across the arena like a rocket. Damn.
If I ever got the chance I was going to have a grand old time figuring out exactly what it was that made that particular superpower tick. The ability to be covered in flames without taking any damage would be very useful in numerous applications I regularly found myself facing in my work.
She slammed into the rock creature. Faster than she ever could have done in the commissary considering there wasn’t much room in here to get up to speed.
I still expected the fight to go down much as it had the last time. She'd slammed into the guy, and he'd resisted. The immovable object meets the unstoppable force and all that. Only it turns out this object was pretty movable as long as someone slammed into him with sufficient velocity.
Well, sufficient velocity and the ability to turn herself into flames which basically created a human missile.
The rock guy, I never caught his name for all that he'd stood up for me, shattered into dozens of pieces. One moment he was there, and the next he was rubble. My mouth fell open and I gasped in horror right along with all the other villains.
Sure I didn't know the guy, but he'd had my back. That was more than could be said for a lot of people lately, and now he was gone.
Fury filled me. Unfortunately the only thing I could direct that fury at were the guards. Particularly that weaselly asshole who turned up the volume. Which wasn't much, but it was something.
"Why the hell are you making us…"
"What seems to be the problem Night Terror?" a familiar voice drifted across the room. "Having trouble acknowledging the new master in this place?"
I wheeled around. Stared. If that fury had been low-key boiling when I was pissed off at the guards, well that was nothing compared to the pure fury that filled me as I glared at none other than the culprit herself.
Firebrand.
"You bitch!" I said, “What the hell do you think you're doing killing him? What’s your problem?"
She shrugged. "Maybe you heroes and villains have gotten a little soft in recent years, but that's how we did things in the old days. You saw someone who was a threat, and you took them out."
"But he wasn't a threat to you!" I said. “He wasn’t a threat to anyone as long as he was in here!”
"Says you," Firebrand said. "As far as I'm concerned he was a villain who was getting in the way of me taking over this prison. And if he was standing between me and what needs to be done around here, well then I'm going to take care of him. And if I happen to please our new masters while I'm at it? Even better. They understand what needs to be done to the villains in this city, and I’m happy to help them.”
I stared at her in disbelief and astonishment and fury. How could she call herself a hero when she was willing to curry favor with someone who was actively trying to conquer the planet? Especially when the thing that landed her here in the first place was fighting that new master she was going on about?
But that's when I saw it on her face.
She was no hero. She was simply an old angry woman with a grudge, and she was using her heroism as a cover for the hatred she felt for villains.
I was surprised I hadn't noticed it earlier. I mean it was pretty obvious that she liked to get her hate on for villains, but I hadn’t seen just how deep it was until I looked at her staring at me with contempt from across the commissary.
It's not like an old person using their “deeply held beliefs” to justify doing terrible things was exactly something new. This was just a new application of the old idea. She didn’t care about truth or justice or any of that bullshit. All she cared about was grinding her axe, and if there was some fascist asshole trying to take over who allowed her to grind that axe then she was more than happy to help out.
The bitch.
I looked around the room. I had my hero, and it couldn’t have been better if I’d set this up myself. There were guards all around, and they all had some variation of a piece of technology that had clearly been stolen from yours truly hanging at their sides.
Well then. This might be moving the timetable up just a little bit, but whatever. I was pissed off, and I was going to use that anger clearly boiling in this room.
"I've had about enough of you," I said. "Walking around here li
ke you’re some great shining hero or something. You're nothing but an old bitch hiding behind what you were once upon a time. It's time for you to move aside and let the new generation take care of things."
Firebrand’s eyes narrowed and she stalked across the room towards me. I'll admit I felt a little bit of nerves that hadn't been there since the very first time I made an appearance on the scene years ago in some homemade stuff I'd cobbled together by stealing technology from the Applied Sciences Department.
Coming under investigation for those missing pieces had been the first occasion where me and Dr. Lana tangled with one another as she tried to track down the missing pieces. Personally, of course, because that was the kind of micromanaging bullshit she always pulled and one of the big reasons why no one in that department could stand her.
"What are you going to do about it," Firebrand asked when she reached me.
"I don't think you're as big and bad as you think you are," I said. "And besides. You were wrong earlier."
“About what?" she asked as her body started to smolder.
This was it. My opportunity. If my observations of this bitch were correct then I had a very short window, but I couldn't resist getting in a little quip before I put the plan into motion.
What was a good villainous moment without a good quip?
"I'm a villain, not an antihero."
Her eyes turned from anger to shock as my fist made contact with her nose with as much force as I could muster.
Maybe I didn't have all the power that was available to me when I had my super suit at my disposal, but it was still a hell of a lot of force. Hey, I was a disciple of Arnold, and I was no stranger to the weight room even if I didn’t look like a ‘roided out monstrosity like some women who took the whole bodybuilding thing a little too far in my opinion. More power to them, just not my taste.
Especially since I'd realize I had a taste in women to begin with.
A sickening crunch echoed off the walls and Firebrand’s eyes rolled into the back of her head. She fell back, hitting her head on the corner of a table, and that provided the number two in my one-two punch that knocked her out.
