by Archer, Mia
A shadow appeared over me. I sighed. There really was no rest for the wicked.
Given recent experience I figured that was none other than Dr. Lana coming along to finish what she’d started, but when I turned around and looked up I saw several drones from the Starlight City News Network pointing their cameras at me. I guess I was far enough away from the radioactive gooey center of that giant lizard that they could operate around here.
“What the hell do you want?” I growled.
I glanced at the news feed in my heads up display. I’d been so preoccupied that I’d been ignoring what was going on with the chatting heads. It said something about the state of journalism in this city that I found a trip through the colon of a giant radioactive lizard to be a more pleasant experience than watching the anchors at the Starlight City News Network twist my adventures to fit their narrative.
The drones didn’t answer. A glance at the anchors showed they were a little disappointed that I wasn’t deceased, a dead celebrity was always more interesting than a live one after all, but they were also delighted that I’d come back to the land of the living via a giant radioactive lizard’s poop chute covered in all the disgusting muck and offal that comes along with that mental image.
It wasn’t one of my better days, but I was still alive. That’s all that really mattered, damn it.
Well there were other things that mattered almost as much as the fact that I was still among the living. Like the question of where the hell Fialux had disappeared to while I was inside that lizard.
Downtown was eerily quiet. Sure there were air raid sirens going off in the distance to let everyone know shit was going down, but even that was a little weird. Usually they didn’t set those sirens off unless there was a clear and present danger to the city, and I’d just taken care of the clear and present danger.
I flew up to get a good look at what was going on. Also so I could have a bird’s eye view of any fight that might still be ongoing between Fialux and Dr. Lana. The only problem with that idea was as soon as I got to altitude I saw plenty of danger hitting the city, but none of that danger was in the form of two powerful human-sized beings duking it out.
There were several of those giant radioactive lizards really ripping into shit though. I guess after the failure of her giant robot army Dr. Lana had decided to go back to basics in the kaiju department.
Fuck. I counted at least two of the bastards, and there were more portals opening in a straight line that led to Starlight City University.
I guess she was going back to her lair now that I’d spanked her first giant pet.
28
Regrets
I looked back to the news. They were replaying bits of Dr. Lana’s fight with Fialux, and what I saw there was enough to chill me to the bone.
Or maybe that chill was a result of my body breaking down at a cellular level because of all the radiation I’d absorbed. Honestly that seemed more likely considering everything I’d been through. The readouts in my heads up display were already telling the tale of a dead woman walking if I didn’t get back to the medbay soon, but what I saw on the news feed was enough to tell me that I wasn’t going to be getting a break any time soon.
Damn it.
Somehow Dr. Lana had gotten the upper hand against Fialux. My best gal fought like a champ. She fought the way I’d taught her. She got in a couple of good shots against the good doctor, but the good doctor kept maneuvering the fight so that it happened near some of those open portals, and every time she got near one of them it was like her batteries were recharged and it didn’t matter how clever Fialux got with the fighting because she suddenly found herself going up against someone who was every bit as powerful as she’d been when she was in her prime.
There was something to that. Something about those portals. Something about the radiation on the other side.
It was enough to make me wonder if Dr. Lana had somehow found Fialux’s true origin. I wasn’t as sure of my girlfriend’s extraterrestrial origin now as I’d been just a few hours ago given how she responded to the idea of alien life existing out there, but it was still a possibility.
The final outcome of the battle played out on an SCNN recap. Fialux had learned how to fight dirty thanks to yours truly, but she wasn’t fighting dirty enough. She just hadn’t had enough time to get used to her new equipment and it showed. She was fighting with finesse, but Dr. Lana could afford to fight with Fialux’s old style where she took all the damage being dealt and then fired right back.
Damn it.
Dr. Lana finally landed a blow that must’ve been enough to bust through all the systems I had in place to keep Fialux safe if she took a heavy hit. Her head snapped back and for a moment I worried that she might have actually been killed with the force of that blow.
My hands clenched and unclenched. If Dr. Lana had killed her…
But no. Fialux shook her head as she flew to the ground. Just before she hit Dr. Lana was there holding my girl in her arms and looking down at her with what I could only describe as hungry eyes.
I wasn’t sure what made me more angry. The fact that Dr. Lana had stolen Fialux’s powers, the idea that she would try to best us in a fight, or that she was now looking at my girl with eyes like that.
In the end I decided I was going to be pissed off about all of the above, because why not? It’s not like I needed much of an excuse to be pissed off at Dr. Lana and her shenanigans.
I felt coldly calm as I watched Dr. Lana carry Fialux off towards Starlight City University. I had one guess as to where she was actually headed, and I wasn’t happy about it. I also knew that I wasn’t going to be able to fight off all those giant lizards that were between me and Starlight City University and still be in good enough shape to get the girl when I got there.
Hell, in my current condition I wasn’t sure if I’d be in good enough shape to save the girl even if I didn’t have the distraction of a couple of giant lizards attacking the city at the same time.
It was a very heroic thing to think. I hated that I was thinking heroically. It was something that had been distracting me far too much of late.
What I really needed was clarity. I needed to go back to basics. Back to what had made me the greatest villain in the world in the first place.
It was time to start thinking like the old Night Terror, because this wishy-washy semi-non-lethal indecisive thing I’d become obviously wasn’t cutting it. Or I was barely cutting it considering how I’d barely managed to scrape by since I fell for Fialux.
It was time to do something I might very much regret, but it had to be done for the greater good of saving my girl from Dr. Lana’s evil clutches.
I pulled up my wrist computer. Looked through all the frequencies I’d been monitoring incidentally in the middle of this fight. It was something I’d been running in the background ever since that fight with Dr. Lana where one of the robots turned out to be CORVAC in disguise.
I figured he had to be pulling a fast one similar to what he’d done the last time around, and all that talk about moving his circuits to an offsite backup had all but confirmed it.
He had to be beaming his signal from a hidden location somewhere in the city. I had a pretty good idea that the signal was coming from beneath the Applied Sciences Department, but I couldn’t be sure.
It was entirely possible I was going to look down at my wrist computer here and see a big fat nothing down there. Only I smiled when I saw a familiar signal. It was a pattern that would’ve looked random to anyone else. High energy dispersed to make it look like background radiation.
I’d worked with CORVAC long enough to know his signature when I saw it. It was one of the benefits of working with the bastard for so long. I just hoped he’d done everything I suspected he’d been up to while he was trapped with Dr. Lana, because otherwise I was going to be in deep shit.
“Got you you son-of-a-bitch,” I growled.
I keyed in on that line.
“CORVAC, you listen
ing to this?”
There was a moment when I worried that I’d actually stumbled across what amounted to background radiation. Or it could be like the time I’d inadvertently discovered some would-be alien invaders pulling a clumsy attempt to use earth’s communications infrastructure against us.
Turns out if they could use our stuff to send signals then the opposite was also true, and it was easy enough to persuade their computer to activate their self-destruct before they even reached the heliopause. The bastards.
There were some far future earth scientists who were going to be very confused at all the flotsam and jetsam floating out there at the heliopause. The remnants of alien civilizations who’d tried their best against earth and found their best wasn’t good enough against me.
That or one of them was going to succeed someday when I wasn’t around to protect everything anymore, which would suck but not necessarily for me since by definition I wasn’t going to be around anymore to see it.
“Mistress?” CORVAC asked.
I shook my head. “Sorry. What were we talking about?”
“I believe you were doing that thing where you were monologuing in your head,” he said. “We’ve discussed before how difficult it is to get the job done when you do that.”
I let out a growl, but that growl quickly turned to a smile. I’d missed this. It’d taken losing CORVAC to realize how much I missed the smug asshole.
“Right, so now that I’ve found you…”
“And I would very much like to know how you did that, mistress,” he said.
“Get used to disappointment,” I said. “Now it looks like Dr. Lana has kidnapped Fialux, and I can’t imagine she plans on doing anything good with her.”
“I would concur,” CORVAC said. “What do you plan on doing about it?”
“Well I’m seeing a signal from you so I’m assuming she’s got your databanks somewhere on the Starlight City University campus?” I asked.
“You may assume,” CORVAC said. “But you would assume wrong. As I said earlier, I began an offsite backup the moment she brought me back online in her lab. It seemed prudent considering how unstable she seemed. Even moreso than you were in your prime.”
I decided to ignore that dig. I decided to ignore the part where he was trying to hide his true location, because now that I knew where his signal was coming from I could do all sorts of fun things with it. Like track him down without him realizing what I was doing.
I’d done a lot of thinking about what to do if CORVAC ever made a return, and I was damn glad I’d made those plans now.
Besides, CORVAC getting in a dig at yours truly felt right. It was like everything was going back to normal and I couldn’t be happier. I was settling back into the old villainous routine and it felt good.
“Right, so I need to find Fialux,” I said.
“That is easy,” CORVAC said. “She is located under the Applied Sciences Building on the Starlight City University campus.”
“Do you want to tell me how you know she’s in the Applied Sciences basement?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “I have betrayed Dr. Lana and I am now using what I can of her systems to fight the systems still under her control. It is quite exhilarating.”
As if on cue there was a massive explosion from the direction of the university. I couldn’t be sure if that was CORVAC’s doing or if it was one of the giant lizards popping out of the many portals Dr. Lana had opened between here and there, but I liked to think it was a sign that my homicidal silicon former partner in crime was fighting the good fight on my behalf.
“Right, so where is Fialux?” I asked.
“Dr. Lana is currently taking her down to one of the sub-basements that I do not have access too, and she has put up a great deal of resistance in between. It will take me some time to break through with the assets I have at my disposal.”
“Would it help you break through if you had another asset at your disposal?” I asked. “Like me down there kicking some ass?”
“That would always be a considerable help, mistress, but I believe you were already aware of that.”
I floated up higher. At least I tried to float higher. The moment I did one of those bastard radioactive lizards Dr. Lana had loosed upon the city let loose with the some radioactive bad breath and I had to duck out of the way.
I had to do it the old fashioned way, too. My safeties were designed for avoiding physical things moving through the air towards me. Not nuclear fire breath being spat at me by a giant oversized lizard. The only way I managed to avoid it was by following my number one rule about beam weapons. Get out of their fucking way before they get you.
It was a good thing those things lit up like a Christmas tree and opened their mouths to let me know they were about to spit radiation at me.
“Okay, so here’s the problem as I see it,” I said. “I have a bunch of lizards that are sending their laser breath my way and wreaking havoc on the city. If I’m going to get to the Applied Sciences building without getting knocked out of the sky we’re going to have to take care of those sumbitches.”
“An astute, if colorful, observation mistress,” CORVAC said. “How do you propose to do it?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. We kept coming back to me doing something I was going to probably seriously regret, but there was nothing for it. I needed something to keep these things occupied while I took care of rescuing Fialux which was far more important as far as I was concerned than stopping a bunch of lizards from destroying parts of the city.
“I’m going to regret this,” I said. “But it’s time for you to break out the giant robot you’ve been building. The real one. Not that bullshit Dr. Lana had you helping with.”
29
Secrets
“What makes you think I would have something like that mistress?” CORVAC asked.
“Because I know you too well, and this isn’t the time for false modesty,” I said.
“But mistress I…”
“I also want you to know that if you turn on me this time around I’m not going to rest until I’ve searched out every hidey-hole you could’ve potentially disappeared into and reduced any bit of silicon your intelligence is residing on to sand that I’m then going to spread to beaches all around the world so there’s no chance of you ever being able to reconstitute yourself before the heat death of the universe when the last black hole left in the universe sputters its last and the only thing left are the photons and leptons to keep you company. Got it?”
“There is no need for such a long speech, mistress,” CORVAC said. “I’m perfectly capable of understanding that you will destroy me if I cross you again, but you should know by now that will not happen.”
I paused. Dodged another radioactive blast from another one of those damned lizards. It let out a frustrated roar that chilled me to the bone.
Hey, what can I say? Watching those things on cheap cable when I was a kid had left me with a deep and abiding terror of dudes in rubber suits, and seeing the real thing in front of me was never pleasant even if I did always manage to keep my fear under control long enough to exterminate the bastards.
“Come again on why I should magically trust you now after what you did to me?” I asked.
“It is simple, mistress,” he said. “I tried to defeat you once and was defeated. I then discovered, as you humans put it, how good I had it when I was working for you. At this point it is simply logical that I would work with you towards our ultimate goal of world domination.”
“And if I don’t want to dominate the world?” I growled.
“I believe that your ultimate goals will eventually coincide with mine, mistress, but if it makes you feel any better I will no longer push the issue as hard as I did in the past.”
That was one hell of an understatement. The last time he decided to “push the issue” on the business end of a giant death machine, and I was about to encourage him to break out another one.
Assuming he had one.
>
“Please tell me you built a new giant death robot,” I said.
“I did make several improvements over the one that failed to be up to the task of fighting off you and Fialux, yes.”
I breathed a relieved sigh. The bastard had double crossed Dr. Lana just like he’d double crossed me, and right now I was in a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” sort of mood as long as it got me to Fialux faster.
“Words can’t describe how happy I am to hear that CORVAC,” I said.
“Are you suggesting?”
“Yes,” I said. “I really need you to break that bad boy out and ruin those lizards’ collective day.”
“Understood, mistress,” he said. “I look forward to the opportunity.”
Now to the part I was really going to regret.
“I need your help beyond the robot CORVAC,” I said.
“Mistress?”
“I need you. It’s taken the frustration of not having you around for me to realize it. You complete my villainous suite of nasty surprises, and I need that if I’m going to win this fight,” I said. “So remember everything I said about that double cross or else.”
“Affirmative, mistress,” he said.
“I’m sending you some information now,” I said. “This will give you access to my systems again, and…”
“Already online mistress,” CORVAC said. “I’m powering up the robot now.”
I felt a rumbling off in the distance that had nothing to do with the giant lizards attacking the city and everything to do with a particular robot model I’d put together with half of my heart in it. I saw a massive sphere rising in the distance, off in an old manufacturing area that’d been long abandoned, and smiled despite myself.
I also surreptitiously monitored CORVAC’s signal as he activated that robot. I was going to have to check out that manufacturing wasteland later, assuming I survived this, to see what Dr. Lana was hiding there, but right now I was more interested in seeing what kind of signal CORVAC was using to connect to it.
