Evil Genius 5

by Jacobs, Logan

  The gas had to be hidden somewhere on his body.

  “Well, I did say that I was going to sell it to the highest bidder,” the man said and bit his lip, “so you know, even just a little bit would, uh, really go a long way to, um…”

  “You’re disgusting,” Elizabeth said as her turquoise eyes flashed with anger.

  “Look, I promise I’ll tell you where it is,” the man said, “but you have to promise not to kill me, and if you could just give me a little bit of payment for it, then I could--”

  “Wrong answer,” I said. “Norma, would you please check inside all of this man’s pockets and see if you can find the gas sample? It’s somewhere on him.”

  “W-what?” the man spluttered. “But how did you--”

  “Well, I was pretty sure,” I said with a smirk, “but your reaction just confirmed it for me. Dynamo, hold his arms tight so he doesn’t interfere with my lovely assistant, would you?”

  “It would be my fucking pleasure,” my beautiful girlfriend growled.

  Elizabeth instantly tightened her grip on the man until it looked like she pinched some kind of nerve in his back because he couldn’t even kick his legs to try to keep Norma away. Instead, the man just went a little limp as my assistant started to fish through his pockets.

  Norma checked the man’s jacket first, but when she didn’t find anything, she moved on to his boots. It had to be somewhere on him, but the boots came back clean, too, so unless this bastard had wedged a canister of toxic gas up his asshole, the only place left to check was his pants.

  Sure enough, when Norma reached into the man’s front pocket, she pulled out a small metal canister just a little bit longer than a rifle round.

  She held it up and turned toward me with a grin, but then her face grew pale underneath her mask.

  “Shit, is this even safe to hold?” Norma swallowed.

  “It was safe enough for him to keep it inside his front pocket,” I said with a shrug, “so I think you can hang on to it for a second… just, you know, don’t drop it.”

  “Yeah, your pocket’s still probably not, uh, the smartest place for you to keep that,” Penumbra said, “not that it’s important or really matters for you anymore, but… I’m just saying.”

  “I can take it if you’re too nervous,” I told my assistant.

  “No, I’ve got it,” Norma said as she held the canister firmly but carefully in between her fingers. “I know how important this is, and how much you can do with it.”

  “Penumbra, go check the other bodies to make sure none of the rest of these bastards had any of the gas on themselves,” I said. “I’d like to have plenty to experiment with, so more would be better.”

  “On it,” the blonde superheroine said as she moved toward the closest corpse.

  “I think they all kept theirs somewhere else,” the man gasped as Elizabeth slowly started to increase the pressure on his arms. “They weren’t… fuck! They were too afraid that the Maniac would find it on them.”

  “They sound a little smarter than you,” Norma said. “Or maybe just luckier.”

  “No, no, I’m the lucky one,” the man said. “I got to help the good guys, right? I gave you the gas sample, so that’s good, yeah? And now--”

  “Oh, I think that’s where you’re wrong,” I cut him off. “We’re not the bad guys, but… well, we’re not exactly the good guys, either.”

  “And you didn’t give us the sample, you asshole,” Elizabeth said.

  “You tried to sell it to us, so we had to just take it from you.”

  “B-but you have what you want, right?” the man stammered. “So that’s it? You’ll let me go now?”

  “Actually, I never promised that I would let you go,” I said. “I think you might have just assumed that.”

  “But you’re--” the man stopped himself and then tried to twist his neck around to look at my girlfriend. “And you’re… you’re Dynamo!

  You’re a real superhero, and I don’t even have superpowers, so you wouldn’t let him kill me, right? I mean, I’m just--”

  “Yes, I am Dynamo,” Elizabeth said, “but that has absolutely nothing to do with what’s going to happen to you. You sealed your own fate the day that you decided it would be a good idea to work for the Maniac.”

  “But I--”

  “Anyone who works for the Maniac deserves to die,” my girlfriend cut him off. “No exceptions.”

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” I snickered. “Dynamo, if you would be so kind as to step out of the way, please.”

  My beautiful girlfriend stepped to the side, and as the man started to sag toward the floor, I raised my palm blaster and fired it clean through his throat.

  He didn’t even have time to cry out before the laser burned a hole right through the muscles of his neck and all the way back through his

  spine. Instead, the man just rolled his head to the side until both his head and body collapsed into a little heap on the concrete floor.

  “There’s no more gas,” Penumbra said as she floated back over to join us again, “so I guess he was at least telling the truth about that.”

  “That’s about the only thing,” Elizabeth muttered. “Sick bastard.

  What kind of person agrees to help the Maniac unleash toxic gas on the whole city, just because he thinks he can get out and sell more of that gas to the highest fucking bidder? That makes my stomach turn.”

  “I know,” I said, “but think of how much ammunition we have now.

  We have a sample of the gas, we know basically what its effects are, and we know the Maniac’s plan to destroy Grayville.”

  “Plus, we already know the timeline,” Norma said, “so now we really have something to work with.”

  “Absolutely,” I said with a nod.

  “So what’s next?” Penumbra asked. “Like what do we do now?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” I replied with a grin. “Now, we stop the Maniac.”

  Chapter 10

  After we got back to our mansion, I handed off the canister of gas to Aileen with strict instructions to make sure that it didn’t accidentally release and poison us all while we slept. But as much as I wanted to experiment with it so we could stop the Maniac’s plan before it even got started, I knew that I would be useless without a little bit of sleep.

  I didn’t need much, but I did at least need a few hours of rest before I started to tamper with hallucinogenic gas, so after we all changed out of our suits again, we fell asleep to get some well-deserved rest. After all, we still had a solid twenty-four hours before the Maniac’s plan was supposed to take effect, and I could do just about fucking anything in that amount of time.

  I woke up just before sunrise and headed downstairs, but it looked like I was the first one up. I was glad for the opportunity to work without any distractions, so I headed down into the basement to join Aileen and see what she had been up to while I was asleep.

  As I moved down the stairs, I saw that my beautiful creation still had her skin on, and she had slipped on shorts and a loose T-shirt that pulled

  tight against her breasts. She looked so comfortable as a human that I had to remind myself for a second that she was actually an android.

  “Good morning, Creator,” my robotic assistant purred when she saw me. “I made a few repairs to your four-person plane while you slept, in case you decide to use that against the Maniac.”

  “Oh, that’s perfect,” I said. “I meant to ask you to do that, but all I could think about last night was the gas.”

  “I knew that it needed to be done,” Aileen replied, “so I did it.”

  “Have I told you lately how much I appreciate you?” I grinned. “I couldn’t ask for a better AI system.”

  “Of course not,” Aileen said. “You designed me, so how could I be better than the way I am?”

  “Good point,” I said with a smirk. “Have you started to work with the gas yet?”

  “No, I thought it would be better to wait for
you,” my robotic assistant replied. “However, I have designed a containment chamber so that we may release a small portion of the gas at a time, with no risk that it will filter out into the air.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “Then first, I want to make sure that we all have gas masks that will keep us safe from this kind of toxin, so I should modify

  the one that I started on for Elizabeth.”

  “I do not need a gas mask, Creator,” Aileen said in her low, sultry voice.

  “And that’s just one more reason why you’re perfect,” I snickered.

  “But we’ll still need four masks, just in case the Maniac decides to kick things off a little early.”

  “What about the gas itself?” Aileen asked. “Do we need a test subject to see its effects and try to generate an antidote?”

  “Yeah, we should try to generate some kind of antidote,” I said, “but we should be able to examine its chemical properties and then start to work up something from there.”

  “I can begin the analysis of the sample,” Aileen said, “if you would like to begin work on the masks.”

  “Works for me,” I said with a shrug. “Just make sure you only release a little at a time into your containment chamber, so we still have plenty to work with.”

  “Of course,” my robotic assistant replied. “I will call you over if I discover anything.”

  “Same,” I said, and then I headed to the workstation where I had been working on Elizabeth’s mask.

  The structure of the mask was sound, so I wanted to keep its shape but make it actually effective at cleaning the air instead of just blocking it out. Since regular gas masks were way too bulky to really be functional in a superpowered fight, the small shape that fit right over the nose and mouth was important, so I just needed to make it out of the right kind of filter.

  Plus, I had finally gotten the charcoal I needed delivered, so now I really had something to work with.

  I sat down on the stool at my workstation and started to work.

  I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but at some point after I had finished the first new mask for Elizabeth, Norma came downstairs and set down a sausage and egg biscuit for me, along with a cup of black coffee.

  She didn’t say anything, but before she could slink back upstairs, I blinked and looked up from the table.

  “Hold on, Norma,” I said. “Come here for a second.”

  My mousy assistant immediately turned back around and hurried over.

  “I just need you to stand there for a minute,” I said.

  “Did you want cheese on your biscuit?” Norma asked. “Or maybe a little more--”

  “The food’s fine,” I said. “I just need to fit your face for a mask.”

  Norma nodded and then stood completely still as I slipped Elizabeth’s mask over her ears. It was a good prototype to start with, but Norma’s cheekbones weren’t quite as prominent as my girlfriend’s, and her lips were a little fuller, so I jotted down some measurements, pulled and held down the mask in different places, and just generally ran my fingers all over my assistant’s face until she’d gone two dozen different shades of red.

  “Okay, all done,” I said with a smile. “Thanks for being my model, Norma.”

  “Oh, I… um, sure thing,” she replied as she took the mask off to reveal just how much of her skin had turned pink with embarrassment.

  “If you wait there for a few minutes, I can get your own mask together for you to try on instead of Elizabeth’s,” I said. “Unless you haven’t eaten breakfast yet?”

  “No, I ate with Penumbra and Dynamo,” Norma replied. “I made you some fresh coffee so it would be hot when I brought it down here. We all sorta finished the first batch I made.”

  “Already?” I raised my eyebrows. “Sounds like you all are expecting a long day.”

  “Well, we’ve got less than twenty-four hours to stop the Maniac now, right?” my assistant sighed. “So we just want to be prepared for whatever

  happens.”

  “That’s my girl,” I said with a wink. “Now, pull up a stool and keep me company. Maybe Aileen will even let you play with the toxic gas in a minute, but only if you’re very good.”

  “Ooh!” Norma’s face turned more red, but her brown eyes lit up with the possibility that she might get to experiment with something so dangerous.

  “So how do you think the Maniac will distribute the gas?” I asked as I bent over and started to work on a new mask for Norma. “Any ideas so far?”

  “Well, it’s gas, so it has to be airborne,” my assistant said. “But it would have to be dispersed through the whole city at once, or at least, I imagine that’s how the Maniac would prefer it. So that doesn’t leave a lot of options.”

  “Mhm,” I said and held up the filter’s stitchwork underneath my magnifying glass to make sure that I had the strands just right.

  “Okay.” Norma adjusted herself on her stool and leaned forward in excitement. “So he could have it wired to a bunch of bombs that he’s planted around the city, and when they explode, poof! The gas disperses all through the air.”

  “That’s certainly one possibility,” I said, “although at this point, I imagine that the cops have probably taken bomb-sniffing dogs all around the city to try to find anything like that.”

  “That’s true,” Norma said as she pushed her oversized glasses back up on the bridge of her nose. “Okay, so then, um… oh! What if it’s actually airborne? Like from a crop-dusting type of plane or something?”

  “Now there’s an interesting possibility,” I said and looked up at her with a grin. “If he had a whole fleet of planes or gliders like the Shadow Knight, then he could just crop-dust the city with gas.”

  “We have not found any evidence that the Maniac has such a fleet,”

  Aileen called from the other side of the basement.

  “That’s true,” I said, “but it’s definitely still a possibility, so we should keep it in mind. What else have you got, Norma?”

  “Oh, I’ve got a good one,” my assistant said, “but I’ll only tell you if you take a bite of your breakfast first. It’s almost eleven o’clock.”

  “Alright,” I laughed as I set down my tools. “I guess I should thank you for keeping me supplied with food and coffee.”

  “You’re welcome,” Norma sighed, but she didn’t say another word until I had eaten half of my breakfast and downed almost my entire mug.

  “Happy now?” I arched an eyebrow.

  “Yes,” my mousy assistant sighed again. “So anyway, the other option I was thinking about was if he had it down in the sewers of the city somehow, right? And then whenever it was time, he triggered it to all filter up through the sewers, so people would immediately inhale it if they were outside.”

  “It could also come up through the pipes into people’s houses, too,” I said. “The sewers definitely seem right up the Maniac’s alley, that’s for sure. I think either an aerial or a sewer attack are probably our best options, so we need to be the most prepared for those.”

  “Do we need an escape plan?” Norma asked. “If everything, uh, goes south real fast?”

  “Oh, we have an escape plan,” I said. “It’s called Penumbra.”

  “Shit, I didn’t even think about that,” Norma said. “That makes sense. I guess she could fly all of us out of here if we needed her to.”

  “And if we’re all wearing our masks, then we should be protected until we’re out of reach from the gas,” I said. “We could always come back later for all of our shit, since your security measures for the mansion are sure to keep anyone away who might want to break in.”

  “That assumes anybody would be left alive after the gas attack,” my nerdy assistant muttered.

  “I don’t think it’ll come to that,” I said. “At least, I don’t plan for it to get that far. I want to come up with some kind of antidote for the gas, just in case, but I obviously plan to stop it before the Maniac can actually activate it.”


  “I am making progress,” Aileen chimed in from across the room. “I have isolated the phosphorus center, and I am working on a method to break apart the chemical bond. I should have additional updates in approximately one hour.”

  “Nicely done, Aileen,” I said. “Norma, why don’t you go tell the others what we talked about and see if they have any additional ideas?”

  “On it, boss,” she replied. “Need any more coffee?”

  “Not just yet,” I said. “I’ll ring a bell or something if I do.”

  “Or you could just call or text like a normal person,” my mousy assistant said with a frown. “I’m your assistant, not your servant, thank you very much.”

  “Okay,” I laughed. “Even though I don’t think there’s any chance that I’ll forget that as long as you’re around.”

  “Oh, one more thing,” Norma said as she stood up from her stool.

  “Penumbra has been putting on a brave face this morning, but, uh… well, I

  think she’s pretty scared about everything with the Maniac, and… I don’t know. I thought maybe you could talk to her or something.”

  “Sure, if you think it’ll help,” I said. “Give me about an hour, and then send her down here. You can tell her it’s so I can fit her for a gas mask, and then I’ll take it from there.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Norma said with a smirk.

  After my assistant headed back upstairs, I stretched my neck for a minute and then returned to work on the masks. I already had the measurements for myself, so once I finished Norma’s, I started to work on mine, while Aileen hummed from where she worked on the other side of the basement.

  When almost an hour had passed, I had finished all three masks and had roughly cut out Penumbra’s, so I stood up, stretched, and then headed over to check on Aileen’s progress with the hallucinogenic gas itself.

  “Any luck breaking that chemical bond yet?” I asked as I leaned over the containment chamber that Aileen had set up at the workstation.

  “The molecules are quite similar to those in sarin gas,” my robotic assistant replied, “and I have determined that a solution of sodium hydroxide, when paired with a carrier oil, can--”