“Epic, open a line to Carlos!”
As I try to regain my feet, black-clad arms wrap around my neck. Alarms scream as pressure on the suit increases a hundredfold.
“Amelia, I’m in the middle of something—”
“Carlos—help!” Genuine fear erupts through me. My throat contracts as the one behind me squeezes my neck. I kick out, only to hit the shield of the woman. Five of them close in on me, pinning me. The spear wielder raises his spear, aimed directly at my chest.
“You should have stayed dead,” Three says, and he plunges the spear toward me.
I hit full thrust on the Emdrive, dumping every single joule into the engines. The whine is deafening but it’s enough to jerk me free, so the spear only hits my legs. Alarms warble to life. My HUD flashes warnings as systems fail. The Emdrive cuts out while I’m thirty feet up and I pinwheel helplessly to the ground.
That’s when the thunder crack of Carlos’ own spear crashing down through the heavens reaches my ears. I see it hit the ground, followed by his sandaled feet. I’ve never been so happy to see a toe in all my life. I try to say something, but my mouth dries up and the world goes dark.
128
When I was a kid, just after I lost the ability to walk, I was sick of hospitals. Boy, I sure was in the minor leagues back then.
The soft beep of machinery greets me as I drift up through the layers of unconsciousness.
“Where?” I manage to say before I even open my eyes.
“Oh, Amelia, you’re awake,” Kate says, placing a cool rag to my lips. I’m thirsty as all get-out and my arms are freezing, which is a sure sign I have IVs hooked up to me. I manage to crack open an eyelid. Thankfully, the lights are turned way down and I can see Kate’s smiling face. Behind her is the standard architecture of the Spire’s medical floor. When we built the place, I had them paint the walls a nice sky blue. It’s very soothing. Right this second, I appreciate that little detail.
“It’s only been a few hours, right? No yearlong jumps?”
She laughs. “No honey, no more yearlong jumps. You had us worried, though.”
I nod. “Water?”
She puts a cup to my lips and I drink deep. It tastes better than water has any right to. I rest my head on the pillow for a second, thinking back to what happened. I didn’t have any spare moments at the time, or I think I would’ve spotted the setup sooner.
“Any idea who they were?” I ask Kate.
“No, they’re new. I checked with the database and Milton ran a search. Other than the giant robots that have been ransacking the cities, there haven’t been any reports of armored villains. I think we would have heard of six armored figures in flat black armor running around with melee weapons and machine guns.” She reaches over and holds the cup in the sink then turns on the water to refill it.
Everything hurts. I mean everything. I wince as I pull myself up to sit. Only then do I notice the bandage over my leg. “Is that why I didn’t feel the spear hit?”
She hands me the cup which I eagerly take. “Yes. It cut your femoral artery. If I hadn’t been there to get you to Teddy, post haste, we’d be at your funeral… again,” she says with a sad smile.
“I was… taken by surprise,” I say by way of an explanation.
“You don’t say! Amelia, those people weren’t there to rob a bank or steal some jewelry. They were there to end you. If our own God of Spears hadn’t come down from the heavens when he did… they would have had you,” she says, leaning in and narrowing her eyes at me. “How, I think is the question of the hour.”
I hit the button on the bed to lift me up. It whirs to life moving me ever so slowly into a seated position. “I’ll have to check with Epic, but I think…” I sigh. I hate what I am about to say, but I expected it from the moment I found out my lab was gone. “They had my tech. Or at least access to enough of it that they could bypass my shields and armor.”
Kate’s eyes go wide; she sits up straight. “How is that possible? You said no one could ever replicate what you did?”
“Yeah, yeah I did. All that time and energy I spent keeping my armor out of the hands of Ericsson and his goon squad and my own government stabs me in the back.”
“Oh,” she says, understanding what I mean.
An uneasy silence breaks out between us. I let out a yawn. “Listen, you all did what you had to do, and what’s done is done. No use crying about it now.”
She nods. “I’m sorry Amelia. This is your worst-case scenario come to life.”
A cold chill runs from my toes to my neck. Not my worst case. Not even close. “In the broad scheme of things, this ranks really low. Listen, I need to get back to work and—”
“No,” she says firmly.
My hackles raise and I open my mouth to argue when a wave of exhaustion rolls over me. The machine next to me beeps.
“Did y-you… ju… just drug me?”
She smiles. “For your own good. Nighty-night.” The last thing I see before my eyelids grow too heavy is her waving at me, fingers dancing like they’re playing air-piano.
129
“Really, Luke, I’m fine. I don’t need to spend the rest of the day in bed,” I explain to my beau. He gives me the look. The one that says, “Uh huh.” My apartment is exactly like I left it. Things like this trick my brain into thinking I wasn’t gone as long as I was. Luke lived down here, and he did his best to make sure it stayed perfect. For the last hour, we’ve been talking over breakfast, but every few minutes my eyes glance over at the lab.
I do have things I want to start on. First and foremost, figuring out how to track down the people who stole my tech. Then I need to find a way to keep my butt from getting kicked again. Third, I need to restore Kate… somehow. I really need my friend back.
“I’m sure, Amelia. Teddy told you to take it easy, though. They nearly killed you,” he says with a deep, sorrowful voice.
Idiot, Amelia! He’s not just worried about you; he’s got the whole team on his shoulders. I reach over and take his hand, feeling his calloused fingers between mine. His hands can be so rough sometimes. I guess that goes with a lifetime of using them for a living. I trace little patterns over his knuckles and his palms. Not only do I love holding hands with him, but I also love looking at him holding my hands. He has monster hands. They’re easily twice as big as mine. I forget, sometimes, being so close to him, how truly tall and broad he is.
“Luke, there’s nothing you or anyone else could’ve done to prevent that. It was a setup, just like Epic said. They were there for me; they were ready for me. If I don’t work on the problem, they will just return to finish what they started.”
He lets out a big sigh, shrinking a little. “It’s just that… I haven’t gotten to spend much time with you since you’ve returned and now there’s a new threat… maybe we need a vacation. We could go somewhere warm and sunny? Sit on a beach and sip little drinks with umbrellas in them. I have plenty of money saved up. We could leave tomorrow and—why are you looking at me like that?”
I close my mouth. He wants to go on a vacation with me? I know that before everything happened with the Th’un he was planning on proposing, but that got thrown off track. Now he’s talking about a vacation? “You’re wonderful, you know that?”
“Psh… you’re the awesome one. I’m just along to bask in your glory.”
He says it with such a straight face I can’t help but blush. Heat floods through my ears and my face feels ten degrees warmer than it did a second ago. “Luke…”
“Okay,” he whispers. “It’s okay. I had to try. But seriously, think about the vacation. Winter is coming and we could be sitting on a beach in Puerto Rico turning brown. Well… brown for me, browner for you.”
I nod. Not trusting myself to speak while blushing furiously.
“Attention,” Milton’s voice comes over the Spire’s speakers. “There is a hostage situation in Albuquerque; as the hostage taker has super-powers, the locals have asked us to intervene. Ma
jor Force, TK, Teddy, and Fleet please report to the hangar.”
Luke sighs, looking up at the speaker. “Duty calls.”
“Go get ‘em, Tiger.” I plant a kiss on his cheek. He smiles before returning the token.
Once Luke vacates my apartment, I wait five minutes to make sure he’s not trying to trick me and come back to say, “Ah-Ha”. I flip on the TV, finish the delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs, potatoes, and bacon that seems to be the only thing he knows how to cook in the morning. Not that I’m complaining, he does it better than most restaurants. Has to be the cowboy upbringing.
When he doesn’t return, I roll over to the bookcase and pull on Armor. The wall slides aside with a satisfying swoosh effect. I know I should be upset, angry, or whatever. But I’m not. This is a puzzle. A challenge. And like Elizabeth Bennet, I always rise to the challenge!
The door slides shut behind me blocking out everything but the task ahead. “Epic?”
I am here.
“Time to work for a living. Show me everything we know about the… The Armory.” I come up with the name on the fly, but he takes my meaning. I think it’s pretty fitting since they seemed to have a weapon for everything.
Six armors pop up on six of the eight screens I have down here. Each one shows a wireframe representation of the details we were able to see and scan along with a list of information like heat levels, energy signature, etc. The good news is, I don’t keep ZPFMs in my old armors. Once I upgrade out of them. I take out the power sources and either put them in my new armor or store them in the secure server buried under the building. The one only I have access to. Of course, I thought that about my lab, and I was wrong then.
No point in going down that road. Not now.
There is still a clutter of boxes down here but for the most part, everything is hooked up. “Okay, they bypassed our kinetic shields; I’m thinking they used frequency resonance. What do you think?”
If that is the case, then simply changing the frequency modulation of our kinetic manipulators may provide some defense.
“Right, but that leaves us with another problem.”
We do not have enough animetal to repair the suit.
I wheel over to the workbench—the one with the sink in it. Except it’s not a sink—it just looks like one. I place my hands on the bottom. “Extract, one-one-three-eight.”
A cold wave rolls over me. I wince as the armor seeps out of my pores. It doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t feel good either. After a few moments, the sink is half full of the animetal in a liquid state. With the press of a button, the animetal flows down the drain into the containment tank where it will be purified and held until I can figure out what to do with it. With its unique atomic structure and the polymolecular chips installed in it, the animetal can become anything. A power source, a sword, mass driver: all I need is the schematics loaded into it.
I glance over at the brand-new quantum computer we had Mars Tech Global whip up for us. I am so used to Epic being with me, it’s going to take some getting used to. I sigh. One more thing I don’t have now. I slip on the augmented reality glasses. The HUD springs back to life and I can see the icon indicating Epic is connected.
Shall I bring up the percentage we have for coverage? Perhaps we can make an exo-suit with plates attached.
“That’s not a bad idea. What I really need, though, is a combination. The advantages of both the animetal and the titanium-tungsten carbide suits. I liked being stronger in the new suit. Not just for a second, but lift-a-car-and-throw-it strong. I need a way to do that in my old-style suit, while still maintaining the flexibility of the MK V.
Amelia. What if we used some of the animetal for the joints? Using a small amount, we could mimic human muscles in the suit, giving us strength by fusing the animetal with the inside of the suit.
“Yeah, but if we fuse it with the suit, then I can’t store it in me. Then we’re back to only walking around when we’re in the suit… oh.”
I do not think there is any way around it, Amelia. There simply is not enough animetal to form a stable suit. Until such time as the government gives us the amount we need, you will not be walking around without your suit on.
I sigh. “Sounds about right. Dangit all. Okay, let’s fire up the plant. Place the orders we need. If we’re making the MK VI then we’re going to need a good amount of material—and don’t forget what I need for the sword, okay?”
Affirmative.
“Well, if it can’t be stored inside me, then we better start looking at some kind of mobile deployment package… I don’t want to be caught without my armor—ever.”
130
“Amelia, you here?” Kate’s voice echoes over the boxes and whirring computer equipment in my lab. I pull off the goggles I use to solder.
“Over here,” I yell back without looking up. This version of the suit is almost ready. I hope. But this part is always tricky; connecting the ZPFM to the internals on the suit then sealing it using the kinetic manipulators.
“Amelia? You’ve been busy. When Luke told me you disappeared into your lab for three days, he wasn’t kidding.”
I nod. The workbench I’m at has the armor laid out in pieces. Almost like I’m wearing it, each piece is suspended using the kinetic field. I have little articulating arms that do all the fine work for me. All I have to do is raise my hands and the arms mimic my movement. I use the goggles and Epic to make sure the work is—
“Wait? Three days?” I look back at her, she’s dressed in a conservative, all-black suit with a gray top peeking out under her black coat. Even inside she doesn’t take off her trench coat.
It has indeed been three days. I did remind you to sleep… several times.
“Yeah but I thought…” I wave my hand in the air. “It doesn’t matter. But it sure explains how tired I am.” Kate leans down and gives me an awkward hug.
“It’s nice to see you hard at work. I missed this.” She pulls up a chair next to me. “Now, tell me all about it.”
I glance over at the largest screen in the lab. It usually displays whatever project I’m working on, but, in this instance, it has a molecular matrix played out on it with several different wavelengths.
“This is the base frame for my MK VI... but that isn’t why I wanted you to come by.” I wheel around to face her, grabbing the rag hanging off the workbench to wipe my face. “I have a surprise for you.”
Her eyes go wide. “Amelia, what did you do?”
I feign shock. “Your suspicious tone hurts me, right here.” I thump my chest.
“It’s hard not to be suspicious. You have a penchant for using technology to solve all your problems. It’s just, not everything can be solved by science.”
Now it’s my turn to narrow my eyes. “I will ignore the blasphemy you just spoke in my lab and give you your present anyway,” I smirk, then turn and wheel over to the animetal dispenser.
“Is this suit the one you’re designing to deal with ‘The Armory?’”
I smile. “The name stuck, huh?”
“Milton filed it, and everyone agreed it works. Though, they haven’t come back since. No new crimes. Not to mention all the giant robots looting banks have stopped as well.”
I didn’t know that. Luke had told me about the robot attacks and I even pulled up some footage. I have my suspicions about what they are but I’m playing it close to the vest for now. It’s hard to believe the attack on me and the giant robots aren’t related.
I point at the stool next to the computer. “Have a seat.” Since they took all my stuff, I had to redesign much of this from memory. I decided that instead of using a helmet to program compatibility with the animetal, I could just use a headband with ‘trodes and glasses.
“Do I need to put on this tiara for your present to work?”
“Yep.” I wheel up next to her, bringing the adjustable size metal band. After a few seconds, I have it placed firmly on her head. “Now the glasses.” They are flat black and shielded like th
e shades skiers use.
“This would be easier if you told me what you’re doing,” Kate asks.
“Take off your coat.” I purposely saved this part until she couldn’t see.
“Amelia…”
“Kate—a year may have passed since you saw me last, but I’m still your best friend. Trust me?”
She nods and unbuttons her coat then slides it off her arm; she pulls it off awkwardly over the missing one. I bite my lip to keep from making a sound. It looks worse than I remember. There isn’t even a stump; they surgically removed her entire arm all the way to the shoulder. Bastards.
Now for the tricky part. The last gift I gave her was well-intentioned, but I didn’t expect her to never take it off. Now I have to ask her to never use it again.
“Okay, last thing. Turn off the necklace.”
She hesitates, grasping the necklace and running her fingers over the gem. “Amelia, I… I don’t know. I’ve gotten out of the habit of listening to other people’s emotions. I don’t think I want to go back. Not even for a few minutes. After what happened at the Starbucks, I was so overwhelmed by everything I couldn’t focus through all the noise to help you. I watched helplessly as Carlos saved you, I couldn’t even stop any of them from fleeing, and I should have.”
I sigh. “I’m sorry, Kate, truly. But what I’m doing has to interface with your specific powers to work. Your necklace blocks those and if it’s on, this won’t work.”
She nods awkwardly through her headband and glasses. “And what exactly is this?”
“Can I let it be a surprise?” I ask. I’ll tell her if she wants, but I would prefer it to be a surprise, for several reasons.
She hesitates for a second, then presses the gem on her necklace, deactivating the power source. Her chest heaves and I can tell she’s having some trouble. I’ve got the lab shielded; no telepathy or empathy can pass through. Her trouble comes from me.
Full Metal Superhero Box Set [Books 1-6] Page 70
