DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2)

by Andrew Seiple

  “For the love of god, woman, will you not listen!” I howled.

  She slapped me, and I nearly blacked out.

  “Hey! Kin.” Siegebreaker put a hand down. “Enough. Okay? Enough.”

  “Then stop resisting arrest and come quietly.” She told me. “Can you at least do that? We’ll talk about your flowers later. Rather, the MRB detectives will, when they interrogate you— are you even paying attention?”

  I wasn’t.

  I was staring at the manhole, and the vines oozing forth from its shattered socket.

  “No,” I whispered, as they felt around the room, and found the wrecked crates.

  Kinetica mistook my denial for a reply. “Well then listen, okay? We’re going to take everything in this room, and let the authorities sort it out in a contained environment. So calm down and—”

  “The flowers!” I yelled, and she rolled her eyes. The vines jerked, and Siegebreaker swiveled his head around on his torso and jumped upright, moving towards them... but too late. With a screech of metal on concrete, and blossoms and dirt spilling across the floor, the vines pulled the flowers, crates and all, down into the sewer.

  I closed my eyes. Vector had left a kaiju behind just in case. Siegebreaker had probably moved right by it, without realizing it was anything beyond a tangled mess of plants.

  “Uh. So that was a thing that just happened,” Siegebreaker said. “Doc, you catch that?”

  “Yes.” Quantum’s voice boomed down from the jet. “Do not pursue. Schrodinger doesn’t have eyes down there.”

  “We had a drone in the tunnels, didn’t we?”

  “Looks like it got taken out while he was focused on Doctor Dire.”

  “You couldn’t catch it anyway,” I muttered. “Those things go insanely fast in straightaways.”

  Kinetica and Siegebreaker traded looks. “I think we’ll continue this conversation in privacy. Could you?” She asked Siegebreaker. The cyborg nodded, scooped me up, and dropped me. I had a split-second to freeze up in shock, before I was hovering in the air, slowly twisting around. Kinetica’s power had me, now that I was an object in motion, and she steered me through the door, and outside.

  Above, the roughly-triangular shape of the Quantum Jet loomed over us. Shaped like a plane with no visible engines, it was about as long as a city bus, and three times as wide. A rough triangle with wings, wide at the back and tapered toward the front. A long strip of shining glass ran around the front of it, extending halfway down the body on either side.

  I had no idea how it crept up on the Power Station without my notice.

  “Silent engines,” I muttered, as she floated me up toward the open cargo bay. “That’s new.”

  “Yeah, fun, aren’t they? Been hunting other terrorists out in California. People complained about the noise, so we made some stealth baffles.” Kinetica grinned, as she floated along next to me. “Compared to those other losers, you went down like a chump.”

  I didn’t listen. Didn’t care.

  The cargo bay was clean and white, like a hospital. She floated me past a few metal cylinders and what looked to be maintenance tools, before depositing my unresisting form in a small, open indentation, barely big enough to sit on. I blinked at it, confused. then glass indentations on the floor flared, and bars made of energy crackled to life. The scent of ozone filled the air, and I welcomed it. It was a nice change from lilacs, at least. Took my mind off what the pollen was doing to me.

  “Phased solid photonic resonators,” I said, studying the emitters. “Interesting way of going about it.”

  “I tend to agree,” Doc Quantum said, stepping out of a hatchway to the north. He was much as I remembered him: a tall, well-built man with a blue jacket, white shirt, white pants, and a white mask with goggles built into it. His hair protruded from the open top of his mask, as black as mine, but shorter, neatly cropped.

  “There was another one?” He asked Kinetica.

  “I’ll go get her.” Kinetica hopped out of the hatch.

  Siegebreaker’s voice echoed over the Jet’s intercoms. “Take it easy with that one. Slight concussion.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah...”

  Quantum ignored their byplay, and settled on a crate next to me, looking me over. I lay on the floor and stared back. I couldn’t work up the anger to hate him.

  “Why?” He finally asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you choose this path? What has it gained you?”

  I said nothing, stared at him.

  He stirred, offered an open hand. “All this could have been averted, if you’d come with us in that WEB base. Stood trial for your crimes.”

  “Crimes.” I gurgled laughter, shifted so that the blood didn’t flow in my face quite as much. I was making a good mess on their clean white floor, and didn’t care about that in the slightest. “You called her a villain. Are you not happy with how low she’s come?”

  “I don’t see how you can blame us for your own actions,” he continued, as calm as a gardener considering how best to trim a hedge. “You’ve killed and harmed a lot of people, Doctor. You’ve caused massive amounts of property damage, and put civilians in danger for nothing more than your own gain.”

  Behind him Vorpal floated by, with Kinetica following. But I didn’t watch them go, held the hero with my eyes as I put force into my voice. “You speak from ignorance, Quantum. Dire’s motives and methods were the result of reason and benevolence, even if the results have not been acceptable thus far. She fights necessary battles for every sentient mind on earth, not just herself.”

  “You’re going to plead the greater good?” He shook his head. “I think not. You’ve suborned the law, aided felons in escaping justice, worked with known criminals, and targeted innocents. And what I’m trying to figure out is why. This doesn’t match your actions during the Y2K event. This doesn’t match up with what I found out about you. Your activities with the Black Blood situation and the Shanty Town seem more understandable than your recent crimes.”

  “The Shanty Town?” I asked.

  “That’s the MRB designation for your original home. The one we know about, anyway.”

  “Ah.” I pulled myself up to a sitting position, as best I could with my back screaming at me and my legs a beat behind the rest of my body. “Then you know now that Dire was telling the truth about vampires, back in the WEB base. You know now that you acted incorrectly, and jumped to conclusions.”

  He frowned for the first time, lips pulling back into a hard grimace. “I acted correctly for the information that I had at the time.”

  “They you admit you owe Dire an apology.”

  “I owe you an apology for that. Compared to some of the things we've been through, I suppose that vampires were fairly pedestrian.”

  I smiled. “Apology accepted.” I lost the smile. “Now get lost.”

  “I think not. You haven't answered my question. Why?”

  “She'll answer your question with another question; did Great Clown Pagliacci and his Black Bloods follow the unwritten rules?”

  “No.”

  “And who ended up taking them down at the end?”

  He massaged his temples. “I see where you're going with this, but there's a fallacy inherent in the assumption. You're implying that it was necessary to break the rules in order to stop him from committing worse atrocities. That his atrocities forgive yours.”

  “Atrocities.” I snorted.

  “Yes. You broke your word to us, Doctor Dire. You armed civilians, drove them to fight in the street under your banner. We took a chance on you, that you weren't the warlord it looked like you were shaping up to be, and—”

  “You could have fucking stopped it!” I shrieked, pulling myself to my feet though it hurt, though every part of me hurt. He rose as well, but I had an inch on him and by god I looked down on him, glaring. “You knew what WEB was doing. You said you had a tracker on Dire, from the first beach-fight onward. You heard what we said! You could have sto
pped the Black Bloods, before Dire’s people died in the street like dogs!”

  His eyes, barely visible under the goggles, blinked. He took a half-step back, put up his hands. “It was a tracker, not a bug. We couldn’t hear what was going on, and it was just one measure of many, so we couldn’t devote our full attention to it. By the time we learned you were assaulting the Black Bloods, we were too late to stop it, too late to intervene. The Steampunks were wrapping it up anyway—”

  “Yes.” I hissed, anger overpowering my depression, pulsing through me in waves. “The villains. Who finished the fight that you couldn’t. So high and mighty you are, hero. Never touched by the blood that pools under your feet, high above them all as good people die in the gutters, and you call those who fight alongside them villains.”

  I flicked my hand at him between the bars and he flinched, as blood spattered across his jumpsuit, staining the white with bright red.

  He scowled again, and shook his head. “I suggest that you adjust your attitude before I return. We’ve got some questions for you before we hand you over to the authorities.”

  “Not going to leave her to the MRB interrogators, then?”

  “I recommend you tell the truth.” He turned and left, as I glared at his back.

  Siegebreaker floated up into the jet, carrying the remnants of my armor. I slumped down in my cell, and watched him carry the armor forward, compacting his bulk to fit through the hallway ahead, scrunching himself down to a half of his regular size. He turned to look at me just before he left. “Don’t get any funny ideas. This is going in a sealed room, that doesn’t permit grid or other broadcast connections. Remote activation won’t work.”

  I shook my head. “Not in the plan.”

  “Of course you’ve got a plan,” he said, and headed through the hatchway. “Looks like a lousy one to me so far, but hey, knock yourself out. Save me the trouble.” But something made him hesitate, and meet my glower with his electronic eyes. “Hey. Listen, your back’s messed up. Looks like cracked vertebrae. The less you move, the less trouble you’ll have later. Alright?”

  I stared at him in confusion. “Thank you?” I hadn’t expected kindness from these clods.

  He turned without another word, and left.

  I slumped onto the floor and tried not to move. The longer I lay there, the worse my back felt. Tiny shifts brought more pain, burning pain, worse than the rest of the beatings I’d taken today combined. But I clenched my jaws, and held tears back. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

  I watched Kinetica head out with a rebreather and a device similar to an old-style vacuum cleaner, a ball with a hose attached. For lack of anything better to do I pondered the brief glimpse I had of it, and discerned its purpose. It was a molecular scrubber. It would break down organic particles at the atomic level. They were taking me seriously, scrubbing the site of pollen, at least. Well, that was something. Too late for me, but something. She returned after a couple of minutes, shut the hatch behind her, and went forward.

  A few minutes later, a faint sense of motion informed me that we were on our way. Not long beyond that, Doc Quantum returned, with a new person following him. The stranger wore a jumpsuit split down the middle, half-white and half-blue. His mask was full-faced, and was also split, but the colors were the opposite of the sides of his costume. The mask on the right was white, and the right half of the jumpsuit was blue, and vice-versa. A mass of golden curls tumbled out from behind his mask, and he was thin, with little muscle on him. Thinner than me, even.

  “Doctor Dire!” He said, coming to the edge of the cell, and hopping up on a nearby crate. “Good to meet you face to face. Well, more or less. Hi, I’m Schrodinger. Also known as the bane of your life for the last fight.”

  I stared at him in sullen silence. The seconds ticked past, and after a bit, Schrodinger nodded at Quantum. “Got her. ”

  “All right.” Quantum folded his arms. “Please answer truthfully. You said that the flowers were a bioagent?”

  “The pollen’s a bioagent, the flowers are just the source.”

  Quantum looked to Schrodinger. Schrodinger nodded.

  I took the opportunity to scrutinize him. “Now how does this work, precisely? You see into the future, yes... presumably you hear the outcomes too, unless you're very good at reading lips.” I covered my mouth.

  Schrodinger shook his head. “You're being ridiculous.”

  “She's testing a theory,” I spoke, voice muffled behind my hand. “You know, that science thing you pretend to do when you're not wearing spandex and capturing your betters?”

  “Focus.” Quantum said. “Where do the flowers come from?”

  I cocked my head to the side. “Not going to tell you.”

  Schrodinger smacked his thigh with an open hand. “Morgenstern! Of course!”

  I blinked. How had he done that?

  The answer came easily. Obviously, he'd sorted through various timelines until he found one where I'd decided to answer him truthfully. Probably found a couple more where I'd answered the same, just to double-check it.

  “Clever. Dependent on the idea that she doesn't have prepared lies to tell you, but clever nonetheless.”

  “Thank you. And seriously, I can hear you through the filter. The hand-over-mouth thing doesn't hinder me one bit.”

  I started to withdraw my hand, hesitated. No way to know for sure. But at this point, it was a moot matter anyway. I let my hand fall away. “Did you choose the timeline where she did that? Or did you leave it to fate?”

  Schrodinger shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  “At any rate, we're asking the questions here,” Quantum interrupted. “What are the effects of this bioagent?”

  I didn't speak. Schrodinger gasped. “Oh. Wow. Okay, that's bad.”

  Quantum looked to him, and Schrodinger shook his head. “Tell you later. Let's just say we'll run a full scan back at the base.”

  Quantum nodded. “Alright. Do you have any evidence linking the bioagent to Morgenstern?”

  Frankly, no. I'd destroyed my supercomputer in an effort to preserve my leverage. I shook my head, and Schrodinger confirmed it. I watched Quantum's lips tighten. “So again he'll escape justice.”

  “He's rich enough that you have little chance of bringing him to justice anyway, with the social system of this nation being what it is.” I supplied, leaning against the wall. “Though, to be fair, that's a species-wide problem. Dire had plans to do something about that, eventually.”

  I saw the heroes share a look.

  “You think?” Schrodinger asked.

  “It's worth a shot.” Quantum confirmed.

  “What?” I asked.

  He looked at me. “Doctor. I know we got off on the wrong foot. Mistakes were made, but... for all your struggles, your motives seem just in retrospect.”

  I nodded. “Well, yes.”

  “There's a spark there. There's a spark that could grow into a mighty fire. You're right in some respects... justice is a worthy goal for this world. There's a shortage of it, and those who would defend it are in short supply.”

  “You're flattering her. Get to the point.”

  “I want you to do penance for your crimes, and redeem yourself. We can help you with this.”

  Time came to a screeching halt. I stared at him, open-mouthed. What the hell was he thinking?

  And then my eyes slid over to Schrodinger, inscrutable behind his mask.

  No. That was the wrong question, I realized.

  “You're trying to recruit her.” I smiled.

  “Frankly, yes. Your intelligence is comparable to my own, you fill a niche we don't have at present, and you desire to do good. In a more positive environment, we can help you to realize that dream.”

  “You're trying to recruit her, and you're using Schrodinger's power to cheat.”

  “How so?”

  “He's looking for one reality, one timeline where Doctor Dire agrees to join you. And once he finds it, he'll shunt it to
be the main timeline.” I snickered, and straightened up. “It's kind of pathetic, really. Is this how you get dates on lonely nights, Schrody?”

  He sighed. “If you must know I'm married to a wonderful husband.”

  “Good for you. Now listen to her, and listen well.” I leaned forward, until my eyes were inches from the energy bars, glaring at the both of them. “In not one timeline, will you find any version of Dire who will ever agree to join your insipid, hypocritical, hindered, team.” I spat. “In all of the multiverse, however your power sorts things, look hard, and see the depths of her loathing for you and your methods. See how she despises you, and your hackneyed attempts to set her straight!”

  I leaned back, smiled, smug and at ease despite the pain throbbing through my back, despite the spreading numbness in my legs. “Go on. She dares ya.”

  Time crawled by, and after half a minute, Schrodinger shook his head. “Sorry Doc.”

  “Apology not accepted,” I told him.

  “Wrong Doc.” He hopped off his crate, and headed towards the hatch.

  Quantum straightened up, and tapped the panel by the door. “You’re no longer our affair,” he said. “Good luck in jail.”

  The jet shuddered. Quantum snapped his head around. “Status?” He yelled.

  The hatch burst open, and Schrodinger slammed through it, hitting the back wall of the cargo bay as a heavy suit of power armor followed after him, turned, and oriented on Quantum.

  I knew that armor. That was one of Morgenstern’s armored suits! But the face was different. The faceplate had been repainted, to look like my own mask. What the hell was this?

  Quantum drew a pistol, snapped a shot of sparking energy off at the suit, which fell backward, with waves of electricity cascading across it. An ionic nullifier? Nasty. He’d be down for the count for a while.

  “Kinetica! Siegebreaker! Respond!” He slammed the hatch shut, slid a heavy cargo box in front of it, then went to check on Schrodinger. “Thank god. Dire. Call off your minions, this won’t end well.”

  The jet shook and shuddered again, and the lights blacked out for a second. So did the bars. They came back on before I could do more than blink, though. “These aren’t Dire’s minions.”