Connie pointed to the towering machine in the middle of the room. “And this psycho-amplifier will allow you to exert your will over all humans on Earth.”
“You have some familiarity with devices of this type, then? Of course you do. And you no doubt know exactly how to shut it down or, even worse, use it against me somehow.”
Connie shrugged. She’d need a screwdriver and two seconds to undo all of Debra’s plans. She just had to keep the mutant genius talking until the opportunity presented itself.
“Shall I tell you why you won’t do whatever you’re planning on doing?” asked Debra.
“Please.”
“Because I am the only one in this universe who can save you from what’s coming. Among my powers is clairvoyance, and I know what is to come.”
“That’s precognition,” said Connie. “Not clairvoyance.”
Debra glared with disdain. “Regardless, I have seen your future.”
“And let me guess,” said Connie. “You don’t see any possible future where I can defeat you, so I might as well surrender.”
“You are not as smart as you think you are,” said Debra. “Do you think you’ve seen everything, understand everything? Do you think I don’t know your reputation, your abilities? The odds of you stopping me are ridiculously small, but those are exactly the kind of odds you enjoy. Yours is a life of the improbable, a reliable succession of statistical absurdity. At this moment, you are in your element. If anyone can foil my brilliant plan, it is you. But you won’t, and I’ll tell you why.
“How long do you think you can continue to live like this? Even the most fortunate soul has their bad day, and your bad day is coming.” Debra gazed off into the distance, as if she could see the future there. “Sooner than you think. And I am the only one who can show you the way to save yourself.”
Debra pressed her fingertips together and leered at Connie. “You will join me, or you will die.”
“That’s it? That’s your pitch? It’s not very original.”
“You misunderstand me. I’m not threatening you. I’m simply presenting a fact. In all the fields of probability before me, I see not one where you survive more than two or three weeks. Four at the outside. Except for the one where you join me. Guided by my understanding of your role in the universe, you and I shall become unstoppable. Defeat me, and you will only be sealing your own inevitable doom.”
The psycho-amplifier hummed and rattled as it neared completion. Its lights blinked in colorful patterns as the entire room vibrated. Connie edged closer to the toolbox.
“Tell me, Connie. How many close calls does a single person get? How many have you had this year alone?” asked Debra.
“I don’t know,” replied Connie. “I don’t keep track.”
“No, I suppose you don’t, but I can promise you that the universe does. Sooner or later, the law of averages catches up to us all. Do you not ponder when that day comes for you?”
“It’s bound to eventually,” said Connie. “I don’t worry about it.”
Debra clomped before Connie. “But what if you could do something about it? All your life, you’ve defied the odds. But there is a day of reckoning coming. I can sense the unraveling fields of probability around you.”
Debra placed her hand on her side in the exact spot Connie had been stabbed, and whether through psychic manipulation or the mere power of suggestion, Connie’s side twinged.
“It’s only the beginning, you know.”
“And I’m supposed to just let you take over the world because you can stop it, and look the other way while you conquer the world?”
“Why not? We’re not so different, you and I.”
“Oh, brother. Not the we’re not so different speech,” said Connie to Tia, who, like every other person in the room, had fallen under Debra’s control. Tia didn’t reply. Only stared straight ahead. Connie wiped some drool from Tia’s lips.
Debra said, “If you think about it, all you do is put a bandage on a disordered world. I’m a more permanent solution. I will bring peace and order to all, and all I ask for in return is absolute obedience. In that way, am I so different from the governments that came before me? The people always look to leaders for answers. I am the answer they have always been waiting for.”
“You’re just another megalomaniac,” said Connie. “I’ve heard the Join Me and We Shall Rule the Galaxy Together speech a hundred times before.”
Debra’s eyes narrowed, and the veins on her giant head pulsed. “I take that as a no, then.”
“Hell, no.”
Connie snatched the screwdriver from the toolbox and dashed around Debra’s walking throne. A pair of technicians moved to stop her. She knocked them aside without breaking stride and was a few steps from the psycho-amplifier when her body stiffened against her will. She fell over, a numbness creeping through her limbs.
Debra cackled. “I may not be able to control your mind, but I can certainly access your nervous system. What good is a brain unable to communicate with its body? Not much. The question is how best to dispose of you? Heart attack?”
Connie’s chest tightened.
“Suffocation, perhaps?” said Debra.
Connie stopped breathing. She didn’t panic. If Debra was as smart as she claimed, she’d have simply killed Connie outright. But she was a mastermind. They loved to gloat. Connie had time.
“Or I could just play it safe and shoot you.” Debra’s mobile throne stepped aside and a commando picked up his weapon and walked forward. “Good-bye, Connie. You have no one to blame but yourself.”
Connie called upon ancient meditative techniques to reboot her nervous system under her control. It would take only a few moments. Moments she didn’t have. She tried shouting a taunt. Something to get Debra talking again. The only thing that came out was a strangled grunt as Debra clomped away.
A gunshot rang out, but it wasn’t rifle fire. The mesmerized commando glanced down at his bleeding shoulder, more perplexed than anything.
Tia fired her pistol twice more. The shots missed their target. One ricocheted a few inches from Connie’s face.
Connie gained control of her mouth. “Shoot the mutant!”
Tia, her body still stiff from conflicting signals, aimed at Debra. Tia emptied her gun. It was difficult to not hit the giant brain directly in front of her. Every bullet found its mark. Or would have, if Debra hadn’t telekinetically snagged them. They orbited her head like a halo.
“I don’t even know who you are,” she said. “And after I’ve killed you, I’m going to erase the very memory of you from everyone you’ve ever met.”
Connie stood and punched the commando. Her reflexes were off but up to the task of smacking aside the clumsy lab technicians in her way. Debra hurled several bullets at Connie but stopped as she reached the psycho-amplifier.
“I should’ve seen this coming.” Debra shook her head with a grim acceptance. “And you should’ve taken my offer.”
Connie inserted the screwdriver and adjusted the master control. She pushed the activation button, and a psionic surge blasted out of the machine. For most everyone on Earth, it wouldn’t register. For some, it’d be a headache for a few hours. For Debra, it was a massive misfire of mutated, overpowered neurons. She shrieked. Veins on her head burst, and her head sagged like a fluid-filled balloon.
Her mechanized chair stomped wildly out of control. It spun around the room, nearly crushing Connie, crashing into the psycho-amplifier. The tower wobbled, and she thought about getting out of the way. But her head was buzzing and her body didn’t respond as the amplifier fell toward her.
Tia yanked Connie out of the way. The amplifier smashed into the floor with a final thud. Connie stared at the several tons of electronics. The static in her brain processed the geometry of the situation.
“Are you all right?” asked Tia.
It was hard to think, but her reflexes would’ve kicked in, and she would’ve moved out of the way on her own.
Tia
snapped her fingers in front of Connie’s eyes, and Connie pushed away the oppressive psychic crackle. Tried to. It skittered in the back of her skull.
“I’m fine,” she said.
Debra’s thralls stopped working. The commandoes surrounded her, but she only lay in her overturned chair, groaning.
“My God,” Tia said. “What happened to your eyes? They’re all red.”
“Side effect of sabotaging the device.” Connie played it cool, but her eyes were itching so badly, she had the urge to scratch them out of her skull. It’d pass. Along with the headache. She wasn’t psychic, but being beside the amplifier was bound to have some effect.
She wiped her runny nose. Her hands came away with blood.
“Damn.” Tia produced a handkerchief from her pocket and offered it to Connie.
“It’s nothing.” Connie tucked the cloth under her nostrils. “I’m surprised you were able to resist Debra’s telepathic control.”
“What can I say? I’m strong-willed. Picked it up from someone. I told you I work better under pressure.”
“More likely, she’d overextended her powers and didn’t consider you important enough to prioritize.”
“Yeah, but that unimportance just saved your ass.”
Connie said, “Hey, I didn’t say I thought it. And, yes, thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Connie’s headache worsened, a hot blade scraping at her cortex. She staggered, leaning her weight on Tia.
“We should get you looked at,” said Tia.
“I’m fine.”
Connie threw up. It was a welcome distraction from her watering eyes, which she would’ve gladly gouged out otherwise.
14
With Debra subdued, her operation could be dismantled without Connie and Tia. They caught a flight home, and Connie was in the middle of cooking dinner when Byron opened the door.
“Honey, I’m home!” he shouted from the other room. “Unless you’re some sort of chef alien who is here looking for Connie!”
“No alien!” she called back. “Just me.”
Byron stepped into the kitchen, set his briefcase on the counter, and came up behind her to give her a hug while she sautéed peppers and steak in a skillet.
“Smells great,” he said. “What is it?”
“Just a recipe I picked up in the Lost Incan Empire. I had to improvise a bit. We don’t have a huatia, and I didn’t have any guinea pig meat.”
“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about getting a huatia,” he said with a chuckle. “They practically pay for themselves.” He loosened his tie and poked through the cupboard, settling on a bag of chocolate chip cookies. “So, how was your trip?”
“Good. Stopped a telepathic superbrain from enslaving humanity. You’ll ruin your appetite.”
“Maybe, but I’ll risk it, since we don’t have any genuine guinea pig.” He bit into a cookie and offered her one, which she accepted.
He got his first clear look at her face. The worst of the psychic headaches had gone, though an ache still lingered. Her eyes no longer felt like crawling bugs nestled in her face. They were still bloodshot, and the swollen, discolored skin wasn’t pretty.
“Jeez, Connie,” he said. “What happened?”
“Telepathic feedback.” She looked away. “It looks worse than it is.”
“Oh.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” she said. Lied. But the lingering pain wasn’t a big deal, so it wasn’t a lie she felt badly about.
“That’s good.”
He ate the rest of his cookie, chewing long and slow and thoughtfully, which had all manner of implications she was likely imagining but still didn’t care for.
“How was work?” she asked.
“Good. Found an error that could’ve cost the company fifteen thousand dollars.”
“Go you.”
She gestured toward a plate of sweet potatoes just out of reach. He slid it closer.
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d be coming home?” he asked. “I almost worked late.”
“I wanted to surprise you,” she said.
“You can’t really do that anymore.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”
“That is not a challenge,” he said. “I just meant that I’ve come to accept the unlimited weirdness you’ve inserted into my life. In a good way. So, telepathic superbrain?”
“Oh, the usual. Somebody gets psychic powers and suddenly thinks they should rule the universe.”
“And they did that to you.”
“Not them, but the psycho-amplifier device she was planning on using to take over the world.” Connie shrugged. “Not really that interesting.”
“Tell me about it anyway.”
“I have a better idea,” she said. “Pass the chile sauce and tell me about your day.”
“Not much to talk about. Not like the fate of the world turns on what I do.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she said. “The fate of the world depends on everyone. You saved your company money. That’s something. That’s laudable.”
“Yes, because of my hard work, a company made a little more money.” He pumped his fist slowly in the air. “Hooray.”
“It all adds up,” she said.
He glanced away and mumbled into his cookie. “Uh-huh.”
She knew he was annoyed, and she knew why. She elected to ignore it as she checked the pasa.
“You know it’s all right to talk to me about these things, right?” he said.
“Uh-hmm.” She hoped it would be enough.
“Connie, I’m going to worry about you whether we talk about it or not. You can’t just pretend like it’s not happening because we don’t mention it. Especially because it’s right there on your face.”
“Uh-hmm.” She took a drink of beer and focused on mixing the ingredients together as if the fate of worlds depended on getting it just right.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Telepathic superbrain. I already told you. No big thing.”
“Why don’t you want to talk about it, then?”
“Because I told you. It’s boring.”
“As opposed to accounting?”
She didn’t have a good reply, so she stirred her potatoes and peppers and steak.
He reached out to touch her face. He ran his fingers gently across her swollen cheek. “It looks painful. Are you sure it doesn’t hurt?”
“A little,” she admitted. “But not much.”
She took his hand and pulled it away. She squeezed it. “It’s almost ready. Can you set the table?”
Silently, he did so.
Silently, they sat at the table, eating a few bites.
“Why won’t you tell me about it?” he asked.
“Why do you want to know?” she replied.
“Something happened,” he said, “didn’t it?”
“Nothing happened. I didn’t die. I had a reaction to some incidental psionic feedback. I don’t know why you assume the worst. Why can’t you assume the best?” She stabbed her meal with her fork. The metal clinked against the plate. The stress was bringing back her headache. “I’m home. Why can’t we just enjoy a nice evening?”
“Connie—”
She groaned, despite herself. “This is supposed to be the place I get away from the bullshit.”
“Connie, your nose is bleeding.”
Red dots splattered on her plate.
“Goddamn it.” She grabbed a napkin and stuck it under her nose.
She closed her eyes and pushed through her annoyance. The night could still be salvaged. She took his hand.
“Nothing happened, Byron. Nothing unusual for me anyway.”
She told him about the confrontation with Debra. She left a few details out. Nothing important. Just the prediction of her impending death, which didn’t mean much because Connie was always flirting with danger.
It wasn’t exactly a lie. It wasn’t exactly the truth either, w
hich was just a roundabout way of ignoring that it was a lie. She convinced herself that knowing the whole truth would only cause him to worry more. That wouldn’t do either of them any good.
After she finished, she set aside her bloody napkin. She checked for crust on her lip before leaning in to kiss him. “There. Now you know. Better?”
He nodded. “Better.”
Guilt crawled into her gut, and she poked at her food. It was all so complicated. She’d navigated the Minoan Labyrinth with less trouble than this relationship. There, the worst that could happen was getting killed by the Minotaur. Here, she could screw everything up with Byron. The stakes felt a hell of a lot higher.
“I love you,” she said. It only made her feel worse.
“I love you, too.”
That made her feel better. She hadn’t earned it, but she didn’t give a shit. Saving the world meant making tough decisions sometimes. Keeping this relationship going required the same. She only did it for his own good.
And by the time they’d finished dinner, she’d almost convinced herself of that.
15
Hiro greeted Tia at the door with takeout from her favorite Chinese place. They watched harmless romantic comedies as they ate. She snuggled up next to him on the couch as he fed her a bite of his General Tso’s chicken.
“Good,” she said as she offered him some of her sweet-and-sour pork.
On the TV, a young, inoffensively handsome man raced to the wedding of a young, inoffensively beautiful woman.
Hiro said, “If movies were any indication, you’d think the only reason to marry someone would be to spur the love of your life to interrupt the ceremony.”
“You’re overthinking it.”
“Right.” He kissed the top of her head. “It’s just . . . if this movie wasn’t about these two, we’d think they were colossal assholes. Look at all the people at that wedding. I bet some of them flew there, booked a hotel room and everything. Spent hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars. And then, boom, this guy walks in, ruins the ceremony, and everyone’s supposed to not be mad about it?
“And this guy, he’s kind of an asshole. You’re not supposed to notice, because the guy she’s marrying is a bigger one, but that raises the question of what issues she has. She didn’t end up with the first asshole by accident.”
Constance Verity Saves the World Page 11
