Miracle's Touch

by J. A. Cipriano

  Superheated vapor from the sink singed the tips of my red hair as I dipped past the blast and came up in Peril’s face, swatting the raygun away with a slap hard enough to break any normal person’s hand in a million places. From her cry of pain, it at least stung her, even as I felt the same hard resistance I had when I first punched her. Some kind of armor in her suit or personal force field? I’d figure it out later.

  With my other hand, I snatched her by the oversized collar, slamming her into the wall behind her hard enough to plow straight through the false wall to dent the steel reinforcement beyond it.

  “Surrender right this moment and deactivate the army you’re massing at Hardware’s old place!” I commanded as I cocked back a fist. “You can’t mentally control me and you sure as heck can’t beat me in a fight.”

  Peril grabbed my wrist with one hand as she struggled, her emotions still shielded from me as she growled. “Oh, rub it in, why don’t you? Always coming in second, always snubbed at the last moment by the powers that be! Even my own experiment gave me the weaker powers.”

  “That’s no reason to murder people,” I shot back. “Now, are you going to give up or do I have to hit you again?”

  “Oh, would the noble heroine beat the weak, defenseless villainess?” she taunted childishly … and if that had been all, everything would have been fine. “Or am I defenseless?”

  She clicked another button on the inside of her glove, and even with my superior speed and reflexes, all I could do was try to punch her before whatever weapon she triggered went off. And as fast as I was, I couldn’t beat the speed of light. There was a black-and-purple flash of light and a sickening twist of space-time as Professor Peril disappeared from my grasp, just like she had wormholed away from us before.

  As my eyes cleared, speakers picked up, booming her arrogant, sneering voice from around the house. “Ms. Miracle or whoever is unfortunate enough to be hearing this, I had to bid you adieu … which has set off the self-destruct protocol for —”

  I didn’t listen. I moved, leaping with all the strength in my legs towards the back of the kitchen, where I saw sunlight filtering through the windows. I didn’t think, either, didn’t let worry about what Peril was planning to do or whether whatever instrument of doom was about to go off would catch me in its blast. No, I was all muscle, speed, and instinct as I tore the reinforced outer wall like it was wet tissue paper and kept going.

  Whatever the mad professor had set up to take out the house, it was almost silent, a faint whump as the entire house imploded in on itself. The vacuum suction almost sucked me in, but as the winds rushed past me, trying to yank me backward, I threw myself desperately forward, slamming both my hands into the concrete edge around the backyard pool. My fingers throbbed as they shattered holes in the stone, but it was worth it. The impromptu handholds didn’t give, thank God, even though it felt like my arms would be yanked out of their sockets.

  A split-second later, the suction ended, the near-silent destruction now punctuated by a tremendous crash of stone and steel. My body fell to the ground, and I sucked in a few steadying breaths before pushing up to my feet again.

  Looking behind me at where the house once stood, there was only a crushed, compressed ball of wreckage, glowing white hot from the tremendous pressure it had been other. The entire area of the house and half the yard around it had been squeezed into a space no larger than a kitchen freezer.

  I didn’t have time to stare. I pulled my cowl over my head, dug the new pairs of compressible boots and gloves Robert had bought out of my purse, and finished suiting up. The battle was still on across town, I could feel anger, conflict, and concentration from both Robert and John through our emotional bonds, and I didn’t have to think of where Peril had gone now.

  Without another look at the deathtrap, I crouched down and leaped into the sky, rocketing through the clouds and towards the sounds of battle across town.

  29

  I saw the plumes of smoke and dust well before I got to the site of the battle. Hardware’s, well, Professor Peril’s facility was on the inland edge of New Harbor, in the sprawling industrial parks of Barrington Flats. Even with my newly enhanced powers, it still took me several mile-eating leaps before I got close enough to make out more than smoke and the occasional echoes of explosions and weapons firing.

  Descending down onto the scene, I passed through obscuring gouts of smoke and finally got a good look at the situation.

  Now, I’ve covered plenty of super battles for the Sentinel before, and even at that moment, I’d had a few property-destroying brawls under my sash. What was laid out before me took the cake. It was a freaking war zone, just an inch shy of an alien invasion. To be fair, it was an invasion of sorts, just not the Crystal King of Saturn, the Mole Masters of the subterranean depths, or the aquatic hordes from the Marianas Trench.

  This invasion was an endless tide of smooth-skinned Ken bots, like the one I’d fought off in John’s apartment, and misshapen creatures that made me think of the bio-beasts Magnetaur had with him, but without the Terminator skeletons inside. They issued forth from what looked to be an old steel mill, long turned over to rust and decay, a perfect spot for an enterprising villain like Hardware to set up shop.

  Considering how perfect it was, it was no wonder Fortress and Ballista found the place within a few hours of hard researching. It would have been at the top of my list too.

  Of course, the downside was that the place was huge, sprawling, a classic early 20th Century big industry site, which meant there was a lot of ground to cover and a lot of room to cram robots and blobby beasts in. Not that my guys hadn’t already hit the place hard. The central smokestacks had already been shorn off, a large portion of the roof gone with them. Out of that hole came most of the billowing smoke and the stinging smell of melting plastic and electronics.

  Down in the parking lot, where most of the escaping invaders had been channeled, I could see a defensive line formed. Wrecked cars and debris had been shoved into a crude wall, manned by a squad of power-armor-clad E-SWAT officers, and that’s where my link to John pulled me to, right at the vanguard of the defense and the greatest mass of bots and blobs.

  Pulling my arms and legs into an arrow shape as I hurtled down, I saw John in his full glory, Ohm wrapped around him like a protective shell. The Omniarmor had morphed around the ex-Marine’s hands to form a chain-gun over each fist, barrels spinning as they cut a swath through the attacking army. Anything that got too close was beaten back by Ohm’s tendrils, whipping and lashing like bladed whips.

  Even with all his firepower and the barrage of pulse lasers from the boys in blue, they were barely holding the line. A particularly resourceful Ken Doll managed to break through, lunging through a blind spot to try and tackle John and break the defenses for good.

  The super-android might have managed it too if I hadn’t selected his pointy head as my landing zone. Instead of my usual weightless landing, I willed myself to descend with all the force and momentum my mile-long jump carried with it. Though the shock of the impact put an ache in my knees, it caved in the robot’s head like a piñata, along with his shoulders and half his torso.

  John’s attention snapped to the explosive crash as I lightly hopped down from the wrecked bot, grabbed him by one of his flailing, sparking arms, and hurtled the wreckage into the center line of the oncoming masses. Bodies and globs of bio-beast flew as the throw cleared a path almost to the front doors of the mill. A lot of my targets wouldn’t stay down for long, but it bought the defenders here time to catch their breath.

  “Chriiii- Miracle,” John shouted above the din, a smile splitting his harsh game face. “Excellent timing as always.” He off-handedly raised a chain-gun fist to cut down a bio-beast that tried to ooze over the wall. “Did you get Blair? Was she actually behind this?”

  “No on one, yes on two,” I answered as I kicked another robot in the chest, throwing it back along with several of its brothers. “We had an intense discussion, w
recked a house, but she teleported away. She’s —”

  As if Peril had been watching the whole thing, which she probably was through her robot proxies, her shrill, amplified voice cut me off, booming through the PA system of the entire complex and through the mouth of every Ken Doll android still operational … and that was hundreds if not thousands.

  “Damn you, Ms. Miracle, why aren’t you dead yet?” she roared. “I destroyed my house for nothing … which just adds one more to the list of reasons I am going to make you suffer!”

  John glanced at me. “What the hell is her beef with you? Didn’t you save her life?”

  “I don’t know.” I paused our little conversation as I threw a chunk of the shattered parking lot into the center of a clump of blobs that looked like they were trying to meld together into a giant blob. “She went on about coming in second place, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

  “Why don’t I explain while I get ready to turn Paragon over my knee and spank him?” Peril cackled. “You deserve to know that much while I tear your precious little life apart.”

  Could she have figured out some way to do that? She had thought she had the answer a few times before but had come up short. And yet, worry sprang up in my throat. If she could get close enough to Robert to bring her terrible telepathic might to bear …

  I could only assume that if Robert had no protection from my own empathic senses, Peril could tear right into his mind and make him her plaything.

  Before I could even shoot a glance at John, he was already looking at me. “Go. Ohm and I have got this. Make sure Bob doesn’t get his dumb bald ass killed.”

  As if to voice their agreement, Ohm expanded outward, seeming to absorb and convert a mass of the wreckage into a solid wall of liquid metal that sprouted a collection of scary-looking firearms.

  I set my jaw, filled with determination, and took a moment before I dashed into the heart of the problem to step right up beside my knight in shining armor. In one swift motion, I cradled his head and gave him a swift, passionate kiss. The power in me surged at the pulse of love that rose in the ex-Marine, matched by my own.

  As I pulled away, I nodded firmly. “Be safe, Ironclad. I’m going to go save the day.”

  John flashed me a fierce grin. “Go knock ‘em dead.” He swiveled back to the charging masses and yelled, “Come on, you bastards! I’ve got a one-way ticket to the junkyard in Hell for you!”

  Even over the endless reports of the Omniarmor’s array of weaponry going off, Peril’s amplified voice screeched, “And that there is the biggest reason! You stole what was supposed to have been mine, Miracle, and kept it all to yourself! That love would have been EVERYONE’S if not for you!”

  I didn’t even try to make sense of her accusations as I broke into a sprint, taking advantage of Ironclad’s renewed onslaught to find a path through to the mill. Robert still felt okay, and I could now sense Fortress and Ballista both through the waves of confusing, intense emotion flaring all around me, but I couldn’t count on that lasting. When the crowd of attackers thickened again, I threw the nearest one aside and took to the skies again, clearing the horde in one leap that took me to the roof and through the hole.

  “Instead, I was left with the dregs of power, just like when some cheater with superpowers stole my valedictorian spot in college,” the madwoman continued to shout, even as I heard the growing hum of electronics as a sort of background track for her ranting. “Just like a pretentious ass like Paragon lords over all of us. But you, you’re the perfect little heroine, aren’t you? You have the perfect body, and everyone just LOVES you, don’t they? Do you know what happened to me while you were sipping champagne with your dear Mr. Washington?”

  Diving through the smoke and flames, I landed in the twisted wreckage of some massive machine. Part of it had been blown apart with explosives of some kind, while the other half had been deformed into perfect, cleanly shaped spirals of metal by what had to be Robert’s power. My best guess is that this thing had been two stories tall and the size of a large room, maybe one of the main production machines here. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only one.

  Around me, I counted at least eight more of these things. Four were still in operation, churning out robots and bio-beasts with a regularity that was insane. It had to be some kind of matter duplication because no machines could work that fast. The other four were in various states of disrepair and from the waves of robots that were clumped here, there were two pockets of resistance fighting them.

  Explosions of azure light turned swaths of them into lumps of solid lead and inert globs of organic material at the far corner, right where I sensed Robert. He was calm, cool, and if anything frustrated that he was making slow progress. Even with his vast powers, so many were coming that he was barely making headway through them.

  From the other end of the plant, where Fortress’ disciplined and steady control alongside Ballista’s mix of cocksureness and worry were coming from, things were worse. I actually didn’t know what powers the detective duo had. I wasn’t even sure they had powers at all. They were holding on, but I couldn’t be sure for how much longer.

  “I grew smarter, yes, and consumed by a terrible hunger I couldn’t sate,” Peril continued, desperation and a strange sadness tinging her voice. “And when I went to my old mentor for answers, I wanted him. I overpowered his mind and took him right on his office desk. It should have been wonderful, but instead, everything that he was flooded into my brain, even as he died inside me.” The sadness turned into insane laughter. “But with every curse comes a blessing. My hunger sated and my mind expanded with Dev’s death. That’s when I knew. I remembered you, playing the hero, saving me and letting my work burn, and I knew then you were the cause.”

  Pity sprang up for a brief moment in my heart for the woman who had been Becca Blair, but it was burned away by the horrors of the woman that replaced her. It was obvious now what she did. After her mind broke and she became what she was, Peril used each of those scientists, killing them with her parasitic powers during sex, and then combined their knowledge to form these horrors flooding the room.

  Robert was safe for the moment. I had to get Fortress and Ballista to safety, so I could end this place. I launched myself not into the fray surrounding the two heroes, but towards one of the operational duplicator machines.

  As I hurtled toward it, I saw Fortress shrug off a punch from a Ken Doll that would level a wall, barely moving as the detective counterattacked with a tremendous haymaker of his own, knocking it off its feet. Ballista seemed to shimmer in and out of reality, disappearing from one tight spot to reappear moments later in momentary safety to launch a double shot of explosive bolts into another robot or blob. They were fighting hard and could hold out for a time, but I made the right choice. No matter how hard they fought, the pair was going to get overrun.

  Not on my watch.

  The towering machine loomed close, and I reared back a fist, ready to throw the hardest punch I could muster. I knew it wouldn’t wreck the thing, not in one blow, but that wasn’t my intention. I let fly at the height of my momentum, my punch slamming into the soaring steel of the machine’s side and tearing through cheap wallpaper. The ringing echo of the tremendous blow rang out through the cacophony of battle.

  It was like I was ringing the dinner bell. As I held on through the torn hole and threw another punch into the thing’s innards, almost all of the robots and monsters that had been charging into the fray stopped and reoriented on me. I was the only one still threatening the core of the factory, and my hunch as to their programming had been right.

  If Peril was watching, she was so wrapped up in her own story to care, all pretense of sanity thrown aside. “All that interest you showed? It was on purpose, all a plan. You knew what I was working on, you probably even sabotaged the Bonder, and then you let it burn so no one else could be like you! But in saving me, you’ve brought your own doom. I may not be your equal, Ms. Miracle, but I’m smarter. When I kill yo
ur lover, kill your friends, and kill you, I’ll be number one!”

  “You’re mad, Peril,” I shouted through grit teeth as I launched myself off my perch on the damaged duplicator.

  The detective duo had a chance to regroup, and I knew Fortress had the tactical mind to take advantage of the opening. Robert could blast free and hopefully take out the rest of the machines while I kept this horde busy. They arrayed out below, starting to use their brothers as a ladder of bodies to climb up at me, even as I made it to the outer wall behind the massive machine.

  These things were immense, as I said, and to keep them from collapsing in on themselves, I saw they were attached to supports that ran up from the floor. On this one, that support used the nearby wall for added reinforcement, leaving a small space, just enough for me to wedge into. Pushing myself into that space, I grunted as I managed to get my back against the wall and both booted feet against the side of the machine itself.

  As Paragon’s blue radiance flared up out of the corner of my eye, turning the other duplicators into useless hunks of glass, I took a deep breath and pushed. Pushed with everything I had, a slow, building pressure to avoid tearing right through the skin of the machine. The cracking of brick and mortar filled my ears as the wall behind me started to crater under the force, and my legs cried out from the strain. It was a smart idea, but was I strong enough to do topple this giant thing, probably hundreds of tons, by myself?

  I closed my eyes and let out a primal scream, letting thoughts of Robert and John fill my heart, their love, my worry for their safety. Strength filled my body, and the tortured cry of twisting metal filled the air … and then I pushed more. Spreading out my empathic senses, I took in Fortress’s determination to not back down, Ballista’s courage to fight even when all hope was lost, and even each E-SWAT officer’s grim resolve in the face of all those monsters. Every positive emotion I could latch onto, I pushed it through me and drew on that strength.