by Mia Archer
I was only willing to go so far in making something like this happen out there in the world, after all. I had bigger fish to fry. Like trying to take over that world that I was also trying to make a better place so people would be more healthy when I inevitably became their benevolent overlord.
The light was almost blindingly bright. We’re talking it looked like staring straight into a laser or a fiber optic cable, and that was never a pleasant experience or something I’d recommend someone try. I’d had a couple of trips to the med bay to repair my eyes after I accidentally caught the business end of something that would’ve otherwise permanently blinded me.
The only thing that kept me from having my vision fried away until I could stumble into the med bay myself was I was still wearing my mask and it put up my light filters as soon as it detected that bright light heading for me. I could look directly at the sun with these babies and they’d automatically compensate, so it wasn’t like I was ever in any real danger.
Unlike Fialux, who was in very real danger by virtue of being in that thing when I wasn’t sure what it was going to do to her. I still had trouble believing the computer’s assertion that she was completely human, but I’d run into stranger things over the years so I couldn’t discount it entirely.
“Estimated time?” I asked.
“Several hours,” the computer said. “Unable to provide more detail than that at this time.”
I grunted. “You’re worse than Windows Update.”
I waited for a moment before I remembered that the medical computer wasn’t like CORVAC. It didn’t have any sense of smug superiority for me to tweak, and so comparing it to the operating system everyone loved to hate didn’t do anything.
If CORVAC had been in the room he’d be doing the digital equivalent of sputtering in rage right about now. It was a pity he wasn’t.
I really needed to stop with the whole missing CORVAC thing. I reminded myself that the asshole had tried to kill me, after all, and I felt like I was in the living half of one hell of an abusive relationship with the way I kept pining for the prick.
Speaking of computers. I figured it was probably safe enough to leave this one running the automated medical process. It’s not like it was something that could be screwed up, and I had even more failsafes built into this thing to keep the computer from pulling a HAL on me and turning off the life support while I was in there getting fixed up.
I couldn’t do anything about the computer trying to fly an EVA pod at me while I was in the thing, but there were a lot of doors between this room and the closest equivalent I had to an EVA pod, none of them were large enough for said pods to fit through, and on top of that the medical computer was airgapped from all the really fun non-medical toys so I figured that was a minimal danger.
“I’m going to go do some tinkering while you’re working on the medical bay,” I said.
I had a lot of tinkering to do. I had a couple of those weapons I’d confiscated from Dr. Lana, and it was high time I broke them out and tried to figure out what the hell made them tick. I’d been avoiding that for far too long.
I took a step towards the exit and stopped. There was still the off chance she might wake up in that thing and have her powers restored. I wasn’t going to hold my breath for something like that to happen, but I also hadn’t made it this long in a career with a ridiculously low survival rate by taking chances.
“Make sure you have a couple of anti-Newtonian nets set up around the exit to the med bay in case she wakes up and gets a little punchy,” I said. “Don’t hurt her, just slow he down long enough that she won’t be able to do any damage if she wakes up with her powers intact.”
I hoped I’d have that kind of problem, but something told me it wasn’t in the cards. Still, a girl could dream.
“Affirmative,” the medical computer said.
There really wasn’t anything else I could do. I looked at Fialux one last time hanging there looking so vulnerable in the med bay. Then I blushed as the computer used the teleporter to remove her clothing.
Nothing I hadn’t seen before, of course, but there was something about it that felt wrong with her being in such a vulnerable state.
I forced myself to turn away. Walked out of the room. It was time for me to get to work trying to figure out what the hell Dr. Lana had done to screw Fialux up.
I had a feeling it was going to be a long night.
22
Tinkering
I stepped into my tinkering lab and pulled out one of the strange weapons Dr. Lana had used on Fialux that fateful night I’d stepped in to rescue the greatest hero this world had ever known.
It seemed fitting that the world’s greatest hero would find herself being rescued by the world’s greatest villain. Though of course she hadn’t seen it that way at the time.
No, she’d been less than amused. It brought a smile to my face thinking about it.
I sighed and hefted the weapon. Looked down the barrel. Normally I wouldn’t recommend looking down the barrel of a weapon like that, but… actually the more I thought about it, specifically the more I thought about all the devious ways Dr. Lana had discovered to be a first-rate pain in my ass, the more I figured I shouldn’t look down that barrel.
It would be just like her to put in a sensor that waited for me to do something stupid like that and then blast me.
The whole thing was frightfully primitive and I found myself wishing there’d been some way to get whatever weapon Dr. Lana had been firing at Fialux today.
Somehow she’d managed to disappear the damn thing before I could get a good look at it. That galled me. I didn’t like it when someone got one over on me. It didn’t sit right with me that there was someone out there who could one up me or outsmart me.
Though in this case it seemed like she’d mostly been busy trying to get the world to see me as a villain. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why the hell that would be a big deal for her considering I’d been a villain for most of my career.
It’s not like a change in public perception was going to hurt my feelings at this point. Still, I was tempted to turn on SCN and see what there was to see.
“Computer,” I said.
No response. I had a moment of dread where I worried that I might be in a CORVAC situation again. The asshole had gone radio silent right before he popped in to betray me, after all.
What if this new computer was doing the same thing?
Then I noticed a light flashing on a panel on the other side of the room. I walked over and peered at it, then let out a disgusted sigh. Of course. The stupid AI I was running now didn’t have the capacity to turn on the TV because I’d been so busy canoodling with Fialux that I hadn’t done the AI supercomputer equivalent of programming the damned remote control.
CORVAC would’ve been able to figure that out on his own. Though, as I so often thought these days, this computer was no CORVAC. Both for good and for bad.
Well damn it. It looked like I was going to have to get a remote and turn on SCN like a normal. It took me a couple of moments to figure out what the correct input was and how to get everything working appropriately, but finally I had the news up and running.
I really missed the days when CORVAC would simply program the damned remote and I didn’t have to worry about any of this, but those days were long gone.
Of course the number one story on the Starlight City News Network was none other than my little fight on campus with Dr. Lana and Fialux.
There was plenty of footage being played of my run-in with Dr. Lana. They got a particularly nice-looking helicopter shot of me flying across the top of the dorm, and I hit the record button to make sure all of this was being preserved so I could look it over later.
Not because I was particularly interested in an after action report so much as it looked awesome, and I wanted to make sure the video made it into the digital scrapbook.
Though of course keeping that digital scrapbook was getting more difficult since I
didn’t have a computer recording everything coming in on the news feeds so I could look at them later.
They were also giving plenty of attention to the many cell phone videos of my fight with Dr. Lana. Luckily it seemed we were far enough away from the idiots taking those videos that they hadn’t captured our conversation, but I realized it had been dangerous for me to be asking all those questions out there where anyone could hear us.
I could’ve given away that Fialux was de-powered. I’d been caught up in the emotion of the moment and it had done a number on me, but still. I’d gotten sloppy in more ways than one in this fight, and I needed to remember that.
Coverage moved back to an anchor. A pretty blonde thing. She’d taken over ever since Rex Roth disappeared, which was just fine by me. She was way more easy on the eyes, and she didn’t have that smarmy self-satisfied look Roth always had when he was reporting on the news.
“So to continue our story from earlier,” she said. “It would appear that the brief heroic streak from Night Terror is over. As you can see from the video this morning she not only launched a robot attack on the Starlight City University, but also fought a strange new hero who tried to take her on while also fighting off Fialux and doing serious damage to her as well.”
My jaw fell open. I’d fought Fialux and some strange new hero? What sort of crack were they on? What the hell did they…
They moved to a shot of me firing on Dr. Lana. One of several shots. I wasn’t sure if they were selectively editing this to make me look like the bad guy or if they seriously missed the parts where Dr. Lana was repeatedly doing her best to kill me.
I sighed. I guess the Starlight City News Network was willing to do anything to get eyes on their broadcast. They’d been hurting what with the Internet and all, and the only reason they were still doing anywhere close to the business they had back in the day was because of all the superpowered beings and creatures who regularly fought it out in the city limits.
The rest of the world was willing to pay a premium to get that sort of news directly from the closest news source on the ground.
“It’s almost like that bastard Roth is still there,” I muttered.
I paused. Stopped to think that through. This was Starlight City, after all, and it’s not like it was all that uncommon for a villain to suddenly reappear after they allegedly were done away with.
I’d made a return from the dead on more than a few occasions. I’d always been very good at faking my death when the heat was getting to be a little too much.
With the way Roth had been carrying on I had trouble believing he’d done the same thing. Besides, he would have to have access to teleporter technology and…
I shook my head. I was jumping at boogeymen. Rex Roth was dead. I’d vaporized him. Even if he did have access to a teleporter he would’ve had to time it precisely so the thing went off at exactly the moment I fired on him, and that was the sort of thing I would’ve had a tough time pulling off even if I had CORVAC doing the calculations and watching for the energy blast.
Rex Roth going up against me with no computer to back him up since I’d just vaporized his digital partner?
There wasn’t a chance.
I looked down at the confiscated weapon. Held it up and fired it at the wall. It had the odd effect of causing the television screen in front of me to flicker.
I sighed. Went over and set up a radiation scanner manually. Oh how I pined for the days when I could just tell CORVAC to monitor whatever I was doing and assume he’d catch everything I might find interesting.
I really missed working with that asshole. Almost enough to make me want to try training my new AI, even if I knew just how dangerous that game could be.
Getting in the car and going for a drive was technically one of the most dangerous things a person could do, after all. Or hopping in a plane. Not that I ever hopped into a plane considering I preferred doing my flying a little more directly.
The point was life is all about trade-offs. Humanity regularly traded convenience for a little bit of danger. I was starting to wonder if the convenience of having a computer running point for my operations wasn’t worth some of the danger.
For now, though, I was going to do this the old-fashioned way. I was going to run experiments on the damned thing and figure out what the hell it was that made this weapon tick. If I figured out what made it work then maybe I could figure out exactly what it was Dr. Lana had done to Fialux, and if I figured out exactly what the hell it was she did to Fialux then maybe I could do something to reverse the process.
Assuming the technology in this particular gun was even anywhere close to the technology on display in the weapon she’d used today. It had seemed a little more advanced than the toys her minions had been throwing around, after all.
There was nothing for it but to get to work. Even if I was going to be partying like it was nineteen ninety-nine and using ancient technology I had to manipulate myself because all the automation I’d built into my lab over the years had been done away with the moment CORVAC betrayed me.
I let out a few choice curse words. It’s not like there was anything to hear those curse words with no AI listening in.
Fialux was counting on me, even if she was unconscious in a med bay and had no idea she was counting on me.
Unfortunately I still hadn’t come up with any answers a couple of hours later when the computer finally dinged and let me know the med bay was finished. I didn’t even bother running through the halls. No, I was in a big enough hurry that I flew down the halls at top speed for all the world like I was about to fire some torpedoes down a small target a couple of meters wide.
“How is she?” I asked when I zoomed into the medical room.
“Unconscious, but she will recover. Recommend several days of rest and relaxation where she doesn’t get too active. It will take that long for some of the bones to finish setting and repairs to complete.”
I grimaced. That was the thing about those medical bays. They could work wonders healing someone, but they weren’t miracle workers.
They had the ability to manipulate tissue at the molecular level, but there was still a part of the body that needed to heal on its own. There was still a need for a little rest and relaxation, which was endlessly frustrating on those occasions when I really needed to get back out into the city immediately and fight whatever the hell it was that had put me in the med bay in the first place.
I had a feeling Fialux was going to be no less frustrated when she realized the situation she was in, but there really was nothing for it. The last thing I needed was for her to go out and try to save the city.
Especially when it looked like she didn’t have any of the powers she used to. None of the little tricks that would allow her to save the city. She wasn’t going to be happy about that, and I was going to have to try and shield her from that news for as long as possible.
“And her anatomy?” I asked.
“Still human,” the computer said, sensing the unspoken question. Hey, I guess even this dumb AI could be smart sometimes.
“Damn,” I said. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
23
Waking Up Is Hard To Do
I felt ridiculous carrying a tray into the room, but there was nothing for it. If I was going to go to the trouble of making breakfast in bed then I was going to go to the trouble of doing this right.
Even if the whole thing did make me feel like the help. Usually I had robots to do this sort of work for me, but chalk that up to yet another thing in the lab that wasn’t working at one hundred percent thanks to my hobbled AI situation.
“Good morning!” I said, trying to sound more cheerful than I felt.
I wasn’t sure how well it worked. Cheerful wasn’t exactly something I did well on a good day. On the day after I’d been sort-of defeated by a woman who was shaping up to be my new archnemesis and my girlfriend had lost her powers and was bound to be upset when she discovered that fact?
/> Yeah, cheerful was so far from my wheelhouse right now it was a wonder I wasn’t downing enough booze to get a dinosaur drunk with one hand and running a blood purifier in the other hand to cleanse my BAC down a point or so every time it edged from “drunk off your ass” to “potentially deadly.”
I knew Fialux was awake because all the sensors monitoring her for medical purposes showed she was awake. I hadn’t gone as far as having a camera in the room. That would’ve been downright villainous, and even I had standards and lines I wouldn’t cross.
The room was designed to look like something out of an expensive English country manor. Even if it was buried well below Starlight City’s sprawling suburbia. The illusion was helped by a screen along one wall that looked exactly like a window with a view of a pastoral scene that was meant to be calming.
Fialux stood in front of that window, and I wondered if she realized it was just a very high resolution screen. Higher resolution than anything you could get at a big box retailer, that was for damn sure.
She whirled around to face me and there was pure fury in her eyes. I stood there dumbfounded with the tray in my hands and suddenly found myself wishing that I had more of my suit on.
I only had the basics. A chest piece that went on under my shirt and that was about it. The rest of the suit could materialize around me in a moment from the pattern buffers in my belt which I always wore, but that moment might not be enough to stop Fialux from coming after me if she’d suddenly regained her powers.
Not that I thought I’d be that lucky. Or unlucky. I was in a place right now where the line between the two was so blurred that I couldn’t even see it to know which side I was on. That’s how great the past twenty-four hours had been for the “world’s greatest villain.”
