by Mia Archer
Which I didn’t. I’d thrown it all in that improvised missile routine.
Well shit. This wasn’t going to be good. I dove for the street, it was the only thing I could think to do while I waited for my power reserves to go back up, and I figured it was probably even money as to whether or not I was going to make it out of this alive.
I wouldn’t take the betting odds if I were in Vegas, is what I’m trying to say.
There was totally a whole ecosystem that had grown up in Vegas to take advantage of the craziness that regularly happened in Starlight City. People betting on the frequent misfortune of the unfortunates who lived here. Whether or not this hero or that hero would win. That sort of thing.
My understanding was the betting had been pretty boring since I’d dominated the game and shut down most of the competition, but the betting had gotten a lot more interesting with recent changes. Namely me getting distracted and pulling out of the game for a short while.
“You’re a fucking idiot Night Terror,” I growled as I hit the ground and ran. I figured if I could make it into one of the buildings then at least the bastards would have to dig through said building in order to reach me.
With a little luck that’d give me enough time to get everything recharged. Maybe I could even take an elevator up to the top floor, blast out, and hit these assholes with everything I had while they were still busy trying to dig me out from the lower levels.
The only problem was I was too late, and it was my own safety systems that screwed me over. I felt a tug as my antigrav kicked in and jerked me to the side. I might’ve made it to the door if it weren’t for that tug.
They weren’t supposed to work like that when I was on the ground, but obviously this fight had knocked something loose. Yet again an example of something where CORVAC could’ve told me the code on the check engine light as it was happening, but he wasn’t here and I was too busy fighting off these giant robots to worry about the stream of diagnostics pouring into my heads up display.
Damn it. I’d finally run into a scenario where my failsafes did less good than they were supposed to. They pulled me away, sure, but they were pulling me away from safety. Not that they were smart enough to know that.
If I’d run five more feet I would’ve been in the building, but instead I was to the side of a giant robot hand that came slamming down beside me, incidentally blocking my access to said door.
Son of a bitch.
A shadow appeared over me. I looked up to see Dr. Lana floating down with an unpleasant grin splitting her face.
“I believe we’re finally in agreement on something,” she said.
“We are?” I said, momentarily confused.
“You are a fucking idiot, Night Terror, and that’s why I’m about to defeat you for good!”
48
Improbable Rescue
For good measure she threw her head back and let loose with a good villainous laugh. Talk about cliched, but then again cliche was about what I’d expect from her.
I glanced up at the drones hovering behind her. I thought about Fialux in my dummy lab that was set to messily kill anyone who wasn’t her or me. She’d be watching all of this.
I liked to think the image of watching me being smashed into the pavement would be more suffering for her than the toys in that dummy lab could ever be, but I wasn’t sure about that. I’d come up with some pretty interesting death dealing devices for the place.
Finally I looked up at the robot that was about to turn me into villain paste on the Starlight City pavement. Maybe I was projecting just a little, but it seemed like the thing was staring down at me with a supremely satisfied robotic smirk.
Even though it didn’t even have mouth parts. Dr. Lana put in the weird ‘70s eyeslit with the rotating red business but she didn’t bother putting in a mouth.
Yet there was something about that bot. That was a self-satisfied robotic son-of-a-bitch if I’d ever seen one.
I should know. I’d become intimately familiar with self-satisfied robotic sons-of-bitches working with CORVAC.
I heard the hum of its servos and motors as it lifted its other hand. It was preparing to bring the hurt down, and there was nothing I could do. This was it. The final moment.
I couldn’t believe it. I always figured I’d go out in a bang fighting some upstart hero trying to overthrow me after I’d ruled the world for a few decades at least. It was a good death for a villain.
Nothing like the ignominy of being smashed by a robot. Talk about embarrassing. At least I could draw comfort from the fact that I wasn’t going to feel that embarrassment for long.
I wasn’t going to be feeling much of anything here in a minute.
I had enough power in my antigrav units to jerk me out of the way when that damn hand came down, but not enough to go flying through the air fast enough to get the hell away from this thing. I was only delaying the inevitable.
“Hold still Night Terror!” Dr. Lana shouted down. “It’ll make it so much easier for my robot friend!”
I resolved that if I actually managed to survive this clusterfuck of a fight I was going to create a remote research outpost in Antarctica or something where I could figure out how the hell to get more power to my suits, because clearly I didn’t have enough.
That felt weird. It had been way too long since I found myself completely at a loss, but the combination of my power situation and not having access to the computerized backup that I usually counted on had really put me at a handicap in a fight I probably shouldn’t have gotten involved with in the first place.
Only I’d never had a choice. I needed to save Fialux.
That was going to be my epitaph. “She got cocky and overconfident and then she died. Messily.”
Though, honestly, I had a feeling any epitaph they came up with for me was going to be a hell of a lot nastier than that. I could imagine the graffiti on any gravesite they made for me. Assuming they even had enough of me to scrape off the pavement to turn into a gravesite.
The giant robot hand came whooshing down. I could hear the air being displaced as it moved.
So this was what my death sounded like.
I’d always wondered about that. There were so many nasty sights and sounds that could greet a person in this line of work right before they went off to whatever was waiting for them in the great beyond. Probably nothing, but you never knew. All that talk about tunnels of light could legitimately be some supernatural afterlife waiting for people and not just a side-effect of the human brain shutting down for the last time and giving people one hell of a trip before that big blue screen in the sky.
Death was something you had to contemplate in this line of work if you had any sense. Would it sound like electricity? Like the sound of a lab experiment going wrong? Maybe the bubbling of some caustic chemical turning to deadly mist because I’d been sloppy about how I handled it? The splorching sound of a sentient blob closing in around me?
Or would it be the Sonic Boom of some superpowered hero coming down out of the sky and misjudging a hit, or hitting me just as I was vulnerable because my systems were down, and turning my insides into mush?
And here I was experiencing the ultimate in insult. I was going to be taken out by a robot. A not particularly artificially intelligent robot.
If there was a great beyond out there and it happened to include computers then CORVAC was probably rolling in his digital grave knowing he’d failed where a stupid dumb robot like this one was going to finally win.
I closed my eyes. I figured if this was it then I didn’t want to see it coming. I’d never understood the kind of person who wanted to see it coming.
A loud clang sounded above me. The sound of metal on metal. I frowned.
My death wasn’t supposed to sound like metal on metal. No, I figured it would be a smack and a splat as my body was transformed from three-dimensional to very two-dimensional by some very impressive forces. Maybe there’d be some crunching along the way as my bones were c
ompressed in ways bones were never meant to be compressed.
Either way I’d hoped my brain would go fast enough that I wouldn’t have time to feel any pain. That I wouldn’t even have time for the tunnel of light routine. Just a quick hit and lights out.
But that’s not what was happening here. What the hell?
I opened one eye and dared to look up. Wondered what the hell was going on here. And my mouth fell open in true gobsmacked wonder as I saw what was happening right above me.
Or rather what had inexplicably come along and saved my ass at the last moment.
The second remaining robot had stepped between me and the first. Its giant hand was holding the first one in place. I blinked a couple of times and wondered if there were somehow enough neurons left in the paste that was my brain to conjure up this fantasy scenario for my flattened body before the darkness took me.
But no. This was too real. No dreamlike quality about it at all. The polluted city air. The sounds of life going on like normal in other parts of the city because that’s what always happened when shit went down in Starlight City. The sound of Dr. Lana cursing up a blue storm at the robot that’d stepped in to save me.
I wasn’t sure if this was a malfunction or if Dr. Lana was screwing with me, but this wasn’t what I was expecting.
I’m not knocking it. Not being dead was great. It’s just that I didn’t understand how I wasn’t dead right now and I didn’t like not understanding things.
Even if the thing I didn’t understand had just saved my ass.
“What the…”
The first robot looked at the second one, and again I realize it’s entirely possible that I’m projecting here, but I could’ve sworn the robot that’d been so close to flattening me looked surprised. It had a “what the fuck” sort of body language thing going on just as much as I did.
It’s glowing rotating eye came to rest on the one that was saving my bacon. I looked to that robot. And I saw something there that was even more impossible than being saved.
The thing’s eye slit had the little light moving back and forth, but it was bright green. The exact sort of color that CORVAC always preferred when he was creating something.
Then the content of Dr. Lana’s screeching finally got through to me. I’d been so focused on the whole near-death thing that I’d tuned her out. The last thing I wanted to hear as I was dying was her voice, but what she was saying seemed sort of important now.
“What the hell are you doing? How did you get through? Our deal was that you stay…”
She stopped. Looked down at me with a look that clearly said her anger had gotten the better of her and she’d just said too much. Another classic villain mistake I tried to avoid.
The green-eyed robot nodded to me as though in salute, and then it turned and punched the robot that had nearly killed me so hard that the hand moved right through the thing’s chest. It was a robot so there wasn’t a beating heart that came out of the other end, but that would’ve been pretty cool.
And just like that the robot that had been on the verge of killing me was no more. Killed at the hands of a robot I was pretty sure was being controlled by a ghost. Or an AI who was proving to be far more difficult to kill than I’d first imagined.
Talk about having your ass saved at the last minute and not expecting it. I wasn’t sure what to think as I looked up at the thing.
Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to think much of anything or ask the robot any questions. Not that it had the ability to communicate in the first place with no mouth. It made a few quick gestures with its hands, too fast for me to make it out, but then Dr. Lana was pulling up her control panel behind the bot.
Oh shit. I knew what happened when she hit that button. Shit was about to hit the fan. A world of hurt would rain down on anyone standing too close to that robot.
Fuck.
The robot looked down at me. Actually sketched a salute this time. Then it started to run.
My eyes narrowed. What the hell was going on here? The robot threw itself into the air, but it didn’t get very far before Dr. Lana hit the big button on her control panel.
The explosion was nothing short of spectacular. The robot threw itself in the air and it was well over the city when it blew, but I could still feel the concussion. A good thing it sacrificed itself too considering I didn’t have any shields to save my ass this time around.
My power reserves weren’t going back up nearly as fast as they should be, and that meant there was something terribly wrong with my systems that’d need to be fixed.
“You!”
I looked up. Dr. Lana was staring down at me with pure fury, and I was about to do something I hadn’t done since the opening days of my villainous career. I was going to beat an expeditious retreat from a situation I’d already barely survived more times than a cat has lives.
“Yup, me,” I said.
If that robot with the mysterious green eye had been nice enough to sacrifice itself to save me then I wasn’t going to let its sacrifice be in vain.
It was time for me to get the hell out of here and get to a safe spot where I could figure out what the hell was going on. So I ducked into the building that had been blocked so recently by a giant robot hand.
I needed answers, but I needed to live long enough to get those answers. I had just enough power to run the teleporter, so I activated it for a short hop that would take me somewhere I could teleport back to the lab in safety.
I held my hand up and gave Dr. Lana a little wave. Looked at that gun and control panel in her hands with regret. I really wanted those, but I wanted to live more.
The world flashed white around me, and the satisfying sight of Dr. Lana looking supremely pissed off was the last thing I saw before the world reappeared around me looking totally different because I’d teleported back to the mangled remains of the Skyhigh.
I breathed out a sigh of relief. “That was close.”
“Closer than you think,” Dr. Lana said. “Did you really think it would be that easy Natalie?”
49
Escape Protocol
I whirled around. I’d like to say I was surprised to see Dr. Lana standing right behind me, but who was I kidding?
I’d always known it was possible for someone to track a teleporter signal if they knew what to look for. I’d worked it all out myself as soon as I’d invented the damn technology.
If she’d figured out how to zero in on my teleporter unit then why not track the signal too? Everything else that could possibly go wrong in this fight had, and…
Well let’s just say I had a sneaking suspicion she’d been working with a particular AI asshole and maybe that explained how she was suddenly able to refine so much of my technology into useable solutions.
I was proud of myself for not flinching. Take the last time someone managed to sneak up on you, like really sneak up on you when you had no clue they were even there in the first place, and then multiply that by like a million because I still had the strong feeling that she wasn’t supposed to be able to find me even if I knew on some level that it was very much possible.
“Surprised?” she asked.
“Not really. You’re the one stealing my tech, but I invented it and I know how it works inside and out.”
I looked around. There wasn’t anything obvious I could use to save myself here. I still didn’t have much power. Maybe enough to initiate a few more teleports, but that was it. Whatever had knocked something loose in my suit was still keeping it from fully recharging.
“That’s the thing you never understood Night Terror,” she said, pacing around me with her arms behind her back.
She was talking. Talking was good. I hated the sound of her voice, but at the same time as long as she was blathering on about how stupid I was I could figure something out. I could fire a shot with what I had left in reserves, but it wouldn’t be enough to kill her. Not with that strange regeneration power she’d exhibited time and time again.
&nbs
p; Damn it. If I teleported she was just going to follow me to wherever I went and kill me there.
If I teleported.
She would follow me.
And suddenly like a light from the heavens I didn’t quite believe in inspiration hit me. I realized what I had to do. It was a little bit of a long shot, but a long shot was all I had right now.
If I survived this I was really going to go back to the drawing board for a lot of my toys because I didn’t like finding myself in situations where a long shot was the only chance I had to save my ass.
I liked relying on good old fashioned overwhelming firepower, thank you very much.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sure this is all very interesting, but I need to get going now.”
“Seriously?” Dr. Lana asked, stopping whatever she’d been saying. I’d tuned her out while I was doing the whole evil genius thing. “I just got done telling you I can find you wherever you go.”
“Yeah? Well I guess we’re about to see how good you are,” I said. “Because I don’t think you can pull it off.”
My eyes darted to the gun in one hand, really more of a rifle but she was holding it one handed, and then to the control in her other hand. I really needed to get my hands on those, and there was only one chance to do that and save my skin.
So I hit the emergency teleporter protocol.
The world flashed white around me as the teleporter transported me to random locations around the city pulled from a predetermined list. I could do it at random because I’d put in safeguards in the teleportation tech that checked the end location for anything solid so I didn’t accidentally find myself reconstituted in another wall or another person or something creepy like that.
Talk about something out of a science fiction nightmare scenario. No thanks.
I appeared in the middle of a high school dance. A slow dance if the soft blue light and some slow pop monstrosity blaring on the speakers was anything to go by. The high school students dressed in their best turned to look at me, and then the music stopped.
