by Daco
The screen switched to a graphic showing the phone number, along with photographs of Alexa and Sigfred.
When the scene switched back to the news conference, Montgomery Manchester was wiping tears from his eyes with his white handkerchief. “The return of my dear niece is my number one priority. My only priority. That being said, until her safe return, I’m invoking a clause in the Manchester Trust that allows me to assume control of the Manchester holdings. I want to assure the public that this is only temporary, pending my niece’s return. I will move into the Manchester mansion posthaste. That way, the energy flow from The Mick will continue unabated.
“This brings me to another important announcement. In light of recent events where Electromancer drained all of the energy holdings while fighting off what the media is calling Red Web, our nation’s energy reserves have been depleted. This places us in a precarious position, one that gives us no choice but to triple the price of electricity, immediately. The price increase will ensure that our reserves are restored and that there is no waste of our precious resources. Please rest assured that we are working night and day to resolve the problem and to provide energy to the common man. The Mick is running at full capacity to restore reserves. Again, please help us find my niece.”
Momo sat back in his chair and crossed his arms in satisfaction, only to have Professor Slipter approach him and blurt out, “Sir, there is something of vital concern that I must speak to you about.”
“This better be good,” Momo said. “Because you’re interfering with my leisure time, Slipter. I do not like my leisure time interfered with.” He took a large bite of veal and, while chewing with his mouth open, glared at Professor Slipter.
Momo turned to Bitterman. “I have my snack, but where’s my lunch? Go check on it, and make sure the chef gives me plenty of tartar sauce to go with my tuna steaks. And while I’m thinking about it, tell him to whip me up some of that cherries jubilee to toss over a gallon or so of vanilla ice cream, and none of that artificial junk.”
“I’m right on it,” Bitterman said.
Momo regarded Professor Slipter with a frown. “Answer me this, Professor.”
“Yes, sir,” Professor Slipter said. “You see, I’ve learned that—”
“Why is it so hard to get a decent undisturbed meal? I ask for peace, and all I get is one problem after another. It’s like constantly having mud thrown on me. My constitution is very delicate. I can’t take this nonsense. Don’t I pay you people well enough? You get twenty, thirty times the going rate as your salary. Do I blink an eye? No, I pay it. Now, what is it, Slipter? Get to the point.”
“We can’t hold Electromancer for long.”
“Nonsense. Just keep zapping more Red Web energy on her.”
“We’ll drain every ounce of Electromite energy if we keep this up.”
“You said the Electromite’s energy was inexhaustible.”
“For producing electricity, yes. But it turns out this isn’t true of electromagnetic energy. Our calculations didn’t ... Anyway, creating the super-powerful electromagnetic force field is definitely draining the Electromite. We didn’t expect this. But those are the facts.”
Momo stood, his eyes blazing with rage. Professor Slipter took a step backward. “How do you propose to take care of this, Professor? And you’d better take care of this.”
At that moment, Bitterman returned, carrying Momo’s lunch and dessert.
“Ah, good,” Momo said. “I do hope the ice cream is frozen solid. You know how I hate my ice cream melted.”
“That’s it!” Professor Slipter said. “We’ll freeze her.”
“What are you taking about, man?” Momo said. “You can’t freeze electricity.”
“Very true, sir. But you can slow down the actual flow of its current by getting it—or more pointedly, getting her—very, very cold. You decrease the temperature, which decreases resistance, which slows down the flow of her electrical charge. So it’s quite simple: we subject her to exceedingly cold temperatures to decrease conductivity so that electricity can no longer flow. All you have to do is put an insulator in the way of the flow of the electricity. It’s like freezing electricity. We freeze Electromancer, and we disable her electrical flow of energy. She can’t zap us or anyone else. She’s powerless. We’re rid of her. Done. But we’ve got to get her cold enough to stop her electricity from flowing.”
“Will it kill her?” Momo asked, with a hint of concern in his voice.
“It won’t kill her,” Professor Slipter said. “She’ll be in a state of cryo-suspended animation. If you want to revive her, it might take some time to get her to come around. But she’ll live.”
Momo nodded. “Let’s do it. Prepare the lab.”
Professor Slipter’s shoulders slumped. “There’s a problem with that, sir. We don’t have the capabilities currently. And by the time we construct a deep freeze capable of freezing nitrogen, it will be too late. We need to find some sort of refrigeration facility where we can encapsulate her in a bubble, freeze it, and then put the bubble at the bottom of a frozen lake. Or better yet, a frozen portion of the Arctican Ocean near the North Pole. We zap the ocean ice with The Big Zapper, create a hole, dump the bubble in it, and let the hole freeze over again. No one will ever know where we put her, and she’ll never be able to get out unless and until we want her to. And we save our Electromite.”
“But you can’t do that without a refrigeration facility?” Momo asked.
“That’s right, sir,” Professor Slipter said.
“Then what good are you, Slipter?” Momo bellowed. “You have this bright idea that is completely unfeasible. We can’t just walk into the Kensington Creamery factory and tell them we need to use their equipment because we want to make an Electromancer Popsicle!”
Bitterman cleared his throat.
“What is it, Biggie?” Momo said. “Are you contagious? You know how fragile I am. If you’re infectious, get out!”
“No, sir,” Bitterman said. “I think I have a solution to your problem. The old Sugar Express Train Depot has an abandoned ice cream factory. Some of the equipment is still there. Rusted, but who knows? Should still work. And there’s an old holding tank for dry ice shipments—there you have your bubble.”
Momo pondered this for a moment. Bitterman didn’t look smart, but he was. “What about people?” Momo asked. “We can’t afford to be seen, obviously.”
“The place is mostly deserted. There’s no one around but those flower ladies and those train engineers trying to remodel the place. But they’re just planting a bunch of flowers and laying railroad ties. They’re clueless. If they ask, we just tell them that we’re looking to buy the old place or invest in its refurbishment, and they won’t be the wiser.”
“How do you know all this?” Momo asked.
“It’s my job to know what’s going on in this town,” Bitterman said. “Besides, I’ve been prowling around the place lately, remember?”
Momo turned to the professor. “Can you get the old ice cream facility up and running in time?”
Professor Slipter stood tall and smiled. “Not a problem, sir. We’ll get on it right away. It won’t take long at all. Then we’ll transport Electromancer inside Red Web to the facility and put her in the deep freeze there. As soon as we can commandeer a train with a refrigeration car, we’ll be able ship her on up. I’ll shoot a beam to the Arctica right now to prepare the hole before we head to the depot. We ought to be done by no later than tomorrow.”
• • •
Electromancer was barely awake. The fight against Red Web had depleted her energy, and she was exhausted. She’d never lost her store of energy before, never understood that she could run out of energy. If she stayed quiet and waited for the fatigue to lift, she’d replenish her powers—or so she hoped. She had no idea how much time had passed and how much damage Momo had cast upon the world. But she had to get free as soon as possible.
She looked at the web that was holding her prisoner
, pulsing red like some enormous strobe light at a garish dance club. She forced herself to relax and did what she always did in times of tribulation—imagined how her father, Mickey, would have solved the problem. Then, she thought, he couldn’t solve every problem, either—he’d become lost in another dimension. It was childish to think that anyone, even her beloved father, could fix everything. She wasn’t a child anymore. It was up to her to solve this problem. This realization somehow gave her strength, because now she’d rely on both Mickey and herself.
But a solution seemed impossible. The threads of the electromagnetic field were knit together so tightly that there was no getting through its imprisoning blanket. Luckily, it had expanded some, and there was now enough room to move around a few feet and even to lie down. She could also see through the slivered openings, but only enough to detect that she was inside a dank, dark room, likely a basement prison at Momo’s hideout. Where else would she be? It occurred to Alexa suddenly that perhaps she wasn’t the only one being held prisoner.
“Father, are you there?” she whispered. He didn’t answer, though she sensed a definite presence nearby. It was like he was there, but in that different dimension—close, but unreachable. She wondered if Sigfred was here too, trapped somewhere else in Red Web. Then the vision of Blue Arrow tumbling to earth insinuated itself, and her very human heart ached. She had to force herself not to transform back into Alexa Manchester. She couldn’t think of that other life at the moment.
Electromancer thrashed again. The web’s fibers stretched but showed no signs of weakening. She recalled something that Sigfred had said about his martial arts study, when she asked him whether a physically weaker person—a woman—could truly learn to vanquish a much stronger attacker.
“It’s very possible,” Sigfred said. “You learn with martial arts to use the attacker’s own strength against him.”
That’s it, she thought. If she could turn Red Web in on itself, she might be able to slice a hole in the fabric of the universe. She’d create a miniature black hole by causing electrons to collide at quantum speed. But where would that lead? Perhaps to nowhere. She might even be destroyed atom by atom, electron by electron, as the black hole spaghettified her. But if it worked ... Maybe, just maybe, she could escape to find her father and then Sigfred and get them all out of there.
A door in the concrete wall opened. Blue light spilled into the room. Electromancer saw a glimmer of hope. But it soon flickered out when an odd-looking man entered the room. His bright red hair was in complete disarray, which made him look like a terrifying circus clown.
“Hello Electromancer. I’m Professor Slipter,” he said. “Chief scientist for The Momaxita. The man who harnessed Electromite.”
“My father was the man who harnessed Electromite,” she said, glaring at him. “And he used it for beneficial purposes.”
“But I created The Big Zapper and Red Web. They will have a much greater impact on mankind than anything your father did.”
“If you’re truly a man of science, you wouldn’t be working for someone like Momo. You’d be serving the world’s interests, using your talents for something that mattered.”
He wasn’t listening to a word she was saying.
“You’re probably not aware of this—it was long before you were born—but I took graduate courses from your father at Kensington College. It was decades ago. I was one of his best students, he said. Then I was expelled for that cheating incident. Your father did nothing to support me. Completely disloyal was Mickey Manchester.”
Professor Slipter walked closer and said, “Your voice is extraordinary, like liquid magic.” He scrutinized her as if examining a newly discovered specimen for the first time. “How do you achieve the vocal pitch? Are you constricting your airways somehow? And how do you fly with your body mass?”
“You make me want to vomit,” Electromancer said.
Professor Slipter flinched at the insult. “When it happens, you won’t feel a thing. Pity. You deserve to feel pain with your attitude.”
Electromancer groped at Red Web, tried to strike Professor Slipter with electricity, but the web absorbed it easily. Professor Slipter laughed maniacally, his deranged cackle hurting her ears.
Someone banged on the door with what sounded like an iron pipe. An assistant poked his head inside the door. “Are you ready, sir?”
Professor Slipter nodded.
Other lab assistants entered, carrying electronic devices that Electromancer didn’t recognize. One container looked as if it was filled with a viscous gelatin. The substance was clear and reflected a rainbow of colors. A second contraption looked like a child’s giant beach ball with an interior cavity. The lab worker attached a hose to the ball-like device and filled the exterior portion with the gel. When the bubble was filled to capacity, Professor Slipter nodded. His assistant started another machine, and this, Electromancer did recognize—liquid nitrogen, cold and deadly. Though she wanted to scream, she refused to give them the satisfaction.
• • •
Electromancer awoke to a bright light streaming inside of her concrete prison. The room was freezing. When she’d fallen asleep from the cold, Professor Slipter and his assistants must’ve moved her inside the bubble, sealed it off, and turned on the refrigeration unit.
She shook her head groggily, and felt her limbs becoming warmer. Someone must’ve turned up the heat so that she’d regain consciousness. She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious. Now what?
Momo walked inside the room, as always hidden behind the gold mask. In his heavy fur coat and Mukluk boots, he looked like a clown. He and Professor Slipter—two clowns in a despicable circus.
“Wake up, princess,” Momo said brightly.
For one sickening moment, she thought of her father—Mickey had called her princess.
“I tried to warn you, Alexa,” Momo said.
“It’s Electromancer,” she rasped.
“Oh, let’s stop the charade.” He pulled off the gold mask, and in an instant, she was wide awake—staring at the face of her Uncle Montgomery. And it was his voice as well. He’d disguised it on those broadcasts. But Uncle Montgomery had been with her that time when ... how foolish of her. He’d prerecorded that message about Big Benny.
“I would have thought better of a Manchester,” he said.
“I could say the same,” she replied.
“Didn’t you know that I was watching you cavort with that servant, Sawyer, at the golf course? And what should I see? Electrical sparks shooting from your hands! The sparks of lust—but also the sparks of Electromancer. How indiscreet of you.” He shook his head. “You’re as stubborn as your father. More stubborn. He never would’ve let things go this far. He would’ve given me exactly what I demanded. He would’ve saved those cities from my attacks. Now, those deaths are on your hands.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
“You disappoint me in so many ways, Alexa. Dallying with the hired help. Getting engaged to a two-bit, snake-oil politician. But don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything. I’ll see to it that the Manchester name will once again be respectable, that it will be revered, feared.
“You’ll never get away with it. People like you never do.”
“People like me always do. I have for years.”
Electromancer placed her hands against the walls of her prison. “Why don’t you just kill me and get this over with?”
“I thought of that. But after all, you are my niece. Blood is thicker than water—even thicker than ice. Besides, I might need you some day. Meanwhile, perhaps I’ll court Della Dowdy and I’ll give you a cousin. Someone more worthy of being the Manchester heir than you.”
She clawed at the edges of the frozen bubble, tried to shoot electricity from her hands, but the severe cold had robbed her of her powers.
“Good-bye, Alexa.”
Chapter 25
A short while later ...
Zachary Zero headed down the stairs to stash his
case of Kensington-Jack Rye Whiskey in his secret hiding spot in the Sugar Express Train Depot. When he got there, the door was locked. He tugged and pulled on the door, but it wouldn’t open.
“Those women! They discovered my hiding spot,” he whined. He began scrounging around, looking for something to break off the lock. Around the corner, he found a metal pipe, which he used to hack away at the lock. The lock didn’t break, but the concrete surrounding it gave way, and he was able to jimmy the lock casing from the wall so that it hung from the door. He maneuvered the pipe inside the crack and pried until the foot-thick door opened. A rush of ice-cold air smacked him in the face, the shock sending him stumbling back. When he regained his balance, he used a foot to push the door open the rest of the way. The room was filled with steam, the way dry ice fogs up when exposed to water. But that was impossible—this room hadn’t stored dry ice for decades.
No way these WEEDs ladies or those CABOOSE engineers would be storing dry ice. He waited for the gas to settle and then braved his way inside the room, only to encounter a large frozen bubble of ice. There seemed to be some kind of object inside. What, he couldn’t make out, because there was too much condensation on the bubble to see inside clearly.
It struck him that if there was something untoward going on down here, and he was the one who reported it, the town would think him a hero. If that happened, maybe he’d be able to get his criminal record expunged. Maybe he’d even get his old job back. There was no guarantee that Mayor Baumgartner was going to become prime minister. But only The Mayor could help him now. He left the room and placed the call.
“I told you never to call here unless it was a dire emergency,” The Mayor said.
