The Queen of Disks (Villainess Book 5)

by Alana Melos

  In the now, Next Jenna had caught up to me. She grimaced at the metal plate, shaking her head. “Ice in the system,” she said. “Haxxoring off table.”

  “Of course it is,” I grumbled, having known it would come to me flexing my mental might. Instead of standing there bitching about it, I swallowed the last of the bar and focused on the metal door. It wasn’t just heavy; something was actively pushing down on it, or it was magnetized to the floor. Whatever it was, it made the already heavy door nearly impossible to lift.

  I tried it anyway.

  The effort wasn’t without pain. Tearing people’s limbs off were much easier than this. My left eye twitched like I had a nervous tic as I strained, pushing all my mental might into pulling the stubborn door up. When it was about three feet off the floor, I gestured for Next Jenna to scoot in. The door behind it was the regular sort of reinforced door I remembered well from my last trip. Even depleted of “juice”, she should be strong enough to punch through it with minimal effort. Instead of doing so at my behest, the cyborg stepped in front of me and stopped. She regarded the heavy reinforced door with a curious expression, then raised her hand. The tips of her fingers glowed, and she muttered to herself as she touched the frame of the bunker door. Light flared and I looked away as she spot welded it into place. I just had to hold it for another minute.

  A pain started behind my left eye as seconds crept by on slow sloth feet. It doubled, then tripled, bursting into my skull and ringing my bell but good. I held on, gritting my teeth as tears sprang into my eyes from the effort. My sight doubled through them, then pain exploded through my head and I let go. I had to. The door shuddered and groaned, but held in place as she welded the other side. Wetness ran over my lips and chin. I lifted my mask and wiped the blood off, which had poured from my nose. It trickled still, though it was slowing now that I wasn’t exerting myself any longer. As I looked at the bright red blood on my black glove, fear ran through me, wild and wanton. I’d already lost use of my telepathy… what if my teke was next on the chopping block?

  Not for the first time, I knew something was seriously wrong in my head. This wasn’t the time or the place for it, so I shelved my fear. If you weren’t moving forward, you might as well be dead in this world, and I couldn’t afford to be afraid. Such a useless emotion, Gerard would say, but fear alerted you to what was wrong. I just had to figure out what it was exactly and fix it. Lowering my mask, I took a deep breath, and focused on the task at hand. I had a job to do, and nothing was going to stop me from doing it.

  Once my companion finished welding the door into the frame, she kicked the flimsy one behind it open. We slipped underneath and found ourselves in a laboratory. This hadn’t changed at all. Some scientists or researchers were still here, gathered in groups as they talked amongst themselves about the alarms.

  I raised the gun. “No one needs to get hurt,” I said in a loud, clear voice. “Just stay where you are and don’t cause trouble.”

  “That gauss rifle isn’t even on,” a perky young woman said, scoffing loudly.

  I had to look at her incredulously. We’d just broken into their secure lab and she was bitching over details? “Fine, then,” I said, lowering the weapon. Pointing with my other hand, I counted off, starting with her. “Eeney, meeney, miney mo…” At the last word, I lashed out with my teke, using the monofilament teke to decapitate her. Her head rolled off of her neck as her body jerked, standing in place for a second before falling backwards toward the group, quietly spurting blood from the stump. I sighed as I watched, wishing the monofilament would work with stuff stronger than flesh. “Any other observations?”

  The lot of them either froze in place, or shook their heads in a hurry. I glanced to Next Jenna, “What you’re looking for is in the next room.”

  She scurried over there like an electric rat after some virtual cheese, a greedy and eager look upon her doll like face. I stood there watching the scientists and the door, waiting for another ambush. Though tempted to eat another bar, I instead concentrated on my music, counting down the time with Gloria Gaynor as she sung about how she’ll survive.

  “Work complete!” a joyous Next Jenna called out, popping out from the tank room. She didn’t hold anything, but she moved across the room to join me. I motioned to the door, but she stopped and looked at a machine near by. “Scoopin’ health pack.”

  “What?” I asked, but she had already ripped open a panel from the machine and yanked out several wires. One of the researchers yelled to stop, that she would kill herself, but she’d already connected to them. With a mad shriek and a shrill of insane laughter, electricity sparked out of the machine, burning it out… and taking the building along with it. The room was plunged into semi-darkness as the lights died. She glowed, lighting the way with soft jazzy blues and punk purples as the electricity danced along her skin. I would have killed for such power, but it wasn’t without a price. Her skin flaked off more and more in place. The empty spots looked like dead pixels on a computer screen, standing out against her bright colors. There were a lot more of them than I’d first imagined. Being from the future, she couldn’t replace her tech easily, if at all. If it burned out, even if it was just a small part, it was dead and gone forever.

  “One up!” she chortled and let go of the wires. The researchers and scientists had all bolted for the relative safety of the tank room, away from the mad woman who ate electricity.

  “Let’s go, time’s up,” I said, though it wasn’t quite, not yet. She gave me a scornful look and I shrugged, “By the time we get to the shaft, it will be.”

  “Dodger roger,” the cyborg said.

  “We are on our way out too!” chirped the Siren.

  “Move quickly,” Fearful Symmetry warned from outside. “I hear sirens. They are close, and I am not yet recovered.”

  “You heard the lady,” I told Next Jenna. “Let’s hoof it.”

  We exited the main lab room to pile into the hallway once more. I slung the rifle over my back, figuring that even if it didn’t have power, the tech itself might be valuable. Or, barring that, I could find a way to power it up again. It never hurt having lots of weapons and choices. The hallway remained clear, but dark. Next Jenna took the lead since she glowed. I followed behind, edging along as I searched for the ambush which had to come.

  When we reached the elevator shaft without an incident, I relaxed, but only minutely. There was still a lot of ground to cover. I glanced into the open hole. The guts of the shaft shone with the blue and purple highlights of the light Next Jenna threw off. “Is the gas still there?” It wouldn’t do any good if I got poisoned all over again. My head hurt, my body ached, and I still had to fly away from here. If I had to, I could try holding my breath and flying to the top as fast as I could… but a lot of chemical weapons didn’t need to be inhaled. Skin contact would be enough to do the job.

  “Negatory, Ghost Rider,” she said, but her petite lips were turned down in a frown.

  “What is it?”

  “Jar on the lid,” she said, pointing. “Leet hax.”

  Since she’d declared it safe, I poked my head in and looked up. Not more than ten or twelve feet up was a metal floor, or rather, a wall like we’d encountered here. Another new safety protocol. “Fuck,” I muttered. “Assuming they’ve got one for every floor… I can’t move five or six of them.” Maybe if I hadn’t been poisoned before I could have, but that was a big maybe. “We have to find another way out.”

  It wasn’t part of the plan, but I tapped on my comlink and tried to inform the rest. Next Jenna snorted, shaking her head. “Sig busted,” she chirped, and I wasn’t sure if she meant the signal had been busted or we had, but the effect was the same at the moment.

  I racked my brain to think of another exit, but Next Jenna was one step ahead. Well, more like several steps ahead being from the future and everything. She held out her hand and light projected from it, building a skeletal map of Titan Industries. From what little I had gathered, she’d been
some kind of archivist or librarian in the future. Thus, she had access to information impossible to get in the now because it was all just some dusty blueprint or notation to her, stored and not quite forgotten in her memory banks.

  “Secondary elevator,” I said, pointing at the light made blueprint. “There’s one here. But it doesn’t reach this floor, or the one above us.” I looked up at the ceiling. While it no doubt was reinforced, it wasn’t armored like the doors had been. “What materials is the building made of?”

  “Iron titanium alloy,” she supplied, then chortled, pointing at the side. “Sec-sec, pinging.”

  “Pinging what?” I asked but she ignored me.

  Next Jenna put her hand on the wall, palm flat, and held it there for a few seconds. “Nav en.” Without further ado, she took off, flying down the hallway. I followed behind as close as I could, but juiced as she was, she pulled ahead leaving me to chase after her blue and purple contrails. Through random twists and turns she led me through the compound until she pulled up short and stopped in front of a unisex bathroom.

  “I thought I told you kids to go before we left,” I quipped, frowning as she entered.

  “Ew,” she said, crinkling up her petite, pert nose. “Ew, bodily expulsion of waste is for ancients, not leet.”

  The door to the bathroom had not been shielded. Why would it have been? There was nothing here but toilets and sinks. “Yeah, well, we’re not perfect like you.” I pause looking around as she hunted along the ceiling.

  “Score one, ancient,” she replied, but in an absent-minded manner. She made a clicking sound, then turned and studied me. “Sans rifle, but that’ll do, pig. That’ll do.”

  I bristled, but at least I knew where she’d gotten the quote from. Her speech had gotten better, more understandable the more we interacted, but oftentimes it was still hard to decipher. “What are you looking at?” I asked, unable to contain my irritation.

  “Ex, why, zee axes. Charting the curve, surfing the quadratic!” The cyborg held up a finger, “Sec, meatbag. Leet haxxoring.”

  I looked up at the ceiling, then our surroundings and it dawned on me. No one would be guarding a water main. Frowning as water and electricity didn’t mix well, I wondered at her plan. If I was by myself, and I knew where I was going, then I could potentially get out that way if the pipe was big enough. An industrial building this big? It probably was. Probably. Maybe.

  “Whatever you’re doing, hurry it up,” I said. Did I hear faint echoes of footsteps down the hallway or was it just the ringing in my head? “I think we’ve got company coming.”

  “Finito,” she chirped. “Bubble me!”

  It took me a moment to realize what she meant, and I threw up a shield around her just as she broke into the ceiling and busted the pipes above us. Water crashed down, and I had to lift myself up to avoid being knocked over. From outside, I heard loud swearing.

  “Hurry up!” I hissed through my teeth.

  The water came down in a great deluge, but trickled to a stop after the first wave, pardon the pun. She’d turned off the water main remotely to the building by hacking their computer. It was a low priority service, nothing anyone would think to put extra defenses on. Plus, underground. If people wanted to break in this way, they’d probably have to crawl through full water pipes a half a mile, at least. Yet since it served every level of the building, it more than likely was close-ish to the surface somewhere in order to draw directly from the local water treatment plant.

  The door banged open and I switched the shield from Next Jenna to myself. A couple of the armored guards stood in the doorway, a different squad from before. They opened fire without any warning. The bullets which hit my shield broke through it. My teke shield shattered, but slowed the bullets enough for me to move out of the way. I leaped forward to attack, seeking a weak spot with my sword. Next Jenna made a sound of annoyance as I splashed into the fight, ankle deep in water.

  “Bad meatbag!” she snapped. She turned her attention to the damp pipe, widening the hole she’d made. The metal creaked and bent under her strength while I covered her.

  My head ringing as my sword bounced off the first one’s armor, I ducked the vibroblade of the second. Careful not to parry out of instinct--my sword might be strong, but it wasn’t that strong--I kept up a steady pace of thrusts and dodges, timing my movements to theirs. In the suits, they were slow. The rifles they carried were all but useless in close range like this. The only light was Next Jenna’s soft glow, giving everything an old eighties punk rock look. The only gap in their armor was between their helmets and suits. It wasn’t much of a gap, but it gave me something to aim for. I slid around one as the other thrust with their knife. My trench was cut, the metal plates inside chewed open with the vibroblade, slick as shit.

  Concentrating on his partner, I grabbed his helmet telekinetically as I danced back, my shin hitting one of the stalls of the bathroom. Wincing, I jerked out of his way. The helmet moved ever so slightly under my mental grasp, and as I swerved to the side to avoid a metallic arm crashing into me, I lifted up with my teke.

  “Can’t see!” he exclaimed, but that was the least of his problems. Any other words turned into an unintelligible burbling as I thrust the thin blade of my o-wakizashi in the gap, slicing his throat.

  When I withdrew, I fell back into an easy kendo stance and stared at his partner. “Your turn.”

  With his partner dead like my voice, the second one turned tail and ran. I slumped against the post between the bathroom stalls and sighed heavily. A buzzing sound made me look up. Synthetic music played. It was from a video game from long, long ago which had to do with plumbers and pipes. Next Jenna floated there in the air, gesturing up with a ‘come on’ expression on her face.

  Fleeing through a pipe may not have been the proudest thing I’ve ever done, but the objective had been achieved and I’d lived. A victory’s a victory.

  Chapter Two

  When we rejoined at the rendezvous point, the crew was more or less intact. I say ‘more or less’ as Tiger looked as sick as I felt--though obviously he had some way to process the gas better than I had--and his partner had disappeared. He explained there had been damage caused to her suit as she’d held off the cops, and this environment was toxic to her. Other than that, bumps, bruises, a few gunshots, and a couple nasty looking cuts but no deaths. I finished transferring the payment to the hirees, and everyone dispersed.

  “Easy money,” Lethal crowed. “You idiots need a spotter again, call.”

  “You’d probably get more jobs if you didn’t insult people,” the Siren said as she frowned at him.

  “You’d probably get laid more often if you weren’t such a stuck up ice bitch,” he countered. Obviously, his attempts to get her into the sack had failed.

  Her mouth dropped open and she issued a squeak of protest. Wolf crossed his arms and growled, standing tall and imposing over the lot of us, but his ire was directed towards the biokinetic sniper. “You should show morre rrespect.”

  “Whatever, snotdog,” Lethal said, ignoring the naked threat in Wolf’s bright green eyes. “Like I said, need a spotter again, hit me up.”

  “I’ll just hit you,” I muttered under my breath before saying in a louder voice, “Will do. Later, Lethal.”

  Adira shook her head after he left. Only four of us stood around in the empty squatter’s house in the Wastelands. Jeneva had split immediately after we emerged from the water main. I’d shielded myself with my teke as we’d climbed through the water main so she didn’t accidentally, you know, kill me with the electricity she emitted. It hadn’t been fun, but at least it hadn’t been a sewage pipe. Once we got clear and the comlink interference cleared up, I’d called a retreat.

  “He is such a bother!” Siren huffed, crossing her arms in an unconscious imitation of Mauler.

  “He’s an asshole,” I corrected. “But effective.” He was. He’d covered our exit with ease, keeping us informed on what was going on outside as he picke
d his targets off one by one. “Doesn’t matter if people like you in this business, you know.”

  “Hmph,” she grunted, still fuming.

  “I think you protest too much,” Adira said with a sly smile, teasing her.

  Rebekah squeaked again, but Wolf put a restraining hand on her shoulder. “The dead thing mocks,” he said. “Ignorre it.”

  At that, the smile wiped off of Adira’s face, leaving only cool neutrality behind. The werewolf and the vampire didn’t get along, but it wasn’t just them in their bodies either, so it depended on the time of day if there was going to be a fight. I rubbed my temple. They were aggravating my headache, and would at home too since I lived with them both.

  It wasn’t an ideal situation, but the pair of them were used to living with their pack, which had first cast Wolf out since he’d been ‘changed’ by the mutant plant Pangea. Adira had refused to leave him, and thus, she’d been exiled as well. They both insisted I was their new leader. While they hadn’t insisted on living with me, it was the most sensible arrangement in the beginning until each could find their own place. What I hadn’t expected was the side benefit of having two fuck buddies at my place who were fine with me sleeping with other people. What made it difficult was that Wolf, the werewolf-plant part of him anyway, hated the vampire Adira, but liked Huraiva, her human host. Adira practically chased after Rory, Wolf’s human self, trying to rebuild their relationship while he held her at arm’s distance, influenced by the wolf in him. And Rory wanted to be friends with Huraiva, who didn’t want much to do with him at all since he was a guy, so she spent much of her awake time at her girlfriend’s place. She was distant instead of mean to him, but she and the werewolf part of him got along since Wolf didn’t care. It was like Three’s Company if everyone had dissociative identity disorder.