The Queen of Disks (Villainess Book 5)

by Alana Melos

  Adira appeared a moment later next to the Siren. “What…” she said, then fell silent. “How did you know about this?”

  “I told you, my father told me,” I said as I finished typing up her profile. “This used to be pretty much where they worked from… I don’t know why I never thought of coming here before. It was, I don’t know, kind of a fairy tale. A magic place where the cops couldn’t find you. A refuge. Annnnd… done. You two should both be able to enter without me now, if I did it right.”

  “If it’s in another dimension, no wonder it’s empty!” Rebekah said, bounding over to inspect the furniture. “No one has been here in a long time.”

  “They’re all dead, or retired,” I said. “After Uptown fell and the Sentinels were broken, there wasn’t any reason to stay around, I guess.” Shaking my head, I nodded towards the hallway. “I don’t know how big this place is, or if it’s still intact. I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be, but be careful while you search.”

  “And what are you looking for?” Adira said, narrowing her eyes ever so slightly as she asked.

  “Something to help me regain my telepathy,” I answered, not seeing any reason to lie. “I’m not holding out high hopes though.” I gestured with a hand. “Look around. See what useful shit you can find.”

  “This would be a good place to plan operations!” Rebekah said. She’d put her goggles up around her hat again, though left he gas mask in place so her voice sounded metallic. “If it can’t be found, safe to hide in too.”

  I walked towards the hall and the two of them fell in line. “I’d had that thought too.” The hallway was large, wide enough for several people to walk abreast. It was lined with art, some of which I thought I recognized, but most of it unknown to me. There had been plants here, once upon a time, and the remains of them lay dead in planters. Someone had taken time to not only create this place, but decorate it as well, to make it feel less like a bunker and more like a home. As we went further down the hallway with the iron grey walls, smaller hallways split off from the main.

  “Operations is at the end,” I said, pointing. “That’s where I’m going. Feel free to look around.”

  “I will!” Rebekah said, and disappeared down the nearest tunnel. The eagerness in her voice was infectious, and I felt giddy with her.

  “I will stay with you,” Adira said, patting my forearm lightly. “You never know what dangers might be present.”

  “I don’t think there are any,” I said.

  “You are the one who told us to be careful,” she pointed out in a prim voice. I had to chuckle at that.

  A few moments of walking later, the hallway ended with a wide set of dark brown double doors. Etched upon the doors was the coat of arms for the Blackguard. Mother had been amused by the art, saying that it was terribly medieval of Cortex: a coat of arms for crime. It was shield shaped, with a quartered field. In each of the quarters was something one would associate with crime: a gun, a knife, a stack of coins, and a fist. I touched the etching reverently, tracing the outline of the shield. This was a momentous occasion, yet no music marked it. Fanfare passed in my mind with a soft sigh and gentle exhalation. Then I pushed the doors open.

  I don’t know what I expected, exactly, but this wasn’t it. Maybe some Legion of Doom-esque grand meeting room with a long table and high backed plush chairs. Maybe a trophy room with the stuffed heads of their enemies adorning stained oak walls. It wasn’t a round table with some folding chairs around it, covered in dusty papers with the same plain grey walls as outside. The rest of this place from what we had seen was decorated, but this place was nothing but practicality with no room for embellishments. File cabinets stood along the left side of the wall, some open and some not. They looked to have been rifled through in a hurry, and some of the papers scattered on the floor were burnt, singed around the edges. On the right side was a big board with maps and notes tacked to it. Directly opposite the door was another door, and that was where I was heading. Flanking that door was a long table which held a coffee pot and cups. On the other side were folding tables and stacked chairs.

  “This is what you were looking for?” Adira asked.

  “Not quite,” I replied as I moved around the round table. It was much too small for all of the members at the height of the supervillain gang. It must have been for the leaders only. A glance at some of the papers showed handwriting I didn’t recognize, and some that I did. A small thrill went through me again, knowing that great schemes had been hatched here, murders had been planned, and crimes executed with precision. Yet it just looked like a sloppy, temporary office.

  Opposite the entrance was a door, off-set to the right. That was my objective: Tommy Cortex’s office. When I tried the handle, I half expected it to be locked, but the door swung open with ease. Cortex had been the one to form the group, beginning with recruiting metahumans to rebuild the Mafia. While the former Mafioso had failed in that--to an extent, the Mob had not been pleased with his efforts and, after booting him formally via an attempted murder, rebuilt themselves to contend with the young upstart--he had kicked off what some call the Golden Age of meta on meta action. Good versus evil. Hero versus villain. Right versus wrong. All of that and more.

  Unbeknownst to the public, he’d also been a drug addict. It wasn’t cocaine, heroin, oxy, or anything else mundane though. His drug of choice had been a speciality designer drug for metahumans, one whose formula had been lost through some mishap ages ago: Clarity. With Clarity, a metahuman’s powers were amplified. If someone had the ability to barely light a cigarette with their pyrokinesis, after taking Clarity, they’d be like a flamethrower. It was potent and highly addictive, but it was also the best shot of getting my telepathy back, if temporarily. Some mentat a while ago had said I was unbalanced, that something was seriously wrong. Yet, without the ability to manipulate my own head, I couldn’t even begin to fix it. I had to get my power back in order to fix my head so I could use my power. That was my working theory anyway, and the sudden inspiration from last night had set this plan into motion.

  Cortex’s office was disheveled, looking much like the meeting room which preceded it. Stacks of folders and papers crowded his old dusty desk, and cabinets stuffed with various knick-knacks lined one side of the room. The other side held a small table with a now empty decanter and some crystal glasses. Behind his desk hung two paintings. One was a reproduction of ‘The Scream’ by Edvard Munch. The other I didn’t recognize. It showed a couple, male and female, dancing in a darkened room, surrounded by stars. The painting itself looked wrong somehow. When I slipped behind his desk, I touched it and discovered why. There was another layer of paint underneath the picture, brushed in weird broad strokes, and then meticulously painted over.

  Slice of history or not, this was the place. I sat down behind his desk and thought to myself, Now, if I was a mobster crackhead, where would I hide my stash?

  Adira leaned in the doorway and watched me. “This is your destination?” she asked.

  I nodded as I rifled through his desk, searching for false bottoms or trick drawers. “Yeah… this used to be the leader’s office. There’s something here he might have left behind that I want.”

  “What is it?”

  “A drug,” I said, then explained the purpose of Clarity, leaving out the ‘highly addictive’ part. “If I boost my powers, I might be able to fix it so I can use my ‘pathy without it. And even if not, then if I really need it, I’ll have access to it.”

  “You sound so certain this will work,” she said, her voice carrying doubt.

  “It’s as good a shot as any, barring getting another telepath to work on me,” I replied.

  She nodded her assent, knowing that asking Gerard was out of the question. Even if he hadn’t had his shitfit, he wasn’t to be trusted that far. “What does it look like? I will help you search.”

  “That I’m not sure on,” I admitted. “It’s a pill, but what color, what size… I don’t know. I’m assuming that
he had a stash and had it hidden somewhere. If you find pills tucked out of the way, odds are those are it.”

  She moved with liquid grace around the room, feeling around the walls and furniture for an obvious catch or compartment like I did with the desk. We worked in silence for a few minutes. The desk, while filled with the normal type of clutter one would expect to find, didn’t yield any immediate results, though a few of the documents in there looked interesting. I turned my attention to the paintings on the wall behind me. It was cliché, but if there was a safe, wouldn’t it be hidden there? Sadly, Cortex too must have thought the same as there was nothing but the grey concrete wall behind them. When I moved the Scream print back in its place, I heard a rattle.

  Intrigued and hopeful, I took the painting off the wall. When I shook it, there was that faint rattle again. Adira stopped her searching to watch me examine the frame. The print was obviously too thin to hide anything, but the frame was one of those fancier jobs, thick with scrollwork carved into the frame. Once I popped the painting out and verified that no, nothing was there, I ran my fingers along the back of the frame. There was no obvious catch, but also nothing which should have rattled.

  “Here,” Adira said as she leaned over the desk and ran her finger along the bottom of the frame. “There’s something there.”

  I looked where she indicated, and scraped a nail down the back bottom. There was the smallest snag, which meant there was an opening. I had no idea how to open it, so I used my teke to lever it open, breaking whatever lock was in place as I did. A long, thin compartment popped out, almost as wide as the frame. When I slid it open, a row of white pills came into view. They were unmarked and appeared to be aspirin. I knew better. I shook them out and counted. There were twelve of them in total.

  “This is it?” Adira asked.

  “I’m sure it is,” I replied. Now that I had the Clarity in my hands, I wasn’t sure I wanted to take them right that second. Eagerness had overcome me before, but now restraint played its tune. It would be better if I were in a safe, familiar place if I had a bad reaction.

  I brought out an empty aspirin bottle and put them inside before stuffing them back in my front jeans pocket. “That’s all I needed,” I said. “Now let’s--”

  “You have to come!” Rebekah said as she burst into the room. One hand was on her hat, and her uncovered face was flushed with excitement and exertion both. “You have to come and see! Fast! Hurry!” With that, she turned and took off through the meeting room and down the hall.

  Fearing some emergency, Adira and I rushed out of the office after her. Had someone found us? Were they attacking? If not that, what could have gotten such a reaction? Rebekah was prone to excitement, but I’d never seen her that impatient before. She turned a corner and we followed. There were other rooms around--this base was really much larger than I’d imagined--some of them labeled and some not. From what I saw in passing, this ‘wing’ appeared to be science based with labs and a medbay. At the very end of the long hallway, she waited by an open door.

  “What is it?” I asked as we caught up to her.

  “Go in and look,” she said, her eyes bright. She grinned ear to ear.

  Stepping inside, I saw what she meant in an instant and stopped, blocking Adira until she pushed me out of the way. A large metal ring stood against the back wall with tons of crazy wires hooked up to it running to a stand alone panel and into the walls, probably to a power source. I’d seen something like this a couple times, though this was rougher, home made instead of manufactured by a factory. The ring itself was six feet tall, give or take, and empty, but the metal shone with a strange light.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed as I stared.

  It was an interdimensional portal.

  The implications blew my mind. It meant that not only had they possessed the ability to travel to other dimensions and plunder them back in the day, they had the power to operate it. I’d never really thought of how big the operation was, but now, it staggered me. I joked around about being a Rogue’s Gallery member rather than part of the Legion of Doom--not that a lot of people got it--but this hit home with how accurate that joke was.

  “I know, ja?” Rebekah said, bouncing in place. “If this works, then we can go where we please!”

  Her words echoed in my head, and a plethora of possibilities opened up before me. Before I opened my mouth to reply, Adira spoke. “Does anyone know how to work it?”

  “Gerard, maybe…” I said, biting my lip. He’d operated the Interdimensional Inc’.s portal when we’d gone to Axis Earth. I glanced around the room, then moved to the control panel. “It sort of looks the same, but simpler.” That was an understatement. Interdimensional, Inc.’s controls had been designed so that one person alone could not operate it. That cut down on the possibility of their employees taking trans-dimensional joyrides. This control panel had been designed so that one person could operate it alone. The energy cost to open and maintain a portal wasn’t small… and I thought about the entrance to this pocket dimension, which was a gate as well. It hadn’t occurred to me when we entered, but energy had to be used to open that one too. Where was all this power coming from?

  “Perhaps there’s a manual,” Adira said as she stepped into the large room. As with the other spaces here, it was filled with dust, but at least it was organized. There were racks against all walls holding various types of equipment. Not really an armory, but rather items which might have come in useful which weren’t necessarily weapons or armor such as gas masks, backpacks, climbing gear, and so on. There was a cabinet below the control panel, so I tried to open it and found it locked. Instead of breaking the lock, I took out my lock picking equipment and went to work. After I’d been cuffed and had to pick my way out, I thought it wise to keep in practice as well as have the equipment near at hand.

  When the lock sprang open, the space inside revealed notebooks and folders. A quick look through them told me it was a manual, more or less. The technical stuff I couldn’t read. It might as well have been a foreign language. Someone would be able to. The question was getting someone I trusted to read them. I continued to flip through the pages, seeing if anything looked like a how-to guide for idiots.

  While I did that, the other two circled around the room, inspecting everything. “This is amazing,” Rebekah gushed. “There are so many worlds to explore!”

  “Not all of them would be friendly to us,” Adira cautioned, though she had a thoughtful expression upon her face.

  “Maybe not, but some would be!” the small blond woman continued. “There’s so much we could see and do--”

  “And bring back,” I interrupted as I stood. I put the notebooks back then dusted myself off. “That has to be what they had it for, robbery.”

  Adira nodded. “I would think so, from what little I know,” she said, choosing her words with care. “It does open opportunity, however.”

  “I’m more interested in how it’s powered,” I said, moving over to inspect where the lines and wires went into the walls. “There has to be a massive power source here. What kind is it? Can’t be solar or hydro… it has to be nuclear.” There wasn’t any other option, and the thought of sitting where a nuclear reactor was which had been unattended for twenty some-odd years wasn’t appealing.

  “Oh, I found something else!” Rebekah said, her voice still light and eager. “I did not think much of it at the time, but it might answer your question.” She gestured as she rushed to the door, “Come, come. It said power room.”

  “Lead the way,” I said, and followed. Adira followed more slowly behind us, her gaze turned introspective in a way I didn’t like.

  The Siren led us to a hallway off the main branch, which stretched on for what seemed like a mile. Though there were other doors present, she’d opened most of them already, revealing what looked to be storage rooms and janitors closets. Nothing which looked that interesting, in other words. At the end of the hall, an unassuming door stood alone. A plaque had been affixed
to it which simply said ‘power room’, and it was left partway open after the Siren had opened it.

  “I didn’t understand it,” she said. “It looked like, hm, a box with the wires… centrally located with the….” She made a square gesture with her hands, frowning.

  “A breaker box,” I supplied.

  “Yes! I think so,” she smiled, nodding. “The central pathing place. Like in the pack’s basement. There’s many of them, though, and some kilns.”

  At that I blinked. “Kilns? Like for firing clay?”

  She shook her head and pushed the door open, flicking on the lightswitch before stepping inside. “No, no, not for clay. Kilns, containers…” She stopped, frowning in frustration. She had her English down pretty well, but there were always going to be some words which weren’t commonly used that would give her trouble. “See for yourself.”

  We went in, and I saw the bank of breaker boxes immediately to our left lining the wall. The floor underneath us wasn’t a floor at all, but the top of a metal stairwell with a plank which lined the room. A bit further on, stairs went down, but only about one story. Lastly, sure enough, what appeared to be kilns, no bigger than five feet around, filled the bottom part of the room, a wispy vapor coming from the top. I saw where she made the mistake right away, and knew she knew what it was, but didn’t have the proper word for it in English. They all looked like miniature smokestacks.

  I grabbed the railing staring at them. There were twenty-five of them lined in a neat five by five square. Most of them appeared to be operational. Pipes joined them to the walls and each other. Even though the smoke left the tops of them to dissipate quickly in the air, the temperature of the room was cool. If these were miniature nuclear reactors, the room should be scorching hot, and radioactive.