“Alchemist is dead,” Ajeet said. “You three killed him, and I buried him. Only Doctor Alchemy remains.”
“Look Ajeet, I don’t know what you’re going on about,” Austin said. “Let’s grab a beer and talk about it. Maybe I can help.”
Bart had been watching this exchange from his perch on the stool across the room, slack-jawed, his mouth partly open, as high as a kite. With a fluid movement, Doctor Alchemy raised his arms and fired an alchemy cartridge into Bart’s open mouth with the unerring accuracy of a latter-day William Tell. A split second later an alchemy cartridge from Doctor Alchemy’s other gauntlet hit Bart’s chin, cracking open at the impact. A mass of black that looked like an octopus made of tar exploded out of the cartridge, expanding and writhing like something alive. The black mass swallowing Bart’s entire head in a blink of an eye, sealing in the unexploded cartridge in Bart’s mouth.
Bart was off the stool now, stumbling, tripping, pulling furiously and futilely at the sticky substance that enshrouded his head. Shocked and stunned by what was happening, everyone nearby stared at Bart.
“Bart, I want you to know what is happening and why,” Doctor Alchemy said in a loud calm voice as Bart continued to struggle. Flailing blindly, Bart bounced off the back wall. “Though you participated in the break-in of my house, you tried to stop these other two animals from molesting and killing Rati. You will die with the least amount of suffering when the over one hundred gallons of water I poured into the cartridge in your mouth explodes out of it.”
As if on cue, the unseen cartridge exploded with a pop and a whoosh. Like a balloon filled with far too much water, the abrupt release of all that water made Bart’s head explode. Bar patrons shouted in alarm and confusion. Those closest to Bart were suddenly drenched with water flavored with bits of Bart’s brain, bones, and flesh. Doctor Alchemy lifted his cape and shielded his body from the downpour.
Bart’s drenched, decapitated body was still upright and moving, responding to impulses sent by a brain that was no longer there. His heart, still pumping, sent blood spurting out like a geyser from the empty space between his shoulders. The headless body hit a pool table, bounced off, and fell to the floor. There it continued to twitch, adding bloody slickness to the already drenched floor.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Peter said, staring at Bart’s body. His voice held a combination of awe, disgust, and fear.
“You will need more than just them to save you,” Doctor Alchemy said.
Austin was the first of the onlookers to recover from stunned stillness. He swung the thick end of his cue at Doctor Alchemy’s head. Quick as lightning, Doctor Alchemy reached up and grabbed the piece of wood rocketing toward his head, staying it well before it hit him. Doctor Alchemy twisted his wrist sharply and pulled, jerking the cue out of the hands of the super strong, powerfully built, and now very surprised man.
Doctor Alchemy took a step back. The cue began to whistle in the air as he twirled it like a majorette twirling a giant baton. Austin stared at the cue with disbelieving wide eyes as it danced in Doctor Alchemy’s hands like something alive. Doctor Alchemy said to Austin, “It’s amazing how much the human body’s strength and agility increases when the mind operates at peak efficiency. But you’re too dim-witted to know anything about that.”
Moving like a striking snake, Doctor Alchemy jabbed the thick end of the cue into Austin’s gut. Austin grunted, doubling over. Doctor Alchemy cracked the other end of the cue over Austin’s exposed back, breaking the cue in half and driving Austin to his knees. Without missing a beat, Doctor Alchemy spun, smoothly driving the jagged end of the part of the cue still in his hand through the throat of the man who had been creeping up behind Alchemy, intending to brain him with a beer stein. Blood spurted, spraying onlookers. The man clutched his throat and fell on a table. He was dead before he hit the floor.
“The next person who interferes suffers the same fate,” Doctor Alchemy thundered. A few hard-looking men who had started to get out of their seats paused, reconsidered, and sat back down.
With Austin on the floor, temporarily stunned, Alchemy turned his attention to Peter. Panicked, Peter fumbled hastily through a leather jacket draped over a chair.
“You beat Rati. You were the second person to rape her. For that, I will expose your true nature,” Doctor Alchemy said to Peter’s back.
Peter turned, gun in hand. Doctor Alchemy shot him with an alchemy cartridge on the wrist of Peter’s gun hand. The cartridge exploded on impact. Peter dropped his gun, screaming in pain.
The cartridge’s explosion had left an electric orange splotch of liquid on Peter’s wrist. Peter clawed at it, trying to wipe away the substance that scalded him like boiling water. The splotch spread out on Peter’s skin like oil spilled on a lake’s surface. In seconds, the substance covered his entire body. Peter’s body glowed, lighting up the corners of the dim bar. Most of the bar’s patrons averted their eyes from the light. Not Doctor Alchemy. He looked unflinchingly at Peter’s illuminated body with grim satisfaction.
The glow of Peter’s body extinguished like a lit match dipped in water. Those who had averted their eyes looked back at Peter. Or, what used to be Peter. In his place was a human-shaped mass of writhing, wiggling, squirming cockroaches. The chittering of the countless insects rivaled the sound of the still-blaring music.
Peter’s roach-filled clothes slowly sank to the ground as the mass of roaches disentangled from one another and scattering in all directions. Grown men shrieked like children as the swarm of disgusting insects crawled on them like a Biblical plague. Doctor Alchemy smiled as the men swatted and stomped the roaches. He knew that a piece of Peter’s consciousness and soul was in each insect. Peter would feel every slap, every stomp, every crunch of every insect body. The roaches that escaped the bar would fare no better as most would be eaten by birds, rodents, and other insects. As cockroaches did not balk at cannibalism, they would even eat each other. Peter would die not once, but thousands of times, sometimes at his own hands. Mandibles, Doctor Alchemy corrected himself silently.
“From ashes to ashes, from dust to dust, from vermin to vermin,” Doctor Alchemy said to no one in particular. The men who were not trying to run out of Roy’s Tavern in horror were too busy killing roaches to hear him.
The roach invasion had roused Austin. Struggling to rise from his knees, he smacked the bugs crawling on him, not knowing he killed or maimed his friend with each slap. Doctor Alchemy shifted smoothly to stand in front of Austin. He raised his arm again, pointing a gauntlet at Austin’s chest.
“I have saved the worst for last,” Doctor Alchemy said to him. “It was you who initiated Rati’s rape. You who started beating her. You who shot her. And, though I cannot be certain, I suspect it was you who decided to break into my house to begin with. The other two would not even have a bowel movement unless you first gave them permission.”
The roaches crawling on him forgotten for now, Austin looked up at Doctor Alchemy with dread in his eyes. Doctor Alchemy savored the look like a fine wine. Until tonight, no one had ever looked at him with fear before. It was intoxicating.
Doctor Alchemy shot Austin in the chest with an alchemy cartridge. Crimson red spread out on the front of Austin’s tight shirt. Austin knelt there stunned for a moment. Then he looked down. He reached up, frantically patting his chest. Other than the sting of the cartridge’s impact against him, he was unhurt. Whatever substance Doctor Austin had hit him with, it had an appetizing sweet smell, like that of a ripe peach.
The sounds of men frantically killing cockroaches throughout the bar dimmed. Some men stopped altogether, turning to look at where Austin knelt in front of Doctor Alchemy. Austin looked back up at Doctor Alchemy, clearly puzzled he was still alive.
“I hit you with a pheromone. Even as I speak, it’s soaking into your skin, suffusing through your entire body. By itself, it’s quite harmless,” Doctor Alchemy said in response to Austin’s unspoken yet obvious question. “However, it is not by
itself. When I walked through the bar, I dropped alchemy cartridges that released a gas. Completely odorless and colorless, yet its effects are quite potent. Think of it as a love potion in gas form.” With a strange, almost feral look on their faces, all the men in the bar had stopped what they were doing and were slowly walking toward Alchemy and Austin. They moved awkwardly, like zombies, as if they could not fully control their own movements. “On second thought, it is really more of a lust potion. All the men here have inhaled it. They are attracted to the pheromone you absorbed and now reek of. They will be unable to control their desire for you. They will feel compelled to mate with you. By force, I imagine, unless you are more of a fan of all-male gangbangs than I suspect you are.”
The man closest to Austin reached out and touched his hair in a manner that could only be described as a caress. Austin slapped the man’s hand away with a curse. Based on the feverish look on the man’s face, Austin’s touch had only inflamed the man’s rapidly increasing desire.
Austin tried to stand. The men closest to him tackled him. They pulled him to the ground. His low-level super strength could not break him free of the men’s combined efforts. They held his struggling body down as the rest of the men in the bar slowly walked closer and closer. Austin’s eyes were wild, spinning in their sockets. He pleaded with Doctor Alchemy, talking so fast that his words were almost gibberish.
Doctor Alchemy continued to speak as if he could not hear Austin’s begging. “I have inoculated myself against the gas, of course. I have no interest in mating with the likes of you. If one lies down with a dog, one invariably rises with fleas. I am too much a man of refined tastes and standards for that.” As Alchemy spoke, men began ripping Austin’s clothes off, exposing his hairy, heavily muscled body. Austin was screaming now, yelling for the men to get off him. For them to stop. No one listened. Doctor Alchemy certainly did not.
“When everyone’s lust is slaked,” Doctor Alchemy said, though it was unclear if Austin could hear over his own screaming and thrashing, “their compulsion will change. Did you know the black widow spider eats her partner after she mates with him? Sexual cannibalism, the phenomenon is called. As coincidence would have it, black widow venom is a component of the gas the people here have inhaled. To make a long and painful story short, after these men’s sexual appetites have been satisfied, their stomach’s appetites will take over. You are a big man. You have a lot of good meat on your bones. It is well-marbled too if your gut’s size is any indication. I read that long pork is quite delicious if one has a taste for such things. Your friends most definitely do. Or at least they will. I wonder how long it will take them to rip you apart and consume you.”
Doctor Alchemy sighed regretfully. “Alas, I cannot linger to find out. Time waits for no man, not even one such as I. I have a world to conquer.”
Austin’s blood-curdling screams trailed Doctor Alchemy as he walked back toward the bar’s exit. Doctor Alchemy pushed patrons out of his way. They did not seem to notice. Their eyes shone with lust, focused only on reaching Austin.
When he reached the door, Doctor Alchemy turned back around to face the bar’s interior. Roaches crunched underfoot. Austin screams now mingled with sobs. He was hidden from Doctor Alchemy’s view by the tightening throng of men. The men on the floor with Austin grunted loudly with exertion and desire.
Doctor Alchemy’s face had been cold, almost analytical until now. Now it twisted, turning feral and animalistic. His eyes danced maniacally behind his cowl. He shook a clenched fist at the backs of the lust-fueled occupants of the bar, none of whom paid him the slightest bit of attention.
He thundered, “Now you call me Doctor Alchemy. Soon you will call me king!”
CHAPTER 15
Ten Years Ago
Doctor Alchemy read the letter from his 14-year-old daughter Neha for the second time. He did not need to. His photographic memory had automatically memorized it during the first reading. However, his disbelief at the letter’s contents had made him doubt what his eyes had told him.
Written in Neha’s clear, bold hand, the letter read:
Dear Papa:
As you know, I have disapproved of your behavior and your desire to rule the world for some time now. When I was younger, I went along with your plans and ambitions out of childish ignorance and a child’s natural desire to please her parent. I even trained in the martial arts and studied history, strategy, and statecraft to prepare to take what you always called my “rightful place as the heir apparent to the Thakore Empire.” Now that I am older, I see how misguided your objectives are and how evil the means you have chosen to achieve them are. The world does not need to be ruled, does not want to be ruled, and it certainly does not need to be conquered. You fancy yourself the world’s savior, yet, it pains me to say, you are little more than a superpowered thug who has needlessly killed more people than you probably remember. And, just as important if not more so, I am deeply dismayed and disappointed by what you have done to mother.
In light of this, I am leaving home for good. I will not continue to participate in activities that are not only illegal, but immoral and misdirected.
Despite your many flaws, you have taught me well. Surely you know you will never find me unless I wish to be found. I do not so wish. I will never return to live with you unless and until you change your ways and seek the psychological help I have repeatedly urged you to get. The help that you so desperately need. Further, now that I have manifested Metahuman powers, I intend to devote my life to fighting you, to ensure that your plans of world domination fail.
Unless you see the error of your ways and get help to change your behavior, the next time we meet, it will be as adversaries.
Despite all you have done, I still love you.
—Neha
Nothing about the letter changed upon his second reading. Doctor Alchemy angrily waved the letter in Rati’s direction. She sat feet away in a throne that was the golden twin of Doctor Alchemy’s diamond one in their palace’s throne room. She was radiant in her ornate sari, numerous jewels, and gold crown. Over two dozen of their subjects stood silently and meekly before the dais on which the thrones rested. The palace was hidden in the jungle of an otherwise uninhabited island in the Indian Ocean.
“Can you believe this, Mother?” Doctor Alchemy exclaimed incredulously. “After all we’re done for that ingrate of a child, she spits in our face. We’ve been nursing a viper in our bosom.”
Rati said something.
Doctor Alchemy snapped, “Well of course the letter is well-written. Neha is a near genius. She is my daughter after all. What did you expect, that she would write it in crayon with only one syllable words and sign her name with a smiley face?”
Doctor Alchemy’s face grew contrite as he listened to his wife again. He wore his full costume, minus the purple cowl. A gold crown matching Rati’s was on his head.
“You’re quite right, Mother,” he said, chastened. “There is no need for me to take that tone with you. I apologize.” Doctor Alchemy’s eyes fell on the letter again. “My emotions got the better of me. That daughter of ours makes me so mad. Where did we go wrong in raising her?” He shook Neha’s letter in his fist again. “Not only did that ungrateful whelp write these insults and lies, but she stole one of our jets. She even disabled the jet’s transponder so we cannot track where she went. Our forefathers had the right idea about a woman’s place. We never should have taught that girl to read, much less how to pilot a plane or about electronics. What’s more, our ambitious Judas was not satisfied with a trifling thirty pieces of silver—she took with her a considerable sum of cash, gems, and precious metals from our vault. How in the world she got into the vault is beyond me. Turned into a gas with her powers and seeped into it, probably. If I had known we had a traitor in our midst, I would have made sure the damned thing was airtight. Thank the gods, Mother, that only you and I know where the Philosopher’s Stone is hidden, else Neha might have taken that too. What kind of daughter steals fro
m her father the things he worked his fingers to the bone to steal? An atrocious one, that’s what kind. Kids these days.”
Overtaken by fury, Doctor Alchemy crumpled Neha’s letter into a ball. He threw it on the gem-encrusted marble floor. He rose and stomped on the wad of paper repeatedly. His long cape made swishing sounds as it bounced up and down. His ornate crown slipped off his head and fell to the floor with a clatter. It spun on its edges like a dropped coin.
Doctor Alchemy pointed at Rati. “I’ll tell you the first thing we did wrong in raising that quisling. We never should have bought Neha that Lady Justice doll when she was a toddler. The blasted thing was a bad influence. It made perverse notions of right and wrong seep into her. To make matters worse, we later bought her a doll in the likeness of that sanctimonious do-gooder Avatar. Well actually, I stole it because I’d be damned if I spent one red cent on that overgrown Boy Scout, but that’s not relevant to the larger point. Eh? What’s that Mother?”
Doctor Alchemy listened intently.
“Yes, yes, I know Neha says the Avatar one is an action figure. She thinks the term makes the toy sound cooler. But she can’t fool me—the beastly thing is a doll. Both the Avatar and Lady Justice dolls are nothing but Hero propaganda in toy form. Their insidious presence in our home has twisted Neha’s mind. Turned her against us.” He snorted indignantly as he paced. “Licensed Heroes. Rogues. Hah! The most ironic titles ever. They’re not heroes. We’re the good guys. They’re the bad guys. I am trying to save humanity from itself, to bring the world peace under my leadership. These so-called Heroes are agents of the old world order. Of the status quo. The same status quo that’s produced every war, every genocide, every inequitable class system, every institution of slavery, every murder. Including yours, Mother. Thank the gods I was able to formulate a potion to resurrect you. The Philosopher’s Stone said that resurrection was one of the few things under the sun that was impossible, but my genius combined with the other secrets I unlocked in the book’s pages made the impossible possible.”
Rogues Page 15
