Speaking of which, he thought. Doctor Alchemy pulled up additional footage of the murderous stripling Omega, the first Omega-level Hero to come on the scene in decades. According to his confidential and private Heroes’ Guild file that was no longer either thanks to Doctor Alchemy’s hacking abilities, Omega’s birth name was Theodore Conley. He went by Theo. Hah! Doctor Alchemy scoffed silently. Theo was the Greek word for god. What kind of god would let this happen to his daughter?
Omega had let Neha die. He was as much to blame for Neha’s death as the Sentinels were. More so actually, because he was supposed to be Neha’s friend and comrade. You were supposed to protect the ones you loved, not let them be murdered. Look at how I’ve protected my beloved Rati over the years, Doctor Alchemy thought.
Scenes recorded by news crews and amateur videographers of young Theodore’s exploits both under his current alias and that of Kinetic filled Doctor Alchemy’s screens. Almost immediately, Doctor Alchemy noticed that the Hero’s hands and fingers always moved when he activated his telekinetic powers. A weakness I can exploit? He filed the thought away for later contemplation. He also noticed that Theodore was more powerful as Omega than he had been as Kinetic. He was beginning to realize his potential as an Omega-level Metahuman. As such, he posed a threat to Doctor Alchemy’s plans for world domination. Destroying him would kill two birds with one stone: avenge Neha as well as take a powerful Hero off the global chessboard.
Doctor Alchemy also made a mental note of the men and women Omega had battled in his short career at a Metahuman. Perhaps he would enlist some of them in destroying Omega. Doctor Alchemy smiled grimly. The thought of hoisting the young Hero on his own petard appealed to the Rogue’s sense of poetic justice.
Myth, aka Isaac Geere, had to die as well. Though he had not been on the scene when Neha died, he should have been. Like Omega, he was supposed to have been Neha’s friend. Therefore, he was as culpable in her death as Omega was.
He would also kill Truman Lord for his participation in the events leading to Neha’s death. Doctor Alchemy had met Lord years before. Even before his involvement in Neha’s death, the Heroic detective’s infantile sense of humor had been enough to make Doctor Alchemy want to kill him. “Hey Doctor Alchemy, can you turn Flint, Michigan’s drinking water into gold?” the gun-toting nuisance had the temerity to ask when they had crossed paths. The only thing Doctor Alchemy hated more than a joke was a joke he did not understand. It would give him great pleasure to rid the world of that incomprehensible irritant.
Doctor Alchemy shut off all the computer screens. He was plunged into near darkness. He sat for a while on his throne, brooding. As much as he wanted to rush out and start crossing people off his hit list, he could not do so immediately. With him being out of circulation for so many months in China, the ship of his burgeoning empire had listed without his sure hand on the tiller. Despite her many virtues, Rati was not a capable administrator. She seemed incapable of taking any initiative without him present. As a result, the influx of new subjects was down to a trickle. Research and development of the technology his plots and schemes relied on had ground to a halt—his potion-controlled subjects were great at blindly following his orders, but terrible at independent thought and creativity.
His income was also down. Several crime lords around the world who were supposed to regularly pay tribute to him had refused to do so in his absence. Even sales of the Doctor Alchemy action figure with its kung fu grip—distributed through a perfectly legal toy company whose board of directors did not know he owned a controlling interest in it—were down. With him in jail, Doctor Alchemy had not been in the headlines lately. The public had turned its attention to the latest villain of the week. They apparently needed constant reminders of his exploits for merchandise sales to remain brisk. Fickle fools!
In short, Doctor Alchemy had to get his multifaceted empire back in order before turning his full attention to the murderers who destroyed his family. Plus, he had some new ideas regarding his final objective of world domination while he had been in the Chinese prison. He would set them in motion before turning his attention to his hit list. He estimated it would be several months if not longer before he terminated the lives of those on his list.
No matter, he thought. Revenge is a dish best served cold. He especially looked forward to snuffing out young Theodore. With all the power he had that he should have used to protect his darling daughter, Doctor Alchemy blamed him the most. Some Hero he was. Doctor Alchemy felt a surge of impatient anger at the thought of postponing his vengeance on the boy.
With effort, he smothered the emotion.
I will be calm. I will be thoughtful. I will be patient, Doctor Alchemy mused. I am a man of towering intellect, determination, and resolve unlike any Theodore has ever dealt with. When I do finally move against him, I will disembowel him mentally, physically, and spiritually. He will die screaming my name. He will rue the day he ever heard the name Neha Thakore.
Fresh grief almost overwhelmed him. Neha. His bright, golden girl. He would never feel her embrace again, never again bathe in the warmth of her smile, never again delight in the quickness of her mind. The reconciliation between him and her he had long dreamed of was now impossible. She would never join him in his quest to bring the world peace and order.
Sick at heart, Doctor Alchemy stood.
“Come boy,” he said to his manservant. The man had grown old in Doctor Alchemy’s service. His face was wrinkled and lined, and sported scars from Doctor Alchemy correcting him over the years. If Doctor Alchemy had not rescued him from his humdrum life at Burke Pharmaceuticals, he undoubtedly would have long retired from that job by now. Doctor Alchemy, however, was as young and fit as ever thanks to secrets gleaned from the Philosopher’s Stone.
He did not feel young and fit now, though. Now he felt as tired and world-weary as a broken-down old man.
With a suffocating feeling of dread, Doctor Alchemy slowly walked through the gilded walls of his lair, toward the Throne Room where Rati patiently awaited him. He did not know how he would find the words, but he would inform Rati of their tragic loss.
And, what he planned to do to all the people who caused it.
With his mind preoccupied with grief and thoughts of vengeance, Doctor Alchemy did not even notice the bows of his subjects as he swept past them through his sprawling, opulent lair. His manservant shuffled after him like a beaten old dog.
CHAPTER 17
One Week and Several Days Ago
Jason Sydney lay in his bed in the medical ward of MetaHold. The country’s primary prison for housing Metahuman criminals was on Ellis and Liberty Islands in New York. The Statue of Liberty had been on Liberty Island before the Rogue Black Plague destroyed it decades ago. The islands through which millions of immigrants had once streamed into America with dreams of freedom and a better life now imprisoned hundreds of superpowered criminals with similar dreams of freedom and a better life.
Cute, Jason thought about the prison’s ironic location, not for the first time since he had been imprisoned here years ago. The government is not good at much, but it sure as hell excels at irony. Just look at the buzzwords it puts into laws’ names. Any time a bill has the word “freedom,” “liberty,” or “rights” in the name, that bill is for sure designed to take away freedom, liberty, and rights.
Jason had plenty of time to think about Orwellian doublespeak. Paralyzed from the neck down, he was unable to do too much else other than think. Reading, watching television, being occasionally chauffeured around the prison in a wheelchair, and thinking about better days were pretty much the extent of Jason’s activities. He could not even move enough to adjust his gray and white prison gown, which had somehow gotten bunched up so it exposed most of his gaunt legs.
Jason knew Bella would take care of his gown. Bella was his favorite prison nurse. She was in his room now, preparing to move his broken body to help him avoid getting bed sores. The voluptuous raven-haired woman always seemed to leave
undone the top couple of buttons on her white uniform, permitting Jason a nice view of her ample cleavage when she bent over him. He was pretty sure she exposed herself on purpose because she felt sorry for him. It certainly was not because she was attracted to him. With his muscles atrophied from years of disuse, Jason looked like a Holocaust survivor. He felt like he was held together with bubble gum and baling wire.
And, of course, the miracles of modern medicine. The machines and electronics that kept him alive clicked, beeped, and whirred as Bella prepared to turn him. He could not even shit or take a piss without mechanical assistance. He was a far cry from the robust and powerful Metahuman assassin known as Iceburn that he had once been. As Iceburn, he had struck fear in the hearts of people when he appeared.
Even Jason’s fire and ice powers were gone, nullified by the field that permeated the medical ward and all the prisoners’ cells in the facility. After all this time without them, Jason still felt the absence of his powers, like a missing tooth his tongue kept probing for out of habit.
Bella turned. Jason got a quick glimpse of her overflowing pink bra through a gap in her uniform. Glee mixed with frustration in Jason. It was like looking at a delicious meal he would never be able to eat. His junk was as useless as his arms and legs. Even so, the fact he could no longer drive a car did not mean he could not admire a beautiful one when it sped past.
“You’re doing the Lord’s work,” Jason said to Bella. Her plump face dimpled into a smile. Her fleshy upper arms jiggled as she fussed with bottles of his medication. Jason had always liked big girls. In his heyday, when he was an obscenely high paid assassin who attracted gold-digging women like moths to a flame, he had shoved skinny supermodels out of the way to get to bigger women like Bella.
Bella’s smile and the rest of her froze like someone had pressed pause on her body. The noise from the medical devices in the room, which were as familiar to Jason as his own heartbeat, froze as well. The sudden silent stillness was both eerie and startling.
Two empty halves of a small metal canister lay on Jason’s chest. They had not been there an instant before. It was as if they had magically appeared. “What the fu—?" Jason exclaimed, trailing off when he spotted him.
Doctor Alchemy. The Rogue had appeared in full costume and cowl as if out of thin air to the left of Jason’s bed. Jason would have jumped in surprise if he could have. He recovered almost immediately. Jason was pleased to see that, even after all this time in bed, he had not lost reflexes honed from years of being faster than the other guy.
“What’s up, Doc?” Jason said. “What brings you to this neck of the woods? If you brought me a get well soon card, you should’ve saved your money. I won’t be getting well soon. Or ever, for that matter.” Despite Jason flippancy, the purple and black garbed Rogue made Jason nervous like few people did. Jason had pulled a few jobs for Alchemy back in the day. Though Alchemy’s word was good and he had always paid up like he said he would, he was erratic. Erratic was one word for it. Crazy was another. Alchemy would act and sound like a university don one minute, and foam at the mouth and spout vulgarities the next. If he wasn’t nuttier than peanut brittle, he might be able to conquer the world as he always blathered it was his destiny to. Jason trusted him about as much as he’d trust a dog that had been known to turn and bite without warning. It flashed through Jason’s mind to say something to trigger Alchemy’s volcanic temper. After years lying in this bed unable to even wipe his own ass, there were days when death looked like a blessing.
“Iceburn,” Doctor Alchemy said in greeting. “Aren’t you going to ask how I penetrated the security of one of the most secure facilities in the world to visit you?” He sounded like a kid who hadn’t been asked Who’s there? after the kid said Knock, knock—disappointed and faintly offended. Jason noticed Alchemy still spoke in a thick Indian accent. Jason had often wondered if the accent wasn’t at least partly a put-on. Alchemy seemed to want everyone to know his ancestry. Jason had once seen him beat a man senseless who mistakenly referred to him as Hispanic.
Jason would have shrugged in response to Alchemy’s question if his body could make the movement. “I just assumed it was more of your magic.”
Doctor Alchemy drew himself up to his full imposing height. “What I do is not magic,” he huffed. “I am a man of reason and science. It only appears to be magic because it is so much more advanced than anything others are privy to. As Arthur Clarke said, ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’” Alchemy’s face screwed up in sudden anger. “Infernal Brits! Why must they be so eminently quotable?”
Same old Doctor Alchemy, Jason thought. The thought had barely passed through Jason’s mind before Alchemy’s face calmed again, like a summer thunderstorm that had abruptly come and just as abruptly had gone.
“The reason why that zaftig nurse and everything else appear frozen is because they are.” Alchemy said it in the manner of a professor lecturing a particularly dense student. “Before entering the facility, I doused myself with a substance allowing me to slip outside the normal time stream. Because of that, everything around me froze, or at least seemed to from my perspective. After that, it was a simple matter to gain admission to the prison, liberate a frozen guard’s key card, and use it to make my way to you. I used one of my alchemy cartridges to douse you with the same substance, putting you into the same time stream I am in to permit us to talk. The substance is quite toxic if used long-term—meddling with time tends to disrupt organic matter as it goes against the natural order of things—but I can assure you I will not be here long.”
Jason was curious despite himself about why Doctor Alchemy wanted to talk to him. He said, “You say you want to talk. So talk.” He motioned slightly with his head at the surrounding prison. “I’m a captive audience, after all.”
Doctor Alchemy frowned. “Is that a joke? Puns are beneath me.”
“They’re not beneath me. Not much is. I have to take my pleasure where I can find it these days.”
“I have a job for you.”
Jason was surprised. “Unless the job involves me lying flat on my back and not wiping my own ass, I’m not qualified for it.”
“I want you to help me kill someone. Someone you have dealt with before. You were previously hired to assassinate him. Theodore Conley. You knew him as Kinetic. He goes by Omega now.” Jason had never heard of Omega before. If he had access to the news, perhaps he would have. The only television channels he was allowed access to were filled with mindless entertainment. Thanks to countless hours of watching Telemundo, Jason was fluent in game show Spanish. In the unlikely event he was made the host of a Spanish version of Wheel of Fortune, he was ready.
“What’ve you got against my old pal Theo?” Jason wondered why Theo had changed his code name. He doubted it was for the same reason Jason had changed his own alias several times over the years—to evade the authorities. Jason remembered Theo as a superpowered Cub Scout who might graduate to Eagle Scout one day if he applied himself.
“Omega killed my daughter.”
Jason was surprised again. “I didn’t even know you had a daughter, much less that she was killed. That doesn’t sound like Theo at all. I accidentally offed Pappy Conley while trying to kill Theo, yet Theo did not in turn kill me when he had me at his mercy. He showed more restraint than most would in a similar situation. Certainly more than I would’ve.”
“Whether it sounds like him or not, he did it. I am assembling a team of Metas who have confronted him before to help me subdue and kill him. You are the first person I’ve approached, both because I have had successful dealings with you in the past and because you have something that may prove useful. Parts of your last fight with Theodore were captured by Washington, D.C.’s city surveillance cameras. In reviewing that footage, I noticed you wore a suit that seemed to immunize you from Theodore using his telekinesis directly on you. Such technology would be useful in a future battle with him.”
Jason was still
dubious that the kid he had dealt with years ago could kill anyone. The Theo he had known had eaten too steady a diet of American apple pie, Bible verses, and aw-shucks, down-home values for that. Jason kept his doubts to himself. Alchemy was not fond of being contradicted. Instead Jason said, “That suit was destroyed in my last confrontation with Theo.”
“Come now. Do you really expect me to believe a consummate professional such as yourself with a well-deserved reputation for preparing for all eventualities did not have spare suits salted away somewhere? I could reverse engineer the technology and incorporate it both into my own clothing and that of the other members of the team I am assembling.”
Doctor Alchemy was right. Jason did have spare telekinesis-proof suits that he had gotten from his then-secret employer, whom Jason had not even known at the time had been Mechano of the Sentinels. Mechano had retained Jason through a series of intermediaries so that the Hero’s connection with Theo’s assassination would be hidden. The suits Mechano had designed were stashed in various hideaways. Jason had not volunteered information about them when Theo had turned him over to the authorities. Just as Jason had not volunteered information about the millions of dollars he had squirreled away in safe deposit boxes and offshore accounts under various names. Those concealed millions had gone untouched when the federal government had seized Jason’s assets to make restitution to the families of the people he had killed over the years. The victims the authorities knew about, at any rate. There were others, so many that Jason had lost track. Jason was still a very wealthy man thanks to his hidden assets. Not that all that loot was doing him any good while trapped in a prison bed.
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