The dolphin chatters something. She wishes she knew what it was, but she has a good idea he’s saying goodbye. A hand grabs her shoulder. She turns to see Paul behind her. “Come on, Elise. We have to go.”
“I know,” she mumbles. She gives Manny one final pat before she wades ashore. As she does she hopes Mother and Manny’s sacrifices haven’t been in vain.
***
Robin’s iPad and phone are gone, but Melanie’s have the same modifications. While Melanie continues to sleep, Robin breaks into the Pentagon’s files. She has done this often enough that she can do it even without her morning coffee.
Getting into Colonel Storm’s Top Secret files takes a little more effort. She suspects the impostor Midnight Spectre has been consulting with them about security. He’s good, but she’s better. After a few minutes all of Storm’s files are in front of her.
A Project Gemini catches her attention. Gemini are twins in the Zodiac. ‘Twins’ is a euphemistic way to describe clones, she supposes. Or it might have something to do with the old NASA rocket program.
When she gets a look at the files it’s clear her first hunch was right. The surprise is that the earliest files date from eight years ago. The Super Squad had only been about three years old and already Storm was making contingency plans. No, not Storm—Dalton.
From the files, it’s clear Project Gemini was Dalton’s baby. As with the Feminazi’s gender-bending weapon, it originated with alien technology taken from Dr. Roboto. In this case it was cloning technology. Dalton floated the idea of cloning the Super Squad in case anything happened to the originals—or as a deterrent should the originals get out of control. One of Robin’s fists clench as she reads part of a memo dealing with her. “Holloway has demonstrated paranoia and obsessive compulsive behavior bordering on sociopathic. He is the most unstable element of the group, but thankfully the easiest to terminate, should it become necessary.”
Her rage turns to a chill as she reads part of another memo. “The mental matrix has shown signs of instability. Dr. Stanford recommends the project be reevaluated at this time.”
Robin searches through the files, until she comes to some personnel files. Dr. Ezekiel Stanford is listed as the lead research scientist on Project Gemini. Stanford, the one who had helped Robin with all of her equipment in her early days as Midnight Spectre. He had been her friend and yet all that time he’d been betraying her trust by working for Storm and Dalton on a project to eliminate her should they feel the urge.
She doesn’t feel good, though, to read, “Project Gemini materials have been moved into storage. Staff has been terminated.” The date of the memo is a day after Stanford was killed with a car bomb. Midnight Spectre, the dupe, had pinned the bombing on Hitter, an elite assassin. Maybe Hitter had pushed the button, but it was Dalton who’d given the order.
“Rob, what’s wrong?” Melanie asks.
Robin realizes then that she’s crying. She wipes furiously at her eyes. “I’m such an idiot.”
“What are you talking about?”
Robin explains to her about what she found in the files. “They killed him and I let them get away with it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not the one who should be sorry. Those sons of bitches are the ones who need to pay.”
“So what do we do?”
Before Robin can answer, an alert sounds on the iPad. She touches the icon and sees that someone is caught in one of the shafts leading to the bunker. From the DNA scans, it’s Starla Marsh, the same Starla Marsh who disappeared shortly before the impostors showed up.
Robin taps a few buttons to bring up an image. There’s a girl caught in the shaft. She looks like even more of a pipsqueak than Robin was when the Feminazi first used that weapon on her. The girl’s glasses and clothes make her look like an extra from Laverne & Shirley; she’s probably some hipster who thinks it’s cool to dress “retro.” She zooms in closer to the girl’s face. Robin commands the camera to take a still photo and freeze it on the screen.
“What’s going on?” Melanie asks.
Robin gestures for her to be quiet while she works. She has the computer compare the still photo of the girl to one of Starla Marsh. Subtract the freckles, grow out the hair, add a little bulk to the neck area and they’re the same.
She presses a button to activate a speaker. “Starla? What the hell happened to you?”
“It’s kind of a long story,” the girl says. “Can you let me out of here?”
“How do I know you’re the real Starla Marsh?”
“Remember the first time we met? I rescued you after Corporal Carnage left you in that pit in Burma? You were all covered in—”
“That’s enough,” Robin snaps. She doesn’t want Melanie to hear the rest of that story; it isn’t very flattering for the young Midnight Spectre who’d blundered into an obvious trap and then nearly drowned in excrement.
“So I passed?”
“Sure. Just be careful. My doppelganger might be down there.”
“Where are you?”
“I can’t say. We’ll be there in a couple hours. Sit tight until then.”
“I’ll try.”
Robin activates the override to let Starla slide the rest of the way into the bunker. She shakes her head as she studies the results of the DNA scan. It was clearly Starla, but portions of her DNA—the alien parts—seemed to be repressed somehow. That would explain why she was such a shrimp. Who could have done this to Starla she doesn’t know, but she will find out.
***
When she wakes up in the morning, Allison hopes to find her asthma cured and her speed restored. It takes only getting out of bed before this idea is shattered. She’s as frail and slow as ever. All that work yesterday for nothing.
She ponders this situation all through school. There has to be something she missed. She tries to remember that night so long ago. Had she done anything to change the mixture? She can’t think of anything that might be different from what she’d done yesterday.
By the time the final bell sounds, her shoulders sag with defeat. She thinks of what Mom said yesterday, but she isn’t sure how much more disappointment she can deal with. This one failure has her questioning everything about herself. Maybe she isn’t a good scientist. Maybe she’s a dumb kid now.
“So what are we going to do today?” Mrs. Tanner asks her when she shuffles into the lab.
“I’m not sure.”
“It might help if I knew how this is supposed to work.”
“What?”
“How is what we’re making going to cure your asthma?”
“Um, well—” Allison runs a hand through her hair as she thinks of how to explain it.
“It seems like you’re trying to create some kind of steroid that would stimulate cell regeneration.”
“That’s pretty much it.”
Mrs. Tanner goes over to the chalkboard. She writes down some of Allison’s formulas. Then she begins to circle parts of them. “How about this—” she begins. Allison watches her with fascination. She goes up to the blackboard and takes a piece of chalk for herself.
The blackboard is soon full of scientific notations. As they go back and forth, Allison doesn’t feel like a kid talking to a teacher; it feels like back at T.U.R.B.O. Labs when she and her assistants would brainstorm a problem. There’s a free exchange of ideas, a give-and-take that has been lacking since she first became a girl.
Allison wipes away a section of the board. “If we do this—” She scribbles a few notations to replace the old ones. “That should do it.”
Mrs. Tanner surveys the blackboard. “I think that could work.” She pats Allison on the back and smiles. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a student like you.”
“Thanks.”
There’s a renewed sense of hope as they set to work on the equipment. She should have remembered that the original formula hadn’t been created in a vacuum; a whole team of research scientists had worked on it. As only an intern at
the time, Allison had been the least important of those scientists. Yet she thought she could recreate it all on her own now.
“What’s so funny?” Mrs. Tanner asks.
“I was thinking about hubris.”
“Were you studying that for English class?”
“Yes, right.”
They stand back as the chemicals start to flow again. Allison is so focused on this she doesn’t realize they have a visitor until she hears a familiar voice say, “Allison?”
She clamps a hand to her mouth to keep from screaming at the sight of Sally in the doorway. “Um—”
“Is this a friend of yours?” Mrs. Tanner asks.
“Yes. This is my…sister-in-law,” Allison gets out through a violent wheeze. She takes the inhaler out to squirt some medicine into her lungs.
Sally races over to her, seeming to ignore Mrs. Tanner. “Oh my God. I was so worried about you. What’s happened to you?”
Allison is glad for her asthma at the moment to excuse her from having to say anything. She flashes a pleading look to Mrs. Tanner. The teacher seems to take the hint. “I’ll give you two a minute,” she says.
Once the teacher is gone, Sally helps Allison over to a stool. She brushes hair back from Allison’s face. “I called your mother and she eventually said you were here. She didn’t say anything about—this. What happened?”
Haltingly, Allison explains what Storm and Hall did to her. “Ally, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Look at me. How could I tell you?” Allison’s breathing gets worse as she starts to cry. “I…I didn’t want you…you and Jenny…to see me…like this.”
“Allison, you know I don’t care what you look like. I still love you.”
“But Jenny…she cares.”
“That’s no excuse not to tell me. I thought you learned better after the last time.”
“I’m sorry.”
Sally runs a hand along Allison’s damp cheek. “For what it’s worth, you’re a cute kid.” She swirls a bit of Allison’s hair around her finger. “I like the color.”
“Thanks.”
Sally motions to the lab experiment. “And what are you cooking up there?”
“It’s a cure.”
“To make you older?”
Allison shakes her head. “For the asthma. It should…it should make me…faster too.”
“But you’ll still be the same age?”
“Probably.”
“Isn’t there any way to cure that?”
“I don’t know…what they did…to start.” They watch the chemicals drip for a few moments. Allison gathers her courage and her oxygen to ask, “How are things…at home?”
“That man is a beast. If I get a phone call he thinks it’s you or some other lover. He practically has me under house arrest. It was all I could do to get over here.”
“There you are,” Alan Bass growls. He has Mrs. Tanner by the throat in one hand. “And you’ve made a new friend.”
Chapter 24
Mrs. Tanner sails across the room to land in a heap on the floor. Even before she has landed, Alan is across the room to grab Allison by the throat. “What are you doing, you little bitch?”
“Nothing,” Allison manages to get out. Her throat is tightening, though this time it doesn’t have anything to do with her asthma.
“You’re lying.”
“Alan—”
“Shut up! What are you doing with her? You going to start fucking children now?”
“It’s not like that, Alan. I wanted to see her, to make sure she’s all right.”
“She’s not going to be in about five seconds.”
Sally takes him by the arm. “Please don’t hurt her. There’s nothing she can do to you. Look at her. She’s a little kid. A little, asthmatic kid. She probably can’t even climb a flight of stairs without getting winded.”
Though she knows Sally doesn’t mean to say such hurtful things, tears still come to Allison’s eyes. She is a puny little kid who can’t climb a flight of stairs. She’s completely helpless in Alan Bass’s grip, her world slowly darkening as he squeezes the life from her.
Sally strokes Alan’s arm. “Let her go and we can go home. We can be together, like we used to be.”
“You think I’m that dumb? You’re trying to save her miserable life. You don’t love me at all!”
Out of the corner of her eye, Allison sees a beaker filling. If only she could get to the formula, maybe it would work this time. Then she might be more of a match for Alan. She reaches out with one hand, but her arm is much too short to reach.
“Is that what you want, you little bitch? Here, go ahead and have it.” He throws her onto the lab counter, where she lands amongst the equipment. Sally joins her a few seconds later. A dark blue cloud envelops them. They begin to cough and wheeze from the cloud. Allison reaches over to find Sally’s hand. She squeezes it a moment before she passes out.
***
They stagger around the atoll until they find a narrow crack in the rock. This seems like the best they’ll find for the entrance to a temple. “It doesn’t look like much,” Paul says.
“It’s what’s inside that counts.”
She has to flatten herself against one wall in order to slide through. She’s glad at this moment that formula Storm force-fed her didn’t make her chubby. It’s probably just as well that it shrunk her breasts too.
Since she’s moving sideways, she has no idea the crack is ending until she tumbles through it, into a wider space. She manages to get onto her knees in time to catch Paul. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“Where are we?”
“I’m not sure.” They don’t have a flashlight on them, all their gear ending up in the Aegean with the boat. Elise squints into the darkness, but there’s not much to see. They seem to be in a chamber; the walls form a circle without any other entrance or exit. Elise runs her hands along the walls in case there’s some kind of trip mechanism like in the movies.
“Where’s Indiana Jones when you need him?” Paul says.
Elise finally sags onto the ground, defeated. She begins to sob. Paul puts an arm around her. “It’s all right, sweetie.”
“No it’s not! My husband’s dead. That nut has my daughter. Mother and Manny sacrificed themselves so we could get here—and for what? A dead end.” She reaches into her pocket for the shell. “All because of this stupid thing.”
She throws the seashell; owing to her decreased arm strength it only gets about halfway across the room. She catches a glimpse of the shell before it seems to disappear through the rock at the center of the chamber. “What the hell?”
She follows the path of the shell. As she gets near the center of the chamber she finds her feet getting wet. There’s a shallow pool of water here. The shell must have landed in it. She feels around for it only for her hands to sink into the water. She barely has time to call for Paul before she’s pulled under.
She screams as she tumbles down a waterfall. With a splash she lands in a deeper pool of water. She sloshes a short distance away from where she landed as she hears another scream. Paul lands about where she had; she gets to her feet and finds the water is only up to her waist. She wades over to help Paul up.
“Thanks.” He grins at her. “Indy’s got nothing on you.”
“I prefer to think of myself as more like Lara Croft.”
“You wish.”
She playfully splashes him with water. Their frolicking ends when she sees they really have made a discovery that would make Indiana Jones or Lara Croft orgasmic with joy. Across the pool of water is a building carved right out of the rock. The portico and columns would look at home in Athens or any other ancient Greek city.
Elise has no idea what the words on the portico mean, but from the fish-tailed statue at the entrance, she has a pretty good idea. “This is it,” she says. “This is the temple of Poseidon.”
“You mean it is real?”
“I hope so.”
She rushes forward, splashing her way towards the entrance. At the edge of the water, something winks at her. She peers down to see the seashell Lord Neptune is so hot for. She scoops it up. “Thanks, old friend,” she mumbles as she puts it in her pocket.
Paul catches up to her at the statue. “That guy looks like the king from The Little Mermaid.”
“Maybe that’s who they based the character on.” They step past the columns, into a short hallway. There are more words carved into the rock, but she doesn’t know what they mean. Are they ancient Greek or perhaps ancient Pacifican? There’s no way for her to be sure. She hopes they don’t mention any deadly booby-traps.
At the end of the hallway they come to a fountain fed by two statues. One statue is of a young man done in the ancient Greek style. The other statue is a fish of indeterminate type. Elise bends down to stare into the water.
“This must be it,” she says. She gestures to the statues. “Half of it is fed by the man and the other half by the fish. Get it?”
“I take it back. You’re much better than Lara Croft.”
“Thanks.”
“So, Lara, what are you going to do?”
“She’s going to die,” Lord Neptune growls.
***
Starla has visited Midnight Spectre’s bunker several times. She has never seen it in such a sorry condition before. The giant computer is torn apart, as are the control boards for all of the vehicles. Robin’s equipment lies scattered over the floor; Starla has to watch her step so she doesn’t set off a flash-bang grenade or get the point of a boomerang through her foot.
She opts to curl up in a deserted corner of the hangar until she’s certain it’s safe. As she sits there, she hopes Billy and Greta are safe. They should be safe in the hospital, but nowhere is really safe from Apex Man at the moment. He could smash into this bunker if he wanted to; he might if he knew she were in here.
When she hears footsteps on the stairs, Starla curls up even tighter against the wall. While she hopes it’s Robin, it could be that other Midnight Spectre or Apex Man or one of the other impostors. She should have taken one of the weapons lying around; the thought never occurred to her as she has never needed a weapon before—all of her weapons have been built-in.
Girl Power Omnibus (Gender Swap Superhero Fiction) Page 39
