by Logan Jacobs
“Elizabeth?” I looked at my superpowered girlfriend.
“He’s telling the truth,” the black-haired woman said.
“Okay, then,” I said. “Have I told you lately that’s a very handy extra superpower that you have?”
“Not lately,” Elizabeth said with a small smile. “You can make it up to me later.”
“Alright, Julien,” I said and turned my attention back toward the wounded man. “I won’t question your motivations anymore.”
“I appreciate it,” the old man said and then cleared his throat with a cough. “Now to get down to business, take a look at the hangar below.”
“There’s nothing left in there,” I said with a glance at the empty hangar. “He has all of his vehicles distributed around the city already, doesn’t he?”
“He does.” Julien nodded. “I helped him finish the designs on his latest armored tank, and I also fixed up the previous models so they can run on their own.”
“Run on their own?” Norma blinked. “Is he planning to have them all operate remotely?”
“Yes,” the old inventor said. “That was what he had me work on. He had me create an entirely closed network for his AI to operate on in order to control the vehicles, and I’m sure that’s because he suspected that you would somehow try to meddle with his plans.”
“So the vehicles all function through his AI,” Norma said as she pushed her oversized glasses up the bridge of her nose. “But Aileen can’t get into a closed network, can she?”
“Not without a lot more work or an access point,” I replied. “Is there any kind of physical access point around here?”
“No,” Julien sighed. “Slade knew you would try to get in here, so he hid the location of the access point. It may even be held on his person as a portable device to broadcast the network.”
“That seems likely.” I nodded. “So what are these vehicles capable of?”
“A variety of different things, depending on the model,” Julien said. “There are three different models: an air glider, a tank, and a smaller car.”
“How many does he have?” Elizabeth asked. “What are we even up against?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know the exact number of vehicles,” Julien admitted. “Slade mostly put me in charge of creating his closed network rather than working on the physical vehicles themselves. But I am familiar with what they are all capable of.”
“Then let’s focus on that for now,” I said. “We can figure out how many vehicles he has at his disposal when we return to my mansion. Does he still intend to use them to fight criminals?”
“Oh, yes,” Julien said. “Most certainly. He wants to keep them out of your clutches so you can’t kill them, but he also wants to try and show Grayville that he can still be a hero here.”
“But his main target is probably you right now,” Penumbra said. “The second we make a public move anywhere, he’ll be on us.”
“That is the plan that Slade told me,” the old inventor replied. “He intends to go after you while you go after his villains, although that could have changed since he last spoke to me.”
“So the bridge was planned.” Norma frowned. “He had prepared for that, so it wasn’t just a coincidence.”
“That much was obvious,” I scoffed.
“I also believe that he wanted his vehicles to be operated by AI so he can combat the rest of your team,” Julien said. “That was one of many plans he threw at me in one of his deranged rages, and it seems like the most likely one he went with.”
“It makes sense,” Elizabeth said. “During the bridge fight, he escaped after Penumbra appeared to help me with the bus.”
“He knows he can’t take on all of us at once, so he’s trying to separate us.” I nodded. “That’s his plan.”
It wasn’t a terrible plan, and it might have worked if we hadn’t infiltrated Slade’s base. In fact, it was actually lucky for us that Julien had been here to explain what was missing from the hangar below. We probably could have figured it out eventually, but it’d be useful to get more details so I could formulate a better plan of action.
“Let’s go down there,” I suggested. “I want to take a look at whatever he left behind.”
“Good idea, Miles,” Norma agreed. “You can figure something out based on what’s down there.”
“They’re really old,” Beacon said as he peered down at the remaining vehicles in the hangar. “I think I remember that one from when the Shadow Knight and I went on our first mission.”
“It is indeed the same one.” Julien nodded.
“Oh, I remember it, too!” Penumbra added as she pressed her hands against the glass. “But I was never allowed to ride in it. By the time he let me join you guys, he’d already moved on to the next model.”
“Perhaps we should not waste any more time,” Julien said.
“Agreed,” I said.
Based on the size of the mostly empty hangar, I had already made a rough estimate of how many vehicles the Shadow Knight might be in control of, but I was eager for a closer look at the prototypes he’d left behind. The steel door to the hangar itself was locked with a code, but Aileen quickly unlocked the door so we could enter the bay and see what we might be up against.
The hangar was large, so my guess was that Slade had anywhere between five and ten vehicles at his disposal. That assumed that all the vehicles were in the same size range as his cars and armored tanks, so if he had anything that was bigger or smaller, that would impact the number I estimated. I knew that Julien said there were gliders, tanks, and cars, but I figured that Slade’s multiple armored tanks were likely our worst threat.
I had to prepare for the worst possible scenario, so I hoped there would be plenty of information on his vehicles in the information that we’d pulled off of the Shadow Knight’s hidden computer.
“It feels a lot bigger in here without all of the tanks in the way,” Penumbra said as she levitated off the ground to float across the empty space.
“It’s a little… I don’t know, sad?” Beacon rubbed at the back of his neck as he looked around. “It feels very final. Like the Shadow Knight is already gone.”
“He’s been gone for a long time, Beacon,” Julien said.
I didn’t feel like getting sappy and sentimental with Beacon and the old man, so I left them behind and started across the empty floor toward the prototypes in the back corner of the hangar.
I could immediately see why the Shadow Knight hadn’t taken any of these with him.
There were three prototypes left behind. One looked like the beginnings of a tank, another one seemed like the remnants of a car, and the third one looked like it was supposed to be some sort of glider. The tiny glider plane was the closest to a complete vehicle, while the other two looked like they’d been scrapped for parts and had only their skeletons left behind. As I looked over the plane, I could see that the engine had been removed and that it definitely could not run in its current state, but I could easily tune it up into something that Norma could probably pilot.
The tank skeleton was little more than scrap metal and a few inner workings, but a lot of the outer layer had been left behind in pieces. I could probably piece it back together to figure out how the Shadow Knight created his tanks, but as I looked over the remnants of the car he’d left behind, I realized that I could probably combine the car and the tank scraps into some kind of armored car-tank hybrid similar to his main vehicle.
None of the prototypes were in any shape to be used right away, so it would take a lot of work, but it would definitely be worth it.
“How does it look, Miles?” Norma asked as she came to stand beside me. “Anything useful?”
“Looks like a pile of junk to me,” Elizabeth said as she tapped a scrap of metal with her foot.
“Junk with potential,” I said with a smile. “We should take all of this back with us.”
“All of it?” Norma gasped. “How are we possibly going to carry all this?”
<
br /> “Easily,” I snickered, and then I glanced up at where Penumbra floated along the ceiling of the hangar. “Hey, Penumbra! Can you come down here?”
She snapped to attention and spiraled down to land next to Elizabeth.
“Yes, Miles?” Penumbra asked but then immediately looked past me toward the pile of scrap metal behind me. “Oh, you want to do something with the prototypes, don’t you?”
“Of course,” I replied. “Can you gather up all of this and float it toward the exit? I want to take it back with us.”
“Leave it to me!” The blonde grinned and clapped her hands together. “Actually, can you give me a hand, Dynamo?”
“Sure,” Elizabeth said. “You want me to make sure you don’t drop anything?”
“You guessed it,” the blonde said. “Plus, it’s all pretty heavy, so it would help if you can stabilize it while I manipulate it.”
I left the two super-powered women to gather up the prototypes for me to look over later. I knew I would have to reverse-engineer them to keep up with the Shadow Knight’s own technology, especially now that we knew his plan. If I could come up with an armored tank or car of my own, it would make the fight against him a lot easier.
“You don’t think he’ll try to ram his tanks into our mansion, do you?” Norma asked Julien once we rejoined the old man and Beacon.
“I doubt it,” Julien replied. “If he can, the Shadow Knight will do what he can to look heroic in order to defeat you. He wants to make it public, especially after you ruined his reputation.”
“Let’s get back to the tanks,” I said since I had already guessed Julien’s answer. “What can you tell me about them? How efficient are they while remotely operated?”
“His AI is primitive compared to what I’ve seen of yours,” Julien admitted. “So obviously the remotely operated vehicles will be a lot less intelligent than the one he operates himself manually. They’ll have slower reaction times, and they won’t be able to keep up with clever maneuvers. They really won’t be able to do much of anything except point, drive forward, and shoot.”
“That can still be pretty dangerous if he has a lot of them after us,” Beacon warned. “The tanks have really powerful guns attached to them. The Shadow Knight only ever uses them to knock debris out of his way, but against you…”
“You think he would resort to lethal force?” Norma asked.
“I do,” Julien said. “You have gotten under his skin in a way that no one else has managed to do, Miles.”
“Great.” I rolled my eyes. “So it wasn’t the deaths of hundreds of his citizens that drove him off the deep end, but instead, it was someone doing his job better than him.”
“It would seem so,” Julien said.
“What are you going to do now?” I asked the elderly inventor.
“Oh.” Julien blinked at me and then shrugged. “Once you finish here, I was going to change the access codes so Slade can’t get back in, or at least he won’t be able to until I’m far away.”
I couldn’t hold back my surprised laughter.
“What?” Beacon demanded. “You’re going to change Slade’s access codes to his own lair?”
“That was why I was here in the first place,” Julien admitted. “I don’t want Slade to be able to access anything he left behind because I know he won’t put it to good use.”
“But you don’t think you’ll be able to keep him out forever?” Norma asked.
“No,” Julien said. “Slade’s too smart for me to permanently lock him out of his own base of operations, but I can definitely keep him out for a while.”
That was pretty interesting to hear, and not at all what I expected out of this old man after the way he’d threatened us earlier. It made me a little bit suspicious, but I wasn’t going to be entirely Slade-level paranoid about him, especially since Elizabeth thought he was telling the truth.
“Well, you may not be able to keep him out permanently,” I said finally. “But I’m pretty sure I can. You wouldn’t have a problem with that, would you?”
“Of course not,” Julien said. “Consider this place yours, since from what I can see, you’ve done a lot more to stop criminals since you got to town than Slade ever has.”
“That’s definitely true,” Norma piped up.
“There’s not a lot we want to take with us from this place, so it won’t take us long to pack up.” I shrugged. “I think these prototypes are good enough. We’ll take a few shurikens and stun-guns with us just to examine back at the mansion, but the rest of Slade’s weapons are all more primitive versions of things I already have. Plus, I’ve already taken all of the information off of his computer.”
The look Julien gave me in response made me think that he knew about the existence of the secret computer, but he didn’t say anything.
Part of me just wanted to rig Slade’s lair to blow, so when he tried to come back, there would be nothing but a pile of rubble. But even though the look on the Shadow Knight’s face would have been priceless, it seemed like a waste of a perfectly good underground lair, especially if we were still able to lock him out of it.
I wasn’t sure how long I planned to be in Grayville, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have access to a secret base underneath an island.
Especially after I killed Slade and bought out his company.
“How long will it take to change the access codes?” Norma asked.
“Well, we definitely don’t want him to be able to crack the code,” I said. “So, Aileen? What do you think?”
“Ten seconds would be sufficient,” my robotic assistant replied.
“Perfect,” I laughed. “How much time do we have left? Is Slade still in his investor meeting?”
“By my calculations, the meeting should last approximately one more hour,” Aileen said. “I would recommend vacating the premises shortly.”
“We’ll be long gone by then,” I replied.
“So what’s the plan?” Elizabeth asked as she and Penumbra finally returned to us with the three prototype vehicles hovered between them.
“We’re getting out of here,” I explained. “And then we’re changing the access codes so Slade can never get back in here.”
“Really?” Penumbra exclaimed.
“Yep,” I said. “Slade’s going to absolutely lose his mind.”
“Well, I guess that makes sense,” Elizabeth said. “It’d be best not to leave the Shadow Knight with access to anything he might be able to use against us.”
“Plus, it’ll make him crazy,” Norma said with a grin.
“You mean more than he already is?” I laughed.
“It is a good idea, even though I doubt he planned to return back here any time soon,” Julien sighed. “Not until he managed to defeat you, anyway.”
“So, you mean never,” I scoffed. “I guess he took everything he needed to Slade Tower.”
“That is my belief,” Julien said.
“Then let’s take our stuff and get out of here,” I said but then glanced at the prototypes that Elizabeth and Penumbra had brought over.
“I’m not sure we can fit this through the entrance tunnel,” Elizabeth said as if she could read my thoughts. “Beacon, didn’t you say there’s an exit somewhere in here that connects to that tunnel back on the mainland?”
“Yep, it’s at the back of the hangar,” Beacon said. “Sorry, I probably should have reminded you before you lugged all this stuff over here.”
“It’s good practice for me,” Penumbra said with a shrug.
“Then you’ll just need to float the prototypes out through the hangar exit, and take the tunnel all the way back to the mainland,” I told the blonde heroine.
“Okay, but Aileen can activate the exit, right?” she asked. “Since it’s also controlled by one of those code panel thingies? I don’t want to trigger any kind of poison gas on the other end of the tunnel.”
I told my android assistant about Penumbra’s suggestion, and only a few seconds later, the h
angar bay exit slid open to reveal nothing but darkness beyond it.
“She says she’s disabled the security in the tunnel,” I told Penumbra, “so you should have a clear path all the way back to shore.”
“Right,” the blonde said. “Then I guess we’ll see you soon!”
Penumbra picked up Elizabeth to levitate her, too, even though that made it impossible for my girlfriend to pick up anything that the blonde heroine dropped. I knew Penumbra really just wanted someone to come along with her, so I gave Elizabeth a little wave as she shrugged and went along with the other woman.
“We don’t want to take that tunnel, too?” Norma asked.
“No, we can’t just leave the boat by the entrance,” I told her. “That would ruin the element of surprise if Slade comes back that way.”
As soon as Elizabeth and Penumbra had disappeared through the hangar bay exit with all three prototypes, the rest of us returned back through the tunnels to the main entrance of the Shadow Knight’s lair.
“If you want to get sentimental about locking the Shadow Knight out of his lair forever, be quick about it,” I told Beacon and Julien.
“I think I’m good,” Beacon sighed. “It serves him right for everything he’s done to us.”
“I’m definitely glad to see it go,” Julien added. “This is a chapter of my life that I am eager to close.”
Neither of them seemed very happy about their experiences here, and I found that fascinating. After all, I certainly wasn’t the nicest person around, but at least I knew how to treat my own team right, and that was more than I could say for Dan Slade.
None of the Shadow Knight’s methods made any sense to me. The more I learned about him, the more it seemed like he treated the supervillains he fought better than he treated his own team and sidekicks.
I couldn’t wait to kill him.
“You want a ride off the island?” I asked Julien. “Don’t get me wrong, you’re welcome to stay behind, but…”
