Evil Genius 4: Becoming the Apex Supervillain

by Logan Jacobs

  “I’ll come with you,” Julien chuckled, “but if you don’t mind, I would like to take one of these with me.”

  The old inventor stooped down to grab one of the small, spherical robots that had greeted us when we arrived.

  “These have been my masterpiece,” Julien explained. “I can control them remotely, and as you saw when you came in, they can be quite handy.”

  “You’re welcome to take one as long as the Shadow Knight doesn’t get his hands on it,” I said and then reached down to grab another one of the spherical robots. “But I’m definitely taking one with me, too.”

  “Fine.” Julien glanced at his injured hand but didn’t mention it. “I have several to spare, and I won’t have any need for them after this. I really just want one for a keepsake.”

  The hovering mechanism that the robots used was interesting to me, and it was definitely something I could try and engineer on a large scale to add to my own suit later. I knew the only reason that the spheres had been able to float in the first place had probably been because they were very small, but surely I could figure out how to add the system to some sort of bigger thruster.

  Maybe once this was all said and done, I’d offer Julien a job.

  “Well, um, if we’re all ready, we should go,” Norma announced.

  “You’re right about that,” I said.

  We exited through the main steel doors in the front of the Shadow Knight’s hideout and emerged onto the same platform where the boat was docked. As soon as the doors closed behind us, I took a step toward the access panel.

  “Aileen?” I started. “How about changing the access code and scanner so Slade can never get back in here?”

  “Certainly,” my android replied. “Shall I change the scanner to recognize only you?”

  “For now,” I said.

  “One moment,” Aileen responded.

  Only ten seconds went by before the access panel and combination scanner lit up green, blinked red, and then went dark again.

  “I take it you were successful?” I grinned.

  “Of course,” Aileen said. “It is done. Slade will never be able to access his lair again, and since I control his AI, his hacking measures will never be successful.”

  “Then it’s high time we get out of here,” I said.

  As soon as we all climbed into the boat, we took off back through the tunnel, but the ride was less crowded than before since we only had four people in the boat now instead of five.

  Still, I had enjoyed the fact that both Penumbra and Elizabeth pressed themselves against me on the ride over, but I didn’t mind that I sat next to Norma in the back now. She seemed nervous, but she didn’t cling to me like the other two women had. Instead, she just fidgeted with her fingers in her lap and looked up at me every now and then with a shy little smile.

  The ride back across the lake at night was a lot quieter, but it also felt a lot less tense. I had gotten everything I wanted and more out of Slade’s hideout, and I felt confident in our plans and my ability to reverse-engineer the technology I found inside it. There was still a lot of information I’d stolen off of his computer to go through, but we had time to look through it now that we knew exactly what we were up against.

  It didn’t take Beacon nearly as long to cross the lake this time. It was darker than before, so we were well-hidden, but we also didn’t need to sneak up on the island, so the ex-apprentice was able to roar the boat across the water so fast that Norma had to hold onto her oversized glasses.

  Once the boat slid up onto the sandy shore of the lake, I helped Norma out of the boat, and Beacon assisted Julien onto the shore.

  “Um, do we even want to bother putting it back in the boathouse?” Norma asked.

  “Oh, absolutely,” I said. “If Slade uses it as a quick way to get across the water, I don’t want him to know we were inside his hideout until he gets there and realizes he can’t get inside.”

  “Right,” Norma giggled. “I keep forgetting that Slade’s still around. In my head, we’ve already gotten rid of him.”

  “We will soon,” I said. “Plus, you never know when we might want boat access to a secret underground lair in the middle of a lake, even if it is covered in feathers.”

  Beacon and I pulled the boat back into the run-down shack, and by the time we finished locking it up, Penumbra and Elizabeth had come out of the hidden tunnel further back along the shoreline, and now they floated toward us with the three stolen prototypes.

  “It seems strange to just leave it,” Julien sighed.

  “You’re not having any second thoughts, are you?” I demanded.

  “No, don’t worry,” the old inventor said. “I’m glad to leave that place behind me. It’s got a lot of memories, and many of them… well, many of them aren’t good.”

  “Oh, dammit!” Norma cried.

  “What’s wrong?” Elizabeth asked.

  “We should have put a camera up at the entrance,” my mousy assistant huffed. “Then we could have seen Slade’s face when he realizes we locked him out of his own lair.”

  “Don’t you mean his nest?” I snickered.

  I didn’t mind that we wouldn’t be able to see the Shadow Knight’s face at the entrance to his lair because I didn’t imagine he would live long enough to make it back there. Instead, I was looking forward to Slade’s expression when he finally realized that I had beaten him.

  And that would happen sooner than the Shadow Knight thought.

  Chapter 13

  Once I got a better look at Slade’s vehicles when we returned to the mansion, I realized that the prototypes we’d salvaged from the Shadow Knight’s lair needed more work than I’d originally expected.

  Once I knew for sure that I wouldn’t be able to get three vehicles out of them, I decided to combine the parts leftover from the tank with the skeleton of the sportscar-like model to create one super armored vehicle. And even though the plane-glider was still pretty bare bones, it wouldn’t require as much work as the grounded vehicle, so I would have time to really polish up the armored car-tank hybrid.

  It was nothing that I couldn’t handle.

  Ultimately, it took several days of around-the-clock work, but I had Norma and Aileen to help me out, and between my robotic assistant’s incredible talents and my mousy human assistant’s average engineering skills, we made impressive progress on the vehicles inside the mansion’s huge garage.

  While we worked, we left Beacon, Elizabeth, and Penumbra inside the mansion itself so they could keep an eye on the Shadow Knight’s movements and come up with a basic plan of attack. Of course, they would also alert us if it seemed like he was about to ram into my mansion with a giant tank.

  So after a few days of non-stop work, we had just about finished two vehicles that I was quite proud of.

  “Whew,” Norma exhaled as she tightened a final piece of the front-mounted cannon on the new vehicle. “We can take a break now, right?”

  “Almost,” I said once I’d looked over the front cannon to make sure it looked satisfactory. “But you can take a break if you want.”

  “I do not need breaks,” Aileen chimed in. “So I will remain with you, Creator.”

  “Fine,” Norma sighed. “I’ll stay, too. But we’re almost done, aren’t we?”

  “Just about,” I said, and then I circled around the armored car of my own creation.

  These may have all started as the Shadow Knight’s prototypes, but I’d taken them and turned them into something much better.

  We’d used a lot of the armor plating that Slade had already come up with, but I’d reverse-engineered them to create a more solid covering with the black metal alloy that I used for my suits. It resulted in a much sleeker design that both looked better and was more aerodynamic, so we could go faster.

  The design of the armored car itself was close to the ground much like a sports car, but the wheels were massive and stood out from the side. They were covered in spiked, armored plating that could shift and m
ove depending on how I needed to turn. I’d used Slade’s prototypes to make the wheels of the car able to move and twist apart from the main body of the vehicle as well, and that would allow us to have a lot of mobility. It also gave the car the potential to correct itself if we crashed and flipped over.

  Or if Slade ran straight into us with one of his armored tanks.

  Beyond the armored outsides, the interior of the car was padded enough to protect its driver from the intense movements this thing was capable of. It technically had enough space for two people to sit inside, but it was mostly suited for a single rider.

  The roof of the car had a convertible top so I could drive it around with the top down if I wanted to, but I had also installed the armor plating to slide over the top to act as a kind of door. Because of all the other upgrades we’d installed, the sides of the car no longer opened like proper doors, so we’d have to get in and out through the roof of the car.

  Still, I’d rather have the upgrades than actual doors, especially since those upgrades included a hell of a lot of firepower. Several machine guns were now all along the sides of the car, but the roof of the car was also outfitted with a small cannon that Norma had just finished up the final touches on. It could slide up from the trunk and then attach to the roof whenever necessary, so it could be used as a last resort if the machine guns on the sides weren’t enough. As cool as I thought the cannon was, I also knew it had more potential for civilian casualties than the guns on the sides did.

  The weapons on the original prototype seemed a lot simpler than the ones I’d upgraded my version with, but we’d still found evidence that the Shadow Knight had installed some kind of stun gun on his own vehicle, plus a weaker cannon of his own that seemed like it was only supposed to be used for emergencies.

  “I think we’re finally done here.” I patted the roof of the car affectionately. “I can’t wait to take her out for a test drive.”

  “Against the Shadow Knight?” Norma replied with a sly smile.

  “Against anyone,” I said with a grin of my own. “But especially against that bastard. Imagine his face when he sees that I’ve turned his own technology against him.”

  “It will be highly amusing,” Aileen agreed.

  “Let’s take a look at your glider, Norma.” I moved on to the next prototype we’d fixed up. “Then we can go see how Elizabeth is doing with the rest of the plan.”

  “Okay!” My assistant clapped her hands together in excitement.

  I thought Penumbra might be starting to rub off on my assistant, but I enjoyed the rare display of confidence from Norma. Then again, we had spent plenty of time going over the basics of how to pilot the glider, so it had probably been enough to make even Norma confident in her abilities for once.

  We headed over to the other side of the garage where the plane was propped up on an automotive lift. To call it a plane, however, wasn’t exactly accurate. It was much more like a glider than a plane of any sort, and the pilot had to lay down in the very small cockpit in order to fly it. The original prototype had a much larger area for the pilot, most likely because Slade himself was going to be the one to try and fly it, but I’d created my version specifically with Norma in mind.

  For that reason, it was much smaller and sleeker, and I’d also replaced Slade’s heavy armored coating with more of my own black metal alloy. The wings of the plane were still large and vaguely crow-like, but I’d adjusted them to look more like an actual plane’s wings, and I had definitely stripped off all of the feathery accents.

  The wings balanced the plane enough for it to fly even with the powerful thrusters in the back. I’d reverse-engineered the thrusters in hopes that they could eventually power my suit with flight, too, but they would work well for the plane-glider right now. The thrusters in the back were complemented by a small propeller on the front, and the landing gear worked much like a large-scale commercial plane. All in all, the glider would have an enormous amount of speed in the air.

  But the main feature of the plane was the small machine gun that we’d built into the front. I’d wanted to outfit the glider with a cannon as well, but it had been too heavy for such a small design. Still, the machine gun in the front nose of the plane was definitely more than enough to pack a punch as Norma supported us from the sky. Due to the nature of the glider, it wasn’t as secure as my armored car was, but it made up for its lack of bulky armor with its speed and ability to maneuver through the air.

  So as long as Norma could pilot it like an average pilot, she should be fine, especially since most of Slade’s attention would be on me, anyway.

  “Looking good,” I said.

  “Yeah.” Norma flashed me a thumbs up from the other side of the glider. “It seems sturdy.”

  “We’ll be relying on you a lot, Norma,” I said. “Aileen doesn’t have full control over Grayville’s security cameras, so we’ll depend on you to get a good overview of the city for us. We still don’t know how many vehicles the Shadow Knight has to use against us, so you’ll need to be extra observant.”

  “I can do that,” Norma said. “You can count on me, Miles.”

  “Good girl,” I said with a lopsided grin that I knew would make her blush a vibrant red.

  “Um, should we go inside now?” My flustered assistant avoided making eye-contact with me. “To see how Elizabeth and the others are doing?”

  “Yep, we should let them know we’re ready to go as soon as the plan is finalized,” I replied, and then I glanced outside to check how long we had until sunset.

  Ideally, I didn’t want to make a move until it was dark enough to avoid media attention. The sky was still bright and the sun was maybe halfway across the sky, so we had a few hours to go over the final plan if we wanted to go after the Shadow Knight tonight.

  I was absolutely itching to use my new weapons against him.

  Norma, Aileen, and I returned into the mansion through the front door, and we found Elizabeth, Penumbra, and Beacon gathered around the kitchen table with a spread of tablets in front of them. There was also a map of Grayville spread out between them that was marked with all the places that we’d tracked the Shadow Knight’s movements so far.

  While I’d been working on fixing up his prototypes into something way better, Slade hadn’t exactly been sitting on his hands. The destruction of his base hadn’t outwardly affected him as Dan Slade, but the Shadow Knight had been going on a complete rampage throughout the city. He’d gone after more criminals and supervillains than ever before, and he had been much more reckless with civilian casualties. Entire buildings had crumbled beneath the Shadow Knight’s armored tanks, and civilian bodies had been recovered from all over the city in his wake, but thanks to Optimo’s continued assistance, only the supervillain captures were broadcasted over the media outlets.

  It was irritating, but not surprising. Until he could get his hands on me, Shadow Knight wanted to cause as much destruction as he could, and that was part of why I’d made Beacon and Penumbra take Julien out of the city to go stay with his nephew. I knew that Slade had to realize that the old man had been the one who had made his base unusable, and I didn’t want him to lash out at the old inventor in any way.

  Not that I really thought the Shadow Knight would go after Julien. Slade was far too obsessed with me to lose his focus, and since that meant he was just waiting for his opportunity to strike, we had to be the ones to hit first.

  I also knew we had better act soon. I didn’t think Grayville would survive many more civilian casualties in pursuit of the Shadow Knight’s brand of ‘justice.’

  “How’s it going?” I asked as I approached the planning table.

  “Not great,” Elizabeth growled as she drew another mark on the map. “The Shadow Knight’s rampage continues. We really need to stop him soon, Miles.”

  “He’s worse than I ever expected,” Beacon groaned.

  “Yeah…” Penumbra sighed. “It’s like he doesn’t even care about saving people anymore.”
/>   “He doesn’t.” I shrugged as I took a seat next to Elizabeth. “We already knew that.”

  “Well, on the bright side,” Norma chimed in from across the table, “Miles has determined that the new armored car is ready to go, and so is my plane. So we can take action tonight.”

  “Affirmative,” Aileen said from where she stood just behind me. “I have run full diagnostics on both vehicles, and they are ready to use.”

  “That’s great,” Elizabeth said. “Then let me brief you on what we’ve come up with so far.”

  “Go ahead,” I told her.

  “So, based on news reports and the calculations that Aileen has done, the most likely criminals the Shadow Knight will go after tonight are all located in the east end of Grayville’s low-income district,” my super-powered girlfriend said as she pointed at a few locations on the map. “And since Slade is still doing damage control for his business from Slade Tower, he’ll most likely be coming from there. As for his tanks… Beacon?”

  “So from what we’ve gathered from footage of the Shadow Knight’s fights,” Beacon said, “we believe he can use the AI system that Julien developed for him to call any of his vehicles to his location at any time. So we can’t be sure which one he’ll take with him tonight.”

  “Then we’ll prepare for the worst,” I said as I took in all their information to form my own plan of action. “As long as we know where he’s coming from, we can intercept him in an emptier part of the city to minimize casualties. Aileen, calculate the most likely trajectory that the Shadow Knight will take tonight and reflect it on the map.”

  “Certainly.” My android assistant leaned forward around me to create a small hologram over the physical map on the table.

  “It looks like he’ll be passing through an area he recently blew up while chasing down a supervillain,” Elizabeth said as she drew a circle over a section of the map.

  “Perfect.” I nodded. “We’ll intercept him there. As for which vehicle he’s using… honestly, he’s probably just using his most recently developed model.”