by Logan Jacobs
“I don’t see any backup yet!” Norma chirped. “But it looks like he isn’t heading toward the power plant anymore!”
“Good,” I said as we continued our chase.
The Shadow Knight was headed toward the open road most likely in an attempt to get away from us, so we needed to head him off and take out one of his wheels before he could reach the outskirts of Grayville.
We needed to trap him.
“Norma, I need you to fly up ahead and fire in front of him,” I told my assistant. “It doesn’t matter if you hit him or not-- we just need to contain him.”
“Where can we corner him?” Elizabeth asked as she fired off another burst of machine gun bullets into the back of the Shadow Knight’s armored tank.
Even though the wheels had been hit by a few bullets, they still held sturdy, and the damage didn’t seem to impact the Shadow Knight’s ability to drive.
They also didn’t impact Slade’s ability to fire another RPG at us.
“Hang on,” I growled as I swung the car off to the side to avoid the incoming blast.
It exploded just off to the side and shook the ground as it blasted a huge crater in the asphalt, but the wheels on my new creation allowed it to absorb the shock and keep itself steady. Even an explosion with that kind of power wasn’t enough to knock us over, so I kept up the chase after the Shadow Knight.
“There’s an alley up ahead with a dead end,” Elizabeth said as she opened up the GPS that Aileen had supplied us. “Maybe we can herd him there?”
“Send that information to Norma,” I said and then swerved again to avoid an electric burst from what must have been a stun gun that was attached to the Shadow Knight’s armored vehicle.
“Sent,” Elizabeth said.
“Received!” Norma replied. “I’ll direct him that way!”
I glanced up in time to see Norma’s glider as it sped ahead of both armored vehicles, and I prepared to maneuver my car around to keep the pressure up on the Shadow Knight and so I could keep him from formulating his own counter-plan. From what I’d seen of him, he didn’t seem to handle stress or anger very well, especially not when it involved me.
I heard the sound of the bullets from Norma’s plane before I saw them. They ripped into the street up ahead, but the Shadow Knight’s tank also absorbed some of the fire before he spun his car to the left with a screech of tires as they burned against the asphalt.
I shifted my own wheels to veer after him and followed him down the next set of roads.
Slade had to slam on his brakes to slow down enough to maneuver through the smaller set of roads that we’d forced him into, and I followed close behind him while Elizabeth continued to bombard the back of his tank and wheels with bullets.
I didn’t want to break out the cannon just yet. I didn’t want there to be even a possibility of escape because then he would know all our weaponry, so instead, I planned to save the cannon until the very end, when he was cornered against the back alley we were driving him into.
Norma flew ahead and ensured that the Shadow Knight’s tank would not be able to turn down any of the roads except the ones we wanted him to turn down.
“The front windshield is cracked!” Norma announced as the Shadow Knight’s tank skewed away from her glider’s fire.
“Then he won’t risk facing you head-on anymore,” I said with a grin.
“We’ve almost got him,” Elizabeth growled as she directed more fire at the tank in front of us.
I knew that even the Shadow Knight’s armored tank wouldn’t be able to survive a direct hit from my hidden cannon. As soon as he was cornered, he’d be finished, so I pushed the button to bring the cannon out of concealment on the roof.
The dead-end wall suddenly loomed up ahead of us, and the Shadow Knight noticed it at the same time we did. He skidded his tank around as if he could try and turn it to face us, but he ended up slamming sideways against the wall with too much momentum. Even as his car shook from the impact, Slade swiveled his cannon around to face us.
But I was faster.
I fired the rocket out of our own cannon before Slade could fire his, and the rocket shot out with enough force to rattle us inside the car. I slammed on my brakes just as the missile slammed directly into the Shadow Knight’s armored tank, and it immediately erupted into a deafening explosion of flames that quaked the ground and nearly knocked Norma’s plane out of the sky.
But even through the smoke, I noticed the huge dent that my rocket had left in the side of Shadow Knight’s tank, and more importantly, I saw the top of his tank slide open.
Shadow Knight jumped out of it and disappeared somewhere in the smoke.
“Norma, fire!” I ordered, but I couldn’t see Norma’s plane-glider above us through all the smoke and flames.
“H-hang on, I’ll be right there,” she stammered. “I can’t see anything!”
I could barely see what was happening myself, but Elizabeth continued to fire through the smoke to pepper the tank with bullets. Finally, I put up my hand to stop her, partly because we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, but also because I wanted to salvage what was left of the tank.
I wanted to steal anything that could survive a point-blank hit from a rocket cannon.
The sound of thrusters came from overhead, so when I looked up, I expected to see Norma, but instead I caught a glimpse of the Shadow Knight as he jumped into the air and was caught by a clearly upgraded version of his plane-glider. It had a much sleeker design than the prototype, and it was shaped more like a one-person wedge than an actual plane. A smooth mechanism opened up the cockpit, so the Shadow Knight was able to leap right into it.
He then sped off through the sky.
“I had to land, I’m sorry,” Norma coughed through the earpiece. “I’m on a roof close to you, so is he still--”
“He got away,” I exhaled.
Elizabeth sighed wordlessly and leaned back in her seat.
“It’s alright,” I assured both my girlfriend and my assistant. “At least now we have a new toy to play with.”
“Looking on the bright side, huh?” Elizabeth laughed.
“No point getting upset about it.” I shrugged, even though I could tell my girlfriend was disappointed. “With access to one of his tanks, we might be able to gain access to all of his other AI-controlled vehicles, too. Remember how Julien said we just needed a physical access point?”
“Oh, so you can use the tank as that gateway?” Elizabeth said. “That’s clever.”
“Yup,” I said as I pushed the button to lower the roof on my armored car. “I’ll take it back to the mansion, so you can drive this one back home.”
I scanned the night sky for any signs of the Shadow Knight, but it looked empty. He must have fled back to Slade Tower to go lick his wounds.
I hopped out of my own armored car to go check out the damage to Slade’s tank, while Elizabeth slid into the driver’s seat of my vehicle and put the roof back down to prepare to drive back. She had wanted to test out our car for herself, so this was a good chance for her to drive it since I wanted to take charge of Slade’s machine myself.
And in spite of my disappointment that the rocket hadn’t been enough to blow the Shadow Knight sky-high, I was still eager to see what his current model of armored tank looked like.
The dent from the rocket’s impact was intense, but the side of the tank was still pretty intact, all things considered. I could see how the Shadow Knight had escaped so easily, since the impact had been entirely absorbed by the outer layer of the armor, and I did have to hand it to Dan.
This thing was a beast.
Unfortunately for him, it was about to become my beast.
I climbed into it through the open roof that the Shadow Knight had so conveniently left open for me, and then I dropped down into the leather driver’s seat. The newest model of Slade’s tank was more spacious than my own new car, but I’d already figured that since the vehicle itself was much bigger. There were screen
s on every surface plus a multitude of buttons that I’d have to experiment with to see everything that they could do, but the tank itself didn’t seem all that difficult to operate.
I adjusted the wheels and tested the engine to see if it was still capable of driving even after being hit by a rocket, and I was surprised to see that it still was. Whatever the Shadow Knight had upgraded this with, it could really take a beating.
It was definitely something I was glad to have in my new arsenal.
The vehicle was already keyed into Slade’s system, so I tapped my finger against one of the screens, but a red alert suddenly blared to life all around me.
“ALERT! ALERT! ALERT!” the car’s speakers screamed.
I slammed my hand against the screens to try and shut them off, but every screen reflected red. Next, I tried to press several buttons in quick succession to forcibly power off the screens. That didn’t work, either, but I knew it probably had a fingerprint scanner localized in it, so after I took the tank back to the mansion, I’d have to open it up and--
“Miles!” Norma screeched into my earpiece. “Miles, above you!”
I glanced up just in time to see the Shadow Knight’s plane as it made a direct suicide bomb down toward me.
The tank’s engine still roared with life, so even if I couldn’t access any of Slade’s high-tech gadgets inside yet, I could still drive it around. Of course, I also wouldn’t be able to access any of his cannons or other weapons, and that meant I needed to get the hell out of this dead end alley.
“Elizabeth, fire our cannon at him!” I shouted through my earpiece.
“Already on it!” my superpowered girlfriend said just before the cannon fired a rocket at the Shadow Knight’s plane.
Slade swerved off course so the rocket flew harmlessly off into the sky, and I figured that the thrusters on his current glider must be better integrated than the ones in Norma’s. Shadow Knight was also far above average when it came to piloting skills, so he knew exactly how to control the glider, and that meant it would be very difficult to hit him while he was in the air.
I needed to figure out how to activate the weapons in his own tank.
“If you leave the tank, I’ll spare your life!” the Shadow Knight’s voice crackled through a speaker in his glider. “Consider this a draw!”
“That sounds like something someone who knew they lost would say,” I growled, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me inside the tank.
Norma flew shakily after the Shadow Knight’s glider and fired at him, but he ducked out of the way and returned fire. He clipped one of the wings of her plane and it forced her to veer through the air to avoid further damage.
“I can’t fight him like this,” Norma told us through the comms. “He’s too fast!”
“Don’t worry, Norma, I’ve got your back!” Elizabeth said as she started to fire off rocket after rocket at the Shadow Knight’s plane.
We didn’t have all that many rockets available for her to waste like that, but the barrage of them did seem to throw him off balance in the air as his plane dipped and spun to avoid them.
While Elizabeth kept him busy, I continued to test out the buttons on the console of the tank, and I was already starting to figure it out. The Shadow Knight’s system wasn’t too difficult even if I was still locked out of accessing his screens or anything more than a stun-gun.
But that was all I needed.
I maneuvered the tank through the alley to adjust my position. The windshield was cracked just like Norma had said, but it was more than just a hairline crack. It would only be able to take a few more hits before it completely shattered.
I faced the Shadow Knight’s plane to draw his attention, since it seemed to infuriate him that I’d dared to try and steal his tank. Of course, I couldn’t blame him after what Julien had told us about his closed AI system, since he absolutely could not afford for it to fall into my hands.
That was just too bad.
He dive-bombed his plane toward me again, and my fingers flew across the buttons on the tank’s console to activate the stun blaster.
It popped up from the front of the tank and fired off a burst of electricity in a direct hit on the Shadow Knight’s plane. He swerved his plane off to the side, and wheels popped out from the bottom of it-- like that could prevent him from crashing.
The glider flipped over my armored car, collided with the ground, and skidded across the asphalt with a crackle of smoke and electricity. It only came to a stop when it slid into a building wall, and then more smoke and dust filled the air.
“Elizabeth, fire!” I ordered.
But nothing happened.
“We’re out of ammo,” my girlfriend moaned.
“Then use the machine guns!” I demanded. “Norma--”
“Already on it!” my assistant replied as she took back off into the air on unsteady wings.
Norma rained down bullets onto the Shadow Knight’s crushed plane, and Elizabeth joined in by firing off my car’s machine guns, but so far, it didn’t look like regular bullets could do much to pierce the plane’s armor.
“Miles, there is another vehicle incoming toward your location,” Aileen alerted me. “It does not appear to have a driver.”
“The Shadow Knight called over another vehicle, and we need to intercept it before he can get into it,” I told the girls.
“I warned you,” the crackled static of the Shadow Knight’s voice erupted from the wreckage of the plane again. “Remember, Evil Genius, I gave you a chance!”
I couldn’t believe that he’d actually called me that.
Optimo had really rubbed off on him.
“Self-destruct activated.” The screens inside Slade’s tank lit up once again with a countdown to interrupt my amusement at my own nickname.
I had ten seconds to escape the tank.
“Norma, get as far away from here as you can!” I ordered. “He activated the self-destruct!”
“What about you?” she wailed even as she swerved the plane off to the side and away from the alleyway.
“Don’t worry about me,” I said as I clambered out of the still-open roof of the tank. “Get yourself to safety first!”
I heard the countdown tick behind me as I jumped down from the tank and hit the ground hard. I scrambled forward into a run toward the other vehicle, and I saw that Elizabeth had already opened the roof as soon as I’d warned Norma about the self-destruct, so now all I had to do was just get to it in time.
“Miles!” my girlfriend shouted. “Hurry!”
“I know!” I shouted back.
I launched myself forward and onto the back of my armored car. I grabbed one of the spikes and used it to pull myself forward, and then I crashed down into the passenger seat just as Elizabeth slammed on the gas.
Then, behind us, the countdown reached one.
The tank exploded with the force of a small earthquake. The blast was powerful enough that it flung even my stabilized armored car forward, but as the noise of the explosion rang in my ears, Elizabeth corrected the wheels to keep us from flipping onto our backs. She skidded off to the side as the smell of burnt rubber joined the smell of the smoke from the tank, just as an unmanned vehicle appeared from the other end of the long alley.
Slade had called a small motorbike to help him escape, and while Elizabeth still worked to keep our car stable, I saw the Shadow Knight stumble from the wreckage of the plane, mount the covered motorcycle, and speed away from us into the night.
“Fucking self-destruct,” I growled as we finally came to a stop after Slade had disappeared. “Why does he have to include that in everything he builds?”
“He’s paranoid,” Elizabeth sighed and leaned back from her tight grip on the wheel.
“We need a way to get him away from all of his escape cars,” I exhaled. “He had two of them ready to rescue him.”
“If he hadn’t gotten into that first plane, we would have had him cornered,” Elizabeth said. “With access to all o
f his vehicles, he’s too prepared for anything we can throw at him.”
“So we’ll just have to separate him from them,” I said with a shrug.
“Miles!” Norma’s voice chirped through the comms. “You should go back and take a look at the tank! It’s in pretty bad shape, but it’s also kind of still in one piece?”
That was interesting. I nodded at Elizabeth to turn my car around, and she drove us back to the end of the alleyway with the wreckage of the tank.
The buildings were devastated by the blast as well as by the fight that we’d had with the Shadow Knight, and I was glad that we’d trapped him in an abandoned part of Grayville since otherwise, the civilian casualties would have been immense. One of the stone buildings beside the tank had completely crumbled into a pile of rubble, so it would definitely have killed anyone inside it.
“I’ll keep better watch this time,” Norma said as she landed her plane on the roof of one of the still-standing buildings. “I really didn’t expect him to try and come back…”
“We should have,” I replied. “But it’s alright. We’ll be more prepared for him the next time, and I already have an idea for a better plan.”
Dan Slade was not an ordinary criminal or even a run-of-the-mill supervillain. He had access to technology that, while may not have rivaled mine, was still a threat, and he had the home field advantage. He had the benefit of the armored vehicles, planes, and bikes that he’d created over the course of the last few years ever since he’d moved to Grayville.
But I would come out on top. I always did.
I examined the remnants of the tank, and although the screens were damaged beyond use, I soon realized that Dan hadn’t used enough explosives to really hurt the thing. In fact, I could still salvage most of it. And upon further investigation, I would probably be able to discover something hidden within the depths of the tank’s console. Something in there must have survived that would let me at least get a better idea of how Slade’s upgraded AI system operated.
