The Enhancer series Box Set

by Wyatt Kane

  “Tempest preferred the bigger stuff,” Dinah continued. “Before Bain came along, she was on a mission to disrupt as many of the New Lincoln crime families as she could. You know, the type of thing the police can’t deal with because they’re in on the game. Protection rackets, drugs, smuggling operations, you name it. I’d spot the opportunity, and Tempest would go in and disrupt it.”

  Dinah gave another small shrug as if what she was saying wasn’t a big deal. “It was fun. But now that Bain and this Master are here, all that has changed, at least for the moment. They are the bigger threat, and we don’t even know what they’re planning. Yet.”

  Ty looked at Dinah with newfound respect. Since he had met her and Tempest, he had assumed it was Tempest who had the greatest impact on the city. She was the one who could fly and throw cars about as if they were nothing. But the blonde superhero could only be in one place at a time. She could only help small numbers of people.

  Dinah, on the other hand, could monitor fifty different situations at once, and with Tempest and the police at her fingertips, there was no limit to the number of people she could help.

  Ty knew from Dinah’s character sheet that she was only at level four with her skill. He couldn’t help but wonder what she would be capable of if she leveled up.

  Would she some day be able to pluck the information she needed out of the air without resorting to technology at all?

  If Tempest was the right arm of this superhero team, Dinah was the nerve center. And if that was an appropriate analogy, what did that make Ty? Another hand, weak and malformed compared with Tempest, at least for the time being? Or something different? His enhancement skill was less direct than Tempest’s energy manipulation. Yet its potential impact could be profound.

  It was something to think about.

  “Right,” said Dinah. “Let’s see what we can find out about our demoness, shall we?”

  With that, she lowered Gremlin to the floor. The cat looked up at her with an inquiring expression, uttered a vaguely disgruntled, “Meow,” then sat down and started cleaning herself. She ignored Ty’s presence as if he didn’t exist.

  “Full control, on me,” Dinah said. She raised her arms and began making gestures that her system instantly translated into commands. She was like a conductor leading an orchestra, swiping the air in front of her to discard existing images, miming expansion to fill up a wall, and a myriad of other motions that all had specific effects. She didn’t limit herself to a single wall, instead spinning about so she could make use of all the available space. At the same time, she punctuated her gestures and movements with verbal commands.

  “New search. Person, first name Lilith. Extreme body modification. Demon horns, wings, tail. Ty, anything else?”

  Ty was mesmerized by everything that she did. The screens shifted and moved with a speed he found alarming. He couldn’t keep up with the bewildering display and barely caught that she had asked him a question.

  “Um, hooves? Like yours, a little.”

  “Hooves,” Dinah repeated. “Go.”

  Immediately, the wall in front of them filled with thousands of results. Dinah responded with a series of gestures that flipped the results around the room, then sorted through them at a pace Ty could barely believe. It was like a dance, an intricate ballet, and Dinah was the star of the show.

  Nor was it silent. Somewhere in the room, there were speakers that Dinah had activated. A dozen different voices and segments of music burst into life, all at high volume. Ty flinched away from it all, and Dinah laughed at him as she lowered the volume.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I usually do this alone. It’s easier to hear something subtle if the volume is high.”

  Before Ty could respond, Dinah was back into her dance, flicking many of the images and voices away, sorting through them at an unbelievable rate.

  “Aha!” Dinah said. She focused on one small image and blew it up so that it covered a larger part of the screen. It was a picture of Lilith, her innocent features no longer countered by the serious expression Ty was familiar with. She was smiling instead.

  “Is this her?” Dinah asked, her voice filled with the excitement of the chase.

  “Yeah. That’s her.” Ty had no clue how Dinah had managed to find her so quickly. But the deerkin wasn’t yet finished.

  “Image search. Go,” she said, and once again the screen exploded into similar images.

  Dinah discarded them just as quickly until just one remained. As well as the image, also recognizably Lilith, there was a name associated with it.

  14: Lies

  “Lilith Wagner,” Dinah said. Then she frowned as if something about the name puzzled her. “Strange. She seems familiar,” the deerkin said.

  “You know her?” Ty replied.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe.” Dinah shook her head, as if dismissing the thought. “It’ll come to me,” she said. “Let’s see what we can find out about her. New search. Lilith Wagner.”

  Another explosion of search results filled the wraparound screen. Ty watched Dinah work her magic while stifling a private grin. To him, Wagner was the perfect last name for a teleporter, especially one that looked like her. The only thing that might have made it more perfect was if her father happened to be named, “Kurt.”

  Yet his quiet amusement couldn’t last.

  As Dinah brought up and discarded image after image, her demeanor changed. She started to frown again, although this time Ty sensed it had little to do with confusion. She was starting to find documents of interest, and what she saw concerned her. As she blew up several items, she bit her lower lip in an expression that Ty found almost irresistible.

  “Hmmm,” she murmured.

  “What is it?” Ty asked. He hadn’t been able to keep up with what Dinah was doing. He saw the different items on the screen but hadn’t yet figured out what they meant.

  At first, Dinah didn’t respond. Then she made a series of gestures to organize what she had found.

  “It seems our friend Lilith has quite a history. She has been arrested more than once, for dishonesty offences. Dropped out of school young and worked a series of low-end positions. The splice job came with strings. Seems she worked in a strip joint to pay for it.”

  Ty couldn’t help it. He felt disappointed, and, even though he had no claim on Lilith at all, surprisingly jealous as well. Yet he knew it was a difficult world, especially for someone without formal qualifications. People had to do what they could to survive.

  He wasn’t yet ready to give up on Lilith. She had risked much to warn him.

  “She was popular, I’ll give her that,” Dinah continued. “And she must have been determined. She paid back her debt within a couple of years.”

  At this, Ty couldn’t help but grin. Maybe if stripping had been a viable option for him, he would have gone that route as well. He was still struggling under a mountain of debt that would never do him any good.

  “Oh,” Dinah said.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Look,” Dinah said, indicating another image. At first, Ty couldn’t see what the issue might have been. It was basic biographical information, the type of thing normally kept by government organizations. Dinah blew it up, so it covered most of the screen, and Ty saw what had drawn her attention.

  “Father–deceased,” he read.

  “Yes.”

  Ty drew a deep breath. He felt betrayed. Lilith had lied to him. Her father wasn’t being used against her. Her father was dead.

  Nor did Dinah give him any opportunity to rationalize it away. “So, what we have is a woman with a history of dishonesty who told you something that is verifiably untrue. What else was she lying about? What was her purpose in talking to you at all?”

  Ty couldn’t hide his disappointment. He felt deflated, and he let out a huge sigh that was so loud and dramatic that Dinah laughed at him.

  Her eyes sparkled. “Ty!” she said. “Do you like her? Lilith? Did you want her to be all innocent, a victi
m in all this?”

  Ty felt his cheeks turning red. Dinah had read him perfectly, which wasn’t really a surprise given her skill. He hadn’t been thinking of Lilith as an enemy, but someone who needed his help.

  Now that he knew she had lied to him, he felt let down. And there was more to it as well. Knowledge of the lie was one thing. What to do about it was something else entirely.

  Ty didn’t answer Dinah directly. He didn’t have to. There was no hiding the truth from the deerkin. He mustered a half-grin.

  “Well, that makes it simpler, at least,” he said. “I guess I have work to do. The cameras and floodlights are a great start, but we need a way to stop people, including those who can teleport, gaining entry to the mansion itself.”

  As if she was adding her voice in approval, Gremlin chose that moment to look up at Ty and meow at him.

  With a happy laugh, Dinah swooped down and plucked the cat from the ground and squeezed her tight for a moment. Ty knew that if he tried the same thing, Gremlin would have struggled and maybe even scratched him in an effort to get away. But with Dinah, all things were apparently tolerable.

  “Aren’t you a good girl?” Dinah said, responding to the cat instead of Ty. “You’re hungry, aren’t you? Come along, let’s find something for you to eat while Ty does his thing.” Then she gave Ty a warm smile that was nevertheless tinged with sadness. “One of the things I’ve learned from watching this screen is that not everyone is innocent. Sometimes, people do bad things. They lie. They scheme. And they end up hurting others.”

  She gave another of her small shrugs. “And sometimes, there is no justification.”

  15: Work

  The Architect’s workshop was quickly becoming one of Ty’s favorite places to be. He took in the clean, white lines and display cabinets filled with the prosthetic devices that Tempest’s father had worked on and gave a satisfied smile. The workshop soothed his spirit the same way that Dinah’s presence did. It was a safe place, a place of thoughtfulness and calm.

  Ty hadn’t known the Architect in person, but in his mind, the original superhero was a figure of transcendence, insight, and peace. With the Japanese water garden outside serving as inspiration, Ty could easily imagine him as a thin, older man sitting in the lotus position on the workbench in a meditative trance as he came up with his ideas.

  It was as if the spirit of the man was still there, providing hope for the future. And more than hope. The Architect had packed the room full of wonders.

  The filing cabinet alone was bursting with potential. Ty longed to investigate the plans and ideas within those hallowed drawers to his heart’s content and indulge all of his technological desires. He was confident that the things he found within could change the world many times over.

  Nor was the cabinet the only wonder in the workshop. With the Stark Holographic Imager, Ty could design anything he could think of, and model its effectiveness at the push of a virtual button. Once he was happy with the design, the Fabricator could turn it into a reality within just a few minutes.

  Ty had used both tools already, to improve the performance of the devices he, Dinah, and Tempest all wore. He had analyzed Tempest’s ability to manipulate energy and used it as a model for his own mesh suit. And, with the Architect’s help, he had created an energy converter powerful enough to give life to his creations.

  It was the mesh suit and the energy converter that played on his mind even now. As a basis for securing the mansion, as well as the building it sat upon, Ty couldn’t think of anything better. All he needed to do was make the projection discs bigger and he could generate a shield over everything.

  Once activated, there should be little that would be able to get through.

  The thought was enough to set Ty grinning broadly. Wasting no time at all, he activated the holographic imager, called up the specs for his mesh suit, and had the machine display a holographic image of it over the workbench.

  “Zoom,” he said. At once, the holographic image of his suit doubled in size. Then, using gestures that were surprisingly similar to those Dinah had used in her information dance, Ty separated the holographic projection discs from the rest of the suit, which he discarded.

  Then he had to pause. He needed to generate a shield large enough to cover the entire building but didn’t know exactly how big the building was. He wondered briefly how he might find that out, then almost laughed out loud at his own foolishness.

  Dinah’s skill was information. If anyone could find out what he needed to know, it would be her.

  Ty called her through his device, and a holographic image of Dinah appeared over his wrist. She was smiling broadly.

  “Yes?” she said.

  Ty grinned in return. He couldn’t help it. Her positive humor was contagious. “I was just wondering,” he began. “I need to know the dimensions of this building, including the penthouse.” Then he thought about it some more. “Preferably separately. Do you think you could find that for me?”

  “Is that all you wanted? How disappointing. I was hoping for something a little more fun,” she said. The way she said it left Ty in no doubt at all about her intentions. But she didn’t give him a chance to respond. “Sure. I’ll get it to you right away,” she said, and her holographic image blinked off.

  Ty barely had time to return to what he was doing before his device sounded an alert. It was Dinah.

  “That was quick,” Ty said as he brought the image of the deerkin back up.

  “You’ll have to give me something more challenging next time,” she replied. “So, I’ve brought up the building plans, including those of the penthouse. It’s got length, width, elevation, the works. How do you want it?”

  “Uh,” Ty responded. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Can you send it through somehow?” he asked.

  “Your wish is my command,” she replied, and blinked off again. Less than a second later, his device sounded a different alert. This time, when Ty brought up his display, there was an attachment notification. He opened it, and an image of the plans Dinah had described unfolded in front of him.

  He quickly realized that the building was substantial. It was one hundred and sixty feet by ninety and four stories high, and that didn’t include the penthouse. By those measurements, Ty estimated that any shield he created would have to cover just short of fifty thousand square feet, including the roof and the floor.

  All by itself, the penthouse came in at sixty feet by eighty, and two stories. He didn’t count the Architect’s workshop, because as a basement, it was already included within the main building.

  To Ty’s hasty calculation, even that came in at around seventeen thousand square feet, or maybe twelve thousand if he didn’t bother with the floor.

  He stared in dismay at the hologram of his mesh suit, still floating about the workbench. Each projection disc could generate a shield that could cover only about half a square foot. Did that mean he needed somewhere around a hundred and forty thousand of them to do the job right?

  Then he shook his head. “Don’t be an idiot,” Ty said to himself. For the second time in just a few minutes, he found himself laughing at his own foolishness. He’d kept the projection discs small on his suit because the power supplies were small. But with this, he didn’t have those limitations.

  “I can make the energy converter as big and powerful as I want. And the discs as well, for that matter.”

  ◆◆◆

  Forty minutes later, Ty’s focus was interrupted by Gremlin wandering into the workshop. The cat looked at Ty as if she wanted something and said, “Meow.”

  “Hey, Furball,” Ty said affectionately. He moved to pick her up, but she casually stepped out of his reach and bounded up onto the workbench, upon which the holographic images of Ty’s work were displayed.

  The last time she’d been with him as he worked like this, the cat had tried to play with the holograms. This time, she walked right through a projector disc that was as big as a plate and sat herself down partia
lly within the image of a large energy converter.

  Ty grinned at the furry creature. “What, is this your way of helping?” he said. But the cat ignored him completely.

  Ty snorted out loud. “Typical. I look after you for two years, and this is the thanks I get in return? How am I supposed to see what I’m doing with you in the middle of everything?”

  Despite his words, Ty wasn’t really upset. He enjoyed Gremlin’s company even if she barely seemed to notice his.

  Nor, as it turned out, was Gremlin alone. Ty’s first clue that she was the advance party for Dinah was a delicious aroma that filled the air. It was warm and spicy, and Ty recognized it immediately. Thai green curry. An aroma that set his taste buds watering in anticipation before he even knew he was hungry.

  He closed his eyes and inhaled hugely, savoring the exotic bouquet, and when he opened his eyes again, Dinah was there.

  “I thought you might be hungry by now,” the gorgeous deerkin said with a smile. She was carrying a tray upon which she had set two bowls of the delicious curry, along with another piled high with perfectly done rice.

  She flowed past him with consummate elegance and set the tray on the workbench. Then she raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Unless I’m interrupting?” she said.

  “Not at all,” Ty said, acknowledging to himself that he would have welcomed her presence even if he was at a critical point. “I was just getting ready to test this,” he said.

  “Oh? Did you want to do that before eating?”

  Ty shot a hungry look at the food she had brought. It was beyond enticing, and he wanted nothing more than to inhale it all in one go. Yet he hesitated. The test was important. Not only would it give him the chance to make sure everything worked, but he had been more than impressed watching Dinah in her control room. Testing his work would give him the opportunity to show off his skill for her.

  “Yes. It’ll only take a moment,” he said.

  With that, Ty zoomed the holographic image out so that the different parts he had been working on were all contained within a small area.