Enhancer 2

by Wyatt Kane

  Dinah tilted her head to the side as if weighing Ty’s words. Abruptly, she nodded. “Well, we might not be able to verify everything she told you, but there are a few things we can check. Lilith, you say? With a splice job like the one she has, she shouldn’t be too hard to find. Come along. We’ve got work to do.”

  With that, she turned and led Ty into the mansion.

  13: Information Control

  Ty had seen much of Tempest and Dinah’s home over the past couple of days, but neither of them had given him a full tour. The closest he had come to that was when he and Tempest searched room to room, hoping that Dinah was somewhere within, and even then he’d only seen about half.

  Tempest and Dinah had used the short time Ty had been at work to clean up. The mercenaries who kidnapped Dinah had made it their mission to ransack the place. Yet somehow, the two women had managed to tidy much of the mess away. There was still evidence of items that were broken or out of place, but all-in-all, they had done a marvelous job.

  The deerkin led Ty through to a part of the mansion he hadn’t seen before. He’d spent much of his time so far in the kitchen, one of the lounges, and the Architect’s workshop. And Tempest’s bedroom, of course. But Dinah led him to another wing entirely.

  Yet again, Ty didn’t have the time to explore. Dinah was on a mission. She flowed up the stairs and through hallways at a pace Ty struggled to match, all the while holding Gremlin in her arms.

  “Here,” she said, glancing back at him from a doorway. She had a twinkle in her eye that Ty didn’t understand until he stepped through into the room. Then he figured it out.

  Her twinkle was one of pride.

  The room was a communication center, a technology hub the like of which Ty had never seen before. The room was essentially empty aside from a large, curved screen that covered all four walls. The only gap in the display was at the door through which Ty and Dinah had entered.

  It was all Ty could do to stand there and stare. He knew without asking that the screen was top-of-the-line. One step down from a holographic display. Yet perhaps it wasn’t a step down at all. The screen was overflowing with different images, with one whole wall taken up with the scene from outside the building.

  Ty could see the aftermath of the battle very clearly. There were police, ambulances, and even fire engines on site, and to Ty, it looked like a war zone. Wounded mercenaries were being treated by the medical teams while the police did their best to talk with those who were up to it. The image was so clear it was almost like being there.

  Yet that was only one part of what the screen displayed. Other walls showed different images, hundreds of them, all different sizes and squeezed in together. There were camera feeds from elsewhere in the city, static pictures of documents, and a bewildering array of other items on show. There was even a cute clip of a litter of puppies all moving in a circle as they ate from a shared bowl.

  A holographic display wouldn’t have been able to capture so many diverse scenes. It would have filled the room in such a way that an observer could feel like they were part of the scene, but wouldn’t have the flexibility to display so much all at once.

  “You like it?” Dinah asked.

  “It’s amazing! I’ve never seen anything like it.” Ty looked to the beaming deerkin. “This set up – what do you use it for?”

  “It’s my skill,” she said. “Information control, remember? It’s what I do.” Clutching Gremlin with one arm, she used the other to gesture at the screen. “We’re patched in to every database I could get access to. All the New Lincoln camera feeds, the city maintenance records, everything you can imagine. If you have a library fine, I can find it.” She twinkled again. “I could even expunge it for you.”

  Still smiling, Dinah gave a small shrug. “I may not be out there fighting the bad guys, but you’d be surprised how much crime can be uncovered simply by looking. Most times, it’s easiest to just call the police and let them deal with whatever I find. Muggings, murders, kidnappings and the like. I have direct lines to several departments. But there are some things the police just aren’t set up to help with. That’s where Tempest and Zach come in,” she said, and her grin faded. “Or used to, anyway.”

  Once again, Ty was reminded that another member of their team had died only a few days before. Ty was even wearing the man’s shirt and trousers.

  “Zach used to like some of the simpler things I sent him to do. Cats stuck in trees, old ladies with flat tires. That sort of thing. He was also good at talking people down from suicide attempts, and just generally helping out where he could. You know, the feel good stuff, the kind of thing that makes you happy to be human.”

  As she spoke, Gremlin started to purr in her arms. Ty looked at the cat, vaguely bemused. Gremlin had never liked to be held for long before. Yet she seemed perfectly content in the deerkin’s arms.

  “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 res
ults. 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. 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 victim 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 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 all of 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.