Perry hung up the phone and let out a long breath.

It was probably Gramma’s fault, but it was past the statute of limitation for being angry about it. She’d cast spells cursing Solaris’s fate back when they were in direct conflict, like…40 years ago. They’d been waiting around in the background for the right moment to cause as much damage as physically possible.

Add that to the list of things I need to hedge against, Perry thought, scowling as he began drawing out some defensive spellwork.

Once Hippocrates had made a sufficient amount of Solaris’s cure, he pocketed half a dozen and loaded a syringe into a machine to inscribe enchantments into the needle to prevent it from melting on first contact.

While he waited for that to finish, he used an eyedropper to load a single drop of his reverse-engineered curse into each little vial. Each one should render Solaris mortal for about fifteen minutes while the cure did its work.

After that, like Scrape’s original, it should hang out in the body forever. In this case, though, it would be a boon, preventing further alzheimer’s dickery.

“You should keep an eye on Solaris after this.” Hippocrates said as Perry worked.

Perry glanced over at the medical AI’s hologram.

“Why’s that?”

“The serum is going to repair and replace large swaths of damaged brain tissue. It will not necessarily be exactly the same as before. Memories cannot be restored. There’s a possibility he might have some permanent personality changes as well. It’s not uncommon with this level of brain damage.”

Perry grimaced.

Solaris had been the leader of Franklin City for half a century precisely because his personality was ideal for the job. Even minor changes might cause big problems.

“My design has measures to mitigate that problem, but it’s a concern.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Perry said, plucking the syringe from the machine.

He took a deep breath.

Let’s see how badly this goes, Perry thought, loading the syringe.

Portal.exe

A moment later, Perry was standing in front of Solaris.

“Who are you?” Solaris asked.

“He’s the one working on your cure. Paradox.”

“Claudette’s kid?” Solaris asked.

“Yep. You’re losing a lot of time over the last few days. Let’s get this done quick.” Perry said, brandishing the needle. “Before we start, I want to make sure you understand the risks.”

“Shoot.” Solaris said, motioning for him to go on. He was feeling lucid today.

“This serum has some serious, weapons-grade curse-magic in it.” Perry said, tapping the syringe. “It’s gonna render you mortal for about fifteen minutes while the virus settles in your body. During that fifteen minutes, it’s going to get a toehold in your body, at which point it will become part of your DNA. Over the next few months it will repair all the damage Scrape’s virus has done. You should see gradual improvement in memory and executive function until you’re back to one hundred percent…or close enough to it. Memories that you’ve already lost probably won’t be coming back and you may experience a personality change as parts of your brain are repaired. This medicine is entirely experimental and you’re not allowed to blame me for unforeseen bullshit,” Perry finished.

“Well, now I know it’s not a trick. If you’d said it would be a miracle cure, I would’ve blasted ya.” Solaris said,

“Hippocrates told me that a miracle cure would literally cook your brain from the exothermic reaction of cells healing in seconds.”

“Bah, I can take it.” Solaris muttered, waving it off.

“I’m sure you could,” Perry chuckled, pulling out an alcohol wipe, cleaning off a patch of Solaris’s shoulder before injecting him with the serum.

There was a tiny burst of white-hot light as the needle went in, but it held together admirably the fraction of a second it needed to while the plunger forced the serum into Solaris’s body.

Like a wave of calm, Perry could see the tiny bursts of uncontrolled light die down across Solaris’s body, emanating outward from the point of injection.

“Alright,” Perry said, withdrawing the empty syringe and placing a band-aid at the injection site. “Now we wait.”

“What, a month?” Solaris asked.

“No,” Perry said, making eye contact with Truthslayer and Guile, who watched him with palpable tension. “Fifteen minutes.”

“You can go, Paradox.” Guile said. “We’ll keep him safe.”

“Not gonna happen.” Perry said, leaning back in his chair and keeping his eyes on the two Anchors. They tensed, and Perry knew he had a fifteen-minute staring contest on his hand. “I’m not leaving anything to chance at this point.”

He wasn’t going to leave the room until he knew no one was going to sneak in and kill Solaris in his few minutes of vulnerability.

And that included the other Anchors.

“Why aren’t you an Anchor, kid? I like your style,” Solaris asked, rolling his sleeve back down.

“I’ve got my own city to deal with,” Perry said. “And I’m hoping you’ll owe me a favor.”

“Fair ‘nuff.” Solaris said, glancing at the three of them before grabbing the remote for the TV. “Sounds like if I live or die in the next fifteen minutes is out of my hands, so if you guys don’t mind, I’d rather watch the news.”

Solaris, or for the next fifteen minutes: Tom Franklin, put his feet up and began flicking through news channels.

“Hey, the delegates from Australia in the Eternal Empire are under attack.” He said, nodding towards the air footage of an embassy in Los Angeles being swarmed by shapeshifting monsters with laser weapons.

Perry didn’t take his eyes off the two Anchors, but he could make out some of what was happening out of the corner of his eye.

What he saw…didn’t look great.

***Slick***

“You know, when I got this job, I figured I was being punished,” Slick said, turning a spot under the slavering monster frictionless.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

As it stumbled, Perfora launched off the wall of the embassy and slammed into the strange cybernetic monster with her elbow, executing a perfect pile-driver, enhanced by her ability to grow blades from any part of her body.

Any part.

One of the reasons Slick had never asked for a date. The other one being that she was his boss.

Although…

“Next!” Perfora shouted, dull blades erupting from her feet and launching her towards another creature.

Slick bobbed and weaved, using his control over friction to keep his movement wild and erratic as laser beams sizzled the air past his ears.

Sure, he had hyperweave on, but there was never any telling with lasers. They might harmlessly spatter off, or they might be Tinker-enhanced disintegration rays.

You never know, so it was best not to get hit at all.

“But now I’m actually kind of enjoying myself!” Slick finished, launching himself up and onto the wall of the embassy before sprinting along the side, keeping an eye on the rest of his team and providing support where necessary.

“Is the entire population of L.A. turned?” Mend asked from the wall where he was turning swaths of mimics into quivering chunks. Unfortunately, those quivering chunks tended to stick themselves back together rather than just dying like they were supposed to.

Even Perfora’s brutal attacks were eventually shrugged off.

“Probably not. There’s a news copter,” Perfora said over the comms, her ragged panting and the screams of the creatures coming in through the earpiece. “We need an energy type. Someone who can fry these things.”

“Sure would be nice if Heatwave were here, wouldn’t it?” Slick couldn’t stop himself from picking at their ex-member’s loss.

Personality conflicts, they said. That was polite-talk for ‘dating gone poorly.’

“Slick, we’re going to have a talk after this.” Perfora said. “But for right now, focus on your job. Next!”

“Perfora, above you!” Mend screamed.

Slick glanced up and spotted a pair of red wings catching the air above them.

Is it far away and big, or…oh, it’s big, and it’s coming fast!

Mend tapped Slick on the shoulder and pointed at Perfora and making a jerking motion towards themselves.

Slick nodded.

Perfora jumped off the monster she was fighting, not quite fast enough to dodge the boiling wave of fire that was speeding her direction.

Mend sealed the air together behind her while Slick removed any friction, and Perfora shot up and over the wall like a watermelon seed pinched a bit too hard.

Slick caught her ankle and the three of them dove behind the concrete wall moments before the blast of fire annihilated everything on the street outside the embassy.

“Keep going, go go go!” Perfora shouted, ushering them towards the embassy as the wall began to glow from the heat.

Slick felt like his skin was being baked, until Mend did something. The Catalyst motioned at the wall and the heat diminished long enough for them to get some distance.

Once they got inside the embassy, they looked at the brand-new wall slumping to the ground in a pile of white-hot liquid the consistency of soft-serve ice cream.

“I guess you got that energy-type after all.” Slick said, tapping Perfora’s shoulder as he moved by her.

“I guess,” Perfora muttered, leaning out of the window and craning her neck to try and spot Tyrannus. “But why’d they send their boss?”

“And is he on our side?” Mend mused.

“If he shows up, I’ll talk to him. You two get started on cutting us an escape route through the sewers.”

“Are there actual sewers beneath us?” Slick asked.

“There’s always sewers.” Perfora said.

“And if there aren’t we’re screwed,” Mend said, clapping Slick on the shoulder.

“Is Ryan still alive?” Slick asked, bringing up their pilot, who had been staying in a hotel near the new airport.

“Maybe,” Perfora said as she checked their team’s vitals on her HUD, the only hint a brief flicker of light in her eye. “Still need that escape route.”

Slick’s shoulders drooped.

I hate escaping through the sewers. Maybe American sewers are less dangerous.

He wasn’t holding his breath.

As it turned out: American sewers were much more pleasant than Australian sewers. No mutant saltwater crocodiles, no giant roaches with a hunger for flesh, no spider outlaws whispering into your mind trying to get you to separate from the group and lie down for a nap.

All in all, downright easy, save for the smell, Slick thought, flicking the fist-sized cockroach off his neck as he walked through the narrow tunnels, crouched over.

Tyrannus hadn’t returned before they finished cutting the escape tunnel, and Perfora wasn’t interested in waiting around for him, so they’d ditched the embassy. They needed to report back home and send a stronger team. They were essentially peace-officers, not Outback Hunters, who kept the real nasty stuff outside city limits.

America, or at least L.A., seemed to be in the middle of shitting its pants, and Perfora didn’t want to hang around.

I’m actually of the same opinion, Slick thought, musing as he nudged a rat-sized spider out of the way. The spider reared up, but after seeing the size discrepancy between them, scuttled away, carrying the dead rat it’d been feasting on.

Cute.

“America has such small spiders.” Slick said.

“Right?” Mend asked with a grin.

“We’re under the airport.” Perfora said, checking her map. “Should be, anyway.”

Perfora in the lead, they climbed up out of a manhole, one at a time.

In the distance, a plume of light brightened the horizon where the Australian Embassy burned.

“Airport’s a block away.” Perfora whispered, pointing.

The three of them crept down the quiet streets, uninterested in prompting another attack.

“Ryan’s going to meet us there.” Perfora whispered. “He’s…probably still himself.”

“I saw a corgi split open around a gatling gun,” Mend whispered back. “All bets are off.”

They turned the corner into the driveway leading to the newly created airport. For the moment, it was a simple thing that could only house a few planes at a time. The thought back home was, if America was still a major power, they could establish trade with them using Tinker ships that could transport as much as an ocean freighter. Once the concept was proven, they could expand the airport and both countries would benefit tremendously from intercontinental trade.

That wasn’t really any concern to the three of them. They were picked as a diplomatic team because they were young, attractive, disposable, and charming…for the most part. Not because they had a head for international diplomacy.

Slick wasn’t charming, but Mend and Perfora were.

Ryan was a hoot, but he was just the pilot, and wasn’t technically a diplomat.

Now that they’d hit an open area, Perfora signaled for them to sprint to the hangar where their Tinker supersonic jet was.

One of the biggest things that made international travel safer was speed. If you’re only in the air for an hour and a half moving at mach 5, that’s only an hour and a half that things can go horribly wrong, rather than fifteen hours.

Not to mention there’s less that can catch you even if it notices.

“The hangar’s right around this corner.” Perfora said as they sprinted through the darkness.

A moment later, the three supers skidded to a halt on the brand-new tarmac, lit up by the surrounding streetlamps like fathomless black water.

There was a rather large problem between them and their escape route.

“Good evening, delegates.” The massive red dragon rumbled. “While I do not have enough jurisdiction over you to put you to sleep in order to hedge against the usurpation of your powersets, I do have enough to ground your ship and politely require that you stay within the Eternal Empire until the situation has been handled.”

“Whazzat mean?” Slick asked.

“Means he’s not gonna let us leave.” Perfora whispered back.

“Imagine if I allowed the cancer infecting the Eternal Empire to spread to Australia. As a world leader…That would just be irresponsible.”

“Chunk him?” Mend whispered under his breath, but Perfora hastily waved a negative, while Slick gave Mend the side-eye.

That would cause a war.

“Would you care to explain exactly what’s going on?” Perfora asked, raising her voice and straightening, adopting a more forceful tone.

“A small piece of a legendary Manitian creature was replicated by Professor Replica, and has since spread across the American continent. A mimic.”

“Professor Replica? He’s dead.” Perfora said, cocking her head in confusion.

“Yes, but many of his facilities are alive and well.”

“I guess that explains the lasers.” Slick muttered.

“Lasers?” A voice from behind caused the three of them to spin around.

A young man with black hair and green eyes stepped through a shimmering oval in the air.

“They have lasers?” He asked, turning his attention to the dragon.

“Some of the mimic’s older offshoots seem to have the ability to…Tinker a bit…as well as being stronger and smarter than they should be. You wouldn’t know why that is, would you?”

“Shit.” The nameless young man cursed.

“Did you finish your other pressing business that was definitely more important than the world-ending threat of the mimic?” Tyrannus asked. “I defer to your expertise.”

“Sure did, no need to be sassy. This problem now has my undivided attention.”

“Excellent. Delegates of Australia, this is Paradox, omni-class tinker, the leader of Chicago and probably the person to blame for our current predicament. Paradox, these are the delegates from Australia: Perfora, Mend, and Slick.”

“I wouldn’t call myself Omni-class,” Paradox said, offering Perfora his hand. Their team leader gingerly shook it.

“Nobody calls themselves Omni-class, and it’s the only thing that will soothe my wounded pride.”

“If you insist, Paradox said with a shrug. “We need to confer with Stacy about any potential weaknesses, increase our orbital surveillance, and -OH MY GOD! WHAT IS THAT!?” Paradox pointed up at the hangar behind them, where a spider hung off the edge of the roof, two meters from end to end, fuzzy and wearing aviator sunglasses and a leather jacket over his abdomen.

Mend and Slick broke into guffaws.

“Oh, that’s just Ryan. He’s our pilot.” Perfora said.

“Greetings.” Ryan signed, saluting with his spare forelimb.