“Thanks Diz,” said Misto, as she fired her Disruptophazer at the handcuffs on his wrists, at point-blank range. A flash of purple-white light, and the chain melted, as did the mechanisms. Misto winced and shook his hands. “Ow! Shit, Diz! I’m gonna need burn cream, now! One thing’s for sure — you sure as shit aren’t a Stormtrooper.”
“Yeah but I was aiming at point-blank range,” she said. “So how can you really tell?” The motors in her helmet whirred and her face-plate lifted up and away from her face. “Besides. Those’re just first-degree burns. You can deal with ‘em. We’ve both had worse. In fact, I’ve had worse, tonight. Look at what he did to my frakkin’ Evangeliojaeger! It looks like it’s been through a wormhole!”
Yes, through a wormhole. Trashed, in fact. The way she wished she could trash the whole thing. Take a sledgehammer to it, bash it to pieces, and walk away. Walk.
“Yeah,” said Misto, “sad to say, but it does. Look, can we get the hell outta here? This place is givin’ me the creeps. Funny, to think I helped champion the funding to get this thing built, and now all I wanna do is get as far away from it as possible. It almost did turn me into the ten thousand volt ghost, after all.”
An African-American man in his mid-fifties, Misto was nearly bald, with curly, white hair at the edges of his scalp that dwindled toward his ears and neck. His eyes were crinkled with crow’s feet; they were kind eyes; they exuded the glow of a caring and abiding soul, placed in a face used to laughing and telling jokes. He wore round, wire-rim spectacles — Dizzy retrieved them for him from where Ravenkroft had thrown them on the floor — that he had worn since age eleven.
“Oh? I rather like it,” she said, taking a look around. “Sorta reminds me of Cerebro from the X-Men movies. A few throw-pillows, some flowers . . . it’d be very homey in here.”
They stood inside the fusion-ignition chamber of the Laser Accelerator at Morchatromik University, a gigantic spherical room, its round walls made of blue, metallic sectional panels, with the actual laser-ports — large, funnel-like nozzles about a foot in diameter, wrapped in coils of metal tubing — punctuating the sectional pieces at sixty-degree angles, all aimed at the exact center of the chamber. The wooden chair that Misto had been tied to sat near one of the nozzles, with the laser aimed exactly where his face would have been. The chamber was dimly lit, and had a large, metal blast door that matched the curvature of the walls leading into it. Presently it stood open, leading out into the brick and mortar hallway that wound back underground, and eventually led to the basement of the Electrical Engineering building on the Morchatromik U campus . . . which was where, oddly enough, Misto’s office was located. Office hours were from two to four, Mondays and Wednesdays, though he usually had to extend those. Misto was the most popular physics professor the campus had ever hosted. His students loved him — almost as much as Dizzy loved him. And dang . . . that was saying something.
“Well you weren’t almost zapped into oblivion by it,” said Misto. “C’mon. Let’s blow this popsicle stand, Diz.”
“Y’know, I’ve always found that expression troubling and perverse,” said Dizzy, as they filed out through the blast door. Once they were on the other side, Dizzy flipped the circuit breaker that extinguished the lights in the chamber, and shut and locked the blast door. She didn’t want undergrads or frat boys messing around in there. They could get hurt. But ah, the good old Laser Accelerator. She smiled. She had done many experiments with it during her time here as a doctoral student. Good times. Sure, it had almost just fried her best friend, but . . . the technology itself was innocent.
“Well how about, ‘let’s phase outta this alternate Star Trek universe?’”
“Okay, I like that hella better,” she said, as they ventured down the hall. Dizzy limped along beside him, favoring the leg Ravenkroft had shot her in. She winced at a sudden pain in her neck and cricked it to the side. “I need to get back to Weatherspark Dynamics, to the Gadget Factory. So I can take this thing off. It hurts to move in it. Funny, I spend most of my time so glad I don’t have to be in that gods-danged wheelchair, but now all I can think of is how good it will feel to sit down for an hour or so before I have to put on the Mark XIII and go back out.”
“You’re going back out? Tonight?”
“Not just yet. First I have to check on something at the company. There’s something . . . interesting happening in the NeuroScape, something I’ve been meaning to deal with for a couple of days now. Shouldn’t take long. But I’ll have to log in to the system and enter the NeuroScape as an Avatar to check it out. I think the time is right to do it. New recruits for the team. If they’re ready. If I can catch them together. They’re two of the keys. But yes, I am going back out, tonight. I have to meet her. I have to, Misto. It’s important. I need to get this new team together, and soon, and this girl — I don’t quite know how yet — but she’s one of the keys, too. This Zoë Deschain girl; she’s important. Or will be. I just know it, somehow. Something’s going to happen soon, and we have to be ready for it. I can feel it. Like Obi Wan Kenobi, I feel a great disturbance in the Force.”
“Oh come off it,” he said. “There’s no such thing as the Force.”
"Bitch, shut yo mouth!" she said with a gasp, and arched an eyebrow at him. “Don’t be such a Mundane. Mechanology has pumped zillions of dollars into paranormal research, Misto. And then there’s the way the Tesseract Reactor acts in the presence of people who’ve tested positive for paranormal abilities. You’ve seen the data. Heckin’, you’ve written the equations that explain the frakkin’ data. So if I say I feel a disturbance in the motherfrakkin’ Force, you best shut yo motherfrakkin’ mouth and motherfrakkin’ listen . . . Motherfrakker. Yo.”
“You’ve got quite a mouth on you tonight. And don’t ever call me a Mundane.”
“Yeah, well gettin’ the holy livin’ frell beaten out of you will do that to you, I guess. And sorry I implied you were a Mundane.”
“You didn’t imply it. You said it.”
“Oh, well, yeah. Guess I did. Sorry ‘bout that.”
“It’s . . . okay. You’re . . . under a lot of stress. But it's avoidable stress. You . . . you know what has to be done, Diz. You know."
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“Goddamn it, I don't fancy being kidnapped again!”
“I know.”
“We need to stop him before this gets any worse!”
“Yeah.”
“And there's only one way to do that!”
“Yeah, I know. Enough already, alright?”
“No, not ‘enough already.’ You need to listen to me. He’s out there, Diz. He’s got your tech, and he’s out there doing harm with it. You can’t stand by and let that happen. You have to escalate your defense in order to cope with his offense. It’s the only way. And if that means killing him — ”
“Yeah, I've got it, thanks. I can do the frakking arithmetic, Misto.”
“For instance, the Tesseract Reactor. He wanted to know where he could find it." He pointed to his blackened, bruised eye, and the cut on his forehead, and the one on his cheek. “That’s how I got these.” Dizzy immediately felt awful; she hadn’t even noticed his wounds until now. “Don’t worry. I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Good,” she said, her voice quiet and soft, as she stopped to stare at him a moment. “That’s . . . Thank you, Misto. I mean . . . You didn’t . . . you didn’t have to put yourself through that. Not for me, not for Mechanology, not for . . . not for anything. I’m so, so sorry he hurt you.” She felt tears threatening in the corners of her eyes, but forced them back. “I’m so, so sorry. Please, if there’s anything I can ever do — I mean — ”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said, and shrugged, and they continued walking, her limping, him supporting her. “I coulda saved my own skin, I guess. But where’s the nobility in that? Plus this way I get to hold it over your head for, like, the rest of both our natural lives, right?” He smiled at her and winked.
“Oh definitely,” she said, and grinned at him. “And me rescuing you, that . . . I supposed that doesn’t count, right? You ungrateful frak.”
“Oh of course not,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s just what superheroes do, right? That’s, like, your whole job description. Your gimmick.”
“So I’m a superhero now. Huh. Een-teresting.”
“Well sure you are! Don’t you watch YouTube?”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me those videos exist! There’s probably three dozen more of them after tonight’s little scene on Broadway!” She suddenly felt a quiet come over her, and a chill went up her spine as she thought of the exploding minivan. She swallowed, not wanting to relive it, but spoke anyway. “He killed an entire family tonight. On Broadway. Right in front of me, Misto. He shot a minivan with kids in it, and blew it to flaming pieces. I saw their faces, Misto. They were screaming. They were on fire, and they were screaming . . . They flew through the air, and . . . God, Misto, they were just kids . . . And oh, shit. Get me to the bathroom, dude. I think I have to puke — again.”
“It’s uh . . . it’s this way, remember?” he said, and they turned a corner. Sure enough, up ahead, they saw signs indicating restrooms. They were almost back in the Electrical Engineering building’s basement.
Dizzy limped ahead and into the women’s bathroom, into one of the stalls. Goddamn this thing, this Evangeliojaeger. Never again could she dance to a phat techno beat, the way she had once upon a time, the way she had been able to in the long, long ago, those fifteen years previous to this, those precious years when she had known what it was to move her legs like a dynamo without this damn thing’s neural interface getting in the way.
She knelt in front of the toilet, grabbed the sides of the bowl, closed her eyes, and retched; she felt and tasted more of her dinner from last night — Taco Bell, refried beans, and nachos — come rushing back up along with stomach acid and bile — as her stomach contracted, her lungs heaved, every muscle in her body tightened. Then, her body relaxed, and she knelt, breathing heavily. She simply sat still for a moment, and then she wiped her mouth with toilet paper, threw it in the toilet, and stood up, still shuddering. She sucked in a deep breath, and then let it out, slowly. Then, she turned around and left the restroom. Misto awaited her outside.
“Everything come out okay?” he asked her.
“Uh, yeah,” she said. “Yeah I’m doing fine.” She managed a half-smile. “I’m a superhero, remember? If I’m not fine, who’s gonna save the world? And believe me . . . after what I saw tonight . . . it needs saving. From him.”
“He did all of that just to get to you, y’know. To piss you off, to unnerve you.”
“Yeah, I know. And that’s the sick and twisted part,” she said. “That’s what’s so frakked up about it. It’s gone beyond revenge for Anastasia now, Misto. He no longer just wants to torture me, you, dad. Now we have something he wants. The Tesseract Reactor. And you’re right. He won’t stop at killing a few civilians in order to get it. There’ll be more. He’ll keep on killing, and maiming, and destroying, until I finally break down, give in, and give it to him. Maybe I should just hand it over to him, and spare the world the terror he’ll unleash if I don’t. I can always steal it back.”
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“Yeah, but is that before or after he uses it to do God-knows-what?” asked Misto. “Is that before or after he hunts us both down right after you give it to him, and gets his other half — Viktor — killed because it really is still all about revenge for him? And is that before or after he kills you and then gets hold of all the rest of your tech? Think about it, Diz. You hand that thing over to him, you’re handing him the keys to a World-Domination Monster Truck and saying ‘Here, go take ‘er for a spin.’ No, Diz, no. You can’t do that. You cannot just ‘give him’ the Tesseract Reactor. No matter what.”
Dizzy heaved a sigh. He was right, of course. Perfectly right. Giving Evolutior the Tesseract Reactor was the coward’s way out. But what else could she do? Just keep going at the rate she was, and — what — just address the Evangeliojaeger’s shortcomings? Just crank up the Repulsivators’ beam mode? See if she could make it more stable, maybe more than just a one-shot deal in a fight? Or perhaps the problem lied with her. Maybe she would just have to get over her rule about not killing. Maybe it was time to put that particular notion to rest . . . Maybe Viktor was as good as dead. Perhaps killing him would be an act of mercy, for he would no longer live such a tortured existence, trapped in and at the mercy of the madman lodged in his head like a bloody dagger cleaved into his skull. Yes, perhaps it was time to put aside the idea that Viktor could be saved; and seriously consider the notion that Ravenkroft deserved death for the crimes he had committed . . . and that she was the only one equipped to be his executioner. She, along with her Evangeliojaeger, forever her metal companion on this journey into hell.
“You’re so right,” she said, and swallowed, nodding to him. “You’re so right, dahlink. I think it’s time that Ravenkroft got what’s coming to him, don’t you? Let’s face it, Misto. Viktor . . . the man you knew . . . he’s el-gone-oh. Flown the coop. Zoom, ka-pow, outta here.”
Misto furrowed his brow, and appeared ready to cry. He nodded. “I know. I think I’ve known for a while.” Dizzy put a hand on his shoulder. A long silence passed between them as Misto tried to shut his eyes and hold back the tears. He managed to get hold of himself and choke back his feelings. “But y’know,” he said at last, “Viktor’s not the only one who’s lost a wife. At least Anastasia’s still breathing. In cryo-stasis, but still breathing.”
Dizzy nodded. “Yeah," she whispered to him. “I know, Misto. I know.”
Her grip on his shoulder tightened as a tear leaked down his cheek. Two years before this, Misto had lost his wife, Coraline. Morchatromik University, like Purdue in Indiana, had a nuclear reactor, for teaching purposes in its Nuclear Engineering program. Purely by accident — and due to poor oversight — Coraline had been overexposed to uranium in the refinement lab and had died due to radiation poisoning. It had been a slow and painful death, and Misto had been by her side the whole time, holding her hand, watching it happen. Her death had left a terrible mark on him. His trip to FantazmagoriCon this year would be the first time he had really “gone out” and done anything social in over a year, and it had been like pulling teeth to get him to agree to go.
“Anyway,” he said, sniffling, and appearing to suck it up, “You’re right. Viktor is most likely gone. It is time to deal with Ravenkroft. To give him the hard goodbye, once and for all.”
Dizzy nodded. “Right. It is. After all he’s done . . . the horror he’s unleashed on innocent frakkin’ people . . . the horror he could unleash . . . It’s time we — time I — put a stop to his supervillainy antics. I’ll need your help fine-tuning the Repulsivators so that beam mode is hella more stable, though, and can be used multiple times in a fight. We need to perfect them. And I’ll need to upgrade the frakkin’ Disruptophazers so that they pack more of a punch. And, I’ll need to get the force-fields workin’ right so that they don’t fritz out on me and allow his shots to get through. Any of his shots. All this will require a lot of deep physics calculations. You up for it?”
“Ready and willing, as always,” said Misto.
“Up ’til now the plan was, ya know, to compromise the butthole and hand him over to the proper auth-or-itahs. But now the plan is a lot simpler. I’m gonna — ” She paused, and blinked. The words didn’t quite want to come out. She forced them out anyway, forced herself to say them, acknowledge their realness at long last. She swallowed. “Now I’m simply going to kill the bastard. But I might need help. Hence, the assembly of the team.”
Misto nodded. “I think that’s wise, Diz.”
He helped her hobble up the staircase that led from the basement of the Electrical Engineering building up to the first floor, to the lobby, where the large glass front doors awaited. The early morning darkness lay beyond them, as did the rest of the Morchatromik U campus. Stars shone in the night sky, obscured by bruised thunderclouds. Rain continued to pitter-patter down. The tall, ornate bronze lamp-posts that stood on either side of the glass doors, and held aloft two blazing globes of light, shined with an ethereal brilliance that lit up the stone steps leading to the building. Together Dizzy and Misto pushed open the glass doors and went outside into the cool night air, the motors in Dizzy’s Evangeliojaeger whirring as they moved.
Goddamn this ungainly, clunky device. There were nights she cried herself to sleep, wishing she didn’t have to wear it. Wishing she could perfect Mutagenesis X-119 so that an injection could heal her spinal cord’s nerves, and give her back what that cruel car accident had taken from her, stolen from her, so she could go out to a club — just one time, just one frakking time — and move her body the way she used to, the way she longed to once again.
“So can we call for the Fangirl?” asked Dizzy. “I need a frakkin’ rest from flying just now. Besides, I think the Repulsivators in my boots might need some tuning. They sound sorta funny when I bring them up to full power.”
“Absolutely,” said Misto. He reached into the pocket of his tweed coat — Misto always dressed the part of the stereotypical college professor: Tweed coat and slacks; white, button-up tuxedo shirt; red bow-tie; dress shoes — and pulled out his iPhone. He launched an app, waited, then punched a few buttons on its touchscreen. Then he put the phone back in his pocket. “Okay. The Fangirl is on her way, Diz.”
“Egg-salaaad,” said Dizzy. She sighed, and looked up at the stars for a long moment. Still looking at them, them, she said, idly, “Whatever happened to us, Misto?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“We’re supposed to be scientists,” she said, still stargazing. “We’re supposed to be exploring the frakkin’ unknown. Not fightin’ battles in Evangeliojaegers and preparing for the next attack from a psycho. And that psycho isn’t supposed to be attacking us. His other half — the part of him that’s still Human, that is — is supposed to be a scientist too . . . not suffering from an unexplainable split personality that drives him to do evil. We, the scientists, are supposed to bring light into this demon-haunted world . . . not constantly working our asses off just to stave off the darkness. When did it become all about stopping bad guys, and less about time spent at the chalkboard and working in the lab?”
“I think,” said Misto, “that that happened when the bad guys decided it was time to take their villainy out of the lab, and field-test it in the world at large.”
“Hmm,” said Dizzy. The motors in her suit whined as she turned to him. “Could be, I guess. I dunno. Either way . . . it makes me sad.”
“Me too Diz,” said Misto, nodding, with a sigh. “Me too.” Another long silence passed between them, and then Misto said, "Well, at least we get to have fun for the next few days, right? Forget about our problems, and hope that Evolutior lies low for that time?"
"Yeah, let's hope so," she said. "With any luck, he won't know where we've gone or what we're doing. The last thing we want to do is endanger the con. I couldn't bear it if anybody there got hurt because of us."
"Yeah, me neither," said Misto. "I'll be bringing Jack. Y'know, for the jam session."
Dizzy grinned. "Good ol' Jack. Did you restring him yet?"
"Oh yeah, of course I did," said Misto. "Restrung him, tuned him, just the other day. Even broke him in by playing a few songs on him. He sounds just as good as ever. My trusty guitar."
"So Father Joe will be singing this year at the jam session." She smiled. "The greatest filker in all of Massachusetts rides again. Frakkin' awesome."
"Yep," said Misto, and he smiled too. "Father Joe, also the best damned maker of alcoholic elixirs and spirits that FantazmagoriCon has ever seen. We'll arrive sometime around noon tomorrow and get the room all set up for guests, and set up the bar table and everything. I'll be bringing the booze with me, in my car. You'll bring the table, the cups, and the ice, like we talked about. As for my main costume this year, out on the con floor, I’m planning on being Thanos.“
“Thanos?”
“Yep, Thanos. Got the gold-plate armor all made up and everything. Had to do a bit of custom metal work to get it all to come out right. But I’ll be the best damn Thanos the Marvel Universe has ever seen. You just wait. I won’t have the purple skin . . . Sadly, I can’t do the make up on my own, and everyone knows you’re rubbish with make up — ”
“Gee thanks.”
“Well, you are — ”
“Too true, I am at that.”
“So I’ll just be going as a black Thanos.”
“Hey, racial diversity is good for the landscape of cosmic beings. There can be black Mad Titans too.”
“That’s what I’m sayin’, right?”
“Darn tootin’,” said Dizzy. It was hard to keep her mind on the con. She wanted to, though. Badly. But . . . again, those poor kids. Their bodies . . . on fire, flying through the air . . . the awful crashing noise they had made as they had landed on that car . . . the terrible sound of their screams . . . the look on Ravenkroft's face right afterward . . . the lust for blood that had pumped through her as she'd seen him do it; the fact that she had failed to deliver justice when he had done that, right then and there. That she had let him get away with it. That she hadn't killed him when she'd had the chance. That now, there was no other option. She shuddered.
"Yo Diz, you okay?" said Misto. He waved a hand in front of her eyes, and she snapped back. Oh. That was right. Misto. The con. Room party prep.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm . . . I'm fine," she lied. "I'm okay. Ducky, even.“
The sound of a car's engine gunning down the street just beyond the campus — and the unmistakable whine of what sounded like a pair of jet engines — took her attention away. The Fangirl came roaring down the street, driving itself to their location. It spun-out and squealed to a stop ahead of them. The Fangirl had originally been a jet-black Cord 812. A product of the Auburn Automotive company in Indiana in the nearly-Mesozoic era of 1932, the Cord 812 had come equipped with a 4.9 centiliter, 125 horsepower Lycoming 8-cylinder engine, and had been famous for its long, narrow coffin-shaped nose and louvered, wraparound grill plating on the front. It had sleek, curvy, chrome-plated exhaust ports that lined the sides of the long-nosed front compartment, and its large, pontoon fenders had concealed, flip-out headlamps, which the onboard computer now switched off; they obediently retracted and folded into the fenders.
Dizzy and Misto had altered the area near the rear fenders so that two swooping, curved pylons erupted from the chassis; they terminated in two ellipsoid cylinders — twin Repulsivator engines — with all the wiring, hoses, and tubing all descending into a maze of esoteric tech that rested in the trunk. The roof sported a large laser, aimed forward, mounted next to a miniature particle accelerator covered in tubes and wires and circuit-boards. Dizzy had taken off the outer metal cover of the engine compartment and had swapped it for a curvy piece of glass, under which sat a device that resembled the innards to an old tube-style television that flickered with eldritch sparks, coupled with what looked like a large sewing machine — but was actually the primary vacuum pump — that ticked and rocked furiously; a glowing Zero-Point Energy Reactor like the one in Dizzy’s Evangeliojaeger, mounted in a ring-shaped electromagnet; and a large electric motor that turned a set of gears that extended through the floor and connected to the car’s front-wheel-drive system.
In short, the Fangirl was a delight to behold, and every time Dizzy looked at her, she swelled with pride; she had taken four years to fully construct, but she had been worth every minute. She was literally a dream car.
“Welp, you coming?” said Dizzy, as she started to limp down the building’s steps toward the waiting vehicle by herself. She almost lost her balance, and nearly fell. Whoa shit. “I’m driving. I’m perfectly fine to drive.”
“No, you’re not,” said Misto, grabbing at her Evangeliojaeger and catching her just in time. He let her put a mechanical arm around his shoulders for support, and helped her down the steps to the car. “I’m driving, and that’s final. You just sit in the back and take it easy.”
She didn’t have the energy to argue. He opened the rear passenger side door for her, and helped her in. It was a tight fit with her wearing the Evangeliojaeger — it made her almost two meters tall and a third of a meter thick — and closed the door behind her. He went around and got into the driver’s seat.
“Comfy?” he turned around and asked her.
“Peachy-keen,” she replied, and gave him a gauntleted thumbs-up, motors whirring. She attempted a smile. “Let’s get to Weatherspark Dynamics so I can take this frakking thing off for an hour or so. Then it’s back to work, and on to meet my new recruit. If she’ll even sign up. Which I reeeeally hope she will.”
“There’s always hope, Diz. Try to remember that,” said Misto. He winked at her, and smiled, then turned back toward the dashboard. “Righty-oh, then! Away we go!”
The dashboard of the car was just as complex as its exterior might’ve suggested: A hundred buttons, knobs, switches; an embedded touch screen. Misto touched a button on the screen, then several more. He flicked a few switches and turned a knob, and pulled back on the steering wheel. The Fangirl lurched, felt like it shifted down a notch toward the ground, as though the tires had all flattened at once . . . and then they were suddenly going upward. The building outside fell beneath them, as did the lamp-posts and their twin globes of light, and the steps, and the road, too. They ascended toward the clouds, the stars coming into view more clearly, and then began to move forward, the engines whining and roaring behind them as they sped on into the night. A night that Dizzy wished she could dance away, but was — for now — not permitted to.