3-35: Hostage Situation

“Go ahead,” I coughed, pulling myself up. “Do your worst, bitch.”

I knew I was scraping the bottom of the barrel if the best I could come up with was swearing at her. It always brought to mind Mrs. Murphy back in eighth grade English. A strict witch of an old woman who said swearing was the last resort of a weak mind.

My mind wasn’t weak, but the rest of me sure as hell was. I was really starting to feel everything I’d done this afternoon. It was just about time for the gloating hero to lay the smack down on the villain, and things weren’t looking good for me.

That was the real rub, though. Which one of us was the villain, and which was the hero? 

I guess it was all a matter of perspective. For Fialux I was the hero come to rescue her against all odds. For Dr. Lana I was obviously the villain come to thwart her evil plan, whatever the hell it was.

As I righted myself I knew exactly what I was, though. I was Night Terror. I was a fucking villain. I was the best of the best, and I was going to show this bitch how to dance.

A flash of green seen just out of the corner of my eye told me everything I needed to know about how the next thirty seconds or so was going to go. I was probably still going to die given how bad things looked, but at least I’d die standing. Floating. Whatever.

I floated up and forced myself to show some backbone even though I could feel my body protesting and refusing to work properly.

Fuck. I needed to get to a medbay soon or there might not be anything left in my body for the damned thing to repair.

“Damn it!” Dr. Lana shouted, spittle flying from her mouth. “Why won’t you stay down?”

I stopped to reflect on the inevitable arc of somebody on their villainous career. It always started with villains on top of the world. Thinking they were going to take on every hero and villain who ever came at them and ruin their days.

Then there was the wall of reality that all villains inevitably hit. It was only a matter of time. With me that moment had come when I ran into Fialux.

With Dr. Lana it’d obviously come at this moment when she’d realized maybe I wasn’t going to be as easy to defeat as she’d hoped. Sure she still looked supremely confident, but when I stood that clearly said I thought there was still a chance I could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

“What are you going to do about it?” I asked. 

Not because I was curious about what she was going to do about me refusing to stay down so much as because it was part of the script, and I wanted to keep her talking for just a little longer.

“No more bullshit,” Dr. Lana said. “I’m going to kill you, and I’m going to do it now. I tried to best you with your technology and it didn’t work. I tried to best you with your computer friend and it didn’t work. I tried to use my research into enhancement to defeat you and that’s obviously not working. I tried to defeat you with giant lizards, and what do you do when one of them tries to chow down on you? You come out the other end looking for all the world like that giant lizard ate some bad Chinese food down at…”

I tuned her out. The memories of what I’d experience inside that lizard were traumatizing enough without Dr. Lana reminding me of how traumatizing it’d been.

No, instead I looked around to the robot army that was arrayed as though they were getting ready for an invasion. If Dr. Lana had bothered to look down at the things, she might’ve noticed something had changed about their eyes. That there was a strange eerie green glow coming off of all of them.

A glow that matched the ancient green monochrome of an Apple IIe, or an old 8088 IBM Compatible.

The kind of green glow that showed CORVAC had been putting his time to good use while I was busy distracting the good doctor. Damn we made a good team. I’d forgotten just how good we were together, and boy did it feel good to be working with him again.

Well, if Dr. Lana was going to be too stupid to realize she’d just edged closer to losing then I wasn’t going to be stupid enough to point that out.

Hey, what can I say? One of the reasons I’d lasted this long, even though I’d been getting my ass handed to me on the regular lately, was I knew when to shut up and kill someone.

“Um…”

“What?” she screamed. “What now? What are you going to tell me? Because I’m sick and tired of…”

She trailed off. The green glow was so pervasive that it was impossible to miss now. It filled the rooms and illuminated the walls all around us, which was an impressive feat considering how big this room was. She’d have to be blind to miss it, and while she was blind to a great many things, she couldn’t miss CORVAC’s handiwork. She stared in astonishment.

“I can’t believe you were controlling them with a signal disguised as campus WiFi,” I said. “I mean come on. That’s amateur hour stuff right there.”

“Come on!” she shouted. “This isn’t fair! I was just about to tell you to kill her!”

“There is one problem with that,” CORVAC said, his voice doing a really weird hive mind thing now that he was using thousands of robot voices speaking at once. “You never had control of this robot army to order them to kill the mistress in the first place.”

“CORVAC,” I said with a smile. “If you would do the honors?”

“Gladly, mistress,” he said.

For once I was glad to hear that smartass tone. Unfortunately, it was an instance of the two of us doing a victory dance before we’d crossed the finish line, and what do they say about celebrating victory prematurely?

Yeah, the problem with that is there’s always the chance your enemies are going to come along and help you snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

In this case, Dr. Lana was particularly crafty. She knew we were about to fire on her sorry ass, and so rather than sitting around and taking it like a villain, she decided she was going to do the last resort of assholes everywhere and try one last thing to spite her enemies on her way out. 

She threw herself at Fialux who was still floating in the air taking everything in.

Huh. I guess she’d decided with the kind of firepower Dr. Lana was throwing around it’d be a better idea for her to stay the hell out of whatever fight we were in the middle of. Which was a lesson I’d tried to drill into her time and time again. It figures she finally learned it in time for that lesson to bite me in the ass.

Because the fight was coming right for her, and it was coming with a vengeance.

Dr. Lana slammed into her, and I could see the surprise on her face. They whirled around in midair and the crazed woman stared down at us with a look that was so close to triumph that it made me want to kill the bitch.

“Seriously?” I growled. “You’re going to try and take a hostage?”

“I’m going to do what I need to do!” Dr. Lana said. “Whatever it takes to make you regret the day you ever came to the Applied Sciences Department and tried to show me up. Whatever it takes to stop you from seducing my science experiment! Whatever it takes to make sure you’re not the top villain in this world! I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure you’re miserable for the rest of your natural life, which isn’t going to be very long if I have anything to say about it!”

As far as villainous speeches went, it was pretty standard stuff, really. We’re talking the kind of uninventive crap you’d find in those stupid comic books that were always being put out aping the misadventures of real heroes and villains.

Where she made up for it was in the execution. We’re talking literally she made up for it with an execution. She twisted her hands. It was a quick motion. A motion I’d used myself a couple of times before I realized that snapping someone’s neck wasn’t always the clean end for someone they made it out to be in the movies.

It was one of the many ways that how things happened in the movies failed to be anywhere close to reality. I’d learned those lessons the hard way on a couple of occasions.

There was just one caveat to the whole neck snapping thing. It only really worked if you were far more powerful than the creature whose neck you were snapping. I’d busted it out as a finishing move for a couple of enemies who I felt deserved a more intimate touch to their demise considering the good run they’d given me, but it was always in situations where my strength augments gave me the advantage.

And such was the case with Dr. Lana and her crazy strength. The same strength Fialux had. I held my hand out as though that was going to stop her, but I knew it was too late even as I reached up and had my wrist blaster humming.

Because she was pushing out enough power that the twist she did was going to snap Fialux’s neck. It was a certainty. I cried out, but I knew I was too late to save the woman I loved.

Though maybe not too late to avenge her. Oh hell yes was I going to avenge her.