3-40: Infamy

“Good morning mistress,” CORVAC said.

“Good morning yourself, CORVAC,” I replied, my voice entirely too cheery for having just stepped out of the stasis field in the medbay. “Mind turning on the news?”

“Certainly, mistress,” CORVAC said.

The news popped on. A story about how the city was rebuilding and there was still at least one giant radioactive lizard that had escaped to the sea from whence it came.

Obviously the anchor who was using that line was a fan of Japanese monster movies, because those things hadn’t come from the sea. It looked like Starlight City was going to have its own giant monster to contend with in the near future, though.

Not my problem. I’d only asked CORVAC to turn on the news to make sure he hadn’t gotten into the medbay computer, had his way with it, and had me pull a Rip Van Winkle where I woke up in a world ruled by damned dirty apes or something.

It looked like everything was just as I left it though. Well, mostly as I left it. There was the half destroyed city, but already the news was running puff pieces on how they were going to rebuild just like they always had.

Typical.

“Coffee,” I said.

I held out my hand and the coffee appeared in my hand. It was nice having CORVAC running things again. I’d forgotten how much I hated having a computer that couldn’t anticipate my every whim.

I took a sip of my coffee and let out a contented sigh.

“That’s the stuff,” I said.

“I thought you were drinking soda the last time we worked together,” CORVAC said.

“I was, but I’m trying to cut back,” I said.

I looked at the readout from the medbay. It always told me all the work it’d done, and in this case it looked like the thing had been working overtime. I’d been out for a couple of weeks, which wasn’t good.

I had to find Fialux. Though I was already pretty sure my search was for a corpse. No, things definitely didn’t look good unless I could perfect time travel.

That wasn’t going to stop me from trying though.

“You seem surprisingly chipper this morning, mistress,” CORVAC said.

“Of course I am,” I said. “I have work to do. There’s nothing that makes me feel better than knowing there’s a job to do.”

“I’ve been calculating the probability of discovering the location of the radioactive planet without Dr. Lana assisting us and…”

I held up a hand. “I really don’t want to know the odds of finding the planet, or the odds of Fialux alive once we get there.”

“Are you sure, mistress? Because…”

“Gonna stop you right there, CORVAC,” I said. “The last thing I need is you depressing me by telling me the reality of my fucked up situation.”

“If you are certain, mistress,” he said, a slight quaver to his digital voice.

That was new. Maybe I really had put the fear of a God I didn’t believe in into the asshole when I blew up his giant robot. That was good. He needed to be on his toes. Especially since I was pretty sure I’d reverse engineered every spot in the city where he was hiding his asshole circuits.

And at least one orbital platform he was using as the ultimate offsite backup.

“Could you please show me our subject for the day?” I asked.

“Certainly, mistress,” CORVAC said.

A hologram appeared showing Dr. Lana. She was isolated in a cell designed to look like one of the brigs on the old Enterprise set from the original Star Trek. Complete with a glowing yellow field in the front that would make a cheesy ‘60s-era special effect blast if someone was stupid enough to try and touch the thing.

From the dark marks on the wall, it looked like Dr. Lana had definitely tried to touch the forcefield a couple of times. I chuckled and shook my head. It was the least she deserved considering everything she’d done.

“Is she still healing up nicely?” I asked.

“Affirmative,” CORVAC said. “She burned herself rather severely a couple of times trying to get through the forcefield, but she has recovered every time.”

“Interesting,” I said. “Anything else of note? You put her in the supermax cell, right?”

It was a cell we’d put together for Fialux on the off chance I managed to capture her. Though by the time I did manage to capture her, everything had changed because of the serious case of feelings I’d developed for the girl.

Waste not was one of my mottos in life. I was more than happy that I got this chance to reuse something I’d made for capturing my girlfriend back before she was my girlfriend. Especially considering the weird powers Dr. Lana seemed to develop and discard that were easily on par with what Fialux was putting out.

Had been putting out.

No. Was putting out. Present tense, damn it.

“That is actually quite interesting, mistress,” CORVAC said.

“I’m listening,” I said.

If there was something CORVAC found interesting, then I figured I was really going to find it interesting. After all, our sense of curiosity was quite similar, and I figured this had to be good considering it involved my new archnemesis.

Though she wasn’t much of an archnemesis these days considering I’d managed to capture her and it looked like she hadn’t been able to break free, which I’d half expected.

That would’ve been a rude awakening to regain consciousness while the medbay was only halfway through fixing me up with my mortal enemy’s hands wrapping around my neck. I shivered and pushed that unpleasant thought away.

“She exhibited higher than usual force the first few times she hit the forcefield, but after that she seemed to lose some of that force, and the last couple of times she was hitting with what would be expected from human normal,” CORVAC said.

I took another sip of my coffee. “That is very interesting. So you think whatever she was doing to get powers like Fialux has worn off?”

“That would appear to be the case,” CORVAC said.

“Well I suppose there’s only one way to figure it out for sure,” I said.

I walked over to a control panel and activated the PA system that piped into her holding cell. There was a moment of feedback, and she looked up with pure fury in her eyes.

“Too much of a coward to face me yourself?” she spat.

“Come on, Doc,” I said. “I think we both know each other well enough to know I’m not going to fall for that bullshit.”

“It was worth a shot,” she said.

“Right. So I’m guessing since the first thing CORVAC did was give me some coffee when I woke up, he hasn’t managed to get the info I need out of you,” I said.

“I’ll never talk,” she said. “Your girlfriend is as good as gone!”

I muted the feed as she threw her head back and let loose with a good old fashioned villainous laugh. I’d seen it and heard it before, and I already had the beginnings of one hell of a headache pounding behind my temples. The last thing I needed was to irritate it by listening to her cackling.

When it seemed like she was done with her little cackle session I reopened the communication line.

“Right. If you’re going to be that way then we’re going to start our first round of experimentation,” I said. “CORVAC? Did you run the pipes to her cell?”

“Of course I did, mistress,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, her eyes darting around like she was starting to worry.

She should be worried. The bitch. I was going to show her just what it meant to cross Night Terror. I’d deliberately kept the line open while I asked CORVAC about the next step to our plan.

That was one of the things about torturing someone properly. A lot of the time the stuff they came up with in their head about what you were going to do to them was a hell of a lot worse than anything I could actually come up with.

“Never you mind,” I said. “We’re just going to run a little experiment to see how your healing and invulnerability responds to dihydrodgen monoxide in its various states.”

“You’re going to…”

Dr. Lana’s lips puckered up like she’d just eaten something particularly sour. She stared around the room like she was looking for the camera I was using to spy on her, but of course she wasn’t going to find it. When I wanted to hide a spycam, I made sure it stayed hidden.

“Dihydrogen monoxide? Seriously? Are we making up some stupid image meme for social media or something?”

“Nope. We’re just torturing an enemy. You could always forego this testing by telling me the coordinates for Fialux,” I said.

“Never, you bitch,” Dr. Lana growled.

“Right,” I said. “CORVAC, send her into the drink.”

Water started running into the room. Not a lot of water, mind you. Sure it would’ve looked nice and dramatic if water came pouring into her cell, but I figured the slow trickle was the better way to go. That would be a nice way to remind her there was nothing she could do to stop it or save herself if she had to sit and watch the room ever so slowly fill up to the point she could no longer breathe.

“I’m going to go play some Skyrim or something,” I said. “I’ll be back to check on you after I get around to finishing the first Dragonborn quest on the Throat of the World. You can sit there and hope I don’t get distracted by side quests for too long.”

Whatever she was about to say was cut off as I disabled the audio. She ran around and even hit the forcefield keeping her in the room, but not with the full force I was expecting.

I’d been sure she’d been playing at not having any of those strange powers she’d developed, but sure enough, they were gone. That was interesting.

Not interesting enough to save her ass though. No, I was going to find Fialux. I was going to get her to give up the coordinates of the planet she’d sent my girlfriend to, and in the meantime I was going to have a hell of a good time playing through Skyrim again while I tortured my new nemesis. 

I hadn’t ever done a punch cat build before. That sounded like fun.

I whistled a merry tune as I brought up my gaming rig on another monitor and started running through my favorite mods, keeping one eye on Dr. Lana the entire time.