Flying Squirrel: “White Squad and all remaining units, this is Mission Command. Converge on Tachyon Tower! Repeat: Converge on Tachyon Tower!”
When We Lose Our Delusions, We Must Not Lose the Lesson
Zooming every available city security camera I could, I tracked the shadow car as it rocketed up the hills to the plateau and then—astonishingly—straight up the side of the Tachyon Tower.
The black blot further silhouetted itself against the scoreboard-style full-color advertisements coursing the tapering heights of Tachyon Tower. Decelerating rapidly, slowing to a crawl just before it reached the tower’s apex, the car braved an upside-down ascent from the bottom of the giant faux-plasma globe, then inched up along the curvature until finally at the globe’s equator…
Switching angles to an interior camera, I gazed upon a vast window, on the other side of which the X-Racer stuck to the glass like the world’s largest refrigerator magnet.
Something extended from the underbelly of the vehicle, and then a neat circle etched itself in the glass, popping out a hole through which slid the cloaked L*A*Bster the Dark Fantastic, Chip Monk (in an altered version of his original costume—black tights instead of scaly green briefs), and the ever white-shirted, black-tied, and black-suited X-Man.
Kareem glanced back to the window. The X-Racer disappeared. Through the crisp circle in the window, wind instantly whipped their costumes and scattered brochures across the Sunday evening desertion of the observation deck. The Dark Fantastic raised his arm—
—and every hexagon scanning that gallery of the Tachyon Tower deck blinked not to null blue but total black.
I flicked at the controls to bring up another image, but the invading trio was completely blacked out.
Instantly another hexagon seized my attention: One floor upward, a wall shattered inward, and then a woman in shining armor landed on the debris of steel and reinforced concrete—Iron Lass, her black wings transmuting back into her cloak, her twin swords bared for battle. Scanning her surroundings, she dashed toward the vault door, on top of which a sign declared:
CONTAINMENT UNIT X FULLY AUTOMATED FACILITY EXTREME DANGER
ACCESS RESTRICTED TO SECURITY LEVEL INFRARED AND ABOVE
Shoving her swords into the massive metal mechanism, she was showered by sparks and instantly lit up by flashing bullet fire from a dozen angles and splashed by jets of a liquid spray that coated her and everything around her in icicles. Throbbing lights plunged the room into red and purple.
With her armor protecting her from whatever she didn’t deflect with the nearly invisible speed of her swords, Iron Lass leveled both blades at the firing zones, emitting blasts of her own frost and fire until the entire room was a chaos of steaming and flaming destruction.
Vanishing her swords, she pried her way through what was left of the vault door, and I lost visual contact with her—apparently certain wings of the Tachyon Tower had no cameras in them, or required some further pass-code or override for me to access them.
By the time I patched into Iron Lass’s cognistream—
What is this contraption? Like planetarium projectors—seven of them? They almost look like psionic inhibition siphons…but they’d be the largest ones ever built, all clustered and pointed at…is that a person inside that cube? Like a man sitting inside a washing machine! Is he asleep?
~~Ymir’s blood—can it really be?
“Destroyer?”
~~Withered, depleted, a human apple core left in the sun—eyes shuttering open, twin blue suns—
“Menton! But…but I kilt you!”
~~His mouth slowly working, chewing and swallowing, dryly forcing itself to work, as if the man’s emerging from a coma—
“Ah…Professor…Icegaard? Killed me, you say? Your delusions…of grandeur…are as cloying as ever…”
~~Grendelsmuter, Darkalfheimsdottir, to me!
“Surely…Professor…you have no need…of your weapons…against a desiccated corpse of a man…strapped into this…Torquemadan technology?”
~~Caution, Valkyrie—don’t gaze into his eyes for too long at a time—he murdered ten thousand mortals in a single night, feeding upon their minds—
~~Grendelsmuter’s silver light upon the butcher’s face makes him look even paler—
“How in Niflheim didt you get here, villain?”
“I believe, Professor Icegaard…I heard someone call it…Project…Paperclip? Transferred me on the CSV Odessa, if memory serves, from the Asteroid…I don’t know how long ago…You’ll forgive me…My mind’s not what it used to be—”
“Haff you been behindt all ziss? Destroying ze Asteroidt? Murtering Hawk Kink?”
“Me? Hnnnh…hnnnh…excuse my, my wheezing, Professor…it’s the only laugh I have left. I’m flattered, truly, but no…my glory days are long expired…Time to lift me on the pyre. These days…I’m nothing but a humble document…in the archives of power. To be filed, refiled, defiled at the whim of a higher power—”
“Zen be filedt in ze grafe by my power, monster, for now at last you vill die!”
~~Ach, sheisen! My sword—I’ve smashed one of the psionic inhibitors—his eyes—
“YOU WILL LET ME OUT OF THIS ABOMINATION, HNOSSI.”
~~Must…fight him…but I can’t…stop…myself…
“EXCELLENT WORK, WIELDING THOSE BLADES OF YOURS LIKE SCALPELS. THANK YOU FOR FREEING ME. AH…FORGIVE ME IF I DON’T STAND UP…AFTER SUCH A LENGTHY CONVALESCENCE, MY LEGS…YOU UNDERSTAND? AH, I CONFESS, THIS INTIMATE TIME WE’VE SPENT TOGETHER HERE HAS GIVEN ME NOTIONS. WOULD YOU BE A DEAR AND SHARE WITH ME YOUR HEART?”
~~No…my Grendelsmuter—away! Why won’t you away? Ah—no, not through my armor—NOT INTO MY—
Hnossi’s agony momentarily blinded me, shocking me right out of her cognistream. I dialed through every camera I could, then through every OM Meter feed I could locate, until I clicked on to Syndi’s.
“—How ya like me now?”
~~That’s it…sing it with me, asshole!
“How’s it feel being the one controlled, Menton? Oh, what’s wrong, legs weak? That’s okay, you dirty old bastard—dance! Dance anyway! You know this one? Hey! MEN-ton! LEAVE my MOM aLONE!”
~~That’s it, that’s it—right on her goddamn sword, you old fuck!…Look at that…hardly even bleeding. Like a mummified mental Hitler…
“Muzzer! Can you hear me?”
~~She’s so heavy, all this armor…Odin, please don’t let her be dead—
“Can you hear me?”
“Ah…my daughter…you’f…safedt me…?”
“Yes, Muzzer!”
“Such…a gut…girl—”
“Muzzer? MUZZER?”
“She’ll be all right, Syndi!”
~~Who the hell? Chip Monk, Dark Fantastic, and—
“Kareem! Oh, Kareem—why? Why’d you do all this? Why, Kareem? WHY?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“All those, those, those people,
