27. "Victory", chapter 22

“Bad, bad, BAD,” Borough remonstrated himself as he rubbed the back of his head. “Stabler,” the bouncer turned on his manacled companion, “why didn’t you see them coming?”

“I'm not all-seeing,” Stabler added with Stardust hovering above to the left of him. While no conventional manacles could hold her, keeping her insensible was simple enough despite her toxic immunity. Their once and current teammate Torchbearer was nowhere to be seen.

Only to open the cell door and appear ten seconds later with good news. “Congratulations!”

“You’re joking, right?” Rachel Benson in her three-piece suit did not look at Borough, Stabler, and Stardust with amusement.

“Apparently they’ve decided we’re ‘human enough’ to help them out.” Ah, there was the rub, Borough figured. The ‘Human Defense League’ was about as anti-super human as he was … when it suited their interests not to be. And the events over the world in the last several months – the random murder/suicides, the frequent quakes, and the increasingly frequent

white outs of reality made everyone edgy. And even the ongoing Summer Olympics, a poorly attended and viewed international competition since the pre-Rio fire eight years ago, wasn’t enough to distract people from their despair of going through the motions.

This was not lost on the Empress. Even with the gross national product of the Philippine Empire, the patchwork of nations assembled in the unusually rapid time of two years at her command, the leader and newly empowered master of billions through the Uniforce with the best advertising in creation could not drum up enthusiasm that just wasn’t there. Some high-minded souls on the International Olympic Committee thought that central Africa would have recovered enough that being awarded the Olympiad seven years ago – the first the “dark continent” had ever held – would bring together the rest of the continent to produce something truly glorious!

But no, Africa was not Europe and was not the United States, two unions that worked and endured to a point due to a shared cultural and historical identity. Not all the desire for gain and graft could be weeded out in a generation or two, or at least not diffused among a population that did not believe it could share equal responsibilities and reap equal rewards. Convincing an Egyptian and a Gambian and a Botswanan that they were all in this together was about as successful as sticking a gelatin mold to a wall.

Yet another clarion sounded as the medal ceremony was announced for women’s gymnastics.

“My Empress, My Empress!” One hunched-over woman was heard distinctly among the crowd that greeted the sovereign and sponsor of this Summer Olympics as she was borne on her litter through Brazzaville’s closed-down streets.

“Who is that?” The Empress turned her head to perceive who called her distinctly. Something familiar about that voice …

“Who, my Empress?” The uniformed servant did not dare to turn and face her loveliness.

The crowd grew louder and larger around her grand procession, but the Empress ordered them to halt as one person made her way through the crowd. With a wave of her hand she pushed the people back and allowed this especially devoted matron a clear path to her glory. Her steps were predicated with a shuffle, a skip, and a bow in succession. “You, dear one.” The Empress pointed and shouted, “Behold her example. She loves me, her Empress, without question and without reservation. She is mine.”

“I am yours, my Empress,” everyone who wasn’t her murmured as one.

“Come, child. Serve me,” she seethed as she licked her lips.

“Oh, my Empress, how you have blessed me,” the hidden-faced woman crackled as she raised herself a little with each shuffle, skip, and bow. When she was within arms’ reach by the ruler’s compulsion as well as the ruled’s intention, she shouted within earshot of a force-hushed audience, “No one has a higher opinion of you than I do,”

Opinion? The Empress raised her head at the quizzical tone.

She finished, “And in my opinion, you’re a despicable sewer rat!” She raised her hooded head back and knocked the top of her head into the Empress’ chin, kneed her in the groin, and pulled her toward her and disappeared.

Panic ensued, “Our Empress has been taken; find her!” Uniforce operatives armed and otherwise motioned through the crowd, making the processional insanity ever more chaotic, exactly what the heroes wanted.

“She’s done it,” Triptych relayed through his headset.

“But not for long,” Gadgetmaster cut in with Triptych’s double by his side. “Mariner and Cadmus are coordinating the evacuation.”

“Evacuation?” Beacon turned to her husband a she deflected a ricochet from several Uniforce soldiers and ran with him on the oval track.

“Count on the Empress to create martyrs,” Daniel Gallatin seemed to speak from experience. Gadgetmaster could almost smell it before anyone else reacted. On reflex, his extensions waved around him as though they sensed what he didn’t, which was very likely. Amid the battlefield that Congo Olympic Stadium was becoming, Daniel Gallatin sharpened his mind along with two extension tips and sent them hurling toward the lowest tier. The multiplex alloy tips at that speed would have poked through a human head like a melon, but all they met were stone.

Laughter seemed to permeate the air around Gadgetmaster, and he looked around as though he didn’t know the source, but he knew. Oh, he knew.

“Miasma.”

The smoke from the debris of battle seemed to coalesce into a woman’s form, but one that could never be described as shapely. Gadgetmaster retracted his extensions into his armbands and grunted, “I’ll deal with you later.”

“I don’t think so,” she spewed as two of her gaseous tendrils meandered behind him and tickled his breathing orifices. Their presence prompted him to send a gas mask from the neck of the sweater he wore to cover his face.

“Nice try, lady. Now get out of my way!” Gadgetmaster left no ambiguity as to what he’d do to Miasma herself if she didn’t.

“No way, flyboy. I’ve done some homework, and there’s one part of yourself you couldn’t seal up,” Miasma’s gaseous form then whirled faster than Gadgetmaster could see and disappeared toward his right arm. Gadgetmaster frantically searched with his sensors for Miasma as he worked his way toward the distant Beacon and Mariner. Then he felt it. He felt his eyelids getting heavy, and he wanted to cough, but the super-speed on the expelled air would knock back into him. So he held it like a straw in a hurricane – that is, not very well.

I’m in here, Gadget.

Daniel Gallatin didn’t as much hear Miasma as he felt her vibrate through his skull. It’s happening again, Gadgetmaster thought as he felt his steps waver. The extensions Daniel had built to make him a more effective hero had over the years tied themselves into his thought patterns, so anything he thought the extensions would do.

It was all too easy for someone to work through the extensions to him, which Miasma had done. Almost before he could think, Gadgetmaster tried to expel Miasma from his systems by flushing her out. But he couldn’t even take a breath of clean air, for at that moment Miasma was his breath!

Can’t exactly do an enema here, can you, Gadget? Miasma laughed and it made Gadgetmaster shake his head and wince with pain as his field of vision started to get black.

Beg me for your life, Gadget. The way the Hellhounds begged for theirs! For being professional assassins, the Hellhounds of the 1990s and early 2000s were rather squeamish when it came to their OWN lives. Not by Miasma’s hand entirely under the Empress’ direction, of course, but it was enough to watch Bloodshed, Firespray, Garrote, Renaissance, and Tantamount die at the hands of the heroes and further drive public opinion away from them. Then Miasma communicated one more thing to Gadgetmaster who on his knees was forcing himself to stay conscious:

The way Marble whimpered like a baby, Gadget, as she collapsed in my wake.

In the time he and the real Madeleine Ravenscroft had known each other as foes, friends, lovers, and spouses, Daniel Gallatin had NEVER known Marble to whimper. More likely she made them do the whimpering ... get her dander up, and she was ruthless! And so was he as Miasma relaxed her gaseous grip in anticipation of his demise.

“That’s,”

“Any last words?” Miasma resumed her semi-solidity and faced him with arrogant confidence. Gadgetmaster clutched his throat as he rose to look Miasma in her dark, wispy eyes. Two claws had snaked behind Miasma and risen over her head ready to pounce.

“That’s Gadgetmaster.” With no more effort than he’d take mentally to swat a fly, Gadgetmaster lowered the boom on where Miasma had been and devastated where she had alighted before resuming her mist form. But that’s exactly what he wanted her to do; in mid-rise the ends of Gadgetmaster’s extensions changed into hollow tubes that reached Miasma's sides and began to pull her form apart.

Miasma laughed inside Gadgetmaster’s head, but he could barely hear her mouth, “Is that the best you can do, Gadget-jerk?”

“Wait. It gets better.” A mental flex reversed the vacuum pulling on Miasma and pushed every part of her together and added something; indeed, thousands of somethings. Although Miasma may not have been the sharpest crayon in the box, it soon became evident that Gadgetmaster was just standing there while his extensions pelted her with ... fluff, really. That’s when the time-release microcapsules split all around and through Miasma’s form.

Without a word, she snaked a wisp toward Gadgetmaster only to have it freeze solid and collapse at his feet. The panic that crossed Miasma’s face was met by Gadgetmaster’s own laughter. “Out of character for you.”

The rest of Miasma coalesced into her human form and fell at Gadgetmaster’s feet as he retracted one extension and grabbed the block that had formed over her with the other and safely lowered her to the ground. “There you go. Wouldn’t want you shattering into a million little pieces, would I?”

“You’re saving me? Boy, are you dumb.”

“Not really,” Gadgetmaster dismissed her as he shrugged and retrieved his extension and fine-tuned his armband. “You know, liquid nitrogen turns steel to peanut brittle. I just released that into your substance, and the two gases mixed perfectly. Translated: you move, you die.”

Miasma figured out he was right by his serious mien. She was about to speak when Gadgetmaster put his fingers to his lips. “That would include moving your lips, nearly any sound you make ... I’m giving you one more shot than you gave any of your victims. Make it count.” Miasma remained frozen in the trap he’d set as she was escaping his others.

As he walked away bristling with his sensors and mark one eyeballs, Gadgetmaster heard a silent scream from the frozen block behind him. So it went.

“Broken and humbled?” The Empress in her private booth turned on Trapdoor regarding a conversation they’d had in Quezon City some months before.

“My Empresss,” he replied in his human-arachnid form, “how could they resssissst?”

“They’re the heroes,” she grunted as she broke his devoted grip to survey the battlefield and evacuation site. “And the heroes are stupid.” She turned to the stolid Memnon, “I’ll deal with this myself.” The Empress in her golden gown stepped through the glass shield that allowed her to survey the outdoor events and hovered in midair at just the height Mariner had reached.

She raised her hand just as everyone’s attention on the ground was directed toward the shining Empress who stood waiting from them. Everyone including the jet-powered Mariner saw her as she reached toward him in a pinching motion with her left hand and squeezed his head like an overripe melon, letting the armored flier fall to the ground with a resounding crash.

“KEITH!” His new bride Zenia had just shaken off the stupor Trapdoor’s countering teleportation had left her in. She rushed in and caught the Empress’ attention.

“I’m not done with you yet,” she seethed down at her and raised the track she was running on so she’d hit it with her head. “Sleep, Zenia. I’ll deal with these ingrates.” Deal with them she would – not enough to kill them, but to let the Superstars and Team Europa know they’d been in a fight.

Triptych turned and saw the robes whip around the Empress’ empowered yet still human form. He trailed off, “She does not look happy.”

“Can you blame me, Michel?” The Empress bellowed, “I tire of this game.”

“But I must say you’re committed,” Miss Twirl said as she bounded toward the Empress on the training field through the Uniforce patrol she’d engaged. “You need to BE committed!”

Melody divested of her Olympic tracksuit and in her battle uniform prepared to deliver a blow with the end of her baton that would have caved the Empress’ head in had it connected. Faster than Melody, Triptych, or the advancing Cadmus saw, the Empress raised her arm and blunted the downward momentum of the baton into her left hand. With her right, she released the force of the killing blow into the chest of Cadmus’ protruding body armor and knocked him to the field.

“That will leave a mark,” the Empress muttered as she retracted her right hand, blew on it, and raised Miss Twirl and her baton over her head. “IS THIS THE BEST YOU CAN DO? Send children against me?”

“Hey, she wanted first crack at you,” Triptych retorted. “Blaze, go!” He looked up and Noel Brand seemed clad in fire as she released white-hot beams from her wrist as she floated well out of the Empress’ reach. For a few moments, the Empress almost staggered before the onslaught around her.

“I don’t need to see,” the Empress seethed as she dropped Miss Twirl unconscious to the ground and reached out with her mind to the flying Blaze. She reached out and reversed her spatial perception so when Blaze thought she was achieving a higher vantage point by heading up, she was actually heading down to the ground. Fast.

“Nuts,” Image who was helping direct the stadium evacuation cried. “She’ll break her neck!”

“Not if I can help it,” Iris diverted her rainbow from the persons entering it who saw their road to freedom disappear and jumped into it when it appeared at her tiny feet. The other end appeared beneath Blaze and caught her in the time it took Generis to just avoid being torn to shreds by the mob.

“Cindy, get over here!”

Beacon still half-wearing her trainer’s coveralls scurried to Generis’ side from where she’d just met her husband. “What’s going on?”

“Hundreds of people and their way out of here’s gone!”

“But not forgotten,” Gadgetmaster pointed out as he saw the familiar rainbow alight between them and Iris materialize once more with a shocked Blaze babbling.

“Noel, pull it together!” Generis ran over in her energy state to shake her up.

Generis’ run brought her right where the Empress wanted her to be. Dodging two Uniforce patrols onrushing her and subsequently finding assault vehicles shorted out by Image’s passing before and through them, they became the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, and the Empress could control that.

The Empress glowing gold reached for Generis and grasped her in her energy form from next to Sergey who thought he was no longer physical and found he was. At least, he was to the Empress.

“YOU.” She took them apart –

“ARE.” She smashed them together –

And the world ended with a bang and a whimper.

Alas, poor Genevieve. Alas, poor Sergey. I knew them well.

From the quantum void between being and non-being, the Empress lamented the destruction of Generis and Image in the blast that wiped the Olympic Stadium off the map. Despite what she let her slaves and other attendants believe, Elisabeth Mercedes Petra’s passage and return through the world-engine’s portal did not make her all-knowing. Her anger at the annoyance the Superstars and their allies had become was something she dared not give free rein. Ah, the price of power.

Now that I have the power, the Empress voiced without her lips, the providers are no longer necessary. When she returned to her reality – and the universe of Earth 314 was now the Empress’ reality, for nothing happened there she didn’t allow – there would have to be some ... negotiations with the Esperians. It certainly wasn’t unreasonable for the other-dimensional aliens to want to settle here, but it’s because they were so alien that the Empress couldn’t allow them to stay. To lead the human race into its new millennium, her millennium, she had to maintain the appearance of humanity as the privileged class.

In the real world, of course, the only one worthy of privilege was the Empress herself. And that was as it should be, as it was always meant to be, as it always will be in this brave new world.

The embodiment of power the Empress had become surveyed her post-merging environment and felt some obligation to restore everyone and everything as it was. Well … not quite as it was. Now she could shape their minds, mold their minds, and make her choice truly the only one that mattered.

It is my right.

The Empress chuckled.

Yes.

It is MY right!

She raised her arms like some conjurer in the void and began her silent work.

It’s harder than it looks.

Zenia Sinclair raised her head from where she’d fallen and took in the lay of the land. The battle felt unreal, somehow, as the sudden shock and awe of two bodies coming together explosively sent everyone careening. Should have, anyway, but one gaze at the landscape said otherwise.

The entire population of the Olympic stadium was gone.

Not strewn over the seats.

Not dead on the ground

Gone.

“And they died gloriously,” one woman facing down to her announced, flanked by three lightly armed yet bodily armored Uniforce soldiers. “They died for their Empress.”

Zenia raged in her torn coveralls and with blood still running down her face, “You,” and before the soldiers reacted lunged for the source of all her misery and knocked her down. “You took my baby, you killed my husband, and,” Zenia stopped. She had raised her hands to claw the Empress’ eyes out but then stopped and waved her arms around her, “did this!”

“Yes,” the Empress admitted. “But did I force your friends to resist me?” Zenia looked back at her with a vacant stare. “Did I taunt them into testing me?” The Empress raised her right hand and it glowed with power. “No, Zenia, no; they chose to act against me, and against the wishes of the world.”

“Of the world?” The teleporter could barely contain her laughter, even punctuated by coughing.

“Of course,” the Empress consoled her, “now those wishes are MY wishes. And who in the world after this will want to resist me?” Zenia was about to say something but was cut off by the Empress raising her finger to her lips. “Slaves,” she called behind her, “take Zenia and heal her.” Four with a stretcher came and dragged the struggling super human onto it, and the Empress added. “Let her die and you will join her.”

“No, my Empress.” They all sounded as one and bowed as best they could before disappearing with their cargo. When they had, the Empress flexed her fingers and thought, Oh, the price for Zenia’s defiance will be far more public.

“DEATH TO THE TRAITORS! DEATH TO THE TRAITORS!” These and other like-minded shouts erupted from those who occupied the tiers of the restored Olympic Stadium. For one as acquainted now with matter and energy conversion as the Empress now was, restoring everyone who had been present just before Generis and Image had been brought together was so easy.

From the dais where the gold, silver, and bronze medalists would have stood, the Empress sat on a throne and her image along with her now-ornamental bodyguards was projected on the screens surrounding the field as well as in each of her new servants’ minds. Not a sound was heard, not a direction was followed that the Empress did not stage.

The Empress rose from her throne, stepped down to the ground, and in her shimmering gold gown raised her hand for celebration. The crowd went especially wild as on an unseen cue two dozen Uniforce troops, three of whom were recognizable later as the Filipino gold medalist in the discus throw, the Paraguayan silver medalist in the 200 meters, and the United Kingdom’s bronze medalist in the hammer throw, marched onto the track with two figures in stocks.

Two women, judging from the way they swayed with their burdens made to look like the wooden stocks of old. Battered and beaten, Zenia Sinclair and Martina Carey looked to the screen above one group of ceremony attendees and saw that they appeared as raging maniacs who’d been trampled underfoot by a tank.

Transwarp had been trying to pull her disappearing act ever since being left behind in the melee that originally destroyed the Olympic Stadium, but no go. She didn’t understand why – she was battered but not broken, wounded but not crushed; from some of what she understood between her time on the table in Rio de Janeiro and her training and testing sessions in Gadgetmaster and Beacon’s house, Zenia’s power was reliant on her focus.

Captivity in solitary tends to make one very focused. So what was wrong?

The woman known as Oxygen to her now but evidently by other names to her traveling companions was in no position to tell her anything. Oxygen didn’t even look like herself and seemed to fight more to look good than stay conscious. It hurt even more to look at her live next to her than filtered by the giant video screen they approached.

The processors turned Transwarp and Oxygen in their burdens to the roar of the crowd toward the Empress at her throne. The women in Uniforce regalia who’d been selected to remain closest to the two heroines knew their pressure points and forced them to their knees. Oxygen broke her concentration and spat on the tip of the boot nearest her. That ended up in her face.

“If you’re gonna kill us,” Oxygen hissed as blood dripped from her chin, “get on with it! Nobody lives forever.”

“But I do, fool,” the Empress boomed without her lips moving. “I WILL, and my slaves,” she bent down to bring this point home, “in generation after generation will know no purpose, no need beyond my own.” She rose to her feet and shone brighter than the overhead midsummer sun. “The destruction of Earth will enable me to restart creation right!”

“Destruction?” This came from Zenia Sinclair.

“Oh yes, child.” The Empress resumed her place seated and elaborated, “The world-engines themselves are helping the process along. All over the world, they bombard the planet’s core and take away more than they give.” She mimed looking at a wristwatch on her right arm, “That gives the citizens of this world two months to declare their loyalty to me … or die.”

“Bull!” Oxygen forced out. “We’re the good guys, we’ll stop you and save the world. Again!”

“Will you?” The Empress directed Oxygen’s guard to drive her face into the dirt at the foot of her podium. “The ‘good guys’ don’t seem too concerned about who they leave behind, even their own!” Then the Empress raised her voice so the entire assembled crowd could hear her with no apparent effort on her part. “WHO WILL SAVE YOU?”

“YOU ARE OUR EMPRESS! YOU WILL SAVE US!” Several times this rose from those assembled in the stadium as they clamored to their feet and stomped approval.

“WHAT OF THESE ‘HEROES’?”

“KILL THE TRAITORS! DEATH TO THE TRAITORS!”

“That’s why I never wanted to be a hero,” the Empress stated in her normal, lowered voice. “Such a high mortality rate.”

“Oh, wah,” Oxygen grit between her teeth before her guard was ready to knock them out. “We’re just the beginning.” She said that with more bravado than she felt.

“And the Empress saw them,” she dismissed her and Zenia from her sight with the slightest effort, “and they were seen no more. It was very good.” The Empress then raised her head to the accolades of her forces and the reconstructed attendants of the Olympics. Now, though they did not know it, her attendants. Slaves, by any other name.

She called to one at her side who wore the green headgear and orange leotard. “Clear a path for my subjects between the stadium and the airport. They must all arrive home safely.”

“Yes, my Empress.”

“I am done here.” The self-assured ruler of the world talked to herself. “The heroes who survive will be too few and too weak to oppose me, and those who know better,” she laughed, “won’t want to.” For effect, the Empress raised her lithe arms and rose into the air with a trail of fire around her bathing her body in the glow of the sun. Those who saw her rise – and once she’d reached above the highest tier, it was impossible not to notice her – pointed out and hailed her on cue. It was the wonder of the Empress, and She was Wonder.

Wind whipped the desert sand of the dune around Zenia and Phoebe’s limbs and seemed to stick to every exposed part of their bodies. Fortunately for the two women, their faces were the only exposed parts of their body. It was still a fight to keep from being blinded by the sun as well.

“How’d we get out here?” Zenia asked.

“With a wave of Her Majesty’s hand,” she retorted and nearly fell over. “She stuck us in the middle of a desert!”

“We don’t know that,” she tried to make heard over the wind.

“What?”

“We don’t … let’s move!” Zenia pointed to a wide expanse in front of them hidden by the dune that was now blowing away. That Oxygen understood.