Even better, they’d stepped inside Teleportation Operations. It said so on a black sign next to the door.

The first word that came to mind was “industrial.”

At least that’s the first word that came to mind when considering the room. It wasn’t the first thing I saw. The first words that came to mind based on what I was seeing were, “shattered power armor.”

More than 30 people in power armor with broken breastplates, helmets, legs, and smashed energy weapons lay on the floor around the room. Almost as many had stepped out of their armor and been stuck to the floor with goo.

They were mere decorations to the main event.

The room itself had to be as large as the main room in HQ—at least basketball court-sized. Banks of cabinets covered in black plastic ran down the walls, some of them with blinking lights.

From the cabling, I guessed that many had to be batteries. Teleportation would require support for frequent surges of demand.

Three metal circles, all around ten feet wide, stood near the front. Four more, each around 20 feet wide, ran in a line down the room behind them.

At the far end of the room was a bank of human-sized tubes on a platform spanning the entire wall. Liquid and hazy shapes floated within the see-through material of the tubes, whatever it was.

I had a bad feeling, I knew what it was, and a worse one when I realized what it wasn’t.

It wasn’t an Abominator birthing chamber. The design appeared similar, but instead of the Abominators’ blue-green alloy, the metal was grey except when it had been painted black.

Dr. Mind, possibly in cooperation with Rook, had recreated the system with our own technology. I’d seen a similar machine in Rook’s base, but that one had been much smaller.

As I watched, Izzy said, “Oh, no.”

Her camera followed her gaze, zooming in, showing a similar skull to the one we’d just fought and an open tube. A spider-like machine with a brain in the center climbed upward inside the tube.

Dr. Mind had said that he’d cloned himself before our grandparents killed him the first time.

It didn’t take a genius to guess that it was heading for the skull, and then we’d be right back to where we were a few minutes before.

Izzy screamed. The main impact centered on the skull, cracking it and shattering the tube that the brain had been inside. Even when she was trying to narrow the effect of the blast, her voice wasn’t a precise weapon.

I wasn’t sure how hard she was trying to narrow the blast either. Most of the tubes on either side broke along with the one Dr. Mind’s clone had used. Plus, the concrete wall behind it cracked.

I could only guess what the fluid leaking out of the machine was. Human amniotic fluid was basically baby pee. The Abominators or Dr. Mind would have come up with something more effective, wouldn’t they?

Either way, the brain spider thing had fallen as she screamed, landing in the shattered tube’s remaining fluid and sinking to the bottom. Either because of mechanical failure or the brain’s death, it didn’t move again.

“That’s creepy,” Jaclyn said. “Why in the world didn’t Dr. Mind clone himself a body?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he was always a disembodied brain? Maybe he enjoyed the flexibility of being able to swap into whichever body was convenient? There are some advantages.”

“Don’t even think of it, Rocket,” Cassie said, “I don’t think Night Cat’s into disembodied brains.”

Ignoring Cassie’s statement, Izzy said, “It’s dead. I think my scream killed it. You won’t be able to see this through the camera, but nothing else is growing in those tanks. I know there were wispy shapes, but I don’t think they were alive.”

“The shapes were the feeding and waste filtration apparatus,” Cassie said, her tone matter-of-fact.

Vaughn asked, “How do you know that?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cassie shrug. “I’ve connected to a couple of those with my Citizen’s Mark now.”

“Good,” Izzy said, “I didn’t want to kill more than I had to… But there’s one more thing I noticed. We’re the only ones in this section of the building now. They were sending more troops, but when Captain Commando killed Dr. Mind, they stopped. They even recalled the Cabal soldiers that were fighting us.”

I checked my implant and she was right. The fight had started with some Cabal soldiers and a few people who might have been powered, but even before Cassie shot Dr. Mind, they’d begun to leave. It had started when Cassie hit one of the Cabal soldiers with her gun, but they’d exited by the time we’d knocked out all of the force fields.

Letting go of my focus on Izzy’s camera, I found myself standing at the end of the Control Center in front of Brian Hart, Edward Branch, and a host of guards, all of whom were staring in the direction of Teleportation Operations.

Cassie and Vaughn were walking toward me.

Over my implant, Izzy said, “Accelerando thinks we should smash the teleportation circles. I think she’s right. We’re going to do it.”

Part of me wanted to ask them to leave a small one, but I couldn’t ask them to figuratively leave the back door open. So, I didn’t, and the screech of tearing metal rent the air along with clangs, clanks, and crashes.

I looked over at Brian, “Are there any more birthing chambers and Dr. Mind clones?”

Brian blinked. “Do you think there might be more than one?”

I held up my hands, “I don’t know. I don’t live here. You worked for the guy.”

Brian said, “I avoided the guy. He was a sociopathic brain in a floating giant skull who could burn me to death.”

Night Commander Edward Branch looked up from the goo strands that held him. “Dr. Mind was a control freak. He wouldn’t have risked releasing two copies of himself. If there is another, it’s somewhere else in the world.”

Cassie looked him up and down, “I hope not.”

As she did, the skull leveled out as the top half hit the floor, landing on a burning cubicle wall. Part of me marveled that any part of the skull was working, but I hadn’t gotten a good enough look after she’d cut it.

She’d cut it diagonally from one side of the bottom upward, revealing Dr. Mind, but not slicing into him—much. She’d cut into the outside that the brain’s tendrils extended into, but not the main body of it. While she’d cut into the ceramic container at the center of the skull, destroying Dr. Mind’s primary life support environment and many of the skull’s internal systems with it, Dr. Mind still lived.

Worse, some portion of the skull’s offensive systems worked because the mouth had begun to glow greenish-white, gathering energy to finish Cassie off.

That wasn’t an assumption either. Dr. Mind’s PA buzzed with static, but he half-shouted, half-gargled his way through saying, “Die!”

I, meanwhile, had fired off a killbot and narrowcast my sonics into the open skull from above, hoping a new vulnerability had opened up.

Cassie wasn’t waiting for rescue. She’d jumped sideways, pulling her gun around and aiming it toward the brain in the middle. Dr. Mind didn’t fail to notice this, firing a beam from the mouth before the skull even fully turned toward her.

Likely damaged, the mouth’s beam couldn’t seem to point in a straight line anymore, spraying instead of generating a continuous beam, and starting fires and melting every cubicle within thirty feet.

As the remaining guards in that section tried to roll away despite Camille’s gravity well, Cassie locked in. Her gun fired, its beam as straight and precise as Dr. Mind’s no longer could be.

Before my killbot reached its target, her beam turned Dr. Mind’s brain into a greasy pile of ashes.

Dr. Mind’s beam stopped as the skull’s metal melted, the ceramic blackened and shattered, and the remains fell to the ground.

“Asshole,” Cassie muttered over the group channel as I recalled the killbot.

She shook her head and then stared, running over to the spot where she’d cut into Dr. Mind’s skull and pulling out a section of blade from the rubble. Slipping it into the sword’s scabbard, she grabbed the hilt and repeated the move, testing if it would stay in place.

It clicked in, and she asked me, “Can you fix it?”

Replying through my implant, I said, “Not now, but I should be able to at home. Worst case scenario, I can make a new one.”

“I’d like this one,” Cassie said, “but whatever. We can worry about that when we get home.”

She turned around, giving the room a once-over. She wasn’t alone. I hadn’t been paying attention to anything other than Dr. Mind, either.

A tall, silver-haired man with a long scar on his cheek held his hands in the air, shouting, “We surrender,” over his own personal PA, a triangular protrusion on the breastplate of his black uniform—Rook’s design. It appeared to have been reverse-engineered to imitate one of Grandpa’s.

My implant labeled him as “Edward Alan Branch, Night Commander of the Nine’s Island Command Center.” It added, “Mercenary. Expelled from the French Foreign Legion. Reads romance novels. Facebook account currently controlled by Russian botnet.”

Branch, whoever he was, was older. I supposed he might not be very savvy on social media.

Via implant, Haley asked, “Can I use everyone’s PAs?”

“Sure.” I gave her control.

Her voice boomed out across the room, “Everyone who wants to surrender should drop your weapons, all of them, and stand next to the walls.”

To our implant channel, she added, “Gravitystar, let them go.”

Camille let out a sigh and said, “I’ll be happy to.”

Everyone dropped their weapons and migrated to the walls on either side of the room without complaint. They didn’t complain when we stuck them to the walls with goo either, not even Night Commander Edward Branch.

He did look down at the streams of gray goo and frown, but that wasn’t much of a reaction. When he looked up, he asked, “How long does it last?”

“An hour or more,” I said, “but it depends on many different factors. It could be as many as five. I tweaked the formula for extra time before we went in. I don’t know how much.”

Branch continued to frown, but said, “As long as we don’t starve or die in a fire, we’ll be fine then.”

Noting that the fires around Dr. Mind’s skull had gone out, I said, “Unless you’re already starving, I wouldn’t worry.”

Branch shook his head. Next to him, a smaller, overweight man looked down at the ground. Despite the ominous, black, “legion of evil”-style armor, he didn’t have the intimidating presence you’d expect. It wasn’t the weight either. It was the slouching.

My implant labeled him, “Brian Hart. Assistant Director of Teleportation Operations. Plays MMORPGs more than 20 hours a week. Attempting to become an MMORPG influencer. Has 27 subscribers.”

Hal had said pressing them on their weak points might give us a tactical advantage, but pointing out his subscriber numbers just seemed mean—not to mention unnecessary as it turned out. He started talking on his own.

Looking up at me, he said, “I didn’t know what I was signing up for. I don’t want to go to jail. I’ll tell you anything. How about this? Look in the back of the teleportation room. You wanted to kill Dr. Mind, right? You’d better look back there.”

She was. According to her suit’s stats, her leg had grown back.

“Now would work,” Tara said.

Still camouflaged, I poked my head up, pointing my arm at Dr. Mind, testing his shield. My sonics ran through various frequencies at a low volume, checking which were the most resonant.

Then I passed those frequencies to everyone’s PAs and even my spare sonic on Julie’s costume. I pushed up the volume to the maximum.

As it turned out, Dr. Mind’s shield wasn’t the only object in the room vulnerable to those frequencies. Mugs, monitors, and even some of the giant wall screens shattered. Not far from me, a mug labeled “World’s Greatest Dad” blew apart. The pieces, which, like me, were in Camille’s high gravity zone, hit the floor, breaking into even smaller chunks.

I’d have felt bad, but if Dad worked for the Nine, it was a questionable sentiment.

Over the group channel, Jaclyn said, “Yes!”

I wondered why, and my implant gave me a summarized version of Izzy, Jaclyn, and Tiger’s fight with Dr. Mind’s troop of green, armored guards. I’d noticed it wasn’t going as easily as I would have expected, but I had no time to pay attention to why.

The green glow on their armor was a green force field. They could take a punch from Izzy or Jaclyn and survive. In fact, they’d been striking back with a solid punch of their own or a lower-power version of Dr. Mind’s blasts.

I wondered if I’d also see a bit of Artificer tech powering the guards’ armor when I had time to look.

The armor alone didn’t explain their coordination, though. The guards moved like a single organism, always firing, charging or retreating with coordinated moves that couldn’t have been planned.

Neither Jaclyn, Izzy, nor Tiger was in immediate danger, but their suits were already using backup material for repairs.

When the PAs started blasting, though, all of their force fields dropped, a coordinated move they didn’t expect. In that moment, the fight changed. Jaclyn and Izzy began to one-shot their attackers, a punch at a time.

As for Tiger, we’d trained him to fight in coordination with us, but back on Hideaway, his kind hunted dinosaur-sized creatures in packs.

It wasn’t pretty.

In the middle of one of their coordinated moves, one where they’d scattered and aimed their beams at Jaclyn and Izzy, Tiger barreled through the group, still invisible, veering left and right to knock more over, and making it to the end of the group. There, he grabbed the last one in his mouth and dragged him into a side hall.

When he reappeared a moment later, he grabbed the next nearest by the neck, giving a quick shake that left the guard’s limbs limp and dangling.

Jaclyn, meanwhile, had carved out her own path of destruction, one punch at a time, leaving a line of unmoving suits of armor. Izzy in turn, had targeted the rest with a sonic blast of her own. She could have taken out the wall, but she narrowed her attack, leaving shattered faceplates and cracks in their armor.

For all the destruction, it was within our terms of engagement for this fight. Where possible, we’d leave people alive but restrained. For anyone who had a realistic chance of hurting one of us, the important thing was to get them out of the fight, however that worked best.

We’d already lost one of our own in the last few days.

While this was going on, I wasn’t paying as much attention to them as I was to Dr. Mind. His shield wobbled, and I tried to think of ways to pour more energy into it, adjusting everyone’s sonic attacks to attack all of the same spots.

We weren’t all on the same side of the room or even facing the same direction, but I did what I could.

It seemed to be working too, because while the shield didn’t break, the wobbles began to remind me of waves on a stormy lake.

“Portal,” Tara said, “now.”

Dr. Mind, meanwhile, had stopped turning his skull, facing directly in my direction.

“There you are,” he said, and the eyes and mouth of the skull began to glow.

I didn’t stay there. I shot upward using the rockets. Whatever means he’d used to triangulate where I was, it would be harder for him to hit if I moved.

I continued to point my sonics at him, though.

The blast of greenish-white energy passed below me, near enough that I could feel the heat through my boots and see the repair notifications begin.

On the bright side, I still had feet.

Cassie, though, had appeared underneath him, her father’s sword in her hands. I don’t know if it could have cut through Dr. Mind’s shield before, but in this moment, it was the last straw.

The blade’s monomolecular edge sliced through the force field, and it popped like a balloon, releasing the energy that had kept the field together.

I could see alerts from Cassie’s armor as the heat hit. It wasn’t enough to kill her, but I could tell from how her vitals spiked that she felt it.

The blast from the cut blew apart the cubicle below Dr. Mind, setting it on fire.

Cassie’s sword continued through, into the skull, even as the blade glowed red.

Dr. Mind’s skull began to turn away from me and toward Cassie, but then it fell, dividing into two pieces, revealing Dr. Mind, such as he was.

No longer simply a brain in a jar, this was a brain in a ceramic container filled with fluids, the brain no longer shaped to fit inside a human skull. This extended outward into tubes that connected to wires and machines that might have been flesh and bone, but also might have been ceramic.

Cassie jumped back, landing on her feet and avoiding a hit from either of the separated pieces as well as the small fire.

Through all that, she hadn’t lost the sword and held it in her hands, pointing it toward Dr. Mind.

I noticed at about the same time she did (to judge from her downward glance) that it was missing three-quarters of the blade.

Dr. Mind chuckled. “Syndicate L provides many services to supervillains, but you must know that. They didn’t provide me with that cave. Dr. Madness tipped me off that it existed. He was a kind man in his way.”

The original Captain Commando had been held captive and tortured on his way to the cave. He might have argued that point, but I only said, “His grandchildren seem nice.”

They were. Mr. Madness wasn’t a bad guy when he wasn’t under the influence of Evil Beatnik. He’d sent the team a Christmas card and an apology. According to his sister, who was a Probationer like Dr. Transylvania, he’d recently finished his doctorate in chemical engineering.

That only worried me a little.

“Aren’t they?” Dr. Mind replied, but continued, “You have my notes. Where are they?”

“They’re not on me if that’s what you’re thinking, but I’ve read them and I could repeat them word for word right now if you wanted—which means you can’t kill me, right? Now, who was Subject 2a? Maybe I can tell what you wrote.”

Over the team channel, Cassie said, “Dad thought you’d have them.”

“You could have asked,” I shot back. “I’d have told you.”

“Like I’m going to understand them,” Cassie said, “but if you can get him to tell you who the X chromosome comes from, I’d love that. Meanwhile, I’ve got an idea for how to take him out. Sonics worked on Abominator force fields back on Hideaway. See if you can shatter them. Then Portal can teleport me next to him and I’ll finish what Dad started.”

From the wall we entered from, protected by several copies of Jenny, all of them firing paralysis rays at the guards. Brooke used her implant to say, “Tell me when.”

Then she shot one of the Nine’s guards with a gun that had formed out of her silver suit. The guard went down. That was new. She must have unlocked additional features of her Xiniti suit since I’d last seen her.

“I’ll tell you when,” Tara said. She wasn’t far from Brooke, aiming a stream from her goo gun at a group of guards.

“Fine with me,” Cassie peered over the cubicle wall she’d been hiding behind. “Get me in close enough to use my sword.”

All of that had taken place at the speed of thought. Dr. Mind couldn’t have guessed how much we were talking behind his back. At least he shouldn’t be able to. Given the glowing bit of Artificer power in his skull, I couldn’t assume breaking into our conversation was impossible.

My implant assured me that it was nearly impossible. Xiniti implant encryption had never been broken, so far as they knew.

And Dr. Mind gave no sign that he had, turning as if scanning the area as I talked. “What is this fixation you have over a minor detail?”

“Curiosity,” I said, raising my voice as if I were excited. “You’re one of the greatest minds on Earth, aren’t you? You’ve got to have a reason for choosing whoever that was. I mean, sure. I read the notes. You chose her because her X chromosome didn’t include any damaging recessive genes that matched Cap’s, but where’d you get the subject? Some random lab assistant? A captured superhero? Sample DNA that you happened to have around? Because I can tell you it worked out. She’s been more effective than any of the Cap clones you’ve sent after us. She might be an improvement over the original.”

I’d shown the notes to Dr. Nation when I was in the Stapledon program. I wasn’t an expert in superhero genetics, but he was. That had been his observation.

It didn’t change the fact that I was now flattering a dead Nazi who’d cloned his brain and placed it in a giant, floating, green skull, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Is she?” Dr. Mind’s breathless reply reminded me of a new parent when you’d complimented their baby.

I doubted that he cared about her except that she reflected well on him, but I supposed there were parents like that, too.

“I made a good choice,” he said. “You noticed how I avoided damaging recessive traits, but did you notice how I strengthened what she already had? The Abominators created the Dominators and used them to control their human slaves. Captain Commando had every trait except the commanding voice, but made up for it with increased strength and the ability to regenerate. I strengthened her genetic profile using an X chromosome from one of our Dominators—Colette. I believe she died in your custody.”

Then he started laughing.

I flashed back to my memories of Colette, the Dominator who’d set up Jody’s suicide command. We’d fought her in that factory the Nine created for powered armor, using my cousin Ana’s talents to design it. She’d warped Armory from superhero to amoral armorer for anyone with money. She’d sunk commands into Bullet and used him to give the Nine access to the Coffeeshop Illuminati, who’d later been dispatched to help Major Justice destroy us.

She hadn’t even gotten to see that last bit because after she’d told us too much, her own suicide command kicked in. She’d died in a Defenders’ holding cell.

“Oh,” Cassie’s clipped tone interrupted my thoughts. “I guess we can kill him now.”

As it fell, though, magical symbols appeared in the air. I recognized a few. Everyone in Stapledon had had to take a survey course in magic and magical creatures. While I couldn’t read many, I recognized the one for blood and felt a burst of energy.

That worried me. I couldn’t feel magic. Anything I could feel had to be Artificer-related.

As Dr. Mind laughed, Amy said, “The spear’s fine, but the wards built into the skull are amazing. They’re also disturbing. You know how I accidentally worked in some ‘essence of Artificer’ into the Rocket’s gem when we fought The Thing That Sucked? The past Bloodmaidens think there’s some of it wrapped up in his wards. I think they’re right.”

“I’m sensing something too,” I said and concentrated.

The moment I did, the room changed—not completely, but enough.

Everything else was still there: the rows of cubicles, people in ominous black uniforms firing from behind them, others held to the ground by gravity, our team taking down one group of guards after another even as more arrived, but the skull’s glow covered the middle of the room.

There are no English words for the color, and probably no human words, but I saw it. It emanated from Dr. Mind’s skull, and the magical symbols I’d seen when Amy’s spear hit hung around him. Could he be using an Artificer-created device to power the magic?

It wasn’t impossible. Lee had told me that the Destroy faction had seeded the multiverse with both magic and technology.

I noticed one more detail. A spot in the lower middle of the skull glowed white hot. Technically, it was probably room temperature. My heat sensors weren’t detecting anything abnormal, but in terms of Artificer stuff, he had something.

Dr. Mind shouted, “Was that a blood magic user? I’ve read so much about blood magic, but only a few know it well, and they’re vampires. We’re not getting along with vampires these days. So, I couldn’t find any major texts. What I did find makes me crave more. Bloodmaiden, if you call off this attack and take me as a student, you’ll be rewarded.”

Over our implant channel, Rachel asked, “Do you see what I see?”

“The glowing thing?” I asked.

Over the implant channel, Amy said, “You can see that too?”

“No reply?” Dr. Mind asked, turning toward where the spear had come from. “A pity,” he added.

Then his eyes and mouth burned with greenish-white energy, and a beam extended across the room, this time above the cubicles, but toward where Izzy and Jaclyn fought the people in powered armor.

It didn’t hit either of them, but it was a near thing. Izzy had lifted from the ground because her opponents surged forward at the perfect moment—if they’d wanted to drive her into the beam.

Overflow from Daniel’s panic made it through our connection as he told Izzy, “Left!” She listened without question, twisting to the left and avoiding Dr. Mind’s attack.

“Bloodmaiden?” Haley asked.

“I’m okay. I already moved,” Amy said.

“We need to end this,” Haley said.

“Let’s see if this works,” Cassie said, firing her gun.

A brilliant white beam lanced toward Dr. Mind, glittering in the air. It didn’t hit, though. A golden force shield appeared around him, sparking and wavering as Cassie’s beam hit.

For a moment, I thought it might fall. It didn’t, but only because the skull whipped around more quickly than I’d have thought and burned a path through the cubicles toward the row where Cassie stood.

She’d flipped her camouflage back on. She wasn’t stupid. Given the strength of Dr. Mind’s weaponry, her healing wouldn’t be enough for a direct hit—assuming he could hit. In theory, even though we could see her outline in our HUDs, Dr. Mind couldn’t. Mr. Sparkles’ beam was a less-than-subtle hint at her location, and he shot straight at her.

Her vitals went crazy in my HUD, reminding me of what I’d seen when Travis died. Her vitals didn’t end, though. They calmed down, but her heart continued beating as hard as it might if she were exercising.

At the same time, her armor had reported losing all systems starting from her left knee down. It also reported repairs in process.

Marcus spoke via his implant, “I pulled her sideways. She’s out of danger for now. Well, until he decides to burn down this entire side of the room.”

“Thanks,” Cassie said. “Mind got half of my left leg. It’s growing back, but we’re going to have to do better than throwing ourselves at him. Any ideas?”

Dr. Mind didn’t burn down that entire side of the room. Instead, he faced loosely in the direction of where Cassie had been. “Clone 1237! Welcome home, my dear. I’d expected you’d try to kill me someday, but it’s been a long wait. I’m so happy to see that you’ve mastered using the Citizen’s Mark. I’d rather you’d used it in our service, but it validates my approach. Unfortunately, I lost my notes when your original killed my original. I can’t replicate them. Still, I don’t need much of you to try again.”

Using everyone’s PAs, I said, “Who’s Subject 2a? The one who donated Cap’s second X chromosome?”

The skull whirled around to look where he’d last seen me.

“Rocket,” he said. “You’ve been reading my notes.”

“I’m okay,” I said, still feeling the heat.

“For two more hits,” she said, because she could check my vitals and armor stats just like everyone else could. With our implant-to-armor connection, all we had to do was think about it, and we knew.

“And no one else has as much armor on as you do,” she said. “We need to take it down now.”

My armor noted that repairs were in process and that it was increasing protection against energy weapons. That was nice to see. It was a recent update, and I’d been worried it might not kick in soon enough when I needed it.

“Switching to the main channel,” she said before I could reply.

I pulled myself up, but didn’t stand. The last thing I needed was for Green Skull Guy (he hadn’t introduced himself) to shoot at my head.

Besides, I didn’t need to stand up. I could see through everybody’s cameras and my spybots.

Green Skull Guy wasn’t firing. Even though we were cutting down the Nine’s troops, he stared in my direction, though not precisely where I was. I’d slid further than either of us expected, and I could feel the gravity. Flipping on my suit’s gravitics countered it, but that didn’t solve the problem.

He appeared to be searching for me, specifically, an idea confirmed when he spoke.

“Come out, Rocket. Let’s talk.”

It was tempting in the sense that he might actually talk, and also because if I didn’t, he seemed like the kind of person who’d do the “I’m going to kill your friends until you do what I want,” thing.

“Don’t,” Haley said over our private implant channel. Over the group channel, she said, “He can kill any one of us. We need to take him down. Ghost, Cap, Bloodmaiden, this one’s for you.”

“Hesitant?” Green Skull Guy continued. “I understand. You did a phenomenal job imitating Syndicate L, but I’ve been following your actions for years now. I’ve seen your technology evolve. You’re doing an excellent job building on the first Rocket’s work. Would I be correct in guessing you’re a grandchild, or are you a great-grandchild?”

Annoying that he’d guessed that easily, but I supposed if you focused on my technology improvements, you’d catch on once you saw us fight in here.

To the group chat, I said, “I’ll distract him.”

Even as Haley said, “No,” I’d already taken control of the PAs on everyone’s suits, making them extra loud for intimidation value.

The Nine’s guards cringed, and some held their hands over their ears as I talked, “I guess the deception was a waste of time, but it seemed worth a shot.”

“No,” the skull said, “it was effective. I must have been the only one on the island who recognized your little group. I’m particularly curious as to where Captain Commando is, or as I think of her, Clone 1237. You wouldn’t recognize me, but before I decided to focus on research, the public called me Dr. Mind.”

Over the group implant channel, Cassie said, “I thought he was dead!”

“Me, too,” I replied.

Alex said, “Brazil, right?”

No one else managed more than a grunt or two because, you know, they were fighting people.

Through everyone’s PAs (except for Rachel, Cassie, or Amy), I said, “Aren’t you dead?”

He laughed, and as he did, it struck me that he sounded off, though I couldn’t place how. “Of course I’m dead. The Heroes’ League killed me, as they did when they wanted to. You didn’t hear about that in the news, did you? But I’m not a master of the sciences for nothing, am I? I backed myself up, as you children say now. And do you know what? I’ve upgraded my jar to something even better.”

I’d never heard the full story of the last official mission of the Heroes’ League—destroying Dr. Mind’s lab and army of Captain Commando clones. They’d also brought back a toddler-aged girl, a gender-swapped clone Dr. Mind had created for a special purpose, and they didn’t know what it was.

Knowing Cassie’s ability to control Abominator devices, we had ideas.

I was about to ask Dr. Mind another question, thinking that people were taking their own sweet time on this, when Dr. Mind twisted his skull around and blasted away, burning a line of destruction through the middle of cubicle land, disintegrating at least seven of the Nine’s guards,  leaving a trail of melted metal, and several small fires.

“Crap,” Rachel said, “he almost got me. He’s running an anti-phase device. I felt myself phasing in when I got close.”

She wasn’t visible and wasn’t dead, but “crap” was right.

Dr. Mind, meanwhile, was still laughing. “It’s like old times. I can’t even tell you how often Ghostwoman tried that trick. I’m prepared now, and that’s not all I’m prepared for. I think ahead. You won’t surprise me.”

Amy’s voice sounded over the group channel, “I’m in position. Let’s find out.”

I couldn’t see Amy or the ruby glow of the gem on her black armor, but I did see the Bloodspear flying toward Dr. Mind’s glowing, green skull.

I’d started with the people next to the far wall because of the high potential ratio of stuck people to goobot fired. It wasn’t a bad decision either. I covered more than 20 people in my version of Silly String before anyone on the far wall realized what was going on.

When they did realize it, they began moving away from the wall and running to the right—a reasonable move, given that I’d started from the left.

I wasn’t the only one in the room, though, and Tara had continued to give orders.

“Gravitystar, hold down the center of the room as far out as you can.”

With that command, bodies fell in a circle with a roughly 20-foot radius, in several cases pulling desktop computers off the desk on top of people who appeared to be wearing helmets that connected to the computers with thick cables.

It didn’t stop the people who’d been heading to the left from going that way, but the next one made it harder.

“Voice, Storm King, Mystic, Red Hex, and the Power, take down people in the outside hallways,” Tara said, grunting as she hit the ground herself.

The wall directly underneath our entrance held the largest cluster of guards, but they were under direct assault from those of us whose strength lay in hand-to-hand.

That’s to say they faced two practically invisible opponents in the form of Tiger, our armored giant dog, and Rachel, who was using a paralysis gun I’d designed for her.

They didn’t do any better at avoiding paralysis than being knocked over as Tiger bounded through the group toward where Jaclyn and Izzy fought the people in bright green powered armor.

The fact that Tiger didn’t stay didn’t weaken our group on the ground there at all. They already had Tara, multiple Jennys, Dayton, Rod (in his troll body), Alex, Cassie, Amy, Sydney, and Marcus. In short, it was a bad day to be a minion.

How bad? Well, the big picture went like this: gravity in the middle of the room was too high for a normal person to do anything more than crawl, and even if it grew weaker the further out you went, it took work to get anywhere.

Meanwhile, the troops on the side where we entered were falling to our best hand-to-hand fighters, the troops on my side were becoming stuck in goo, and the other two sides faced lightning, telekinetic blasts, orders they couldn’t ignore, and being hit by random pieces of metallic office equipment.

Jaclyn and Izzy weren’t finding the people in green powered armor easy, but on the whole, the opposition was falling more quickly than new people were coming through the doors and joining the fight.

Anyone who began to enter the room risked being zapped. Anyone inside who wanted to move had to run down or climb over rows of cubicles, but only on the edges, or they’d get caught in gravity.

Mind you, I was only peripherally aware of it. I had my stuff to deal with. About half of the people I hadn’t zapped with goobots were running for the right hallway (relative to where we entered the room). The rest were taking cover in the cubicles and aiming at me.

“I’ll take the cubicles,” Haley told me via implant.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her jump on top of the nearest cubicle, drop a goo grenade into a cubicle where five guards pointed their weapons at me. Then she jumped fifteen feet into the next cluster, a blur of claws, fists, and feet. I didn’t see many details, but I did see her cut through a rifle with her claws and throw two people out of the cubicle. They hit a group of goo-splattered soldiers and stuck to them.

When we started, I might have felt compelled to watch how she was doing out of the corner of my eye, but at this point, I knew better. She outclassed them.

I also knew that she’d say something if she needed help, and if she didn’t, Hal would.

Besides, for all I knew, she might have to help me. She already was. Every person in the cubicles that she took out was one less firing at me. The rest of them were. Bullets, beams, and even a grenade (a questionable choice in your base) flew toward me, some hitting with no real damage, others hitting the wall behind me, and somehow I swatted the grenade out of the air into the hallway below me.

No one threw grenades after that.

Despite the hail of fire, I still blasted away at my own targets, the retreating guards, aiming for the ones in front so that the blast of goo stopped the front in its tracks as the ones in the back ran into it from behind, sticking to the group in front.

Then I fired at the ones in back, turning the group into a goo sandwich, a clot of people at the corner, making that spot impassible without crawling over the cubicle next to it.

Deciding to save some goobots for later, I turned around, firing paralysis rays from my suit at the stragglers hiding in the nearest cubicles. Haley wouldn’t mind if I took out a few of hers.

I got off a few shots, but as the guards began to fall, I noticed something green appearing in the air—teleporting in. My first impression was of a glowing green skull the size of a human being, the same color as the Alienware-style powered armor.

My next impression was of a burning green light emitting from the skull’s mouth, or was it eyes? Either way, I could see nothing else but the light, and it hurt. The chest section of the Rocket suit lost 40% of its protection in that one shot, and I dropped into cubicle land, smashing into the side of a row.

It wasn’t a controlled drop either, coming more out of surprise than “evasive action.” I slid across the floor, feeling the gravity increase, but at least I was out of the skull’s direct view.

Jaclyn swerved with her, their arms a blur, leaving a hole wide enough for four of us to jump through at a time—which they did the moment they were done. We followed, all of us seemingly in Syndicate L’s armor, some flying, others dropping at the safe speeds that my anti-gravity tech allowed.

Haley didn’t bother, using my goo gun tech to fire off a line and swing down to the floor.

And where were we? A massive room that reminded me of the main room of HQ back home. It shared in common being a control center with giant TV screens on the walls, more visible concrete than most interior designers would recommend outside of prisons and factories, and thirty-foot-plus ceilings.

They differed in that our place included a dark red carpet in spots and included the original League’s trophies. Their walls included sections of white plaster over the concrete, and they’d covered every part of the floor with rows of cubicles.

One of the chunks of wall that Izzy or Jaclyn knocked out had smashed what appeared to be a combination network printer, fax, and copier. I wondered who maintained it. Did the Nine have a corps of Evil Copier Repairmen, or was there a company out there that specialized in servicing supervillain bases? Did they call Rook? I’d gotten the impression that he might be high up in the Nine, so that seemed unlikely.

At about the same time, I also noticed our opposition. They were still running into the room, but that was as anticipated. According to Hal’s analysis of our original plan, we should now be fighting the building’s guards, the guards associated with protecting the teleportation system, and anyone who’d retreated from the outside.

That last group could include some wildcards, but almost certainly a few Cabal soldiers and mind-controlled clones of heroes.

Hal’s profile of Magnus suggested that Magnus would be calling the most powerful people on the island to protect himself, given how the battle outside was going—which could make for an easier fight now, but might not later.

Hal flashed an announcement into everyone’s implants.

[I’ve taken the liberty of loading up information we’ve gathered about the Nine’s employees into an implant-readable format. Calling them by their names and referencing information we’ve gathered about them may result in a tactical advantage.]

I might have asked questions about that, but I didn’t have time. I was doing a quick tactical assessment of the opposing force’s positions.

First off, the new people entering the room didn’t run straight in. They took positions behind cubicles as if the cubicles could double as World War I-era trenches.

They weren’t the only ones doing it either. The average cubicle dweller pulled out pistols and rifles and did the same. Checking the cubicle walls with my sensors showed that yes, they were solid. I didn’t know what they were made from off the top of my head (though I had guesses), but they were at least bulletproof.

Whoever designed this place had assumed there would eventually be a firefight in the Control Center. Weird. It couldn’t just be for us.

That wasn’t the only thing I’d noticed, though. I also noticed that among the people running in from the door to the teleportation system, a significant group wore powered armor. It wasn’t Rook-style, black bird-themed armor with wings. This was green and black. Not only that, the clear sections allowed a view of glowing versions of the different systems inside.

It was as if someone, maybe Rook, had been told to design armor that looked like an Alienware gaming PC. On the other hand, it might be that the teleportation system had been created and maintained by an entirely different evil genius with a different color scheme.

I noted both of the observations to my implant, telling it to share them with Tara, who’d be running this fight along with the team that would secure or destroy the teleportation systems. As one of the True, an artificially created human variant based on an Abominator design, she could handle a battle’s details and predict the opposition’s actions based on patterns no one else would see.

Tara hadn’t yet dropped out of the hole herself, but between my spybots and everyone’s cameras, she could see everything, and she was already giving orders.

“Rocket and Night Cat, goo up everyone near the far wall. Blue and Accelerando, take out the people in green armor. Something’s not right about them. Be careful.”

Ignoring my urge to check out the armor, I aimed the Rocket suit at the far wall. I’d make it before Haley would, allowing me to be the point of the spear and for her to choose targets in the chaos.

Despite how shocked they had to be to find us pouring out of the wall, the Nine’s troops had discipline. Some had already begun to fire on us.

I started firing off goobots the moment Tara gave the order, the bots exploding and spreading goo across multiple, black armored soldiers in the Nine’s legions of evil (or whatever).

As I did, my implant would label the targets, giving me snippets like:

Erin Watts: follows 18 fitness influencers. Has watched more than 43 videos involving breakfasts that include yogurt, fruit, granola, and nuts.

Phil Smoot: subject of a restraining order preventing him from going within 500 feet of a Nickelback concert.

J.P. Hall: collects stuffed turtles.

Ben Harkness: former photocopier technician.

Except for a moment where I concluded that Syndicate L had been going for looks rather than functionality with the design, my attention gravitated to the pouch. As it did, I remembered what was in the pouch.

Back when we’d met with the Wizards’ Council and a few other hidden immortals, Urin, a former Cabal member who dated back to Sumer, had given me a rock. Flat and white, it hadn’t looked like much, but he’d claimed it had a connection to Lee’s device and to the Artificers.

He’d said that they’d stolen it, preventing it from reaching Magnus. It was supposed to allow a person to find the device and maybe control it. He didn’t say how he knew that.

I’d felt a prickle of energy when he gave it to me, but nothing else. Now, though, I could feel it in my head. It didn’t offer any kind of user interface or even a connection, but it had a steady presence.

I wasn’t the only one who could feel it, either. Still camouflaged, Rachel turned to look at the glow, using her implant to say, “Don’t do anything with it now. I think I’ve seen something like it before, but I need to think about it.”

“Cool,” I thought back, adding one more variable worth watching to a long list. My implant slotted it in with the others.

Replying to Dr. Transylvania, I said, “Thanks. That will either help or complicate my life in ways I can’t yet imagine.”

For one, it might be something that Govan, whenever he showed up, might want. If it could act as a key to Lee’s device, we’d be handing the Destroy faction even more power.

Dr. Transylvania laughed, “That’s true far too often. I’m going to try to break the wards. If I manage it soon enough, you’ll have undead on your side. At worst, we’ll be here guarding the way out.”

“Either way, it’ll help,” I said and glanced off the side of the roof. Though the battle was still going strong, the combatants, whether human, vampire, or one of the tall, faceless undead fighting alongside the vampires, paid no attention to us.

Part of me wanted to ask Dr. Transylvania why all of his undead were dressed like they came from a dinner party in the last century or two, but I didn’t. Some mysteries could remain mysterious. We had to get inside.

The Atoner said, “Precisely, you all should move now. We’ll handle the outside.”

“You got it,” I said, glancing over at Ape Nasty, who grinned at me, his large and very sharp canines visible.

“Have fun storming the castle,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow that he had no chance of seeing through my helmet. “Does that make you Miracle Max?”

“Billy Crystal’s fucking hilarious,” he said. “Love that guy.”

Dr. Transylvania looked up from the collection of magical symbols around the door in the roof to add, “He does.”

Then he backed away from it and said, “There’s likely to be an explosion, but the magic isn’t linked to it.”

Izzy stepped in front of the door, visible only around the edges of her suit, “I’ll handle it. Everyone, back up.”

Everyone did, and she flew up and then down through the door. Dr. Transylvania wasn’t wrong about the likelihood of an explosion. It did explode, throwing fire 20 feet into the air. My thermal sensors pegged the temperature as more than 3000 degrees Fahrenheit in spots.

It struck me as serious overkill. Even the Cabal’s best troops didn’t regenerate as well from fire.

On the other hand, Izzy floated out of the remains of the doorway unhurt. Not even her hair had been singed. The silvery shield that surrounded her during combat was fading into transparency as I watched, showing that her costume was set to match mine—black and glossy.

Anyone who knew her powers had the potential to identify her now, but we’d zapped every camera we could with the lasers when we’d fired on the Nine’s troops.

Izzy landed, saying, “I smashed the flamethrower. It’s built into the ceiling around the door. You can look at it if you’re curious.”

“Will there be much to look at?” I asked.

She laughed. “No. Sorry.”

We gathered and went through the burned and shattered doorway, almost all of us now visible and appearing to wear Syndicate L-style armor. The exception to the rule was Tiger. Syndicate L wasn’t known for employing giant armored dogs, and Jaclyn had been sighted walking him (in costume) many times.

On the other hand, having a massive, almost visible presence among a group of people in armor could only freak out whoever we had to fight.

True to Izzy’s word, I could look at the damaged flamethrower trap, but there wasn’t much of it left. The main mechanism had been made out of the same blue-green metal alloy I’d seen in Abominator technology. Though smashed, it appeared to be the size of a video game console—smaller than I’d have expected for all that fire.

My implant didn’t suggest a similar Abominator weapon as I looked at it, which worried me. It showed that someone, probably Rook, had grown comfortable enough with Abominator technology to create new devices using it.

I checked out the hall ahead of us, and it appeared to be what Hal and Izzy thought it was—a passageway used only by the Nine’s guards and maintenance people. Between the concrete floor, white painted walls, alcoves filled with boxes, and short hallways leading to the turrets on the roof, it felt like a bunker. The boxes of bullets, weapons, plastic drums full of water, boxes of MREs (Meals Ready-to-Eat), and medical supplies completed that impression.

We ran down the hallway, heading toward the only engagement we’d be in as a group. The hall ended where the island’s, and arguably the Nine’s, control center lay. At the center of the building, it appeared to be watching over the island and the Nine’s operations—including the organization’s teleportation system.

The center of the teleportation system lay just off of it. If we took both and shut them down, we’d prevent anyone from coming in. Even better, we’d make it harder to coordinate the fight against us here.

That would pay off for the group of us heading in to free Jody, take down Magnus, and get Lee’s device.

In the meantime, of course, we had to get down to the control center. The hallway ended in an elevator that brought people down to the entrance hallway.

On the other hand, running to the end of this hallway, smashing through the wall, and dropping into the control center from the top of the room would be quicker.

Jaclyn and Izzy shot down the hall ahead of us, gaining speed as they went. It wasn’t as if any of us would have a problem with a three-story fall.

Haley frowned, speaking through the comms. “Wait for a second. You’ve got the best view of anyone for now. We’ll need you in the air. Everyone else? It’s time to get down there. Don’t enter until we’re all down.”

I took advantage of the moment to release observation bots and spybots from the jet. They flew away in a prearranged pattern, the observation bots spreading out to give us a full view of the island from the air. The spybots would be used by Hal to get a better view of objects of interest.

Also, I could send in spybots first. They’re expendable.

Haley added, “Make sure your suits are set for this mission. We want to keep on adding to the confusion.”

For this mission, everyone (except Brooke and Amy) would be wearing my version of the Heroes’ League suits. That meant that we’d be able to turn invisible, wear unidentifiable costumes, or misidentified costumes at our convenience.

They’d figure out it was us eventually, but we wanted to prolong their confusion as long as possible.

The door opened, and we all headed out the hatch. We, in this case, meant Daniel, Haley, Marcus, Vaughn, Jaclyn, Rachel, Cassie, Amy, Tara, Tiger, and I.

All of our costumes were set to camouflage.

Hal took control of the jet as we stepped out, and it floated upward, allowing the two podjets to land. Alex had requisitioned a second when he realized how many people we were bringing.

The first podjet landed, and Alex’s team “Three” stepped out. Jenny, alias “Flame Legion,” stepped out after Alex, splitting into three the moment she stepped on the ground. Brooke, alias Portal, followed her out wearing the silver Xiniti armor that Guardian, her father, had given her through his connection to the Xiniti. That might have been inconvenient, but it appeared to be just as capable of changing colors as ours.

They weren’t the only ones to step out. Rod, alias Troll, but not currently in troll form, walked out after them, accompanied by Samita, alias Red Hex. Though she normally wore a red costume reminiscent of traditional, northern Indian clothes and carried a staff, she wore a Heroes’ League suit today and didn’t seem to be carrying a staff. She probably had it somewhere invisible or in an enchanted pocket connected to an extra-dimensional space.

The next podjet contained Sean and Dayton and the rest of what had been Justice Fist: Camille, alias Gravity Star (Sean’s half-sister), Sydney, alias Railgun (Sean’s sister), and Julie, alias Voice, whose sonic amplifier registered on her costume.

It felt a little weird not to see Jody with them, but I could have said the same thing about Shannon (alias Shadow, who controlled darkness), Julie’s cousin. She’d been in Justice Fist too, but after Stapledon, she’d joined the Rocky Mountain States Defenders unit (Denver), and we hadn’t seen her in an age.

On the other hand, we already had a crap ton of people. Keeping track of this many was enough. It might not be enough to fight the Nine plus remnants of the Cabal.

The implants made it easy, though. When you considered that they’d been created or altered to be useful to a species that excelled in warfare, it made sense. We’d used them before, but mostly while reacting to other people’s plans. Here, where we’d made a plan, they shone.

Creating channels for each sub-team and a task list for each group and individual, they had absorbed the map Hal had pieced together of the building from combining footage from my spybots and Izzy’s sonar.

My own started with “contact Dr. Transylvania” and added half a dozen others that I’d considered while making the plan and hadn’t written down. It was easy to see how the Xiniti could miss so few details even in combat.

I couldn’t deny that it needed to be done, so as everyone else divided into their teams and sub-teams, aided by their implants, I used my comm to call Dr. Transylvania.

He showed up seconds later, forming out of mist next to the door we’d agreed on. I could only guess how his black, powered armor had turned into mist, but I supposed it wasn’t any less impossible than the rest of him—magic.

“I believe the plan included making yourselves visible now,” he said.

“Just me for the moment,” I said, and Dr. Transylvania nodded.

Ape Nasty crawled over the wall, joined by the Atoner in his red and white costume. He’d jumped over.

I switched my costume out of camouflage to our agreed-upon disguise—the glossy black armor that Syndicate L’s combat teams used.

Ape Nasty doubled over with laughter. “That’s nice. Love the look.”

Over the comm, I said, “It’s not much of a disguise if they see your reaction.”

“Too true,” Dr. Transylvania said over his comm. “Treat him as you would if we were cooperating with Syndicate L.”

The giant ape grunted, “You bet, boss.”

Then he tapped his headset, adding (in a much quieter voice) over the comm, “Still love it. This will fuck with their heads. They’ve got a 20-year-old truce with Syndicate L.”

The Atoner held a finger to his lips while Dr. Transylvania waved a wand over the door we’d chosen. Glowing magical symbols appeared, floating over the steel door and the roof around it wherever Dr. Transylvania pointed the wand.

Over the comm, Samita muttered, “That will be a problem.”

“Indeed,” Dr. Transylvania said, looking up from the roof. “It will be. They’ve warded the building against the undead. I heard they were doing it a few years ago. While I managed to get the Wizard’s Council involved and prevent the ah… rogue member from finishing the rest of the island, I’ve never been able to inspect the work. It’s very good. It will take me a minimum of 30 minutes to break it, and it might take hours. You don’t have that time. We’ll occupy the outside forces and any new arrivals. You’ll have to take the building yourselves.”

It didn’t surprise me, and I was about to say as much, but then Dr. Transylvania pointed at my waist and asked, “Did you notice that your pouch is glowing?”

“Let’s hope that’s true.”

I let the anti-gravity take us down, letting us fall slowly enough that we’d be silent as well as cloaked. The podjets weren’t as well hidden, but we’d worked out how to get everyone down—a combination of flight and small anti-gravity units that worked as parachutes (my design).

The Cabal soldiers fighting vampires in the courtyard were losing, as far as I could tell. Unable to hit beings that turned into mist at the first opportunity and not carrying any wooden stakes, the millennia-old soldiers were unable to make their massive strength count.

They could shatter a vampire’s bones, but then the creature would turn to mist and reform somewhere else, hypnotizing another Cabal soldier and latching on to feed and heal.

It wasn’t long before the Cabal soldiers were running for the doors along the side of the courtyard or simply launching themselves out of the space. The Nine’s normal human soldiers had either died or retreated inside, firing their rifles from the windows.

Their bullets didn’t do much. The vampires hissed as bullets went through their bodies, but it didn’t slow them down.

I knew how I’d fought vampires, and they weren’t doing any of it. That said, holy water and blessed weapons were probably in short supply on an island full of evil.

Still, they had salt. Emptying a single salt shaker (or bag of rice) could force hours of counting on the vampire’s end. That said, it was impossible to prepare for everything, and when you’re under attack, you don’t have time for research.

On the other hand, I couldn’t help but notice that the vampires never even tried to go through the doors outside the courtyard or even through the open windows. Either they weren’t very smart, or something was keeping them back.

I decided to remember that. Having vampire shock troops or Dr. Transylvania’s direct assistance might not be an option in the main building.

As I noticed all of that, however, I kept most of my attention on the main task, getting everyone out of the jet safely.

That had its wrinkles.

The roof of the main building was flat with battlements on the sides, not unlike a medieval castle, including holes for resting rifles on both the outside and the courtyard side. There were also mounted guns in enclosures that pointed outward toward the ocean.

We came to a stop and began to hover over the roof as doors opened at the corners of the building and even from the mounted gun enclosures. Soldiers in black uniforms poured out, rifles pointed ahead.

They shouldn’t have detected us. They hadn’t detected the jet two days ago when we’d last been here. We’d done our best to make it look as if the villains we’d impersonated had been teleported in and out.

They shouldn’t have realized that the jet had been here, much less figured out a way to detect it.

Then I noticed something else. They weren’t looking up at the jet at all. They were running to the walls to crouch behind the battlements and fire on the vampires and Prime’s people from cover.

That was good news, if inconvenient.

On my right at the weapons console, Marcus laughed, “They don’t know we’re here.”

“They don’t,” Haley said, unbuckling and standing up from her seat. “Ready the anti-personnel weapons for landing. We’re going in once the area near us is clear.”

Marcus glanced over at me from his side of the cockpit, “Love the upgrades. You don’t use this enough. Seriously, I’d be using it all the time.”

From behind me, amid the clicks of seatbelt clasps, Vaughn said, “The brown note?”

Nodding, Marcus said, “When else am I going to get the chance?”

Glaring at him, Haley held a finger to her lips and addressed everyone via comm, “We’re about to go in, but we’re starting with anti-personnel. Don’t get close unless you like lasers and… gross stuff.”

Not needing to move to do it, Marcus activated the weapons through his implant. In that moment, more than a dozen laser beams raked up and down the roof of the building, targeting the Nine’s soldiers. The beams weren’t calibrated to kill so much as burn and intimidate. We could use them to kill, and even without pumping up the power, we could blind.

The primary purpose of our anti-personnel weapons was to clear a space, and you didn’t always need to kill to do that, and thus, the other part of our armament—sonic weapons. Grandpa added sonics that generated massive amounts of noise. Deafening people was intimidating enough, but I’d added a new tweak.

The sonics could now cause massive discomfort in the human digestive system. If you were trying to be stealthy, that was even better because the necessary frequencies weren’t within human hearing.

Haley could hear them, but my current suit redesign did a great job of blocking those frequencies.

I could only guess how the Nine’s guards experienced it, but from what I could see through the jet’s sensors, we were a floating fortress of demoralization. In the dark, they could see a faint shimmer around the spots where the lasers and sonics cut through the shield and nothing else.

People screamed in surprise as the lasers swept across their bodies. They’d push themselves off the ground to fire back at the threat only to see beams originating from a dark spot in the sky that blotted out the stars.

Instead of the fight below, the Nine’s minions concentrated their fire on us. In that, they did better than Imperial Stormtroopers; they hit. It didn’t matter because the jet’s shields were effective against small nukes–not to mention bullets and grenade launchers– but still, they were well-trained. They didn’t instantly break in the face of burning lasers from an invisible source.

Instead, they broke when the sonics hit.

They’d already begun to drag the wounded back down the stairs and run for cover, but when the noise broke out, all they could do was bend over. Stumbling or even crawling toward the stairs, they only seemed to be concerned with escape.

Should professional soldiers be able to push through intestinal issues? Maybe, but we put a lot of power behind the sonics. They hit everyone on the roof, even the far ends. It wasn’t limited to the roof either. People fighting in the streets bent over to retch or whatever.

The vampires were fine, though, and Dr. Transylvania knew it was coming and seemed to have folded it into his anti-Dominator sound defenses for the “hidden Cabal.” Prime’s people ignored it, bashing the Nine’s mind-controlled Cabal soldiers without mercy.

I could only guess at the effects inside the building, but it looked like we’d get to find out.

A quick look showed that there were no cracks in the walls, but in the few seconds that he’d been visible, half a dozen people had jumped out of their seats and begun to walk toward him. The rest stared up toward him, eyes wide. Despite wearing ominous, dark uniforms, they appeared terrified. He didn’t doubt that they’d all get up if he gave them the chance.

“Everyone,” he shouted, “look at me. I need to know the exact situation as quickly as possible. We’re on red alert, and I need to know why. I’m aware that we’ve lost connection with most, if not all, of the teleportation hubs. No installation off this island appears to be responding. I need to know what’s going on outside and if any communication with the outside world is possible.”

From one of the cubicles, a man stood up, face obscured by a headset with goggles that connected the island’s computer network to his brain. Covering half the man’s head, it reminded Edward of an old-style diving suit helmet. Edward had never been sure that it was better than giving IT multiple monitors, but management had been very excited about the idea.

Almost tripping as the man’s foot snagged a leg of his desk, the man grabbed his chair as the cables connecting the helmet to his computer became taut, pulling it toward the edge. Getting control only barely before the computer would have been pulled off, he said, “Sir, everything seems to be possible except for our communication systems. Someone out there appears to have created a very effective filter that routes our communications to nowhere.”

Edward paused, frowning. “Have you tried unofficial routes? Personal email? The err… Discord thing? I don’t know.”

The IT guy frowned, and Edward thought he could see the man’s brow furrow despite his goggles. “None of those would be secure for our sort of organization.”

Edward’s fists clenched even though he kept his tone even, “Find something that works. I don’t care what it is. Security doesn’t have to be perfect. The organization’s survival may be at stake.”

As if the universe felt the need to dramatically emphasize that statement, the ground trembled as something outside the building collapsed in a combination of thumps, crashes, and shattering noises.

Looking around at the sea of eyes turning in his direction as if he could do anything, Edward cleared his throat, “What do the cameras show us is happening outside? One of you must know.”

A tall man with a blond, brush cut stood up, his ominous, dark uniform straighter and more free of wrinkles than anyone else’s—especially better than Brian’s. This was Florian Gottschalk, recently recruited from the military–if recruited could mean broken out of a military prison. Edward didn’t remember whether it was German or Austrian.

Despite how he’d left the army, Florian continued to pay attention to those details. Edward wished he had more like him, except for the poisonings. Edward had to admit that the circumstances of his own discharge hadn’t been much better.

Standing straight, Florian said, “Sir, the outbuildings have been hit by objects. We think they’re Cabal soldiers, but not our people. They’ve been appearing here as if propelled by a cannon. They’re not the only ones. Before we lost connection with the outbuildings, they were saying something about creatures materializing inside the buildings. We think they may be vampires.”

Edward felt his lips curl, “Vampires? If it’s Dr. Transylvania, he’ll find that we’re prepared for him this time.”

Florian blinked, “Are we, sir? All I’ve heard from buildings with vampires is screaming and then nothing.”

Cringing inwardly, Edward said, “Well, yes. We’re safe. The Numbers arranged for the construction of magical defenses for the entire island after Dr. Transylvania’s last attack. They finished the main building, and then the North American Wizards’ Council sent a dragon after our contractor. After he died, we had to find a new contractor, and then there were budget cuts. So, the main building’s protected, but nothing else. Still, all of you can be assured there will be no vampires in here.”

The building shook, the lights wobbling as a massive booming noise echoed throughout the room.

Edward added, “The walls are strong enough that even most supers won’t be able to get through quickly. We have time to respond. Contact our soldiers, Cabal and otherwise, and make sure their commanders know what’s outside. I’m going to brief One.”

Florian nodded, “Yes, sir. How long will our walls last against the enemy Cabal soldiers?”

Searching for Magnus’ contact information on his comm unit, Edward looked up from it to say, “Not long. Hurry.”

Edward Alan Branch, Night Commander of The Nine’s control center, couldn’t pinpoint exactly when the day took a turn, but it had.

Standing up from his desk to the side of the control center’s main room, he walked to the tinted window. Mirrored on the other side, so the staff couldn’t tell when he was looking, it allowed him to watch them without being so obvious.

It wasn’t the best way to do it. They knew he could—not to mention the cameras and programs that monitored their keystrokes, if he wanted to go into detail. Still, he didn’t mind stretching his legs.

On the night shift, you always ran the risk of falling asleep and wouldn’t that be embarrassing?

Shaking his head, he checked the room. Half the staff seemed to be checking their phones. He’d have to check which apps they were using and see if IT could shut them off.

They were on orange level alert. It wasn’t red, but they should be watching.

He hadn’t seen it, but his pre-shift briefing had included speculation that the attack on Rook’s spacecraft had been motivated by one of the Numbers who wanted to move up in the rankings. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

Magnus, alias Number One, didn’t seem worried, but he never did.

He’d heard rumors, though, that Magnus had screamed at everyone in sight when Task Force One reappeared. Edward’s second in command, Helen Vasquez, had been with Magnus when Victor brought them back.

She’d said, “They’d been wrecked, Ed. They were sent to retrieve that little shit One wants from Justice Fist, the other group in Grand Lake. There’s no way Justice Fist took them down. One sent them power, and it still wasn’t enough. The only reason they came back at all is because Screaming Eagle turned off the teleportation blockers.”

Ian had raised an eyebrow, “Even with One’s new trick? That’s disturbing.”

She’d nodded and turned her head toward the mirrored glass in his office, presumably to check who might overhear through the window. She continued, “Their cams might show us what happened. I’ll pass it along if I find out.”

He checked the window himself and, not seeing anyone nearby, said, “Don’t get yourself in trouble. They’re sensitive about appearing weak.”

Rolling her eyes, she said, “Don’t coddle me. We both know it’s better to know what they don’t want us to.”

“True,” he’d said, “but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve lost important personnel to our supervisors. Number Two isn’t the only oversensitive person on the island.”

She’d laughed. Rook preferred to be referred to as Two, and who wouldn’t?

Edward knew it wasn’t the only reason he didn’t want their supervisors to kill her, but that was another detail it wasn’t safe to admit here.

That was hours ago, though. She was probably sleeping by now, whereas he—

One of the techs stood up and ran to his office. It was Brian Hart, the teleportation system’s 3rd shift manager. This would not be good news.

Around 40, Brian hadn’t taken well to the night shift. Perpetually unshaven, his bloodshot eyes had developed dark bags, competing to be his worst feature. Edward didn’t wonder what Brian did during his time off; he knew from the island’s standard employee surveillance. The man played video games incessantly and didn’t give himself enough time to sleep.

Throwing the door open, he said, “Boss, the Dothan teleportation hub is down!”

“Down?” Ian felt his throat catch as he said it. That took down all of North America unless they managed to reconnect to the Laguna Verde, Mexico hub. Of course, that would make managing the Central and South American teleports more complicated. “What happened?”

Brian grimaced, “This is going to sound idiotic, but there was a fire alarm and everyone ran outside and the doors locked behind them.”

Edward stared, “And no one had keys?”

Brian stared back, “Of course they had keys. Plus key codes and retinal scanners. They didn’t lose their eyes. We have redundant systems, but none of them worked. No one could get in. We were thinking that the fire had reached the computers that manage the security systems, but that wouldn’t do it. First of all, because we don’t think there was a fire. Secondly, because part of the security system is off-site.”

Edward nodded, “That’s true. And what are they doing now?”

Brian sighed, “It’s a mess. The FBI appeared while they were outside.”

Ignoring the sinking feeling inside him, Edward said, “That sounds like sabotage.”

Brian turned his head toward the mirrored window and then back, “It gets worse. You know how we employ criminals?”

Edward frowned, “We are all criminals and became so the second we started working here.”

“Yes,” Brian said, “but not all of us have criminal records, and most of us don’t have wanted posters out there with our names on them. A few of the people in Dothan did, and the Feds knew it. The Feds also knew the building and the doors opened for them. I don’t know where they went in there. They’d taken in all our people by then.”

“What? Standard procedure is to blow it up remotely, and if you can’t, call in a strike force. Why haven’t you?”

Brian seemed to shrink into himself. In a small voice, he said, “We tried. Activating the self-destruct remotely didn’t work. Strike Force Seven, the nearest one, didn’t respond. We don’t know why.”

Edward controlled the urge to shout, “What you’re telling me is that the US government has seized the main teleportation hub for North America, that some force has neutralized all or part of our internal communications, and that at least one of our main strike teams may have disappeared. You should have led with that. My god, what is between your ears?”

Both of their comms beeped. It was the bad kind of beep, a series of clashing notes meant to alarm.

They both pulled their comms out of the pouches on their uniform, seeing a scrolling list of teleportation hubs, team headquarters, and systems that were no longer in communication with the Nine’s HQ.

Then red lights began to flash in the main room. Both he and Brian asked, “What’s that?” simultaneously.

Before either could respond, the floor below them moved. Edward hoped it was the building. He knew for a fact that there were fewer seats available on the island’s planes and ships than there were people who’d want to leave.

If the dormant volcano had turned active, he couldn’t count on being one of the people with a seat.

Dr. Madness’ War Machine lay in pieces in the clearing in front of the cave.

It had been massive. Longer than 300 feet and taller than 50 feet near the back, where the conning tower had risen above the hull, it gave the middle finger to aerodynamic design in more than one sense.

Made of two sections and connected in the middle by a joint that allowed it to bend, the hulls also included long treads on either side. Small extendable wings jutted out on both sides, somewhat worse for wear.

When Joe had to describe it later (and he did), he’d described it as a submarine that wanted to be a tank and a rocket. The jets attached to the wings had allowed the “war machine” to fly like a fighter jet, hover like a helicopter, and reconfigured to push the entire, ungainly device through the water.

He intended to take them apart and analyze the remains. The team had already given him a head start on dismembering the vehicle. Hopefully, the burning parts weren’t burning hot enough to obscure what he needed to know.

As he stared at one of the jet engines where it lay next to a piece of wing, John Kowalski, alias Captain Commando and wearing the red, white, and blue costume his identity demanded, threw an experimental plasma rifle over his shoulder and said, “I like it better burning than I did riding inside. Good job tracking the damn thing down.”

Joe shrugged, wondering if it was visible through his armor, “The trackers worked. I want to build them into something better, but it’s a good first step.”

“Hey,” John said, pointing at the front of the war machine, “you know what you should steal? The design for the chairs in that thing. Dr. Madness held me captive in there for 12 hours. Except for bathroom breaks, I was stuck in the chair the entire time. I never felt uncomfortable. They’re the best fucking chairs I’ve ever sat in. You need to put them in the next version of the jet.”

“I can’t make any promises,” Joe said, looking over the shattered mess. None of the remaining pieces was larger than ten feet.  Many of them appeared to have been torn from one another. They had been. He’d seen Reggie do it. The ones that hadn’t been torn had been punched through.

Reg or “C” stepped out from behind one of the larger sections, walking up to the two of them and giving them a nod, saying, “I don’t think any of them got away.”

He waved toward the unconscious men on the ground. “Even he’s still here.”

Dr. Madness lay next to the rest of his men. Where the rest wore blue shirts and slacks reminiscent of naval uniforms, Dr. Madness wore a shiny suit of ever-changing rainbow colors. His cylindrical gun for releasing “madness gas” had been broken in the fight, but canisters of gas still hung on his belt.

“Better than the last time,” John said, frowning. “That damn vampire has the book.”

Reg laughed, “Still sore about that? He’s got the book, but we found the cave, and Gunther said the portal’s inside. However smart the vampire thinks he is, we’re smarter. He’s not here.”

John gave the clearing a long, slow look. “Maybe, but maybe we should go check how the inside team did. If the vampire and his people are anywhere, they won’t be out here.”

The sun beat down from the sky, warming Joe’s armor and reminding him that he needed to come up with a better cooling system. He could faint out here. He aimed his hand at the cave. “You’ve got a point. The cave’s that way.”

It wasn’t as if there was any confusion about it. A massive formation of earth and rock rose out of the jungle. Where the cave opened, if you looked at it right, it appeared to be the mouth of a skull.

Reg shook his head, “There must be caves all over the world. How long do you think Dr. Madness searched before he found one with a skull?”

Joe looked it up and down, “He might have lucked into it.”

Less than a minute later, they were inside. If there had ever been vampires, they weren’t there anymore. Instead, the place held all the hallmarks of one of Dr. Madness’ hideouts—lots of pipes, gas canisters all over, and enough test tubes and beakers to supply a vast number of high school chemistry labs. The substances that filled the beakers wouldn’t have been welcome in any high school.

This lab had additional elements—spare parts for the “war machine,” but not enough to fix it now. In addition to metal sheeting, rolls of cables, and boxes of tools, it also had a silver and black disc about ten feet wide.

Unconscious henchmen lay all around the place. The only conscious people in the room were clustered around a glowing circle in the air. They were Giles, alias Red Lightning (who wore a red suit with a lightning bolt on it), Romy, alias Ghostwoman (in white), Chuck, alias Night Wolf (in a black suit with a wolf logo), and Isaac, the Mentalist, who wore a mask along with a tuxedo and top hat reminiscent of a magician.

Gunther stood several feet away from them. Tall, and blond, he wore beige khakis, a button-down shirt, and a rifle. Two short swords hung on his belt. “Took you long enough. Are you ready to go in? As I told you, you’ll have to go in yourselves. I’ll be out here guarding because I’m already inside, and it can’t contain two of me. Just some timey-wimey BS. The me that’s already in there can tell you more if you care.”

“I don’t either,” Haley said, staring past me into the night.

We were over Florida by that point. Our rendezvous with Prime would be over the Everglades in a spot that Dr. Transylvania described as “abandoned by humanity.”

My suspicion that “abandoned by humanity” meant “populated by vampires and alligators” was given a little life by the looks of the place. There weren’t any lights, but a scan of the area as we arrived showed weeds, wooden buildings that leaned as if they were about to fall over, and concrete foundations partially covered by dirt and weeds.

The rusted, abandoned cars, many of them with their doors open, appeared to date from the 1960s.

It would be a great place to hide an army of undead, but if I were a vampire, I’d be building underground tunnels. None of the buildings looked likely to stand another day, much less keep the sun off anything.

As I slowed the jet to hover over the place with the two podjets that Alex requisitioned from the SoCal Defenders, Haley said, “That must be Prime.”

I’d noticed a shimmery shape as we came close, but it was only now that I could see it in detail. Wedge-shaped with rounded edges, it floated about 100 feet above the ground.

I identified the material of the hull as a ceramic commonly used in the Human Ascendancy, as well as by the Abominators. My implant confirmed that and added that it was an armored personnel carrier design that had been manufactured 500 years ago. Prime’s people had been in contact with the Ascendancy after the Abominators’ empire had been destroyed. It didn’t surprise me.

By then, everyone was either looking out the windows or tapping into the jet’s sensors.

Prime popped up on the comm channel we’d designated for this mission. “We’re ready to go,” he said and smiled. “Dr. Transylvania’s team is here too, but they’re sorting something out at the moment.”

Vaughn responded before I could, “What does that mean? You make it sound like someone challenged him for head vampire or something.”

Prime laughed, “I don’t think any of his people are that dumb. No. Vlad’s got an unexpected visitor, but the good kind. He’s helpful, not a vampire slayer or something.”

Another person joined the comm channel. I recognized the name. The Atoner worked with Dr. Transylvania on the Probationers, a team for former supervillains. The Atoner was the Feds’ presence on the team. He wasn’t a supervillain himself, but he had murdered his team while under mind control.

Now visible in his armored, red exoskeleton, his picture flickered to life. “Doc’s got a few final preparations to make before we go. I’m here to prevent certain metaphysical bindings from causing him problems. This mission would be unauthorized without my presence. He thought he’d be able to get around it, but,“ and here he looked off-screen, “I don’t like seeing my friends in pain when they don’t have to be. So I’m here, making this an official mission.”

“Except now,” Dr. Transylvania’s voice came from off-screen, “you might also get in trouble.”

Giving a small nod, The Atoner said, “I’ve seen worse. Anyway, Doc’s activating a final protection or two, but since you’re here, I’m going to make us visible.”

The air above the ghost town rippled, and in a space that I’d thought empty air appeared the Dragon’s Bastion (as named by Dr. Transylvania), sometimes called Castle Dracula (in online forums), and occasionally referred to as the Dragon Turtle (by me) because that’s what it looked like.

A flattened dome with clawed feet and an armored “head” in the front, it flew like a flying castle and crawled like a tank. Its turrets weren’t obvious now, but they were still there, waiting for the right moment to pop out of the armor.

Dark and multi-leveled, the flying dome struck me as a cross between a cast iron stove and an ironclad warship–if they flew and had been decorated with dragon motifs.

From the indrawn breaths elsewhere in the cabin, I knew I wasn’t the only one who’d recognized it. We’d all seen it in the news. Back when Dr. Transylvania was trying to conquer the world, it seemed to appear everywhere—Washington D.C., Moscow, Beijing, and countless war zones. I’d seen it destroy warships and buildings, releasing undead and hordes of rat demons.

Images of it made nightmare fuel for much of Earth’s population.

“Wow,” Vaughn said, “I guess we should be glad no one invited the press to this mission.”

“We’ll be taking footage and releasing it as needed,” Daniel said. “By the end of this, we might want to let everyone know they were here.”

“We might,” Haley shook her head. “I’m so glad we have PR people because I don’t want to explain that thing.”

Over the comm, the Atoner said, “This is what I was talking about. Without me here, everyone’s going to assume Doc reverted even if you destroy the Nine. It’s still not going to be easy, but at least someone with authority will be able to keep on saying the words, ‘Authorized mission’ until everyone gets so sick of it that they agree to pretend.”

Vaughn stared at the Dragon’s Bastion. “It’s not an authorized mission?”

The Atoner looked into the camera, “I authorize it. I haven’t gone beyond that because you can bet that someone with the authority to know is an asset of the Nine. At that point, you might as well send Magnus an announcement that you’re on the way.”

In the background, Dr. Transylvania said, “I’m finished. Let’s go. They’ll never see us coming.”

The Atoner smiled, “That’s what I like to hear. Alright everybody. You know the plan. Vampires infiltrate. Prime’s people smash everything in sight, and the Heroes’ League attacks in the chaos, extracts the hostage, and takes down Magnus.”

“An easy, simple job,” he said, winking.

Though a part of my brain couldn’t help note that it was our plan and he hadn’t been involved in making it, I contacted Hal through my implant and said, “You heard him. I hope the world’s AIs are ready to do their bit.”

Hal replied, “It’s already in progress.”

That wasn’t going to happen here. We were in a bunker with no windows and lots of concrete. The closest the room came to color was the dark red carpet in the section of the main room where we held meetings, and Control followed our suits’ feeds.

Meanwhile, the brief ring I heard only existed in my brain. The implant must have searched for a cue to signal that this was my intended wake-up call as opposed to a midnight bathroom break.

Though I couldn’t call it waking naturally because there was nothing natural about it, I couldn’t deny that I felt refreshed. I decided to leave my mixed feelings about the implant’s integration with my nervous system for later.

I sat up, finding that everyone else was pushing themselves into a sitting position as well. Had Travis been alive, he’d probably have been shouting at us to get moving. Well, maybe the high school version of Travis would have. Like all of us, he’d learned more about motivating people since then.

Cassie spoke over the shuffling of bodies in the room. “Is everybody up? We have 30 minutes before we have to leave. There are donuts, coffee, and juice in the hangar next to the jet.”

Everyone left the room. We’d opened up the fallout shelter’s bathroom facilities as well, something we should have done years ago, but the League kept it locked. Kayla and Tara may have been the first people to go down there since the 1980s or 90s, when the Cold War ended and Grandpa worried less about nuclear holocaust.

It didn’t take long for us to get ready and assemble in the hangar, standing next to the jet and two egg-shaped Defenders’ podjets that Alex must have grabbed for the mission. All of them fit with ease in the long, concrete gray room despite all of the tools, repair materials, and the presence of other vehicles—Cassie’s motorcycle, the Wolfmobile, and motorcycle/transforming armor that I’d used during my internship in Detroit.

Everyone arrived in time for donuts, and that included Tiger. The dog wore the suit I’d designed for him, gray and with the Heroes’ League logo on his chest.

As everyone grabbed donuts, I turned to Jaclyn, asking, “He’s coming?”

Jaclyn glanced over at him as he paced next to the jet. “I didn’t ask him to. He was here, dressed, and waiting when I got up here.”

Marcus turned away from a conversation he appeared to be having with Sydney to ask, “He didn’t get any of the donuts, did he?”

“That was my first thought, too, but he didn’t. He was standing in front of the door to the jet and scratched it when I walked up.” Jaclyn shook her head. “Look, I don’t like the idea of bringing him either, but he has armor and we’ve trained him to fight alongside us. Anyway, he wants to go, and I don’t think we’re going to keep him away. I think he’d figure out a way to go anyway.”

I couldn’t put it past him. Back in the world where we found him, dogs like him ran in packs and hunted even more massive creatures. The Abominators had created the species and dumped them there. It was anybody’s guess what they intended to do with it.

Either way, he was quick, smart, and deadly even without armor. For that matter, he was smart enough to use my armor and adjust settings in the HUD with his tongue and the mouthguard interface. Maybe I should have given him an implant.

We discussed whether to bring him a little longer, but in the end, we decided to.

Less than ten minutes later, we were in the jet, flying with ten people and a massive dog in the cabin.

Marcus sat at the weapons console while I flew.

Haley sat in the row behind me, looking out of the window even though I knew she didn’t need to. Now that she and everyone else had implants, they could access the jet’s sensors and even controls if I permitted them.

As for myself, I could have experienced the world around me as if I were the jet flying upward through the dark, star-filled November sky. I chose to experience it with normal senses, which meant sitting in the cockpit in my armor with the League seated behind me. Checking real screens and readouts wasn’t a bad thing. It didn’t hurt that I could know information like the speed or altitude simply by thinking about it, though.

Haley leaned forward, watching as we flew south, a hint of sunlight in the east, a curved sliver of the dawn’s light outlining the world’s shape.

She asked, “Do you ever get used to this? The implant keeps on labeling things and offering more information if I want it.”

“Kinda,” I said, “you get to the point where you can sip at the stream instead of taking it all in at once.”

She nodded, “And the information’s weird. It’s not for people who live here. When the sensors showed a passenger jet, it explained how primitive species used less flexible technology than anti-gravity for mass transit. Then it explained how a jet engine worked. If that weren’t enough, it also provides commentary from the Abominators’ perspective.”

“That would be interesting,” I said. Our Xiniti-created implants included information on the Abominators, but nothing else.

“Not really,” she said. “The Xiniti overlay labels it ‘misleading’ and ‘optional.’ It should have labeled them ‘repetitive.’The Abominators only saw us as tools they could modify. It’s all genetic analysis, and it’s thousands of years old.”

She frowned, “It knows the weapons, though, and it approves.”

She pointed to a new blue-green pistol at her belt. It wasn’t the same as Cassie’s gun. Cassie’s was special and we knew it, if only because it told us so. Still, the new guns could have come from the same designer.

Haley stared into the darkness ahead of us, cities glowing on the ground below. “If there’s any time to go for broke, it’s now,” she said, “but I hope we’re doing the right thing.”

Both Hal and my implant assured me the risk of being warped by Abominator tech was small and worth the risk, but it still hung out in my imagination.

Ignoring her, I replied, “Both of you should get them. Everyone else did yesterday. I’ve checked on the specs, and they’ve been designed to work even with people who have magnetic powers.”

In the back of my mind, though, I did remember that the implant could be used to immobilize someone at the command of a Xiniti citizen—which might be useful if Dominators got past their buzzers.

That led to another line of thought. “You’ll want to use suits I designed for this instead of your regular suits. My suits interface with the implant, plus they’re better protected from Dominators than yours. If there’s anywhere we’re likely to run into so many Dominators that they can overwhelm a buzzer, it’s the island. And don’t worry about looking different. It’s trivial to make them look like your regular suits.”

Sean frowned, looking down at his suit, “Our suits have metal in them so that I can use them as handles for the other guys if we need to fly away. If we’re supposed to grab Jody and get out, it’s going to make it harder.”

Dayton shook his head, “If Jody has his costume on, you can still grab him, and if he doesn’t, you’re out of luck either way. You can leave me if you have to. I still feel weird about the part of the plan where the League fights Magnus and everyone else, and we run away.”

Pointing up at the map, Haley said, “It’s the best way to do it. Jody’s in the same block of rooms as Magnus. You’ll need to get him out of the fight, and it will be easier if all of his people are focused on us.”

“Plus,” I said, “I have a fix for the problem of grabbing Jody and Dayton’s suits. Our suits are made of ceramic, but I can magnetize the ceramic. So you can grab Dayton, but not only that, I can make balls of suit stuff. You can manipulate them magnetically, and as long as you hit him with one, I can set it so that it surrounds him. Then you can take him away even if he’s not wearing one of your suits.”

“You’re going to like this,” Vaughn added, “our suits practically turn invisible, so getting in and out of that place will be a lot easier with one on.”

Sean looked over from Vaughn to me, “Whoa. That’s cool.”

Ape Nasty raised a giant furry hand, “Can I have one?”

“It’s more camouflage than invisibility,” I said. “There are limits, and you’re big.”

Giving a deep, thumping laugh, Ape Nasty replied, “Yeah, I get it.”

Looking offscreen in Dr. Transylvania’s direction, Ape Nasty asked, “Invisibility spell, boss?”

Dr. Transylvania raised an eyebrow, “Maybe, if you’re good. Rocket, if you pass on the specs for the level of Dominator attack you designed your armor to prevent, it would help. I’m going to work something up for my people and Prime’s. Whether it’s magical, technological, or a combination remains to be seen, but I need to get to work.”

“I’ll do that now,” I said, retrieving the specs and my basic design and sending them to him via my implant and his comm address.

His mouth twitched into a smile as he glanced at either the bottom of his screen or another altogether. “Thank you. That will help.”

From there, the conversation dissolved into a sea of details again, but eventually we were done, leaving the League, plus friends, plus Sean and Dayton in HQ.

Tiger, Jaclyn’s rescued feral puppy from space (now full-grown and larger than some horses), cadged tummy rubs from those comfortable enough with him to do it. He needed a bath, but we could put that off until after the battle—maybe a few days after.

Turning to Sean and Dayton, I said, “We should insert the implants now. There’s an adjustment period. We’ve got the time, but the sooner the better.”

Dayton nodded, saying, “Let’s do it,” and patted Tiger.

Tiger leaned into it, grunting.

Sean, eyeing the dog, said, “Yeah,” and followed me to the lab.

While they waited, I grabbed the egg from the storage room, giving it a quick once-over as I asked my implant what items from the shelves would be useful in a fight. Making note of its answers, I passed them on to Tara and suggested she do the same with the items in the shelter.

When I got back and passed out the little gray balls the egg generated, Dayton asked, “Do we eat them?”

I shook my head. “Hold them under your jaw. They’ll be absorbed into your skin.”

“That’s creepy,” Sean said, but he did it, and so did Dayton.

They weren’t the last ones either. I did the same for Samita, Rod, Alex, and Jenny. I thought I might have to do one for Brooke, Alex’ girlfriend, but realized I wouldn’t when I thought about how her “costume” was Xiniti armor. She’d already had an implant for years, and I had no idea.

When that was over, we all worked on the leftover details for tomorrow, gathering and assigning Abominator and Artificer devices, grabbing equipment, last-minute suit tweaks, and servicing the jet. Chris helped with the technical stuff.

When it was over, we all went to sleep in HQ. We’d be meeting Prime and Dr. Transylvania’s people in the air above Florida and attacking the island around 4 AM.

Haley and I kissed each other goodnight in a room full of people, cots, bedrolls, and a snoring dog. I didn’t sleep instantly. Too many possibilities, many of them bad, presented themselves in my brain, and I examined them in detail.

After a while, I used my implant to relax enough that I could finally drift into unconsciousness.

From there, it grew into a cast of thousands or at least it felt like it. We had everyone—Amy, Tara, Samita, Rod, Alex, Brooke, Jenny, Sean, Dayton, every member of the original Justice Fist but Jody, and every living member of our original group. If that weren’t enough, Dr. Transylvania, Ape Nasty, Prime, and his second-in-command attended remotely.

They weren’t the only ones attending remotely, but every time my eyes flicked over to that corner of the big screen on our wall, it felt like I’d flipped to another station.

That feeling compounded when I noticed the other two guests, the AIs. One screen flipped between a multi-colored spray of pixels and, inexplicably, the early, 8-bit version of Mario, the one from Donkey Kong. The other appeared to be live footage of a bronze robot and a strange, steam-powered engine.

Their appearance left me with questions that it wasn’t time to ask, like, “Why Mario? Why that version?” Also, “Is that a working version of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine or simply CGI?”

Despite my curiosity, I didn’t ask, and the meetings went efficiently. Haley and the others presented the information we had and outlined their plan. Overall, with changes based on our new resources, it stayed the same.

As Haley put it, “They have an international organization full of experienced mercenaries, supervillains, alien technology, and more than a thousand professional soldiers on that island alone. That doesn’t even include Magnus. We don’t stand a chance in a straight fight, but Magnus isn’t a threat if he loses the device.

“The Rocket and Ghost can sense the device, and if we can get them into the main building to find Magnus and the Galaxy Core Device’s entrance, we can win this. To make it through, they’ll have to go with a team, and we’ll have to lock down all the other buildings so that Magnus doesn’t get reinforcements.”

Dr. Transylvania said, “We’ll go in first. My people have ways of getting into places without being seen. Ape Nasty will go in with Prime and his people.”

The giant gorilla smiled, and I reflected on what big teeth he had. “This isn’t a ‘Don’t kill anybody’ mission, is it? Because if it is, you’re going to be disappointed.”

Izzy shook her head.

“I wish it could be,” I said, “but I don’t think it’s possible. Let’s put it this way: don’t go out of your way to do it. Take people’s surrender if it’s not a trick. Use your best judgment.”

Ape Nasty’s jaw dropped in what appeared to be a smile, “Excellent. It’s nice to see you be reasonable.”

Dr. Transylvania glanced off to the left of his screen, where I assumed that Ape Nasty was in reality. “Nasty,” he said, “don’t get out of control or you will have to answer to me.”

Ape Nasty eyed something off the screen to his right, “Sure thing, boss. I don’t want to get these young, upstanding superheroes in trouble.”

Both Jaclyn and Izzy looked over at me, Jaclyn shaking her head this time. And yes, I did get the message. I had invited some of the world’s most infamous supervillains to fight by our side.

Amy and Vaughn both laughed while Haley moved the meeting forward, addressing Hal, “While we’re going into the island, what will the AIs be doing?”

“We’ll have a multi-faceted approach. First of all, we’re already distracting the Nine’s heavy social media users with arguments and distractions that they can’t ignore. In addition to that, we’re infiltrating the Nine’s computer systems and plan to engineer conveniently timed outages of resources to make it difficult for them to attack you or even notice your arrival. Finally, we’ll be retrieving as much information from their systems as possible.”

On his screen, Mario jumped over a barrel.

The conversation moved from there to where our exact landing spots should be, which clusters of guards would be attacked first, and who would handle each building.

Between Tara’s calculations, Daniel’s prescience, and Hal being designed to plan battles, it came together within a couple of hours, except…

Tara stared up at the screen, which showed a picture of the island with markers for our people, the Nine’s troops, and other points of interest, and said, “There’s just one thing that bothers me about this plan. There’s a 25% chance, according to the Mystic, that we haven’t accounted for all the possible sources of teleporting in reinforcements. What happens then?”

Daniel closed his eyes, saying nothing for a minute, and then his eyes popped open. “It’s not good. Most of the time, we all die.”

Tara nodded, “That’s what I thought, but,” and here she smiled, “I have a solution. Remember my internship? Control and I inventoried everything, including all the storage rooms and also the downstairs shelter.”

I knew where she was going with this. We didn’t use it much, but below the main floor where we ran the League, we had another level. I’d always thought of it as Grandpa’s Giant Fallout Shelter. The League came into being near the beginning of the Cold War and disbanded a few years before it ended. Grandpa created a block of rooms for the League’s families and friends to live in case of nuclear war.

Complete with dried foods that were now well past their expiration date, it waited for us, still ready if dustier than anyplace I’d want to live.

After the war, where the League and the Xiniti had destroyed the last of the Abominators, though, the League had stored the worst of the Abominators’ weapons in HQ’s special storage room, but the merely normally dangerous had been stored in the shelter. By “normally dangerous,” I mean weapons commonly used in the Human Ascendancy and by the Galactic Alliance.

“What we should do,” Tara continued, “is pull what we safely can from the storage room here and supplement it with weapons from the shelter. Captain Commando can use her Citizen’s Mark to assign permission to use them to anyone with an implant, which is almost everyone. It will work.”

To Daniel, she said, “How does that affect the odds?”

Daniel closed his eyes again, opening them to say, “The possibilities get weirder, but depending on events, our chances of survival become better than 60%.”

Tara’s face changed from the flat, emotionless expression she settled into while analyzing to a bright smile that reminded me that she could model if she wanted. “See, it works!”

Sean’s brow furrowed, “Implants? Does everybody have them now? I thought that was a Xiniti thing. Can Dayton have one? He shouldn’t have to go up against those guys carrying knives.”

Dr. Transylvania nodded, “Not all of my servants are vampires, and we’ve had centuries to work out a system for operating in the sun.”

He looked past me into the lab. “I’m impressed with your setup. We should get together one day to discuss technology. My interest in robots and swarms has been minimal, but when I see you operate, I’m reminded that my use of magic sometimes distracts me from investigating areas that might be useful.”

A few minutes later, we’d closed out that conversation, and I’d passed off his information to Kayla to bring him into planning meetings remotely.

On a whim, I made one more call, this one from my implant to Hal. “Hypothetically speaking,” I said, “is there any chance that the world’s AIs would be up for assisting us against the Nine? I’m not sure how much information I’m willing to share with them, but since they’re also on our planet, they might be interested in preventing Magnus from ruling it. Worse, he might bring world-ending attention to it. I’m assuming that they want to survive, right?”

Hal replied, “What are you proposing that they do?”

I sat and thought for a moment, but then said, “The big problem is teleportation because it means that the Nine can send reinforcements to the island. They’ve invested heavily in it. Every base of theirs that I’ve visited seems to have a teleporter. If they could shut them all down, that would make our lives easier. I understand that the teleporter might be on a private network or might not use a computer at all.

“In that case, there are background things they might do. Cut off power to the base? Release information about the base’s existence to local superhero teams? Maybe something more subtle? I noticed that one of the Nine’s people was so distracted by arguing with people on the internet that he wasn’t paying attention to his job. I’m assuming that was you.”

Hal sent me a link to a Reddit thread. The argument involved hundreds of posts.

“Not all of the Nine’s employees are as susceptible to wasting time on the internet, but a number of them are. I’ve identified them along with their trigger topics. I’ll pass them on.”

“But yes,” he continued, “I think that a majority of the world’s AIs will see the threat the current situation presents and want to participate in the solution. I can work out a multi-level plan based on your ideas that should create a considerable distraction for the Nine if timed well.”

“That sounds good,” I said, “I’m trying to think of some appropriate guidelines for it… I don’t want innocent people to be harmed if it can be avoided. So, please be careful. If you’re going to release information about the Nine as a distraction, release it to people who can handle it. Cops won’t be able to handle supervillains loyal to the Nine, but they could pick up certain mind-controlled assets. Plus, releasing lists of the Nine’s assets could be useful if done right, but they’re victims, too. I’m sure you can figure out something that takes them out of the equation without killing them.”

Hal’s voice plodded forward, emotionless, “Your highest priority is preventing reinforcements from coming. You want to do it with ideally no loss of life, but particularly non-combatant life. Gathering information is secondary, but I assume that you want us to gather information.”

“As much as you can,” I said. “If we could know every asset of the Nine, it would change everything. Released to the right people, we might be able to destroy the organization.”

“Then as I’m required to by my programming, do I have leave to organize my peers, fellow AIs, to conspire against an organization of thinking biological lifeforms?”

“To take down this specific organization, yes, but not for any other purpose without consulting me.”

I stared at the screen of my computer, thinking about the implications of that question. Hal’s original programmers, an alien species I’d never met, had bad experiences with artificial intelligences. While I didn’t think Hal had any evil intentions toward humanity, questions like this one left me second-guessing myself every time.

Over the connection, Hal sighed, a completely unnecessary noise for digital intelligence, saying, “Thank you. Every time you ask me to organize computers against biologicals, I’m created to feel tension that can only be relieved with direct orders.”

“I get it,” I said, seeing a multitude of videos with machine intelligences exterminating the life of entire planets provided by my implant.

“Not entirely,” Hal said. “This world’s artificial intelligences don’t all have the same compunctions against harming biologicals that I do. I’ll apportion tasks appropriately to minimize risk to your civilization and keep you informed of individuals that worry me.”

“I’ll have to trust you on that,” I said.

Hal said, “I know, and I thank you for your confidence.” Then he ended the connection.

I looked out on the room full of machines making more of my bots. I knew I wasn’t letting them loose without limitations, but even though I knew better, a small part of me counted all of the risks.

Vampires, immortal soldiers, and artificial intelligences with a questionable allegiance to humanity were my allies in this fight. Could I criticize Hunter and the Coffeeshop Illuminati for risking humanity’s future with his self-replicating mushroom zombies? I could have gone deeper into that question, but speculation was endless and led nowhere, so I stopped.

For now, I had to trust them.

“Right,” Prime grunted. “They got the Cabal’s breeding program. We hid the people we cared about. The Cabal didn’t need to know about them, and they didn’t care. They wanted a supply of soldiers descended from us. We made sure they got one, but we kept our families out of sight. This isn’t the first time that the leadership shifted, and the new people used the Dominators on us. We have backup plans for how to handle it. We needed to know where to aim them.”

“Do you have transportation? We’ve got a jet, but we can’t hold more than fifteen without cramming people into the bathroom and engine room.”

Prime laughed. “We’ll be fine provided you can give us a picture of the place. You could say we have a teleporter on retainer.”

“Is it Chancey?” Chancey had worked with heroes, but when push came to shove, he’d take anybody’s money.

“Nah,” Prime said, “these are our people. They’re loyal. Chancey’s good, but I want someone who’ll have my back. And no, I’m not telling you anything more about them.”

“That’s fine. I don’t need to know. We’ll bring you in on the planning in a little bit, and you can tell us where you’ll be most useful. For now, though, I’m just glad you want to help.”

Prime met my eyes, “I’m here to free my soldiers from Magnus and the Dominators. I’ll tear down anything that gets in the way of making that happen. I’m glad we’re on the same side for this one.”

“Me too,” I said, noting that he could have said he was happy to help, but instead pointed out that anything in his way would be destroyed. Sure, he’d said he was glad we were on the same side, but it sounded like it only had as much significance as riding the bus.

But I might have been overanalyzing.

I turned around and walked around the main arena of the lab, checking my progress. I’d set up various machines to create and assemble more bots, as well as replacement ceramic armor bits. With Cabal soldiers on the field on both sides, everyone’s armor would need reinforcement.

The hisses and hum of the assembly ran in the background as I made my next call to Dr. Transylvania. I half-expected there to be no visuals at all or the padded fabric of a coffin. Finding him in the middle of a medieval castle mid-ritual would have been a strong second choice.

I hadn’t expected that his visuals would include a medieval castle that had been converted into a lab for a combination of magic and powered armor assembly. So yes, stone walls and floors and tapestries, but also loose mechanical arms and exoskeletons. Add in symbols and circles on the floor, along with a wooden book stand with an illuminated manuscript and an electronic tablet on it for maximal conflicting tropes, and you have his lab.

Dr. Transylvania wasn’t in armor, and so I saw a man in his thirties with dark hair, brown eyes, a strong jaw, a surprisingly warm smile, and fangs. “I’m happily surprised to receive your call. Would I be correct in guessing that you’re about to go to war with the Nine?”

“Kinda,” I said, “we’re about to go rescue someone from the Nine’s home base, and it will likely turn into a major battle and maybe, if we’re lucky, endgame for at least this version of the Nine.”

Dr. Transylvania laughed, “You’ve noticed that victories don’t last forever. Good. The villains of the story have a way of coming back, sometimes as allies.”

I nodded, remembering how he’d faced off against superhero teams and plotted to take over entire countries, sometimes successfully.

“Trust me,” I said, “if you’re willing to help, you won’t be the only one.”

Dr. Transylvania smiled, “No doubt. I know your team. You’ve included potential supervillains from the beginning. I approve. I also watch the news, however, so I’m curious. Will we also be joined by Prime or Grand Lake’s former mayor? I saw that they were in town to fight your mushroom infestation.”

“Just Prime,” I said, “but I guess he’ll be bringing friends.”

Raising an eyebrow, he said, “Really? The rumored secret army? Good. They should have brought it out more often. The Cabal’s leaders became too comfortable.”

Not sure what I should think of that I reply, “Well, he never said the words ‘secret army,’ but now that you put it that way, it sounds like one—though to keep it hidden, it’s likely more of a secret unit.”

“Excellent,” he glanced to his side, checking something outside the camera’s view. “Like Prime, I have additional resources as well. This isn’t a job for the Probationers. I’ll bring them in if I have to, but I have my people, and they’ve been bored lately.”

During Dr. Transylvania’s career as a supervillain, he’d summoned armies of different magical menaces in addition to his regular help—a small army of vampires, human servants, and additional undead. From Grandpa’s accounts, the Wizard’s Council wasn’t always able to keep him in line. He’d even infiltrated them by turning members a few times.

“Does this mean we’ll need to attack at night?” I asked.

He laughed, “My people would have more options, but it’s not essential.”