DIRE:SINS (The Dire Saga Book 5) Read online

  “Hey!” The hero called down from the level above.

  Well, crap. I had voltaic vision. She didn’t. If she triggered something, then this entire operation would fail. I’d have to disarm the bomb ahead of schedule.

  I traced the wires in the stairs, amped up the penetration, until I was staring through walls.

  There!

  Three shattered plaster walls later, I hurtled into a central room, hit the floor shoulder-first, and rolled to my feet with a distinct lack of grace. A utility room, looked like, complete with an ancient furnace. Smart. The vent system would allow the explosion to drop the entire building.

  And there, with wires coming into it from about twenty different leads, sat a metal barrel with no obvious control panel, LED displays, or other significant features that would indicate an explosive. Not even a big red self-destruct button!

  “SHODDY WORK,” I muttered, through a screeching voice modulator. “SHAME ON YOU, MAESTRO.”

  Another person would have been confounded by the unprofessional lack of disarmable doodads.

  Fortunately, I’m a technological supergenius.

  Five seconds, one chemical analysis, a thorough scan with voltaic vision, and a few gentle taps later, I knew how to disarm it.

  Ten seconds of hard work followed. I cracked the shell, twisted the wires into a grounding pattern, destroyed the failsafe, removed the remote trigger, and dumped a nearby box of laundry detergent into the catalyst. It bubbled and turned green, trading its explosive potential for a lesser, stinkier destiny. I assumed it was stinky, anyway.

  The door to the room slammed open, and one of the wires glowed in my voltaic vision... to no avail, as the ground drained the current away from the detonator.

  “There you are!” Lady Thrush yelled. “Stand down, and—”

  She doubled over, retching.

  Ah, right. The dust upstairs had troubled her lungs, which meant that the standard paragon supermuscle set didn’t extend to all her internal organs. That or it was a weakness. Either way, the evaporating catalyst wasn’t meant to be breathed, so I sighed, grabbed her by the cape, and dragged her after me as I ran out of the room. Her head bounced and thwacked repeatedly as I switched back to infrared sight and searched the ground floor. Now that the bomb was disarmed, I had a little more time.

  “You!” Came a shout from behind me, and I staggered as a sudden impact knocked me forward. Damage readouts spooled up as the sound of the shot echoed through the building.

  Gunfire in London. I hadn’t thought they’d actually use the guns. Very cocky or very stupid, on the Maestro’s part. Though, knowing him as I did, I’d guess more on the cocky side of things.

  I whipped around, and glared at the four guards who were diving for cover at the end of the hallway, setting up proper firing zones. Didn’t look like they had any high-caliber stuff, but on the other hand, I wasn’t exactly bulletproof at the minute.

  Wait a minute.

  I looked down at the choking, gasping heroine I was hauling around, pulled up her file to make sure, and if I could have smiled I would have.

  The guards opened fire, and I twisted to the side, tossed her up into the air, caught her, and charged them. I held Lady Thrush in front of me like a shield, bulldozing her through the plaster of the wall to smash into the first shouting guard, then twisting and throwing her at the second. They went down, hard, but by then I was diving toward the others. A bullet or two clipped me, but then I was among them and lashing out, and they dropped as I turned back to check on the hero.

  Lady Thrush was on her hands and knees, retching, glaring up at me through her mask.

  “What the hell? What the bloody hell?” She rasped, mopping her mouth with a glove.

  “WE HAD A TEAMUP,” I told her. “GOOD JOB.”

  I saw murder in her eyes, but had no time to care. I moved past her before she could react, searching again.

  It took a full half-minute to find the hatch, and by the time I did I could hear her running after me. Good, I wanted her to see this.

  I bent, ripped the hatch open. It took two tries... my damage readouts told a story of hydraulic leaks and diminished operating capacity. That was the problem with this design... with everything as slim as it was, there weren’t many opportunities to pile on armor. Every shot that connected damaged something, and anything that could affect thin steel could break me right now.

  WHAM!

  The hatch went up, and I went down, hitting the ground hard. Everything fizzed and I gritted my teeth against the shock of biofeedback. Had I tripped an explosive? Had the Maestro broken pattern and gone for two bombs instead of one?

  Then the damage readouts began their glowing march, and I sighed. No, Thrush had recovered faster than expected.

  I rerouted power, got the optical circuits working again. She’d punched me just as I went through the hatch, judging by the square sliver of light above, and the angry heroine standing framed in it, looking down at me.

  “And stay down!” She shouted.

  I turned my head. Didn’t look like a huge room. I tried for infrared vision, got error messages. Damn it, she couldn’t have waited a few seconds...

  “HEY,” I called up. “GOT A FLASHLIGHT?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “ALRIGHT. GUESS YOU’RE GOING TO BE COMING DOWN HERE. IN THE DARK. ALONE.”

  I stretched out my arms and hauled my metal body across the floor, grinding and scraping, until I was well out of the light from the open hatch above. It didn’t take long.

  “Oh damn it!” I heard her footsteps recede, and chuckled.

  And from the depths of the basement, someone chuckled back.

  I froze, and the laughter stopped. Were my audio sensors glitching, now?

  “HA. HA.” I tried again.

  “Ha ha ha...” someone else offered, then trailed off. Didn’t sound mocking, or maniacal. Just mildly amused. Male, by the tone. And coming from what looked like a corner.

  I turned that way, dragged my shattered frame over. Shapes shifted in the gloom. My right ocular arrangement had been knocked askew, couldn’t focus properly. I thought these might be the targets, but I had to make sure.

  “Nice night, isn’t it?” A woman’s voice.

  “IT’S NOT NIGHT,” I pointed out.

  Feet shifted on concrete. Someone coughed, in the gloom.

  Three figures. Four? They huddled together, I couldn’t get a clear look at them.

  “Nice night, isn’t it?” The woman’s voice had an undertone to it. She sounded nervous.

  “WHO ARE YOU?”

  “Emily Dorchester.”

  “Tom Westminster.”

  “Able Aberdeen.”

  “John Dover.”

  Seriously? I shifted, got the four of them over to the left side of my face, and the fully functional optics. I couldn’t tell with ‘Emily’, but Able, John, and Tom were all wearing baggy shorts and loose shirts. Not good clothing for the current season.

  “HE DIDN’T EVEN GIVE YOU GOOD NAMES FOR YOUR ALIASES, DID HE?”

  “I’m sorry?” they said, Able and John speaking at the same time. Emily and Tom were just a beat behind, and the words spilled into each other.

  I stretched a metal hand toward them, and triggered the nanite spray. A silvery dust cloud filled the air, settling around them.

  They didn’t react. But a light flared up to the side of me, resolved into a television screen hanging from one wall.

  A man stood on-screen, all in black. Blonde curly hair peeked out from under a bowler hat, tilted forward just enough to keep his upper face in shadow. But his smile, oh, that was a thing of nightmares. A grin bare of anything human, so tight and sharp that you almost expected to see flesh scraps from his last victim stuck between his teeth.

  “MURDER MAESTRO,” I rumbled.

  “Doctor Dire,” he replied. “You’ve come an awfully long way to die.”

  CHAPTER 2: DEATH THREATS AND DINNER

  “Constables are res
ponding, at this time all residents of Brixton and surrounding buroughs are asked to stay off the streets, as gunfire has been heard from the scene of the fight. The noted heroine, Lady Thrush, seems to have engaged the mystery costume...”

  --LBC, emergency radio announcement during the Brixton incident

  We regarded each other as best we could, him from whatever camera he was using to stare at me, and me from the busted ocular sensors of the drone body.

  He broke the silence first. “You know what irritates me? I mean, you do, obviously. But what utterly gets my goat? You know what that is, Dire?”

  “NOT YET. BUT SHE INTENDS TO SUBJECT YOU TO THE MOST RIGOROUS OF EXPERIMENTS TO DETERMINE YOUR THRESHOLD OF TORMENT. USING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD, OF COURSE. A THOROUGH AND LOGICAL DESTRUCTION OF EVERYTHING YOU HOLD DEAR.”

  “Pardon?” One of the idiots piped up. The others caught the word, chorused it back, rattling back and forth.

  Maestro shook his head. “Oh shut up,” he whispered, and the chill, rasping voice he used rattled through my head. I remembered that feeling. It stoked my rage anew, and I bared my own teeth, unseen and unnoticed.

  But the confused tourists shut up, and the villain of the hour turned his attention back to me. “What really hacks me off, Dire, is that you had won. You’d won, you dizzy cunt—”

  “CAREFUL.”

  “—you’d won! All you had to do was stay in your little island paradise, shrink back into the shadows while the Americans stomped around and acted tough, and drink rum while you fucked poolboys. Just kick back in the sun and sand, rake in drug money and graft money from that glorious little hotbed of corruption, and I don’t know, build death rays or something in your spare time. You’d won!” He lifted his face, and ice-blue eyes stared at me, flashing in the dim light of wherever he was. “But no, you couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?”

  “YOU SEALED YOUR FATE THE MINUTE YOU TRIED TO GET INSIDE DIRE’S HEAD.” Murder Maestro, also-known as Maestro M, or occasionally Pride, was a subtle mind controller. Implanted triggers, modified memories, and a thoroughly ruthless attitude when it came to using and abusing his puppets. I’d barely escaped.

  He laughed, rattling and dry. “Almost had you. Bit of a mess in there, though, can’t say I’m surprised my usual tricks didn’t take. But no matter. You’ve come here now to the seat of my home, where every resource is mine. If this is a game, un-dear lady, then I not only have all the pieces, but also both chairs, the board, and the whole damned room. What do you have? What do you even have, that could possibly present me even the ghost of a challenge?”

  “TIME. TIME AND MALICE. YOU’RE HER PROJECT UNTIL YOU’RE GONE, MAESTRO. AND SINCE SHE HAS QUITE A LOT PLANNED IN THE LONG-TERM, SHE’S GOING TO SEE THAT YOUR PROJECT COMES TO A DRAMATIC AND PAINFUL ENDING AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.”

  “You really have no idea what you’re up against, you silly cunt.”

  “THERE’S THAT WORD AGAIN. YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH WOMEN, DON’T YOU?”

  “I’ll have less of one when you’re dead. But that’s beside the point... you have no idea, no idea of the resources I can bring to bear against you. Of just how rigged the game truly is! Oh, Doctor...” his grin stretched open, and a pink tongue flicked out, catlike, and moistened his lip. “...you know, I think I’m going to have fun with this. Yes, I do believe that not only will I break you, not only will I kill you, and all those around you, but I’ll take my time and enjoy it.”

  “WELL THEN, YOU CAN START THINGS OFF BY ENJOYING ONE LESS HIDEOUT, NINE LESS GUARDS, AND FOUR LESS METAHUMAN MORONS.”

  The idiots looked on mutely. They’d been tortured out of their minds, and rebuilt. In the process, Maestro had found a way to induce superpowers into them. The problem was that it took time to rebuild them afterward, and I’d turned these up before he could finish the process.

  But Maestro merely shook his head. “My un-dear Dire, you’re quite delusional if you think that I have any stake at all in the continued existence of any of the assets you’ve named. Case in point.” His hand moved offscreen. And for the first time in our conversation, his grin faltered.

  “OH, DON’T GO AND POUT JUST BECAUSE SHE DISABLED YOUR BOMB.”

  Another sigh. “Spoilsport. Very well then. We’ll do this the old-fashioned way, I suppose. See you soon, Doctor Dire.”

  “NOT SOON ENOUGH, MURDER MAESTRO.”

  The television snapped off, and I returned my attention to the morons. No, it wasn’t their fault they had been effectively lobotomized. They needed a new name. Blanks? Yes, that would do.

  At this point the plan was for the hero to call the cops, once she found the Blanks, and get them into safe custody where Maestro couldn’t retrieve them without drawing too much attention. Even getting their records traced and fingerprints on file would be a step in the right direction there.

  Wood creaked behind me, and crunched as it gave way. I turned my head with the little hydraulic pressure I had left, and watched as a caped silhouette was once more visible above. Light stabbed down into the hole from the hero’s hand, and twisted, poking around into the darkness.

  “GOOD, YOU FOUND A FLASHLIGHT AFTER ALL. WAS BEGINNING TO WORRY YOU’D LOST YOUR WAY.”

  The light oriented on me, and Lady Thrush jumped down into the hole. “Now, you bloody thing, tell me what this is all about—”

  “Nice night, isn’t it?” The idiots chorused.

  “What?” The light shifted, and with a dawning horror, I saw her body language go from anger to alarm.

  Young. Impulsive. Heroic. Injured right in her pride, thanks to my earlier actions. Maybe thinking she’d just been lead into an ambush, and completely outnumbered.

  The very people I’d come to save were now at risk.

  Unless...

  “STAY BACK!” I bellowed. “COME ANY CLOSER AND THE HOSTAGES DIE!”

  “What? Who even are you! What do you want? This doesn’t make any sense!”

  “NOW YOU’RE GETTING IT,” I said.

  “Look, don’t hurt them. Just tell me what this is all about.”

  I considered her for a moment. “MMMM... NO.”

  “A standoff, then? You’re leaking. A lot. Think I’ll win this one.”

  “YOU EVER PLAY CHESS AGAINST SOMEONE WHO FEELS NO OBLIGATION TO LOSE GRACEFULLY?”

  “Can’t say I have.”

  “WELL THEN, THERE’S A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING. THIS UNIT WILL SELF DESTRUCT IN TWENTY, NINETEEN, EIGHTEEN—”

  To her credit, she didn’t hesitate. I’d barely made it to sixteen before she’d dropped the flashlight, grabbed me by the leg, and taken off at top flight speed up through the ceiling, then a few more ceilings, then the roof. My gyro ground and I groaned as my head whipped around as she spun me in circles by the leg, like she was holding a lasso.

  At some point she let go, and as I spun I could make out the ground flashing by, receding. She’d gathered momentum and thrown me straight up.

  I eyeballed the location, ran a few calculations for a whole half of a second, gave it a few more seconds, for dramatic effect. Then I triggered the real self-destruct sequence.

  I logged out of the remote interface, to find that the room was still spinning.

  I tried to stand up, grab for the couch, and say something witty. Didn’t work out so well.

  After I’d spent a good minute and twelve seconds vomiting on the floor, I managed to blink enough tears away from my eyes to see the room wasn’t spinning quite as badly.

  “Boss? What the hell?”

  “Alpha,” I croaked.

  “There was an explosion, up above. Looked like fireworks? The local Gridnet’s aflame with rumors.”

  “Had to blow the remote unit. A local paragon did the fastball special with it, straight up.”

  “That’s not gonna go over well. People are already tossing around the ‘T’ word. Y’know, Terrorist? Uh, everything was out of range, right?”

  “Please. Triple checked the math and the angle. The river�
��s going to catch the fragments. They can have fun dredging them out. Nothing solid is going toward anything that would cause collateral.” It’s a handy thing, being a supergenius. It let me keep my hands mostly clean, which was very important in my line of work.

  “Ouch. So, the mission failed, then?”

  I snorted. “Now what do you take her for, Alpha?” Sure of my stomach now, I mopped my mouth, spat out the horrible taste left within, and rose to my feet. Alpha stood before me, glowing, genderless, and looking like a two-foot tall man made of purple light. Hard light, admittedly; I’d given him the ability to do the faintest of gravitic force exertion via a suite of mobile projectors, on the off-chance he needed to manipulate something physical.

  It also let him make me dinner, when I was too busy otherwise. Which was more and more often, these days.

  “The mission was a success.” I leaned against the sofa. “Not a complete success, but within parameters for Plan C.”

  “Plan C? Ouch.”

  “Not as bad as it sounds. It’s a healthy C.”

  “A C-plus, then?”

  “Sure, whatever.” I closed my eyes, let the last of the vertigo fade. “The mess on the carpet. Could you?”

  “I’ll never understand the revulsion you organic types have toward your own bodily byproducts. It’s just waste. I’ll clean it for you, sure.” Alpha wasn’t human, never had been. An online intelligence sealed into a single powerful server, thanks to my machinations. Originally he’d been a rogue element, if not an enemy, but I’d turned him.

  I hadn’t been quite ready to trust him with my newest toys, but after I’d lost a perfectly good lunch, I found my reluctance diminished. “The biofeedback is a problem. Too low, and it’s sluggish, hard to control at any decent speed. Pointless to fight in. Too high, and it causes problems. There doesn’t seem to be a happy medium that will handle all situations.”

  “You know, I don’t have a body,” Alpha said, as he trotted over to the kitchenette area and retrieved a roll of paper towels. “Just saying, if I was piloting I wouldn’t end up spraying.”