Industrial Strength Magic

Chapter 272: The Purge

“Here it is,” Guile said, handing Truthslayer the medicine.

“How’d you get these?” the black-haired superheroine murmured, opening the case and peering inside.

Inside were four vials of the stuff Paradox had used to ‘cure’ Solaris, although the jury was still out on that. The important part was that it made a god mortal, however temporarily.

I hid inside Paradox’s incinerator in my subspace and caught a few of them as they were disposed of. Kid might be able to sense me when I’m aiming to harm him, but when I’m not…Almost burned my hands off through the hyperweave, though.

“You already know the answer to that question,” Guile said.

“Don’t ask,” Truthslayer said with a dry chuckle. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.

“Are we actually doing this?”

“We aren’t doing anything.” Truthslayer said. “I’ll do it. He’s not getting better, and he deserves…” Guile watched as Truthslayer choked up a moment before mastering her expression. “He deserves peace.”

“I’ll tell him he needs multiple doses. He trusts me. Once he’s got the serum in him, I’ll catch him in a lie, and he’ll…go to sleep.” She glanced over at him, her eyes red. “Is everyone else on board?”

“Solaris is dangerously unstable,” She said. “He could get violent any second, and a second is all it would take to destroy Franklin City. And if the mimic gets to him…” She shook her head. “It’s already almost everywhere. We’ve had to move him…too many times.”

Guile nodded. “I’ll get everyone ready,” he said. “Just in case. Some Anchors aren’t going to agree with this, but they won’t know until it’s over.”

Truthslayer nodded, closed the case and heaved a deep breath.

“Alright.”

****

Tom Franklin stared at the glass of water. How long had he been sitting there? Things had gotten a little better over the last few days. The memory loss and periods of confusion were getting smaller, if his tracker had anything to say about it.

Like Paradox had said, it wasn’t an instantaneous cure, but it was allowing his mind to gradually put itself back together, which was good enough. His skin wasn’t leaking light anymore, either.

Just another close call in a hundred-year string of close calls.

He made a note in his journal and grimaced.

‘Staring at water.’

He checked his watch, then remembered that he didn’t have one since the cell phone was invented. He checked his phone and wrote down the time.

’15 minutes.’

He picked the glass up and tossed it back, sighing in relief.

If Diane sees me this spaced out, she’ll give me an earful…

Tom’s heart sank a moment, glancing down at the journal, eyeing the words scratched into the paper, forceful enough to damage the sheet beneath them.

Diane is dead.

Right. Right.

A flood of memories washed over him. Two decades of hunting the man who’d killed his wife, only realizing with the wisdom of age that it’d been an accident. By then there was already too much bad blood.

So many valuable protectors of humanity wasted chasing a non-threat.

Backfire, Hound-dog Hell-Ware, Bastion, Boom-R-Ang, Molly, Ten-Don, Holy Holly…I’m sorry.

Like touching a hot stove and liking the pain, Tom remembered the way each and every one of them died, wondering exactly what went through their head. What it had felt like as they realized they weren’t going to make it. How much pain they’d perceived before everything went dark.

Anger at Professor Replica flared up for a moment, then fluttered and died like a sick bird. There simply weren’t enough Omni-class supers left to pick another fight with the Replicators.

Although…Tom thought of Claudette’s son. He might be the next. He’s damn close.

Which son? The twenty-something or the little snot-nose…No, they’re the same.

Tom carefully corrected his frayed memories, hoping it would take this time. They were beginning to take, but sometimes requires a little persistence.

Now I’m sitting here staring at an empty glass, Tom mused to himself, sighing and wiggling his toes in his sandals, turning away from the sink.

I haven’t had a vacation in…what? Fifteen years? Role was currently handling the daily appearances, and Locust was surprisingly competent at administrating the city. That old woman was more than just a supreme multitasker, she understood people at a deeper level than most.

Tom yawned and started the coffee maker, shuffling through his apartment.

Sometimes I think Coffee is the only reason the Earth is still spinning. Tom mused, waiting for that nostalgic smell. There’d been a fair number of times where it was the only thing that got him going. Some of those times had included saving the world.

Sure, once the coffee hit his light-based physiology, it vaporized, but he still got a caffeine rush. The doctors told him it was a placebo, but Tom would take it any way he could get it.

Knock, Knock, Knock. A knock on the door brought Tom out of his thoughts.

“Who ‘dat?” Tom grunted, pouring himself a cup of joe while shuffling toward the door.

“May,” Came a woman’s voice from the doorbell.

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“May, who?” Tom asked.

“Grampa, open the damn door,” she said, and for a brief instant, a flash of a little girl giving him the stink-eye for lying to her. That tone brought it all back to the forefront.

Grumbling, Tom opened the door, revealing a young woman wearing a frankly pornographic suit of black leather…or is it something else?

She’s a bit older than I thought? And…

“May, what are you wearing?” Tom asked, aghast at the frankly shocking choice his granddaughter had made in apparel.

“I’m Truthslayer, remember? A super?” she asked, cocking her head in that same posture she had when she was getting miffed at him.

“Right. Right…that’s just what the girls are wearing nowadays. Hyperweave.” Tom muttered, turning away from her and making a note in his memory correction journal.

“Women…dressing…like…harlots…Normalized…Hyperweave…responsible.”

“Hah, hah.” Truthslayer gave a mirthless chuckle and brushed past him, bearing a little case which she set down on the table and unzipped, revealing a professional-looking set of vials and syringes.

“What’s that?” Tom asked, his heart starting in his chest. He habitually glanced at the door behind her, and the window overlooking Franklin city, his mind instantly assuming the worst. Shapeshifter?Mind control? Assassination attempt?

“Your medicine.” She said, showing him a vial. “This is the stuff Paradox made to get your brain to patch itself back together. You need a weekly dose until you’re back to 100%.”

Tom frowned, glancing at the vial of clear liquid.

“I always loved your grandmother, you know. She took good care of me, and you’re just like her.”

Truthslayer’s lips quirked up in a smile. “liar,” she said, shaking her head, tugging on him gently with her power. Letting him know it was her. Their secret handshake.

“I just didn’t remember needing more than one dose,” Tom said, sitting down at the table and rolling up the sleeve of his fluffy robe.

“Well, you also have Alzheimers, so that’s not too surprising,” May murmured as she put one of the syringes into the vial, extracting a “One dose a week, just to make sure it’s at full strength while your brain patches itself up. Once you’re mostly back together, we can stop and let the effect dwindle. So sayeth ‘Dr. Paradox’, who studied your condition for a whole weekend. You should be thankful.”

“Freakin’ Thinkers,” Tom murmured, shaking his head. Paradox was more like a Drainer with his dad’s Magnum Opus running through his system, but he was definitely a smartass.

It was almost insulting to be cured by a kid who gave the problem the barest amount of his time, fixing everything practically casually.

May ripped open an alcohol wipe package and wiped Tom’s shoulder.

“Whaddya think, I’m gonna get an infection?” Tom asked wryly as she paid more attention than necessary to procedure.

“You never know,” May murmured, meeting his gaze as she stuck the needle into his arm, filling his veins with cold medicine.

Something’s wrong. Something about the way she met his gaze...

Tom leapt up and unleashed a blast of light from his palm, cutting his granddaughter in half.

As she toppled to the ground in two crispy halves, Solaris prayed he was right and he hadn’t just killed his last blood relative.

But if I’m right…

Tom glanced down at the needle in his shoulder and tore it out, flinging it aside.

The syringe skittered across the tiled kitchen floor, disappearing under the dishwasher while he kept his gaze on his granddaughter.

For a gut-wrenching moment, nothing happened, May simply lay there in shock, eyes wide, jaw moving silently.

For a moment, Tom thought he might’ve…

Then it happened.

May’s halves grew tendrils, attaching to each other, drawing her crispy halves towards each other. They sloughed off the burnt meat and sealed in a matter of second.

“I’ll take some small comfort in knowing it wasn’t me that killed you,” Tom said, raising his hand to vaporize the monster that’d consumed his granddaughter.

Nothing happened.

“You should’ve run.” The corpse of his granddaughter gargled as her lungs came back online. “Now you’re going to die.”

It was true. In the single heartbeat he had while his power still worked, he could’ve gotten halfway across the world. If he’d been thinking straight, and not about his granddaughter, he would’ve done just that.

If he’d been thinking straight, he would’ve vaporized her completely, not half-assing it.

Now he was gonna die.

“Ah, fuck it,” Solaris muttered, grabbing the scalding hot pot of coffee and taking a sip, relishing the first burn he’d had in fifty years. The Real Coffee Experience. “Had to happen sooner or later.”

His last living relative was gone, twisted into a horrific abomination that crawled towards him on rapidly mutating limbs. There really wasn’t anything left to live for. His son, his wife, his daughter, his other grandkids…now May.

Maybe It’s about time I shuffled off the stage. I’m sick and tired of this world. Of clinging to the last fragments of my mind in a world that’s gone insane. I just want a break. And maybe this is it.

Then again…

Solaris threw the scalding hot coffee at the mimic as it launched itself towards him. the creature reeled back, screeching in pain while the aging super grabbed a butcher knife out of the knife block.

“Never said I’d make it easy for you.” Solaris muttered, hefting the blade before wading in and hacking away at the creature, all pretense at defense forgone in favor of extracting maximum damage. “You killed my granddaughter.”

A few minutes later, in another point in Franklin City, Chemestro was working out.

Today was Cardio, and Chemestro was sprinting at full speed down his personal track, wearing a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound vest.

Chemestro enjoyed the burning sensation spreading through his body, the taste of blood in his mouth. The pain scoured away all doubt, stress, and worry, leaving nothing but calm. It was the closest to meditation he would ever come.

Every once in a while, as his body struggled, Chemestro could feel his mind touching…something else. Something beyond himself.

It was probably hypoxia.

Still, he pursued this state of mind, simply to be free from the cage that was his life, his body, his ‘friends’ and ‘family’.

It was a delicate moment. Sometimes at the end of a run, he could point to a moment and say ‘there, I was definitely there’, but when he was inside that moment, trying to pay attention to it would tear the state apart like cobwebs, as if his consciousness itself was some kind of scouring wind.

It resided outside consciousness. Outside of reality.

Against the backdrop of his body panting, muscles burning, Chemestro felt his self diffuse and expand, seemingly projecting on a larger canvas than his narrow view of reality, spreading in directions that had no name.

He didn’t dare acknowledge it. That would shatter the ephemeral, dreamlike moment.

He simply kept running.

It’s coming.

Between one step and the next, Chemestro felt a ripple cut across his billowing, expanded self, heading straight for him. Something filled with pain, rage and malice. Something moving at the speed of causality.

Chemestro’s instincts reflexively rendered him completely permeable, to light, to heat, matter. His expanded senses picked up the ball and included thought, meaning, reality.

Chemestro’s eyes widened as he seemed to step outside the world itself, in a dreamlike state, looking in on his underground running track from outside reality in a moment seemingly frozen in time.

The old analog clock on the wall was still, the second hand refusing to budge.

No, wait.

Click.

As though it were forcing its way through molasses, the second hand clicked forward.

Then, for the briefest instant, so small that he might’ve doubted himself, Chemestro saw Solaris standing in the corner of the room.

Then he was gone.

A flood of nameless dread suffused Chemestro’s entire body.

In another location, inside the very same second, Nocturne was watching TV in his underwear, resting a beer on his gradually expanding stomach.

He was getting old, to be sure. The super suit barely managed to contain his paunch nowadays. I guess I should probably call it soon. I’ve got plenty of money, and I can always do good on the side, The sound-based super thought, watching contestants wipe out on the spinning bars and topple into slime pits and chuckling.

BEEP!

The Alarm went off, but Nocturne didn’t have time to process it.

Between one second and the next, Nocturne’s brain caught up to the fact that he was no longer sitting down watching Lincoln City Gladiator. He was in fact being held aloft by Solaris, whose hands were already in his mouth, preventing him from whistling.

Nocturne tried to click his fingers, but they turned to ash.

“Fucking mimics,” Solaris sneered.

The fingers in his mouth pressed upwards, delivering pain to the roof of his mouth.

After that, Nothing.

At that very same moment, Darryl Collins, also known as the Mechanaut, launched out of bed, The Alarm blaring in his head.

His Watchdog AI that kept an eye out for erratic movements from Solaris had triggered, and in a big way. The man had visited the homes of no less than four Anchors in less than a second.

There was no way that was enough time to talk to them or organize some kind of political agenda.

Plenty of time to kill them, though.

Darryl hit the emergency escape button in his head, ejecting his soul out of his decoy body.

An instant later, his decoy was reduced to so much gas, along with 95% of his secret backups and hidden armories.

The purge of Franklin city’s Anchors took less than a minute.