Girl Power

  He keeps his hands buried in the folds of his robe as he says, “My son, human pair-bonding is an intensely difficult process. It is not like on our world, where matches were determined based on physical and psychological compatibility. The humans rely on instinct, which often creates couples that are unsuitable.”

  “How do you know if you’ll be unsuitable?” she asks. Her father shows no reaction. Starla keys in the question manually.

  The hologram ponders this question as the computer searches for an answer. Finally he says, “Without the sort of tests we run on our planet, it is a process of trial-and-error. I am afraid it often requires many errors to find a good match.”

  “I want to run those tests,” Starla tells the computer. “Tell me who my soul mate will be.”

  “As you wish, my son, but it will still be difficult to find the other half of the tandem—”

  “Just do it!” she shouts. It’s apparently close enough to her male voice that the computer responds. Restraints appear on the armrests and front feet of the chair to hold Starla in place. Then the chair begins to glow. The hologram of her father watches placidly while Starla cries out from the searing pain in her mind.

  “Do not worry, my son. The pain you are experiencing is to be expected while the probe scans the deepest recesses of your mind.”

  After minutes that seem like an eternity, the pain finally subsides. Starla sags forward in the chair. She has to grab the armrests when the restraints disappear so she won’t fall onto the floor. While she pants and wipes her face with the back of one hand, her father steps closer to her. There’s an expression of pain on his face.

  “There is one your thoughts fixate on. The one you call Kate King. I am afraid she will never be compatible with you. Her selfish pursuit of what you call ‘the scoop’ will always take precedence over her feelings for you. It is a part of her nature you cannot change and which will lead any union to ruin.”

  “No, that’s not true,” Starla whispers, though she’s seen the signs of this herself. She types into the computer, “What if I bring her here and run the test on her?”

  “A human could not survive the testing. Her mind would be destroyed by the probe. If you truly care for her, my son, you cannot bring her here.”

  Starla sags in the chair. At times like this, she wishes her father were real, not a hologram, so he could hug her. Did her people hug? She isn’t sure on that, though she doubts it. Her people valued knowledge and reason above feelings like love. Yet they had destroyed themselves. So maybe there’s something to be said for humans.

  Her legs are wobbly as she stands up. She shouldn’t have come here. She should have gone to her real home, to Ma and Pa on the farm. She still hasn’t told them what happened. They think their adopted son is dead. She can only imagine the pain they endured when the military chaplain showed up to deliver the news.

  If Starla were still a man, she knows what her adopted parents would say. They would tell her to follow her heart. The only problem is Starla doesn’t know what her heart wants anymore. She thought she and Kate could be together at least as friends, but they don’t seem to have much of a bond. As her biological father’s hologram said, Kate’s pursuit of the scoop would always keep Starla in second place.

  “Is there anything else you require, my son?” the hologram asks. When she doesn’t say anything, it shuts down. That’s certainly one disadvantage of having a hologram for a parent.

  As she continues to ponder what to do about Kate, the hologram returns. Starla hopes the computer has come up with some kind of answer to her problems, but the hologram of her father says, “There is an incoming message from Major Dalton.”

  The hologram changes to the major’s face. She looks worried, almost scared. “Starla, I need you at base. We’ve got a problem.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Chapter 23

  Midnight checks the time on the treadmill’s display: 15:49. And she doesn’t feel ready to pass out yet; she’s not even winded. That’s a definite improvement from when she started. When she squints into the mirrored wall of the gym, she can even make out calf muscles now.

  Beside her, Melvin’s face is red and sweat drips into his eyes. His progress has been a lot slower, but she appreciates the fact he continues to make the effort. She just wishes sometimes he could make the effort somewhere else.

  Since she saved him from Barf the bully, Melvin has stuck to her like a conjoined twin. He even changed his schedule of classes so they could have all the same ones. The only time she’s able to get him to leave is when the limo shows up to take him home for the night. Tonight she won’t even have that luxury since he convinced his mom to let him stay the night.

  Midnight would have to be an idiot not to see what’s happening: Melvin is in love. With her. It’s happened before when she was a man and some damsel in distress would fall head-over-heels for her rescuer. He let himself return those feelings once, but after Christy Connor was butchered and left in the meat freezer of an Italian restaurant, he refused to let it happen again.

  Which means she should tell Melvin to get lost, but she hasn’t. He’s just so sad and pathetic that it’d be like drowning a litter of kittens. In less than a year he’ll have to go off to college anyway and she’ll go back to the Holloway Corporation board to manage her company. She hopes he doesn’t work up the nerve to try anything until then.

  When the time gets to twenty minutes she turns the treadmill off, more for Melvin’s sake than hers. She claps him on the back and says, “Good job. You didn’t even throw up this time.”

  “Thanks,” he says. She had never imagined anyone could get motion sickness from a treadmill, but that’s how pathetic Melvin is. “The Dramamine patch seems to be working.”

  She reaches into the minifridge to take out two bottles of water. She tosses one to Melvin, who of course fumbles it; he has the reflexes of a ninety-year-old woman with arthritis. After he manages to pick up the water, they go into the drawing room to sprawl on the couches with their tablets.

  While Melvin reads comics on his, Midnight does real superhero work. The last two weeks she hasn’t made much progress on her investigation into Dr. Roboto. Her own records being of little use, she decided to hack into the Pentagon to see if they have anything helpful. It’s unlikely they have anything she doesn’t, but it’s worth a shot.

  What she really wants to do is go to Guantanamo Bay’s secure wing and smack Roboto around until she gets something useful. That’s what she would have done back when she was a man. She can’t do that now for a number of reasons. A girl who weighs a hundred two pounds dripping wet and stands five feet tall in her shoes isn’t going to intimidate anyone. And Major Dalton wouldn’t let her onto the island in the first place, let alone into a cell with a hardened murderer.

  She only needs a minute to get into the Pentagon’s mainframes. Melvin starts to talk to her about something involving Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus; she nods and grunts at the appropriate times to make it seem like she’s listening. With a few buttons she lines up the Pentagon’s records to those of her computers. There’s only one file she doesn’t have: a list of visitors to Roboto’s cell in Gitmo.

  The file is marked as restricted to only the very upper echelon of the US government. It’s technically treason for her, a civilian, to read the file. That’s only more incentive for her to see what’s so interesting. She can’t imagine why a list of visitors would be classified that top secret.

  It starts to make sense once she cracks into the file. There’s only one name listed: Major Carrie Dalton. “Holy shit,” Midnight mumbles as she looks through the file. The visits after what happened with the Feminazi aren’t a surprise. What does shock her is to see the many, many visits the major made up to nine months before what happened on Roboto’s island.

  “What’s wrong?” Melvin asks. He tries to peek at the screen, but she presses it again
st her chest. His lower lip trembles; he looks about to cry as he asks, “Are you chatting with someone on there?”

  “No. I need you to go. Right now.”

  “What did I do? Whatever it is—”

  “Go ask Jasper to give you a ride home. I have to go.” As she gets up, she forces herself to smile and say, “It’s female problems, you know?”

  Melvin makes a face to show he understands what it means. That should keep him out of her hair for a little while—hopefully three to five days. She jogs upstairs and slams the bathroom door. Then she creeps down to the master bedroom.

  Midnight ducks into the old fireplace, which hasn’t had a real fire lit in it in thirty years. This is a lot easier now that she’s so much shorter than before. A retinal scanner IDs her and then opens the fake backing of the fireplace to let her into the escape tube that goes down to the bunker. There are stairs and an elevator to the bunker, but she’s never been one to take chances.

  It’s hard to resist letting out a childish “whee” as she coasts down the tube. When she sees her feet approaching the light, she tucks her body as much as she can. She lands hard on the floor of the bunker, at Jasper’s feet. He pauses his dusting to look down at her in her soot-stained tracksuit with a face to match.

  “Are you and Mr. Amis playing hide-and-go-seek? I must say this isn’t a sporting way to win.”

  “I needed to get away from him so I could use the computer,” she says as he helps her up. “Give him a ride home, would you? I have work to do.”

  “No disrespect, Mistress Robin, but Mr. Amis has had his heart set on this sleepover for some time.”

  “I don’t care!” she shrieks and stamps her foot. “This is much more important than his feelings.” Seeing the hardness setting in on Jasper’s face, she softens her voice. “Please, take him home. This is really important.”

  “Very well,” he says. “I’ll make sure to convey your regrets.”

  “You do that,” she growls and then sits down at the computer to find out what Major Dalton has been up to with Dr. Roboto.

  ***

  There’s no such thing as privacy in the secure area Guantanamo Bay; every cell is monitored with cameras and microphones to make sure the captured supervillains don’t get up to no good. At least that’s how it should work. Strangely Dr. Roboto’s conversations with Major Dalton are not recorded. No video or audio, just blacked out like the Nixon tapes.

  Any good hacker knows how difficult it is to really delete something. On the surface it might seem like the file is erased, but traces of it remain beneath the surface. The only way to make sure it’s gone forever is to destroy the server it exists on. Apparently Major Dalton doesn’t have the authority to make that happen, or she didn’t expect anyone to follow her trail of bread crumbs. It’s sloppy on her part.

  Whoever did erase the files was able to get rid of a lot of the data, but the computer in the bunker is able to pull bits and pieces of it. While Midnight waits for the computer to reconstruct it, she gets up to do some stretches. She’s going to need her muscles—such as they are—soon enough. Not that she expects to do any actual fighting. She just needs to get the information to Starla or Allison and let them do the rest. She doesn’t even need to leave the bunker, except she doesn’t want to risk discovery by sending a message over the radio. Her computer has the best encryption in the world, but she can’t be certain about Starla or Allison’s end.

  As she does a lunge, she hears a clatter from upstairs. Midnight straightens and then hurries over to the locker in which she keeps her old costume and other goodies. She grabs a Taser and a brass knuckle.

  Dalton couldn’t have found out about her snooping already, could she? Midnight thought she’d been careful, but perhaps it had been a trap to lure her in. Well, if Dalton or any of her grunts want a fight, Midnight will give it to them.

  She starts for the stairs only to realize a fight won’t be necessary. It’s not Dalton or any of her soldiers. It’s not one of her supervillain foes either.

  It’s Melvin.

  He lies on the floor at her feet for a moment before he starts to stir. He sits up with a groan and then arranges his glasses on his face. His eyes bug out when he sees the Taser leveled at his chest. “Whoa!” he shouts. “This is it, isn’t it? Midnight Spectre’s lair!”

  “How the hell did you get in here?” she asks. “Did Jasper let you down here?”

  “No. I saw him come out from behind a bookcase like in an old movie. After he was gone, I figured out how to trip the mechanism.” His face reddens as he adds, “I tripped on the stairs when I was coming down.”

  “No shit.”

  “What are you doing down here? Do you know Midnight Spectre?”

  “Not really. He’s my uncle. I found this place after he left.”

  “Wow. It’s so cool, just like the Batcave.”

  “It’s not a fucking cave,” she snarls. “It’s two feet of steel-reinforced concrete buried deep enough that it can survive anything—including a nuke.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what the notes in the computer say. Now, are you going to get lost and promise not to tell anyone or do I have to light you up with this Taser?”

  “Why do I have to leave?”

  “Because I’m busy.”

  “On what?”

  “I don’t have time to explain it to a goddamned amateur. Just go back up the stairs and try not to break your damned neck. Jasper’s going to take you home.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he says. He pushes himself up to his feet. “You’ll have to shoot me—”

  He doesn’t finish the sentence before she pulls the trigger.

  ***

  She had hoped the Taser would keep Melvin out for a few hours, long enough for her to do what needs done, but she hears him groan an hour later, as she pulls on her boots. He tries to sit up, but she pushes him back down. “Don’t try to move yet. Just relax and breathe. I’ll have Jasper come get you.”

  “Wait,” he whispers. “Why?”

  “I don’t have time for this right now. There’s some very bad stuff going on and I have to put a stop to it.” He tries to get up, but she pushes him back down. “It’s going to be all right. You just lie here and rest. I’ll see you Monday.”

  She pats his cheek and then walks away, to the hangar. The Mark 3 jet was destroyed to stop the Feminazi, but she still has the Mark 1 at the very back. Though it’s been in mothballs for eight years, it should still be flight-worthy, so long as Jasper’s kept up the maintenance on it.

  It’s a struggle to carry a fuel hose over to the aircraft. She really needs to start lifting weights now that she’s built up some endurance. The hose feels like it weighs a ton and the panel on the jet she needs five minutes with a crowbar to get loose. She has to pull back her hood to wipe the sweat from her face as the fuel begins to flow.

  While she waits for the jet to fuel up, she runs through the checklist. According to the logs, Jasper last maintained the jet six months ago. From his notes, the engine could use an overhaul. She hopes it has enough left in it to get her to Atomic City and Focal City.

  As she’s about to climb down to remove the fuel hose, she hears a click. She turns to find her own Taser pointed at her. Melvin holds the weapon in a trembling hand. “I’m coming with you,” he says.

  She scoffs at this. “You think so?” Her hand isn’t as fast as it used to be, but it’s fast enough to swat the Taser from his hand. She leaps out of the cockpit, doing a flip in midair that’s steadied when her cape stiffens into its glide mode. She had to actually cut the cape down from one of her old ones; she’s relieved to see it works well enough on her shorter frame.

  Before Melvin can react, she pulls him down from the ladder. That’s a mistake, as he’s too heavy for her. They land in a heap on the floor. She’s quick to push him aside and slide the brass knuckle around her fingers.
The knuckle is much too big, but that won’t matter so long as she maintains her hold on it when she swings.

  “Unless you want your face rearranged, I’d suggest you go upstairs.”

  “No. I’m not going to let you go by yourself. I want to help.”

  “You don’t even know what I’m doing.”

  “I know it has to do with a Major Dalton and Dr. Roboto,” he says.

  “How the hell do you know that?” She shakes her head. “You hacked my computer?”

  “Not all of it. I only got through the lower encryption levels.”

  “Shit.”

  “So either you let me come along or I’ll go tell the police where they can find Midnight Spectre. He’s still on their Most Wanted list.”

  “Or I could just kill you.”

  “You wouldn’t do that. Midnight Spectre never killed his enemies.”

  “Well, I’m not him, am I? So maybe I kill my enemies.”

  “No you won’t.”

  Her fingers twitch in the brass knuckle. All she needs to do is knock him out. But the way he stands here, unflinching, gives her pause. He’s so much like how she used to be the first time she was seventeen, just a kid with more guts than brains when it came to danger.

  “Goddamn it,” she mutters and lowers her fist. “Fine, you can come along. It should be a milk run anyway. Just make sure you don’t barf on me.”

  “I won’t,” he promises.

  She finds a couple of extra barf bags for him to use, along with a helmet that is a couple sizes too big. The visor of the helmet droops down to his mouth. “This is a really bad idea,” she says.

  “I don’t care. I’ve spent most of my life reading about superheroes. Now I’m going to be one.”

  “More like a sidekick. My sidekick.”

  “Fine, but I need a cool superhero name. I was thinking the Outcast. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Keep dreaming,” she says. Then she lowers the cockpit and they take off.

  Chapter 24

  Starla shivers involuntarily at the sight of the base as the memories of being cooped up in the secret facility come back to her. In some ways though she supposes the place wasn’t that bad; at least she had fewer things to worry about there. She needed only to adjust to her new body, not a new life.