Girl Power

  “That’s right. I’m the original Midnight Spectre.”

  “But now you’re…a girl?”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you.” She shakes her head. “You promised not to freak out about it.”

  “I’m not freaking out.”

  “You are too! You’re looking at me like I have three heads.” She wipes furiously at her eyes when she realizes she’s crying. Goddamn these hormones.

  “It’s just really…weird,” he says. “You’re so cute. Not like a guy at all. I mean most guys who get a sex change you can tell, but you look so natural.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean—”

  “It’s fine. Now, it’s up to us to stop them. You always wanted to be a superhero, didn’t you?” When he nods, she continues, “Now’s your chance. I’m going to need your help to pull this off. Can I count on you?”

  He nods again. She tells him what she has in mind. He needs the barf bag again. “You can’t do that!” he says. “Those people will have guns and stuff. They could kill you.”

  “I know. It’s a calculated risk. And I know I’ve got my partner backing me up.” She reaches over the seat to take his hand and shake it.

  “I won’t let you down,” he says.

  “Good. Then here we go.” She pulls her hand back and then punches the release for his ejection seat.

  Chapter 26

  Midnight isn’t sure where Melvin lands. She already has the fighter moving in towards Roboto’s monster. She brings it around to land about twenty feet in front of a group of soldiers, who scatter to cover amongst the rubble. She shuts down the engines, pops the canopy, and then stands with her hands up.

  Ten laser sights converge over the heart of her puffy gray vest. She reinforced the vest with Kevlar composite strips taken from her old costume, but she doesn’t want to find out if it can withstand ten direct hits from a machine gun. “Easy, boys,” she says. “I’m a friend of Major Dalton. Tell her Midnight Spectre has arrived.”

  “Yeah, right,” one soldier says. “You’re just some punk kid.”

  “Would some punk kid have an awesome jet like this?”

  “So you stole it from him. Big deal.”

  “You guys really are thick. Just call Major Dalton and tell her.”

  To her relief one of them finally does. “There’s some kid here calling herself Midnight Spectre. You want I should give her a spanking?” He puts a finger to one ear while Midnight resists the urge not to lunge at him and kick him in the crotch a few times. The soldier lowers his finger from his ear, followed by his rifle. “It’s all right. The major’s coming up to meet you.”

  “Thanks, guys,” Midnight says. She hops down from the cockpit, onto the back of the machine. None of the soldiers say anything to her as they wait; they just glare at her like they want to bash her head in. The feeling’s mutual.

  Major Dalton finally appears through a crack in the monster’s armor. She smiles and to Midnight’s embarrassment pulls her into a hug. “Look at you! That’s such an adorable costume. It looks almost like your old one.” She brushes Midnight’s hood back to get a better look at her face, most of which is covered with a black mask. “You’re only missing the belt.”

  “It’s too big,” Midnight says, her cheeks turning warm.

  “Come on, we’ve got Roboto down in the control room.” She takes Midnight’s left bicep and squeezes it. “You’ve been working out, haven’t you?”

  “I try.”

  “That’s good. Won’t be much longer until you’re back on the team.”

  “I’m sure Elise can’t wait for that.”

  Dalton laughs at this. She’s overplaying her hand, acting too casual. If Midnight didn’t already know the truth, she would suspect Dalton was up to something. “Actually, with you gone, she’s become the malcontent of the group.”

  “Everyone needs a hobby, I suppose.”

  Dalton goes through the crack first. She holds up her hands to help Midnight down, but Midnight jumps down on her own. The lights are off inside the creature, but someone’s glued flashlights to the walls to give the corridor a sort of campfire glow. Dalton has to squat down when the tunnel narrows, but Midnight only has to worry her cape or hood will catch on something.

  She waits until she’s certain they’re alone in the belly of the beast before she says, “So, you know a Katrina Knox?”

  She expects Dalton to whirl around in surprise or perhaps to even bash her head on a low-hanging piece of machinery. She only shrugs. “Should I?”

  “There’s a picture of you and her on the Sarah Lawrence field hockey team.” Midnight smiles. “You got everything else. I’d have never figured it out if not for that picture.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Katrina Knox was the Feminazi. Don’t deny it. I saw her face. There’s no way I’d forget it after what she did to us. The two of you must have been pretty chummy. So chummy you wiped away all evidence of her past. And then you hooked her up with Dr. Roboto’s island and that alien ray gun. As the kicker, you led us right into the trap the two of you cooked up.”

  “That’s an interesting theory.”

  “I have plenty of evidence to back it up. It might not stand up at a court-martial hearing, but I’m sure it’ll interest Kate King. You know how much she loves getting the goods on the military-industrial complex.”

  “You haven’t sent it to her yet. So all I have to do is get on the horn to my guys upstairs to blow up that jet of yours. A couple more hours and I can have Green Berets in that bunker of yours you think is so impregnable.”

  “You really think I’m that dumb? I’ve already got it in an email that will send in six hours—unless I stop it.”

  Dalton stares at Midnight for a moment. With surprising speed for a woman pushing forty she yanks her sidearm out. “I’m sure you’ve got some bulletproof material in that cute little vest of yours, but I doubt you had time to implant any under your thick skull.”

  “Touche. But that will make sure the email goes out, won’t it? Your whole scheme will be exposed. See how fast any buddies you have in the Pentagon give you up.”

  Dalton laughs. “I don’t have any buddies in the Pentagon. Or anywhere else. I had one buddy and you killed her. So tell me: why shouldn’t I put a bullet in your head?”

  “I think I outlined my case pretty clearly. Go ahead and shoot if you want.”

  Dalton considers it for a moment. Then she smiles. “Same old Rob. Always so bull-headed, even when you’re a wimpy kid. Speaking of, what happened to your boyfriend?”

  “I ditched him over the harbor. He should be able to swim to shore.”

  “The two of you make a cute couple. Though those navy fighter jocks don’t think so right about now. That was a thing of beauty how you gave them the slip.”

  “Thanks. It’s nice to have a fan,” she says and then remembers she said the same thing to the Feminazi. “Why don’t we stop all this circling around and just put the cards on the table? Why did you do it? Why betray us? What are you getting out of it?”

  “Is this the part where you try to make me talk long enough for you to pull a rabbit out of your hat? You got that plane of yours rigged to blow?”

  “You know I don’t use the same trick twice. Let’s just call it professional curiosity.”

  Dalton shrugs. “All right, sweetie, I’ll tell you. You haven’t been a woman long enough to understand what it’s really like to feel like a second-class citizen. My parents were a couple of rich old birds, kept me locked away on a pedestal in an ivory tower. Sent me off to Sarah Lawrence so I could learn the ‘refinement’ I needed to marry some rich bastard and pop out his kids.”

  “And let me guess, you met Katrina Knox your sophomore year and she turned you on to all that feminist claptrap about women should be in charge and whatnot???
?

  “How can you be a woman and still be misogynistic?” Dalton shoots back.

  “It’s a gift.”

  “Well, honey, we aren’t all worth five billion dollars.”

  “Just a few hundred million?”

  “If you’re trying to say we’re anything alike, little girl, you can stop right there. I am a soldier, not some cowboy trying to work out his psychological trauma by beating up criminals.”

  “So what’s all this?”

  “I’m going to finish what Kat started.”

  “Which is to make some kind of feminist paradise with Dr. Roboto’s toy?”

  “If you want to put it so cynically.”

  Midnight shrugs. “Fine, I can understand wanting to avenge your girlfriend and all that. Why did you do this to us?”

  “That’s where Kat and I differed. She was always so hotheaded. She thought you had to change the system from the outside.”

  “And you wanted to change it from within, which is why you joined the military.”

  “What is more symbolic of man’s control of the world than the US Army? I figured if I could hack the basic training I might be able to make general someday, maybe even the Joint Chiefs.”

  “Maybe president after that?”

  “It was possible, at least back then. But Kat was right: I’d never crack the glass ceiling. When I took the job as Storm’s aide, I thought it was my ticket to the top. I mean here I was working with the most powerful people on Earth. That had to count for something, didn’t it?”

  “You seem to be doing fine for yourself.”

  Dalton snorts at this. “Yeah, right. They passed me over for promotion to colonel. It won’t be much longer and they’ll force me into retirement.”

  “So you and Knox hit on this scheme to use Roboto?”

  “It’s all thanks to you guys, really. You dropped Roboto right into my lap. I got to interrogating him and found out about this alien sex-changing ray of his.”

  “You couldn’t use it yourself, so you brought in Knox to do it for you. This before or after you wiped her existence off every government mainframe?”

  “I’ve been doing that for years. Every time she’d get busted, I’d break her out, wipe her old ID, and give her a new one. When I found her the last time, she’d hooked up with a few other like-minded girls.”

  “And you gave them the idea for the Feminazi and her Merry Gals.”

  “I wish you’d stop interrupting so much.”

  “I’m just moving the story along.”

  “I can see why the others hated you so much. You’re such a smart ass. You think that really impresses anyone? You don’t think we all know what a pathetic, broken little shit you are inside?”

  “I’ve been psychoanalyzed by better than you.”

  “I’ll admit it’s been no small pleasure to see you brought down to this, some skinny little nobody still pathetically trying to thumb her nose at the world.”

  “Is that why you haven’t shot me yet?”

  “I haven’t shot you because I want you to see the plan unfold.” She grabs Midnight by the arm again. Midnight could try to resist, but she wants to know what’s going on here. From what she can see now, though, Dalton has completely gone around the bend. She’s ready to kill millions of innocent people because she didn’t get a promotion and her lover was killed.

  At the same time, Midnight appreciates how well Dalton has executed her plan. She orchestrated everything beautifully. She pulled all the right strings to arrange things to suit her purposes. It might be brilliant if it weren’t so damned crazy.

  Dr. Roboto’s throne room has been rebuilt since the last time Midnight saw it. The damage made by her jet has been repaired to the point it’s impossible to see it. Starla, Allison, and Elise are chained up as they were before, all three unconscious. From the look of it, none of them have been hurt, just neutralized.

  “Welcome, Miss Holloway,” says the synthesized voice of Dr. Roboto. He sits on his throne, his entire body gleaming with the same chrome finish as his monster.

  The reason for Dr. Roboto’s name is that he is a doctor and he is—now—a robot. A cyborg is the more appropriate term. When he lost a leg in a car accident, he found artificial legs to be inferior. So he created a robotic one for himself. He saw no reason to stop there. He replaced one limb at a time, working with only his assistant, a servant robot he called Igor as a joke. Midnight imagines the pain that must have been involved with each surgery, but when it was complete, Roboto’s entire body had been replaced with titanium alloy—everything except his brain. He’s tried to create an artificial brain for himself, but so far he hasn’t succeeded in one capable of holding all his knowledge.

  Roboto gets up from his throne and stomps over to Dalton and Midnight. He stands about two feet taller than Midnight now and probably a half-ton heavier. If she punched him, she’d break every bone in her arm. The better solution would be to try her mini-EMP, but it’s on her utility belt, which she doesn’t have.

  He just about doubles her over when one metal hand rakes through her hair. “You make an attractive young girl, Miss Holloway. I would never have imagined such beauty was possible all the times we crossed swords over the years.”

  “You’ll make an attractive toaster when we get done with you.”

  “Your spirit is still the same. That is good. It will be perfect for the test.”

  “What test?”

  “For the weapon, of course.” One of Roboto’s eyes glows red. A hatch opens in the top of the room. Through the hatch appears the weapon that changed Midnight and the others into women. Only now it’s larger and she imagines many times more powerful.

  “So what’s your plan? You’re going to use this on heads of state, CEOs, people like that? Threaten to leave them that way if they don’t meet your price?”

  “You think much too small,” Roboto says. He stomps over to start fiddling with the machine.

  “Like I said, we’re going to finish what Kat started,” Dalton says. “We’re going to change the balance of power in the whole world, starting here in Japan, a country that for centuries has subjugated women.”

  “You’re going to turn everyone in Tokyo into a woman?”

  “That’s right. It’ll level the playing field once and for all.”

  Midnight snorts at this. “Sure. Now all those rich male assholes running things will be rich female assholes. Great plan.”

  She isn’t prepared for Dalton to pistol whip her. Midnight tries to roll with the impact, but she’s too late. She drops to her knees. Tears bubble up in her eyes. “I wouldn’t figure you’d understand. We’re starting a revolution here. Ordinary women will see they don’t have to be afraid anymore. They don’t have to be intimidated or cowed by men and men’s rules anymore.”

  Midnight waits for Dalton to cackle like a maniac, but she doesn’t; she’s not that far gone yet. Dalton does smile down on her. “Your friends here have actually helped get the ball rolling. The world’s seen what women can do now. They’ve seen we’re just as powerful and capable as men.”

  “So that was why you brought us to the island?”

  “Actually Kat thought the ray would make you all into ordinary women to get you out of the way. It worked in your case, but not the others. I figured I might as well use the resources I have.”

  “So you staged all that press for a new Super Squad. You probably even let Geiger, Inertia, and Killer Whale out, didn’t you?”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “And now what are you going to do with them?”

  “I’m going to make them martyrs for the cause. They died heroically to save us from a man’s tyranny.”

  Midnight turns to Roboto. “And you’re OK with this? I mean, inside that Cuisinart you call a head, you are still a man.”

  “I’ve taken care of him,” Dalton says. “With your help. You remember that little progra
m you wrote after the first time we went up against Roboto?”

  “The virus I came up with that’s supposed to incapacitate his decision-making functions,” Midnight says. “I don’t recall giving you a copy.”

  “We found it in the wreckage of your plane, along with plans for a few other goodies you were holding back from us.”

  “Those were only plans,” Midnight says. “I hadn’t even made prototypes yet.”

  “Well, then I guess we saved you some time and effort.” Dalton puts a hand on Roboto’s shoulder. “Thanks to you, Dr. Roboto is my obedient slave now. And once his usefulness has ended, he can go to the junkyard.”

  “I guess you thought of everything then. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.” She turns to Roboto and says, “Let’s get the first test underway.”

  “As you wish,” Roboto says. Then he presses the button to start the machine.

  ***

  Melvin feels like a mouse in a maze as he follows the diagram of the monster’s interior on his cell phone. The nightvision lenses Robin gave to him allow him to see as if it were bright as day inside. Most of what he sees are gears, pistons, and hydraulic pumps two or three times bigger than him. He’s tempted to study them, but there isn’t time.

  Robin told him he had to find the main relays for the device within five minutes. He would have another three minutes to deactivate it with the instructions Robin left for him. “Don’t be late,” she told him. “The fate of the world depends on it.”

  From the watch on his wrist, he sees he only has a minute left to find the relays. According to the map he’s still a ways away. He picks up his pace, running as fast as he can through the machinery. Robin is counting on him. Robin and the entire world.

  Since he read his first Batman comic at age five, Melvin has dreamed of being a hero. He never had the physical skills to make that dream a reality. Even with Robin’s help, his body still isn’t anything like a comic book hero’s. That doesn’t matter right now. Right now all he needs to do is deactivate those relays.

  He’s a minute late when he reaches them. The relays have an amber glow to them to indicate they’re active. Each relay is twice as big as Melvin. It would be impossible for him to shut them down by hand.

  He doesn’t need to do that. He just has to attach a pair of clips like jumper cables to the first relay. The clips are attached to a cord that plugs into his cell phone. If Robin is right, this should allow him to access the controls of the relays to override them.