There are plenty of marine biologists who would probably kill to hear the thoughts of sea life, but for Ellis it’s akin to reading the Facebook walls of non-celebrities. It’s all about what they ate and the places they’ve been, all of it perfectly ordinary. He tries some of the crustaceans in the area with similar results.
He’d love to find out what’s happening on the island before that beastly Midnight Spectre. Ellis doesn’t know why they have to keep that fascist in the group. So he’s good at computers? So are plenty of fourteen-year-old kids in Russia. They could recruit one of those and save themselves the hassle of not dealing with Midnight’s macho front.
Ellis has already surveyed half the island without finding anything interesting. While he’d like to stick it to Midnight Spectre, another part of him wants to just swim away. The superhero thing seemed like it’d be fun at first. It was a good excuse to get out of Pacifica. Father had been against that, but Killer Whale’s assault on Hawaii had shown the need for someone to bridge the gap between the underwater world and the surface. Ellis had been all too willing to volunteer.
After fifteen years, it’s become tiresome. The “adventures” have all begun to merge into the same movie. There’s some mad scientist or alien warlord or nut with a nuclear weapon and then the U.S. military brings the Super Squad together. Apex Man does his thing, Midnight Spectre tries to act smart while undermining everything, Alan goosesteps along like a good soldier, and Ellis swims along with them for support. Half the time anymore they don’t even need him. He might as well just go home to the Love Shack with Paul—
Just like that, he can’t move. He flails around in the water for a few moments before he sees the net. It’s made of some kind of transparent material that’s strong as hell. No problem, Ellis just needs to get a hold of that tiger shark—
A shock runs through the net. Ellis’s body goes limp. As he passes out, he wonders how long Paul will wait for him to come back.
Chapter 3
Midnight Spectre feels the ground shake. That must be Apex Man punching the mountain. Midnight shakes his head; if anyone inside didn’t know they were here already, they certainly will now. But then Apex’s clumsy entrance will be good cover for his more subtle approach.
He takes the grappling hook gun from off his belt and sights along the side of the fake mountain. There’s a laser on the gun to help him pinpoint the spot he needs. He pulls the trigger and watches the hook shoot up into the air. It hits the exact point he targeted; its hooks claw into an outcropping of the fake rock. He gives it a tug to make sure it’s secure before he goes up.
The ground shakes a second time as he climbs. That must be Apex Man punching his way through the actual wall. It won’t be long now until they’re inside. Midnight isn’t sure what they’ll find. Roboto’s lair had a number of booby traps, but Midnight had deactivated all of those. It’s possible whoever’s moved in here now has found a way to reactivate them or to install new ones.
With this in mind, he pauses at the opening to the airshaft. He runs a handheld MRI of his own design over the grate to check for any surprises. The MRI and the thermal imaging lenses on his eyes don’t pick up anything. He puts the MRI away in favor of the Swiss Army knife that had belonged to his father. The screwdriver attachment makes short work of the grate.
It’s a tight squeeze in the grate. He’s tempted to take off the belt in order to fit better, but he’ll need the assortment of gadgets he keeps in there to make his way through Roboto’s lair. We can’t all punch our way through, he thinks.
The need for the belt becomes clear when he reaches a fan in the shaft. It’s difficult to reach into the belt, but he’s able to snag the EMP emitter, another of the gadgets he designed himself and could make billions on if he patents it. But that would negate the advantage he has over the common criminals, the advantage that keeps him alive.
The EMP shorts out the fan and then with the help of the screwdriver he’s able to slither through. So far he hasn’t picked up on any traps. That worries him more than if he’d found a bunch. Someone like Roboto wasn’t careless enough to leave any entry point unprotected. Maybe whoever’s in charge now isn’t as careful. Or they could have something nasty in store for him.
At a junction he reaches into his belt for what look like two ball bearings. Except these bearings are actually cameras. He slips on the glasses that go with the cameras. Then he slides one bearing down each shaft. As the bearings roll, they transmit pictures back to him. The glasses compile the images into a coherent picture.
The shaft to his left goes to a tool room. The bearing harmlessly rolls through the shaft, down into the room. There doesn’t seem to be anything of interest in there. The door is probably locked from the outside, but he can make short work of that.
The shaft to his right goes much longer. The bearing rolls around until it finally drops into Roboto’s throne room. The place doesn’t look any different since the last time Midnight had been in there. Except now a woman sits on the throne. She’s dressed in an old-style Nazi uniform complete with the swastika on the sleeve. Beneath the uniform cap, a mask similar to his own obscures her face. If not for the breasts pushing slightly against the jacket, he’d have no idea she were a woman.
When she looks up from the throne, he wonders if she heard the bearing drop. Then she looks in the opposite direction. “Ah, you have both of them. How delightful,” she says.
Midnight already suspects who she means before a pair of gurneys roll into view. On one is Apex Man and on the other is Velocity Man, both of them unconscious. “What of the third one?” the woman asks.
“We’re reeling him in now,” another woman says. She’s a huge bull dyke, six feet at least and built like a brick house. Her gray uniform is cut similarly to her boss’s. Midnight can imagine what goes on between the two of them at night and grimaces.
So, they got the swishy fish too. That means it’s all up to him now.
***
The most direct route would be to take the shaft on the right, but Midnight Spectre eschews that. He drops into the tool room without making a sound. He finds the bearing he dropped into the room and picks it up.
The door is locked from outside, but he’s able to take care of that easily enough. As he does this, he watches the scene in the ballroom through his glasses. Another fascist dyke brings in Neptune. It’s no surprise they were able to get the drop on him. Apex Man is more of a surprise. He only has one weakness and it’s beyond the capabilities of most criminal organizations. But then most criminal organizations couldn’t have taken over Dr. Roboto’s island either. These bitches clearly mean business.
Midnight opens the tool room door slowly and then peeks outside. A guard is coming down the corridor. Midnight backs away until the guard is about to pass by; then he yanks her into the room. He locks her in a chokehold. She flails around, but no sound can escape from her windpipe. She takes longer than he would have expected to finally pass out. He slips her to the floor and then locks her inside.
There are three more of them in the corridor. Midnight takes each one down without raising an alarm. This is the kind of subtlety an oaf in bright yellow tights can’t manage, or someone running heedlessly at the speed of sound. Sometimes “superpowers” are overrated.
Meanwhile, the situation in the throne room is getting worse. A couple more lesbian helpers have brought in what looks like a death ray from an old science fiction movie. They arrange it so the barrel is sighted over the three superheroes. Midnight isn’t sure what it will do, but he knows it won’t be good.
For that reason, he doesn’t head straight to the throne room. Instead he heads for the generator room. Roboto’s island runs on geothermic energy tapped from beneath the ocean floor. Midnight opens the door to find the four huge generators all working. The room is otherwise empty.
His portable EMP device doesn’t have enough power to disa
ble the generators by itself. It needs a larger source of energy—like one of the generators in the room. He breaks open a panel on the nearest generator and then sets to work. Two minutes later, everything is ready.
He sets a timer on the EMP to give him time to get clear before it goes off. He doesn’t want all the gear on his person to get fried while he might still need it. He bolts out of the generator room and is all the way to the throne room before everything goes dark.
In the land of the blind a man with a set of nightvision goggles is king, he thinks, amending the old saying. He hopes the death ray or whatever the hell it is is also run by the generators. If not, his comrades could already be dead before he can get inside.
No longer concerned with subtlety, Midnight takes a wad of plastique from a pouch on his belt. He gets a safe distance before it blows a hole the size of a typical doggie door in the doors. That should be good enough for his purposes.
He barely manages to slide through the opening. “Get down there and bring the power back online,” the head dyke shouts, no doubt to her lieutenant.
The lieutenant isn’t going to make it. As she staggers towards the door, Midnight seizes her by one arm and flings her hard into a wall. The woman grunts before she hits the floor, out cold. The head bitch takes an old school Luger from her belt. “Sasha? Sasha?”
“You’ll have to wait until the arraignment to talk to her,” Midnight growls. He throws his voice to draw the woman the wrong direction.
“You must be Midnight Spectre,” she says without missing a beat. “Very nice work.”
“Always nice to meet a fan,” he says, throwing his voice from another direction to further confuse her.
He’s about six inches away from her, the Luger pointed in the opposite direction, when she shouts, “Lights!”
Midnight screams and drops to his knees as the entire world goes white around him. While still on his knees, he feels the cold steel of the Luger against his forehead. “Now let me introduce myself. I am the Feminazi.”
***
Like many a villain, the Feminazi is all too happy to talk as her henchmen tie Midnight Spectre to a gurney like the others. Sasha glares at him as she binds Midnight’s wrists and ankles. She’d probably like to do a lot more, but she doesn’t.
“I had a back-up light system installed for this very purpose. It runs on a secondary generator hidden beneath the throne,” the Feminazi explains.
“Pretty forward-thinking of you,” Midnight grumbles. He turns his head to see Velocity Man’s body twitching. He’s trying to accelerate his molecules enough to break through the chains holding him down. Apex Man gives a little groan; from the greenish tint to his chains there must be gamma radiation in them. Midnight’s own bonds are ordinary nylon rope. No problem to cut through with the razors built into the bottom sides of his gloves. All he needs is to get his wrists turned slightly and then shake them.
First he lets the Feminzai talk a little more. It might provide some useful information and it gives Velocity Man time to work on his bonds. Two of them would be more effective than one.
“I’m sure you want to know what this device here is. I don’t know how to describe it myself. It’s an alien artifact Dr. Roboto restored and stashed away. I can’t tell you how it works, but I can tell you it’s going to change the world.”
“So what are you going to do, kill all the men on the planet? Brainwash them to be your sex slaves?”
“Nothing so drastic. We’re going to start a revolution. A real sexual revolution. And this time we’ll win. With your help.”
“Sorry lady, we don’t help crazy.”
“You won’t have a choice.”
“Yeah?” Velocity Man is still working on his chains, but Midnight decides he’s waited long enough. He triggers the razors on his gloves. They slice through the ropes as if they were butter. He lifts his right wrist to fire the razors in the general direction of the Feminazi while he uses the left razors to slice the bonds on his ankles.
He rolls off the gurney into a crouch. He’s just in time to flip Sasha over the gurney in a judo throw. Then he makes for the Feminazi—
The death ray fires. The entire room erupts in pink light. Midnight feels a wave of heat wash over his body, but it doesn’t destroy him. Nothing seems to happen at first.
Then his entire body lights up in pain. With another scream, he drops to his knees at the Feminazi’s feet. There’s something wrong with his scream; it sounds as if he’s been sucking helium. He hears two similarly high-pitched screams from Velocity Man and Apex Man.
Midnight turns to them, but his cowl drops over his eyes. He wants to brush it back, but his suit has become as heavy as lead. It feels about five sizes too big as well—except the upper chest that feels tight.
By now he can tell his hands are where his forearms were in the sleeves of his suit a minute earlier. There’s no hope trying to fight like this, so he goes to Plan B, his failsafe. He flails around until he hits the button on his belt. Then he collapses onto one side to writhe in pain.
The cowl is yanked back from his head. The bright pink light has faded; the ray gun has gone silent. The Feminazi looks down at him with a smug grin plastered to her face. She puts a hand to Midnight’s cheek. “Looks like everything has worked beautifully,” she says.
Before Midnight can make a witty comeback, the wall behind the Feminazi collapses. The fireball that used to be Midnight’s jet bursts through the opening. He manages to curl into a ball to let the flames wash over him. From the Feminazi’s scream, she isn’t so lucky.
A squad of soldiers bursts into the room through the hole made by the jet. Midnight is too weak to greet them at the moment. His entire world is fading to black now. Before he goes under, he hears a soldier say, “Holy shit! Is that them?”
Then Major Dalton is at his side. “It’s going to be all right, Rob.”
He tries to nod but isn’t sure he does before he passes out.
Chapter 4
Midnight hears unfamiliar voices all around. This triggers his finely honed instincts. He has to wake up and get out of here. Major Dalton might know his true identity, but he wants to keep that list as short as possible. He doesn’t need some grunt blabbing to his wife or buddies or selling that information to a gossip site—or one of Midnight Spectre’s many enemies.
He tries to sit up but can’t. He’s strapped down. No problem. He just has to use the razors again—
From the lack of weight he knows he isn’t wearing his suit anymore. All of his equipment is gone. From the steady hum and beeping of machines, he figures he’s in a hospital. Great, now some sawbones and a bunch of gossiping nurses will know who he is, unless Major Dalton comes up with a decent cover story to explain why billionaire playboy Rob Holloway happens to be in a hospital in the South Pacific. A skydiving or boating accident maybe? That would fit Rob Holloway’s profile.
With a groan that doesn’t sound right to his ears, he opens his eyes. There’s a pink blanket pulled up over his body so he can’t see anything except a bulge at about the top of his chest. What the hell? Did someone leave a pillow there?
He tries to sit up, but he still can’t move. All he can do is whip his head around. This causes a sweep of red hair to fall over half his face. The hair curves all the way to the middle of his chest.
The pieces begin to fall into place. Midnight screams. It’s a high-pitched scream—a girl’s scream.
A nurse is beside the bed in an instant. She bends down and puts a hand to Midnight’s forehead. “Easy now, sweetheart. It’s going to be fine. Just try to relax and I’ll fetch the doctor.”
“What the hell have you done to me?” Midnight shouts.
A door bangs open. Major Dalton appears in Midnight’s vision. “It’s all right, Rob. You’re safe now. Try to calm down and I’ll explain everything. At least as much as I can.”
As much as she does
n’t want to, Midnight relaxes in the bed. To her surprise, tears are dripping down her cheeks. She hasn’t cried since her parents died twenty-five years ago. The nurse starts to wipe at the tears, but Major Dalton shoos her away. “Give us a few minutes before you bring Dr. Harken in here,” she says.
Midnight waits until the door closes before she says, “That ray gun of the Feminazi’s. It made me into a girl, didn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so. From what Dr. Harken says it did a pretty thorough job of it. You’re one hundred percent female now.”
The major reaches beside the bed and then holds up a hand mirror so Midnight can get the confirmation. In the mirror she sees the narrow, soft face of a young woman. At the moment her freckled cheeks and eyes are red as she cries. The girl in the mirror looks like she’s about fourteen, though the breasts pushing against the blanket would indicate she’s older than that.
“Shit,” Midnight mutters and then sniffles. Her long hair flips again as she nods her head. “You think you can undo these straps?”
“You promise not to go running off? Dr. Harken still needs to do some tests.”
“I don’t think I could get far if I wanted to,” Midnight says. Her body feels almost numb right now, a combination of the physical and mental trauma from the radical change.
Major Dalton undoes the straps and then thrusts a remote into Midnight’s hand so she can tilt the bed into a sitting position. With her other hand, Midnight peels the blanket back to see a girl’s body clad in a pink gown. Her bare feet leave about a foot extra space on the bed; how tall is she now: five-two, five-three? It can’t be much more than that.
“The machine—”
“It’s gone. We gathered up what pieces we could and sent them to T.U.R.B.O. Labs for study. I’m not sure they’ll be able to figure it out, especially without Alan.”
“Alan’s gone? Is he—?”
“Dead? No. I’ll have the nurse fetch a chair so you can see for yourself.”
***
The others are in an adjoining room. The three of them are lined up in beds like Midnight had been. And like her, they all have breasts and long hair now. She’s certain beneath the blankets they have a lot more than that too. She feels her face warm as she glances down between her legs, where there’s now only a slit.