DIRE : BORN (The Dire Saga Book 1) (38 page)

“Doctor Dire, I presume?” Kinetica grinned, as she sauntered into the room, hands at her hips.

I nodded, not daring to take my eyes from her.

My peripheral vision caught more motion, as Doc Quantum moved in to join his team, my mask held loosely in one hand.

I rallied. It was an uncertain situation, of course. They were acting with due caution. Fortunately, I was around to appraise them of matters. “About time you got here. The server over there holds an artificial intelligence in thrall to WEB. She's been cooperative, and—”

“Doctor,” Quantum said, “Will you come quietly, or are we going to have to do this the hard way?”

CHAPTER 22: Forged in Flames of Scorn

“And when it's done, when all's said and done, you're going to have to forge your own path. Don't look to me for guidance, I've done all I can for you. No one gets to decide your future but you, and anyone who stands in your way is an obstacle or an enemy. Good luck, Dire. Good luck, me-to-be. There is so much riding on you, more than you'll ever know...”

--Excerpt #148 from the Dire Monologues, last entry.

“What?” I had to be hearing this wrong. Aftereffects of the brain surgery? Possible. “Why would Dire fight her rescuers?”

“Oh, this is rich,” muttered Arachne. Siegebreaker started in surprise, and moved to put his bulk between her server and the others.

Arachne chuckled. “Relax handsome, I've got nothing to hurt you with. So you're here to arrest Dire?”

“Why?” I barked. My lips pulled back from my teeth, as shock turned into outrage. “After all she's done? All she's done to fix this?”

Kinetica shook her head. “You left a trail of dead from one end of this base to another, you're standing in a room with two murdered people with the murder weapon in your hand, and you ask me why we're arresting you? Jesus, you're a special kind of stupid, aren't you?”

“It was self-defense!” I yelled, pressure grabbing my head like a vice as the headache intensified. “They kidnapped
her.
”

Quantum shook his head. “Even if that were so, your previous crimes can't be ignored. The man you killed in front of Ballista—”

“He had it coming.”

“—The attempt to trade in highly dangerous narcotics—”

“We settled that. She needed to trade it for bullets.”

“Bullets for the weapons of your army that you said you weren't raising!” Quantum shouted, striding forward to point at me. “And yet how many are dead on the street now, because of your ambitions?”

I took a step toward him, halted as one of the circling orbs almost clipped my face.

“Go on,” Kinetica purred. “I dare you to try to fight.” She glanced up. “We need to wrap this up, anyway, before Schrodinger brings the base down on our heads.”

I ignored her, stared at Quantum. “The alternative to fighting was to let the Black Bloods slaughter us all. Dire took charge because no one else was left. And no hero would help us. So Dire did.”

His lips thinned. “And I suppose the dead police officers were necessary martyrs for the cause?”

“What?” I blinked.

“They tried to disarm you, and you fought them. Half of them have turned up as corpses now, and it's clear they were tortured before they were killed. Was your vengeance on them truly necessary? Was that self-defense?”

“She... no.” I said, puzzled. “This is... the Black Bloods must have killed them for failing—”

Siegebreaker snorted. “Oh, that's perfect for you, isn't it? The Black Bloods are suddenly a problem, right at the time you show up. You antagonize them, then use them as an excuse to grab power over those poor people in the shelter. And whenever you kill, or beat someone, or bully someone, it's all 'well, I have to because otherwise the Black Bloods win!' You damn hypocrite.”

I shut my mouth, nearly bit my tongue with the force of the motion.

How could someone be so stupid?

But with astonishment, came clarity. The Black Bloods had been operating under the radar, so to speak, for years. Avoiding heroes, shifting their attention away through guerilla tactics and brutality. The few heroes that had come close to the truth of the matter had died. Great Clown Pagliacci's methods were as twisted and cunning as the insane clown himself.

“No. You've got it wrong,” I explained. “The Black Bloods weren't what you thought they were. Great Clown Pagliacci was secretly their leader—”

“Great Clown Pagliacci is dead,” Kinetica said. “Has been for over a decade. Try a better lie.”

“No, see, he was pulled from near-death by an ancient vampire and fed its blood, then betrayed the vampire, and—”

“Doctor,” said Quantum. “Please. This is nonsensical and embarrassing. Just slide over the gun and come with us. The authorities will sort out the truth of the matter.”

“On a lighter note,” Arachne piped up, “How did you find this facility, anyway?”

Quantum held up the mask. “An entangled particle microtracker. Ballista put it on your mask during the fight on the beach.”

Kinetica folded her arms. “We talked him into it at the hospital. It made sense. We were trying to find WEB, and we knew they were after you. So all we had to do was wait until they grabbed you, and follow the signal.”

Hm. Made sense, now that I thought of it. Ballista and I had been fighting in close quarters with no time to think. All it would have taken was a quick brush of his hand across my face.

And then it sunk in. “Wait. You were watching all this time?”

“As much as we could spare, given the crises throughout the city.” Quantum said. “Keeping an eye on your general location.”

“And yet.” I was whispering now, a cold fury winding its way through my guts. “Yet you couldn't intervene while her friends were dying?”

Quantum grimaced. “I assure you, if it had come down to—”

“They sent men to slaughter families on the beach. Where were you?”

“We were too far away to respond when that happened. And afterward, WEB had moved an aircraft into the battlefield. If we'd intervened they would have fled—”

“If you'd intervened at all, then you would have saved lives!” I hissed, giving free reign to my anger. “It would have taken you less than an hour to come in with your fancy plane and drive off the Black Bloods during the first beach battle! It would have taken less than that for your little fate manipulator to sort out the second battle and get you what you wanted! But no, you hung back, and you let Dire be the one who got her hands dirty. You let her do what you couldn't, and now you reap the reward for her skill and cunning!”

Kinetica shifted, and the orbs pushed in tighter. “I don't think I like your tone.”

“You're not meant to, you worthless waste of powers.” I was spitting the words by now, shoulders hunched, face thrust forward to the point that the circling spheres were nearly clipping my nose. “You know the saddest thing that Dire's learned about this world, since her awakening?”

She scowled at me. “I'm sure you'll enlighten us—”

“The saddest thing is that people like
you
are considered heroes.”

The silence hung for a long moment, as my rage boiled within me, and took shape into something colder. Reason wouldn't work, I knew that now. Further logic or an accounting of my perspective would be wastes of breath, they weren't interested in listening to me.

Entire camps of homeless people forced to live on a beach in winter. Corrupt law enforcement officials that harmed the community, while using its laws as a shield. And now this? Heroes who put themselves above it all, regardless of the cost to those who idolized them and depended on them for protection.

This was not the way the world should be. And in that moment of furious realization, came clarity and conviction.

This was not the way the world should be. But I could fix it, just as I'd fixed the camp. I could save it. I could save the world, and make it
right.

It would take work, of course. It would take years, and struggles, and sacrifices, and many, many hard choices. If I faltered I'd be lost. If I showed weakness, I'd be slaughtered. But I could do it, no, I had to do it. Because if I didn't, then no one else would.

I no longer had the luxury of chasing my past.

Not when the future itself was on the line.

“Right. Okay, we're getting off-track,” Siegebreaker rumbled. “Fun as this has been, Dire, please toss us the gun and come quietly. We'll sort this out and get answers from you and the WEBheads.”

I licked my lips, moistening them. “Speaking of that, a final question if you will. Arachne, is the power outage going to correct itself?”

“In a few days time. I have a few friends who are working on it. We'll have the last of the Digitals' work undone by then.”

Quantum's gaze never left me. “Doctor. The gun, if you please.”

The first step to a better world was obvious. Corrupted authorities would never agree to allow me the resources or freedom necessary to mend things. I would have to evade capture.

I crouched down, and put my gun on the floor. All eyes upon me, I put the safety on, and slid it over.

Kinetica bent down and scooped it up, and I studied the three of them, looking for a weakness. All I had to do was hit two switches and be in the console's chair when it descended. All I needed was one good distraction.

And as my eyes played across my mask, I knew what I had to do.

I closed my eyes, sighed. The last solid link to my past, my 'Silent Partner' it had called itself. By doing this, I'd be sacrificing my last chance of solving the mystery of my time before becoming Dire.

But the world right now was not the world that should be, and this was the first of many sacrifices, I knew. I had to give up the past, to save the future.

I sagged into the chair of the console, and smiled at Quantum as he started to move in towards me, still holding my mask in one hand. Still holding my mask, with one thumb on the inner surface of it.

“Doc Quantum?” I asked.

“Yes?” He stopped a few paces away.

“Frogs in winter burn azure pyres.”

The mask's anti-theft system triggered its electrical blast, and as he was screaming I was in motion. I jabbed the self-destruct button, and klaxons wailed as red light filled the room, and Kinetica cursed. I threw myself to the ground, as the Spheres ceased their orbit and drilled in, nearly catching my head as they collided.

“Dire!” Arachne's voice, rising above the din as Siegebreaker grabbed for Quantum, grounding him, tearing the mask from his hand as electricity howled and jumped. “Dire, please!” She called.

A split-second to make the decision, and a split-second was all it took. I jabbed a finger into the button that freed her, and scrambled to the first console. I didn't look back, knowing that every second counted.

Perhaps it was disorientation from the alarms, perhaps it was concern for Quantum, perhaps it was simply that bright, eye-searing flashes of electricity were between me and her, but Kinetica didn't hit me with a sphere as I typed in the escape code. And no one tried to stop me, as I sunk back into the upholstery, and let it carry me down a dark tunnel, into the depths of the Earth.

I was so tired, as I sat back. So tired, and the headache was ripping into me with a new level of pain. If there was anything left of the painkillers, I couldn't feel it. And I couldn't stop moving. Once the chair stopped, I'd have to get clear, find a new place to go to ground. Figure out what to do next.

So why did I feel so free? Why was my heart lighter? It was like a weight had left me, one that I hadn't even noticed until it was gone.

And then it struck me. I had purpose. For the first time since my 'birth', I had a goal. I knew what I had to do, and the fact that it was going to be the hardest thing I'd ever tried to do made it worthwhile.

I would fix this broken, corrupted world by any means necessary.

No matter the cost.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

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Andrew Seiple