Tomasi leered at him through the window on his cell. Quinn glared at him and flicked him off again. The racist thug was always present, threatening and taunting him, and always snarling and pounding the door when Quinn gave him the finger. Like now, for example.
Tomasi must have been in a bad mood, for he pounded on the door for a full minute before there was a crackle of energy and a yell from the Exley brother. Quinn smirked, then winced and quickly stopped. There must be a security field around the door.
But then a face that Quinn remembered all too well appeared in the doorway. The face smiled. "Hello, Quinn."
"No." Quinn told himself. "I must be hallucinating. He's dead."
"The rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated," Lean Il Lupe said. "Your hacker friend, Naught, allowed me to get a decent body again. And let me tell you, I haven't felt this good in years!"
"You're not that old, Lean," Quinn grunted around the flaring pain in his mouth, "so save it."
Lean, rather than scowl like Tomasi would have, tossed back his head and laughed. "Oh, Rentack, you are so idiotic. Insulting the person who literally holds your life in his hands is the easiest way to die."
"I feel halfway dead already," Quinn remarked. "It kind of itches a little."
"That's only halfway there," Lean said. "The whole nine yards is a lot worse than an itch."
"So what are you going to do to me now?" Quinn asked. His mouth screamed at him to stop talking. But he needed to know this.
"I'm not sure," Lean said. "Perhaps I'll just let Jander run tests on you until your organic body dies. Perhaps I'll let the boys use you as a punching bag. Or perhaps I'll let the golems play with you." He turned to leave, but turned to look at the writer for another moment. "All three prospects are rather unpleasant, aren't they? Ah, well. Aht-serat, and all that." He laughed again, then disappeared from the window.
Quinn grunted from the pain again and sat down on his cot. Things just kept getting grimmer and grimmer. What the hell happened to the Law of Averages?
Lean Il Lupe strode through the long and maze-like corridors of the Negacrag Base. He was feeling like a new battery. Full of energy, and nothing to do with it. He knew that Jander had told him that he would feel restless for a time-that was to be expected from his 'death'-but he should be back to normal within a few days.
He knew that his cane was still functional. But even so, he needed to make sure everything was working properly. He went up to the roof of the Negacrag Base and stood in the gravel on the top.
Lean raised his eyes to the perpetually stormy sky of System Omega-Cragis. He had looked himself over in the mirror. There had been a few flaws in his bitmap following his resurrection, but a few nudges of energy had corrected those easily. He now looked exactly as he had when the Game Cube had nullified his body two months earlier.
Lean tapped his cane on the ground. A vid-window opened in front of him and turned reflective, acting like a mirror. Green computer-generated letters flicked across the top of the vid-window.
>>Test #1: Chameleon capabilities
Lean reached down into his code and tweaked something. The image in the vid-window changed. His skull became a bit wider at the top. His glowing blue-gray eyes changed to a sprite's ice-blue. His armor changed to a black one-piece suit. The cane disappeared. His hair turned dark. His skin turned a pale cream color. Lean smiled. This was the form of Andrew Ginole, one of his prime disguises for use in the Resonate. Although now the government knew it was a viral bitmap, so he would have to find something else to use.
He concentrated again, and his bitmap changed again. His skin turned a greenish color, his eyes turned yellow, and his clothing turned into a padded uniform. His muscle mass increased a bit, but that was all. His face became more square-like, with a hint of five-o-clock shadow. Another alias, Sgt. Nichols, an identity he used when contacting some of his associates in the underworld. All anyone knew of Nichols was that he worked for 'the Wolf.'
Lean nodded, satisfied that this portion of his code still worked. He let his concentration go, turning back to his normal bitmap. He looked at the vid-window, which decreased in size, turned black, and moved out of the way. The text now read something else.
>>Test #2: Flight
Lean raised his arms to the sides, closed his eyes a bit and lifted off the ground. He raised about a meter off the ground and hovered. Then he opened his eyes, gave a feral smile, and angled his body and proceeded to move through the air, flying in circles around the Negacrag. He looked down into the ravines, seeing the golems mucking around, doing whatever it was the golems did when Lean wasn't ordering them around. Lean cared only for their labor. He didn't care about their lifestyle.
He came back to the Base and lowered himself back to the roof. He glanced at the vid-window. The text changed again.
>>Test #3: Energy charges
Lean raised his cane in front of him and twirled it in his fingers. Energy crackled along the staff and shot out in front of him in a bolt of lightning. He changed the energy to form ball lightning and fired it up into the air. He clenched his free fist, energy cracking around it, then, threw it before him. He continued at this course for several moments before he stopped. He felt drained. Jander had said this was expected, too, that Lean's energy supplies were low, and he would have to watch himself for a while.
But the virus smiled. He had other ways to gather energy. He levitated again and moved up the face of the Negacrag until he stood just below the 'lava line.' This was the point at which the rock spires and ravines halted the perpetual flow of lava down the face of the mountain and allowed Lean to maintain his base. Lean stared up into the sky and raised his cane to the air.
A bolt of lightning easily twice as big as any seen on Earth shattered the sky as it plunged into Lean's cane. He shook a bit from the sheer magnitude of the blast, but caught himself and altered the flow of the energy and absorbed it, adding it to his reserves.
Down in the Base, Dr. van der Waals watched all of this through a spy program. He made notes on each of Lean's powers and smiled to himself again.
Lean roared with triumph and flew back down to the roof of the Base. He turned to see Rollo and Tomasi. Lean tapped his cane impatiently. "Yes, what is it?"
"Boss, the doc's told us that he's not gonna use that User anymore," Tomasi said. "Is it okay if we use him as a--"
"--Punching bag? Of course," Lean said. "Go right ahead."
Rollo and Tomasi grinned. "Thanks, boss!" The two clomped off, presumably to find some heavy blunt objects. Shortly after they left, Dr. van der Waals emerged from the stairwell. "Guten tag, Herr Lean. I trust zat everything is vorking properly?"
"Naturally, Doctor," Lean said. "How is your work coming along?"
"Oh, excellently, sir!" Van der Waals said. "I am currently constructing a batch of nanites!"
"Nanites?" Lean echoed. "I thought you were working on new technology?"
"Of course, sir," van der Waals said. "I am going to build a new type of nanotechnology such as none ze world has ever seen!" He cackled. "Mein nanites will put ze nanites constructed by the likes of Dr. Saoras Salan to shame!"
Lean nodded. "Very well, Jander. Go and get to work." Then something else occurred to him. "Oh, and if you need a test subject, feel free to use Mr. Aught. I have no further need of him."
"Danke, Herr Lean."
Nada called up the specs for the portal-generator on her computer. Zilch and Niente had brought out the tools for repairs and adjustment. Nil and Void were eager to do something, and little Blank and Zip were hanging around to watch. It was a weekend, after all. The older sibs put on goggles for the work and looked at the portal-generator, which Zilch had hauled out of storage.
Nada cleared her throat and directed the re-haul process. David looked on impassively. Chances are they would catch hell when they got back from Omega-Cragis, considering the fact that they were going to have to go through the portal at the same location it had been in the first place-namely, the Resonate Bank. That meant driving through the front door. This was not going to be easy to explain to the authorities.
Within an hour, Nada had portal-gen fixed. She and Zilch had put it back in its place, between the front seats of Naught's car, and had recharged the cache of pistols they kept on hand. David climbed into the driver's seat. Nada felt "like a ghoul" behind the wheel. Besides, she had to stay behind and maintain the link to Omega-Cragis once they got the portal open. She was the only one who knew how to do it. Last time they had done this, David had been a prisoner in Omega-Cragis and Naught had been the one driving the car.
Now Blank and Zip were bouncing up and down on the floor. "We wanna come!" they chorused.
"No!" Zilch shouted. "Come on, little sibs, it's too dangerous there!"
"Last time, we saved your lives," Zip pointed out. "You owe us!"
"Yeah," Niente said, "and we paid you back with those two two-gallon tubs of chocolate-chip cookie-dough ice cream, remember?"
The two kids pouted. They obviously wanted to come along. Blank looked at Zip, then leaned over and whispered something in her ear. She giggled and nodded. Then they both turned to Zilch and proceeded to do the one trick that always worked.
Zilch grimaced. "Aw, not the Big Soulful Eyes routine. All right, fine. You can come with. But you stay in the car, hey? No tellin' what sorta beasties we might run into."
"Golems," Niente said.
"'Sides them."
Nil and Void collapsed their hoverboards and hopped into the back seat. Nil then grinned and climbed up to shotgun. Blank and Zip plopped down beside Void in the back. Zilch and Niente gunned their bikes. Nada looked them over. "Okay, now listen. You go in, find Quinn and Naught, then get out. I don't want to have to maintain the link with the portal closed for more than half-an-hour. Got it?"
"Yeah, no problem, hey?" Zilch said.
"What if we run into Rollo and Tomasi?" Nil asked.
"Avoid that."
With nothing else to add, Nada sent them off and seated herself back in front of her computer screen. She initialized the link.
Lean looked with uncertainty at the test tube Dr. van der Waals dangled in front of him. It contained what appeared to be a silvery liquid, almost like mercury. But according to the doctor, it was a batch of nanites.
"That's it?"
"Zat's it," Dr. van der Waals confirmed.
"It doesn't look like much," Lean said.
"Zat is because you have never seen zese nanites at vork," Dr. van der Waals said. "Come. Let me show you my test subjects."
Subjects? Plural? Lean thought. He frowned and followed the doctor to a large, two-story room. As Lean looked down on the floor from the platform he emerged on, his eyes widened and glowed more fiercely.
The test subjects were golems. As he looked around, he could see at least a dozen golems in various stages of injury. One golem was legless and Lean could see the rock-flesh on its arms melting off. But Lean knew the lava-blood was not hot enough to do that. Dr. van der Waals nodded at Lean's question. "It is ze nanites doing zat."
Another golem wailed as its teeth dissolved. Lean watched as its claws likewise melted away. Lava-blood started to pour out of the gaps, and Lean grimaced as the golem's jaws started to burn. A third watched as its arms vaporized in a moment. Lava-blood, no longer having an arm to circulate in, plopped to the ground, sizzling.
The images sickened even Lean. He turned to Dr. van der Waals and grabbed him by the lapels of his lab coat. "What in the Web is this?!" he roared.
"I needed resilient test subjects," Dr. van der Waals explained. "I do not see vat is so terrible about zat."
"You used my golems without my permission!" Lean screamed. "I told you to use Aught!"
"Vell, I did! But I need more zan just one test subject! Und Herr Rentack has not yet recovered enough to use as mein human test subject!"
"You are not to do anything like this again!" Lean roared. The golems who still had the ability to make noise roared along with him. "If I do, I'll feed you to them!" He pointed down at the golems, who already seemed eager to gore Dr. van der Waals.
"Ja, ja, ja," the doctor said, waving his hand dismissively. "Just get to ze part vere you chew me out more, huh? I must get back to mein vork."
Lean's eyes glowed even fiercer and he growled wolf-like. A wolf's teeth appeared in his mouth as he raised his cane. A bolt of lightning fired out to pound Dr. van der Waals into the wall. Lean growled again and picked the doctor up with one hand and held him off the ground.
"Get out of my sight."
"Ja," the doctor grunted. "I go." He got to his feet and stumbled out of the room. Lean glared after him, then looked down on the ruined golems. His eyes narrowed. This was going to cost Jander.
Quinn flew across the room to smash into a mirror. He flopped to the ground, too mutilated to move. Rollo and Tomasi cackled as they clomped across the room to pick him up again. Tomasi picked him up and held him out as Rollo slammed his fists into Quinn's stomach and face. Tomasi then flicked his wrist. Quinn's body flipped backwards over his wrist. Tomasi reared back and hurled him like a spear at a table.
The writer crashed through it. Quinn was barely conscious. All there was, was pain. He was dimly aware of any feeling in his body. His arms were broken. He knew this. So were his legs. Hell, he probably had a few fractures in his skull by now. If he survived, he'd be lucky if he could ever move again.
"Gosh, are we having fun yet?!" Rollo chuckled as he picked Quinn up and tossed him at Tomasi, who slugged him in the gut, then slammed him into the ground with his other fist. Tomasi kicked him and sent him lifting off the ground and causing him to crash into the wall again. Blood leaked from a thousand cuts and gashes. His arms bent in ways that were not intended by God. His legs dangled uselessly, cocked at impossible angles. His head leaned down to one shoulder. His face was grotesquely swollen.
Rollo moved to start beating him again, but Tomasi put a hand on his brother's shoulder. "Not yet, Rollo. I'm gettin' thirsty. Let's go refresh ourselves before we work over User-boy again."
"All right," Rollo said, sneering at Quinn as he clomped off with his brother.
Quinn never noticed their departure. He'd been out cold for the last minute.
About half a kilometer from the Negacrag, a glittering tear suddenly appeared. It sparkled against the stormy sky for a moment before it transformed into a globe-like portal to the Resonate. David halted Naught's car and looked back as Zilch and Niente came roaring after him on their hoverbikes. David's sunglasses glinted with green light as he looked at the Negacrag Base.
"Right!" Zilch said, cocking the cannon he'd installed on the handlebars of his bike. "Let's go get our boys back, hey?!"
The little convoy went on a beeline for the Negacrag Base. Nil, who had obtained an extra pair of goggles ("Always carry a spare!"), leaned forward. "Well, dooby-dooby-doo! Look at who we got outside, D."
David leaned forward as well, then smiled grimly. "The Exley boys. Hey, kids!" Blank and Zip perked up in the back seat. "You still got those mallets of yours?"
"You know it, big D!" Blank said with a giggle, producing the large wooden bonking device.
"Right! Your favorite targets are right down there! I think it's time for them to get a beatdown."
Void laughed. "Hit and run! Our specialty, right, Nil?"
"Right you are, bro!" the goggled twin laughed in return. They reached out to extend their hoverboards and held on to the side of the car as Blank and Zip climbed onto their shoulders. Then they kicked the engines on their boards and streaked forward.
Rollo and Tomasi, for their part, were scarcely paying attention. They were standing outside, looking up the face of the Negacrag, polishing off their energy shakes, when they heard a shout behind them.
"Hey, bits-for-brains! Don't turn around!"
Naturally, the two louts turned to glare at the source of the noise, only to get smacked in the face with a large wooden mallet. The mallets made a nice hollow >BONK!< sound as they hit the Exleys' heads. Rollo and Tomasi went down, seeing stars.
Nil and Void hooted with laughter and slapped each other a high-five as David, Zilch, and Niente pulled up. Zilch swiveled his cannon around to aim at the side of the Base. Niente did the same with her own. The twins looked at each other once, then hovered up and well out of range. The cannons thundered, and half of the wall just utterly evaporated.
David leapt out of the car and cocked his energy pistol. Nil and Void placed Blank and Zip in the back seat of the car as they joined David. Zilch and Niente dropped down beside them. They all had their game faces on. They charged into the open wall of the Negacrag Base without a sound as they went to rescue their friends.
Lean Il Lupe had decided shortly after seeing what Dr. van der Waals had done to his golems that the doctor as he knew him would have to go.
He had gone into his private chamber and extracted from a locked and shielded cabinet a device that was certainly illegal, and certainly the adequate solution to the problem. He had then turned his bitmap invisible (another little quirk of his chameleon capabilities) and sneaked into the doctor's lab. He had gone right up to Dr. van der Waals and quietly prepared the device and moved to use it.
That's where things had gotten strange.
First, there had been a loud CRACK, and a surge of energy had rippled through Lean. It hadn't hurt him, of course, but he had been in considerable discomfort during it. Next, Dr. van der Waals had turned to look at him with a faint smile on his pale face. The Mysadt probe in Lean's hands had then literally fallen apart as he looked at it.
"Sorry, Herr Lean, but zat's not going to vork," Jander said. "Credit for trying, however."
Lean looked at him. "I suppose there's a rational explanation for all this?" he asked, raising his cane to bludgeon the doctor.
"Ja," the doctor replied. "Since you saw fit to give mein only human test subject to zose Neanderthals, I decided I had best do things the only way left!"
"And that was?"
"By testing mein nanites on myself!" Jander laughed. Lean was put off by the sheer lunacy of the laugh. It was rather high-pitched, and quite disconcerting. He'd been questioning Dr. van der Waal's sanity since the golems, and now he was certain that the doctor was quite mad.
"To put things shortly, ze nanites inside of me protect me from all outward harm. Zat includes mind control, viral influence, und any sort of injection. Including Mysadt probes." He laughed again. "Also, I have been monitoring your every move since your resurrection, Herr Lean. I know everything you are capable of!" He stood and went over to the link cylinder, which was covered by sheeting. "I have programmed mein nanites appropriately. In anticipation of zis moment, I took ze liberty of creating mein trump card." He pulled the sheeting off to reveal an eight-foot tall suit of exo-armor. Lean stared dumbly as Jander began to put it on. "Vonce I have deleted you, I will go about turning zis system into mein own private la-boratory."
Lean now moved. He swung his cane up and fired off a bolt of lightning. Jander simply laughed as the energy dissipated harmlessly off the armor. "Danke, Herr Lean! Zat has pumped up ze charge in mein armor's cells! Now it should be fairly simple to delete you!"
The exo-armor moved faster than Lean would have imagined. A titanosteel fist slammed into his chest and sent him flying through the wall. Jander cackled and stomped after him.
They found Quinn.
Nil and Void had turned their heads out of dignity. Niente seemed on the verge of tears, though, naturally, she wouldn't admit it. Zilch had a pained grimace on his face, as though he could sense all of the pain Quinn was in. David's mouth was set in a firm line. His sunglasses glittered with green light.
"Goddamn bastards," David muttered.
"How can he still be alive after all that?" Zilch mumbled.
"I dunno, bro," Nil said. "But my goggles definitely say he's alive."
"Right," Niente said. Everyone looked at her. "I'll take him back to the Resonate. You guys hold on to the bastards that did this to him. I'm gonna make them wish they never compiled!"
Then, the long-haired racer had bent and picked Quinn up in her arms. She gave them a glare that said simply Go-and-give-them-hell-for-me and strode back out toward her bike.
Nil and Void had snickered a bit, but Zilch skewered them with a glare. "Shut it, both of you."
They headed back through the Base, looking for a room that might contain Naught. Nil stopped them. "Hey, guys, check this out." The door they were just passing read: LABORATORY. And beneath that, in hand-lettered writing: DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT DR. VAN DER WAALS' PERMISSION
Nil grinned. "Talk about an open invitation!"
They entered, and immediately froze. The lab was a gross perversion of a surgeon's chamber. It looked more like a torture chamber. Indeed, that is what it served as. The operating table seemed to act more like a rack. There was a sparking Jacob's Ladder and a miniature Tesla Coil, both of which appeared to be discharging energy into a golem's arm.
But what really got their attention was the subject tied to the operating table/rack. It was Naught. His dark gray skin was paler in color, his hair was falling out, and his clothes hung in tatters. He was jittering like a man in the grip of a grand mal epileptic fit.
David blanched. "Jeez-us!" He ran to Naught and quickly disabled the bonds holding him down. Naught continued to spasm and was now in danger of falling off the table. Zilch caught him, tilting his head back to prevent him from swallowing his tongue. Nil dashed over and looked him over with his scanner-goggles.
"Whoa." Nil sounded remarkably like Keanu Reeves saying that. "Guys, there's something in his blood."
"What is it?" Zilch said, opening his brother's eyes and looking for signs of life. None.
"I dunno. It's too small for my scanners to pick out. We'd better get him to a hospital."
"Great," Zilch mumbled. "And Niente already left." He sighed. "All right, I'll take him. I don't wanna leave you guys here, but what other choice do we got?"
He made an apologetic expression and carried his brother out back the way they had come. David sighed. "Well, we're down by a lot now. Zilch and Niente were our two heavy-hitters, and Quinn was pretty handy with a shotgun. But he's out of the picture." Then his face tightened. "Right. This Dr. van der Waals is going to pay."
"Double!" the twins chimed.
Fortunately (or, perhaps, unfortunately,) they didn't have to look far. As soon as they set foot outside Dr. van der Waals' lab, the side walls of the corridor in front of them suddenly exploded. A screaming form flew before them, followed by a larger and more metallic form bearing a large energy cannon. David raised an eyebrow.
"Was that--?"
"I dunno," Nil said.
A few metallic CLANGS reverberated from the exit hole left by the dueling forms. David ventured in first, and immediately he screamed, "LEAN!!"
The virus, who looked a little put out due to the heavy suit of exo-armor standing on his head, grimaced. "Ah, DaVinci! A little help would be appreciated." He grunted and tried to grab at the suit's ankle, but his position made it a little more than difficult. He gave a yelp of alarm as DaVinci started to fire his pistol at Lean's head. The virus was still able to erect his energy shield and he wolf-growled. "I don't appreciate that! This little User-bastard was the one responsible for what happened to your friends!"
Now the exo-armor turned to regard DaVinci, Nil, and Void for the first time. The dark tinted plastiglass covering the head retracted to reveal a balding, pale, Germanic human. "Ah, so zis is ze famous Renaissance Hacker, ja? Guten tag, I am Dr. Jander van der Waals. Let me just delete zis data-trash here, and I'll be right vith you." He turned back, aiming the energy cannon clamped to his left arm at Lean's head.
But Nil and Void, realizing that this man was the one who had tortured their brother, went ballistic. They quick-drew their pistols and fired several pulses at Jander's head. The doctor blinked as the pulses dissipated around his head. He turned back to look at them. "Really, vat do you hope to accomplish vith zat?" Then he noticed the twins. "Ah! You are related to zat test subject, Herr Aught! Zis is perfect! You shall be perfect replacements for him!"
He raised his energy cannon to fire at them, but Lean underwent a transformation under Jander's foot. He grew to the form of Sgt. Nichols and did a mighty push-up that staggered the doctor backward. Lean/Nichols stood and swung his cane to crack across Jander's head before he shrank back to his normal form. Jander shook his head with a daze, then frowned and put the plastiglass back up.
But David wasn't concerned with the German doctor. He was concerned with the virus. He launched himself at Lean, but was balked by his energy shield. Lean looked at him, and DaVinci paused. Lean's armor was badly dented and scratched, and his arms were battered. "DaVinci, now is not the time. This User has abused the trust I put in him. I am going to erase him."
"Since when have you ever trusted Users, Lean?" DaVinci growled, aiming his gun at Lean's head. Lean responded by raising his cane and pointing it at DaVinci's chest.
"Oh, stop it, DaVinci!" Lean snapped. "Don't you realize that this bastard has experimented on your friends? He's the one that reduced Aztral to that quivering lump and left Quinn to weak to defend himself against Rollo and Tomasi!"
"Really? And did he do that without your permission?" DaVinci scowled.
Then Void's voice cut in. "D, now's not the time to worry about any of that! We could use a little help here!"
DaVinci turned his head to look. The twins had been grabbed by Jander's armored fists. He was even now preparing to render them unconscious. Lean knocked DaVinci's arm away with his cane as he leapt at his current target--Jander. To DaVinci's surprise, Lean's lightning bolts dissipated harmlessly off the exo-armor, just like Nil and Void's attack had done.
But DaVinci was a hacker. He had a nearly photographic memory for anything that passed his eyes on his computer screen. And one of those was exo-suits. To be sure, the one Dr. van der Waals was wearing was not like any he'd ever seen. Probably it was something new. But all new technologies were based off existing technologies, so there were similarities.
DaVinci aimed his pistol at a joint in the armor, just next to the left shoulder. He fired. The armor glowed dully for a moment, and with a spark of energy, the fist holding Nil released him. Before Nil hit the ground, DaVinci was aiming at the other shoulder and soon Void was scrambling away from the menacing armored man.
"Nice trick there," Lean remarked as he sought out another joint in the armor to hit. He fired a lightning bolt, but it again dissipated. He growled. "This is getting monotonous."
"Ja," Jander said, firing his energy cannon again. The wall shattered under its onslaught. Two diminutive forms peeked out around the rubble.
"Uh," Blank started.
"Oh," Zip finished.
"Kids, get out of here!" DaVinci screamed at them as Jander loped forward to slam him with a steel fist.
So the kids scampered out the door into the corridor as Jander turned to look at Nil and Void, who were shooting him in the back. Blank and Zip then ran right into the vacated lab. Zip peeked over the edge of a table. "Blank, what're those?"
"Look like pens."
"Don't look like any pens I've ever seen." She reached up and plucked one up.
"Hey, lemme see!" Blank said.
"Get your own!" Zip snapped.
So Blank reached up and picked one for himself. They looked them over, but couldn't seem to find anything that functioned as the point. So they decided to ask the smartest person they knew-David.
The two kids came back into the room where the battle still raged. They held out the pens to David. "David, how do you work these?" Blank asked.
Jander stiffened as he saw what the two little ones were holding. "Nein!! Give me zose!" He shoved aside Lean and DaVinci as he lunged at Blank and Zip.
Zip screamed, stumbling back. Her fingers slipped on the pen and pressed something. There was a faint fluttering sound, and Jander stopped short. He looked down at the armor over his chest. There were pinpoint holes stitching it. "Oh, how stupid of me," the doctor muttered. "Defeated by mein own nano-launchers."
All at once, there was a series of explosions and Jander went flying out through the wall and into the side of the Negacrag. DaVinci grabbed the pen from Zip. "Lemme borrow this for a sec, darling," he apologized as he dashed out after the doctor. Nil and Void followed and Lean quickly swiped the other nano-launcher from Blank as he hurried out.
Deep within the Negacrag Base, the golems heard the distant explosions from the doctor's nano-explosives and stirred. Many of them did not know what to make of the strange sound. The Master did not make noises like this, and neither did the two strange rakeshi who seemed to obey him.
Two of the golems seemed to understand that the noise was connected to the pale isheri that had abducted their kind. They roared their frustration to the mountain, which rumbled deep within itself in reply. But then, an older golem stood.
The older golem understood what was happening. The Master was battling the isheri and he needed their help. The older golem turned to the younglings. With a grinding voice, the elder said, "Annode."
The elder thudded off through the network of tunnels, toward the homes of the golems. The younglings bellowed and followed, eager to destroy the isheri.
Lean transformed himself into a large Perovanian and slammed Jander with a powerful blow that lifted the doctor into the air and causing him to land farther up the side of the Negacrag. The exo-suit staggered back up and fired its energy cannon again, but Lean had already reverted to his normal form and was dodging the blast. DaVinci was firing the nano-launcher and causing more and more of Jander's armor to buckle and crack.
Nil and Void, now that their weapons could do more damage to Dr. van der Waals, were firing non-stop, pausing only to reload their pistols.
Jander's armor was in sorry shape. The chest armor was ripped apart and blackened, only the wrist portion of his left arm was left, and that alone supported the massive energy cannon. The right arm was utterly bare. Only his nanites protected it. The plastiglass covering his head was cracked and shattered. Through sheer luck, his energy cells had not been punctured by the nano-projectiles.
Lean aimed the other nano-launcher and pressed the firing stud. The 'pen' emitted a fluttering sound and the rock spire next to Jander suddenly exploded. The doctor fell to the ground, then struggled to get back up. Nil and Void fired at the base of another spire, however, and it toppled over on top of the doctor.
"Ach," the doctor commented. "Zis is not good."
"Aptly put," DaVinci said, aiming the nano-launcher right at Jander's face. "Give my regards to Satan, when you meet him."
"DaVinci," Lean called.
"In a minute, Lean," DaVinci called back.
"DaVinci!" Lean called more urgently.
"Not now, Lean!"
"DaVinci!" Lean bellowed.
"What?!"
"Look up."
There were three golems standing up near the top of the Negacrag, just below the lava-line. Lean recognized one of them, the elder golem he used as his foreman. The elder was holding his arms up to the sky, and the two younglings beside him were doing the same. The elder seemed to be shouting something.
"I didn't know they could speak," Nil said.
"Neither did I," Lean replied.
But DaVinci could hear what it was saying. It was in Hatemil, but he'd been fluent in Hatemil since he was nine. He translated.
" 'For the Honor of our brothers and sisters, the danger-man must die.' "
"What does that mean?" Lean asked.
DaVinci looked down at Jander, who was struggling to get the spire off of him. The hacker smiled. "I think it means that the golems wanna finish this bastard off."
He leapt off the spire and nodded to the golems. "Finre!" he called.
The golems seemed to shudder violently for several moments. Then, in a cacophony of thunder, the golems literally exploded. Rock and lava-blood poured down the Negacrag, toward the site of the battle.
"I didn't know they could do that," Void said.
"Neither did I," Lean replied.
DaVinci's eyes widened, and he could see Jander doing the same under the shattered plastiglass. The doctor's struggles increased as he tried to avoid what was almost certain death. But before long, it was clear that the golems' sacrifice was not going to be enough. The lava-blood was already slowing due to the spires and ravines.
However, the explosions had knocked down a wall of spires below the lava-line. The constant stream flowed quickly toward the hapless Dr. van der Waals. The dawning horror caused his pale face to turn almost transparent with fear. "No! No! Nein!"
DaVinci was yanked into the air by Nil and Void, while Lean levitated up, as the lava covered the damaged exo-suit. There was a momentary scream before the lava enveloped all of Dr. Jander van der Waals.
Lean calmly pointed his cane at the side of the Negacrag just below the battle site. A bolt of lightning shored up a rift of rock to halt the lava flow.
The lava covering the doctor bubbled once, then became smooth again.
DaVinci looked up where the golems had died. He saluted. "Valavan."
Lean landed calmly on the roof of the Negacrag Base. "Well, nice to have that problem dealt with. All in a day's work." He moved to exit into his base, but the telltale whine of an energy pistol charging stopped him.
"Day's not over yet," DaVinci said coldly.
"Oh, put the gun down, DaVinci," Lean said. "I'm not in the mood."
"Well, gee," DaVinci said expressionlessly.
Lean looked at him. "Don't you have anything better to do than annoy me? Drop it, DaVinci."
"You've kidnapped me," DaVinci said, "tried to force me to help you take over the Metaverse, dropped a Game Cube on the Resonate, tried to kill me and my friends, and kidnapped my best friends for torture, and YOU HAVE THE UNMITIGATED GALL TO TELL ME TO DROP IT?!"
Lean held up a hand. DaVinci's pistol flew from his grip and into Lean's. The virus looked at the gun, then let it drop to the ground, where his boot smashed it. "You," Lean told him, "have other things to attend to."
"Like what?" Nil asked. He felt he needed to add something to the conversation.
"Your friends," Lean replied.
The trio blinked. Then Nil scowled. "Bastard."
Lean smiled grimly. "Nothing like the guilt trip to get someone to shut up." He waved his hand dismissively. "Leave me. I'll be busy rebuilding and repairing for a long time before I try anything against the Metaverse."
"This isn't over," DaVinci said.
Lean laughed. "I never said it was." The virus turned to leave.
"Lean," DaVinci said. The virus turned back. "Give me the nano-launcher."
The virus hesitated, but then passed the 'pen' to DaVinci. The hacker wound up and hurled the two devices into the cooling lava, where they flash-vaporized instantly. DaVinci looked at Lean for another moment, his sunglasses glinting, then went over to Naught's car. Nil and Void had already picked up Blank and Zip. Lean spoke up.
"DaVinci, you're not so bad for a User. No offense."
The hacker replied by raising his middle finger. "None taken."
Then the car wheeled around and headed back for the tear that led to the Resonate.
A day, and numerous explanations to the system police and the Bank, later, the Aughts and David were assembled outside a hospital room. Within were the sleeping forms of Quinn and Naught. Naught was still twitching like a man with his finger in the electrical socket, and Quinn was still swollen in many places.
The surgeon, a sprite with silvery skin by the name of Hadden, was explaining the situation of his two patients.
"We managed to clear out half of the nanites in your brother's bloodstream," Dr. Hadden said, "but it is still going to take a lot of time for him to recover fully. Many of the nanites had already lodged themselves in several nerve centers. It would take somebody with far more skill in neurosurgery than myself to remove them all. As time passes, the nanites will eventually dislodge themselves and he will simply pass them out of his system."
"How long will that take?" Nada asked.
Dr. Hadden shrugged. "Could be days, weeks, months, or years. There is no way to tell. Most nanites are designed to disintegrate after a set period, but these nanites are unlike any I've ever seen. And they appear to have no set time limit. The only way for them to stop functioning is if their power cells run out. And each of the nanites I removed had a different amount of charge. Almost as if someone wanted your brother to be in the most pain possible for the longest amount of time."
David bit his tongue. He knew exactly who had done this, but the police had made it clear not to tell anyone else about Dr. van der Waals.
"What about Quinn?" Niente asked.
Dr. Hadden sighed. "This was the part I was dreading." He looked at the sleeping writer. "Mr. Rentack has suffered severe trauma to his arms and legs and chest. I was amazed he was even alive. As it is, it was touch-and-go for a while, repairing most of those injuries." He looked at them. "But there was extensive damage to his spine. Chances are that Mr. Rentack will never walk again."
"But what about medical-nanites?" Niente asked. David blinked. The female racer was genuinely concerned for Quinn.
Dr. Hadden shook his head. "The damage is far too extensive. The risks outweigh the benefits. I won't allow it."
Niente seemed ready to pound Dr. Hadden's face in, but Zilch stepped beside her. "Thanks, Doc Hadden. You did all you could."
Nada slowly started to sob for her brother, and was quickly joined by Blank and Zip. Zilch seemed a bit misty-eyed behind his tinted goggles, and Niente was, of course, determined to not show any emotion at all. Void rubbed at his eyes, and streaks of tears flowed from under Nil's goggles. David placed his head against the window looking into Naught and Quinn's room, then slowly struck his fist against the pane.
Lean was going to pay.