Veldron 17

Veldron's Saga 17: Striking a Deal

I wasn't sure why the Ultimate Justice Squad was working with a teenager who spoke to sea creatures, but suddenly the dolphin attack made some sort of sense. Neria had always been a bit of an annoyance to me, although she used her powers more for reconnaissance than actual fighting.

To their credit, the Squad treated my wounds acceptably after Seer managed to convince them not to play Operation looking for implants. The wounds weren't serious, mostly bruising from the dolphin attack (they took me by surprise, alright? Did you know that dolphins club seals to death with their heads? For fun? No? Well shut up then). Longtooth had barely cut through the skin on my forehead and my arm wound wasn't dangerously deep either. I suspected that this was more a concern for neatness (and possibly the result of a talking-to from his teammates) than any concern for my welfare from him.

"Hang on, didn't Neria's water friends attack me? How can you be sure she's missing yet?" I asked as they bandaged my arm. They'd unstrapped me and just cuffed me to the table. I wasn't stupid enough to try to attack them. "How long have I been here?"

"Eight or nine hours, but she was meant to report in." Mirror was looking very, very tired; not like a heroine at all, just a woman with far too many problems. "What have you done with her?"

"Me?! I've been here!"

"And you make robots. Do you think I'm stupid? This is exactly the sort of ploy you would pull. You're drawing out your enemies one at a time and getting rid of them." The venom had left her voice, though. She didn't expect me to admit anything.

I couldn't help the tiny smile of amusement pulling at my lips. "You have no idea what to do without the Captain, do you? Was using Seer your entire plan?"

She glared. Ah, there was the venom. "Longtooth wanted to just kill you, you know."

Yeah, that sounded like Longtooth. I wasn't all that worried about that; the Squad had diplomatic considerations. Killing people meant paperwork and endangered their sanctions.

But they had been acting unpredictably harsh so far. Perhaps I should watch my step.

"If it were me, wouldn't that just leave you with hero-fighting robots that nobody could turn off?"

She nodded distractedly. "Probably. So what, genius, do you think we're going to do with you now?"

A tremble of doubt there. They didn't know what to do!

Without the Captain, they were fumbling around blind! I wished I'd paid more attention to their histories. Longtooth, I knew, had tried to rob the Captain in an alley and had been pounded to a pulp. He'd sort of attached himself to the man, a two-bit mugger given direction and purpose in his life, and although he was still a lot more crooked than his teammates knew, he was a part of the Squad. It was what he did, and the Captain, according to reports, was the one guy he never argued with. I wondered if the others in the team had similar stories and made a note to look into it. How effective a team were they without their leader?

I looked down at my bandaged arm. The unknown implant worried me, and I wondered if there were any more. And how Longtooth knew about it. It wasn't unusual for me to find stuff I'd built and had no memory of, but I didn't like to think about it too much. I couldn't scan myself to learn anything, and there was the possibility that there might be implants that were dangerous. Why didn't I keep better records?

Of course, there was a simple way to scan inside my body as much as I wanted with a new implant, but recently I found myself captured or almost killed on too regular a basis to risk carrying my most important invention inside my own body.

What could they do with me? They had no way to control me once I left their custody and they knew it. People had tried to fit me with explosive collars before; I could disarm any design I'd seen with a small knife and a shaving mirror. Implants wouldn't work unless they were on a timer; no detonation signal would get through my skin and I'd just get the damn thing removed once I reached base anyway.

Sending me back to prison was the obvious answer, but oddly enough I think my knife wounds protected me there, at least temporarily.

There was no way they could be played off as battle wounds. People were scared of superpowers and those who had them tended to be held to unusually high standards; the international community probably wouldn't be too happy with the Squad if I started slinging around accusations of torture with the open wounds to prove it. They hadn't thought this through at all well.

I changed the subject, although not much. "Perhaps I can help you find him."

She glared at me. "If you're trying to negotiate your way out, it won't work."

"I'm not; I'm looking after my own interests. The Ultimate Justice Squad has never bothered me all that much; I don't have anything in particular against the Captain, but having every vigilante with any powers hanging around my base makes it impossible to get anything done."

"Or you'll wait for enough of us to be picked off that you'll be unopposed."

"Unopposed? What do you think would happen to villains without heroes? Our goals don't synchronise well. We already have enough in-fighting. I need heroes to limit my enemies' power, or we're just playing the same game with much higher stakes. Mirror, my... my nemeses... are two flying kids with flashy powers who don't have the guts to actually try to kill me even if they were strong enough to. Who do you think my chances are better against; them, or the people the Captain keeps in check? You think Rainbow isn't scheming right now? You think that the Host and Cabaret aren't taking advantage of his absence? He had a lot of enemies that nobody else paid much attention to, knowing the Captain and the Squad could handle it. And with every 'hero' worried over the Captain, pretty much all of my rivals are getting time to work under the radar, even the ones that he had nothing to do with." This wasn't going to work. How could I get her to trust me?

"We found the components of some sort of device in your bag. What does it do?"

I'd almost forgotten about the omnidetector. But maybe I could use it. After all, she'd seen the Trabethan Jewel before, usually spraying fire or knocking buildings down as part of a sonic weapon. The Jewel was one of several artefacts that the Squad had campaigned to have turned over to their custody permanently, only to be denied by various governing bodies. I had noticed that several objects from that list had mysteriously vanished over time, though; presumably they had a secret vault somewhere. "Why should I tell you that?"

Her eyes narrowed. "It hardly matters now. We'll just destroy it."

"You think I can't replace anything in that device? Who do you think you are talking to?"

A pause. The Jewel was supposedly one-of-a-kind, but she was talking to the man who had discovered electronium.

"I'll tell you everything," I said, "about that device, whatever you want to know. And you will release me."

"You will, of course, release StarFyre."

"Of course."

"I'll talk to the team about it."

They locked me in a cell with a camera that I could reach. Idiots.