For A Brighter Future
Chapter 14: The Best Laid Plans
Doctor Lys is lounging back looking like she doesn’t have a care in the world. More intimidating are four of me surrounding her. To top it off, a very familiar feeling woman with black hair and pure white eyes is kneeling before the doctor, nuzzling into her leg over and over again. We’re outnumbered six to three, but with Rebeca as one of our three . . . yeah, that’s more accurate as a two.
“Aurora LaSilvas . . . I wish I could say I was particularly surprised by your appearance. I had thought you defeated to be fair. We’re even connected now, on he same misplaced time line, and yet . . . you surprised me. What did it, my little golem battery? What freed you even though I’d had Rebeca burn away everything that you were? What brought you back? Is your mother’s immunity hereditary after all?” Her voice isn’t cold. It’s completely devoid of any warmth, but it’s not cold. She sounds almost robotic, if a robot could sound annoyed.
“We did! Because Aurora’s heroic example is something you can never defeat! Even if you were to stop us here, the ripples of her deeds won’t end here. She inspired me, she inspired Rebeca, she helped so may people see there was hope for a future that people would want to live in, with freedom, and self-determination.” Sylvia’s voice sounds so fiery, so passionate, so . . . sexy. I can’t let myself be distracted by her, though goddess I want to.
I step farther into the room, and slowly let my eyes memorize the surroundings. There are no windows, but with the construction of the facility my guess is that it’s underground. There’s only one way out and that’s behind us. A computer terminal is installed in the far corner of the room, half-protruding from the wall. None of the decorations seem especially important.
She laughs, and the dawnlings laugh with her. There’s something haunting about hearing four versions of yourself laughing against you. It doesn’t help that they’re dressed in black latex, shaped in a pair of ‘v’s, one covering their breasts, and the other a tight hold between their legs. Their eyes are all so deep, so soulful, so powerful . . .
They don’t look like ordinary robots, or duplicates. They feel . . . different. Looking into their eyes has the dizzying feeling of looking into a mirror and having it laugh.
The doctor slowly rises to her feet, and so does her kneeling pet. “This is true. She is an inspiration, and there will be resistance. There will be a lot of very powerful resistance, with men and women left and right believing that thinking for themselves is better than an obedient, blissful future. But, you will find that there are so many people who do not want to resist. People like knowing what they have to do. People like having a role to obey.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t even remember half of what you’ve done to me and I know you’re right. That’s not what’s important. You’re oversimplifying everything so your philosophy is justifiable. I won’t let you claim the hearts and minds of this world as collateral damage!” I run fast as I can towards the doctor, trying to intercept, to tackle, anything . . . and the dawnlings move to block my way.
I try to shove past them, turning my metal body to ram my shoulder through, but their grasp is too strong, and their own skin just as metal, and just as unrelenting. This is not a feeling that I can claim to feel particularly used to.
“Aurora!” Sylvia’s yell fills the room as the dawnlings wrap their arms around mine, a pair of feet connecting hard with the backs of my knees sending me right to the floor. Fingers lace through my hair, yanking back to force my eyes to look up to Doctor Lys. High heels dig into my back as my hair is tugged harder, and I scream. I’ve never felt pain in my metal form before. I wish I could say it wasn’t intoxicating.
Their hands are so strong, so sturdy and firm. I can’t look away. I can’t struggle. They’re all holding me down entirely too stiffly. All I can do is scream or grit my teeth and try not to. I let myself scream. Holding back would give her too much satisfaction.
Something is so strange about being involved in something I know almost nothing about. Every little second reminds me how little I remember, but it feels like I never knew as much as I wanted to know. The dawnlings push me down harder, and the doctor reaches out, slowly stroking along my cheek. “You’re strong, but four of you are stronger. You’re at our mercy, and there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s nothing you could want to do about it. I know you better than you know yourself, Aurora. Especially now. Your life has been defined by what you surrender to. Now, you will surrender to me.”
Fighting past them with metal, with strength, won’t work. I let my skin melt back to flesh, and close my teeth around my lower lip. I feel so vulnerable, soft, and pitiful. It’s something I enjoy more than I want to, a lot more than I want to.
I try to look back at Sylvia or Rebeca, but I can’t turn at all. Their grasp, holding me down, feels like I’m pinning myself. Tears well up in my eyes, and I can’t fight. Every little squirm tugs my hair so much more than when it was metal. It might be silver, but it’s just strands of hair now. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. There has to be something.
“Ah ah ah Sylvia . . . Pull that mist back inside, or I have the dawnlings snap her neck. I’ll do it. I can’t let anything stand in my way, not anymore. I’m too close . . . I was hoping you would sing in the revolution, but I can live with myself if I have to change things a little. The three of you might just be too dangerous . . .” Lys’s voice is so full of madness. She’s so sucked into her own story. She’s so trapped in her own plan. She’s sacrificed entirely too much for it.
“Aurora . . . Last time we met, you trapped me outside of everything, outside of time, outside of space . . . It’s time I repaid the favor.” The black-haired woman pushes Lys’s hand away, and grasps my hair as the dawnling releases it. “Aurora? This is what it feels like to be nothing.”
She tugs my hair harder and . . . I’m laying on my back, the dawnlings stepping farther away. My scalp burns, but I don’t know why. I try to sit up, and suddenly I’m on my stomach, fingers through my hair, tugging it back, the weight of a woman on top of me . . . I try to push her off, to wriggle . . . something clenches around me, inside of me, and the time between being pushed down, and my head connecting with the ground, never comes. The smash makes my head resonate, and my thoughts feel so incredibly scattered.
I should know her. I do know her. Time is messed up. Time lines, something about time lines, time travel, someone named The Domina Argenti . . . I don’t really remember all of it, but little flashes, images . . .
I don’t remember my head pulling back, but I remember it slamming down again.
“You’re not even turning to metal. I’m disappointed. You’re making it entirely too easy. We’ve broken your mind, your sister’s mind, your friend’s mind, your mother’s mind . . . all over, and over, and over again. Nothing can stop us. And you won’t even put up a fight?” She slams my head down, not taking away any of the time between the slam. The floor feels wet under my forehead. “Huh. The data on you said you’d put up your metal on instinct . . .”
“I can. But I don’t see the point in resisting. You want me to make this hard so you can break me. I won’t let you. I will not be broken. I will not be a toy. I might not remember who you even are . . . but I will not give you that. I won’t give you the one thing you can’t take.” She pulls my head back, and the floor . . . there’s a little bit of blood. It’s not much, but it’s more of my own blood than I’ve ever seen from conflict. My metal protects me, but right now protecting me means giving them blood instead of tears. I’ll cry out, I’ll scream, but I won’t bend or snap.
Somehow I’m on my back again, looking up at my white-eyed aggressor. White eyes . . . a flash of a banquet hall . . . Rebeca whimpering over and over about red . . . A woman grabbing my shoulders, my power, white eyes . . .
Anachronista. She wants to . . . to get revenge. All I was doing was trying to protect Rebeca, Draupnir Inc . . . I didn’t go there to get her. You can’t get revenge on someone who was just trying to defend innocent people!
She strokes along my cheeks, laughing a maddened laugh. Her eyes . . . no irises, no pupils, just white curved ovals. They look so beautiful, and yet so frightening. Pearlescent intensity . . . even without defining features. Sylvia whimpers, and Lys quickly hisses out a sharp warning. She must feel so powerless, just having to watch me used like this. It has to be so hard on her.
Ana slaps my face, and I leave it to the side, nuzzling softly into the floor. “You little slut! We broke everyone you cared about . . . we stole everything from you, and you react like . . . like this. Stupid Rebeca. She had to have something to do with this. She had to know and . . .”
“Ana . . .? If you try to play with time, and you pass out while doing so . . . what happens?” I try to sound as bored with the question as I can. It’s amazingly easy when I still don’t know how I would normally act in this situation.
“Playing with time, as you put it, takes a lot of concentration. Being interrupted, however . . . just makes it fizzle. It’s not like it causes some dramatic explosion . . . why?” She leans in closer, her white eyes so strange with one brow raised.
Giggling, I reach up and grasp her cheeks, holding her face so close. “Because I imagine concentrating through this? Will take a whole lot of effort. Wanted to make sure you wouldn’t get bits all over me.” Using silver without my metal still feels strange. It makes me feel a lot more like Mommy than . . . Mommy . . .
Light courses along my hands, sizzling and twining inside of her. Her eyes go wide as she starts to gasp and whimper and whine. Dawnlings grab my arms, trying to pull them away, and I just shoot off a myriad of little sparks instead. She shudders and arches with each one, grinding down against me harder and harder. Even with their hands over mine, I send out sparks from my hips, from my eyes . . . laughing louder and louder as her nipples stiffen, as her thighs shudder and clench.
Dawnlings lift her off of me, blocking her with their own bodies. My body feels a little cold so I stop, laughing, shaking my head as one of the dawnlings takes her place straddling my body with her own. I’m glad my cape is below me to make the floor a little bit comfier.
“You are quite persistent, Aurora . . . It’s gotten rather tiresome. So . . . Anachronista is not the wildcard I had hoped she would be. And I . . . I’m not sure what you’re planning on doing next. Still . . . Sylvia cannot intervene. Rebeca is powerless as she is, and always needed others there to guide her. Leading her own pack only worked because she used to pretend she had someone telling her what she needed to do, that she had resources she didn’t . . . So that leaves you and me, and my dawnlings.” Doctor Lys strokes along my hair before pulling back, those pink heels of hers clicking as she steps away. “I’m just going to make this battle meaningless right now . . .
“Though to let you know, a magnetic super heroine is already on her way to destroy countless records . . . an electrical heroine is already on her way to take out the better part of the local military complex’s power . . . This has been planned for entirely too long. This has been designed for me, to no longer have any importance. You can stop me . . . and you should. Make me a martyr to my cause . . . As I press this last button . . .? Draupnir Inc’s software update will make my project for a brighter future a reality, a drive, in so many countless men and women.”
I shake my head, trying to struggle against the hands holding me down. I couldn’t free myself when I was metal. I send a volley of sparks from my fingertips at one of the dawnlings, and it bounces back at me, hard. “Nnnnnnnnnfff . . . What the . . . fuck . . .”
“One material in the world bounces back your magic. I’m wearing a fair amount of it under my clothes. Ana, of course, was not. She was a useful lap pet, and it was fun to program her to love me and be surprised by how she acted . . .” Another few clicks. I can hear it, feel it . . . “All of their wires? Lined with the stuff. Can’t be sure how more power introduced would work, so I decided to play it safe. Sorry, you’ll find them quite impervious to your powers, Aurora.”
The one on top of me moves closer, kissing my forehead with sparked lips just like Mommy used to. Sarah . . . Just like Sarah used to. I moan, and rub myself against her without even realizing it. Her energy . . . I can feel it. When it slides out over her lips, when it presses into me . . . It feels like I should feel colder, but I don’t . . .
Colder . . . why would someone else sparking . . .
“And there we go. Done. Even if you stop me here, I’m not the important central cog I used to be. As systems update across the country, and then the world, people getting money from their bank, teenagers chatting in cyberspace . . . Everything. Everyone will be making a brighter future. Sorry.” I wish she was the kind of villain who lied to get an upper hand. She’s done everything honestly, if cruelly. She’s just been watching instead of acting for far too long, and she’s gotten so used to knowing how things are going to end.
I struggle harder, but it’s no good. Warm, but robotic, the dawnlings are just too much for me. Metal against metal isn’t really a good match-up. I prefer metal against flesh, or cheap plastic. I’d even go for a weaker alloy.
I can feel when they move. I can feel when they press me down harder, and not just in my own body. It’s entirely too strange. I know it means something, but it doesn’t make enough sense. Anachronista is down though, leaving us two to five. We should have fried the terminal from across the room. Taking out electronics is useful, but it’s a rather nonstandard use.
Even if it’s too late to stop everything entirely, it can’t be too late to do something. If we could just get a message out to the right people that could make all the difference. If we could blackout the city to stop the signal, or anything like that, I’m sure that’d work too.
“Your lovely plant friend and her sister are going to be spreading their lovely plants with pollen that encourages docility. Psiona has a role to play . . . It’s futile.” Lys slowly clicks back over to me, pressing the heel of her shoe to my forehead before giving it a kick, and sitting back down. “You, can’t rise up off the floor. You? You can’t do anything without your toys. And you are . . . woefully ineffective at the best of times. With your sister in my mercy, you’re even less of any use. So why don’t you all just go back to your rooms, and we can forget this ever happened.”
Epiphany hits me almost painfully. I know what I have to do.
“Sylvia? I’m about to give you an opportunity. Take it. Don’t worry about me.” Before she can respond, I reach out with that same part of me that moves around my sparks when I’m not metal, and tug as hard as I possibly can. The dawnlings cry out, slamming into me as I pull harder and harder. Having the four of them fall on top of me is more than I anticipated, and the weight doesn’t exactly hurt, but it does make me feel entirely too claustrophobic.
Their hands claw at me, legs trying to kick away, their mostly naked frames all grinding and squirming against me just in the right way to be frightening and impossibly hot. Lips press to my neck, to my legs, to my stomach, and sparks flow into me.
My ass clenches as I arch my back with a cry, but I don’t give up. I don’t give in to the cold feeling holding me tighter and tighter. The more they spark me, the more my nipples tighten, and the harder and harder it is to focus on anything at all. Everything just gets fuzzier and fuzzier, further and further away, but I clench my teeth and focus. They move slower and slower against me, until with a sharp burst of silver slamming into me from all sides, they turn still.
Silver fills my vision, swirling and shifting, making the floor under me, and their bodies against me, feel so good, so smooth, so tingly, so hot . . . it’s impossible to move, but it feels . . . really . . . really good . . . really . . . really hot . . .
I moan, and let my eyes flutter shut, nuzzling and rubbing against them.
“Aurora!” Opportunity. This is the opportunity she was going to give me. I can’t hesitate. I can’t let whatever she just did be in vain, which is amazingly hard to keep in mind as you watch your sister’s metal body become buried under a pile of doppelgangers. Their bodies are glowing, but not in the way Aurora’s can.
I tear my eyes away, and leap at Lys. Without even moving, Anachronista is in front of me, deftly shoving me to the ground. “You really think I was down for the count that easy? I needed to catch my breath. It would have looked more graceful otherwise, but . . . Lys taught me to care about the long term.”
But I took a moment to breathe. If I could have landed on Lys, I could have made her order Ana to kneel. I can’t believe Ana took that much silver and is still thinking. It might be that whatever effect Aurora had on her gave her a resistance.
Ana disappears from above me, appearing suddenly crouched down in front of me, her eyes level with mine. “You can’t see me move because I move between the ticks of the clock.” Her eerie white eyes are easy to stare into, even if they don’t have any features. It’s not that they’re just without irises or pupils, they’re just . . . white. Most eyes have veins, detailing in the whites, but hers . . .
She’s a real super villain. I’ve never fought a real super villain, not really an A-Class one anyway. Screamer was a confused little girl. That girl with the sticky bomb was an inventor with a bad attitude. I’ve faced others, but none with powers like this, none who frightened me like this. She can move without being seen. Even if I grab her, she could wriggle free. How did Aurora ever defeat her? Her powers aren’t that amazing. Then again, it looked like she’d beaten her a couple seconds ago.
“I’ll still let you go back to your room, Sylvia. You can take Hope with you. I imagine you’d love to get even with her, yes?” I don’t need to look away from Ana to know that Lys is grinning. She’s the same smug woman my mother freed me from, just not as well dressed. “I can hear thoughts, you remember. I am psychic.”
“I know. You’ve made that abundantly clear. But . . . you weren’t ready for this, not like you’re always ready for everything. What changed?” Stall for time. If I just let my mind wander while I listen I might be able to just act on impulse instead of thinking up a plan. Plans are very bad when you’re facing off with a telepath. Of course now she knows I’m thinking this, but randomness is hard to predict.
Lys sighs. “You aren’t as brilliant as you think you are, I hate to tell you. But, since it doesn’t matter anyway . . . Aurora was the wildcard. I could never sense her . . . The short, less needlessly complicated answer is that Anachronista became weaved in the same loose thread of fate as your sister, and I latched on. My visions of the future, of the past, are tied to that disjointed time line now, too. This adds another large list of possibilities to sort through. But it no longer matters. Losing that gift’s precision to ensure Aurora could not interfere was worth it.”
“But she did interfere!” I rise up from the ground, only to take a palm to my forehead, landing on my ass less than gracefully. “And Hope poured so much of Aurora into me . . . I started to think like her . . . Think like her . . .”
My empathic shadows . . . Mother called it that when I channeled Aurora after that night in the car. I was her. It was the same thing when Valerie’s mind overwhelmed mine in the hotel room . . . Or the time after a show that I couldn’t sing lead but I played a wicked rendition of stairway to heaven on Nikki’s guitar . . .
Deep inside of my mind, if I focus hard enough, I can still feel that little seed of Aurora. I can still taste Nikki’s creative fury, her passion. I can remember being on stage with her guitar in my hand. I can remember metal wrapped around my body, kneeling between my sister’s legs, sparking her . . . I can remember my daughter taking me by surprise . . . And I can feel that dark pool of black in my mind where I took Quillspawn’s will and power inside of me, and used it to reshape her.
“Your eyes . . . What . . . What are you doing with . . . with your eyes . . . They’re . . . Swirling with . . . Silver and . . . amethyst . . . I’ve never seen anything look quite like that before in my life . . .” Ana’s voice sounds so far away, like she’s through a long, long tunnel. Sylvia’s lips on mine as she fills my body and mind with energy feels so much closer. “I . . . I don’t know what you’re doing or . . . or how . . . Can’t bring myself to look away, like . . . like a moth, or . . .”
“Moths only dance around the flame. You’re sinking into it.” Little pieces, edges, of Nina Corvi are still inside of me. I touched her mind, and she touched mine. I can feel those thugs wanting to stop me, stop Sylvia, Nebula, from saving that little rat that could spoil everything for Miss Blanc . . . “You’re spiraling down. You are out of time, Ana. Singularity, Nebula . . . Whose mother is the reason Aurora is all special, anyway? Never heard of a woman known as the Domina Argenti?”
Her eyelids begin to slowly droop, the perfect white surfaces of her eyes seeming coated in a layer of shining glaze.
My hands reach out of their own volition, and thick, dripping wisps of purple-and-silver energy with such a wet shadow rushes into her eyes. Images flash into my mind as I watch her body shudder and shake, with long drawn out whimpers and moans. I can see Aurora standing before her, eyes wide, confused, uncertain but determined. So many women frozen, lost, stuck in place, touched, teased, used . . .
Such wickedness, such greed, so much . . . ambition . . .
All blotted out by my sister’s ever-present dumb luck. All of her hopes and dreams shattered. So many possessions, toys, pets, so much money . . .
I pull my power back into myself as I rise. Ana slumps to the floor, limp. Her lips shudder, half parted in empty confusion, the only sounds escaping of half-thought-out whimpers and whines, half-words, half-thoughts . . . the rest inside of me. I turn to Doctor Lys, and narrow my eyes. “You counted me out a little quick, Lys. You counted all of us out a little quick. You thought you could just plan enough, and everything would fall into place. Knowing what would happen, what might happen, is never enough all by itself. But that’s not important right now.”
“It’s not? What . . . what are you . . .” Lys’s eyes meet mine. I don’t know what she sees, but I can feel my power swelling and pulsing around me. I can see it out of the corners of my eyes, and feel it in my bones. Every hair on my body feels raised, and my skin feels so sensitive, tingling, alert. “What are you going to do . . .?”
“I’m going to stop you. You wanted to make the whole world into a beautiful mindless utopia. I’m going to give that to you. I’m not going to hurt you . . . and after what you did to my family . . . You should be very thankful for that.” I crouch in front of her, before slowly rising, sliding my breasts up along her legs. She tenses, but doesn’t try to pull away. I moan, and pin her arms down to her chair as I straddle her lap, and press my forehead to hers. Her body is so warm against mine, and I feel hungry like I’ve never felt hungry before in my life. All of my desperation feels like it’s transmuted to desire.
Her eyes gaze into mine, but not with the same mixture of rapt fascination and horror. There’s something . . . eager inside of them. Through the edges of my power dancing along her arms, reaching out along her scalp, I can feel . . . she isn’t frightened at all.
You can taste my thoughts . . . The same way I can read yours, feel yours . . . But so much more intimately . . . You’re so connected to the world, to the people around you, watching it as you’re a part of it, not as it unfolds . . . Give me utopia, Sylvia . . .
There’s almost something sad in her mind, but also so relieved, even excited. I can feel her nipples stiffening against my breasts. I can feel her sink back into the chair, as I press against her harder to keep the feeling of her body firm.
“Mmm . . . I can do that . . . Don’t know if you’ll ever recover from it, but . . . That wouldn’t really be so bad, would it . . .?” I don’t give her time to respond, instead taking that moment to press my lips wetly to hers. I slide my fingers down along the curves of her breasts, cupping, holding, before enveloping her. My power surrounds us, dripping over us, as pure light and spreads its way through Lys.
I can feel the pulse of her thoughts so intensely. Her mind is so strong, but so vulnerable. I knead her breasts, just once, pushing more of my power through her. Inside of her I can feel so many things, my own thoughts, her pleasure as she grinds her stiff nipples against my body.
The slickness in my nebula doesn’t feel like it did I when I was still full of Quillspawn’s control. It’s more . . . Mine. It isn’t as overpowering, or as powerful, but her thoughts are slowing all the same. I can still taste her memories.
I can taste her pushing her powerful mind against Ana’s, and using it to pull her back to reality. I can smell her reading Aurora, savoring her helplessness. I can see her as young as sixteen gazing dreamily at a girl across her classroom, sliding her glasses down her nose, smiling, as she forced thoughts of desire and arousal into the woman’s supple mind. Her mind is so full of loneliness, of being so far away, always watching, always feeling, examining, always knowing . . . feeling a million miles away even with a woman’s tongue between her thighs...
She definitely feels this. Her whole mind trembles every time I move my power inside of her, descending deeper into her memories, into her sense of self, flooding her with wet misty light.
The last of her mental defenses, the last of her denials, of her resistance, crumbles away like a thin layer of ice tapped by a sledgehammer. Her mind falls apart, the words in her mind, the images, the senses, all becoming jumbled and disconnected, incoherent and jumbled like a bad dream. She screams, her thighs clenching hard under me as the heat between her legs turns wetter.
The way the images reach out to me almost feels like some attempt at communication. I can feel myself looking out from her eyes as she watches a broadcast introducing Katya Emerald, the woman in charge of the Argentum Array . . . Images flash in her mind of it firing, the world bathed in silver light . . . before quickly these images are overridden by my mother without her silver skin squaring off against . . . no . . . it’s Aurora’s mother fighting mine. Images of Silver Girl in her full uniform coming to visit her in a lab, shaking her hand, putting a spark into a tube . . . and then the dawnlings . . .
Her whole plan, seeing through everything . . . she was always so far ahead, already as soon as she found out about the Argentum Array she knew . . . she was plotting from that moment . . .
But no images of what’s happening now exist in her mind. For some reason, that makes me smile as I cup her cheeks in my hands. “Always on the outside, looking in, knowing too much, hearing their thoughts, influencing them, experimenting, learning how to predict . . . You’re a sad woman, but that doesn’t change anything. I won’t let you use anyone ever again.”
She moans, but it’s less an attempt to speak than it is a sound of pleasure as my breasts press more against hers. She’s not thinking well enough to remember what words are.
Holding her mind in my power, webbed and submerged, I clench that part of me as hard as I can. The colors of my power pour through her, the slick black staining over her words, her mind, her everything, accented with silver and purple streaks. The small flashes of memory get hazier and hazier until all I can feel in her mind is my power, and then I pull away.
I feel so incredibly cold. My teeth chatter together as I wrap my arms around myself. I’m not cold on the outside, just the inside. I’m . . . starving . . . but my powers feel quiet. The voices, the presences I recalled to pull Aurora and the other minds I’d touched over my own, are gone. It’s just a very cold me, and the places inside where my powers flow tingle like a sleeping limb full of long pins and needles.
“That . . . Ended you . . . for good, I think. Might have been a little . . . much. Fuck I could go for a slice of pizza, or some waffles, or . . .” I collapse down to the floor as gracefully as I can, pulling my body into a tight little ball for warmth. “Sarah . . . I need to find out how you dealt with this . . . I wish you could tell me.” I gaze over at the pile of dawnlings stacked on Aurora and sigh. There’s no way in hell I could move them in a million years. She’ll be stuck under them till she wakes up, which I hope is incredibly soon.