Love in the Underground, Chapter Three

Lightning for his part had been only too aware of the Henry Martin overhead, and immediately prior to entering the alleyway between warehouses had glimpsed her tacking off in obvious search of a landing-place. “Company’s coming, Flashtease,” he muttered grimly to his companion and prop. “Every second’s going to be crucial now.”

There stood the house-sized galactic trans-mat unit in the loading-yard before them, a vast inverted radar-dish with a small platform for passengers directly beneath and a control-desk not far from it. Heaped alongside were hunks of burnt-out scrap that looked to Lightning like the remains of power-transference hoses, and nor could he help noticing at the foot of the machine the dead body of his fellow Solidity chief Space-Screamer. So in one respect at least Lightning’s day was looking up, even if the junk-piles remained a cause for concern.

With Flashtease’s help he lurched to the control-desk and fell heavily against it, forearms first. Consulting the readout-screens Lightning swiftly deduced that although his suspicions had been correct, the news was encouraging indeed. “It’s suffered a near-overload that’s left it power enough for just one deployment – no more,” he reported. “But that’s all we’ll need. Work fast, Flashtease.”

The Mini-Flash at once slung Lightning’s muscular arm back around his small shoulders and assisted him to the platform, where leaning against the scaffold the latter was able to stand upright. Their one remaining minute was surely ticking away, so Lightning wasted no time in unceremoniously booting Space-Screamer’s corpse out of reach of his foot and then commanding Flashtease: “To the fallback point – our old headquarters. Program the destination and give yourself a ten-second delay, so you’ll have time enough to get back here and join me.”

Flashtease in a great tunic-flurry scampered to the controls. His fingers skated over trajectory input-keys then hammered down together on the proceed-panel, as he shouted: “Done!” and the first of ten electronic blips sounded out in the alley.

“Good,” replied Lightning, raising one open hand.

A bolt of energy shot from his palm and struck Flashtease full in the chest. There was barely time for a cry as he was flung back, his shoulderblades hitting warehouse wall and then the helpless whole of him sliding streetward. Dimly Flashtease registered the two limp slaps of his bare thighs against concrete, and the bumping impact as his underwear met that same hard surface and he slumped still, all to the tune of the tenth and final blip.

Shimmering lights began to dance round the fading form of Lightning, who with a smile on his lips was looking down his chiselled chin at Flashtease where he lay.

“Stand up to me,” Lightning laughed coldly, his voice warping fainter and fainter. “One other thing, Flashtease, about my Flash Club – we knew how to deal with traitors…!”

In a last glinting gleam he vanished, at which the empty trans-mat unit groaned and shuddered to eternal silence.

Carmilla and Degris rounded the corner into the loading-yard in time to witness the last of it. “That jerk!” she exclaimed, running at once to the semi-conscious boy and throwing herself down on her knees beside him. Tearfully she took him in his arms, cradling his head against her.

“Oh, Flashtease,” Carmilla murmured. “We had no idea. I can’t believe he…! But…but above all, Flashtease, we need you to know…”

So numerous were Carmilla’s emotions that she was unable to go on. Degris, seeing this, hunkered down on Flashtease’s other side and continued for her:

“We weren’t going to stop you, kid. If that’s any comfort at all to you now. Carmilla and I talked it over, and we agreed we just wanted to see you one more time and say goodbye. But we never guessed you had a means to get off-planet right here, or that one of your own guys was going to pull something like that on you!”

The Mini-Flash was starting to sit up. His next words came as something of a surprise to both his listeners.

“I knew he was going to double-cross me,” Flashtease declared plainly. “In fact, I was counting on it. There was no way I was getting on that trans-mat with him, and going where he’s gone.”

Carmilla and Degris stared at him. “You mean you didn’t input the destination he asked for?” she cried. “So where did you send him instead?”

“Not actually sure,” was Flashtease’s response. “But my guess is it’s not the sort of place you leave.”

Both his friends were equally baffled by now. “Then, Flashtease, just what did you program into that thing?” Degris burst out.

Flashtease smiled. There was no malice about the smile, no gratification in revenge, indeed no evil intent at all. It was merely that when Carmilla beheld the expression on his face, she knew for certain the Flashtease she had first met was gone. His two human friends, Aloysius and Gussy, would not have recognized the boy before her now as the same carefree little bundle of happy hyperactivity they had escorted around Nottingham on a now-distant day. It was a strong smile, the smile of one who had found his strength in the darkness and brought it back with him when he emerged again into the light, and Carmilla did not doubt that this new Flashtease was in every regard something greater than the old one had been. Such a change, however, carried its own cost. A most precious coin known as innocence, which for but the shortest time in any life belonged to its owner to spend, was what Flashtease had parted with forevermore.

At long last, the reply to Degris’s question came thus:

“The first set of co-ordinates. Wherever that fake Blaster-Track Commander was planning to send the Next Four…that’s where Lightning is now.”

The rematerialization cycle ran its course, and Lightning’s atoms cohered into a solid physical body for the second time in as many hours. His first observation was that he was not standing on the floor of Flash Club headquarters as he had expected. Indeed, he wasn’t standing at all. There was vacant air on all sides, and an ominous sensation of gravity.

Before his eyes stretched endless dark firmament in the throes of a raging tempest. Lightning at once turned himself in space to look over his shoulder, as he seemed to be headed in that direction.

An ocean of raw searing white was swelling fast to greet him.

“The Seegs,” Lightning breathed in horror. “Not the Seegs! No!”

And still ever bellowing and railing thus Lightning plunged, as a self-styled destiny that had begun in this place was duly swallowed up again by all-enveloping nothingness.

Phoenix Prime and Phoenix had made it within view of the cave-exit. At the end of the uphill-sloping tunnel shone a round opening bright with the floodlamps of the Earth encampment, but between it and our heroines warred the last of the weary robots who had fought their way there via some third route. Drilldome and Breakpoint were by now companions to Cyclotor and Conduit among the ranks of the deactivated, their mangled husks together with two more comatose criminals littering the silent catacombs between here and the gully. Only Steelstreak and Audio-Wave of Space-Screamer’s faction, and Technomancer and Electromagnet of Dimension Borg’s remained, and they were locked in a crushing embrace which did not look set to end until half the quartet was scrap-iron.

The latter duo seemed closer to achieving this end. Electromagnet’s twin-pronged power-hand was mutilated into uselessness, and battle-damage apparently likewise prevented Technomancer from summoning his mastery over the elements, but their opponents were no less the worse for wear and with brute strength alone the Dimension Borg robots were pressing home their advantage. The two watching girls however, both scientists, had noticed at once that Audio-Wave instead of resisting was scanning, busily cycling his sensors through one amplitude after another as if in search of something that might serve.

“Conclusion,” Electromagnet snarled malevolently as he bore down. “This battle: ended.”

“How right you are,” Steelstreak’s final grandiose gloat wheezed back, and then he hollered aloud: “Now, Audio-Wave! In the name of mighty Space-Screamer!”

The wordless one’s high-frequency transmitters erupted into piercing radiant noise. Suddenly both aggressors stumbled back, bombarded by a modulation Audio-Wave had that instant hit upon, the unique wavelength that would scramble the very interlocking mechanisms that held each Dimension Borg robot’s armour around the human body at its core. Electromagnet and Technomancer fairly fell to pieces, blue and bronze anatomies jumbling into metallic melange amid electronic protestations expressed in buzzes and burrs, as crucial clamps atrophied as one and the pallid ragged forms of supervillains Solenoid and Maelstrom emerged from the chaos and dropped first to their knees and then their faces on the rock. A second later though the men were up again and taking to their heels for the exit, whilst two spasming masses of cable and steel-plate thrashed and flopped crazily to the cavern floor spitting sparks from the mouth-grilles of their domed Dimension Borg heads.

Phoenix and Phoenix Prime knew their last chance when they saw it. The latter tucked Carrie securely under one arm, and side-by-side they broke cover and charged headlong.

Technomancer’s dome had clattered to rest on the stony floor close to Phoenix’s path, so without checking her stride she pointed the energy-beam emitter on the palm of her gauntlet down towards her feet and with a single shot caved the severed head in. Phoenix Prime meanwhile throwing fire from her free hand slagged Steelstreak through the cerebral module and curbed his pomposity once and for all, clearing Phoenix a sight-line to adjust her aim to Audio-Wave and riddle him with photon ’til he moved no more.

Original and clone drew to a halt together in the newfound calm, both breathing hard, but hope rising in each one’s breast that they might at long last have prevailed.

Then from behind Phoenix with no warning whatsoever surged the nightmare pillar of mingling mechanical components to which Electromagnet had been reduced, topped by the domed head all blazing crimson eyes as it rattled out its synthesized death-scream. Phoenix was blindsided by the thing and hit the floor unconscious.

Phoenix Prime turned, lifting her hand to Dimension Borg’s last loyal soldier, that hemispherical head which had instigated so many of its master’s dark designs and wrought so much ill for the people of Planet Earth, and with a bolt of flame from her fingertips blew out its computerized brains.

This time, the silence was lasting. After a second or two of it, Phoenix Prime began to wonder why she had not yet extinguished the fire from her hand.

Then she looked down at the ground, and knew. The robots were slain, and the cowardly supervillains were by now beetling at the cave-exit a good distance off. Phoenix Prime was alone in this empty tunnel with Phoenix lying prone before her, breathing but helpless, her brown hair disarrayed to expose a slender unprotected neck. That was the reason the hand still burned.

For it was only then, as Phoenix Prime looked on what she had wanted for almost as long as she could remember, that she knew for certain she didn’t want it any more.

Quelling her flames she stooped, bundled Phoenix under her other arm, and set off running for the light.

Solenoid and Maelstrom, with their considerable lead, were first to stagger out of the cave-mouth and into the halogen-illuminated bustle of the Earth army compound. Helicopters circled overhead, and nearby companies of troops turned at once to the newcomers.

“We’re giving up!” Solenoid shouted, as he and Maelstrom weakly raised their hands above their heads. “Hold your fire. After what we’ve been through, facing justice has never sounded so appealing!”

While soldiers led the two men away, Phoenix Prime stepped out to join the rest of humanity in the welcoming glow. Immediately a medical patrol was rushing to her aid, relieving her aching arms of Carrie and Phoenix, lowering the girls gently onto stretchers and ferrying them directly to the field-hospital where both lives would be saved. For just a few additional moments Phoenix Prime allowed her gaze to linger on her clone, sleeping safe and sound atop the gurney having completed their adventure very much alive. Then Phoenix Prime stayed still and quiet where she was a moment more, and after two tears had trickled steaming down her cheeks, closed her eyes.

She was free.

There were debts to pay, obligations upon her and atonement that must be sought, to be sure. Phoenix Prime was determined on that much. She would devote all her scientific knowledge to finding a cure for Dylan, undoing the harm she had done and making amends to both Phoenix and her love. But she would do so with parents, sisters and clones beside her. For the first time since the beginning of her solitary existence she would be part of a family again. Phoenix Prime had at last dragged herself face-to-face with her hatred to look on it for what it was, and thereby learned of something far more powerful which had also been hers all along.

Files of infantry with rifles pointing onward were quick-marching into the caves, striking out to rescue the remaining supervillains and dispatch those few of the demon-horde that had survived Kral-it-Gor. For Phoenix Prime however it was enough merely to stand, enfolded by the thriving industry of the camp and the tall city towers and the starry night sky that glittered over all, as a new world dawned before her.

END OF CHAPTER THREE