Carrie Vaughn - After the Golden Age

“Dad?” She looked around. Not so much as a jogger or dog walker was in sight.

She heard a hiss and felt a sting in her shoulder. Wincing in pain, she grabbed for it, thinking to find a hell of a monster mosquito. Instead, she pulled out a dart.

She stared at it a moment, a silver pellet with an inch-long needle—terrifyingly long—lying in her hand. A wave of dizziness crashed against her skull, only because she realized what had happened.

The tranquilizer took effect a second later, and she dropped to her knees.

Her limbs went numb, her nerves died, her muscles escaped her control, and she fell. Her eyes remained open, and her mind raced in a futile panic. Lying on her back, staring up, she saw the old man approach. Two black-suited guards flanked him. He wore charcoal gray. He had a fringe of thin white hair and smiled a grandfather’s smile down at her.

He held up a mini tape recorder and pressed the button. “Celia! Thank God! I need your help—”

Her father’s voice, synthesized.

With gentle fingers he pressed her eyelids closed, and his men carried her away.

At some point she gratefully fell into unconsciousness. Didn’t dream. Regretted waking up, which she knew she was doing when she heard a voice.

“You have your mother’s hair, don’t you?”

She opened her eyes and jerked back at the sight of the old man bending over her. Or tried to jerk back. She’d regained control of her muscles, but she was in a dentist’s-type chair, nylon straps securing her arms and legs in place. Even her head was restrained. She felt tired, weak, but nothing hurt. Except her knotted stomach.

“And your father’s eyes,” he said. “Lovely.”

The room was dark. She squinted, trying to see. A row of computer banks stood along one wall. They gave off a blue-white glow and a faint hum of cooling fans.

“What else do you have of theirs? Spark’s fire, the Captain’s strength? A bit of telekinesis perhaps. The ability to fly, or to see through solid walls. No? Nothing? How disappointing.”

She glared at him, her face contorting in a grimace. It wasn’t any of his business.

But he knew that her parents were the Olympiad.

Had she said anything, done anything to reveal their identity? No, of course not. He’d taken her because he already knew who they were. But when she disappeared the police would think it was a simple kidnapping of the daughter of a wealthy businessman for ransom. They’d be expecting a ransom note. She wondered if they would get one.

She didn’t think so. This didn’t seem right. A “simple” kidnapping involved warehouses and car trunks, not tranquilizer darts and computer labs. What this room reminded her of most was the Olympiad’s command center, gleaming and sinister.

The man reached out, and she drew away as much as she was able, wincing. “Oh, shh, shh there,” he said, like he might calm an animal. He ran his finger along her chin. He had a look in his eyes, intense and clinical, like a child who took pleasure in breaking his toys to see what made them work. He would gladly use people, but he didn’t need any of them.

She managed to whisper, “What are you going to do with me?”

“Well. I’m going to send you back to your parents. After I’ve made a few adjustments to your pretty little mind. A childish sort of revenge, I admit. Enjoyable nonetheless.”

“Who are you?” she said, though in her gut she already knew.

“Can’t you guess? I’m the Destructor.”

Screaming at this point would be so undignified. She swallowed back any noise into her too-tight throat.

She prayed. Dr. Mentis, I’m here, please look for me, please help me. The telepath had only been with the Olympiad a year, but she liked him. He didn’t brush her off just because she didn’t have any powers. He didn’t treat her like a kid. Surely he would hear her.

The Destructor leaned on the chair, an arm on either side of her waist, and stared down at her with a look of such vicious longing she wanted to vomit. Tears welled in her eyes, which she squeezed shut. She had to be brave. She’d be brave, and she’d get out of this.

“It would be so easy to break you. Such a young, innocent thing—a blank slate. I could write anything on you.” He let his body lean close to her, brought his face to her shirt and inhaled deeply through his nose, smelling her. She could feel his breath through her shirt, on her breasts, then on her throat.

“No. Please, no.” Her tears streamed steadily now. She knew what this was, knew she didn’t want it to happen. Not like this.

If only she were strong. If only she had her mother’s power, her father’s strength. Such a disappointment, as he’d said.

He straightened his arms, pushing away from her, and she gasped a sigh of relief. “Hush, my dear. I’m not so gauche as that.”

Moving to the head of the chair, he reached for an equipment stand. In moments, he was pasting electrodes to her scalp, burying them in her red hair, pressing them to her skin.

She’d almost prefer the other. At least she knew what was happening, then. She bit her lips closed and refused to cry anymore.

He’d secured over a dozen of the electrodes, then pulled a device mounted on a jointed arm to the side of the chair. Made of steel and glass, it looked like a gun, a long nose with narrow rings of wires and disks protruding from a complicated mechanism. The Destructor studied it, making adjustments, then aimed the point of it at her forehead.

He went to the computer banks. “I call this process Psychostasis. A freezing of the mind. You won’t feel anything, I promise. You’ll start to forget, and you won’t even notice that you’re forgetting. You’ll go on without a care in the world. And when you’ve forgotten enough, then we’ll stop. It only becomes really dangerous if your heart forgets to beat. But I won’t let that happen.” He smiled at her over his shoulder.

No, no, no —her thoughts narrowed to that simple, desperate pleading. If she thought hard enough, maybe she could make it happen. Maybe she could give herself powers through sheer will.

No, she couldn’t, because then she’d have had powers a long time ago.

“Doctor! Something’s happening outside!” A man wearing a black suit ran into the room.

The Destructor paused, frowned. “I don’t want to be disturbed.”

“But I think it’s the Olympiad!”

She couldn’t see the villain’s expression, but his voice turned cold and determined. “Never mind. I only need a few moments.”

He turned back to his computer. A vibration passed along her skin, like the hum of a voice close to her ear.

“No,” she whispered, crying. Only a minute, she only had to hold on for one more minute. Don’t forget, never forget.

A fireball roiled through the doorway, tossing aside the Destructor’s goon, who rolled to the protective cover of a computer console.

The Destructor frowned and stepped back.

“Mentis! She’s in here!” Her mother’s voice, ringing clear.

A wall of flame erupted, a shield between Spark and Celia, and the Destructor and his computers. In the next moment, Dr. Mentis was beside her, holding her face, looking into her eyes.

“Celia, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” she said, because she couldn’t nod.

More than hear him, she could feel him prodding in the corners of her mind, like an extra voice, a thought that wasn’t hers, a dream that she didn’t know the origin of. An odd smell of sage filled her nose. She couldn’t stop it or respond—she didn’t have that power. But she didn’t struggle. Whatever the Destructor had done to her, Mentis would find it and fix it.

He must have been satisfied with what he found in her mind, because he grabbed the wires, all of them together, and tore them away. Her hair and skin ripped; she braced and didn’t cry out. Calmly and methodically, he pulled loose all the straps, then put her arms over his shoulders.