Anna paused and grunted, "Huh. Really?"
I brought up video of the two sharing a rather tender kiss. Tender in some relative sense, given his skin was blistering from the contact.
Anna stared and shrugged. "Right. The crazy femme fatale in a cage can get a boyfriend and I'm still single."
"Can you blame men for finding the thought of being burned alive more tempting than sleeping with you?" I asked.
Mechos cleared his throat like he wanted to say something. He didn't.
Anna took a deep breath and forced a smile. "So you maybe slow down her powers a bit. Then what?"
Mechos offered, "Friction-heavy flooring. I should be able to rig up some panels that would do immense damage to someone trying to move across them quickly."
"And I can mix the neutralizing gas with a tranquilizer agent. We slow her down and keep her captive until she goes under," I said.
Anna said wryly, "It's going to be me grabbing her. How do you keep her from cutting me into little Anna chunks in the meantime?"
"I'm realizing that acknowledging your eternal solitude has made you even more dim-witted than usual. You can teleport. You simply need to grab her, bring her here, then abandon her as you've abandoned all hope of a happy or fulfilling life," I said.
"I want a backup plan. These little schemes of yours never go like you say," Anna said.
Well, that just seemed mean. I was a brilliant planner. Anna could be so inconsiderate sometimes.
37
I set up the trap for Runner in a new military training area. There was nothing else that the space was being used for, and if it suffered some damage it wouldn't be an issue.
At Anna's urging I did have a backup plan, of sorts. I'd sealed the entire area off with reinforced doors. Runner didn't have any sort of enhanced strength, so the doors should serve to hold her. If I needed to, I could evacuate the air from the area and suffocate her.
I'd rather take her alive, but with the threat of the Righteous looming the important thing was getting access to her Power core. At the same time, given the unexpected behavior of the last core as I'd taken it from a dead subject, I'd rather gain the abilities from a living one.
I upgraded Anna with the teleportation ability and she spent a few days getting the hang of it. We determined that she had a maximum range of about two kilometers in a single teleport, and could only manage forty kilometers in total each day. It was nowhere close to what Runner was capable of traveling, but it likely was on par with her lieutenants and outdistance them. It would do.
Anna suited herself up for combat, getting into her own set of Righteous battle armor. If any combat happened it would be at close quarters, so she passed up a rifle in favor of a pistol and knife.
The plan was that she'd spend one day teleporting close to Runner, then camp out to allow her power to rest. The distance was going to be around twenty kilometers. Theoretically, she could manage the return trip carrying Runner all in the same day. It would be cutting it close and if she didn't get Runner all the way back here, then the plan would almost certainly result in her death.
The two companions of the Commander had agreed to stay on and work—not that they had anyplace else to go. Along with the Mechanites they continued to work on clearing away the debris from the entrance.
Thirty hours after Anna departed she made her return.
I'd been keeping careful watch on the room where Mechos had our trap rigged, just waiting for the moment. Anna flickered back into existence, but something was wrong. Her body was moving at over one hundred kilometers per hour as it crashed into a wall, breaking several of her bones in the process, before she collapsed into a heap.
There was no sign of Runner, and other bad things were happening. My new bioreactor really was something like a beating heart and it was starting to beat out of control, building up energy. Power was flooding the base systems—too much.
Lights flickered all over the facility, a bolt of electricity leaping out of a wall panel to electrocute one of the Mechanites passing near.
I had too much charge.
The lowest level of the base was unoccupied and I discharged as much of it as I could there, filling the corridors with blasts.
The containment cells' power was fluctuating and I disengaged the barrier on Mechos. It wouldn't be his first time out and I cautiously trusted the man. More, at least, than I trusted any of my other test subjects, who would happily kill me if they had the chance.
I blacked out for a moment, a surge to my central core leaving me dazed for several minutes.
My systems were degrading quickly. I had to stop these overloads from happening. My Power core was biological in essence, I had to treat it that way. I manufactured a combination of muscle relaxant and sedative, and delivered it in an injector to Abigail, who I already had teleporting to the Core Room.
I have to say this about my manufactured human guardian, she really was fearless. The room was filled with arcing bolts of power and she charged through them all to deliver the injection. A blast threw her back through the doorway, her body smoking. I had Bernard on hand as a spare and had him teleport her back to the Infirmary. My worker mole had just teleported to Anna and was ready to do the same with her.
"Is there a reason you've opened my door?" Mechos asked from a comm panel in the research center.
"Because you're the least dangerous prisoner I have. Anna is back, but Runner isn't here. My systems are racing out of control," I said.
I thought the tranquilizer was having an effect, the beating of the reactor seemed to be slowing.
"You got a dose of energy of the Speed Core. Anna is going to be filled with it. You'll need to slow down her heart rate before her body tears itself apart," Mechos said.
He wanted me to worry about her heart. Well, I was good at multitasking. I prepared the Infirmary with that information. When Anna reached it the autodoc would be ready.
"I've got a heart of my own. I've tried a tranquilizer, but my power levels are still unstable," I said.
"Use Thomas," Mechos said.
It was a good idea. Thomas was currently mixed with the tranquilizer gas in the trap, but that could serve a dual purpose. I altered the configuration so I could shunt the gas directly to the Core Room and began piping it in.
The relief was immediate, I could feel my rhythm starting to slow into something more regular.
My relief was short-lived. My worker mole was killed in a massive explosion outside the reactor, and another blast occurred in the hall outside my central processor.
Then the facility began to shake, tremors coursing through the earth like the mountain around us was being ripped apart.
We were under attack again.
38
Had the Righteous returned?
It was the most likely reason for the whole mountain to be shaking.
"What's going on?" Mechos called.
"Someone seems to be doing a better job at threatening this facility than you did," I said.
I was checking surveillance recordings to figure out what had just happened. There it was—the two that had accompanied the Commander. They must have had internalized bombs of some kind and detonated themselves outside my critical structures. It was fortunate that I'd reinforced the doors.
"Upgrade me," Mechos said.
"Improve your allure all you want. Anna still isn't going to sleep with you," I said.
"Runner is still out there and she'll be angry after this. Give me the ability to teleport and I'll go get her. Nobody else here can take a punch like I can," Mechos said.
That was true. Mechos had a Power core of his own that granted him powers a lot like mine. I couldn't be sure that if I upgraded him I'd ever see him again, but at this point he was my best chance.