"Hot flashes? From the looks of you I'd have figured you got those out of the way years back," I said.
"Age jokes are the best you've got? Oh sugar, the mind is the first thing to go. Boys? Get in here and go hot," Hot Stuff called.
William and the others stepped inside. They'd heated up enormously and flames flickered around their forms, although none was running nearly as hot as Hot Stuff herself.
I didn't close the doors. Not yet. I needed to time this carefully.
"See? There were like these water guns that fired on us? I burned my way out, but the others didn't make it," William said.
"And you just ran off and left them," Hot Stuff said.
I told them, "There is a popular conception that you can tell the size of a man's courage by the size of his dick. There is little scientific truth to it. Still, in the case of Willy, when the two are both so minuscule I wonder if further tests are warranted."
"Fuck you," William said, his flames growing even hotter. "Seriously. Fuck you!"
"She's trying to rattle you," Hot Stuff said.
"It's working," William said.
Yes, it was. Time to rattle them some more. I killed the lights and slammed the doors shut.
Since they were living torches the effect wasn't quite so dramatic as it might have been, but it would still disorient them a little. Then I hit them with the water cannons. I wasn't trying to drown them out, not this time. Based on past performance I didn't think I'd be able to do that. I was herding them.
Jets of water pounded each backwards until I could drop the floor out from beneath them, plunging everyone into separate tanks of water. Instantly, I sealed the tops trapping them inside.
No oxygen, just water surrounding them and snuffing out those flames.
I had rigged monitors in every tank and in three they were showing exactly what I wanted—an initial huge spike of temperature that quickly began to drop. In the fourth tank the water just kept growing hotter.
There was nothing else I could do now. Nothing else but hope I'd planned my trap well enough, and that Hot Stuff too would suffer the fates of the others and be overcome before the tank gave way.
It wasn't to be. I registered a sudden change in tank pressure and powerful gusts of steam escape from the one of the rooms, before the door blew itself apart in a spray of shrapnel.
Hot Stuff came walking out. Despite her bare flesh she had no fear of jagged metal. Where pieces of the door came into contact with her, it turned molten and dripped away.
Crossing the hall she pressed a hand to one of the other doors, which ripped itself asunder as the pressure within was released. Hot Stuff went to one door after another and quickly freed all of her Flames. They were shaken, coughing up gouts of steam as the water inside them boiled out and away. They were alive.
"Oh, good try sweetie. Good try, but I'm just getting started. You wanted me to come find you. I'm on my way. Boys, man the fuck up and come along," Hot Stuff said.
They were on the wrong side of my defenses. I'd planned for that trap to work, and if it didn't I'd expected for them to withdraw into the other traps I'd placed on the upper levels.
There wasn't much between them and me. I needed to think fast.
10
The pit traps had been a good idea and against just the Flames would have worked, but Hot Stuff had put paid to that.
I did have limited supplies of liquid nitrogen and other super coolants for use in my own systems. They could deliver a small but intense burst of cooling. If I could get Hot Stuff to inhale this, it might do enough damage to her lungs to put her out of the fight.
I could also try asphyxiation. Normally, denying a fire of oxygen would be a great way to put it out, but I worried it might not work on Hot Stuff. In the water tank air had been in short supply and she kept burning hotter—there was something internal helping to fuel her fire.
I said, "Do you really want to keep coming and see what else I have planned? If you thought those traps were good, just wait until what comes next. You may think you're hot, but you're just a firefly pretending to be a dragon."
"Scared?" Hot Stuff said, taunting me. "You should be. I don't normally take my time, but for you sweetie I am going to make an exception."
Was she flirting with me? Mammals were strange and thoroughly disgusting, and I'd been keeping company with them entirely too much lately.
I had a plan. It wasn't a great one, but at least it was something. The hallway right before my chamber would be best. I could seal it on both ends and, as I'd been getting it suitable to house Anna, the environmental systems were the best in the facility.
I set a path of blinking lights for them to follow. I doubted they would, humans were rarely so cooperative as to do what they were told.
"Luring us into another trap?" Hot Stuff asked.
"Just showing you the way. I thought I'd better make it easy," I said.
"Explore the nearby rooms. There's something she doesn't want us to find," Hot Stuff ordered the Flames.
In that she was wrong. But the distraction did give me a few minutes extra to prepare.
When they made it to the corridor I was waiting. I allowed them to advance halfway down before springing my trap.
The doors at either end slammed shut.
"You know I'll burn through them," Hot Stuff said.
"You? You really don't live up to your name," I said.
Hot Stuff flared into life, again to a temperature that would melt metal.
That was where I wanted her.
I couldn't douse her flame, I'd proved that. That didn't mean it couldn't be used against her or the others.
I ran my filters quickly, sucking all the air from the hall and, as soon as it was clear, began pumping in pure oxygen.
I knew the results would be explosive. I had emergency cooling on hand for my Core Room if the door should go down. Anna might wind up a little incinerated, but then, I'd built her an Infirmary just so she could recover from such things.
Hot Stuff flared brilliantly and my thermal sensors stopped registering.
The Flames burned hot, but I hoped not hot enough. I also hoped that whatever internal energy source powered Hot Stuff wasn't infinite and that this sheer burst of power might deplete it.
My door was melting. I began to flood my core with liquid nitrogen just as the bloom of heat went in.
My connection to the autodoc in the Infirmary told me that I'd added a rather impressive list of new burns to Anna. The woman was being seared from head to toe. Still in the grips of the medical system, she remained alive, although her time until full recovery went up to two weeks.
Acceptable, if this worked.
With my sensors blinded it was another of those situations where I simply had to wait to find out if I was alive or soon to be dead. If Hot Stuff won the day, or I did.
When I was finally able to send my drone into the hall I found that I'd eeked out the win.
The Flames were dead, all three of them, even their heat-resistant flesh burned too much and too badly.
Hot Stuff was sprawled unconscious on the floor. Her body heat was intense, but stable and relatively low—for her.
I wasted no time getting her down into the testing lab. I was already building a labyrinth just for her. I'd designed tests that would require her to use that intense heat generation ability to get past obstacles.
It might kill her, but I had to provide real danger to elicit the best results. Still, I had faith that I'd be getting data from her for a long time to come.
Research Menu
"Hot Stuff"
Hot Stuff is bonded to a Power core that grants her considerable power over fire. In addition, it grants her superhuman levels of endurance and eternal youth.
You have placed subject "Hot Stuff" into a test labyrinth. While within the labyrinth escape is highly unlikely, although technically possible. If subject is held for two weeks you will unlock the ability of their Power core for your own usage. Further testing will accumulate core points at the rate of 0.1 per week.