“World domination, I assume.”
Cote was wearing his smuggest look yet. “Perhaps not world domination. I do know, of course, that Remo Annoying is not your real name. What is your real name, pray tell?”
“Hell if I know. So, why not world domination?” Remo could see Cote’s interest was piqued. He had to play this guy’s game for a while—and Cote was more than willing. Cote relaxed against the back of his chair and tried not to reveal the fact that his hands were working a tiny joystick on the side of the doughnut cushion. The chair moved, with a whirring of motors under the floor, carrying him to the front of his banks of obnoxiously bright and flashy controls.
“I don’t know if I am prepared yet to dominate the planet. Someday, perhaps. For now I’ll settle for Europe.”
“With these guys you want to conquer Europe? Mr. U. is cool-looking and well-polished and everything, but does he have what it takes to defeat whole nations?” Remo’s eyesight was restored fully and he turned casually right and left, taking in the vast array of mechanical creatures that surrounded him, all poised as if to strike. The always-smiling Mr. U. adjusted its position by the millimeter to keep the aim of its distended arm- launcher locked on Remo.
Remo had guessed Cote right. He was into his spy-movie super villain role, and the last thing he wanted was for it to be over within a blink of an eye. Cote began explaining the self-replicating properties of the various autonomous vehicles in his menagerie, and Remo put on his best shocked-and-awed expression while he evaluated his body. He felt much better, but he didn’t feel he was back to one hundred percent yet. Maybe it would take hours or days. Maybe he was scarred permanently.
But did he have what it would take to fight off the mysterious Mr. U.?
How good were these contraptions anyway?
“They might be able to replicate themselves in body, but not in mind,” Remo asserted. “You don’t have robots to build Gee-DAMS.”
Cote’s sonorous speech, delivered in a booming stage voice, faltered at the interruption and his face clouded. He advanced on Remo, but the last feet of track was not aligned well and the chair began to shimmy as the mechanics ground together, under the floor. Now Cote was even angrier, his face flushing as he grabbed onto the sides of the seat and held on until the chair managed to come to a halt, tipping a little to one side.
Remo chuckled.
“What is so humorous?”
“What isn’t? Cote, you’re about as much a supervillain as I am George Lazenby. You’re a clown.”
“What?”
“Look at you. You’re a clown. A stupid fake. You’ve got everything wrong. You don’t even know what stupid game you’re trying to pretend at.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what’s with the British accent? Most of the supervillains weren’t British. They were Eastern Europeans or whatever. So what are you trying to do, be the British secret agent and the supervillain at the same time? Can’t play both sides of the fence, Cote.”
“I know what I am doing,” Cote retorted.
“And the accent sucks anyway. I mean, I’ve heard junior high-school kids from Detroit doing Monty Python skits and they’re way more genuine than you.”
“My good man—”
“Also, what’s with the retro look? I mean, okay, if you’ve made the commitment to be a pseudo-supervillain, and you’ve already committed some horrific crimes—and you have—and you’ve got a few million in disposable cash to outfit your new supervillain stronghold, then why in God’s name would you go retro? It makes you look stupider than you already look.”
“You’re wearing my patience, Mr.—”
“Even if you ignore all that, you forgot the most important part of being a supervillain.”
“I forgot nothing!”
Remo shrugged. “Fine.”
“What? What did I forget?”
“You forgot that every supervillain fails,” Remo said.
Cote applied the smug British smile to his sweaty Spanish face. Remo could see, from maybe thirty long paces away, that the man’s respiration was slowing again, his heart rate becoming steady. He was relaxing in a moment of self-confidence. Now was the time to make his move, with Cote’s reflexes slowed. “That is where I have revamped the character, whoever you are,” Cote explained.
“Sorry, old chap.” Remo smirked. “You’re nothing but a Dr. No and away you go.”
Remo charged.
But he attacked Cote as Cote had never been attacked before. Instead of running him down in a flurry of flying legs, Remo Annoying seemed to slip and slither and glide across the ballroom with more grace than any dancer had ever moved, and faster than any human being was capable of moving.
Cote had been told to expect extraordinary skills and speed, but this was inhuman. He stabbed at the nearest control, a fat orange plastic square, and across the room one of the automatons shot into motion. Mr. U. was already activated and it rotated quickly, its body quivering as if it had a bad case of nerves, but it was actually the minute and precise maneuverings of the aiming mechanism—and yet Mr. U. failed to lock on to its target.
Remo Williams slipped around the room in sporadic fits, but he closed in on Cote fast. The man yelped in astonishment when something clamped on to his neck and he became a statue, frozen in his seat. He could only watch what happened around him.
Remo circled the laughably huge computer and zipped out the other side to find Mr. U. bearing down on him. He felt the pressure waves of the next igniting rocket even as it shot from the barrel in Mr. U.’s palm.
It was a different projectile, slightly stubbier, and as he moved out of its path, it moved to intercept him. He stopped, watched it burn the air directly at him, then nodded his head forward when it was just inches from crashing into him.
There was a powerful scream from the second robot, an eight-legged spider of jointed brass legs, and for a moment Remo had an ugly flashback.
But this wasn’t that mechanical spider, just a bunch of hollow tubes for legs, pneumatic cylinders for muscles and tiny discs positioned on every square inch, spinning fast, creating a drone like the buzzing of steel bees. This spider specialized in wasted motion but it still came fast, clattering on the wood, and the sharpness of its tiny rotary saws was made evident by the cloud of sawdust it raised.
The little rocket managed to recover itself before crashing into the walls or floor, spinning wildly in the upper air of the ballroom, then veering into a dive. Remo ran at the spider robot, which turned to catch him by reaching out with four front legs. Remo faked it out by going low, then jumped over the whizzing tubular limbs, and the spider reared up in a vain attempt to tag him.
Remo hit the ground and glided back the way he’d come, under the raised spider legs and around the rear of the spider, moving too fast for the spider to match— but not too fast for the motion-sending rocket, which homed in on Remo without knowing or caring what was in its way. The spider was still balanced on its rear end when the tiny rocket slammed into it as Remo fell and rolled. The explosion was an intense pressure burst, and Remo exhaled fully and let it roll over him.
When he got to his feet he was pleased to see that the spider had been splatted and another nearby automaton was damaged, the pair of round cylinders that made up its body shifting on positioning motors while its wheeled feet adjusted like a circus clown on a ball, trying to get balanced.
Remo stepped up and gave the thing a nudge with his foot, and the two-tank robot raced across the room at Mr. U., who was lining up to fire again. Mr. U.’s grin became less cheerful when it swung away fast to avoid the impact.