Summus Proelium

Five Years Ago

As she sat in a medical examination room deep in the heart of the Seraphs headquarters, the small Biolem girl known as Paige gripped the edge of the bed she was perched on and tried to calm her thoughts down. She was so scared right then. She had been scared for so long. After running away from her father, she'd really had nowhere to go. The only other living person who had known who she was didn't remember her anymore. Cassidy's memory had been erased, and Anthony was gone. She had no one left. No one, that was, aside from a father who wanted to punish her for exposing his plans to the people he was trying to hurt. He had been arrested, but that didn’t mean she was safe. He had people out there who would follow his orders.

She had been wandering the streets, trying to figure out what to do, when several of those very people found her. They tried to take her in, but she stopped them. She killed them. And before she could leave the area, before she could recover from the injuries they’d managed to inflict on her in the process, those Seraphs people had found her. They brought her here, and now she wasn't sure what to do next.

In her exhaustion and confusion, she’d even told them to find Cassidy. Thank God she hadn’t said a last name. The thought of how Cassidy’s parents would react to some girl who had been found in an alley surrounded by corpses asking for their daughter’s help was… bad. They’d already had Cassie’s memory erased once in an effort to ‘protect her,’ so who knew what lengths they would go to in a situation like this.

On the other hand, maybe she should go to them. After all, she’d told that Robert guy, anonymously though it was, about her father. Maybe if she told them the whole story, everything about her situation, they’d believe her and help? Then she could even be with Cassie again, and they could go back to--

No. Of course not. That would risk Cassidy finding out what they had done to her, and they wouldn’t allow that. Nor would they want someone like Paige being around their daughter, after hearing about what she was. And if they knew what she was, they’d just want to use her for their own schemes. Or worse, they’d want to take her apart to find out how Benjamin Pittman had built her in the first place. Would they even see her as a real person? She didn’t want to take that risk. She couldn’t take that risk. Not with her own life and freedom in the balance. No, she had to do something else, but what?

Lost in her own thoughts as she was, Paige almost missed the sound of someone approaching the door. No, multiple people, in fact. But the footsteps--those weren’t the shoes of doctors, it sounded like heavy combat boots. If there were men wearing combat boots coming for her room, that could only mean one thing. She was in danger. No one wearing combat boots and walking directly toward that door could be coming for any good reason.

Eyes darting around the room, Paige slipped off the bed. There was no window in here, not with the room being deep in the heart of the facility. The ventilation duct was about the size of a shoebox, so that was out. She had no cover and nowhere to go. Which meant she was going to have to fight again. As exhausted as she was, both mentally and physically, she had to do this. Her father’s people had somehow managed to get inside the Seraphs building, and now they were coming to finish what they had started back in that alley. Unless she stopped them.

Moving to the far side of the bed to keep that between her and the door, Paige snapped a hand out to yank a nearby lamp cord out of the wall. Another yank ripped the other end from the lamp itself, giving her the full length of cord to work with. It wasn’t much, but with her combat programming, she could use the cord to help with leverage against much larger opponents. And as what appeared to be a twelve-year-old girl, basically every opponent was much larger. That was something at least, and in these tight confines, she needed all the advantages she could get. Even if she was quite a bit stronger than normal opponents tended to expect, anyone sent by her father would know what she was, and would be ready.

Tensing when the boots (there were three pairs of them, she could tell now) stopped outside the room, Paige watched the doorknob. As soon as the men started to come through the door, she was going to have to act. Maybe she could take them by surprise if they weren’t expecting her to be ready for them. Every advantage. She needed to--

There was a sound, but it wasn’t the doorknob turning. No, it was a voice, speaking up from further down the hall. It was too far away for even Paige’s enhanced hearing to pick up, and she had been too out of it to hack into the security cameras--crap, why didn’t she hack into the security cameras?! They were connected to wi-fi and that could’ve told her a lot more about what was going on out there.

Devoting some of her attention to fix that (though much slower than it would’ve gone if that was the only thing she was focusing on), Paige strained her ears to listen. The voice spoke again, close enough now for her to pick up the words.

“--would’ve heard about a dangerous prisoner being kept around here, you know? Especially one that requires so many large guns to escort.”

It was a male voice, she could tell that much. And damn it, who told the Seraphs to keep such tight security on their camera systems? It was taking even longer to break through than she’d thought. All she could do in the meantime was listen.

“I mean, are you sure you have the right room? I just came past the desk down the hall, and wouldn’t you know it, dear old Lacey is asleep at her post. She’s a sweet thing, she really is. But maybe getting a little close to retirement.” Now the voice was even closer, he had to be almost right in front of her father’s men. “Maybe the room you’re looking for is the one two floors up? I seem to remember hearing something about a giant, incredibly disgusting distraction.”

Even as Paige processed that last word, she heard the sound of a flurry of motion right there by the door. There were several pained grunts, a couple heavy thuds, and the sound of what had to be someone being hit by something very heavy in the face. Then a third heavy thud. It all happened in the course of about six seconds, followed by a moment of silence. That silence was broken by the creak of the doorknob turning.

Only then, in that moment, did she finish hacking through the security measures and get access to the cameras. Which meant she could see a view from the hallway showing all three of her father’s men (dressed as uniformed soldiers) lying haphazardly across the floor. As well as a view of the back of a man in an expensive black suit with slightly graying dark hair.

At the same time, she could see the man from the front. He was a handsome figure. She was pretty sure the right word would be ‘heartthrob.’ But all she felt upon seeing him was confusion.

From the look on the man’s face, he hadn’t known what to expect when he opened that door either. But he adjusted quickly enough. “Well ahh, hey there. Something tells me you probably shouldn’t hang around this place much longer, if what those guys were packing is any indication of how badly they want to bring you in. If you want, I’ve got a place you can stay for awhile.

“The name’s Eric Abbot, and my daughter Melissa would love to meet you.”

*********

Two Years Later/Three Years Ago

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Eric Abbot--known to the world as Blackjack, asked the now-fourteen-year-old Paige as the two of them stood in front of a large metal-reinforced door with an electronic keypad and retinal scan next to it. His face was much paler than usual, eyes burdened with dark circles. Even then, he still asked despite how high the stakes were.

“It’s Melissa,” Paige replied simply, as though he needed the reminder. “I’ll do anything to help her. She’s… she’s my sister.” That was true in both a figurative and literal way, given the legal adoption Abbot had managed to put together.

“And you’re both my daughters,” he agreed in a somewhat shaky voice. Melissa being sick, getting Rot Bone, it… it hurt him more than almost anything else could have. His wife was gone, Melissa was the only blood relative he had left. She was his biological daughter, the one he had brought up from birth. The only tie he still had to the wife he had lost.

Paige couldn’t let this happen. She couldn’t let Melissa die. Abbot had taken her fully into his family and home, had trusted her with everything ever since that day when he saved her from Pittman’s men. Melissa was his baby and her sister in every way that mattered. No matter how afraid she was, no matter how worried she might’ve been about how this would go, she had to do everything she could to save her sister.

To that end, she gave her adopted father a firm nod of acceptance. This was the only way. No matter how risky it was, they had to do it.

Rather than immediately move to open the door, he pulled her into an embrace, smiling down at her. “When my power told me there was an opportunity if I stepped in back then, I had no idea just how hard it was working. I walked in there to talk about a business opportunity with an old friend, and I walked out with…” His hand rested on the top of her head, gently brushing her hair. “With the other most important person in my life. Whatever happens, I promise, I won’t allow anything bad to happen to you.”

With that, he turned to allow the retinal scanner to see his eye. As the door began to hiss open, the man touched something at the back of his neck. Immediately, his familiar black helmet with a golden mask shaped like a face expanded into view.

At the same time, Paige touched a spot on her own neck and a similar helmet and mask expanded and slid into place. Hers, however, was blue with a white face mask. These would allow the two to conceal their identities from the person waiting in the room ahead of them.

The room itself looked like it was half medical lab and half auto repair garage, though a sparkling clean one. Standing near a table full of tools, its only occupant turned to face them. He was a shorter man, standing only five and a half feet tall, with a costume that appeared to consist of various pieces of robot parts stuck randomly over his body, while a metal ball with a radiator-like grill across the front and several antennae sticking out in random directions served as his helmet.

This was Rotwang, from the Braintrust gang. His particular specialty lay in creating and working with robots. Which made him the best possible choice they had in this case. Even if he wouldn’t have been Blackjack or Paige’s first choice of which member of Braintrust to work with. They didn’t have a lot of options.

The man himself took the two of them in. “Ah, this the girl you were talking about?”

“This is my daughter,” Blackjack confirmed. “Which I’m certain means you understand what will happen if word about any of this leaves this room.”

“Yeah, yeah, you made that clear,” Rotwang replied with a wave of his hand. “Like I said before, just keep paying me and it’ll all stay between us. The thing about making robots is parts are expensive. Especially if you want to make anything good. And for the amount you’re paying, I can afford a lot of good parts.”

Blackjack gave a short nod. “And that is why we agreed to this specific payment plan. Do your job, keep your mouth shut about it, and you’ll continue to be compensated for quite a long time. Not to mention the access to certain other benefits we’ve agreed upon.”

“So?” Rotwang gestured with one hand, the metal parts across his costume clanging a bit. “If I’m going to do this, I need to see what we’re working with.”

Paige exchanged a glance with Blackjack, waiting until he gave a reassuring nod. She trusted him, trusted his power. It would be working overtime to ensure that nothing happened. He wouldn’t leave the room or take his eyes off her the entire time. Which didn’t mean she wasn’t nervous, even afraid. But this was for Melissa, so it was worth any amount of fear.

Returning the older man’s nod, Paige took a step forward, then turned her back to the Tech-Touched. There was already a hole cut in the back of her shirt, exposing bare skin, which had a square dotted line drawn in marker to indicate precisely where the man should cut to access her orb, the thing that made Paige who she was.

And the thing which, with the help of one of the only men in town who had any possible chance of understanding Pittman’s tech, was going to save Melissa’s life.

*********

Two And A Half Years Later/Six Months Ago

The noise of shoes squeaking along the gymnasium floor filled the room, as two figures went sprinting in a wide circle. Both were laughing as they ran together, the sound bringing a small smile to the face of Eric Abbot as he watched them from the sidelines. He wore much more casual clothes than his people were accustomed to seeing him in, consisting of crisp jeans, a red turtleneck, and a levi jacket. Keeping his hands resting comfortably in the pockets of that jacket, he called out. “Okay girls, let’s run those diagnostics!”

Eric watched then, as his daughters halted their run and approached. Paige, now approaching seventeen by their reckoning, walked alongside her slightly pale, brown-haired sister. This was Melissa now. A Melissa who walked without crutches, who could run and jump and fall without any worry of hurting herself. A Melissa who wasn’t suffering and lonely, but out in the world she had been stuck watching from her window for so long. And not alone, but with a girl who had become her real sister over these past… almost five years.

This was a Melissa whose brain had been uploaded into a brand new brain-ball. That was what Rotwang, whose talent for naming things incredibly poorly apparently extended beyond himself, insisted on calling the Biolem orbs. It had taken years of work and literal millions of dollars of research, not to mention plenty of bribes to get other scientists to do work they didn’t know the purpose of, to get this far. But it was finally done. This was Melissa’s first full day in her new permanent body. Her mind had been temporarily placed in the brain-ball a couple times before, so they could test it while the gradually-assembled body had been under construction. But now the transfer was complete. Her new body was working perfectly, from all appearances.

Yes, having Pittman himself do the work would have been faster. But not only was he out of reach on Breakwater, if he had been close enough to do this, he also would have been close enough for Eric to cut his filthy throat. And the man who had taken Paige as his own daughter just wasn’t sure he could avoid that temptation.

Besides, they couldn’t have trusted him anyway. No, Benjamin Pittman was better off rotting on that island forever. Eric had made certain to scour the entire state for any more of his people or labs, using all the information Paige had been able to provide about how to identify and track them. They were like cockroaches, infesting a dozen different buildings.

Even now, he wasn’t certain that all of Pittman’s little puppets were completely gone. But at the very least, the man’s ability to do anything was at a minimum. And any time they did pop up again, Blackjack and his people would be ready to deal with them. He had already informed the Evans’ about the situation as well, in general terms (he didn’t tell them about who Paige was or where his information came from, and definitely did not tell them about the girl’s history with their daughter). They knew enough to help keep an eye on things so none of them would be taken by surprise if one of Pittman’s plots did manage to get off the ground.

By that point, Paige and Melissa had reached him and stood there. Neither were panting, even after sprinting several times around the full gym. Melissa was grinning at him, the eight-year-old literally bouncing up and down on her feet. “Did you see me, Dad? Did you see me?!”

“I saw!” With a wide grin, Eric took a knee in front of them, holding up the scanning device (it looked like a handheld dustbuster vacuum with a computer screen). “Work before play, let’s see.”

Melissa groaned, but obediently held her arms out to either side and stood patiently while he ran the scanner all the way over her. Then he did the same for Paige, just so Melissa would feel like they were both in this together. And they were. They had become sisters in a real, tangible way, years after becoming sisters in every other way.

Reading the scans as they came up, Eric shook his head. “Bad news, girls. Turns out you’re definitely healthy enough to go to lunch with me.”

“That’s not bad news, that’s good news!” Melissa insisted.

“Maybe for you, but I’ve seen how much food the two of you can put away!” Eric put a hand to his chest and slumped backward as though faint. “I’ll be in the poor house if I have to feed both of you in a restaurant! We’ll have to take out second jobs!”

The girls groan-laughed and assaulted him with light swats, until he rose and they all headed for the door. Or started to, anyway. With his hand in Melissa’s, Eric looked back upon realizing the other girl wasn’t there. She had stopped to stare at the spot where they had just been standing together. “Paige, is something wrong?”

There was a brief pause as she stood with her back to them, then the girl turned and he saw her blinking moisture out of her eyes. Her head shook, voice catching slightly as she walked back over. Her hand took his free one, squeezing it. “No, everything’s fine.

“In fact, it’s pretty damn good, Dad.”