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This message Premiere #11: Thirty Years Ago was posted by on Tuesday, March 5, 2002 at 18:48.
She watched him on the vid-cast as he flew into the very eye of the tornado, somehow resisting forces that could flatten buildings to wrestle with the weather front that threatened Service Outpost Rho-Eta. For a moment a little flutter of fear chilled her but she reminded herself that this was no longer her concern. He wasn’t part of her life any more.
She forced herself to continue packing. There was surprisingly little to put in the valise for four years of living here. The Metahuman Development Center apartment wasn’t that big, of course, but mainly it was because they had spent so much of their lives away from home, doing things that the everyday people of Technopolis only dreamed about.
On the wide screen she had been unable to turn off, Premiere had broken the back of the tornado. His own lightning movements, his thermal concussions, the indomitable will that let him defy gravity and force was too much for the tornado. The wind column fractured with a force that sent the remote camera drones spinning, and then the disaster was over.
Of course he’d survived. Of course he’d triumphed. He always did.
Lament pushed the last of her clothes into the bag. She wanted to be ready to leave, to tell him when he got back here. She wanted it to be a clean break, done properly. She owed him that much.
There was a gust of wind, and Premiere was there.
Not Premiere, she told herself. It wasn’t fair to hide behind science hero codenames at a time like this. It was Victor Brooke’s heart she would be breaking.
“Lament…?”
“Victor. I wasn’t expecting you for another three or four minutes.”
“Clockwork Soldier and his drones were on scene to handle the rescue operations,” the science hero shrugged. “So I rushed back.”
Lament pointed to the valise. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “I’m going.”
The big man was pale now. “I see. And I can’t convince you otherwise?”
“Don’t you want to know why?” she asked him.
“I know why. Red Watchman. You’re leaving me for him.”
Lament’s eyes widened. “How…?”
“Enhanced senses, level eight,” he replied bitterly. “I’ve known since you started your affair. I could smell your arousal, and later I could smell him in you. I could hear your gasps, right across the city, despite the sound bafflers. Of course I know.”
Lament was taken aback. “That’s… that’s the how, not the why. It’s not about me and him. It’s about me and you.”
Victor still stood there, almost at attention. “I love you,” he answered. “And I thought that you loved me.”
The first tears formed in Lament’s eyes. “So did I. For a while it was wonderful. We were on the metahuman programme together, some of the lucky survivors gifted with amazing powers, able to make a difference in the world. We were… we were like gods, reveling in Olympus. But we were very young.”
“You’re saying that people change,” Premiere said. “I don’t.”
Lament smiled fondly though her weeping. “No. No you don’t. You’re just you. Always you. Honest, faithful, noble, compassionate… even a little shy really.” She turned away. “I’m sorry I didn’t turn out to be worthy of you.”
Premiere took a step towards her and forced himself to halt. “Wait! Lament, it doesn’t have to be this way. We could try again. I could…”
“You knew I was being unfaithful to you but you tried to win me back anyway,” the woman recognized. “I’m sorry, Victor. It is over. My future is with Assak Malavi.
The door-chime jingled and the house computer announced the arrival of the Red Watchman.
“You dared to come here?” Premiere growled, his eyes narrowing as the swarthy metahuman in the golden armor entered the apartment.
“There was hardly any point in hiding, was there?” argued the Red Watchman. “Given your abilities you could find me anywhere on the planet if you wanted to. And we have to deal with this situation like adults, don’t we?”
Victor Brooke resisted the temptation to rip Assak Malevi’s head right off then and there. After all, the Red Watchman was actually right. They were fellow science heroes. They had to be able to work together, as they always had. “It doesn’t mean I have to like you though,” he told his former friend.
“I understand,” Red Watchman nodded soberly. “Fortunately my next assignment is a long-term deployment to the South American infranet and Lament is coming with me, so you and I won’t be seeing much of each other for a while. But you will shake my hand and wish Lament and I the best of luck?” Assak reached one arm out around the woman’s shoulder to gather her to him and held out his other for Premiere to take.
And the Red Watchman smiled.
---------------
“You bastard!”
The Red Watchman chuckled as Lament crawled across the bed to wrap herself in one of the sweaty covers.
“You seemed to enjoy it at the time, my dear,” he shrugged, dismissing his security guards now that they had performed their duties. “Several times if I interpret your howling correctly.”
“What are you doing to me?” Lament shuddered. “How are you turning me into this… creature?”
“I see it as helping you to explore the uninhibited side of your sexuality,” Assak Malevi gloated. “South America is such a passionate continent, don’t you think? Oh, the work here is difficult and complicated, but you’ve been such a comfort here at Fuerto Olimpo base, Lament. To all of us.”
“I’m not like this,” she whimpered. “I’m not.”
“Oh, we all are, my darling,” the Red Watchman shrugged. “After all, what are humans but little knots of chemicals and electrical imbalances? Given the right chemical combinations and electrical stimuli, our bodies just take over and we find ourselves helpless slaves of our own hormones and instincts.”
A terrible suspicion splashed like acid on Lament’s heart. “Assak… your metahuman ability…?”
“Yes? I’m a class ten manipulator of chemical and electrical reactions. What’s your question?”
“Assak, you don’t… you’ve never used that power on me, right? To make me… make me do these things?”
The Red Watchman chuckled. “Would you prefer that I had or I hadn’t? Is it better for you to be a faithless slut or an abused fool?”
“Assak, did you use your abilities on me?”
The man slapped her hard across the face, sending her sprawling back over the bed. But Lament found she was unable to defend herself. The Red Watchman’s power was neutralizing her vocal sonic abilities. “From day one,” he leered. “Your stupid lover even detected the arousal I was causing in you, but he thought you were just a cheap adulteress who couldn’t keep her pants on. And you thought you were choosing for love.” He ripped the blanket from her and gazed down on her abused body. “As if there is any such thing as love beyond a trick our body chemistry plays on us.”
“Get away from me, you swine!”
“Or what? As a senior and trusted science hero I’m in total charge here at Fuerto Olimpo. All the personnel here are hand-picked by me, and I’ve taken the time to adjust the brain functions of those who might be troubled at assisting my long-term ambitions. From here I control the food-processing operations that feed half of Technopolis and the wider technet. Just think what that means when one has the ability to control chemical reactions, Lament.”
“You’re not just a sadistic bastard. You’re mad!”
Red Watchman laughed and made a few of the dendrons in Lament’s brain explode. “Quite mad,” he confided in her. “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”
Lament screamed, struggling against her captor, still unable to use her power to defend herself. She felt every surge as the Red Watchman erased her mind.
“I’ll leave you alive, of course,” Assak Malevi promised her. “The guards here need some kind of entertainment, and they won’t care about the drooling. Who knows, I might even use you myself from time to time, for nostalgia’s sake, just for the pleasure of fucking the girl I took from Premiere. But by then, you won’t care.”
But the Red Watchman had made one mistake, reminding her of the one thing she could still do with her voice that had nothing to do with her power.
“VICTOR!”
“Shut up,” the Watchman told her, wiping out her speech centers and bludgeoning her down again. “I like my women obscene but not heard.” Then he was interrupted by a rending of steel as the base bulkhead was shredded like wallpaper.
It was like the Red Watchman had said: Premiere could find him anywhere on the planet if he wanted.
There was a black and white blur towards the rogue science hero. The Watchman discharged a five million kilowatt lightning arc into Premiere, and followed it by disconnecting every molecule in Victor Brooke’s body.
In less than a heatbeat Premiere had shrugged off the energy, and his body denied any modification from the Red Watchman’s power. A thermal beam burned a clean neat hole through the center of the Watchman’s chest, sending him tumbling to the floor with a neatly cauterized hole right through him.
“Ah… I surrender…” gasped Assak Malevi. “Pax. No more. I’ll come quietly officer.”
Premiere so wanted to finish him them. But there was the code. Rules. Procedures. Rights.
Premiere backhanded the Red Watchman into a wall and went to tend to Lament. Her body was still breathing but Lament was gone.
---------------
“Are you all right?” Dancer asked anxiously as Victor Brooke awoke with a cry. She had been keeping vigil at his bedside more or less since he had been brought to Herringcarp Asylum.
“No,” breathed the science hero, glaring into the darkness. “I have a job to finish.”
---------------
“Report of the Gothametropolis resistance?” the Red Watchman demanded.
“We have lost contact with all the forces we deployed there, master,” Doctor Zalas answered. “The city is a virtual no-go zone. There is definitely indigenous metahuman activity, supplemented by other factors we don’t yet have intelligence on.”
“Good,” the Red Watchman smiled. “Time to set an example to other, less intransigent elements of this planet.” He turned to the technicians gallery of the White Room. “Launch a Quantum Packet Neutron Missile spread at Gothametropolis York,” he commanded. “Complete destruction.”
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