Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon (8 page)

Why would she ask such a stupid question? Couldn’t she see the pictures? “No! It’s just a sample. It takes too long to design an animal from scratch. Bring me a cat!”

No need for impatience, Penny. I could get the machines ready while I waited. My creation would grow too fast for normal flesh, but these wonderful devices would help me.

Claire showed up again, holding a wriggling cat. I took the animal from her arms, stroking its fur the correct way to calm it down, and lowered it into the sample tank. The cat meowed and danced as the floor pricked its paw, gathering for me a few cells, a little blood. The tank’s lid began 3-D imaging of the subject’s organs.

“Yes! Ha ha ha ha! Yes!”

All I saw were the pictures in my head. I was in the pictures, and I was part of the machine of creation.

My last shreds of self-control let go.

woke up leaning against the linoleum counter in the biolab. My legs felt like clouds, and about as stable. Oh, Tesla’s Wind-Up Widgets, that was the worst creative fit yet, maybe worse than when I’d built Vera. Penny, no matter how much it hurts, do not hold onto an inspiration that long again, okay? Break it, make it go away.

I looked up, and saw my reward for enduring madness. She was glorious. She had short, sleekly black fur, a head too big for a regular cat, and a tail much too long.

A gentle hand touched my shoulder, and a soft voice suitable for dealing with mad girls asked, “Are you back, Bad Penny?”

I nodded. “I am. I am. Sorry, guys. That must have looked pretty freaky.”

Looking over my shoulder, I saw Claire’s wry grin, her blue eyes amused behind wing-shaped glasses. “We’ve seen you build before, but yeah, this was a big one. I was a bit worried.”

Ray lifted a black-sleeved arm and pointed a black-gloved finger. “I’m more worried about what’s behind that door.”

Yikes. I’d been so obsessed I’d missed it. This room had another of those sliding security doors. The smiling suns sat in the middle of green biohazard symbols, and writing on both halves of the metal door read ‘For Your Comfort And Safety, Please Do Not Taunt.’

Okay, okay. First thing’s first. I opened the plastic hatch of the sample tank, and let my specimen jump out. “Run away, little girl! The police will be here soon. Maybe you can get out the front door while they poke around.”

Claire jerked a thumb towards the airlock. “I already took the other cages up the elevator and opened them up. By myself. Somebody had to stay and guard you.”

Ray folded his arms over his chest, raised his chin, and looked downright smug in response to Claire’s accusing tone. The Lutras weren’t the only people weak on shame.

Since there was no winning that exchange, Claire leaned over my shoulder to peek at the cloning tank, or whatever it was. Now that my inspiration had ended, I had no clue what any of these devices did. Whoever made them really liked red liquid and red blobs, that was all I could tell you.

And yet in front of me, in one of these plastic vats, lay my beautiful feline creation.

Claire asked the sixty-four million dollar question. “So, what did you make?”

I had only one answer. “Time to find out.”

Lightly, reverently, I reached into the tank and scooped up my creation. Her eyes opened, glittering red like rubies. Four legs locked around my right forearm. She really wasn’t heavy at all. Her long tail unwound, hooked around my neck, and closed like a collar.

I could feel her. She was part of my body. I could see through her―okay, no, the room swam when I tried to make sense of what she saw. I would just have to leave that alone. For one thing, my kitty symbiote had serious color blindness going on. Everything she saw looked red.

Well, she didn’t need to see. I could feel her, and make her muscles twitch, but she didn’t do anything herself. “She’s a bioweapon. Mindless. She’s an extension of my nervous system, but with fur.”

“So, what does she do?” Claire prodded, since I’d avoided the real question.

“I’d like to know, myself,” said a croaking woman’s voice.

Oh, criminy. We’d all got caught up in my new creation, and hadn’t heard the airlock doors cycle. A woman stood in the entrance, dressed neck to boots in white leather crisscrossed by straps. The thick leather couldn’t hide her unhealthily slim shape, but her face worried me a lot more. It might have been pretty if not for the blotchy yellow skin and long, lank white hair.

Mourning Dove. The last hero I ever wanted to meet. We would be lucky to get out of here alive.

“Don’t fight! Run!” I yelled at Ray and Claire, swinging my creation up to point at Mourning Dove.

My kitty symbiote meowed. Mourning Dove straightened, went stiff, and turned maybe an inch towards the door.

Wow. I’d built a mind control cat!

A not good enough mind control cat. Mourning Dove turned her bloodshot green eyes back to me, and started walking. “Stop! Stop! Surrender! Guys, run!” I shouted. Every command made Mourning Dove jerk, but she kept walking, each step smoother than the last. My left hand dug automatically in my belt pouch. I bet my cursed pennies would drop her defenses.

My belt pouch was empty. Where had my pennies gone?

I’d added them to the cloning process. I could just barely remember dropping them into a tank full of red goo, one at a time. Why, only my superpower knew.

Mourning Dove reached for me. I’d run out of time. I stepped backwards―and teleported into the airlock. Hurry up, Ray and Claire!

I didn’t even have time to see if they were coming. Shadows flickered, and fingers as cold and strong as iron closed around my neck. Oh, great. Mourning Dove could teleport too, and I was the only one who hadn’t known.

Behind us, Claire yelled, “Please! You have to let her go! Please! She didn’t do anything wrong!”

I looked, and so did Mourning Dove. Claire had hold of Mourning Dove’s other hand, tugging on it ineffectually. Fat tears welled up in the corners of Claire’s eyes, and her normally pretty lips trembled with despair. She was going to pieces. Claire had been my best friend for most of my life, but I hadn’t known she cared this much. It made my heart ache. Claire’s golden hair bounced with every helpless tug on Mourning Dove’s hand.

Even Mourning Dove had to be moved by that, but she stared at Claire with a puzzled frown. Yellow-stained teeth clenched, and Mourning Dove’s forehead furrowed in effort. I’d seen people naturally immune to Claire’s power. I’d tried to avoid it, and think past it. I’d never seen anyone just fight it.

Why was Ray standing next to us, holding a metal stool?

What just went boom behind the security door?

Everything went black. Not the black of unconsciousness, black like a dark room. I fell on my butt on the cold floor. No, the cold was me. I shivered. My body felt thick and slow. I’d been tired to begin with from too many teleports, but now I felt made of clay. Ray and Claire lay on their backs. Only Mourning Dove and I remained conscious.

Well, us and whatever hit the security door again.

The Machine’s legs prickled, shifting position on my wrist. I’d been hit by some sort of energy, and the Machine sucked it up. That was why I was still awake.

Did I have the strength to fire my bioweapon? Could I even lift her?

Mourning Dove said the last thing I ever expected. “I’m not here to hurt you children. You’re not villains.”

Ray and Claire made faint, grunting noises. I translated. “You’re not?”

Mourning Dove pointed past me. I looked, and saw the cat I’d used for a sample pawing at the airlock door. It was also black, but far less pretty than my creation.

I still felt woozy. The thing behind the security door boomed again, twice, but Mourning Dove ignored it. She had a voice like a terminal cigarette smoker. “You let the cat go. You broke into and exposed a criminal facility, let the animals go, let the staff go, and even let the guards go. That’s what any hero would have done.”

I gaped at her. Mourning Dove, the vampire, the heroine with a habit of ‘accidentally’ killing villains who had gone too far, was going to be our chance to finally change sides?

Claire and Ray managed to push themselves up onto their elbows. The security door banged again, louder than before. “You kids had better get ready for action,” Mourning Dove rasped.

“What’s back there?” Claire asked groggily.

“The thing I came for.”

The door banged again, so hard the wall shook.

The next blow knocked the door and most of the wall down, and a huge, hairy man staggered into the room.

Was that Bull? The little room I could see behind the door was filled with broken restraints. Happy Days had kidnapped Bull and kept him locked up?

No, this wasn’t Bull. Bull was, like, eight feet tall. This thing was big, but not Bull big. Bull didn’t have a hunch, one shoulder bigger than the other, and a lumpy face. Bull didn’t leave wet globs of hair behind when he took a step.

Bull didn’t have laser vision, so strong it lit up beams in the dusty air and charred an arc across the floor near Mourning Dove and up the wall.

Mourning Dove moved. It swung at her as she stepped up in front, but she ducked under the monster’s slow punch and jumped up onto its bulbous shoulder.

It lurched back and slammed her into the remains of the wall. Mourning Dove let go and fell off the monster’s back.

Ray and Claire were still too weak to help, having trouble climbing to their feet. I pointed my psychic cat at the monster and yelled, “Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!”

My head was muzzy. The cat’s meows came out as whimpers. The hairy man beast still paused, staring at me as the psychic commands confused what little intellect it had.

Mourning Dove jumped to her feet, slipped in front of it, and grabbed the monster by the throat. It lifted its fists, but I commanded, “Stop!” again. It hesitated.

Fatally.

The lab suddenly smelled like an ancient attic, like dust and rotting wood and nameless organic filth. The monster shrank, withering inside its own skin. Its hairy beast hide turned grey, and it kept shrinking like a deflating balloon. When Mourning Dove let go, what fell to the floor looked like a disgusting humanoid raisin.

And that, folks, was why everybody was terrified of Mourning Dove. The stiff, clay muscle sensation had been entirely replaced by ice running through my veins.

“You killed him!” I squeaked. Oh, criminy. Think before you do that, Penny! Do not backtalk the murderous vampire!

The murderous vampire turned and looked at me. Despite her stiff, cold expression, she did not immediately drain me into a withered corpse. “It was never alive in the first place.” Was that a hint of guilt or sadness in her croaking voice, or did I just want to hear that?

In a weak mumble, Ray asked, “Someone is trying to clone superhumans again?”

Claire sounded raspier than Mourning Dove, but she joined the conversation anyway. “She’s right, Penny. They live two, three days, tops. It never works.” Remember to add the ‘Bad’ to that ‘Penny’, Claire, okay?

The monster had been disintegrating into globs as I watched. That was true. I would have to let this one go.

“They can do a lot of damage in three days. That clone would have been a prototype to make better, more destructive clones. I came here to stop that research. The Inscrutable Machine helped,” Mourning Dove lectured. It felt like a school lecture, with us sitting weakly on the floor, being told about how to be superheroes.