Chapter 241: Trouble Brews

Chapter 241: Trouble Brews

“I’m sorry, but Solaris is away on business.” The nexus receptionist said, “Negotiating with Stacy Watt-powers over immigration.”

She shuddered.

“That little girl gives me the creeps.”

“Yeah, she’s got baggage.” Perry said, glancing at Solaris’s office door. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“I was not informed, sorry.”

“No worries,” Perry said, worried. It was out of character for Solaris to leave Franklin city at all, let alone during High Tide. What could he accomplish in person that couldn’t be done over video phone with his old nemesis?

Other than killing her, he supposed. And even then, it wouldn’t take much time at all for a man who moved at the speed of light.

Something smelled fishy.

Perry glanced back at the receptionist. She didn’t have any tells of hiding anything, but that didn’t really mean anything. She could’ve been lied to.

She did, however, have the key to Solaris’s office, but there was so much security in place that Perry sincerely doubted he could get it from her without triggering something.

Dad had just demonstrated that while Perry was blazing fast, there were still things that were much faster. Like electromagnetism. And lasers.

Still, there was another way to check this: Perry pulled out his cell phone and called Stacy.

Calling Stacy...

“What’s up, Paradox?” Professor Replica asked, her voice squeaky and childish over the phone. Then again, it had been ever since the godlike roboteer had hermit-crabbed into the android body. The professor used to have the ability to give commands to his robots that defied the laws of physics and rationality.

If for example, he’d said ‘you are fast enough to defend me from with Solaris’, that would become the truth of their existence.

One of the old man’s only true rivals.

“Is Solaris there with you?” Perry asked.

“Yeah, we’re making plans.”

“Oh, what kind of plans?” Perry asked.

“Son,” Solaris’s voice said over the speaker, “If I wanted you to know, you’d be here.”

“Fair enough. Who’s in charge of the city while you’re out?” Perry asked.

“Locust is running the day-to-day, and the Anchors have been tasked with laying down the law for her.”

“Oh, thank god, I thought you’d say it was Chemestro.” Perry said, clutching his chest in mock relief.

“Now if you don’t mind-” Solaris said moments before his voice cut out.

Whatever they were cooking up wasn’t about immigration, that was for damn sure, but it looked like things were under control in Solaris’s absence, so Perry didn’t really have a leg to stand on to continue prying.

It was out of the ordinary, but that didn’t immediately warrant a full-on investigation...yet.

Plus, He’d left his own family in the lurch, and after an hour, he was starting to get used to his new, expanded perception of reality. It was just a matter of giving himself time to adjust to himself and the world itself.

Everything looked different and deeper, but it was still the same world he’d inhabited. Just because he could see more didn’t mean it’d changed.

“Paradox?” The receptionist asked, drawing his attention back to the present moment.

“Eh?”

She gave him a professional smile. “I wanted to say, my friends and I kind of thought you weren’t very cool in high school, but I’ve seen the bill for damages passed around a couple times working here, and how much money you’ve saved the city. Big fan now.”

“In high school?” Perry asked, his voice choking slightly.

It’s only been four years.

“Yes?” She said.

how am I supposed to respond to that? Perry defaulted to a polite ‘thank you’ and made tracks.

“Shit!” Scrape shouted, turning to see Solaris standing behind him, in the flesh.

“How’s the work going keeping soldiers on the wall healthy and vaccinated?” Solaris asked, glancing around the room, his gaze lingering on the picture of Para-Legal on Scrape’s monitor. “That’s what I released you for, anyway.”

“You know, you’ve got an amazing power on your hands. Truly. You could’ve been the next Bio-Master, but your mind is narrow, your view limited to the next high, the next petty grudge, the next pretty face.”

Solaris appeared in front of Scrape, moving instantly without sound or light betraying his presence.

“Your teeth and brain are rotted by meth.” he said, tapping Chris’s temple, causing his heart to jump into his throat.

He doesn’t know. He couldn’t.

“You would know about rotting brains, wouldn’t you?” Solaris said.

He does know. Shit. I’m dead.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Scrape said, defaulting to denial even thought he already knew he was a dead man. It was how he dealt with authority.

“Scrape, there is only one way you survive this: This is Truthslayer,” Solaris said, motioning to a woman in black hyperweave stepping out of the darkness of Scrape’s ‘lab’.

“She’s going to torture you until you make a cure for the shit you slipped me when we shook hands at your High Tide muster. Once you do, you’re free to go.”

“Bullshit,” Scrape spat on the ground.

“You think when I won the lottery and scraped a flake of your blood off the engine of a truck, that I worked for months to clean the sample up so that it could be used...That I designed a perfect fucking end for you...just so I could pussy out and roll over the second you come at me?”

“What did you do?” Solaris asked, his fingers shaking for a moment before he clenched his fists. “Why is it still in my system even though I burned everything out?”

“You don’t know shit about how viruses work. It modified your DNA, asshole!” Chris crowed, emboldened by the horror on Solaris’s face. “The virus is gone. Disappeared the first time you did your vanishing trick, but your body’s been trained to attack itself. You’re FUCKED!”

Solaris stepped closer.

“Fix it.” he said, looming over Scrape. “You can avoid a lot of pain if you do.”

“Nah,” Chris said, sensing weakness. When big dogs like Solaris start to bark like little chihuahuas, that was when you could take them for everything they were worth.

“Fuck that. I’ve got all the power here,” Scrape said with a victorious grin. “If you don’t give me everything I want, I’ll just do nothing, and the world will know me as the man who took down Solaris.”

Solaris’s gaze went dead.

“No. It won’t.”

A cold sweat broke out on Scrape’s forehead.

“Wai-“

Scrape dissolved into ash in a flash of light.

“He was bluffing, Tom!” Truthslayer shouted, shaking his shoulder.

“I know, I know!” Solaris said, pressing a trembling hand to his forehead. “Damnit.” It was getting harder to control his emotions. Soon he might not even be aware of it anymore.

“What do we do now?” She asked.

“Sic the Anchors on it. The ones we can trust. Quietly.” Solaris said, looking at his shaking fingers. “I can’t be trusted to handle this.”

“Should we keep you in the loop?” she asked.

“...No. If you make The Decision, I don’t want to see it coming,” Solaris said. “More likely to work that way, too.”

“True.” Truthslayer said, vanishing into the darkness with one of her sub-powers. How she did it was anyone’s guess.

A moment later, Solaris was left staring down at the ashes of his best shot at survival.

He glanced up at the picture of the bright young woman fighting Tung-Stan displayed on the supervillain’s desktop.

“Silver linings, I suppose,” he muttered, spitting on Scrape’s ashes before pulling out a cigarette with his trembling fingers and lighting it with his thumb.

The nicotine didn’t do anything to him these days, but the act of smoking was nostalgic and calming, reminding him of simpler days playing cat-and-mouse with the FBI.

And Solaris needed all the calm he could get.