Her eyes narrowed. I wasn’t sure if that was her being annoyed with me for implying she swung that way or if she was annoyed with me for fishing for information.

  Either way it’s not like I could fault her for being annoyed. I’d be pissed off if someone was fishing for info about yours truly like that.

  Especially if it was right after I got in the middle of a fight I was obviously having some trouble winning and the person asking me those awkward questions was my worst enemy who’d just pulled my super powered bacon out of the frying pan.

  I guess if we were friends on social media our relationship could safely be listed as “it’s complicated.”

  “I…”

  She paused. She seemed on the verge of saying something, then she thought better of it. I thought back to the alley when I ran up against that guy using that weird mind control bullshit on me.

  Only I wasn’t using anything like that on her now. It’s just that she was reacting like I was. Finally she shook her head and all the confusion was gone. When she looked at me she didn’t seem happy.

  It’s not like it was my fault she fell under some sort of spell. This girl was weird. I had to keep reminding myself she was probably from another planet or something.

  It was the only explanation I could think of for why she was acting so weird.

  “I don’t know who any of these people are or why they would want to harm me,” she said.

  The lie was almost more interesting than if she’d told me the truth. I knew it was a lie because I’d seen the significant looks she was sending Dr. Laura’s way.

  The great and powerful Fialux, savior of Starlight City, the most incredible hero this world had known in a time when there were a lot of heroes popping up here and there with seemingly impossible powers, had just told a lie.

  Maybe it was a little lie. Maybe it was a big lie. Either way it was a lie.

  The implications of that lie were way more interesting than any truth she could’ve told me. The implications of that lie were feeding into the idea that was making its way through my brain and starting to solidify.

  She didn’t want me to know she had a connection to these assholes. She didn’t want me to figure something out that I could only figure out if I knew there was some sort of connection with these assholes.

  It took every ounce of control I had not to quirk the corners of my lips up into a smile. After all, she’d just given as much away by telling a little white lie as she would’ve if she’d just come out and told me exactly why she didn’t want me knowing more about her connection to the goddamn Applied Sciences department.

  She knew Dr. Laura. If she knew Dr. Laura then that meant she had to have a close connection to the university. If she had a close connection to the university then…

  Well, let’s just say there were a lot of possibilities opening up in front of me. Exploding inside my head and filling me with new ideas.

  “Right,” I said. “Well if that’s all then I’ll be going now.”

  “What makes you think I’m going to let you leave?” she asked.

  Shit. Were we really doing this now?

  “Um. I just totally saved your life? Is that worth nothing?”

  Her eyes narrowed. Yeah, that was worth nothing. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess. Which is one of the reasons why I went out of my way to keep from doing more good deeds than were strictly necessary.

  “Okay. I’m guessing it’s not worth getting me out of the inconvenience of spending a night with the cops, so time to move on to plan B.”

  “What’s plan B?” she asked.

  The poor girl. So naive. She looked like she actually believed for a moment that I was going to come out here and face her down without a plan B in case things went tits up.

  It was a fair assumption to make. I’d gone up against her countless times in the past few weeks and it took me a few fights to start implementing my teleporter escape.

  But mostly it was a fair assessment because she was absolutely correct. I hadn’t had a plan B when I came out here to see what there was to see. I hadn’t had a plan B when I decided to leap into the fray and do my best to save her cute ass. I’d just acted because she was in trouble.

  Sure there was the teleport, but a better plan B had presented itself in the course of that fight.

  “CORVAC,” I subvocalized, hoping that it was low enough she wouldn’t be able to pick up the subtle vibrations with that super hearing of hers. “Send me back one of those pain sticks they were using on her.”

  “Immediately, mistress,” CORVAC said.

  One of those strange devices the Applied Sciences pukes had been using against her materialized in my hands. Frightfully useful, that ability to teleport things.

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  I held it up and the tip crackled with the same strange energy it had before. Apparently CORVAC had decided to send it through ready for business.

  Which could be terribly dangerous, teleporting a piece of unproven technology without knowing whether or not that teleportation was going to end with an earth shattering kaboom, but in this case it hadn’t. Plus I needed an out so I wasn’t going to dock his pay too much.

  I held it up and pointed it at her.

  “You were having trouble going up against a bunch of inexperienced college kids going for some Applied Sciences practical credits. Wanna see what happens when you dance with the best this city’s ever seen?”

  Fialux regarded me for a long moment where I thought she might actually decide to try it. Only I couldn’t help but feel good about the fight this time around. I couldn’t help but get excited at the chance to try a practical application of one of these things.

  Sure I’d be fighting using unproven technology I hadn’t had a chance to practice with, that was bad, but I’d also be finally fighting her with something that had shown it could do some damage.

  I’d take those chances when the alternative was going for another one of those flights across the city supported by nothing but her desire not to see me splattered all over the pavement below, thank you very much.

  The shimmering picked up around her, and I braced myself for a fight. It occurred to me that I didn’t even know where the trigger was or how to get the thing to work the way those students had been working it.

  Oh yeah. This was going to be a short fight no matter how you sliced it. Great.

  Then, to my surprise, she shot into the air and disappeared with a series of sonic booms over the city.

  That would piss off the FAA, but it’s not like there was much they could do to stop superpowered creatures from violating local rules about making loud noises in controlled airspace.

  “Huh. That actually worked,” I said.

  “Indeed mistress,” CORVAC said. “I’m as surprised as you are.”

  “You don’t have to tell me you’re as surprised as I am,” I growled.

  “Of course mistress, but that won’t stop me.”

  I stared off at the distant point where Fialux had disappeared. She was still out there somewhere.

  And that was the key to finding her. The idea that had been percolating in the back of my mind this entire time.

  Where did the greatest hero the world had ever known go when she wasn’t being the greatest hero the world had ever known? It’s not like she disappeared off to some fortress in the middle of nowhere.

  It was impossible for a hero to have something like that hidden from the world in this day and age when satellites covered every inch of the planet and it was easy enough to follow them to wherever they were going.

  I had seen her disappear into buildings several times. Never the same building. No, she went in and then she disappeared, which led me to believe she was walking out of there using that oldest of tools in the hero toolbox.

  A secret identity.

  And if she had ties to the university? If Dr. Laura knew more about her than she was letting on? Well then it stood to reason that maybe, just maybe, that secret identity had something to do with the university.

  I suppose I could just ask Dr. Laura, but the thought of talking with her for more than five minutes gave me a case of the screaming heebie-jeebies. Not to mention I could never be sure she wasn’t going to pull out some toy that she’d try to use to ruin my day.

  That was the problem working with someone who was so devious that they might actually be my equal when it came to pulling some seriously shady shit.

  Never mind that she did all of it hiding behind the legitimacy of the university and all the stupid stuff they did to cover up people who were doing the kind of shady shit she was up to on the regular. The point is, the last thing I wanted to do was bring her into my lab where she could potentially do some damage at worst and steal more of my ideas at best.

  I looked around at the college students surrounding me on the ground. Young people in the prime of their life. All they’d wanted was to drink from the fountain of knowledge.

  Well, to be honest there were probably a few of them who wanted to drink from the fountain of whatever kegger was going on in student housing, but that was neither here nor there. The point is I couldn’t very well do anything to them.

  I looked at Dr. Laura. Fury built inside me. A part of me very much wanted to do something about her. I wanted to put one of my wrist blasters right up against her and…

  But no. I wasn’t going to do that. Violence begat violence, and the last thing I needed was to be caught icing someone in cold blood in the middle of the university where they had cameras everywhere.

  That would be all over the evening news. Not a headache I needed right now on top of all the other headaches piling up.

  So I held back from vaporizing her even though she deserved it. Instead I dropped the fancy new weapon in my hands. It dematerialized before it hit the ground. CORVAC was always very good about catching things like that.

  I activated the antigrav units in my suit and went for a little flight. I was careful to avoid the part of the city Fialux had disappeared into. The last thing I needed was to meet up with her for round two.

  No thank you.

  “CORVAC, I need you to go ahead and hack into the records for the university,” I said. “You’re looking for enrollment details specifically. Female students only.”

  “Oh?” he asked. “Is there any reason in particular why we’re looking at those?”

  “I’ll tell you more about it later when I’m back in the lab and I don’t have to worry about someone listening in,” I said. “In the meantime just pull those records and make sure you don’t get caught doing it.”

  “I’d never get caught, mistress,” he said, a hint of insult coming to his voice.

  I grinned. The only thing that could make sure he did something exactly as I wanted him to was to imply that it wasn’t possible for him to do what I wanted. He was easy to manipulate that way. Which was a surprise for a megalomaniacal super computer who was at least as hellbent on world domination as yours truly.

  “Right. Well make sure you don’t get caught this time either,” I said. “Because the last thing we need is someone realizing I’m looking for Fialux’s secret identity.”

  There was a long moment of silence on the other end. At least what passed for a long moment of silence for CORVAC. In reality it was just a few milliseconds, but to paraphrase a famous android: that was an eternity in computer terms.

  “Most impressive mistress. What makes you think she’s enrolled in the university?”

  “Later CORVAC,” I said. “Right now you pull those records, and then we’ll work through them and talk it out when I get back to the lab and we don’t have to worry about anyone listening in.”

  I smiled as I made my way across the city to one of the many hidey-holes that hid entrances to the lab. I wasn’t the only person smart enough to disappear into a random building around the city so it wouldn’t be too obvious where my lab was located to anyone who might be inclined to watch via satellite.

  If the hacked information I got from the government was any indication, there were a lot of people out there who made their living trying to find the location of my lab via satellite. They’d whiffed so far, and they were going to whiff again tonight thank you very much.

  It was time to get down to work and find out who Fialux was. From there I’d track her down and finally get a chance to take her by surprise with the Anti-Newtonian device and show her who ran this city.

  At least that’s what I told myself. I tried to ignore the shiver of excitement that ran through me at the thought of getting to know her on a more one-on-one level when we weren’t trying to destroy the city around us.