“Spinnerette, kill that console… now!” Webmistress shouted.
“This is preposterous,” Dr. Clevenger said, shaking her head as Spinnerette walked up to the darkened monitor, a doubtful look on her face.
“Okay, if I just push Control-Alt-Delete a couple times, that should make it shut down even though the screen’s black, right?” she asked.
“Just destroy it!” Webmistress shrieked.
“Oh, sorry,” Spinnerette said, and she drew back a gauntleted fist and then drove it forward with blistering speed at the front of the monitor. It wasn’t particularly heavy or anchored to the work station, though, so it just toppled halfway over before its thick connecting cable and power cord ran out of slack.
“That’s the monitor, you lackwit,” Dr. Clevenger said. There was an electric whine of generators powering down and the big overhead lights in the laboratory cut off, leaving only the colored ambient lighting which suffused the walls and floor. It was now a sickly, pale green. “Oh, your mood lighting is also the emergency lighting. How.. fun.”
“Oh, hey, guys, the computer’s off!” Spinnerette said.
“No thanks to you,” Webmistress said. “And not that it matters. If the generators are down, something has gotten into the intranet and compromised two out of the three mainframes.”
“Why would a virus or whatever shut off the power?” Spinnerette asked.
“Because they switch off if anything happens to the computers that are supposed to keep them from exploding,” Webmistress said. Confidence filled her voice, and as she spoke the light level came up and shifted to a somber purple. “It’s just one of the many failsafes I had built into this place. Expensive, but well worth it. No doors are going to cut anybody in half. No security drones are going to go around shooting up the place. The entire computer network is heavily compartmentalized. If one of the master computers goes bad, the whole thing goes into quarantine… and if two out of three fail, it shuts down. Which means I’m hemorrhaging money, and that the next few hours are going to be hellaciously inconvenient to fix, but hardly catastrophic.”
“As I am going to be unable to continue my work for the time being, I believe I shall return to my quarters,” Clevenger said. “I assume any one of your grunts can show me the way to the stairs?”
Before Webmistress could make a reply, the whole room began to vibrate. This was immediately followed by a series of distant explosions, and then the sound of gun fire and screaming.
“Crap,” Webmistress said.
“So, these failsafes,” Rhyme said, smiling inside her restraining suit. “How much did they cost, and did you save the receipt?”
“Well, at the very least I didn’t secure our subject in magnetic clamps or anything else that’s dependent on an uninterrupted power supply or subject to external controls,” Dr. Clevenger said. There was another earth-shaking explosion. “So, I suppose we can be assured of knowing at least one thing that will not be responsible for our deaths.”
“Unless she gets blasted free in an explosion,” Spinnerette said.
“As she is in the middle of the room, I think an explosion which ‘blasts her free’ would render her the least of our problems,” Clevenger said.
“Oh, don’t worry, Sandy,” Rhyme said, her voice oozing menace. “You brought me here to raise the dead, after all… so even if something else kills you first, that doesn’t mean I won’t get a chance to.”
“Silence her,” Webmistress said.
“Just so I’m clear, do you mean for me to shoot her or switch off her mic?” Spinnerette asked, raising her crossbow.
Dr. Clevenger switched off the speaker while Webmistress put a hand to her face, shaking her head in disgust and muttering.
“Far be it from me to issue orders here, but I would say it is imperative that at no point do you attempt violence against the subject,” Clevenger said. “Right now, she is restrained and her dangerous biology is completely contained within a closed system. If you rupture the suit… well, I doubt very much she’d be able to wriggle and ooze her way through the hole left by your crossbow bolt, but it would not do to be pointlessly imprudent even if it is not likely to matter.”
“Especially as we’re already well past the point of what you think is likely to happen. Here is the situation, ladies,” Webmistress said. “My minions are trained… conditioned, even… on what to do in a crisis. Right now, some of them are doing damage and fire control, some are fighting the drones, and some will be coming to see to my safety. In the meantime, we need to get to the command center to check on the computers.”
“Why? If your lackeys are coming to your aid, should we not stay put?” Clevenger asked.
“The boys will be following my emergency transponder,” Webmistress said. “And the reason we shouldn’t stay here is the same as the reason we should get to the computers: I think it’s a mistake to discount Rhyme’s words just because they conflict with what you think you know, but it’s a bigger mistake to accept them at face value. I’m not convinced that we aren’t facing an outside threat. If we are under assault… well, my labs are designed to contain things, not to keep them out. “
“I can’t believe I’m arguing in favor of the ‘image made the computers go crazy’ theory, but would that not be an astounding coincidence if your subterranean fortress were assaulted at just this moment?” Dr. Clevenger asked.
“If it were a coincidence,” Webmistress said. She went over to a seam in the wall and stuck her metallic fingernails in it, running them up and down to find a hidden latch. “But maybe it’s cause and effect. Spinnerette, you will stay here and keep our guest secure… in bringing Rhyme here, I bent my cardinal rule: never give anybody a reason to come here uninvited. She has enemies who would follow her trail to the ends of the earth, and I have competitors who would see her as an asset to control. I’m sure the same government that imprisons her would probably love a chance to ‘disappear’ her far away from prying eyes when she’s not officially in their custody.”
She paused in speech as she pulled a huge, bulky section of the wall out as a concealed swinging door. A slight mechanical whine emanated from her joints as she pulled and strained, her feet slipping against the floor several times as she grunted, her cheeks puffing out and her tendons straining. When she had it open far enough to slip an arm in, she pushed it the rest of the way.
“There,” she said, panting. “There’s a reason I prefer having my boys do the heavy lifting, but… needs must. Oh, stop gawking, Janie. Come on, Doctor.”
They disappeared through the hidden passageway. It swung closed much more smoothly than it had opened, and then Spinnerette was alone in the lab with Rhyme. She listened to the distant thudding and the intermittent bursts of automatic fire, while fingering the end of her crossbow and wondering how she’d ever let herself be convinced that it fit a spider theme. She holstered it and reached for her pistol, then stopped and pulled it out again, cradling it in her hands. There was something soothing about holding it. The pistol had custom modifications, but the crossbow was uniquely hers. It was part of her costume, part of her identity.
Then another sound caught her attention… a muffled echoing whisper, like somebody whispering her name in a dream…
Or shouting it inside a fishbowl.
“Janie!” Rhyme shouted again. “Hey, Janie!”
“What?” Spinnerette screamed, wheeling around to face her. “What do you want? No, don’t answer that… I’m not going to turn your sound back on, either. You’ve already caused enough problems for one lifetime. You can scream until your air runs out, because I’m not interested in anything you have to say.”
She started to turn her gaze back towards the doors at the end of the lab, but Rhyme had opened her mouth and begun to speak. The beginning of the phrase caught Spinnerette’s eye, and she turned to catch the end, still unsure if she had seen correctly.
Three words. Rhyme repeated them.
Spinnerette went very pale. Very slowly, she reached out one trembling hand and she flicked the switch on the suit.
“Say that again,” she said through bloodless lips.
“I love you,” Rhyme said. “I love you, Janie.”
Spinnerette jumped back like she’d been stung, the shaking crossbow leveled at the bubble over Rhyme’s face.
“D-don’t joke about that,” she said. “I know what you’re doing and it’s not going to work. I mean, as mind games go, that’s pretty fucking weak. You hate me. You’ve always hated me. When we worked for Opal Song…”
“I was jealous,” Rhyme said. “I was weak. I loved you even then, Janie… I knew it even then.”
“Shut up!”
“Why do you think it seemed like Opal hated you so much, when she’d given every sign that returned your affection?” Rhyme said.
“I only thought she did.”
“But you were sure,” Rhyme said. “Remember that? Remember how certain you were? Remember how good it felt to think that?”
“Yeah… but…”
“But nothing.”
“I’d been wrong about that kind of thing before,” Spinnerette said. “More than once.”
“Don’t you see, though? Janie, what are the odds that out of all the supervillainesses you’ve ever thought were in love with you, you were wrong about all of them?” Rhyme asked. “What’s more likely, that… or the idea that somebody was out there manipulating people against you?”
“And that’s you?”
“It wasn’t hard,” Rhyme said. “It’s easy to turn people against you because you scare them. Because of that, I’ve been able to turn love into hate and make adoring eyes fill up with hate, scorn, and pity. You know those looks, Janie. You’ve been getting them for years and you never knew why… maybe you even thought something was wrong with you. I just hope you can forgive me for letting you think that.”
“I scare people?” Spinnerette said.
“You scare people because you make them feel such powerful things,” Rhyme said. “The kinds of people we work with, they aren’t used to feeling good about themselves, but that’s what being with you does.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Rhyme said. “Opal… well, the closer you and she got, the more she talked about retiring. Getting out of the business and settling down. She’d have this look of pure serene contentment on her face, and then she realized what she was saying and she looked afraid. She was terrified of the possibility, and of you for inspiring those thoughts.”
“So… when I tried to kiss her…”
“She lashed out not because she didn’t want it, but because she wanted it so damn much,” Rhyme said. “She ached for you, Janie, the same way you ached for her… the way I ache for you. I saw all that, and I fed those fears… because I wanted you for myself.”
“Even if the rest were true, you’d do that for fun.” Spinnerette said. “Webmistress says…”
“Webmistress says,” Rhyme repeated. “Janie, look at her. I know you think she’s a strong, smart, powerful woman, but she’s shut herself off from the world. She doesn’t even go out and fight heroes, she just stays here surrounding herself with money, men, and jewels… jewels you bring her. Look at her relationships. Does she strike you as somebody who knows what love is, what it is to be loved?”
“…no.”
“Do you think she could ever love you back?” Rhyme asked. “Answer me honestly, Janie. It doesn’t matter if you believe me about the rest or not. Just take a good hard look at the situation you’re in. Do you think somebody like Webmistress could ever love you?”
“No,” Spinnerette said, lowering her crossbow. Behind the segmented eye goggles of her cowl, her eyes squeezed shut and tears began to pool inside the skin-tight material. She let out a sob of despair. “No, she couldn’t.”
“And do you know why?”
“Because I’m a fuck-up,” Spinnerette said. The tears began to run down from beneath her mask now. “I’m a loser. You think I wanted to be a henchwoman?” She laughed, then sobbed, and then laughed again. “I was… I was going to be a sidekick. Kid Bast.”
“You would have made a cute cat,” Rhyme said.
“But she said… she said…”
“What?” Rhyme asked. “Let it out, Janie…”
What exactly Bast may have said was lost as Spinnerette broke down completely, talking through tears and snot and sobbing as she told the story of her first time out in a costume. Rhyme had heard most of it from various sources: after being sent away by her heroine idol, little Janie had decided to solve the caper by herself and deduced where Baron Von Stahl’s men would be hitting next, then showed up to get into position to stop them.
Unfortunately for her, she’d picked a jewelry store that had nothing to do with the Baron’s attempt to steal sealed diplomatic documents, and her idea of “getting into position” had involved a not-too-skillful bit of breaking and entering .
“…and then the cops came and they were shooting at me,” Janie blubbered, “and they just kept yelling…”
“Yeah, that’s where it all went wrong, wasn’t it?” Rhyme said, as much for the sake of keeping her hand in the conversation. Some people took all the fun out of being a diabolical psychological mastermind.
“…and they were shooting and shooting and I got arrested… and my mom… my mom…”
“You know, Bast and Thoth invited a lot of reformed career villains to their wedding, and they sent invitations to others they thought were worth reaching out to,” Rhyme said when Spinnerette finally ran out of breath. “Did you know that?”
“N-no.”
“I guess you didn’t get one,” Rhyme said.
Spinnerette tried to dry her eyes, which didn’t really work with the mask on. She stuck her fingers under it and stretched it out away from her face, peeling it off and flipping it back like a hood.
“Why… why are you telling me this now?” she said. “Not that I believe you… I mean, the part about you… why would you tell me now?”
“You heard Webmistress,” Rhyme said. “They’re coming for me, and if it’s who I think it is, then they mean to kill me… or close enough that I might as well be dead. In my selfishness, I ruined your chances at happiness so many times… I don’t want to leave the world with that on my conscience, and with you never knowing… never knowing how I really felt.”
Spinnerette shook her head.
“This is… it’s too much,” she said. “I mean, parts of it do make sense… I always thought there was something else going on with Opal.”
“There was,” Rhyme said. “Of course there was. It just doesn’t make sense otherwise, does it?”
“No…” Spinnerette said.
She was cut off by the click of an intercom.
“Spinnerette, we’ve reached the auxiliary command center,” Webmistress’s voice said. “Is Rhyme still secure?”
Spinnerette didn’t answer. She looked at Rhyme’s face, searching for some clue, some irrefutable sign which would confirm or deny what she was saying. While she silently searched, the intercom remained open.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Webmistress said, sotto voce. “She’s probably lying dead on the lab floor after letting Rhyme out for making goo-goo eyes. Useless…”
The intercom line closed.
“What do I do?” Spinnerette asked Rhyme. “How do I help you? Just tell me what to do.”
« « 22: The Face of Madness 24: Mixed Messages » »Note: I'm trying out a new comment system. It's new and subject to jiggerypokery. It's moderated. Detailed guidelines to come but follow the general rule: be excellent to each other.
If you enjoy reading, please consider a financial contribution.
« « 22: The Face of Madness 24: Mixed Messages » »