VELVETEEN vs. Evolution #3
Doctor Darwin turned back to the control bank, beginning to press buttons and flip switches even faster than he had been before the alarm went off.
“We’ll have a single shot at doing this correctly,” he said.
“But we’ll have half a dozen shots at doing it incorrectly if this fails, and that should be close enough.
Once half the process has been completed, I should be able to get the resources to complete it, even if it takes longer than I would have preferred.
Some people may die in their in-between state, but not you, my dear.
Your reward for your part in all of this will be a guaranteed ascension into the new reality, with all the position and power that implies. ”
He flipped another switch, this one larger than the others around it, and turned to give Velveteen an expectant look.
Something bright and silver-blue began to flow through the tube attached to her hand, drawn from her body and into the waiting containment tank that stood nearby.
Drop by drop, the viscous substance flowed out of her, until it finally seemed to reach its end, and the tube ran dry.
As this happened, Velveteen opened unfocused eyes, staring up at the laboratory ceiling, and began to scream.
It wasn’t a particularly impassioned sound.
She didn’t sound like she was suffering or in pain, or scared of anything; she sounded more like a third-rate scream queen trying to emote in the face of the latest terrible rubber monster she’d been asked to be afraid of.
Even as she screamed and shrieked and wailed, she managed to come off as faintly bored and unimpressed.
Doctor Darwin scowled. “Is that any way to show proper awe and reverence to the man who’s about to change the world?” he asked.
He flipped another switch, and the table slid into a new position, holding Velveteen at a right angle from the floor.
She finally stopped screaming and shook her head, eyes focusing on the supervillain in front of her.
She started to struggle against her bonds.
“Let me go right now, you dickweasel,” she spat.
“That is not, I must admit, something I’ve been called before,” he said. “Is that commonly taught vocabulary in your superheroic institutions?”
“I dropped out,” she snapped.
“Of course. How foolish of me to forget.” He kept flipping switches and adjusting dials, moving quickly now. “What happens if I don’t let you go?”
“I find the nearest Chuck E. Cheese and I kick your ass with a giant animatronic rat,” said Velveteen. “I bet this place has security cameras. If I leak that footage, I’ll make enough money to clear any bills I incur for property destruction.”
“Ah. You do know how to think like a superhero. That’s a pleasant discovery, as you’ll be needed in my new world.”
Velveteen paused, finally seeming to realize that this might be something more important than a simple abduction by a C-tier archnemesis.
She tensed against her bonds, eyeing him suspiciously.
“I don’t see you as the ‘bringing about a new world’ type,” she said, keeping her tone carefully level.
“If you had that kind of power, you’d have changed everything years ago. What are you playing at?”
“I told you, Miss Velveteen, I will not be the first to change the world. The evolutionary plague, when it came, changed everything, and not for the better. Perhaps a ‘new world’ is the wrong descriptor. I’m simply putting right what’s been made wrong.”
There was a massive smashing sound from somewhere beneath them. Doctor Darwin nodded, satisfied. “There they are, right on schedule,” he said.
“Who?” asked Velveteen.
“Why, your friends, of course,” he said.
“This will be the epicenter of the transformation, and I knew once they discovered your absence, they would be hunting you down in short order. They want to reclaim you, no doubt. Because you’ve been such great help to me in my work, and I know they’re important to you, I wanted to wait for them to arrive before I initiated the change.
Call it a small repayment for everything you’ve done without knowing you were doing it. You’ll get to keep your friends.”
He flipped a final massive switch, and a wave of static arced through the room, accompanied by the bright, sweet scent of incense. Doctor Darwin turned, offering Velveteen a shallow bow, then walked out of the room through a small door on the far wall.
The main door burst open as Polychrome, Victory Anna, and the Snow Princess burst into the room, all of them clearly braced and ready for a fight.
They paused as they realized there were no villains waiting to be taken down.
Victory Anna approached the bank of controls with a wary, reverent air, like a priest moving toward an altar that might or might not be filled with highly poisonous spiders.
“What was he hoping to accomplish?” she asked, seemingly of herself. She moved closer still. “This looks like a reality programming machine, but lacks some of the primary components that would make such a thing operate.”
“Less analysis, more smashing,” said Polychrome, pulling back her hand to throw a beam of solidified light into the console.
Victory Anna grabbed her wrist before she could. “If we smash it, we’ll never know what he’s done that required abducting Velveteen multiple times and stripping the dimensional transference energy from her body,” she said sternly. “Restraint, please.”
Snow Princess ignored them both, moving toward Velveteen and beginning to undo the straps that held her in place.
She didn’t touch the tube still protruding from Velveteen’s hand, although she did look at it askance, clearly unhappy about leaving it where it was.
As for Velveteen, she sagged forward into Snow Princess as soon as she was released from the table, making no real effort to stand on her own.
“You all right?” asked Snow Princess, anxiously. “What did he do to you?”
“Put this stupid tube in my hand and monologued at me a bunch,” said Velveteen, finally trying to straighten up.
She pushed her hair out of her eyes with her hand and frowned.
“Strapped me to the table. Said he made sure you’d all get here before ‘the transformation,’ because he wanted me to have you with me. ”
“What?” asked Snow Princess.
“What?” demanded Victory Anna, whipping around and staring at Velveteen.
Polychrome also turned, and paled as she saw her friend.
“Vel,” she said, in a carefully measured “I am not freaking out right now, but gosh I would really like it if I could” tone. “What’s wrong with your arm?”
Velveteen looked down at her arm, where long burgundy flight feathers were pushing their way through her otherwise bare skin. She looked back to Polychrome, unable to shake the feeling that there was something very wrong with the length and shape of her neck, and said, “I don’t know.”
The pain hit a moment later, great, rolling waves of agony that seemed to radiate from every cell of her body, creating an overlapping field of agonies so intense that she staggered away from Snow Princess, dropping to her knees.
Victory Anna and Polychrome began to scream half a beat later, both falling to the floor with long feathers growing from their arms and shoulders.
Snow Princess looked on in horror, unable to quite understand what was happening to her friends, unsure of how she was meant to defend against it. The skin of her forearm prickled and she clasped her hand around it, feeling the sharp tips of pinfeathers press against her palm.
“No, thank you,” she gasped, and hurled one of her snow globes at the floor. It shattered on impact, a swirl of glitter and artificial snow rising all around her, finally wrapping around her like a bright ribbon. When it faded, she was gone, leaving only her feathered, agonized friends behind.
And the screams, of course. Nothing she could have done would have taken the screams away. Someone listening very closely might have picked up on the screams coming from outside as well. It was like the whole city was screaming, united by a sudden, unexpected agony.
And then, as quickly as it had begun, the screaming stopped, and all was silence.
* * *
It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the nation’s premier superhero, Doctor Darwin himself, was going to address the city at noon.
It was a special appearance, only announced the night before, and the city government had been in a tizzy since the news came in.
Even the governor and her sister had come to attend, making the mayor of Portland even more uncomfortable than he would have been already.
The city wasn’t equipped to host a truly A-tier superhero, or to deal with the villains his presence might attract.
Oh, they’d been moving up in the national power hierarchy since Velveteen chose to settle there, inevitably bringing her own toybox full of allies to haunt the city streets.
Crime was down, tourism was up, and their three full-time heroines could be counted on to save the city at all hours of the day and night.
But that didn’t mean they wanted to deal with the real top-tier supers, the ones who could crack planets or rearrange realities with a wiggle of their noses.
Animating toys, slinging light, and making clever little machines was about the speed Portland was equipped to handle.
But Doctor Darwin was coming, whether the mayor liked it or not.