Chapter Eleven: A Two-Sided Coin

(The following moment…)

……………….

The faces weren't familiar. Rose Red had expected her back-up, but when the first hand fell and tightened on her arm, she knew otherwise. She twisted out of the grip and jabbed her gun into the gut of the nearest person: her attacker.... or well, grabber. An image flashed in the back of her brain and for a fraction of a millisecond, pulling the trigger seemed a very natural action.

She dropped the gun instead, as the man doubled over, and made a run for the gate before the others closed in. Her hope was to be just a little faster.

No such luck.

In a breathless blur, she was disarmed, restrained, and thoroughly surrounded. But regardless of ten-plus guns aimed at her, there was no blaze of light, no sudden death. Those around her were motionless, all staring in the same direction. And she realized with a sinking horror that they were waiting for an order.

She looked up and even without the lab coat and goggles, Rose Red could recognize the face from the tabloids those years ago—the man who sang of no mercy.

It's gonna be bloody…

"Billy…?"

The heroine caught the villain's gaze and nothing changed.

The doctor nodded coldly to his minions. "Take her away. T-Zero."

Rose let herself be pulled away, cuffed, and loaded into a van. Crammed into the small space were other members of the Hammer Force, including Captain Corn who, judging by his captive state, probably didn't have eye lasers after all.

-…-…-...-…-…-…

She was taken to a cell occupied by three other probably-heroes, none of whom she recognized.

Seeing Rose Red, a short woman with pink hair hopped to her feet. "Oh! Escape-time!"

"Really? Already...? That was..." She was quickly interrupted.

"Our rescuer! Lead us to our grand escape!" exclaimed a man with rather frizzled hair.

Rose Red frowned. "Uh... Huh?"

Another man, hunkered into the corner, glowered. "We were put in here for our own good by the great Doctor Horrible."

"That's The Iron Skillet. Just ignore him," piped the woman cheerily. "He's going through a trial. It'll wear off soon. Anyway, I'm Rabbit's Foot, over there is Other Einstein. We get two meals a day and about our escape…"

So... There was no planned escape. Of course. "I'm in here too, aren't I?" hissed Rose Red.

"So… you're not here to rescue us? I'm pretty sure you're supposed to rescue us… If you don't, who will?" asked Other Einstein.

"No one," replied Rose curtly.

Rabbit patted Rose's back. "Well aren't we a sourpuss?"

"More like a sour flower," noted Einstein, gesturing to the newly-incarcerated's shirt.

They laughed, and Rose Red couldn't help but feel that Dr. Horrible had been right about at least one thing: the heroes who chose to stay were morons.

-…-…-...-…-…-…

At that moment, Moist was leading a young scientist through the many halls of The Basement, explaining the duties of the lowest level of Horrible Labs.

He paused outside the cells. "And this… is where we keep our human specimens, mostly captured heroes and whatnot. They're given threat tiers: zero through three based on, well, level of threat. Levels one through three are assigned to trials pretty randomly, you know, to keep the experiments unbiased, but we generally put T-Zeros in the control group."

The scientist smirked at this. "Pretty merciful for a villain-run organization."

"Doc. thought we oughtta draw the line somewhere." He shrugged and moved on.

-…-…-...-…-…-…

When was the last time someone had spoken his name? His actual, non-villain name, that is… It was a little strange and plenty unnerving, but that was all well and dandy because the world was still turning and everything was fine. Or it would be, once Dr. Horrible got his hands on it.

There was still much to be done. In fact, there was always much to be done. The amount of to be done increased exponentially with time.

Billy snuggled into his oversized chair and awaited inspiration. Or an idea. Or a thought, preferably of the warm and fuzzy variety.

Bazooka Joe bubblegum, relativity, penguins in suits, quantum mechanics, Me: zero, Big bad world: one

Nope. None felt particularly fuzzy at the moment. His mind wandered.

Recent events took the number of turned implanteds to an even thirty, at least by the Labs' count. It was a small number, less than a hundredth of a percent. That was a good thing. A very good thing. It was still a non-zero number, most certainly, but a small number… and a good number. A very good number…

The phone rang and Billy grabbed for it immediately. "Moist!"

"Yeah. Hey, you doin' alright? I was kinda worried..."

"I'm fine. Wait, you were worried? About what?"

"Well, I woke up feeling weird… Like, fight-ready weird. It was pretty awesome, actually. But that's not the point. There was some strange activity at the labs, and there were these camera things, and then we picked up this signal…It's a good thing I sent out the troops, so to speak, huh? I mean, this is the biggest lot we've brought in for some time."

"Oh. Yeah." A pause. "Thanks for that."

"I guess it all worked out for the best, though. New test-subjects, not exactly a bad thing at the Lab…"

Right. Not exactly bad… Even if those people were better off dead.

Billy said nothing and Moist continued.

"About that. There's two months left and we could still use your help down here…"

Rogue superheroes and side-switchers aside, Billy had the city… but he needed the world. "I'll be there by seven."

So, that evening, Billy gathered his coat and a few supplies before leaving for Horrible Labs. He programmed his cell phone to be able to contact the implants remotely and left just after five.

The building had small apartments for the more dedicated employees, so there would be no need to run back and forth. Doing such would be a waste of time, and time was beginning to feel increasingly important.

Most of the more world-domination-pertinent work was conducted in the basement—variants of chemical mind control would be necessary for such a large-scale project… or maybe a signal of sorts would work better. Mere mental suggestion wouldn't be enough; a short-term fix would be necessary before the long-term solution. People were going to be against him—lots of people, and no twisted, League-backed law would be there to help him.

It was cold down there, so Billy made use of the grass-stain removal wing and donned his newly cleaned coat.

Things progressed slowly, but they did progress. Dr. Horrible avoided the cell hall, and hummed loudly whenever he was near that heavy metal door.

And maybe it was just a quirk of fate, a painfully ironic curve which was bound to bend into the road of a supervillain, but only two days after Billy walked out his front door, Penny appeared on one screen amongst many, in the sleepy glow of the surveillance room.

……………….

That sentence was a lil' long for my taste. Ah well. Anyone see any similarities between this and the dream sequence of ch. 6? Also... why do I only edit AFTER I post? Sigh...

I'm becoming very confused on which name (real/costume) to use. What are they wearing? But what do the characters around know them as? Gah!

Also, the 'Me zero' thing is a Jonathan Coulton song.