A/N: Only one more chapter to go after this. (It'll be a brief epilogue.)
Disclaimer: As ever, don't own.
Many cameras and many eyes watched as a man toting a small steel box approached the front door of the "car factory". Biometric scans were run; in all respects – height, weight, facial features – the newcomer was found to match the operative known as Psi. Silently a word flashed on a computer screen: ADMIT. A switch was flicked; the doors slid open.
The director of the operation – code name Alpha Prime – approached Psi. "You have it?"
"I do." He held up the black hole in its magnetic cage. "I don't understand it, but I have it."
"Well done. Perhaps you're not entirely worthless after all."
Alpha Prime watched Psi's face carefully, expecting him to snarl in anger – the expert torturer's temper was well-known, and goading him was something of a popular sport. But much to the director's surprise, Psi's expression remained unchanged. Only his eyes flickered from side to side, nervously.
"Something the matter?"
"No. No, forgive me."
There was a curious undercurrent of distortion in Psi's voice, as if someone were subtly pinching his throat. Alpha Prime raised an eyebrow. "You seem a bit…off."
"It was that girl. Killing her – I didn't like it. I know we had to have this-" he nodded at the box- "but still…"
"Funny. You've never shown any moral objections to killing youngsters before."
"First time for everything, I guess."
Alpha Prime puzzled for a moment over his operative's strange behavior, then decided to let it pass. After all, Psi had been behaving irrationally ever since the girl scarred his face and humiliated him. Perhaps it was time, thought Alpha, for Psi to take a vacation. A long vacation – complete with memory scrub. The organization couldn't afford to have its best interrogator crippled by emotion.
He carried the box through the labyrinthine hallways toward the central core. Psi followed.
At last they arrived at the heart of the complex. An immense diamond drill stood perched, tip downward, over a pit of earth. Around it technicians manned banks of computers, carefully checking and re-checking seismic data as it poured in from monitors beneath the soil.
"This is truly a great day," said Alpha Prime, as Psi stared goggle-eyed at the tremendous apparatus. "No power source on Earth was adequate for our needs – until this moment. Soon the Apocalypse Drill will bore into the earth, wresting open fault lines, bringing up magma from the Earth's core, and generating a wave of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that will tear outward from Anatolia across both Europe and Asia. The eastern Mediterranean will be closed to shipping for decades to come. Oil shipments through the Bosporus will be impossible. Worldwide economic collapse will ensue. And, out of the chaos, we will rise, to remake humanity in our image!"
With a few swift gestures, he connected a series of electrodes to the magnetic cage. Two technicians then moved it into the line of fire of a proton accelerator.
"You see, my friend, when fed with a continuous stream of mass, the black hole will generate a massive power differential between its environs and the event horizon. The Apocalypse Drill will tap into that energy." He smiled. "It's almost a pity you couldn't bring young Caterina here alive to see this. It would be a thing of beauty indeed, to see the look on her face when she realized just what her discovery was capable of." Turning to the technician at the console behind him, he yelled, "Activate proton gun!"
With a whirr and a flash of light, the strange weapon began to release its subatomic payload. The greedy singularity consumed it, and as it did so, the great diamond-tipped drill head began to turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster.
Alpha Prime laughed like a madman. "Victory is ours! At long last, we have…WHAT?"
For, to his utter amazement, the drill head was now not merely spinning, but tilting on its axis as well. Rather than pointing toward the soil, it was aimed directly at the main console.
"What the hell do you think you're doing? Stop redirecting it!" he screamed at the operator.
The man threw up his hands in despair. "But, sir, I'm not doing anything! We've lost control of the guidance systems!"
The drill, now spinning so swiftly that it was nothing but a blur, advanced menacingly.
"Run! Run for your lives!" Alpha Prime cried. And he himself dived for cover, in such a panic that he barely had time to wonder where Psi had suddenly disappeared to.
With a mighty roar, the deadly drill bit sheared the console in two, and plunged into the wall behind it. All throughout the complex hapless workers and soldiers were sent sprawling in terror, blinded by the whirlwind of dust and powder that the drill threw up, deafened by its noise. The factory generator failed; the lights flickered into nothingness, and the cameras that kept every inch of the surrounding plateau under surveillance went dark. Yet the drill continued remorselessly forward: the power from the black hole was sufficient now to drive the very proton gun that fed it, in an endless loop.
At last the drill reached the outer wall of the factory. As it ruptured the solid steel girders, sunlight poured in.
Alpha Prime looked frantically about him. All his workers had fled; it was up to him to shut down the apparatus. He took a deep breath, then leapt from cover and, dodging glass shards falling from the ceiling high above, darted across the chamber. With shaking hands he yanked loose the electrodes from the steel box.
The proton gun fell silent. Deprived of mass to nourish it, the black hole sank into inertness. Outside on the plateau, the drill bit slowed and ground to a halt, as awestruck goatherds watched from below.
Alpha lay on the floor, panting, trying to catch his breath. A shadow fell over him: Psi. Alpha was filled with sudden rage. "And just where the hell were you? What were you thinking, leaving me to risk my life?"
Calmly, with a mirthless smile on his face, the other man reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a taser. "Call it payback for the way you treated my friends."
A horrid realization struck Alpha Prime as he stared into the electrical arc of the taser's prongs. "You're not Psi."
"Guess you really are a supergenius." There was a blue crackle; Alpha's limbs convulsed, then he lay still.
"Psi" pulled off the stiflingly hot latex mask he wore, removed the electronic voice changer from his throat, and stepped out of the platform shoes that had allowed him to match the height of the man he was impersonating. He stood revealed as Andre Harris.
Inserting an earpiece, he said one word, the first Turkish word Cat Valentine had taught him:
"Saldırınız."
Attack.
Through the fissure in the factory wall ran detachment after detachment of heavily armed Turkish police in full body armor. As the still dazed mercenary guards attempted to organize themselves for a resistance, flash grenades fell from the ventilation shafts above, dazzling their eyes. A moment later smoke grenades followed, taking their breath away. Coughing, teary-eyed, they were easily rounded up.
The air ducts opened, and the lithe figures of Cat Valentine, Tori Vega, Trina Vega and Jade West slipped to the ground.
/
The rural scene was idyllic no more. Hundreds of prisoners were thrust into squad cars and police vans, as radios crackled with messages and sirens blared. The goats and their herders kept a respectful distance, looking up occasionally at the curls of smoke from the ruined factory.
On the other side of the dusty road, the little group from Hollywood Arts grinned as the man known as Alpha Prime was led off in handcuffs and shackles.
"I'll make you pay for this! All of you!" His eyes fixated on Cat with a look of death. "You most of all. God damn you, Cat Valentine."
"Well, I'm sure you'll get your chance once you're released from prison. Which should be, oh, about never."
"GrrAGH!" The brilliant mind behind the plot to destroy the world was reduced to a howl of animalistic rage as the police car door slammed shut behind him.
"Okay, Cat," said Robbie as he held her tight, "explain to me exactly how you took control of their death machine?"
"Before I went to sleep last night I improvised an electron microscope and encoded a nanovirus into the molecular structure of the Faraday cage. Simple, really."
"Uh, yeah. 'Simple'." Robbie chuckled. "Have I ever told you that you're absolutely freaking amazing?"
"Once or twice." She pressed her lips against his, and then whispered into his ear:
"But I can always stand to hear it again."