Fialux slammed into the wall with a crunch and I had a moment to gather myself while she was trying to extricate herself from a sparking computer bank. It looked like I had a few seconds, at least.

  “Son of a bitch!” I shouted.

  “Get over here,” Fialux growled.

  Time to go to work. It’s not like I had much time.

  The monitors shut down and there was nothing else from CORVAC. Presumably he was off in the city in the giant death robot he was supposed to take back to the hangar after I captured Fialux. The giant death robot that had no chance of standing up against Fialux and her powers, but it's not like that mattered if he managed to neutralize Fialux.

  It really was the perfect plan. If you couldn't defeat Fialux by physical force, then why not use a mind control device to neutralize her? All he needed was a partner in crime who was capable of mind control at that level, and apparently he’d found that partner.

  “Hold still!”

  A whoosh instead of sparking tipped me off that Fialux had pulled herself out of the computer bank. I didn’t bother looking up from my wrist computer as I stepped to the side.

  “Sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t do that, Fialux.”

  Heroes with super powers were all the same. They spent so much time relying on those powers to do the work for them that they never learned how to actually fight.

  Which worked well enough for me now. The practical result was she flew across the room again and slammed into another wall.

  I winced. It was going to be a real pain in the ass repairing all this, but I’d already blown this area with that EMP so it was work I was going to have to do anyways. Stupid CORVAC and his stupid mind controlling partner trying to move in on my territory.

  A partner who hadn’t looked at all happy with how this was playing out as his video feed winked out of existence, but those were the breaks. The asshole could kiss my ass if all he wanted out of this was some “hot girl on girl action.”

  “I’m going to get you, Night Terror!”

  Besides, CORVAC had said his right words. He’d activated a clever little subroutine that would completely cut off his access to the lab systems. It was entirely possible he’d discovered a way around that too, but there was only one way to find out for sure.

  See, the problem with perfect plans is it's impossible to plan for every contingency. That was something I'd learned the hard way time and time again in my villainous career. And it was apparently something CORVAC hadn't learned yet.

  “Tempting, but something tells me you don’t want to get me in the way I want to get got,” I said, rolling to the side as something flew through the air right over me.

  CORVAC might be the most advanced computer known to humanity, but he he’d been designed by some nameless forgotten evil super genius who was nameless and forgotten because they were prone to the same flaws I knew I had.

  And unlike yours truly, most evil supergeniuses had a problem with admitting they had flaws. Which is why they inevitably lost.

  And some of that was bleeding into CORVAC now. Like assuming his plan was so foolproof that the hero would be taken care of no problem. Of course in this case it helped that I’d hard coded the whole “gloat then assume the hero dies while you look elsewhere” character flaw into him and set it to activate when we had that little verbal exchange.

  He was compelled to look the other way. He just didn’t realize it. I hoped.

  “Hold still, damn it!”

  “You kiss your archnemesis with that mouth?”

  A roar of rage. Another whoosh. Another crash. Another few moments bought to fix this problem while she extricated herself from my lab.

  So far it felt like the plan was working. Sure he could be trying to lull me into a false sense of security, but chances are he wouldn’t be paying much attention even without that insurance subroutine.

  He’d said it himself. He was having trouble splitting his attention. Which told me there was a good chance that wherever his computerized consciousness resided, it wasn’t in my lab’s systems. Or at the very least he had a backup somewhere else. I was pretty sure I’d blown up all his local copies, damn it.

  Still, it paid to be thorough.

  I reached up and flicked another switch on my wrist computer. A wrist computer that was completely beyond his reach now if that subroutine had done its work.

  “Why won’t you fight?”

  “I am fighting!”

  “No you aren’t!”

  I’d avoided even looking at this switch because it actually physically pained me to hit it. A switch I'd studiously avoided while CORVAC's traitorous machine consciousness was still stinking up the lab, because I wasn't entirely sure he couldn't counteract my ace in the hole if he was around to see what I was doing.

  I heard a loud rumble and the room shook as the matter/anti-matter intermix chamber that powered my lab lost stability and the core shut down to avoid going critical.

  The room went dark, and the only light came from the glow of my wrist computer. I winced. Shutting down the matter/antimatter reactor was no small feat, and it was going to take me at least a month to get it going again.

  But it was worth it, because that damned secondary mind control device he broke out when his buddy got all pissy about going through with their master plan shut down as soon as the power went out.

  “I am fighting, but I fight with my brains, bitch.”

  Fialux blinked in the glow of my wrist computer and paused in the middle of pulling herself out of the wall. Which made her look pretty ridiculous now that she wasn’t doing her best to kill me.

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  “What happened?” she asked. “And did you just call me a bitch?”

  “Turns out my evil supercomputer and your evil boyfriend were working together on some lame evil plan to take over the world by neutralizing you through mind control and neutralizing me through mind controlling you to smash me into a fine paste. And I did call you bitch, but only because it was dramatically appropriate.”

  I paused for a moment and thought that over.

  “Sorry for that, by the way. I got caught up in the moment. I have trouble not using a good line when I’m caught up in the moment.”

  “It’s okay under the circumstances. Man. My life has been really weird ever since I went into the hero business,” she said.

  “It only gets weirder from here,” I said. “But if you don’t mind, we have an evil supercomputer and the ultimate evil ex-boyfriend to defeat before they destroy the city.”

  I tried not to think about how disturbingly close that was to something a hero might think.

  “Right. How do we do this?” she asked. “And did I really have a boyfriend? That doesn’t seem like something I’d ever…”

  She wavered just a bit. A telltale sign of someone who was dealing with the aftereffects of mind control. Thankfully it was the sign of someone shaking off the mind control rather than someone having a relapse that might result in her trying to kill me again.

  That was good considering I had more important things than self-preservation to worry about.

  I did some quick mental calculations. If CORVAC really was in the giant death robot, and assuming he at least turned it around and followed the plan up to the point he realized I was more interested in playing kissyface with Fialux than dominating the world, that meant it would be a good twenty minutes before he could make it back to the outskirts of the city proper and start doing some real damage.

  How long had I been talking with him trying to trigger one of my software fail-safes? How long had I been fighting Fialux? How long had I been distracted making out with Fialux, for that matter?

  Einstein’s theorem about relativity and how an hour spent with a pretty girl felt like a minute came to mind. It hadn't felt like very long, but I’d been busy with other things and pretty much lost track of time once I teleported in here and confessed my feelings to Fialux.

  Fialux walked over to me. I braced myself for her to give in to the mind control again and start throwing punches, but instead she draped her arms around me. Which was almost as distracting as her coming at me with a punch, but not quite.

  "So I was being mind controlled just now?" Fialux asked. “Because I don’t remember anything.”

  "Apparently my evil supercomputer had a few aces up his sleeve that even I didn't know about," I said.

  "That feeling. That buzzing noise," Fialux said. “It was so weird but so familiar… What was it?"

  “Mind control device. One he definitely shouldn’t have had access to. I thought I was the only one that had them until I had a run-in with the asshole who was trying to control you,” I said.

  “Did he do it the same way?” she asked.

  “As best I can tell he uses some sort of weird funky eye thing to work his power. The stuff I made is auditory, but I really don’t use it all that much except to develop a countermeasure for the stuff.”

  And to worm my way onto the staff in the Journalism Department at Starlight City University, but that wasn’t something we needed to go into now. Or ever, for that matter.

  “Huh. So is there a way to give me that countermeasure?” she asked.

  I looked at her. Held her gaze for a long moment.

  “There is, but you’re going to have to trust me,” I said.

  There was only a moment’s hesitation. Which was a lot less than I was expecting, to be perfectly honest. Considering all the time we’d spent trying to defeat each other I figured it’d take her a good ten seconds or more to decide to trust me.

  “I do,” she said. “It’s crazy, but I do.”

  “Right,” I said. “I’m going to give you one of my backup set of contacts and earbuds. Give me just two shakes while I get my backup up and running.”

  “Your backup?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I sort of had to shut down the main power source and the main computer for my lab to save you from CORVAC’s mind control, so I’m putting a hell of a lot of trust in you too. If ever there were a time to take me down…”

  But she made no move to take me down. Not that I expected her to. So I got to work restoring the few systems I needed to get ready to go out and do battle with my former partner in crime.

  Poor CORVAC. He was so intent on protecting his central processing units that he never stopped to consider I might have another fail-safe device attached directly to the power source for the lab. It was madness. Shutting down the reactor meant throwing most of my toys out of commission, but I always figured the ability to continue existing independent of a steady source of electricity was the one ultimate advantage I'd always have in a fight with CORVAC.

  He'd obviously never considered that I might be willing to blow the power source to the entire lab just to stop him.

  Not that the place would be much use to me without a central computer. CORVAC leaving meant I was going to be stuck with the old system for awhile.

  The lights flickered and then came back up as I flicked a physical button, no touch screen software controls for this baby, and the auxiliary power system kicked on. The only control for that system was on my wrist computer, and it wasn't networked with the main system.

  Another precaution.

  I paused for a moment and listened, my hand hovering over the power button. The last thing I needed was for the auxiliary power systems to turn that hidden mind control device back on. It was going to be a real pain in the ass figuring out where that was hidden.

  It didn’t come back on. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  A voice boomed out of the speakers. A metallic voice with none of the personality I'd come to expect from CORVAC.

  “What the hell is that?” Fialux asked, looking up and around with wide eyes. Like she thought we were about to be betrayed again.

  “An old friend,” I said.

  I smiled. Good. The backup computer system was far inferior to CORVAC but had the distinct advantage of no sapience. Which meant no megalomaniacal urges and no pesky sense of self-preservation that came from self-awareness.

  "Awaiting input," the voice said.

  “Computer, prepare a new combat suit for me with all networked components removed, and I’m going to need a new set of contacts and earpieces with full countermeasures built in.”

  I figured if I was going to go into battle against an evil computer then it would be prudent to go full Galactica with my precautions to keep frakking toasters out of my head. Not that most of the networked functions in my current suit would be of much use without CORVAC around to make those systems fully functional.

  “Working. Please allow a moment.”

  That might take more than a moment. The old system was slower than CORVAC. Which gave me some time to think.

  That was fine though. I needed time to think.

  On a hunch I hit a few keys on my wrist computer and did a quick scan of the systems. Key commands were a hell of a lot faster with the old system since it wasn’t the greatest at voice recognition.

  My suspicions were confirmed almost immediately. There were absolutely no traces of CORVAC's software anywhere to be found. Yet he still existed. Where the hell had he gone?

  I had a system that was custom designed just for him. I was pretty sure there wasn't a way for him to exist independent of that architecture. It was one of my insurance policies in case he ever went rogue, for all the good that did me.

  Only I wasn't sure exactly where he'd gone. The giant death robot chassis wasn't nearly big enough to fit the entirety of CORVAC's massive computer mind. Not to mention he was overly cautious. The last thing he'd do was transfer all his eggs into a basket that could potentially get blown up by a lucky shot from the military, or taken out by Fialux or yours truly if we managed to escape his surefire plan to kill us.

  There was also the matter of all of my fail-safes completely failing. I don't care how thorough he was, I'd heard explosives go off and he somehow survived.

  Another piece of the puzzle.

  A whine sounded off in the distance. Sirens that would mean an air raid in some countries, tornadoes in other parts of this country, but it only meant one thing in Starlight City.

  Something was about to go down, and it was probably going to involve super powered beings throwing down. At least it would if I had anything to do with it.

  I glanced at Fialux. She looked back at me and smiled.

  "Computer."

  Nothing. I frowned.

  “Hello, Computer?”

  Again, nothing. Then I glanced down to my wrist computer and realized I’d flipped it to manual input only.

  “The keyboard. How quaint.”

  I tapped a button to enable voice commands again.

  "Ready for input."

  "Are my new toys ready?"

  "Affirmative."

  "Good, send it down. Mama's going computer hunting."