Currently Playing Songs For Silverman By Ben Folds "Landed" see related

We always do. Just when things start to go awry, when Major Patriot or the Phoenix Phlash or whatever is about to have us at his mercy, we always make it out to the conveniently stowed titanium sphere and hurdle ourselves into orbit. There are a few minutes of unconsciousness, but we're safe. They never follow us.

My wife is already awake when I come to. Her chin is resting on her leather glove, and she's brushing dust out of her hair with her other hand. She's staring out the window into the stars and the approaching moon. This is normally the part where I shout at her, wondering how she could be so foolish and let the heroes get away. I always blame her.

I don't know why, but I don't feel like blaming her this time.

"Hi," I say. It's in the air for only a moment before the buzz of machinery swallows it. "You okay?"

"What do you care?" she says without turning. "You're Dr. Lucius Darke. When did you start caring about your underlings?"

I sigh. "You're not just an underling. You're my wife, okay? And you did the best you could this time." I reach out to touch her shoulder, but she swats my hand away.

"I'm not your wife," she says. "I'm Madame Maelstrom--an underling who happens to wear a wedding band. And what the hell does it matter how I did? We failed. Again."

The events of the past few hours start to piece themselves together. The abandoned chemical plant outside LA. The plan to mutate the entire town into hideous creatures under my command. The appearance of Death Valley Dave, heat-vision blazing. The battle. The capture. The plan to mutate him. His escape. The destruction of the lab. Our escape.

My promise to get my revenge on him if it was the last thing I did.

"Yeah, we should probably make it a bit harder to escape next time," I say. "Maybe find a way to trap that heat-vision of his. I could work on some special goggles, rig them up to his face, I dunno..." I run my finger along the instrument panel.

"So what now?" she says.

"Well, we could regroup," I say. "But the LA lab is bust." Yeah, definitely gone. The government's probably starting to acquire it already. They'll probably tear it down, bury the chemicals somewhere, brag about how they're going to turn the plant's property into a park. Then they'll break down and sell it to some big supermarket company.

I clench my fist. I spent decades of my life earning degree after degree, and all I am now is a machine for turning abandoned laboratories into Wal-Marts.

"What if we just stopped?" I say. I wait for a response before continuing. "What if we just pack up everything at the moon base, head back to Earth, and start over?"

"You mean set up a new base?"

"No, not even that!" I punch the instrument panel. "What if we sold all that? What if we changed our names, got plastic surgery, bought a little place in the country..." When I turn to her, she is looking back at me, dark eyebrows low, dark eyes narrow. I trail off.

"And then what?" she says. "We just live?"

"Yeah," I mumble, and the response is almost immediately lost in the machinery's hum. "We've got plenty of money and all that. And I've got doctorates in physics, chemi--"

"I know your credentials, Lucius," she says. "What about me?"

I smile, but somehow I can tell it looks awkward. "You wouldn't even have to work."

"Oh, so we end it like that, then?" she shouts. She rises from her chair, keeping her head low to avoid the ceiling. "You get to go off and continue your work while I sit at home, clean, cook dinner, and wait for you to get home and tell me about all of the interesting bullshit you did that day! Is that it?"

I shrug and look down at my shoes again. "You could get a job..."

She sits back down and leans on her fist again, staring out the window. For a second I remember that she's beautiful. "I'm a martial artist, a sorceress, and a leather-clad temptress. Those are hardly marketable skills, Lucius."

"You could be an entertainer."

"You could shut the hell up."

I do for a moment. I think about telling her she could go back to school, but the idea seems like a bust now. I wait for her to talk. She doesn't. We don't say anything as the orb drops down onto the moon, as the surface opens up beneath our craft, as the silver marble slides into the tunnels connecting to my underground moon base.

"You could've just killed him," my wife says.

"Who?"

"Death Valley Dave." She turns and looks at me again. "I mean, you had him beat--shackled from head to toe. And then you just--just waited!" She throws her arms in the air. "Why didn't you kill him?"

"You're missing the point," I sigh. "It's not enough to just let him die. What if I'd killed him outright? Then he'd die knowing that there was still a hint of hope for his city! I can't allow that!"

She sighs. "And because you can't, he got away."

"No, because of coincidence, he got away." And I think back to how securely I had shackled Death Valley Dave, how every joint of his body was incapable of movement. And I think back to the moment when he let loose with his heat-vision, when it knocked over a rafter that landed on a table that flung onto its side and shot forth a ball bearing that struck a nearby laser--and how that laser fired and conveniently broke the bonds on his arms.

I slam my fist against my arm rest. "Damn it, Paula, why didn't you stop him? You could've done it!"

She glares at me; I don't think she's heard her first name in years. "I was just as off guard as you were, Doctor. Don't you dare blame this on me."

I sigh and punch the arm rest again. "It's not fair! I know I'm smarter than any of these heroes! And what happened today, that--that was just a stupid coincidence! ARGH!" I pause, take a deep breath, and stare straight ahead at the tunnels stretching out before the craft. I figure we're about a minute away from the docking bay. "Why couldn't I have gone into a line of work where I get rewarded for being smarter than others?"

"Because," she answers quickly. "You said being a villain meant being a force of change."

For a moment I turn this over in my mind. I shake my head. "Not anymore. These heroes are just going to show up, get captured, break free, and thwart me--time and time again. That's the way it always happens."

"Well," she says with a slight shrug, "maybe they're trying to stop you from continuing to be a force of change."

I laugh for the first time in our conversation. "Are you kidding me? Look at all they'd have to lose by beating me! Paparazzi! Action figures! Video game deals! If they wanted to defeat me, they'd just do it!"

That's precisely when the capsule docked and opened on the right side, dropping us off right into the laboratory.

The laboratory.

What happened? The machines are all broken, tipped, sparking. The flickering bulbs overhead release just enough light to reveal a pile of black-uniformed minions. They don't move. Nothing moves.

In the center of the room, facing the capsule, arms folded across his chest, is a man in bright blue spandex. He's tall but quite young, his dark skin smooth. His mask features a single atom (boron, judging by the electrons on it) and hides the upper half of his face.

"So, Dr. Darke," he says. His voice is dark and low. "You didn't think anyone would find your secret moon headquarters, did you? Well, you didn't count on the technical prowess of me... Nuclear Winter! You see, after you took off, I..."

I stop listening to him. I look around. How could he do this? How could he violate the unwritten code? I scan the room for a single ray gun, one solitary item by which I can put an end to his idiotic monologue. I find none. And I shudder because I've been outsmarted.

My wife steps forward, curves and black leather and narrow eyes. Her hands glow dark purple; the last hope for us is her magic.

Nuclear Winter lets fly. The atom on his forehead erupts into white-hot energy, and in a moment it blasts forth. It's going to hit my wife. He's too fast. Before she can even conjure her energy, he's going to end her.

No.

The air grows frigid around me as I leap into the path of his blast. The power surges through my body. I feel my heart stop, maybe even explode. I'm cold and drained of energy in a moment. I drop to the ground and hear a snicker.

I stare up at my wife. Madame Maelstrom. Paula Darke. She doesn't look down at me, doesn't even flinch. She's huge and powerful, gathering more energy each second. I feel a growing wind at my cheek. She looks like a goddess.