Heart of the Storm (Part 11)
Title: Heart of the Storm
Authors: lizynob and lorafantastory
Pairings: Oscar/Block as the Anna/Hans dynamic
Characters: Oscar Schlumper, Wayne Schlumper, Dr. Block, Dr. Tease, minor mentions of Party Mania characters
Word Count: 47,002
Warnings: Descriptions of anxiety, some bullying, angst, references to death
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Epilogue, Bonus Content
Test the Limits
Block took a quick glance over at Oscar. He wasn’t looking good at all. He was breathing unevenly and his hand was tightly pressed against his heart. He looked like he was about to pass out at any moment.
She was almost impatient by now, but things were still going smoothly. A little lie about the back tire being blown out combined with Oscar’s thoughts being occupied with the struggle just to keep breathing combined with another little lie about calling for help meant that they were just waiting now.
They weren’t kept waiting for long, however, before bright headlights could be seen, and a loud engine could be heard, along with the sharp squeal of brakes.
Block smiled, popped the trunk, and hopped out of the driver’s seat. Tease met her halfway between the vehicles, practically skipping with excitement. “Took you long enough to get up here. Oscar needs to be taken care of, you know.”
“I know, I know,” Tease waved the statement off as Block opened Oscar’s passenger door. “There’s no need to worry about anything. It’s all one hundred percent under control.”
“I’m grateful,” Oscar managed as the two of them helped him to his feet and began to lead him carefully across the grass. “I wish I could s-say the same about Wayne. It wasn’t his fault, really. If he wasn’t so afraid, he might have had a better handle on the lightning.”
“Ability to negatively charge atoms dependent on emotion…” Dr. Tease giggled, not even bothering to hide her excited glee. “This is going to change our whole strategy! Of course sneaking up is already out of the question, but with all of those capacities together? Think of all the sexy scientific possibilities!”
Block cocked her head curiously at the outburst. “Possibilities that are sexy because they’re scientific or scientific possibilities that could be used for sex?”
“Exactly!” Dr. Tease exclaimed. “This new plan is so much better than our old one. I mean, getting the patents was one thing, but this?” Her mouth curled into a dark grin. “This blows that idea out of the water and then some!”
Oscar blinked in confusion as the two yanked him over to the back of the car and then let go, leaving him to lean heavily on the edge of the open trunk . “What plan?” he asked, not understanding what they were talking about.
“Well to be frank, you and your brother co-own some wonderful patents,” Dr. Block began.
Dr. Tease cut in. “But you’ve never really done anything with them. I mean sure, they’re permitted for use in experiments with strict ethical guidelines, but they could be used for so much more!”
“And when we found out you were both going to be attending the conference, well we had to give something a try, right? I spent a week studying up on the shared spousal property laws in this state and everything. I was originally going to go for the ‘colleague’ to ‘close friend’ to ‘business partner’ to ‘significant other’ road, but you were just so desperate for attention that I could just skip steps one through three with no problem!”
“But this!” Dr. Tease threw out her arms in elation. “This is a scientific breakthrough waiting to happen! Who needs a few patents when you have control over an organic generator of electricity?! Add to that the manipulation of metals and electrons, and there’s no limit to the fields we could revolutionize!”
“Physics!”
“Genetics!”
“Thermodynamics!”
“We could weaponize it!” Dr. Tease looked about to melt into a puddle of joy.
Weaponize it? Weaponize it?!! Oscar couldn’t believe what he was hearing. That wasn’t an ‘it’, that was his brother!
“A-Are you two insane?!” he yelled as best he could, nearly quivering with rage and horror. “You’re talking about a person. A person!! He’s not an experiment you can just use! How could you even think something like that?! I won’t let you-” A burst of pain exploded in his chest and the world spun for a moment.
“Oscar, I know you’re mad, but this really isn’t the time to get your heart rate up,” Dr. Block said calmly. “You got hit by lightning. You had, oh, even at a conservative estimate probably around 250 milliamps go through you earlier. You really ought to sit down.”
Her hand slammed into his shoulder hard, shoving him down and backwards into the trunk of the car. His head smacked against the back seat and by the time he could even make a sound, his legs had been lifted over the rear bumper and stuffed in with him. “No!” was all he managed to get out before the trunk lid slammed, leaving him in darkness. He gave a few feeble shoves at the lid before the pain in his chest overwhelmed him and he had to curl up into a ball in an effort to endure it.
Dr. Tease was cackling on the other side of the metal. “Oh my god, I can’t believe you actually said that! That was amazing!”
“I saw the opportunity and I just couldn’t pass it up!” Dr. Block’s voice replied jovially as two sets of footsteps started away from the car. “You know, this friend-of-a-friend Nella had these lessons on being evil and you think ‘when am I ever going to need that?’ but then a situation just presents itself and it’s too good…”
The words faded away, leaving Oscar in darkness and in shock and desperately trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. He didn’t want to believe that it was real, but he heard the other car engine rev up again and slowly become faint. They were gone. They had left him there.
All at once, full realization hit him. Everything she’d said since he’d met her was a lie. She hadn’t enjoyed his company or thought he was brilliant, or been any of the refreshing things he’d thought she was. It had all been a ruse to get to his and Wayne’s shared intellectual property, and he’d fallen straight into it without a second thought. And now Wayne was in even more danger. And he was…
Oscar bit down hard on the sleeve of his coat, feeling like stone fingers were squeezing at his heart. He was stuck in a car trunk and he had to escape, had to get to Wayne.
He uncurled his limbs as much as he could in the cramped space, hitting something that felt like a book with his leg and something else with an arm. Blindly, he began feeling around, pretty sure there supposed to be a flashlight somewhere. He was almost certain he could remember sticking one in the trunk at some point. He felt around for a while and felt a surge of triumph when his fingers came in contact with a familiar-shaped item. He clicked the button with his thumb and a bright white beam illuminated the cramped space.
Things didn’t seem quite so bad once he could see again. Oscar shifted around uncomfortably, shoving some spare beakers and a test tube rack out of his way while he got a better look at the trunk lock.
For the first time in his life, Oscar wished he specialized in engineering and not science because as much as he fumbled around with trying to undo the latch, it would not budge. He scoured the floor for anything that might work in trying to pry it open, hoping in vain to magically find a screwdriver, wrench, or tire iron. Something to give him leverage. But all he had was his two hands, and they were proving to be relatively useless.
The minor relief that had blossomed when he’d first flicked on the flashlight was waning fast as he continued to try to pop the trunk open from the inside. His movements grew more and more frantic as the latch remained tight no matter what he did, and panic began to set in. Why couldn’t he figure it out? What was he missing? Why wasn’t he smart enough?
He wasn’t sharp enough to catch onto anything apparently. Not his brother, not Dr. Block, and not even a simple locking mechanism. He wanted to scream or hit something in frustration, but all he did instead was curl back up as another wave of tight pressure flooded his chest.
A small trickle of tears began to leak from the corners of his eyes and the more he tried to will them to stop, the more the flow of tears increased. What good was he? After all his efforts to get Wayne to come back home, all he’d succeeded in was making everything worse. He was a horrible, useless brother. Wayne had spent his whole life trying to protect him, something he had only begun to understand that very day; and the one time it was his job to protect Wayne in return, he’d failed his brother in every way possible.
Oscar hoped that Wayne would be able to use his powers to save himself because it didn’t look like he was going anywhere.
The thought sent a cold chill through him and made his strained heartbeat pound even more excruciatingly. He couldn’t help but despairingly think that maybe his fate was for the best given how useless he had been to Wayne anyway. What good did he think he could accomplish even if he did escape? Another thought flickered through his mind and Oscar decided instead that it truly would have been for the best if he’d never been born at all. Wayne wouldn’t have had to suffer so much if he didn’t have a younger brother to constantly have to protect from himself. Wayne could have had his freedom, and there would be no Oscar to ruin his life and be fooled by a superficial smile and false flattery. If it hadn’t been for him…
Even though there was no one to hear, Oscar nevertheless buried his face into his sleeve to try to muffle the sounds escaping him. Tears that he was powerless to stop continued to pour down his cheeks, and his breath hitched with every sob that unwillingly tore from his throat. He had never felt so alone, so miserable, so afraid; so lonely and hopeless and ashamed, and utterly, utterly defeated.
He cried for himself, for Wayne, for every wrong turn that had happened that night, and for all the others throughout the years. He cried in an uncontrollable fit until he couldn’t cry anymore and simply laid in a sniffling ball. He felt tired and drained of any will to move. The most he managed was to rest his head somewhat more comfortably against his arm, letting his fingers brush against the blonde patch in his hair. He was ready to close his eyes and simply surrender to the inevitable when something unexpectedly colorful entered his vision.
The flashlight Oscar had forgotten about was still shining and the beam was hitting the beakers he had shoved over, refracting through the panes of glass and creating a rainbow on the trunk wall.
It was a relatively small rainbow, and the colors were somewhat soft and hazily blended into one another. It wasn’t as sharp as the display that could be garnered from a proper triangular prism.
He still remembered that day clearly. How excited he had been when he found the prism at the mall in one of the novelty shops, and how happy he been that his brother had finally left his room to play with him. They had spent the entire rest of the day together, learning everything they could about light, and more than anything Oscar remembered having the sense of togetherness. The feeling that he and Wayne could do anything because they were brothers.
It was almost as if he’d been struck all over again and had there been any possible way Oscar could have been sitting up, he would have fallen right over.
What was he doing? How could he be sniveling and moping while his brother was in danger? He didn’t have time to feel sorry for himself and Wayne didn’t either! No matter what had happened between them, they were still brothers and he couldn’t just give up.
He hastily wiped his face as best he could as a renewed sense of determination welled up. He grabbed the flashlight and the rainbow vanished as he set the beam back on the trunk lock.
Oscar wracked his brain as he inspected it once more. There had to be some way to open the blasted thing. He fiddled with it again but still didn’t see any clear way to get it open without some sort of tool he did not have. He wished he had pocketed the keys instead of leaving them in the front of the car. Escaping could have been a simple push of a button.
He took in a breath as an idea came to mind. Even if he couldn’t undo the lock by hand, there had to be some way to trip it. The keys did it wirelessly, but there had to be wires connecting the door to the trunk unlatch button in the front. He only had to find them.
Moving around was no easy task and there wasn’t any great way to hold the flashlight and start pulling back the false carpeting at the same time, but he managed the best he could. After the challenge of getting into the inner section of the trunk, he succeeded in spotting a series of thick wires that ran along the length of the car. One by one he began tugging, but nothing happened.
Once again, Oscar wondered what trick he was missing, but he didn’t waste any time berating himself for it. His resolve was undeterred and he merely tried again, getting the best grip he could and tugging each wire with more force. First in one direction and then the other. And after a few more minutes of trial-and-error, there was a loud pop.
Oscar went still for second, almost unable to believe his ears, but when he pressed against the trunk lid, it easily sprang up and fresh air washed over him.
He let out a very thin and shaky laugh of relief and broke into a brief smile before grimacing as another constricting pain tightened in his chest. He didn’t wait for it to pass, though. He gripped the flashlight harder, clenched his jaw, and climbed out. There wasn’t a second to spare. He was on a mission and he was already behind.
His mind set, Oscar began walking straight up the ravine. His breath was already short and began to turn ragged at even the slightest bit of elevation, but Oscar unwaveringly kept putting one foot in front of the other.
The night wasn’t over yet.
*****
Wayne stood atop a column of metal just inside the door to his fortress, making adjustments to his hulking robot. He’d had to completely redesign the entranceway to get the machine inside, and even so it took up most of the space in the front hall. He guessed it to be about twenty five feet high, and standing nose-to-nose with it was a bit intimidating even if he was the one who’d built it.
Wayne ran a brightly-sparking hand over the robot’s chest to smooth down the compressed pieces and get it to look vaguely symmetrical. It was quite an achievement, he had to admit, even if it had been created out of necessity more than anything.
A series of license plates had all jumbled together across the machine’s chest, their letters and numbers spelling out nonsense gibberish. He shifted the plates around a bit until it became something he could pronounce. “Neutro.” He nodded to himself, satisfied. “That does seem like a good name for you, doesn’t it?” The machine, being dead metal, said nothing. Wayne took a step back and glanced over his work. “Not much of a conversation partner, but you should be solid enough.”
A sudden bang rang through the air and he spun quickly towards the sound. It was outside but not too far off. People? He had the metal column lower him back to the ground and he hurried over to one of the tinted limousine windows, reaching out with the electricity to direct one of the headlights outside to move around the space in front of his fortress.
Smoke was billowing from the barrier wall, a section of which had been blown to pieces. Two figures in white lab coats were climbing in over the wreckage, their voices carrying across the empty space and bouncing off the hundreds of metal surfaces.
“I told you it would work!”
“You didn’t tell me it would be so loud!”
“C4 is not soft, Block. You should not be surprised by this.”
“Tell me again just why you’ve been keeping C4 in the car?!”
Wayne could feel his mouth twisting into a snarl again. More people. All he wanted was to be left in peace. Why did they seem dead-set on finding him?
With a flash of light from both hands, he slammed open the now-massive doors to the fortress. The lighting from inside spilled out across the clearing, bathing the entire space in a bright glow and causing the two women to stop and look up at him in surprise.
“Why won’t you people just leave me the hell alone?!”
The blonde one that was not Dr. Block squealed in excitement, which was not at all the reaction he’d been going for. “Oh my God, it’s wonderful! And it’s all made out of cars?!”
Block dusted soot off her coat, ignoring her partner. “Dr. Schlumper, we need you to come with us. It’s an important matter and we’d like to do this the easy way-”
“Get out!” Wayne moved to the side, launching a string of electrical commands into the mechanical body just inside the doorway. “Neutro, get rid of them!”
Neutro stirred to activity, stomping out through the doorway towards the intruders at its master’s commands. Right leg step. Left leg step.
The blonde woman clapped happily like an overexcited child as it marched towards her. “Yes! Yes that is exactly the kind of thing I want! Look at it, it’s so big and sciency and perfect!”
Wayne gritted his teeth angrily as bolts flew from his fists. His efforts were meant to inspire fear, not delight. What was wrong with these crazy people?
Right arm reach. Right hand close.
But Block knew what was coming and pulled her colleague back out of the way. “Not now, Tease.” Neutro’s grab missed and Wayne swore under his breath as he directed the robot to turn toward them again. “Dr. Schlumper-”
“Is gone!” He had to raise his voice over the clanking of the metal.
“Dr. Insano, then! You really ought to listen to me!”
“I don’t care!”
Neutro reached again and the two of them managed to skirt around the metal fingers, hurrying back a few feet to where the soil was looser.
“Reflexes could use some upgrades,” Tease observed as Neutro changed its trajectory again. “We’ll have to increase the speed, obviously. And maybe set the center of gravity lower to the ground. It seems awfully high at the moment.” She picked up a small rock and tossed it at the machine’s view plate where its eyes would have been. It didn’t flinch.
“I said get out!”
Neutro made a lunge for them but they ducked between its legs. Torso bend. Left hand close. The metal made a groaning sound as it twisted farther than it had been designed for, but the scientists were already too far away.
Neutro stumbled as its foot slipped on the loose dirt and Wayne hurried to have the electricity keep it from falling. The machine was not going to be any more help in an encounter of this type, that much was clear. He tried to recall it but the motion caused it to wobble even farther. He cursed to himself and released his control over the robot, leaving it precariously balanced and useless.
Angry lightning split the air around him and he swept it toward the intruders. Bolts cracked around them, striking trees, grass, rocks. He didn’t want to seriously hurt anyone if he didn’t have to, but his intruders were leaving him with little choice. If they insisted on playing hard ball, then he would play hard ball.
Dr. Tease let out a delighted cackle of glee as she watched the white hot flashes burst with unrestricted power. “I think the weaponization option is definitely looking promising,” she said to Dr. Block. “How big of a hit did what’s-his-name take? It must not have been that big because it took forever for him to go down. I’m sure we can tweak things to make instant incineration possible.”
Those words got Wayne’s attention and he pulled the lightning away from them just a little, just enough to allow them to answer him. “Who went down?” he demanded warily.
“Oscar!” Block’s single word cut the air like a knife.
A terrible cold washed over Wayne. The lightning around him cracked wildly, lashing out in all directions as his grip on it faltered. “W-what?”
Block took a careful step forward, her face the picture of accusatory grief. “Don’t you realize what you did? How could you have let him get hurt? If I had only found out sooner, maybe he would have had a chance. But you didn’t even say anything, or try to help him, you just sent him away to his death.”
The memory of Oscar picking himself up off the fortress floor mixed horribly in his mind with the memory of his little body flung across the playroom on that long ago night and all of a sudden he couldn’t think, couldn’t process anything as the electricity raged around him.
“I...I didn’t...but he…”
“What, because he didn’t fall over instantly you assumed everything was fine?” Block snapped. “Such a strong shock of electricity to the chest broke down his pulse’s rhythm. His heart couldn’t keep beating and now he’s dead.”
“Oh yeah,” Tease nodded vigorously, catching onto Block’s lead. “Clutching, gasping, the whole nine yards. It was something to watch.”
Wayne felt as though the bottom had dropped out of the world. No, God no, not here, not again, not-
He registered the gun shape in Tease’s hand half a second before it let out a low crack. He stumbled backward and barely managed to throw a metal plate in front of himself before the projectile could connect. A black dart fell to the grass and his jumbled brain struggled to make sense of it. A dart meant for him. Poison? Or a tranquilizer?
“We just want to make sure this doesn’t happen again!” Block insisted, moving cautiously to the side. “Just come with us and nobody else has to get hurt.”
“You’re...you’re filthy liars!” he shouted unsteadily. If they were shooting at him, what reason did he have to believe anything they said? Oscar was not dead, could not be dead. Unless he saw it with his own eyes, Wayne refused to accept that idea. He opened his arms to gather the lightning back to him, but only some of the bolts heeded his commands. Lies or not, their words had shaken him badly.
This fact was not lost on Tease, who grinned widely at this opportunity to experiment. “It was dreadful, you know,” she prodded as she lined up another shot. “Crying and everything.”
“Shut up!”
Wayne swiped for her gun from across the clearing, trying to yank it away in a wave of static, but nothing happened.
“Ha!” She hefted it triumphantly. “Custom 3D printed! One hundred percent polycarbonate! No metal in a thermoplastic. Lucky thing, huh? I can’t say as much for your brother, though. He gasped for ages. You have no idea how much he suffered.”
“Stop it!”
Wayne struggled to get the metal plate to deflect the next two darts. The electricity arced wildly, not listening to him as his emotions reeled. Horror and fear and guilt and rage spun out of all control, and it was all he could do to fling scattered debris from the wall at her. Some debris chunks she dodged. Most missed by yards. No, stay angry! He tried frantically to will himself back into control. Insano is not afraid, Insano is angry!
“You know the most heart-wrenching thing about it, though?” Tease continued. “The whole time, he kept going, ‘Why would my brother do this to me? I don’t understand. I didn’t think he’d ever hurt me like this.’”
“Shut up!”
Wayne grabbed his makeshift shield and hurled it at her, desperate to make her stop talking. She’d jammed an invisible knife into him and each word twisted it deeper and he couldn’t take it-
Tease danced out of the way of his poor aim, throwing a hand across her forehead dramatically. “Such an awful way to go! He was so alone at the end! So broken!”
Electricity was bursting forth unhindered from him, and Wayne could do nothing to stop it. The storm of things he didn’t want to face came crashing down on top of him and spread throughout the whole clearing.
So consumed was he by the storm that he couldn’t see Block off to the side, leveling an identical gun to line up a shot of her own.
*****
Oscar sank down heavily against the nearest tree for the third time in as many minutes, the flashlight dropping forgotten to the ground. The pain in his chest was excruciating and his legs refused to hold him for more than a few seconds at a time. He fought to keep drawing breath but it took so much effort to get his lungs to expand and he was so tired…
Wayne. He struggled to focus on his objective. Wayne needed him. He couldn’t stop, he couldn’t...
The edges of his vision blurred terribly, but he still registered a bright flash of light from somewhere ahead of him, and unintelligible shouts reached his ears as though from far away.
He couldn’t stop. He had to get to his brother.
The strain of getting his legs back under him was unbelievable. The moment he managed any sort of elevation, a dizzy rush washed over him and he clung tight to the tree as his vision went black and a buzzing filled his ears. Hang on, stay conscious, stay…
He came back to himself at a sharp jolt of pain. He wasn’t sure if he had passed out or not, but he didn’t have time to figure it out. He dragged himself from tree to tree, stumbling hard and knowing with a frightening certainty that if he tripped now, there would be no getting back up again.
That was it, Oscar realized hazily. There was no hope for him. He was going to die up here on the ridge.
He couldn’t let the same thing happen to Wayne.
The metal wall loomed up in front of him, a gaping hole blown through it. Oscar managed to make it to the opening, clutching desperately to a piece of rubble as the blackness pressed farther into his vision. The buzzing was returning, filling his head as he struggled to inhale.
The rest of the clearing came to him through a peculiar fog: the illuminated fortress, cutting through the darkness of the night; the towering robot, frozen precariously off-balance and looking like it would topple over at any moment; sharp, angry lightning lashing out everywhere and in the middle of it all, Wayne. Wayne, wild and afraid and doing all he could to fight off a blurry figure in white.
Movement pulled Oscar’s hazy perception to the left. Just on the edge of his vision was Dr. Block, steadying what he suddenly realized was a gun of some kind.
At his brother.
Oscar tried to call out to Wayne but he couldn’t get any air. His chest screamed as his lungs refused to expand any longer, and the excruciating pain ripped all through him. He couldn’t reach his brother in time, couldn’t warn him, couldn’t reach Block to stop her. The only thing close to him was the robot.
No. He could not let her win. He could not let her hurt Wayne.
With the last of his energy, he let go of the rubble, stumbling forward. The blackness grew thicker, swallowing what was left of his sight even as he strained to focus on the glowing figure in the clearing. The buzzing in his head became a deafening roar and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t think…
Oscar’s hands encountered cold metal and the last thing he registered was his knees giving out and his body falling forward as the roar and the blackness swallowed him up entirely.
And he fell, and fell, and didn’t stop.
Authors: lizynob and lorafantastory
Pairings: Oscar/Block as the Anna/Hans dynamic
Characters: Oscar Schlumper, Wayne Schlumper, Dr. Block, Dr. Tease, minor mentions of Party Mania characters
Word Count: 47,002
Warnings: Descriptions of anxiety, some bullying, angst, references to death
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Epilogue, Bonus Content
Test the Limits
Block took a quick glance over at Oscar. He wasn’t looking good at all. He was breathing unevenly and his hand was tightly pressed against his heart. He looked like he was about to pass out at any moment.
She was almost impatient by now, but things were still going smoothly. A little lie about the back tire being blown out combined with Oscar’s thoughts being occupied with the struggle just to keep breathing combined with another little lie about calling for help meant that they were just waiting now.
They weren’t kept waiting for long, however, before bright headlights could be seen, and a loud engine could be heard, along with the sharp squeal of brakes.
Block smiled, popped the trunk, and hopped out of the driver’s seat. Tease met her halfway between the vehicles, practically skipping with excitement. “Took you long enough to get up here. Oscar needs to be taken care of, you know.”
“I know, I know,” Tease waved the statement off as Block opened Oscar’s passenger door. “There’s no need to worry about anything. It’s all one hundred percent under control.”
“I’m grateful,” Oscar managed as the two of them helped him to his feet and began to lead him carefully across the grass. “I wish I could s-say the same about Wayne. It wasn’t his fault, really. If he wasn’t so afraid, he might have had a better handle on the lightning.”
“Ability to negatively charge atoms dependent on emotion…” Dr. Tease giggled, not even bothering to hide her excited glee. “This is going to change our whole strategy! Of course sneaking up is already out of the question, but with all of those capacities together? Think of all the sexy scientific possibilities!”
Block cocked her head curiously at the outburst. “Possibilities that are sexy because they’re scientific or scientific possibilities that could be used for sex?”
“Exactly!” Dr. Tease exclaimed. “This new plan is so much better than our old one. I mean, getting the patents was one thing, but this?” Her mouth curled into a dark grin. “This blows that idea out of the water and then some!”
Oscar blinked in confusion as the two yanked him over to the back of the car and then let go, leaving him to lean heavily on the edge of the open trunk . “What plan?” he asked, not understanding what they were talking about.
“Well to be frank, you and your brother co-own some wonderful patents,” Dr. Block began.
Dr. Tease cut in. “But you’ve never really done anything with them. I mean sure, they’re permitted for use in experiments with strict ethical guidelines, but they could be used for so much more!”
“And when we found out you were both going to be attending the conference, well we had to give something a try, right? I spent a week studying up on the shared spousal property laws in this state and everything. I was originally going to go for the ‘colleague’ to ‘close friend’ to ‘business partner’ to ‘significant other’ road, but you were just so desperate for attention that I could just skip steps one through three with no problem!”
“But this!” Dr. Tease threw out her arms in elation. “This is a scientific breakthrough waiting to happen! Who needs a few patents when you have control over an organic generator of electricity?! Add to that the manipulation of metals and electrons, and there’s no limit to the fields we could revolutionize!”
“Physics!”
“Genetics!”
“Thermodynamics!”
“We could weaponize it!” Dr. Tease looked about to melt into a puddle of joy.
Weaponize it? Weaponize it?!! Oscar couldn’t believe what he was hearing. That wasn’t an ‘it’, that was his brother!
“A-Are you two insane?!” he yelled as best he could, nearly quivering with rage and horror. “You’re talking about a person. A person!! He’s not an experiment you can just use! How could you even think something like that?! I won’t let you-” A burst of pain exploded in his chest and the world spun for a moment.
“Oscar, I know you’re mad, but this really isn’t the time to get your heart rate up,” Dr. Block said calmly. “You got hit by lightning. You had, oh, even at a conservative estimate probably around 250 milliamps go through you earlier. You really ought to sit down.”
Her hand slammed into his shoulder hard, shoving him down and backwards into the trunk of the car. His head smacked against the back seat and by the time he could even make a sound, his legs had been lifted over the rear bumper and stuffed in with him. “No!” was all he managed to get out before the trunk lid slammed, leaving him in darkness. He gave a few feeble shoves at the lid before the pain in his chest overwhelmed him and he had to curl up into a ball in an effort to endure it.
Dr. Tease was cackling on the other side of the metal. “Oh my god, I can’t believe you actually said that! That was amazing!”
“I saw the opportunity and I just couldn’t pass it up!” Dr. Block’s voice replied jovially as two sets of footsteps started away from the car. “You know, this friend-of-a-friend Nella had these lessons on being evil and you think ‘when am I ever going to need that?’ but then a situation just presents itself and it’s too good…”
The words faded away, leaving Oscar in darkness and in shock and desperately trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. He didn’t want to believe that it was real, but he heard the other car engine rev up again and slowly become faint. They were gone. They had left him there.
All at once, full realization hit him. Everything she’d said since he’d met her was a lie. She hadn’t enjoyed his company or thought he was brilliant, or been any of the refreshing things he’d thought she was. It had all been a ruse to get to his and Wayne’s shared intellectual property, and he’d fallen straight into it without a second thought. And now Wayne was in even more danger. And he was…
Oscar bit down hard on the sleeve of his coat, feeling like stone fingers were squeezing at his heart. He was stuck in a car trunk and he had to escape, had to get to Wayne.
He uncurled his limbs as much as he could in the cramped space, hitting something that felt like a book with his leg and something else with an arm. Blindly, he began feeling around, pretty sure there supposed to be a flashlight somewhere. He was almost certain he could remember sticking one in the trunk at some point. He felt around for a while and felt a surge of triumph when his fingers came in contact with a familiar-shaped item. He clicked the button with his thumb and a bright white beam illuminated the cramped space.
Things didn’t seem quite so bad once he could see again. Oscar shifted around uncomfortably, shoving some spare beakers and a test tube rack out of his way while he got a better look at the trunk lock.
For the first time in his life, Oscar wished he specialized in engineering and not science because as much as he fumbled around with trying to undo the latch, it would not budge. He scoured the floor for anything that might work in trying to pry it open, hoping in vain to magically find a screwdriver, wrench, or tire iron. Something to give him leverage. But all he had was his two hands, and they were proving to be relatively useless.
The minor relief that had blossomed when he’d first flicked on the flashlight was waning fast as he continued to try to pop the trunk open from the inside. His movements grew more and more frantic as the latch remained tight no matter what he did, and panic began to set in. Why couldn’t he figure it out? What was he missing? Why wasn’t he smart enough?
He wasn’t sharp enough to catch onto anything apparently. Not his brother, not Dr. Block, and not even a simple locking mechanism. He wanted to scream or hit something in frustration, but all he did instead was curl back up as another wave of tight pressure flooded his chest.
A small trickle of tears began to leak from the corners of his eyes and the more he tried to will them to stop, the more the flow of tears increased. What good was he? After all his efforts to get Wayne to come back home, all he’d succeeded in was making everything worse. He was a horrible, useless brother. Wayne had spent his whole life trying to protect him, something he had only begun to understand that very day; and the one time it was his job to protect Wayne in return, he’d failed his brother in every way possible.
Oscar hoped that Wayne would be able to use his powers to save himself because it didn’t look like he was going anywhere.
The thought sent a cold chill through him and made his strained heartbeat pound even more excruciatingly. He couldn’t help but despairingly think that maybe his fate was for the best given how useless he had been to Wayne anyway. What good did he think he could accomplish even if he did escape? Another thought flickered through his mind and Oscar decided instead that it truly would have been for the best if he’d never been born at all. Wayne wouldn’t have had to suffer so much if he didn’t have a younger brother to constantly have to protect from himself. Wayne could have had his freedom, and there would be no Oscar to ruin his life and be fooled by a superficial smile and false flattery. If it hadn’t been for him…
Even though there was no one to hear, Oscar nevertheless buried his face into his sleeve to try to muffle the sounds escaping him. Tears that he was powerless to stop continued to pour down his cheeks, and his breath hitched with every sob that unwillingly tore from his throat. He had never felt so alone, so miserable, so afraid; so lonely and hopeless and ashamed, and utterly, utterly defeated.
He cried for himself, for Wayne, for every wrong turn that had happened that night, and for all the others throughout the years. He cried in an uncontrollable fit until he couldn’t cry anymore and simply laid in a sniffling ball. He felt tired and drained of any will to move. The most he managed was to rest his head somewhat more comfortably against his arm, letting his fingers brush against the blonde patch in his hair. He was ready to close his eyes and simply surrender to the inevitable when something unexpectedly colorful entered his vision.
The flashlight Oscar had forgotten about was still shining and the beam was hitting the beakers he had shoved over, refracting through the panes of glass and creating a rainbow on the trunk wall.
It was a relatively small rainbow, and the colors were somewhat soft and hazily blended into one another. It wasn’t as sharp as the display that could be garnered from a proper triangular prism.
He still remembered that day clearly. How excited he had been when he found the prism at the mall in one of the novelty shops, and how happy he been that his brother had finally left his room to play with him. They had spent the entire rest of the day together, learning everything they could about light, and more than anything Oscar remembered having the sense of togetherness. The feeling that he and Wayne could do anything because they were brothers.
It was almost as if he’d been struck all over again and had there been any possible way Oscar could have been sitting up, he would have fallen right over.
What was he doing? How could he be sniveling and moping while his brother was in danger? He didn’t have time to feel sorry for himself and Wayne didn’t either! No matter what had happened between them, they were still brothers and he couldn’t just give up.
He hastily wiped his face as best he could as a renewed sense of determination welled up. He grabbed the flashlight and the rainbow vanished as he set the beam back on the trunk lock.
Oscar wracked his brain as he inspected it once more. There had to be some way to open the blasted thing. He fiddled with it again but still didn’t see any clear way to get it open without some sort of tool he did not have. He wished he had pocketed the keys instead of leaving them in the front of the car. Escaping could have been a simple push of a button.
He took in a breath as an idea came to mind. Even if he couldn’t undo the lock by hand, there had to be some way to trip it. The keys did it wirelessly, but there had to be wires connecting the door to the trunk unlatch button in the front. He only had to find them.
Moving around was no easy task and there wasn’t any great way to hold the flashlight and start pulling back the false carpeting at the same time, but he managed the best he could. After the challenge of getting into the inner section of the trunk, he succeeded in spotting a series of thick wires that ran along the length of the car. One by one he began tugging, but nothing happened.
Once again, Oscar wondered what trick he was missing, but he didn’t waste any time berating himself for it. His resolve was undeterred and he merely tried again, getting the best grip he could and tugging each wire with more force. First in one direction and then the other. And after a few more minutes of trial-and-error, there was a loud pop.
Oscar went still for second, almost unable to believe his ears, but when he pressed against the trunk lid, it easily sprang up and fresh air washed over him.
He let out a very thin and shaky laugh of relief and broke into a brief smile before grimacing as another constricting pain tightened in his chest. He didn’t wait for it to pass, though. He gripped the flashlight harder, clenched his jaw, and climbed out. There wasn’t a second to spare. He was on a mission and he was already behind.
His mind set, Oscar began walking straight up the ravine. His breath was already short and began to turn ragged at even the slightest bit of elevation, but Oscar unwaveringly kept putting one foot in front of the other.
The night wasn’t over yet.
*****
Wayne stood atop a column of metal just inside the door to his fortress, making adjustments to his hulking robot. He’d had to completely redesign the entranceway to get the machine inside, and even so it took up most of the space in the front hall. He guessed it to be about twenty five feet high, and standing nose-to-nose with it was a bit intimidating even if he was the one who’d built it.
Wayne ran a brightly-sparking hand over the robot’s chest to smooth down the compressed pieces and get it to look vaguely symmetrical. It was quite an achievement, he had to admit, even if it had been created out of necessity more than anything.
A series of license plates had all jumbled together across the machine’s chest, their letters and numbers spelling out nonsense gibberish. He shifted the plates around a bit until it became something he could pronounce. “Neutro.” He nodded to himself, satisfied. “That does seem like a good name for you, doesn’t it?” The machine, being dead metal, said nothing. Wayne took a step back and glanced over his work. “Not much of a conversation partner, but you should be solid enough.”
A sudden bang rang through the air and he spun quickly towards the sound. It was outside but not too far off. People? He had the metal column lower him back to the ground and he hurried over to one of the tinted limousine windows, reaching out with the electricity to direct one of the headlights outside to move around the space in front of his fortress.
Smoke was billowing from the barrier wall, a section of which had been blown to pieces. Two figures in white lab coats were climbing in over the wreckage, their voices carrying across the empty space and bouncing off the hundreds of metal surfaces.
“I told you it would work!”
“You didn’t tell me it would be so loud!”
“C4 is not soft, Block. You should not be surprised by this.”
“Tell me again just why you’ve been keeping C4 in the car?!”
Wayne could feel his mouth twisting into a snarl again. More people. All he wanted was to be left in peace. Why did they seem dead-set on finding him?
With a flash of light from both hands, he slammed open the now-massive doors to the fortress. The lighting from inside spilled out across the clearing, bathing the entire space in a bright glow and causing the two women to stop and look up at him in surprise.
“Why won’t you people just leave me the hell alone?!”
The blonde one that was not Dr. Block squealed in excitement, which was not at all the reaction he’d been going for. “Oh my God, it’s wonderful! And it’s all made out of cars?!”
Block dusted soot off her coat, ignoring her partner. “Dr. Schlumper, we need you to come with us. It’s an important matter and we’d like to do this the easy way-”
“Get out!” Wayne moved to the side, launching a string of electrical commands into the mechanical body just inside the doorway. “Neutro, get rid of them!”
Neutro stirred to activity, stomping out through the doorway towards the intruders at its master’s commands. Right leg step. Left leg step.
The blonde woman clapped happily like an overexcited child as it marched towards her. “Yes! Yes that is exactly the kind of thing I want! Look at it, it’s so big and sciency and perfect!”
Wayne gritted his teeth angrily as bolts flew from his fists. His efforts were meant to inspire fear, not delight. What was wrong with these crazy people?
Right arm reach. Right hand close.
But Block knew what was coming and pulled her colleague back out of the way. “Not now, Tease.” Neutro’s grab missed and Wayne swore under his breath as he directed the robot to turn toward them again. “Dr. Schlumper-”
“Is gone!” He had to raise his voice over the clanking of the metal.
“Dr. Insano, then! You really ought to listen to me!”
“I don’t care!”
Neutro reached again and the two of them managed to skirt around the metal fingers, hurrying back a few feet to where the soil was looser.
“Reflexes could use some upgrades,” Tease observed as Neutro changed its trajectory again. “We’ll have to increase the speed, obviously. And maybe set the center of gravity lower to the ground. It seems awfully high at the moment.” She picked up a small rock and tossed it at the machine’s view plate where its eyes would have been. It didn’t flinch.
“I said get out!”
Neutro made a lunge for them but they ducked between its legs. Torso bend. Left hand close. The metal made a groaning sound as it twisted farther than it had been designed for, but the scientists were already too far away.
Neutro stumbled as its foot slipped on the loose dirt and Wayne hurried to have the electricity keep it from falling. The machine was not going to be any more help in an encounter of this type, that much was clear. He tried to recall it but the motion caused it to wobble even farther. He cursed to himself and released his control over the robot, leaving it precariously balanced and useless.
Angry lightning split the air around him and he swept it toward the intruders. Bolts cracked around them, striking trees, grass, rocks. He didn’t want to seriously hurt anyone if he didn’t have to, but his intruders were leaving him with little choice. If they insisted on playing hard ball, then he would play hard ball.
Dr. Tease let out a delighted cackle of glee as she watched the white hot flashes burst with unrestricted power. “I think the weaponization option is definitely looking promising,” she said to Dr. Block. “How big of a hit did what’s-his-name take? It must not have been that big because it took forever for him to go down. I’m sure we can tweak things to make instant incineration possible.”
Those words got Wayne’s attention and he pulled the lightning away from them just a little, just enough to allow them to answer him. “Who went down?” he demanded warily.
“Oscar!” Block’s single word cut the air like a knife.
A terrible cold washed over Wayne. The lightning around him cracked wildly, lashing out in all directions as his grip on it faltered. “W-what?”
Block took a careful step forward, her face the picture of accusatory grief. “Don’t you realize what you did? How could you have let him get hurt? If I had only found out sooner, maybe he would have had a chance. But you didn’t even say anything, or try to help him, you just sent him away to his death.”
The memory of Oscar picking himself up off the fortress floor mixed horribly in his mind with the memory of his little body flung across the playroom on that long ago night and all of a sudden he couldn’t think, couldn’t process anything as the electricity raged around him.
“I...I didn’t...but he…”
“What, because he didn’t fall over instantly you assumed everything was fine?” Block snapped. “Such a strong shock of electricity to the chest broke down his pulse’s rhythm. His heart couldn’t keep beating and now he’s dead.”
“Oh yeah,” Tease nodded vigorously, catching onto Block’s lead. “Clutching, gasping, the whole nine yards. It was something to watch.”
Wayne felt as though the bottom had dropped out of the world. No, God no, not here, not again, not-
He registered the gun shape in Tease’s hand half a second before it let out a low crack. He stumbled backward and barely managed to throw a metal plate in front of himself before the projectile could connect. A black dart fell to the grass and his jumbled brain struggled to make sense of it. A dart meant for him. Poison? Or a tranquilizer?
“We just want to make sure this doesn’t happen again!” Block insisted, moving cautiously to the side. “Just come with us and nobody else has to get hurt.”
“You’re...you’re filthy liars!” he shouted unsteadily. If they were shooting at him, what reason did he have to believe anything they said? Oscar was not dead, could not be dead. Unless he saw it with his own eyes, Wayne refused to accept that idea. He opened his arms to gather the lightning back to him, but only some of the bolts heeded his commands. Lies or not, their words had shaken him badly.
This fact was not lost on Tease, who grinned widely at this opportunity to experiment. “It was dreadful, you know,” she prodded as she lined up another shot. “Crying and everything.”
“Shut up!”
Wayne swiped for her gun from across the clearing, trying to yank it away in a wave of static, but nothing happened.
“Ha!” She hefted it triumphantly. “Custom 3D printed! One hundred percent polycarbonate! No metal in a thermoplastic. Lucky thing, huh? I can’t say as much for your brother, though. He gasped for ages. You have no idea how much he suffered.”
“Stop it!”
Wayne struggled to get the metal plate to deflect the next two darts. The electricity arced wildly, not listening to him as his emotions reeled. Horror and fear and guilt and rage spun out of all control, and it was all he could do to fling scattered debris from the wall at her. Some debris chunks she dodged. Most missed by yards. No, stay angry! He tried frantically to will himself back into control. Insano is not afraid, Insano is angry!
“You know the most heart-wrenching thing about it, though?” Tease continued. “The whole time, he kept going, ‘Why would my brother do this to me? I don’t understand. I didn’t think he’d ever hurt me like this.’”
“Shut up!”
Wayne grabbed his makeshift shield and hurled it at her, desperate to make her stop talking. She’d jammed an invisible knife into him and each word twisted it deeper and he couldn’t take it-
Tease danced out of the way of his poor aim, throwing a hand across her forehead dramatically. “Such an awful way to go! He was so alone at the end! So broken!”
Electricity was bursting forth unhindered from him, and Wayne could do nothing to stop it. The storm of things he didn’t want to face came crashing down on top of him and spread throughout the whole clearing.
So consumed was he by the storm that he couldn’t see Block off to the side, leveling an identical gun to line up a shot of her own.
*****
Oscar sank down heavily against the nearest tree for the third time in as many minutes, the flashlight dropping forgotten to the ground. The pain in his chest was excruciating and his legs refused to hold him for more than a few seconds at a time. He fought to keep drawing breath but it took so much effort to get his lungs to expand and he was so tired…
Wayne. He struggled to focus on his objective. Wayne needed him. He couldn’t stop, he couldn’t...
The edges of his vision blurred terribly, but he still registered a bright flash of light from somewhere ahead of him, and unintelligible shouts reached his ears as though from far away.
He couldn’t stop. He had to get to his brother.
The strain of getting his legs back under him was unbelievable. The moment he managed any sort of elevation, a dizzy rush washed over him and he clung tight to the tree as his vision went black and a buzzing filled his ears. Hang on, stay conscious, stay…
He came back to himself at a sharp jolt of pain. He wasn’t sure if he had passed out or not, but he didn’t have time to figure it out. He dragged himself from tree to tree, stumbling hard and knowing with a frightening certainty that if he tripped now, there would be no getting back up again.
That was it, Oscar realized hazily. There was no hope for him. He was going to die up here on the ridge.
He couldn’t let the same thing happen to Wayne.
The metal wall loomed up in front of him, a gaping hole blown through it. Oscar managed to make it to the opening, clutching desperately to a piece of rubble as the blackness pressed farther into his vision. The buzzing was returning, filling his head as he struggled to inhale.
The rest of the clearing came to him through a peculiar fog: the illuminated fortress, cutting through the darkness of the night; the towering robot, frozen precariously off-balance and looking like it would topple over at any moment; sharp, angry lightning lashing out everywhere and in the middle of it all, Wayne. Wayne, wild and afraid and doing all he could to fight off a blurry figure in white.
Movement pulled Oscar’s hazy perception to the left. Just on the edge of his vision was Dr. Block, steadying what he suddenly realized was a gun of some kind.
At his brother.
Oscar tried to call out to Wayne but he couldn’t get any air. His chest screamed as his lungs refused to expand any longer, and the excruciating pain ripped all through him. He couldn’t reach his brother in time, couldn’t warn him, couldn’t reach Block to stop her. The only thing close to him was the robot.
No. He could not let her win. He could not let her hurt Wayne.
With the last of his energy, he let go of the rubble, stumbling forward. The blackness grew thicker, swallowing what was left of his sight even as he strained to focus on the glowing figure in the clearing. The buzzing in his head became a deafening roar and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t think…
Oscar’s hands encountered cold metal and the last thing he registered was his knees giving out and his body falling forward as the roar and the blackness swallowed him up entirely.
And he fell, and fell, and didn’t stop.