The hallway seemed really long and had bedrooms, a bathroom, and several closets splitting in several directions. Cybernet had drastically changed the house. The rooms had been remade into laboratories and a couple of munitions hangars. At the end of the hallway was, what looked like, a giant engine.
“How did Harris do all this so quickly?” Geo-Whiz asked as he and Superkitten ran down the hall, trying to find Cybernet.
“I am a master of technology. I can mold this place, and any place, into whatever I choose,” Cybernet said as a model of his face suddenly appeared in the wall.
“So I guess you’re kind of master of your domain,” Geo-Whiz smiled at the face. Superkitten gave Geo-Whiz a confused look. He looked at her and noticed the look. “What? I can’t make quip like superheroes in comic books?”
A small beam came out of the wall, where the face-in-the-wall’s cyborg eye was, and struck Geo-Whiz in the abdomen causing him to scream and fall to the floor. “Insolence. I should just kill you and be done with you both and continue on with my plan.”
“Then do it,” Superkitten slammed her fist into the face. The wall dented and the face went away. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. It’s just a little burn,” Geo-Whiz looked at the burn mark on his skin. His uniform was burned and tattered where the laser hit. “But now I want to tear this place apart.” Geo-Whiz began using his power to rip up the floor, pulling the ground from underneath and destroying the metal walls and floors.
“Save your energy for Cyber--Harris,” Superkitten said. “Let’s keep going.”
The two continued down the hall toward the engine room of the house. The door opened and Cybernet stood at a control panel among all the metal and wires. “You think you can stop me?” he said and wires and piping began wrapping itself around Geo-Whiz and Superkitten. The floors and walls began to move and soon they were trapped within them.
Geo-Whiz tried to stop panicking so he could focus his powers on the dirt underneath the metal floors. He calmed down just enough and focused his power to the ground below, quaking the dirt up and ripping out the floor and wall. Both were soon free. Superkitten noticed that Cybernet looked visibly concerned.
“Looks like I was wrong, Geo. Tear this place apart. I’ll get Harris,” Superkitten said and launched herself into the room where Cybernet was. Geo-Whiz began using the earth to rip apart the metallic parts of the house. A door suddenly came down, blocking Cybernet and Superkitten from Geo-Whiz and the others.
“This door will keep your team members out while we have some alone time, Alix,” Cybernet said.
“How do you know my name?”
“I am downloading everyone’s information. Soon I will have all the vast knowledge of this pathetic planet and then I will make it pay for what it made me,” Cybernet said.
“What it made you? You volunteered yourself for the military experiment. You decided to murder your wife and children when she became scared of you and what you became,” Superkitten argued.
“This is all your fault. No one else’s.”
“Little girl, you know nothing of what happened. You’re just a scared little girl who feels guilty about her mother, her friend, the kid whose back she broke, and her dead cop father,” Cybernet snarled.
“None of it will matter soon.”
“What are you talking about?”
“A pandemic of epic proportions,” Cybernet said. “A simple virus. Billions will be killed. It will be a new Black Death that the world will never recover from.”
“No. Hundreds of thousands have already died because of you and it stops now,” Superkitten threw herself at Cybernet, striking him across the metallic jaw.
“Lucky hit. It won’t happen again,” Cybernet said and grabbed one of the giant pipes behind him. “Creating this virus required a lot of heat. These pipes carry air that reaches hundreds of degrees. I will burn you until you are nothing but bleached bones.” He tore the pipe from the wall and aimed it at Superkitten. The air began blasting her.
She could feel the heat but the pain wasn’t there. She originally thought that maybe the direct hit had already destroyed her nerves but then realized that she was immune to it. Slowly, she began taking steps toward Cybernet. Now she was starting to feel pain as she got closer but within seconds, the air was gone.
Cybernet had used it all and in the process destroyed the lab and damaged his cybernetic body. “How? How are you still standing?”
“I don’t know but now it’s my turn,” Superkitten hit Cybernet full force with her fist. His face splintered and one of his jaw hinges broke. Another punch, into his abdomen noticeably damaged interior mechanisms. “Not as strong as you thought,” she said and laid into him again. Another punch broke his left eye, the one that was robotic, and Superkitten rammed her left arm through his chest and lifted him up over her head.
“How can a little girl defeat me?” he shrieked.
“Maybe I’m not so little,” she said.
“No, it’s not over. I’ll survive--somehow.”
By now, Superkitten’s other teammates were able to get through the door. They saw Cybernet, a weak husk hanging off of Superkitten’s arm, and stopped in their tracks. “If you do, we’ll still be here. I’ll still be here.” Her arm shifted just a bit and Cybernet went quiet and limp. “He’s too damaged so his body shut down. We’ll be able to find a place to keep this thing, right?”
“I’m sure Dmitri will come up with something,” Agent Spider said.
“Someone help me with this thing. Let’s get out of here,” America said as he began to pick up Cybernet.
Alix was sitting in her room, reading, when Brandon came in. “So what happened in there? Fighting Cybernet? I read the report and it was strange.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know I could withstand that kind of heat. What skin was exposed is a little red--kind of like a wind burn. I thought that maybe it was just new powers or something but now I’m thinking it had to do with how angry I was.”
“Maybe. We should try to test that some time,” Brandon said. He looked down at her arm and saw a bandage around her wrist. “What happened there?”
“I was testing those powers to see if a knife could cut me. The answer was yes,” she smiled.
“Across your wrist?” Brandon was concerned.
“It’s nothing like that,” she reassured. “I just chose there because it was easily accessible, would hurt, and possibly bleed. No other connotation needed.”
“Well, that’s good but if you ever need anything, let me know,” Brandon offered and got up to leave. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Alix.”
“See you, Brandon,” she smiled at him. After he left, she got up, took off her clothes and turned off the light. She got into bed and closed her eyes.
