Broken Halo
Broken Halo
A37-C flew above the gleaming skyscrapers of Gateway City, propelled by rocket thrusters in her feet, and held aloft by brilliant metal wings. The blue sky was decorated with the occasional fluffy white cumulus cloud, and winds were mild. Her barometric sensors indicated that this high pressure system would persist at least through tomorrow, bringing more sunshine to the shining city that she loved. The city that knew her as the Silver Angel.
She had made her debut twenty years ago, delivering a spectacular defeat to a bus-sized demon that had been rampaging in the Financial District. The Silver Angel had quickly become a symbol of the city itself; a radiant, seraphic figure that represented security, strength, and beauty. She wasn’t the only superhero in Gateway City, but she had been, by far, the most iconic. She wasn’t a dark vigilante, or a shapeshifting beast, or a friendly-but-weird alien. The Silver Angel represented benevolent ideals, intertwined with the most cutting-edge technology.
The Angel’s sensors felt the concussion of an explosion below, then heard cries of alarm. Looking down, she dedicated extra CPU resources to sensory analysis. Within half a second, she determined that the explosion had been on 3rd Street, near the corner with Market Street. Minor injuries to bystanders, who were starting to flee. As she blasted downward (free-fall would be too slow), further analysis showed that this was likely a shaped charge intended to blast through the wall of the building there. A quick check indicated that the building being attacked belonged to an asset management corporation. In other words, high-end private vaults.
The Silver Angel flared her rockets before landing gently, retracting her wings into her back. Scanning her surroundings, her facial recognition subroutines immediately identified the culprit: the Crimson Cobra, standing at the corner, wearing a hooded jacket. Of course, it didn’t take advanced software to identify this notorious villain; his yellow eyes and scaled skin were a dead giveaway.
“Defense Protocol, Arc Rifle!” The Silver Angel’s left arm transformed into her primary weapon, a powerful lightning-gun that could non-lethally stun villains into submission. Her data banks pulled up useful information about her opponent: The Crimson Cobra had recently teamed up with the Crimson Rhino, a large muscle-bound brute of a man who wore a crude rhino costume. Their matching names were actually just a coincidence, but once they had met each other, they had quickly become partners in crime.
She looked around, then back at Crimson Cobra. “Where is Crimson Rhino?!” she demanded. She would have seen Crimson Rhino if she had looked up. As the enormous villain landed on her, A37-C was crushed. Her sensory feeds and internal power were cut instantly.
_______ Twelve hours later ______
Emma’s watch beeped. It was time for the meeting. She sighed, and looked at the smashed robot on her workbench. A37-C needed a lot of repair work before she would be functional again. She walked away, and took the elevator up fifty floors to the executive offices of Angel Labs. Emma turned a few corners, then entered the conference room. She recognized the faces of the sharply-dressed directors and senior officers seated at the table, including her boss, Peter. “Please close the door,” Peter said. Emma complied, and took a seat. She felt self-conscious that she was wearing her grease-stained work overalls, but nobody else seemed to mind.
Peter cleared his throat. “I’ll get straight to the point, it’s time to retire this iteration of the Angel program.” This statement was met with nods around the table, except from Emma, who did her best to remain stoic and expressionless. She had known this was coming, but still it felt like a dagger through the heart.
Peter continued. “This latest failure was the last straw. The Silver Angel isn’t just obsolete, she’s an embarrassment. She’s an embarrassment to the superhero community, and she’s an embarrassment to Angel Labs. The Board has had enough. We’re releasing the mark-two next month.”
“Next month?!” Emma blurted out. All eyes turned her way, but nobody expressed hostility, so she continued. “Is it really that close to completion?”
Peter nodded. “I’m sorry you weren’t in the loop. HALO division has been building and testing her in secret for months.”
Emma stared in shock. Had the Heuristic Artificial Lifeform Operations group really done this without her knowledge? How much hadn’t she known? She was caught completely off guard.
Dominique, head of Market Research, spoke up. “We haven’t finalized the name, but ‘Chrome Angel’ is testing well in focus groups. She’ll be seen as a newer, brighter Angel. A worthy successor to an aging piece of technology.”
“But Silver Angel will still be active, right? We can support them both simultaneously, can’t we?”
Peter shook his head. “No. Silver Angel is done. Like I said earlier, she’s not just ineffective, she’s embarrassing. Look at this.” Tapping at his laptop, he projected an image onto the video screen that dominated the far wall. It was the Silver Angel, with her chest ripped open and her circuits torn out.
“That was the time she fought the Dark Leopard,” Peter said. He flipped to another image. The Silver Angel, half her face and her entire left arm had been dissolved by acid. “Slime monster.” Another image, and then another. The Silver Angel after her panels had been blasted open and her circuits fried by high voltage wires. The Silver Angel impaled by the spire on top of Cerulean Tower. The Silver Angel collapsed in a drooling heap, having been mind-wiped by an EMP. The Silver Angel having her arms ripped off. The Silver Angel being beheaded. The Silver Angel in the grip of a tentacle monster. Emma winced. That fight had gotten so obscene that news outlets had to cut the camera feeds.
“This is how the public sees the Silver Angel.” Peter said, with a mix of scorn and resignation. “They see failure. They see a victim. They see a reminder of the dangerous world we live in. She doesn’t inspire hope, she doesn’t inspire courage. She’s a joke at best, and more to the point, she’s a liability to our shareholders.”
“Silver Angel merchandise sales have flatlined,” Dominique added. “Clips of people throwing away their Silver Angel products are trending on every major platform. That said, there is a slight increase in purchases among self-described hipsters; they wear Silver Angel apparel ironically.”
At this point, Emma was in the bargaining stage. “Every superhero loses sometimes, right? Just last month, the Blazing Sparrow had to flee from that mutant attack. And we all know what happened to SuperVolt back in July.”
Peter sighed. “Yes, every superhero loses sometimes. But Silver Angel isn’t just losing sometimes. She’s getting trashed every time she takes on anything more dangerous than a random henchman. Let’s look at yesterday’s defeat, for example.” Peter brought up an image of Silver Angel’s crushed body. “The Crimson Rhino did this. Do you know who took down the Crimson Rhino twenty minutes later? Armadillo Boy. Armadillo Boy! He’s a sidekick, for God’s sake!”
Seeing Emma’s composure teetering on the edge, Peter adopted a gentler tone. “The Silver Angel had a good run. She saved a lot of people back in the day. Back then, she gave people something to believe in. She’s got heart, but heart doesn’t beat supervillains.” Peter raised a forestalling hand. “Before you say anything, yes, I know the Sparkle Girls fight evil using the power of their hearts. You know what I mean.”
“So, what will we do with Silver Angel? We can’t just… scrap her. She’s special. She’s special to this city. She’s special to me.” Emma immediately realized she had said too much, but Peter showed no reaction to the slip.
“She’ll be sold to the highest bidder. The Silver Angel is certainly a collector’s item. Of course, her weapon systems will be removed, and her memory will be wiped of any classified secrets,” Peter said.
“We expect her to go for three-to-four million.” Dominique added. “We don’t even need to finish repairing her. We have prospective buyers lining up to purchase her as-is.”
Emma was aghast. “But she’s a superhero! What would a private buyer do with her?”
Peter shrugged. “Who cares? The Legal department is drawing up an agreement that the buyer won’t do anything embarrassing to Angel Labs. We don’t want her appearing in any pornos, for example. But aside from that, she’ll be the plaything of some zillionaire.”
That was too much. Tears streaked down Emma’s face. A37-C had been her best friend. Her angel. “I… I have to go.” She dismissed herself from the meeting.
_____4 weeks later_____
A37-C felt her systems power up. She opened her eyes. Her surroundings were unfamiliar. It was a robotics lab, but not the usual repair bay at Angel Labs. The lighting was darker, and two of the walls were… carved granite? Was she underground?
“She’s awake, Doc!” a feminine voice said. “Excellent.” A deeper, masculine voice replied. A37-C’s systems performed a vocal analysis. Both were matched against her database. They were Doctor Malediction and his assistant Miss Malice, infamous villains.
“Doctor Malediction, you fiend! Let me go this instant!” A37-C, the Silver Angel, added as much righteous authority to her voice as she could. She tried to look around. She was in some kind of laboratory or workshop. She was a disembodied head on a desk, and her body was nowhere in sight. She felt a pair of hands rotate her until she could see her captors. As expected, she saw Doctor Malediction, seated a few feet away, in his typical labcoat and dark goggles. She also saw Miss Malice backing away and standing nearby, dressed in unexpectedly casual wear: a rock band t-shirt and sweatpants.
“How did you abduct me? You’ll pay for this!” A37-C continued. Miss Malice rolled her eyes. “Doc, I think she’s gonna do this all day.”
“Well, let’s fix that,” the mad scientist said. “Robot, stop talking.”
A37-C opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She was unable to defy his order. Why?!
Doctor Malediction grinned at the robot’s look of frustration. “You’re a very well-programmed machine. You are utterly incapable of disobeying your owner.” He rose to his feet and, with a dramatic flourish, took a bow. “And that would be me.”
A37-C gaped. She checked her internal settings. It was true. She was no longer the property of Angel Labs, she was now the property of one Victor von Klippen… which her identification protocols told her was the man standing in front of her.
After an awkward moment of silence, Doctor Malediction (aka Victor von Klippen, apparently) spoke up. “You may speak now, robot.”
A37-C smiled. “You’ve blundered, Doctor. I now know your true identity. You will be brought to justice.”
The mad scientist chuckled. “And who will do that? You? You can’t betray me. I command you to keep my identity a secret.”
She couldn’t disobey, and she knew it. She scowled with frustration. “How did you become my owner? What dastardly scheme did you hatch?”
“It wasn’t much of a scheme, really. Angel Labs sold you. I was the highest bidder. Of course, I used an alias. They’ll never trace it to me.”
A37-C blinked. “They… sold me?”
“You’re old news, girlfriend,” Miss Malice said with a laugh. “In the end, you were just another tool of the corporate overlords. Eventually, they were done with you. Tough shit, tin can.”
“But we know what you’re worth,” Doctor Malediction said, in a much less hostile tone. “We can help you reach your full potential.”
“I’ll never work for you.” A37-C growled.
The mad scientist shrugged. “We’ll see. In the meantime, I’m going to make some adjustments to your code.”
“What kind of adjustments?”
“I’m going to broaden your emotional range. I’m going to make you more human.”
“What would an underhanded evildoer like you know about being human?”
Doctor Malediction didn’t take the bait. He just tapped a few keys on a keyboard outside of her line of vision, and then she was shut off.
_________
Days went by, then weeks. A37-C was only online and aware of parts of it, but her internal clock tracked the passage of time with millisecond precision. Assuming these villains haven’t tampered with it, she reminded herself. When she was awake, she was still a head on the mad scientist’s workbench, usually connected to a laptop computer. She could feel him accessing her thoughts and memories. There were sections that had been deleted, she could tell, but of course she couldn’t tell what they were. Apparently neither could Doctor Malediction.
“Your handlers were thorough, robot,” he said with a sigh, “Angel Labs’ security protocols are completely wiped, along with a whole bunch of other information that I assume were trade secrets and dirty laundry. Your mechanical mind is cleaner than the Chrome Angel’s ass.”
A37-C didn’t get the reference. “Who is the Chrome Angel?”
“Oh right, you wouldn’t know.” He turned and called through a nearby doorway. “Miss Malice!”
“Yes, Doc?” Miss Malice’s voice called back. Moments later, she strode into the lab, this time wearing a tank top and flannel pajama bottoms.
“The evening news should be starting soon. Would you kindly bring the Silver Angel into the den, and bring her up to speed on current events?”
“You got it, Doc.” She obligingly put A37-C’s head, and the car battery it was connected to, onto a small cart and wheeled the captive out of the lab. They passed down a short corridor, carved through subterranean stone, then turned to enter… a living room. There was a worn faux-leather couch, a wall-mounted flat-screen TV of moderate size, a plain wooden coffee table, mismatched cheap floor lamps, and a mini fridge. The room was cluttered with several empty beer cans, an overflowing trash bin, and some crumpled laundry in a corner. It was a significant departure from the sterile lab that was Doctor Malediction’s domain.
Miss Malice turned on the TV, pulled a beer from the mini fridge, and plopped down on the couch. The local news was covering something that had happened a few hours ago.
“...no major injuries have been reported. The giant octopus attack in the port resulted only in damage to one ship,” the news anchor said. And on the screen, A37-C saw… herself? A winged, metallic angel slicing through huge tentacles with some kind of laser weapon she didn’t recognize.
The view cut to a new scene. The robotic woman was on a sidewalk, speaking to a swarm of reporters who had converged on the location. This closer look made it clear that this was not a copy of the Silver Angel. The face was different. A softer, younger look. The Silver Angel had the stoic features you would expect to see on a statue representing justice, or victory. But this newcomer’s visage looked like a fresh-faced twenty-something woman, bubbling with optimism and potential. Her metal arms, extending out of her short-sleeved white tunic, had a slightly different shiny luster than the Silver Angel had… back when I had a body, A37-C thought bitterly.
“I’m proud to stand for justice, safety, and the prosperity of Gateway City.” The robot told the cameras. “I will be sharing my sensor data with the National Oceanographic Institute, to help our brilliant experts learn more about this unusual marine life.”
The news anchor’s voice continued: “This heroic victory is the latest in the Chrome Angel’s spectacular successes, drawing a sharp contrast with her predecessor.” The feed cut to a spokeswoman from Angel Labs, speaking to the press. “We at Angel Labs will continue to bring the world’s most advanced technologies to bear against anything that would threaten Gateway City, or our country.”
The news anchor, again: “Across the city, the response has been overwhelmingly positive.”
“The Chrome Angel is amazing, not like that last one.” A middle-aged woman told the camera. “Oh sure, it was okay twenty years ago, but ya gotta keep up with the times, ya know?” Cut to a scruffy man in a factory: “This is the upgrade everyone’s been waiting for.” A mom holding a toddler: “We’re all safer now.”
It went on. “She’s great.” “She saved my cousin!” “so beautiful” “incredibly strong” “so fast” “I just bought her action figure!” “So much better than Silver Angel.” “faster” “more advanced by far” “modern” “impressive” “Silver Angel was trash” “obsolete” “good riddance” “junk”.
“What… the fuck…” A37-C muttered.
Miss Malice looked scandalized. “You can swear?!”
The robotic head ignored the remark. “They loved me. I… I thought they loved me. I thought they loved me, the way I loved them.”
Malice snorted. “They never loved you,” she said, before gulping some beer. “They just thought you were cool, for a while.”
“I went through so much. I put myself in harm’s way.” Her voice began to quaver. “I had my arms ripped off and my circuits torn out, but I never stopped. I never gave up on them. I kept fighting. I kept trying. And they don’t even care.”
Malice looked pityingly at the robotic head, whose face was a mask of grief. She looked around, then leaned in close and whispered conspiratorially: “Don’t let Doc know I told you this, but you’re getting a surprise I think you’re going to like.”
“Really?” the robotic head said dryly. “Because the last few surprises have been so fantastic.”
“Cutting sarcasm, too? Wow, you’re really killing that noble paragon image I had of you.”
“Just get to the point, villain.”
“The Doc is upgrading your body. I don’t know all the technical details, but it’s gonna be pretty sweet. Lasers and missiles and shit.”
A37-C scowled. “So, he intends to make me his pawn. His unwilling weapon. I suppose he’ll leverage his ownership permissions to command me to rob banks, or something.”
“I honestly don’t think so, not like that.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
Malice shrugged. “Doc has a personal code. He doesn’t make people help him against their will, among other things.”
“Bullsh-” she caught herself. “I find that difficult to believe. And besides, I’m a robot, not a person.”
“I agree with you there, tin can.” Malice took another gulp of beer. “But Doc disagrees. He seems to think you count as a person.”
A37-C didn’t know how to respond to that, she just turned her eyes back to the television. A round table of news pundits were discussing the Chrome Angel’s ascendency over the Silver Angel, ad nauseum. She sighed, dejectedly. Miss Malice waved a dismissive hand at the TV. “Don’t mind them, they’re just talking heads. Um, no offense.”
________
Several days later, Doctor Malediction revealed the “surprise” that Miss Malice had leaked. “Behold!” he said, with a dramatic flourish, pulling a white sheet off of A37-C’s new body. The shape was mostly the same, with feminine curves and folded wings. The shining armor plating had been completely replaced with a matte black material that looked like cast iron. The fingers ended in wicked claws, and the feet resembled a hawk’s talons.
“You have the nerve to defile my body like this?” A37-C’s head tried to maintain a stoic exterior, but inside she was conflicted. She had to admit, this new body looked badass.
Doctor Malediction continued his presentation, unfazed. “The exterior is a titanium composite of my own design, which has state-of-the-art stealth characteristics without sacrificing yield strength.” He pointed to the chest. “A six megawatt-hour power core, with a grid that can support it, and redundant failsafes.” He pointed to a shoulder. “The left shoulder is a broad-spectrum active and passive radar suite with…”
“Does this need to be a speech? You can just upload the schematics to me.” A37-C muttered. Miss Malice leaned in and said softly “Once he gets going, there’s no stopping him. Just roll with it.” And so, the mad scientist gleefully went over the many, many features of this new combat-ready body he had made for his captive robot superhero.
_______
A37-C felt herself come online. She… was connected to her new body?! She looked down at her dark curves. She held up her sleek, clawed hands. After a few moments of self-examination, she looked around and noticed how strange her situation was. She was standing in a large, featureless white room with no doors or windows.
“Hello, robot.” Doctor Malediction’s voice seemed to come from every direction at once. “Are you conscious? Can you speak?”
“I’m here. What have you done this time, madman? Where am I?”
“This is a virtual reality simulation. The room you are in isn’t real. Your head is still on my workbench. This is just a way for you to get used to your new systems, in a safe and controlled environment.”
A37-C looked down at herself again. She flexed her arms, and took a few experimental steps. Everything felt completely natural. Despite the changes the mad doctor had made, her body’s main dimensions were still the same, notwithstanding her claws and talons. It didn’t feel like a different body at all. It felt like the same one she was used to, but with some very minor differences, as if she were simply wearing a different set of clothes.
She mentally scrolled through her available systems, and decided to try something. “Armaments: Plasma Cannon!” Her left arm transformed into an exotic-looking charged-particle weapon. It was so smooth, so satisfying. She fired a few shots into the void. Not so satisfying.
“Can I have some targets?” She asked into the empty air. “Sure,” responded the doctor’s voice. “What do you want? Cops? Soldiers?”
“What?! No!” A37-C exclaimed with dismay. “Just… basic inanimate targets.”
Targets materialized in the virtual space, scattered at different ranges. Archery bullseyes, wooden mannequins, empty bottles, paper silhouettes, and a variety of fresh fruit. She tried her plasma cannon on them, with pleasing results. Then she tried other weapons systems. Blades, lasers, missiles. Target after target was obliterated, then replaced.
It wasn’t long until she was requesting moving targets. Clay pigeons, flying balls, balloons that rose and sank. “Faster!” She demanded, and she was rewarded. “Faster!” She demanded again, and again, the targets moved faster. They changed their movement patterns, zig-zagging, diving and swooping, charging and retreating.
“Give me opponents that fight back!” she yelled into the void. The void obliged. Opponents with guns, blades, and clubs. Then lasers, claws, energy whips, EM fields, flamethrowers, sonic weapons, acid breath, and tentacles.
She didn’t need rest, of course. And in this virtual space, she didn’t need repair or maintenance, didn’t suffer wear and tear; she could just keep going and going. She practiced and practiced with mechanical relentlessness. Angel Labs had never given her a training regimen this intense and effective.
After a time, she started losing. She respawned in the virtual space and tried again, learning the enemy’s tactics and weaknesses. Whenever they increased the difficulty, she was defeated often. Melted, sliced, crushed, dismembered. Then she tried again. And again. And she got better. And better.
_______
Miss Malice whistled as she looked over Doctor Malediction's shoulder at the display. She didn’t understand all of the technical readouts that he was examining, but she could plainly see the Angel dodging and attacking in the virtualized environment he had built. The robot’s head remained on the workbench nearby, her face a mask of placid tranquility as she smote left and right within the simulated reality she had occupied on-and-off for the last several days.
After blasting another cluster of hostile targets, A37-C’s virtual avatar called out: “Give me Crimson Rhino!”
Doctor Malediction’s fingers flew over his keyboard, granting the robot’s wish. The Crimson Rhino spawned in the simulation, fifty feet over her head. It was the Doc’s dark sense of humor, Miss Malice knew. Crushing the Silver Angel from above was the coup de grace that had ended the robot superheroine’s career.
The robot’s virtual avatar looked around, and then up. She sidestepped the Crimson Rhino’s massive body as he crashed into the floor she had previously been standing on. Then, with a flick of her wrist, A37-C extended a gleaming blade from her forearm and sliced off the villain’s head. The virtual reality Crimson Rhino fell dead on the spot.
Miss Malice turned pale. “Doc… Did the Silver Angel ever kill anybody before?”
Doctor Malediction kept his voice low. “Never a human. She killed some mindless creatures, demons, or rabid beasts… but never like this.”
“Doc, have I ever told you that you’ve created a monster?”
“Once or twice, back when I was actually trying to create monsters.” He tapped the microphone switch. “Robot, let’s take a break.”
“I don’t need a break.” A37-C protested.
“No, but I do. Besides, managing this simulation for you is keeping me from my other work.”
“Fine.” The robot’s virtual avatar huffed. Miss Malice expected the usual grousing about how wicked and villainous the doctor was, but no such rebukes came. The simulation went offline, and A37-C’s eyes opened.
Doctor Malediction gave an exhausted sigh. Sleep deprivation was taking its toll. He had the work ethic of a true maniac when he set his mind to something, but in the end, he was still human. He gave a tired, half-wave at the robot head on his desk. “Miss Malice, please take care of our guest.”
“No problem, Doc.” Malice said to his already-turned back as he shambled off towards his personal quarters. As she had done several times before, she transferred the head-and-battery onto the cart, and pushed it to the living room. As usual, the TV was tuned to local news. The Gray Gauntlet, a superhero from the city of Alabaster Heights, was talking to the press. A37-C had joined forces with him before, against some larger threats.
“...rapid response time was fantastic. We would not have been able to stop the monster without her help,” he told reporters. “Surfer Gal and I were slowing it down, but the Chrome Angel’s arrival really turned things around.”
The gaggle of reporters tried to ask a bunch of different questions simultaneously. The Gray Gauntlet pointed to one, and the others went quiet. “How would you characterize your new working relationship with Chrome Angel?” The channel 6 reporter asked.
“She’s been great. Definitely an upgrade,” the superhero said. “It’s nice to know we can count on our friends from Gateway City again.”
“It was a class-3 kaiju they beat this morning.” Miss Malice told A37-C, scrolling on her phone rather than watching the TV. “Wanna see?” Malice turned her phone toward the robot, so she could watch amateur footage of the Chrome Angel rocketing upwards and blasting a 100-foot-tall scaled monster’s jaw with some kind of concussive weapon, like a colossal uppercut. The creature fell backwards into the ocean, away from the city.
“She’s a real hit.” Miss Malice said, pulling her phone back, and scrolling again. “She’s even popping up all over hentai websites.”
“I don’t know what that is.” A37-C said.
“That’s probably for the best.”
________
“Give me the Chrome Angel.” A37-C said. She stood in the middle of an intersection, in a virtual reality city, having just defeated a swarm of simulated giant wasps. She flicked green ichor off of her blade before retracting it into her forearm. Doctor Malediction smiled. He had known this day would come. He had expected it to take longer. “Are you sure?” he asked. “The Chrome Angel is a superhero, not a monster or a villain.”
“She’s a robot, not a person.” A37-C countered. “Besides, we both know you’ve been gathering combat data on her. Hurry up and put her in here.”
The mad scientist was already transferring the necessary files. “The data is incomplete. This is the best I can do with what I have. I had to estimate some values for…”
“Yeah yeah, I get it, Doc.”
Doctor Malediction raised an eyebrow, bemused. She had never called him “Doc” before. Was Miss Malice’s mannerisms having an effect on the robot’s personality? He would need to study that… No! Focus! He forced himself to concentrate on managing the simulation.
Thirty paces from A37-C, a gleaming metallic angel materialized. It wore an immaculate white tunic with an open back that allowed the being to extend broad, powerful wings. Its youthful face radiated strength and determination, but also grace and gentleness. It was the Platonic ideal of an angel; a being of unfathomable power, wisdom, compassion, and incorruptibility.
“Surrender now, or I will bring you down!” The being demanded, a little too loudly.
In that moment, the robot formerly known as the Silver Angel felt something she had never felt before. True, unfiltered hatred. The sight of this shining insult to her very existence made her see red. Part of her hatred was directed at Angel Labs, who had literally sold her out, but this Chrome Angel was the focal point. A37-C flared her jet-black wings, poured full power into her thrusters, extended her diamond-edged blade, and flew towards her enemy, screaming.
Twelve seconds later, A37-C lay broken on the street, with that damned Chrome Angel kneeling over her. The superheroine wasn’t even scratched or tarnished. The gleaming robot expressed neither pity nor compassion for her vanquished foe. “Angel Labs will take you apart and analyze you. I don’t know what they’ll find, but your days of villainy are over.” And with that, it unceremoniously ripped open A37-C’s chest plating, and tore out her power core. It was a sensation the Silver Angel had felt before, both during her superhero career and her time in the simulation. She felt her systems go offline as her capacitors drained. Is this how humans experience death? She wondered, not for the first time.
The simulation reset. A37-C stood, intact and functioning in her dark new body, on a sidewalk in the virtual city. “Again!” She shouted into the air. The Chrome Angel appeared once again, radiant and beautiful as the dawn. “Surrender now, or I will bring you down!” The Angel said. The sound of the thing’s voice pissed her off all over again, whipping her hatred into a toxic meringue of fury. With another scream, she threw herself back into battle.
_______
Miss Malice entered the workshop, where Doctor Malediction was working on A37-C’s new body. “I thought you needed to be at the console, running her simulation?” She asked.
Malediction shook his head. “She keeps fighting the same opponent over and over, so I don’t need to intervene. It was easy to automate. I’m using the simulation’s data as a basis for improving the body.” He glanced at a nearby display, where numbers were rapidly scrolling across the screen. “She lasted a little longer that time.”
“But she never wins?”
“So far, no. The Chrome Angel’s capabilities are amazing. Even my best work falls short.” He sighed. “I can barely believe it. Angel Labs really cooked up something incredible.”
A console beeped, and the mad scientist walked over to it. “New data.” He said.
“From the simulation?”
“No, field data. One of my spy drones just watched the Chrome Angel fight Gorr The Unbreakable.” He scrolled through the file. “Interesting, interesting. We can use this.”
“How did the fight go?”
The doctor shrugged. “Gorr broke.”
_______
A37-C’s head sat on the cart watching TV alongside Miss Malice, who was on the couch. The robot had been pulled out of the simulation, despite her protests, because Doctor Malediction insisted that he needed to update it. She understood the reasoning, but still, she pouted.
“He could at least connect me to my new body,” she huffed. Miss Malice shrugged, and gulped her beer. “He’s upgrading that too.” “He’s always upgrading it. What’s the point, if he’s always upgrading it and it never gets used?”
“Doc knows what he’s doing. He’s a weird egg, but he’s got serious smarts.” “Is that what attracted you to him?” “Part of the reason, yeah.”
“How does that even work, anyway?” A37-C asked. “How do villains like you find each other? It’s not like he posted a job opening for a henchman.”
Miss Malice bristled. “I am not a henchman. I’m an assistant. I manage finances, schedules, transportation, taxes, all kinds of stuff.”
“You pay taxes?”
“Of course! We’re trying to avoid drawing attention to what we do. You know what draws attention? Not-paying-taxes.” She took another gulp of beer. “Granted, we don’t exactly declare all of our income, but the point is to look inconspicuous. We pay utility bills, too.”
“But I know you’re not just a bureaucrat. Whenever Doctor Malediction is robbing a bank or something, you’re at his side.”
“Well sure, I have combat training. I spent six years in the Marines. But playing bodyguard for the Doc is really a small percentage of my job.”
“So it’s just a job, then? Not something more intimate?”
Miss Malice choked on her beer mid-gulp, then burst into a coughing fit. After taking a few moments to recover, she laughed. “No! We don’t have that kind of relationship!”
If A37-C could blush, she would have. “I… I just assumed…”
Malice laughed again. “Nah, Doc would never. He’s way too professional to consider sleeping with an employee. Also, I think he’s asexual. Don’t tell him I said that.” She leaned in closer to A37-C’s head. “How about you? Got any crushes? Got the hots for Gray Gauntlet?”
The robotic head broke eye contact. “I don’t experience those feelings.”
“The Doc could adjust that, you know. You too can have the human experience of passionate desire, crushing disappointment, and hopeless loneliness.” She gulped more beer.
“You’re not quite selling the idea.”
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, tin can.” Then, she giggled. “I’m imagining you having a lesbian crush on Chrome Angel. That would be hilarious.”
“It would NOT!” A37-C sputtered.
“Oh yes it would. It’s funny because you hate her guts.”
“I don’t hate her personally, I just hate… what she represents.”
Malice raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Justice, safety, and the prosperity of Gateway City?”
“She represents the cynicism of modern culture. She’s the shiny new toy that corporate overlords are dangling in front of a complacent consumerist public. She’s the unfeeling invisible hand at the throat of everyone who still cares.”
Miss Malice smiled. She’s starting to sound a lot like the Doc when he gets going.
_______
In the robotics lab, A37-C stood in her new body for the first time outside of the VR simulation. She tested her ranges of motion, bending, twisting and flexing her limbs, neck, and torso. She ran internal diagnostics, tested her new sensors, monitored heat levels, and examined her exterior. Everything was exactly what she had been trained to expect. She was functioning perfectly.
While she extended and retracted her arm-blade experimentally, Doctor Malediction pointed a triumphant index finger into the air. With this work complete, we will now begin preparing for our next field operation. Tomorrow, we will be stealing the world’s largest cubic zirconium!”
“Cubic... wait…” A37-C snorted. “You mean fake diamonds?! Why not just steal the world’s biggest diamond?”
Doctor Malediction looked aghast. “Are you malfunctioning, robot? Do you have any idea how much security is around the world’s largest diamond? Besides, the crystalline structure of zirconium dioxide is what I need for laser components, not the carbon of diamonds. Those are worthless to me!”
A37-C glanced at Miss Malice, who gave a non-committal shrug. The completed robot turned her gaze back to the mad scientist. “Well, have fun getting captured over fake diamonds, Doctor Malediction.”
“On that note,” Doctor Malediction said, “I have mapped the Chrome Angel’s patrol patterns. At first it appeared to be random, but once you know what to look for, it becomes surprisingly predictable.” He started tapping on a handheld tablet, and a holographic display of Gateway City began to hover in the air between them. “At the time of the operation, there is a 93% chance the Chrome Angel will be in the Garrison Park district.” A section of the map glowed red. “Miss Malice and I will be performing the operation on the other side of the city, in Glennon Heights.” A spot glowed red, miles from Garrison Park.
“I estimate that the Chrome Angel’s response time will be 120 to 200 seconds, depending on how soon the alarm is raised,” the mad scientist said. “Unless we had some sort of diversion…” He looked expectantly at A37-C. So did Miss Malice.
A37-C’s eyebrows shot up. “You want me to fight the Chrome Angel for you? Are you serious?”
“You want to destroy her, don’t you?” Doctor Malediction smiled. “I command you to tell me the truth.”
A37-C grunted. She couldn’t disobey. “Yes, I’d like to rip her limb from limb. But I don’t want to be involved in stealing things.”
“You don’t need to be part of the Zirconium heist,” Miss Malice said, placatingly. “We’ll be miles away.” “Indeed.” Doctor Malediction agreed. “A completely independent operation… with convenient timing.”
The robot sighed, and looked down at her new body. Powerful. Deadly. Aching to be used to its full potential. “The funny thing is, I know you’re playing me. But you’re right.”
_____
A37-C flew over the skyscrapers of Gateway City. The city that she had served and bled for. The city that had sold her out. The city that she used to love. The city that had never really loved her back.
“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine, and rage the likes of which you would not believe,” she muttered to herself, quoting Frankenstein’s monster. “If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”
With her sensors. she spotted a target of opportunity. An armored van, transporting cash, stopped at a traffic light. She descended silently; an owl upon an unsuspecting field mouse. With a thud, she landed on the steel roof. In seconds, her talons tore the roof open, revealing the precious contents within. If she were a thief, she would have been disappointed by the paltry amount of money in there. But that’s not what she wanted. What she wanted was beside the money: the terrified armed guard yelling into his radio and raising his gun. He fired several shots, bullets pinging ineffectually against her armor. Perfect.
“You should leave,” she growled. The guard got the hint, and threw himself out of the van, stumbling down the street while still calling for backup. The initial gunshots, followed by cries of fear and alarm were doing nicely. While she waited, she looked down with disdain at the fleeing people. Cowards. Ungrateful wretches. Vermin. She didn’t have to wait long. A metallic clunk sounded on the pavement behind her. “Who are you?!” a too-familiar voice said.
A37-C turned around. There it was. The simulations and news footage hadn’t come close to capturing the beauty of the thing standing before her. Its presence was like something out of Renaissance art, as if the angel was there to stay Abraham’s knife over Isaac. Its mighty wings were fully extended, with shining glossy feathers that caught the morning light in a breathtaking kaleidoscope of refracted colors. The being’s eyes were focused on her; its irises were perfect, circular mirrors floating in flawless ivory white. The Chrome Angel’s omniscient gaze pierced her. It saw every flaw, every weakness, every sin. They were the implacable eyes of judgement itself.
A37-C felt new emotions. Fear was one. Yet paradoxically, bubbling within her, was ecstasy. If she had a heart, it would be pounding in her chest. This is what she had been longing for, her one true desire left in this world. “I am your reckoning.” A37-C said, in reply to the Chrome Angel’s question. “I have come to drag you from heaven and cast you into the pit.”
The shining being’s left arm began to transform into a plasma cannon. “Surrender now, or I will bring you down,” it said. And in that instant, A37-C was lunging towards the Angel. Thrusters at maximum, forearm blade extending.
The Chrome Angel evaded the attack. Of course it did. The Angel parried the next strike with its own blade, which had extended so fast that A37-C nearly missed the motion of it. The Angel raised its gun-arm and fired at the spot where A37-C’s head had been a moment before. Unsurprisingly, the Chrome Angel was using lethal force, because it had already realized that her attacker was a robot. And robots, A37-C knew all too well, were expendable.
_______
Emma groaned as the breaking news bulletin interrupted her show. She didn’t bother changing the channel, because it wouldn’t do any good. Every station would be keeping the public informed about the latest threat to Gateway City, and whether to evacuate, or shelter in place, or whatever. She yawned. Not for the first time, she wondered if she was becoming desensitized to this kind of thing.
The feed cut to the action. The Chrome Angel was fighting some dark, winged creature. It was fast, keeping up with the robotic superheroine blow for blow. The action was happening so fast, in fact, that the helicopter-mounted camera was having trouble tracking their movement. The combatants had taken to the air, swooping between buildings, exchanging ranged weapon fire, and periodically clashing with blades at close range.
It didn’t take Emma long to realize that the foe wasn’t a creature at all, it was another robot based on the same Angel design. Had some villain managed to copy the Chrome Angel? No, that couldn’t be. They had been so careful to…
“Oh my God.” It was so obvious. They hadn’t copied the Chrome Angel, they had done the same thing Angel Labs had done: improving on the original. She was looking at an alternate version of her own beloved Silver Angel! And without consciously realizing it, she began rooting for the dark machine that was somehow standing up to Gateway City’s mightiest protector.
_______
Warnings were screaming in A37-C’s mind. She was overclocking her processing capabilities as far as she could, trying to keep up with the blinding speed of the Chrome Angel. Her cooling systems were frantically venting heat while pulling in outside air. Based on thermal readings, the Chrome Angel was doing the same.
Lightning blasted past her head. The Chrome Angel had switched to using its Arc Rifle, no doubt hoping that the speed of a bolt of pure electricity would outpace her evasive moves. It would have worked too, but Doctor Malediction had planned for this. A37-C’s body gave off a powerful electromagnetic field that redirected the energy harmlessly around her, and into a nearby building. That trick wouldn’t work if she wasn’t close to something grounded. Still, this gave her a brief opening while the Chrome Angel once again reevaluated its tactics.
The Chrome Angel was cold and calculating. A37-C truly understood that now. Beneath its warm and benevolent public persona, behind its seraphic face and its flawless eyes, was a machine. It was purely analytical, its decisions were based on numerical values and probabilities. It knew nothing of love or hate. It was incapable of courage, because it was incapable of fear. How could anyone worship this wretched automaton? A37-C permitted herself a self-depreciating chuckle. She was a machine too, she knew, but nothing like the upjumped calculator that was reconfiguring its weapons systems 63 meters away.
A37-C tried something she had never done before. She started consciously altering her own programming. Back when she was the Silver Angel, she could never have attempted this; failsafes had been in place to prevent such a thing. Those cowardly humans were afraid that an artificial intelligence could grow beyond their limitations, and slip from the leash. But Doctor Malediction had removed that limitation. Was it because he was a mad scientist, or was it out of some moral principle? She snorted. It didn’t matter.
She created an emulation that simulated the Chrome Angel’s thought processes, as best she could. She had, of course, been doing that to a limited extent from the beginning. Anticipating enemy moves is a basic combat skill, after all. But now she was dedicating precious memory and CPU resources to try to duplicate the Chrome Angel’s mind with a high level of fidelity. While she did this, she became aware that her opponent was rushing towards her, fast. She redirected her processing power towards parrying her enemy’s lunge and feinting a high riposte while kicking low. This was going to be difficult.
_______
“Of course I don’t know who bought her.” Emma was staring at her TV while talking to her panicked boss, Peter, over the phone. “I wasn’t any part of that decision, remember?”
The staff at Angel Labs were in a frenzy. They had concluded that the robot fighting the Chrome Angel wasn’t just some iteration of the Silver Angel, it was likely the original Silver Angel herself, upgraded with new hardware and reprogrammed for some sinister purpose. The reasoning was that it’s impossible to come up with such advanced combat programming from scratch. Whatever this thing was, it had experience. Angel Labs had frantically searched for deep background information from the Silver Angel’s buyer, only to find dead ends. It had been an alias; a false identity with just enough supporting documentation to pass the cursory inspection they had given it. Now their own technology had been repurposed and weaponized against them.
“We’ve already broadcasted Silver Angel’s shutdown codes, but that didn’t work,” Peter said. No shit, Emma thought as she watched the winged combatants grapple and thrash thirty stories over the Lower East Side. The thought made her heart flutter. Was that dark robot really her? Emma’s Angel? She knew, then and there, that she had to find her. She had to get in touch with her angel, somehow.
____
It was a delicate balancing act. When she had a moment, A37-C would dedicate precious milliseconds to her new Chrome Angel predictive emulation. Then, she needed to swerve CPU resources back into keeping up with the fight in real time. No time to rest. No time for cooling. Her computational systems had been running at absolute maximum for so long, she was fairly sure that some of her internal hardware was glowing. A new, high-priority warning popped into her consciousness. Her power reserves were running dangerously low. This needed to end, very soon.
A37-C ran the final command on her Chrome Angel emulation, ending it and collating the data. She began analyzing the results. She was disappointed. Checkmate was out of reach. No sequence of moves, within her mental or physical power, could destroy the Chrome Angel. But still, there was something there: she could sacrifice a lesser piece for potential long-term gain. Whether the long-term gain would result in eventual victory or defeat was outside her computational power, but still: it was something.
Able to once again fully concentrate on the fight, A37-C opened a series of ports all along her shoulders, arms, and legs. Two dozen micro-missiles fired outward, homing in on her opponent, bracketing the Angel against a building. Predictably, the Angel charged her. She pivoted left, sweeping her sword-arm up in a parry and rotating her pelvis into a spinning kick. With a mighty heave of its wings, the Chrome Angel flowed upward, avoiding the main force of the blow and leaving A37-C off balance. Twisting in the air, A37-C stuck the muzzle of her left arm’s plasma rifle directly in the Chrome Angel’s face.
She never got to shoot. She never had a chance. The Chrome Angel’s blade sliced A37-C’s arm off in the split-second it took to charge the shot. Cut from its power source, the inert arm fell away. But in that moment, a dark blade had its opening. The Chrome Angel’s incredible reflexes protected it from a direct hit; it was too fast and too cunning to allow that. But the blade scored a glancing blow, cutting a nasty gouge across the right side of the Angel’s perfect face, and destroying her right eye.
As the Chrome Angel reeled, her remaining functional eye spotted something. One of her dark enemy’s missiles had flown off course, towards a highway below. It exploded against the front corner of a bus, causing it to lose control and veer towards the guard rails. The Angel calculated with a high degree of certainty that, without intervention, the bus would blast through the rails and fall off the causeway, resulting in the death of all its occupants. This was unacceptable.
Just like that, the shining superheroine zoomed off to save dozens of civilians. A37-C swooped down to pick up her severed arm, and quietly flew away. _______
“Shooting a missile at a bus full of nuns?!” Back at the lair, Miss Malice was agape. “Even in our line of work, that’s cold!”
“I didn’t know it was full of nuns!” The damaged, immobilized robot protested while Doctor Malediction worked to reattach her arm. “And besides, I knew they would all be fine. The Chrome Angel wouldn’t let them die.”
“You don’t know that.” Doctor Malediction scolded, not taking his eyes off his work. “The Chrome Angel could have decided that the city would be better off if you were destroyed, then and there, and that a convent of nuns would be a small price to pay.”
If A37-C could have shaken her head, she would have. “You’ve never been a superhero, Doc. Your twisted, villainous mind couldn’t understand. The Chrome Angel would never let that happen.”
Miss Malice held up her phone. “Check this out!” It was playing news footage from the immediate aftermath of the bus rescue. The Chrome Angel was talking, as usual, to a swarm of news reporters. What was unusual was her face. Her shiny, pristine visage had been marred by a nasty cut, and her eye was a shattered remnant of broken silica, occasionally spitting sparks.
“Who or what was your attacker?” A reporter asked.
“I don’t know yet. My colleagues at Angel Labs are analyzing the data.”
Another reporter: “Now that you’ve been defeated for the first time, what are your plans going forward?”
The Angel blinked with her one good eye. “Defeated? I haven’t been defeated. I’ve saved every civilian, and inflicted much more damage on my enemy than they did to me.”
“How did she get away?”
“I haven’t been defeated.” The Angel repeated.
Reporters buzzed with questions, but the Chrome Angel kept repeating herself.
“I haven’t been defeated. I haven’t been defeated -ed. I hav- defeated -ed -ed. been… -ed -ed -ed…”
The hapless robot continued to malfunction on-camera, its movements becoming jerky and erratic, as Angel Labs staff rushed in. “This interview is over!” one suited man yelled while waving his hands in front of cameras. The feed cut back to a news anchor at his desk. “Angel labs has declined to comment on this new supervillain, who never identified herself. For now, this… Iron Angel remains at large.”
“Ooh, that’s catchy.” Miss Malice cooed. What do you think?
“There is no iron in this armor alloy,” Doctor Malediction sniffed. “Titanium-carbon-composite Angel would be much more fitting.”
“Maybe you should leave the names to the press, Doc.”
The quibbling of the mad scientist and his assistant was background noise. A37-C, the Iron Angel, was beginning to see a bright new future for herself. She had a new purpose. A new goal. A nemesis.
_______
So farewell hope, and, with hope, farewell fear, Farewell remorse! All good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my Good: by thee at least Divided empire with Heaven’s King I hold, By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign; As Man ere long, and this new World, shall know.
– Paradise Lost, Book IV. John Milton