Chapter Eleven

Dr. Ruth Ruthless stood in the shadows of a ventilation shaft the size of a pedestrian tunnel, two hundred meters below New Avalon’s smoggy skyline.

She had found it.

The ping on her sensor map—the alien signature of cosmic radiation–had led her here. Not to a crater, not to some irradiated corpse, but to the Ladies of Liberty’s hidden underground fortress. Their sanctum. Their sanctuary. Their smug little sisterhood’s shrine to conformity and self-righteousness.

Her emerald eyes sparkled, lips curling in a satisfied smirk. Her head was exposed, as always—she refused to hide her face behind metal. Her face was a weapon, after all. Elegant, composed, framed by a fall of impeccably styled crimson hair that no hero had ever mussed.

Ruth had honed her generic human body until it reflected the razor-sharpness of her genius-level mind. She employed the most merciless personal trainers in disciplines ranging from martial arts to CrossFit to **** yoga. Her lean, muscular frame was a coiled spring of flexible strength while maintaining her femme fatale charms in the chest, ass and hips.

Charms she’d enhanced when designing her cybernetic armor. Gunmetal gray nanopolymer hugged her breathtaking figure like a second skin, affixed with ballistic plates, miniaturized energy weapons, and other handy devices in places that wouldn’t detract from her overall sex appeal.

Like the peek-a-boob window showcasing the valley of her fulsome cleavage, in which Ruth concealed a lightning baton, small as a ballpoint pen.

"Let them see who bested them," she whispered to herself, almost affectionately. "Let them know exactly who brought their little dollhouse crashing down."

The psionic negator embedded in her armor hummed, generating a field that shielded her from psychic incursions— a deliciously paranoid bit of tech that would serve to nullify Kinestica’s frustrating attacks. Ruth had built it herself, of course, like everything of actual worth in her life. She’d crafted it with her own mortal hands. Sans alien DNA. Without the aid of mystic crystals. No divine birthright or freak mutations.

Just human ingenuity.

Simple brilliance.

Simply Ruth.

She dropped from the shaft with feline grace, her power suit muffling the impact, nanoclaws finding purchase in the HQ’s sleek white walls. Her corneal implant painted the environment in layers — motion sensors, thermal readouts, sonic dampeners. It was all very pretty. Gold filigree, azure accents. Very... inspirational.

Oh, girls, she thought, slinking through a corridor past polished white statuary and trophies of bygone battles, you’ve decorated your base like a spa for fascist pixies.

She allowed herself a chuckle, recalling the utter ease with which she'd walked out of police custody days earlier.

Ruth had cooled her heels in a holding cell while her arsenal of legal eagles dismantled the charges and launched counter-suits. They quoted arcane precedents from trade courts, unearthed loopholes buried under decades of deregulation, and reframed her doomsday weapon as an… ‘experimental energy array.’

The judge, brow furrowed beneath the weight of a thousand legal contradictions, had **** but to let her go. The bail had been astronomical—obscene, really—but the tech billionaire paid it willingly, from a mutual fund she didn’t even monitor anymore.

And now here Ruth was, strolling unseen through the sanctum of her greatest enemies, while the courts still debated whether she should be allowed to use her frequent flyer miles.

Her gauntleted fingers danced across a panel, then through it. A holographic projection. Child’s play. The real mechanism behind the wall yielded to a hacked data signature from her wrist bracer; the blast door irised open with a pneumatic sigh of defeat.

She entered the central command nexus on silent grav-boots.

It was everything she’d imagined: enormous, shiny, buzzing with that nauseating aura of self-congratulatory vanity. Projected screens shimmered midair. Console stations blinked like Christmas lights.

Four would-be queens on thrones, Ruth mused, rejecting the empty seats with theatrical disdain. Each of them bending the knee to one corporate entity or another. Embarrassing, really.

She swept across the space like an avenging angel, utterly resplendent.

She didn’t know who she was searching for yet. The vessel. Meat that had stood too close to glory during her failed demonstration. That ray beam, designed to facilitate her ultimate ascension, had instead fired down into the city and zapped some bystander in the milling herd like the finger of god.

And now that radiation sang to her, like a tuning fork across spacetime.

They didn’t earn it. She thought, lips thinning. They didn't build it, suffer for it, calculate its frequency across sleepless nights and neural fatigue. They just stood there. A nobody in the wrong place at the right time, and the universe gifted them the power I procured. I synthesized it. The glory of the cosmos, refined by my hand.

Her wrist monitor flashed. The signal was close now. Meters away, maybe less.

Dr. Ruth Ruthless paused beneath the dome, exulting in the moment. The heart of their operation lay bare to her superior intellect. She could destroy it. She could corrupt it. She could reroute their communications to livestream poetry about their ineptitude.

But not yet.

First, she needed the vessel.

Then, she would take back what the universe had so rudely stolen.

And when the LoL came to stop her—and they undoubtedly would, trailing moronic repartee and media drones—Ruth would already be gone.

With the power. With the future.

She threw her head back and laughed.

"Let them come!" She cackled, shaking armoured fists in the air. "Let them try to understand a mind like mine! Let them chase me in their pretty costumes and capes. They will fall and shatter like their fragile egos!"

After all, what were queens compared to a human woman who made herself a goddess?

“The hell?! Who’s there?”

The startled yelp came from behind the Freedomobile–a hideous conveyance of steel alloy and clit-measuring marianismo–slowly rotating on a raised platform off to one side.

A man’s head popped up, staring at Ruth over the roof, face flushed and eyes wide. He was young, modestly handsome from what little she could see, and, most importantly, visibly emanating the telltale yellow glow of cosmic radiation.

The iniquitous villainess’s genius mind dissected the situation in an instant. She identified and catalogued visual data, extrapolated probable scenarios, assessed risks, and formulated contingencies in a fraction of a millisecond.

He was unarguably the prize she sought.

Dilated pupils, increased respiration and heart rate, and heightened blood flow to his epidermis indicated excitement. If his presence in the LoL’s secret HQ wasn’t warning enough, the dishevelled state of his clothing clearly signalled he wasn’t alone.

Even as Ruth’s defensive measures and weapon systems activated, the man shuddered, the rolling of his broad shoulders denoting more rigorous movement out of sight below.

Quick as a whip, she aimed two forearm-mounted molecular disrupters at him, wary of whichever superheroine was hidden from view and, presumably, up to mischief.

“Stop whatever you are doing and step away from the vehicle,” Ruth ordered, her tone laced with steel. “If you and your… lady friend come easy, and I won’t have to get nasty.”

She waited for the fear to flash across the man’s face, for the shock of recognition. Instead, he looked down at something and groaned. The noise wasn’t one of fright or despair. He sounded pleased, indulgent, and the yellow glow pulsed brighter.

“Ha, yeah. I’m coming easy, alright.” He grunted, not concerned in the least. Totally ambivalent to the deadly threat aimed in his direction. “Gonna need a few minutes, though. Nice getup you’ve got there. Do I know you? You look familiar.”

Ruth glared at the mouth-breathing meathead. If she’d possessed eye-beams, he would’ve been burnt to cinders.

Did he know her?

HER?!

Dr Ruth Ruthless, scourge of the boardroom and world governments alike. She, who held nations hostage and menaced high society with her cybernetic abominations and cutting wit. An untouchable, mature beauty that haunted the front pages of tabloid media and law enforcement’s most wanted posters.

Humanity’s loudest proponent. Ardent advocate for the inherent potential of mankind. Mastermind of… of…

That throbbing energy–the cosmic radiation emanated from her target like ripples in a pond–tugged at Ruth. Pulling gently but insistently at something in her brain, derailing her chain of thought.

An odd, tantalizing scent tickled her nose…

“I said stop! Whatever you’re trying to do, it won’t work.” She barked, gritting her teeth. “Feeble tricks will not fool me. I am Dr Ruth Ruthless. Obey or be crushed like the worthless worm you are!”

Her demands caught the guy’s attention. His brow creased, not with worry–he seemed immune to that, but in agitation. The pulsating power intensified, confounding her constant calculations.

What was that smell?

Dank and musky and dangerously enticing.

Condensation prickled Ruth’s neck. Her power armor could accommodate volcanic heat and the freezing vacuum of space, yet she felt warm. Uncomfortably so.

A diagnostic sweep concluded that her equipment was performing at peak capacity. A possible biochemical or airborne contaminant, then?

She slowed her breathing, recalibrating her suit’s scanners to detect foreign elements in the surrounding atmosphere. It didn’t help. The persistent hook in Ruth’s skull twitched, burrowing deeper.

“Dr Ruth Ruthless?” The man snarled, blaring out waves of yellow energy. Ruth shuddered under the battering ****. “The cunt who blew up a building downtown two days ago, almost killing me and dozens of civilians?”

His voice was harsh, packed with vitriol. Lips curled back to bare teeth, he hunched over something out of sight, moving repetitively. Ruth performed a lightning-fast cost/benefit analysis of killing the petulant peon on the spot.

But that energy pulled at her, and his strange, alluring scent was triggering a physiological reaction most troubling…

Was it pheromones?

A laughable gambit to attempt on the bastion of self-control that was Ruth Ruthless. She allowed herself a snigger. It came out light and girlish, more of a giggle, really.

This ape thought she’d fall for such a clumsy ruse? Ruth straightened, lifting her chin imperiously. The pose pushed out her armored chest, nipples stiffening in the sweaty confines.

“Yes, indeed. The sanctimonious LoL’s meddling destroyed my lab that day. But I, Dr Ruth Ruthless, Champion of humanity's superiority, cannot be caged!”

The snail-pace spinning of the vehicle platform would shortly bring her target into full view—enough perfect time for a quick villainous monologue.

“I shall recover the stolen power you bear, then use it to show the universe what mankind is truly capable of. The heights to which we can ascend through ambition and struggle, defying the odds! Proving that overcoming weakness is our greatest strength and--What the shit?!"

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