Justice

The silence that rushed back into the room was deafening. Rikki slumped forward in the chair, gasping for air, her throat raw and burning. Her nose was bleeding. Her body felt heavy, aching with the aftershocks of the sonic purge. She ripped the loose straps off her wrists and stood up. Her legs were shaky, but they held.

She reached down, grabbed him by the collar of his suit, ready to haul him out like a bag of trash, but she underestimated the desperation of a man who had just lost his godhood. He twisted violently, his movement fluid and practiced. He swept his leg out, catching Rikki behind the knees.

​She buckled, crashing hard onto the concrete floor. Before she could scramble up, he was on her. ​He didn't have the power of the nanobots anymore, but he was still a man who sold weapons to warlords and supervillains for a living. He knew how to kill. He drove a knee into her stomach, knocking the wind out of her, and followed it with a vicious elbow to her jaw. Rikki’s head snapped back, stars bursting in her vision.

“Did you think the nanobots were the only thing that made me a threat?” He grabbed a jagged shard of glass off the floor, gripping it like a dagger.

“I built all this with my bare hands, long before I ever injected a single nanite.” He lunged for her throat. ​She threw her arm up, catching his wrist. Her grip was iron, unlike him, her strength was biological, not technological, and it was still there. She twisted her hips, shoving the Supplier off of her, getting some distance between the two of them.

​"Give up," he taunted, circling her. "Let me put you back to sleep."

​Rikki starred him down, she tried useing her powers but the rawness of her throat reminded her she'd exhausted that option.

​"Come get me," she said calmly.

​The Supplier lunged, feinting left and striking right with the glass shard. ​Rikki didn't retreat. She stepped in. ​She caught his arm mid-swing, absorbing the impact. She didn't rely on agility this time, she relied on brute **** and technique. She slammed her palm into his elbow, hyperextending the joint with a sickening pop.

​The Supplier screamed, dropping the glass as Rikki tossed him aside.

​"Wait—" he gasped, holding up a hand. “I can help you. You've seen what I can create, you've seen what I'm capable of. I can work with you, create new weapons, enhance your powers.”

​Rikki grabbed him by the lapels of his ruined suit. She pulled him close, until their noses were almost touching.

“There's nothing you have that I need.”

​She pulled back and drove her forehead into the bridge of his nose and tossed him aside. He hit the ground hard but started to push himself up.

Then he froze. A choked sound crawled up his throat. And suddenly he lurched forward and vomited. Not just blood, though there was plenty of that, but thick, glistening mouthfuls of silver. Nanobots poured out of him in metallic streams, hitting the ground with wet, clattering. They spilled from his mouth again and again, a grotesque torrent of the machines that had been puppeting his body for months, keeping him healed, keeping him moving, keeping him alive.

But now that they were destroyed, his body rejected them. It couldn’t hold them anymore. He collapsed onto his hands, gasping, still heaving as the last of the silver sludge dripped from his lips. The thing that had made him unstoppable was abandoning him. ​He stayed there for a moment, trembling, staring down at his own reflection in the puddle of dead technology.

​Then, he looked up at Rikki.

​For a split second, there was panic in his eyes, the realization of what was happening. The nanobots weren't just in his blood; they had been woven into his neurons, replacing synapses, bridging gaps in his brain tissue to allow him to control his empire with a thought.

​They were his memory. They were his processing power. They were him. ​And now, they were on the floor. ​The panic in his eyes flickered once, like a dying lightbulb, and then went out.

​His pupils dilated until his eyes were entirely black. His face went slack. The tension left his body, not in a wave of relaxation, but in a total structural collapse of will. He slumped forward, his forehead resting in the silver mess, breathing in shallow, rhythmic rasps.

​Rikki waited for him to move. She waited for him to blink. ​He didn't.

​She crouched down, careful not to touch the sludge, and snapped her fingers in front of his face. ​Nothing. No flinch. No recognition. No Supplier. ​He was a hollow shell. All that was left was a breathing braind dead body, staring blindly into the dark.