System Supervillain, Chapter 138

Chapter 138 – Foresight

(Rio di Janeiro, Brazil)

Two weeks ago, the last aliens fighting in the city had either surrendered, or been put down. For the past two weeks, Sibila had done little more than eat and sleep, her body struggling to recover from the strain of using her powers for so long, with so little rest. She knew it would happen, of course, even without her powers warning her. It happened every time she overused her abilities, like during natural disasters. Everyone who mattered already knew that she’d be out of commission, but she warned them all the same.

Now, however, she was feeling back to her normal self. Or, at least eighty percent. Close enough that she could go back to work, instead of being on bed rest. The team’s doctor agreed, clearing her for light work, with no active Foresight use unless absolutely necessary. And ‘absolutely necessary’ was defined as something that would pose a risk to the city itself.

“Mirela,” she called out to her assistant, “do we have anything planned for today?”

“Não, Senhorita Rios,” Mirela said, despite how many times Sibila had asked her to just call her Teresa when in private. Her assistant was an old-fashioned sort, when it came to such things, but she had a suspicion she did it partly to tease, and partly so that there was at least one person in Rio that didn’t jump to her every word. Not that she used her influence for anything but calming tensions and ensuring that things never got too far out of hand, but still.

“The rest of the Vindicadores have been out, patrolling the streets, helping to clean up, tend to the bodies, and so on. And they are not the only ones. Even the vigilantes and villains are helping.”

Sibila nodded. “The cooperation won’t last forever. Just until things have been cleaned up enough to go back to normal. Next week, we’ll see ‘business’ return to normal.”

“Velocidade said as much, during the morning briefing. I have the notes for you. Everyone knows that this cannot last, but it should stay mostly friendly, for a while. Thanks to you, there isn’t the kind of bad blood you see in other major cities between heroes and villains.”

Sibila sighed, and said, “It is not thanks to me, but the people actually involved. I just see problems before others do, and point the right people in the right direction. I do not have the power to change fate on my own. It is the others who actually make it happen.”

“Senhorita, you are not being honest with yourself,” Mirela clucked her tongue, disapprovingly. “While you were sleeping, we heard from Moscow.”

“Yes, I saw the White Bear talking about it on the Guild’s forums. The vision I prevented for Rio came true there. Have they managed to contain things yet?”

“They have. Fabricator flew out to Moscow, and managed to get a wall up around the entire city. The undead and the mutants were trapped inside. Then, Iceblade showed up, with that curador angelical, Serafina. She had some spell that allowed her to cleanse the undead of their infection, and made the mutants less dangerous. The Russian supers are clearing out the undead and the rubble, using fire to torch what remains of the city. They’re going through the underground tunnels, as well, burning everything.”

Sibila nodded, sadly. “Yes, it is unfortunate that so much was destroyed, and more will be destroyed before it can be made safe for civilians to rebuild, but rebuilding will be possible, which is more than could have been hoped for, normally. Thankfully, the city was already mostly empty, save for the Gel-nak and the dead, so there were fewer creatures to change. Do they know what happened to those who were taken?”

Mirela’s tone turned somber. “Taken back to their worlds as slaves, according to the Gel-nak captured here in Rio. Though, according to the information that Iceblade gave to the Russians, the Gel-nak apparently are going to wipe out four-fifths of the slaves to eliminate genetic abnormalities, and make the rest easier to ‘order’, making them genetic slaves. Apparently, their flagship had a bioweapons lab on board, so they could do testing on the planet as a whole.”

Sibila’s vision shifted. She was no longer in Rio. No longer on Earth. Nowhere on Earth had green skies and blue grass, after all. This was a vision of the future!

They were in a large clearing in the woods. Trees with leaves of different shades of blue ringed the clearing, maybe the size of a futebol field across. Red sunlight pierced the green sky, shining down upon her. She did not know enough science to even begin to figure out what interactions of elements and light waves would cause a star to look red coming through a green sky, or what would make the grass and leaves turn different shades of blue.

There was a ship behind her, she knew that much, but she couldn’t turn to see it. She was trapped in the moment, unable to do anything but what the possible future her was doing. Somehow, future her had left Earth, and gone to an alien world.

No, not just her. She wasn’t alone. There were others around her, all in costume. She was in costume, too, even though she only used it for public events, or the few times she was in the field. But these people weren’t her teammates from the Vindicadores. They weren’t even from Brazil.

Even so, she knew them. Or most of them. One was an unknown, naked and clad only in illusions. But the others? Serafina, Web Mistress, Titania, Pyra, Stolen Victory, Bloodmoon, Foxtrot. The members of Devastation. Heroes and villainesses bound to the will of another.

And he was there. Several paces in front of the group. Iceblade. And he was… talking? Yes. He was talking with a group of Gel-nak females wearing what looked like leather armor and carrying spears, rather than the high-tech armor and weapons she’d seen before. They had the markings of Leader and Warrior caste, but did not carry themselves like that.

What was going on? Why was she here, with these people? Not for the first time, she wished that she could move, or speak, as she wished. But she was limited to the ‘script’ the vision had set for her. And then her mouth moved, and she spoke.

“They know something about other caches. Material from the slave species. Other orders that hid their prior genetics.”

Web Mistress glanced at her. “Premonition, or cold read?”

“It will come up in the next couple minutes. The Empire is crippled, but if all the species that have been ‘ordered’ are changed back to who they once were simultaneously, then…”

She was back in her penthouse suite. No longer standing, but seated in one of the comfortable chairs in the living room. Her eyes took a moment to focus, like they always did when she came back from a vision.

“Ah, you’re back,” Mirela said, moving in front of her, holding a digital recorder in one hand, and an offered can of Guaraná Antarctica in the other. “How are you feeling, Senhorita? And, before you ask, you’ve been gone for just under ten minutes.”

Sibila took a moment to open the can and sip the tart, crisp soft drink, letting the berry after taste linger as she tried to get her thoughts in order. Ten minutes. Not the longest she’d been ‘away’, when a vision hit, but still longer than the amount of time she’d experienced in the vision. Time seemed to move slower during the uncontrolled visions, giving her more time to experience things, and learn details. That was why her brain always took a bit to adjust when she came out of it.

“I’m all right. Another of the future visions. Not near future, I don’t think. I wasn’t on Earth. I don’t know where I was, or how far into the future it was, but I know it wasn’t Earth.”

“The trigger seemed to be when I talked about the biowarfare lab on the Gel-nak flagship.” This was the other reason why Sibila valued Mirela as an assistant so much. She was clever, in her own way, and even if she didn’t have any direct insights, sometimes just talking about her visions made them start to make more sense.

“No, I don’t think so,” she shook her head. “Or, not entirely. Genetic slaves, and ordering people. That was the key, I think. So, the vision had to have something to do with that.”

Mirela nodded, as she continued holding the recorder. “What did you see, Senhorita?”

She recounted everything she could about the vision, her tone dispassionate, as it always was when she recounted the visions she’d seen. She had learned long ago to have a healthy detachment from the futures she saw. It was bad enough watching horrors that would never be, thanks to her actions, but there were so many happy moments that she had to see unmade casualties of causality, and so many times she’d sacrificed her own happiness to keep from becoming twisted. She would rather see a hundred of her own deaths, horrible as they were, than see glimpses of happiness that could never be. Especially the children she had seen and loved and then turned away from, never meeting their father to have them in the first place.

Anyone who said that seeing the future was a blessing was blissful in their ignorance. They did not see what she had seen, and she did not wish that fate upon anyone. The only solace she had was that she could ensure that so many people never had to experience the tragedies and losses that she had foreseen.

Mirela turned the recorder off as she finished speaking. The recording, like the ones of all her other glimpses into the further future, would be sent to the analysts at the Cidadela, their team’s headquarters. The only time she didn’t make recordings of her foresight was when she was using the active version, since there was no point in analyzing what had already happened or not happened by the time the analysts could get the information.

Sibila was not surprised to see worry on her friend and assistant’s face. “Senhorita, this is not like your other visions of Iceblade. Those were all scenes of him coming to you, different scenarios where he came to try and claim you, for your powers, or where you got caught in the middle between him and another force, trying to stop the fighting. And each one of those earlier ones has been different.”

“I know,” she said. “Each time, I tried to force a change, which changed the circumstances of our meeting. Delayed it. Events that would have brought him to Brazil were headed off, stopped before they could start. It was starting to feel like something that cannot be stopped completely, only put off more and more, one desperate attempt at a time. But this is the first one since the invasion. And the first one where I was not facing him, but already alongside him, and the members of Devastation. They talked as if they knew me, beyond just reports or datasheets.”

“That is concerning,” Mirela agreed. “It sounds as though they were acting as though you were one of them. And you say that you were on an alien world with them, and that he was talking with some Gel-nak. But primitive versions of them? Or just ones who embraced a more naturalistic lifestyle?”

“I don’t know. I just believe that it has something to do with the way the Gel-nak changed their species, and the others that they’ve enslaved. Perhaps some kind of resistance group? It did sound like they had some sort of connection to other groups in the Empire, at least amongst the other species.”

“What do you want me to do, Senhorita?”

Sibila sighed. “Get that recording to the analysts. Have them start running the colors. Red sun, green sky, blue grass and leaves. That’s got to be important. At the very least, it should help tell what kind of planet that we’d be going to.” She shook her head, dreading this next part, but knowing it needed to be done. “And then, I believe I will need to speak with the Guild, and see if they cannot arrange a meeting with Iceblade on neutral ground.”