System Supervillain, Book 12 Prologue

Prologue – Trade Chat

(Capes & Cowls Forum, General Chat)

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Speedy, AngelEyes, Victory, HotStuff, Jester, Freedom, Aegis, Stars, Emerald, Snowflake, MagicGurl, RedHot, Scholar, CantSeeMe, Turbo, Emperor, DontYouWantMeBaby, KoolAidMan, SliceNDice, Destroyer, Inquisitor, Narrator, PartyGurl, Chummer, Fabricator, TheWhiteHat, TripleThreat, LuckyDice, GrimDark, RazzleDazzle, Slicer, DarkAngel, Chiller, Sparky, MultiMe, Oracle, Stepford, DevilsDaughter, Dollmaker, Quickfoot, Mindtaker, MrRoboto, ItsyBitsySpider, Valkyrie, TitaniumTits, Lolth, InfoGirl, ScoopGirl, HolyBlessing, and DonJuan are in the chat.

HolyBlessing: One week after the final portal fell in Moscow. Final death tolls are coming in. Almost 55 million dead or missing from the ten target cities. Most from Moscow and New Delhi.

InfoGirl: It could have been worse, a lot worse. If those ships in orbit hadn’t been taken down by Devastation, things would have gone horribly wrong.

RazzleDazzle: I think people in Moscow and New Delhi would say that things already went horribly wrong. If there were any of them left.

Valkyrie: Unfortunately, the truth is that it could have been a lot, lot worse. Aerial bombardment would cripple infrastructure and response efforts, which could have allowed more portals to open. And the fact that there even are survivors from under the shields in Rio and London is better than it could have been.

Victory: And that doesn’t count the possibilities of what would have happened if Cairo had been destroyed, and the Seal of the Immortal King was destroyed.

PartyGurl: What is this Seal thing? I’ve heard some people talk about it, but all they say when I ask is to keep away from it.

Scholar: Long story very short, Egyptian leader way way back, over two thousand years ago, got it in his head to go for world domination by way of undead army. Enskerka the Undying was too powerful to kill, so he, and his army, were sealed away. Problem is, if the seal ever breaks, he could get loose, and use the souls of everyone who has ever died in Egypt to add to his army of the undead.

PartyGurl: Ah. Yes. That sounds like a bummer.

Narrator: Was his tale told while the System reigned? Or did it pass whilst the System slumbered?

Chiller: According to system logs, the System would have been offline for about a thousand years by the time Enskerka rose to power.

CantSeeMe: Then you should be able to ‘adjust’ his powers, like you did with the reality warpers?

Chiller: Probably. But I see no reason to take the chance on ‘probably’. And there’s the very real chance that, if the seal is undone, the undead army will pop up, and be uncontrolled. And if they are the ‘infectious’ undead…

CantSeeMe: Oh. I see.

Speedy: So, the Gel-nak have been driven off Earth. The only survivors are the ones who surrendered in London and Rio, right? Everyone else fought to the last.

Lolth: Only reason there are any survivors, at all, is because killing their Emperor shattered their morale. They are a very rigid-minded species. Most of the Warriors and Workers have trouble even comprehending the idea of not following orders.

RedHot: Some kind of mind control?

Dollmaker: No, mind control, under the System, doesn’t work like this. If it were just a few individuals, the possibility of it being a mental Transform power at work would be the most likely source. But with the entire species? No.

Lolth: I have access to System records, thanks to the local administrator. There is evidence that the Gel-nak, as a species, were ‘ordered’ at some point in the past. Their genetic code was rewritten and locked, preventing genetic drift, destabilization, or mutation. This gave rise to the Castes, and eliminated any deviance in the Gel-nak genetic makeup.

Chiller: Which is why the lizards were so woefully unprepared for supers, of any stripe. They literally removed such things from their genome.

Freedom: Why would they do something like that? What could possibly convince someone to do something like that to a whole species?

Chiller: That isn’t in the System logs, but considering that the Gel-nak have ‘ordered’ several other species they have conquered, it is easy to guess. Power and control. When you condition people on both a genetic and cultural level for obedience and adherence to hierarchies, that makes it easy for those on top to maintain control, and less likely for any of their ‘lessers’ to break out the guillotines.

Inquisitor: This is disturbing. And you think they would have tried something like this with humans, if they’d won?

Lolth: There were bioweapon labs on the carrier, designed to create cultured retroviruses. They expected more trouble in ‘ordering’ humans, since our genetics have greater adaptability than some others, but between the viral therapies and eliminating genetic outliers when they occurred, they were convinced that they could do it.

Freedom: That’s horrible.

Scholar: Not the first time someone would have tried that on humans, though. Doktor Zerstörer attempted something similar during World War II. However, Captain Canada and the Death Company killed him, and wiped out his genetic experiments with what the records only describe as ‘extreme prejudice’.

DevilsDaughter: Ah, yes. I remember that fight. We used hellfire to burn the entire site down to the bedrock.

Stars: The question is, what happens next?

Fabricator: Well, rebuilding for all the cities affected by the fighting, obviously. I expect I’ll be busy in the coming months.

Stars: Well, yes. But we have to be prepared for when they come back. You know they’ll eventually come back, right?

Emperor: I cannot go into details, but I can say that there are high-level talks about creating a unified defense force to deal with threats like the Gel-nak.

Mindtaker: What, under the UN? Because that’ll be a clusterfuck if ever there was one.

ScoopGirl: You’re not wrong, but placing it under any one nation’s command, or under any one international alliance, like the EU? That won’t end well. At least the UN is supposedly neutral.

Emperor: Exactly. Plus, it helps keep a new arms race from starting if everyone is working with the same agency. And it nicely avoids the treaties about nations militarizing space.

Jester: Treaties that will likely get revised as different countries start looking to put colonies on the moon, or further out. I’ve already heard talk that some countries and corporations are already looking at colony efforts, especially since the tech from the captured Gel-nak transports (the ones that didn’t explode) will help counter some of the long-term problems with space travel. The artificial gravity systems, for instance, will help prevent the loss of bone density and muscle mass.

BelyyMedved has entered the chat.

DevilsDaughter: Bear, is that you? Haven’t heard from you since Moscow got hit. Any news?

BelyyMedved: Da, and it is not good. The lizards, they blew up the reactors in their ships. The radiation, it was contained within the shield, yes? But most of our supers who could resist radiation were killed when Moscow was attacked, and the people who could flee already did, so there was no one to check on the site until now.

TitaniumTits: I don’t like the sound of this. You found something, didn’t you?

BelyyMedved: Again, da. We sent a team to the edge of the ‘hot zone’, so that we could send cheap, disposable drones in, and see what was left. Only, the team was discovered.

TitaniumTits: By who?

BelyyMedved: By what. The dead rise in Moscow, and they are hungry.

Oracle: Then it is as I feared would happen, if the Gel-nak blew the reactors in Rio. Unfortunately, the range of my foresight does not extend across the globe.

BelyyMedved: Nyet. No one blames you, Oracle. But we would like to know what we can expect from these undead.

Oracle: The dead will become zombies, driven to feed, and they will infect those they attack to rise with them. Any living creatures affected by the radiation will have been mutated horribly.

Freedom: So, how do we kill them?

Oracle: For the undead, shoot them in the head, destroy the brain, and the body will fall. But ward against their fluids. Anyone you see bitten or scratched? Kill them, before they turn.

Chummer: So, standard zombie rules, got it. And the mutants?

Oracle: Each will be different. Each dangerous. Powerful, but feral. At least, that is what I saw in the future I aborted in Rio. I could not see past my own death, however, so I don’t know how to kill them.

BelyyMedved: That is enough. Fortunately, Russia still has many guns, and those who know how to use them. Though I do not think we will be rebuilding Moscow anytime soon.

Fabricator: I’m booking a flight now, which airports are open?

BelyyMedved: Vnukovo is still functional. Why? As I said, it will be some time before we begin rebuilding.

Fabricator: I might not know a lot about fighting zombies, but I know a damn lot about building walls. Figure building a barricade around the city, so the zombies can’t just randomly wander out is a good idea.

BelyyMedved: I will have protection meet you at the airport.