The Villain

Unfortunately, she had no power to mimic such signals even if there was such a device. If she had the strength, she could probably lift the door easily enough, since there didn't seem to be any form of lock other than the simple expedience of the massive weight of the door. That very weight, however, was it's own deterrent for any but the strongest agents.

Resonance took a few steps back. She gauged the material of the door and doubled the distance. The way that it snuggled tightly into the casing could cause small pieces to break off randomly. Although her ability usually broke objects down into particles too small to cause any real damage, shards were always a possibility.

Legs shoulder's width apart, one slightly behind the other in case of any blowback from pressure on the other side of the door. Arms extended in front of her. The heels of her hands touching and palms open towards her target.

Strictly speaking, her power worked without the pose but it looked good. Besides, it had taken her a while to train her ability to only activate with some semblance of the pose. It had been one of the first things they'd taught her at the PRA and it helped immensely in preventing unexpected flare-ups.

With very little concentration, she reached out and touched the metal with her powers. She could feel the slight vibration of the molecules. She couldn't name it in terms that scientists would recognize. They probably could explain her powers, but she wouldn't recognize their terms any more than they could comprehend her attempts to explain how it felt.

The door was very well crafted. Resonance could tell by the way that the whole thing began to shudder almost instantly. Had there been any faults or weaknesses in the metal she would have sensed it as a stutter in the harmony.

Metal was simple. Something about the ordered arrangement of its molecules made it a bit tougher to shake apart but when it finally gave it fell apart evenly. The extra distance proved completely pointless but with metal she could never be too safe. A single fault could cause a shard dangerous enough to slice her open.

Just to be sure, Resonance reached up and felt around her neck, mouth, and cheeks. Her mask was made of the same material as the suit and flared up high enough to block anything that might have hit the rest of her head. She'd already know if something had come at her eyes so she never bothered to check those small openings.

Confident she was unhurt, Resonance carefully stepped across the threshold. Another long corridor stretched out before her. Unlike the previous one, however, doors marked various rooms and halls that branched away from the one she was in.

Inside the building, she had to reign in her senses. The various walls and rooms made it much more difficult to map out in her head. All that inaccessible, open, air caused gaping voids that played upon her conscious mind and drove her to want to know what lay within it.

Eventually, Mary assured her, she'd learn to multitask. She would be able to compartmentalize the information until it afforded her a general map of the area without the distracting need for specifics. Unfortunately, she wasn't anywhere near that level of mental discipline yet.

Despite the focus, Resonance still found herself curious as to what lay behind the doors. She was acutely aware, however, that the contents could just as easily be traps as anything worthwhile. The man had meticulously brought down every hero that came his way. Undoubtedly some had fallen due to curiosity as much as through the evil man's design.

Straight ahead, the corridor ended with an elevator. She was loath to trust herself to a small box that could easily be used as a prison but she had yet to find any hint of stairs. Surely, if that had been a secret escape, there should have been some other way to approach it than to risk an elevator.

Resonance carefully extended her senses once more. With great difficulty, she managed to map out the rough size and shape of the various rooms and corridors around her. As she feared, none bore the distinctive incline of a stairwell. As far as she could discover, all four tunnels led into corridors that aimed directly at the elevator. There might have been a stairwell somewhere beyond her perception but she still couldn't move past the thought that it would have been all or nothing.

Even more surprising, however, was that the elevator only rose two floors. She knew perfectly well that the roof of the tunnel she entered through had been twenty feet below the surface. None of the floors since then had any noticeable degree of inclination so there should be two additional floors of basement above her. That meant the only exit from the level failed to even reach the ground floor!

Unfortunately, there was nothing to be done about it. If she wanted to reach the end of this maze, she had to go up. She palmed the button beside the door and glanced in when the room opened to her.

The small elevator was no wider or deeper than the width of the corridors that led into it. All four walls held a single door each that undoubtedly slid away in the same manner as the one before her had. Aside from the doors, it was unadorned save for a single pair of buttons on the left-hand wall marked with an up and a down arrow.

Cautious of a trap, Resonance stepped in and lightly touched the up button. She wished she could leave on her enhanced senses but she quickly turned them off. The vibration of the machinery would wreak utter havoc on her nerves and distort any possible information she could acquire.

It only took a moment to realize something was off. Rather than a standard elevator, only the floor began to move upward. If not for the shrinking of the doors she would never have noticed. Within a moment, too fast to react or even be afraid, the ceiling rushed down at her and she passed through the paltry illusion.

Resonance tried to steady herself as the platform picked up even more speed. The next floor flashed by in even less time than it took her to leave the first. Her mind managed a brief moment of insistence that her vibration sense, her sonar as it were, had confirmed a physical presence for the ceiling of the upper basement. This time, rather than an illusion, she saw the ceiling split apart and retreat before she reached it.

The lift stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Momentum launched her almost a foot in the air from the sudden halt. Instinct drove her into a roll the moment her feet touched the ground again. She didn't care which direction, just so long as it was away from the treacherous section of floor.

Resonance came out of her roll in a crouch and looked around. If "Villainy Inc." was intended as a mockery of the PRA, then the room was a parody of every child's concept of an evil lair. Large banks of flashing lights and obscure buttons blinked from every wall. Strange machines, whose designs ranged from steampunk to ultra-modern, stood in every spare nook and cranny of the remaining wall space.

The center of the large room remained completely bare.

There were no doors along any of the walls. If Resonance was forced to guess, this room took up almost the entirety of the large building that she'd seen from without. By the way the ceiling soared above her, there might be enough room for a single floor before the roof. If there was, she'd be hard pressed to figure out how to reach it short of flying. Even then, there were no discernable entrances.

The room, the very building, was one gigantic trap.

It was fortunate that she had the foresight to drop into her meditative breathing and reactivate her extra senses the moment she came to a halt. She felt the subtle vibrations in the air and barely managed to dodge out of the way of the disk that dove at her. It shattered the moment it hit the floor but she barely noticed as another launched.

It took only an instant for her reflexes to kick in. Her hand came up, aimed at the newest threat. The vibration of the air linked her to the projectile. She only had time to shatter a portion of the weapon but it was more than enough to throw it off its course and harmlessly aside.

Two more launched quickly on its heels.

For the next minute, her life became a constant blur of motion as disks began to launch from every angle. Sometimes only a single attack came at a time while others up to three were sprung. She swiveled and spun. Her universe became a frantic dance of dodging and destroying the frustrating disks.

One managed to get through to clip her shoulder. It stung, slightly, but otherwise left no lingering trace of its impact. It snuck in, launched a fraction of a second after two consecutive barrages of two disks each. After, she made certain not to concentrate as heavily on each attack in favor of just enough damage to knock them off target.

Resonance almost failed to notice the change in tactics as the last volley crashed from the air. Her senses told her nothing else flew at her and she almost missed the subtle rumble of a much slower-moving object rolling along the ground in her direction.

She spun and tried to focus her powers on a dark gray sphere about the size of a soccer ball. The combination of its motion and the connection with the floor must have thrown off her concentration enough that she could not connect with the resonance within the ball itself. As hard as she tried, she simply couldn't feel the vibrations.

At the last moment, Resonance jumped away from the balls path. She didn't worry if she looked foolish diving away from the relatively slow-moving object. It was certainly more than it appeared. The flash of light and minor concussive force that followed not only proved her point but threw off her concentration.

This time, it took Resonance a bit longer to stagger to her feet. Her body needed to shake off the effects of the blast and she'd need longer still before she could focus enough to bring back her other sense. She spun around, in search of the next attack but found only the scattered remains of dozens of the clay pigeons that had been hurled at her.

Suddenly, with no immediate threat to occupy her thoughts, she realized how silly she had been to react to them as she had. They stung, certainly, but couldn't cause much real damage. Given the material of her costume, she probably wouldn't even have a bruise from the one that hit her shoulder. Her temples and virtually every other major pressure point were well protected so she didn't even need to worry that they might knock her unconscious.

Why would the villain have tossed them at her one after another? Sure, they were cheap and easy to make. Given the relative lack of craftsmanship that had gone into them, he might even have bought the materials at a craft store and fashioned them himself. But they were utterly ineffective against the armor that PRA agents were given.

In the midst of her brief pondering, a panel opened in the front of one of the large banks of blinking lights and buttons. Silhouetted by light from the small space, a man stepped out. Slightly above average height, a little overweight, a scraggly blond beard, he could have lost himself in virtually any crowd.

Another quick glance around the room not only told her that the man was alone in his approach but confirmed the sudden realization that quite a few of the mysterious banks of supposed computers could actually have hidden an entrance to another level of the complex. He could live on the possible top floor or just as equally deep beneath the structure with a dedicated lift and additional escape paths.

This was her chance. Resonance took two steps towards him, intent on attack, when she was brought up short. It didn't take long for her training to kick in and realize that he must have erected a force field around her. Even if she had access to her senses, she wouldn't have been able to sense the strange energy. The best she could have hoped for would be to define her prison.

Even that didn't bother Resonance overly much. Her own destructive ability had yet to find anything she couldn't punch through. Even the strongest force fields the PRA could erect fell instantly to her strange power.

Rather than try to focus on the object she wanted to disrupt, Resonance simply allowed the effect to disburse in the general direction she wanted to escape. It drastically weakened the strength of her attack, but energy tended to be very sensitive to changes in wavelength. She didn't even try a cautious hand. She simply ran through the space created by her blast.

The man didn't react as she expected. He should have panicked. Maybe she thought he would scramble to bring up another trap, or launch another attack. Instead, he simply nodded. As if he had expected that she field wouldn't hold her.

The discovery brought Resonance up short. Confidence she would have been able to deal with. Most villains, it seemed, thought of themselves as nearly invincible. They were arrogant. This was different. It wasn't cold so much as simply emotionless. Calculating.

The focus was a mistake. Even with access to her other sense, she probably wouldn't have noticed the creeping mounds that rose out of the floor. The first indication she had of them was when they shifted like some primordial ooze and encased her feet past her ankles.

Everything happened so quickly it was difficult, later, for Resonance to remember the order in which it happened.

Instinctively, her arms dropped and her hands flew open to focus on the rapidly thickening material. Her concentration wavered and she couldn't seem to find the resonance of the dark gray substance. Similar blobs launched themselves from the floor and encased each hand. Cables that connected the new manacles to the floor quickly retreated to the far walls and yanked her arms wide.

When the moment cleared, Resonance found herself with her feet firmly planted to the floor and her arms raised to her sides above her shoulders. The only benefit of the pause was that it afforded her time to concentrate on her powers. She could dissolve each of the bands on her hands and then free her feet.

Unfortunately, even with complete concentration, she couldn't seem to discover the proper resonance in the material!

"Are you aware, my young heroine, that your remarkable powers are based on the properties of sound?"

Suddenly afraid, Resonance looked meekly up. The man's deep baritone voice could have sent thrills of excitement through her if the two had met under different circumstances. Even as his captive, however temporary she intended that state to be, a rebellious part of her mind wished she could hear him speak with full access to her enhanced senses.

"The thing about your organization is that they've stopped truly studying the abilities of their agents. Of course, that's not really what they're about, though, is it? They're about control. They don't care aboutwhy Paras are the way they are, they just want..." He paused for a moment and shook his head. "But I digress."

The man began to slowly circle his captive from a fairly safe distance of ten feet. The caution might have seemed absurd to most people, given that she was completely bound, but she knew he would try not to underestimate a Para. Given how many he had defeated, his caution served its purpose.

Resonance needed him to let his guard down. There was no other way that she could possibly win. Although now afraid, she still favored her chances against him. He might think he had her, but she still had a trick up her sleeve. If only she could get him close enough that it wouldn't be wasted.

"Your powers," his voice drifted over her shoulder, "are sonic in nature. You set up some kind of resonance within objects that cause them to shake apart. Incidentally, the material around your hands and feat is a sound absorbing material. You won't be able to break them like that. I would guess they probably call you something like Wailer, or Mockingbird, or even Sonica?"

Apparently, he didn't seem to have much respect for the PRA naming scheme. "Resonance." She answered simply as she glanced over her shoulder at him.

The man stopped. His head cocked to one side in thought. It almost looked like surprise mingled with respect. When he spoke again, his tone matched the expression. "Do they? You're one of the lucky ones. Must have a good handler."

He crossed his arms and brought a single finger up to tap against his chin as he temporized. "Female, obviously. With a body like yours any red-blooded male would have put you in something far skimpier. Gale Liberty, maybe?"

Resonance allowed her shoulders to slump, immensely grateful that the restraints and position allowed her the relief. She had to make herself look as defeated as possible. Her handler, with only her cover alias, would be easy enough to confirm. It was public knowledge. "Mary Heart."

The man continued to circle, now slightly in front of her but still off to one side. He nodded once, again. "You are lucky. She's one of the most dedicated to her charges. Of course, she's young so the future remains to be seen."

His pacing finally stopped in front of her once more. This time, when he looked her up and down, the purely unemotional, calculating, expression had been replaced by one that helped her fully believe the charges the women spoke of. He seemed to drink in her every curve with a heat that unnerved her.

At the same time, that much interest from a man also left her mildly excited. It was a compliment, in its own crude fashion. She tried to shake off the feeling, however, and explain it away as an aftereffect of the method in which she had come to think of her current folly. Thought of him as her target had come while she masturbated, so they concepts would be at least mildly linked in her mind.

When the man resumed walking, she noticed that his pace wasn't nearly as sure and steady as it had been. A bulge had grown firm and strong beneath the bland gray slacks he wore. Whether it actually affected his gate or remained nothing more than a symbol of the real cause of his distraction didn't matter. What mattered was that he now paced slightly closer than the original ten feet. If he kept up the spiral, eventually he would be in range.

"Have you read my file? I suspect you haven't. I don't remember the last time they officially sent someone after me. While I'm wanted desperately, they know what will happen. Besides, if theyhad sent you, I suspect they'd have given you a much skimpier outfit in the hopes it would distract me enough to win the day. Maybe even just a thong and a couple of pasties."

There was a decidedly lascivious glint to his eye as he pondered the concept that made Resonance blush from head to foot beneath her unrevealing costume. She knew the PRA wasn't against such tactics. There were plenty enough men, Paras and norms alike, who would fall for it and almost as many women agents willing to flaunt themselves for just such an edge.

"Regardless of how wonderfully such attire would accent your beauty, I digress once more. The point is, you don't know what it is that I'm wanted for. In truth, I set up this place as something of a lure. I then put out rumors that I had begun to collect Para DNA for experiments.

"Of course, the first who visited were police. Predictably, with their flimsy warrants. I sent them away, of course. It took a few more months, and some equally flimsy forged evidence put into the right hands, before they came back with a legitimate warrant.

"Being the law abiding man that I am, I let them in and allowed them to search the entire place. There was nothing to find, so they left empty-handed."

Resonance couldn't help but scoff. "Law abiding? You assaulted and humiliated dozens of male agents of the PRA! You'veraped dozens more of our women! Those aren't the actions of a 'law abiding' citizen!"