Page 103 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

“Well, my dear,” he said, turning to face the figure strapped down on his operating table, “it seems the timeline has just been accelerated. You have my most profound apologies. This would have been easier for all of us, and substantially less painful for you, if it had been delayed a few more weeks. But beggars can’t be choosers, and we didn’t choose this disruption, now, did we?”

Velveteen, who was still unconscious, didn’t open her eyes or respond to him in any visible way. She kept breathing, chest rising and falling in smooth, measured motions, and gave no sign that she had heard. Apart from a single tube inserted into the back of her hand and held in place with a small strip of surgical tape, she looked entirely untouched by whatever was going on around her, like she just happened to be a piece of equipment in the presence of some grand and terrible experiment.

And any experiment undertaken in this lab would be grand and terrible, by definition.

Everything was concrete and chrome, a brutalist combination that made the place look like it had been ripped out of the scenery of an early Frankenstein adaptation, or something else starring Vincent Price in his heyday. There was even a vast laser aimed at a pair of steel doors that would, when opened, expose a substantial expanse of the sky. It was a lab built for mad science, and anything that failed to reach that height was unlikely to be successful.

Doctor Darwin turned back to the control bank, beginning to press buttons and flip switches even faster than he had been before the alarm went off. “We’ll have a single shot at doing this correctly,” he said. “But we’ll have half a dozen shots at doing it incorrectly if this fails, and that should be close enough. Once half the process has been completed, I should be able to get the resources to complete it, even if it takes longer than I would have preferred. Some people may die in their in-between state, but not you, my dear. Your reward for your part in all of this will be a guaranteed ascension into the new reality, with all the position and power that implies.”

He flipped another switch, this one larger than the others around it, and turned to give Velveteen an expectant look. Something bright and silver-blue began to flow through the tube attached to her hand, drawn from her body and into the waiting containment tank that stood nearby. Drop by drop, the viscous substance flowed out of her, until it finally seemed to reach its end, and the tube ran dry.

As this happened, Velveteen opened unfocused eyes, staring up at the laboratory ceiling, and began to scream.

It wasn’t a particularly impassioned sound. She didn’t sound like she was suffering or in pain, or scared of anything; she sounded more like a third-rate scream queen trying to emote in the face of the latest terrible rubber monster she’d been asked to be afraid of. Even as she screamed and shrieked and wailed, she managed to come off as faintly bored and unimpressed.

Doctor Darwin scowled. “Is that any way to show proper awe and reverence to the man who’s about to change the world?” he asked.

He flipped another switch, and the table slid into a new position, holding Velveteen at a right angle from the floor. She finally stopped screaming and shook her head, eyes focusing on the supervillain in front of her. She started to struggle against her bonds. “Let me go right now, you dickweasel,” she spat.

“That is not, I must admit, something I’ve been called before,” he said. “Is that commonly taught vocabulary in your superheroic institutions?”

“I dropped out,” she snapped.

“Of course. How foolish of me to forget.” He kept flipping switches and adjusting dials, moving quickly now. “What happens if I don’t let you go?”

“I find the nearest Chuck E. Cheese and I kick your ass with a giant animatronic rat,” said Velveteen. “I bet this place has security cameras. If I leak that footage, I’ll make enough money to clear any bills I incur for property destruction.”

“Ah. You do know how to think like a superhero. That’s a pleasant discovery, as you’ll be needed in my new world.”

Velveteen paused, finally seeming to realize that this might be something more important than a simple abduction by a C-tier archnemesis. She tensed against her bonds, eyeing him suspiciously. “I don’t see you as the ‘bringing about a new world’ type,” she said, keeping her tone carefully level. “If you had that kind of power, you’d have changed everything years ago. What are you playing at?”

“I told you, Miss Velveteen, I will not be the first to change the world. The evolutionary plague, when it came, changed everything, and not for the better. Perhaps a ‘new world’ is the wrong descriptor. I’m simply putting right what’s been made wrong.”

There was a massive smashing sound from somewhere beneath them. Doctor Darwin nodded, satisfied. “There they are, right on schedule,” he said.

“Who?” asked Velveteen.

“Why, your friends, of course,” he said. “This will be the epicenter of the transformation, and I knew once they discovered your absence, they would be hunting you down in short order. They want to reclaim you, no doubt. Because you’ve been such great help to me in my work, and I know they’re important to you, I wanted to wait for them to arrive before I initiated the change. Call it a small repayment for everything you’ve done without knowing you were doing it. You’ll get to keep your friends.”

He flipped a final massive switch, and a wave of static arced through the room, accompanied by the bright, sweet scent of incense. Doctor Darwin turned, offering Velveteen a shallow bow, then walked out of the room through a small door on the far wall.

The main door burst open as Polychrome, Victory Anna, and the Snow Princess burst into the room, all of them clearly braced and ready for a fight. They paused as they realized there were no villains waiting to be taken down. Victory Anna approached the bank of controls with a wary, reverent air, like a priest moving toward an altar that might or might not be filled with highly poisonous spiders.

“What was he hoping to accomplish?” she asked, seemingly of herself. She moved closer still. “This looks like a reality programming machine, but lacks some of the primary components that would make such a thing operate.”

“Less analysis, more smashing,” said Polychrome, pulling back her hand to throw a beam of solidified light into the console.

Victory Anna grabbed her wrist before she could. “If we smash it, we’ll never know what he’s done that required abducting Velveteen multiple times and stripping the dimensional transference energy from her body,” she said sternly. “Restraint, please.”

Snow Princess ignored them both, moving toward Velveteen and beginning to undo the straps that held her in place. She didn’t touch the tube still protruding from Velveteen’s hand, although she did look at it askance, clearly unhappy about leaving it where it was. As for Velveteen, she sagged forward into Snow Princess as soon as she was released from the table, making no real effort to stand on her own.

“You all right?” asked Snow Princess, anxiously. “What did he do to you?”

“Put this stupid tube in my hand and monologued at me a bunch,” said Velveteen, finally trying to straighten up. She pushed her hair out of her eyes with her hand and frowned. “Strapped me to the table. Said he made sure you’d all get here before ‘the transformation,’ because he wanted me to have you with me.”

“What?” asked Snow Princess.

“What?” demanded Victory Anna, whipping around and staring at Velveteen.