Chapter Text
This was not how Evelyn expected to be spending her third day of community service, running down a set of stairs fearing for her life and listening to her brother complain about trivial things. The labs had been compromised by a group of rogue supers something that was unheard of until recently and what was Winston concerned about?
“I told you we should have installed a sprinkler system,” That was what was on Winston’s mind, not that they were about to die but the lack of a sprinkler system.
“The foam is more effective than water!” Evelyn growled pulling her brother down the staircase.
“Against natural fire Evelyn!”
“Ugh!”
They made it to the end of the third flight of stairs and found a hunk of steel-enforced cement blocking the next flight, they stared at it silently for a moment each wondering why. None of the supers they’d come across during their escape were strong enough to break solid steel, they didn’t waste any more time pondering the question thanks to the fire a few flights above them the stairwell was getting increasingly hot, they carefully opened the door that put them off on the twentieth floor and looked around the hall before stepping out.
“How are we going to get down?” Winston asked.
Evelyn stared at the floor thoughtfully, they were twenty floors up they couldn’t just jump out a window.
“Where’s the next staircase?” Evelyn asked.
Winston looked uncomfortable.
“There are only two staircases on odd-numbered floors,” Winston said.
She scowled at him.
“Winston!”
“I didn’t design this building,” Winston said defensively.
“Where do those staircases lead to?” Evelyn asked.
“Another odd numbered floor of course!”
“That makes no sense whatsoever,”
“It does, you see you can take floor nineteen to seventeen and seventeen to fifteen and-”
“So why didn’t you tell me that before?” Evelyn asked angrily. “It would have been a lot faster!”
Winston shrugged. “I panicked,”
Evelyn couldn’t be angry with him for that, after all she had left Dr. Colibat when the first volley of fireballs rained down she hoped he was okay, this was the second time Dr. Colibat had come to collect information about some virus but the first time she’d ever seen a real-life supervillain who happened to bring his friends and attack the labs and of course Winston just happened to be there sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.
“We’ll have to go up a floor then and take the odd numbered staircases down,” Evelyn decided. They turned and ran up the stairs cringing at the heat, that fire elemental must have been having the time of his life in the meta-wing, Evelyn didn’t have a great care for supers but the destruction of precious research irked her. Winston pried open the door to the nineteenth floor and they ran through and darted down the hallway it was eerily empty.
“Where is everyone?” Evelyn asked despite her better judgment telling her to keep silent.
“Maybe they evacuated,” Winston suggested hopefully.
“No they didn’t,” Evelyn said thoughtfully. “They wouldn’t have had the forewarning the fire alarm just went off there’d be a stampede.”
The rogue supers must have done something with the employees and visitors Evelyn tried not to think about what.
“Are the fire alarms hooked up to the police system?” Evelyn asked instead.
“Yes,” Winston said.
“Then help is on the way, hothead up there triggered the foam retardant,” Evelyn said.
Winston nodded wordlessly and they made they way down the hall towards the odd numbered staircase.
As Evelyn was unlocking the door the ceiling groaned above then and suddenly gave way Winston pulled her back just as a net filled with people came crashing down a green substance oozed from the net and began corroding the floor. Winston pointed at the net and screamed it took Evelyn a second to recover from her shock and realize what he was screaming about, on top of the net was the character that had caused Evelyn so much grief, she let out a little shriek of her own. The Screenslaver’s mask stared up at them, then suddenly the body attached to it leaped into action and rolled away from them, jumping to his feet Evelyn’s character ran down the hall.
He was shorter than she remembered and skinnier too.
“This is a nightmare,” Winston whined.
Evelyn nodded in agreement it seemed her own creation was back from the “dead” and wreaking havoc on the labs. The people in the net screamed for help and Evelyn helped Winston pull them free.
“Take the stairs,” Evelyn said rising to her feet, Winston looked at her questioningly. “I’m either going crazy or witnessing the greatest copyright infringement of all time, either way, he is not leaving here with my hypnotech.”
“Evelyn,” Winston said calmly, Evelyn knew he was about to begin a very persuasive conversation so she ran down the hall before he could get another word out.
Evelyn ran around the hall, flinging open doors as she went he was in none of the rooms she looked in, she kicked open the final door and found herself in a library, Evelyn frowned and stormed inside and started peeking behind bookshelves, why did these things always happen to her?
“Your priorities are sure in order,”
Evelyn’s eyes darted up towards the scratchy voice she had spent so much time crafting, the Screenslaver- the fake Screenslaver raised a gloved hand to his goggles, Evelyn looked down quickly not wanting to get hypnotized by her own technology.
“What are you doing?” She growled.
“The same thing as you, looking for answers,” Screenslaver said something hit the floor next to Evelyn’s feet, he glanced at it fearfully, it was a textbook. “But you won’t find yours here.”
“Where did you get that mask?” Evelyn asked. “You’re not supposed to have it.”
Winston told her he’d gotten rid of it, but by Winston’s definition “gotten rid of” could very well mean he found the mask on the hydrofoil’s floor and tossed it in the garbage.
“A dockyard for broken watercrafts,” Screenslaver said, there was something different about his voice something softer, younger. Evelyn picked up the book by her feet and chucked it at the bookshelf she didn’t see where it landed but she heard a huff from above.
“Didn’t like that answer?” Screenslaver asked. “Want another one? Or would you rather figure it out yourself?”
Evelyn eased down the aisle she was in a precarious situation one that she shouldn’t have put herself in willingly, her character was dangerous she had designed him to be the near perfect villain only a super could take him down, whoever was behind that mask wasn’t under her control but he did have access to a state of the art hypnosis device.
“What type of answers are you looking for?” Evelyn asked trying to keep him distracted, if she could get to the fire alarm on the wall she might be able to cause enough confusion to slip out the room and find a weapon, then she would come back and rip that stupid mask off his face.
“The kind that leads to tangles being unraveled,” He hummed. “The kind that makes people’s minds work. The kind that causes everyone to ask themselves, why did supers tear apart the SHF?”
“Couldn’t you find a better way to do that besides destroying our research labs?” Evelyn asked taking one more step towards the alarm.
“I didn’t do this. I’m a bystander and a beneficiary,” Screenslaver said.
“Of what?”
Before he could respond Evelyn pulled down on the alarm, the Screenslaver glanced up in surprise and a thick layer of foam coated his goggles frantically he wiped it away but more poured down, Evelyn pulled open the door and ran outside, a loud noise that shook Evelyn to the bone roared through the building she pressed herself against the wall on instinct as the building made a sound like a dying whale, the ceiling a little ways from her bowed and contents of the upper levels came pouring out crashing through the nineteenth floor and causing a small chasm to form, it stopped five feet from where Evelyn was standing, the library door opened again and the Screenslaver still covered in foam stared at her.
“I told you your answers weren’t in the library,” He said unhelpfully.
“What did you do?” Evelyn screamed.
“Nothing.” He said flicking a lump of foam off his shoulder. “That was a bomb, courtesy of the monsters upstairs.”
Evelyn was afraid of moving, but she remembered she left Winston in the stairwell knowing him he might not have listened to her, he could be dead for all she knew.
“I need to get to the stairs,” Evelyn said aloud to no one, in particular, Screenslaver answered anyway.
“Where there’s a will there is a way,”
Evelyn glanced at him and saw he was pointing upwards, directly into the tunnel formed by the collapse, he was insane there was no doubt about it, she said nothing and he just looked at her, Evelyn had never realized how unnerving that mask was before and the fact that she wasn’t in control of it made it even worse the possibility of snatching the mask off fled from her mind.
“Lack of action frequently leads to unsatisfactory results,”
With that he went back inside the library and shut the door and judging from the loud clicks locked them, leaving Evelyn stuck between a rock and a hard place. The only place left to go was up or straight down.
“Great,”