Vigilante

11. Patty Parker

When Patty came to, there were a few things that she noticed about her surroundings. The first was that it was dark, and she was in a cage. Off in the distance, she could hear the sound of seagulls from somewhere she couldn't quite place. Outside, probably.

She also noticed that the wound that she had gotten from Ryder was no longer hurting. Patty thought back, trying to remember what had happened, and it hit her hard. She'd become a cliché.

The superheroes girlfriend, kidnapped by the villain. How thoroughly boring of her. "Shit," she muttered, as she frantically looked for some way, anyway to get out. She didn't even have a weapon on her.

She sat down on the hard, dark ground and let out a cry. It was a useless thing to do, but it had been a long, hard few days. She was frustrated. There had been so much death and so much change. Perhaps it would have been better if she gave up then. There was no way they could take down The Six, no way they could save the city and return things to normal.

"You know, out of all the things I thought would bring me down, I never thought it would be the maid's daughter," said a cold, cruel voice.

She looked up to see Hayden Whittier standing over her. "You bastard." She jumped up, turning around to reach through the bars of her cage hoping to grab him. He leaped away, laughing.

"You know, I never understood why my son was so fascinated with the helps kin. But now I know. You've got fire, spunk. I thought you were a fool when you gave up your interests in Armstrong Industries but you weren't a fool. You were simply trying to be noble, heroic. You didn't understand the greatness you could have had if you had simply taken what you were given. Why, you could have saved the city yourself instead of waiting for your boyfriend to come back from the dead. The Six might never have been an issue. Now, as it is, were going to make sure that the two of you can't even stand the sight of each other."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean, that little program that made Ryder what he is never fully shut down. In fact, we're looking for new candidates. We've yet to try it on a fully grown, adult woman before. The scientists were so excited when they saw you. It's been so long since we've had a good candidate for this."

"I won't be a monster," she said.

He laughed. "How romantic, that's what you think of my son. I'll have to tell him that. Of course, once he finds out what I intend to do with you he might not be so in love with you anymore. In fact, he might even think of you as tainted."

She blanched. "What the hell are you talking about?" Even though, before he said the words out loud, she already knew.

"Well, all of our little creations have to come from somewhere," Hayden Whittier said, his eyes dropping to her stomach, "and look at it this way, now you will finally have the family that you always wanted. We even brought in someone you love for the other part."

"Someone I love?" she said. "There's no way that you could have gotten the drop on Ryder. He's too smart for that."

He laughed. "No. Not Ryder."

Her stomach dropped, as she thought of the only other man she had cared about enough to even consider herself in love. "No. Surely you didn't bring him into this mess."

"Really, you left me with no choice," he said, "consider it a gift. It's impossible for Ryder to have children. His DNA has mutated so much that there's no possible way for him to reproduce. Of course, that doesn't really stop him from trying." He grinned, as if the whole thing were a normal conversation.