Previous Post     One minute the girl scout was accepting her award from Yuki Shiro. The next she exploded.     The detonation caught the Lair Legion unawares. The eleven year old evaporated in a spray of gore that drenched them and the rest of Elizabeth Tilley’s troupe, the winners of the National Be-a-Hero competition who’d travelled from Marmaduke, Texas to meet the world’s greatest superheroes.     Liz Tilley burst like a blood-filled balloon and a number of things happened all at once. The Lair Mansion biohazard alarms went off. Hallie activated an emergency crashdown, sealing the building airtight and releasing broad-spectrum antitoxins and antiviral nanobots. CrazySugarFreakBoy! grabbed the remaining children and scooped them away from the area. Mr Epitome checked the perimeter for follow-up attacks.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This is a very interesting virus,” noted the Manga Shoggoth as if children exploded around him every day. “It has a number of fascinating qualities.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A virus?” Yuki questioned sharply. “What kind?” Already her onboard sensors were picking up fast-replicating airborne particles. Her scan of Liz’s pulped remains quickly identified the surgically-installed delivery system. Somebody had transformed the child into a walking bomb, with technology good enough to pass through the Legion’s bio-scans.     Al B. Harper was already at the nearest terminal. “Something pretty new,” he suggested. “It’s been designed to bond with our cellular systems, even the Shoggoth’s, and while it won’t kill him the rest of us have a matter of hours.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t have any exposed organics,” Yuki pointed out. “I can check out…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You can’t,” Hallie warned the cyborg P.I. “It’s bonded to your artificial skin so you’ll need refitting. And even if it wasn’t, the virus is airborne in your section of the mansion. There’s no way you can get out without releasing the biohazard as well.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Somebody’s trying to kill us,” Al growled. “And they’re aiming kids at us!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or maybe they’re just trying to just pin us down.” CSFB! reasoned. “Keep us out of the way while they do their nefarious plot.” He turned back to Hallie. “Is Hatty still with the President? Patch into his comm-card fast and tell him he’s got…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Six hours,” estimated Al B.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Six hours to find out what the hell is going on.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…Senator just exploded like an overinflated tyre,” snarled Dan Drury, Agent of SPUD. “An’ that, combined with a sophisticated little bit of hacking to prevent our bioseals deploying for just a couple seconds has forced the entire helicarrier into quarantine. Something’s going on and I don’t like it one little bit.” He bit his cigar in two and slammed his fist on the table. “Something’s happenin’ and these bozos already tied our hands.” He leaned towards the viewscreen. “You gotta find out whut an’ stop it.”     The man at the other end of the transmission nodded. “I’m on it, Colonel,” agreed Silver Aegis. *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2007 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2007 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.