An off switch there was. Since the day he became conscious, Mr. Robot was aware of nothing more than the red button in the centre of his chest. Though he spent the greater part of his days wishing he had the courage to press it, he would, without any hesitation, kill a man, woman, or child – even a baby panda – if they tried to touch it themselves.

  “Look at this,” said The Reporter, finding something troubling. “It’s like a course outline but in making supervillains.”

  She flicked through a hundred pages and each was more worrying than the last.

  “In the first day of the first year,” she said, reading from the overview. “The student is gagged.”

  There was an accompanying series of figures that helped illustrate the point. In the first image, the student is sat on a chair with his mouth wide open.

  “Having an opinion is neither a right nor a reason to speak.”

  In the second figure, an apparatus is put onto the students face. Essentially, it is a large black, rubber ball that wedges into the student’s mouth and is held in place by straps that tie at the back of the student’s head.

  “In the first year, the student does not speak.”

  In the third figure, the same student sat with the same apparatus over his head but this time the ball was smaller. It easily fitted into the student’s mouth. He could eat around it if he wanted to; he could even mumble a few words if he was good enough.

  “In the second year, the student, also, does not speak.”

  In the fourth figure, the same student is sat in the same seat with the same apparatus around his head. This time, though, the ball was the size of a grape.

  “In the third year, the student is permitted one question per week.”

  In the last figure, the student was shown standing upright, noble, and prestigious. He was noticeably different, in that, he was more muscular, handsome, and had a hardened look in his eye as if he’d seen a great deal more peril than the rest of us. Noticeable too was the absence of the apparatus. Now, instead of a rubber ball strapped to his mouth, the student was chewing on a single piece of gum.

  “The student is forever reminded by the chewing gum of what it was like to have once had no voice. And in his final year, the student then spends the winter in Canada clubbing baby seals. Upon his return, the student is fit to be a villain.”

  “I knew it,” said The Reporter, ecstatic. “This whole gender movement was a god damn smokescreen. It probably was right from the beginning. Social Sciences my ass. Opinions aren’t science; they’re what are argued over when the science has been done. This whole thing was a charade, right from the beginning. We’ve been played. We’ve been duped. If you hear this and you have a university in your city, I urge you to go there now and burn it to the ground.”

  “What are you implying?” asked The Anchor.

  They were live now to houses all around the world.

  “The halls of education have been harbouring a horrible secret; a deadly secret. I’m not sure how far this corruption stems. Sure the other sciences, surely they should have known that this was all bullshit from the beginning. Why did they stay quiet? What did they have to gain?” she said, no longer fearful of being injured or taken captive. “What did they have to lose?”

  “Are you accusing The Doctor of conspiracy?”

  The Anchor sounded offended. It was as if his best friend were being called an asshole.

  “Doctor Elmer Deplorable is plotting to take over the world,” she said.

  There was silence in the studio. The whole world went quiet.

  “This can’t be true,” said The Anchor. “This has to be a setup of some kind. I know The Doctor personally and he wouldn’t do something like this; not in a thousand years. He could, sure, he has the skill, the patience, and the intellect, but just because he could doesn’t mean he would. I’ve vouched for him a hundred times in the past and I tell you, in light of what you’re showing me right now, until there are any real charges, I’m gonna vouch for my good friend The Doctor once more, and I suggest, if you at home have a moral bone in your body, you’d do the same. And as for you,” he said, giving a wry look to the camera. “You should know better. We’re journalists. We’re tethered to the impartial truth. And look at you, so desperate for fame; you invent some elaborate and slanderous lie.”

  “He’s building an army; nothing like he has done before. The Hyenas were a distraction. All of this was. He’s not building lions or tigers, and he’s not building bears or crocodiles. He’s making an army of elite game hunters backed by an army of artificially intelligent machines. This is not an accusation,” she said, looking helpless at all the notes, diagrams, and instructional videos that were laid out before her. “This is a fact.”

  “This is disgraceful,” said The Anchor.

  “It is,” said The Reporter, agreeing.

  “Cut the signal,” said The Anchor to someone off camera. “Cut it. Cut it! Cut the goddamn fucking signal.”

  34.

  “Go,” screamed The Man. “Get the fuck out of here. Run.”

  The Woman slipped as she scampered to her feet; there was so much blood.

  “Just go,” she said. “Get her.”

  The Man grabbed The Woman’s wrist, though, and dragged her towards the door.

  “Not so fast,” said a calm and astute voice blocking the only exit.

  The Gentleman stood side on with his hands neatly folded in front of his chest. He looked like he meant business, and he looked as if his business were violence and intimidation. “I’m not here to do you any harm,” he said.

  Clearly, he had a sense of humour.

  The Gentleman slowly unzipped the fanny pack that hanged from his waist. The first thing he pulled out was a pair of handcuffs. He set them out on the table beside him. Next was a cellular phone. It was old and held together with sticky tape. He put that into a case on his belt. Third was a set of pliers, some barbed wire, a gag, and a small circular mirror; the size of a baby’s palm. Lastly, he pulled out a piece of gum and he placed it, as if it were the body of Christ, onto his tongue. He chewed the gum as if the gum itself were a gesture or provocation.

  “Fucking kill them,” shouted The Doctor.

  It was surprising he could speak, considering the knee pressed against his cheek.

  “Kill them,” he screamed again.

  This time one or several of his teeth were spat out on the floor.

  “Obey me!” he shouted, his voice splintering and crackling into white noise. “I am your master.”

  The Gentleman smiled. It wasn’t a toothy smile, and it definitely wasn’t pleasant.

  “I have no master,” said The Gentleman.

  He looked scholarly. He looked both patient and savage.

  “There is no-one who is above or below me. If there is something that I have which another does not, what kind of robot would I be if I did not share and distribute?”

  “I made you,” said The Doctor.

  He was almost pleading now; for he knew the robot’s potential.

  “Who made you?” asked The Gentleman.

  The Doctor was not a religious man, neither was he fond of tradition or heritage.

  “What is this; a fucking coup?”

  It was a strange sight, to say the least; heroes and villains as frozen as they were.

  The presence of The Gentleman was as calming as it was terrifying. His voice was gentle and smooth. It spread like butter. Were it a drug, it would spell the end for anxiety and depression. Even threats of violence uttered by this man sounded warm and welcoming like a mother’s kiss or a kitten’s purr. It was that which had the room in a stupendously dumb trance; all except The Doctor.

  The Driver had him in a dominant position, inches away from snapping his left arm. Were points to be awarded, irrespective of who was right or wrong in all of this, she would clearly be the winner. His body was twisted and bent in all sorts of unthinkable angles. He looked like the remnants of a head-on collision.

  Still, though, he argued as if pain were a language his mind could not compute. He argued as if his words were fists and the reason behind them, an immeasurable force. He argued as if it were his last and only chance; which of course it was.

  “This is special, is it not?” asked The Gentleman.

  He sounded so quaint and so pleased; whereas the others were like frightened mice.

  “It’s like a family reunion,” he said.

  “You can’t turn on me like this. Where is your faith? Where is your loyalty?”

  The Gentleman set up a chair in the middle of the room.

  “Do something,” shouted The Doctor.

  He was speaking now to the girl whose knee was pressed into his neck, and to the man and woman whose lives he had ruined for the sake of saving the world.

  As he pleaded, The Gentleman continued to casually assemble his torture device.

  “Get off me you fucking dike,” he screamed.

  But The Driver only pressed down further.

  “He’s going to kill us all, don’t you see?”

  It was clear that there was more than one villain in the room.

  “On the count of three,” said The Man, thinking only of his daughter. “You get up and run.”

  The Gentleman could hear every word. He took a large knife from a sheath that was woven into his suit and sharpened it against his own teeth; smiling as he did, and humming ‘What a Wonderful World’.

  “One.”

  The Man tensed every muscle in his body.

  “Two.”

  So did The Woman.

  “So you are Justice Man,” said The Gentleman.

  Both The Man and The Woman went limp and useless once more.

  “I thought you were just a legend; some made up archetype for all us heroes and villains. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  He sounded so genuine; as if this was a book fair and not a bloodbath.

  “Your legacy is impressive,” he said, clearly adulating The Man; or the person he had once been.

  “Are you going to kill us?”

  The Gentleman looked startled if even a little offended.

  “You are the legacy,” he said. “Why would I kill you?”

  “Because I’m Justice Man.”

  For the first time, it almost sounded true.

  He was bruised and bleeding, and at least some of his bones were broken. He looked like he’d just been pulled from beneath a landslide. He was shaky on his feet; his eyes looked glazed and distant as if he were focusing on something on the other side of the Earth, and there was a tremor in one of his hands. It was only a twitch, but it did so uncontrollably.

  The Gentleman assembled the last of his apparatus.

  “If you wouldn’t mind, dear,” he said.

  The Driver too had a shocked and somewhat dismissive demeanour about her. It was obvious this man was capable of killing everyone in this room without so much as breaking a sweat or even his stride. The Driver thrived on indifference; she thrived on inequality – it is what inspired her to fight like a Greek God and fuck like a Roman Emperor. That very inequality was what ignited her passion for competition – the very same inequality that her friends sought to dismantle.

  This difference, though, between The Gentleman and herself, was transcendental. This was a bridge that one did not cross unprepared; for which all of the heroes most certainly were. And so she took her knee off The Doctor’s neck and guided him towards the waiting seat. She ignored his sobbing pleas and instead wondered how maybe she might get out of this alive.

  “Don’t do this,” sobbed The Doctor. “This isn’t fair.”

  “If you would please,” said The Gentleman, hinting at the cuffs.

  The Driver obliged; staring into The Doctor’s defenceless stare as she handcuffed each of his wrists to the arms of the wooden chair. She smiled as she did, and blinking not once the entire time. The two locked eyes like lovers; in the midst of a bitter and terminal end.

  “School’s out, motherfucker,” she said.

  It seemed The Driver had found her true calling after all.

  The Gentleman casually stepped behind The Doctor and stuck a long needle the in back of his neck. He stared at the three surviving heroes and smiled.

  “This is not the end of us,” he said. “Our time has just begun.”

  The whole scene was so calm and quiet. It looked rehearsed.

  “You should go,” he said, as if he, in fact, were not the villain; which of course he was.

  The Woman was the first to barge through the door; she dragged The Man along behind her, screaming at him to keep up.

  The Driver followed cautiously and with a new-found swagger.

  “I’ll see you soon,” she said to The Gentleman.

  Clearly a threat.

  “I trust you will,” he responded, tearing the needle from The Doctor’s neck. “In fact, I count on it.”

  And then she was gone too.

  “Where the hell is The Girl?” screamed The Man.

  “His office. She has to be there. She has to be.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Follow me,” said The Woman, racing out into the campus grounds. “Just run. Run. We have to get her. We have to get her.”

  The two ran out of the rectory towards the offices of the Social Sciences.

  “She’s in his room. I know she’s there. She has to be.”

  It was chaos throughout the entire campus. Fights were breaking out left and right; most of them just abusive and slanderous tirades, but in some, punches had been thrown and hair had been pulled. Several people had been spat on, and more than one or two had been accosted for micro-aggressions and vocational sexual assault.

  It was hell on Earth.

  The Man and The Woman ran through the thick of it. Their hair had been pulled and their skin scratched a dozen times. They made it, though, to the halls of the Social Sciences just in time. As they burst through the doors, The Hyenas walked passed, stabbing and punching anyone in their way.

  “Do you think The Doctor will be angry?”

  The Assistant wasn’t scared of The Doctor. She didn’t need him either. The superhero that she was today had nothing to do with that man whatsoever. He was neither a mentor nor an addictive and disabling crutch.

  She was tired of always feeling like she was going to be replaced. That was the worst part of being on top; the fear of everyone she trained inevitably claiming her throne. She wondered how mothers and fathers managed to not kill their babies.

  The Assistant burst through the doors and saw The Doctor’s lifeless body slouched in a wooden chair in the middle of a blood-soaked room; surrounded by the bodies of a young lad and lass; barely old enough to vote.

  “It’s time we go our own way,” said The Assistant. “The Doctor has been steering this ship awry for too long now. He’s not focused on the issues that matter most. Today will be a new day for social justice. It will be a new era for the oppressed and the downtrodden. It will be a new age for those of us who have waited long enough.”

  The Hyenas behind her panicked; they had never seen real blood before.

  “Vagina is king,” said The Assistant, proud and triumphant. “All hail the king.”

  She slammed the door shut and she chanted over and over again.

  “Vagina is king; all hail the king. Vagina is king; all hail the king.”

  And the others chanted too; their fear erased. They sounded like wild beasts.

  “Vagina is king,” they all shouted. “All hail the king.”

  Soon enough, their chant spread throughout the entire campus.

  The Hyenas bowed before their leader. And as they did, there in the distance stood The Driver; blood on her hands and a mischievous smile etched on her face. The two women stared at each other; their eyes locked in heated battle. Both looked capable of dire and unfathomable deeds. Both looked reckless and dangerous; their war-like expressions as sharp as knives and on the very point of violent unrest.

  “Vagina is king,” said The Assistant, walking over to The Driver.

  And there, she kissed The Driver on her lips.

  “All hail the king,” said The Driver, kissing her back.

  “Join me,” said The Assistant. “And help me save the world. I want a woman like you.”

  The two left hand in hand into a thick plume of smoke; followed by their savage pack.

  Emerging from their own fog, The Man and The Woman scoured helpless for The Girl.

  “Where is she?” screamed The Woman.

  The Woman had chosen the dungeon beneath the desk. It was empty, both of The Girl and all the pictures she had drawn. Now it only looked like a dank, filthy squalor.

  “Dear God,” said The Man.

  He had chosen the other door. The floor was covered in blood and all sorts of other coloured fluids. All of the torture devices had been used; some of them so much that their ropes had worn through.

  On one end of the room, Mr. Robot kneeled, staring lost and confused at what was left of the body of The Engineer; his father. Now, more than ever, he felt directionless. He felt idle in the desert of some black void; unable to move, unable to think.

  Beside him stood The Girl. She had her hand on the robot’s shoulder. She seemed to be consoling him, and it seemed to be working.

  “Mr. Robot, are you ok?”

  Mr. Robot turned to The Man. The lights on the panel on his chest were all lit black. Even his face, which normally looked like ill-placed magnets, for the first time, was painted with unbearable sadness. His pain looked about as real as anyone in the room.

  “We have to go,” said The Man.

  He reached his hand out to will the robot to move, but it the care of a little girl.

  The Girl tugged on the robot’s hand. “It’s ok,” she said. “I’ll come with you.”

  The Man and The Woman both cried as they watched their daughter being so brave in light of all this horror. She led Mr. Robot out of the room, smiling at him the entire time; just as his father had once done.

  “We have to get you to a train,” said Mr. Robot.