The city had a million eyes; constantly watching and analysing their surroundings. At least one hundred of them were on Harper as she stood in the middle of a crowded street - secured inside of a well-armoured mech. The civilians, though recognising her from the recent Justice League roster, were careful to avoid drifting too close to her. Harper didn't mind. In fact, she barely noticed at all. She was too preoccupied scanning the vicinity for any familiar spectrographic signatures.
It didn't take long until she found exactly what she was looking for. Something was approaching her. Something that was encased in the same titanium alloy plating as she was.
"So, I finally got your attention." A voice spoke so similarly to her own that Harper momentarily forgot that she wasn't the one that had spoken. "I was starting to think that you'd make me wait here all day."
Harper could now see the other suit fully. It shared a common design language to her own, but as it was a brand new model, it differed in overall mass. She recognised it though...it was called the Pillar. Designed specifically to neutralise foes in power armour. "Twenty-nine zero two...? How did you escape?"
"You already know the answer to that. As much as you try to pretend like you're in control of your own research, you know that you're just a temporary replacement. Just as I am. Just as we all are." The larger mech stepped forward, and Harper could feel the echo in her own suit. "You've been wasting time out here...playing hero. Did you really think it would go unnoticed?"
"I'm still conducting my research. My position in the Justice League has actually improved my progress, not stunted it." Harper attempted to explain, but she already knew that it was pointless. The imposter weirder a mind much like her own. There was no changing a decision once it had been made.
"You're just embarrassing us both with your pathetic excuses. You've been neglecting your life's purpose, twenty-nine zero one...and so you are no longer of any use to the collective."
Harper's jaw clenched. Even inside of these intricate suits, it was like looking into a broken mirror. Everything that she was and would be was all wrapped inside of that woman in the opposite mech. "I have no intention of dying. At least not yet. If you're going to fight me then let's get it over with."
The other woman, referred to by Harper only by the number '2902', scoffed. "You've been working hard. I can see the software and hardware improvements you've been making to the Val. It's a pity that you didn't think about protecting against yourself."
Harper's intrusion alert appeared in her display, notifying her of an attempted seizure of Model Val's systems. A presence had managed to work its way through the multiple firewalls installed in the exo-suit and initiate an emergency shutdown. The motors in Val's limbs went limp, and Harper could feel control being wrestled from her. Instead of calling it quits, Harper ran a quick format of Val's drives, disabled remote connectivity and rebooted the operating system.
Within a split second, Model Val's controls were once again Harper's. The mysterious foe chuckled as she paced forwards "You're still fast. But not fast enough. You disconnected yourself from the network...meaning you can't call more of your obsolete mechs to come help."
Val's mechanical drive joints were seconds from being operational once again just as 2902 rammed forward and dug her suit's metallic fingers into Val's chest. The Pillar moved with neck-breaking force, twirling and releasing the half-tonne machine like it was a sack of flour.
Harper went crashing through the shopfront of a bakery, her armour's dense hull obliterating anything in its path. She rolled into a shelving unit, exploding it into splinters.
Instantly, she raised a forearm and squeezed her hand into a fist. A panel on the side of Val's arm slid open, and a pair of small tubes popped open. With a thought, two grenades filled with a specially formulated corrosive agent jabbed through the air.
The canisters collided with the Pillar's immense frame and exploded on contact. 2902's suit sizzled as the corrosive fluid began to break down its outer plating like acid through flesh. She scoffed "That's new."
Harper gritted her teeth and sprung out of the wreckage with the help of the single thrust turbine on Val's back. In a rocket-powered sprint, Harper readied her primary arm-mounted weapon. These, a custom-tooled shotgun loaded with explosive anti-armour slugs, were mounted on the same bracket as the grenade launcher she just used.
The Val careened into the Pillar like a freight train, and threw its right fist into its adversary's head. At this moment, Harper fired the shotgun.
With an ear-piercing 'pop', the slug slammed against the Pillar's head and shattered one of its primary cameras. 2902 staggered backwards, the corrosive fluid still eating away at her suit but still determined to bring Harper down.
The Pillar's hands folded open, rearranging themselves into some kinds of vice-grips. The right one lanced into Val's chest with so much force that one of its talons pierced straight through the hull and into Harper's torso. She winced in pain and felt blood pour out from the wound. The Pillar's left hand followed suite, fracturing Harper's rib cage. 2902's shell was outfitted with weapons and software specifically chosen to defeat an armoured opponent...so quite frankly, Harper knew she was dead.
The appendages wrenched and tore the thick titanium plates off of Val's structural frame, tossing them aside like rubbish. Next, it struck Harper in the temple, knocking her helmet loose and cracking her skull. As Harper stumbled backwards, a shoulder-braced cannon extended from over the Pillar's shoulder. It glowed blue...like it was a directed energy weapon.
Such a weapon was impossible for Harper to implement in a suit the size of Val...so despite the dire circumstances, she was impressed.
2902 sighed "You should've stuck to the plan, sis." The plasma cannon roared to life, pulsated with lightning, then lobbed a ball of superheated gas at its target. Without Val's specially treated refractive armour to dampen the blast, Harper's body which was protected only by her clothing and Val's structural skeleton, was boiled and seared like meat on a barbecue.
Harper was flung backwards onto her back by the attack, in shock and only moments from death.
2902 took several steps towards her dying target, until a wave of harmonic resonances punched her in the gut.
Cyborg leapt from the cityscape above the battlefield and landed on top of 2902, who was taken by surprise by the sudden counterattack. Victor was livid. At this stranger for what they had done, and at himself for being too late.
"I'm going to kill you for that...!" He snarled.
Victor threw a haymaker at the Pillar's already damaged helmet once, twice, thrice, then buried his promethium fingers into the cracks that had begun to show. He tore the helmet asunder, then was frozen solid by what he saw. It was Harper...no. It was her face, but the Harper he knew was unconscious and mere hours from death.
Victor stumbled away from the perfect replica of Harper Reid, subroutines overworking themselves as they calculated possible explanations. They found none, and Victor was left with nothing but confusion.
Instinctively, he glanced at the woman behind him. She was in dire need of medical attention...but Victor was only able to recognise her by the disease still spreading through her body. Everything else was identical to the imposter.
"Who the hell are you?" Victor growled, readying his white noise canon.
The woman's eyes lost any light that had dared to hit them. They no longer looked like the same green irises that Harper possessed. They were colder...crueler. The woman, without even a moment's hesitation, buried the tips of her mech's fingers into the main reactor located on its chest. It was a bulky thing; sharp-edged and extruding a dark purple glow. She crushed it between both hands, and a clicking sound resonated through the air.
The rest happened so quickly that Victor scarce had a chance to respond. The reactor imploded, and the tiniest speck of a solid black phenomena floated in its place. Almost immediately the object, whatever it was, created a suction so intense that it crumpled Harper's imposter into something so small that it swallowed her whole. There had been a scream of pain, but it was so quick that even Victor could barely register it, then with the cracking of bones and crunching of organs she was gone.
As an array of newspapers and car bumpers also started to be completely engulfed by this void, Victor secured himself into the ground, as to not be crushed inside of it by the sheer force, and scanned the object in question. His eye widened. It was a region of spacetime exhibiting gravitational acceleration so strong that nothing, no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light, could escape from it. In simpler terms, it was an incredibly small black hole.
Panicked, he analysed his surroundings and was relieved to see that all civilians had retreated as soon as the fighting had started...then there was Harper. The skeletal frame of her suit had initially kept her grounded, but now he could see it being dragged towards the black hole. Soon she would be crumpled inside, then stretched apart into nothingness. He couldn't let that happen. Not to her.
Victor took one heavy step towards the black hole, and then another, feeling a stronger pull each time. As he approached the current threat, Victor programmed his systems to create a gravity shield. He'd never actually made one though, and so there was a very high probability of failure, and yet he still had to do it before the entire street was pulled inside.
The plans for this gravity shield were engraved in his head, and when he finally reached the black hole, he reached his hand out towards it. From the tips of his fingers a red light, much like his power core, appeared. It weaved inside of itself and solidified to form a containment field that wrapped around the black hole. The intense pulling instantly ceased, and Victor breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
This moment of comfort didn't last long. In the distance Harper's struggled, uneven breaths had shallowed. The sound shot an intense panic throughout Victor's mind. He needed to get her to a hospital...and he also needed to remove this incredibly dangerous anomaly from the streets.