On the cold, clear night of 14 April 1912, at 23:40, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic as she neared the end of her maiden voyage. Two hours and 40 minutes later the great ship took her final plunge to the bottom of the sea. Less than two hours after that the RMS Carpathia arrived to begin rescuing the few survivors, adrift in lifeboats. But one of those lifeboats, Lifeboat No. 4, was never found and for a long time its fate remained one of the great mysteries of that tragic night to remember.
One of the things that so captured the public’s fascination concerning the vanishing of Lifeboat 4 was the fact that aboard her were Col. John Jacob Astor IV and his young wife Madeleine Talmage Astor (neé Force), one of the wealthiest couples in the world at the time. Along with with Mrs. Astor’s maid Rosalie Bidois and nurse Caroline Louise Endres, the famous couple escaped the doomed ship, but according to eyewitness reports it was a near thing. Second Officer Lightoller at first refused to let Col. Astor board the boat, relenting only at the last minute under the piteous pleas of the the man’s 5-months pregnant wife. Lightoller drew the line at the valet, Victor Robbins, however – Col. Astor was prepared to rejoin his man aboard the doomed ship, but between his wife’s urging and Robbin’s insistence, he remained, reluctantly, aboard the lifeboat… and vanished with the 40-odd other occupants less than two hours later. It would be 91 years before the world learned the truth of that fateful night…
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Less than an hour after the great ocean liner took her final plunge, Lifeboat 4 was drifting some way apart from the other boats. It was a cold, clear night, and the stars shone sharply above them and reflected brightly in the glass-smooth waters around them, as the cries and pleas for help of those in the water slowly faded into silence. They had pulled half a dozen people from the freezing waters in the first few minutes, but it was now clear that there were no more souls to be saved.
Nonetheless, Col. Astor continued to peer into the night, and strained to hear anything that might be a living person. But he whirled around at the sudden, terrified shrieks of many of the women, and a horrified cry from Second Officer Lightoller, positioned at the opposite end of the boat, and like the colonel staring into the night “Dear God, it’s a sea monster!” the young officer cried, pointing aft.
Out of the smooth waters a great dark shape was rising, close behind them and coming on at speed. Like a great sea beast indeed, it loomed over them, and an immense mouth gaped open as if to swallow the boat whole! After an instant of near heart-stopping shock Col. Astor, at least, recognized that it was not a living creature at all.
”Look closer,” he called out, his firm, authoritative voice demanding calm. “It’s merely a craft of some sort… perhaps a submersible boat such as Mr. Verne has written about! Let us not panic!”
Calming and reassuring Astor’s words might have been, but it was a bit much to ask. Even he felt a moment’s trepidation, and the terrified passengers shrieked again and cringed away from the looming apparition as its gaping black maw swallowed the lifeboat whole. When nothing else happened immediately, beyond the total darkness which now engulfed the lifeboat and its 43 occupants, the screams soon faded to quiet sobs and muttered questions. Then electric lights flared to life all around them, and the shadowy figures of men could be seen beyond the glare, moving on a catwalk some feet above, which seemed to ring them.
“You have nothing to fear, my friends,” a deep, booming voice above them called out, speaking English, but with a strange, not immediately identifiable accent. Astor thought it sounded like something between Greek and Russian, although clearly not either, and had an odd mechanical quality to it. The silhouetted shape of the voice’s owner, positioned between two of the great light sources above them, was large and thickset, though the colonel could make out few details… wait, was that a glass helmet around the man’s head?
”You are now the honored guests of the Imperial Realm of Great Atlantis,” the voice went on, and the man leaned forward to grip the railing in front of him. Now the light illuminated his head and upper body, and Astor could see that he indeed wore a glass helmet – and that it was filled with water! “We have saved you from a fate far worse than death, surface dwellers, and I am only sorry we could not save more of your people this terrible night.
”But there will be time for explanations later… and for mourning. For now, let us get you out of that boat, dried, warmed, and fed. Once that is accomplished, and you are all made comfortable, I will answer all your questions.”
As the commanding figure had been speaking the water had been draining away around them, and now the lifeboat was resting, tilted to port, on a glistening floor of black metal. More light poured out from a large doorway behind them, and a dozen men in strange, scaled suits of some body-hugging silver material approached. Each of these men also wore bowl-like helmets on their heads, completely filled with water…
“Which rather lends credence to their claims of being citizens of the fabled underwater city of lost Atlantis,” Col. Astor murmured quietly to his wife as he helped her over the side of the boat. She only shook her head in shocked and frightened bewilderment.
Once the Titanic survivors had indeed been warmed and fed, in a largish chamber dominated by a curving glass wall that showed black ocean beyond, the commander of the strange vessel introduced himself in his strangely accented English.
“I am Thar Holthorus, a scientist and explorer of Great Atlantis.” His manner was assured, his presence and deep voice commanding and confident, even through the mechanical speakers which allowed his watery speech to be heard by the air breather guests. “I assure you again, you are all safe now, and will remain so as long as it is within my power to assure it. But the news I must bear now to you is not at all good… for I must tell you of a terrible foe who even now threatens us all.”
He then spoke for some time, telling the surface dwellers of the ancient enemy of humankind, the Saurians, the fabled Serpent People of Lemuria. These fiendish, evil creatures had, this very day, launched a massive and long-planned attack on the major lands of the surface world, of which the sinking of all ships at sea was but a part.
“Even now great armadas, long prepared, are assaulting the great cities of the surface world,” he said sadly. “While you ate, we have had reports that New York is burning, as are New Atlantis and Boston.
Once the shock and anger had died down amongst his audience, the Atlantean scientist (“Thar” was apparently a title, much like “doctor” or “professor”) explained that his ship had been on a scientific study of the area when they learned of the attack on the Titanic, and had rushed to render wait aid they could. “Unfortunately, we are but a small science vessel, ill-equipped to fight the Serpent People’s war ships. We saved what we could…”
“We return now to an outpost, far from the heart of our realm, and we offer you, out drylander cousins to join us there.”
”But why go to some outpost?” Colonel Astor spoke up. “Why not go straight to Atlantis itself, which surely must be much safer than a small outpost in your hinterlands?”
”Ah, I wish that were so,” Thar Holthorus sighed. “Sadly, once the surface cities are fully subdued, and your peoples enslaved, the Saurians will quickly turn their slavering jaws on their oldest, and most hated enemy, Atlantis herself. It will take some weeks, no doubt, but I greatly fear the capital, and our other major population centers, will eventually become targets.
“You see, the one great advantage those savages have over the people of my land is their ability to breath in both the oceans and on the dry land. Once they have the resources of the surface world at their command… as primitive as your industry may be in comparison to ours, its scale is more vast, by an order of magnitude, than that of Atlantis. When combined with the Saurian technologies, and other forces they wield, we will be… hard pressed.
”But all is not yet lost, and there remains great hope amongst us. It may be that our rescue of you will prove fortuitous, my new friends, and not just for yourselves. It is possible that you yourselves may be the key to depriving the Serpent People of their major advantage – for if Atlanteans can discover a way to breath in the surface air again, as well as under the waves, we can take the fight to them!”
Most of the others seemed to absorb this last statement without any real concern, but Colonel Astor found himself unsettled by the implications. Surely the man couldn’t mean that they intended to experiment on the rescued “drylanders,” could he? No doubt there was a more benign meaning to his words, he assured himself… he suppressed the feeling of uneasiness as an artifact of his exhaustion and stress.
Over the next several days the Atlanteans faithfully reported to the survivors what news their wireless intercepts could provide… Washington, D.C. overrun, much of the Eastern seaboard in flames, slaver parties of Serpent People rounding up humans and marching them away in chains… Europe overrun, only England holding out… then a report that London had fallen, destroyed in a single tremendous ball of fire…
By the time they reached their refuge, even the most skeptical were convinced, and very grateful to have been spared such a fate. They gladly accepted the offer of succor offered by Thar Holthorus and his crew. Their new home turned out to be a remote scientific outpost called Kenyon’s Reef, far from the centers of Atlantean civilization. Thar Holthorus explained, as they disembarked into a section already sealed off from the water, that some of their equipment and techniques required a dry environment, making it much easier to quickly accommodate the atmospheric requirements of their new friends.
Assured that the Atlanteans would find a way to return them home once the war was over, most of the survivors began to relax and to start processing their grief at the double tragedy they had just lived through. Life began to settle into a routine, and the Atlanteans were soon asking for volunteers to undergo medical exams — nothing invasive or dangerous, of course, merely to learn more about air-breather anatomy.
Not everyone was totally convinced by the Atlantean’s story, however… certainly not Col. Astor, and young Lightoller harbored a lingering suspicion of their hosts as well. But with the consensus so strong among their fellows, and in any case with no way they could see to immediately disprove anything, both men concealed their doubts — Astor not least for the sake of his wife and her “delicate condition.”
Truth be told, Astor, while dubious of the fantastic confabulation of the Atlanteans, was also absolutely fascinated by the advanced technology all around him. A bit of an inventor himself, with several patents to his name, he was also a writer in the new genre of science fiction (his first novel had been rather well received, in fact – although he suffered a painful doubt that it was his name, not his talent, that garnered the accolades). This was almost a dream come true… except for all those deaths, of course. And those niggling doubts.
The Atlantean doctors had managed to save all but one of the half-dozen passengers, pulled from the frigid waters, who had suffered from hypothermia. They also seemed particularly interested in Mrs. Astor and her unborn child. Under her husband’s strong admonitions at what he deemed their unseemly interest, however, they tempered their enthusiasm and desisted, for a time. But they eventually managed to convince the couple to let them treat Madeleine, after she showed early signs of vitamin deficiency.
While Astor remained uncomfortable with the Atlantean scientists’ attentions toward his wife, Madeleine herself became wholly convinced that their on-going concern was only for her health and that of of their unborn child, due to “possible complications of a birth under these pressures.” Certainly it all seemed on the up-and-up, the Colonel had to admit… and yet…
A month after their arrival, Holthorus called an assembly of the 42 survivors of Lifeboat 4 to inform them that the situation had become very grim above the waves – the Serpent People had apparently won, and were even now preparing for an assault on Atlantis. He assured them that they were still safe, even if Atlantis came under attack, as his facility was very remote, and known to very few outside his own scientific circle. But he now believed that they would never be able to return the survivors to the surface, and he urged them to accept this fact. He also used this news to emphasize the fact that there might be ways to help them adapt to life under the sea, as his own ancestors had done millennia ago.. and at the same time help the Atlanteans develop was to breath on the surface without their cumbersome, fragile helmets.
After giving the surface dwellers time to absorb this information, he came privately to the Astors. In the name of acclimation, and to set an example to the others, who clearly looked to Col. Astor as a leader of sorts, the Atlaneans wished to make the unborn child an amphibian. Both parents rejected this idea, the Colonel quite hotly, despite assurances that the procedure was quite safe when done in utero. Holthorus backed off, a bit coldly the Colonel thought, despite his seeming amiability. Mrs. Astor continued to receive her injections of “vitamins” each week.
Four months after the sinking of the Titanic John Jacob Astor VII was born – entirely normal to all appearances. This fact, combined with their hosts’ seemingly unbounded willingness to teach him about their technology, finally lulled Col. Astor’s suspicions… as did the occasional reports still coming in from the surface.
These reports, always shared with the surface dwellers as soon as Thar Holthorus had seen them, were often accompanied by not only amazing color photographs but by a type of moving picture as well, displayed on glass screens. The reports showed images of the deteriorating condition of the world under Saurian rule. The survivors slowly came to grips with their new life, and eventually a score of them agreed to undergo the procedure to turn them into water-breathers. The Astor’s were not among them.
Young Jake, as his parents called him, grew normally as the years rolled on… at least until shortly after his eighth birthday. It was then that he began to show signs of what his parents at first assumed was asthma, something his father had suffered from as a child. But it quickly became clear that it was something quite different. He was actually developing lungs like the Atlanteans, capable of breathing underwater, while retaining his ability to breath air.
Col. Astor’s suspicions were instantly stoked to full flame from the ash-covered embers where they had smoldered for years. While the Atlanteans claimed it was just a spontaneous natural adaptation to his environment, Astor became absolutely convinced that they had done something to the boy in utero to cause this change. The boy himself seemed thrilled with this new ability and the freedom it gave him to escape his parents watchful guardianship… he didn’t seem particularly to mind when he discovered that he could no longer spend more an hour or two our of the water without beginning to suffocate.
As it turned out, the Colonel was right about the Atlanteans. Although he would never learn the truth himself, they had indeed introduced an experimental serum into Madeline during her weekly shots, attempting to create a hybrid. They were somewhat disappointed in the result, as they had hoped that this hybrid would be able to last longer than a full-blooded Atlantean in the air without needing to return to the water. The boy seemed little better than a normal Atlantean in this regard, however. Still, they were in it for the long haul, and this was just the first round…
Despite his renewed suspicions, there seemed little that Col. Astor could do about the situation. The surface humans had the free run of the Reef, but as it was surrounded by abyssal depths on all sides, so deep that even the Atlanteans couldn’t survive them, they were trapped. While his “hosts” still allowed him every freedom in terms of equipment and research, they were always careful that neither he nor any of the other former surface dwellers ever had access to any vehicles or communication equipment without supervision.
And so the years passed, as more children were born, some with the better adaptations the Atlanteans hoped for, others apparently without; older people died, and occasional accidents took others – and after Lightoller’s tragic accident the Colonel was careful never to make his captors (as he now thought of them) doubt his own loyalty or unwavering, dim-witted belief in whatever fantastic story they told… and so managed to remain accident-free.
When he was 17 John Jacob VII, who had taken to spending most of his time with other water-breathers his own age, to his mother’s great grief, announced that he planned to marry L’alwa, 16-year-old daughter of Thar Holthorus. His parents objected, naturally, saying they were both much too young for such a step, but the Atlanteans seemed pleased, especially the girl’s father, and the ceremony took place in due course.
Eight months later a baby boy was born. The child showed traces of his mother’s people, having their pale blue-white skin, although the blue cast was noticeably fainter in him. Best of all, from his maternal grandfather’s point of view, he was a true amphibious breather, showing no signs of distress no matter how long he was in either water or air. He was stronger than his human progenitors, if perhaps not quite as strong as a native Atlantean. And as he grew older he also began to display amazing intellectual abilities, moving ahead of his peers in school at a tremendous rate.
His father, who had in truth never been terribly bright and was always much more interested in physical accomplishments, took little interest in his son beyond agreeing to name him John Jacob, the eighth of his name. But the boy’s paternal grandfather doted on him, and reveled in sharing with him all his interests, from science fiction to engineering. He would regale the child with stories of the surface world – a practice which Holthorus disapproved of, but made no move to curb – making the bond the two shared even stronger for having to be somewhat surreptitious.
After his grandmother’s death in 1940, when he was 10, his grandfather spent even more time with young John. Although now 75 years old, the Colonel showed few signs of slowing down, and the two worked tirelessly on their engineering projects, as well as writing numerous science fiction tales together.
The senior Astor also began to share his suspicions of the what the Atlantean’s were really up to with his grandson. Several years earlier Holthorus had claimed that Atlantis itself had fallen to the Lemurians – this shortly, and strangely conveniently, after growing demands from his restless “guests” to finally be integrated into mainstream Atlantean society.
JJ, as his grandfather called him, alerted by the old man’s warnings, began looking for clues, noticing the holes and cracks in the official story, and eventually discovered proof that the tale of the fall of Atlantis, at least, was an absolute lie. The two became convinced that everything else they’d been told was also a lie, but they bided their time. Both Astors now chafed under the certainty that they were prisoners, and little more than breeding cattle in the eyes of the Atlanteans.
When he was 13 JJ began to exhibit a strange change… he began discharging little bursts of electricity whenever he came in contact with a conductor. In the water, this seemed not to happen, but in the air it became increasingly frequent, and stronger. He could also dimly sense the flow of electricity within mechanical devices, and even in the very air (and water) around them. The Colonel quickly took steps to keep this development a secret from Holthorus – he had no doubt that the scientist would turn the boy into a lab animal in an instant in pursuit of his apparent quest to create “super Atlantean” hybrids.
For almost two years they succeeded in keeping the Atlanteans unaware of the boy’s growing power, and worked at devising some way to escape their captors and return to the surface world. During this period JJ’s full genius began to bloom, and he created a number of impressive, but ultimately (and purposefully) minor, improvements on Atlantean technology, to his grandfather Holthorus‘ delight. But he kept the extent of his true genius securely under a bushel… along with his greatest invention.
This was a type of techno-organic metal, based in part on Atlantean orichalcum, part on his own development of a unique type of nanite, developed after studying ancient wreckage the scientists had recovered from the ocean floor. His material responded only to his unique bio-electric signature, allowing him to shape it into almost anything… but in any other hands it became just an inert lump of slightly malleable metal. His paternal grandfather called it his masterpiece… and possibly their salvation.
Under the beloved old man’s guidance JJ created enough of his miracle metal to cover his body in a protective shell that they hoped would protect him from the crushing pressure of the depths that even the Atlantean’s couldn’t withstand. JJ wanted to create more, enough for his grandfather to accompany him in his escape, but the old man was adamant that once the material was tested, the boy should flee immediately. Once free, he could alert the surface world, and bring help for everyone else.
Unfortunately, before they could get to the final testing stage JJ’s mother, L’alwa, witnessed one of her son’s involuntary electrical discharges. Delighted that her boy was showing signs of the sort of “improvements” her father was always looking for, she immediately went to tell him the news. She had always been a passive woman, cowed by her father, ignored by her husband, and physically a bit frail, perhaps due to the in utero and early childhood “treatments” Holthorus had subjected her to… electric eel DNA didn’t seem to agree with her as much as it did her son. She hoped her news would please the old man and maybe she’d get some reflected approval…
Please him it did, and enrage him too, when he realized the boy had been keeping this information from him, and who knew for how long? What other secrets were he and that odious old man harboring? He should have had the doddering fool killed along with the officer; but at the time it had seemed unwise to remove both leaders of the drylander cattle. Curse his kind heart and trusting nature! Well no more easy-going good guy, not this time…
• • •
JJ loved his time in the water, the freedom from the sometimes oppressive confines of the family quarters in the Reef. He’d never seen the open air, but he imagined swimming in the open waters around his home (well, prison, really) must be very much like flying, as his grandfather had described the ability possessed by some surface creatures. As much as he enjoyed it, however, he did try to limit his time as a water-breather, knowing how much it distressed his grandfather – not that the old man ever said anything, of course. But JJ could tell.
So he’d been particularly happy today, when Grandfather had suggested he take the latest build of his living metal armor out for a depth test. Evading his bored security detail had become a routine part of his swimming outings, even when he had no need to do so. That way, on occasions like this, when he really wanted to lose them, it would raise no suspicion… and after all, where could he go? Once he’d shaken Olop and Kren, JJ mentally summoned his miracle metal, disguised as the ornate bronze belt he always wore, to flow across his body, encasing him in a shell of quasi-organic metal.
As soon as the HUD was up and projecting data directly onto his eyeballs, JJ moved stealthily along the twisting canyon he’d discovered months earlier, which took him to the very edge of the sea mount atop which Kenyon Reef sat. Out of sight of any watchers, the teenager shot out into open waters of the North Atlantic, and dove down toward blackness of the abyssal plain. This was his third such test, and as he’d hoped, this latest configuration of his armor was withstanding the growing pressure beautifully. Within ten minutes he’d reached a depth more than 100 feet greater than any Atlantean vessel he knew of could safely achieve.
He was tempted to keep going, even after the first amber light began to blink, warning that he’d reached the theoretical crush depth they’d programmed into the system. He was sure it was a conservative number, but his grandfather had been insistent that they play it cautiously… reluctantly, he headed back.
As he swam he flexed his left hand, gratified that he felt no pain. He’d gashed his palm a few days earlier, a deep cut from a carelessly wielded blade. Stupid of him, but they had discovered a new property of his miracle metal as a result. A streamer of the metal had flowed up from his belt almost immediately, with no mental command from him (at least no new he was conscious of), and covered the wound briefly before seeping into his tissues. A strange tingling had quickly occluded the pain, and even as he and his grandfather watched, amazed, the edges of the wound began to slowly, but visibly, pull together. Toady, it seemed entirely healed!
Back at the lab he and his grandfather shared, a part of the suite of rooms assigned to them, JJ excitedly relayed the results of his test dive to the old man, who seemed very pleased. Until his other grandfather, the Atlantean one, burst in on them. Two guards (not his usual ones, JJ noted uneasily), weapons conspicuously held, if not actually aimed, flanked the door as the obviously angry scientist stalked through it.
”How long have you two been keeping this new ability of my grandson’s a secret?” he demanded without preamble. “Do not bother to lie, I know he has developed a bio-electric ability of some kind – although his mother was annoyingly vague in her description.”
Colonel Astor had tensed at Holthorus’ sudden intrusion, but now JJ saw his grandfather visibly relax, leaning hip shot on a workbench. “Oh we never figured we could keep it from you forever, Thar. We wanted to explore the extent of the ability ourselves before presenting you with it, but truth be told, it’s really nothing more than a pretty light show and a mild static-electric shock.”
”Do you really take me for such a fool, Astor?” Halthorus sneered. “What my daughter saw was more than a “light show.” But even if that had been the extent of what she saw, I’d never take your word for anything. No, the boy is coming back with me to my lab, now, so I can begin running tests on him immediately. Finally, a result such as we’ve dreamed of—“
His grandfather moved faster than JJ had thought him capable of. He lunged forward and delivered a roundhouse punch to the Atlantean’s jaw. Halthorus staggered back, as completely surprised as his two guards, hitting another workbench and scattering machine parts everywhere. He was more startled than injured, JJ suspected – the man was younger and physically stronger than the Colonel.
Halthorus was also deeply prideful, JJ knew. He couldn’t imagine that many people had ever dared to lay hands on him before. That the Colonel had very obviously enraged him. Halthorus was not a particularly athletic man, but JJ realized his natural Atlantean strength made him more than a match for the much older man.
As his grandfather grabbed a fistful of the scientist’s tunic and yanked him forward, JJ leapt to try and get between the men, to somehow calm the situation down. But Halthorus’ hand fell on a heavy spinner on the workbench… he brought the tool around and slammed it into the side of the older man’s head before JJ could reach them.
Colonel John Jacob Astor dropped without a sound. The absolute stillness of his body, and the much-too-rapidly expanding pool of blood under his head told his grandson that he was dead. JJ went a little berserk then – he grabbed his murderous grandfather by the hand which still clutched the lethal tool, and let loose one of his bio-electric pulses, for the first time intentionally at full strength. Halthorus spasmed and collapsed to the floor. Dead, JJ savagely hoped, but by the bubbles still percolating in his breathing collar, probably only unconscious.
Everything had happened so quickly that only now were Thar Halthorus’ two guards reacting, bringing up their pistols, faces blank with surprise. JJ cursed the luck that had left his armor, now in the shape of his bronze belt, sitting on his lab bench on the other side of the room. Too far, curse it, but he had to try —
The tranquilizer darts struck him in neck and buttock before he was halfway to the bench… he staggered onward, but the drugs took effect too quickly… even as he reached out for the belt… darkness overtook him.
• • •
When he slowly swam back up to consciousness JJ found himself restrained on a table in what he groggily recognized as his Atlantean grandfather’s main laboratory. For a moment he was utterly confused.. why was he strapped down? Why were his thoughts so scattered… and then it all came back to him in a rush, and grief swelled up again, this time unalloyed by rage. His grandfather, his TRUE grandfather was dead, murdered by his own mother’s father.
Who was still alive, JJ realized, with real disappointment, as he turned his head and saw the man bent over some piece of equipment off to his left. He would have thought his uncontrolled blast of bio-electricity would have been lethal… obviously the old shark was tough. Next time he’d just have to make sure…
He must have made some sound as he glared at his tormentor, for Thar Halthorus turned and smiled coldly back at him. Any pretense of the kindness or concern he occasionally affected towards his half-breed grandson was gone. JJ thought he looked relieved to be free at last to display his true face — the cold, dispassionate man of “science.” The boy shivered in sudden dread at that slight smile, as Halthorus lifted an instrument from a nearby tray and stepped up beside him.
”Now, let’s get started on that testing, shall we, boy?” The smile widened to an evil grin… and then the screaming began…
• • •
How long he had been in the lab JJ was no longer sure… days, certainly… maybe weeks? The agony was unrelenting during the testing and experimenting, almost as if his grandfather enjoyed tormenting the 15-year-old simply for the torment’s sake. His only relief came in the brief hours of the night, and it was during one of these respites that his mother, L’alwa, came secretly to visit him.
”Oh, my son, I am so sorry,” she whispered softly as she stroked his long dark hair back from his sweat-crusted forehead. “I had no idea Father would do… this. And your poor grandfather… I’m so sorry…”
Looking into her tear-filled eyes, he could almost feel sorry for her. She had never been a strong woman, he’d known that from a young age, but she had always been a kind, if ineffectual, presence in his life. Ignored by her husband, dominated and cowed by her father… he supposed she’d done the best she could. He had always vaguely pitied her, but after her betrayal of him to her father, he found that pity gone.
”If you… are truly sorry, Mother… then free me now,” he croaked through cracked lips and a painfully dry throat. Halthorus had been refusing him water for… days? Too long, in any case, and he was weak with dehydration. “Undo what you’ve done… or at least what… part of it… can be undone…”
“Oh, Janke,” she gasped, looking suddenly frightened. “I… I can’t. I just… Father would be so furious! But… but I will speak to him! I’m sure I can make him see reason, make him understand how he’s hurting you… I’m sure he doesn’t mean to , he just gets so caught up in his research— here, drink this, you’re so parched.”
She took a beaker of water which Halthorus had left, purposefully and tantalizingly close, yet just out of his grandson’s reach, and lifted it to JJ’s lips. He gulped it down and felt some strength returning. She continued to babble on quietly, making excuses for her father that even she must realize were weak to the point of absurdity.
”Mother,” JJ interrupted, able to speak clearly again, “just stop. You know what a monster he is… how could you not, after what he did to you, his own daughter, when you were just a child? And to me, now… never mind his murder of the Colonel. You must know my only hope is to flee, before he finally decides to dissect me!”
His mother broke down into sobs then, shaking her head and refusing to meet his gaze again. He realized she would never find the strength to defy her father, she was too terrified of him. But maybe she could still be of some use, if she wasn’t aware of what she was doing…
”Very well, Mother, I understand,” he said when her crying finally stopped. “Look at me… yes, that’s right. If I am to remain here, at least let me have some comfort in the familiar, as in the water you gave me. You know the bronze belt I always wear, the one I love, that Grandfather made for me… will you at least bring that to me. For my comfort and in his memory?”
He held his breath. If she had seen his miracle metal in action, seen him armored, as she had seen him use his bio-electric power, then she would understand what he was asking… and understanding, be too frightened to bring it.
”Oh yes, Janke, yes, I can do that,”L’alwa said, her face lighting up as the thought of being able to do something useful. That was the second time she’d used her childhood nickname for him, her thought, the one she’d stopped using when, by Atlantean custom, he’d become a man at age 14. Brushing her hand once more through his hair, she rose and went quickly from the laboratory.
The minutes dragged by for JJ in an agony of fear and anticipation. He didn’t know the hour, but his mother wouldn’t have dared to come to him except in the middle of the night… surely she could make it to his quarters and back without encountering anyone else? Just as he was beginning to think she’d lost her nerve and wouldn’t be returning, he heard her soft tread coming through the doorway.
”Here, my son, I have the belt,” she said, holding it out as she approached the table where he lay restrained. But before she could hand it to him the lights suddenly flared to full brightness and Thar Halthorus burst into the lab, raging. With no more than a glare of disgust at his daughter, he shoved her aside and towered over his grandson, making sure he was still —
JJ smiled ferociously at the man who was staring down in blank-faced shock at the several feet of razor-sharp metal which had just pierced his chest. Finally nothing to say, JJ thought in grim humor, as the man staggered back, pulling himself off the blade that had somehow appeared in the boy’s hand, and half collapsed against one of his lab benches. He hadn’t seen JJ grab the belt his mother had dropped as she’d fallen.
JJ enjoyed the look of fascinated horror on the madman’s face as the metal flowed and reshaped itself into a smaller blade, moving and twisting like a thing alive to cut easily through the restraints on JJ’s right hand. But there was no time to savor that look, he’d missed the bastard’s black heart and the old man wasn’t dead yet. As JJ cut away the restraint on his left wrist and bent to his ankles, he saw Halthorus, bleeding copiously, pull a weapon from his pocket.
Not a dart gun this time, the boy realized as he sawed frantically at his leg restraints, but a lethal needle gun. He wasn’t going to make it, curse his luck… the man was coughing blood now, but the gun was aimed right at him… but as Halthorus pulled the trigger, L’alwa leapt in front of him, shielding her son… and taking the full blast of needle-like razors in the head. As she collapsed, her face a bloody ruin, unquestionably dead, JJ broke the last of his restraints and flew at his grandfather.
The older man, momentarily stunned at his daughter’s foolish, unnecessary death, was slow to raise his weapon for a second shot. It proved his undoing. JJ knocked aside the needler, wrapped his hands around Holthorus‘ neck, and unleashed all the rage and grief and hatred that had built up in him during his torment. This time, in the greatest surge of bio-electric energy he’d yet produced, his hated grandfather died instantly, sparks flying from his melting eyes.
Dropping the smoking corpse, the 15-year-old turned to look down at the body of his mother, a storm of emotions wracking him. She hadn’t been a particularly good mother, certainly, but she had loved him as best she could. And in the end she had sacrificed herself for him… maybe. He would never be completely certain if that was truly her intent, or if she’d simply believed that her father wouldn’t shoot her.
His is brief delay as he stood, exhausted and bewildered over his mother’s body almost proved to be his own undoing. Although it was the middle of the night, the violent encounter had roused Holthorus‘ security, who now rushed into the lab. Seeing the smoldering corpse of their leader and L’alwa’s still, bloody form, they turned their weapons and outrage on JJ.
His miracle metal, still in the form of a knife in his hand, instantly began to flow over his body at his almost unconscious command for protection. As it did, he dodged one of the energy blasts, and the second was absorbed by the forming armor… but a third blast took him in the belly. He dropped to the floor, curled up around the pain… but his metal continued to complete his armor.
The Atlantean’s stalked over to him, but as they reached down to haul him up, the transformation was complete — his metal now sheathed him from head to foot in golden-bronze protection. While the burning paint in his gut was strong, he was able to stand and throw off his would-be captors… already he could feel the tiny elements of the metal infusing and holding closed his wound.
The armor could do doing little for his pain, beyond the numbness, but he had to move. With the armor amplifying his strength, JJ backhanded the nearest man into his partner, and charged through the others that had suddenly appeared in the doorway. Energy blasts struck him several times as he fled, but did no further damage – indeed, he was hardly aware of them.
He thought he had made it, as he swam away from Kenyon’s Reef, but the Atlantean’s were not quite so willing to let such an asset escape them. The ship that had rescued his grandparents and the others from the wreck of the Titanic rose from its berth and pursued. He dove deeper, hoping to lose them at depths they would fear to attempt… assuming his armor could protect him, of course, which was still something of a question. But JJ had faith… and no other choice.
Hi faith seemed to be justified, as they approached the crush depth for the Atlantean ship. His armor was taking the tremendous pressure, although he was beginning to feel a little warm. But before giving up, the vessel blasted him with its main energy cannon, preferring to destroy him if they couldn’t recapture him.
The armor absorbed the brunt of the blast, but the residue was nonetheless too much for the already injured youth. As consciousness faded, JJ felt himself sinking into the blackness of the abyss… he’d been so close…
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The next thing young John Jacob Astor VIII knew, he was sinking to his knees on a cold marble floor, dizzy and weak, in a large, dimly lit room. He was naked, and his hand went instinctively to his belly, where the pain had been… but there was no pain now, and no sign of a wound beyond a faint raised scar. Head still spinning, JJ looked up to see two strangely garbed people staring down at him.
One was a man in a form-hugging white and blue garment, with black hair and eyes that glowed with an actinic light so bright that it was hard to see his features. The other was a woman, dressed in an equally tight outfit of black and gray, her face covered in a garishly painted half-mask. She was semi-prone at the feet of the man, hands apparently bound behind her and a cloth bag on the floor next to her, with colorful gems spilling from it.
“Where – where.. am… I?” JJ managed to rasp out, though his throat felt drier than he’d imagined possible. He tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t bear his weight, and he collapsed to the floor again. The man and woman looked at each other in surprise, and then back at him, as he faded out again…
When he next woke JJ was in a large, strange bed and feeling considerably better, if still weak and disoriented. He had no idea where he was. The architecture was unlike anything he’d ever seen, far more bland and unadorned than the Atlantean decor he’d grown up in. Could this be surface world construction. There was no portal to see outside, although perhaps behind that wall of fabric dripping one wall…
His questions were soon answered, although those answers quickly raised a slew of new questions. In the end it was the man he had seen in that darkened room who answered them all. Dressed now in still unfamiliar but more ordinary looking garb, he smiled as he stood by JJ’s bed and offered his hand.
“My name is Kevin,” the black haired, blue-eyed man said as they shook – a surface world custom the Colonel had told JJ of many times. “I have a great many questions for you, but first I imagine you have at least as many for me. So why don’t you go first?”
It took quite a lot of asking and answering on both sides, but eventually the whole story was pieced together. By the end JJ couldn’t tell which of them was more amazed at the result.
It turned out he was in Portland, Oregon, a city on the West Coast of North America, and had been there for several years. Apparently his armor had gone into some sort of hibernation mode, keeping him alive, healing his wounds, but unable to revive itself while sustaining him. He lay wedged in an outcropping below Kenyon’s Reef for a very long time… the current year was 2003 CE!
His entombed form had been found in 1995, when a movie maker, James Cameron, had been using experimental technology to discover and film the wreck of the Titanic for his next film. He had stumbled across the ruins of what must have been the Reef, long abandoned, and in searching the area found what everyone assumed was a crude statue. Bringing it up to the surface, it caused a brief stir in certain historical circles (there was considerable debate on whether it was ancient or modern Atlantean, or as a minority posited, late Roman). Eventually the interest faded, and after using it as a prop on the opening night of his movie Titanic Cameron donated it to the Hunter Museum in New Atlantis, where it sat in a sub-basement for several years before being loaned out to the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.
There the statue had sat on display for almost two years, until a criminal, the jewel thief and cat burglar Columbine, attempted to steal a valuable array of kundalini stones from the museum. A superhero named Stormfront had thwarted her, but in their fight a blast of electricity from the hero had struck the statue. Apparently it had been enough to jump start the living metal, and it had flowed away from JJ, releasing him after 58 years in its embrace.
After Stormlord had handed Columbine over to the authorities he had flown the unconscious, naked young man to the nearby Oregon Health Science University, which was where they were now talking. The hunk of metal, an inert blob for all anyone could tell at that point, had been taken into custody by SHADE – apparently a government agency dealing with these sorts of things Kevin explained. Kevin who turned out to be that same Stormfront, who had rescued JJ.
“I wouldn’t worry,” his new friend had assured him when JJ looked anxious at the news that a government had his miracle metal. “SHADE eventually always remembers that they’re the good guys… they’ll return it eventually, once it’s deemed safe. And you said no one else besides you can activate it, right?”
”Well, it’s keyed to me, yes,” JJ had admitted. “So I guess I’ll just have to trust you…”
For the next week JJ suffered the ministrations of the hospital staff, endured the questions of SHADE, FBI and AFT agents, and enjoyed the frequent visits of his new friend. It was during these last that he began to catch up on what had happened in the world since 1912. He eventually told Kevin his own story, and at his urging, the authorities as well. Soon enough it had leaked to the press (not through Kevin, he was sure), and the whole world knew what had happened to him and his family.
Overnight, JJ became an international sensation. All of a sudden the Lost Scion, as the press dubbed him, seemed to be all anybody was taking about. Lawyers came out of the woodwork, urging him to sue for his share of the Astor family fortune. But his goal, once he learned that such a course was possible, was instead to sue, and hopefully inflict some damage on, the Atlantean’s for what they had done to him and his family.
This, unfortunately, proved to be an unrealistic goal. In point of fact Holthorus and his group were renegades, outlaws attempting to fulfill an ancient prophecy and overthrow the rightful royal government of Atlantis. But the prophecy was fulfilled by others before they could succeed, and not long after JJ’s escape the illegal operation was finally uncovered and destroyed by the Atlantean’s themselves. Most of the surface human-Atlantean hybrids were killed in the raid, and the few survivors were adopted into Atlantean civilization. The surviving conspirators were executed by royal decree in 1947. Current relations with Atlantis were delicate enough these days, and the US government promised to quash, with prejudice, any attempt at upsetting that particular apple cart.
As for the Astor money, JJ had little interest in pursuing it, although he would need some way to support himself eventually. He couldn’t “crash” on Kevin’s couch forever. In the end representatives of the Astor family approached him and offered a tidy sum if he would quit all other claims on the family interests and go quietly away. He took the money and never looked back.
He got his miracle metal back from SHADE with only a little trouble, eventually smoothed over and sorted out by Stormfront. The hero encouraged him to think about getting into the “truth and justice” game, assuring him that with his physical abilities and technical genius, plus the miracle metal, he was a natural… but only after he went to school and got caught up on everything he’d missed over the years. Despite his birthdate, he was still only about 15 years old physiologically and emotionally, after all. Unsure about the whole “superhero” thing, JJ was absolutely onboard with the education idea. His curiosity was voracious.
Fascinated by flight – he’d fallen in love with it the first time Stormfont took him flying (well, the first time he was conscious for it), and even more so after his first trip in a plane – he applied to the US Flight Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado (which also had the benefit of being far from any ocean). He easily made the cut, and discovered the wonders of mountains as well as of flying. In three years he graduated at the top of his class… he could’ve done it in two or less, but he couldn’t enter the Air Force until he turned 18, although the exact nature of what “18” meant in his case was a matter of some debate.
As it was, he didn’t really mind the extra time, since he enjoyed socializing with people his own age and learning from them all about his strange new world. During breaks he visited all the places his grandfather had talked about, most especially Egypt, the last place his grandparents had visited on their extended honeymoon before boarding the Titanic.
He also saw the poverty and hunger in many parts of the world, a shocking experience for one who had been completely sheltered from even the concept of such things. While in Africa on one such trip he spent a week developing a power system that the locals could build and maintain themselves to pump water up from deep wells and bring in educational broadcasts from outside. He donated the tech to the Quest Foundation, who quickly began spreading it across the impoverished areas of the globe.
After graduating from the Academy, JJ took his commission as an officer in the USAF, and was soon drafted into the test pilot program. It was a role that he was well suited for, given his enhanced physiology, and one he loved. It was during a disastrous test flight in 2008 that he first discovered that he could fly under his own power, at least when encased in his armor. When the chute on his ejector seat malfunctioned, he’d panicked and unconsciously summoned his armor (he always wore it in the form of a kind of “back brace” along his spine), and soon found he could ride the planet’s electro-magnetic lines of force, much as Stormfront had described his own ability.
After he finished his four year commitment to the Air Force in 2010 JJ decided not to reenlist, and instead traveled around the world on various Quest Foundation or Savage International missions, looking for his calling. But as much as he enjoyed helping others, it was always the designing, the engineering, the creating that he found most satisfying. And the one thing that could strike at the root of poverty and hunger he decided, was energy.
In 2012 he incorporated his business as Apergy Systems International, naming it after the fictional anti-gravity energy in his grandfather’s one published novel, and began producing small, compact batteries and capacitors. Apergy units stored three times the energy of the next best commercial battery, in less than half the space, with triple the storage life, and sold for about 60% of what his competitors charged for theirs. And for worthy causes and in poorer countries he offered steep discounts even beyond that .
Founding the company absorbed almost all of the settlement money from his surface relatives, but within two years he had regained it all, and by 2016 he was worth at least $50 million. He briefly considered settling in Portland, but had decided instead on Astoria, not least for his familial connection to the city. It was also a major hub in high-technology research and production, well-suited to all the time he liked to spend at his high-tech work bench tinkering up “the next big thing.”
Stormfront continued to gently push him to take on the heroic role he seemed convinced that JJ was made for. In recent months Kevin had even been hinting that JJ would make a worthy successor when Stormfront eventually retired. But one of the reasons he’d chosen Astoria over other places was the lack of superhuman activity there. It made it easier for him to resist the lure (and he did feel the pull he had to admit, if only to himself) of the excitement and adventure of the superhero lifestyle and focus on his inventing and philanthropic work. Still, he did don his armor occasionally, to deal with some crisis that only he could handle, usually where lives were at stake… he’d refused, however, to take a superhero code name. It wasn’t like everyone didn’t already know it was him in the armor. He had no secret identity, so why did he need a code name? After several attempts by media figures to get him to name himself, the press gave up and just did it themselves, calling him Scion…
And so, on a beautiful spring day in 2016, a generally contented John Jacob Astor VIII was at his workbench, contemplating the problems of large-scale teleportation, both technical and socio-economical, when his personal assistant Penny burst in with the news that there’s been some sort of plane crash on the Silver Mile. Casualties were being reported, and possible meta-human involvement. The Silver Mile was less than five blocks from his office, he could be there in seconds…
Love it. Absolutely love it.