Scion projected the map from his wrist comp onto the wall of the conference room as the tracker Phantom Ace had planted pinpointed the precise location of the military cargo container the E.V.A.L. team had stolen. A blinking red dot appeared over the Cascade Salmon Wholesale Company facility on the northern edge of Chinatown.
“Looks to be closer to the Willis Avenue side of the property,” Scion muttered as he zoomed in and called up the city’s file copy of the building’s blueprints, overlaying the two images. “Yes, it appears to be in the loading bay at the rear of the facility. That part of the building is one story… the processing area to the south is two stories… all brick construction, built in 1962, retrofitted and reinforced for earthquake safety in 1997. The plant takes up the whole block between Willis and Scacajawea Avenues and Huber and Kern Streets.”
“As it happens, I’m familiar with the company,” Artemis said. “It is owned, through a series of shell companies, by Lucky Dragon Imports – the public, legitimate face of the White Tiger Society. But I never found any connection to the illicit side of their business, beyond the fact that Chin Zhia, the head of the triad and better known as the Kirin, seemed to take a personal interest in the business. She made visits to the facility on a frequent, if irregular, basis… I always assumed it was just a matter of keeping up the appearance that she was a simple, and influential, local entrepreneur… but now I wonder if there was more to it…”
“Interesting,” Quanta said, motioning for Scion to give them a 3D view of the building. “But why would E.V.A.L. operatives be bringing their loot to a White Tiger Society facility? I know they were both part of the Cabal, but with that alliance having fallen apart in the last two months… could this be a sign that the factions are trying to rebuild the damn Cabal?”
“Possibly,” Artemis said, frowning. “But the stress lines between the criminal factions have been building for years – a process that I’ve done my part to encourage, in fact – and between the internal strife within the Society caused by the recent stroke Chin Zhia suffered, and the external chaos of the influx of uncontrolled meta-humans, I don’t see reconciliation as very likely. It’s more reasonable to assume this is a ploy of E.V.A.L., either against the Society, using us as pawns…”
“…Or a trap for us,” Scion finished the thought. “Or pitting us and the Society against each other, so E.V.A.L. has an easier time taking on the winner. But whatever the truth is, Álvaro remains in imminent danger and this is our only lead. So we go in, of course… but we keep our eyes open and our guard up, knowing it’s likely a trap.”
After a brief discussion on strategy and tactics Quanta opened a quantum tunnel between the Shane Company conference room and the roof of the Cascade Salmon Wholesaler’s loading bay…
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Once the Vanguard was through the quantum tunnel, Eagle took to the air to scan the area. He quickly reported nothing out of the ordinary for early evening, mid-week, in a commercial/industrial area… and only a single private car, a beat-up red Chevy, in the company lot. Artemis teleported from the shadows of the roof into a dim corner of the loading bay, while Phantom Ace simply drifted down through the roof itself. The others flew or jumped down to the loading dock, to enter via the rolling bay doors when PA opened them from within. Oddly quite doors, Chilz thought as he stepped cautiously inside… maybe somebody didn’t want to draw attention when these doors were used…?
The large area of the loading bay was dimly lit and, aside from the stolen cargo container, mostly empty. Only a few stacks of pallets and other industry detritus competed with the smell of fish for attention… a competition the smell won handily. After a careful reconnoiter of the room Scion pulled open the container’s door and stepped in to retrieve his tracker.
Stepping back out, he turned to the left. “This is the direction Dominator and the others went,” he said, scanning the corner of the room carefully. There was no obvious exit from the dead-end corner, with the angled container blocking off the area and the narrow glass-block windows near the 15′ high ceiling both un-openable and, even if they could be opened, too narrow to fit any but the most slender person through.
Closing his eyes, Scion extended his electromagnetic sense, and in the dark of his mind’s eye the electrical grid that ran through the building’s walls became visible to him… pulsing strands of blue-white light limned every wire, plug and light fixture around him. He opened his eyes and the hallucinatory lights remained, overlaying the visible walls, ceiling and floor.
“I think I’ve got it,” he called out after a moment’s study. “A power line comes out from a juncture box in that wall to a faint square in the floor… here!” He tapped his foot on a section of the concrete surface indistinguishable from any other bit.
Kneeling, he ran his hand along a square invisible to the others, sending a pulse of bioelectric energy into the mechanism he sensed below… with a faint hiss, like the breaking of a seal, a crack appeared in the concrete, defining a square about six feet across. There was a thunk as the section of flooring dropped down six inches, then slid back and out of sight, revealing a flight of metal stairs descending into dimness.
“Well, I suppose we’ve just announced ourselves to our enemies,” Eagle sniffed derisively as he hung in the air above them.
“Maybe,” Scion said with a shrug. “But I didn’t sense a pulse of outward energy, and I’d expect to if an alarm had been tripped. And I can tell there are no cameras in here… but nonetheless I suspect you’re right, they almost certainly know we’re coming.”
“Speaking of which,” said Artemis to the Avian Avatar, “shouldn’t you revert to your Totem persona now?” She gestured at his enormous wings. “Not a great advantage underground, really…”
“But my strength may be,” Eagle replied haughtily. “Even if we don’t find room for me to fly… which we may, of course… I know what’s best for me.” He drifted upward, effectively ending the discussion, but as he did she sensed an unexpected hesitation in him, a crack in his usual air of arrogance and studied indifference… with a start she realized that he was uncomfortable about the idea of going below ground!
Blue Flame caught her eye as she turned away, shaking his head and shrugging in their teammate’s direction. He had reverted to human form himself, in preparation for the descent into who-knew-how-cramped a space. “Claustrophobic?” he mouthed silently to her, and she shrugged in return. Who knew, but this was no time to dig into it. If he did panic down below he’d probably just revert to Totem anyway…
Scion led the way down, with Eagle reluctantly bringing up the rear. The metal stairs proved to be a series of switchbacks that descended about 60′ before ending at the start of a long corridor. The concrete floor was damp but not slippery, and the old brick walls, obviously dating back a century or more, dripped with moisture. The bricks arced overhead to form a vaulted 6′ ceiling, along which were strung dim red lights every ten feet or so. Chilz was forced to bend and shuffle along awkwardly, but decided that was better than reverting to human while walking into a likely ambush.
Eagle muttered darkly as he was forced to contort himself even more awkwardly, and somewhat painfully, to avoid scraping his wings along the bricks of the tunnel. But still he refused to change back to Totem… Artemis, just ahead of him in the line, frowned thoughtfully…
Fortunately, the narrow corridor ended after only 50′ or so… unfortunately, it ended in a blank brick wall. Glaringly out of place, on the left side of the passageway stood a burnished metal pillar with a very high-tech biometric scanner set atop it. The unit’s hand-pad glowed faintly red, other lights blinking in green and amber along the side. The implication of a door was obvious, but no amount of searching turned up anything but solid walls and, Phantom Ace assured the group, solid dirt and rock beyond them, at least as far as he could safely go.
“Definitely a biometric key,” Quanta mused, examining the device alongside Scion. “So it must open something. At this point I’m theorizing it will be some sort of teleportation gate. Maybe we can jury-rig a bypass…”
“Possibly,” agreed Scion. “But I may have a better solution.” He held up his right hand and the metal of his gauntlet began to flow and change. In seconds his fingers and palm were lined with glowing white lines, and the tip of his index finger opened in a tiny maw.
“I built this biometric bypass gizmo awhile back,” he explained as he ran his finger a few centimeters over the face of the hand print reader. “It works best if I can shake hands with someone authorized to use the scanner, of course, or at least get some skin contact, but in pinch I can vacuum up skin cells from the plate, like so…” The tip of his finger irised closed as he finished sweeping the face of the pad. “Then my systems analyze the genetic structure while I wirelessly hack into the device… there we go… a little scan-and-compare to find the palm print that matches the DNA… and… voila!”
He placed his glowing, gloved hand on the pad, which scanned up and back down… and then turned green with a cheerful >beep<. Almost instantly a glowing magenta shimmer appeared in the air in front of the dead-end wall. A shimmer identical to the one ´Álvaro de la Vega had walked through two hours earlier.
“Good call,” Scion said, giving Quanta a thumbs-up. “So, anyone taking bets on what we’re facing on the other side… the center of the sun? The bottom of the Pacific? A wood chipper in Fargo?”
“Well, I can’t be sure about that last one,” Quanta laughed. “But my own quantum-attuned senses tell me this portal is two-way, which means it doesn’t open into either of your other two suggestions… nor into vacuum. It’s definitely on Earth, and with breathable air at about the same barometric pressure as here, on the other side… unfortunately that’s all I can be sure of…”
“Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, as my mother probably never said in her life,” Phantom Ace shrugged. “We knew we were gonna face this point somewhere down the line, no sense hesitating now!” With that he slipped through his two teammates and stepped into the portal.
“Goddamn it kid,” Scion growled in exasperation. “That doesn’t’t mean we couldn’t take a minute to plan!” Shaking his head, he stepped through the portal as well, and the others quickly followed suit. Each was prepared to walk into a fire zone, their offensive powers prepped and on a hair trigger…
Eagle was the last one through, electricity arcing between the talons on his hand, prepared for anything – except seeing the others milling about in a much wider, much more high-tech corridor, which stretched ahead into dimness.
“Well, this is anti-climactic,” he said as he stood up straight and spread his wings. The 12-foot ceiling and 20-foot-wide dimensions of this corridor obviously pleased him better than the other had, and he sounded almost friendly.
“No doubt lulling us into a false sense of security,” Chilz said getting a chuckle from Blue Flame and Phantom Ace.
“No doubt,” agreed Scion dryly. “Maybe this time we could stay in formation, mmm?”
Phantom Ace shrugged and took his place behind Chilz as the group set off down the corridor, but he looked only mildly embarrassed and not at all repentant. Ahead of them Scion turned his head to speak to Quanta, immediately behind him. “Does all of this seem vaguely familiar to you?”
“Yes,” Quanta replied quietly. “I was noticing it too… it looks very much like the secure areas of our own headquarters, doesn’t it?”
“An earlier generation of work from the same architect maybe?”
“Maybe… or it could be a matter of form following function, and the same architecture teacher. We’ll have to ask Álvaro about it once we have him back,” Quanta replied. Scion nodded, and picked up his pace.
After 50 feet the corridor narrowed to only ten feet wide, although the ceiling remained at a 12-foot height. Another 35 feet brought them to a set of shiny metal doors and another biometric hand scanner. Scion placed his hand on it, using the previous settings in his bypass device, and the doors slid open with a sibilant hiss.
The space beyond was large – an 80′ x 80′ room, with large rounded alcoves at each corner. The ceiling was 20′ high along the edges of the room, arching into a dome 50′ high at the center of the space. Partial domes in each alcove merged into the larger one, with indirect lighting coming from recessed panels along the top of the walls. A variety of high-tech machinery and numerous video panels, currently all dark, lined the walls, while the floor was a fine shimmering silver mesh, inset with several areas of gray metal plates.
In the center of the room was an octagonal table of burled maple with high-tech trim. Four ornate chairs of carved black wood, almost thrones really, were set at four of the table’s opposing faces, each padded in luxurious cushions of a different color –red, green, blue and yellow. Smaller chairs of the same wood but less ornately carved, sat at the faces between the thrones, cushioned in dark gray.
At the north face of the table, in the blue chair, sat Álvaro de la Vega. He was not obviously restrained, but he didn’t even blink as the Vanguard stepped into the room, just stared blankly ahead. As the heroes moved toward him, and fully into the room, the doors behind them hissed suddenly shut and an almost subsonic hum, more felt than heard, filled the air.
The heroes were prepared for a fight, but there was nothing and no one to fight… they slowly lowered hands and weapons. Scion, the closest, took a single step towards de la Vega, but stopped at the sudden gasps of horror from his companions. He turned to see them staring beyond him, apparently at the empty space in the air over the table.
He turned back to the table, but could see nothing deserving of such riveted attention. Swiveling his gaze back toward Artemis, who seemed to be frowning intently over his shoulder, as if listening to something very intently, he keyed his comms unit to her channel. “Artemis, what the hell is–”
She cut him off with a sharp hand gesture, and briefly glanced at him to mouth the word “wait” before turning her attention back to the empty air. Puzzled, but trusting his teammate, Scion turned back to study the spot that seemed to so fascinate his companions… and waited.
To the rest of the Vanguard the air over the table was most definitely NOT empty. As soon as the doors had slid shut a floating apparition had appeared over the table – a gigantic, pulsating, glowing translucent brain, half a dozen pink tendrils writhing from where a spine should be. A voice spoke in strong, arrogant tones that compelled attention… the same voice they’d heard just before the assault on the AzTech Pyramid a few hours earlier…
“For years, Astoria was ruled from this room… the Hub of our Cabal. It was from here that the most powerful people Astoria has never known created a city in our own image – a city with no heroes, a city whose people never knew they were ruled by the strong – by the so-called “villains” of the world!
“We’ll help you launder your loot!” the Cabal said. “Rob Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, New Atlantis… then put your costume aside and live safely here in Astoria!” Criminals finally had a place where they could hide out between jobs, build homes for their families, and live like kings without a second thought, never having to worry about SHADE or some damn “hero” knocking on their door!
And frankly, it wasn’t just the criminals who benefited from this system – for decades Astoria had the lowest crime rate per capita in the country, and the Cabal was directly responsible for that! But now it’s all fallen apart. The Kirin incapacitated, other members of the Cabal losing their hunger for power – like it was all just too much work! And then came the last straw – the damn Incident. It introduced too much chaos into the system, a system already stressed by internal rivalries… and now everything has collapsed.
But adding insult to injury, in all the chaos de la Vega thought he could just step in to claim Astoria’s future for his own, could shape the destiny of the city by creating a team of so-called heroes to send the “criminals” packing! But he was not the only one who saw opportunity in disaster… Cerebral is still here, and I still command E.V.A.L.!
We rise up now to show the world just what a city without heroes can truly be. Where once we ruled from the shadows, now we will rule openly! We will train the new metas of the Incident who join us, the derisively named Incidentals, to use their powers however they like, and to take whatever they want. When the world sees how badly we crush de la Vega’s Vanguard, no one will ever dare put on a mask again, and the citizens of Astoria will become our hostages – the other do-gooders of the world will quickly realize the cost in innocent lives of opposing us would be astronomical… and then this city will belong entirely to us, our haven once more!
Incidentals, prove your worth to E.V.A.L. and our glorious future! Destroy de la Vega and his heroes! Then Cerebral will show you the true path to ruling Astoria!”
As the words faded from their minds a wider set of doors on the opposite side of the room slid open to reveal Dominator, CyberKnight, Dark Condor, Shou Tzin, Shadowson and three new villains – a tiny man, no more than three feet tall, clad in red, including a red bandana on his head, gangsta style, who seemed to be made entirely of organic metal; a woman whose body not only appeared to be made of solid, golden energy, but consisted of three humanoid forms joined at the shoulders, each body in a different Indian sari, and with three heads looking in three directions; and lastly, a tall older man with flowing white hair and glowing eyes, dressed like a scary re-enactor from Plimoth Plantation, right down to the large-brimmed black hat… although the massive war hammer he carried didn’t seem quite period, Quanta thought…
The villains leapt into the room and began heading for the heroes at speed, the doors slamming shut behind them. As Scion braced for the onslaught, Artemis spoke in his ear, fast and precise. “I gather you didn’t see or hear that apparition of Cerebral that appeared over the table. Tedious story short, he intends to kill us all so gruesomely that it will be a deterrent to others, then take over the city, using its people as permanent hostages to keep other heroes and the government at bay.
“Don’t know why you didn’t see or hear him, but I’m assuming it’s your armor – I know you’re not likely to take any of it off in battle, but just in case – don’t! You may be our ace in the hole!”
Unfortunately, there was no time to respond, for at that moment hard-points in the four alcove corners of the room suddenly opened up, weapons ratcheting out and targeting the heroes. Scion took to the air just as a coil launcher sent ribbons of twisting black metal at him… but zigged when he should have zagged. The metal bands encircled and immobilized him, constricting around him like high-tech swaddling and bringing him crashing back down, a dark mummy writhing on the floor.
Similar bands shot out from the other alcoves, enveloping Blue Flame, Chilz and Quanta, immobilizing them in seconds. But their bondage didn’t last long… Quanta managed to partially avoid his bands, and it took only seconds for him to free himself completely.
It took the others only a few seconds longer to do the same – Chilz froze his bonds solid, then flexed, shattering them like glass, while the Blue Flame poured on the heat, briefly turning the metal to molten slag before vaporizing it completely. Scion took a deep breath, then flexed with all his considerable strength, snapping the metal bands and sending them flying in all directions.
Leading the villains with his speed, Dark Condor reached the heroes first, swooping down on Phantom Ace, his talons extended for a disembowling blow – only to flash harmlessly through the suddenly intangible hero. But PA realized how close it had actually been – he’d barely had time to change, the bird-man was that fast! And man, did that guy stink – the whiff of carrion about him was stronger in the enclosed room than it had been out of doors…
Quanta, still on one knee after throwing off the metal bands, gestured and a massive block of quantum matter formed in the air above the center of the villainous pack. But as it fell, Dominator blew it in two with a rocket barrage, while the Pilgrim dude with the hammer smashed one side of the remains into dust and CyberKnight used a plasma blast from her lance to shatter the other… the few chunks that rained down on the metal midget didn’t seem to bother him, or even slow him down!
“Glade to see that thing isn’t just for show, Hexenhammer,” Dominator laughed. “Can’t wait to see what it does to some of these squishy bitches!”
At that instant a blast of Arctic air engulfed the criminals, courtesy of Chilz, standing tall amidst shattered remnants of his own bands. Unfortunately it had no effect, and Hexenhammer raised his weapon, turning the wintry fury back on the hero.
Reabsorbing the redirected attack, Chilz barely had time to brace himself as Dominator launched a barrage of mini-rockets at him. He took the blasts full on the chest, but it did little more than star his ice form… as he stepped out of the cloud of smoke his foes could see that the cracks had already begun to fuse together and disappear.
Leaping over the table, Shadowson gestured towards his enemies, and a wave of darkness seemed to roll off him. At the same time Artemis‘ cloak billowed around her, almost like a thing alive, and suddenly Nightblades‘ darkness turned translucent… within seconds it was gone altogether.
Artemis had no time to appreciate her countering of the assassin’s attempt to blind her friends, however, as CyberKnight launched a plasma blast from her lance directly at her. Artemis rolled neatly away from the attack, and coming up in crouch hurled her fully charged escrima sticks at Shadowson, who dodged them both in turn.
Phantom Ace, passing through Dark Condor’s futile attacks, raced to Álvaro de la Vega’s side. Becoming tangible, he grabbed the billionaire’s shoulder and prepared to teleport. Not being sure where they were, the best he could hope for was the corridor they’d arrive in, but at least it would get the man out of immediate harm’s way…
Gideon screamed as his attempt to teleport was blocked, its energies hurled back at him two-fold. He collapsed to the floor, rolling partway under the table near Álvaro’s feet, as merciful darkness swallowed the pain and his mind.
Taking to the air once free of his bonds, Scion attempted to blanket the room with his electronics-nullifying pulse… but found that something seemed to be blocking the effect, along with his external communications and GPS tracking.
From above, Eagle could see that both the little metal man and the ominous-looking Hexenhammer seemed to be bearing down on Chilz… well, maybe he could even up the odds a bit… but something about that old man gave him a premonitory chill… and made him want to stay away from him.
Stooping instead on the tiny metal man, Eagle fully intended to grasp him by the shoulders and lift him into the air – but the diminutive villain was shockingly heavy, and his talons had a hard time finding purchase, >screeeing< off the shiny surface before the man, barely slowing down, backhanded him away!
“Sorry Wings, Anvil ain’t the kinda guy that lets just anybody pick him up,” the little guy laughed. “And anyway, you sure ain’t my type!”
Before Eagle could renew his attack the room’s wall-mounted weapons fired a second salvo, this time utilizing blue-green lasers. Eagle was forced to pull up and use his wings to deflect the energy away from his more vulnerable flesh. The beams from the other weapons simply flashed through Blue Flame with no effect, and bounced harmlessly off Scion’s armor.
Only Quanta, a blast to the back knocking him forward, took any damage. His quantum shell quickly healed the steaming gouge, however, just in time for him to face an attack from above as Dark Condor’s talons raked across his torso. But unlike the lasers the talons proved completely ineffective, and the winged psychopath barely managed to dodge the hero’s return blast of high-velocity buckyballs.
“Your minutes are counting down, Vanguard!” crowed the mental voice of Cerebral, echoing in every mind in the room save Scion’s. “And my cameras are recording every angle – the whole world will soon witness your pathetic failures… and well deserved executions!”
Seemingly encouraged by her leader’s words, the glowing three-bodied, three-headed woman looked up at Blue Flame and snarled “Feel the true flame of the Trinity, freak!” She lifted two of her six arms and hurled a blast of yellow-white plasma at the hero. As the stream hit him, however, it seemed to turn blue and then vanish into his own form.
“Wow, kettle, meet pot… but thanks for the recharge, lady – umm, ladies,” the Blue Flame laughed. “I’ve barely started, though, so no need to top off the tank! Now, let’s see if we can’t put your energy to better use!”
With that he turned a stream of his own super-heated plasma on the nearest weapon hard point, hoping to slag it before it could recharge for its next attack. Unfortunately some sort of deflection screen seemed to turn the blast, and a harmless section of nearby wall was charred instead.
Trinity was momentarily distracted by the need to evade a stream of armor-piercing slugs sent at her from Scion’s arm guns. Her triple body moved with surprising grace, and she rose into the air herself as she avoided the attack, her form glowing more brightly.
Phantom Ace was groggily pulling himself up from the floor, leaning heavily on the table, when he suddenly found himself face-to-face with the colorfully garbed Chinese martial artist Shou Tzin. The man’s sword flashed out and once again Phantom Ace barely made the transition to intangible before the blade passed through his stomach.
“Geeze, dude, you coulda killed me!” he complained, diving through the startled villain and rolling away. The man frowned, but shrugged off the brief encounter and turned again to seek his true target…
Chilz, meanwhile, had seen the same danger headed his way that Eagle had, and took his own action to deal with it. A gesture from one hand formed a ramp of ice directly in the path of the charging Anvil… the truncated villain’s feet slid out from under him and he slammed down on his ass, his momentum carrying him forward at a tremendous speed.
Chilz raised his other hand and the still-forming ramp banked up away from himself – straight into the running form of Hexenhammer. The metal mini-man slammed feet-first into his erstwhile ally like a cannon ball, sending the older man flying backward as they both crashed to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs.
“That outta look good on your home video, ya Big Butt-Head,” Chilz chuckled.
Unfortunately, neither villain seemed to have been more than slightly dazed by the impact, and Hexenhammer rolled the smaller man off him with barely a grunt. “Get thee in my way again, abomination, and thou shalt feel the power of mine hammer for thineself!” he snarled as he regained his feet.
Anvil just laughed and picked himself up, readjusting the red bandana on his gleaming head. “Sure Gramps, like that toy of yours could make a dent in me! Ha, dream on!”
Before their confrontation had a chance to escalate into something interesting, however, Dominator launched another missile barrage at Quanta. The explosions knocked the silvery hero back, momentarily dazing him, and the shockwave rattled Chilz, Scion and Blue Flame, but did them no harm. Dark Condor, on the other hand, was also caught in the blast. He crashed to the floor, stunned.
Dominator’s attack did, however, distract Scion just enough that he took a full power plasma blast in the back from CyberKnight’s lance, which sent him slamming into a wall, rattling his brains a bit.
Shadowson, meanwhile, had finally closed with Artemis and swung a savage blow at her midriff with his mystic sword. She ducked and rolled, cloak billowing around her, deftly avoiding his blow while putting herself in position to scoop up her escrima sticks.
Flicking them to full shock mode, Artemis whirled and lashed out, high and low, at Shadowson. He twisted gracefully away from the one and efficiently blocked the other with his blade, blue electricity snaking up its length to dissipate harmlessly in the hilt.
“I have heard of you, Artemis,” he said quietly, the smile plain in his voice despite the black scarf over his lower face. “I admit, one of several reasons I took this trip to your dreary little city was in the hope that we might cross paths… I was disappointed that you failed to find me earlier today at the jail… and our encounter at the museum was so brief… but here we are now, with the rest of your life to enjoy. Once you are dead, just imagine what I might accomplish with both Blade and Cloak in my possession?”
“I’ve heard of you , too,” Artemis replied as they circled warily, each looking for an opening. “And you’ve made a mistake in seeking me out. While I have no desire to possess both artifacts, I am certain that it’s time the Shadow Blade returns to Shambhala, to await a more worthy master. I plan to see that that happens as soon as possible, and if it’s over your dead body… well, sometimes life just gives you that cherry on top.”
Whatever answer the Phoenix Moon Triad’s assassin might have made was drowned out by a deafening crack of thunder as Eagle sent a lightning bolt into Dominator. The armored felon managed to get a shield up in time to absorb most of the blast, although it did force him momentarily to the floor.
Before Eagle could follow up the room’s weapons system finished recharging, and this time it was flame-throwers that lashed out. Two of them focused on each of the flying heroes – Eagle jinked and dove, narrowly avoiding both the flaming streams aimed at him.
Scion, on the other hand, managed to avoid the first attack, but the second stream of superheated liquid struck him in the head. Momentarily blinded, his systems struggled to bleed off the heat – he had designed his armor more to keep him warm, under the sea or in the upper atmosphere, than to deal with extreme heat. Perhaps an oversight he should remedy, assuming he survived…
Cerebral’s laugh again rang out on the psychic plane. “The mighty Scion, brought low by mere fire! How embarrassed your famous family will be to watch your pitiful antics!” Scion, of course, was the only one in the room who couldn’t hear him, and his silence and apparent indifference to the taunts seemed to enrage the psychic kingpin.
But before he could continue his tirade Quanta dropped another mass, this time onto Cerebral’s glowing apparition as well as Dominator and Hexenhammer. The latter swung his hammer up and shattered the block, but several large pieces plunged into the image of Cerebral… and to Quanta’s surprise elicited a grunt of pain! So, some sort of psychic feedback must be occurring… interesting…
At that same moment Trinity released a massive burst of radiation in the direction of Chilz, Artemis, Blue Flame and Quanta, none of whom seemed phased by it. All three faces of the glowing creature frowned in annoyance. Her shimmering force shields easily blocked the hail of razor sharp ice that Chilz blasted at her in return, but his attack did distract her from the Blue Flame.
His blue-white stream of superheated plasma blew through her shields on the side away from the ice attack, and staggered her. Scion took that moment to send a bolt of bioelectric energy into the same spot, clearly stunning the woman… women… whatever.
Scion had been ready to take the fight to CyberKnight, but that radiation blast had worried him – his onboard Geiger counter had redlined for a second, and if she could pour out that much lethal radiation… well, he was safe enough in his armor, and he doubted it would have much effect on Blue Flame or Quanta. But he was less certain about Chilz or Eagle… their powers might protect them, but then again they might not… and Phantom Ace was likely the most vulnerable. Better to take this threat out quickly.
Artemis, meanwhile, found her stalemate withShadowson broken when Shou Tzin joined the attack. Sweeping low under his blade, she avoided the Chinese fighter’s attack while blockingShadowson’s attempt to decapitate her. As Dark Condor swooped in to pile on and try his luck at disemboweling her, Artemis easily ducuked under his talons, grabbed one of his wings, and used his own momentum to swing him around, smashing him into her other two opponents…
Anvil had taken the various distractions of the general melee to switch targets, and now he attempted to “bowling ball” Quanta, much as the giant ice dude had forced him to do to that old creeper Hexenhammer. He wondered if he could crack the silvery dude’s shell with one hit… and what he’d find inside if he did. But fast as he was, Quanta was faster, and the hero neatly sidestepped at the last second. Anvil’s momentum, and a blast of silvery matter to the ass, carried him past and straight into the nearest wall.
Meanwhile, Eagle was suddenly finding himself in some trouble… Dominator had opened up on him with a hail of machine gun fire, which he’d easily dodged. But in doing so he’d flown directly into the electrified net that CyberKnight had launched at him.
The 50,000 volts only momentarily stunned him, and that was enough to allow the net to contract around him, pinning his arms and wings, hindering his ability to fly and leaving him vulnerable – a fact which Hexenhammer took swift advantage of, swinging his hammer in an underhanded arc that smashed into Eagle’s jaw and sent him flying back to crash to the floor.
Eagle struggled to remain conscious, disbelief warring with anger… and real fear. This close to it, he could sense the malevolent life in the weapon the old man wielded, and its hatred for all things magical or supernatural… as well as its ability to destroy magic! He flexed his muscles, shredding the net, and his out-flung wings momentarily knocked back the dangerous old witch hunter and his murderous hammer.
But before Eagle could take to the air again, and try to put some distance between himself and them, the room’s weapons cycled for the fourth time, and two Taser cannons locked on to him. Already weakened and dazed, this time the electricity coursing through him nearly broke several bones as his body spasmed uncontrollably and he slid down into the darkness… this was so unfair, his last thought wailed…
Chilz and Scion, both focused on the threat of Trinity, took the other two taser blasts to their backs. Chilz had never felt that much electricity before, and was momentarily stunned as it rippled through his ice form. Scion, of course, was unaffected in his armor, but the attack did leave him open to a brain-rattling roundhouse punch to the head from a suddenly resurgent Trinity.
Phantom Ace, who was finally recovering from his forcibly aborted attempt to teleport, saw Eagle go down, and the scary old dude standing over him, hammer raised for a killing blow – damn, he was too far away, he didn’t dare teleport, and the swirling three-way fight between Artemis, Shadowson and Shou Tzin was between him and his endangered teammate…
In a flash he suddenly saw one chance… as the old man hesitated, taken aback at the sight of Eagle shifting back into the human form of Totem, Phantom Ace leaped into the fray between the three martial artists, interposing himself between Shadowson and Artemis and drawing the assassin’s attention momentarily to himself.
Backing away under the ninja’s flashing blade, Phantom Ace gauged his moment, and then made a feint, going intangible at the same instant. The vicious swing of the blade meant to gut him instead took Hexenhammer in the lower back, staggering him and knocking him away from the prone figure of Totem.
Dark Condor, finally seeing an opponent he could dominate (that is, one who was unconscious), swooped down, prepared to rend the shaman’s flesh and feast! But a sudden stream of tiny silver balls took him hard in the gut and he was hurled halfway across the room, to come crashing down to the floor.
Quanta, having also seen the danger Totem was in, had launched a triple quantum matter blast at the three enemies closest to his fallen teammate. His primary target had been that psychotic freak of a bird man, and he was gratified to see the disgusting self-proclaimed cannibal sprawled out in a tangle of limbs and feathers.
He’d have hit Hexenhammer, too, if the villain hadn’t staggered back at just the wrong moment, hit by his own “friendly” fire. And sadly, CyberKnight wasn’t even a close call – she managed to easily dodge up and over the stream of buckyballs.
“Not this time, Quanta!” she said grimly, and immediately dove down at him. In an unexpected move, she used her lance to sweep Quanta’s feet out from under him, at the same moment Dominator let loose a double blast from his Force Cannons, pile-driving the hero into the floor and dazing him.
Artemis, meanwhile, had been distracted for just an instant by the sudden appearance of Phantom Ace in the middle of her fight, and while he did manage to draw off Shadowson, at least for a moment, the distraction also allowed Shou Tzin to finally land a blow.
It was only a gash on her thigh, but first blood to him. It’s an ill wind that blows no good, however… rather than go defensive, she rolled forward and went for a grab. It was clearly unexpected, and for an instant she had the man… but with a supple twist and a drop, Shou Tzin broke away before she could consolidate the hold.
Chilz laid down another sheet of ice in front of both Trinity and Anvil, the latter seeming determined to head-butt the ice elemental. And indeed, the appeal of taking down the biggest guy in the room was strong in the little metal man! Unlike his tripartite teammate, who managed, barely, to keep her footing on the suddenly treacherous floor, Anvil looked like a cartoon character, pinwheeling wildly before going down, hard, on his face again. A string of muttered curses turned the air blue as he attempted to scramble back to his feet, to little success…
Overhead, the Blue Flame plasma-blasted Trinity again, trying to keep her off balance and on the defensive, although his power seems to affect her as little as hers did him… but between the fire and ice, she did seem distracted!
At that point the room’s automated defenses fired up once again, cycling back to the coil launchers. Chilz and Blue Flame, still focused on their two immediate foes, were again wrapped in the black metal coils, while Scion managed to dodge them this time. A dazed Quanta, struggling back to his feet after being double-teamed by Dominator and CyberKnight, was not so lucky, and found himself bound tightly.
“Struggle all you want, Vanguard” Cerebral taunted the heroes once again, his psychic tendrils whipping about in excited agitation, like the tail of a cat preparing to pounce. “It just makes my inevitable victory all the sweeter! Hexenhammer, finish off the shaman – now!”
The witch hunter looked momentarily mulish, apparently not wild about taking orders from the image of a disembodied brain, even if it’s what he would’ve done anyway. Nonetheless, he strode forward to loom over the still unconscious form of Totem, raising his hammer high… and Phantom Ace dove through his body from behind, reaching out to grasp the hammer and turn it as intangible as himself.
“What sorcery be this?” the old guy bellowed, outraged at such a liberty being taken with him. “Be ye ghost or warlock, thou shall not long keep me from mine own weapon, forged by my will alone and loyal unto me forever!”
With a feral grin he gestured at the hammer, and to Phantom Aces’ shock it ripped itself from his hand, although they were both still intangible. The weapon flew to its master… who had no trouble grasping its once-more-solid haft.
Phantom Ace leaped forward then, to put an intangible hand through the bastard’s chest and squeeze his little black heart – and was knocked aside like a rag doll by a savage backhand blow that sent him across the table and almost into Álvaro de la Vega’s lap. Shaking his head to clear it, he sank through the table just as the hammer >swooshed< through the space where his head had been.
Hexenhammer, momentarily diverted from his previous victim, stalked after his new prey as the boy scrabbled away, fear in his eyes… yes it was always good to see the fear in the eyes of monsters and witches… even after all these centuries, he hadn’t grown tired of that look…
Totem came slowly up from the darkness, and it took him a second to remember where he was – and what that bastard Eagle had done! It was unprecedented, as far as he knew – an Avatar refusing to give way to its human host!
Of course, he had been the one to break the covenant first, by summoning Eagle twice within a 24-hour period… something he hadn’t’t even thought possible. But still – he shook his head as he climbed to his feet. This was not the time nor place to worry about it. Clearly his friends needed him, even if he dared not summon any of the other Avatars right now.
Focusing on his personal magic, Totem raised his hands and murmured the ancient incantation that summoned the Sleeping Mists… and the gentle green rain began to drift down over the battle. Unfortunately only three of the villains where affected by the spell, and those only partially. Armor, metal body, other magics, or just plain luck insulated the others from the effects…
Across the room Trinity suddenly staggered, her eyes growing wide and then half closing as she fell to her six knees. Although she swayed, and her three sets of eyelids drooped, she never fully lost consciousness… her three heads kept shaking in sequence, trying to throw off the spell…
Hexenhammer shook his own head violently as he felt the drowsiness overcome him… he gripped his hammer tightly and muttered what sounded like a prayer. A flash of violet light flared out from the hammer, and the green mist around him vanish with a malevolent >hisss<.
Dark Condor, just getting back into the air after his last beatdown, was also staggered by a sudden feeling of weariness… but after a moment he snapped his head back and seemed to throw off the siren call of sleep. He snarled in rage then, as he realized what had almost happened… and who had done it!
Shrieking in fury, he swooped down at Totem, but before the shaman could summon up a mystic shield a stream of quantum matter blasted the winged monster sideways, to crash to floor once again dazed.
The other two prongs of Quanta’s three-pronged attack had mixed results – Hexenhammer managed to deflect the stream of buckyballs with his weapon, but CyberKnight was caught unawares, the blast taking her in the head, stunning her, and knocking her from the air to collapse with a metallic crash to the floor.
“How about this time, CyberKnight?” he called out, grinning. He was beginning to get a handle on these multi-pronged attacks…
As the dazed CyberKnight scrambled to retrieve her dropped lance, Dominator walked a stream of machine gun fire across Quanta’s torso, but the hero had been ready for it, and his thickened and reinforced shell defeated the attack easily. Obviously still woozy, CyberKnight whipped her lance up and with a grunt of pain fired off a blast of plasma at Quanta. The shot missed him entirely – but did strike Shadowson, in the middle of his latest attack on Artemis.
At the last second some preternatural sense seemed to warn him, however, and the assassin was able to turn his attack away from Artemis, instead deflecting the plasma beam with his blade. This gave Artemis an opening, and she scored a hit on her other opponent, Shou Tzin, momentarily dazing him.
Meanwhile, Anvil’s futile attempts to ram into Chilz continued to send him slipping and sliding around on the iced-over floor, while the Blue Flame continued to blast Trinity with plasma, forcing her to throw up shields again and again… which allowed Scion to attack from one of her other sides.
While there was no way to really sneak up on Trinity, with three sets of eyes giving her a pretty much 360° field of vision, she didn’t seem able to focus her attention very effectively on more than one front. So Scion’s strafing run along her second side forced her to divert some energy and attention from the plasma attack to block the armor-piercing rounds… and left her third side open to a sudden dive and grab…
As his armored hand closed on Trinity’s shoulder Scion let loose his strongest bioelectric charge. She screamed as the energy surged into her, and her three bodies suddenly spasmed, flickered… and vanished! In their place a rather ordinary young woman in street cloths collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
As Scion formed a neural dampener from his armor and attached it to the back of the woman’s neck, assuring she wouldn’t be rejoining the fight any time soon, the room’s automated weapons completed their charge cycle and let loose with the flame throwers again. They missed all their targets this time, except the Blue Flame, who simply absorbed them without even noticing.
“Time to do something about those damn automated weapons.” Scion muttered to himself. Still crouching over his subdued foe he began to scan the flow of electricity within the walls around him…
Losing one of his pawns seemed to have shut up Cerebral, at least momentarily, and everyone appreciate the respite from his inane taunts… even his own operatives, apparently. After a moment of tense silence, however, he turned his ire on Dark Condor, who had retreated to the highest point in the room, apparently having had enough with the beat downs…
With Trinity out, Chilz created a column of ice beneath the flailing Anvil, raising the pint-sized firecracker 30 feet into the air, while Blue Flame swooped in to grab him. Unfortunately he missed as Anvil, apparently unafraid of heights, ducked and leapt off the pillar – aiming himself at Chilz like an iron meteorite. The little metal man struck the ice elemental squarely in the chest, sending a starburst of cracks radiating across his torso and knocking him on his ass.
Across the room Totem, still a bit dazed, cast another spell, attempting to bring down CyberKnight with his Bitter Lash, but she seemed to have regained at least some of her own senses, and narrowly dodged the glowing tendril of mystic energy.
At the same time she managed to bring her lance back up, and this time she didn’t miss Quanta, knocking him back and to the floor. Shaking his head to clear it, Quanta in return attempted another block drop on CyberKnight, but Hexenhammer, abandoning his fight with Phantom Ace and headed toward his original target, Chilz, swung his hammer in passing and shattered the block to dust.
There were a great many power lines running through the walls of the Hub, but it took only a moment for Scion to trace the lines running from the weapons hard points to… yes! There! A seemingly blank section of wall, behind which lay a control panel…
No doubt there was some elegant way to gain access to the hidden panel, but there wasn’t time to finesse it – Scion simply dug his fingers into the wall and tore the section away. It took only a few seconds more to interface with the electronics and… interesting, the programing was very similar to that in their own Danger Room, if less robust… older maybe? In any case, it was a piece of cake to make a few tweaks to the targeting parameters…
A moment later the rooms weapons discharged again, but this time it was Dominator who was ensnared in the black metal coils from two launchers. Caught entirely flat-footed, the mercenary was wrapped up with his arms pinned so effectively that, unable to control his flight, he slammed head-first into the floor.
Hexenhammer simply batted the coils away with his hammer, growling in annoyance as he moved to confront Chilz‘, who was just climbing to his feet, his fractured chest healing back into solid ice.
Shou Tzin, while managing to dodge the coils aimed at him, was forced to abort his attack on Artemis, allowing her to deflect Shadowson‘s slash with an escrima stick. Taking advantage of the distraction, in a sudden flurry of blows she staggered Shou Tzin, then whirled to catch the Shadow Blade between her sticks – a sharp twist, and she ripped it away from Shadowson, sending the weapon spinning across the room. She stored away the look of shock in his eyes to take out and treasure at her leisure…
Suddenly Cerebral was much less amused by it all. Realizing that Scion had perhaps just turned the tide, the criminal mastermind vented his fury on the armored hero. “I’ll turn your mind into a soup of disconnected neurons, you sanctimonious fool!” he mentally roared. Phantom Ace and Totem both gasped as a blast of searing psychic energy lanced out from the floating brain, striking Scion full in the back of the head!
Scion turned away from the hijacked control panel and picked up Anvil, who seemed determined to have another go at Chilz, even though (or maybe because) he’d turned to face the much scarier threat of Hexenhammer bearing down on him…
Although it was hard to read expression from a giant floating brain, the villain seemed utterly taken aback at Scion’s complete obliviousness to his most powerful attack… for a moment his spectral tentacles hung limp in shock…
Totem took that moment to cast a spell of Baleful Bindings on the psychic manifestation, in the hope that the magic might be able to bind the psionic energy. But Cerebral seemed as oblivious to the glowing bands as Scion had been to his own attack.
Anvil, meanwhile, struggling in Scion’s grip managed to land a solid kick to the hero’s groin – and while it didn’t do any real damage, it was startling enough to force Scion to drop him. He hit the floor with a boom, but before he could launch another attack he was bathed in plasma from the Blue Flame. His red costume instantly charred and then vaporized, but he himself seemed unfazed, even as his body began to glow red…
“Ha! You ain’t got what it takes to melt me, flyboy,” he crowed. “But let’s see if your ice buddy there can take the heat!”
Chilz heard the threat, but couldn’t spare the time to look behind him – Hexenhammer was batting aside his barrage of piercing ice shards as he charged forward. With a demented laugh the villain raised his hammer over his head and brought it down in in a blow intended to shatter the icy monstrosity’s head into a thousand shards…
Chilz stopped the blow dead, halfway through its arc, catching the head of the weapon in both hands. The palms of his hand starred and splintered, and cracks raced down the length of his arms, but he held the hammer still for a moment before yanking it out of Hammerhexen’s grip, to the old man’s fury.
Before he could react and call the weapon back, a blast of quantum matter struck him in the side, knocking him away and momentarily dazing him. At the same time CyberKnight dodged a second stream of silvery matter, and hurled a plasma blast from her lance back at Quanta, who threw up a shield against which the energy splashed harmlessly.
Dominator was still on the floor, struggling to break his bonds and cursing a blue streak, when the room’s weapons recharged and cycled to their next attack – Taser cannons.
Anvil, caught mid-rush in his move on Chilz, was bathed in sparking blue electricity and his mouth opened in a silent scream as he went down, spasming into unconsciousness. Hexenhammer, focused on summoning his weapon back to his hand, never saw the bolt that struck him in the head, sending him, too, down into darkness.
Shou Tzin, still dazed from Artemis‘ last strike, managed to twist away from the Taser assault… but in so doing ran straight into her next attack. A double hit, to head and solar plexus, and he dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
Shadowson took advantage of this distraction to retrieve his sword, and surveying the situation in the room at that moment, decided the party was over. Even as Artemis turned to focus her full attention on him, the black-clad assassin was vanishing through the doorway he’d opened behind him.
Dark Condor, already having had enough of the fight, took his teammate’s departure as the sign that it was every man for himself, and in steep dive he angled for the door, momentarily, but effectively, blocking Artemis as she made to pursue her foe. Even as his wings brushed the edges of the doorway, the panels began to slide shut…
CyberKnight, dodging another blast from Quanta, caught sight of her fleeing companions, and grimaced in disgust. As Scion lined up a shot on her from his arm guns she hit a button on her wrist guard and the air around her rippled as she faded from sight. From the sounds and the rush of air past her, Artemis was certain the villainess made it out just before the doors closed.
Cerebral was enraged at the defection of his minions, but he wasn’t done yet. “You may have defeated my feckless minions, Vanguard, and won the battle – but I still win the war! Not as photogenically as I’d hoped, perhaps, but your death’s will still serve the purpose I intended! Enjoy your very pyrrhic victory, fools!” With that his floating avatar vanished like a soap bubble.
Scion, of course, neither heard nor saw any of it, and with CyberKnight’s escape he had turned to wrenching off Dominator’s helmet… and almost his head, too, the way the mercenary went on about it. But without the command-and-control circuitry in the helmet he was locked in his armor as effectively as any prison, even without the metal coils.
As soon as Cerebral’s visible manifestation had disappeared Álvaro blinked and slowly shook his head, as if waking from a deep sleep. Suddenly, his eyes flew open wide and he leapt up. “We have to get to the power core – that bastard has set it to overload, and we’ve got minutes, at the most, before it turns a chunk of Desdemona Island into radioactive slag!”
“Desdemona Island?” Artemis asked, having secured Shou Tzin. “How do you know we’re under Desdemona Island?”
“Cerebral mentioned it while taunting me, but that’s really not the point right now,” Álvaro growled in exasperation. “Time is of the essence…” feeling around the underside of the table in front of the chair he’d just vacated, he smiled tightly at the sound of a click. “We need to move, heroes!”
A section of flooring between the table and the north wall began to sink, then slide silently into a recessed pocket, revealing a spiral metal staircase beneath. “Scion, Quanta, follow me,” Álvaro barked, and headed down the stairs at a run. The two heroes glanced at each other, shrugged, and followed their sponsor down into the bowels of the Cabal’s lair.
Which turned out to be a circular room about 40 feet across. Its centerpiece was a crystalline column of pulsing blue-white energy that rose from the floor almost to the 12-foot-high slightly domed ceiling. A console of brushed metal sporting variously glowing buttons, most of them flashing red, surrounded the column. Other computer stations lined the wall of the room, all but one of them dark and apparently shut down.
Álvaro immediately headed to the central console, and began checking readouts, Scion and Quanta on either side. “Thank god, I think we’re in time,” the billionaire sighed in relief. “I think we can abort the process if we…” There followed a detailed discussion, heavy on physics, between de la Vega and Quanta.
Scion, seeing the other two had the situation well in hand, moved over to the other consoles on the perimeter of the room. Powering up one of the dead terminals he found that whatever data the room’s computers might once have held, it had all been erased and, he strongly suspected, well scrubbed.
The sole exception was the active terminal. On closer examination Scion slowly began to grin… this computer held the backup to the video cameras throughout the Cabal’s Hub and its annexes. Cameras that had captured the whole fight, from the moment the Vanguard has entered the Cascade Salmon Wholesaler’s loading bay to Álvaro opening the secret door to this room…
No doubt the live feed had been broadcast to a remote E.V.A.L. facility for editing into a nice propaganda piece about the death of the Vanguard, but the original video files had been erased, probably when Cerebral triggered the power core overload. He either hadn’t known about what appeared to be an automatic back-up, or he hadn’t cared, assuming the files would be destroyed along with the Hub itself.
With an outright laugh Scion plugged his armor into the terminal and began a flash download of all the data into a carefully isolated drive unconnected to his onboard system (who knew what nasty viruses the former masters of the Hub might’ve left for unauthorized visitors). This was going to make an excellent PR piece for the good guys… and give E.V.A.L. a very public black eye in the process.
While their teammates defused the explosive problem below, the rest of the Vanguard finished mopping up in the Hub itself. Chilz managed to pry open the doors through which the remnant of the E.V.A.L. “team” had retreated, while Artemis and Phantom Ace finished securing and neutralizing the prisoners.
“I’ll scout ahead,” Blue Flame called out, zipping past his icy friend as soon as the doors were wide enough.
“Damn it, wait!” called out Artemis as she finished hog-tying Shou Tzin. “We should all go together –” but he was gone before she could finish the sentence. With a sigh she motioned the others to follow their impetuous teammate…
In the end, all they found were a series of dead-end corridors with burned out teleportal control panels at their terminus’. And returning to the main corridor with the teleport back to the fish facility, they found that it, too, was a fused mass of useless electronics.
“The teleportation interference is gone,” Phantom Ace noted. “But without knowing exactly where we are I don’t dare teleport out.”
“I could get to any number of places,” Artemis said. “But I can only take one other with me, so evacuating all of us, and our prisoners, would prove… time consuming. But I doubt that that will be necessary. No sane person would build a facility like this, accessible only via teleportation, without an emergency escape route in case the technology fails. The Cabal are criminals, but they were never insane.
“What do you think, Álvaro?” she asked, turning to their benefactor, who had returned with Scion and Quanta, having averted the overload of the power core.
“Me?” Álvaro replied, looking surprised. “Well, I suppose you’re right. Certainly I would never build a facility without emergency exits… after all, that would be illegal. And while I doubt the Cabal are much concerned with local building codes, as you say, they aren’t crazy – and as criminal masterminds, quite adept at contingency planning. Or so I would imagine.”
With Scion’s electro-magnetic sense it didn’t take long to discover the concealed emergency exit – a narrow circular tube, lined with very solid rungs, that went up for over 200 feet and exited into a maintenance shed in the SW corner of Cathedral Park. Scion flew up the shaft, avoiding any booby traps the ladder might hold, and once it he’d opened the top hatch it was a only matter of minutes before Phantom Ace had everyone evacuated and the prisoners laid out on the grass.
Within five minutes SHADE support vehicles and prisoner transport wagons were dropping out of the sky, It was only a few minutes after that that the APD was there setting up police lines. Two minutes after that the TV news crews began to arrive… A hundred feet to the east, traffic whirred by on the elevated Lewis & Clark Interstate Bridge and made an eye-catching backdrop for the dramatic impromptu press conference Álvaro somehow roped the Vanguard, SHADE and the APD into…
It was not much past 21:00, early evening on a beautiful summer day, the embers of a spectacular sunset just fading from the sky, and everyone was exhausted. Unfortunately, between initial debriefing with both SHADE and the APD, Álvaro’s press conference, and helping to secure the Cabal’s Hub, it was well after midnight before the Vanguard made it back to the Pyramid and were able to collapse into their various beds.
It had been a long day, and no one had the energy to even think about trying to make it home…