“Happy Moon Landing Day!” Gideon caroled as he slid into his seat between Jonny and Chuck. “And also happy fifth anniversary of UN Moonbase Armstrong, too!”
“Old news, dude,” Jonny laughed. “After today you’ll have to add Happy Interstellar Launch Day to that list.”
“I still don’t see why Álvaro couldn’t swing us an invitation to this thing,” Chuck grumbled, handing Gideon a perfectly chilled beverage. “Or at least some of us… I know we couldn’t all leave town at the same time, but… I mean, jeez, practically the whole Liberty Alliance is there…” He gestured at the screen with his hot dog, sending flecks of ketchup and mustard flying.
Cooper, sitting in the row behind his younger teammates, looked at Meg and just shook his head, adding a slight eye-roll for emphasis. Chuck’s love of the spotlight was well known by this time, and everyone knew who he thought should be at the Mojave Spaceport, representing the Vanguard. Meg shook her head and grinned, putting a finger to his lips as he opened his mouth.
“Let it go, no teasing today,” she whispered, snuggling into him as his arm went around her shoulder. “Don’t spoil the moment.” He shrugged and grinned in return, settling back into his seat after topping off their glasses from the chilled bottle of Riesling.
The entire Vanguard, as well as most of the support staff not on monitor duty or security detail, were gathered in the group’s private theater to watch the launch of America’s, and Earth’s, first interstellar vessel. The Argos 7, crewed by the so-called “Space Family Ulysses” and piloted by Major John Eastman, wouldn’t be lifting off for the newly re-opened, alien-built, Star Gate and the jump to Alpha Centauri for another two-and-a-half hours, but no one wanted to miss even the “pre-show” events.
These consisted of technical details about the first human-built starship and video from the various phases of its construction, interviews with Elon Musk, Tom Swift IV, Álvaro de la Vega, Richard Branson, and the head of NASA, as well as canned biographies of the Ulysses family and Major Eastman.
Artemis, seated between JJ and Kyle in the back row, lifted a California roll from her plate of sushi, dipped it in the wasabi and took a bite, washing it down with warm sake. “I know this is a pivotal moment in human history, and all the possibilities this may open… but I remember watching the first moon landing, and nothing will ever match the sheer thrill of that moment, or equal the awe I felt at Armstrong’s “one small step.” In that moment I glimpsed the true greatness of the human race, of our immense potential, despite the flaws that sometimes stand in our way…”
“I was in a coma, buried at the bottom of the Atlantic, at that point,” JJ sighed, taking a long pull on his beer. “I’ve seen the recordings since, of course, and as amazing as it was to realize what we humans had accomplished, it wan’t really the same as experiencing it firsthand… not like this, for me anyway. My grandfather loved science fiction, tales of space travel and interplanetary adventure – he would be absolutely amazed if he could see this moment, and I’m just grateful to be seeing it live myself!”
Kyle shook his head and reached for another slice of his pizza. “It’s always just been history to me, a simple fact of life… I mean, I wasn’t even born when Apollo 11 landed on the moon – hell, my father was barely 19 and my mother was just 16,” he said, giving Artemis a strange look. How old was she, really? He knew she was older than she looked… certainly older than the 30 or so years she appeared to possess. But exactly how much older? He was pretty sure JJ knew, but his teammate just shrugged and diverted the conversation the few times Kyle had hinted around the subject. Maybe he should just bite the bullet, just come right out and ask her, just man up –
But before he could work up the nerve, all of their comm links started buzzing and flashing red lights, and the Dispatch Officer on duty overrode the theater’s sound system to blare “Vanguard to the Briefing Room, Priority One!”
In less than two minutes the heroes were gathered about the Round Table as Dispatch piped in security video of the shattered entrance of a fairly new-looking office building. A thin trail of smoke was trickling from the twisted metal and shattered glass of the wide doorway.
“This is the ZeroPoint corporate headquarters,” the dispatcher’s calm, professional voice reported. “The footage comes from CCTV cameras in the parking lot, less than five minutes ago. At least five unidentified metahumans are reported to have entered the building at 16:48 PDT, but we’ve been unable to access any interior cameras.
“Given both the involvement of super-humans and ZeroPoint’s link to the Astoria Incidnet, this automatically went to the highest priority level. The APD is on the way, but will not enter the building until you’ve given the all-clear or request back-up. Possible hostage situation seems likely.”
As soon as they had absorbed what little other information Dispatch could provide, Quanta opened a portal from the Pyramid to the helipad on the roof of the ZeroPoint building, while Phantom Ace teleported himself there separately, and Artemis shadow-walking herself into the darkened main lobby of the stricken building.
The headquarters of the beleaguered ZeroPoint company was a three-story building of gray slate and dark smoked glass. Its sleek, contemporary look stood out amidst the former warehouses, factories and flop houses of the old River Docks district, even with the ongoing efforts of urban renewal and gentrification that were bringing new life to the area. The plume of thin smoke rising from its main entrance seemed a sad exclamation point to its bold cry of modernity.
From the helipad on the roof, after a quick scan revealed no activity amongst the solar panels and rather amazing number of AC units that crowded the space, Quanta, Scion and Chilz decided to risk the elevator, while the Blue Flame did a quick fly-around of the entire building. Phantom Ace teleported himself and Totem down to the shattered entrance to back up Artemis.
The music in the elevator was a bland sort of smooth jazz, making an odd counterpoint to the tension of the three heroes as they prepared to face an unknown number of hostile, super-powered criminals. The doors slid open on the third floor vestibule. The security doors directly ahead of them had been blasted out of their frames, and in the hallway beyond lurked… a skinny, rather sickly-looking kid who couldn’t have been more than 15, and a waifish goth-girl who didn’t look very much older.
At the >ding< of the opening elevator both teenagers stopped and turned to look behind them. Their eyes seemed to have a milky film over them, their expressions glazed and passive, their whole demeanor strangely affectless. Before either side could react, an alarm light began flashing in Scion’s HUD – his new Matrix Crystal Detector® had sensed a hit, somewhere within 100 feet of them!
“I think I know what they’re after,” he broadcast to the team. “I’m picking up a concentration of Incident-related Matrix Crystals somewhere in this building. We also have two possible metas on the third–”
Before he could complete the thought the skinny boy gestured toward them, and suddenly the air between the two groups warped and Scion’s gravimetric sensors went wild. All three heroes were almost yanked off their feet as something tried to pull them toward the center of the warped space. They all managed to hold their ground, however, and after a few seconds the effect vanished with an audible “pop.”
“I think the kid can create singularities,” Scion barked, scanning his suit’s telemetry. “Miniature black holes,” he added for Chilz‘ benefit. “That makes him seriously dangerous – we need to contain him quickly!”
Chilz gestured toward the pair of strange teenagers, who had turned and again started down the hallway, heads scanning from side-to-side in an eerie synchronicity. Frigid blue energy shot forth from his hands and ice began forming under the youth’s feet, quickly arcing up and over their heads to form a tunnel. Both teens staggered and slipped, the boy falling on his ass, while the girl managed to just keep her balance.
With a twisting motion of his hands the ice elemental sealed both ends of the tube, trapping the young villains in a capsule of ice two feet thick…
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
As Artemis stepped from the shadows that obscured a corner of the spacious public lobby the first thing she noticed was the flickering of the overhead lights, their irregular, staccato flashes almost strobe-like. A thin haze of smoke filled the space, apparently from several patches of charred carpet and blasted ceiling tiles. White powdery patches indicated that someone had put out any actual fires, though the area currently seemed devoid of occupants, either employees or invaders…
A stifled groan drew her attention to the long reception desk on the raised dais jutting into the center of the room. Two people, a man and a woman, crouched fearfully behind it, a large fire extinguisher on the floor nearby. The man’s hands were red with likely second degree burns, and the woman, eyes wide with fear, moved to shield him as Artemis leapt over the desk.
“I’m one of the good guys,” the hero assured the woman. She pulled out a burn kit from her utility belt and tossed it to her. “This should help his hands, but first tell me what’s happening here.”
“Artemis!” the woman cried, relief plain in her voice. “Thank God! I thought – OK, sorry… so, we were just getting ready to close up… Mr. Drummond was letting everyone go a little early, to get home in time to catch the launch, and we’d already locked the doors… that’s when I saw a strange group of people approaching the front doors.
“There were six of them, most of them pretty strangely dressed, and I just had time to think it looked pretty damn suspicious when this skinny kid sort of gestured – and the doors just imploded! There was glass everywhere, and then this other guy, with a cross tattoo on one side of his face, started hurling these flaming ninja-star things everywhere…
“In the confusion, with all the flames and the smoke, I- I lost track… I think some people made it past them out the front… I know some others tried to hide in their offices… most of the – the gang, I guess – head toward the elevators, but two guys, one really big, with the most dreamy – er, anyway, they, um, started ransacking the offices… people were hiding in some of them, but they didn’t seem interested in hurting anyone… they just kept demanding to know where “the canister” was… they didn’t interfere when Tom grabbed the fire extinguisher and started trying to put out the fires…”
As the woman began apply salve to her co-worker’s burns Artemis‘ comm suddenly came to life. “I think I know what they’re after,” Scion said urgently. “I’m picking up a concentration of Incident-related crystals somewhere in this building. We also have two possible metas on the third–” The transmission broke off with a grunt, and a series of odd sounds.
“Scion, are you alright?” Artemis turned and gestured at Phantom Ace and Totem, who were picking their way through the rubble of the lobby, listening to their own comms in concern. “We have six possible hostiles, not five. Are you –”
“We’re fine,” Scion’s voice cut in. “We may have an Omega-class meta up here, but maybe not, if Chilz has really contained him.”
Before Artemis could respond, the sound of gunfire erupted from beyond the doors behind the reception desk. “That’s coming from the Security Office,” Tom, the man with the burned hands said. “The really big guy went that way just before you got here… the other one went left, back towards Mr. Drummond’s office!”
With a brief nod to acknowledge the intel, Artemis signaled Totem to go left, while she moved right, speaking over her shoulder to Phantom Ace. “Get these two to safety and clear anyone else from this floor, then see who on the team needs help!” She was gone with a swirl of her cape as more shots rang out.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
“OK, Chillz… can you lower the temperature inside your ice tube, bring it down far enough and fast enough to incapacitate those kids?” Scion asked, eyeing the ice prison approvingly.
“Depends on how tough they are,” the elemental shrugged, focusing intently on his construct. “If they’re anywhere near baseline normal –” At that moment the goth-girl walked through the wall of ice as if it wasn’t there, her form flickering with a ghostly light. She stalked steadily towards the heroes, her blank look of apparent disinterest more unnerving than any expression of rage would have been.
“Stop right there miss,” Scion said, raising an arm cannon and targeting the strange waif with stun-bolts. “We don’t want to hurt you, so just surrender before –”
With a sound like a rifle shot, the front of the ice chamber shattered into a thousand shards. But instead of flying out to strike the heroes they seemed to move inward, shrinking into an infinitesimally small point before vanishing without a sound. At the far side of the suddenly revealed space the scrawny boy gestured and the other end vanished similarly.
Scion instantly shifted his aim and fired the volley of electro stun rounds at the boy, but gravity must still have been in flux around him due to the multiple singularities – the rounds all missed wildly. At almost the same instant Quanta formed a long block of matter over the two teens and let it drop.
The boy didn’t even look up as he turned to continue making his way down the hall, but the end of the block over him cracked and shattered, vanishing into another of his tiny black holes. The other end, however, came down on the girl, who vanished beneath its mass.
As Quanta caused the block to disintegrate back into the quantum foam whence it had come he was both relieved and dismayed to see the girl standing there as if nothing had happened. She resumed her slow walk toward them, now raising a spectral arm. A blast of greenish light flared from her hand and spread to engulf the three heroes…
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Artemis quickly found the Security Office, and the two guards hunkered down behind an overturned computer table, firing at a hulking figure dressed in fashionable black Under Armour sportswear, a number “01” in red on his chest. The man was busy lifting another table up as if looking for something, and as computers and monitors crashed to the floor, Artemis was momentarily taken aback – he was gorgeous!
Tall, olive skinned, wavy black hair and the body of Adonis, he fairly radiated sex-appeal – the effect only slightly marred by the slack expression and filmed-over eyes. He was shrugging off the bullets, if not without notice then at least with nothing more than an abstracted annoyance. Which made him dangerous. Artemis shook her head and pulled her attention back to the matter at hand.
“Stand down!” she commanded, using the Voice. “We know what you’re looking for, but it’s over now. You must–”
“You know where the canister is?” the man asked in a flat, affectless voice as he suddenly stopped and turned to look in her direction. “Nimrod demands you hand it over. Now.”
“Nimrod?” Momentarily taken aback at the name, Artemis barely dodged the computer “01” hurled at her head, her tuck-and-roll bringing her to her feet between the guards and the villain, eyes widening in surprise. She’d barely seen him move as he’d bent to grab his missile… if her own relaxes weren’t superhumanly fast she would never have known what killed her!
Her new shadow sticks formed in her hands and in a blindingly fast move of her own she hurled them at the Adonis’ head. He side-stepped them like they weren’t even moving. Pushing her own reflexes to the maximum, she again barely escaped the haymaker he threw.
At that moment Phantom Ace popped in. “Everyone on this floor is clear – whoa!” He went insubstantial just in time as a massive fist flashed through his head. “Hey, what the hell! Eddie, er, Paragon?! What are you doing, dude?”
“You know this man?” Artemis asked, hurling another set of shadow sticks at her momentarily distracted opponent. Although they hit, they had little effect except to draw his attention back to her.
“Yeah, he’s that guy I teamed up with a couple weeks ago,” Phantom Ace said, flitting in to be distracting again. “I filed a report about it. He’s an Incident-boy, had pretty much everything about him increased to the peak of human ability – honestly, I think more than a bit beyond peak, from what I’ve seen. Strength, speed, toughness, intellect – when I introduced him to Meg, for an interview, she said he sounded like a virtual paragon of perfection. He really liked the sound of that (although I convinced him to drop the perfection part), so he’s Paragon now.”
“I thought you reported that he wanted to be a hero,” Artemis said, aiming a kick to Paragon’s solar plexus, which he blocked with frustrating ease, although he in turn failed to grab her.
“He does, or did, or… I don’t know, he was stopping a robbery when we met, he seemed pretty sincere…”
“OK, get these guards to safety, then check in on Totem and let the rest of the team know that some, if not all, of these “villains” may be being mind controlled.”
“But what about you?” Ace asked, even as he popped in behind the two security guards and grabbed them each by a shoulder.
“I can take care of myself if I don’t have bystanders to worry about,” Artemis replied grimly, taking out the last light in the room with a thrown stapler and plunging them all into near-darkness. “Besides,” she continued with a slight smile as the Blue Flame suddenly appeared in the doorway behind Paragon, “my other back-up is here.”
With a grin Phantom Ace vanished along with the two very relieved-looking guards.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Totem was beginning to think this hydrokinetic might be a tougher nut to crack than he appeared at first glance. He was a wiry kid in his early twenties, with longish dirty-blond hair, dressed in thrift-store chic in shades of blue, white and gray. The vacant expression and glazed eyes that made him look like a real washout had led the shaman to wonder if he was on drugs. If so, the Sleeping Mists should be particularly effective…
Unfortunately, even though the green mists had slowed him momentarily in his single-minded ransacking of Mr. Drummond’s office (the man himself had fled gratefully when Totem had arrived), Washout had appeared to shake the drowsiness off in seconds. He’d then turned on the hero and begun to pull the water out of his body, slowly but steadily dehydrating and weakening him…
A mystic blast had broken that attack, but Washout’s next move had been to encase Totem’s head in a sphere of water, one he couldn’t escape no matter how he moved. He was just beginning to think he was going to have to summon Orca when Phantom Ace popped into the room.
“Oooh, a hydrokinetic,” his teammate laughed, taking in the situation at a glance. Totem glared at him through the bubble of water… his breath was getting a trifle short…
“Blue Flame would be the obvious choice, but he’s sorta busy… ah, I have an idea!” Phantom Ace grabbed Totem’s arm and they both vanished with a faint “pop” of displaced air. The water bubble lost its form and splashed to the floor, soaking the plush carpet. A moment later Phantom Ace was back, with Chilz in tow.
“Water dude, meet ice dude. Ice dude, meet raw material.” With that the teleporter was gone, and Chilz began to grin…
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Phantom Ace’s next stop was the second floor, since if there were six of these Incident zombies, and two were on the ground floor, and two were on the third floor, then logically the remaining two must be… ah, yes, there they were!
A very attractive redheaded woman, wearing low-slung black leather pants and a very tight red Lycra top, was using several highly animated chains, glowing a sullen red, to hurl desks and credenzas aside in the large “bullpen” area that occupied most of this floor. An equally good-looking and very buff Eurasian dude, dressed in equally tight leathers of black & orange and sporting an ornate cross tattoo on the left side of his face, was busy summoning up throwing crosses of reddish-orange plasma and blasting open the doors of the offices that lined the area.
Unlike the others on their “team,” these two seemed more than willing to cause injury to innocent bystanders in their quest for the mysterious canister. There were maybe 20 people Ace could see, cowering behind desks or in offices, and several of them were either burned, battered, or both. His incipient good humor vanished as he began teleporting people to the emergency room at St. Eligus Hospital, the closest medical facility.
After he’d removed the last injured office worker, Phantom Ace popped back in to find that Chains and Hot Cross (as he’d come to think of them) just outside the largest office on the floor, that of the CEO. The executive was crouched behind his large, solid desk, a mixture of fear and rage on his middle-aged features, as Chains‘ namesake weapons lashed out to shatter the glass wall and doors of his office.
“Nimrod says you would know where the canister is if anyone would,” the redhead said it in the same flat, affectless way that all these assholes spoke. She and her partner moved in on the helpless man, glass crunching under their boots. “Tell us and live… don’t make Crux burn you, old man.”
Damn, thought Phantom Ace, I really liked Hot Cross… or maybe Hot Cross Buns… nah, too sexual… oh well, can’t call ’em all.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” the executive growled, his voice only slightly shaky. “What canister? We have a lot of–” He was cut off as Crux raised his hands, the air around them rippling with heat from which two throwing crosses of plasma coalesced.
Back to work, PA thought as he flicked into existence behind the now defiantly standing man. “You may be mind controlled,” he snarled at the two invaders as he grabbed the executive’s shoulder, “but I think you’re probably both real assholes even when you’re yourselves.”
Crux’s plasma crosses seared through the empty space where the two men had stood, melting twin holes in the floor-to-cieling window beyond. Neither villain reacted to the escape of their prey, simply turning away to resume their search. Then they paused; as one, they turned their gazes upward toward the same section of ceiling…
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
On the third floor the battle continued to see-saw between Scion, Quanta and Totem and Kid Singularity and Ghostlight in a seemingly endless stalemate. Ghostlight kept blasting the heroes with some sort of terror/nightmare effect, which only impacted Quanta, and that mildly, while Kid Singularity lobbed miniature black holes at them. Scion’s armor easily withstood the intense gravitic forces, but Totem and Quanta found themselves increasingly battered and bruised.
On the other hand, the heroes managed to keep the zombie intruders from progressing further into the building in their search for the canister of alleged matrix crystals. While Quanta’s attempts to encase them in quantum-matter shells only led to the Kid shattering them and Ghostlight simply passing through them, they at least forced them to react. Totem had better luck with his mystic bindings, which seemed able to restrain the girl, if not Kid Singularity. And while Scion’s barrages of bullets and stun rounds didn’t take them out, they too slowed the kids down and distracted them.
The hallway the Changelings were attempting to move down was lined on either side by walls of smoked glass. On one side they looked into a brightly-lit high-tech electronics/energy lab; on the other into a dim shadows of a server farm. For a minute or two the walls stood up to the shifting gravity spikes and fusillades of armor-piercing ammunition, but eventually they both shattered, eliminating the narrow containment that had been the Vanguard’s greatest advantage.
Kid Singularity, dodging a quantum-matter blast, ducked into the lab, gesturing at its back wall with one hand, and at Totem with the other. Pinprick black holes simultaneously blew out the wall and dazed Totem, the latter having the added effect of freeing Ghostlight from her mystic bindings. Scion pulled up just before unleashing another fusillade at the Kid – the lab was dotted with several large, spherical containers of liquid nitrogen, helium and hydrogen, as well as two engineers hunkered down behind an overturned lab bench in the corner of the room.
“I have located the canister, Nimrod,” Kid Singularity said, apparently to thin air, as he moved toward the opening he’d made. The room beyond appeared, through the dust and now-flickering lights, to be a storage room of some sort. Quanta encased the youth in another column of silvery matter, this time making it as tight to his opponent’s form as possible… and was gratified when the Kid didn’t immediately break out.
“Maybe without room to gesture he can’t –” Quanta started to say when the floor near the imprisoned villain suddenly cracked, then shattered, and finally exploded upward in a gout of cement, whipping chains and glowing plasma. Plasma which engulfed a nearby spherical container…
“Shit!” yelled Scion. “That’s hydrogen! It’s gonna–”
Everything vanished in a ball of orange-white flame.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Downstairs, Chilz, Blue Flame and Artemis were deadlocked in their own battles. Paragon seemed just as strong, fast and enduring as Artemis. Her only advantage was perhaps a little more agility, which kept her in the fight but didn’t stop her from taking a few nasty blows along the way. He seemed to have no trouble dodging Blue Flame’s plasma blast, and the few that did hit didn’t seem to phase him much. She suspected that if he was in full control of his mind they’d be in real trouble…
“Damn, this guy is fast – and tough!” Blue Flame groused, momentarily forced to pull back from attacking to absorb the fires his own flames had started. “Of course, I can’t really let loose indoors like this…”
Chilz, meanwhile, was finding Washout to be more trouble than he’d expected. While he could freeze the villain’s summoned water, and was unaffected himself by his drowning bubbles, he found his own efforts to encase his foe in ice were Sisyphean at best. The hydrokinetic seemed able to sublimate his ice almost as fast as he could summon it. And when the hydrokinetic turned that power on Chilz himself, the hero could feel his body begin to evaporate away. Of course he reformed it even as it sublimated, but it left them each apparently unable to take down the other.
Both fights had moved from the back offices into the larger open area of the lobby, now fortunately empty of innocent bystanders. From the corner of her eye Artemis could see that her teammate was having no more luck than she was, and realized it might be time to stop banging their heads against the same walls… the Blue Flame was the obvious choice to pit against a hydrokinetic, and Chilz should be able to mitigate Paragon’s strength and speed with a nice thick shell of ice…
“Chilz!” she called out, hurling her shadow sticks at Paragon to disrupt his own charge at her and give herself an opening to disengage. “Switch targets!”
The ice elemental hurled a volley of ice spikes at Washout, causing the villain to stagger back as he dissipated them; but before he could fully disengage and turn his attention to Paragon a tremendous blast shook the building, almost knocking them all off their feet, with the exception of the airborne Blue Flame. It had come from above them, and as Artemis tried to raise her teammates on the comms both villains’ heads turned as one to look upward.
They then turned their backs on the heroes and began walking toward the remains of the front door. Before either Artemis or Chilz could react, a vortex of swirling white energy appeared in front of the ruined doors, growing from a pinpoint to a circle three meters across in an instant. Blue Flame hurled a plasma blast at the zombified criminals, but Washout threw up a massive wall of water behind them – the resultant explosion of steam obscured everything for a moment, and when it had dissipated both villains and vortex were gone…
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Quanta had seen what was coming at the same instant as Scion, and had thrown up a quantum shield between the blast and himself and Totem. The shield cracked and buckled, but it saved them from the worst of the concussive force and heat. Scion had leapt to crouch over the two engineers, adding to the inadequate shielding of the lab bench. Extending his bioelectric field to cover them all, he’d managed to divert some of the heat and energy… but it was mainly the fact that the blast was fairly directional, and at 90° to them, that allowed the two men to survive… if unconscious and slightly singed.
In the immediate aftermath of the explosion Chains had lifted herself and Crux up through the hole they’d blasted, rising like some humanoid daddy longlegs through the smoke, dust and flames. At Kid Singularity’s gesture, Chains used one of her eponymous artifacts to lift a meter-tall, very high-tech looking canister from where if had lain concealed in a corner behind several crates…
Scion was torn, but his first duty was to get the injured men out of the damaged and still burning lab. The ceiling shifted slightly, with an ominous creak, as he lifted both men and rose into the air – Quanta created braces to keep the helipad, AC units and solar panels from collapsing in on them all.
Only Totem was free to try and stop the villains, but his spells had so far proven only marginally effective – with a reluctant grimace he summoned Raven. As soon as his form had stabilized Raven had attempted to mind control first one, then another of the criminals. But there was something strange about their minds, something he’d never seen in all his millennia of existence. It was as if their minds were… slippery… coated, in his own mind’s eye, with a rainbow-like, almost liquid, substance that prevented him from gaining a grip… his mental “fingers” kept sliding off…
As Scion flew the injured engineers out the gaping hole the explosion had blown in the exterior wall and down to the ambulances that were just pulling up, Kid Singularity gestured once again. A glowing vortex of swirling white energy suddenly appeared in front of him, and before either Raven or Quanta could act the four villains and the canister vanished into it. The vortex itself collapsed an instant later, leaving the Vanguard alone in the smoking ruins of the ZeroPoint building.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Scion pulled Artemis aside as the authorities began sifting through the rubble, before they met with the APD, letting his helmet melt away. Seeing his worried look, she knew what his concern was, and forestalled him.
“Yess, I know – the name Nimrod came up, apparently as the guiding force behind this attack. But let’s not jump to conclusions, John, there may well be an explanation. For now I’m willing to trust my instincts on this, and the Alliance’s.”
“OK, I don’t disagree, especially given the events in New Mexico today. The almost continual media coverage of everyone and every minute makes for a pretty damn good alibi. But I think it may be time to have that talk, and soon.”
“Indeed,” Artemis sighed. “Soon.”
They turned to greet Detective Ransom and begin the debriefing on the morning’s mess.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
It was a dispirited and cranky Vanguard that debriefed later that evening, once the battle site had been secured and turned over to SHADE, APD and the hazmat teams. The heroes had arrived back at the AzTech Pyramid at 19:35, about 15 minutes too late to catch the historic launch of the Argos 7. Now, an hour later, they were gathered about the Round Table watching video of their fight on the central holo-display. Beyond the windows the sun was sinking into bands of intense red, orange and purple.
“At the end there,” Scion said, freezing the action captured on his rear exterior camera and pointing to the mysterious vortex, “my sensors show that Kid Singularity actually opened an Einstein-Rosen bridge – a true wormhole!”
“Which is incredible,” said Quanta, staring hungrily at the data readouts on his own screen. “My quantum tunneling is completely different, as is Phantom Ace’s teleportation… and I don’t even pretend to understand how Artemis‘ cloak works, except that it’s not like this. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of any individual who can manipulate forces at this level, except the Paladins. And they do it using those high-tech bracers they wear.
“Given what this kid was doing with those microscopic singularities… if he’s capable of creating larger ones, now or as he get older, he could easily be the most dangerous meta on Earth. It’s not impossible to imagine he could, in fact, destroy the entire planet!”
“Shit, you mean like that Romulan dude did to Vulcan in the Star Trek reboot?” Jonny asked, looking shocked. “I mean, that was a kind of black hole, right?”
“Yes, and that’s unfortunately exactly what could happen, if he were to generate a large enough singularity – or lost control of one of them, or couldn’t shut it down…” Quanta frowned at the data stream, and trailed off as he focused on the numbers.
“I suggest we forward this information as Priority One to both SHADE and the Liberty Alliance,” Artemis sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. She seldom got headaches, but she could feel one building now. “Whoever this “Nimrod” proves to actually be, everyone needs to know what kind of power they control… and that they may have a canister full of the Incident-related matrix crystals.”
Given Raven’s description of the “shape” of the minds of the controlled, they had all agreed that it was unlikely to be Cerebral doing the manipulating. And once they’d confirmed that all of the attackers had indeed been Changelings (Artemis disliked the pejorative slang term Incidentals, and discouraged its use by the team), the working theory was that they were being controlled via the crystals in their systems.
“Gideon recognized Paragon,” Artemis went on, “real name Eddie Ritter, former grocery store bag-boy at Fred Myers and would-be hero; I recognized the so-called Ghostlight – she’s Cassandra Hartwal, a runaway I was looking for on the day of the Incident. I finally found her two weeks ago, in the Undercity, and while I couldn’t convince her to go home, I had no sense from her that she was criminally inclined. Nor does she have a juvenile record.”
“On the other hand,” Scion picked up the thread,” the APD files on Jimi Francona, aka Crux, indicate that he was a two-bit thug for hire prior to his transformation – greedy, cold-blooded and dangerous even without powers. Chains, civilian name Ally Hendricks, also has a troubled past, suffering from a serious rage disorder. Medications can control it, but she seems to be off them at the moment… or maybe it’s just the mind control. Kurt Lister, aka Washout, is a college drop-out, and while he has no criminal record he is, by all accounts, unmotivated, narcissistic and just generally an all-around asshole.
“Finally there is Kid Singularity. He appears to be one Chris Terazzo, 14 years old and a freshman at Grant High School. He is the youngest Incident Changeling discovered yet. A bright but emotionally underdeveloped teen according to his school counselor… it’s unclear what his motivations might be, when free of mind-control. Given his power level I just pray that he can be reached, assuming we can free his mind…”
“Damn, does that mean I could be controlled?” Jonny asked nervously. “I mean, we think I was affected by them…”
“Yes,” Scion said soothingly. “But remember, Jonny, we determined very quickly after the Incident that you burned out the crystal that was inside you the first time you turned to plasma. And before you ask, Chuck, I’ll remind you that we’ve never found any indication that the Incident is what changed you – no matrix crystal energy, no shard… just a very disturbing coincidence.
“It’s possible other Changelings might be similarly protected, like Jonny. Or maybe one has to be in proximity to this Nimrod and/or some specific technology to get “taken over.” Or maybe a strong enough mind is capable of resisting the effect. Too many variables and not enough data to make any definitive conclusions, at this point, I’m afraid.”
“And more to the immediate point,” Artemis said after the silence began to stretch, “all of these people have gone missing in the last seven to ten days. My contacts say Cassie vanished five days after I spoke to her – I’ve checked with her mother and she hasn’t returned home. The Terazzo boy disappeared nine days ago, apparently on his way home from school… the last any of these six people were publicly seen, until today, was a week ago.”
“No doubt taken by this “Nimrod” using whatever mind-control power he or she possesses,” Quanta added. “Our priority right now should be to find this person – and more importantly the canister. If it truly contains matrix crystals, it could be used to cause another disaster like the Incident – and create a potential army of new meta-humans. A real army, if they can all be controlled like these people seem to be.”
“Fortunately, I may have a lead on that,” Scion said, holding up a thin silvery band that looked like nothing so much as a metallic Live Strong wrist band. “I’ve been studying this little item we found in the wreckage of the third floor at ZeroPoint, and I’m pretty sure it’s how “Nimrod’s” crew was tracking the canister.
“One of them, Ghostlight if I had to guess, lost this during the fight, and if I can reverse engineer it and combine it with my own crystal-sensing tech, we might be able to track them, in turn. “Nimrod’s” sensors must be longer-range than mine, if they knew to look at ZeroPoint to begin with… so, if we’re done here, I’m heading to my lab to work on this.”
Quanta, reluctantly pulled from his analysis of Kid Singularity’s powers, agreed to come along, and the others all dispersed to their own pursuits.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
It took JJ less than 36 hours, with Kyle’s help and calling in a few Air Force favors to gain access to a military spy satellite, to increase the strength and range of his matrix crystal radiation sensors. Running a modified tachyon pulse through the satellite’s own sensor array he was able to boost the signal to the point of being able to scan a circle almost 200 kilometers in radius.
At 09:07 on the second day after the debacle at ZeroPoint, the satellite’s orbit brought it into position to cover Astoria, and JJ powered up his sensors. By 09:45 the Vanguard were heading west over the Pacific Ocean in the Interceptor.
“At this point I can only narrow it down to a circle about a kilometer wide,” Scion said from the pilot’s seat, his sensor telemetry being relayed to the screens at his teammate’s seats. “But the only thing within that circle is the Porpoise Mount Marine Research Platform.”
“What do we know about it?” Artemis asked.
“Built about twenty years ago by a company called Diogenes Searchlight, it’s currently owned by the Aquarius Research Group. It’s main purpose has apparently always been marine mammal research, and it’s location atop an undersea mount is supposedly rich in such sea life. Particularly schools of porpoises.”
“Don’t porpoises come in pods?” Jonny asked , looking bright-eyed and innocent.
“In the brief time I had to pull up background before we headed out,” Quanta said hastily, before Scion could respond, “I have to say the facility doesn’t seem to have accomplished much… less than half a dozen scientific papers mention it, and in only two of those did it seem that researchers actually worked from the platform. It’s currently unoccupied and preparing to undergo a long-overdue refurbishment, apparently.”
“In my time in the Air Force we would occasionally do fly-bys as part of our training and routine coastal patrols,” Scion added. “It’s really the only landmark 15 klicks out at sea, and I don’t recall it ever seeming very busy… not that I paid it much attention back in the day.”
“Scion,” interrupted Chilz. “I’ve intercepted a distress call on a proprietary high-band frequency.” Having a ham radio license and an interest in all things related, Chilz had become the group’s de facto communications officer in the field. “It’s coming from Porpoise Mount… an Underhill-Hart security team… they say they’re under attack from six unidentified meta-humans… they’re calling for company reinforcements…”
At that moment the research platform was coming into view, growing from a smudge on the horizon to almost full size in seconds. Scion brought them in low, sending up rooster tails of water behind them, before pulling up to do a tight circle around the station. Flashes of gunfire could be seen, and small figures clearly engaged in fighting. They recognized the Nimrod-controlled metas from the other day, and the distinctive black and silver uniforms of Underhill-Hart security personnel.
“I count six Underhill-Hart employees down,” Artemis called, studying the video feed from the external cameras. “At least 18 still standing.”
“Chilz, if you can get through on their channel, let the Underhill-Hart forces know were here to help,” Scion ordered as he set the Interceptor down on the station’s helipad. “I’ve dealt with them in the past – they’re professionals, but they can be prickly about their perceived jurisdiction.”
As soon as the aircraft had settled the Vanguard was out the hatch and into the battle. Scion took to the air with Totem and Quanta, dropping them both on the roof of the main building overlooking the fight, while Chilz ice-ramped over the superstructure, the Blue Flame flying beside him. Artemis shadow-stepped into the dimness beneath the central portion of the main building, while Phantom Ace teleported straight into the heart of the fray.
Their arrival seemed to take the mind-controlled villains by surprise. Artemis managed to stagger Paragon, who was ripping up decking and hurling it at three Underhill-Hart operatives. Totem cast his Sleeping Mists spell over several of the villains, but focused its power mainly on Kid Singularity, who staggered and collapsed to one knee, swaying drunkenly. Scion sent a barrage of electro-bolts at Chains, who was threatening two Underhill-Hart operatives, and sent her flying 15 feet sideways to slam into the metal frame of a support tower. The Blue Flame’s burst of dazzling light was very pretty.
Already staggered by Artemis‘ and Totem’s attacks, both Kid Singularity and Paragon were ill prepared to avoid the mass of quantum matter that Quanta suddenly dropped on them – the kid somehow managed to dodge most of the construct, but even a glancing blow was enough to send him sprawling, dazed. Paragon was not so lucky, and he went down hard, battered into unconsciousness.
Chilz confronted Crux as the villain tried to fry an Underhill-Hart fighter, but his attempt at an ice encasement was turned to steam by several plasma crosses, one of which actually hit the hero, melting part of his left arm and sending him reeling. The aborted attack did give the Underhill-Hart soldier, a tough looking blond woman, an opening, however. The pulse from her blaster caught Crux in the side, spinning him around and dropping him, if only momentarily.
Ghostlight, who seemed to have been staying around the perimeter of the fight, suddenly moved forward and glared at Scion hovering 30 feet above her. Her eyes glowed green, and suddenly the hero felt a wave of mild anxiety wash over him, an amorphous sense of dread… but strangely dim and diluted. A benefit of his armor’s natural resistance to psionic, he realized, as his bioelectric blast missed Chains, who was pulling herself up from where he’d send her flying, allowing the villain to use her chains to begin climbing the support column like a spider.
Washout summoned a massive wave that rose up through the deck grates to inundate both the man he’d been fighting when the Vanguard had arrived and Phantom Ace. The Underhill-Hart operative, a tall, fit-looking man with a blond crew-cut was dressed in a blue-and-black mottled wetsuit, the name “Mariner” on his breast, and seemed to be in charge. He also seemed relatively unfazed by the wall of water that engulfed him… Phantom Ace was briefly dazed at the sudden impact, before phasing himself through the water.
And so the battle went for several minutes… Artemis making good use of her new Shadow Whip; Phantom Ace phasing Washout down to the lower deck of the platform; Scion easily shaking off Ghostlight’s Evil Eye and blasting at Kid Singularity to try and keep him dazed and off balance, with the Blue Flame adding his own power to that effort; Totem again attempting to put their enemies to sleep, however ineffectively; and Chilz throwing up ice walls to protect the Underhill-Hart people; they in turn used the cover he provided to more effectively snipe at the bad guys.
Quanta attempted to encase Chains in a tight shell as she, going after Totem, swung from the south support tower toward the main building – but her glowing links burst it even as it formed around her. Totem’s Baleful Bindings were more effective at holding Ghostlight, although not, unfortunately, before she’d managed to fill Quanta’s head with horrible visions of his greatest fears.
For a moment Quanta was paralyzed by the visions of the world discovering his secret shame… the accusations, the contempt, his accomplishments stripped from him… but he’d come a long way in the past two months, and with a tremendous effort of will he shoved the fears aside, at the same time sending the most powerful quantum matter blast he’d ever generated at Chains.
She was just lashing out at Totem when the blast caught her in the back, sending her flying into the forward support tower, cracking several of the steel struts and stunning her. Unfortunately her whipping chains managed to catch Totem a glancing blow to the head, stunning him as well and knocking him off his feet.
Equally unfortunately, at the same moment Kid Singularity, although continually battered and knocked around by barrage after barrage of energy blasts, armor-piercing rounds and plasma bolts, managed to get off one of his signature mini-blackholes. It was aimed at Scion, but missed the armored hero by several yards, instead flying past him to hit the forward support tower just below the hole Chains had made in it.
With a grinding shriek of metal tortured beyond endurance, the tower began to buckle. The entire platform shuddered and began to tilt… Quanta, who had turned his attention to encasing a reviving but still groggy Paragon, turned back even as he was almost knocked from his feet. He sent strands of quantum matter racing up the bending, twisting struts, and the collapse slowed, then stopped.
“I can reinforce this enough to stabilize the platform,” he called over the team comm-link. “But I don’t dare try to lift it back to level – the tower is too badly damaged. We need to–”
At that moment the Interceptor, which had been slowly grinding along the helipad decking, slid into the safety rails… which held it for a moment, before slowly beginning to buckle. Scion hurriedly called up the remote systems on his armor’s HUD, and fired the VTOL thrusters. The aircraft rose, tearing free of the railing, and with a relieved sigh he set it to hovering a dozen yards off the damaged research platform.
The fighting had halted when the collapse had begun, and before the conflict could resume a voice rang out over the rig’s loudspeakers. It was the man in the mottled blue-and-black wetsuit, and his tone was assured, un-panicked, and forceful.
“This is Agent Mariner of Underhill-Hart Security. We need to evacuate this facility while we can. I call on all hostiles who–”
Before he could finish the sentence the entire platform jerked and shuddered like it had been kicked, knocking almost everyone not airborne off their feet. With a groan the other two support towers began to twist, and the silvery material of Quanta’s reinforcements on the first cracked and splintered with sounds like rifle shots. The shaking slowed, then intensified in waves of increasing frequency, and the angle of the deck increased steadily.
“Vanguard!” Scion barked both over the comms and his PA system. “We need to get EVERYONE off this station, NOW!”
Phantom Ace instantly began teleporting the unconscious Underhill-Hart personnel into the Interceptor, while Chilz began forming ice slides down to the water were he created a large ice floe for the conscious operatives. Scion airlifted the subdued metas, Crux, Kid Singularity, Ghostlight and Paragon, to a second, smaller floe his teammate created. Chains, although fairly beat up, was still mobile… but on consideration, decided she probably couldn’t swim the 15 kilometers back to shore. Her glowing chains faded back into tattoos on her arms, legs and torso as she allowed Artemis to bind her. Of Washout there was no sign…
In minutes everyone was off the rapidly disintegrating and sinking research station. The waters beneath Porpoise Mount were only 60 feet deep, it being set on the top of an undersea mountain, so even after it had finished settling one corner of the station remained above the waves, sticking up at an incongruously jaunty angle. But the debris hadn’t even stopped raining down when a massive bubble of water began to rise next to the ruins.
As a chunk of shimmering, rainbow crystal at least 50 feet across and 20 feet in diameter rose from the churning waters, mud, sand, and rocks pouring off it. As it rose higher, a massive spacecraft, clearly alien in origin, wavered into existence above it. The previously cloaked vessel seemed to pulse with a strange, electric blue light. Hovering in the air next to it was a man.
Not a man, exactly, the Vanguard quickly realized, although certainly male – his reptilian-like skin was as jet black as his form fitting costume, the only bits of color his golden slit-irised eyes and bands of a smokey gray translucent, glass-like material on his forearms. A black “light” was radiating from his hands, entwining the huge crystal mass and pulling it up toward him.
As all the humans stared, transfixed, a large portal along the underside of the spacecraft irised open, and the figure guided the immense crystal shard within. Before anyone could react, the ship sealed itself again and began to rise, faster and faster, into the cloudless blue sky. The hovering figure remained, turning to stare down at the humans below. After a moment, it spoke.
“Attention, primitive sentients!” It’s voice was deep, resonate, and strangely musical, with a slight hint of sibilance. “You have been interfering in matters far beyond your limited ability to comprehend. You will cease this interference immediately. You cannot stop what was set in motion long ago. Although long delayed, my patron is at last in a position to save this foolish world from itself.
“He will permit no further distractions, and your misguided attempts to control or hinder the changes he must make to this world are futile! Continue to interfere, and you will discover the consequences to be dire, both for you and for this planet; cease these distractions and you may all yet survive. You cannot hope to stop what is coming. Ignore this warning at your peril; there will be no others.”
With that he shot upward, easily catching up to the ship, which began to shimmer as he disappeared within, energy building up… In seconds a wave of intense blue-white light flashed out, temporarily blinding everyone below. In the seconds it took for their sight to return the ship was gone.
Scion, standing atop the Interceptor, let his helmet retract and turned to stare at Agent Mariner, next to him. The Underhill-Hart operative looked as stunned he felt.
“Well, that can’t be good,” the agent said, shaking his head in concern…