Post by HoM on Feb 28, 2018 12:40:32 GMT -5
Previously, in JUSTICE LEAGUE…
Mysteries abound as we draw closer to our seventy-fifth issue!
Last issue, AQUAMAN, AQUAWOMAN, BATMAN and HAWKMAN were hot on the trail of their mysterious informant known as PATHFINDER, only to be led to the doorstep of pan-dimensional arms dealer XOTAR, THE WEAPONS MASTER! Instead of revealing who his client was, the villain deployed his latest haul, a squadron of AMAZOS, malevolent robots programmed with all the abilities of the Justice League!
Meanwhile, the team’s science advisor ANGELA SPICA led CYBORG, FIRESTORM, THE GUARDIAN and MISTER MIRACLE to the metahuman penitentiary known as the Slab to confront her imprisoned father, the mad scientist known as THE ENGINEER, but it was too late-- he’d already escaped, restored to beyond his former glory!
Finally, BIG BARDA, MAJESTIC and WONDER WOMAN investigated the mysterious locale known as Neverland, only to find a train full of artefacts and relics, along with their keeper, LYLA MICHAELS. Deep in the belly of the vehicle lay a curious sphere, with massive implications for MAJESTIC-- he recognised the sphere to be a pocket dimension, a lifeboat where his long-thought dead species might be taking refuge!
With all this in mind, please join us now for the continuing adventures of the JUSTICE LEAGUE--
“Did anyone ever tell you the tale of the lost colony of Roanoke?
Established in 1585 by Sir Walter Raleigh, it was a late 16th-century attempt by Queen Elizabeth I to establish a permanent English settlement in North America. The Queen and Raleigh intended that the venture should provide riches from the New World. Oh, how naïve they turned out to be.
The queen's charter said that Raleigh was supposed to ‘discover, search, find out, and view such remote heathen and barbarous Lands, Countries, and territories to have, hold, occupy, and enjoy…’ but if you know anything about Roanoke, you know that there wasn’t much left to enjoy when all was said and done…
They wanted to cause problems for the Spanish, disrupt their fleet in any way possible. They wanted to mine gold and silver and discover a passage to the Pacific Ocean. And, probably worst of all, they wanted to convert any natives to Christianity, or whatever iteration of that theology was popular at the time.
But, of course… all good things must come to an end.
Three years later, a new group were dispatched to establish a colony on Chesapeake Bay. On their way, they stopped at Roanoke to check up on their old friends, but upon arrival they found nothing except a skeleton.
This sphere.
And one word, carved into a tree: Croatoan.”
Amazos. One was bad enough, but right now, closing in on the assembled members of the Justice League, there were seven. The mathematics of the situation was dire.
When the team first faced off against one of these mechanical monstrosities, the Justice League, in one of its most powerful roster configurations, were dismantled, and it took the quick thinking and ingenuity of the Atom to reprogram the synthetic being*.
Something told Aquaman they weren’t going to get that lucky twice in a lifetime. Hawkman had already taken a defensive posture, his mace gripped tight and determination marked across his face-- Katar had never faced an Amazo before, and neither had Mera, but they’d heard stories, and they knew that what was coming was never going to be good.
“We need to--” Aquaman started, but Batman was already on the move, throwing down numerous smoke bombs that engulfed the entire bridge of the buried spaceship in darkness. The last thing Arthur saw was the Dark Knight striking Xotar, the Weapons Master, in the chin, knocking him out instantly. Lights out.
Crimson eyes glowed in the dark, and in unison, seven identical voices croaked, <Batman / Threat Level: 1 / Vision obscured. No matter. With the powers of Superman / Martian Manhunter, we are able to see through your obfuscation.>
“Down!” barked Batman, pulling his cape wide and throwing himself over Aquaman, Aquawoman and Hawkman. Something slipped out of his hand that fizzled audibly, and then it erupted in light-- the smoke refracted the light a thousand times over, transforming from a fogbank to as bright as a star in a split second!
<Optical sensors compromised! Compromised! Compromised!> The Amazo’s voices were shrieking discordantly, their hands clasped around their eyes, their voices no longer in sync.
When one Amazo lowered its hands, its formerly red eyes were burnt out husks, sparks crackling in the now-empty eye sockets where its enhanced optics were now charcoal fragments.
Xotar was unconscious, and the Justice League were gone, leaving the seven Amazos blind but not without their means…
<…Activating enhanced aural abilities. We / We / We can hear your hearts beating. We will FIND YOU!>
The chorus of their rage sent vibrations throughout the buried Rannian ship, but the Justice League tried not to listen. Hawkman beckoned them forward as they ran, their footfalls echoing back toward where the Amazos lurked.
As they went, Aquaman turned to Batman and almost laughed, then said over the nanotelepathic link, {I think you pissed them off.}
{Good. If they’re pissed off, they’re not thinking rationally. That works in our favour.}
{What was with that smoke-screen-flare trick?} asked Hawkman. They turned a corner. He knew where they were going, but was more interested in what had just happened.
{Last time Aquaman and I were on a mission together we got stuck in a situation where a bright light was required to save our lives*. He provided the spark last time, but it got me thinking. I followed that thread as far as it would take me.}
{Super flash blindness?} offered Mera.
Batman didn’t respond, but Arthur smiled and thought, {Nasty…}
Angela Spica reviewed the footage of her father’s escape. His lawyer, Ray Gauss, had crumbled, his body transformed into a nanite swarm that aided Angelo in his release. Another death to her dad’s name. After regaining his full suite of nanotech-aided armaments he looked at the security camera and then it cut out.
When the team on site had arrived in the containment cell, they found a brand new skylight. The villainous Engineer had dissolved concrete and steel all the way up, thirty stories, and according to Cyborg, had gained speed as he’d gone. Three cells had been damaged. The inmates inside had been partly devoured, their bodies splayed out like spilt-paint-covered canvases on the floors of their cells.
Two had died.
The third was still screaming.
“I’ve seen this before,” said Angela, looking away from the security footage. She was situated in the warden’s office, while the others worked the scene. Cyborg was scanning every inch of the damage, and Mister Miracle was trying to figure out how the escape had taken place. Firestorm was gleaning as much information off the cell as she could, her hand moving in slow motions every couple of seconds or so. The Guardian made sure none of the prisoners got any ideas. He patrolled the halls with the riot squads, striking his baton against his golden shield, clang, clang, clang.
“It’s horrible,” said Warden Shilo Norman. He’d already vomited up his lunch, and it looked like breakfast was threatening to make a repeat appearance too.
The third was still screaming.
She gave him a sympathetic look. “His nanites feed to propagate. They eat matter, organic, inorganic, man… woman… child… When he decided that it was time to consolidate his genius, when he sent his swarm to take me out, they ate the entirety of my university lab. Harper saved me. But still… we’re lucky no one died then, and I guess we’re less lucky now.”
Shilo said hello to his breakfast, sweat streaking his face. He looked up at Angie and shook his head. “Where’s he going now?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” said the Guardian, entering the warden’s office.
“Everything okay out there?” Angie asked.
The Guardian nodded. “Norman has a strong infrastructure in place. Even if we hadn’t gone out there to put the fear in them, they weren’t going anywhere.”
Mister Miracle rushed inside, followed by the others. “Figured it out. Great escape! Top notch!”
“Scott…” murmured Cyborg.
“Sorry, but it’s just… do you have video playback? I want to see it in action,” replied Mister Miracle.
Angie rewound to where Scott indicated, and then pressed play.
In his cell and in high definition, Angelo Spica sneezed, and his lawyer said “Bless you.”
“Watch! Watch watch watch!” said Mister Miracle, pointing. The others had never seen him this excited, but then again, picking apart an escape must have been invigorating for him.
“Thank you.” Angelo responded, but he had already turned away from the others. He was smiling.
The guard was trying to corral the situation, gesturing towards the lawyer. “Please, Mister Gauss, this way-- Jeez!-- Ow. Weird.”
The lawyer was concerned, despite himself. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, sorry, some kinda insect.”
“What did we just watch?” asked the Guardian.
“Shall I rewind it?” offered Angie. “I mean… I missed it too, but…”
Harper shook his head. “No, no. Scott. Talk to me, man. Tell us what we missed.”
Mister Miracle threw his arms up. “The sneeze was a delivery system! He ejected a nanite into the air and it burrowed through ten inches of plastic silently and flew into the guard’s ear. Immediately began to replicate and influence his thought processes. Why else would he go against a direct order?”
“We found the tunnel in the plastic. Infinitesimal but there. Scary to think,” said Firestorm.
“What about the lawyer?” asked the Guardian.
Mister Miracle shrugged. “We roll the footage back to their first meeting, I’m sure we’d see another sneeze or cough or he could have fa--”
"We get it," said Harper.
Angie's mind was racing. “He said… my dad laid it all out. He infected him with nanotechnology and it replicated and replaced all of the lawyer’s… matter. Artificial stem cells. At the end, he was an automaton who didn’t know he was an automaton. And when my… when Angelo clicked his fingers, the nanites dispersed and went back to their creator.”
Shilo was horrified. “He said he never stopped working…”
Angie tapped her temple. “He built a lab in his brain. Nanites working away in his cerebrum. I wonder how much humanity is left in him…”
The group were interrupted by the arrival of another guard to Shilo’s office. He was sweating, having rushed here from wherever there had been.“Warden Norman, I’ve got some really bad news…”
The third had stopped screaming.
Now he joined the others dead, wherever they were.
“…Croatoan?” repeated Majestic.
There were four in the carriage, their eyes locked on the sphere that floated before them. Big Barda, her warrior’s instincts screaming that the impossible shape was danger, that nothing good could come of it. Wonder Woman was apprehensive. She too felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand. Majestic was amazed. This could be it. This could be home. Maybe… just maybe…
Lyla Michaels didn’t know these people. She knew of them, but they weren’t her friends. She was here to study the haul that her sponsors had collected over the years, to find something that her predecessors had missed. But the sphere freaked her out. She had always hated having it at her back. And if the Justice League were here then it was for a reason. Maybe she could be the first tenured academic of the night train to offload some of their property…
“Does that mean something to you?” she asked.
“In our mythology, there’s the Great Mother, Hecate. She created everything but by contemporary times, she wasn’t worshipped as much… a fringe belief for the select few… My mother had a shrine dedicated to her in her chambers… my mother always remembered the old ways. Hecate, and her opposite… the greatest darkness… Croatoan.”
“You’re saying Roanoke was destroyed by a…. an alien devil?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying. But tesseract technology is something the Kherubim had utilised for all kinds of applications. But near the end, when the war was in full swing… we created bunkers. Tesseract bunkers. Do you remember the town that had been engulfed by a hostile bubble reality? I first considered that my people might be hiding inside one then…*”
“I remember you saying, before we entered the place,” said Big Barda. The name passed her lips as a whisper. “Ugthothlhem*.”
“So, you’re saying that inside the sphere… is a pocket dimension?” said Lyla. “But that doesn’t explain--”
“Programmable environments. Used as a hospital, or an armoury… it could be anything in there,” said Majestic, interrupting her. He was thinking now, his mind racing, and niceties were fast going out the window.
Lyla’s head was racing with the possibilities. “The disappearance of the Roanoke colony… the mystery could be solved… they could be in there!”
Majestic almost sneered in derision. “Colony… your colony? My entire race! The last survivors of the holocaust of Khera!”
“Majestros, please,” said Wonder Woman, placing a hand on his arm.
“No! This is as close as I’ve come to learning the truth about my people! I lost everything, Diana. Everything! And I try to accept my new lot in life, I try to believe that fighting the good fight beside you and the Justice League is enough, but I lost my love, my life, my entire people!”
Barda placed a heavy hand on his shoulder, and Diana retracted her own, watching the intense glare the New God was giving the Kheran Warlord. Barda simply said, “What can we do?” and Majestros considered what she was saying.
“The sphere is emitting immense energy readings, but it’s harmless,” said Lyla, knowing that the thing that should help the most right now would be information. “And if you touch it, the history of the country dances across its surface… it never used to do that, only in the last year or so…”
“Environmental retention,” said Majestic, matter-of-factly. “It’s been active for so long, longer than it should have, and now it’s beginning to project the ambient light and sound it’s absorbed for centuries. How did it come into your possession?”
Lyla swallowed hard. “Back in the days of the Roanoke tragedy, the sphere was taken in by a captain loyal to the Queen, but it was soon lost at sea-- a cover for its return to the Americas by a secret society of alchemists. It was their philosopher’s stone, their almanac… it was studied for decades, passed from alchemist to alchemist, then later scientist to scientist, gathering dust along with all the other artefacts that the society gathered. It… it’s terrifying and I hate it. I see things I don’t want to think about.”
“If there’s someone inside there, or something, how can we access it?” asked Diana.
“They were gene-bonded to the Lord of the Kherubim. I can access it… but…” Majestic was hesitant.
“What?” pushed Barda.
“What if all we find in there is death? Or worse… nothingness?” he murmured.
Barda shook her head. “Then we find out together. And take the consequences with us.”
The Amazos had separated. Each was powerful enough to devastate the Justice League, but with their visual sensors damaged beyond their repair capabilities, it was decided internally that they should separate and spread their other abilities as far as they would go-- they listened intently for heartbeats or blood flow-- and knew that the Justice Leaguers were in the belly of the cargo ship. Seven Amazos. Seven cybernetic beings capable of mainlining the powers of the Justice League.
The one thing they lacked though?
As they entered the cargo bay, their bodies phasing through the bulkheads as they channeled the powers of the Martian Manhunter, they found that a thick fog was pooling at their feet. They didn’t need their eyes to know. Their skins were lined with sensors that allowed the seven powersets they contained to be applied practically. Their skin told their heads it was wet, and that they could detect the fog. The air was damp, the water content like that of a rainforest. They didn’t need to breathe, but if they did, their mouths and throats would fill with an oppressive damp.
<You are cornered. There are seven of us. Four of you. And you are merely human, or as close to baseline human as the Justice League gets. Come out. We will make your deaths quick, if not painless.>
The one thing they lacked?
A bolt of lightning shot out in the smog-filled hold and struck one of the Amazos in the chest. It wasn’t damaged, having leaned into the invulnerability of Superman, but it was confused. It had moved away from the brunt of the blast with artificial speed thanks to the Flash’s own powers, but it still had been hit.
<Error / Query: Electricity-based attacks do not register with any recorded encounters with Justice Leaguers present,> said one Amazo, its bare chest smouldering with the ashen scorch marks left by the attack. It brushed away at the markings, and they drifted off easily.
There were clicks and whirls in their heads, electronics asking electronics question. They weren’t networked in any way, nor were they telepathic, but they were identical in programming, and that meant an amount of shared reasoning went on in their heads. Why was their so much fog? Why was the air so damp? How was their electricity projection in play? Why couldn’t they hear the Justice Leaguers' heartbeats anymore?
The one thing they lacked?
A moment later, two separate streams of ice shot across the room, gathering speed and ferocity as the beams absorbed water molecules along the way. Two Amazos were struck and staggered, but as their internal temperatures dropped, they shivered off the sloughs of ice that caked their bodies, once more becoming immaterial thanks to the Martian Manhunter.
They could super-speed across the cargo hold but without visual accuracy available they might slam into a trap, or a wall, or cause damage to the ship either way. Xotar’s extra programming prevented that, as he wanted to keep using the frigate he’d stolen from the Rann skydocks. They could project their own arctic breath across the space, but with the amount of water in the air they might damage the stock stored down here with that as well. Same as utilising the ad hoc power ring enhancements they had on their rings. Without visibility or knowing what was going on in the space they inhabited, they were cut off at the knees.
<Enough. We shall remove the oxygen from the-->
“Now,” came a voice.
Seven blasts from seven artificial power rings zeroed in on the sound, and then the Amazos seized up. Their heads began to crack on the inside, their artificial brains being crushed by some unseen force. No, not unseen-- as the fog cleared, the water in the air having been absorbed in the Amazos’ bodies-- Mera stood behind them, her hands raised as she manipulated the water molecules to flood whatever made up the cybernetic entities’ brains. They were being lobotomised, quickly and efficiently, and as the seven androids fell to the floor, completely deactivated and completely without any brains to process input, the rest of the Justice League were revealed.
The one thing they lacked?
Imagination.
The Justice League had found crates of equipment in the cargo bay. Stolen technology from across the superhero-- and villain-- world. Mr Freeze’s cryo-rifles; Captain Cold’s freeze guns; Weather Wizard’s elemental magic wand; Sonar’s noise control technology… someone had found all this monstrous tech and replicated it.
When he’d picked up a rifle, Batman noticed that Mr Freeze’s creation didn’t feel as balanced as it did when it came from the lab of Victor Fries himself. Analysis would show, he was sure, that it was cargo cult. Built from a schematic but not by the master himself. Who would want to inundate the world with this kind of deadly technology?
Regardless, flooding the hold with fog and creating an atmosphere akin to a rainforest was the first step.
Hawkman weaved wonders out of the wand, even though his untrained use of the thing burnt his fingers through his gloves. Sonar’s technology allowed them to mask their heartbeats-- not that Batman needed any outside assistance with that, considering the technology in his suit. With their freeze guns, Batman and Aquaman blasted the Amazos with beams of sub-zero fury to propagate the moisture in the air around their enemies. And then, after throwing his voice using Sonar’s tech so Batman sounded like he was in one part of the hold when he was actually in the other, they forced the Amazos to turn solid so that Mera could tweak the water in their bodies and crush their operating systems into mush.
Amazos 0, the Justice League 7. A resounding victory.
“How’d Xotar get a hold of all this?” wondered Aquaman, squeezing his wife’s hand as a gesture of a job well done, while gesturing at all the crates of weaponry they’d plundered to save their own lives.
“Better yet, how is he out of prison without us knowing?” said Batman.
Hawkman had stayed silent, content to walk over to the Amazos and watch the cybernetic grey matter leak out of their pointed ears. He broke said silence by driving his foot down repeatedly on their hollow skulls, just metal and plastic now that their heads were empty. “Let’s go ask him, shall we?” he murmured, heading toward the exit, his fist clenched and his boot covered in grey matter.
“It’s just how I left it. Pristine and in full working order,” observed the Engineer.
His silent signals to his hidden laboratory had meant that upon his arrival, it was already buzzing with activity. Light flooded the space, and that meant every nook and cranny was visible as he arrived in its belly.
The laboratory was overgrown with what appeared at first glance to be impossibly blooming plants. This was a place, deep beneath the scorching desert sun, but how could there be a garden here? There were no irrigation systems, no sun lamps. But upon closer inspection, you’d see. You’d know.
“My Nevada Garden,” he mused.
He walked through his garden, every beautifully twisted artificial plant blooming nanotechnological nightmares, and knew that everything was going according to plan.
“That said… if my daughter is running with the likes of the Justice League, my investment in high level enhanced operative security might very well pay off sooner, rather than later.” He chuckled. “Listen to me. Who talks like that? Solitary confinement has not agreed with me.”
Two tubes, about seven feet tall and two feet across, opened, and a chemical mist rolled out. There was a moment of silence after that, as the pharmaceutical concoction in the air settled and slipped through the grates underfoot. And then, a leather boot emerged from inside the first tube. From the other, a white-clad one.
“Do you know why you’re here?” asked the Engineer.
“To… protect…” growled the first man. The words came out of his grizzled mouth with some effort, like it was against his better nature to say what he was saying. And if you knew him, and the Justice League soon would, you’d know just how true that sentiment was.
“To keep… to keep you safe,” said the other. He was hesitant to speak, but the words flowed just as sure. He was beautiful, and the first man would have agreed with the observation given the chance. But right now, the pair weren’t entirely themselves. But they were still deadly enough to get the job done.
“Good. The Justice League will be here, soon enough. You’re ordered to keep them from interfering. Anything else, I’ll instruct you on the fly. Now, go. Patrol the garden. I’ve got an ascension to plan.”
“I think I’ve found him,” said Angie. The team had reconvened back on their island headquarters to utilise the powerful satellite array available to them, and their scientific advisor had already got results.
“That was fast. Where is he?” asked Professor Martin Stein, looking over from the console he was typing away on. He’d separated from Lorraine Reilly upon their arrival back, and she was currently drinking coffee a few floors away in the building. He could feel the Siamese twinge of caffeine rush in his own body, even though he hadn’t drunk it. The symbiotic link the two shared as Firestorm was beyond his knowledge, but that didn’t stop him from trying.
“I just know what to look for. Massive heat output where that wasn’t some previously. We have satellites tasked above nearly all of the United States. Before his breakout from the Slab, this area of the Nevada desert was cold. Cold as it can get in the desert, I mean. Minutes after, the heat output pinged off on the satellites. That’s his lab revving up. Just north of highway 157, near Angel Peak... the only thing separating him and Las Vegas is Red Rock Canyon and just over fifty miles... that's a massive population centre...”
“What are you thinking?” Martin asked.
“I don’t know… but he turned that lawyer into a swarm of nanites just by sneezing on him… imagine what he could do if he had six hundred thousand unwilling victims?”
Martin opened his mouth but the answers coming to him weren’t worth saying out loud. Instead, he thought hard, connected with Lorraine and the two of them warped together to form Firestorm. “I’ll gather the others,” said Martin, from Firestorm’s mouth.
“We should gather the others. We go in together. We find out what happens together,” said Wonder Woman.
Majestic shook his head. “I can’t wait. Look at the ripples across the sphere. It’s been active far too long. The environmental retention… that can only expand outward. It’ll warp perceptions of anyone in proximity, and if this train gets moving again… anyone in its radius will experience replays of the collected history that went on around the sphere. Do you want that? Do you know the history of this country?”
“Don’t lecture me, Majestros. We need to be careful. We need to tell the others, at least,” she replied.
Majestic pressed his hand against the sphere and the extra pressure caused something to slowly form under his palm print. It was a display, with controls available in an alien language. Barda and Diana had seen the characters in Majestros’ writings, and knew it to be the language of the Kherubim. They didn’t know what it meant, but they weren’t feeling confident right now.
“What are you doing?” asked Barda.
“Tesseract bunkers are keyed to Kherubim lords. I’m one of them. I’m initialising entry.”
“Majestros-- don’t--” started Diana, but it was too late-- in a flash of light, the the trio vanished, leaving Lyla Michaels alone with the sphere as it warped out of shape for a split second, reaching out to meet the Justice Leaguers, and snapping back into shape.
It had eaten three, and left one behind. She smiled. Thoughts not her own. Then Lyla gasped in shock and screamed, falling to her feet. “What-- what-- what just happened?!”
Xotar awoke when Hawkman broke two of the knuckles on his left hand. He awoke with a start, screaming.
“Oh. Hello. Did I wake you?” asked Katar.
“You-- broke-- my-- hand--!”
Hawkman shook his head. “No, I didn’t. Did I, Aquawoman?”
Mera smiled. “No, you didn’t, Hawkman. You broke his knuckle.”
“Two of them. I don’t know my own strength,” he replied. “If I wanted to break your hand, I’d leverage your palm up like this, and dig my thumb in right under--”
“No-- no-- no-- don’t-- stop stop stop. What do you want? I have answers! I have everything you need!”
“Who hired you to deliver this weaponry?” Hawkman asked.
“I… I can’t tell you that… they’ll… they’ll kill me…” murmured Xotar. He was staring at his sunken hand, where his knuckles had once been pronounced, now they were just… floating under the skin.
“That’s fine. Let’s start slow. Who broke you out of prison?” said Hawkman.
“Ah…”
“Because I know that’s where we left you after Elongated Man and the others defeated you in Prometheus’ Crooked House*. You were supposed to be locked up for a good long time. How’d you get out?”
“Maybe… maybe I didn’t break out… maybe I was let out…” said Xotar. He looked smug but Hawkman pressed down on the space on his hand where his knuckles had once been. The scream shattered any other expression he might have been able to gather.
But Hawkman was thinking, even as his thumb pushed around in the fleshy space amongst Xotar’s mangled knuckles. The Russians had claimed extradition for some reason, and the Justice League didn’t have a horse in the race. If the Guardian had been a member at the time, maybe they would have cared more… but last they’d heard, Xotar was transferred to Temho-Metya prison, beneath the Laptev sea. So… why was he here now?
Down in the belly of the ship, Batman was analysing the weaponry. “Hawkman’s torturing Xotar, I assume.”
“Yes. I didn’t want to be party to that,” said Aquaman, leaning against the bulkhead.
“Your wife doesn’t seem to have a problem with it,” observed Batman.
“Different value system, I suppose. Not even near a deal breaker.”
The Dark Knight looked up from one of the crates and almost smiled. “Good to know.”
“Speaking of… the world seems to be aware that you and Diana are a thing. Doesn’t that worry you?”
Batman’s smile faded. “Not particularly.”
“Bit limiting, though… don’t you think?”
The Caped Crusader held up his hand and projected an idea the Hawk Knight's way. {Ask him who built the weapons. They’re clearly not originals.}
Aquaman rolled his eyes. “Changing the subject. I see. Touchy. What do you think the issue is here then? Any ideas?”
“Hhh. Temho-Metya is a hellhole. I’ve been there once before, and the conditions were terrible…”
“You were in a Russian prison? Why am I not surprised?”
“I needed information from an inmate. I go where I need to go. Regardless, the institution is corrupt. I wonder…”
“I don’t think I like where this is leading, Batman…”
The Dark Knight smiled in that way that made other people uncomfortable. {How’s your Russian, Hawkman?}
{Rusty, but passable,} came his response.
{Good. I’ve contacted Checkmate to lock down this location. They’ll be here any minute to take Xotar into custody. Hopefully this time they won’t lose him in the system. Meanwhile… let’s go break into a prison.}
Angie Spica breathed in, anxiety creeping up inside her sternum like a closed fist. “A couple of things. I’ve managed to gather some samples of my father’s nanites from the corpses of the prisoners… one of the side effects of devouring matter to fuel construction of more nanites is that some become malformed and inert. That means there’s a residue… a signature… left behind after the consumption begins. They’re trying to form, they’re trying to eat to build, but they’re inherently broken. It’s the speed of transformation, I think. It’s… imperfect.”
“What does that mean?” asked Mister Miracle.
“Well, it allowed me to compare the blueprint that Alejadro Cuetes passed to Aquaman and Wonder Woman* to my father’s work. They’re generationally the same. But the Cuetes’ blueprint is… it’s hard to explain… Cuetes’ blueprint is Generation 1, right? And the nanites my father has developed now are… Generation 1,000. There’s a massive disconnect in processing power. But somehow my father passed his work onto Alejandro. That’s scary. And it looks like he knew that. So he tried to warn us.”
“So if we apprehend your father, we might find out why Alejandro had to die?” offered the Guardian.
“Yeah, maybe,” said Angie.
“Look, we know where he is, we know what he’s capable of, so we need to take him down before he gets any plans in motion,” said Mister Miracle.
Firestorm nodded. “I agree. I mean… with your know-how, and our firepower, we can take him down, can’t we?”
“I took him down with your help before, remember that, Angela,” said the Guardian. Angela. The Guardian rarely called Angie by her actual name, so it meant something. It meant business.
“Okay, we need to get close to him to transmute his nanites into… I dunno… saline. Something harmless. But if we don’t get all the nanites at once, then he can reconstitute his abilities and warp whatever they touch. Wherever we go, he’s going to have the upper hand, because of the nanite swarm he controls. So we need to be careful.”
“‘We’?” repeated Cyborg.
“Like you’re going without me on this. I’m the only one who knows my father’s work nearly as much as he does. And if we’re close to him, nanotelepathy becomes moot. He’ll hack into the wavelength and mess with us. So before we even touch down in Nevada, I’m going to have to expel our connection.”
“Will it hurt?” asked Firestorm.
Angie looked up from her bracelet, where she’d been fiddling with some small buttons. “Uh. No. I just did it. It means we can’t use the Doors as their targeting is based around the nanites in your heads, so we’re going to have to Boom Tube to the location.”
“Doable,” said Mister Miracle.
“Okay, but no matter what, you stay behind us, and you don’t go running off into trouble,” said the Guardian.
“Guys, this terrifies me, but I know it’s the way it’s gotta be. I’m not going to be doing anything stupid,” she replied.
Light took a few seconds to make sense. The sphere had opened up and absorbed them in, and spat them out somewhere else. The air tasted strange and the light interacted with their optical nerves even stranger, so as they blinked madly to get their sight back, there was a disgruntled silence between the three of them-- broken by Wonder Woman grabbing Majestic by the cape and wrenching him up.
“Of all the bull-headed things to do, Majestros! What were you thinking?”
“Hecate…” whispered Majestic, barely paying attention to the threatening gesture of Diana.
They were in a wooded area, trees all around the clearing they stood inside. The trees were as tall as Sequoia sempervirens, over eighty metres tall, but their bark was discoloured, almost transparent so you could see the throbbing heartbeat of nature within it. The leaves themselves were reddish, not green, and the skies were clear of any cloud or imperfection-- in fact-- if you looked toward the sun-- you’d be surprised to find--
“We’re not alone,” murmured Barda. “And… nanotelepathy is offline.”
“The air… smells like Khera… and the light… look up…” He gestured upwards. “Binary suns. Like home. Am I… home?”
An arrow whizzed past Majestros’ shoulder and plunged into Barda’s chest. Then another. And then a dozen more followed by a hundred. The arrows all found their target, first Barda’s front, then Majestic’s back. Wonder Woman was only saved from the attack by the size of Majestros’ frame. He doubled over, propped up by Diana’s immense strength.
Before he passed out, he began to whisper incoherently, the only words Diana could pick out were “Coda… Coda…”
“What do you mean?” she whispered back.
“They’re… they’re here.”
Behind Majestic, a warrior approached, She didn’t hold a bow or arrow, or any kind of projectile weapon. She had support then, hidden in the forests behind her. The woman’s blazingly white hair was done up in a ponytail above her head, and her armour was subtle. She wore a black chain-link shirt with red trim, with matching bottoms that tucked into boots. She had two sharp, scarlet tattoos emblazoned across her cheeks, and a single, simple circle on her forehead. In her hand was a curved weapon unlike any kind of blade Diana had ever seen before, and in her perfect blue eyes was the kind of mettle that Wonder Woman had seen in war gods.
What had her mother always told her? “Don’t kill if you can wound, don’t wound if you can subdue, don’t subdue if you can pacify, and don’t raise your hand at all until you’ve first extended it.”
Wonder Woman slowly lowered Majestic to the ground, and then held her hands up. She only had her lasso at hand; no shield to block a blow from the sword the woman approaching was wielding, nor her own blade to parry a strike. So instead of raising a shield, she used her words. “My name is Diana, Princess of Themyscira. I come in peace, sister.”
The woman didn’t change her pace, but her disdainful look was enough to say why. “There are no sisters here. Nor are there any princesses. The only royalty we’ve known cast us into this hell. Now, there is only the Coda.”
The woman drew her sword up, and moved it in a fashion that Diana had never seen before. There was no foundation on Earth, or in human history, for the artistry this woman exhibited with a blade.
Diana had tried to extend a hand. Now it was time to raise it into a fist.
{I don’t like this,} said Hawkman. Except right now, he was wearing the rumpled uniform of one of the prison guards Batman and he had assaulted upon their arrival. He fit right in, considering his immediate surroundings. They had arrived covertly into the belly of Temho-Metya, snuck their way past numerous guards, and found a pair that looked about the right size. A few moments of extreme violence later and they had their camouflage.
Talking the lead, the Dark Knight cut an odd profile. He’d applied a prosthetic scar to the side of his face, something to draw the eye and by default obscure his identity, and wore a fake nose. Apparently, he carried a master disguise kit, collapsed in the rear of his utility belt. Why should Katar be surprised? Of course he’d been in this kind of situation before. Gotham’s defender grunted something in Russian at a passing guard and was met by a stern nod.
{We won’t be here long. Just need to look into something..}
They’d shared supposition on the way over. Temho-Metya had been compromised. They wanted to know to what extent. While the UN sanctions that allowed the Justice League to operate across the globe was international in scope, the current government in Russia didn’t like the idea of an unannounced visit from the team, so Batman didn’t bother letting them know. If they were caught, they had a way out via the Doors, so they wanted in, and got it.
Outside in the ocean, out of range of the prison’s defence net, Aquaman and Aquawoman swam, waiting for the signal. They were there to provide a distraction if necessary. Laptev didn’t claim the most welcoming underwater clime, but something like the cold never bothered the pair, and the sheets of arctic ice gave a natural camouflage. Noting the low salinity in the water like one would grey skies, the pair floated patiently, letting their bodies hydrate, filling their stamina and focus to their maximum. They’d be ready when they were called upon.
The prison itself was accessible by numerous Soviet-era freight elevators that descended from points on the surface down into the submerged facilities. The rusting exterior of the prison suggested it should have been decommissioned many years ago, decades even, but the interior was a state of the art facility designed to house metahuman threats against the Russian people.
Except… the metahuman containment wing was empty. The dust suggested it had been so for months. The general population area was filled to the brim, but the recreational areas, the dining halls, anywhere where machinery could be operated, was at capacity with just that. Prisoners were chained to the machines, begrudgingly operating things way beyond their presumed intelligence level.
{Seven Hells…} thought Hawkman.
{Slave labour. They’ve transformed this place into a slave labour camp,} replied Batman.
One of the prisoners noticed the pair and began to shout in their direction. He looked cleaner than the other prisoners, and he was wearing loose-fitting prison whites. “You can’t do this!” He said, in a crisp mid-western accent, “I have rights! I didn’t get a trial! You-- you Russian bastards-- !“
Behind the prisoner another guard marched forward and shoved a cattle prod in his side, shocking him into submission. The guard looked up at Batman and Hawkman, and saluted in respect, then kicked the prisoner for good measure.
{They’re not just prisoners… they’ve been kidnapped…} said Batman.
Hawkman turned to his teammate. {We have to get them out of here.}
{We have to tear this place down,} countered Batman.
Katar smirked. {Now you’re talking my language.}
The Justice League materialised somewhere in the Nevada desert, but were surprised to find themselves surrounded by a lush garden of exotic plants. They were on high alert, surrounding Angie while she examined one of the plants that had come up through the terse sands.
Firestorm raised her hand and closed her eyes, reaching out to take a measure of the atmosphere. There were scant traces of nanites hanging around them, and with an elemental twist, they were rendered into black scabs of metal that fell to the ground like a flash hailstorm.
“Okay, we’re safe, but I don’t advise you guys take off your hazmat suits. Just in case,” she said.
Instead of coming in their usual costumes, the Guardian, Mister Miracle and Angela Spica wore hazardous material suits based around their individual uniforms. They were aware that nanites could eat through them if given enough time, but if there was something more sinister, perhaps it would give them a buffer to put an end to whatever subtle attack might have come their way.
“Whoa. It’s bio-mechanical,” Angie said, looking around at the lush garden.
“Cybernetic plants?” asked Cyborg. He was the only one not wearing a hazmat suit, due to his own naturally unnatural body type. He was a walking tank now, with a computer doing most the work of his surviving brain. He wasn’t concerned about nanite infection, as his own nanotechnology make-up, while more rudimentary than the Engineer’s own, would allow an immune system capable of striking back against an invasion.
“Exactly. But look, the size of this one, the petals are closed but…” She prised open one of the flowers and revealed what appeared to be a rifle, with nodules of green energy caught in glass cylinders along the barrel. The trigger was non-existent, but there were thick tubes hanging off the handle, with pincers at the tip. “It's… it’s symbiotic? I think it plugs into a user, a bearer, and then you don’t need to pull a trigger, you just… think and fire. That’s all supposition.”
Firestorm motioned to below their feet. “Look at the ground. It’s still sand. The heat being emitted is massive, but it’s coming from underneath. They’re blooming from a location underground. Piercing the desert floor…”
“He must have a laboratory-- or a greenhouse-- underfoot,” said the Guardian. “Firestorm-- Firestorm, what’s wrong?”
The Nuclear Hero looked around, somewhat confused. Angie picked up on her expression and began searching for what had caused the nuclear hero to be distracted. “What is it, guys?” she asked.
“When I transmute a substance, I can kind of… sense where other pockets of that substance might be. Now, I can feel… the nanites… they’re inert, but they’re… growing?”
She searched for one of the plants that caught her attention, and then created a transparent aluminium sphere around the petals. She reached inside, her hands phasing through her construct, and pried the petals open-- and a burst of nanites were ejected outward, smashing against the sphere and immediately beginning to eat away at the metals. She rendered the nanites inert like she had the rest, but then turned back to Angie.
“There are dozens, maybe hundreds of these plants littered amongst the… naturally occurring weapons caches…” Firestorm said, looking around. “Waiting to burst. How far away from Las Vegas are we?”
“Fifty miles, give or take,” said the Guardian.
Firestorm nodded, her understanding beginning to be verbalised. “The winds could carry the bursts… the swarm… to a population centre, right?”
“And devour any matter in their way?” offered Mister Miracle.
“Devour… or transform…” mused Angie.
Inside the sphere Firestorm had created, the inert nanites suddenly reformatted themselves and were pulled back into the petals by metal threads. The flower reset, and folded back into place. It wasn’t yet ready to bloom.
“I’m scanning,” said Cyborg, his hand transformed into a discus array that made voop voop voop-ing noises. “Huh. That’s really strange. I’ve mapped the flower, and it’s not at full capacity yet, and those nanites are still multiplying. When it reaches critical mass, I think… I think it’ll pollinate. Open up like Firestorm just forced it to a minute ago.”
“How long do we have?” asked the Guardian.
“Hours… if that…” said Cyborg.
“Damn. Damn it all. Firestorm, can you give us a tunnel to the greenhouse?”
She nodded and cast her hand out. “I don’t want to interfere with any processes until we know what those processes are. I need to find… yeah… heavy metals… power lines… but…” She closed her hand into a fist and the ground began to rumble. She first transformed sand, stone and dirt into a thick steel tube, capable of holding up the weight of the earth above and around it, and then she hollowed the tube out, tunnelling down into the laboratory below.
The Guardian raised his shield. “Cyborg and Firestorm, take point. I’ve got your back. Mister Miracle take the rear in case we need a quick exit. Angie, stay behind me. I don’t like this one bit. And yet… down we go.”
Wonder Woman brought her hands together as her attacker sliced downward—and she caught the singing blade between her two open palms—an act that caused her determined opponent to show wide-eyed shock--
“I don’t want to fight you,” said Diana.
“You threaten our existence by being here,” replied the white-haired woman, who kicked forward, sending Diana back a few steps. She still had the sword between her hands, but had slid down to the tip, blood now streaking the blades. It was so sharp that it cut through her gods-given invulnerability, but just because she was bleeding didn’t mean she was any less defiant.
Her attacker shoved the blade forward, hoping to catch Diana unawares, but she locked herself in position to the blade and flew backwards in time with it, then she flew heel over head to drive her feet down on the white-haired woman’s head. The blow sent her sprawling toward the downed body of Majestros, but she held tight to her weapon until her eyes met his face, and then--
“no…”
She dropped the weapon and it clattered to the grassy floor below.
Her eyes darted from Majestros to Diana, then back again.
“Who… who are you?” she whispered.
“I am Diana, Wonder Woman and member of the Justice League. There has been a misunderstanding here.” She gestured toward her fallen comrade. “Do you know him?”
“He is… my… he is Majestros. Lord of the Kherubim. And… and my betrothed.”
Betrothed? Diana remembered the stories… remembered the events relayed to her first by the Guardian thanks to the shared consciousness he experienced with Majestros and Jack Marlowe*, and then elaborated later upon by Majestros himself. “You are Lady Zannah?”
She pursed her lips at the mention of that name and shook her head. “No. No longer.” She picked up her sword and then raised it, shouting toward the treeline, “Coda!”
From the thick foliage and trees, from every nook and cranny, from every hiding place there possibly could be in the immediate area, dozens upon dozens of women appeared, bearing weaponry beyond anything Diana had seen before. They wore variations of the white-haired woman’s own armour, though their facial tattoos were either non-existent or just a stripe here or there, and not the pairs that she herself wore. Even as Big Barda stirred, her New God physiology processing whatever drugs they’d shot into her system, it was clear the trio were massively outnumbered.
The white-haired woman sheathed her weapon and then held a hand out to Diana. “I am Zealot. I lead the Coda. We were snatched from our promised land and rendered here by the great traitor Imperator. Can you… bring us home?” she asked.
In the distance, a sound… like rivets being driven into metal…
The team made it down the tunnel Firestorm had created and found themselves intersecting with a stairwell that led even further down into the earth beneath the Nevada desert. Firestorm held her hand up, and again, sensed the presence of nanites in the air. She projected an aura around the group that rendered the nanites inert, just like she’d done upstairs.
The stairs led somewhere down, so they went down them together. At the bottom, they were amazed to see the plants that had pierced the ground and blossomed on the surface growing in massive tanks filled with some kind of murky substance. All the plants were tagged and hooked up to machines that made no sense to anyone who saw them, apart from maybe Angie.
“Whattttt…” she exhaled, curious and a little scared.
“What is all this?” asked the Guardian.
“Uh, I’m thinking some kind of next gen hydroponics. Y’know, growing plants without soil? Usually they’re growing in mineral nutrient solutions, but this stuff…”
She wanted to dip her finger into the tanks to feel whatever it was that fed into the roots of the plants, but she knew better, even wearing her hazmat suit.
“…It’s gotta be some variation on his nanite design.”
There was a squawking and an announcement system activated overhead. A voice became clear, though the mocking tone wasn’t welcome. “Very clever, Angela. I’d call you smart, but you came down here, which most certainly isn’t.”
“Daddy?” Angie whispered.
“I’m not your father. I’m your creator and you’re a failed experiment that refuses to end, no matter how hard I try. Any familial ties between us were severed when you didn’t let me undo you when I first ascended to my new position.”
“Where’s that voice coming from, Cyborg?” asked the Guardian.
“Closed system—I can’t patch in—”
“I see that you bought a Firestorm with you. I thought she was a he, but I’m old-fashioned, I can’t keep up with all these changes. No matter. An elemental force, capable of transforming matter from one form to another. Remind you of anybody else? What one calls elemental transmutation, I call my science, impractically applied.”
“wuhh?”
Suddenly feeling woozy and off-kilter, Firestorm looked at the Guardian, a shocked expression on her face. It wasn’t the words they could hear, but the forces acting upon her body that destabilised her so. A seam formed down the middle of her face, down her sternum toward her groin, and then each side of her body began to stretch in the opposite direction, like she was being pulled in two by immense, unseen hands.
Martin Stein’s voice shouted in Firestorm’s head, well aware of the encroaching darkness that spread through their shared mindspace. {Lorraine! The matrix! It’s being corrupted! We’re being--}
She screamed as she was pulled thin and then snapped into two separate components, Lorraine and Martin, both unconscious as smoke trailed up from their bodies. Firestorm had been neutralised, and now the nanites that hung in the air began to cycle back to full strength, already eating away at Angie and the Guardian’s hazmat suits.
“I think you’ll appreciate what I’m trying to do here, though. A fellow scientific mind. I wish Professor Stein were awake, so he could hear the logistics of my latest proposal. Once the flowers of my Nevada garden bloom, their pollen will travel to Las Vegas. A population centre that-- at any one time-- is home to close to six hundred thousand men, women and children, both residents and tourists.”
“Yeah? And so what?” asked Angie, spinning on the spot even as her suit began to crumble into dust in sheets. She started tearing it off instead of letting it eat away, until she was exposed to whatever nanites that might be in the air directly.
“It’s an experiment. My nanites will infect every single living soul in Las Vegas and transform them into a race tailored to survive the series of upcoming eschaton events that are predicted to strike Earth. I was thinking of calling them Homo Cyberneticus.”
Angie was staggered. The scope of the plan. The body of it. All she could think to say, was, “You’re goddamn insane.”
“No, what I am is smart. Smarter than you’ve ever been. I’ve anticipated every single move you would make. Every action has led to this. You deactivated the nanotelepathic link that kept you connected. It means I can’t get into your heads, but you didn’t think to slough off your own mental-illness-regulating nanites, did you? Or maybe… I reprogrammed them to make you forget.”
Angie vomited violently as every single nanite that she had designed and injected in herself was expelled from her body. Her head screamed as her brain chemistry went haywire, and she clutched at her temples to try and make the pain go away.
“Angie! Angie!” shouted Cyborg, but when he raised his arm to reach out to her, it was blown off by a searing blast from somewhere he couldn’t track. He looked at the stump, at the wires that flew wildly from it, and then tried to figure out where his attacker had blown his arm off from.
The Guardian knew the situation had gone to hell, and now he was back to back with Mister Miracle, trying to--
He drew his shield up a split second before a series of razor sharp shuriken impacted against it, digging into its long-thought indestructible surface. He looked down and saw what could have been batarangs embedded across it, but they were sharper and a hell of a lot meaner. “Who the--?”
“I. Planned. Everything. I purchased some very special security. And while I finalise the next stage of my experiment, I think I’ll allow you to meet my investments. See you again soon.”
The PA system shuddered off, and a figure emerged from the darkness. He was dressed all in black, a long coat obscuring his body armour. The mask he wore hid the majority of his face, but his shit-eating grin was clear as day. The symbol on his chest was of a waning crescent moon. In one hand he held a baton, and in the other, he had a shuriken between every finger.
"Justice League… let me make this situation clear for you. I know what special abilities you have. And I don’t care. No punches have been thrown, and I've already fought our fight in my head a million different ways and I always win. That’s even before my solar-powered friend here enters the fray. Me? I can hit you without you even seeing me. I'm what soldiers dream of growing into. I'm what children see when they first imagine what death is like. I'm the Midnighter. So: Your move."
Mysteries abound as we draw closer to our seventy-fifth issue!
Last issue, AQUAMAN, AQUAWOMAN, BATMAN and HAWKMAN were hot on the trail of their mysterious informant known as PATHFINDER, only to be led to the doorstep of pan-dimensional arms dealer XOTAR, THE WEAPONS MASTER! Instead of revealing who his client was, the villain deployed his latest haul, a squadron of AMAZOS, malevolent robots programmed with all the abilities of the Justice League!
Meanwhile, the team’s science advisor ANGELA SPICA led CYBORG, FIRESTORM, THE GUARDIAN and MISTER MIRACLE to the metahuman penitentiary known as the Slab to confront her imprisoned father, the mad scientist known as THE ENGINEER, but it was too late-- he’d already escaped, restored to beyond his former glory!
Finally, BIG BARDA, MAJESTIC and WONDER WOMAN investigated the mysterious locale known as Neverland, only to find a train full of artefacts and relics, along with their keeper, LYLA MICHAELS. Deep in the belly of the vehicle lay a curious sphere, with massive implications for MAJESTIC-- he recognised the sphere to be a pocket dimension, a lifeboat where his long-thought dead species might be taking refuge!
With all this in mind, please join us now for the continuing adventures of the JUSTICE LEAGUE--
“Did anyone ever tell you the tale of the lost colony of Roanoke?
Established in 1585 by Sir Walter Raleigh, it was a late 16th-century attempt by Queen Elizabeth I to establish a permanent English settlement in North America. The Queen and Raleigh intended that the venture should provide riches from the New World. Oh, how naïve they turned out to be.
The queen's charter said that Raleigh was supposed to ‘discover, search, find out, and view such remote heathen and barbarous Lands, Countries, and territories to have, hold, occupy, and enjoy…’ but if you know anything about Roanoke, you know that there wasn’t much left to enjoy when all was said and done…
They wanted to cause problems for the Spanish, disrupt their fleet in any way possible. They wanted to mine gold and silver and discover a passage to the Pacific Ocean. And, probably worst of all, they wanted to convert any natives to Christianity, or whatever iteration of that theology was popular at the time.
But, of course… all good things must come to an end.
Three years later, a new group were dispatched to establish a colony on Chesapeake Bay. On their way, they stopped at Roanoke to check up on their old friends, but upon arrival they found nothing except a skeleton.
This sphere.
And one word, carved into a tree: Croatoan.”
Issue Seventy-Two: “Roanoke”
HoM / FLINCHUM / BOWERS
BENEATH THE ČOLINA KAPA ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY:
Amazos. One was bad enough, but right now, closing in on the assembled members of the Justice League, there were seven. The mathematics of the situation was dire.
When the team first faced off against one of these mechanical monstrosities, the Justice League, in one of its most powerful roster configurations, were dismantled, and it took the quick thinking and ingenuity of the Atom to reprogram the synthetic being*.
*Way back in Justice League #2!
Something told Aquaman they weren’t going to get that lucky twice in a lifetime. Hawkman had already taken a defensive posture, his mace gripped tight and determination marked across his face-- Katar had never faced an Amazo before, and neither had Mera, but they’d heard stories, and they knew that what was coming was never going to be good.
“We need to--” Aquaman started, but Batman was already on the move, throwing down numerous smoke bombs that engulfed the entire bridge of the buried spaceship in darkness. The last thing Arthur saw was the Dark Knight striking Xotar, the Weapons Master, in the chin, knocking him out instantly. Lights out.
Crimson eyes glowed in the dark, and in unison, seven identical voices croaked, <Batman / Threat Level: 1 / Vision obscured. No matter. With the powers of Superman / Martian Manhunter, we are able to see through your obfuscation.>
“Down!” barked Batman, pulling his cape wide and throwing himself over Aquaman, Aquawoman and Hawkman. Something slipped out of his hand that fizzled audibly, and then it erupted in light-- the smoke refracted the light a thousand times over, transforming from a fogbank to as bright as a star in a split second!
<Optical sensors compromised! Compromised! Compromised!> The Amazo’s voices were shrieking discordantly, their hands clasped around their eyes, their voices no longer in sync.
When one Amazo lowered its hands, its formerly red eyes were burnt out husks, sparks crackling in the now-empty eye sockets where its enhanced optics were now charcoal fragments.
Xotar was unconscious, and the Justice League were gone, leaving the seven Amazos blind but not without their means…
<…Activating enhanced aural abilities. We / We / We can hear your hearts beating. We will FIND YOU!>
The chorus of their rage sent vibrations throughout the buried Rannian ship, but the Justice League tried not to listen. Hawkman beckoned them forward as they ran, their footfalls echoing back toward where the Amazos lurked.
As they went, Aquaman turned to Batman and almost laughed, then said over the nanotelepathic link, {I think you pissed them off.}
{Good. If they’re pissed off, they’re not thinking rationally. That works in our favour.}
{What was with that smoke-screen-flare trick?} asked Hawkman. They turned a corner. He knew where they were going, but was more interested in what had just happened.
{Last time Aquaman and I were on a mission together we got stuck in a situation where a bright light was required to save our lives*. He provided the spark last time, but it got me thinking. I followed that thread as far as it would take me.}
*Justice League #40
{Super flash blindness?} offered Mera.
Batman didn’t respond, but Arthur smiled and thought, {Nasty…}
THE SLAB:
Angela Spica reviewed the footage of her father’s escape. His lawyer, Ray Gauss, had crumbled, his body transformed into a nanite swarm that aided Angelo in his release. Another death to her dad’s name. After regaining his full suite of nanotech-aided armaments he looked at the security camera and then it cut out.
When the team on site had arrived in the containment cell, they found a brand new skylight. The villainous Engineer had dissolved concrete and steel all the way up, thirty stories, and according to Cyborg, had gained speed as he’d gone. Three cells had been damaged. The inmates inside had been partly devoured, their bodies splayed out like spilt-paint-covered canvases on the floors of their cells.
Two had died.
The third was still screaming.
“I’ve seen this before,” said Angela, looking away from the security footage. She was situated in the warden’s office, while the others worked the scene. Cyborg was scanning every inch of the damage, and Mister Miracle was trying to figure out how the escape had taken place. Firestorm was gleaning as much information off the cell as she could, her hand moving in slow motions every couple of seconds or so. The Guardian made sure none of the prisoners got any ideas. He patrolled the halls with the riot squads, striking his baton against his golden shield, clang, clang, clang.
“It’s horrible,” said Warden Shilo Norman. He’d already vomited up his lunch, and it looked like breakfast was threatening to make a repeat appearance too.
The third was still screaming.
She gave him a sympathetic look. “His nanites feed to propagate. They eat matter, organic, inorganic, man… woman… child… When he decided that it was time to consolidate his genius, when he sent his swarm to take me out, they ate the entirety of my university lab. Harper saved me. But still… we’re lucky no one died then, and I guess we’re less lucky now.”
Shilo said hello to his breakfast, sweat streaking his face. He looked up at Angie and shook his head. “Where’s he going now?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” said the Guardian, entering the warden’s office.
“Everything okay out there?” Angie asked.
The Guardian nodded. “Norman has a strong infrastructure in place. Even if we hadn’t gone out there to put the fear in them, they weren’t going anywhere.”
Mister Miracle rushed inside, followed by the others. “Figured it out. Great escape! Top notch!”
“Scott…” murmured Cyborg.
“Sorry, but it’s just… do you have video playback? I want to see it in action,” replied Mister Miracle.
Angie rewound to where Scott indicated, and then pressed play.
In his cell and in high definition, Angelo Spica sneezed, and his lawyer said “Bless you.”
“Watch! Watch watch watch!” said Mister Miracle, pointing. The others had never seen him this excited, but then again, picking apart an escape must have been invigorating for him.
“Thank you.” Angelo responded, but he had already turned away from the others. He was smiling.
The guard was trying to corral the situation, gesturing towards the lawyer. “Please, Mister Gauss, this way-- Jeez!-- Ow. Weird.”
The lawyer was concerned, despite himself. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, sorry, some kinda insect.”
“What did we just watch?” asked the Guardian.
“Shall I rewind it?” offered Angie. “I mean… I missed it too, but…”
Harper shook his head. “No, no. Scott. Talk to me, man. Tell us what we missed.”
Mister Miracle threw his arms up. “The sneeze was a delivery system! He ejected a nanite into the air and it burrowed through ten inches of plastic silently and flew into the guard’s ear. Immediately began to replicate and influence his thought processes. Why else would he go against a direct order?”
“We found the tunnel in the plastic. Infinitesimal but there. Scary to think,” said Firestorm.
“What about the lawyer?” asked the Guardian.
Mister Miracle shrugged. “We roll the footage back to their first meeting, I’m sure we’d see another sneeze or cough or he could have fa--”
"We get it," said Harper.
Angie's mind was racing. “He said… my dad laid it all out. He infected him with nanotechnology and it replicated and replaced all of the lawyer’s… matter. Artificial stem cells. At the end, he was an automaton who didn’t know he was an automaton. And when my… when Angelo clicked his fingers, the nanites dispersed and went back to their creator.”
Shilo was horrified. “He said he never stopped working…”
Angie tapped her temple. “He built a lab in his brain. Nanites working away in his cerebrum. I wonder how much humanity is left in him…”
The group were interrupted by the arrival of another guard to Shilo’s office. He was sweating, having rushed here from wherever there had been.“Warden Norman, I’ve got some really bad news…”
The third had stopped screaming.
Now he joined the others dead, wherever they were.
DEEP IN THE UTE MOUNTAIN RESERVATION:
“…Croatoan?” repeated Majestic.
There were four in the carriage, their eyes locked on the sphere that floated before them. Big Barda, her warrior’s instincts screaming that the impossible shape was danger, that nothing good could come of it. Wonder Woman was apprehensive. She too felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand. Majestic was amazed. This could be it. This could be home. Maybe… just maybe…
Lyla Michaels didn’t know these people. She knew of them, but they weren’t her friends. She was here to study the haul that her sponsors had collected over the years, to find something that her predecessors had missed. But the sphere freaked her out. She had always hated having it at her back. And if the Justice League were here then it was for a reason. Maybe she could be the first tenured academic of the night train to offload some of their property…
“Does that mean something to you?” she asked.
“In our mythology, there’s the Great Mother, Hecate. She created everything but by contemporary times, she wasn’t worshipped as much… a fringe belief for the select few… My mother had a shrine dedicated to her in her chambers… my mother always remembered the old ways. Hecate, and her opposite… the greatest darkness… Croatoan.”
“You’re saying Roanoke was destroyed by a…. an alien devil?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying. But tesseract technology is something the Kherubim had utilised for all kinds of applications. But near the end, when the war was in full swing… we created bunkers. Tesseract bunkers. Do you remember the town that had been engulfed by a hostile bubble reality? I first considered that my people might be hiding inside one then…*”
*Back in Justice League #57
“I remember you saying, before we entered the place,” said Big Barda. The name passed her lips as a whisper. “Ugthothlhem*.”
*Check out the whole story in Justice League #55-58
“So, you’re saying that inside the sphere… is a pocket dimension?” said Lyla. “But that doesn’t explain--”
“Programmable environments. Used as a hospital, or an armoury… it could be anything in there,” said Majestic, interrupting her. He was thinking now, his mind racing, and niceties were fast going out the window.
Lyla’s head was racing with the possibilities. “The disappearance of the Roanoke colony… the mystery could be solved… they could be in there!”
Majestic almost sneered in derision. “Colony… your colony? My entire race! The last survivors of the holocaust of Khera!”
“Majestros, please,” said Wonder Woman, placing a hand on his arm.
“No! This is as close as I’ve come to learning the truth about my people! I lost everything, Diana. Everything! And I try to accept my new lot in life, I try to believe that fighting the good fight beside you and the Justice League is enough, but I lost my love, my life, my entire people!”
Barda placed a heavy hand on his shoulder, and Diana retracted her own, watching the intense glare the New God was giving the Kheran Warlord. Barda simply said, “What can we do?” and Majestros considered what she was saying.
“The sphere is emitting immense energy readings, but it’s harmless,” said Lyla, knowing that the thing that should help the most right now would be information. “And if you touch it, the history of the country dances across its surface… it never used to do that, only in the last year or so…”
“Environmental retention,” said Majestic, matter-of-factly. “It’s been active for so long, longer than it should have, and now it’s beginning to project the ambient light and sound it’s absorbed for centuries. How did it come into your possession?”
Lyla swallowed hard. “Back in the days of the Roanoke tragedy, the sphere was taken in by a captain loyal to the Queen, but it was soon lost at sea-- a cover for its return to the Americas by a secret society of alchemists. It was their philosopher’s stone, their almanac… it was studied for decades, passed from alchemist to alchemist, then later scientist to scientist, gathering dust along with all the other artefacts that the society gathered. It… it’s terrifying and I hate it. I see things I don’t want to think about.”
“If there’s someone inside there, or something, how can we access it?” asked Diana.
“They were gene-bonded to the Lord of the Kherubim. I can access it… but…” Majestic was hesitant.
“What?” pushed Barda.
“What if all we find in there is death? Or worse… nothingness?” he murmured.
Barda shook her head. “Then we find out together. And take the consequences with us.”
BENEATH THE ČOLINA KAPA ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY:
The Amazos had separated. Each was powerful enough to devastate the Justice League, but with their visual sensors damaged beyond their repair capabilities, it was decided internally that they should separate and spread their other abilities as far as they would go-- they listened intently for heartbeats or blood flow-- and knew that the Justice Leaguers were in the belly of the cargo ship. Seven Amazos. Seven cybernetic beings capable of mainlining the powers of the Justice League.
The one thing they lacked though?
As they entered the cargo bay, their bodies phasing through the bulkheads as they channeled the powers of the Martian Manhunter, they found that a thick fog was pooling at their feet. They didn’t need their eyes to know. Their skins were lined with sensors that allowed the seven powersets they contained to be applied practically. Their skin told their heads it was wet, and that they could detect the fog. The air was damp, the water content like that of a rainforest. They didn’t need to breathe, but if they did, their mouths and throats would fill with an oppressive damp.
<You are cornered. There are seven of us. Four of you. And you are merely human, or as close to baseline human as the Justice League gets. Come out. We will make your deaths quick, if not painless.>
The one thing they lacked?
A bolt of lightning shot out in the smog-filled hold and struck one of the Amazos in the chest. It wasn’t damaged, having leaned into the invulnerability of Superman, but it was confused. It had moved away from the brunt of the blast with artificial speed thanks to the Flash’s own powers, but it still had been hit.
<Error / Query: Electricity-based attacks do not register with any recorded encounters with Justice Leaguers present,> said one Amazo, its bare chest smouldering with the ashen scorch marks left by the attack. It brushed away at the markings, and they drifted off easily.
There were clicks and whirls in their heads, electronics asking electronics question. They weren’t networked in any way, nor were they telepathic, but they were identical in programming, and that meant an amount of shared reasoning went on in their heads. Why was their so much fog? Why was the air so damp? How was their electricity projection in play? Why couldn’t they hear the Justice Leaguers' heartbeats anymore?
The one thing they lacked?
A moment later, two separate streams of ice shot across the room, gathering speed and ferocity as the beams absorbed water molecules along the way. Two Amazos were struck and staggered, but as their internal temperatures dropped, they shivered off the sloughs of ice that caked their bodies, once more becoming immaterial thanks to the Martian Manhunter.
They could super-speed across the cargo hold but without visual accuracy available they might slam into a trap, or a wall, or cause damage to the ship either way. Xotar’s extra programming prevented that, as he wanted to keep using the frigate he’d stolen from the Rann skydocks. They could project their own arctic breath across the space, but with the amount of water in the air they might damage the stock stored down here with that as well. Same as utilising the ad hoc power ring enhancements they had on their rings. Without visibility or knowing what was going on in the space they inhabited, they were cut off at the knees.
<Enough. We shall remove the oxygen from the-->
“Now,” came a voice.
Seven blasts from seven artificial power rings zeroed in on the sound, and then the Amazos seized up. Their heads began to crack on the inside, their artificial brains being crushed by some unseen force. No, not unseen-- as the fog cleared, the water in the air having been absorbed in the Amazos’ bodies-- Mera stood behind them, her hands raised as she manipulated the water molecules to flood whatever made up the cybernetic entities’ brains. They were being lobotomised, quickly and efficiently, and as the seven androids fell to the floor, completely deactivated and completely without any brains to process input, the rest of the Justice League were revealed.
The one thing they lacked?
Imagination.
The Justice League had found crates of equipment in the cargo bay. Stolen technology from across the superhero-- and villain-- world. Mr Freeze’s cryo-rifles; Captain Cold’s freeze guns; Weather Wizard’s elemental magic wand; Sonar’s noise control technology… someone had found all this monstrous tech and replicated it.
When he’d picked up a rifle, Batman noticed that Mr Freeze’s creation didn’t feel as balanced as it did when it came from the lab of Victor Fries himself. Analysis would show, he was sure, that it was cargo cult. Built from a schematic but not by the master himself. Who would want to inundate the world with this kind of deadly technology?
Regardless, flooding the hold with fog and creating an atmosphere akin to a rainforest was the first step.
Hawkman weaved wonders out of the wand, even though his untrained use of the thing burnt his fingers through his gloves. Sonar’s technology allowed them to mask their heartbeats-- not that Batman needed any outside assistance with that, considering the technology in his suit. With their freeze guns, Batman and Aquaman blasted the Amazos with beams of sub-zero fury to propagate the moisture in the air around their enemies. And then, after throwing his voice using Sonar’s tech so Batman sounded like he was in one part of the hold when he was actually in the other, they forced the Amazos to turn solid so that Mera could tweak the water in their bodies and crush their operating systems into mush.
Amazos 0, the Justice League 7. A resounding victory.
“How’d Xotar get a hold of all this?” wondered Aquaman, squeezing his wife’s hand as a gesture of a job well done, while gesturing at all the crates of weaponry they’d plundered to save their own lives.
“Better yet, how is he out of prison without us knowing?” said Batman.
Hawkman had stayed silent, content to walk over to the Amazos and watch the cybernetic grey matter leak out of their pointed ears. He broke said silence by driving his foot down repeatedly on their hollow skulls, just metal and plastic now that their heads were empty. “Let’s go ask him, shall we?” he murmured, heading toward the exit, his fist clenched and his boot covered in grey matter.
SOMEWHERE IN THE NEVADA DESERT:
“It’s just how I left it. Pristine and in full working order,” observed the Engineer.
His silent signals to his hidden laboratory had meant that upon his arrival, it was already buzzing with activity. Light flooded the space, and that meant every nook and cranny was visible as he arrived in its belly.
The laboratory was overgrown with what appeared at first glance to be impossibly blooming plants. This was a place, deep beneath the scorching desert sun, but how could there be a garden here? There were no irrigation systems, no sun lamps. But upon closer inspection, you’d see. You’d know.
“My Nevada Garden,” he mused.
He walked through his garden, every beautifully twisted artificial plant blooming nanotechnological nightmares, and knew that everything was going according to plan.
“That said… if my daughter is running with the likes of the Justice League, my investment in high level enhanced operative security might very well pay off sooner, rather than later.” He chuckled. “Listen to me. Who talks like that? Solitary confinement has not agreed with me.”
Two tubes, about seven feet tall and two feet across, opened, and a chemical mist rolled out. There was a moment of silence after that, as the pharmaceutical concoction in the air settled and slipped through the grates underfoot. And then, a leather boot emerged from inside the first tube. From the other, a white-clad one.
“Do you know why you’re here?” asked the Engineer.
“To… protect…” growled the first man. The words came out of his grizzled mouth with some effort, like it was against his better nature to say what he was saying. And if you knew him, and the Justice League soon would, you’d know just how true that sentiment was.
“To keep… to keep you safe,” said the other. He was hesitant to speak, but the words flowed just as sure. He was beautiful, and the first man would have agreed with the observation given the chance. But right now, the pair weren’t entirely themselves. But they were still deadly enough to get the job done.
“Good. The Justice League will be here, soon enough. You’re ordered to keep them from interfering. Anything else, I’ll instruct you on the fly. Now, go. Patrol the garden. I’ve got an ascension to plan.”
LAPUTA:
“I think I’ve found him,” said Angie. The team had reconvened back on their island headquarters to utilise the powerful satellite array available to them, and their scientific advisor had already got results.
“That was fast. Where is he?” asked Professor Martin Stein, looking over from the console he was typing away on. He’d separated from Lorraine Reilly upon their arrival back, and she was currently drinking coffee a few floors away in the building. He could feel the Siamese twinge of caffeine rush in his own body, even though he hadn’t drunk it. The symbiotic link the two shared as Firestorm was beyond his knowledge, but that didn’t stop him from trying.
“I just know what to look for. Massive heat output where that wasn’t some previously. We have satellites tasked above nearly all of the United States. Before his breakout from the Slab, this area of the Nevada desert was cold. Cold as it can get in the desert, I mean. Minutes after, the heat output pinged off on the satellites. That’s his lab revving up. Just north of highway 157, near Angel Peak... the only thing separating him and Las Vegas is Red Rock Canyon and just over fifty miles... that's a massive population centre...”
“What are you thinking?” Martin asked.
“I don’t know… but he turned that lawyer into a swarm of nanites just by sneezing on him… imagine what he could do if he had six hundred thousand unwilling victims?”
Martin opened his mouth but the answers coming to him weren’t worth saying out loud. Instead, he thought hard, connected with Lorraine and the two of them warped together to form Firestorm. “I’ll gather the others,” said Martin, from Firestorm’s mouth.
DEEP IN THE UTE MOUNTAIN RESERVATION:
“We should gather the others. We go in together. We find out what happens together,” said Wonder Woman.
Majestic shook his head. “I can’t wait. Look at the ripples across the sphere. It’s been active far too long. The environmental retention… that can only expand outward. It’ll warp perceptions of anyone in proximity, and if this train gets moving again… anyone in its radius will experience replays of the collected history that went on around the sphere. Do you want that? Do you know the history of this country?”
“Don’t lecture me, Majestros. We need to be careful. We need to tell the others, at least,” she replied.
Majestic pressed his hand against the sphere and the extra pressure caused something to slowly form under his palm print. It was a display, with controls available in an alien language. Barda and Diana had seen the characters in Majestros’ writings, and knew it to be the language of the Kherubim. They didn’t know what it meant, but they weren’t feeling confident right now.
“What are you doing?” asked Barda.
“Tesseract bunkers are keyed to Kherubim lords. I’m one of them. I’m initialising entry.”
“Majestros-- don’t--” started Diana, but it was too late-- in a flash of light, the the trio vanished, leaving Lyla Michaels alone with the sphere as it warped out of shape for a split second, reaching out to meet the Justice Leaguers, and snapping back into shape.
It had eaten three, and left one behind. She smiled. Thoughts not her own. Then Lyla gasped in shock and screamed, falling to her feet. “What-- what-- what just happened?!”
BENEATH THE ČOLINA KAPA ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY:
Xotar awoke when Hawkman broke two of the knuckles on his left hand. He awoke with a start, screaming.
“Oh. Hello. Did I wake you?” asked Katar.
“You-- broke-- my-- hand--!”
Hawkman shook his head. “No, I didn’t. Did I, Aquawoman?”
Mera smiled. “No, you didn’t, Hawkman. You broke his knuckle.”
“Two of them. I don’t know my own strength,” he replied. “If I wanted to break your hand, I’d leverage your palm up like this, and dig my thumb in right under--”
“No-- no-- no-- don’t-- stop stop stop. What do you want? I have answers! I have everything you need!”
“Who hired you to deliver this weaponry?” Hawkman asked.
“I… I can’t tell you that… they’ll… they’ll kill me…” murmured Xotar. He was staring at his sunken hand, where his knuckles had once been pronounced, now they were just… floating under the skin.
“That’s fine. Let’s start slow. Who broke you out of prison?” said Hawkman.
“Ah…”
“Because I know that’s where we left you after Elongated Man and the others defeated you in Prometheus’ Crooked House*. You were supposed to be locked up for a good long time. How’d you get out?”
*Read Justice League #21-25 for the full epic
“Maybe… maybe I didn’t break out… maybe I was let out…” said Xotar. He looked smug but Hawkman pressed down on the space on his hand where his knuckles had once been. The scream shattered any other expression he might have been able to gather.
But Hawkman was thinking, even as his thumb pushed around in the fleshy space amongst Xotar’s mangled knuckles. The Russians had claimed extradition for some reason, and the Justice League didn’t have a horse in the race. If the Guardian had been a member at the time, maybe they would have cared more… but last they’d heard, Xotar was transferred to Temho-Metya prison, beneath the Laptev sea. So… why was he here now?
Down in the belly of the ship, Batman was analysing the weaponry. “Hawkman’s torturing Xotar, I assume.”
“Yes. I didn’t want to be party to that,” said Aquaman, leaning against the bulkhead.
“Your wife doesn’t seem to have a problem with it,” observed Batman.
“Different value system, I suppose. Not even near a deal breaker.”
The Dark Knight looked up from one of the crates and almost smiled. “Good to know.”
“Speaking of… the world seems to be aware that you and Diana are a thing. Doesn’t that worry you?”
Batman’s smile faded. “Not particularly.”
“Bit limiting, though… don’t you think?”
The Caped Crusader held up his hand and projected an idea the Hawk Knight's way. {Ask him who built the weapons. They’re clearly not originals.}
Aquaman rolled his eyes. “Changing the subject. I see. Touchy. What do you think the issue is here then? Any ideas?”
“Hhh. Temho-Metya is a hellhole. I’ve been there once before, and the conditions were terrible…”
“You were in a Russian prison? Why am I not surprised?”
“I needed information from an inmate. I go where I need to go. Regardless, the institution is corrupt. I wonder…”
“I don’t think I like where this is leading, Batman…”
The Dark Knight smiled in that way that made other people uncomfortable. {How’s your Russian, Hawkman?}
{Rusty, but passable,} came his response.
{Good. I’ve contacted Checkmate to lock down this location. They’ll be here any minute to take Xotar into custody. Hopefully this time they won’t lose him in the system. Meanwhile… let’s go break into a prison.}
LAPUTA:
Angie Spica breathed in, anxiety creeping up inside her sternum like a closed fist. “A couple of things. I’ve managed to gather some samples of my father’s nanites from the corpses of the prisoners… one of the side effects of devouring matter to fuel construction of more nanites is that some become malformed and inert. That means there’s a residue… a signature… left behind after the consumption begins. They’re trying to form, they’re trying to eat to build, but they’re inherently broken. It’s the speed of transformation, I think. It’s… imperfect.”
“What does that mean?” asked Mister Miracle.
“Well, it allowed me to compare the blueprint that Alejadro Cuetes passed to Aquaman and Wonder Woman* to my father’s work. They’re generationally the same. But the Cuetes’ blueprint is… it’s hard to explain… Cuetes’ blueprint is Generation 1, right? And the nanites my father has developed now are… Generation 1,000. There’s a massive disconnect in processing power. But somehow my father passed his work onto Alejandro. That’s scary. And it looks like he knew that. So he tried to warn us.”
*Justice League Annual 2018
“So if we apprehend your father, we might find out why Alejandro had to die?” offered the Guardian.
“Yeah, maybe,” said Angie.
“Look, we know where he is, we know what he’s capable of, so we need to take him down before he gets any plans in motion,” said Mister Miracle.
Firestorm nodded. “I agree. I mean… with your know-how, and our firepower, we can take him down, can’t we?”
“I took him down with your help before, remember that, Angela,” said the Guardian. Angela. The Guardian rarely called Angie by her actual name, so it meant something. It meant business.
“Okay, we need to get close to him to transmute his nanites into… I dunno… saline. Something harmless. But if we don’t get all the nanites at once, then he can reconstitute his abilities and warp whatever they touch. Wherever we go, he’s going to have the upper hand, because of the nanite swarm he controls. So we need to be careful.”
“‘We’?” repeated Cyborg.
“Like you’re going without me on this. I’m the only one who knows my father’s work nearly as much as he does. And if we’re close to him, nanotelepathy becomes moot. He’ll hack into the wavelength and mess with us. So before we even touch down in Nevada, I’m going to have to expel our connection.”
“Will it hurt?” asked Firestorm.
Angie looked up from her bracelet, where she’d been fiddling with some small buttons. “Uh. No. I just did it. It means we can’t use the Doors as their targeting is based around the nanites in your heads, so we’re going to have to Boom Tube to the location.”
“Doable,” said Mister Miracle.
“Okay, but no matter what, you stay behind us, and you don’t go running off into trouble,” said the Guardian.
“Guys, this terrifies me, but I know it’s the way it’s gotta be. I’m not going to be doing anything stupid,” she replied.
INSIDE THE TESSERACT BUNKER:
Light took a few seconds to make sense. The sphere had opened up and absorbed them in, and spat them out somewhere else. The air tasted strange and the light interacted with their optical nerves even stranger, so as they blinked madly to get their sight back, there was a disgruntled silence between the three of them-- broken by Wonder Woman grabbing Majestic by the cape and wrenching him up.
“Of all the bull-headed things to do, Majestros! What were you thinking?”
“Hecate…” whispered Majestic, barely paying attention to the threatening gesture of Diana.
They were in a wooded area, trees all around the clearing they stood inside. The trees were as tall as Sequoia sempervirens, over eighty metres tall, but their bark was discoloured, almost transparent so you could see the throbbing heartbeat of nature within it. The leaves themselves were reddish, not green, and the skies were clear of any cloud or imperfection-- in fact-- if you looked toward the sun-- you’d be surprised to find--
“We’re not alone,” murmured Barda. “And… nanotelepathy is offline.”
“The air… smells like Khera… and the light… look up…” He gestured upwards. “Binary suns. Like home. Am I… home?”
An arrow whizzed past Majestros’ shoulder and plunged into Barda’s chest. Then another. And then a dozen more followed by a hundred. The arrows all found their target, first Barda’s front, then Majestic’s back. Wonder Woman was only saved from the attack by the size of Majestros’ frame. He doubled over, propped up by Diana’s immense strength.
Before he passed out, he began to whisper incoherently, the only words Diana could pick out were “Coda… Coda…”
“What do you mean?” she whispered back.
“They’re… they’re here.”
Behind Majestic, a warrior approached, She didn’t hold a bow or arrow, or any kind of projectile weapon. She had support then, hidden in the forests behind her. The woman’s blazingly white hair was done up in a ponytail above her head, and her armour was subtle. She wore a black chain-link shirt with red trim, with matching bottoms that tucked into boots. She had two sharp, scarlet tattoos emblazoned across her cheeks, and a single, simple circle on her forehead. In her hand was a curved weapon unlike any kind of blade Diana had ever seen before, and in her perfect blue eyes was the kind of mettle that Wonder Woman had seen in war gods.
What had her mother always told her? “Don’t kill if you can wound, don’t wound if you can subdue, don’t subdue if you can pacify, and don’t raise your hand at all until you’ve first extended it.”
Wonder Woman slowly lowered Majestic to the ground, and then held her hands up. She only had her lasso at hand; no shield to block a blow from the sword the woman approaching was wielding, nor her own blade to parry a strike. So instead of raising a shield, she used her words. “My name is Diana, Princess of Themyscira. I come in peace, sister.”
The woman didn’t change her pace, but her disdainful look was enough to say why. “There are no sisters here. Nor are there any princesses. The only royalty we’ve known cast us into this hell. Now, there is only the Coda.”
The woman drew her sword up, and moved it in a fashion that Diana had never seen before. There was no foundation on Earth, or in human history, for the artistry this woman exhibited with a blade.
Diana had tried to extend a hand. Now it was time to raise it into a fist.
TEMHO-METYA PRISON, BENEATH THE LAPTEV SEA:
{I don’t like this,} said Hawkman. Except right now, he was wearing the rumpled uniform of one of the prison guards Batman and he had assaulted upon their arrival. He fit right in, considering his immediate surroundings. They had arrived covertly into the belly of Temho-Metya, snuck their way past numerous guards, and found a pair that looked about the right size. A few moments of extreme violence later and they had their camouflage.
Talking the lead, the Dark Knight cut an odd profile. He’d applied a prosthetic scar to the side of his face, something to draw the eye and by default obscure his identity, and wore a fake nose. Apparently, he carried a master disguise kit, collapsed in the rear of his utility belt. Why should Katar be surprised? Of course he’d been in this kind of situation before. Gotham’s defender grunted something in Russian at a passing guard and was met by a stern nod.
{We won’t be here long. Just need to look into something..}
They’d shared supposition on the way over. Temho-Metya had been compromised. They wanted to know to what extent. While the UN sanctions that allowed the Justice League to operate across the globe was international in scope, the current government in Russia didn’t like the idea of an unannounced visit from the team, so Batman didn’t bother letting them know. If they were caught, they had a way out via the Doors, so they wanted in, and got it.
Outside in the ocean, out of range of the prison’s defence net, Aquaman and Aquawoman swam, waiting for the signal. They were there to provide a distraction if necessary. Laptev didn’t claim the most welcoming underwater clime, but something like the cold never bothered the pair, and the sheets of arctic ice gave a natural camouflage. Noting the low salinity in the water like one would grey skies, the pair floated patiently, letting their bodies hydrate, filling their stamina and focus to their maximum. They’d be ready when they were called upon.
The prison itself was accessible by numerous Soviet-era freight elevators that descended from points on the surface down into the submerged facilities. The rusting exterior of the prison suggested it should have been decommissioned many years ago, decades even, but the interior was a state of the art facility designed to house metahuman threats against the Russian people.
Except… the metahuman containment wing was empty. The dust suggested it had been so for months. The general population area was filled to the brim, but the recreational areas, the dining halls, anywhere where machinery could be operated, was at capacity with just that. Prisoners were chained to the machines, begrudgingly operating things way beyond their presumed intelligence level.
{Seven Hells…} thought Hawkman.
{Slave labour. They’ve transformed this place into a slave labour camp,} replied Batman.
One of the prisoners noticed the pair and began to shout in their direction. He looked cleaner than the other prisoners, and he was wearing loose-fitting prison whites. “You can’t do this!” He said, in a crisp mid-western accent, “I have rights! I didn’t get a trial! You-- you Russian bastards-- !“
Behind the prisoner another guard marched forward and shoved a cattle prod in his side, shocking him into submission. The guard looked up at Batman and Hawkman, and saluted in respect, then kicked the prisoner for good measure.
{They’re not just prisoners… they’ve been kidnapped…} said Batman.
Hawkman turned to his teammate. {We have to get them out of here.}
{We have to tear this place down,} countered Batman.
Katar smirked. {Now you’re talking my language.}
NEVADA DESERT:
The Justice League materialised somewhere in the Nevada desert, but were surprised to find themselves surrounded by a lush garden of exotic plants. They were on high alert, surrounding Angie while she examined one of the plants that had come up through the terse sands.
Firestorm raised her hand and closed her eyes, reaching out to take a measure of the atmosphere. There were scant traces of nanites hanging around them, and with an elemental twist, they were rendered into black scabs of metal that fell to the ground like a flash hailstorm.
“Okay, we’re safe, but I don’t advise you guys take off your hazmat suits. Just in case,” she said.
Instead of coming in their usual costumes, the Guardian, Mister Miracle and Angela Spica wore hazardous material suits based around their individual uniforms. They were aware that nanites could eat through them if given enough time, but if there was something more sinister, perhaps it would give them a buffer to put an end to whatever subtle attack might have come their way.
“Whoa. It’s bio-mechanical,” Angie said, looking around at the lush garden.
“Cybernetic plants?” asked Cyborg. He was the only one not wearing a hazmat suit, due to his own naturally unnatural body type. He was a walking tank now, with a computer doing most the work of his surviving brain. He wasn’t concerned about nanite infection, as his own nanotechnology make-up, while more rudimentary than the Engineer’s own, would allow an immune system capable of striking back against an invasion.
“Exactly. But look, the size of this one, the petals are closed but…” She prised open one of the flowers and revealed what appeared to be a rifle, with nodules of green energy caught in glass cylinders along the barrel. The trigger was non-existent, but there were thick tubes hanging off the handle, with pincers at the tip. “It's… it’s symbiotic? I think it plugs into a user, a bearer, and then you don’t need to pull a trigger, you just… think and fire. That’s all supposition.”
Firestorm motioned to below their feet. “Look at the ground. It’s still sand. The heat being emitted is massive, but it’s coming from underneath. They’re blooming from a location underground. Piercing the desert floor…”
“He must have a laboratory-- or a greenhouse-- underfoot,” said the Guardian. “Firestorm-- Firestorm, what’s wrong?”
The Nuclear Hero looked around, somewhat confused. Angie picked up on her expression and began searching for what had caused the nuclear hero to be distracted. “What is it, guys?” she asked.
“When I transmute a substance, I can kind of… sense where other pockets of that substance might be. Now, I can feel… the nanites… they’re inert, but they’re… growing?”
She searched for one of the plants that caught her attention, and then created a transparent aluminium sphere around the petals. She reached inside, her hands phasing through her construct, and pried the petals open-- and a burst of nanites were ejected outward, smashing against the sphere and immediately beginning to eat away at the metals. She rendered the nanites inert like she had the rest, but then turned back to Angie.
“There are dozens, maybe hundreds of these plants littered amongst the… naturally occurring weapons caches…” Firestorm said, looking around. “Waiting to burst. How far away from Las Vegas are we?”
“Fifty miles, give or take,” said the Guardian.
Firestorm nodded, her understanding beginning to be verbalised. “The winds could carry the bursts… the swarm… to a population centre, right?”
“And devour any matter in their way?” offered Mister Miracle.
“Devour… or transform…” mused Angie.
Inside the sphere Firestorm had created, the inert nanites suddenly reformatted themselves and were pulled back into the petals by metal threads. The flower reset, and folded back into place. It wasn’t yet ready to bloom.
“I’m scanning,” said Cyborg, his hand transformed into a discus array that made voop voop voop-ing noises. “Huh. That’s really strange. I’ve mapped the flower, and it’s not at full capacity yet, and those nanites are still multiplying. When it reaches critical mass, I think… I think it’ll pollinate. Open up like Firestorm just forced it to a minute ago.”
“How long do we have?” asked the Guardian.
“Hours… if that…” said Cyborg.
“Damn. Damn it all. Firestorm, can you give us a tunnel to the greenhouse?”
She nodded and cast her hand out. “I don’t want to interfere with any processes until we know what those processes are. I need to find… yeah… heavy metals… power lines… but…” She closed her hand into a fist and the ground began to rumble. She first transformed sand, stone and dirt into a thick steel tube, capable of holding up the weight of the earth above and around it, and then she hollowed the tube out, tunnelling down into the laboratory below.
The Guardian raised his shield. “Cyborg and Firestorm, take point. I’ve got your back. Mister Miracle take the rear in case we need a quick exit. Angie, stay behind me. I don’t like this one bit. And yet… down we go.”
INSIDE THE TESSERACT BUNKER:
Wonder Woman brought her hands together as her attacker sliced downward—and she caught the singing blade between her two open palms—an act that caused her determined opponent to show wide-eyed shock--
“I don’t want to fight you,” said Diana.
“You threaten our existence by being here,” replied the white-haired woman, who kicked forward, sending Diana back a few steps. She still had the sword between her hands, but had slid down to the tip, blood now streaking the blades. It was so sharp that it cut through her gods-given invulnerability, but just because she was bleeding didn’t mean she was any less defiant.
Her attacker shoved the blade forward, hoping to catch Diana unawares, but she locked herself in position to the blade and flew backwards in time with it, then she flew heel over head to drive her feet down on the white-haired woman’s head. The blow sent her sprawling toward the downed body of Majestros, but she held tight to her weapon until her eyes met his face, and then--
“no…”
She dropped the weapon and it clattered to the grassy floor below.
Her eyes darted from Majestros to Diana, then back again.
“Who… who are you?” she whispered.
“I am Diana, Wonder Woman and member of the Justice League. There has been a misunderstanding here.” She gestured toward her fallen comrade. “Do you know him?”
“He is… my… he is Majestros. Lord of the Kherubim. And… and my betrothed.”
Betrothed? Diana remembered the stories… remembered the events relayed to her first by the Guardian thanks to the shared consciousness he experienced with Majestros and Jack Marlowe*, and then elaborated later upon by Majestros himself. “You are Lady Zannah?”
*Justice League #46-48
From the thick foliage and trees, from every nook and cranny, from every hiding place there possibly could be in the immediate area, dozens upon dozens of women appeared, bearing weaponry beyond anything Diana had seen before. They wore variations of the white-haired woman’s own armour, though their facial tattoos were either non-existent or just a stripe here or there, and not the pairs that she herself wore. Even as Big Barda stirred, her New God physiology processing whatever drugs they’d shot into her system, it was clear the trio were massively outnumbered.
The white-haired woman sheathed her weapon and then held a hand out to Diana. “I am Zealot. I lead the Coda. We were snatched from our promised land and rendered here by the great traitor Imperator. Can you… bring us home?” she asked.
In the distance, a sound… like rivets being driven into metal…
THE NEVADA GARDEN:
The team made it down the tunnel Firestorm had created and found themselves intersecting with a stairwell that led even further down into the earth beneath the Nevada desert. Firestorm held her hand up, and again, sensed the presence of nanites in the air. She projected an aura around the group that rendered the nanites inert, just like she’d done upstairs.
The stairs led somewhere down, so they went down them together. At the bottom, they were amazed to see the plants that had pierced the ground and blossomed on the surface growing in massive tanks filled with some kind of murky substance. All the plants were tagged and hooked up to machines that made no sense to anyone who saw them, apart from maybe Angie.
“Whattttt…” she exhaled, curious and a little scared.
“What is all this?” asked the Guardian.
“Uh, I’m thinking some kind of next gen hydroponics. Y’know, growing plants without soil? Usually they’re growing in mineral nutrient solutions, but this stuff…”
She wanted to dip her finger into the tanks to feel whatever it was that fed into the roots of the plants, but she knew better, even wearing her hazmat suit.
“…It’s gotta be some variation on his nanite design.”
There was a squawking and an announcement system activated overhead. A voice became clear, though the mocking tone wasn’t welcome. “Very clever, Angela. I’d call you smart, but you came down here, which most certainly isn’t.”
“Daddy?” Angie whispered.
“I’m not your father. I’m your creator and you’re a failed experiment that refuses to end, no matter how hard I try. Any familial ties between us were severed when you didn’t let me undo you when I first ascended to my new position.”
“Where’s that voice coming from, Cyborg?” asked the Guardian.
“Closed system—I can’t patch in—”
“I see that you bought a Firestorm with you. I thought she was a he, but I’m old-fashioned, I can’t keep up with all these changes. No matter. An elemental force, capable of transforming matter from one form to another. Remind you of anybody else? What one calls elemental transmutation, I call my science, impractically applied.”
“wuhh?”
Suddenly feeling woozy and off-kilter, Firestorm looked at the Guardian, a shocked expression on her face. It wasn’t the words they could hear, but the forces acting upon her body that destabilised her so. A seam formed down the middle of her face, down her sternum toward her groin, and then each side of her body began to stretch in the opposite direction, like she was being pulled in two by immense, unseen hands.
Martin Stein’s voice shouted in Firestorm’s head, well aware of the encroaching darkness that spread through their shared mindspace. {Lorraine! The matrix! It’s being corrupted! We’re being--}
She screamed as she was pulled thin and then snapped into two separate components, Lorraine and Martin, both unconscious as smoke trailed up from their bodies. Firestorm had been neutralised, and now the nanites that hung in the air began to cycle back to full strength, already eating away at Angie and the Guardian’s hazmat suits.
“I think you’ll appreciate what I’m trying to do here, though. A fellow scientific mind. I wish Professor Stein were awake, so he could hear the logistics of my latest proposal. Once the flowers of my Nevada garden bloom, their pollen will travel to Las Vegas. A population centre that-- at any one time-- is home to close to six hundred thousand men, women and children, both residents and tourists.”
“Yeah? And so what?” asked Angie, spinning on the spot even as her suit began to crumble into dust in sheets. She started tearing it off instead of letting it eat away, until she was exposed to whatever nanites that might be in the air directly.
“It’s an experiment. My nanites will infect every single living soul in Las Vegas and transform them into a race tailored to survive the series of upcoming eschaton events that are predicted to strike Earth. I was thinking of calling them Homo Cyberneticus.”
Angie was staggered. The scope of the plan. The body of it. All she could think to say, was, “You’re goddamn insane.”
“No, what I am is smart. Smarter than you’ve ever been. I’ve anticipated every single move you would make. Every action has led to this. You deactivated the nanotelepathic link that kept you connected. It means I can’t get into your heads, but you didn’t think to slough off your own mental-illness-regulating nanites, did you? Or maybe… I reprogrammed them to make you forget.”
Angie vomited violently as every single nanite that she had designed and injected in herself was expelled from her body. Her head screamed as her brain chemistry went haywire, and she clutched at her temples to try and make the pain go away.
“Angie! Angie!” shouted Cyborg, but when he raised his arm to reach out to her, it was blown off by a searing blast from somewhere he couldn’t track. He looked at the stump, at the wires that flew wildly from it, and then tried to figure out where his attacker had blown his arm off from.
The Guardian knew the situation had gone to hell, and now he was back to back with Mister Miracle, trying to--
He drew his shield up a split second before a series of razor sharp shuriken impacted against it, digging into its long-thought indestructible surface. He looked down and saw what could have been batarangs embedded across it, but they were sharper and a hell of a lot meaner. “Who the--?”
“I. Planned. Everything. I purchased some very special security. And while I finalise the next stage of my experiment, I think I’ll allow you to meet my investments. See you again soon.”
The PA system shuddered off, and a figure emerged from the darkness. He was dressed all in black, a long coat obscuring his body armour. The mask he wore hid the majority of his face, but his shit-eating grin was clear as day. The symbol on his chest was of a waning crescent moon. In one hand he held a baton, and in the other, he had a shuriken between every finger.
"Justice League… let me make this situation clear for you. I know what special abilities you have. And I don’t care. No punches have been thrown, and I've already fought our fight in my head a million different ways and I always win. That’s even before my solar-powered friend here enters the fray. Me? I can hit you without you even seeing me. I'm what soldiers dream of growing into. I'm what children see when they first imagine what death is like. I'm the Midnighter. So: Your move."