Issue Six: "Knocking On Heaven's Door"

[HoM]

[HoM]

The Question
Issue 6: Welcome to the New World Order
Part Four: "Knocking On Heaven's Door"
Written by House Of Mystery With Ramon Villalobos
Cover by Roy Flinchum
Edited by House Of Mystery

[HoM]

Area 15. The Cells:

Blood had dried around the sides of his mouth. As he breathed out he could feel something drip from his lips. He assumed it was blood. Or then again… The taste of vomit burned from the back of his throat. It could be that too. Both or either. Who knows?

“Heh…”

Guttural laughter left his mouth with a start like a motor pushed to far. Blood. He could taste his own blood.

“Like… Like…”

He keeled over suddenly, that bitter taste of vomit exploding from out of him. Leaving him. His empty stomach made it even more the bad experience.

“Like a night out… With the guys…”

He jerked up with a start, he could feel his messy red hair flapping in front of his eyes, less like his usual orderly swept back look. He probably looked unkempt. He didn’t care all about appearances at that moment. Pain was blinding him, pain was shooting through him. So obviously he had other things on his mind.

“Always ends… Badly…”

He coughed, the last traces of vomit left his mouth, and then he spat blood, clearing his throat. “Boxed in…” He smiled. He didn’t know why he was speaking. For one, he couldn’t see a thing around him. He couldn’t tell if anyone else was with him, but it didn’t stop him. Impulse. Acting on impulse.

The lenses.

Darkness creeping in. He remembers where he is. An explanation forms in his mind for the blindness he’s experiencing. The place Vapor, Bug and he had entered was some kind of empty space, only viewable with lenses. He had obviously had his taken away from him. Crap.

“Welcome to Hell.” The voice came from beside him; the sound of a door opening crept into his ears.

Victor Szasz, Vic Sage, The Question, smiled. He knew that no one else might see that little flicker of emotion, but he smiled none the less. “I’ve been in places worse than this, o-mysterious-voice…” He spat again, more blood rising from his throat. A chuckle left him. “And I’ve escaped with moderate ease…”

“Ah, but not here. This is a corporate circle of your worst nightmares, the worst hell you could imagine, Mr Szasz. This is a place you’ll die. A place your body will be divided into equal portions and shipped out over the world to various slums. No one will miss you. Enough of your body will be recovered to suggest suicide. Drugs maybe. Anti-depressants they were thinking in your case. But between the then and the now, we’ve got plenty of time to play.”

“I like games,” Vic replied. “Twenty questions for one. I love finding out the answer. Is my friend alive?”

“He’s right beside you. Why don’t you ask him?” The man’s voice reeked of superiority. Arrogance. But Vic can tell he is not lying. He had heard the ugly wheeze of his partner in crime as soon as he had awoken.

“Maybe later. Why not turn on the lights, let me see him?”

“The lights are on their brightest, Mr Szasz. But because you are not gifted in the ways of the world you are blinded to the truth.”

“Or maybe…” Vic flexed his arms, getting a bearing on where his shackles were placed. Elbow and wrist. His legs were surprisingly clear of any manacles or shackles. “Or maybe… I need a pair of those fancy glasses you’re wearing.” The man cleared his throat uncomfortably, ready to speak, but Vic continued. “Maybe… You shouldn’t try to play the elusive secret keeper, the crypt master, when you’re ability for the eccentric is the poorest I’ve ever beheld? Maybe you should go cry to your superiors and ask for a change of employment.”

“Heh, we’ve been briefed on you, Szasz. You think your superior intelligence and smarmy wit will make me doubt myself, maybe make a mistake?” A loud sound of flesh on flesh filled the black, and Vic’s face burnt as the man’s hand struck it. “No, I’m better than that.”

“We’ll see.”

[HoM]

Meanwhile:

“This is one of the damn highlights of working out of a car.” Clevenger sighed, tapping the dashboard. His eyes wandered back over to the petrol station across the lot, where his partner strolled back towards the car with a small plastic bag in his hand. Clevenger groaned and put his hand against the horn. “COME ON!”

“Why have you got to be some damn impatient? When you need to go to the little boy’s room, I’m very, very accommodating, but when it comes to my needs…” Replied Bill Nodell, fidgeting with the packet of cigarettes in his hand as he flicked one out and placed it between his lips.

“Accommodating?” Clevenger rolled his eyes and slid into the driving seat. “You needed a pack of Nails!”

“Your point?” He clambered into the car, and then grabbed a tape from the side pocket of his chair. “Get your girlfriend on the phone, ask her if there are any development concerning our mutual friend.”

“I will if…” Travis Clevenger grimaced as Nodell slipped a new tape into the radio. “Oh not now. Come on. Please.”

“What? Are you not a fan of the great Billy Joel?”

Clevenger groaned. “His face is like a slapped arse my friend.”

“Arse? Who says ‘arse’? What are you, English? Are you from the British Empire? Come on. Gimme a break. Billy Joel is a God, my friend. And who the hell looks at a guy’s face when he’s singing? I’m more about the music. I’m not a vain bastard like you.”

“But still…”

“But still nothing. Call her up.” Nodell sat back against the leather chair and then took a lighter from his pocket. He lit the cigarette and then pulled his sunglasses from his inside pocket.

Clevenger dialled the number into his phone and waited, tucking the phone between his head and shoulder. “Chase? Anything new in Vegas?”

“And ask her if her friend Laura is still working in Ops…”

“Shut up. No, not you. Ok. A power surge? Where? GPS says…”

Nodell tipped his glasses down his nose, and moved the cigarette away from his lips. “A location?”

“A car lot.”

“Great. All this time travelling the open road in a car, searching for some urban myth, and we end up in the place we started off in. A Goddamn car lot."

Clevenger hung up his phone, and threw it onto the back seat. “Make sure your gun is loaded. We could be driving straight into trouble.”

“When has that stopped us before, Clev?” Nodell smiled. “I’ve got about seven months of pent up aggression to let out. You better hurry on up."

[HoM]

Area 15. Major Operations Lab 1:

The skin was the only thing left untouched by the blast. Silver skin with a red symbol across the chest. Captain Atom’s skin. Machines were reduced to husks; skeletons were scorched white by the blast. But the skin… It was laid across the table, strapped down by promethium shackles. Just as it was before a nuclear explosion, ordered by Director Dabney Donovan, incinerated twenty nine Cadmus scientists.

“Ready?”

“Levels are back to zero. The micro machines worked. They removed the excess radiation.”

“We need to examine the skin.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“The Director blew up twenty nine men and women! He scorched the flesh from their bones and there’s nothing left but shells. Nothing survived this.”

“Wait…” A man put a gloved hand up. “Why am I getting thirty sets of heartbeats then?”

“What?”

“Thirty heartbeats. Like drum and bass, again and again, like a rhythm.”

“Test your instruments.”

“Have done. Twice. There are thirty heart beats in the centre of the room.”

“And the only thing in the centre of the room…”

“…Is that skin.”

"I do not feel well."

[HoM]

Meanwhile:

A mist floated through the ventilation system. It moved with a life of it’s own, searching… And as it entered a dark room, and settled on the ground and reformed… Vapor stood perfectly still and looked around, the glasses she was wearing revealing to her what Vic Sage had suspected all along. “Teams are bad news.” She moved like the air she breathed, silent, effortlessly, cells everywhere contained the ill, the dying, and the mutated. The missing. “I shouldn’t be here. And neither should any of you.” She raised her hand like a Goddess and concentrated, her limb transformed into an acidic mist, and as it spread to the bars of the cells they instantly dissolved. “You’re all coming with me, and we’re going to get you out of here.” We. We. She hoped that Vic and Bug were alive. She prayed for that hope to stay alive. [/i]

[HoM]

Area 15. The Cells:

“So. You’re the chief torturer?” Vic smiled. “What’s your speciality? Scathing repartee? A bit of verbal jousting? Do your worst. I don’t even know why you’ve got us down here.”

“Breaking into a government installation. Trespassing. Assault. Oh, and there’s an outstanding warrant for your arrest on the charge of murder in the first degree. Everything catches up with you in the end, Szasz.”

Rodor again. They always bought that up. Clevenger had told him of that, how a man… Or a thing, dressed as him, as The Question, had murdered Tot. Horrific. But it couldn’t have been him. It had to have something to do with Intergang, it must have. Steel Hand had a… hand in that. Vic chuckled again at the thought. “Oh, no… Oh, no, you’ve got me…” He laughed loudly. “Seriously, please, start the torture, anything to shut you up.”

“The prisoner giving you sass, Mr Moon?” A new voice. Vic didn’t recognise it, but he memorised it instantly. “We can always gag him.” Moon. Moon. Familiar.

“Doctor… Moon?” It lingered on his tongue. “Moon.” Vic’s eyes widened. A surprise, a shock, at last. “You’re a freaking villain.”

“Exonerated, thank you.” It was like a sick boast, Vic thought. Exonerated. Who would exonerate someone like this? Someone who enjoyed causing pain? Torturing? Batman’s taken him down. The Flash. Superman even. Superman even gave evidence against him at court, Vic was there, Vic watched. How? “Thanks to Taskforce X and this fine administration. I work for the government now. I’m used to assist on these cases…”

“Assist? Bite me, Moon, you’re their torturer-in-chief. You’re a freaking lapdog for the DEO!”

“DEO?” repeated the new voice, “DEO are pussies. We’re something else. Something bigger.” He laughed, as if in on some tremendous joke. “I’ll leave you and the prisoner alone, Mr Moon.”

“Thank you. Now Mr Szasz. Let’s talk.”

Vic smiled. “Let’s.”

[HoM]

Area 15. Major Operations Lab 1:

The floor crunched underfoot as the first scientist entered. There was a layer of white ash, metal turned into dust by the explosion. “I’m not lying. And I’m not drunk. Thirty heart beats.”

“I don’t understand, how is this possible?”

“I don’t know, but I just got off the phone with the Director, he wants a behaviour chip implanted into the skin.”

“But it’s just SKIN!”

“DO YOU WANT TO GO AGAINST THE DIRECTOR!” The man shouted through gritted teeth, his voice distorted by the mask he wore to protect from any residual radiation. “USE THIS.” Grabbing a device from his kit, he passed it to the other man in the room. “Jab. Inject. EASY.”

“Fine. FINE.” The man grimaces. “You’re an idiot.”

“Shut up.” His finger was pointed at the skin. “Jab.”

“Inject, yeah, yeah… WAIT!” The man’s hand grabbed his belt, holding the device that had checked for life signs. “Thirty just went down to twenty three…”

“God, I’ve got it too… Twenty three to… Twenty three to Nineteen!”

"Come on! Inject the control chip!"

“I'M GOING TO INJECT THE CONTROL CHIP!”

“Yeah… Argh, it’s getting hotter in here…”

“Nineteen to eight…!? Radiation levels are increasing…”

"I know! Come on Ashish! Seal the deal!!"

“Yeah, and… Ahhhh!” The man inside the room suddenly dived at the silver skin. He impaled the metal flesh with his device and injected it with the control chip. Just as he released the trigger his suit was peeled away, then his skin burned off, leaving nothing but a mess of muscle, skeleton and blood.

“Eight to… One… ASHISH!” The man standing at the door didn’t even try to escape. His body is burnt to a crisp, burnt to ash. Burnt to nothing but a pile of dust and bone.

[HoM]

Area 15. The Cells:

“Ah. Ahh!” His eyes were pulled open sharply and he could suddenly see everything in perfect clarity.

“How does that feel, Mr Szasz?” As his face became visible to Vic, Moon’s toothy grin was also apparent. He was a stunted man, large and rotund, nothing like what you’d expect from a supervillain. He had thin hair, and wore a long white coat that reached down to his converse shoes. His glasses were perched on his nose, and he had a syringe in his hand. “Can you see me now?”

Vic rolled his eyes. “Unfortunately.”

“Funny. If you look to your left you will see your colleague. He’s a bit worse for wear, after all, how difficult it must be to shut down a man’s nervous system if its connected to all the computers in the complex, eh? He’ll recover. In time. And then we’ll play a game of chance.” Bug was still bleeding. His shirt was gone, and Vic could see the impression of something underneath his skin, just as he saw earlier in the complex on the technopath's hand. It was a familiar pattern, like that of Blue Beetle’s uniform but directly beneath his flesh.

He was bleeding, Vic could see that as plain as day. He shook his head. Vic had dragged Bug into this. He didn’t think he’d be caught. “Your mind is very strange, Mr Szasz. All broken and shattered, knit back together but still… Falling apart again.”

“What do you know of my mind?” Spat Vic as he strained against his bonds. He felt the tightness of the goggles across his face, and then looked at his arms, bleeding from scratches. His head throbbed from the head wound he had proccured earlier.

“Look who it is.” Vic turned his head suddenly, and saw another man enter the room, a man who looked strangely familiar, someone… “Vic Sage, REPORTER EXTRAORDINAIRE!” As the man spoke he moved his hands as it to show the letters flowing in midair. “We meet again. Well. Meet. For the first time. We’ve not actually met. I’m just being polite. I am the Director of Cadmus. My name is Donovan.”

“Donovan? Jason Donovan? Nancy Donovan? Donnie Donovan? Don’t leave me hanging, chum, let’s share the wealth!”

“Dabney Donovan. As I said, I run this place.” He motioned around the room. “This laboratory.” He paused and looked down to his belt as it vibrated. “Ah. That’s me. My phone.” He carefully removed the cell phone from his buckle, and then placed it next to his ear. He didn’t even bother turning away from Vic Sage, he just began to speak. “You have what I want?” He paused and then continued. “Because we paid you, and I want to make sure you understand what’s needed from you. We need the clones. You get the protoplasm you need.” He placed his over the receiver for a moment. “Hired help. Terrible.” He continued to speak to the man on the other end of the line. “You received the samples? Are they sound…” He sighed heavily. “I know you have more money than most of the citizens of America combined, do not take that tone with me.” He smiled again. “Can we get the… No. Ok. Yes.” He rolled his eyes. “Right. How long?” He nodded slowly and then hung up. “That guy is a son of a bitch.”

"Who? Who's a son of a bitch?"

“None of your business! Anyway. Why are you here?”

“… I’m not going to tell you, ‘Dabney’.”

“Fine, fine. But let me tell you something, smart ass.” He leaned in close to the chained vigilante. “Did you like that link I sent you? That tiny little hyperlink that hid all the information that got you where you are today?”

Vic froze. “What?”

“Checkmate!” Dabney Donovan threw his arms back manically. “I had my technicians’ construct a beautiful little database with the information that would bring you here.” Vic grimaced. The man’s head bobbed up and down like a child’s. "But I changed a few details. Sure, there are metahumans in cages. WHO CARES?! I harvest their organs to build super-soldiers. But they’re redundant now. We don’t need them. Not when we have finally perfected… Well. I’m getting ahead of myself. You are a strange little man.”

“Thank you.”

“’Thank you’! Haha! Good one. But you’re a thorn in certain people’s sides. My ‘counterpart’ in the DEO for instance. He hates you. He hates you with a PASSION.”

“King Faraday?”

“Yes. Exactly. But he could never find you. He’s sent two agents after you I believe. I’m not sure. Some dunces I believe. But again, I’m not sure, nor do I care!”

“Why… Why did you…” Vic grimaced. He felt sick. This man… Argh. “Why did you lure me here?”

“To show everyone I’m better than they thought.”

“How… Vain.”

“Oh, vanity yes, one of the many sins I enjoy exploiting. I appealed to yours I believe. This was your chance to be taken seriously in the eyes of all the people who hate you. ‘Saviour of the metahuman population!’ ‘Took down government facility!’ ‘Stuck it to the man!’ Oh grow a pair, Sage. I lured you here with a chess piece and a death list.”

“Then…?”

“Then, then, then…” Donovan smiled mockingly as he repeated Vic’s word. “I’m going to let you in on a secret. I’ve been at this for decades. Building bodies. Machines that are built into men. Everything. I made a man out of metal, but as he sweated the epidermis of steel that was attached to his flesh rusted and… Well. He wasn’t a good soldier. Men with claws coming out of their hands, they died of blood loss, and when we coated their bones with metal? They died from toxic shock. But with the technology I have now…”

“You’re a regular Doctor Frankenstein.”

“And you’ve not even met my Monster yet, Sage. So keep shtum. Moon, leave us for a while.”

“Sir…” whined the Doctor, “I was going to begin the electric shock ‘treatment’…”

“Later.” Vic watched as Moon reluctantly left the cell. “Anyway. Here’s a secret I’ve kept from everyone. You’re going to die soon so I couldn’t care less if you knew. I’m going to conquer America. I’m going to be King Dabney the first. I’m going to be a God. And you know how?”

“Because your ego and your insanity grant you magical powers?”

“Because I have at last perfected cloning. With help from certain generous benefactors and their ridiculous attempts to clone certain peoples…”

“You're being vague…”

Dabney rolled his eyes. “I LIKE being vague. I like creating more questions for you to thirst for the answer. It's fun. Anyway, I have combined those techniques with my own techniques and have at last created a cloning technique that works. For good.”

“You can’t play God…”

Dabney groaned. “What is it with people and that cliché?”

“I don’t know. It just seemed apt for that moment in time.”

“How old do you think I am, Sage?”

“Oh come on.”

“Play the game. You might live.”

Hope flashed in Vic's eyes. “Really?” He pushed it down. Nothing could be so easy. Yes, these freaks played games, but this? To be released on a game of chance? He had more chance of winning the lottery with no ticket.

“No. But humour me.”

“Fine. Sixty going on… Insane.”

“I am over one hundred years old.”

“Congratulations, you win the prize.”

“Haha, oh you are funny. This is my seventh body. I transplanted my consciousness into it last year, but as you can see the rapid deterioration of tissue… I’m going to start looking my age in the next couple weeks. I’m going to need another body soon.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning… I’m going to transplant my brain into YOUR body!”

Vic smiled slightly at that. “Now THAT was funny. Come on Dabbers. Get real.”

"I love that joke." Nodded Donovan, and then he leant against the wall. He didn’t speak for a while, but when he did, he spoke deliberately, and with a smile on his face, nearly hidden by his bushy grey moustache. “I killed Claudette Walsh by the way.”

Vic’s jaw dropped. “What?!” He remembered every curve of her body, every contour. The way she breathed when he kissed her neck, the way she scratched his back when he held her tightly… “You… You bastard…”

The Director shrugged indifferently. “Thought you should know.”

Vic wrenched his body forward, but the restraints didn’t give one millimetre. “You BASTARD! I’LL KILL YOU!”

“Oh come on. You just screwed her, stole her key card and walked on. You didn’t care about her.”

Vic groaned as he relaxed totally, slouching in his shackles. “Die…”

“Oh, don’t cry Vic. Don’t cry.”

“Shut up. You’re an idiot. I’ll find a way out of here. I’ll come back and kill you. I’ll bleed you till your heart nearly stops beating, and then I’ll smash your face in. I’m sick of all this Boy Scout crap, you’re a murderer and you think you can play God with other people’s lives. I’m going to kill you. And I’m going to be laughing all the while.”

Donovan sighed. “You’ve ruined it now Vic. That’s a shame. You can’t really blame me for doing this now, can you?” Vic watched as the man pressed a button by the door. “Doctor Moon. You may enter.”

The master of torture entered, his palms pressed together and quickly rubbed against each other with glee. “Yay.” Like a child.

“I’ll catch you later, Vic. Doctor Moon… Please… Administer the cocktail you’ve developed. I want this over fast.”

Moon sighed again. “Fine.”

“What cocktail?”

“Oh, now he wants to talk, Doctor Moon.” Donovan sighed. “I’ve got to go check up on my Monster. Seems he’s killed a few of our research staff. They had to put him into confinement. But we’ll see if we can’t make him a tad more sociable.”

“You weren’t kidding…”

“Haha, yes Vic. My Monster? I stole the skin of a superhero. I blew up the greatest minds of this facility to catalyse his return to life. He’s going to be my second skin. I’m going to transplant my consciousness into a being created by death and fuelled by the souls of some of the greatest minds on this planet. I killed to create, Vic. It’s a cycle, you know…”

“Right. Sure.”

Dr Moon tapped Vic’s arm, searching for a vein. “We’re doing this by the book.”

“By the book?” Vic grimaced. “Sure.”

“This is something that will drive you insane. It will trap you within your mind and you will never escape. And so when I’m removing limbs, cauterising the wounds and making sure you live through each trauma, you’ll be aware. Dimly aware that I’m picking apart your body bit by bit until there is nothing left but your head. We have machines. Machines made to keep heads alive. I’ll put your head in a jar and put it on my desk. I’ll feed you sesame seeds.”

“Are you quite finished?”

As if stirred from some memory, the Doctor continued. “Sorry, yes.” He jabbed the needle in. “Ready?”

“Sure.” Vic’s eyes met Doctor Moon’s as he spoke. He watched as the needle began to flush a dark, shadowy liquid into his veins. “Oh. God. I forgot. Don’t you want to know who Batman is?”

“WHAT?”

[HoM]

Meanwhile:

“Are you ready?” She looked at each of them, hel[ed them to their feet, helped them into the large space outside of their cells. “It might hurt.”

Suddenly, unexpectedly, a man stumbled forward, malnourished, his dark red hair limp and thinning. Yet his eyes… He was the same age as her. Maybe younger. But he’d been through much. “P-pain?” He fell into the wall, barely able to hold himself up, but he tried. “You don’t know the meaning of the word.”

“I’m sorry…”

“No.” He looked at her, with his deep blue eyes, this man who had seen more pain, more torture, more agony than any other person should. “No I’m sorry… I had given up hope of anyone coming, anyone helping us…”

“Who are you?”

“Me? Ha.” He scratched his head, and she watched as hair fell out as he did so. “I’m a supervillain.”

“What?!”

“Hey.” His hands shot up at that moment, as if to surrender, and her hands were in front of her head quicker, ready for anything. “Hey. Hey. Come on. If you’d gone through what I have… You’d rethink your life choices too. I’m just a man. Just a man.”

“What was… What was your name?”

“Gunfire.”

“Gunfire? You could…” Her knuckles played against her temple for a moment. “You could shoot energy blasts from your hands.”

He turned his wrists around, to reveal a black tattoo that circled around his limb. “Tomorrow they were going to remove them.”

“God…”

“The cages contain dampening fields. They shoot us up with drugs when they want to move us, they suppress our… Metagene I think it was.”

Makes sense, though Vapor. “I’m sorry….”

“Stop apologizing! You’ve saved us!”

“I should have done more… I should have known… I…”

“YOU THERE!” They turn around, and gasp as a group of armed men rush into the holding area. “ON THE GROUND! GET ON THE GROUND!”

“Bastards...” Murmured Gunfire, “We’re trapped.”

“They’ll kill us…”

“Go.”

Vapor turned to Gunfire, “What?”

“I’ll hold them off. Turn to gas, do what you have to do. Go.” His hands began to glow. “GO.”

“I’ll… I’ll tell them how you changed.”

“Don’t bother. It’d run my REP!” He dived at the men, his hands blazing with fire and fury as blasts of energy shot out from his limbs. Vapor reacted fast, transforming all those around her into gas and then guiding them with precision straight up the vents, and straight up into escape.

Vic wanted them out, but it was too dangerous to walk in like a hero in the old West. Like Jonah Hex. But it was too vague to ask the League for help. The only way Vic had a chance right now… Was for Vapor to get out. To warn others. To cry ‘Superman!’ and pray he’s Earth side.

But all that meant getting out of the complex first.

[HoM]

Area 15. The Cells?

Vic Sage is sent screaming into darkness, the drug shook his brain to the core, his mind shattered and his psyche crumbled, and then…

“Raindrops keep falling on my head… It probably means that I’ll soon be dead…”

He was in a room. A dark room. Black. Shadow. Black. Something not quite right, itching the corner of his mind. He recognised the feeling. The itch. The mind snapping and then… Vic Sage is confronted by a long forgotten face, and then he shook his head. He’s being driven insane with the poison in his veins. It’s not you. It’s not your weakness. And who the hell is singing?

“Crying is not for me… Because I know I won’t stop the pain by complaining…”

“Hello?” Vic Sage asked the voice, “Is anyone there?”

“I ask for one thing. One little thing. And you go and end up in the same position you were in a year ago. How do you think that makes me feel? Putting all my trust in you and ending up back in the darkness? I was safe, I was secure, but now you’ve got sent back to the black room, and how long do you think it’ll take for me to get rid of you? Never. Because you know why? We’re trapped together. And now no one is going to get out. Unless…”

The child. The child from his nightmares. From his youth. “Charlie…”

“Vic Sage. My hero.” The child shook his head. Vic knew where he was. He’s back in his mind. And he’s being confronted with his past. Dr Moon, that bastard, probably didn’t know. Probably. But he had sent Vic Sage… Not into some NEW insanity, NEW to anyone, NEW to Vic… but an old one. “I think I should take it all back. Take back what I gave you. And reintroduce you to those who we kicked right out of here. Your subconscious was calm, wasn’t it? Id, ego, super ego. Combined into you. Let’s hear some action. Let’s split you all in half.”

“Charlie…”

“Welcome to the asylum of your making.” The figures seemed to sap right out of his body, he seemed to lose a bit of himself, in his minds eye. The figures formed and dragged Vic into the darkness, into the small closet he had awakened in all those years ago… And they locked the door.

“Charlie…” And in the darkness… He stays.

[HoM]

Before:

“Butterflies, my friend. Of all the ugliness, for all the wrongness, you spin a chrysalis and you escape with wings. Rebirth, Vic. Rebirth.”

Now:

“WHO IS BATMAN?!” Dr Moon grabbed the catatonic Vic Sage by the shoulders and shook hard, but it didn’t do anything. He just sat there, chained to the wall, dribbling blood and spit. “WAKE UP AND TELL ME!” The Doctor backhanded the vigilante, but to no avail. “Sonofabitch!” The torturer removed the goggles on Vic’s eyes and then took out his small light. “Can you hear me?” Holding each eye open, he shines it at the pupil, checking for dilation. Nothing. No reaction. “Bastard.” He looks at the syringe in his hand and then looks around. “I need to know… I NEED TO KNOW” After biting his fingernails for a moment more and then looking around, a name springs into his mind. “I need Echo.”

[HoM]

Area 15. Major Operations Lab 1:

“Coolant! COOLANT!” The man outside the lab slammed his hand down on the radioactive countermeasure switch, and suddenly the room flooded with foam.

“What are you doing?” Trevor Thomas pulled the man back away from the view screen, and his eyes widen. “Holy £$%^.”

“We’ve got to contain it.”

“What is that? What’s happening to it’s skin? Isn’t that Captain Atom’s skin? You mean it wasn’t destroyed in the nuclear blast?!”

“It’s… It’s changing… IT’S CHANGING.”

“Calm down.” Sighed Thomas. He flicked open a small console and began typing. “Sedatives, coolant, the whole caboodle. And…” He slammed down on a trigger, and a massive clamp slammed down around the creature created from the deaths of the men and women. The men and women he had killed. “The threat is contained. It’s not getting out of that.”

“You say that now…”

[HoM]

Area 15. The Cells:

“Echo, I need to know if it might be possible to bring him back to… Um… Alive. Awake I mean. I might have… Overdone the dosage.”

“You think you killed his mind,” the Russian woman sneered, the hints of accent there, but perfectly fluent in English. “Your methods are obscene and disgusting Moon.” She shakes his head. “Leave us, I shall attempt a scan.”

“Attempt?” Moon pouted, “Attempt? You are of the Turing Project, I was briefed on you too…”

“Leave Moon! NOW!” She pushed him out of the room and then took a breath. “I sense turmoil in you, poor soul.” Calmly, she placed a hand on Victor Szasz’s head, and then is swept up into darkness.

She regretted her decision instantly.

“Newcomer to the party.” Her eyes widened as four men looked at her. Three fully grown, all imposing and burly, all but one wearing masks, then another, a child, teddy bear in hand. An eerie sight to behold. It’s the child that speaks for them. “Mr A, please, take care of her.”

“But she is what she is, and she cannot help it…” The masked man shrugged, his face encased in some steel mask of some kind, but walked towards her anyway, “Sorry.” Echo threw up her hand as he got close, and he screamed as he’s sent flying back at the others. “Ah!”

“She has power. Hurm. She won’t go down as easy as Sage.” The man’s mask changed as he spoke, black dots moved into shapes, akin to a Rorschach test. He didn’t approach her yet, but he took her in, his body ready to leap into a fighting stance. She kept one eye on him. He could be the most dangerous manifestation of madness here in the brain.

“What’s going on?” She inquired, scared, curious, but strangely fascinated by the inner workings of this man’s head. “Who are you people?”

“Didn’t they brief you, lady?” replied the man without the mask, his hair cut short and his body untouched by bruises… just as Vic would look in the outside if not for his beating and abuse at the hands of the guards. “We’re Vic Sage’s multiple personalities. I’m like he would have been if Charlie here weren’t totally abused as a child. Bastard that he was, he wasn’t treated especially well at the Catholic orphanage he called home.” He smiled a smug smile, and then pointed to the only other thing in the white mindscape where they stood, a small closet. “And over in there is Vic. He’s a hero, but we had enough of him. Year back he tried to come back, but Charlie here, he kicked us to the curb, but now the kid knows better. We’re coming back in Vic, and we’re gonna’ have a blast.”

“You’re going to assert control over the body?” Echo frowned. “This is madness! This can’t make sense.”

“Yet you’ve leapt into my head.” The child smiled. “This is a new day and age, way beyond my immature understanding if you will.”

“But isn’t there some way you could come to a compromise? I don’t know what’s going on but… But… It’s all really strange!”

The man with the face like a Rorschach test jerked up, and his voice became a shriek, angry, uncomfortable. “NO COMPRIMISE! ESPECIALLY NOT HERE! NEVER COMPROMISE!”

Echo nodded slowly. “I see the problem. Vic Sage has created multiple personalities. Aggression, evolution, understanding, rage, everything. Everything is here. He couldn't handle extreme emotions in himself so he diverted them away to facets of himself.”

“And what’s the problem there, little girl?” The well-kept man smiled smugly once more and then shrugged his shoulders. “Just a little girl. Little Red Riding Hood. What’re you going to do?”

Echo smiled. It nearly matched the other man’s. “I’m going to kill you all and get down to the proper business.”

“Huhhh. Try.”

“Try.”

“Try.”

“Please miss, try.”

Echo’s smile widened. “I will. And I’ll succeed. And you’ll be nothing but a lost memory. A forgotten thought.”

[HoM]

To Be Concluded Next Issue!

[mockingbird]

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