Post by HoM on Apr 25, 2018 13:11:00 GMT -5
Previously, in JUSTICE LEAGUE...
Horrors abound as we draw closer to our seventy-fifth issue!
Last issue, BATMAN and HAWKMAN infiltrated a corrupt Russian prison, only to be discovered by the mysterious INSPECTOR, who murdered the WARDEN and vanished from the scene! The Justice Leaguers managed to complete their mission without casualties, and now they have a prison’s worth of hostages and guards to learn the truth from!
What exactly was going on with the cargo cult weapons the hostages were being forced to build, and what was XOTAR, THE WEAPONS MASTER’s part in the scheme? Will the Justice League ever learn the truth about their mysterious informant, PATHFINDER?
Meanwhile, the team’s science advisor ANGELA SPICA along with CYBORG, FIRESTORM, THE GUARDIAN and MISTER MIRACLE walked into a trap devised by the villainous mad scientist known as THE ENGINEER, who unleashed his bodyguards, APOLLO and THE MIDNIGHTER, on the team!
With CYBORG completely dismantled and his brain destroyed, and THE GUARDIAN’s neck savagely snapped, the team are thin on the ground with little to no hope of surviving the day, while THE ENGINEER intends to unleash a nanomachine swarm on Las Vegas to force the artificial evolution of every man, woman and child present into his tailor-designed Homo Cyberneticus, the nano-infused next step of mankind!
Finally, BIG BARDA, MAJESTIC and WONDER WOMAN journeyed into a mysterious pocket dimension to discover that the Kherubim race, long thought lost, had taken refugee there after the destruction of their home world!
For the Kherubim, the tesseract hadn’t been the haven it was designed to be though, as upon their arrival the grotesquely evil LORD IMPERATOR had transformed it into his own personal playgound after slaughtering all the men, and it took a revolution led by ZEALOT to win the day!
In the present day, ZEALOT reveals the reason behind her revolt-- IMPERATOR discovered she was pregnant, and wanted to take that away from her! It took all her strength to lead the Coda into revolt, and they had established a martial society at peace since then. But when she reveals to MAJESTIC that her child was his, this fact distracts their daughter, SAVANT from her duties keeping IMPERATOR in check, and he rises from his bondage, intent on inflicting the maximum amount of revenge on all those who oppose him!
With all this in mind, please join us now for the continuing adventures of the JUSTICE LEAGUE--
They’d never faced an opponent as singularly devastating as Imperator before.
Perhaps if the Flash were here, they might stand a chance, but his speed was one thing-- the strength of their opponent was another.
Imperator didn’t even bother throwing a punch at first. He sped out of the dungeon he’d been kept in for thousands of years, and raided the armoury. Majestic was hot on his tail, and Zealot led Big Barda and Wonder Woman soon after. Halfway up the stairs that led to the surface, Imperator returned, slapped Majestros brutally with the back of his hand, laughing all the while, and then punched him repeatedly. A thousand punches in a second. Ten thousand the next.
Since his arrival into the world some near two years ago, Majestros had faced god-weapons*.
He had battled war deities themselves*.
He had been confronted with extradimensional horrors clawing their way into this reality*.
He had warred with Green Martians and Burning Martians alike*.
He had confronted the children of gods and their fathers* and he’d never
been
hit
as
hard
as this.
Blood and spittle flew from his lips, the bones of his face pulverised, and he collapsed to the ground in agony. He tried to stand but Imperator kicked him, barefoot, in the ribs, and his sternum nearly crumbled. It hurt to breathe, and he realised… in between agonising breaths, as his lungs pushed against his broken rib cage... that he had a daughter, and he might never get to speak to her.
“Where’s the fight in you, Majestros? Or is that I’m, as ever, stronger than you, and always will be?”
A lasso of golden light flew around Imperator’s arms and was pulled tight. He looked at Wonder Woman, who held onto the other end with pure determination. “Submit!”
“Never to you. Never to a lowly human,” he replied.
He spun himself around like a miniature tornado, and Diana flew towards him despite herself. At the last second, he stopped, shrugged off the unbreakable lasso, and grabbed her by the throat.
“Oh. Not so lowly, are you. I can smell it on you. Celestial light. You’re--”
Barda barrelled into his bloated torso, and he laughed, not moving an inch. She looked up at his bearded face, and then he laughed some more.
“I am a Kherubim Lord. The last true master of all of Khera. And you think you can, what, tackle me?”
Barda grabbed his beard and yanked down, taking him by surprise. She punched him in the face with a devastating undercut, but the bones in her fingers and knuckles fractured. She’d never been so surprised by a punch than just then.
“Surprising. Not altogether unpleasant.”
He sent his knee into her stomach, only for Zealot to dive toward him in the gap presented by Barda’s fall. She held one of the pickaxes used to keep his spine from healing for the last thousand years, and he kicked Barda back into his former captor.
Zealot rolled out of the way of Barda’s body in midair, and barrelled towards him. She swung with all her might toward his eyes-- but he melted the axe into atoms with a blast of Zoom Vision.
Readjusting on the fly, she opened her hands wide, her fingers like talons, and kept going for his orbital socket-- hoping to prise an eyeball out at least-- but he shifted all his immense weight forward, pulverising the stone underfoot, and sent her into the staircase with an almighty headbutt .
Casually, Imperator flung Diana into one wall by the hair, then the opposite wall, then the floor, and then the floor again. Again and again and again. She’d never been manhandled in such a way, and each devastating impact shook something loose in her body and the citadel they battled underneath.
He released her, and she collapsed in a bloody pile atop Zealot. Barda was pulling herself up at the bottom of the stairs, so he inhaled swiftly, and then exhaled with the force of a compact hurricane, sending her crashing into the ground beneath her and not stopping there-- the force of the attack sent her metres down, and then the floor collapsed on top of her, burying her there.
Majestic looked up, his face healing, but his head a mess of concussive thoughts. Through bleary, swollen eyes, he tried to focus on Imperator, but the obese titan drove a foot into his back and ground it down into his spine.
“Majestros. The great hope of the Kherubim. Cast into the void at my hands. Now returned in their hour of greatest need, the prodigal son. It’s almost… mythic, isn’t it? Your betrothed there, the Zealot, the most holy of holies, defiled by… me. The darkness incarnate. And you… returned… and useless. What say you to that?”
“I’ll… we’ll… stop… you…” Majestros growled.
“Not with your back in that shape, old friend.”
He dug his heel in at just the right spot, and Majestic cried out in agony as his legs stopped working.
Imperator looked up, using his Zoom Vision to see that the Coda were rallying over head. They’d done drills for this kind of thing, clearly. It would take him… twenty seconds, tops, to bring them to heel like he had the others.
He licked his lips. He had so many feelings to work out on his female captors. So many.
“Let’s put young Victor here, shall we?” mused the Engineer, gesturing beside him.
He’d opened up the central cylinder chamber of the laboratory and led Angie inside, along with Apollo and the Midnighter. There were numerous vats containing the roots of the nanite flowers that were threatening to blossom on the surface of the Nevada desert.
As instructed, Apollo dropped Cyborg’s remains into a seat next to the control panel. Grey tissue dribbled from the numerous cracks in the ravaged skeletal structure on display. It was a horrible sight. Angie couldn’t bear to look.
The Engineer shook his head. “Oh, he’s making a mess everywhere, tsk. Apologise, Victor.” There came no response from the dead shell of Cyborg, so the Engineer lifted him up and slipped his hand into the mechanism inside his head, and wielded him like a ventriloquist would his puppet. “‘I’m sorry for spilling myself on your furnishings, Engineer.’ Oh, that’s okay, Victor. You’re dead, so it can’t really be held against you. Ha.”
“You’re… you’re really, truly mad…” said Angie.
“I’m a visionary. I thought you’d be interested in hearing the logistics of my experiment, as a fellow scientist. See, the central cylinder is where the nanites will spool out into the roots and up into and out of the flowers. This is the hub of my experiment. The delivery system of the future.”
“The future isn’t transforming innocent men and women into whatever you think is a better form for them! The future isn’t… hurting or killing people… you’ve just… you’ve torn apart anything that’s good in this world like it’s your duty and I don’t understand why!”
“Because if we don’t change, we die. You don’t know what’s coming, Angela. You don’t see what’s on the horizon. But I do. I know because I’ve been part of it. There is a darkness coming, and the only way we can stay in the light is if we change. And as you’re incapable of changing, you have to die for the rest of the world to live. Starting with Las Vegas.”
“You can’t--!”
“Apollo, if she talks back to me again, incinerate her, won’t you?”
Apollo’s eyes lit up, and Angie fell silent. Her mouth opened and closed, trying to find the words that wouldn’t lead to her death but she knew--
The Midnighter leaned over towards her. “He will, you know. We do exactly what we’re told to do. Look at the Guardian. I broke his neck. Apollo will burn you to ashes, right where you stand. Look at the Guardian.”
“Midnighter, did I tell you to interact with her? Don’t talk to her anymore.”
The Midnighter nodded and walked away, staring a hole through Angie.
What was that all about? she wondered.
Steve Trevor, aka the White King of Checkmate, materialised on the teleport pad awaiting him, flanked by a squad of Checkmate’s gold and black armoured Knights, with Laputa’s support staff watching from the control booth that allowed Checkmate to enter the premises. He was dressed casually; black jeans and a grey t-shirt with a white jacket emblazoned with the chess-piece logo of Checkmate on the shoulder. He had no reason to be formal, and he didn’t want to set the wrong tone with his arrival.
Instead, he glanced around at the gathering of his people and said, “Well, this is an international incident waiting to happen.”
“I believe that’s what we’re here to mitigate, White King,” replied White King’s Rook, a familiar sight to some, and sure to rock some boats when recognised. “Welcome aboard.”
Hierarchy meant something in Checkmate. First, you had the Royals: Black King and Queen-- Nemo Perkins and Valetina Vostok-- were in charge of operations, while the White King and Queen-- Trevor and Catherine Cobert-- oversaw intelligence. You couldn’t authorise an operation without intelligence, and intelligence couldn’t authorise an operation without doing their due diligence, so there was a careful balance between the two royal families.
Under the royals, each member had a Bishop and a Rook, two specialised operatives cum advisors, their most trusted right and left hands. They had the ability to autonomously run ground operations and intelligence gathering on behalf of their king or queen. They cycled in and out of duty. You’d never see one on the scene at the same time as another, due to security constraints. They were vetted by their King or Queen, and chosen for the level of trust and confidence they instilled.
After that, you had the Knights, intended for wet work and intelligence gathering, and everyone else fell under the definition of Pawn, nominally based in each of their royal family’s ‘Castles’-- the secret locations they operated from. Trevor was based in Washington, Cobert somewhere in France, Vostok in Russia and no one knew about Perkins. He kept mum about that one.
Trevor looked around at his men and women and raised his hands to get their attention. “Okay, folks. We’re here as friends, so let’s not wave our guns around, all right? Holster them.”
White King’s Bishop was still MIA*, so the position was vacant. That meant he leaned on White King’s Rook more than he might usually, but he was confident his selection could handle the pressure.
Checkmate had teleported onto the Justice League’s island headquarters as per the invitation extended to them by the team themselves. It was Hawkman who greeted them at the threshold between the teleportation room and the rest of the base.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice, White King.”
“You’re friends, Hawkman. UN-sanctioned and all that comes with it. If you need an assist, we come.”
Katar smiled, then noticed a familiar face. “If you don’t mind me asking-- why is he here?” Instead of gesturing with a nod or a finger, he used his mace to point at White King’s Rook, who tipped his sunglasses down and smiled.
“Who, me?”
Henry King Jr, aka Brainwave, was known to Hawkman by reputation alone-- or more accurately, his father’s reputation. King Sr was an enemy of the Justice Society back in the day, his psychic abilities fearsome to behold. If his son had an ounce of that power…
“…And I do, Hawkman. Calm your thoughts, you’ll give me a headache,” said Brainwave.
“You’re in my head?” growled Hawkman.
“You’re shouting up in there!” replied Brainwave, his voice reaching the same volume as Katar’s but pitching an octave or three higher.
Steve took a step between them. “Gentlemen, please. Henry is a fully vetted member of Checkmate, and he’s on the best medication our agency can afford, so as to clamp down on any of his father’s tendencies.”
Katar’s mace grip tightened audibly, but before he could say another word, Aquaman entered the fray, directing traffic upon arrival. “Hawkman. Take Brainwave and the Knights to where Temho-Metya’s staff are being held. They can begin the debrief at their leisure. White King--”
The teleporters powered back up, and one of Laputa’s support staff looked toward the Justice League. “It’s Checkmate’s authorisation ID again. A location in Russia? We’re querying.”
Aquaman’s brow furrowed. “Who could that be, White King?”
“Oh, boy,” exhaled Steve. “It’ll be the in-laws.”
The support staff checked the readings on his monitor. “They’re green, Aquaman, sir. All above board.”
“In-laws?” asked Katar.
“Black Queen,” replied Brainwave.
With permission granted, a blonde woman materialised before them, flanked by a lithe woman whose face was obscured by a mask that only showed her eyes, nose and mouth. They both wore all black, and the buttoned-up jacket the blonde wore also had a Checkmate logo on the shoulder. “Chert voz'mi, ty ser'yezno, Trevor?!”
“Language, Valentina, we’re guests here…” replied Steve.
“Poshel ty! The Justice League have overstepped their mandate!” She walked up to Hawkman and began pointing into his chest. “You’ve kidnapped Russian nationals from Russian soil! This is an act of war! Idiotskiye superlyudi!”
Hawkman took a step back from her finger, and grimaced. “Do you know why we rescued one hundred and twenty-seven missing people from Temho-Metya? Do you know why the prison had been converted into a weapons factory? Do you have any answers at all, Ms Vostok?”
“Weapons… factory?” She turned to the masked woman behind her. “Eto pravda?”
“Da,” nodded the masked woman.
Brainwave leaned over to Hawkman, and said, “That’s Serafina Arkadin, known as Zhar-Ptitsa-- Firebird. She’s a psychic, like me. She’s just been asked to verify your story. She did. She can glean you’re not lying from--”
“I didn’t ask and I don't care,” replied Katar, before looking over to Aquaman. “I’ll check in with the other field teams.”
Aquaman hadn’t taken his eyes off Serafina. Black Queen had a psychic, and so did White King… Checkmate sure did look like they were trying to read people’s minds… and he wondered what the implication was for the organisation. Vostok and Trevor were talking quickly, in hushed tones, and he didn’t care to listen in. But two psychics…
“I can’t hear your thoughts,” said Brainwave, wandering over to the King of the Seas. “It’s so serene standing over here. Most people transmit without knowing it. Thinking aloud. It’s difficult to control it. White King learned how to do it after training with Wonder Woman, but others just spew whatever it is they’re thinking.”
Having come to an accord during their hushed yet heated discussion, Steve cleared his throat. “The Black Queen and I have come to an agreement. It breaks our usual rules of operational conduct, but we’ll both be overseeing this situation. You have to understand--”
Vostok cut him off. “This is a jurisdictional nightmare. Russian nationals in the custody of a volunteer rescue organisation manned predominantly by Americans, or western-affiliated actors, looks very suspect. At least with myself present, the Federal Assembly won’t have additional cause for concern.”
“And… where will all this take place?” asked Aquaman.
“With your permission… this location is in international waters, is it not?” said Vostok.
Arthur could have laughed. “So, you’re saying… and, please, make sure I’m not mistaken… you’re unhappy that we’ve taken Russian citizens into custody-- even though it is well within our mandate-- but to prevent there being a conflict of interest for yourselves, you want to perform the debriefs in our headquarters?”
Valentina smiled slyly. “I can see the reports of your royal acumen were not exaggerated, King Orin. White Knights will deal with interrogation and debrief, Black Knights will provide security.”
“Intelligence and operations, working in tandem. Checkmate at its finest,” said Steve.
“Well, it would be our pleasure to host you for the day. Please, follow me…”
Every single free woman in the pocket dimension was in chains, strung to one another by the neck by indestructible Kherubim metal links. After securing his new prisoners, Imperator raised the circular stage he’d been imprisoned upon from the catacombs to the surface, toppling the towers on either side of the grounds to the floor during the act. He was graceless, and uncaring about the collateral damage he was inflicting. This was about proving a point, and he basked in the act.
The only other man present, Majestros, was bound atop the platform that had previously held his rival, unable to move, no matter how hard he struggled. Imperator had dosed everyone with the power dampener he’d once used to keep the Coda compliant, and now he was all-powerful amongst them, even more so than before.
He’d floated naked around the grounds, his grotesquely obese body on display to all gathered, carrying equipment from their armouries to the surface. He was in the process of setting up one of the devices when he finally addressed his former comrade.
“I’m almost disappointed by the lack of fight you put up,” he said, looking over at Majestros.
“You’re… a monster… for what… you’ve done…”
“And what have you done, old friend? You survived being cast into hyperspace *, and then what? I see you’ve made some beautiful friends… I like the big one. Are they your consorts? Do you rule the world outside my personal playground? Are you an agent of the Daemonites?”
“I don’t… have to explain… myself… to you…”
“Because if the Daemonites aren’t in charge, I’d be very disappointed. I made a deal with them, you see. I get this bubble of time and space to have my fun, and they have the planet. I have to admit… when I learned I couldn’t procreate, I was very embarrassed. I couldn’t rebuild the Kherubim in my own image… but still… I had your betrothed. I had every lover I could ever want. I win.”
“You… you have nothing…” replied Majestros.
Stirring from unconsciousness, Big Barda’s eyes opened. She felt weak, and knew that she’d been dosed again. The monster was loose… and she had to do something to stop him… but her limbs felt so heavy, and her thoughts were so blurred…. she had to do something…
“Nothing? I have my own slice of reality, which I can reprogram to my heart’s content! I have every single eschaton weapon that Emp ever built! Do you remember this one?”
He moved out of the way of the device he’d reconstructed so it was pointing at Majestic.
“You… can’t… can’t be serious…”
“So, you do! Wonderful. Everybody! WAKE UP!”
His voice boomed, so much so that the ruins of the buildings shook, the trees bent, and the clouds in the skies above parted. At his feet, the Coda stirred from their unconsciousness and realised what had happened-- Imperator had awoken and unleashed a blitzkrieg, and bound them in the same chains that had kept them subjugated for thousands of years!
“I want you all to know what’s coming next. Lord Majestros has returned! Isn’t that grand? The only other surviving Lord of Kherubim, besides myself. I wonder if Emp is out there somewhere… No. Best not get distracted. This is the only man who could free you from this hell I will inflict upon you. And with this weapon… he’ll never have the chance.”
He licked his lips as he pressed a series of buttons on the barrel of the weapon, and made sure the casing was aimed at Majestros' chest.
"Lord Emp called this a god-killer gun. To explain the logistics would take some time, old friend. Suffice to say, the payload involves a quantum singularity encased in a containment field that expands on impact. This envelops the target, so that when the field folds in on itself, it takes the target with it. I anticipate the pain would be tremendous and eternal. And while you are no god... I think this is a death you have earned. An awful one. Do you have any last words?"
Majestros looked over at Zannah, whose eyes burned with rage. Beside her was Kenesha, his daughter, the woman he didn’t have a chance to see grow up. He tried to break his bindings but found the metal immutable. There would be no last minute escape. No rescue. He exaled. “Three.”
“Three last words? Your line was always known for their verbosity, Majestros! You’ve been absolutely disappointing so far. Fine. Three last words. Speak them.”
Majestros smiled and winked at Zannah. “Tesseract bunker-- OPEN!” he barked.
Cursing, Imperator fired the weapon.
The beam didn’t have far to travel, and the payload struck Majestic square in the chest. Upon impact, the space he occupied seemed to fold in on itself-- on himself-- before he vanished completely, the restraints gone with him and only a crackle in the air to signify the successful deployment of the weapon.
The sound he’d made as reality twisted in on him was horrible. He screamed, despite himself, and when space snapped back to normal, the scream was still audible, though quiet… fading… fading… fading…
The horrors didn’t end there. All around the enslaved women, the ruins began to quake, the ceiling began to rupture, and the sky became visible-- great, glowing cracks began to line it, as the tesseract began to open itself up.
Imperator crushed the god-killer gun with his bare hands. He didn’t want such a thing to be used against him.. “Well, this certainly changes things. A whole world to conquer, and Majestros just handed me the keys. Pact be damned, I’m bored of this paltry existence! It’s time to declare war on our old enemies, the Daemonites! Won’t that be grand, Lady Zannah?”
Zealot seethed. Lord Imperator must be stopped, she knew that. He must be stopped or else every living creature in the world outside their pocket dimension would be subject to his will!
That hurt, thought the Guardian.
His war computer booted back up after being on standby, and he reviewed the events of the last-- oh, he’d had his neck broken. That explained a lot. His healing factor had knitted his spine back together, but he knew he’d need to eat a hell of a lot of protein to make up the deficit. He’d landed with one eye half open and the other closed, and he was looking directly at Angie Spica. That must not have been a fun picture for her.
The Midnighter loomed over her, and-- what was he saying? “…What we’re told to do. Look at the Guardian. I broke his neck. Apollo will burn you to ashes, right where you stand. Look at the Guardian.”
The Engineer interrupted. “Midnighter, did I tell you to interact with her? Don’t talk to her anymore.”
But Angie’s mind was clearly swimming. She looked at the Midnighter, who was staring back at her, and then his eyes gestured toward the Guardian, who managed a single wink in her direction.
He knew. The Midnighter knew that the Guardian had a healing factor capable of fixing a broken neck. He’d mentioned some kind of fight computer-- maybe he had some connection to the project that had developed the enhancements in Harper’s own body… or maybe Henry Bendix, who the Engineer had mentioned buying Apollo and the Midnighter from, had seen a good idea in the Guardian and decided to weaponise it in his own way.
Harper tried to think. The Engineer had two deadly metahumans at his disposal. He could transform matter by concentrating his nanite swarm on a target. This wasn’t going to be easy. With one eye on Angie, and the other closed, he tried to formulate a plan. While he watched, she raised her hands to her chest, turned her palms inward, with her fingers separated, then wiggled them slightly. Her eyes were locked on the Engineer’s back, making sure he didn’t see what she was doing. Wait, she had said, in sign language. Then she swept her hands from left to right in a smooth, straight movement. Plan.
She had something. So, James waited, and allowed his body to knit itself together properly. If he had to fight these guys again, he wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be punked so easily next time, and he knew that the only chance he’d have is if he was at full strength.
“Checkmate are settling in for a busy day,” said Katar, entering the monitoring womb where Batman was checking the crisis board. It was quiet. They hadn’t heard from either of the other teams for hours. That wasn’t a good thing. Mera was standing beside the Dark Knight, arms crossed, puzzled at the radio silence from the others.
In the corner of the immense world map that was projected on the screen, footage beamed from one of Wayne Enterprise’s satellite was visible-- it had been re-tasked from its orbit so that it floated over Sarajevo, Bosnia, and it currently showed Checkmate’s elite Knights swarming around the Čolina Kapa Astronomical Observatory. The Rannian cargo ship that Xotar had filled with weaponry was one piece of a larger puzzle, and if Wonder Woman vouched for Checkmate’s White King, that was good enough for the Dark Knight.
He finally spoke, looking back at the new arrival. “Hawkman, I need you to go to the Nevada desert to do a recon on the Guardian’s team’s progress. Their signatures are weak. I’m getting nothing from Cyborg’s transponder.”
Katar removed his helmet, concern on his face as he looked at the cluster of dim lights on the crisis board that showed where the team were and what they were up against. “Does that mean…?”
Batman shook his head. “We don’t know. Do a fly-by. If I don’t hear from you, or things are bad, we’ll call in the reserves and reconfigure to address the threat. Aquawoman?”
“You want me to check in with Wonder Woman’s team. What’s the weather like in the Ute Mountain Reservation?”
“Heavy rainfall,” he replied, glad to be putting his ally in as close to her element as possible, without submersion being involved.
She smiled. “Brilliant. I’ll keep in touch.”
Batman turned to face her. “It’s the same provision, Mera. If things are bad, shout. We’ll come running. I’ve already got the reservists on amber.”
“I understand. What about you?”
“I’m not going to let Checkmate have free range on the island. And I need Aquaman’s… diplomatic skills… to keep them in line. That said, you call, we come-- that goes for both of you.”
Aquawoman and Hawkman both said the magic word, “Door”, and portals opened up to the relevant locations. They stepped through, leaving Batman with his mission: Make sure Checkmate don’t cause any trouble on Laputa.
He left the monitor womb and headed to where the others were. The corridor was lined with windows that showed the ocean, and if you found the right angle you could see Temho-Metya itself, floating after it had been transported some twelve thousand kilometres from the Laptev Sea to the centre of the Pacific Ocean, where Laputa resided. Checkmate were currently investigating the immense crime scene, and had reported they’d found a corpse in the warden’s office-- along with a teleportation signature. Very odd indeed.
The cargo bay they’d set up as a holding area for Temho-Metya’s corrupt staff was guarded by Checkmate pawns, gold and black armoured men and women who wore faceless masks. The bay itself was constructed of malleable meta-materials that reconfigured into individual cells at the touch of a button.
“Glad you could make it down, Bats,” said Trevor, playfully saluting him upon arrival when he spotted him over Aquaman’s shoulder.
“You’re our guests, White King. I apologise for keeping you,” he replied.
“I was just saying to the King and Queen,” Aquaman started, a wry smile on his lips at the thought, “that they can begin their interrogation whenever they want. They’re just prepping their Rooks.”
Batman nodded. “Brainwave and Firebird. I saw them on the security feeds. You’re confident they’ll get to the bottom of this?”
“Tsk! We employ them for this reason, Dark Knight.” Vostok approached the trio, a confident look on her face. “They are ready. We’ve separated the senior staff from the others. We’ll start on the lowest rungs of the ladder and work our way up. It won't take long to find out what's been going on in Temho.”
“Sounds good,” said Aquaman.
{I need a private word with Trevor,} Batman said silently.
“Excuse me, Valentina-- May I call you Valentina?” said Arthur.
“Hmm? No. It’s Black Queen while we’re on duty,” she replied.
“Black Queen, of course. Could I perhaps interest you in a tour of our facilities?”
Her eyes flashed. No one had seen the inner workings of the Justice League’s headquarters since their Metropolis-based Hall of Justice had been in existence-- and that had come to a cataclysmic end when their satellite was crashed into it*!
Vostok checked her nails. “Oh, ya polagayu. That sounds vaguely interesting. Where would you like us to start?”
Taking his offered arm, Valentina was escorted away by Aquaman, who only looked back once to send a wink toward Batman. {Non-essential areas only, of course.}
“Any word on your Bishop?” asked Batman, turning his attention to the White King.
“None on my end. Have you heard anything?” replied Trevor.
“Hh. No. Paul Kirk fell of the face of the Earth two years ago and there’s been no trace of him since*. Are you intending to fill his position?”
“Hmm. Pressure from the White Queen means more than likely. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop looking.”
“Me neither. I owe him my life a few times over, his disappearance deserves my attention.”
“Sure. Sure.”
The two men turned their attention to the two-way glass that looked on into the cargo bay, where Brainwave and Firebird worked in tandem to interrogate the prisoners. Very little was said by either psychic. Every now and then, Serafina said a single word in Russian, and then the prisoner would wince as they thought about whatever the word triggered in them, and the psychic read their minds like books whose pages filled with words when the right circumstances aligned.
Steve broke the silence between them, “I saw you making out with Diana a few weeks back*.”
“As did the entire world. Is that a problem?”
“Not at all. She’s an ex. You’re a… work colleague. There’s always baggage, but I just wanted to say--”
Without warning, Brainwave cried out as the prisoner’s head violently exploded in a cloud of gore, and Firebird collapsed into catatonia at the shock of being connected to the man at the moment of his death--
“What in--?” started Steve, but Batman was already on the move, heading into the cargo bay to see what had happened-- Had the psychics thought too hard at their prisoner? Was this some kind of security precaution the prisoners’ bosses had installed?
The White King followed immediately after, with Checkmate’s Knights flanking him, keeping him guarded even as they surveyed the scene. Henry was covered in a fine, crimson mist, and he was checking on Serafina as she shook violently.
“What was that? What did you do?” growled Batman.
Brainwave shook his head. “Nothing! I didn’t--”
“My god!” shouted Trevor, as the same horrible muted explosion rang out louder and louder in the rest of the cargo bay’s cells-- every one of Temho-Metya’s staff were keeling over, their heads no longer fit for purpose after whatever had caused their deaths was done with them--
Aquaman heard Batman reach out to him over the nanotelepathic link, but had his own concerns-- Valentina and he looked out of the window and witnessed the prison they’d dragged across the globe to their jurisdiction begin to sink!
“Chto proiskhodit?!” she cried out. Checkmate Knights rushed down the hallway to her side, ready to protect her from anything they could physically protect her against.
“I don’t know-- but I intend to find out!” replied Aquaman. He hurried down the corridor to a door, and punched the button beside it to open the hall to the Pacific air. “Get back to the others! I’ll check for survivors!” He dove into the waters crashing below, and chased after the sinking brick of a prison.
Mera walked slowly toward the last known position of the Justice Leaguers who’d been on the scene earlier. Where the rain fell and where she saw it land were two separate places, so she quickly realised there was some kind of cloaking field in operation. With the wave of a hand, the water molecules hung in the air in such a way as to show her the way forward-- and when she stepped through the veil that separated the world she knew and the hidden, she saw a massive pump station, train tracks… and a man.
“You’re not supposed to be here, Justice Leaguer,” he said, calmly. He was tall. Taller than most. Around his neck hung a glowing crystal that shone across his tanned skin, while his face was hidden by an immense mask that resembled that of a bison.
“Who are you to say where I can and can’t go?” said Mera.
“The name’s Jon Standing Bear, but most’a you people call me ‘Super-Chief’. The Ute Mountain Tribal council summoned me when their shaman sensed bad magic in the air. Don’t care if you’re Justice League, you’re not allowed to be here without permission from the Ute.”
Mera took in the man, trying to gauge her proper reaction. She’d tensed upon arrival, ready to summon all her power to manipulate the water pouring down from above, but instead she opened her hands wide and held up her arms. “My friends came here following a lead about a dangerous weapons cache that travels these tracks. I’m sorry if we’ve overstepped, but we work under a United Nations sanction that allows us access to anywhere we’re needed--”
Super-Chief shook his head. “And I’m sure it was ratified by the Ute, and all the indigenous peoples that call this great country home. I’m not here to argue semantics with you, miss. I’m here because I’m needed, and it looks like so are you.”
“Yes, I’m here to help. My teammates are missing-- do you know anything about that?” She approached him slowly, still unsure of what was going on.
“Alls I know is that we aren’t the first folk here. Met a woman, but she didn’t have a face. Said to give this to the first Justice Leaguer that came, said to expect one a’ you.”
He handed her a small card, and Mera looked it up and down. “‘Global Peace Agency’. I know the name… how strange… they were here and left a calling card?”
“They said they cleaned up one mess, but this last one’s on you,” replied Super-Chief.
“Last one? What ‘last one’?” She looked past Super-Chief and saw what the GPA must have meant-- a large sphere fluctuated in and out of sight when observed, with thin cracks lining the surface. She’d never seen anything like it, but if her teammates were here-- did they touch it? And if so, where did they go?
Barda tensed against her restraints, testing their mettle. She knew what she had to do. Something she hoped she would never have to-- but in the face of this monster, more powerful than anything she’d ever faced before, barring perhaps Darkseid himself, she knew what came next. She turned to Wonder Woman. In her hand, she held out her Mother Box and she passed it to Wonder Woman before there could be any argument. “Diana, whatever happens next, I need you… to tell Scott, I love him, okay?”
The Amazonian Princess’ brow furrowed, as she tucked the device into her top. “Barda? What do you mean? We’re going to get out of this. I won’t be chained--”
“What do you mean indeed, creature?” said Imperator, strolling over to her. His hands moved over his bloated stomach casually, enjoying the sensation of movement over his own skin. He’d been in a comatose state for so long, kept there by the women he’d previously kept under his thumb, and he was relishing the newfound freedom he had. “And… what are you?”
Barda ignored his question. “This is a pocket dimension, isn’t it? That’s what everyone’s been saying? Separate from Earth?”
“What are you talking about? This tesseract bunker is engineered to my specification! Completely removed from your paltry world. Soon the walls will fall that keep us separate and I’ll bring your… ‘Errf’… to its knees. Now-- what are you, woman?”
“More than you’ll ever know,” she replied.
“Oh, really? You’re more than the Kherubim, but still weak. I am ancient and powerful. They should have killed me, but--” He glanced up as the sky continued to crack. “Oh. Freedom. Can you smell it? Can you--”
Barda surged forward and clamped her teeth around his nose, and he howled in agony as her celestial jaw bit down hard, and she tore it from his face. She viciously chewed and then swallowed, grinning all the while. Imperator was horrified, clutching at the new orifice on his face as it streaked with blood. He’d been distracted for just a second--
“You-- you-- you--!!"
He backhanded Barda with such strength that her head spun further than it anatomically should have, her neck snapping audibly before she fell to the ground.
“Barda! No!” Diana cried out. She strained against the chains, but even with her gods-given strength she couldn’t escape--
Imperator was raving, one hand clutching his nose, the other pointing at where Barda had fallen. “That bitch! Look what she did to me! I’ll burn your planet to ashes! I’ll kill a whole world for this slight! How-- how could-- how could she?”
Barda’s dead eyes stared at Diana from where she lay, and then a low, rasping voice began to emerge from her still lips, “Because… you don’t know… what I am…”
Imperator-- and to be fair, everyone gathered-- was shocked to see the black crackle of fractal-shaped energy bubble up from the surface of her body. He cursed at the odd sight, and his eyes flashed as his Zoom Vision bore down on the corpse-- the immense heat blinded all those around her for seconds, but when their sight cleared, the energy crackle had taken on a shape, and it was that of a woman--!
“I am Barda Free of the Fourth World! I am the New God of Defiance, and I will not bow my head to a monster who thrives on the suffering of those weaker than it!”
Barda cast a glance toward Wonder Woman and Zealot, and the metal links around them dissolved, a chain reaction that spread across all the bindings that kept the rest of the Coda subjugated!
“...But you can call me Big Barda,” said the shape, and if it had a face, you might think it were wearing a smile.
Imperator roared and dove forward, but he slipped through Barda’s energy form, only to be caught from behind as her front swapped with her back and hooked his arms in one movement.
“Zealot! You know what you need to do!” she declared.
Barda placed a sharp knee in Imperator’s back and he fell to his knees, and with both his arms hooked with one of her own, she used her spare hand to hold his head back, locking his mouth open with her digits.
Zannah rushed toward them and reached a hand down Imperator’s throat, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t clamp down and bite it off. He gagged and coughed as her fingers travelled through the back of his throat and found purchase around what she was looking for-- and with one almighty wrench, she yanked his spine out from inside his mouth, causing him to gag and wretch, even as he lived through the violent ordeal.
Temporarily defeated, Imperator fell forward, every nerve and connection in his body broken, but the monstrous being still refusing to die.
Instinctively knowing that the battle was won, Wonder Woman disregarded everything else and hurried toward Barda, whose energy form was beginning to dissipate. “Barda-- what-- what have you done?”
“The only thing I could think to do-- remember-- tell Scott-- now I--”
Barda disappeared completely, leaving Wonder Woman, the twitching living corpse of Imperator, Zealot and the rest of the Coda in the ruins of the only reality they’d known since leaving Khera. Massive gashes formed in the skin of their world, and a voice could be heard.
“Diana! Diana, what’s going on in there?!”
Wonder Woman didn’t have time to mourn. She focused on the voice, and looked to Zealot. “We need to get out of here!”
Hawkman landed amongst plants that didn’t make any sense to him, considering his rudimentary knowledge of Earth-bound botany. There was a tunnel scoured into the ground, lined with metal, and a number of footprints in the grass and soil. Whatever this place was, it didn’t make sense.
{I’m at the team’s last known location, and I can see where they’ve gone next. I’m going to follow their trail.}
Aquaman’s voice filled his head. {Keep us updated-- something bad just happened on Laputa-- all the prisoners are dead-- Temho-Metya sank-- I’ve got to get off the line-- need to find survivors--}
Katar grimaced. He was about to turn around and head back to their headquarters, but another voice entered his head.
{We’re doing all we can back here, Hawkman. Don’t worry about us. Check on the others!}
Angie concentrated. She’d been able to reabsorb some of her nanites back into her body through licking them back up after expelling them, and she had to think hard for them to reactivate. Thankfully, her mad bastard of a father hadn’t thought to deactivate them, just get them out of her before she could think to do anything with them.
Apollo and the Midnighter were the biggest problem-- they were next-generation super-weapons, capable of dismantling the Justice Leaguers present, but they didn’t want to be the Engineer’s slave-- Midnighter had made that clear by his lack of murdering the Guardian. But how could she stop them from hearing his orders and acting upon them?
Lorraine stirred, woozily, and quickly realised she wasn’t part of Firestorm at the minute, and that she was in a world of trouble. She grabbed Martin’s arm, who made a gruff noise, but didn’t stir. “Oh, boy.”
“Quiet back there,” said the Engineer. He turned and saw who’d awakened, and shook his head. “Oh, I can’t be having that. Apollo--”
Shocking everybody, Lorraine screamed, and blue flames erupted across her body-- she sent a torrent of nuclear heat directly at the Engineer, who reeled back in surprise and pain, the nanotech armour across his body working overtime to protect him. Of course! Just because she’d taken on the mantle of Firestorm didn’t mean she no longer had access to her Firehawk powers, and right now that trump card was what Angie needed to make a move! The Guardian sprang up, worked out the crick in his neck, and pulled his shield up, covering Angie as she made her move.
“Cut yourself!” she shouted at Midnighter, as she rushed over to him and Apollo.
“You what?” he replied, the Guardian agreeing with the look on his face.
“Cut yourself, I think she said,” mused Apollo.
Angie nodded vigoursly. “I need access to the nanites in your blood!”
The Midnighter grimaced and looked over to where the Engineer was adapting and recovering. “I…. can’t. I can’t do things other people tell me to do while he’s still in charge. Here.” He took a small knife from his belt and handed it to her. “Don’t be squeamish, just--”
Angie stabbed him in the hand without hesitation, then did the same to her palm.
“Jesus, you don’t mess about, do you?”
Apollo laughed, enjoying the levity of the moment.
“Not when we’re all about to die, no!”
She mushed the two wounds together, so her blood could mix with his, and absorb the nanites that controlled him so they could link up with the network of nanites inside her own bloodstream. It was an ugly version of how she’d saved Green Lantern from the grips of the extradimensional presence inside his ring all those months ago*, but it was all she could think of doing.
Lorraine-as-Firehawk kept the heat on the Engineer, but could see him adapting to the attack. She shook Martin, who eventually stirred from where he’d been knocked out.
“Whaaaat’s happening?” he asked, blearily.
“Guardian! Keep him distracted for a few seconds!” ordered Lorraine.
Harper leaped toward the Engineer-- Firehawk’s stream of flame subsided as she transformed into Firestorm-- and he jammed his shield into the man’s mouth, causing him to gag in surprise.
“Okay, okay, thinking, thinking…” said Angie, one eye on the Engineer as he stood up, and one on the bracelet on her wrist that allowed her to control the nanites in her blood. Something clicked inside her, and she punched the air. “Yes! Erase all parameters that keep you under the control of anybody but yourself!”
As if struck by some invisible lightning, Apollo and the Midnighter both shook, before vomiting grey. They fell to their knees, just as the Engineer swatted the Guardian away from him, only for the golden avenger to be caught by Mister Miracle, who sprang up from where he’d been left, ready to re-enter the fight!
“Kill them! Kill them all!” ordered the Engineer.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said the Midnighter, wiping the vomit from his lips. He stood up. “Hey, I’ve got a question for you. Have you ever been vivisected before? Because I’ve had some time to think about what I’d like to do with you when I got free.”
“You don’t get to order anybody around anymore,” said Apollo, his aura beginning to rev up around his head.
The Engineer suddenly realised he was vastly outnumbered. “Then it’s time.” He clicked his fingers, and the roots of all his plants began to throb as the nanites began to activate, ready to blossom and pollinate. “That’s all I need. The end of one world, and the start of a new one-- mine. Just like how god didn’t stick around to view his creation, neither will--”
Firestorm shook her head. “Will you shut up?” She sent a beam straight through him, and he collapsed to the floor, drenched inside and out, as the nanites that made up his armour and flowed through his body were transformed into saline. He was bloated for a split second, and then passed out from the trauma of having something so intrinsically tied to his body be removed by elemental transmutation.
“Oh, no, he… he went and activated the final phase,” whispered Angie.
“I’ll transmute them in their roots! It’ll be fine!” said Firestorm. She cast her hand toward the roots and was physically shocked when her powers bounced back and didn’t do what she wanted them to do. “Thaaat should have worked…”
Angie shook her head. “He said… he said they adapt*… Oh, no. I… I can…”
She rushed past the others and entered the control hub where Victor’s corpse was sat and began typing furiously at the keyboards her father had been working at. The others began to approach, but she spun around and sealed herself inside. “I can’t stop the pollination, but I can redirect it.” She turned away and headed back to the keyboards, typing in more, wiping her brow, clenching her bleeding hand as it dripped red over the keys.
Guardian pounded against the glass. “Angie! Open the door!”
“I can melt it open,” said Apollo, his aura intensifying into a halo.
Angie spun around and pointed her finger at the door. “You open that door, and the nanites spill out and get you too. I can… I can make this work. They’ll… they’re going to double back into the control room, through the roots. They’ll expel inward, and die, and then… no one will get hurt.”
“You’ll get hurt!” shouted Harper.
“No… it’s--”
The interior of the control room flooded with a tornado of grey as the nanites were explosively expelled in the wrong direction-- back inside rather than out through the flowers themselves. The window that allowed Harper and the others to see inside was suddenly opaque, and no one could see what happened-- but there was silence-- and stillness--
Aquaman walked out of a portal back into Laputa, where Batman and the rest of Checkmate were waiting. “They’re… they’re all dead. Didn’t even get a chance to drown… Whatever got the prisoners… got the Knights…”
“They’re… they’re all dead? Iisus Khristos,” whispered Vostok.
“I couldn’t do anything… I’m sorry,” said Aquaman.
She shook her head. “I should never have agreed to this…”
Steve approached her slowly. “My rook is with yours, she was inside one of the prisoner’s heads when it went. She nearly got sucked down with him.”
“This is your fault, White King. You suckered me in. How many Checkmate operatives were in Temho when it sank?”
“From both sides of the board, Valentina. Don’t act as if you’re the only one who’s lost good people. Whoever did this struck at us both.”
“I’m withdrawing my operatives from this location. We’re too exposed, chert voz'mi. The hostages you rescued-- are they safe?”
“Yes. Only the hostage-takers were killed,” said Batman.
“You almost sound happy, Dark Knight.”
Batman’s face didn’t show any emotion. “I’m rarely happy, Black Queen. Don’t mistake this moment for one of those occasions.”
Trevor grimaced. “I’ll have the hostages transferred to one of my facilities for debrief and medicals. We’ll see what they have to say. See if there’s anything we can recover from this mess.”
“And I’m going to speak to the UN about this travesty in the morning. I want a full review of the Justice League’s sanction moving forward. Too many people are dead, Batman. Someone has to be held accountable.” She left abruptly, and headed toward the teleporters, flanked by her staff.
Trevor held back, and looked at Aquaman and Batman. “I’ll see what I can do to mitigate this. You followed the book. Went above and beyond. It’s messy, but all we need to know from you-- if you can-- is find out what the hell happened to the people you were holding. This is ugly. Real damn ugly. But if you can figure that out… it’ll help. I’m going to bring in a crime scene analysis team from Washington within the hour to work the location. I assume--”
“You’ll have full access to the relevant recordings,” said Batman.
“Good. I assume you’ll also be working the scene?”
“You’re damn right,” said Aquaman, before his colleague could answer.
“Good. The more eyes on this, the better. I have to head back to Washington, but my Rook will stay on-site. I hope that’s not a problem?”
“None at all,” replied Batman.
The security camera situated in the corridor was pointed directly at them. Sound and vision were clear. The man watching on the other end, far from Laputa and sat in his office a continent or two away, considered what he’d seen-- what he’d been party to, and smiled. It threw a bit of chaos into the mix for the Justice League to have to deal with a blow like this. It was most unfortunate that they’d got so close to putting certain pieces of a puzzle together, only to have the jigsaw be blown up at the last hurdle. He sighed and leaned back in his ergonomic chair and turned off the monitor.
When he exited Temho earlier, he’d left a mess to be dealt with, and clearly his people hadn’t been up to the job. Executing them and destroying the evidence was the only option left to him, and he’d be damned if he was going to let all their planning be for naught…
Mera’s voice was clear, but echoed within the tesseract-- “Diana! Diana, what’s going on in there?!”
“We need to get out of here!” barked Diana.
As the pocket dimension continued to crumble, fragments of broken reality falling from the skies and colliding with the ground like massive sheets of glass, a cacophony of noise filling their ears even as they shouted and tried to stay together, Zannah looked at her people, and then back to Wonder Woman.
“It’s… it’s all we’ve known…” she whispered.
“You’re the Zealot, Zannah! That means you lead your people into the uncertain future! You need to come with me! We all need to get out of here!”
After a moment’s hesitation, Zealot beheld Kenesha, her daughter with Majestros, and understood her role. They began to flock through the cracks in reality and emerged in the pouring rain, where Mera and Super-Chief waited.
“What is that thing?” asked Mera.
Wonder Woman grimaced. “A pocket dimension-- but it’s going to break!”
“And what happens when a pocket dimension breaks, Wonder Woman?” asked Super-Chief, accusatorily.
Even though she didn’t know this man or like his tone, if Mera stood by him there was trust there, so Diana had to follow through on that. “I don’t know, but I also don’t think this is the best place for that to happen.” She looked at the Boom Tube projector in her hand, and then pressed the trigger mechanism.
A massive explosion punctuated the air, and a tunnel in reality formed. Wonder Woman grabbed at the tesseract bunker and found anchorage with her fingers, even as the skin on her hands bubbled and burned. The pain didn’t matter. She heaved with an immense effort and pushed the sphere through the Boom Tube, and prayed it would be far enough to--
The sphere exploded outward inside the Boom Tube, and the tunnel shattered, causing Wonder Woman to tumble out of the sky above ice and snow. She landed hard in a dune, and cried out. The remains of the sphere spun and flashed, and then landed around her-- the city of New Khera reformed in amongst the snow, her fallen towers restored, the ruins left over by Imperator reset to their previous glory upon impact with the main reality.
An orange portal formed next to where Diana fell, and Mera and Zealot hurried through, flanked by Super-Chief and Kenesha.
“This… is not how I expected my day to go…” murmured the indigenous superhero.
“Where… where did we land…?” asked Wonder Woman, as Mera pulled her up.
The Queen of Atlantis put her finger to her ear and waited for a response from the Justice League’s computers. “According to satellite coverage, we’re in Canada, about eight hundred kilometres from the North Pole. A few miles that way is a settlement called Alert.”
“You’re… you’re home…” said Diana, before passing out.
Hawkman made it down to the end of the tunnel and found a staircase which was broken in places where it had been subject to an immense impact. He floated down, careful not to catch himself on anything, then looked around the laboratory he’d arrived in.
Where there had been flowers upstairs on the desert floor, the roots themselves were grey and decrepit, in vats that trailed to the back of the underground chamber to… He located Firestorm, the Guardian and Mister Miracle, along with two costumed characters he didn’t recognise. On the floor in front of the strangers was Angelo Spica, sopping wet and completely naked.
“Not going to be able to get that image out of my head any time soon,” he murmured.
Firestorm turned at his voice and threw her arms around him. “It’s horrible… it’s…”
Hawkman looked passed her. “What happened? Who’s in there? Where’s Angela? Cyborg?”
“Inside,” said Mister Miracle.
The Guardian was on his knees in front of the sealed door. “She… redirected the flow of the nanites. They were designed to…”
The door’s circular handle began to turn. No one could see inside, but they waited with baited breath.
“You don’t know what she’s going to be-- or if it’s still going to be her,” said the Midnighter.
“I don’t like the sound of what you’re saying, stranger,” said Hawkman. “So shut it.”
Angered, the Midnighter went to raise his fist, but Apollo caught it in his. “Not now. We’re free.”
Realising what that meant, he leaned over to Apollo and whispered something in his ear.
With a nod, the Sun God whisked him up into his arms, and the pair shot out of the laboratory, to parts unknown-- just as the door opened--
“How… how do I look?”
Smoke trailed out of the open door, and a figure stumbled forward. Angela Spica stood revealed, but her body was transformed. Her skin was silver, shimmering as the nanites integrated with her body. The Guardian caught her as she stumbled forward, and she looked at him sheepishly.
“You’re alive!” he exclaimed.
“Couldn’t let… a little thing… like nanites… do me in, could I?” she said.
“Whoa…” came another voice from inside the smoking control room.
Mister Miracle unclipped his cape as he realised what he was seeing, and threw it around Victor Stone’s shoulders. He was alive, and-- unexpected by anyone-- completely human.
“Vic? What happened to you? He-- he tore you to bits,” said the Guardian.
“I… I remember all that… and then darkness… now I’m…” He looked at his hands. They looked familiar. His skin was… his. He could feel something under there, and when he touched his wrists, he realised what it was-- a pulse. “What… what happened?”
Angie blinked as the nanites worked their way into her ocular nerves. It was an odd sensation. “I might have reprogrammed the nanites that ended up in there upon impact… they had to go somewhere… so I’ve swapped my blood for nine pints of next gen nanotechnology. And for you… I had them restore your body. You were ravaged by the Throshti… lost so much… so I thought it made sense to give you back everything you had taken from you…”
“You gave me back my body…” said Victor. “But I can feel… something else…” He held out his arm, and it transformed into his Cyborg configuration as he watched. He blinked, and it transformed back to flesh and blood.
“I gave you complete control… so if you want it… you can have both…” said Angie.
Vic was amazed and practically speechless. “Oh, boy.”
There was still work to do. As soon as she’d regained consciousness, Diana had contacted Canada’s Prime Minister to inform him that an alien race had taken up residence in an unused part of the country, three and a half thousand miles away from the nation’s capital of Ottawa. Diplomatic relations would be opened soon, but Zealot informed Diana that the Coda needed time, first and foremost. They’d lost their home world, been enslaved by someone they thought they could trust, and had learned to live in their solitude in that pocket dimension. Give them time. Trust them with time. Wonder Woman couldn’t fault that.
Plus, they had to figure out how to contain Imperator all over again. His spine was still separated from his body, but somehow, he refused to die. Their watch was not over yet, just reconfigured.
The worst was hard to conceive; Majestic was dead. So was Big Barda. She found Mister Miracle as soon as she returned to Laputa, and took him aside so he heard it from her first. She looked at him solemnly, and said, “Scott…”
No good conversation started like that, in that tone, with that voice, with that look on a person’s face. There was a thunder strike in his chest, and he swallowed hard. “What… where’s Barda? Where is she?”
Diana took his hands into her own and held them tight. “She… she sacrificed herself so that we might live… she died, and came back… and then…”
Scott couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He pulled away from Diana and took a step back. “She? She did what?”
Diana shook her head, barely comprehending it herself. “I don’t know exactly… she came back to save us after she died. She became… it was like… pure light… pure energy…”
He blinked, tears forming in his eyes. “I… I… she… she died?”
“Yes, and…”
“And… and she came back…” Scott wiped the tears from his eyes, trying his best to smile even though he was utterly devastated. There was a hint of something in his voice. Hope? “Do you know what we are, Diana?”
She nodded slowly. “You’re New Gods…”
“Yes… and… and that means there are… there are certain rules… of our existence on Earth… on this plane of existence. We… we take a human shape, and that means we can’t access our full celestial power. Do you… do you remember what she said, when we faced Ares? When we talked him out of destroying the world?”
Diana blinked. She remembered the eloquence with which her friend had spoken in the face of the God of Nothing, how they’d laughed at what Ares had become… what were her exact words? “I am a New God. And if I were to shed this mortal form and unleash my true self on this world, I would not only end your existence but that of every single creature that roams this beautiful marble. I am incarnate, just as my husband is, and that means while we fight with our lives on the line, we still have all the knowledge that comes with our connection to the Source.*”
Scott nodded, remembering himself. “She had to die to access her full potential… and now she’s… part of the Source. Part of the living fabric of energy that connects us all. She’s not dead… she’s… everywhere.” He tried to hold himself together, but his shoulders buckled and he doubled over, crying. “She’s not dead… she’s just gone…”
“What can we do? Is there… is there anything?” Diana asked.
“I… I need to find her again… there… there has to be a way, and I’ll find it. I’ll always find a way. We crossed hell to be together the first time, and I’d do it all over again, ten times, a hundred, an infinite time over, to bring her back.”
“We’ll bring her back. If there’s a way, we’ll bring her back,” said Wonder Woman.
Mister Miracle put a hand on Wonder Woman’s shoulder. “We’ll bring her back,” he said, echoing his friend’s sentiment.
He’d been given a task, and he’d spent all day and most of the night working away at it. Tim Wayne, aka Robin, looked up from the computer as Batman stepped into the Cave. He looked exhausted, like he’d been through a war, and that was nothing new considering their line of work. “How’re you holding up, boss?”
Bruce pulled off his cowl and removed his cape, then took a seat beside his partner. “What have you got for me?” he asked.
“Uh, I looked into Ray Gauss as instructed. So, we know that he’s the attorney that represented Angelo Spica*, but I also found out he worked for Sterling & Harris, and that’s where things got interesting.”
The Boy Wonder typed something into the computer and documents began to spin into view, before a web of connections formed.
Bruce’s eyes became slits. “Talk me through it.”
“They’re involved mostly in corporate work; contracts, trademark, copyright. A lot of it medical. Their biggest client is Aleph Pharmaceuticals.”
“This all started with the death of their CEO and founder, Alejandro Cuetes.”
“Yeah… that’s what I thought. When Malik Swain, their new CEO, joined the company, a couple of months back… He’s the one who got Spica the representation. He’s the reason Angelo escaped.”
“We can’t prove that,” said Bruce.
“No, but it’s… but it’s like cause and effect,” Tim said.
“Just because that’s the point at which it happened, doesn’t mean we can link Swain to it. Angela said that Cuetes used to work with her father, so that’s all we’ll get. We need more.”
Tim frowned. “But this is…”
Bruce patted him on the shoulder. “A really good start. And we’ll work it together. Good work, Tim. Head upstairs and let Alfred know I’m back. I… need to think about all this. Then we can get started.”
Zannah couldn’t find the tears. Majestros had died, and… she hadn’t cried. She was devastated, but it had been… so long. She had so much more to be concerned about right now. Imperator was contained once more, a grotesque horror that refused to end, but they had an elegant solution-- they simply strung the two separate parts of his body a far distance apart in the depths of their citadel. They wouldn’t be knitting back together any time soon. They didn’t have enough gods left to save them.
Meanwhile, Kenesha was distant. She’d never met her father before today, only hearing the stories about her dreaming warrior of a dad from the mouth of her mother, and having been so shocked at his appearance earlier, and it being the cause of Imperator’s escape… she felt like she was to blame, and to be honest… she was right to feel that way. She’d locked herself in her own chambers with the wreckage of the god-killer gun, hoping to reconstruct it so they could track where it had sent Majestros. She wasn’t hopeful, but it gave her something to focus on…
“Well, you look like you’ve had one hell of an existence, Zan.”
At the man’s voice, she threw her blade across the room, only for it to be caught by a second man.
“Who-- oh. Oh, Hecate be damned. You.”
Jack Marlowe, aka Spartan, lowered her weapon from where he’d caught it mid-throw, and then offered it back to her as he and Jacob Marlowe, his supposed uncle, approached.
Jacob was a diminutive man, and it was always a source of teasing back on Khera, where he was better known as Lord Emp. “I’m sorry it took us this long to find you, kiddo. But it’s been one hell of a life.”
“You have no idea.” Ignoring the offered return of her sword, she embraced Emp tightly, and then looked at the third man accompanying them, someone who looked and smelled definitively human, with a hooded coat obscuring his features. “Who’s that?”
Emp smiled and took a cigar out from a silver case. “Him? Well, here’s the thing… we thought Majestros had gone bad*, so I put a team together to kill him**. Turns out, not only was he not… we’re also too late to do anything of the sort. I’m so sorry for your loss, Zan.”
“He saved us, in a way. I just wish… he had got to meet his daughter…”
Emp’s face lit up. “You and him had a kid? Geez Louise! I’m sure she’s a right terror. Anyway, this guy?”
“I can introduce myself, Marlowe,” said the scruffy man at the back of them. He lowered his hood to reveal the face of someone who had been in numerous fights in his life and had never let that hold him down. He had brown hair and sideburns that went down toward his jawline to his chin. “I’m Cole Cash. Folks call me Grifter.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Zealot.
Emp grinned. “Oh, that’s a story unto itself. Maybe we’ll tell it next month, but for now, we’ve got an infestation we need to deal with. And I just found out my people are still alive-- and that means the Daemonites will find out soon as well. We need to come up with a plan-- or they’ll win the longest-running war in all of existence.”
Zealot looked at Spartan’s open hands, and took her sword back. “And we can’t have that, can we?”
The Guardian looked at the crisis board in the monitoring womb. There were two new superhumans on the board that vanished off satellite coverage within seconds of leaving the Nevada Garden. Who were Apollo and the Midnighter? A mystery for now, but with definite ties to Henry Bendix. He’d need to be visited soon. He’d need to be interrogated.
According to Diana, Big Barda and Majestic were dead. Such losses were unimaginable this morning. She’d spoken to Scott, told him about his wife, but he seemed optimistic that she was simply gone, not deceased, but that’s not how Harper worked. If they could bring something actionable to the table, he’d believe it… but for now?
What did John Lennon say? ‘I believe in everything until it's disproved.’? That wasn’t Harper, not even with everything he’d seen in his life. No. He prayed that Barda would return. That Majestic could come back… but he’d lost loved ones before, and knew that sometimes when people died, they stayed dead.
New Khera, the alien city, was currently under satellite surveillance in the Canadian wilderness. The Americans were making noise about a military presence, but Canada had kept them at arm’s length for the time being. That was good. Harper would have to put a call in to some of his contacts, get them to cool down. But that was a big one. An entire city full of Majestic-level superhumans. If the Daemonite threat was real, and Harper believed it was from his conversations with the now-deceased Kherubim lord, then they could be useful. He would speak to Diana. Feel out an alliance of sorts, if that would work.
Angie was down in the labs with Victor, testing herself. Harper had recommended bringing in outside help, maybe Ray Palmer, or Niles Caulder, perhaps even Will Magnus, but she’d been adamant-- she had this. She was now infused with the same kind of nanotechnology that her father used for evil. He hoped that she wouldn’t take a turn in that direction-- What was he saying? Of course she wouldn’t. She was a good person. Nature over nurture.
They still hadn’t found out who Pathfinder was. They weren’t any closer to knowing what was going on in Temho-Metya. Xotar was in custody, but keeping shtum. Diana wanted to use her lasso. Harper didn’t disagree. Tomorrow, perhaps. With the unexplained deaths of the prison guards in their custody, Checkmate were making a lot of noise, especially the Black Queen. Vostok was volatile, he knew her from her rookie days, and it would take some expert political wrangling to get her calm.
Maybe Steve Trevor, the vaunted White King, had it in him. Harper didn’t know. Batman hadn’t found anything to tell the Justice League how the guards had died. It was a worry. There was nothing biological or artificial in their blood streams. It was as if they’d spontaneously blown their tops. Not as if… it was.
And then there was Aleph Pharmaceuticals. The death of Alejandro Cuetes in front of Arthur and Diana was worrisome, as was the wine-stained napkin that had led them to the Engineer’s door, only for him to escape. Harper had his own links to the company, having gone to them to ask for help with his daughter’s cancer. They’d agreed to extend a trial to her hospital district… it wasn’t like she was the only one benefiting.
Tucked in his belt, his cell phone rang. He answered, and the voice of his daughter filled him with warmth. She talked quickly, excitedly, which surprised him, considering her advanced age. “Dad. I’m… I’m okay. I’ve just spoken to the doctors. The treatment worked. The cancer… they’ve never seen anything like it. It had metastasized. Spread everywhere. But now… it’s gone into remission. It’s… how soon can you be here?”
James Harper swallowed hard. He was compromised. Well and truly. But his daughter… “I’m on my way*.”
Horrors abound as we draw closer to our seventy-fifth issue!
Last issue, BATMAN and HAWKMAN infiltrated a corrupt Russian prison, only to be discovered by the mysterious INSPECTOR, who murdered the WARDEN and vanished from the scene! The Justice Leaguers managed to complete their mission without casualties, and now they have a prison’s worth of hostages and guards to learn the truth from!
What exactly was going on with the cargo cult weapons the hostages were being forced to build, and what was XOTAR, THE WEAPONS MASTER’s part in the scheme? Will the Justice League ever learn the truth about their mysterious informant, PATHFINDER?
Meanwhile, the team’s science advisor ANGELA SPICA along with CYBORG, FIRESTORM, THE GUARDIAN and MISTER MIRACLE walked into a trap devised by the villainous mad scientist known as THE ENGINEER, who unleashed his bodyguards, APOLLO and THE MIDNIGHTER, on the team!
With CYBORG completely dismantled and his brain destroyed, and THE GUARDIAN’s neck savagely snapped, the team are thin on the ground with little to no hope of surviving the day, while THE ENGINEER intends to unleash a nanomachine swarm on Las Vegas to force the artificial evolution of every man, woman and child present into his tailor-designed Homo Cyberneticus, the nano-infused next step of mankind!
Finally, BIG BARDA, MAJESTIC and WONDER WOMAN journeyed into a mysterious pocket dimension to discover that the Kherubim race, long thought lost, had taken refugee there after the destruction of their home world!
For the Kherubim, the tesseract hadn’t been the haven it was designed to be though, as upon their arrival the grotesquely evil LORD IMPERATOR had transformed it into his own personal playgound after slaughtering all the men, and it took a revolution led by ZEALOT to win the day!
In the present day, ZEALOT reveals the reason behind her revolt-- IMPERATOR discovered she was pregnant, and wanted to take that away from her! It took all her strength to lead the Coda into revolt, and they had established a martial society at peace since then. But when she reveals to MAJESTIC that her child was his, this fact distracts their daughter, SAVANT from her duties keeping IMPERATOR in check, and he rises from his bondage, intent on inflicting the maximum amount of revenge on all those who oppose him!
With all this in mind, please join us now for the continuing adventures of the JUSTICE LEAGUE--
They’d never faced an opponent as singularly devastating as Imperator before.
Perhaps if the Flash were here, they might stand a chance, but his speed was one thing-- the strength of their opponent was another.
Imperator didn’t even bother throwing a punch at first. He sped out of the dungeon he’d been kept in for thousands of years, and raided the armoury. Majestic was hot on his tail, and Zealot led Big Barda and Wonder Woman soon after. Halfway up the stairs that led to the surface, Imperator returned, slapped Majestros brutally with the back of his hand, laughing all the while, and then punched him repeatedly. A thousand punches in a second. Ten thousand the next.
Since his arrival into the world some near two years ago, Majestros had faced god-weapons*.
*Justice League #51
He had battled war deities themselves*.
*Justice League #52
He had been confronted with extradimensional horrors clawing their way into this reality*.
*Justice League #55-58
He had warred with Green Martians and Burning Martians alike*.
*Justice League #59-63
He had confronted the children of gods and their fathers* and he’d never
been
hit
as
hard
as this.
*Justice League #67-70
Blood and spittle flew from his lips, the bones of his face pulverised, and he collapsed to the ground in agony. He tried to stand but Imperator kicked him, barefoot, in the ribs, and his sternum nearly crumbled. It hurt to breathe, and he realised… in between agonising breaths, as his lungs pushed against his broken rib cage... that he had a daughter, and he might never get to speak to her.
“Where’s the fight in you, Majestros? Or is that I’m, as ever, stronger than you, and always will be?”
A lasso of golden light flew around Imperator’s arms and was pulled tight. He looked at Wonder Woman, who held onto the other end with pure determination. “Submit!”
“Never to you. Never to a lowly human,” he replied.
He spun himself around like a miniature tornado, and Diana flew towards him despite herself. At the last second, he stopped, shrugged off the unbreakable lasso, and grabbed her by the throat.
“Oh. Not so lowly, are you. I can smell it on you. Celestial light. You’re--”
Barda barrelled into his bloated torso, and he laughed, not moving an inch. She looked up at his bearded face, and then he laughed some more.
“I am a Kherubim Lord. The last true master of all of Khera. And you think you can, what, tackle me?”
Barda grabbed his beard and yanked down, taking him by surprise. She punched him in the face with a devastating undercut, but the bones in her fingers and knuckles fractured. She’d never been so surprised by a punch than just then.
“Surprising. Not altogether unpleasant.”
He sent his knee into her stomach, only for Zealot to dive toward him in the gap presented by Barda’s fall. She held one of the pickaxes used to keep his spine from healing for the last thousand years, and he kicked Barda back into his former captor.
Zealot rolled out of the way of Barda’s body in midair, and barrelled towards him. She swung with all her might toward his eyes-- but he melted the axe into atoms with a blast of Zoom Vision.
Readjusting on the fly, she opened her hands wide, her fingers like talons, and kept going for his orbital socket-- hoping to prise an eyeball out at least-- but he shifted all his immense weight forward, pulverising the stone underfoot, and sent her into the staircase with an almighty headbutt .
Casually, Imperator flung Diana into one wall by the hair, then the opposite wall, then the floor, and then the floor again. Again and again and again. She’d never been manhandled in such a way, and each devastating impact shook something loose in her body and the citadel they battled underneath.
He released her, and she collapsed in a bloody pile atop Zealot. Barda was pulling herself up at the bottom of the stairs, so he inhaled swiftly, and then exhaled with the force of a compact hurricane, sending her crashing into the ground beneath her and not stopping there-- the force of the attack sent her metres down, and then the floor collapsed on top of her, burying her there.
Majestic looked up, his face healing, but his head a mess of concussive thoughts. Through bleary, swollen eyes, he tried to focus on Imperator, but the obese titan drove a foot into his back and ground it down into his spine.
“Majestros. The great hope of the Kherubim. Cast into the void at my hands. Now returned in their hour of greatest need, the prodigal son. It’s almost… mythic, isn’t it? Your betrothed there, the Zealot, the most holy of holies, defiled by… me. The darkness incarnate. And you… returned… and useless. What say you to that?”
“I’ll… we’ll… stop… you…” Majestros growled.
“Not with your back in that shape, old friend.”
He dug his heel in at just the right spot, and Majestic cried out in agony as his legs stopped working.
Imperator looked up, using his Zoom Vision to see that the Coda were rallying over head. They’d done drills for this kind of thing, clearly. It would take him… twenty seconds, tops, to bring them to heel like he had the others.
He licked his lips. He had so many feelings to work out on his female captors. So many.
JUSTICE LEAGUE
Issue Seventy-Four: “Nevada Garden”
HoM / FLINCHUM / BOWERS
NEVADA GARDEN:
“Let’s put young Victor here, shall we?” mused the Engineer, gesturing beside him.
He’d opened up the central cylinder chamber of the laboratory and led Angie inside, along with Apollo and the Midnighter. There were numerous vats containing the roots of the nanite flowers that were threatening to blossom on the surface of the Nevada desert.
As instructed, Apollo dropped Cyborg’s remains into a seat next to the control panel. Grey tissue dribbled from the numerous cracks in the ravaged skeletal structure on display. It was a horrible sight. Angie couldn’t bear to look.
The Engineer shook his head. “Oh, he’s making a mess everywhere, tsk. Apologise, Victor.” There came no response from the dead shell of Cyborg, so the Engineer lifted him up and slipped his hand into the mechanism inside his head, and wielded him like a ventriloquist would his puppet. “‘I’m sorry for spilling myself on your furnishings, Engineer.’ Oh, that’s okay, Victor. You’re dead, so it can’t really be held against you. Ha.”
“You’re… you’re really, truly mad…” said Angie.
“I’m a visionary. I thought you’d be interested in hearing the logistics of my experiment, as a fellow scientist. See, the central cylinder is where the nanites will spool out into the roots and up into and out of the flowers. This is the hub of my experiment. The delivery system of the future.”
“The future isn’t transforming innocent men and women into whatever you think is a better form for them! The future isn’t… hurting or killing people… you’ve just… you’ve torn apart anything that’s good in this world like it’s your duty and I don’t understand why!”
“Because if we don’t change, we die. You don’t know what’s coming, Angela. You don’t see what’s on the horizon. But I do. I know because I’ve been part of it. There is a darkness coming, and the only way we can stay in the light is if we change. And as you’re incapable of changing, you have to die for the rest of the world to live. Starting with Las Vegas.”
“You can’t--!”
“Apollo, if she talks back to me again, incinerate her, won’t you?”
Apollo’s eyes lit up, and Angie fell silent. Her mouth opened and closed, trying to find the words that wouldn’t lead to her death but she knew--
The Midnighter leaned over towards her. “He will, you know. We do exactly what we’re told to do. Look at the Guardian. I broke his neck. Apollo will burn you to ashes, right where you stand. Look at the Guardian.”
“Midnighter, did I tell you to interact with her? Don’t talk to her anymore.”
The Midnighter nodded and walked away, staring a hole through Angie.
What was that all about? she wondered.
LAPUTA:
Steve Trevor, aka the White King of Checkmate, materialised on the teleport pad awaiting him, flanked by a squad of Checkmate’s gold and black armoured Knights, with Laputa’s support staff watching from the control booth that allowed Checkmate to enter the premises. He was dressed casually; black jeans and a grey t-shirt with a white jacket emblazoned with the chess-piece logo of Checkmate on the shoulder. He had no reason to be formal, and he didn’t want to set the wrong tone with his arrival.
Instead, he glanced around at the gathering of his people and said, “Well, this is an international incident waiting to happen.”
“I believe that’s what we’re here to mitigate, White King,” replied White King’s Rook, a familiar sight to some, and sure to rock some boats when recognised. “Welcome aboard.”
Hierarchy meant something in Checkmate. First, you had the Royals: Black King and Queen-- Nemo Perkins and Valetina Vostok-- were in charge of operations, while the White King and Queen-- Trevor and Catherine Cobert-- oversaw intelligence. You couldn’t authorise an operation without intelligence, and intelligence couldn’t authorise an operation without doing their due diligence, so there was a careful balance between the two royal families.
Under the royals, each member had a Bishop and a Rook, two specialised operatives cum advisors, their most trusted right and left hands. They had the ability to autonomously run ground operations and intelligence gathering on behalf of their king or queen. They cycled in and out of duty. You’d never see one on the scene at the same time as another, due to security constraints. They were vetted by their King or Queen, and chosen for the level of trust and confidence they instilled.
After that, you had the Knights, intended for wet work and intelligence gathering, and everyone else fell under the definition of Pawn, nominally based in each of their royal family’s ‘Castles’-- the secret locations they operated from. Trevor was based in Washington, Cobert somewhere in France, Vostok in Russia and no one knew about Perkins. He kept mum about that one.
Trevor looked around at his men and women and raised his hands to get their attention. “Okay, folks. We’re here as friends, so let’s not wave our guns around, all right? Holster them.”
White King’s Bishop was still MIA*, so the position was vacant. That meant he leaned on White King’s Rook more than he might usually, but he was confident his selection could handle the pressure.
*Check out DC2 Most Wanted for why
Checkmate had teleported onto the Justice League’s island headquarters as per the invitation extended to them by the team themselves. It was Hawkman who greeted them at the threshold between the teleportation room and the rest of the base.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice, White King.”
“You’re friends, Hawkman. UN-sanctioned and all that comes with it. If you need an assist, we come.”
Katar smiled, then noticed a familiar face. “If you don’t mind me asking-- why is he here?” Instead of gesturing with a nod or a finger, he used his mace to point at White King’s Rook, who tipped his sunglasses down and smiled.
“Who, me?”
Henry King Jr, aka Brainwave, was known to Hawkman by reputation alone-- or more accurately, his father’s reputation. King Sr was an enemy of the Justice Society back in the day, his psychic abilities fearsome to behold. If his son had an ounce of that power…
“…And I do, Hawkman. Calm your thoughts, you’ll give me a headache,” said Brainwave.
“You’re in my head?” growled Hawkman.
“You’re shouting up in there!” replied Brainwave, his voice reaching the same volume as Katar’s but pitching an octave or three higher.
Steve took a step between them. “Gentlemen, please. Henry is a fully vetted member of Checkmate, and he’s on the best medication our agency can afford, so as to clamp down on any of his father’s tendencies.”
Katar’s mace grip tightened audibly, but before he could say another word, Aquaman entered the fray, directing traffic upon arrival. “Hawkman. Take Brainwave and the Knights to where Temho-Metya’s staff are being held. They can begin the debrief at their leisure. White King--”
The teleporters powered back up, and one of Laputa’s support staff looked toward the Justice League. “It’s Checkmate’s authorisation ID again. A location in Russia? We’re querying.”
Aquaman’s brow furrowed. “Who could that be, White King?”
“Oh, boy,” exhaled Steve. “It’ll be the in-laws.”
The support staff checked the readings on his monitor. “They’re green, Aquaman, sir. All above board.”
“In-laws?” asked Katar.
“Black Queen,” replied Brainwave.
With permission granted, a blonde woman materialised before them, flanked by a lithe woman whose face was obscured by a mask that only showed her eyes, nose and mouth. They both wore all black, and the buttoned-up jacket the blonde wore also had a Checkmate logo on the shoulder. “Chert voz'mi, ty ser'yezno, Trevor?!”
“Language, Valentina, we’re guests here…” replied Steve.
“Poshel ty! The Justice League have overstepped their mandate!” She walked up to Hawkman and began pointing into his chest. “You’ve kidnapped Russian nationals from Russian soil! This is an act of war! Idiotskiye superlyudi!”
Hawkman took a step back from her finger, and grimaced. “Do you know why we rescued one hundred and twenty-seven missing people from Temho-Metya? Do you know why the prison had been converted into a weapons factory? Do you have any answers at all, Ms Vostok?”
“Weapons… factory?” She turned to the masked woman behind her. “Eto pravda?”
“Da,” nodded the masked woman.
Brainwave leaned over to Hawkman, and said, “That’s Serafina Arkadin, known as Zhar-Ptitsa-- Firebird. She’s a psychic, like me. She’s just been asked to verify your story. She did. She can glean you’re not lying from--”
“I didn’t ask and I don't care,” replied Katar, before looking over to Aquaman. “I’ll check in with the other field teams.”
Aquaman hadn’t taken his eyes off Serafina. Black Queen had a psychic, and so did White King… Checkmate sure did look like they were trying to read people’s minds… and he wondered what the implication was for the organisation. Vostok and Trevor were talking quickly, in hushed tones, and he didn’t care to listen in. But two psychics…
“I can’t hear your thoughts,” said Brainwave, wandering over to the King of the Seas. “It’s so serene standing over here. Most people transmit without knowing it. Thinking aloud. It’s difficult to control it. White King learned how to do it after training with Wonder Woman, but others just spew whatever it is they’re thinking.”
Having come to an accord during their hushed yet heated discussion, Steve cleared his throat. “The Black Queen and I have come to an agreement. It breaks our usual rules of operational conduct, but we’ll both be overseeing this situation. You have to understand--”
Vostok cut him off. “This is a jurisdictional nightmare. Russian nationals in the custody of a volunteer rescue organisation manned predominantly by Americans, or western-affiliated actors, looks very suspect. At least with myself present, the Federal Assembly won’t have additional cause for concern.”
“And… where will all this take place?” asked Aquaman.
“With your permission… this location is in international waters, is it not?” said Vostok.
Arthur could have laughed. “So, you’re saying… and, please, make sure I’m not mistaken… you’re unhappy that we’ve taken Russian citizens into custody-- even though it is well within our mandate-- but to prevent there being a conflict of interest for yourselves, you want to perform the debriefs in our headquarters?”
Valentina smiled slyly. “I can see the reports of your royal acumen were not exaggerated, King Orin. White Knights will deal with interrogation and debrief, Black Knights will provide security.”
“Intelligence and operations, working in tandem. Checkmate at its finest,” said Steve.
“Well, it would be our pleasure to host you for the day. Please, follow me…”
NEW KHERA:
Every single free woman in the pocket dimension was in chains, strung to one another by the neck by indestructible Kherubim metal links. After securing his new prisoners, Imperator raised the circular stage he’d been imprisoned upon from the catacombs to the surface, toppling the towers on either side of the grounds to the floor during the act. He was graceless, and uncaring about the collateral damage he was inflicting. This was about proving a point, and he basked in the act.
The only other man present, Majestros, was bound atop the platform that had previously held his rival, unable to move, no matter how hard he struggled. Imperator had dosed everyone with the power dampener he’d once used to keep the Coda compliant, and now he was all-powerful amongst them, even more so than before.
He’d floated naked around the grounds, his grotesquely obese body on display to all gathered, carrying equipment from their armouries to the surface. He was in the process of setting up one of the devices when he finally addressed his former comrade.
“I’m almost disappointed by the lack of fight you put up,” he said, looking over at Majestros.
“You’re… a monster… for what… you’ve done…”
“And what have you done, old friend? You survived being cast into hyperspace *, and then what? I see you’ve made some beautiful friends… I like the big one. Are they your consorts? Do you rule the world outside my personal playground? Are you an agent of the Daemonites?”
*Justice League #47
“I don’t… have to explain… myself… to you…”
“Because if the Daemonites aren’t in charge, I’d be very disappointed. I made a deal with them, you see. I get this bubble of time and space to have my fun, and they have the planet. I have to admit… when I learned I couldn’t procreate, I was very embarrassed. I couldn’t rebuild the Kherubim in my own image… but still… I had your betrothed. I had every lover I could ever want. I win.”
“You… you have nothing…” replied Majestros.
Stirring from unconsciousness, Big Barda’s eyes opened. She felt weak, and knew that she’d been dosed again. The monster was loose… and she had to do something to stop him… but her limbs felt so heavy, and her thoughts were so blurred…. she had to do something…
“Nothing? I have my own slice of reality, which I can reprogram to my heart’s content! I have every single eschaton weapon that Emp ever built! Do you remember this one?”
He moved out of the way of the device he’d reconstructed so it was pointing at Majestic.
“You… can’t… can’t be serious…”
“So, you do! Wonderful. Everybody! WAKE UP!”
His voice boomed, so much so that the ruins of the buildings shook, the trees bent, and the clouds in the skies above parted. At his feet, the Coda stirred from their unconsciousness and realised what had happened-- Imperator had awoken and unleashed a blitzkrieg, and bound them in the same chains that had kept them subjugated for thousands of years!
“I want you all to know what’s coming next. Lord Majestros has returned! Isn’t that grand? The only other surviving Lord of Kherubim, besides myself. I wonder if Emp is out there somewhere… No. Best not get distracted. This is the only man who could free you from this hell I will inflict upon you. And with this weapon… he’ll never have the chance.”
He licked his lips as he pressed a series of buttons on the barrel of the weapon, and made sure the casing was aimed at Majestros' chest.
"Lord Emp called this a god-killer gun. To explain the logistics would take some time, old friend. Suffice to say, the payload involves a quantum singularity encased in a containment field that expands on impact. This envelops the target, so that when the field folds in on itself, it takes the target with it. I anticipate the pain would be tremendous and eternal. And while you are no god... I think this is a death you have earned. An awful one. Do you have any last words?"
Majestros looked over at Zannah, whose eyes burned with rage. Beside her was Kenesha, his daughter, the woman he didn’t have a chance to see grow up. He tried to break his bindings but found the metal immutable. There would be no last minute escape. No rescue. He exaled. “Three.”
“Three last words? Your line was always known for their verbosity, Majestros! You’ve been absolutely disappointing so far. Fine. Three last words. Speak them.”
Majestros smiled and winked at Zannah. “Tesseract bunker-- OPEN!” he barked.
Cursing, Imperator fired the weapon.
The beam didn’t have far to travel, and the payload struck Majestic square in the chest. Upon impact, the space he occupied seemed to fold in on itself-- on himself-- before he vanished completely, the restraints gone with him and only a crackle in the air to signify the successful deployment of the weapon.
The sound he’d made as reality twisted in on him was horrible. He screamed, despite himself, and when space snapped back to normal, the scream was still audible, though quiet… fading… fading… fading…
The horrors didn’t end there. All around the enslaved women, the ruins began to quake, the ceiling began to rupture, and the sky became visible-- great, glowing cracks began to line it, as the tesseract began to open itself up.
Imperator crushed the god-killer gun with his bare hands. He didn’t want such a thing to be used against him.. “Well, this certainly changes things. A whole world to conquer, and Majestros just handed me the keys. Pact be damned, I’m bored of this paltry existence! It’s time to declare war on our old enemies, the Daemonites! Won’t that be grand, Lady Zannah?”
Zealot seethed. Lord Imperator must be stopped, she knew that. He must be stopped or else every living creature in the world outside their pocket dimension would be subject to his will!
NEVADA GARDEN:
That hurt, thought the Guardian.
His war computer booted back up after being on standby, and he reviewed the events of the last-- oh, he’d had his neck broken. That explained a lot. His healing factor had knitted his spine back together, but he knew he’d need to eat a hell of a lot of protein to make up the deficit. He’d landed with one eye half open and the other closed, and he was looking directly at Angie Spica. That must not have been a fun picture for her.
The Midnighter loomed over her, and-- what was he saying? “…What we’re told to do. Look at the Guardian. I broke his neck. Apollo will burn you to ashes, right where you stand. Look at the Guardian.”
The Engineer interrupted. “Midnighter, did I tell you to interact with her? Don’t talk to her anymore.”
But Angie’s mind was clearly swimming. She looked at the Midnighter, who was staring back at her, and then his eyes gestured toward the Guardian, who managed a single wink in her direction.
He knew. The Midnighter knew that the Guardian had a healing factor capable of fixing a broken neck. He’d mentioned some kind of fight computer-- maybe he had some connection to the project that had developed the enhancements in Harper’s own body… or maybe Henry Bendix, who the Engineer had mentioned buying Apollo and the Midnighter from, had seen a good idea in the Guardian and decided to weaponise it in his own way.
Harper tried to think. The Engineer had two deadly metahumans at his disposal. He could transform matter by concentrating his nanite swarm on a target. This wasn’t going to be easy. With one eye on Angie, and the other closed, he tried to formulate a plan. While he watched, she raised her hands to her chest, turned her palms inward, with her fingers separated, then wiggled them slightly. Her eyes were locked on the Engineer’s back, making sure he didn’t see what she was doing. Wait, she had said, in sign language. Then she swept her hands from left to right in a smooth, straight movement. Plan.
She had something. So, James waited, and allowed his body to knit itself together properly. If he had to fight these guys again, he wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be punked so easily next time, and he knew that the only chance he’d have is if he was at full strength.
LAPUTA:
“Checkmate are settling in for a busy day,” said Katar, entering the monitoring womb where Batman was checking the crisis board. It was quiet. They hadn’t heard from either of the other teams for hours. That wasn’t a good thing. Mera was standing beside the Dark Knight, arms crossed, puzzled at the radio silence from the others.
In the corner of the immense world map that was projected on the screen, footage beamed from one of Wayne Enterprise’s satellite was visible-- it had been re-tasked from its orbit so that it floated over Sarajevo, Bosnia, and it currently showed Checkmate’s elite Knights swarming around the Čolina Kapa Astronomical Observatory. The Rannian cargo ship that Xotar had filled with weaponry was one piece of a larger puzzle, and if Wonder Woman vouched for Checkmate’s White King, that was good enough for the Dark Knight.
He finally spoke, looking back at the new arrival. “Hawkman, I need you to go to the Nevada desert to do a recon on the Guardian’s team’s progress. Their signatures are weak. I’m getting nothing from Cyborg’s transponder.”
Katar removed his helmet, concern on his face as he looked at the cluster of dim lights on the crisis board that showed where the team were and what they were up against. “Does that mean…?”
Batman shook his head. “We don’t know. Do a fly-by. If I don’t hear from you, or things are bad, we’ll call in the reserves and reconfigure to address the threat. Aquawoman?”
“You want me to check in with Wonder Woman’s team. What’s the weather like in the Ute Mountain Reservation?”
“Heavy rainfall,” he replied, glad to be putting his ally in as close to her element as possible, without submersion being involved.
She smiled. “Brilliant. I’ll keep in touch.”
Batman turned to face her. “It’s the same provision, Mera. If things are bad, shout. We’ll come running. I’ve already got the reservists on amber.”
“I understand. What about you?”
“I’m not going to let Checkmate have free range on the island. And I need Aquaman’s… diplomatic skills… to keep them in line. That said, you call, we come-- that goes for both of you.”
Aquawoman and Hawkman both said the magic word, “Door”, and portals opened up to the relevant locations. They stepped through, leaving Batman with his mission: Make sure Checkmate don’t cause any trouble on Laputa.
He left the monitor womb and headed to where the others were. The corridor was lined with windows that showed the ocean, and if you found the right angle you could see Temho-Metya itself, floating after it had been transported some twelve thousand kilometres from the Laptev Sea to the centre of the Pacific Ocean, where Laputa resided. Checkmate were currently investigating the immense crime scene, and had reported they’d found a corpse in the warden’s office-- along with a teleportation signature. Very odd indeed.
The cargo bay they’d set up as a holding area for Temho-Metya’s corrupt staff was guarded by Checkmate pawns, gold and black armoured men and women who wore faceless masks. The bay itself was constructed of malleable meta-materials that reconfigured into individual cells at the touch of a button.
“Glad you could make it down, Bats,” said Trevor, playfully saluting him upon arrival when he spotted him over Aquaman’s shoulder.
“You’re our guests, White King. I apologise for keeping you,” he replied.
“I was just saying to the King and Queen,” Aquaman started, a wry smile on his lips at the thought, “that they can begin their interrogation whenever they want. They’re just prepping their Rooks.”
Batman nodded. “Brainwave and Firebird. I saw them on the security feeds. You’re confident they’ll get to the bottom of this?”
“Tsk! We employ them for this reason, Dark Knight.” Vostok approached the trio, a confident look on her face. “They are ready. We’ve separated the senior staff from the others. We’ll start on the lowest rungs of the ladder and work our way up. It won't take long to find out what's been going on in Temho.”
“Sounds good,” said Aquaman.
{I need a private word with Trevor,} Batman said silently.
“Excuse me, Valentina-- May I call you Valentina?” said Arthur.
“Hmm? No. It’s Black Queen while we’re on duty,” she replied.
“Black Queen, of course. Could I perhaps interest you in a tour of our facilities?”
Her eyes flashed. No one had seen the inner workings of the Justice League’s headquarters since their Metropolis-based Hall of Justice had been in existence-- and that had come to a cataclysmic end when their satellite was crashed into it*!
*Justice League #23
Vostok checked her nails. “Oh, ya polagayu. That sounds vaguely interesting. Where would you like us to start?”
Taking his offered arm, Valentina was escorted away by Aquaman, who only looked back once to send a wink toward Batman. {Non-essential areas only, of course.}
“Any word on your Bishop?” asked Batman, turning his attention to the White King.
“None on my end. Have you heard anything?” replied Trevor.
“Hh. No. Paul Kirk fell of the face of the Earth two years ago and there’s been no trace of him since*. Are you intending to fill his position?”
*Again, check out DC2 Most Wanted, concluding next week!
“Hmm. Pressure from the White Queen means more than likely. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop looking.”
“Me neither. I owe him my life a few times over, his disappearance deserves my attention.”
“Sure. Sure.”
The two men turned their attention to the two-way glass that looked on into the cargo bay, where Brainwave and Firebird worked in tandem to interrogate the prisoners. Very little was said by either psychic. Every now and then, Serafina said a single word in Russian, and then the prisoner would wince as they thought about whatever the word triggered in them, and the psychic read their minds like books whose pages filled with words when the right circumstances aligned.
Steve broke the silence between them, “I saw you making out with Diana a few weeks back*.”
*Justice League #70
“As did the entire world. Is that a problem?”
“Not at all. She’s an ex. You’re a… work colleague. There’s always baggage, but I just wanted to say--”
Without warning, Brainwave cried out as the prisoner’s head violently exploded in a cloud of gore, and Firebird collapsed into catatonia at the shock of being connected to the man at the moment of his death--
“What in--?” started Steve, but Batman was already on the move, heading into the cargo bay to see what had happened-- Had the psychics thought too hard at their prisoner? Was this some kind of security precaution the prisoners’ bosses had installed?
The White King followed immediately after, with Checkmate’s Knights flanking him, keeping him guarded even as they surveyed the scene. Henry was covered in a fine, crimson mist, and he was checking on Serafina as she shook violently.
“What was that? What did you do?” growled Batman.
Brainwave shook his head. “Nothing! I didn’t--”
“My god!” shouted Trevor, as the same horrible muted explosion rang out louder and louder in the rest of the cargo bay’s cells-- every one of Temho-Metya’s staff were keeling over, their heads no longer fit for purpose after whatever had caused their deaths was done with them--
Aquaman heard Batman reach out to him over the nanotelepathic link, but had his own concerns-- Valentina and he looked out of the window and witnessed the prison they’d dragged across the globe to their jurisdiction begin to sink!
“Chto proiskhodit?!” she cried out. Checkmate Knights rushed down the hallway to her side, ready to protect her from anything they could physically protect her against.
“I don’t know-- but I intend to find out!” replied Aquaman. He hurried down the corridor to a door, and punched the button beside it to open the hall to the Pacific air. “Get back to the others! I’ll check for survivors!” He dove into the waters crashing below, and chased after the sinking brick of a prison.
UTE MOUNTAIN RESERVATION:
Mera walked slowly toward the last known position of the Justice Leaguers who’d been on the scene earlier. Where the rain fell and where she saw it land were two separate places, so she quickly realised there was some kind of cloaking field in operation. With the wave of a hand, the water molecules hung in the air in such a way as to show her the way forward-- and when she stepped through the veil that separated the world she knew and the hidden, she saw a massive pump station, train tracks… and a man.
“You’re not supposed to be here, Justice Leaguer,” he said, calmly. He was tall. Taller than most. Around his neck hung a glowing crystal that shone across his tanned skin, while his face was hidden by an immense mask that resembled that of a bison.
“Who are you to say where I can and can’t go?” said Mera.
“The name’s Jon Standing Bear, but most’a you people call me ‘Super-Chief’. The Ute Mountain Tribal council summoned me when their shaman sensed bad magic in the air. Don’t care if you’re Justice League, you’re not allowed to be here without permission from the Ute.”
Mera took in the man, trying to gauge her proper reaction. She’d tensed upon arrival, ready to summon all her power to manipulate the water pouring down from above, but instead she opened her hands wide and held up her arms. “My friends came here following a lead about a dangerous weapons cache that travels these tracks. I’m sorry if we’ve overstepped, but we work under a United Nations sanction that allows us access to anywhere we’re needed--”
Super-Chief shook his head. “And I’m sure it was ratified by the Ute, and all the indigenous peoples that call this great country home. I’m not here to argue semantics with you, miss. I’m here because I’m needed, and it looks like so are you.”
“Yes, I’m here to help. My teammates are missing-- do you know anything about that?” She approached him slowly, still unsure of what was going on.
“Alls I know is that we aren’t the first folk here. Met a woman, but she didn’t have a face. Said to give this to the first Justice Leaguer that came, said to expect one a’ you.”
He handed her a small card, and Mera looked it up and down. “‘Global Peace Agency’. I know the name… how strange… they were here and left a calling card?”
“They said they cleaned up one mess, but this last one’s on you,” replied Super-Chief.
“Last one? What ‘last one’?” She looked past Super-Chief and saw what the GPA must have meant-- a large sphere fluctuated in and out of sight when observed, with thin cracks lining the surface. She’d never seen anything like it, but if her teammates were here-- did they touch it? And if so, where did they go?
NEW KHERA:
Barda tensed against her restraints, testing their mettle. She knew what she had to do. Something she hoped she would never have to-- but in the face of this monster, more powerful than anything she’d ever faced before, barring perhaps Darkseid himself, she knew what came next. She turned to Wonder Woman. In her hand, she held out her Mother Box and she passed it to Wonder Woman before there could be any argument. “Diana, whatever happens next, I need you… to tell Scott, I love him, okay?”
The Amazonian Princess’ brow furrowed, as she tucked the device into her top. “Barda? What do you mean? We’re going to get out of this. I won’t be chained--”
“What do you mean indeed, creature?” said Imperator, strolling over to her. His hands moved over his bloated stomach casually, enjoying the sensation of movement over his own skin. He’d been in a comatose state for so long, kept there by the women he’d previously kept under his thumb, and he was relishing the newfound freedom he had. “And… what are you?”
Barda ignored his question. “This is a pocket dimension, isn’t it? That’s what everyone’s been saying? Separate from Earth?”
“What are you talking about? This tesseract bunker is engineered to my specification! Completely removed from your paltry world. Soon the walls will fall that keep us separate and I’ll bring your… ‘Errf’… to its knees. Now-- what are you, woman?”
“More than you’ll ever know,” she replied.
“Oh, really? You’re more than the Kherubim, but still weak. I am ancient and powerful. They should have killed me, but--” He glanced up as the sky continued to crack. “Oh. Freedom. Can you smell it? Can you--”
Barda surged forward and clamped her teeth around his nose, and he howled in agony as her celestial jaw bit down hard, and she tore it from his face. She viciously chewed and then swallowed, grinning all the while. Imperator was horrified, clutching at the new orifice on his face as it streaked with blood. He’d been distracted for just a second--
“You-- you-- you--!!"
He backhanded Barda with such strength that her head spun further than it anatomically should have, her neck snapping audibly before she fell to the ground.
“Barda! No!” Diana cried out. She strained against the chains, but even with her gods-given strength she couldn’t escape--
Imperator was raving, one hand clutching his nose, the other pointing at where Barda had fallen. “That bitch! Look what she did to me! I’ll burn your planet to ashes! I’ll kill a whole world for this slight! How-- how could-- how could she?”
Barda’s dead eyes stared at Diana from where she lay, and then a low, rasping voice began to emerge from her still lips, “Because… you don’t know… what I am…”
Imperator-- and to be fair, everyone gathered-- was shocked to see the black crackle of fractal-shaped energy bubble up from the surface of her body. He cursed at the odd sight, and his eyes flashed as his Zoom Vision bore down on the corpse-- the immense heat blinded all those around her for seconds, but when their sight cleared, the energy crackle had taken on a shape, and it was that of a woman--!
“I am Barda Free of the Fourth World! I am the New God of Defiance, and I will not bow my head to a monster who thrives on the suffering of those weaker than it!”
Barda cast a glance toward Wonder Woman and Zealot, and the metal links around them dissolved, a chain reaction that spread across all the bindings that kept the rest of the Coda subjugated!
“...But you can call me Big Barda,” said the shape, and if it had a face, you might think it were wearing a smile.
Imperator roared and dove forward, but he slipped through Barda’s energy form, only to be caught from behind as her front swapped with her back and hooked his arms in one movement.
“Zealot! You know what you need to do!” she declared.
Barda placed a sharp knee in Imperator’s back and he fell to his knees, and with both his arms hooked with one of her own, she used her spare hand to hold his head back, locking his mouth open with her digits.
Zannah rushed toward them and reached a hand down Imperator’s throat, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t clamp down and bite it off. He gagged and coughed as her fingers travelled through the back of his throat and found purchase around what she was looking for-- and with one almighty wrench, she yanked his spine out from inside his mouth, causing him to gag and wretch, even as he lived through the violent ordeal.
Temporarily defeated, Imperator fell forward, every nerve and connection in his body broken, but the monstrous being still refusing to die.
Instinctively knowing that the battle was won, Wonder Woman disregarded everything else and hurried toward Barda, whose energy form was beginning to dissipate. “Barda-- what-- what have you done?”
“The only thing I could think to do-- remember-- tell Scott-- now I--”
Barda disappeared completely, leaving Wonder Woman, the twitching living corpse of Imperator, Zealot and the rest of the Coda in the ruins of the only reality they’d known since leaving Khera. Massive gashes formed in the skin of their world, and a voice could be heard.
“Diana! Diana, what’s going on in there?!”
Wonder Woman didn’t have time to mourn. She focused on the voice, and looked to Zealot. “We need to get out of here!”
NEVADA DESERT:
Hawkman landed amongst plants that didn’t make any sense to him, considering his rudimentary knowledge of Earth-bound botany. There was a tunnel scoured into the ground, lined with metal, and a number of footprints in the grass and soil. Whatever this place was, it didn’t make sense.
{I’m at the team’s last known location, and I can see where they’ve gone next. I’m going to follow their trail.}
Aquaman’s voice filled his head. {Keep us updated-- something bad just happened on Laputa-- all the prisoners are dead-- Temho-Metya sank-- I’ve got to get off the line-- need to find survivors--}
Katar grimaced. He was about to turn around and head back to their headquarters, but another voice entered his head.
{We’re doing all we can back here, Hawkman. Don’t worry about us. Check on the others!}
NEVADA GARDEN:
Angie concentrated. She’d been able to reabsorb some of her nanites back into her body through licking them back up after expelling them, and she had to think hard for them to reactivate. Thankfully, her mad bastard of a father hadn’t thought to deactivate them, just get them out of her before she could think to do anything with them.
Apollo and the Midnighter were the biggest problem-- they were next-generation super-weapons, capable of dismantling the Justice Leaguers present, but they didn’t want to be the Engineer’s slave-- Midnighter had made that clear by his lack of murdering the Guardian. But how could she stop them from hearing his orders and acting upon them?
Lorraine stirred, woozily, and quickly realised she wasn’t part of Firestorm at the minute, and that she was in a world of trouble. She grabbed Martin’s arm, who made a gruff noise, but didn’t stir. “Oh, boy.”
“Quiet back there,” said the Engineer. He turned and saw who’d awakened, and shook his head. “Oh, I can’t be having that. Apollo--”
Shocking everybody, Lorraine screamed, and blue flames erupted across her body-- she sent a torrent of nuclear heat directly at the Engineer, who reeled back in surprise and pain, the nanotech armour across his body working overtime to protect him. Of course! Just because she’d taken on the mantle of Firestorm didn’t mean she no longer had access to her Firehawk powers, and right now that trump card was what Angie needed to make a move! The Guardian sprang up, worked out the crick in his neck, and pulled his shield up, covering Angie as she made her move.
“Cut yourself!” she shouted at Midnighter, as she rushed over to him and Apollo.
“You what?” he replied, the Guardian agreeing with the look on his face.
“Cut yourself, I think she said,” mused Apollo.
Angie nodded vigoursly. “I need access to the nanites in your blood!”
The Midnighter grimaced and looked over to where the Engineer was adapting and recovering. “I…. can’t. I can’t do things other people tell me to do while he’s still in charge. Here.” He took a small knife from his belt and handed it to her. “Don’t be squeamish, just--”
Angie stabbed him in the hand without hesitation, then did the same to her palm.
“Jesus, you don’t mess about, do you?”
Apollo laughed, enjoying the levity of the moment.
“Not when we’re all about to die, no!”
She mushed the two wounds together, so her blood could mix with his, and absorb the nanites that controlled him so they could link up with the network of nanites inside her own bloodstream. It was an ugly version of how she’d saved Green Lantern from the grips of the extradimensional presence inside his ring all those months ago*, but it was all she could think of doing.
*Justice League #58
Lorraine-as-Firehawk kept the heat on the Engineer, but could see him adapting to the attack. She shook Martin, who eventually stirred from where he’d been knocked out.
“Whaaaat’s happening?” he asked, blearily.
“Guardian! Keep him distracted for a few seconds!” ordered Lorraine.
Harper leaped toward the Engineer-- Firehawk’s stream of flame subsided as she transformed into Firestorm-- and he jammed his shield into the man’s mouth, causing him to gag in surprise.
“Okay, okay, thinking, thinking…” said Angie, one eye on the Engineer as he stood up, and one on the bracelet on her wrist that allowed her to control the nanites in her blood. Something clicked inside her, and she punched the air. “Yes! Erase all parameters that keep you under the control of anybody but yourself!”
As if struck by some invisible lightning, Apollo and the Midnighter both shook, before vomiting grey. They fell to their knees, just as the Engineer swatted the Guardian away from him, only for the golden avenger to be caught by Mister Miracle, who sprang up from where he’d been left, ready to re-enter the fight!
“Kill them! Kill them all!” ordered the Engineer.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said the Midnighter, wiping the vomit from his lips. He stood up. “Hey, I’ve got a question for you. Have you ever been vivisected before? Because I’ve had some time to think about what I’d like to do with you when I got free.”
“You don’t get to order anybody around anymore,” said Apollo, his aura beginning to rev up around his head.
The Engineer suddenly realised he was vastly outnumbered. “Then it’s time.” He clicked his fingers, and the roots of all his plants began to throb as the nanites began to activate, ready to blossom and pollinate. “That’s all I need. The end of one world, and the start of a new one-- mine. Just like how god didn’t stick around to view his creation, neither will--”
Firestorm shook her head. “Will you shut up?” She sent a beam straight through him, and he collapsed to the floor, drenched inside and out, as the nanites that made up his armour and flowed through his body were transformed into saline. He was bloated for a split second, and then passed out from the trauma of having something so intrinsically tied to his body be removed by elemental transmutation.
“Oh, no, he… he went and activated the final phase,” whispered Angie.
“I’ll transmute them in their roots! It’ll be fine!” said Firestorm. She cast her hand toward the roots and was physically shocked when her powers bounced back and didn’t do what she wanted them to do. “Thaaat should have worked…”
Angie shook her head. “He said… he said they adapt*… Oh, no. I… I can…”
*Last Issue
She rushed past the others and entered the control hub where Victor’s corpse was sat and began typing furiously at the keyboards her father had been working at. The others began to approach, but she spun around and sealed herself inside. “I can’t stop the pollination, but I can redirect it.” She turned away and headed back to the keyboards, typing in more, wiping her brow, clenching her bleeding hand as it dripped red over the keys.
Guardian pounded against the glass. “Angie! Open the door!”
“I can melt it open,” said Apollo, his aura intensifying into a halo.
Angie spun around and pointed her finger at the door. “You open that door, and the nanites spill out and get you too. I can… I can make this work. They’ll… they’re going to double back into the control room, through the roots. They’ll expel inward, and die, and then… no one will get hurt.”
“You’ll get hurt!” shouted Harper.
“No… it’s--”
The interior of the control room flooded with a tornado of grey as the nanites were explosively expelled in the wrong direction-- back inside rather than out through the flowers themselves. The window that allowed Harper and the others to see inside was suddenly opaque, and no one could see what happened-- but there was silence-- and stillness--
LAPUTA:
Aquaman walked out of a portal back into Laputa, where Batman and the rest of Checkmate were waiting. “They’re… they’re all dead. Didn’t even get a chance to drown… Whatever got the prisoners… got the Knights…”
“They’re… they’re all dead? Iisus Khristos,” whispered Vostok.
“I couldn’t do anything… I’m sorry,” said Aquaman.
She shook her head. “I should never have agreed to this…”
Steve approached her slowly. “My rook is with yours, she was inside one of the prisoner’s heads when it went. She nearly got sucked down with him.”
“This is your fault, White King. You suckered me in. How many Checkmate operatives were in Temho when it sank?”
“From both sides of the board, Valentina. Don’t act as if you’re the only one who’s lost good people. Whoever did this struck at us both.”
“I’m withdrawing my operatives from this location. We’re too exposed, chert voz'mi. The hostages you rescued-- are they safe?”
“Yes. Only the hostage-takers were killed,” said Batman.
“You almost sound happy, Dark Knight.”
Batman’s face didn’t show any emotion. “I’m rarely happy, Black Queen. Don’t mistake this moment for one of those occasions.”
Trevor grimaced. “I’ll have the hostages transferred to one of my facilities for debrief and medicals. We’ll see what they have to say. See if there’s anything we can recover from this mess.”
“And I’m going to speak to the UN about this travesty in the morning. I want a full review of the Justice League’s sanction moving forward. Too many people are dead, Batman. Someone has to be held accountable.” She left abruptly, and headed toward the teleporters, flanked by her staff.
Trevor held back, and looked at Aquaman and Batman. “I’ll see what I can do to mitigate this. You followed the book. Went above and beyond. It’s messy, but all we need to know from you-- if you can-- is find out what the hell happened to the people you were holding. This is ugly. Real damn ugly. But if you can figure that out… it’ll help. I’m going to bring in a crime scene analysis team from Washington within the hour to work the location. I assume--”
“You’ll have full access to the relevant recordings,” said Batman.
“Good. I assume you’ll also be working the scene?”
“You’re damn right,” said Aquaman, before his colleague could answer.
“Good. The more eyes on this, the better. I have to head back to Washington, but my Rook will stay on-site. I hope that’s not a problem?”
“None at all,” replied Batman.
The security camera situated in the corridor was pointed directly at them. Sound and vision were clear. The man watching on the other end, far from Laputa and sat in his office a continent or two away, considered what he’d seen-- what he’d been party to, and smiled. It threw a bit of chaos into the mix for the Justice League to have to deal with a blow like this. It was most unfortunate that they’d got so close to putting certain pieces of a puzzle together, only to have the jigsaw be blown up at the last hurdle. He sighed and leaned back in his ergonomic chair and turned off the monitor.
When he exited Temho earlier, he’d left a mess to be dealt with, and clearly his people hadn’t been up to the job. Executing them and destroying the evidence was the only option left to him, and he’d be damned if he was going to let all their planning be for naught…
NEW KHERA:
Mera’s voice was clear, but echoed within the tesseract-- “Diana! Diana, what’s going on in there?!”
“We need to get out of here!” barked Diana.
As the pocket dimension continued to crumble, fragments of broken reality falling from the skies and colliding with the ground like massive sheets of glass, a cacophony of noise filling their ears even as they shouted and tried to stay together, Zannah looked at her people, and then back to Wonder Woman.
“It’s… it’s all we’ve known…” she whispered.
“You’re the Zealot, Zannah! That means you lead your people into the uncertain future! You need to come with me! We all need to get out of here!”
After a moment’s hesitation, Zealot beheld Kenesha, her daughter with Majestros, and understood her role. They began to flock through the cracks in reality and emerged in the pouring rain, where Mera and Super-Chief waited.
“What is that thing?” asked Mera.
Wonder Woman grimaced. “A pocket dimension-- but it’s going to break!”
“And what happens when a pocket dimension breaks, Wonder Woman?” asked Super-Chief, accusatorily.
Even though she didn’t know this man or like his tone, if Mera stood by him there was trust there, so Diana had to follow through on that. “I don’t know, but I also don’t think this is the best place for that to happen.” She looked at the Boom Tube projector in her hand, and then pressed the trigger mechanism.
A massive explosion punctuated the air, and a tunnel in reality formed. Wonder Woman grabbed at the tesseract bunker and found anchorage with her fingers, even as the skin on her hands bubbled and burned. The pain didn’t matter. She heaved with an immense effort and pushed the sphere through the Boom Tube, and prayed it would be far enough to--
The sphere exploded outward inside the Boom Tube, and the tunnel shattered, causing Wonder Woman to tumble out of the sky above ice and snow. She landed hard in a dune, and cried out. The remains of the sphere spun and flashed, and then landed around her-- the city of New Khera reformed in amongst the snow, her fallen towers restored, the ruins left over by Imperator reset to their previous glory upon impact with the main reality.
An orange portal formed next to where Diana fell, and Mera and Zealot hurried through, flanked by Super-Chief and Kenesha.
“This… is not how I expected my day to go…” murmured the indigenous superhero.
“Where… where did we land…?” asked Wonder Woman, as Mera pulled her up.
The Queen of Atlantis put her finger to her ear and waited for a response from the Justice League’s computers. “According to satellite coverage, we’re in Canada, about eight hundred kilometres from the North Pole. A few miles that way is a settlement called Alert.”
“You’re… you’re home…” said Diana, before passing out.
NEVADA GARDEN:
Hawkman made it down to the end of the tunnel and found a staircase which was broken in places where it had been subject to an immense impact. He floated down, careful not to catch himself on anything, then looked around the laboratory he’d arrived in.
Where there had been flowers upstairs on the desert floor, the roots themselves were grey and decrepit, in vats that trailed to the back of the underground chamber to… He located Firestorm, the Guardian and Mister Miracle, along with two costumed characters he didn’t recognise. On the floor in front of the strangers was Angelo Spica, sopping wet and completely naked.
“Not going to be able to get that image out of my head any time soon,” he murmured.
Firestorm turned at his voice and threw her arms around him. “It’s horrible… it’s…”
Hawkman looked passed her. “What happened? Who’s in there? Where’s Angela? Cyborg?”
“Inside,” said Mister Miracle.
The Guardian was on his knees in front of the sealed door. “She… redirected the flow of the nanites. They were designed to…”
The door’s circular handle began to turn. No one could see inside, but they waited with baited breath.
“You don’t know what she’s going to be-- or if it’s still going to be her,” said the Midnighter.
“I don’t like the sound of what you’re saying, stranger,” said Hawkman. “So shut it.”
Angered, the Midnighter went to raise his fist, but Apollo caught it in his. “Not now. We’re free.”
Realising what that meant, he leaned over to Apollo and whispered something in his ear.
With a nod, the Sun God whisked him up into his arms, and the pair shot out of the laboratory, to parts unknown-- just as the door opened--
“How… how do I look?”
Smoke trailed out of the open door, and a figure stumbled forward. Angela Spica stood revealed, but her body was transformed. Her skin was silver, shimmering as the nanites integrated with her body. The Guardian caught her as she stumbled forward, and she looked at him sheepishly.
“You’re alive!” he exclaimed.
“Couldn’t let… a little thing… like nanites… do me in, could I?” she said.
“Whoa…” came another voice from inside the smoking control room.
Mister Miracle unclipped his cape as he realised what he was seeing, and threw it around Victor Stone’s shoulders. He was alive, and-- unexpected by anyone-- completely human.
“Vic? What happened to you? He-- he tore you to bits,” said the Guardian.
“I… I remember all that… and then darkness… now I’m…” He looked at his hands. They looked familiar. His skin was… his. He could feel something under there, and when he touched his wrists, he realised what it was-- a pulse. “What… what happened?”
Angie blinked as the nanites worked their way into her ocular nerves. It was an odd sensation. “I might have reprogrammed the nanites that ended up in there upon impact… they had to go somewhere… so I’ve swapped my blood for nine pints of next gen nanotechnology. And for you… I had them restore your body. You were ravaged by the Throshti… lost so much… so I thought it made sense to give you back everything you had taken from you…”
*Justice League #65-66
“You gave me back my body…” said Victor. “But I can feel… something else…” He held out his arm, and it transformed into his Cyborg configuration as he watched. He blinked, and it transformed back to flesh and blood.
“I gave you complete control… so if you want it… you can have both…” said Angie.
Vic was amazed and practically speechless. “Oh, boy.”
LAPUTA:
There was still work to do. As soon as she’d regained consciousness, Diana had contacted Canada’s Prime Minister to inform him that an alien race had taken up residence in an unused part of the country, three and a half thousand miles away from the nation’s capital of Ottawa. Diplomatic relations would be opened soon, but Zealot informed Diana that the Coda needed time, first and foremost. They’d lost their home world, been enslaved by someone they thought they could trust, and had learned to live in their solitude in that pocket dimension. Give them time. Trust them with time. Wonder Woman couldn’t fault that.
Plus, they had to figure out how to contain Imperator all over again. His spine was still separated from his body, but somehow, he refused to die. Their watch was not over yet, just reconfigured.
The worst was hard to conceive; Majestic was dead. So was Big Barda. She found Mister Miracle as soon as she returned to Laputa, and took him aside so he heard it from her first. She looked at him solemnly, and said, “Scott…”
No good conversation started like that, in that tone, with that voice, with that look on a person’s face. There was a thunder strike in his chest, and he swallowed hard. “What… where’s Barda? Where is she?”
Diana took his hands into her own and held them tight. “She… she sacrificed herself so that we might live… she died, and came back… and then…”
Scott couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He pulled away from Diana and took a step back. “She? She did what?”
Diana shook her head, barely comprehending it herself. “I don’t know exactly… she came back to save us after she died. She became… it was like… pure light… pure energy…”
He blinked, tears forming in his eyes. “I… I… she… she died?”
“Yes, and…”
“And… and she came back…” Scott wiped the tears from his eyes, trying his best to smile even though he was utterly devastated. There was a hint of something in his voice. Hope? “Do you know what we are, Diana?”
She nodded slowly. “You’re New Gods…”
“Yes… and… and that means there are… there are certain rules… of our existence on Earth… on this plane of existence. We… we take a human shape, and that means we can’t access our full celestial power. Do you… do you remember what she said, when we faced Ares? When we talked him out of destroying the world?”
Diana blinked. She remembered the eloquence with which her friend had spoken in the face of the God of Nothing, how they’d laughed at what Ares had become… what were her exact words? “I am a New God. And if I were to shed this mortal form and unleash my true self on this world, I would not only end your existence but that of every single creature that roams this beautiful marble. I am incarnate, just as my husband is, and that means while we fight with our lives on the line, we still have all the knowledge that comes with our connection to the Source.*”
*Justice League #70
Scott nodded, remembering himself. “She had to die to access her full potential… and now she’s… part of the Source. Part of the living fabric of energy that connects us all. She’s not dead… she’s… everywhere.” He tried to hold himself together, but his shoulders buckled and he doubled over, crying. “She’s not dead… she’s just gone…”
“What can we do? Is there… is there anything?” Diana asked.
“I… I need to find her again… there… there has to be a way, and I’ll find it. I’ll always find a way. We crossed hell to be together the first time, and I’d do it all over again, ten times, a hundred, an infinite time over, to bring her back.”
“We’ll bring her back. If there’s a way, we’ll bring her back,” said Wonder Woman.
Mister Miracle put a hand on Wonder Woman’s shoulder. “We’ll bring her back,” he said, echoing his friend’s sentiment.
GOTHAM CITY:
He’d been given a task, and he’d spent all day and most of the night working away at it. Tim Wayne, aka Robin, looked up from the computer as Batman stepped into the Cave. He looked exhausted, like he’d been through a war, and that was nothing new considering their line of work. “How’re you holding up, boss?”
Bruce pulled off his cowl and removed his cape, then took a seat beside his partner. “What have you got for me?” he asked.
“Uh, I looked into Ray Gauss as instructed. So, we know that he’s the attorney that represented Angelo Spica*, but I also found out he worked for Sterling & Harris, and that’s where things got interesting.”
*Ray died in Justice League #71 during the Engineer’s prison break
The Boy Wonder typed something into the computer and documents began to spin into view, before a web of connections formed.
Bruce’s eyes became slits. “Talk me through it.”
“They’re involved mostly in corporate work; contracts, trademark, copyright. A lot of it medical. Their biggest client is Aleph Pharmaceuticals.”
“This all started with the death of their CEO and founder, Alejandro Cuetes.”
“Yeah… that’s what I thought. When Malik Swain, their new CEO, joined the company, a couple of months back… He’s the one who got Spica the representation. He’s the reason Angelo escaped.”
“We can’t prove that,” said Bruce.
“No, but it’s… but it’s like cause and effect,” Tim said.
“Just because that’s the point at which it happened, doesn’t mean we can link Swain to it. Angela said that Cuetes used to work with her father, so that’s all we’ll get. We need more.”
Tim frowned. “But this is…”
Bruce patted him on the shoulder. “A really good start. And we’ll work it together. Good work, Tim. Head upstairs and let Alfred know I’m back. I… need to think about all this. Then we can get started.”
NEW KHERA:
Zannah couldn’t find the tears. Majestros had died, and… she hadn’t cried. She was devastated, but it had been… so long. She had so much more to be concerned about right now. Imperator was contained once more, a grotesque horror that refused to end, but they had an elegant solution-- they simply strung the two separate parts of his body a far distance apart in the depths of their citadel. They wouldn’t be knitting back together any time soon. They didn’t have enough gods left to save them.
Meanwhile, Kenesha was distant. She’d never met her father before today, only hearing the stories about her dreaming warrior of a dad from the mouth of her mother, and having been so shocked at his appearance earlier, and it being the cause of Imperator’s escape… she felt like she was to blame, and to be honest… she was right to feel that way. She’d locked herself in her own chambers with the wreckage of the god-killer gun, hoping to reconstruct it so they could track where it had sent Majestros. She wasn’t hopeful, but it gave her something to focus on…
“Well, you look like you’ve had one hell of an existence, Zan.”
At the man’s voice, she threw her blade across the room, only for it to be caught by a second man.
“Who-- oh. Oh, Hecate be damned. You.”
Jack Marlowe, aka Spartan, lowered her weapon from where he’d caught it mid-throw, and then offered it back to her as he and Jacob Marlowe, his supposed uncle, approached.
Jacob was a diminutive man, and it was always a source of teasing back on Khera, where he was better known as Lord Emp. “I’m sorry it took us this long to find you, kiddo. But it’s been one hell of a life.”
“You have no idea.” Ignoring the offered return of her sword, she embraced Emp tightly, and then looked at the third man accompanying them, someone who looked and smelled definitively human, with a hooded coat obscuring his features. “Who’s that?”
Emp smiled and took a cigar out from a silver case. “Him? Well, here’s the thing… we thought Majestros had gone bad*, so I put a team together to kill him**. Turns out, not only was he not… we’re also too late to do anything of the sort. I’m so sorry for your loss, Zan.”
*During Justice League #59-63
**In the back-up in Justice League #65
“He saved us, in a way. I just wish… he had got to meet his daughter…”
Emp’s face lit up. “You and him had a kid? Geez Louise! I’m sure she’s a right terror. Anyway, this guy?”
“I can introduce myself, Marlowe,” said the scruffy man at the back of them. He lowered his hood to reveal the face of someone who had been in numerous fights in his life and had never let that hold him down. He had brown hair and sideburns that went down toward his jawline to his chin. “I’m Cole Cash. Folks call me Grifter.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Zealot.
Emp grinned. “Oh, that’s a story unto itself. Maybe we’ll tell it next month, but for now, we’ve got an infestation we need to deal with. And I just found out my people are still alive-- and that means the Daemonites will find out soon as well. We need to come up with a plan-- or they’ll win the longest-running war in all of existence.”
Zealot looked at Spartan’s open hands, and took her sword back. “And we can’t have that, can we?”
LAPUTA:
The Guardian looked at the crisis board in the monitoring womb. There were two new superhumans on the board that vanished off satellite coverage within seconds of leaving the Nevada Garden. Who were Apollo and the Midnighter? A mystery for now, but with definite ties to Henry Bendix. He’d need to be visited soon. He’d need to be interrogated.
According to Diana, Big Barda and Majestic were dead. Such losses were unimaginable this morning. She’d spoken to Scott, told him about his wife, but he seemed optimistic that she was simply gone, not deceased, but that’s not how Harper worked. If they could bring something actionable to the table, he’d believe it… but for now?
What did John Lennon say? ‘I believe in everything until it's disproved.’? That wasn’t Harper, not even with everything he’d seen in his life. No. He prayed that Barda would return. That Majestic could come back… but he’d lost loved ones before, and knew that sometimes when people died, they stayed dead.
New Khera, the alien city, was currently under satellite surveillance in the Canadian wilderness. The Americans were making noise about a military presence, but Canada had kept them at arm’s length for the time being. That was good. Harper would have to put a call in to some of his contacts, get them to cool down. But that was a big one. An entire city full of Majestic-level superhumans. If the Daemonite threat was real, and Harper believed it was from his conversations with the now-deceased Kherubim lord, then they could be useful. He would speak to Diana. Feel out an alliance of sorts, if that would work.
Angie was down in the labs with Victor, testing herself. Harper had recommended bringing in outside help, maybe Ray Palmer, or Niles Caulder, perhaps even Will Magnus, but she’d been adamant-- she had this. She was now infused with the same kind of nanotechnology that her father used for evil. He hoped that she wouldn’t take a turn in that direction-- What was he saying? Of course she wouldn’t. She was a good person. Nature over nurture.
They still hadn’t found out who Pathfinder was. They weren’t any closer to knowing what was going on in Temho-Metya. Xotar was in custody, but keeping shtum. Diana wanted to use her lasso. Harper didn’t disagree. Tomorrow, perhaps. With the unexplained deaths of the prison guards in their custody, Checkmate were making a lot of noise, especially the Black Queen. Vostok was volatile, he knew her from her rookie days, and it would take some expert political wrangling to get her calm.
Maybe Steve Trevor, the vaunted White King, had it in him. Harper didn’t know. Batman hadn’t found anything to tell the Justice League how the guards had died. It was a worry. There was nothing biological or artificial in their blood streams. It was as if they’d spontaneously blown their tops. Not as if… it was.
And then there was Aleph Pharmaceuticals. The death of Alejandro Cuetes in front of Arthur and Diana was worrisome, as was the wine-stained napkin that had led them to the Engineer’s door, only for him to escape. Harper had his own links to the company, having gone to them to ask for help with his daughter’s cancer. They’d agreed to extend a trial to her hospital district… it wasn’t like she was the only one benefiting.
Tucked in his belt, his cell phone rang. He answered, and the voice of his daughter filled him with warmth. She talked quickly, excitedly, which surprised him, considering her advanced age. “Dad. I’m… I’m okay. I’ve just spoken to the doctors. The treatment worked. The cancer… they’ve never seen anything like it. It had metastasized. Spread everywhere. But now… it’s gone into remission. It’s… how soon can you be here?”
James Harper swallowed hard. He was compromised. Well and truly. But his daughter… “I’m on my way*.”
*Check out Justice League Presents... The Guardian #1-2 for more!
NEXT ISSUE: OUR SEVENTY-FIFTH ISSUE! THE RAMIFICATIONS OF BRUCE AND DIANA’S RELATIONSHIP FINALLY COME TO THE FORE, IN A STORY THAT COULD ONLY BE CALLED… BREAKING UP!