Annual #3: State of Decay, Part 4 (of 4)

COAST CITY; THEN:

Naked but kept preternaturally warm thanks to her by the corrupt Star Sapphire ring on her finger, Carol Ferris luxuriated in her sparsely decorated bedroom.

Being the CEO of Ferris Air allowed her a degree of freedom; she could delegate control of certain areas of the business to the more trusted members of her board, and when they’d done the legwork to secure deals, she would attend contract negotiations to seal them. If anything, her power ring allowed her a glimpse behind the curtain, a psychic advantage over the stuffy, repressed military types that came calling.

Apart from that, her harem kept her quite busy. She’d had to grow her own power battery and found the condensed love of the men and women she’d ‘persuaded’ to come home with made a great building material. She’d make love for them for days, drain them dry until their inevitably dreary deaths, and then her ring would do the rest…

There was a knock at her door, and she waved her hand at Pablo, a young college student who’d not attended classes since she got her hooks in him. He had stamina for days, but the mottling at his throat and around eyes did not bode well for his ongoing surviving. Without argument, he pulled himself out of bed and over Terry, then headed downstairs.

It was a night like this when Hank had come back to her*, but he wasn’t ready back then, and to be fair, neither was she… he was still broken, still an incomplete jigsaw that he needed to finish, and she wasn’t in the business of building people up-- only breaking them down into their disparate parts.

Once he got his head straight, she’d lure him home… lure him back into the life he had once promised her.


She reflected on that memory, the sweet feeling that came with rejecting one who wanted her so much. “Delicious,” she said. Her hand crept down her stomach… maybe there was power in that moment--

A voice emerged from downstairs, but it wasn’t Pablo’s. She didn’t recognise it, but she’d heard so many voices these last few years… begging… pleading…

“…Cccccccarol…”

Whoever this was, from his sing-song tone she felt like he knew her. It couldn’t have been one of her concubines. They didn’t survive the finality of a relationship with Carol, the inevitability of being boiled down and distilled into the grand experiment that was the creation of her own power battery…

“Yes?” she called out, enthusiastically.

Her ring sparked. <Power levels at 3563%>

“Where’s Hal, Cccccccarol?”

His voice was barely a whisper, but it carried upwards, and it sent a shiver down her spine. It was accompanied by slow, heavy footsteps that began at her front door and soon started echoing up from the stairs that would lead the stranger to her bedroom…

And all Carol Ferris could do was laugh. “Hal? Hal Jordan? Oh, who cares about asshole?”

Dirty, ratty fingertips gripped the doorframe of her room and the decomposed face of Black Hand staggered into view. “I do.”

“Well, hello there, you ugly man,” said Carol.

Black Hand extended a decrepit hand out toward her, but she erected a shield of violet crystal between them. His arm was locked in place, and he considered it like she imagined a mosquito might when it was slowly drowned in amber. She pulled herself out of bed and allowed the bedsheets to slip off her naked body. Not that arousal or sex was a factor in Hand’s life anymore. What was left of his genitals had fallen off months ago.

“Black Hand! Look at you. I like this look, it’s very raw. Very pure.”

Hand cocked his head at an angle. This woman wasn’t like the others he’d met on his way across the country. No one else had been so brazenly brave before him, and the power she wielded… he flexed his arm, and the crystals cracked. He could escape this. And if he wanted, he could hurt her.

“Now, I’m clearly not the woman I was back when we first met, and neither are you. Then again… you were wearing Hal’s body back then, weren’t you*?”


“Why do you want him? Last I heard, he doesn’t even wear a ring anymore…”

“To end this… once… and for all.”

“End what though?”

Hand shook his head. “If I kill him… I win.”

Carol checked her nails for blemishes. “Yeah? And what’s your endgame?”

“The death… of everything… for my master…”

“And how do you propose you commit that act of planet-wide genocide?”

Hand considered the men and women sprawled around the room, their attentions not on him, their eyes not even floating across the crystalline wall that separated them from him. They seemed to be living in some kind of apathetic, mindless, daze, and it was obvious that the cause was the oddly tinged ring worn on the Ferris woman’s finger-- she had them under some kind of spell.

One throat at a time,” he finally replied.

Ferris swiped her hand across the violet barrier she erected and it disintegrated into dust. She strolled up to Black Hand and grabbed him by the toggles on his hoody playfully. “I have a better idea. My ring senses the power inside you, and it looks like you’re barely tapping into it. What if we teamed up? I want a Green Lantern. You want a Green Lantern. We draw them in… we suck them dry… and we kill everything.”

“All you’d want… is one Green Lantern?”

“You kill this world? Fine. Acceptable losses. But I want my man back. My big, scary, beautiful bastard of a man. Have this world. We’ll take the stars. You and me? We’ll kill everything in-between.”

Hand smiled, the corner of his lip peeling off at the corner as the decay continued to spread through his body.

“…You’re a monster,” he said, almost gleefully.

“I know what I want, is all,” she purred back

He nodded slowly. “I love it.”

STEADBORNE STACK; THEN:

Bridget Steadborne paced the halls as they prepared their patient. She was a softly spoken woman, short in stature but with the palest, bluest eyes you could ever see. If you catalogued planet Earth’s super-intellects she’d be in the top fifty for sure, but she didn’t want to build armoured battle suits to fight crime. She didn’t want to construct a giant death ray and extort the worlds’ governments. Instead she wanted to make the world a better place than when she arrived on it, and with the Stack, she had an opportunity to do just that. Healing the future, one scientific advancement at a time.

Now their focus was figuring out why exactly William Hand had survived the fact that nearly 90% of his organs were infested with tumours. They’d never seen a cancer as aggressive, as cruel, as the one inside Hand; he survived the agony of his existence one horrible second at a time.

“Doctor, the patient is prepped and Doctor Tallow wants to have a quick word before she begins,” said Nurse Clancy.

Abigail Tallow was the first doctor Bridget had turned to after starting the Stack. They were old school mates and have reconnected after working at S.T.A.R. Labs back in the day. Now they focused on the future, without looking toward the past.

“Wonderful,” said Bridget; except that was a lie, wasn’t it?

The truth was simple-- this case wasn’t the Steadborne Stack’s idea. They’d been given the brief by a military organisation, somehow hoping to understand why this cancer, which would kill anybody else, hadn’t ended Hand’s life. The funding was immense, enough for countless other experiments at the Stack, but when their work was done, the military would take the findings away and that would be that.

Understanding this but hoping to dovetail their findings into something beneficial, she sighed and entered the observation deck, where her colleague awaited. What else was there? They thought the tumours were in the brain, but scans showed they’d spread. The military loved hearing that when the Stack informed them. They weren’t going to operate, but they pressed them to. An internal investigation, one of their representatives had framed it as.

“It’s horrible, isn’t it?” said Doctor Tallow.

She was bespectacled, strawberry-blonde hair cut short. Freckles covered her cheeks and you could spot a tattoo creeping out from her bicep under her scrubs. She was surgical, and damn good at it, but she did have her failings…

Bridget turned to her colleague. “What part?”

“It refuses to die. Pain medication makes no difference. Chemotherapy… radiotherapy… none of it has any effect on it. Every minute of its continued existence is agony. If it’s not been driven mad by the situation yet, it doesn’t have long now.”

“Your insistence on referring to the patient as ‘it’ is most disheartening, Abi.”

“I’ve read the file. I know what it did and it can’t be human if the facts are true. It killed its family when it was eighteen. The only reason it wasn’t locked up there and then was because it was made to look like a gas leak and no one suspected that it would be capable of such an act. I read that they found it amongst the bodies. Talking to them like they were still alive. Still chatting away. Off it went into psychiatric care, rehabilitated and… it started a life of crime. It all came out during the first trial. While it went around in a mask and cape as ‘Black Hand’, its real tendencies came out separate. Murder. Torture. And yes, cannibalism. The fact that it’s still here, still alive-- if you can call this living-- maybe its karma. Maybe it gets what it deserves.”

“We’re not here to judge. Just to do our job,” said Bridget.

“Our job today is to vivisect. If that’s not casting judgement, I don’t know what is.”

Bridget looked down from the observation deck and shook her head. William Hand was emaciated to the point of resembling a skeleton. They pumped him full of nutrients because he couldn’t chew; they kept him hydrated with drips because he couldn’t drink. That was beside the point. When he was transferred to them, he barely resembled a man, his organs were in failure, the tumours interfering with the most basic functions of living, but again-- he refused to die.

“And the anaesthetic isn’t having any kind of effect?” asked Bridget.

“Nathaniel says no. I’ve double-checked. What we’re about to do… it’s going to feel every cut.”

Bridget removed her glasses and rubbed the diaspora of dust from the lens with her blouse. “Okay. Right. Best we get started then.”

William Hand didn’t move when they made the first incision. It hurt like blazes, but he was too weak to move, or to scream. They tried numbing him, but their needles stung and their drugs burned. He was unresponsive for the most part. Grunts and growls when appropriate.

When would his body finally give up the ghost, he wondered.

What had he done that was so terrible to deserve this living death?

{Are you ready?}

That voice in the back of his head. The one that came at night. It asked the question and he didn’t know the answer. Are you ready to die, perhaps? No. He wasn’t ready. He would outlive them all. And if he kept that will, that strength, he would.

“Nuuuuhhhhh,” he drawled, unable to form a coherent word.

“Jesus, did he just--?” asked Nathaniel Baker, chief anaesthesiologist, rising from his seat in the corner. He was there surplus to requirements. A patient who couldn’t be anaesthetised? What a horrible situation to be in, but fascinating none the less.

“Nat, he does that all the time now; used to be he’d rant all the time, tell us how he was already dead, blah blah blah, but now it’s just grunts and grunts… boring really,” said Nurse Clancy.

Her hand guided the tube of the suction unit that kept Hand’s open chest clear of blood. They’d cracked the ribs. They’d opened him up. They were doing the good work now.

“Damn horrible,” said Baker, settling back down.

{Acceptance is not surrender. Acceptance is a gateway.}

Hand grunted. There were no words.

“Can’t we shut him up?” asked Baker.

“Can’t shut it up, can’t shut it off, Nat Nat,” replied Tallow, her hands inside Hand’s chest cavity now.

{There are things you do not know. That you do not understand. Comprehension comes after acceptance. Accept that your moment is not now. But it could be soon.}

“Tumours everywhere,” said Tallow.

Prior to all this, she’d seen the scans. They’d worked for days figuring out the best course of action. Every major organ was infested with cancer. It had metastasized, spread from his brain and into every part of him that had a job. It was hard to discern what was supposed to be there and what was mutated and cancerous.

{This. Is. Not. The. End.}

“Pluhhhhhh,” gibbered Hand.

“Keep that line in,” said Baker. He wished he’d bought a book with him. Something short and breezy.

“…I know, Doctor; I am,” said Clancy. She didn’t regret joining the Steadborne Stack. This was where the mad scientists played, and she aspired to that sandbox.

{Acceptance will lead to comprehension. Comprehension will lead to evolution.}

“Will I die?”

Hand was above his body now, looking down at what his life had done to it. No one deserved this, he thought. Not even him. But then again… he had been bad…

{You will never die. What you do with this infinite will decide the course of the universe.}

“Who are you?” he asked.

Even as he spoke, Hand watched the doctor cradle his heart and all its tubes and spigots, and wondered why it looked so unlike every other heart he’d ever touched. He wondered what his own heart tasted like. Probably bitter. That’d been ironic.

{We are the progenitor of life on this Earth. On many Earths.}

“Who are you?” repeated Hand.

{We are M’nagalah. And you are perfect.}

“…M’nagalah?” repeated Hand.

Above him, an impossible darkness twisted where the ceiling should have been. Below, he could see the medical team work away on him, taking samples, poking and prodding. But yes, above, the darkness took shape. So many eyes. So many tentacles. They looked down at him, and he wondered…

“Are you God?”

The eyes of the shape in the darkness blinked. It writhed in the black abyss, a creature-- a god-thing-- made of liquid dark and trapped-in-amber eyes. So many… so many eyes…

{We are the face and foundation of all human knowledge.}

“Close enough…”

Humanity was ugly. So, so ugly. And if this thing was the beginning, then Hand could believe it. He wondered what the end would be. Would he be the end? If he accepted whatever the offer this thing made, would that be his destiny?

{Long have we been waiting for one such as you. You are needed.}

“Why? Why am I perfect?”

Below them, the doctors made jokes. They had lifted up the sheet that covered what was left of Hand’s genitals. There was nothing left for him down there. In more ways than one.

{You are a being caught midway between life and death through a quirk of genetics. That acts as a catalyst. You can be our anchor in this reality. Allow us entry. Acceptance will lead to comprehension. Comprehension will lead to evolution.}

“Evolution into what?”

{As we said before, you will never die. With the width and breadth of infinity available to you, you will decide the course of the universe on our behalf.}

“But what will I become?”

{…A better man than Hal Jordan ever was.}

Bridget Steadborne pressed her hands against the glass as the heart monitor buzzed. “Oh my god!”

“He’s flatlining!” bellowed Clancy.

“I know, I know!” Tallow looked up at where Bridget stood while Baker checked the monitors. “I don’t even know where to start! He should have died months-- years-- ago!”

William Hand died with a smile on his face.

Bridget watched as they covered his body with a sheet, then turned to Abigail. “…You… you called him ‘he’.”

Six months later, Guy Gardner was in Bridget Steadborne’s office asking the kinds of questions the military didn’t want her team at the Stack answering. They’d bugged her office, they were monitoring conversations, and she was supposed to stick to a cover story. He’d figured that one out quick enough and erected a cone of silence in her office, and now it was time to admit her sins.


“So you had him here?” asked Guy.

Why was he so surprised at her honesty? William Hand was the black spot on her record at the Stack, and it had rained down nothing but hell since that time. She wanted to be done with it. She wanted him taking down. So if the Green Lanterns could help with that, if this angry, hot-headed man could do that, she’d give him all the information she had available.

“Until he died. And then only until he came back.”

Guy blinked. “Repeat that.”

It was difficult to admit. Her patient was an impossible man. And now he was loose. “Mister Hand died, Mister Green Lantern. He was dead, cold on a slab, and then he came back.”

“Call me Guy,” She watched his brow furrow as he worked through something in his head. His fist clenched tight enough she could hear his glove creak, but then he relaxed, shook his head, and said softly, “Go on?”

“William Hand was suffering with a severe brain tumour when he arrived at the Stack, what we found after an MRI was that it wasn’t just one tumour, it was several. His entire body was riddled with cancer. It was astonishing that he lived as long as he did. But that was why we wanted him here. We read the medical reports, the write-ups on his tumour-- no one should have lived as long as he did, considering the diagnosis.”

“Is that why you had him here?

“Yes, exactly. Our work here involves using the superhuman physiology to combat all-too-human ailments. A man who can survive that kind of cancer? I want to take a look inside his head.”

Her glasses slipped down the bridge of her nose, and she pushed them up with her thumb.

“And then he died,” said Guy.

“Complications from the treatment. We were trying some radical treatment to stabilise him, maybe shrink the tumours. We wanted to look inside his brain, but if we opened him up, we were convinced he wouldn’t make it through the operation. And as much as others wouldn’t care about keeping him alive, I’m not going to vivisect a man to death. Even if he is a killer.”

That was a lie. She was ordered to do just that, and she did. The money was going to good places. The Stack was doing good work because of the cheque the US military cut them. How could she hold the moral high ground? How could she like that?

Gardner nodded. “Humane of you.”

Did he see right through her? Frazzled, she pushed on.

“Well, more humane than what he would have done in our position. That man was vile, an absolute beast. He suffered, and he suffered, and we tried to alleviate his suffering, but nothing we could do helped. He ranted about already being dead, how we were haunting him, and how nothing we did, or he would do to us, mattered, because he was already dead. He spat and swore and cussed us out every minute of every day. And when he wasn’t berating us, explaining how he was already dead, he talked about someone he knew. Umm, Harold, I think it was?”

The Green Lantern in front of her stiffened. Visibly straightened up. She cocked her head to the side and read him like a book. “You know who he meant?”

He changed the subject. “Black Hand died?”

Okay, so now it was his turn to lie. A small one. Secret identities and the like. That was fair, she guessed. But if it meant something to him, then maybe he had more of the tools than they did to track down Hand and do something about it.

“Hand thought he was dead already. You know what we call that? The Cotard Delusion. Somebody who thinks they’re already dead. With how his body reacted to the tumours, the weight and hair loss, his fingernails fell out, his skin blackened, started necrotising. You could almost believe it.”

“But you said he actually died?”

“During the course of treatment. And when then… look, I have a theory, and it’s an odd one, and I’ve got no proof. Hand escaped, and his escape left our work in a shambles. But I think, I think he was a superhuman. And his brain tumours were basically a part of that. Part of his specific mutation. His body is dead, effectively. Afterwards, we opened up his head and looked inside and he woke up, mutilated two of the surgeons, nearly killed them with a scalpel, before breaking out. I can show you the footage-- he just-- he just picks up the part of his skull we removed, slips it back in place, picks up a stapler--”

Tallow might not hold a scalpel again. Hand cut her the tendons in her right arm and the surgery to reattach it left her in agony. Rehab was being covered by the Stack, but she was struggling. A year, maybe more, and she might be back at work. Baker got in the way of the attack before Hand could finish the job, and lost an eye for his bravery. He had taken it in his stride. Always wanted to wear an eyepatch, he claimed…

Gardner pusher her. “I get the idea. Mutation, you said? What’s his power set?”

“I don’t even know, turning himself into a walking, talking zombie?”

“Why wasn’t this reported? Why didn’t the world know this god damn monster was loose?”

The truth was simple and shameful. “…I’m not allowed.”

“Not allowed? By whose order? You’re working for the government. FBI? Are you working for Faraday?”

“Who? No, I’m, it’s a private… I shouldn’t really…”

“But they monitor you?”

His ring sent a wave of green across the room, revealing numerous pieces of recording equipment, microphones in the walls, a camera in every corner of the room. Her computer, her phones, her laptop, everything was riddled with bugs. She had suspected the depth of their monitoring, but it still made her feel absolutely sick.

He pushed ahead. “Are you safe? Really?”

“Yes, yes, I’m safe, it’s just, well, they pay us well and they demand a certain level of anonymity. It’s a private investor, I can’t go into details, but they were the ones who paid for William Hand’s transfer to the Stack. They wanted us to figure out the secret to his surviving. The in-house psychiatrist told me something, and, uh, it might be worth something. It might be the reason he kept going, or it might be a madman’s delusion.”

“What would that be?

“William thought he kept going because Harold had something of his that he needed back to finally rest. He said he wouldn’t rest-- I assume he meant stay dead-- until he saw him again.” She deflated. “Forty-eight hours later, he escaped.”

COAST CITY; NOW:

“You’re beautiful,” whispered Carol Ferris.

Hank Henshaw emerged from the Star Sapphire Central Power Battery she’d constructed, though unlike those built by the actual Corps, hers was organic-- grown-- into the floor of her home. It was as big as a room, lilac-looking metals combined with calcium-like materials. He was naked, covered in the violet embryonic fluid that had pooled in the base of the battery, where all the negative aspects of love coalesced.

On the Star Sapphire’s home world of Zamoran, a similar event had created the Predator entity. Carol had hoped to bring her love back…

Hank pulled Carol toward him and kissed her deeply. His being rattled with power, and she was caught up in its gravitational pull. Their lips parted and a spark flew from her mouth to his, and he smiled.

“I knew you’d come back to me. I knew you were in there,” she continued.

“It’s something so unexpected,” said Hank. He looked at his hands. So human.

“Do you remember what you said?”

Hank nodded. The voice that emerged from his mouth was distant, like it was replaying a memory from long ago: “I’ll come back for you, Carol. I’ll never let you down.*”


Carol began to sob. “Yes yes yes and you’re here.”

“You bought me back from the brink, Carol, you and only you. You’re my heart, and my soul, and without you I’d be nothing. I need you.*”


He nodded again and then turned to contemplate the Central Power Battery. “You know how I was born. All the love in the universe runs through the battery on Zamoran. Every tiny speck of it. Love is a tangible thing. Love can be held. Love can be manipulated. That’s how the Star Sapphires energise their cause. Through sheer force of love. But we all know that sometimes… love hurts. Unrequited love. Obsessive love. The kind of love that drives one to murder.”

“Darling…?” whispered Carol.

“And that’s the Predator,” said Hank, turning around; purple light flashed behind his eyes.

“Not to me it’s not,” she replied, swallowing a smile. “You’re everything. My heart and my soul.”

“Oh, yes, it is. The Predator is every bad thought had after rejection. He is every terrible plan conceived to make one into two. He is the cage you build in the basement to keep your desired partner in until they love you back. He is the parent that kills the child after the marriage ends. He is every bad thing that comes with love.”

“And now you’re here. We can change the world. We can--”

Hank shook his head and held out his hand. “Come here.”

Carol rushed over to him, grabbed his hand and folded herself against his chest. She listened to his heart race as it acclimatised to all that power rushing through him-- except it was steady.

“Carol…” started Hank.

“Yes?” she whispered.

Hank leaned back in and whispered. “…The Predator is never coming back.”

She flinched in shock at the change in his tone. Harsh. Brutal.

Without hesitation, Hank blasted Carol in the head with a cataclysmic beam of purple energy. His palm blistered as he manipulated an energy source he had no clue how to control, but he knew that it wouldn’t last for long.

Whatever had happened in that battery had caused him a migraine on an epic scale, but he felt the true, pure power of the Star Sapphires in there, and somehow-- due to some genetic tweak caused by his previous possession at the hands of the original Predator, perhaps-- he found he could manipulate it.

Not for long, and it hurt like blazes, but it was enough to change the course of the current situation.

Over a year ago, on Christmas Eve, Hank had met Kyle Rayner. They were never close, of course. Rayner was always Hal’s protégé-of-sorts, before the kid started hanging around with Sinestro, and Henshaw didn’t want to make friends at that point. The window of opportunity was too small on either side-- between receiving his ring and dying, then coming back and Kyle’s disappearance. Maybe six months? And he remembered how unwilling he was to fraternise in the latter timeframe, how John was the only one who could get a couple of words out of him…

Hank remembered what Kyle had said, while they were on the surface of the moon. “It won’t happen again, Hank. The Predator. It won’t take you again.*”


The Predator hadn’t taken him, the evil entity that reflected the dark side of love, but the energy was there for the taking, so why not take advantage of that? Carol turned to face Hank but when she sent a beam of energy at him he caught it in his smouldering palm and squelched it. The bastardised power of the Star Sapphire ring Ferris wore wouldn’t hurt him anymore.

Back on the moon, back with Kyle in the past, Hank remembered how terrified he had been. The White Lantern had done something to his very existence-- Kyle had seen immense, cascading shapes behind Henshaw, and it had taken until this moment for Hank to realise what.

Kyle had seen every single one of Hank Henshaw’s possible futures, and nipped all but one of them in the bud. That was the scope of the White Lantern’s power.

Behind every person there is a construct only the cosmically aware could see. Events, things that could be and would be and should be and never have.

For Hank, that was a black cloud-- filled with every event stemming from his life before and after the Green Lantern Corps, then the threads of events that stemmed from each of those and then blossoming out like an immense flower in a dense garden until the garden was the world and the world was the universe and the universe never ended. Infinite possibilities.

Along with the Green Lantern threads there were Predator threads and everything that came from that line of possibility-- loves lost, Carol Ferris broken, every horrible thing that would be delivered with that entity’s continued existence…

In equal measure purple mixed with emerald, with Hank’s body split between the two sources of light. Behind him stood his every future, like an accordion of paper-chained people, all folded back until the end of whatever life he could live.

What lives were there? Life as a Green Lantern; life as the Predator; life as an astronaut; life as a drunk; life cut short by suicide; each with their own events that stemmed from a decision he would make at some point in his life. Henshaw was pure potential and Kyle could see each and every one of them. Every possible life. Every possible future.

Hank remembered how Kyle reached out behind Hank and grasped at empty space-- with the memories unlocked, he could see Kyle looked at the future, and choosing one he liked the look of. He gripped it tight and pulled it forward. Hank remembered the feeling, the physical revulsion as reality rippled outwards, his body screaming danger danger danger but unable to do anything about it. He grabbed Kyle’s wrist, but nothing could stop the White Lantern from making cutting infinite futures away from Hank Henshaw’s life and drawing a single lifeline, from beginning to end, into his existence.

“I will never, ever be the Predator again,” said Hank, looking down at Carol.

He had hoped that the decision would be his to make, but it wasn’t. The White Lantern had decided his fate a year ago, and it made him secure in the fact that he would never turn to that dark side ever again. Maybe his knowing that made it true. Maybe it being true made it known. Who knew how these things worked?

“B-but you said--” started Carol.

“You’ve been driven insane by the ring on your finger, Carol. And I’m going to help you get better. But first, you need to take off that ring.”

She shook her head in the way that toddler might when they refused to admit they’d taken the last cookie from the counter. She had been twisted every which way by the shard of the Predator left in that ring on her finger, and it would be a long walk back to sanity for her.

In another room, there was a buzzing, and a split second later Hank’s power ring shot onto his hand. <Power levels at 150%,> it said, and then his Green Lantern uniform materialised over his naked body

“The boys have been busy then,” said Hank, appreciating that his aura cleaned the battery goop off his body as the uniform reconstituted.

“I will see him again. I will see him again,” repeated Carol, completely lost in her insanity now.

“I truly hope you never do,” said Hank.

He managed to sedate her, but couldn’t remove the barbed power ring from her finger. He hoped that the dose he’d given her would last the rest of his dreadful night, then grabbed the portable power battery he’d been sent to locate hours ago, and headed out to find his comrades.

COAST CITY; NOW:

Kyle was in shock. He was staring at the power ring on his finger and Guy was talking but he couldn’t hear him. Alex was gone. Alex was gone and she was in possession of the powers that made him the White Lantern. The power that nearly drove him mad due to the vast cosmic awareness it granted him. He was built for it and he was overwhelmed. He was--

Gardner slapped him hard across the face and he was snapped back to reality. “Wh-what did you do that for?”

“We need to stop Black Hand, kid. You’re Green Lantern Corps now, that means you listen to my damn orders, y’hear?”

“I-- I hear you,” said Kyle.

“Good. Don’t tell Salaak I hit you, he really frowns on that.”

“How can you joke right now, Guy? Everything’s… everything’s--”

Hank Henshaw landed next to the two Green Lanterns and finished the train of thought. “Everything’s always terrible, Kyle. But we work with the hand we’ve been dealt.”

“Spaceman, where the hell have you been?” asked Guy, embracing his friend.

“I have had the worst kind of day.”

“You, me and him both, pal,” said Guy.

Hank glanced over to Kyle. “You’re here, then? And wearing green?”

“Recent development. Two minutes old, max,” said Guy.

“We need to stop Black Hand. I need to get this damn shield down so we can leave-- I need to find Alex,” said Kyle.

Hank didn’t fully understand. “Alex?”

Guy shook his head. “Other recent developments-- Kyle has a girlfriend. And she’s currently mainlining the powers of the White Lantern.”

“That’s… big,” said Hank.

“So, yeah, where do we start?” ask Guy.

Kyle racked his brains. “Before… before Polaris killed me, we saw that flare, right? Over Rodriguez Cermeno Tower*?”


Guy clicked his fingers. “Yes! Was that you?” he said, looking at Hank.

“Nope. You think John?”

They were about to lift off and head over there when the entire tower, visible from where they stood, began to lift up into the sky. The top of the building scraped against the underbelly of the sphere, large fragments of masonry toppling down toward the street, before it was seemingly flung aside. It crashed near the harbour, half of it splashing into the waters while the rest ruined what was left of the Botanical Gardens.

“Oh, well, that settles it,” said Guy.

“Something’s going on over there. Shall we see what?” asked Hank.

“Just c’mon!” said Kyle.

The trio shot across the city, and when they arrived they could see John hanging in the air, his ring levelled at Black Hand. The villain was stood in the centre of a circle of screaming men and women, while his sister stood dispassionately beside him.

“You wanna catch us up here, Johnny?” asked Guy.

John sighed in relief at seeing his back-up. He gave an acknowledging nod in Kyle’s direction-- no time for niceties, not when things were this bleak-- then spoke quickly. “Black Hand here has had a change of heart. He doesn’t want to kill anybody-- he wants to bring everyone back to life so they can be hosts for his boss--” He pointed at Priscilla. “Meet M’nagalah. She’s a right piece of work.”

Kyle glanced around. “But what about--?”

Plumes of magma exploded up between the four Green Lanterns, but thanks to their rings they managed to dodge being burned alive. From every direction, the villainous horde that Black Hand had gathered was approaching, and they outnumbered the Corpsmen two-to-one.

Major Disaster grinned as the lava spread at their feet, then raised his hands-- all the building nearby began to shake-- ready to begin the next salvo of his attack.

“Well, this didn’t end well for us the first time,” said Hank.

John grimaced and motioned at his arm stump. “You think I don’t remember that?”

“This time it ain’t a surprise, and we got help! I got a plan-- keep ‘em busy while I work out the finer points!” said Guy, his ring flaring as he rushed toward their opponents.

Hank shrugged. “Good plan?”

Kyle could have screamed. “Why are you all so blasé about this? My world is ending! This place is falling apart!”

“Get the civilians clear, we’ll deal with the angry-looking bastards,” said John.

Gardner made a beeline toward Tiger Shark as the hybrid creature dragged itself forward. In itself, that wasn’t a threat, but Tokamak was nearby and he could drain their rings-- so he grabbed the latter with a bare hand, so his aura wouldn’t be compromised, and scooped the former up in a sphere. Guy threw Tiger Shark toward Ferris Air, as far from water as possible, then slammed Tokamak against the surface of the shield that surrounded the city.

Hank felt two hands clasp around his aura and turned to see No-Face standing there.

“…Seriously?” asked Henshaw.

Unable to pierce his protective shield, the villain was useless, so Henshaw kicked him hard between the legs just to see what would happen. Surprisingly, No-Face winced and fell to the ground, where Hank covered his main offensive weapons-- his hands-- in thick bindings.

Kyle immediately hit upon a problem. The civilians were suddenly surrounded by black shields, like the one surrounding the city but on a much smaller scale. He tried smashing through them, but he found himself unable to pierce the shells.

“Got a problem here, guys!” he called out, but he saw that his friends were preoccupied.

John was dodging Javelin’s arsenal of airborne weaponry while also contending with the shuffling form of the Tattooed Man, whose thin, wispy tattoo-constructs kept threatening to slash at his aura, even if he barely had any skin on his musculature.

He turned to Kyle, acknowledging the problem and moving on quickly. “Okay, he needs them alive, so let’s focus on getting the--” He was interrupted by a blast from empty space, presumably the Invisible Destroyer. He dropped to a knee, then an explosive javelin rocked him to the ground.

“WHY DO YOU KEEP HURTING ME?” screamed Tokamak, above the fray with Guy.

“Because your friends are utter bastards,” replied Guy, cracking the energy-absorbing villain’s head against the hard, black surface behind him. He could see the containment suit begin to bulge as energy fed into his being-- just as he suspected, the villain was processing the energy keeping the sphere in place, so if he kept at it, kept using him as a chisel to chip away at--

Before the Invisible Destroyer could go in for the kill, Kyle stepped in front of Kyle and pulled all the concrete dust caused by the toppling of Rodriguez Cermeno Tower into a construct then billowed it out. The villain who relied on going unseen was suddenly visible, and Kyle grimaced as he levelled his ring at him.

“I’m so sorry, I just want to get out of here.”

He encased the Destroyer in a sarcophagus then swung him across the city, away from the fight.

Across the way, Black Hand looked up at the one-sided battle raging above between Gardner and Tokamak and grimaced. Cracks formed at the point that Tokamak was being pushed against the sphere. That wouldn’t do.

M’nagalah shook the head of the corpse it inhabited. “You thought that removing the restrictions that come with being alive would give your followers powers beyond previous reckoning. Look at them. Look how the Green Lanterns war. But you may have given them the tools to tear down the dank womb from which we will be born…”

“I won’t let that happen,” said Hand.

He pointed his finger at Tokamak like a gun then keeled it back, sending a charge through the air that none of them could see. In an instant, the villain who had, mere moments before, been an undead collection of stray energy patterns capable of absorbing power from anything nearby was rendered human and alive.

The energy absorbing villain gasped, flesh visible, hair in clumps emerging from tears in his costume. Guy nearly dropped him in surprise, but when he saw the cracks in the shield fade he knew that his plan to get them out of the sphere had hit a bump in the road. So, he decided to bump the restored villain on the upside of the head and re-join the battle, hoping that they could make their way to Black Hand and whatever that M’nagalah monster was.

“I find this vessel so restrictive, William. I want one of my own. A body that is mine, and mine alone…”

“Soon, soon,” said Hand.

Major Disaster went for Henshaw, plumes of liquid fire exploding at the hero’s boots, lightning storms manifesting above his head. “It’d be a disaster if your ring--” he started.

Henshaw sent a construct into the villain’s jaw, knocking him back. He didn’t know if there had to be a verbal aspect to Disaster’s powers but he wasn’t in the mood to wait and find out. He was about to follow up with a blast to the sternum, but he was on the receiving end of a blast to the back that sent him toward Disaster, who looked up angrily at him.

“It’d be a disaster if your heart stopped,” he said, simply.

Henshaw gasped, his chest screaming. In his head he screamed “Sort that out!” at his ring, and the pain subsided, so instead of fumbling around on the floor he took a page out of Disaster’s book and sent a pillar of earth and concrete upwards at the villains’ feel, propelling him through the sky.

Behind him, Invisible Destroyer shimmered visible, his eyes crackling with the energy that had knocked Henshaw off balance a second ago.

John dodged a javelin throw and redirected it at the Destroyer’s torso. It made an unimpressive sound like a rock falling into a pile of sand and jutted visibly through his abdomen a split second later, giving Henshaw a brief reprieve.

“Kill your friends! Kill them all! Please! Please?” shouted the Puppeteer, waving his hands wildly at Kyle Rayner, trying to draw his attention. He didn’t seem focused, and the fact that only his mouth and nose were intact on his head gave the young Green Lantern pause. These super-zombies were something else.

Kyle drew a catapult with his ring and sent the villain across the city. Best to continue to clear the streets--

“ur frie idnt ki e b edi eac m eth ne”

The sound was like a radio suffused with static, and Kyle couldn’t make out the source.

“Hello?” he asked, but there was no response, so instead he deflected a javelin thrown by the titular villain, and tried to repress his disgust at seeing the man’s head blown half off. It looked like the skin and bone had tried to reconstitute, but he was still half-headed.

Were the super-zombies they’d managed to stop over the last few hours capable of reconstituting themselves completely? Slowly but surely, but surely none the less?

Behind Kyle, a visible crackle in the air appeared, and the voice emerging from it became clear: “I said: Your friend didn’t kill me but he did teach me something new.”

Previously thought dead-- Doctor Polaris manifested and sent an electromagnetic pulse into Rayner’s chest, causing the young Lantern to careen backwards into John. Both men skittered to a stop in front of Black Hand, who looked down at them with utter contempt.

Hand grabbed John by the throat and Kyle by the leg. He threw the latter at the grubby hands of the Crumbler, but Stewart yelled in shock and created a battering ram that sent the vicious villain half way across the city, through every building between here and there.

Hand squeezed hard and Stewart gargled blood. He tried to create a construct but his mind went fuzzy as oxygen began to become a commodity unavailable to him.

“You don’t understand what I hope to do here, John. Clearly.”

“You-- wan-- to create-- body for--- M’mgaga,” gargled John.

“I mean, that is actually quite accurate,” said Hand, contemplating the point.

Hank managed to get Kyle’s heart beating again, thinking ‘This seems to be a recurring theme’ as he did so, then said, “You okay?”

“Man, that hurt; that really, really hurt,” said Kyle, rubbing his sternum.

Above, Guy was strafing from above, and he’d managed to pull of Javelin’s weapons from his overly large quiver and impaled him on them all. He was out of the fight, and the scene was clearing. Doctor Polaris was still active, causing metal from every building to twist and leech upwards, and he constructed an immense, clockwork death machine that promised to harm everyone in sight in horrendous ways.

The three Green Lanterns-- minus John, who struggled against Black Hand’s grip-- conversed silently via their ring connection--

“That doesn’t look good,” thought Hank.

Guy agreed. “How’s he so powerful all of a sudden?”

“How do we stop him, guys?” asked Kyle, cutting to the chase.

Guy considered their position. “I think there’s some kind of weird energy that Black Hand’s using to keep these freaks up and moving around. If we can cut that energy off--”

“We need to find it first, see if we can sever the connection,” thought Hank.

Kyle shook his head, and after thinking, “let’s find it then!”, he, and the others, sent strands of light into Doctor Polaris’ brain, searching for any trace of the signal that was animating his body. He screamed as his mind was being picked apart, but the trio didn’t have time to be a soft touch about it. After a number of seconds, and the surviving villains slamming their fists against the shields that kept the Lanterns protected, Polaris’ machine dropped to the floor with a colossal thud, and he passed out.

“New plan!” shouted Guy, and he uploaded it to their rings.

“Oh, come on,” said Kyle, Gardner’s intentions beamed from his ring into their brains.

Hank agreed with a nod and then followed Gardner’s instructions-- they created a massive scoop that zeroed in on all the supervillains, carefully picking them up from the rubble. From the scoop, large columns of light shot out and located all the bad guys they’d dispersed across the city, drawing them back to their cohorts. Once all the villains had been located, they severed the connection in their heads the same way they had Doctor Polaris, until they were all defeated.

Finally, with the battlefield clear, the trio turned their attention to Black Hand, who still had John hoisted up.

Hand tutted and shook his head. “You could have had it so easy, gentlemen.”

He stabbed a finger into the stub of John’s arm and watched as flesh and bone began to knit back together. Stewart screamed as the bone formed first, then the webs of nerves and arteries across muscle, then skin. Hand had rebuilt his arm, and it was one of the most painful experiences of his life.

Priscilla looked up at the sky and smiled. “The time is close, William…”

Black Hand nodded. He held John aloft, squeezed his throat to punctuate what was coming next, and asked: “Just tell me, where’s Hal Jordan?”

“I-- we-- don’t-- know--” growled John.

“Time for you to stand down, Hand,” said Henshaw.

“Yeah, you’re surrounded. Let the hostages go and come along quietly,” said Guy.

“Why do you insist on--”

Guy levelled his hand in her direction. “Shut up!”

“All this talk… you don’t understand what’s at stake here…”

John groggily lifted up his hands and aimed his ring at her. “trrrryyyy mmeeeee”

Without any further hesitation, he blasted the head of M’nagalah’s host body and she flopped to the ground immediately. Hand screamed, released Stewart, and rushed over to the double-dead corpse of his sister-master. “What have you done?!”

John rubbed his throat, his ring knitting the damaged tissue back together, and stumbled back into the line his fellow Green Lanterns had drawn. “Ended this. Stand down, Hand. You’re done.”

“We are far from finished here. It’s time.” came the disembodied voice of M’nagalah.

Hand looked to the sky as the hundreds of thousands of black orbs that held the survivors of the Coast City’s latest massacre began to float upwards. Inside, the inhabitants of the city were filled with a serene calm-- be them the survivors, be them those killed by the undead then resurrected, be them the undead themselves bought back to life-- the spheres rewired their brains; everything-is-good-everything-is-great-everything-is-fine, and drew them closer and closer to the black shield that had trapped them since the night before.

If asked, Kyle would have said that it looked like time was moving in reverse-- the shield was weeping these grand, obsidian tears, and instead of seeing them land, they were seeing them emerge from crying eyes. He remembered the cosmic wonders he’d witnessed as the White Lantern, he remembered the Crimson Scar and the wall around Sector 666, he remembered stars going out and the lights they sent out into the universe going with them, he remembered that Alex was in possession of a power that might end her, and he felt his hand tense up-- he needed to get out and find her! He needed to save her!

“I don’t like this,” said Hank.

“Guys, I don’t think we’ve stopped anything,” said Kyle.

.“Then we need to--” started John.

“Unrelenting cellular duplication. Relentless, unstoppable life,” said Black Hand, his voice a low growl. “I thought… the answer was death… but it was always life. Life! I don’t understand why you’re fighting this. I don’t understand. I want everything to live! Together! Forever! United under M’nagalah! How it was always meant to be!”

“What you’re talking about is a horror show, Hand. And we’re not going to let your master have its way.”

“Enough of this bullshit!” spat Guy.

He sent a lance of light straight through Hand’s chest and the foursome could see the urban sprawl behind him through the hole left in the attack’s wake. Hand staggered forward, then staggered back. He touched the wound, then shook his head angrily. Within his chest, a writhing mass of tumorous growths began to extend from the edges of the wound; the worming flesh tentacled toward each other until it sealed him up, complete once more.

“Huh,” said Guy, simply.

“You can’t stop this. It’s already begun--!”

John understood something, and he spoke plainly. “You regenerate now. You don’t rot. Let’s see if you can regenerate from this.”

The four Green Lanterns pooled their power and reduced Hand to floating atoms in one, concentrated blast of emerald energy. The air where he had been standing fizzled and popped-- then the obsidian orbs floating above their heads cracked open, and suddenly hundreds of thousands of survivors began to plummet to the ground, their screams filling the air.

“Go go go!” howled Hank.

The team went into overdrive. Their rings worked in unison, catching every single survivor in the city, and not even one hit the ground without a pair of emerald wings lowering them slowly, a lime parachute allowing them a graceful landing, or without being encased in a protective sphere that got them to safety.

After the screaming seconds had passed, the team paused. They’d done it. Black Hand was gone, M’nagalah seemingly dissipated. That was easy.

“What now?” asked John.

“It can’t have been that easy--?” agreed Guy.

Then the screams started, and this time, the cause was something more horrifying than they could have possibly imagined--

“Oh, God,” whispered Kyle.

COAST CITY; NOW:

Suddenly, the emerald sphere surrounding Coast City was gone, and it was finally, clearly morning. The skies above were beautiful, punctuated by by a mixture of emerald and violet light. The Green Lanterns were interacting with the Justice League, who had held a vigil over the black sphere, and later they would discuss the events of the day with the four heroes who had survived the ordeal.

The first thing that happened was Arisia Rrab, leading a contingent of Star Sapphires, descended toward her former Green Lantern comrades. A group of them split off from the main, and retrieved a still unconscious Carol Ferris from her apartment. Hank didn’t even acknowledge what was happening-- he was horrified, nearly catatonic with shock. The Star Sapphires were side-by-side with the Batman and Wonder Woman, while Katma Tui represented the Green Lantern Corps.

Later, when asked what the Star Sapphires were doing on Earth, Arisia would explain how the presence of an active second Central Power Battery fuelled by love sent their rings into disarray. In conjunction with the Green Lantern Corps they had descended on Earth, but when they found the shield, all they could was wait…

Her eyes drifted over the human Lanterns, and she was surprised when she counted four. She half expected the man she barely recognised to be Hal, but after the fog of the circumstances behind his disappearance passed, she realised it was Kyle Rayner.

“Kyle! How-- where--?”

Kyle looked past the Lanterns and Leaguers. “I have… I have to go…”

He shot into the air and broke atmosphere, immediately slipping into subluminal on a course to Oa.

“He’s a Green Lantern now?” said Arisia.

“Where is everybody?” asked Wonder Woman.

“John?” pressed Batman.

Katma looked around Coast City. She’d been here over a year ago now, on Christmas Day. She’d been late to proceedings, having to wrap something up back in her home sector, but managed to get there not long after the children had turned in. There was such warmth to the place then, but now it was so quiet. Not a sound, other than those coming from the heroes swarming in to see what they could do in the aftermath.

“Oh, no,” she whispered, understanding why it was so quiet.

“Black Hand… he… he summoned some kind of outer dimension being… they… they…”

“Everyone died,” whispered Hank.

Arisia was taken aback. “What?!”

Guy shook his head and pointed an angry finger at her. “They’re all dead, ‘Risia! We couldn’t save them! We tried and we couldn’t… couldn’t save them… ”

“Hera help us,” said Wonder Woman.

She’d been there when Black Hand had stolen Hal Jordan’s identity. She had some idea of the depth of his depravity, but this was something leagues beyond that. How could this kind of destruction be possible?

Meanwhile, Batman looked around at the chaos, and then headed back to where the Justice League were gathered. What more was there to be said? What more could be done?

“Black Hand did all this?” repeated Wonder Woman.

“And we lost everyone,” said Guy, simply.

OA; NOW:

“Well, look at you, boy. What an interesting piece of jewellery on your finger.”

Sinestro had been waiting in the Citadel of the Green Lantern Corps since he first heard the news. Salaak hadn’t wanted him flying off to Earth when there were so many active threats on the board, so he had been stuck in the science labs, assessing the viability of the thousands of power rings John Stewart had delivered from a parallel universe*.


But when Kyle Rayner had landed on Oa, Thaal couldn’t help but feel proud. The boy he’d helped train to utilise his immense powers* had returned to him, and he’d be lying if he said there wasn’t some paternal pride involved there.


Kyle utilised the emerald power ring like he’d bore it for decades. Subluminal travel, phasing through structures, zipping through the skyscrapers that surrounded the Citadel… there was a learning curve involved in using one, but not with Rayner. A result of his training, perhaps? Sinestro was not a vain man, but perhaps he had done some good…

Kyle shook his head apologetically and embraced his mentor before either could think about it. “Thaal, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know what happened. The White Lantern thing… it became too much… I had to let it go, but now… now my girlfriend… now she’s… we need to find her… before it burns her up!”

Sinestro had no idea what Kyle was saying, but the fear in his eyes was apparent. “There’s nothing much more to it then,” he said.

“Wh-what do you mean?”

Sinestro patted him on the shoulder reassuringly. “I mean we’re going to go find her. So, where should we start?”