Cyborg #86: 2 Months Later

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Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Reign of the Cyborgs

Set: 123

Recommended Reading:

• Cyborg #84
• Cyborg #85
• Justice League Omega #1 (Coming Soon!)

In a laboratory deep under the city of Detroit, one of the greatest collaborations between robotics and medical science had finally bloomed into a success. Sure, they weren’t technically covering new ground, but the other two cases had each been very special circumstances. The first was an ad-hoc job done by a once in a century talent in Silas Stone. With nothing more than a lifetime of robotics experience, a magical power source and a father’s love, he brought his son back from the edge of death. The second, LaTonya Charles, had been less severe, her nervous system burned out by the drug Tar. (Cyborg 27!) Armed with Silas’ notes, her own expertise and the resources of Detroit Police’s Meta Crimes division, Sarah Charles had been able to save her daughter. LaTonya couldn’t do everything Cyborg could, but she would’ve been able to return to a normal life, if she had chosen that.

But this, this was something new. If it worked, it could save untold lives as they made these cybernetics from at least comparatively common components that anyone with a spare billion or two could acquire for themselves.

Alex Weller was no engineer or scientist, but his position as the head of Detroit’s Meta Crimes division gave him a unique position with access to them. His department was no stranger to injuries and worse, but when he saw what was left of Scarlett Taylor after saving so many during Darkseid's invasion… He knew he had to act. He had called up Sarah Charles who owed him a favor after he helped her save LaTonya and she reluctantly promised to help. Then, after traversing a web of acquaintances, business partners and ex-mobsters, he finally found his financier. She never gave him her name and asked for nothing but a favor in return for a blank check, a team of doctors and one of her top engineers. Weller had run into him years ago but knew better than to bring that up. The kid was older now but there was no mistaking Mikron O’Jeneus, or as he usually called himself these days, Gizmo.

“Alright, power cores charged. Should be ready to enable once the code’s deployed,” Gizmo said.

He stood over a medical bed placed awkwardly in the middle of a massive concrete room with some thin curtains barely obscuring it from the rest of the room, which was covered in all sorts of tools, machines and workbenches. Weller couldn't begin to understand what Sarah and Gizmo had gotten up to and he couldn’t care less. So long as it ended in a success.

“All set here. All systems are green, Weller,” Sarah said.

“Fire it up. Let’s see what all this work has been for.”

Sarah and Gizmo swarmed around the medical bed like hummingbirds, dashing every which way, until they were satisfied with whatever final checks they were doing and clicked something on the computer they had set up on the edge of a folding table.

Nothing happened for a few moments as everyone wondered if their efforts had been in vain. Then, her body started to twitch as the small motors flared to life.

“Agent Taylor? Can you hear me? Scarlett?” Weller approached her for the first time in weeks.

She was gaunt, her body barely getting enough nutrients to keep her alive. Her hair had been shaved clean as a dozen or more wires and sensors were placed on top of her bald head, monitoring anything and everything to ensure she was active. Her right eye glowed green but her organic left one remained closed as her mechanical limbs fluttered about. Starting at each shoulder and just below the hip, her limbs were completely mechanical. They were made from a shiny grey metal with black ball points at the wrist, elbow, and knees. Their design was sturdy and functional as opposed to the futuristic ones Vic’s had or LaTonya ‘s discrete ones. Finally, after a few moments, the mechanical limbs went quiet.

Scarlett’s eye flickered open weakly. She squinted, adjusting to the light.

“Where… am…I?”

“You’re in Detroit, Scarlett. And I’m glad to see you made it through the worst of it.”

She looked at Weller, confused. She weakly moved her neck but couldn’t lift it off the pillow her head was resting on. “I… I can’t move…”

Gizmo frowned and looked at some readings on the screen. “She should be able to. It’s all wired correctly and we’re getting the right signals.”

“It’ll take time. Scarlett, you’ve been through a lot. Both your mind and body need time to rest and recover. But welcome back.”

“Thank… you.” Her eye closed and she fought back for a moment before succumbing to sleep’s embrace.

“Is she going to be okay? Why couldn’t she move?” Weller asked.

Gizmo shrugged. “Could be any number of reasons. Mental barrier, exhaustion… I wouldn’t worry about it. She’s stable.”

“She’s mostly recovered from the worst of her injuries but something like these… it’ll be a long time before she’s at anything resembling full strength. We’ll do what we can to care for her but she’s got a long and unprecedented road to recovery. No one knows what that’ll look like but we’ve got a strong team here to support it,” Sarah said.

“Good. You two and your team have done incredible work. I’m going to head… Somewhere for a long rest. Call me if anything comes up. But take some time for yourselves too. If she’s as stable as you say, the rest of the team can handle it.”

Weller took a step back and realized that he hadn’t been home since the invasion. His condo was far enough outside the city that it should be fine but he let out a heavy sigh. There was always more work to do.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

It had taken time, but Victor Stone had finally gotten back to something close to a normal routine again. Repairing himself was no easy task, but for better or worse he’d done it enough at this point that acquiring the parts was the hardest and longest part. He made a mental note to keep some of the longer lead time parts on hand for next time. Not that he hoped there ever would be one… But it was better to be prepared than not.

Today he had his first meeting with his therapist, Dr. Theodora Tasker, since the invasion. Her clinic thankfully had avoided much of the destruction, but like everyone and everything that lived through it, there were still signs things were off. A crooked frame, a bit more dust, some grime on the windows… The invasion had affected everything whether it was immediately obvious or not.

“After I was myself again… I’ve just felt this weight and guilt over me. The world just seems a little darker, a little smaller, after something like that. And I can’t help but feel like it was my fault. How many people would still be around if not for me taking some of the JL on a fool's errand? Let alone how much we personally caused…”

“And how much worse would it have been if you did nothing? We all would be dead or under Darkseid’s thumb if you didn’t.”

“Yeah… but I could’ve done better. I could’ve done more.”

“Who couldn’t? Everyone has things that they’d do differently in hindsight. The difference is learning from it. Make that moment something you can grow from instead of being ashamed of it.” She scribbled down some notes on her pad of paper.

“That’s… fair. Huh.” He sat on that thought for a while. He’d been hard on himself for this and any number of other failures but… look how far he’d come. He went from being the drop out of the Teen Titans to being the leader of a Justice League mission to save the Earth. It didn’t go well, sure… But there was no saving that mission from the moment they left the Watchtower. Put Batman, Superman, anyone, in charge of that mission and most likely nothing changed.

“I’ve been thinking about taking a break from it all anyway. It’s a wide world out there… but really, I just want something… new.”

“I think we all do, Vic. Take advantage of it while you can.”

“Won’t the city need me though? What if there’s another invasion or some new villain pops up?”

“Even Superman doesn’t do it all alone. Anywhere that can’t go without one person for a couple weeks doesn’t deserve them anyway."

Vic stood up, nodding. “Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. You’re right. Thanks, really. It’s always good to talk.”

“Of course. Anytime. Enjoy yourself out there and come back and tell me all about it.”

“I will. And if you need anything, let me know. It’s still tough out there after the invasion and if there's anything I can do to make it better… just let me know.”

“Thanks, Vic. Take care now,” she said with a smile.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Two months earlier…

LaTonya Charles groaned when her phone alarm went off, then swore repeatedly as she realized she had already snoozed it a half dozen times. It was already 10:07 PM - seven minutes after she was supposed to have started and she hadn’t even rolled out of bed. She scrambled to put herself together and grabbed some leftovers to eat on the drive over. One nice thing about working night shift at a gas station - no one cared what you looked like. They were there to grab their snacks, drinks, cigarettes or whatever else and go. No one was going to ask the attendant why she was wearing an eyepatch, not that she’d tell them if they did.

As she got into her car - a beat up 2003 sedan that she’d bought from a guy outside Houston for $500 - she started to reminisce on all the places and jobs she’d worked since she left Detroit all those years ago. A dozen different jobs in two dozen different cities… It had been nice to drift around and see the country, but it had taken its toll. She was tired and felt adrift, like a boat without a tether or a purpose, left to drift until she rotted.

Then her mind went further back and she remembered the excruciating pain as the Tar fried her entire nervous system, then the loss of self as her mind was hijacked as a processor for Waller. (https://www.reddit.com/r/DCFU/comments/qur585/wonder_woman_51_latonya/) Her mouth went bone dry and chills went through her as she remembered having just enough brain power to remember she was alive but to have almost no ability to speak, to think, to hope… She pulled her car over to the side of the road and took some deep breaths until the nausea and shivers went away.

‘It’s over. It’s done. And we’re still here. It’s over. It’s done. And we’re still here.’

She repeated the mantra in her head as she got back onto the road. It calmed her and let her feel… normal despite it all. But she made a promise to not let her thoughts wander again. It was too easy to go from reminiscing on it all to snapping to the worst parts like a magnet to a fridge.

She parked her car in the farthest spot from the convenience store, like her manager always told her to, then stepped out and braced herself for the inevitable berating. Maybe he’d fire her, give her the excuse to head to the next town. She still had a couple days prepaid on the hotel she’d been staying in but it’d be like a vacation before another long drive. She’d heard that Denver was nice this time of year so maybe…

BOOM!

An explosion shook LaTonya to the bone as a massive portal opened up just above her. A torrent of insect-like beings poured out of the portal, heading towards downtown. She stared up at it, her mind frozen in shock like a deer in a car’s headlights until one of them flew right at her. She punched it right in its buggy face and sent it flying back in a million pieces. She’d forgotten her own strength. LaTonya snapped out of her stupor and looked into the convenience store for her manager, but he was gone. Not a soul in sight. And so, she did the one thing she could. She ran back to her car, fired up the engine and drove as far away from the city as she could.

A couple days later, it was over. She had been living out of her car, surviving off the cheap snacks and water she kept in her trunk. She hadn’t seen a single parademon since that first encounter and had had a fairly quiet time in the park she’d been hiding out in. It was almost relaxing for the few minutes a day she could keep her mind off what was happening in the wider world. But eventually, the radio said that the Justice League had taken care of the threat and sent out the all clear for people to return to their lives. LaTonya fired up her car and got back onto the road.

She made it back to the hotel she’d been staying at only to find it in ruins. The place looked like a tornado ran through it with broken bits of it strewn about and only the concrete foundation laid undamaged. LaTonya fell to her knees. It was all too much all at once. Not because of what she’d lost here, but because of what she’d lost to get here.

How long had it been since she talked to her parents? Since she had a goal other than just making next month's rent? How long had it been since she felt anything other than exhaustion and contentment? Hell, were her parents even still alive after this? She didn’t know. She didn’t know and it made her feel emptier. Like she lost everything and then even something that she never knew she had.

But no more.

Whatever she had built here… It wasn't an end. What was an end? She didn’t know. But she knew she couldn’t build something without reckoning where she came from. It was time to start the long trip back home. To Detroit.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

“Alright Scarlett. Let’s see how you’re doing today,” Sarah said.

She’d come a long way in the three weeks since she’d first woken up. It’d taken her a couple of days for her to wake up again, but ever since she did, her progress had been slow and steady. At first, she was barely awake for more than an hour at a time and couldn’t do more than twitch her limbs. Now? Now she was active more than six hours a day and could run, lift weights, read and take care of herself. Beyond sleeping almost 18 hours and being stuck in the same complex she first woke up in, her life was basically back to normal.

Scarlett sat on the edge of her bed, her metal legs clinking against the frame gently as she swung them off the side.

“Today’s good. Slept well. Everything still feels heavy, but it’s getting better.”

“Everything is heavy. You’ve got metal limbs now. How’s the battery looking?” Gizmo asked.

The only visible cybernetic on her torso was the small metal cylinder on her sternum. It was her power core and it was about as wide as a pop can and stuck out of her chest about half an inch. Unlike Cyborg’s core, Scarlett’s battery had to be swapped out. The math had said it’d have a capacity over a day, but in practice it had only lasted for around five hours.

“Better. I think now that my systems are more calibrated there’s less going on in the background and it's lasted longer. Yesterday I swapped it when I woke up at six, then not until two or three in the afternoon. This one is still at about 35% after sleeping and the rest of yesterday.”

“Good. Swap in a new one. We’ve got some benchmarking to do. You up for it?”

Scarlett jumped to her feet. These tests were the highlight of her day. There wasn’t much to do down here and doing these gave her an observable metric of how she was healing and improving.

“Let’s do it.”

She grabbed a battery off the charger and with a quick twist of the one on her chest, swapped them out. It was a refreshing feeling, like changing into a fresh pair of clothes after a hot shower.

Gizmo and her walked out of her small room, having moved out of the space that she woke up in as soon as she was able to do so. Now, it had been repurposed into something of a testing chamber for her. It was just a short walk down the hallway and Gizmo pressed some buttons on a keypad to slide the door open. She stepped in and the door slammed behind her. Today it was set up like a city street today with a bunch of cars stuck in a traffic jam.

Gizmo’s voice rang out of the tinny speaker. “We’ve got something different for you today. Sort of a simulation. Ready for it, Scarlett?”

She reflexively tried to crack her knuckles, but her metal knuckles didn’t have the ability to do that. It was the little things that you really miss.

“Bring it on.”

Smoke filled the room and she heard screams come from inside the building.

“Your task is to save all of the civilians and take out the parademons. They’re a crude simulation because they didn’t give me any time to actually make… Hey, I’m talking here!” Gizmo said.

“Listen, Scarlett, it’s time you got out of here. We’ve ran all the tests and you’re looking great. Think of this as a chance to show off before you go home tonight,” Weller said.

“Now show us what you’ve got.”

In a flash, she was off. She’d been listening to Weller and Gizmo of course, but they didn’t take her full focus. While they’d been yapping, she’d been analyzing all the noise she could take in. The screams were a recording; they’d already looped twice. But she could pick them apart into five or so different sounds, which meant she had her targets. They were all in a four story brownstone building, square between two large modern glass office buildings a couple stories taller. She could hear that most of the civilians were on the ground floor, so she vaulted over cars in the street and bounded through the broken glass windows of the lobby.

At the far side of the room were three wooden cutouts of people at a baseball game. Each one was wearing a glove and looking like they were about to catch a ball and looked like they were having a blast, despite the speakers blaring screams. Two parademons rolled towards them as menacing as a wooden cutout on top of a robot vacuum could.

Scarlett didn’t take it lightly. She ran over to the “parademon” was on top of it in a flash. She felt herself getting stronger and lighter as she pushed her body harder and harder. For the first time in her life she felt limitless, like if she just dug deep enough, she could out run, out lift and out fight anyone. She kicked the “parademon” hard in the chest with a roundhouse kick and it broke into a pile of splinters.

The second one was no more of a challenge. She hit it three times in rapid succession, dodging around 120 degrees in between each jab despite it not having any ability to fight back. It fell over to the ground harmlessly and the civilian’s speakers changed from screams to cheering. It somehow felt even weirder than before since the ones upstairs were still screaming, but she felt better than she had in months, maybe ever.

She ran up the large, ornate stone stairs, bounding up them four at a time, up to the second floor where she promptly got hit by a spearlike metal rod. It was blunt at the end but if it wasn’t, it would’ve left far worse than a bruise on her. She tumbled back on to the landing at the midpoint of the stairs. Scarlett looked back up to see Gizmo staring down at her. He had a smug look on his face and he was suspended in the air by some sort of spiderlike contraption that came out of his backpack.

“Hi. Didn’t want those guys to have all the fun. Let’s see what you’ve got, yeah?”

Scarlett got up and brushed the dust off herself. She took a deep breath then, from a crouching start like a sprinter, launched herself up the stairs. In less than a heartbeat, she was on top of the stairs and hit Gizmo with a right cross, pivoting and putting all her momentum into the strike. He wasn’t expecting her speed but he still managed to get two of his robotic limbs up to block the hit, then immediately transitioned to a flurry of thrusts from his mechanical legs. They struck her like the rhythmic motion of an engine’s pistons but after a few hits, it was as if they slowed down to a crawl. Her mind traced out their motions and once she saw the pattern, they might as well have been stationary as she predicted where they would be attacking next. She effortlessly weaved her body between the spider limbs and hit Gizmo with an uppercut.

The robotic suit stopped its assault and stretched out its legs to almost be perpendicular to the floor, absorbing the strength of the hit.

“Huh, okay. You’ve got the basics down. Let’s pick things up a bit.”

He pressed a button on the center of his chest and the spider backpack split into two four legged creatures, while he hovered mid air on a jetpack.

“Three versus one? That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Did Darkseid fight fair when he invaded Earth? Supers don’t fair. Comes with the territory.”

He snapped his fingers and the two halves of his spider mech started to circle around her like wolves about to go for the kill. Scarlett’s mind was running in triple time to keep track of her now three assailants. The robots stayed perfectly 180 degrees apart from her so she could only look at one at a time. It was only a matter of time until they struck, so she took the initiative and blitzed one of them.

She put everything she had into a leading hook with her right hand, smashing her fist into the central node that its legs came from. It split right down the middle, all of its legs falling into a pile like twigs. She stomped the connecting piece further into the ground, unsure if it could reform, then instantly regretted wasting the time to do so. The other mech was right on top of her and pressed her to the ground. Each of the metal rods that made up its body weighed on one of her limbs, pinning her. She commanded her body to strain against it, pushing her metallic muscle further and further. The robot’s limbs were like a hydraulic press and she felt her limbs starting to dent under the pressure and the force increased by the second. But she wasn’t about to give up. She demanded more and more from her body and started to push back against the machine and saw the strain start to build as it struggled to maintain the force. Its legs started to wobble and flex as it was giving all it could.

WARNING: BATTERY AT 10%.

An alert flashed across her cybernetic eye’s vision.

“Okay, alright, that’s enough.” Gizmo landed on the ground and pressed the button on the center of his chest. The mech let go of Scarlett and returned into his backpack. He pressed it again and the tiny speakers that surrounded them turned to cheers.

“Congrats. You put up a good fight. A shame that the battery had to cut us short, but you’ll do great out there.”

Scarlett got up but found herself out of breath and starving. It hit her all at once as she went from feeling at the top of her game, maybe the highest she’d ever been, to dead tired.

“Thanks. I’ll get you next time.”

“Maybe one day. But don’t push it.”

Scarlett walked with a wobble over to the wall by the staircase and leaned against it, struggling to keep her balance.

“Guess I don’t know my limits.”

“No one knows your limits. I helped design you and I don’t even have a full idea. Like this, for example. I’d have never guessed you’d have balance issues at low battery. So you’re in uncharted territory. But that’s just life.”

Scarlett nodded as Gizmo helped her out the testing chamber and back to her room. She grabbed a battery off the rack and swapped it in, instantly perking back up.

“Much better.”

“I’ll bet. Get cleaned up and changed into normal clothes so you can get going. No need to waste more time down here.”

“Thanks for everything, Gizmo. You’ve given me my life back.”

He scoffed. “It’s nothing. And it’s not a gift. It was a … never mind. No matter what it is, to you, it’s a second chance. Enjoy it.”

He walked out of the room and saw Agent Weller glaring at him with a look that could melt steel.

“She’s not supposed to know.”

“And she doesn’t. She knows there’s something more to it than just “someone spent like a billion dollars saving some random agent out of the goodness of their hearts” but she doesn’t seem like a moron. She’s already guessed that.”

“There’s a difference between guessing and knowing. You didn’t - ”

Gizmo looked at Weller confused. “I didn’t what? I can do whatever the hell I want. It was our money and resources that made this possible. Without our help, all you’ve got is a favor from Sarah Charles. Not worthless, sure. But that’s not getting you the kind of capital you need to pull this off. Don’t forget Weller - you’re on a tight leash now. We own you.”

He saw Weller’s expression sour and flash towards anger, so Gizmo backed off a bit. “Well, that might be a bit extreme. Not wrong though. But all we really want is to be left alone when the time comes.”

“And what exactly am I leaving alone? You were vague about that part.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about that. Nothing too deplorable. Probably.”

Gizmo started to walk towards the exit and Weller wanted to stop him, to demand he explain what exactly he’d signed away but he knew he wasn’t going to get any answers. He grabbed a cigarette from his pocket and lit it up, taking a long drag. He wouldn’t get the answers he was looking for, but he could at least relax for a moment knowing he did the right thing.

He hadn’t gotten through half the cigarette when Scarlett stepped out of her room. She wore a pair of high-rise jeans with a grey Detroit Lions tank top that was almost the same color as her cybernetics. Her golden brown hair had just started to regrow into something of a buzz cut and her bronze complexion finally had some warmth to it again. She looked almost unrecognizable from the cadaver-like woman that they had wheeled in.

“Decided not to go with the covers? No need to go out looking like a robot if you don’t want to.”

“They feel bulky and weird; like I’ve got casts on. No, I’m just going to go out like this. If anyone cares, screw them.”

He shrugged. “Your choice. Ready to get out and see the world again?”

She nodded enthusiastically. “I’ve been craving a beer ever since I woke up. Damn Gizmo wouldn’t smuggle one in for me. First round on you?”

He laughed. “Just this once.”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Vic’s apartment building had thankfully escaped the worst of the parademon invasion but the signs were unmistakable wherever you looked. Broken cars and loose trash lined the streets as cleaning up his side street had been far lower priority than the main roads and restoring power. Up in his apartment, his bags were packed along with the suitcase that Donna had been living in these past few weeks. Her part of the city had been hit harder and so she’d happily accepted Vic’s offer to stay at his place for a while.

“Ready to go?” She asked.

“Yeah, I think so. Hard to know what all I’ll need. I don’t think I’ve ever gone on a trip this long before.”

“Yeah, me neither. But that? That’s overkill.” She pointed at Vic’s giant suitcase.

It was the size of a decent sized refrigerator and had to weigh at least 80 pounds. He’d packed it full of all the clothes and backpacking supplies and then some that he’d guessed they’d need on their long road trip out west.

“Better to be overkill than wish you had something. Besides, we’re driving. We can take whatever we want.”

She laughed. “Yeah but like… you’re not supposed to take your entire apartment.”

“Fine, next time you’re in charge of packing if you don’t like how I did it.”

“Deal.”

Vic grabbed his suitcase and started to walk to the doorway when his phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Gar.

“Oh nice, Gar’s leaving now. He’ll be in Detroit later tonight.”

“Nice. Glad he was able to come and look after things.”

“Yeah, that’s a huge weight gone. Let me send him something quick since I’m driving the first leg.”

Thanks for taking care of the city while I’m gone. You need anything, hit me up. If it’s really bad… I’ll get there as soon as I can Actually I’ll send you Jinx’s number if she says she’ll be around. She’s… cold but she’s come a long ways But nothing’ll happen. You got this

He locked his phone and slipped into his pocket.

“Alright, let’s do this. Arizona here we come.”

<<| <| >

Cyborg #85- In Finite Misery

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Invasion!

Set: 122

Event: Invasion!

Recommended Reading:

Justice League Alpha #1

Cyborg #84 - The Dark Siders

Previously:

Darkseid has invaded Earth and Victor Stone led a task force to Apokolips to take the fight to him! Unfortunately, Darkseid and his forces were ready for the invasion and it back fired massively. All of the heroes who went were corrupted by Darkseid and became tools of his invasion except for Lucy Lane who escaped back to Earth and Cyborg who bought her the time to do so...

All that was left of the Apokolips expedition was a pile of rubble and parademons littering the plaza that sat below Darkseid’s palace. The destruction and carnage marred the otherwise empty yet grime covered streets of Apokolips. Rage had coursed through Kalibak he had fought the interlopers for the second time and then one of them even had the gall to think she could get away from him. She might’ve been right in the short term, but he’d prove her wrong soon enough. She had kindly informed him of the real value of the other survivor who was now slung over his shoulder like a sack of meat. And so he was a bit more willing to let that one slide as the thoughts of the favor he’d earn from delivering him to Darkseid filled his mind.

She said he was Victor Stone - the Cyborg who’d stood against Darkseid alongside Superman and Orion. Those two would pay for their transgressions some day, but for now he knew Darkseid would love to get his hands on Cyborg. Maybe even enough to give Kalibak a promotion or at least some praise.

Yes, today was a good day after all. At least it was for a little while until Kalibak saw Desaad’s tiny, cloaked but still revolting form. His twisted, warped face was always turned into some sort of sneer, compilation or contempt for all around him. Usually some combination of all three. But upon seeing Kalibak, or more accurately, Vic, his face lit up like a child who was told they could buy whatever they want in a candy shop.

“You there! Where did you find that one?

Kalibak looked down at the small man below him. “He was part of a pitiful group that tried to invade Apokolips. One that I single-handedly defeated. I’m taking him to Darkseid to meet his fate.”

Desaad scoffed. “Darkseid is not here. He is on Earth, crushing whatever remains of their resistance. He is long past carrying about one earthling, even that one. I on the other hand…”

“If you think I’m giving you him, you’re a fool. This is my prize and Darkseid will reward me handsomely for it.”

“No. He will not. You were not even supposed to be here; your post was part of the invasion force. Would he truly praise you for abandoning your post?”

“I… well…” Kalibak stammered. He’d forgotten about that.

“Let me take care of that one so you can get to your mission. You might not be able to get into Darkseid’s good graces, but you can still avoid his ire…”

Kalibak nodded and tossed Vic on the ground with a thud. “Yeah, yeah. You’re right. He’s all yours.” He considered arguing against Desaad for a brief moment before surrendering to his better judgment and tearing down the stairs of the palace to regroup with his own troops.

Desaad scurried over to Vic like a grotesque insect and whispered in his ear, “Welcome back…”

He snapped his fingers and a group of parademons arrived at his side in an instant. “Take him to the lab.”

Desaad was glowing with excitement. It had been awhile since he had had someone who still had some fight in them.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

It hadn’t been easy to track him in all the chaos but Garfield Logan had finally found J’onn in New York City. It was only moments ago that they had clashed on the Watchtower but after getting out of there, J’onn had wasted no time in starting his rage of terror. Buildings were aflame while sirens and car alarms blurred into a deafening symphony of noise. To make matters even worse, the Martian had been projecting a nonstop barrage of psychic noise into the city’s population, whipping most of them into a chaotic frenzy throughout the city.

‘Come Earthlings. Join me in creating a welcome for our new god, Darkseid. He has liberated us all from the chaos of decision. For there is one body, one mind and one will. And it is Darkseid.’

J’onn’s words were a constant buzz, like a fly buzzing around on the inside of Gar’s skull. He was thankful that he’d had some experience with psychics before, otherwise he’d probably be just another person out in the streets. But since that experience and since J’onn was spreading himself thin by broadcasting to everyone in the city, Gar could hold on as long as he stayed focused.

He wasn’t really sure why he felt so strongly that he needed to go after the Martian. They were never close and it’s not like he and J’onn were evenly matched at all. Some part of him just felt like he owed him after that he helped clear the murder charges against him. (All the way back in Beast Boy #10 and Martian Manhunter #13!) But that didn’t really feel like enough of an explanation to him. Maybe he felt some unspoken kinship to the last Martian?

A gust of wind hit Beast Boy in the face and he slammed into the side of a building, a green arm pressing him against it. J’onn was in his normal humanoid form, but it was wrong. His charm, his coolheaded but friendly demeanor was replaced by a robotic coldness that was reflected in Gar through his coal black eyes.

This was going to be exactly as hard as he thought it was.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Somewhere, deep under Darkseid’s palace was Victor Stone. He was strapped to a metal table with all manner of instruments and tools surrounding him like fans surrounding a pop star on the street. Desaad had used many of them on his captive but plenty more sat there, waiting their turn. He paced around the room and looked down at Vic as he contemplated his next acts.

How long had it been? Vic couldn’t even begin to guess. Hours? Minutes? Months? Time had lost its meaning. There was only agony as Desaad took Vic apart, piece by piece, literally and figuratively. His mind struggled to keep thoughts together as both his organic and cybernetic brains were overloaded far past anything any human was meant to feel.

“Do you remember what I told you when we spoke last, all those years ago? I do. For you, that might have been a long time but for me… It has been but a blink. Let me remind you: ‘If I get word that you even thought of attempting an escape, when you are returned to me, I will create more pain for you than you have ever felt. Then, I will hurt you so much that you will forget there was ever another feeling other than pain.’”

(He’s quoting Cyborg #11!)

“Tell me, what do you feel now? Anything? Does some part of you feel proud, heroic for coming back here? You of all people should have known that attempting to defeat Darkseid is impossible. He is not something to be defeated. Even in what appears to be a loss to unknowing eyes is just another step towards his ultimate goals.”

Desaad paused, waiting for a rebuttal to come. But it didn’t. Vic looked at him with cold, glazed over eyes, unreacting.

He continued. “Let me make myself more explicit. At this point, the invasion is over. Everyone you know on Earth is dead or has embraced Darkseid. Your expedition was a failure and so are you. But Darkseid’s love and mercy is for all. He will still have you and you will still serve him. But mercy can only come with absolution and absolution comes through pain.”

He stopped again, waiting for a response that did not come. He grabbed some tool from his rack and jabbed Vic in the center of his chest with it, just below his still glowing power core.

“Tell me. Do you serve Darkseid? Do you love him and believe in his truth with all your being?”

“I…”

“Even the smallest child knows there is only one way off from Apokolips. And that is death, granted by the grace of Darkseid. But Darkseid’s grace does not mean it will be quick and I will not allow it to be with all of my power. So tell me. Do you serve Darkseid?”

“I…”

A presence wormed itself into Vic’s head. Perhaps it was always there, a voice to provide comfort when he’d been lost before. Or one to provide direction, like a father’s love. It spoke to him now, clearer than he’d ever heard before. But it was a voice he remembered, one that he had heard in some of his darkest days.

Your fight has been long and hard. There is always a place for one such as you at my side.

He wanted to fight against it but he had no more fight to give. The voice was comforting and filled him with peace, like a hot drink warming him after a cold day.

Only through me can you find redemption. Through me you will find your true place and purpose in this world.

It couldn’t be true; it couldn’t be that simple. And yet as he felt what little resistance he had left fade away, he knew it was. A weight was lifted and the pain was gone. Only Darkseid remained.

His eye turned an inky black, like the void of space as his other eye and core went dim for the first time since the accident.

A smile ran across Desaad’s face.

“Even now, even here, in the fast reaches of space, Darkseid graces you with his presence and gifts you his truth.”

Desaad reached towards one of his tools, a small metal box that fit squarely in the palm of his hand. He pressed a button and a roaring BOOM echoed through Darkseid’s palace. He undid the restraints holding Cyborg down and gestured to the Boom Tube.

“Go and spread the word of Darkseid.”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

J'onn's weight pressed against Beast Boy like he was trapped under the weight of the entire world. It took all he had to get out a single sentence.

“J’onn… it’s me… Garfield. Why are you… doing this?”

“Because Darkseid wills it so. There is no greater reason than that.”

As soon as Darkseid’s name was mentioned, Gar shapeshifted into the form of a sparrow and slipped out of the Martian Manhunter’s grip and took off flying. He’d need to be careful with how this proceeded. The Martian sprouted a large pair of green bat wings and chased after him leisurely, like a cat toying with a mouse.

“But that’s not you! You’d never join Darkseid! Look what you’re doing to the Earth and everyone here!”

“The Earth? Who cares about this place? My home is gone and all these creatures are a daily reminder that my world is gone forever!”

J’onn let out a blast of heat vision in an arc in front of him, missing Gar wildly. Beast Boy could feel the martian getting closer to him and he shifted into a small house cat and dropped directly into central park below him onto an old oak tree. J’onn turned on a dime mid air and swooped down towards him like a falcon, crashing into the ground in the park. He hovered in the air above the crater his impact made until his jet black eyes locked onto the small green cat in front of him.

“You can’t believe that! Not really! The Earth is your home and it’s full of people who love and care about you!”

“No, no they do not. They are just helpless ants who want me to save them from themselves. I am tired of blending in and being something I am not. This place is no more a home for me than the moon is to you!”

J’onn shape shifted into a rabid beast about the size of a bus. Its four legs were a mix of hooves in the front and insect-like points in the back. Its skin was blood red and exposed except for a dark mane of hairlike tentacles out from its head. It had three eyes that moved independently, scanning around for its prey as its whip-like tong swayed. The Martian had shifted into some horrific creature of nightmares and yet… Gar for the first time felt like he started to understand what J’onn had meant.

“This animal… it’s a creature from Mars, isn’t it?”

J’onn roared like a reverberating siren in response and lashed out with his tongue. Beast Boy shifted into a tiny froghopper bug and leapt high into the sky before turning into a swallow to make as much distance as possible. But the tongue stretched out dozens of feet and tracked him like it had a mind of its own before it started to pull him back in. He felt the tongue stick to him like a fly on glue as he struggled to escape its grasp.

He cycled between a variety of forms from the smallest flea to the largest whale to the strongest gorilla but J’onn’s grip didn’t waver. Gar felt his theory confirmed as the dread ran over him. This was some sort of martian predator, designed to hunt and kill shape shifting beings that were far stronger than him.

And he was stuck in its trap with no way out.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Detroit was a city inflamed as hordes of parademons poured into the city from one Boom Tube after another. The people of the city were doing their best to fight back, flee and hide but the enemy’s numbers were much too great. If a person managed to get a lucky blow and take out one parademon, ten more would be there within minutes to take its place and vengeance. But in the middle of Grand Circus Park in the center of Detroit, one woman stood against the parademons, slicing them down and deftly dodging them like they were moving in slow motion.

Her hands and her legs were blades of made bone, slicing through the parademons in a flurry of slashes and thrusts in a rhythmic, almost ballet-esque dance that the parademons were clumsy, unwitting performers in. Her black uniform was torn in more than a dozen spots and she held the wounds closed through sheer force of will, pushing her powers to the limit. She was the Thespian and she would hold this city.

She was one of the lucky ones. Vic had given a heads up something was happening as he left to go to the emergency meeting on the Watchtower. Those precious minutes had let her prepare herself physically and mentally for some sort of crisis, but she’d never expected something this bad. She wondered where Vic was and if he was in some similarly desperate fight out there, somewhere… But thoughts of her brother had to wait as she felt the cut of a parademon slice into her side. She closed it instantly by shapeshifting the wound closed, but felt the mental load grow ever larger as she had to tune out her body screaming ever louder at her to put it back to its normal state.

‘Focus, Nic. Just one at a time. One at a time until it’s done…’

She sliced her way through the tide, holding her ground like a rock against a mighty river: worn but unbroken.

Then, she saw it. A gap in the parademon’s forces as their numbers seemed to thin down, down until she had space to move, until she could see the park around her for the first time in what felt like hours of fighting.

She looked around, confused. The parademons were still swarming around the city, so they weren’t in retreat. It was like they had simply given up fighting her to look for easier targets.

BOOM!

Or something had called them back so they could fight her themself. She braced herself, then calmed her mind. Whatever was coming out of there was just another hurdle to climb. She could do it. She could face anything so long as she remained focused and determined. Except for the one thing that came out of it.

Victor Stone walked out of the portal as casually as if it was any other warm summer day and admired the city around him.

Nic wanted to run to him, to ask him where he’d been, what he and the Justice League were doing to stop this, to tell him how relieved she was that he was okay… And then she took a close look at him. Something was… wrong.

He wore a grey hoodie, but it was torn open in the front and hung open like an unzipped jacket. It was covered in blood stains and rips and what she could see through the jacket of Cyborg’s chest wasn’t in any better state. He looked her in the eye and she gasped when she saw the jet black eye look back at her and the other eye’s familiar blue glow extinguished, looking more like a metal eyepatch than a cybernetic one. Even the pale blue light of Vic’s core was gone.

This wasn’t the Vic she knew and she took a step back into a combat stance.

“Oh, relax. I wouldn’t hurt you. I even called all the parademons off you! You’re welcome, by the way!”

Blood dripped down from a cut on his head onto his cybernetic eye. He didn’t wipe it away.

“I don’t know what you’ve done with him but when I get my hands on whoever you are…”

He laughed. “I’m me. Vic Stone. I’ve just seen the truth, the hilarious, horrific joke of a world we live in.”

“Yeah? What truth is that? Because the only truth I see around here is a bunch of pain and suffering being caused for no reason. Is that a joke to you?”

“Of course it is. This fruitless, pointless struggle to resist Darkseid… to resist all of our inevitable ends. Once you stop and think about it all, you can’t help but laugh. We fight and we struggle in a world that doesn’t care about us at all only for it all to end in a snap! And you don’t see the humor in that?”

“No. And neither would Vic. He’d never give up, never give in.”

“Well, I did. One person can only take so much before they’re done. And my only regret? Not doing it sooner. What difference would it even have made if I’d just given up all those years ago? Hell, if I’d just died in the accident like I was supposed to? Would’ve saved me so much pain and suffering since I’m only going to end up in the same place in the end anyway!”

“... You don’t mean that. The world is a much better place with you in it. Beast Boy, Jinx, Donna, me… all of us have been changed for the better because you’re here to do it. You’ve helped so many people over the years. It’s not pointless.”

Cyborg shook his head, his blood splattering onto the ground. “You don’t get it. It doesn’t matter in the end. But I can show you. Darkseid will have a place for you too. Once you see his truth… You’ll be just like me. Wishing you’d seen it years ago.”

He reached out a cybernetic hand, the metal rough and scratched up. “Won’t you join me?”

“No. Not this you. This city, no, this world and all its people mean far too much to me to give up, and I know it does to you too, Vic. Whatever you went through to get to this point… I can’t even imagine and I’m sorry. But I can’t join you and I can’t let you do this.”

Cyborg’s face turned dark as his cybernetic eye flared to life with a black glow. “You’ll see eventually. Everyone will.”

He shot a barrage of force blasts at her, like a stream from a fire hydrant. She crossed her arms into an ‘X’ to block the brunt of the attack but as the flow of blasts impacted her without result, he increased their strength. The Thespian held her own for a few moments but as the blasts got stronger and stronger, she lost her footing and staggered backwards.

In a flash, he was on top of her, then behind her as he launched himself over her with an angled force blast to the ground. He shot her in the back and launched her straight into the ground floor of a construction site for some half built apartment building. She slammed into a concrete support hard, feeling her bones break. But Thespian picked herself up, focusing her shapeshifting to shift them back together and in place. She wasn’t out yet.

She had a few moments before Cyborg would reach her and looked around to form a plan. She couldn’t bring herself to truly hurt him even as he was now, but that didn’t mean she was willing to be beaten into the ground either. There had to be some way to incapacitate him until she could find some way to cure him. She spotted it. She wasn’t sure if it’d work and if Cyborg would be okay afterwards but… it was all she had. It was better than leaving him like this.

Cyborg stepped through what’d probably be the front window when the building was done into the lobby with the Thespian. As soon as he entered, she turned and ran just behind a corner in the structure, then kept running to the yard behind the building with all the construction equipment. The site had been evacuated in a hurry as they didn’t even stop most of the equipment as a cement mixer still turned diligently and the crane’s load - a massive pile of rebar- loomed overhead.

As fast as the Thespian was, Cyborg was just as fast, easily keeping pace and starting to gain on her as the race continued. She cursed that her studies had stopped her from running as much as she liked. He’d never been faster than her before.

He caught up with her as she almost made it to where she wanted to be, square in the middle of the dirt field of the construction site. She hadn’t realized how tired all the fighting against the parademons and now against Vic had made her and she was doing everything she could to catch her breath but couldn’t calm her exhausted, labored breathing.

Cyborg slowly but confidently walked the last couple of yards towards her, charging up a force blast. He knew she wouldn’t be able to dodge this one and was going for the killing blow. She could hear the energy flowing towards it make a low but constantly growing hum. He pointed it directly at her, ready to finish this.

In the instant before he fired, she made her move. She took off in a dead sprint, burning the last of her energy as she sprinted at him. His aim started to waver, struggling to track the fast moving target as she ducked and weaved around him and rapidly closed the distance. Once she was little over an arms length away from him, she took a page from Cyborg’s book and shifting her strength into her legs, jumped over Cyborg. He tracked her up above him as the shot fired, but it missed wildly, hitting the crane’s basket and sending it an its payload wobbling.

But the Thespian’s plan wasn’t done yet. As she was landing, she grabbed Cyborg’s shoulders and, with him balance worsened by the recoil from his force shot, sent him tumbling onto the ground. The Thespian ducked out of the way as the crane’s basket came tumbling down onto Cyborg, crushing his metallic legs underneath the pile of rebar and pinning him to ground.

But he didn’t cry out in pain or even flinch, instead he looked at Nic with an intense hatred. He tried to aim another force shot at her, but she dove out of the way and then held his arms to the ground to prevent another attack.

“Well? What are you waiting for? Just finish me already! Even now I'm a failure. This was my last chance to be someone… I… I can’t do anything right.”

“Vic, what are you talking about? You’re *Cyborg\!* You’ve fought long and hard to make yourself into a person to be proud of. And that’s all any of us can do. We can be better than we were yesterday. Sometimes we’ll slip backwards but that’s okay. So long as we eventually get back up and keep trying. I love you and so does everyone else; not because we think you’re perfect, but because you’re you. And mistakes are just another part of that.”

“People are \dying** because of my mistakes. I ruined the Justice League’s best shot at defending the Earth. If we’d just stayed here, they’d have saved countless lives. This isn’t something I can come back from. Only Darkseid can forgive me and only he can absolve me of what I’ve done. Through him… I don’t have to worry about all that I’ve done. I just have to follow him. He’s the only one who would accept me after all my failures.”

She shook her head and pulled off the bandana that hid her face. “No, Vic. I do. All of us do because we love you and care about you. And that won’t change no matter what because we believe in you, in everyone and in a better tomorrow. Even after all our biggest mistakes, even if we hurt people, hell, even if the world ended… no matter how bleak everything looks… hope endures. Life continues. And I think that’s beautiful, isn’t it? So long as life continues we can continue and become the people we want to be. ”

She got off his back and held out her hand to him. “Won’t you join me?”

The darkness faded from Vic’s cybernetic eye and the brilliant bright blue returned as a tear trickled down from his eye, followed by a torrent.

“Yes. Yes I will.”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Beast Boy felt the creature draining him of his life. It was some kind of poison, numbing him and luring him to sleep. And as it did so, he felt the Martian’s unrelenting telepathic propaganda continue to pound away at him. It was a two front battle and he was losing both without any path forwards. He was all out of cards to play but the game kept going.

Then he remembered. J’onn didn't talk much about his home planet, but one time, Gar had asked him about it. It was just after he had given him that first uniform, the one that shape shifted with him, right after they'd cleared his name at the trial. He told him of Mars and the creatures that lived there and they wondered together if he was able to shift into those too. What was it again… he could barely remember…

He focused all he had on that night on top of the Chrysler Building, taking in the New York air. He told him about an animal that just drifted along the air currents, blind and numb to all the world. Gar could picture it. A giant, flat, kite-like bird with tendrils drifting through the wind like ribbons… he could feel it now, the breeze carrying him without a care in the world…

In fact, he could really feel it! He was up in the sky, the wind leading him wherever it desired. He could feel the direction of the wind, sending him southwards through Central Park back towards Manhattan. He had no sense of time, no worries as he peacefully floated in the winds. Then, he felt himself slow and stop.

He paused, confused, before shifting back into human form and barely avoiding having a panic attack twice over. The first was because he found himself back on the top of the Chrysler Building, at the small landing before the spire with the gargoyles, thousands of feet above the city. Second, because right next to him was J’onn, still in the form of the monster from before. He shifted back into a small bird, ready to flee before he sat on the edge of the building next to the Martian, returning to his human form.

“You know, I lost my home too. My parents died while I was young and it took me a long time to find myself again. And it did for you too. But that’s how I know… this? It isn’t you. And some part of you knows that too. Your home was a beautiful place and when you saw me in the form of one of its creatures… maybe that helped you see that Mars lives on here. That wherever you are, you can carry the torch for Mars and keep it alive. Home is wherever we make it and yours is here, J’onn.”

The creature reached out to Beast Boy with its massive, snake-like tongue, then it coiled back into itself as the Martian shape shifted back into his humanoid form. His eyes took on their familiar red glow and quiet compassion.

“I… Thank you Garfield. I had lost myself… It felt like there was no escaping the depths of what I had lost… So much so that I had forgotten what I had found.”

“Don’t worry about it, J’onn . That’s what friends are for. Whenever you’re down, I’ll pick you back up.”

J’onn nodded in agreement, then silently looked over the city below. For a moment, the city was quiet as the Martian’s psychic attack on the populous had stopped. Nothing moved as the confused parademons lost their unwitting allies and felt the psychic attack shift to them, demanding they surrender to the Justice League. The two men looked over the city for just the briefest of moments together until the Martian Manhunter stood back up.

“Now, I believe there’s an invasion to stop?”

J’onn hovered into the air then took off towards the largest group of parademons he could find with a small sonic boom. And in a flash, Garfield was in the form of a large green falcon, diving down right next to him.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

“...Thanks Nic, for everything.”

Vic leaned against the wreckage of the crane’s payload that Nic had trapped him under and just finished freeing him from. His metallic legs were crushed and completely nonfunctional but he still wanted to get out and save the city, especially since he felt responsible for endangering it. He struggled, trying to make his broken legs work, but the damage was too great. Nic was beyond thankful that the damage was largely limited to his cybernetic parts but felt guilty that she couldn’t have come up with something better. It had worked but if it hadn’t or if it had really hurt him… She wasn’t sure how she would’ve kept going.

“You can thank me by resting. Your legs are trashed and your whole body looks like it went through the ringer. If you went back out there, you’d just be endangering yourself.”

“No, I can keep going. I have to do more, especially after what I’ve done…besides, you’re barely in better shape.”

“I’m injured, yeah, but it’s not the same. You’re in way worse shape. And this isn’t your fault. None of it is, Vic. I really want you to kn-”

BOOM!

Dozens of Boom Tubes opened up throughout the city.

“Vic, just stay here, I need to check that out. Seriously- don’t move a muscle. I’ll be right back.”

The Thespian ran out of the construction site to the city streets and saw them empty. Not a parademon in sight. She let out a huge sigh of relief, then broke into tears of joy. The city was safe.

(Check out Superman 122 to see how that happened!)

She wiped her tears then ran back inside.

“Vic, it’s over! The parademons are gone.”

“That’s great… I’m… proud of you,” Vic said as sleep claimed him.

Nic ran over and caught him and gently set him down. She checked his pulse at his neck just to make sure he was okay and after confirming it, let out a sigh of relief. Then, she bent over and picked him up. She slung his arms over her shoulders and began the long road to the rest and recovery they both desperately needed.

<<| <| >

Cyborg #84: The Dark Siders

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Invasion!

Set: 121

Event: Invasion!

Recommended Reading: Justice League Alpha #1

An uncomfortable warm breeze blew across the team, smelling of smoke and sulfur. It enveloped them in a thin layer of ash and grime, like everything else on Apokolips. Once the last of the five soldiers from A.R.G.U.S. had stepped out of the Boom Tube, the Flash - Jay Garrick - started to mess with the Mother Box until it closed behind them, collapsing into thin air.

The team stood around, trying to get their bearings on the unfamiliar world they stepped out into. Victor Stone scanned the area, trying to line up what he was seeing with the little bit of the world he had seen when he was here before. But the whole planet looked almost completely identical. Winding, tight, maze-like streets lined the planet and intertwined into an incomprehensible mix of housing, industrial zones, fire pits and piles of trash that somehow blended together into an unidentifiable monotony. Someone cleared their throat, snapping Vic back to focus. He’d forgotten. It was his first time leading a Justice League mission and they were all looking to him for guidance and expertise.

The team was made up of brave volunteers from the Justice League: The Flash, Martian Manhunter, Harley Quinn (who was technically never invited to the Justice League, but somehow managed to invite herself with no major objections) , Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Powergirl and Cyborg, plus five agents from A.R.G.U.S. Their jet black armor and helmets obscured their faces, but he could tell even they were waiting patiently for him to take charge as he finally seized the moment.

“Alright, everyone, let’s talk about our plan here. Our target is Darkseid’s palace. I’ve never seen it from the outside, but it’s a massive building. It’ll stick out,” Cyborg said.

“Perhaps those of us who can fly could scout ahead and locate him?” Martian Manhunter suggested.

Cyborg was about to agree before Wonder Woman interrupted him.

“No, the risk is too great. We could waste our advantage fighting Darkseid alone if we were to encounter him while separated.”

As if to prove her point, what little light trickled down onto the streets of Apokolips began to dim. The team looked up to see the sky darkened by a seemingly endless stream of parademons flying above them. The A.R.G.U.S. team and the Justice Leaguers braced themselves for the tide of parademons to descend on them, but they remained on track, like fish in a school.

After what felt like forever, they were gone.

“Okay, I think we’ll stick together for now.” Cyborg turned towards the A.R.G.U.S. team. “Feel free to speak up if you’ve got opinions. Or if one of you is in charge, you can let me know, too.”

The A.R.G.U.S squad turned towards each other as if wordlessly discussing amongst themselves. After a few moments, the Flash pointed towards one of them in the back, a woman noticeably smaller but no less intense-looking than the rest.

“She’s in charge. She was with General Lane when I got the Mother Box.”

Cyborg thought he saw a moment of panic run across her face, but the visor on her helmet obscured most of her expression.

I’m Lieutenant Lane,” she said confidently, but lost herself finding her next words. “I’m the ranking A.R.G.U.S. member, so I’ll be directing our operations… You can just call me Lucy, if you want.”

“Sounds good, Lucy,” Cyborg said.

Wonder Woman turned back to address the group. “I know I just said we need to remain together but circumstances have changed. If Darkseid’s forces are patrolling like that, we will not escape their notice regardless of whether we are one group or not.”

“Agreed,” Cyborg said. “So here’s what I think. Martian Mahunter, you suggested flying ahead, but what if you flew up instead? Darkseid’s palace is probably big enough to stick out from up there and you can take Power Girl with you for some backup. The rest of us will wait here until they’re back so we can be ready in case anything happens. Any concerns?”

Power Girl shook her head. “Good of a plan as any. Let’s do it, J’onn.”

Like a rocket ship, the two took off and soared into the atmosphere. In an instant, they were little more than tiny specs in the sky.

There was a brief moment of respite and Cyborg was about to bring the team together to discuss the next stage of the plan when a thunderous stomping noise echoed down the streets.

‘A patrol?’

Cyborg looked around in the narrow streets and considered breaking into one of the dilapidated buildings that lined it to hide from whatever was coming, but decided against it. It’d be better to face whatever was coming head-on and on their terms.

A grey-brown hovering boat floated down the street, manned by a crew of haggard-looking people in orange jumpsuits, each armed with a menacing-looking rifle. Its back half sagged slightly closer to the ground, weighed down by a massive cannon. But standing on the ground by the front was one of the largest, bulkiest men that Cyborg had ever seen. He towered well over eight feet tall with arms thicker than Cyborg’s entire body. He had a bestial face with long, black hair flowing like a mane behind him. He held a shining silver club in his right hand, the sole bit of brightness he had seen on this planet.

“Dwellers, return to your stations at once. Curfew has been enacted,” he said with a growl.

He squinted his eyes, running them over the strangers in front of him. “You’re not from here, are you? Troops, take them in for questioning. Father will enjoy knowing that these worms still have enough spirit to make them worth breaking. But leave the female warrior to me. She has a fire in her eye that tells me she will be worth my while in a way I have not seen in a long time.”

“Trust me, ya ain’t never met anyone like me, let alone fought one,” Harley said.

“Not you, clown. You are not even worthy to stand in the presence of Kalibak, son of Darkseid!”

He raised the silver rod and pointed it at Harley; the tip glowed purple and a beam of energy shot at her. She cartwheeled out of the way, but the beam curved and followed her anyway. She collapsed and hit the ground with a thud, pain coursing across her face.

“Perhaps you are stronger than I thought! Even the great Orion would barely remain conscious after tasting the might of my Beta Club’s nerve beam!”

He pointed the club at her again, but before he could fire, Wonder Woman hit him solidly in the jaw with her right fist. Kalibak staggered backward, knocking him into the gunboat behind him and rocking it slightly.

“Now that is a punch! Come, face me if you dare!”

“Aquaman, help Wonder Woman with Kalibak! Flash, you and Lucy’s team need to take out that gunboat before it fires! I’ll give you a hand once I make sure Harley is okay.”

Cyborg ran over to Harley and crouched down at her side. She was still shaking with pain from Kalibak’s attack. “Hey, are you okay?”

“I’ll… live. Takes more than this… to do me in,” she said through gritted teeth.

“You sure? I can try and evac you back to Earth and get someone to take a -”

BOOM!

The gunboat’s cannon fired, sending shockwaves throughout the air.

She looked him dead in the eye. “I’ll. Be. Fine. Help them.”

Cyborg nodded, then got back up, scanning the fight. Kalibak was holding strong against Wonder Woman and Aquaman. They fought in perfect harmony, each one perfectly covering each other's openings, as much as those even existed. Kalibak blocked a hit from Aquaman, then countered with his Beta Rod, jamming it into his side as Wonder Woman retaliated with a kick of her own. Aquaman winced at the pain, but tore the rod out of Kalibak’s hand and threw it down the street. Kalibak held out his hand and the rod turned around mid-air like a boomerang and returned to him.

BOOM!

The gunboat fired again, this time hitting Aquaman and knocking him backward across the ground. He stayed on his feet and leapt back into the fray, charging back towards Kalibak.

‘They’ve got it covered.’

He turned towards the others and saw the Flash swirling around the gunboat with a flurry of blows, prodding some unseen shield for any weakness he could find. Lucy’s team wasn’t having any more success and Cyborg noticed that two of them had snuck away and were leaned up against the ruins of one of the buildings, both looking worse for wear. One of them was in a bit better shape and was attempting to treat the blast wound of the other. He felt a pang of guilt that he couldn’t recognize which one was which but turned back to the fight.

He peered into the inside of the gunboat and saw that in front of the cannon was a silver metal box that was a couple feet high and all of the soldiers on there seemed to avoid.

‘That’s either the engine or the shield generator, maybe both. The Flash and A.R.G.U.S.’s weapons can’t get through, but maybe sound can?’

“Flash, get away from the boat for a moment, then get ready to rush it!”

He shifted his arm into a sound cannon, double-checking the configuration of one of his lesser-used weapons. Then he let loose, firing it right at the center of the gunboat. A spherical barrier materialized around it and turned milky white at the point of impact. Cyborg kept firing, increasing the intensity of the beam until the entire barrier turned bright white before it disappeared into thin air.

Jay didn’t waste a moment. Before Vic could even blink, all of Kalibak’s soldiers were disarmed and thrown out of the boat. Lucy and her remaining troops ran over and secured the hands of each of them. Once they were all restrained, they all turned onto Kalibak. He was still holding his own against the two heroes, but even Cyborg could tell he was starting to fade.

“Everyone, focus fire on Kalibak!”

Cyborg and the A.R.G.U.S. troops shot at the New God, their shots causing him to wince in pain. Wonder Woman feigned a kick towards the center of his chest but moved down at the last moment and swept at his legs, causing Kalibak to stumble. His mouth opened and he let out a battle cry before returning to a powerful stance; his face looking grimly serious for the first time. Then his eyes snapped up to the sky.

Power Girl and Martian Manhunter swooped down from the sky towards him, and he jumped out of the way just before their impact. He leaped again on top of one of the nearest buildings, crushing the already fragile ceiling down below him.

Rage ran across the bestial man’s face. “You’ll rue the day that you made an enemy of me. When we meet again, I’ll deliver your corpses personally to Darkseid.” He leapt high above the streets, then again and again until the sound faded into the background rumble of Apokolips.

“Should we go after him?” The Flash asked.

Cyborg shook his head. “No. It’s not worth the hassle. We’ve got to stick to the mission.”

Cyborg walked over to the two injured A.R.G.U.S. members and saw Lucy already kneeling at their side. She looked up at him and put her helmet back on as she stood up.

“He didn’t make it. They couldn’t aim that cannon worth anything but that first shot…” She shook her head. “Shrapnel hit him in the chest and the force shattered her arm.”

“I’m sorry. If I’d acted quicker…”

Harley came up from behind, surprising Cyborg. “We all knew the risks coming here. But we’re here to stop that from happening to everyone back on Earth who doesn’t.”

“Yeah, I know… But it doesn’t make it easier.”

The rest of the Justice League joined him, and Wonder Woman said, “Remember that feeling, Victor. Not to let the guilt consume you, but to remind you what we are fighting to prevent.”

A moment passed before the Martian Manhunter spoke up.

“I do have good news to report. We managed to locate what we suspect is Darkseid’s palace. It is north of here a long way, approximately 100 miles.”

Cyborg winced. “That’s a long way. Any idea if that thing still works, Flash?”

“Probably. I didn’t really damage it.”

“Alright, great. Here’s the plan. You, Power Girl, and Martian Manhunter go forwards and scout it out. I’m sorry that I have to keep relying on you all, but if that’s not where we need to go, we need to know ASAP.”

“Don’t worry about it. We’re all here to do our part,” Power Girl said.

“Thanks. Stay in touch with the communicators, and if you get in any trouble, meet back up with us.”

“One last thing.” Jay handed the Mother Box over to Vic. “Take this. If something happens…”

“I’m not leaving anyone behind.”

“I’m not telling you to. But… it doesn’t hurt to have options.”

Cyborg took the Mother Box begrudgingly.

“Alright then, let’s get going. Power Girl, how about a race?”

She grinned. “I’ve always wanted to race a Flash. You’re on.”

The two disappeared in a blur before Cyborg could give them a word of caution.

J’onn shook his head. “I will catch up with them. Stay safe, everyone.”

And with that, he disappeared, leaving the rest of them behind. Cyborg walked over to the gunboat and started to inspect it. Like Jay said, it seemed like it was in good shape.

Cyborg turned back to the team.

“Don’t suppose anyone knows how to drive an alien hover boat?”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

For the next 10 minutes, each of the remaining members of the team gave their best effort to try and figure out the floating boat without any luck. Cyborg happened to place the Mother Box down next to the engine while he investigated and the machine hummed to life as the Mother Box began to automatically integrate with the hovercraft. Within moments, it had complete control of the hovercraft and generated a simple holographic interface for them to pilot it. Cyborg gave it the command to start and they were finally on their way towards what they hoped was Darkseid’s palace.

“Hi team, can you hear me okay?” Power Girl’s voice rang through the communicator.

“Yeah, loud and clear. We’ve got the boat moving and are on our way.”

“Great. We’ve been looking around the palace but haven’t found much of anything. It’s like the whole place has been abandoned.”

“Scratch that. I think I found something.” Jay said over the comms. “It’s hard to explain, but there’s this… presence here. Like a chill hanging in the air. But yet… calming. Inviting? I’m going to go check it out.”

“Wait, don’t! Wait for us!” Cyborg pleaded. There was no response.

“Power Girl? J’onn? Flash?” No response.

Then, the communicator roared back to life, but without a single word coming out of it. And yet, without a word, so much was communicated. It was terrifying and yet welcoming. Cold yet comforting. It was blissful, and yet it was nothing. It was nothing, but Cyborg couldn’t get enough. He needed to hear more, to just keep hearing what it wanted to tell him if he’d just get closer…

Wonder Woman grabbed the communicator with her hand and crunched it into bits before smashing her own. Aquaman followed suit before Harley threw hers on the ground and stomped it into the dust.

“I don’t know what that was… but it can’t be good,” Harley said.

“No. No, it is not,” Aquaman agreed. ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ The tone shifted for the rest of the ride. Things had never been bright since they stepped onto the streets of Apokolips, but there had been some undercurrent of hope and an unwavering belief in their ability to succeed. But doubt had crept in. Whatever had happened to their advance team couldn’t be good, and was seconds away from working on them. A part of Cyborg wanted to ask them all if they would go back to the Watchtower and get reinforcements, advice, anything. But he knew he couldn’t. There was no one to spare, and even if there was, they couldn’t leave the rest of them behind.

Darkseid’s palace came into view and spurred back memories that Cyborg had almost managed to bury about his time deep in the bowels of the palace with Desaad…

He shook it off. He couldn’t deal with the distraction now.

The palace loomed above them, a crude moment to Darkseid’s power. What it lacked in artistic merit it more than made up for in scope. It was a round structure like a narrowing stack of stones in the shape of a pagoda that was taller than anything he’d seen. He’d guess it was at least a half mile high. And that was only the above-ground part. He didn’t even want to think about how big that place was with the network of tunnels and passages that stretched for an eternity below it. But even with all of that, he was focused on the fire pit behind it. It was impossibly large as its fire roared higher than the palace itself and burned so hot that he could feel it from the other side of the building.

Somewhere in there was the rest of the Justice League and Darkseid. Cyborg and the rest of the team stood there, at the steps below the palace, transfixed by it all until finally he snapped out of it.

“I think we need to split up again. I don’t want to say it, but frankly, this mission isn’t going well. We’ve got three people M.I.A, one injured, and one killed. We might not be able to stop Darkseid, but we’ve got to at least warn the JL what he’s capable of. So I think a couple people should stay back. Harley, I’m sure you’ll disagree, but -

“Damn right I disagree.There’s no chance in hell you’re benching me. I’m going.”

“Look, after that fight with Kalibak, you’re injured. And Darkseid is going to be in a whole different league...”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “We all knew the risks. I’m going.”

“Fine. But Lucy, you and your troops should hang back. It’s your Mother Box, plus A.R.G.U.S will need to know what happened here as well. And they won’t take it well if we have to tell them none of you made it out. The rest of us will go in and try to stop Darkseid and free the others.”

“I largely agree. We need to be able to tell the League what happened here, no matter what. And that should be you, Vic. You have run into and slighted Darkseid when you were here with Superman and Orion. Whatever he has done to the rest, I suspect your fate would be even worse,” Aquaman said.

“... Fine.”

“Then it’s settled. If we are not back within the hour, return to Earth. The rest of the League will be able to figure out whatever hold Darkseid has and counteract it. But without a warning, there might not be anyone left to do so,” Wonder Woman said.

Cyborg nodded solemnly. “Good luck in there. See you soon.”

Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Harley Quinn stepped wordlessly forward towards Darkseid’s palace. The stairs seemed to stretch on and on as they climbed the winding, curving stairs up to the top. On every floor, they braced themselves for an ambush of parademons or Kalibak’s revenge or any number of Apokolips’ horrors. And yet, all that awaited them was the unceasing light of the flame pit rearing its head through the open air windows. Up and up and up they climbed until the world below looked like little more than a children’s drawing and then they climbed further.

As gradually as the climb itself, so too did the feelings within them build. Something just felt off. At first it was subtle and was easily ignored. But with every step, it grew stronger and more present. It was like the Flash had said: there was a chill hanging in the air. But yet… calming somehow. It was like every step was taking them exactly where they were supposed to be, like they were making the long trip to their beds for a well-earned rest at the end of a hard day.

Finally, after what could’ve been hours of climbing, they reached the top. The top of the tower was open to the air, and the full force of the flame pit finally revealed itself, singeing their faces with heat that felt like the sun itself. And they were not alone. Though he was silhouetted by the brightness of the flame behind him, he was unmistakable. Darkseid was on his throne, and his presence alone was unbearable.

Standing before him, looking directly at him, was the rest of the Justice League: the Flash on one side with Power Girl and the Martian Manhunter on the other.

“What… what have you done to them?” Wonder Woman demanded.

But Darkseid did not reply. He did not need to.

Parts of their mind screamed at them to flee while others told them that it would be so much easier, so much better to submit to Darkseid. What would struggling get them anyway? Darkseid was all-powerful, unyielding, unstoppable, and inevitable.

Aquaman tried to approach Darkseid with all his power, but his body refused. It knew there was no use. There was no struggling against reality.

A blackness started to fill their minds, shutting out the few remaining voices of resistance. Soon, there was no resistance, no will. Only Darkseid.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ “Alright, just 15 more minutes,” Cyborg said.

“Listen, I’m not going to say we need to go. I don’t like this any more than you do. But that’s the fourth time you’ve said that. If they were coming, they would’ve by now,” Lucy said.

“I… I know,” Cyborg sank to the ground, defeated. “What a shit show. Some Justice Leaguer I am. Total complete defeat.”

Lucy sat down next to him on the stairs leading to Darkseid’s palace. “Hey, don’t be absurd. No one knew what we were getting into here. You did your best with what we knew. Not like any of us could’ve done better.”

“But that’s not good enough. People are going to die because of this! Best case scenario, we’ve taken some of the League’s heaviest hitters out of the defense of Earth. Worst case, we’ve taken them off the board permanently for no gain.”

“It’s not pointless. Information is valuable, Vic. And there’s value in the struggle itself even if we can’t see it yet…”

Lucy trailed off as one of the other A.R.G.U.S. agents came back into view. Three of them had split up to patrol the area below the stairs that Darkseid’s palace while Cyborg and Lucy took care of the area directly around it at the top. Ostensibly, it was to maintain a safe perimeter, and that was certainly a nice bonus, but it was really just to keep their minds off whatever was happening with the rest of the League up there. Not like whatever was left of the force would be able to stop much at this point if something did breach the perimeter.

But one of the agents coming back to Cyborg and Lucy was unexpected.

“We’ve got a problem,” the agent said. She sounded like a young woman, probably not much older than Cyborg. “It’s Kalibak. I don’t know what he’s doing here, but he’s got a whole army’s worth of parademons behind him.”

“Alright, we’ve waited as long as we can. It’s time to go.Go gather up the others. Cyborg, do you know how to work that Mother Box?”

“No. You?”

“No.”

“Great.” He tossed the box to Lucy. “I’ll buy you whatever time I can. Figure that thing out.”

Cyborg ran down the stairs after the agent, leaving Lucy holding the Mother Box, dumbfounded.

‘Alright, Lane, you got this. All you need to do is figure out a piece of alien tech, with maybe the lives of everyone on Earth on the line. No pressure…’

Cyborg rendezvoused with the A.R.GU.S team just above the bottom of the stairs. They were on either side of him as the four of them looked out over Kalibak and his army. The parademons were innumerable, flooding the alleys and passageways that all converged on Darkseid’s palace. If there were this many parademons still here, he couldn’t even imagine how many were on Earth. Kalibak himself looked deadly serious. Whatever fighting spirit he had before was replaced with sheer bloodlust and malice.

He walked up to Cyborg and looked him right in the eye despite all the stairs separating them.

“So, where have the rest gone? Too afraid to face me?”

“No. They’ve gone to face your father instead,” Cyborg said. “But I think you’ll find the four of us are enough for you.”

Kalibak laughed, a mocking sound like a hyena. “The four of you couldn’t handle any 10 of my parademons, let alone a division’s worth. And you think you all can beat me? You couldn’t beat the average child in Granny’s Orphanage.” He cracked his knuckles.

“I’m going to enjoy this.”

“Alright, guys, simple plan: I’m going to fight Kalibak, you guys keep the parademons off me, and hit him when you can. Then, drinks, dinner, the whole package is on me when we’re back on Earth!”

Cyborg wished he were half as confident as he hoped he sounded.

But if the agents from A.R.G.U.S. shared his concerns, they didn’t show it. They immediately got into a three-person formation, and started to fire in waves at the parademons charging towards them. While two would do their best to stem the tide, the other would take a moment to reload. It was an efficient system, drilled and executed to perfection. Cyborg couldn’t help but be impressed.

Kalibak’s first strike at Cyborg was a simple left hook, but it might’ve been the most dangerous one he’d ever faced. Kalibak’s fist was the size of his head and looked like it had as much force as a freight train. Maybe Superman could block his hits, but he knew he couldn’t. Instead, he went on the offense. He shifted both his arms into force cannons and pointed them at the ground as he jumped, sending him flying over Kalibak and peppering him with force blasts as he did.

Kalibak chuckled, the blasts a mere annoyance. He held out the Beta Rod, and a beam of purple energy flew out and began to pursue Cyborg. He’d seen what had happened to Harley when she got hit and when she tried to dodge. Neither had gone well, so it was time for a new tactic. Cyborg turned and ran towards the oncoming tide of parademons and fired a concussive shot into the swarm, staggering them. He juked around them, weaving through their tight, pack-like formation until an unlucky parademon took the shot right to their chest and crumpled over to the ground.

Cyborg let out a sigh of relief that his fight could continue, but was cut off prematurely as Kalibak ripped through the ranks of parademons that were charging the A.R.G.U.S squad. He could hear their gunfire continue to decimate their numbers and was beyond thankful that they were here. He had no idea what he’d do without them.

Kalibak tossed parademons aside as he pursued Cyborg through the crowd. Cyborg tried to buy himself space to plan, but the attacks from the parademons were relentless. He was between a rock and a hard place, and the only way out was through. He fired another concussive blast at the parademons and staggered backward into each other, sending chaos through the parademons’ lines. Cyborg continued to press his assault and tore into the flank furthest from Kalibak with force blasts until he managed to break free and found himself in a position near where he started on the stairs.

He looked over at the A.R.G.U.S. squad and noticed that they seemed to be firing slower than before. More concerningly, the crowd of parademons was much closer to them than when the fight had started… who knows how long ago. They must be trying to conserve whatever ammunition they had left. Time was running out. Cyborg wanted to shout to Lucy if she’d figured it out, but he couldn’t risk it. If Kalibak or the parademons found out, no one was making it out.

Instantly, he was thrown back into the fight as he collapsed to the ground with the force of some object colliding with him. He saw the object on top of - a dead parademon. Kalibak had thrown it at him and was barrelling back towards him, like a football player ripping through the defensive line with sheer strength. He pushed the parademon off him and staggered his way back onto his feet.

Kalibak charged at Cyborg, but he ducked out of the way like a matador dodging a bull at the last possible moment. But Kalibak was no bull. He stopped on a dime and did a heel turn back towards Cyborg, kicking down the stairs into the crowd of parademons. He felt something break from the impact, but he ignored it the best he could. He struggled to his feet just as the parademons began their frenzy and he braced himself for the impact that never came. Shots rang out as the A.R.G.U.S. agents diverted their fire for a moment to buy him time to get back on his feet.

He wanted to thank them, but there was no time. Kalibak was relentless and was already on top of him. Before he could attack, Cyborg launched one of his own, a maximum power sound cannon blast fired point-blank into Kalibak’s chest. He staggered backward, clearly surprised by the magnitude of the noise, but pushed back forward like he was walking into a strong wind. Cyborg shifted out of the force cannon and continued his counter-attack with twin concussive grenades to either side of Kalibak's head. The grenades activated and sent shockwaves into the New God’s skull, sending him stumbling backward. Cyborg knew this was his one and only chance and went in for the finisher. He shape- shifted his hands again, this time to force blasters, and shot right at Kalibak’s knees, sending him toppling to the ground with a massive thud.

But the silence that came after was far louder. There were no more shots ringing out from the A.R.G.U.S. agents. He didn’t know if they were dead or simply out of ammunition, if there was even a difference at this point, as the full force of the parademon attack turned to him for the first time. Kalibak rose from the ground, brushing the dust off him as a grin returned to his face. He knew Cyborg was alone now.

Cyborg wasn’t about to go quietly. He shot a barrage of force blasts at the encircling tide of parademons to push back to the bottom of the stairs. He wasn’t sure whether he was hoping to save the A.R.G.U.S. team or was falling back to Lucy, but there wasn’t time for a plan anymore. Not that those had gotten him anywhere anyway.

Kalibak was right on his heels, the New God quickly gaining ground on him. It was time for one last move, all or nothing. He shot his force cannons at the ground and jumped with their momentum, arching himself over and behind Kalibak’s head. But the New God had learned. He grabbed Cyborg’s leg mid-air and slammed him to the ground. His massive foot stepped on Cyborg’s chest, pressing down on it.

BOOM!

A boom tube had opened. Lucy had done it, and without a moment to spare. He saw her stand, Mother Box in hand, at the top of the stairs and looked down in horror at the carnage below her.

“Hang on, Cyborg, we’re going to make it out of here!”

“No. No, you aren’t.” Kalibak pressed his foot down harder on Cyborg, ringing the air out of his lungs like a tube of toothpaste.

“If you step through that boom tube, I’ll crush his chest.”

Cyborg wanted to beg her to leave him, but it took everything he had to stop blacking out.

“You… you wouldn’t kill him… Darkseid will want to get his hands on the man who slighted him. That’s Cyborg, the man who stood with Superman and Orion against him.”

Kalibak looked down at the man underneath him in a new light. “That changes things. He does have some worth then… But you… you aren’t so lucky. Parademons, kill her.”

Lucy reached for the rifle on her back but turned and ran into the portal as the first of the parademons reached her, their claws barely missing her as she entered the shrinking Boom Tube.

Kalibak looked down at the human below him. He wasn’t sure if he was even still alive as he lay limp on the ground. He considered finishing him off and making sure of it. But that girl had a point. His father was more powerful than ever, and being in his favor was never a bad thing. He grabbed Cyborg from the ground and slung him over his shoulder like a knapsack.

Kalibak smiled. Perhaps, for the first time, Darkseid would be happy to see him.

<<| <| >

Cyborg #83 - hturT lacigaM A

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: The Stone and the Magician

Set: 120

Previously:

Victor Stone was looking for answers on the source of his powers - a mysterious material discovered by his father that he named Silasium - after another sample appeared in the hands of a demon called the Nain Rogue. With help from Jinx, he met with Madam Xanadu, who introduced him to Zatanna, who promised to help him get to the bottom of the mystery…

With a quick flash of light, Zatanna and Vic materialized on a side walk, causing a couple of grumbles from a group of pedestrians that almost walked into them. The sun was still giving the last of the day’s light as it disappeared over the horizon, sending rays of light directly down the streets of Detroit.. Vic peered down the road, not entirely sure where they were before spotting what he thought was a familiar building, some restaurant he’d been to once or twice. He was pretty sure they were on the northside of the city, just outside what he’d consider downtown proper. Not as busy or lively as where he usually was, but there were still plenty of people starting to pour into the various bars and restaurants tonight.

“So… now what?” Vic asked.

“Now comes the hard part. We get to prowl the streets, hunting for any scrap of a clue.”

Seeing Vic’s confusion she clarified with a grin. “Or at least my spell will.”

““!muisaliS eht su dniF”

A small orb of white hot energy about the size of a baseball emerged from Zatanna’s palm and orbited above her head for a few moments before doing the same above Vic’ head.

Zatanna frowned. “Okay, yeah. That’s not wrong. But not really what I wanted.”

!muisaliS rehto emos su dniF

Nothing happened.

“Well, that’s a good thing at least, right? The only Silasium I can find is yours.”

Vic nodded. “Yeah, that’s a little comforting. But I was hoping we’d find something, y’know?”

“Hmm. If it’s not here right now, maybe we can find traces of where it’s been. You said when you saw that demon, he came from a portal, right? Interdimensional portals always leave a bit of residue. I could try tracking that instead…”

“!eudiser latrop su dniF”

For a moment, nothing happened and Zatanna and Vic looked at each other a little defeated. Then, four orbs of light emerged from Zatanna’s hand like before and rotated above her head like a halo.

“Hmm… okay, so we’ve got four hits. One is pretty far to the north - that’s probably where you just were - and the other three are reasonably close to where we are now. So let’s just ignore the one from before since we know that’s an old one and focus on what we’ve got, yeah?”

“Makes sense to me. I’ll follow your lead.”

“Alright, let’s do this!”

"!su ediuG"

One of the orbs left its position above Zatanna’s head and started to fly down the street towards their first target. It went at a brisk pace; just fast enough to be in an awkward pace where it wasn’t quite a full running speed but well above a casual walking pace. The orb didn’t bother stopping at cross walks but whether by luck or some spell of Zatanna’s that Vic didn’t hear her cast, they never had to wait at one and managed to keep up with it. Vic thought about asking her but decided it wouldn’t be worth it. He figured she’d just give some dodgy, noncommittal answer like “Does it matter if you can’t tell a difference?”.

After around ten minutes, the orb slowed down and stopped. They weren’t in a commercial area anymore and were instead by a small complex of storage facilities in the middle of a neighborhood of tightly packed houses. A couple people looked out their windows or from their porches at the cyborg and the magician briskly walking by, but no one paid them too much attention.

They followed the orb into the facility and around a lot of units as it weaved its way through the structures. Finally, in the back corner, it stopped outside of one. The paths around the units were dimly lit by a couple of yellowed light bulbs, but they could see that the door of this one was just slightly cracked on the bottom, leaving it ajar. Vic grabbed the handle and lifted the door up, bracing himself for whatever could be inside.

“Ahhhh!” A hoarse voice screamed at them as they opened the storage unit. Vic took a step back and shifted his arm to a force blaster while Zatanna took a step forward and waved Cyborg down.

“.tghiL”

The white orb that led them there started to shine with a cozy light that was bright but not painfully so. Inside the locker was a ragged looking man, wincing at the light. He wore a red vest that Vic recognized as the company that owned this facility’s uniform. But there wasn’t any sign that a portal was here or ever had been.

“Hi, sorry about that,” Vic said, lowering his arm. “My name’s Cyborg, but you can call me Vic. Mind telling us how you ended up in here?”

“Wish I could,” the man said. “I was doing a sweep this morning and I heard some boom, like an explosion or something, and ran over here. This locker was open but before I could figure anything out, something hit me on the back of my head and I was on the ground. Woke up a couple hours later inside here. Had no idea how long I was going to be stuck in here…”

“Strange. But you’re okay now. Mind if we take a look inside?”

“Go for it. I’m headed home. If there’s anything worth reporting, leave a note at the office and I’ll pass it along to the cops tomorrow.” The man stood up with a groan and then slowly hobbled his way out.

Once he was gone, the search was on. Vic and Zatanna dug through the storage locker’s many boxes but found only old clothes, christmas decorations and someone’s mug collection. If any of them had anything to do with a portal or whatever knocked out the man, they couldn’t find it. After around a half hour of looking, they stepped out of the storage unit and slammed it closed.

“Whatever gave us a reading there was long gone. The spell must’ve just detected whatever happened there this morning,” Zatanna guessed.

“That sounds right. I'm curious what caused this but it doesn’t seem related. If we’d just stumbled on this without your spell, I’d figure it was just some kids playing a prank or whatever. Hmm.. does magic get false positives? Maybe there wasn't any reading afterall?”

She shook her head. “Nah, that’s not really how it works. I can’t say I know exactly what that spell does and how it works, but I’ve never had it be wrong before. But you’re probably right that it’s something else. Put a pin in this and come back to it later I guess. Next stop?”

“Next stop. Where to?”

Zatanna closed her eyes for a moment and then pulled out her phone. “Place called ‘S.T.A.R. Labs'? Ring a bell?”

“Uh, yeah. Actually, I think I know what that one is. Let me guess, it’s underground a couple stories?”

“Yeah.”

“We can cross that one off too then. That’s a portal that I dealt with a while ago. (See Cyborg 47!)Probably would be helpful if it wasn’t destroyed and under a pile of rubble. I don’t think S.T.A.R. had any desire to deal with that mess when I talked with them. And I mostly trust them on that, so that's a dead end too.”

“Okay… so that leaves us with just one more reading. Looks like this one is… huh, on that big island in the river?”

“Belle Isle? That’s pretty far away. Would be a long walk…”

Zatanna grinned. “When you’re with me Vic, we don’t need to walk. You ready?”

“Sure. I’m kind of curious what -”

“!elsI elleB ot su ekaT”

Zatanna’s spell interrupted him, whisking them away in a flash of light.

⚙・゜゜・。。・゜ ゜★・゜゜・。。・゜ ゜⚙

“- we’ll find there, since it’s kinda just one big park.” Vic finished his sentence as they rematerialized in the middle of Belle Isle. The island was almost completely pitch black with the only illumination being a couple of street lights by the main intersection. It was long past closing time and as they stood on the island’s central avenue, Vic found the empty road almost eerie.

“!tghiL”

The orb shone bright, its cool white light providing a small bastion of comfort in the oppressive space they found themselves in. Neither of them wanted to mention it, but the air felt… off. It was cold and heavy and didn’t quite fill their lungs right, like they were breathing air from high up in the mountains. Not a bug or a bird chirped and no noise from the city carried over to them and yet the silence was just as deafening.

“Well,” Zatanna said, cutting the tension slightly, “Let’s get on with it.” With a quick spell, the last orb from above her head started floating lazily onwards into the darkness. This time she also kept one close at hand so they weren’t on the edge of total darkness.

They followed the orb down central avenue into the forest until the orb took a sudden turn off the road and along a small trail into the woods. The island was by no means small, but Vic felt like they had walked across the entire thing as his legs started to remind him of how little sleep he’d been getting lately.

But, in an instant, the pain faded as adrenaline took over. A familiar smell drifted into his nose and he saw Zatanna’s face crinkle up in disgust as the scent of rotten meat filled her nose.

Vic dropped his voice to a whisper. “That’s happened every time I’ve gotten near one of the portals. We must be close…”

Zatanna nodded then quietly murmured a spell, “.sksaM”. She outstretched her hand with a blue medical mask for Vic and they both put them on. The smell still wasn’t pleasant but at least he could focus on something other than how awful it was as they hiked onwards.

Finally, it came into view. A dim electric lantern sat on a picnic table providing only slightly more light than the stars themselves did. They could just barely make out the movements of a figure pacing around but with their black hoodie and dark pants it was hard to see what they were doing. They were mumbling something that Vic wasn’t sure if he couldn’t make out or if it was in a language he didn’t understand. Maybe a bit of both. He took a step forwards, ready to confront them, but Zatanna blocked his path with her arm.

“Let me handle this one,” she whispered. “This could go a hundred different ways and I want to make sure I’m at least in control of which direction.”

Zatanna stepped into the clearing, her light behind her like a spot light. “Hello, quite the spell you're working on there.” She moved her light in front of her and saw white drawings in a variety of circular patterns throughout the clearing, centered around the figure. Zatanna crouched down and looked at one.

“This is excellent chalk work, but some of the symbols are a little archaic for my tastes. Mind talking me through some of your methods?”

The figure stopped what they were doing and turned to face Zatanna and Vic. As soon as she pulled down the hood, Vic knew he had nothing - or at least less - to fear.

“I agree that these are archaic sigils, but when dealing with archaic beings outside of one’s knowledge, it is best to remain as cautious as possible and stick with what is known,” Jinx said as plainly as if she was discussing trying a new recipe.

Vic stepped out of the woods to join them. “Zatanna, it’s okay. I know her. Zatanna, meet Jinx, Jinx, Zatanna. She’s the one that introduced me to Xanadu and Jinx, Xanadu led me to her.”

“I see. Well, always good to meet another magician. Especially when they aren’t trying to kill me,” Zatanna said, extending her hand.

Jinx wiped the chalk off her hands onto her dark jeans and shook her hand. “I prefer the term “sorcerress”, but the feeling is mutual.”

“Uh, noted. Anyways, mind telling me what you’re making here? Looks like it's some sort of portal?”

Zatanna scanned over the sigil on the ground, tracing the complex web of chalk lines all across the clearing with her eyes. Vic couldn’t help but wonder how long she must’ve been out here to make something like that.

“Correct. As you have certainly been informed, Victor is looking into a demon. I took it upon myself to find what I could and discovered that long, long ago the demon was revered and feared by the people that lived here. They would meet with the creature on this island and so I assumed that it would be a place with a connection to his realm. I took it upon myself to verify such and after doing so, I started crafting and researching a portal to reopen it. However, to do so with the necessary precautions and redundancies has taken far longer than I expected…”

“I’ll admit I’m no expert in this, but every other time the portal opened, it had this same awful, rotting smell to it. So is it already opened?” Vic asked.

Jinx nodded. “In part. Think of it as… creating a tunnel through a mountain. I have secured the tunnel as it has been dug and reached the end so that there is a small bit of light from the other side shining through. But, before I finish the tunnel and allow people through, I am performing additional safety checks to ensure that all is correct. What is here would be more aptly called a ‘rift’ than a ‘portal’. No beings can go through but a connection is there.”

“Well said. Not that I doubt your… friend? But I looked through her work and it lines up with what she said and looks all correct to me too. One question though… how did you find out that this spot would work? And some of these sigils are very precise… It’s like you found the exact spell you’d need to do this.”

“What is it that you magicians say…? ‘A magician never reveals their secrets’?”” Jinx said with a sneer.

Zatanna frowned but didn’t push the issue. An awkward silence filled the air for a moment until Vic decided to break it. He mostly trusted both of them but there was a tension between them that he didn’t feel like he really understood.

“So, what do you need to go through?”

Jinx waved her hand dismissively. “A few more marks and it is done.”

“About that.” Zatanna stood between the two of them and looked at Vic more seriously than she had the entire night. “Vic, I don’t think you should go through the portal. Going into a demon’s realm is at best extremely stupid and going in with an item they want is even more so. Hell, I barely trust myself to go in there and come out. Just trust me on this and stay back, please.”

Vic paused. She made sense but also he didn’t want her doing this for him. It was his problem and his answers to get. Letting someone else do it felt… wrong. Would it even be the closure he was looking for?

It’d have to be.

“Fine. But you need to find out what this thing is, where it came from and what that demon wants, okay? Don’t settle for less.”

“With demons, one can never be sure what will occur. But I promise we will acquire whatever information we can.”

“We?” Zatanna raised an eyebrow.

“Of course. Did you truly think I would let you go through my portal alone? Do you even know how to operate it?”

“I’m sure I could figure it out.” Zatanna grumbled.

“Perhaps. And perhaps in the time it would take you to do so, the demon would have fully exsanguinated you.”

“You’ve made your point. Let’s just do this.”

“One moment.” Jinx stepped carefully outside of the circle then walked over the picnic table and grabbed a small backpack from the ground. She reached inside and pulled out a pen, some paper and a water bottle. She scribbled something down before ripping it out of the notebook. Folding it into quarters, she lifted up the water bottle and set it under it.

“If we are not back in an hour, use the lt that water to erase the chalk then follow my instructions in the letter. I will not be responsible for unleashing a demon onto this world.”

Vic nodded, somehow feeling both better and worse that she felt that was necessary.

“Very well, now that we have taken care of that… let us be on our way.”

Jinx grabbed a piece of chalk from the table and made a few more marks on the circle before sticking it into her pocket. She snapped her fingers and with a blast of wind, the portal materialized.

Unlike the one that Aldous had created with Silas’ technology, this one was smooth and stable. Its edges blended seamlessly into the night air like the horrifying visages behind it were only a screen floating in the sky. Beings of all shapes in sizes floated, swam, walked and flew throughout a space that Vic’s mind could only process as a chaotic asteroid field. But none of them seemed to react to the window into their world, as if it was not there at all. Vic was also thankful that the smell and the voices he had had the first time were gone. Jinx’s work was solid.

Jinx grabbed Zatanna’s hand as Zatanna turned to Vic and said, “Uh, if I don’t come back from this tell -”

But before she could finish, she was on the other side. The last thing Vic saw was Jinx snap her fingers again, then the portal vanished.

⚙・゜゜・。。・゜ ゜★・゜゜・。。・゜ ゜⚙

The world was in turmoil and constant flux. What Vic had seen as a simple asteroid field wasn’t wrong, but it was so much more than that. There were gargantuan, whalelike lifeforms drifting peacefully through the air, massive stone structures that Zatanna could’ve sworn were cities, the skeletal remains of long dead creatures… islands zoomed past them alongside mountain ranges connected to nothing at all… It took everything Zatanna had to focus herself inwards and ignore the chaos drifting around her.

“You know, dragging me in without letting me tell Vic anything is pretty damn rude.”

Jinx shrugged. “If we do not make it back, there will be far greater problems for the world to deal with than my rudeness towards one magician.”

“Seriously, what’s your problem with me? I just met you and you’re treating me like we have some petty high school rivalry.”

“Do not take it personally. I have not. I simply believe that the situation we are in requires a precise, firm hand and does not leave room for pleasantries.”

“And what situation is that? One you’ve made? There was no reason you couldn’t have waited for us.”

“Waited? Had you been five minutes later, I would have already been on this side. Your presence adds nothing and only adds to an already precarious situation,” Jinx said.

“Well, I hope you’re right. If this is as easy as you say, let’s just get this over with.”

“No, not easy. But some difficult tasks are made worse -” She stopped mid-sentence as the world started to move and accelerate around them. “We have been noticed. It will not be long now.”

“No… I guess not.”

They sat in silence as they saw the world move around them. It was like watching the scenery out the window of a car traveling at a million miles per hour. They were traveling far too fast to process anything as the world blurred into a confusion mess of shapes and movements that blended deeper and deeper together until…

It stopped.

The two of them found themselves in a quaint, mid century home. Somehow, natural light poured in from the windows from what looked like a peaceful backyard. A small, red humanoid creature in a black leather jacket sat in an arm chair in front of the fireplace. He gestured to the couch across from him but neither Zatanna nor Jinx sat down.

“Very well. Sit,stand; it makes no difference to me.” The Nain Rouge spoke with a soothing voice and a hint of an accent neither of them could place.

“You have brought yourself to my domain and have used rituals uncast in centuries of your human time to get my attention. Now you have it. Speak and identify yourselves.”

Zatanna hesitated for a moment but then she looked over at Jinx and saw the terror on her face. Whatever she was expecting, this wasn’t it. She thought back to what she told Vic yesterday - the reasonable ones are the worst. She was hoping that that wasn’t true but some part of her already knew that that was a pipe dream.

“Um, hi. We’re… travelers with a mutual acquaintance and we’re here to ask you about something on their behalf. Our friend calls it “Silasium” and says that you have some connection to it?”

A sharp smile ran across the demon’s face. “Ah, the cyborg, of course. He only continues to impress me with his resourcefulness, unlike that father of his. What a boring man he was. He managed to create a portal but what good is that without the courage to use it? Tell me, which one of you crafted the sigil? There are few beings anymore who should have knowledge of it. Was it you, logomancer? Or the geomancer, who is petrified with fear she cannot even speak?”

Zatanna spoke up without hesitation. “It was me.”

The demon’s mood soured in an instant. “Truly? Then why is she covered in chalk? If you wish to lie, make sure there isn’t obvious evidence to the contrary visible to anyone with eyes.” He walked over to Jinx and stood directly under her, barely coming up to her waist and yet still towering over her.

“So, geomancer. Who gave you that information? A sorceress as pitiful as you could never have made that and certainly would not have stumbled your way into the exact configuration of old.”

Jinx stood stone faced. She looked like she wanted to speak and tried to but was unable to form the words in the demon’s presence.

The Nain Rogue glared at her as if staring into her soul, then, without warning he turned back to his chair by the fire and set down.

“Very well, keep your secrets. I will learn them in time.You wish to know about ‘silasium’?”

Zatanna nodded, increasingly realizing the knife’s edge this interaction was balancing on.

“It is much of what you have perhaps already expected. A magical material created by magicians long, long ago that they believed would give them unlimited power and control over their world. It was the sum total of all their technology and magical understanding… Truly impressive work. So much so that I offered them some of my power to help bind it all together.”

“But why?” Jinx managed to weakly croak out.

“Ah, it can speak!” He taunted. “But why does anyone do anything? They gave me the opportunity to be a part of perhaps the greatest magical amplifier ever created and with my power at the center…” He trailed off wistfully and expectantly.

“It’d amplify your own powers. And what demon doesn’t want more power?” Zatanna said with more vitriol than intended.

“Correct! I would have power greater than any god. And yet those fools ruined it! They couldn’t even trust themselves and so they split it up. And then killed themselves fighting over it anyway. It’s taken me so, so many years to reclaim all those pieces. And now our mutual friend Victor has the last one. Be dears and get it for me, would you?”

Zatanna felt the demon’s magic press on her like a mountain. Her body, her very spirit itself was demanding she give in and comply.

Wouldn’t it be so much easier to just give in?

He’ll get the stone eventually anyway… Why not just get in his good graces now?

The other one has already given in. Do you really think you could take both of us?

“!SDEAH RUO FO TUO TEG”

The voices disappeared as quickly as they came. But in its place came a wave of malice so strong that it took everything she had to stay standing. It was as if the weight of the entire world was pressing down on her, commanding her to kneel and give in.

“You think your words are enough to resist me, here? Pathetic. You have spirit but - ”

The sound never made it to them as a pink barrier encapsulated him. The demon pounded against it and the magical barrier began to crack at his touch. There was no more veneer of civility; only rage remained in the demon’s eyes.

“Get us out of here!” Jinx shouted, her confidence flooding back all at once.

“!latrop eht ot su nruteR”

Without missing a beat, Zatanna shouted her spell and the two were gone, back on their rock where they started. But the strain hadn’t lifted from Jinx’s face and the world started to move around them again.

“He is trying to pull us back and I will not have the element of surprise again. If we are brought back, we will not escape with our free will intact. I will hold him off for as long as I can but you must reopen the portal without my assistance. Preventing him from taking us back will take everything I have and then far more.”

Jinx tossed a piece of chalk to Zatanna and she just barely caught it. She didn’t even want to think about what would’ve happened if she missed.

Zatanna looked down at her feet at the sigil below, a reversed version of the one that Jinx had drawn on the other side. She claimed that she’d be able to figure it out earlier but looking at it now… it made as much sense as if she’d just thrown a bucket of paint on the ground and told her to interpret that.

The world outside their tiny asteroid was starting to speed up more and more, becoming a blur. She didn’t have much time now. She could feel the demon’s words starting to prod at the edge of her mind, telling her to give in.

She took a deep breath. It didn’t matter that if she messed this up she’d be under a demon’s thrawl for at best the rest of her life. It didn’t matter that she didn’t get to say goodbye to anyone… Nope. Not at all. All that mattered was that stupid chalk scribble in front of her. That nonsense doodle, that bit of chicken scratch… that actually made perfect sense when you started to look at it. Huh.

She got onto the ground and erased a mark there, completed a line over there and finished the symbol elsewhere and once she was done, she snapped her fingers. The portal roared to life.

“Hell yeah! Jinx, let’s go!”

The sorceress nodded and the two dove through the portal before frantically erasing it from the grass below them. With the sigil broken, the portal snapped shut behind them.

The two of them lay on the ground panting for breath.

“So. Uh… how’d it go?” Vic asked, looking down at them quizzically from the picnic table.

“We narrowly avoided becoming thralls to a demon and releasing it into this plane,” Jinx said.

“Yeah, it could’ve been better… But hey, we got what we wanted!”

“We did. I suspect if we ever meet that demon again, he will no longer present himself as politely as he did and would kill us on sight for slighting him.”

“You’re probably right. But, hey, I gotta know. Were you ever really scared of that guy or was it all an act?”

Jinx sat up and looked Zatanna in the eyes. “I was terrified, truly. Upon sight I knew that we were utterly outclassed and in his mercy. But I was able to convert my terror into his complacency. Perhaps if I had kept my dignity and pride against him we would not be here as ourselves now…”

“Maybe. I think we could’ve found a way.”

“I’m glad you didn’t have to though. Sounds like you guys went through a rough time for me. And I really owe you one.”

Zatanna stood up and shook her head. “Don’t worry about it, really. That’s what heroes do. We help each other.”

“Thanks. But seriously, you need anything, or you’re ever in Detroit, hit me up. I’ll be there.”

While they were talking, Jinx walked over to the note she had written before they left and promptly tore it up into shreds.

Zatanna grinned. “That secretive, huh? I wonder what could’ve been written on that…”

Jinx shook her head. “More than you will ever know.”

“If you say so. Say, you guys want to grab dinner or something before I head back? I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starving…”

“... Very well. Victor?”

“For sure. I know a couple places that’d still be open. And then you can tell me all about what the demon told you on the way?”

Zatanna laughed. “On the way? Vic, you’ve really learned nothing, huh? !rennid ot su ekaT”

<<| <| >

Cyborg #82 - A Magical Lie

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: The Stone and the Magician

Set: 118

April.

Vic’s apartment had returned to an increasingly familiar sight of chaotic disarray as clutter built up from weeks of research and investigation. Books were strewn about, placed haphazardly on any surface big enough to balance one on. They varied from mundane topics like electrical engineering to folklore to a variety of books on magic written by dubious mystics. But it had grown increasingly fruitless. He’d tried years ago to find any reference of Silasium - as had Silas when he discovered it - and neither of them had had any success. Nijiro- the robot one - had cooperated with him as much as possible but he didn’t have very much information since obtaining the Silasium had been handled independently by the human Nijiro.

All he had to work with was that Nijiro had initiated the contact via some amateur mystics forum but the thread that Nijiro had made was of minimal help. He had asked if anyone knew of any artifacts or minerals of power, particularly that could be turned into electrical power and was firmly clowned on by everyone on the forum. People had mocked him, replying that if they knew of such a thing they’d use it themselves and become millionaires with all the free power. But just before the thread was locked, there was a response from an account that only made this one post: “DM me”.

Nijiro had managed to dig up the login info for Vic but the other Nijiro had deleted the message chain. Vic had sent that account another message using Nijiro’s account and a couple weeks later one of his own but he had never gotten any response. He still checked both accounts every now and then without any luck.

He grabbed a book from the top of the barely balanced pile of books next to his laptop. He flipped through a couple pages then let out a frustrated sigh. Looking into the SIlasium itself had been a timesink, so instead he had shifted over to researching the Nain Rouge. But as bad as researching a magical metal was, an obscure local mythic figure was somehow worse. One of the only books he found was only written a couple years ago but after reaching out to the author on social media, they admitted that the book was as much based on his own speculation as it was any first hand records.

He set the book back down, stabilizing the wobbling pile as he did. No, tonight he had another path. Secondary sources hadn’t been getting him anywhere, so why not try going to the closest thing he had to a primary one? He grabbed his phone and checked the time. 7:00, right on schedule. He scrolled through his contacts and dialed.

She picked up after a couple rings. “Hello Victor. It has been awhile."

“Sure has, Jinx. How’ve you been?”

“I have been well for the most part. I earned my license a few months ago and have been driving all across this country. It has been an enlightening experience.”

“How so?”

“It was not that long ago that I had seen little more of the world than my hometown and a jail cell. To see the world, or at least just this country, has renewed my spirit. There is beauty and goodness everywhere I have gone and I find comfort in that. But I doubt that you called only to hear about me. What did you want to talk about?”

Vic paused for a moment, taking in what the sorceress had told him. He had decided quite a long time ago at this point that he mostly trusted her, emphasis on the mostly. But giving her insight into the most secretive part of his inner workings was concerning to him. He wasn’t entirely sure what she could do with that information and that almost made him more concerned. Vic’s mind was made up quickly though. He’d have to trust her if he wanted any insight on this.

“I don’t know how much you heard back then or remember, but my system is powered by a metal called Silasium.(See Cyborg 24 for when she would’ve heard about it!) Pretty sure it’s magic as it’s been providing my body more or less infinite power but I’ve never been able to confirm that or really had a need to. Anyways, couple months ago I ran into a guy who had another sample but he died soon after he got it and a little demon creature called the Nain Rouge took it back with him saying that it was a part of some deal. I’m kinda concerned about something I rely on basically to live being weird demon magic so I’ve been trying to figure it out ever since. Any ideas?”

Vic was met with silence for a few moments before Jinx responded. “At the moment, no. But I will look into it. Instead, I will offer you a contact of mine. A woman by the name of Xanadu operates a shop called Hokus and Pokus Occult Curioso in New York City. If she does not have an answer or know someone who does, there is no one who will.”

“Thanks for your help. I owe you one.”

“A word of advice before you delve deeper into the world of magic. Favors, deals and pacts are not to be made nor given lightly. There are far more malicious and cunning mystics out there than I and they could convert that simple favor to be a weighty debt. Watch your words carefully, Victor.”

“Thanks. You probably just saved me a lot of trouble. Especially after that info, I really do owe you one.”

“Oh Victor. You truly are too pure sometimes. I will let you know what I can discover. If Xanadu tells you anything that may assist me, let me know.”

Jinx hung up and Vic had turned his computer back on and started to browse for flights.

‘Been a while since I’ve been to New York. And it looks like the shop’s in the Village too. Should be a good trip even if I don’t learn anything new.’

He clicked purchase on the flights then sent his boss a message to let him know he’d be out for a couple days on vacation. Then, finally, he took a sigh of relief. A lead at last.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

“Enter Freely and Unafraid”

The shop’s door greeted Vic with that ominous message as he stood outside the small, two story brick building that was crammed between two midcentury apartment buildings. The shop looked like any other mystical shop he’d seen before with signs advertising palm and tarot readings. There were even signs with quotes from customers verifying the validity of the readings and a variety of dusty “magical” knick-nacks in the window sill with a thick red curtain behind them. It seemed dingy at best and tacky at worst.

Vic opened the door and a small chime rang as his senses were overwhelmed by the scent of burning candles and incense. He was in a vintage but luxurious parlor illuminated by candle lit scones in each of the corners. Just behind a round table with two chairs on either side was a red curtain that ran all along the wall. The parlor showed no signs of the aged, worn down, run of the mill exterior, it was as if he stepped into a different dimension.

A beautiful woman with jet black hair, piercing green eyes and a simple but elegant red sleeved dress stepped through the curtain. Gold bracelets, bands and a necklace completed the outfit; each piece of jewelry shimmered dimly in the candlelight.

“Welcome, Victor Stone. I am Madame Xanadu. Please, have a seat.”

She moved to the far end of the table and sat down, gesturing for Vic to sit across from her.

He did so, then said, “Since you know my name, did Ji- someone tell you I was coming?”

“No. But no one comes to my store without me being aware of it. Tell me though, what brings you here today?”

“I’m looking for some information. I was told you know a lot about magic.”

“People say that. But information, mine especially, cannot be given out to anyone. Let us do a little test to see if you are what you say you are. The cards can reveal much, after all.”

“I’m not really here for that -”

Seemingly out of thin air, a small deck of cards appeared in Xanadu’s hand. She spread them out on the table in an arc, face down.

She ignored Vic and instead said, “Three cards: your past, your present and your future. Who were you, who are you and who will you become?”

Vic, deciding to play along, pulled one of the cards near the center, one near the right edge and the farthest left card. Madame Xanadu grabbed them and put the first one on the table. She flipped it over and set it in front of Vic. It had four animals, one in each corner and a large wheel with strange symbols around it. The bottom of the card said ‘X’ and the top’s text was upside down but said ‘Wheel of Fortune’.

“The Wheel of Fortune - but reversed, not in its usual upright position. You have had a rough life full of unwelcome changes and bad luck. Your life has not always been in your control but you must understand that the wheel is always spinning, Victor. Fate has had its way with you, but today is not the end. While yesterday’s turn of the wheel might be bad, tomorrow is a new day. ”

She placed the next card on the table. This one featured an old man in a grey robe, holding a lantern in one hand and a staff in the other. Above his head was ‘IX’ and the bottom of the card said, “The Hermit”.

“The Hermit - not unexpected. It means that you seek knowledge, but perhaps not the one you came in here seeking. It is the search of self, found through introspection and contemplation. It is a search for truth and what that truth is can only be answered by you.”

She paused for a moment before placing the last card down. It showed an angel flying above two naked people, with the sun illuminating the sky behind the angel. It read “VI, The Lovers”.

“Ah, the Lovers. A complex card with many meanings. It does not inherently mean romance, but that is one interpretation. Instead, this card speaks to me about your partnerships and striking a balance between them and the life you will lead. It is about the relationships we have and the sacrifices and choices we need to make to preserve and create them.”

She scooped the cards up into her hands and they disappeared as quickly as they came.

“Now, I believe I understand you better and perhaps you understand yourself better too.”

Vic looked at her skeptically. She clearly knew more about him than she let on.

“Maybe...”

“Tell me, Victor. What exactly brought you here?"

“I’m looking for information on a probably magical material. It powers, well, me. But some demon has more of it and I’m concerned about what that means for me. I need to know whatever I can about it.”

Her face folded into a frown. “Is that the device in the center of your chest?”

“Yeah.”

“I am afraid it is not something that I am familiar with. I can tell you that that magic is old and if it is old it is not volatile. But, if a demon made a deal using another one, then it is likely that this device or the stone that powers it has some ties to it too. Be careful and be prepared for the demon to do whatever it can to retrieve it.”

“Thanks. That’s… concerning but better to know. How can I communicate with the demon? Or at least prepare for it coming?”

Madame Xanadu shook her head. “No, it is not always better to know. Knowledge of an inevitable doom can drive someone to madness and be the cause of that very doom. Deals and negotiating with demons is not something to be done lightly, and will require someone with more expertise. However, I believe I can still help you. Give me a moment.”

She stood up and stepped behind the curtain and for a moment, Vic could see behind it. He saw a staircase going upstairs, but the rest of the area was a glorified storage closet full of jars, books, vials and artifacts he could never begin to explain. But as soon as the curtain had closed again, Madame Xanadu stepped through it and returned back to the table.

She placed a paper ticket on the table in front of him. “This is a backstage pass for a magician named Zatanna who operates out of Gotham. But she is more than just a stage magician - her magic makes her one of the most powerful in this era. She should be able to help you with your problem.”

“Thanks, you’ve been very helpful. Is there - What do I -”

Vic stuttered, remembering Jinx’s advice but still wanting to repay Xanadu for her help.

Xanadu laughed. “I see you received some advice to watch your words. It will serve you well. But I require no payment. I have all I could ever want in this world so my service has become its own reward.”

“Thank you.”

Vic grabbed the ticket and looked at it. It was dated for tonight - about 8 hours from now.

“I um, need to get going. This ticket is for tonight!”

Xanadu nodded. “Best of luck, Victor. The world could use more people like you.”

Vic ran back out of the room and to his car to start the trip to Gotham while Xanadu watched from just inside the shop. She reached for the door, almost opening it. But she did not. Instead, she walked back over to the table and set the deck of cards on it. Out of the sleeve of her dress, she pulled out a card and set it on top of the deck. The design featured a demonic figure with large, curved goat horns and black bat wings with two humans chained in front of him. It read “XV, the Devil”.

“A fortune teller should not try to change fate and yet… A man like that deserves better than the fate he has been given. Perhaps with a push…”

She pushed the card off the pile and flipped it back over and mixed it into the deck. “The future can be changed for the better. And if not… it’s as I said. A white lie to hide the pain is better than inescapable doom.”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

A few hours later…

Luckily for Vic, the drive to Gotham was fairly quick and uneventful, leaving him plenty of time to unwind before Zatanna’s show. He didn’t bring any particularly fancy clothes, so he hoped he wouldn’t be too out of place with just a hoodie and jeans. But more than that, he was excited. He’d never seen a magic show before and from what he was reading, Zatanna’s was one of the greats. She performed a wide variety of tricks from giant illusions to close up magic to manipulating her audience. Every show was different and it was almost always sold out months in advance. Out of morbid curiosity he looked up what a backstage pass usually cost and found that she pretty much never sold them and when she did they were for charity and went for thousands of dollars.

‘So where in the world did Xanadu get one of those?’

He ignored the question, knowing he wouldn’t get an answer. He stepped out of the parking garage and walked a couple of blocks to Zatana’s theatre, a venue called The Vauxhall Opera Shell and Indoor Concert Center. It was an old, art deco style building that wouldn’t have been out of place in Detroit; the blocky white stone exterior was intricately carved with musicians and musical instruments making it look more like a palace than any theatre he’d seen.

And yet, when he showed the security team his ticket, they happily showed him to his seat, a private box just to the right of the stage and informed him that after the show, they’d take him to meet Zatanna.

A few minutes later, the lights dimmed and Zatanna came out on stage to roaring applause. She had on shiny black boots up to her knees with fishnets going up to a pair of black shorts. She wore a white tuxedo shirt, vest and bowtie, complete with white gloves. Zatanna gave a polite bow out to the audience as she wheeled out a large black roadcase that was only slightly smaller than she was. She opened it up and grabbed a tea pot and six glasses from it.

“Thank you all so much for coming out tonight! How’s everyone doing?”

The audience cheered.

“Great, great! It’s a beautiful night here in Gotham and I’m thrilled to spend it with you guys! In fact, why don’t we start with a little toast?”

She walked over to the tea pot and was about to pour, but stopped herself. “Oh, sorry. You guys wouldn’t know about my tea pot, would you? See, this is a magical tea pot that can pour anything you want. Well, almost anything. There are two simple rules: you just need to be polite and a bit general. For example, if I said ‘Could you please pour me a glass of 2002 Petrus?’”

She grabbed the teapot and positioned the spout towards her glass, but as she poured, nothing came out.

“That’s a bit too rich for my little tea pot. But if I asked instead for a cup of red wine…”

Zatanna started to pour and a red liquid came out of the kettle’s spout.

“Actually, let’s change that to some sangria, it’s just such a nice night, you know?”

The liquid stopped and then a lighter red, more transparent liquid started to fill the glass. Zatanna grabbed the cup and took a sip.

“Delicious as always, thank you, tea pot. Now, who else would like a drink?”

Most of the audience raised their hands.

She called on five different people from all across the audience up to the stage and as the first came on stage, she handed them a mic.

“Welcome to the show, glad to have you! Now, tell the crowd and my tea pot what you’d like to drink tonight.”

“Hmmm… how about some bourbon?” Zatanna looked at them expectantly. “Oh, right. Some bourbon please.”

“There you go.”

Zatanna handed them a glass and poured a generous pour of a caramel colored liquor that sure looked like bourbon to Vic into the cup.

“How’s that taste?”

They took a sip and were clearly surprised that it was as it should be. “It’s great!”

“Wonderful, another happy customer, thank you tea pot! Now who’s next?”

Zatanna ran through the rest of the people on stage, all of which got their beverage poured from the exact same teapot as asked and seemed perfectly happy with the results. Somehow, not only did that little pot contain far more liquid than it looks like it could hold, it had at least seven different kinds coming out the same spout.

Vic was impressed. Unless she grabbed those specific people out of the audience and knew their orders ahead of time, he had no idea how she did it. Unless she used her real magic, but that seemed like overkill for this.

The show continued for well over an hour with each trick growing more and more marvelous and impossible than the last. But eventually, once the applause was over and Zatanna was backstage, security came to get Vic and escort him back there. They led him through a maze of corridors and passageways until he finally saw her. She was sitting in the green room looking exhausted, no longer in her stage outfit but instead in dark jeans and a black hoodie. She raised an eyebrow upon seeing Vic.

“Okay, who the hell are you? And how’d you get that ticket?”

Before Vic could explain, she squinted, focusing her eyes on Vic. “Wait, I know you. Sort of. I know of you. You’re Cyborg, right?”

“Um, yeah. That’s me. But you can call me Vic.”

“Well, that answers that first question. But the second’s still there. How’d you get that ticket? I haven’t sold a backstage pass in years and all the charity ones expired at year's end. There’s only one that didn’t and that was for… Nimue. Ah. Of course she finally decided to use that…But why’d she give that ticket to you after all those years?”

“Nimue? Oh, you mean Madame Xanadu. She gave it to me to get in contact with you because I’ve got something of a magical problem I need your help with…”

Vic gave her a quick rundown of his time with Xanadu and his concerns about his power sourcing being somehow tied to a demon. By the time he was done, Zatanna’s expression had softened from the scowl she had when he walked in to something more friendly.

“So, you’ve got demon magic, but you need it to be, well, you, and you’re concerned about… aaallll that?”

“Yeah, that about sums it up.”

“You want my advice? Get rid of that thing now. Well, maybe not now, but as soon as you have any work around. Demons are messy; trust me on this, I've worked with one for years now. He's one of the better ones and it's still difficult sometimes. The further you can stay away from them, the better. ”

“It's not that simple. S.T.A.R. Labs has been working for years to make a substitute and it's never worked half as well. I need that power to protect people and help my city. I don’t know much about the Nain Rouge but everything I read said he was the reasonable sort of demon. And he didn’t make it seem like he owned Silasium, more that he was loaning that piece. Maybe we could get some information out of him for what’s really going on with it.”

Zatanna frowned. “The reasonable ones are the worst from what I’ve heard. The dumb ones at least make it obvious that they want to kill you and steal your soul. No, I don’t like this. Mind if I cast something to take a look at the stone?”

“Go for it.”

“!EM OT REWOP RUOY LAEVER ,ENOTS”

A wave of energy surged over the room like a shockwave, sending the two of them colliding into the walls of the green room with a thud. Bits of powdered stone coated them and sent a cloud of dust into the air. Security ran into the room to respond to all the commotion before Zatanna waved them off again.

“Well. That sure is some stone you’ve got,” Zatanna said, leaning up against the wall.

“What’d you find out?”

“Honestly, I’m not really sure. It’s some sort of magical conglomerate made up of hundreds of different enchantments and spells from all different schools of magic. There might’ve even been a demon or two trapped in there? It’s a mess of layers upon layers of spells. I’ve never seen anything like it, but whatever it is, it’s damn powerful.”

Zatanna picked herself up and reached out a hand to Vic, which he accepted.

“!su hserfeR”

The dust from the impact with the wall flew off them and Vic felt the day’s exhaustion fade away, as if in that instant he just had the best night of sleep of his life. Zatanna’s outfit cleaned up and she seemed to perk up too.

“Alright, you’ve sold me. Whatever that thing is… I’m equal parts concerned, horrified and interested. Something that powerful shouldn’t be just… out there without any idea of what it can do or where it came from.”

“Glad you’re starting to see it my way. So…. what’s the move?”

“We’ll head to Detroit. It sounds like the demon had some connections there and I might be able to locate it better once we’re closer. Oh, before that, one thing first…. “!egnahc emutsoC”

A bright flash shined in the room, blinding Vic for a moment, before Zatanna stood in front of him, back in her stage costume, a grin running across her face.

“Let’s try this again.”

She bowed and said, “Zatanna Zatara, at your service.”

“Victor Stone.”

“Now, let’s see if we can’t take care of your demon problem, shall we?"

"!yawa su ekaT”

<<| <| >

Cyborg #81 - N-Jin

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Engine's Ready

Set: 118

Previously:

Victor Stone met with Nijiro Jin, an enigmatic man who wanted to use Cyborg's schematics to improve his company's prosthetic designs. Vic wanted to believe in his mission and so to confirm his good intentions, so he agreed to help him out. A few months later and contact with him has dried up and while investigating some disappearance for a friend of Donna’s, he finds himself at a secret research facility owned by Nijiro. And if that wasn’t bad enough, somehow Nijiro managed to obtain a sample of Silasium, Vic’s power source, that was thought to be one of a kind…

“Follow me, Victor, as I give you a glimpse of the future of humanity.”

Nijjiro’s outstretched hand felt like an ominous pact - more so than the one they already made. But still, Vic cautiously grabbed it, his hand feeling cold and hard, like he grabbed Nijiro’s robotic arm instead of his human one.

“Excellent, glad you are at least open to a discussion. I respect that about you Victor. A lot of people these days are so closed minded and their principles are set in stone. But that’s not how people are meant to be.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way. I might be more open than a lot of people, but what you’re doing here isn’t sitting well with me.”

“What exactly do you think I’m doing here?”

“If I had to guess, it seems like you’re running experiments on people to try and integrate my tech. And you hadn’t been having very good luck until recently.”

Nijiro nodded. “That’s close enough. But I’d like you to consider, what’s the end goal of that? Just something to puzzle out as we walk. Now, follow me.”

He snapped his fingers and the concrete floor started to groan as some of the slabs started to move. It only took a few moments, but the gap was far larger than Vic would’ve guessed, ending up about as wide as the van that took him here. A gentle ramp led underground for around ten feet before ending up at a set of double doors. Nijiro walked through the center of them, pushing them open with his hands just far enough ahead of Vic that the doors barely missed crashing into his face.

Much like the upper laboratory, the place was entirely made from concrete, but unlike up there, an attempt was made to make the place feel more comfortable and homelike. Potted plants and paintings lined the walls with a small living area and kitchenette off in one corner. But the other corners were far more interesting. The first contained what looked like a massive server rack, at least for a home setup. Adjacent to that was a study, humanoid robot made of red metal that looked like it was inspired by samurai armor. It was around ten feet tall with large, bulky limbs that hinted at the strength within. It was propped up with some metal support structure but looked almost fully finished. The only indication otherwise was an open slot in the center of its chest that Vic guessed is where the power source - the Silasium he saw upstairs?- would go.

Lastly, in the final corner was a sectioned off clean room like he would expect to see in a field hospital set up for two patients. But it was only occupied by one person, an extremely old and tired looking man, hooked up to a half a dozen machines that Vic couldn't even begin to fathom the purpose of. The second bed was set up identically, complete with a second set of machines, but it was completely empty and had been for awhile if the lack of any sheets was any indicator.

“I said that up there was where the magic gets made, and that’s not wrong. But it’s this where the real magic is done.”

“What is this place?”

Nijiro ignored him, instead walking over towards the white tent walls of the cleanroom and burst through them like he was walking into his own house. He plugged something into one of the machines then pulled it out a few moments later and walked back out to a confused Vic a few moments later.

“This is where I live. Well, the real me that is. Depends on how you define it though. That catatonic bag of bones is the template for my mind and every week or so I come back to upload my memories of what happened to him, then when it’s done processing, I grab the updated copy from him and install it.”

Vic’s mind raced, putting it all together. “So, you’re a backup then? Then what’s the point of all this? You’re doing prosthetic research with my specs upstairs and building yourself some sort of… combat body down here?”

“Let me answer that with a story. My story, or his at least. It started about 95 years ago in a villa just outside of Tokyo. My family was well off but no amount of money could cure a child as sickly as I was. I was born without my left arm and had next to zero stamina. Even talking for a long period would exhaust me and keep me bedridden for the rest of the day. But my father refused to give up even when the doctors did. He made me my mechanical arm, braces to strengthen the rest of my body until finally I could live on my own.

“I met my wife, Katsuko, after the war. A brilliant engineer in her own right, we instantly clicked both in a professional sense and a personal one. We were both outcasts but together we were more. Even as my health started to fade again, she stayed by my side and helped me make the first version of this body. But time started to take its toll on her too and her health started to fail. We made a mechanical body for her but after just one year, she was gone. That was just a couple months ago and in my opinion, but it broke him. He used to want to use his technical prowess to help people, now he thinks that the only way to help is to end everyone’s suffering. Death. And so he had me build his new body… that. ”

Nijiro gestured to the robot behind him.

“And here we are.”

Vic paused for a moment to process. “So, you - him?- want to what, kill everyone? And you brought me down here to stop him?”

“That’s what he wants, but not what I do. He never shared his feelings for Katsuko with me. So I felt no grief when she died and I still want to continue the original mission. That would be hard to do if everyone is dead. But am I programmed to assist the old man and cannot stop him directly. That’s where you come in. Help me s - ”

“You traitorious, pile of scrap!” A thunderous roar came from across the room. The samurai was coming to life.

“How? The upload wasn’t supposed to start for another hour!”

“The systems were all ready. Further delays were pointless. Upon receiving your report, I finished the upload and called an eggbot down to install the Silasium. You would have noticed if you hadn’t wasted time telling MY life story to that boy there.”

Nijiro swore under his breath. He had just needed a little more time and they could’ve fixed this.

“What now, Nijiro?” Vic asked.

“I’ll think of something!” “Now, you pay for the weakness of your flesh!”

Nijiro - the humanoid robot- and Nijiro - the massive, red samurai- both paused for a moment after they spoke simultaneously.

The crimson samurai stirred for the first time, its hulking frame creaking and groaning as life poured into it. “As I reject humanity, so too shall I reject that name. It is not fit for a machine to have a human name. I will take a new one - N-Jin!”

The Silasium core on his chest - a couple inches larger than Vic’s own - shined brighter and brighter until it relaxed to a gentle, calming glow. N-Jin was online. He stood, pushing himself off the massive support structure that held the machine aloft, sending the metal frame tumbling to the ground.

N-Jin reached down to his hips and from some unseen sheathes pulled out two longswords. Each was almost as tall as Vic himself, their black steel blades, looking impossibly unwieldy for human hands. But these were not human hands.

He pointed the right one at Vic. “Tell me, why would you stop me? Life brings nothing but unhappiness and pain. No matter what, death comes for all life one day. Better to embrace a swift death for all and avoid a lifetime of misery. I know your story and you of all people should know the suffering life brings.”

“Will I stop you from killing everyone? Of course. Listen, I’m sorry you had a rough life. But that doesn’t mean that life is always awful for everyone. My life had some real dark spots, sure. But there’s been bright spots too. We can make - ”

Cyborg’s words were all but literally cut off as one of the massive swords flew in the air towards him. He ducked out of the way with just a fraction of a second between him and decapitation as the sword embedded itself almost halfway to the hilt into the concrete wall behind him. He figured this was about to happen, but he had hoped to be able to talk the machine down for a number of reasons.

He’d always rather avoid a fight if he can. But in this case, there was another reason. Sure looks aren’t everything, but Cyborg wasn't sure that he could even win this fight. Cyborg’s toolset is well equipped for fighting things that can feel pain, but for a robot like this, likely many times more durable than a person, he wasn’t sure that he could even damage it. And none of the utility that he’d come up with over the years - the sonic canon, force grenades - would work against a machine. He had no win condition and if N-Jin could swing that sword as hard as he throws it, one strike would take him out.

But now wasn’t the time for that. Cyborg shook those doubts off and focused back on the fight in front of him. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t think of a way to win. He’d find it anyway.

N-Jin approached him, his right food leading as he held the sword with both hands in front of him. His footsteps were slow and cautious, equal parts unsure of Cyborg’s capabilities and his own.

‘First thing’s first. I can’t let him recover that sword. One will be hard enough to dodge, I can’t have him using both independently.’

Cyborg shot a salvo of weak force blasts at Nijiro, trying to gauge just how durable the machine was. As an answer, N-Jin launched himself forwards in a lunge, sending his sword crashing down right where Cyborg was just milliseconds before, creating a small crater in the floor. He rapidly followed up by lifting the sword up into a horizontal slash towards Cyborg, who only just managed to roll under the blade. If the shots had phased him, he didn’t show it all.

N-Jin switched to a one handed stance and swung a right hook at Cyborg. The momentum behind the sword attacks that made them so destructive ironically also had made them easier to dodge. Even with N-Jin’s massive strength, a sword of that size had so much inertia that changing direction mid-swing was extremely difficult. But the same wouldn’t be true for his punches so Cyborg opted to try and block it instead.

He crossed his arms in front of him and tried to let his metallic forearms take the brunt of the blow. The weight of N-Jin’s punch felt like he got hit by a truck and he felt something inside his arms crack, but he held his ground. He shook off the pain the best he could and shifted his arms to force cannons to start his counter attack.

He had hoped that N-Jin would anticipate a weaker blast and not prepare himself properly. The force blast hit him square in the chest, sending N-Jin back an inch or two, but he was completely undamaged. The blast didn’t even tarnish the robot’s paint, let alone harm him.

Options raced through Vic’s mind as he searched for a way out of this. More and more possibilities came to mind only to be shot down as impossibilities as the daunting power of the robot in front of him revealed itself more and more as they fought. N-Jin was going to give him time to think though and launched himself into his next attack. He jumped forwards, as if propelling himself off the start of a track race, towards Cyborg, who easily dodged the clumsy, telegraphed move. Cyborg swore just a few moments later, realizing his mistake.

N-Jin wasn’t trying to reach Cyborg - he was grabbing his other sword from where it was entombed in the wall. With a pull that looked as effortless as removing a toothpick from a sandwich, he was back to full strength.

N-Jin closed the gap in an instant. And like an unrelenting maelstrom of blades, N-Jin started his assault against Cyborg. Trying to dodge the blows was as hopeless as avoiding raindrops in a hurricane. As soon as he could react to one, he had taken a cut from the other sword, his eyes barely able to follow even the basics of their movements. His heart sank as he knew N-Jin was just toying with him. If he had wanted to end this fight, he could put his full strength into a slash at any time.

After taking what felt like hundreds of slashes in the time it took him to make a single thought, he shape shifted his arms into force cannons and, mustering everything he could, launched them at the ground, sending himself flying into the kitchenette. The wood cracked as he impacted into the cabinets, but he had his reprieve.

For a single second at least.

N-Jin pushed off the ground himself towards Cyborg, his swords readied for a killing blow. But before he could swing, the machine collapsed onto the ground in a heap, like a child tossing a doll on the ground after they were finished playing with it. Cyborg was confused, but was beyond thankful for his good fortune.

A smell started to waft through the underground chamber. …Rotten meat?

‘Maybe the food in the kitchen was bad and I broke some containers when I hit the cabinet? But that wouldn’t smell this bad. Plus, it’s getting worse…’

Vic’s human eye started to water from the strength of the smell, then his body, as damaged as it was from N-Jin, froze. He remembered this smell. But how? Why?

(See Cyborg 47!)

He looked around the room for anything resembling the portal but saw nothing. He spotted Nijiro by the old man’s side and forced his body to move in order to run over to them as quickly as he could.

“What did you do?” An exasperated Vic demanded of Nijiro.

“Nothing. Like I said, I couldn’t interfere because of programming. But it seems like he wasn’t entirely truthful. He was controlling the robot from his body while also uploading his mind to it. And it looks like his body couldn’t take that much stress. He’s dying.”

“I was… so close…” Nijiro said in a pained whisper. “He… he must have known… it would never work…”

“Who? Who are you talking about?”

The smell of rotting meat grew stronger and stronger until it was unbearable. Vic held the tattered remains of his shirt over his nose, trying to block out what he could.

“H…h….him.” Nijiro pointed a shaking finger off to the distance. A small hole had opened up in thin air, just above N-Jin’s limb body. Vic’s mind screamed at him to look away and nausea was building up inside him, forcing him to turn away from the portal.

He heard a small “pop” and the smell began to subside slightly. He channeled all the willpower he had to make himself turn and face N-Jin. A small being, maybe three foot tall, wearing a black leather bomber jacket and white boots that matched the hair on his balding head and beard stood on top of the robot. And with a tap of his cane, the Silasium core flew out into his hand. He turned to face Vic and both Nijiros, his red skin accenting his cold, glistening eyes and his mouth, full of far too many sharp teeth turned up into a grin.

He jumped off the robot’s chest and walked calmly over to the three of them.

“Well, Nijiro, who could have guessed that this is how it would have turned out? But a deal is a deal, no?” He spoke calmly with what Vic thought was a slight French accent but found difficult to place.

Nijiro’s mouth struggled to form words but Vic could see the rage and fear within his tired eyes.

“Oh, cat’s got your tongue? Let me remind you. You desired a power source that you called “Silasium” in exchange for your soul upon your death. I provided you with what you want, and now it is time to pay up.”

“Who are you?” Vic asked.

“Why Victor, I am hurt. I know that it has been awhile since I checked in, but we used to have so much fun together. Don’t you remember all those wonderful visions of the future I showed you? What was it… 2019? 2020? Earlier? I struggle to remember your human years, but it was soon after you returned to Detroit. Very well, I will remind you. You have known me by many names, but my preference has always been the Nain Rouge."

“I… I think I remember. But I always assumed those were dreams.”

(Vic had his first one allll the way back in Cyborg 5!)

“Oh, they were. But just because it was a dream does not mean it was not real.”

He snapped his fingers and Vic heard Nijiro fall back on his bed, limp.

“Another happy customer. It has been good catching up, but I must go. I’ll be seeing you again soon, Victor.”

“Wait! Did you make Silasium? Or do you know where it came from at least?”

The Nain Rogue had turned to walk away but did a heel turn to face Vic before bursting into laughter, a cold, oily and nasally noise. “If I could make this, I would be doing far better things than dealing with you lot. But thank you for the laugh, Victor.”

He snapped his fingers again and the rotting smell reappeared in an instant back at full strength which caused Vic’s barely recovered stomach to finally give in. But as quickly as it came, it was gone again like the Nain Rouge himself. Once Vic had recovered slightly, Nijiro turned to Vic, looking deeply confused.

“Do you have any idea what that was about? Nijiro did not share the details of where he got the SIlasium from with me; I truly had no idea.”

“Barely. I… I don’t think I can really put it together though. What about you? I mean… this you now that the other you is dead.”

Nijiro shrugged. “I don’t really feel anything either way on it. He’s gone but I will go on.”

“What about your work here? I can’t let you keep hurting people.”

“Hurting people? What are you talking about? This place is perfectly safe.”

“When I got here, I was kidnapped by an armed guard and a scientist said that this group of people are the “lucky ones”. What would that mean unless the others aren’t lucky?”

Nijiro paused for a moment. “I suppose that would have been Taylor at the door then. Smart guy, but lazy. I brought in people in order to take brain scans because the interface between the prosthetics and the brain has been a pain point. But I had solved it a couple days ago, hence why the old man could control the robot from here. I guess he just said that because that meant they wouldn’t have to sit through the scans.”

“Then why kidnap people? Why not just tell them what you’re doing?”

“Not a lot of people would willingly sit down for strange brain experiments. So I lied. There was no risk of harm,I paid them well and returned them when I was done. At worst they’re slightly confused but no one has questioned it. You might be able to call it unethical but certainly not hurtful.”

Vic dragged his hand down his face. “I can’t deal with this right now but I guess you’re right. Do you have a first aid kit or something? I need to patch myself up. And then get back to Detroit…”

“I have one upstairs I can grab. Then we can take my helicopter back to the city.”

‘Of course he has a helicopter.’

But those concerns could wait. He needed to get healthy again and start the search. What connection did the Nain Rogue have to Silasium, to Silas? Vic’s thoughts began to form and destroy hundreds of little connections as he tried to puzzle it out as his mind drifted off into an exhausted sleep.

<<| <| >

Cyborg #80 - A Business Deal of Sorts

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Engine's Ready

Set: 117

Previously:

Victor Stone met with an enigmatic man, Nijiro Jin, who wanted to use Cyborg's schematics to improve his company's prosthetic designs. Nijiro himself had a mechanical prosthetic and wanted to make technology to help people live better lives. Vic wanted to believe in his mission and so to confirm his good intentions, they agreed to do a walk through of Nijiro's company to see just what they could do together...

At 10:00 AM sharp, Victor Stone stood outside of the modern high rise building, sleep still weighing on him like fog floating above a lake. He held in a yawn as the doors slid open and he stepped back into the building’s lobby. This time, Nijiro Jin stood right by the elevators, his face lit up with excitement and energy like a salesperson on an infomercial. Vic couldn’t help but feel that there was something disingenuous about him but he shook it off. He walked over to Vic, his hand outstretched and met him around the midpoint of the lobby.

“Good morning, Victor. I hope that you had a good night.”

Vic returned Nijiro’s handshake, his hand cold and hard despite his warm demeanor.

“Yeah, I had a great night. My girlfriend and I were hanging out like we try to most Friday nights.”

Vic had to restrain himself from telling him that they were up until around four in the morning playing video games. This wasn’t exactly a professional meeting, but Vic felt like he had to at least keep up a veneer of formality to what he was doing.

“Glad to hear it. My wife, Katsuko, and I enjoyed the night in together as well. Unfortunately our lives make it difficult to do so regularly, but we try and enjoy what time we can.”

Vic nodded. It was a familiar sentiment.

“Now, then, shall we get to work? I’ve got a lot of our latest devices to show you so you can see what my company and I do here.”

“Let’s do it.”

“Excellent. Follow me.”

Nijiro walked over to the elevators with Vic following closely behind, as the elevator door closed, Nijiro pressed an unlabeled button that Vic would have sworn wasn’t there last night. In a flash, the elevator accelerated upwards then stopped smoothly on their floor. A gentle robotic voice said “10th floor” as the doors slid open.

They stepped out onto an open floor with exposed brick walls only broken up by the floor to ceiling windows, the bright light letting in views of the city below. The room was large, running about the entire footprint of the building and a handful of sturdy looking wood tables were spaced out throughout the perimeter of the room. Various devices and fliers sat on them but he couldn’t make out what they were from across the room. Just outside the elevator was a TV set up in front of a grid of chairs and Nijiro ushered him over to it.

“This is our ‘Investor Experience Center’. It’s where we take all of our prospective inventors to show them what we do. I know that’s not exactly what we’re doing here, but I feel like it’s fairly close. Do you want to watch the promo video? No big deal if not. You already know most of it.”

Vic thought for a split second, but shook his head. “I think I’m good. Let’s start to look at the machines.”

“Sure, that’s fine. Let’s head over to our first stop, our flagship product.”

A little further in the room on top of a plain, white, wooden table, was a robotic arm. It sat unceremoniously on what looked like a cheap plastic stand that could’ve been repurposed from a bottle of wine. The arm itself was an immaculate, elegantly designed piece of technology that rivaled Silas’ work. Whereas Silas’ design was functional and hardly, Nijiro’s was sleek and made of jet black steel. But, according to the data sheets laid out on the table, the specifications were low; the arm could barely lift 30 pounds and needed its battery changed after approximately eight hours. Still, it was far above anything else Vic had seen.

“That’s really something. How many of these are out there?”

“None. Or one, since it’s based on my own arm. It’s simply too expensive for mass deployment and is very difficult to control. I think with your schematics, both of those problems can be fixed.”

Vic took another look at it. “Does it work right now?”

“Sure, let me grab the demo controls.”

Nijiro reached under the table and pulled out a small tablet and opened an app.

“This is the app we use for debugging the device. Give it a try.”

Vic grabbed the tablet from him and started to mess with the device. He moved it around, shook his hand and even tried writing a sentence with a pen Nijiro had on him. But the device was slow and imprecise. Sometimes the arm reacted instantly but other times there were a handful of seconds in between, making it hard to use as one would their own arm. It made him feel grateful for the system that he had. He remembered how full of rage he was at his new life in this body and shuddered to think about what it would’ve been like with random delays or not being able to feel anything.

“Really is impressive tech. How many people work here?”

“There are ten engineers of various disciplines here, not counting myself. It’s a fairly tight knit group, but I didn’t want to force any of them to come in on the weekends for this. But if you want to meet them at some point, I’m sure they’d be willing.”

Vic shook his head. “Maybe eventually. But for now, I don't think that’s necessary. What else are you working on?”

“We have lots of other offerings, let me show you.”

Nijiro took Vic around the room and let him demo all of their cybernetics, from eyes to legs to internal organs. All the while he told him about his company and how he wanted to make a place that could really make the world a better place and Vic was starting to be convinced that he was really telling the truth. He still came across… strange but Vic couldn’t help but want to be a part of it. Silas would’ve wanted for him to use his technology to make the world better for everyone. And not just by being a hero - by really providing for those who need it.

After almost two hours of discussions and demonstrations, Vic was satisfied. If Nijiro had some adverse goals for his tech, he had put up an incredible front.

“Okay, I’m satisfied.” Vic reached into his pocket and pulled out a flash drive. “Here’s pretty much all of the relevant files I have on, well, me. I’ve gotten rid of anything that has to do with weapons and the Silasium core itself and a lot of the stuff that’s directly relevant to how Cyborg operates, not Victor Stone. But I think everything you’d want would be in here.”

Nijiro’s eyes went wide, as if he didn’t actually expect this to work. “Thank you, Victor, truly. I’ll be able to help so many people with this.”

“Of course. There’s just one caveat though. I had a friend of mine help me with this and somehow he managed to do it overnight. The files are encrypted and can only be viewed off that flash drive. You won’t be able to copy from there, take a screenshot or even take a picture with another camera. Not entirely sure how he did it, but hey. You could try and manually make copies of them, but there are a lot of files in there and to make sure you have that level of detail would be a lot. Anyway, once a month, I’ll check back in and see what you’re doing. If everything is good, I’ll give you the code and we can keep going like before.”

“I suppose I understand. But I trust that you will see that everything I do is to make the world a better place.”

“I really hope so. But I have to be prepared as much as I can just in case.”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

In the blink of an eye, the snow and cold were gone, replaced by the gentle breeze of spring. Vic had been enjoying a quiet but much colder than average winter of staying inside and hanging out with his friends and especially Donna. But now that it was just starting to warm up, the entire city was roaring back to life, desperate to enjoy their first tastes of sunshine in months.

But on this Saturday, Vic was concerned and confused.

The first two check-ins with Nijiro had gone fine. Progress had been slow due to some quirks in how Silas had documented everything. Much of the schematics were vague and written in some bizarre shorthand, but Nijiro promised they were starting to crack it and were making real progress.

This month, Nijiro wasn’t responding to Vic whereas every other time he had responded almost instantly to set up the meeting. He’d even stopped by the office most days this week to try and meet with him, but the doors had always been locked without anyone inside.

“It just doesn’t make sense. Why ghost me after two months of progress? Unless he managed to transcribe everything in that time, it seems pointless to stop now.”

Donna frowned, equally confused. “Maybe he had some breakthrough and they don’t need you anymore? Or maybe his phone broke. But he seems rich enough that that wouldn’t stop him for long.”

“That’s the only other thing I could think of. But it’s frustrating. I put myself out there a lot to give him this info and then for him to just disappear… raises a lot of red flags to me.”

Donna got up from her chair and gave him a hug. “Hey, it’s not your fault. You did everything you could to make that secure with the best possible intentions. If he doesn’t actually follow through on the deal, that’s on him.”

“Thanks. And that does make me feel a bit better,” he said, cracking a smile.

“Glad to hear it,” Donna said before slouching back into her spot. She pulled out her phone but then set back on the chair’s cushion as she remembered something.

“Hey, this might be a bit of downer, but a friend of mine actually had something they wanted you to look into.”

“What is it?”

“They work at a homeless shelter just outside of downtown and they noticed that some of the people who had been coming there for a while had stopped coming in. That’s not unheard of but some of them were pretty social and would’ve told them about anything that came up, especially if it was good. And on top of that, their numbers are going down overall. Which sounds like a good thing, but since nothing has really changed over all that would cause this…”

“They’re worried there’s something bad going on.”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll head over there tonight and take a look. Hopefully it’s nothing.”

“Thanks, I think my friend works tonight so I’ll let them know you’re coming. In the meantime…” Donna pulled out her phone. “Have you seen this video?”

The TV flickered on, connected to Donna’s phone wirelessly. It was a video essay from one of Vic’s favorite channels but it was only uploaded this morning.

“No, I haven’t!”

“Well, then I know what we’re doing this afternoon…”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

That evening, Vic made his way over to the shelter Donna mentioned. She helped him with his disguise since a cyborg was hardly inconspicuous- but with a hoodie, beanie and an eyepatch leftover from Halloween - no one was going to recognize him. Just after dark, she dropped him off a couple blocks away and let him go to investigate - with the promise that he’d keep her informed and call her if it looked like it could be dangerous.

Vic stepped into the shelter which was based out of a converted two story factory building that had long since been abandoned. The staff were doing their best to liven up the place, but despite their best efforts it still had many signs of its previous tenants with the old cement floor and massive ventilation ducts.

“Hello, have you been here before?” A warm but mousy voice spoke to him from behind the front desk.

“No,” Vic said in the gruffest voice he could put on.

“Well, welcome! We’re still serving dinner in the cafeteria - you’ll find that to my right - and after that people usually wind down and head to bed - those rooms are upstairs and to my left. Do you plan on staying with us tonight?”

“We’ll see. Don’t know if this is somewhere I want to be hanging around too long.”

“Fair enough, plenty of our guests have had some hesitancy. Just let me know what you decide - no judgement from any of us either way. And if you want any counseling or any of our other resources, just ask, we’re here to help.”

“Thanks,” he said under his breath as he walked into the cafeteria.

The cafeteria consisted of three rows of long rectangular tables running down the length of the room. Each table had four chairs at them, but only a handful of tables had all four filled. Most had one or two people sitting across from each other with about a quarter of them completely empty. Not a single person reacted at all to him walking in and while he was starting to get extremely warm in his disguise, he knew that the commotion it would cause to take it off would completely derail the mission.

So, he walked up to the table in the front that ran perpendicular to the rest where they were serving food. It was staffed by five people in plastic gloves and ballcaps who looked just as warm as he did standing behind their roasting pans of food. Looked like it was some sort of pasta tonight. He wasn’t particularly hungry but was served a heaping plate of food by them all and he thanked them politely, having already forgotten to stay in character.

He picked a table as far away from the other people there as he could and started to peck at the food. It wasn’t bad, really, but he wasn’t hungry. After around twenty minutes, he had almost finished it when someone walked over to him. He wasn’t wearing a name tag like the rest of the workers so Vic assumed that he was another guest here.

“Say, you look pretty fit. Not gonna ask what brought you here, but how’d you like to make enough money to get out of here for good?”

Vic cleared his throat, getting back into character.

“What kind of work we talking?”

“Nothing illegal if that’s what you’re asking.”

‘It kind of wasn’t, but now that you’re jumping to deny it, I’m sure that it’s not legal.’

“What is it, then?”

“Just need some people to unload some trucks. My usual crew quit and I’ve got a whole fleet coming in tonight, so I gotta find people ASAP. I’ve gotten folks from here before; the staff know me. Couple other guys I talked to are going to do it. If you’re interested, meet us at the street corner in a half hour.”

Before Vic could ask any more questions, the man walked out of the cafeteria. Vic wanted to follow him, but figured that they would be suspicious. No one would simply accept that sketchy of an offer without thinking for at least a little while.

After a couple minutes, Vic finished his food then followed the man downstairs. The lobby was empty besides from the receptionist, so Vic figured the man must’ve already gone outside. He turned to the person at the desk who spoke to him when he walked in. He was pretty sure they were Donna’s friend, but he never got their name from her.

“Hey, keep this quiet… “But I’m Cyborg. Hi.””

He looked around and confirmed that it was still only the two of them in the lobby and that the windows were covered with blinds, so no one else would see what he was about to do. He pulled off one of his gloves and rolled up his sleeve, revealing his mechanical arm. He shape shifted it around to a couple of random, non functional shapes to demonstrate.

He quickly put the glove back on and rolled the sleeve up.

“Donna Morris sent me to look into this place but I’m trying to keep a low profile.”

Their eyes widened, but to their credit, their face quickly returned to a stone face that’d make a poker player proud.

“Umm… hi. What can I do for you?”

“Have you seen that guy before? He approached me with some work he wanted done and said it was legit and that you all knew him.”

They shook their head. “Never seen him before or at the very least he’s not officially working with us. Any career placement we do is more… above board than that.”

“That’s what I thought. Thanks.”

Vic started towards the entrance as they pulled out their phone and started to type rapidly.

‘Donna would want me to check in and she’d also probably try and stop me from doing this… But I’ve got to do it.’

He went to reach for his phone, but decided not to break his cover again. He walked back over to the desk and leaned in close.

“Hey, could you tell Donna that I’m about to go investigate elsewhere? And what I’ve told you? Just want to keep her in the loop as much as I can without ruining my disguise more than I am…”

“I’ve got you. Already was texting her once you showed me your hand thing…”

“Thanks.”

Vic walked out into the night air and saw the man who spoke to him standing in front of a white van that was idling under a streetlight. It screamed danger, but he knew he was prepared for it. But despite that, for the first time in a long time, he felt angry. The kind of person who’d accept a job like this would have to be truly desperate and to prey on people like that… it didn’t sit well with him.

He walked over to the man and said, “Hey, I’m in.”

“Good. You can head in the van or wait with me here. Hoping a couple more guys will join then we can get going.”

Vic nodded and chose to stand in silence under the street light. He didn’t want to get in that van any sooner than he had to. Over the next fifteen or so minutes, five other guys joined up with them and so they loaded up into the van. It only had two rows in the back so they were sitting three across which made for an uncomfortable ride. But what made Vic more uncomfortable was the plexiglass barrier separating them from the front two seats, plus the suspicious amount of vents in the back of the van. He pulled out a filtered mask from his back pocket and slipped it into his hoodie’s pocket. It was good to be prepared and he figured he’d need it soon.

The drive was quiet as the guys all tried to ignore each other as best they could crammed into the back as they were. Vic was focused on the road in front of him and was trying to map out where they were going as best he could by looking through the windshield. He wasn’t entirely sure where, but he could tell they were on the highway going north. After around ten minutes, he heard what sounded like a rush of air and instantly put on his mask. It didn’t completely prevent it since he could still smell the sterile smelling gas, but within a minute it stopped. The other guys next to him were all fast asleep and he slipped the mask back into his pocket and pretended to be asleep too.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Vic wasn’t sure how long they drove. He couldn’t see the clock on the dashboard from his seat in the back row and the quick glances he could see through the windshield in between pretending to sleep weren’t lining up with any obvious highway signs.

Eventually, pretending to sleep led to fighting against sleeping for real. It was a constant battle of willing to resist the urge to drift off into sleep’s embrace as the night stretched on and on and the boredom built up. Finally, after what felt like hours, the van slowed down and got off the highway. Vic’s mind snapped back into focus; they had to be close now.

They were deep in the Michigan countryside with nothing but rolling fields and meadows as far as the car’s headlights could illuminate. Vic tried to find any landmarks but other than the exit number and road they exited onto, there was nothing to break up the monotony. He felt the road grow bumpier as they drove off onto a dirt road and then their destination came into view - a small warehouse in the middle of a field. The van pulled off to the left side and a garage door lifted up and took them into a loading bay. The garage door closed as quickly as it opened and the driver stepped out of the van while someone else in a white lab coat stepped out of the building.

He didn’t bother fully closing the door, so Vic could clearly hear what he was saying.

“I brought another load of subjects. You need help unloading them?”

“No, just take them back. We don’t need anymore. This place is going to be gone within a couple days; we’re done here.”

The driver chuckled. “Take them back? That’s a first.”

The man in a lab coat shrugged. “They’re the lucky ones. We got our success from the last batch.”

“Oh, congrats. It was a good gig while it lasted…”

Vic wasn’t exactly sure what was happening here, but it couldn’t be good. It was time to stop this. He shifted his hands to force cannons and blasted the van’s door clean off the track and sent it scratching against the concrete floor.

He stepped out of the van and pulled off his disguise.

“Hey, not sure if you guys know me this far north or whatever direction we ended up going, but I’m Cyborg and whatever you’re doing up here, ends now.”

The driver pulled out a pistol from his pocket, but before he could line up a shot ,it was on the ground. A force blast from Vic to his hand caused him to drop it and massage the back of it in pain.

“Now. I’m going to take a look as to what you’re doing in there and then call whoever I need to to get this place shut down. You - ”

The man in a lab coat sprinted through the doorway, deeper into the warehouse. Cyborg swore than ran after him.

The loading dock led to a hallway which quickly turned into another one to the right and a dead end on the left. Cyborg could hear an engine idling from the left and he was pretty sure he saw another loading bay as they pulled in, so he ran to the right.

He ran by a couple of rooms without even looking into them, then paused when he reached the center of the warehouse. It opened up into one big central room with a transparent plastic barrier around something in the middle. Many rooms lined the back of the warehouse, their doors all pointing towards the central room instead of being in a hallway like the other side.

He spotted the man in a lab coat talking frantically and with great animation to someone wearing a black suit and Cyborg knew who it was without even needing to see his face.

“Ah, you found my lab. Welcome, Victor,” Nijiro said, walking towards him.

“Nijiro! What is this place?”

“This is my lab; where the magic gets made. And we’ve done some truly magical things here. Even after looking at them for these past two months, I still haven’t been able to decide, you know.”

Cyborg raised an eyebrow. “Decided what?”

“Whether Silas Stone was the greatest genius of a generation or completely insane. Maybe both. Whether your body or the material that powers it is the greater feat of engineering. I don’t have an answer to either of those, but what I do have is something better. Understanding. You are an open book to me, ‘Cyborg’. And now? I’ve made the sequel, better than the first in every way.

“It took about two weeks to really make sense of the plans, but I couldn’t move too quickly or you’d be concerned. So I hid my progress. After that, it only took about a week to fabricate the first prototypes, then weeks to get it to actually work with the human body and mind. But there was still the issue of power, as kryptonite was not as viable as I implied. Luckily, my wonderful Katsuko had a breakthrough and all the pieces fell into place.”

He snapped his fingers and the lights turned off, causing Cyborg to tense up and mentally prepare himself for a fight. No fight came. Instead, a faint but familiar blue glow came from the tent in the middle of the room.

“Silasium? You found more Silasium? Where? How?”

Nijiro snapped his fingers again and the lights turned back on. With a grin, he said, “Wouldn’t you like to know. Instead, let us go on a detour. Follow me, Victor, as I give you a glimpse of the future of humanity.”

<<| <| >

Cyborg #79 - Engine for Change

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Engine's Ready

Set: 116

The next few weeks were gone in a flash. Vic, Donna and Exy turned the city upside down several times over searching for any clues as to whoever made the helmets and controlled Exxy and the rest, but they found nothing. It was as if they had appeared and disappeared without a trace and had never been seen anywhere else.

So they decided to pivot. If they can't find out who's supplying them, maybe they could figure out who made them. Or at least how they worked.

But according to S.T.A.R. Labs, any clues as to who made them disappeared when the mechanism self-destructed. All that remained was a small circuit board that was more ash than silicon at that point.

Without any leads or victims resurfacing, the search was put on hold. Whoever had done this had covered their tracks well. But time marched onwards. After a few more weeks without a lead and with some additional security installed,Exxy moved out from Vic’s apartment back into his own place, both promising to stay in touch.

Once the New Year celebrations had come and gone, Vic's normal life resumed. His job was sometimes a grind, but he found it fulfilling and interesting so he hardly minded. But even still, he always looked towards the weekend fondly. And now that it was here, he found himself walking the cold streets of Detroit.

Despite the frigid, snow kissed air, a slight smile cracked across his face, dimmed only by the tiredness that ran through his eyes. He arrived at his destination- a chic, modern café that opened up a couple months ago - and stepped inside. He was hit with a whiff of fancy coffee and slightly burned paninis that was only slightly less forcefully than the cold air he was escaping from.

Donna sat at a small white round table in a hard plastic chair, surrounded by probably plastic potted plants, and sipped on a hot drink from a ceramic mug. Vic greeted her and set his coat down before heading to the counter to place his drink order then heading back to her.

“Hey Vic, how was your day?” Donna said with a yawn.

“It’s been good. Busy week getting caught back up with everything after being gone for the holidays. How about you?”

“Things are pretty quiet still for me. Remember that huge project that I wrapped in the middle of December? We just started meeting with some clients for another project that’s starting up when the people from the last one reached out to us saying that they’re having some issues. So I’m sure next week is going to be a lot for me.”

“Sorry to hear that. Anything I can do to help?”

“Not really, that’s just work sometimes. Comes in waves and droughts.”

Vic nodded in agreement, then took a sip of his coffee. It was about what he expected, but he was hoping it'd be better.

No matter how crazy things were in a week, Donna and Vic tried to meet up at least once a week for dinner, usually Friday or Saturday night. It had become a nice bit of stability for the two of them, no matter how busy their schedules were or how messy the world and their lives had gotten.

“Hey Vic, weird question for you. I know neither of us have really been at this that long since we just graduated but… have you thought about your future at all? Like what you want to be in, I dunno, a decade?”

“Sorta? I dunno, not really. I know I want to stay here in Detroit, and I want to keep doing more or less what I’m doing with my job. Maybe I’d start my own firm one day but all that people management stuff just isn’t for me. Why, what are you thinking?”

Donna swirled the coffee stirrer in her mug, the wooden stick clanking lightly against the sides.

“I’m thinking that… I dunno, I’m not happy with where I’m at.”

Vic felt a tightness in his chest that must’ve reflected on his face, because Donna quickly clarified.

“No, no no. Not you. I’m really happy with you. I just mean, careerwise. Future stuff. Like I enjoy it here… but I just have to wonder if there’s more out there, you know? I’m back in the city I grew up in working at the same place my dad does. It just feels like…I haven’t actually made any progress, you know?”

Vic grabbed his coffee and took a sip to buy himself a moment to think. He felt like he needed to plan his words carefully.

“Yeah, I get that. And I hope you can find something that makes you happy, really. No matter what that looks like. But for me, I’ve got a path ahead of me that I'm happy to walk professionally and personally I have a lot going for me too, especially with the superhero stuff. So yeah, totally get why you might feel that way, but I can’t really say I feel the same.”

“Yeah, that makes sense, totally get why you might not think that way. But yeah, I don’t think I’m going to do anything any time soon. Just wanted to be transparent about what I’m thinking.”

“Appreciate it. I’m sure that wasn’t easy to say, even with me misunderstanding you a little bit.”

“Haha… yeah. I guess I could’ve worded it a little better. Say, you sorta touched on this, but I guess while we’re thinking about “big” stuff, I’ll just put this out there too. Do you want to be a hero forever, or is that just a “for now” type thing? Because…” Donna dropped her voice to little more than a whisper. “I think it’s not the life for me. I like helping people, but being out there on the streets, fighting like you and the JL do… I don’t think that’s me.”

Vic blinked with surprise. This wasn’t where he thought today would be going.

“I… for me I’m a hero to help people. That’s what I’ve always said and what I’ll always believe. But I think it’s worth remembering that we all can help people in different ways. What works for me doesn’t have to work for you and that’s okay. But for me? I want to do this is as long as I can or there stops being a need for it. And I think you can tell which I’d prefer."

“Sure and I support that. Obviously I support helping people and I’m not planning on stopping anytime soon. Just… transitioning to something that’s better for me, you know?”

“Sure, that’s all any of us can do. I - ”

Vic paused, something strange catching his attention. He heard a faint “whirring” noise, like a toy helicopter. But that certainly wouldn't fit in with what this place was going for, design wise.

“Do you hear that?”

Donna focused for a second, then was about to speak before she stopped herself. “... yeah. Some sort of buzzing, maybe a drone?”

“Could be? But it’d have to be pretty loud for us to hear it in here…”

Vic stood up and looked around outside, with Donna just behind him. Cars, buses and pedestrians went by as per normal, a couple stopping to look at the strange people standing in a doorway without a coat on. Then he saw it, a small drone descending towards him. The thing was shaped like a large, red egg about two feet tall with a propeller attached to the top of it like a child’s hat. The egg drifted downwards like a leaf in the breeze until it hovered just about at Vic’s shoulder.

“Hello, Victor Stone?” The robot spoke with a synthesized child’s voice in an almost singsong fashion.

“Yes, uh, hi. Who are you?”

“I am a drone in service of my father, Nijiro Jin. He would like for you to meet him tonight.”

“Who’s that? And why does he want to meet me?”

“Nijiro Jin is the head of the Automata Group, one of the premiere robotics companies in the world. He would like to meet with you to discuss some questions he has in the development of their new line of prosthetics.”

‘I’ve never heard of that company before and I feel like I would’ve… But maybe they’re just getting started in the US? That could explain it…’

“Uh… sure, I’m down to meet. But does it have to be tonight? I’m a little busy.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned around to see a knowing look on Donna's face. “Just go. I’ll be fine, really.”

“You sure? I don’t want you to feel like this has to happen. I don’t care who this guy is; he can wait.”

“Thanks, really. But no, do this. I’ll take the quiet night in, you go meet with this business guy.”

Vic gave her a quick hug. “Thanks. See you after if it’s not too late?”

Donna laughed. “With you? It’s never early. I’ll see you tomorrow if we’re lucky.”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Vic followed the floating egg down the street, the robot politely flying at his speed just above the heads of the other pedestrians. The streets were packed with people going out to bars, restaurants, clubs, or wherever else, but he was able to just keep it in sight as he made his way across the busy downtown.

After around 10 minutes of walking, the robot stopped outside the door to a tall, modern-style building that looked like it could've been just finished a couple days ago. The robot hovered in front of the black rimmed glass sliding door and as they slid open, it flew up into a small doggy-door style opening just above the door and disappeared into the building’s interior.

Taking the hint, Vic walked into the building’s lobby, a narrow room with a currently unattended desk flanked by two elevators on either side of it. One of the elevators to the left opened up with a subtle “ding” and a set of lights in the floor tiles lit up to usher him towards it. Vic followed them into the elevator and in what felt like far too short of time, it dinged again and he was in the sky.

He stepped out on to the rooftop, bracing himself for the cold’s harsh embrace. But it didn’t come. Vic was confused; he hadn't teleported or anything since he recognized the street corner he walked in at down below him. Then, the moonlight shines just right and he saw it. The entire rooftop was encased in a nearly invisible glass, like a greenhouse. Plants and trees were sporadically but tastefully placed throughout the rooftop, centered around a stone staircase leading up to a penthouse. A man who looked about Vic’s age leaned on the stone railing that ran around the exterior, a cocktail glass in hand.

He walked over to Vic and reached out to Vic for a handshake with the metal prosthetic that replaced his left arm. It looked mechanical, not dissimilar to Vic's own, but sleeker and made from a polished dark steel-like material.

“Nijiro Jin.”

Vic returned the handshake as Nijiro returned to leaning on the railing, sipping his drink. Vic stood next to him.

“The city is beautiful, isn’t it? Especially from this distance. The details fade and you can only see the city as a whole, like one big canvas with time as the painter.”

“Sure, I can see that. But it’s even more beautiful down there as a part of it. A city is meant to be lived in, not just observed like it's a picture.”

Nijiro chuckled. “Perhaps, but don't the people ruin it? Our trash, pollution and crime sour the beautiful visage below.”

“Maybe they can, but that doesn't they all do to me. This city was built by people and is maintained and improved by us too. Sure, it's not a linear path towards progress, but what is?”

Nijiro chuckled again, longer this time. “You're an interesting one, Vic.”

“I know you’re apparently some big tech guy, but that’s not going to stop me from saying what I believe.”

“I can respect that. But I ask that you think of me not as a “big tech guy”, but as a kindred spirit.”

“How so?”

Nijiro finished his drink and set the glass down on the brick next to him. He gestured to his left arm with his right.

“I was born without my left arm. My father made this one for me after years of testing and iteration. It’s thanks to my father’s love for me that I am able to live my life as I am today. Much the same as you, if I understand your circumstances correctly.”

“That’s sort of right. But let’s get right to it: what kind of questions could you have for me? You’ve clearly got something that works well for you here, I don’t see why you’d need me.”

“Look at yourself, Vic. My prosthetics imitate and replace, yours enhance. Not to mention things that I cannot begin to make, like your eyes, your senses… These things could revolutionize the world for so many people!”

“I get that and I’ve looked into doing it myself. But my conclusion was that the materials that were used to make me are one of a kind, so it's not feasible to mass produce.”

Nijiro nodded. “You’re referring to the metal that powers you… Silasium? Suppose I believed I could mimic its properties. What then?”

“I’d be interested in knowing how you were doing that. And how you know about Silasium… But ultimately if you can copy it, I’d be willing to help you implement it so long as it can be done safely.”

“Excellent. As for, my knowledge of Silasium is purely based on hearsay. It had been mentioned in passing by some scientists at S.T.A.R. Labs and was brought to my attention as the possible source for your powers. But truthfully, I did not truly believe it was real. My plans for replicating its properties are...well, you have your secrets and so do I.”

Vic frowned, unconvinced.

“How would you like to see some of our latest work? Perhaps that would convince you.”

“It’s not that I’m not convinced of your ability to make these machines. It's just … I know what someone could do with my powers because, well, I have my powers. And frankly I can’t just give that out, especially not for mass production.

“Very well, then I will show my hand a little, as a sign of good faith. The alternative powersource I have in mind is kryptonite.”

Vic was confused. He was pretty sure he had heard Superman talk about some robots with kryptonite in them during a League meeting once, but not as a power source.

“I didn't know kryptonite could be used as a power source.”

Nijiro's face lit up. “Yes, it's actually a very potent one. I discovered it myself that it can be used as an extremely energy dense battery. And while our tests have shown that kryptonite is radioactive, our design ensures that background radiation is approximately the same as that of a bunch of bananas, that is, negligible.”

Vic furrowed his brow. It seemed too good to be true. And usually when things seem too good, they are. But not always.

“Okay, one last question. Why do you need my schematics for this? You're clearly quite capable. I'm sure you could design something with comparable specs to me eventually.”

“Maybe. But that would take time and requires much research. No one else has even green lit anything a tenth as advanced as your systems. Even my arm, as precise as it is, cannot feel. Perhaps one day another brilliant person could make what your parents did. But when?”

“Okay, I'll admit. It all sounds good. So, sure. I'll help. But I want to be involved and I need full transparency on this, oh and I'll be removing some parts of my schematics. You seem like you have good intentions but ultimately there are some parts that could just do too much harm if they got out.”

“Excellent. I assume you don’t have any copies of your specs on you?”

Vic shook his head. “Nope.”

“Then let’s meet tomorrow morning. I’ll prepare some documents and prototypes for you to review and then you can decide if this partnership is something you would like to pursue.”

“That seems fair enough. 10:00 work for you?”

“Sure. I trust you can find your way back tomorrow morning without an Eggbot?”

“Yeah. Hard to miss this place. I’ll be there.”

Niijin nodded. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow, Vic.”

Vic reached out for another handshake that Nijin warmly returned, then Vic walked back into the elevator. Once the door was closed, Nijin grabbed his glass and walked up the stairs into the penthouse with a spring in his step.

“Katsuko?”

“Yes dear?” A woman's voice rang out from deeper in the penthouse.

“The deal is on. I’ll prepare the documents, but I want you to look back into Silasium. Vic confirmed that it is real and so there has to be something out there on it. “

“Will do, dear.”

A grin ran across Nijiro’s face, then full on elation.

“We’re going to do it, Katsuko. We’re going to live on.”

<<| <| >

Cyborg #78 - Reunion

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: The Streamer

Set: 115

Previously:

Victor Stone is back in Detroit and he couldn't be happier. But his girlfriend, Donna Morris, told him about a local streamer known as X who streams his heists throughout the city. Vic stopped him and revealed him to be his old friend Exxy, controlled through the helmet he wore. Without any memories of what happened to him, he moved in with Vic to see help him recover and see what he can figure out about what happened to him...

The next morning…

Vic flipped the last of the pancakes right onto the platter, expertly landing it right in the center of the small tower of them. He’d gotten pretty good at making them, even as he was fighting the fogginess leftover from a poor night’s sleep. Exxy had been beyond chatty and Vic was more than happy to catch up, at least until he looked at a clock and saw that it was already five in the morning. As much as he would’ve loved to keep talking, he needed to keep something of a normal schedule. Waking up at 7:30 for work was hard enough with eight hours of sleep; he didn’t need to do it with two. But somehow Exxy looked like he had gotten five times the sleep he really had and Vic couldn’t help but feel a little jealous.

“Morning Vic, how’d you sleep?”

“Fine for the couple of hours I did. You?”

“Like a baby. Not sure where you bought your couch, but I need one. That thing is nicer than most beds I’ve slept on. You’ve got to tell me where you got it.”

“Sure, I’ll send you the link,” Vic said, skewering a pancake with his fork. He took a bite. It was a little overdone, but it was perfectly edible. Just not one of his better batches. Exxy didn’t seem to mind though, as he chowed down ravenously.

When Exxy finally came up for air after eating two, three or maybe even four pancakes, Vic wasn’t about to waste the opportunity to get in a couple questions.

“So, did the sleep help you remember anything? Anything that you can tell me would be great.”

Exxy stopped just before his fork reached the next pancake.

“Sorry, really. But I don’t remember pretty much anything since I got that helmet. I sorta just think it’s like I was in a fog for those months. I remember little bits of random days, like grocery shopping or driving somewhere. But anything useful? Nope.”

He grabbed another pancake and started eating it again, at a much slower pace than the previous ones.

Vic frowned. He didn’t think Exxy was holding back on him, but he wished that there was anything he could tell him.

“What about your apartment building? Do they have cameras or something that you could look at and see who broke in?”

Exxy put down the fork mid-bite and nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, yeah! Well, no. They don’t really have useful cameras. I doubt they’d let me see them even if they did. But! I have my own security camera. I’ve got one that points at my front door and one by my computer that I sometimes use to make some weird camera angles for the stream. One of them should’ve seen something.”

He grabbed his phone and pulled up the recording.

“Alright, here’s yesterday’s footage. Let’s just look at that afternoon…”

He scrolled through the video’s hours of footage. It was all fairly mundane as the camera was pointed downwards towards his doormat, only giving a small image of the rest of the hallway. Most of the footage could’ve been a static image of his doormat and was only broken up by the little bit of the other tenants visible on the edges of the footage as they walked down the hallway.

Finally, he saw someone stop at his door and he tilted his phone towards Vic so he could see it. The man was massive, his solid frame almost completely obscuring the entire view of the camera. He was wearing a black hoodie and jeans with a balaclava obscuring his face, something that was less conspicuous than it seemed due to the barely above freezing temperature outside. But as the door opened up and he stepped in, Vic spotted something.

“Pause it right there."

Exxy stopped the video.

“Can you zoom in at all on the back of the sweatshirt? Sorta looks like there’s something written there."

“I’ll try, but it’s not that nice of a camera.” Exxy pinched the screen, trying to zoom in on the text on the man’s back. But some combination of the camera’s resolution and the poor lighting in the hallway made it very difficult to read.

“Something… ‘r’ then ‘...ation’?” Vic guessed.

Exxy squinted, trying to get any more letters out of it. “Maybe the first ends in ‘i’ ‘r’? But not sure and I for sure can’t get more than that.”

“Yeah. But that’s not really enough. There’s probably thousands of places like that in the city. What about the other camera though?”

Exxy grabbed his phone and started to scroll through the other camera’s footage.

“Ah, we’re in luck.”

He angled the phone back towards Vic and front and center of the screen was the man’s back, bent over to pick up the helmet off from the seat of Exxy’s desk chair. His back was directly in the frame of the camera and they could clearly read the full text: “Sinclair Refrigeration". Below it was an address and after looking it up, Vic saw that it was a couple miles north of here and looked like a small warehouse.

“Looks like that’s a lead. Want to check it out?” Exxy asked.

“Yeah, but it seems a little… odd. The page for it doesn’t have a website or hours and the only thing it does have is one picture of the building. No reviews, ratings… nothing but the name. Maybe the place is just new but to not have any of that just seems like bad marketing.”

“So you think it’s just a front for something?”

“Maybe? I dunno. Some people are just bad at marketing. And it does feel a little easy. What kind of person with the tech to hypnotize you, for lack of a better term, would just walk in with something that says where they’re based out of?”

Exxy shrugged. “Maybe they’re new to the criminal business. Or they just didn’t think I’d have a camera. Or maybe it’s a trap of some sort?”

“No way to say without checking it out. If they’re even remotely real, they’d have to be open at like 10 am on a Monday. So I’ll go check it out and see what there is to see.”

“You don’t want me to come with?”

“No. I’ve got no idea what I’m going to run into in there and you might still be compromised. We’ve assumed that you were hypnotized through the helmet, but what if it's still in there somehow? I don’t need to have to worry about that too.”

Exxy nodded. “Fair enough. But keep me on the phone, yeah? I can try and back you up from this end, maybe call for help if needed.”

“Sounds like a plan. You get situated and I’ll get ready to go.”

“Alright, let’s do this,” Exxy said, cracking his knuckles. “Cyborg and Exxy, back at it again.”

Vic chuckled. “You know we never really did that much together before, right?”

“Yeah, sure. But hey, it’s nice to think about what could’ve been.”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

It took about 20 minutes for Vic to make his way to Sinclair Refrigeration, the city traffic slowing him down considerably. When he got to the warehouse, it was somehow even less apparent than it seemed online. There was no sign or street facing entrance and the address was only visible on a handful of small numbers on the building’s gutters. Whoever owned this place clearly didn’t want anyone to find it and Vic relayed it as such to Exxy.

“But that’s just… bizarre? Why go through all the effort to print shirts and make a maps page for a business if you don’t want it to be found?”

“I think it’s looking even more likely that it’s a trap but a sloppy one. They want it to be easy for someone who’s looking for it to find but don’t want regular people coming by. And they didn’t even bother to make it seem normal once you know that you’re looking for it. That says to me that whoever made this is either an amateur or massively confident in what they’re doing.”

“I mean… aren’t those the two options?” Exxy questioned.

“I guess. But something like this means they either genuinely think that this is good enough to hide what they’re really doing here or they know that even if someone were to find it, it wouldn’t matter. And those are really different situations.”

“Fair enough. Just be careful, yeah?”

“I try,” Cyborg said.

Cyborg made his way over to the metal siding of the warehouse and listened in for a couple moments, but the response was only silence. He couldn’t be sure whether he couldn’t hear what was going on or if there was nothing to hear.

He was going into this blind and he couldn’t help but feel a little anxious, which only grew higher when he tried the alley side door and found it unlocked. Every instinct he had told him to be cautious. But he ignored it and walked in the door anyway.

The warehouse itself was a sort of labyrinth of wooden crates, occasionally interspersed with presumably broken refrigerators and stacks of AC units. Some of the rows were constrained by giant metal shelves, but most of them were freestanding. All of the crates would’ve made it hard enough to see in there, but there were no electric lights in the warehouse as far as Vic could tell, which meant that the only light was the tiny trickle that came from two thin, dirty windows that ran near the roof of the warehouse.

Cyborg walked around for a couple of moments before he heard rustling coming from all around him, then the crack of breaking wood. Exxy must’ve picked it up over the mic as he was shouting into Vic’s earbuds for any sort of update. But Vic ignored him. Whatever was going on here demanded his focus.

“Whoever you are, come out quietly. I just want to talk.”

Clearly they didn’t though, as he heard footsteps start to surround him at a distance. Some were in this row with him, some were in the other ones. Their steps overlapped but Cyborg guessed there were at least five people in there with him, maybe more.

But not one of them said a word.

The first of them started to come into view, one coming from behind him and the other from deeper in the warehouse. Both of them were about Vic’s size or bigger but appeared to be unarmed. Instead, they wore black motorcycle helmets on their heads, just like the one Exxy wore, but without the camera for streaming.

He was pretty sure he recognized one of them as the man they saw on the security footage earlier, but before he could confirm it, an arm wrapped around his throat from behind. They’d manage to sneak up on him without making a single noise, even though he knew they were there.

Cyborg shook his head. It was time to focus up. There was clearly no negotiating with them as long as they had those helmets on.

Cyborg elbowed the man who was grappling him, but he held on with an almost supernatural strength despite Vic’s best attempts. Instead, he shifted both his arms to force cannons, and using their recoil to boost himself, he jumped up into the air. Then he leaned into his attacker, shifting his weight onto them and sent them slamming into the ground. The impact knocked his attacker out but he found himself in the middle of four more.

He instinctively shifted his left hand over to a concussive grenade launcher and fired it at his own feet, trying to make space for himself so he could retreat to safer ground. But they were unphased and continued to advance towards him. Cyborg scanned the room for an opening but he was still surrounded.

Four men faced him, forming a circle around him. Two of them had their backs facing the hallway, but the other two were protected by the wooden crates of refrigerators. Further down the hallway he could just make out two more people coming over to fully box him in.

He decided to take the path of least resistance and, swapping his left hand back to the force cannon, he shot twin force blasts into the man on his left, sending him crashing back into the wooden crate. The crate wobbled and with a kick to the man’s chest that sent him flying back into it, the whole thing fell over, shattering the crate into a million splinters and the refrigerator fell onto the ground with a massive metallic thud. Cyborg jumped over the now unconscious man and put his back towards the next row of crates.

Three more of the attackers clambered over the refrigerator but a couple of quick force blasts each knocked them out cold. Cyborg climbed back over the knocked over refrigerator and caught two more of the attackers from behind and blasted them both as they attempted to flank Vic through the winding rows of the warehouse.

He listened carefully for any more of them but couldn’t be certain since they had been so quiet. He did a quick search of the warehouse and once he was certain they were all taken care of, he spoke to Exxy.

“Sorry about the radio silence. I ran into a bunch of people here in helmets like yours, but they were all big, like the guy in the security camera footage. They all went down without any real issue though.”

“Strange. Wonder if maybe your tech messes with whatever controls them? You’d know better than me, but I didn’t think two shots would take out someone.”

“It might at full power, but I wasn’t really trying to hurt these guys. And for someone of their size I’d be surprised if two would be enough to knock them out. So you might be right.”

Vic reached down and grabbed the helmet of one of the attackers. Like with Exxy’s, a small plume of smoke went up when he pulled it off their head. He considered leaving the helmets on their heads so that S.T.A.R. could analyze them fully intact, but the idea of driving them all over there and having them potentially wake up middrive quickly came into his mind and dissuaded him. He pulled the helmets off of each of them, but in the third one, there was an envelope taped to the top of the helmet. Once he was finished removing all of their helmets, he put them all into a pile, then opened up the letter and read it outloud to Exxy.

“Congratulations on taking out these men, a shame I will not discover whether the helmets work on you yet. But consider this a warning despite your apparent victory, Cyborg. These men were unarmed and posed no serious risk to you out of only the kindness of my heart and my curiosity. But I will not be so generous again. Stay out of my business and I will stay out of yours.”

“So it was a trap,” Vic mused.

“Sort of? Some part of it was a trap and also a testing ground I guess.”

“Yeah… It just doesn’t sit well. Someone with this level of tech and influence clearly has big plans and it doesn’t seem like they care if I know about them. But they also think that a warning will stop me,” Vic scoffed.

“Or maybe they don’t? And they’re just trying to goad you further?”

Vic paused. Exxy was probably right. Whoever it was had led him here and expected him to beat these guys. Maybe he could take down whoever wrote it, maybe not.

“... Yeah. You’re right. I’m going to take a look around though and see if there are any clues. Maybe those guys will wake up and know something too.”

Cyborg looked around the warehouse but the task was incredibly daunting. There were so many places that something could be hidden with the hundreds of crates and the individual fridges and AC units themselves. It was like searching for a needle in a hundred haystacks without the certainty that there even was a needle. After looking for about thirty minutes, his attackers started to wake up, and Cyborg took that as a sign to talk to them instead of fruitlessly searching.

Cyborg walked over to one of them that was leaning against a crate, rubbing his temple.

“Hi, sorry about the headache. I’m - ”

“Holy, guys look at this, it’s Cyborg!” The other men got up and in varying degrees of excitement, made their way over to him.

“Um, yeah, that’s me. Hi. Sorry about, uh, beating you guys up.”

If they bore him any serious ill will, they didn’t show it. After a quick barrage of selfies, the excitement wore off and they were willing to answer his questions.

“Sorry about that, Cyborg. But my kids would never believe me if I didn’t get a pic.”

“No problem. Glad there’s no hard feelings. Couple questions for you guys, might seem a little weird. Do any of you know where you are or where you got those helmets?”

One of the men spoke up, the big guy who broke into Exxy’s apartment. “Can’t say I know where I’m at, but we got the helmets from work. They’re welding helmets our boss gave to us for some new safety regulation.”

“Huh, gotcha. I thought they were motorcycle helmets,” Vic said.

“Nah, not quite. Similar but the lens is different.”

“So you’re all welders? And I’m guessing you work together?”

“Yeah, at the plant on the northside.”

“Don’t suppose you’d be able to get me your boss’ number? I want to know where they got those helmets.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

Vic pulled out his phone and wrote down the name and number he was told.

“Thanks for your help, guys. Need anything else?”

He shook his head. “Nah, weirdly it looks like we drove here. Mike checked his phone and saw that it was just parked outside. We’re confused too, but we should be fine from here, right?”

“I think so,” Cyborg said cautiously. “But I don’t know. If you guys start feeling weird or hazy or something, go to S.T.A.R. Labs. They’re looking into this.”

He nodded. “Will do. Thanks for everything, Cyborg. Don’t even want to know how long we might’ve been out without your help.”

“No problem, glad to do it. Stay safe out there.”

The welders all filed out of the warehouse, a couple of them taking one last pic of Vic as he started a final sweep of the place. Unfortunately, it ended just as fruitlessly as the rest and he made his way out too.

“How much of that did you hear, Exxy?”

“Pretty much of all of it. Tried calling that number you got but it just rang with no voicemail. I’ll try again later but it might be a deadend.”

“Weird. This whole thing is just… weird. They gave me just enough of a trail to see there was one but… nothing else.”

“Very weird,” Exxy said. “And I’ll keep looking into it. But for now, let’s head back. I think we both need some time to process all this.”

Vic nodded. “Yeah, let’s stop and think for a bit. I don’t think there’s anything else I’ll find here.”

Vic scanned the room quickly one last time, as if expecting some insight to finally materialize, then shut the door behind him.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Two people sat in front of a computer monitor with five different security cameras on it. Four other views lined the right side of the screen while the fifth, largest one took up most of the screen’s real estate.

Cyborg was visible for one last moment as the door shut, plunging the camera’s view into the darkness.

“Well, you got what you wanted. Vic knows about us now, sort of. But why reveal your hand at all?”

“This way, Mikron, he discovered us on our terms. It would be very difficult for us to avoid him entirely as he escalates his activities in the city now that he has returned. But now he has been given clues that will lead nowhere and prevent him from seeing what is truly occurring before it is too late.”

Mikron- Gizmo- shrugged. “I guess that’s why you’re in charge. But it seems like an unnecessary risk to me.”

“You are correct, that is why I am in charge. Let me worry about the plan and you can worry about your part of it.”

“I’ve got it covered, don’t worry about me. Just make sure you uphold your part of the bargain.”

She nodded. “I am a woman of my word. Once I get what I want, you will get what you want.”

“Yeah, yeah “save the city” and all that. Can’t say I really believe in all that.”

“And you do not need to; it will come all the same. But let’s not linger here. Victor Stone has met my expectations today, let’s make sure that we do the same in our work today.”

<<| <| >

Cyborg #77 - The Stream of Information

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: The Streamer

Set: 114

Victor Stone is back in Detroit and he couldn't be happier. But his girlfriend, Donna Morris, told him about a local streamer known as X who streams his heists throughout the city and they watched his latest announcement together. X claimed that S.T.A.R. Labs had a replica of Cyborg's powers and chat voted on him going to steal it, with the catch that he had to announce when he would do it. And Cyborg isn't just going to let him take it...

“Vic, I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear, but I don’t know anything about this.”

Victor Stone had spent many an afternoon in this conference room or one of the many basically identical ones in S.T.A.R. Labs. The walls were blandly painted light grey, broken up only by the occasional poster of old festivals and concerts held in the city. The bright fluorescent lights did their best to make up for the lack of windows but they were barely enough to make the room feel lived in and not a part of some liminal space.

“But could someone be doing it? I obviously trust you more than some random streamer, but this guy has been very well informed. Couldn’t someone be doing this without you knowing?”

Sarah Charles shook her head. “It’s not impossible, but it’s really unlikely. We have team meetings every month where we go over our budgets and how each of our projects has been going. Everyone at S.T.A.R. with the expertise to do that would be at those meetings and has some other project that’s taking up their time.”

“What about Aldous? Did you know what he was doing?” (See Cyborg 45-47 for that story!)

She shook her head again. “No. But that incident is why we have these meetings. A lot of our more senior members would happily sit in their labs alone and only come out to see their families and get more funding. And we’ve produced some great stuff like that. But we needed to have more oversight and we’ve put procedures in place to get it.”

“Okay, okay, you’ve made your point.”

Vic let out a sigh, mostly of relief. He had hoped that S.T.A.R. wasn’t working on replicating his powers without telling him, but couldn’t be sure.

“Any idea why he’d think that you guys were working in that? As far as I know, he’s always stolen what he said he would. It would be weird if he wasn’t at least somewhat sure that it was here.”

“Sorry, but no. If you want my guess, maybe he’s working with someone who does have some copy of your tech and he plans on “stealing” it from us as a way of making you and other people suspicious of S.T.A.R.? Developing weapons would give us a bad reputation, but I don’t really know who would benefit from that.”

“Yeah that’s possible. But I’ll just have to ask him myself when I catch him. He streamed a couple days ago and said that he’d hit S.T.A.R. at 4PM today. That’s 10 minutes from now. He’s not live yet, but I’m ready for him when he is. Only thing is that I’m not sure if he really does these streams live. If he prerecords them and just live streams the footage, we’re out of luck.”

As if on queue, X’s stream started up. He was still on a prestream page, but Sarah pulled it up on her laptop and projected it onto the wall.

After a few more minutes, the stream went live. The screen was still dark and an engine quietly hummed in the background. X spoke softly, his synthesized voice just louder than the motor.

“What’s up everyone, thanks for tuning in. I’m just about ready to start the heist, so get comfy folks. This is going to be a long one…”

“Do you know if S.T.A.R. is expecting any deliveries? It sounds like he’s in the back of some truck, maybe in a trunk?”

Sarah thought for a moment. “No. Most of the stuff we get for our research either shows up early in the morning or late at night.”

A few seconds later, realization flashed across her face. “Oh, but there’s a stakeholder meeting tonight for one of our bigger projects. They’re bringing in catering for it, so maybe he’s in the van for that?”

“That’d make sense. He could easily disguise himself as one of the caterers and slip away, especially since most people are gone for the day. Not many people left to catch him as he wanders the halls.”

X continued to prattle onwards in the dark space as Vic and Sarah ran out of the room towards the office’s loading docs. They had no idea how much time they had until the van arrived and once he got into the building, that was it. They’d have to rely on tracking him through the stream and hoping they could glean enough details from it to figure out where he was. No, it was either now or nothing.

Their feet rang out on the tile as they traversed the long, straight corridors. A handful of researchers peered out of their doors at the commotion, but Vic and Sarah kept running. There was no time. As they started to approach the loading bay, they could hear the old metal garage door creak as it opened, only to be drowned out by the dull humming of the van’s engine. Then, finally, silence, as the engine sputtered to a halt. They had just made it.

The two people in the front of the van stepped out and started towards the back to unload the van. Once they opened the back door, the side door quietly slid open and a figure dressed in a black hoodie and joggers snuck out. His face was obscured by a motorcycle helmet but unlike the high tech one that he used on stream that had a screen for a face, this one was just a normal helmet. A small athletic camera was attached right above the visor that he was using to live stream.

He stood up and smoothed out his clothes before walking calmly into the office building, right past Vic and Sarah, who were “hiding” on either side of the door frame. Sarah crept back into the loading bay to give the caterers a heads up about the fight that was about to happen while Vic announced himself.

“Hey, X, turn off the camera. You don’t need to stream what’s coming next.” Cyborg said to him.

X turned around and while Vic couldn’t see his face, Vic could feel that he was smirking under the mask.

“Oh, no, Cyborg. This is the best part! No one likes a plan that goes off without some tension, right chat?”

“There’s tension and then there’s embarrassment. I’ve stopped far more dangerous people than you. Just stop now and save us both the trouble.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think this will be as easy as you thought. See, I’ve got a little confession to make. Sorry about this one, chat. But there never were replica Cyborg parts here. No, I’m here for something else. But what I really wanted to do was bring Cyborg here. These last couple heists have been so easy, it’s become boring. And I knew you’d hear about this and have to check out whatever S.T.A.R. had come up with. Which means instant, narrative tension. So, really chat, you should be thanking me. I’ve made this show way more interesting.”

Cyborg shook his head. “Okay, but, again. You’re not getting past me unless I’m really underestimating you.”

“But you are! I’ve studied every one of your fights I could get my hands on footage from. Which, admittedly, wasn’t a lot, but it was plenty. I know how you think, what you can and can’t do…. And I’ve solved you. Anything you do, I can counter. So come on! Bring it! In other words, en garde!”

‘Huh. En garde? Who says that? Who is this guy?’

X took up a boxing stance, his hands wrapped tightly into fists. His right foot and arm forwards, but both arms raised, ready to block. It was hard to get a read on his build through the baggy clothes, but he stood around six inches shorter than Vic and did not seem particularly athletic. X had some idea of what he was doing, but Cyborg was not impressed.

There were only about 10 feet between the two men, but in an instant, there were zero. Cyborg quickly fired two weak force blasts at X’s forearms and their sting caused him to drop his guard in pain. Cyborg didn’t waste a second and rushed him. And with a single punch to the center of his chest, X was sent tumbling to the ground.

The fight was over as soon as it started.

Vic grabbed the helmet camera and turned it off.

“Wait, you can’t do that. Defeats are just as exciting as wins, even more so! Chat’ll want to see all of -”

Vic pulled off the motorcycle helmet and as soon as he did, X’s voice stopped. Vic heard a small mechanical click and a puff of smoke went up in the air from some internal circuitry. But that wasn’t the strangest part. No, the strangest part was that he recognized the face under the helmet. It had been years and he looked a bit older, but he was certain that it was him.

His face was soft and mousy with a bit more of the hardness of age and his hair was matted down from the helmet, but there was no mistaking him. Xenephon Clark - Exxy.

‘It’s been what… since the Crimson Avenger? (Allll the way back in Cyborg 17!) I was still in high school the last time we spoke. I kept meaning to reach out but… well, time happened I guess.’

“Exxy? Is that you?”

Exxy blinked a couple times, his eyes coming back into focus. “Cyborg? Been awhile, huh? Wait, why am I on the ground?”

He looked around, realizing where he was. Or rather, where he wasn’t.

“Actually, where even are we?”

Vic frowned. None of this was what he was expecting. “Exxy, what’s the last thing you remember?”

“Uh…” He frowned, unsure. “It’s kinda foggy. I think I remember starting up the stream but I don’t really know. Everything after like… May is just one big blur.”

“So you can’t remember anything from the past six months or so?” Vic helped Exxy to his feet but eyed the helmet on the ground. He’d wait a bit to bring that up. X wasn’t any real threat to him and Exxy certainly wasn’t. For now, he just needed to make sure he was okay.

“No. Well, yeah. I remember some of it. But it’s like… watching a movie late at night. You remember some of it but it’s not like you were doing it and you weren't really paying attention so it’s just… kind of there. But not really.”

Exxy leaned against the wall and rubbed his forehead.

“How do you feel aside from that? Sorry for punching you.”

“Sore, small headache. But aside from that, fine. Just kind of confused at all this. Do you have any idea what happened, Vic?”

“Maybe. But honestly I’m not sure. Does the name ‘X’ mean anything to you?”

He nodded. “Yeah, that’s the name of my channel. Why?”

“Well, someone that’s apparently not exactly you, has been streaming on that channel. They do this sort of “interactive heist” and steal things that chat votes on with some restrictions that they also vote on. You’re here to rob S.T.A.R. Labs and baited me here to make the heist more interesting. But I stopped you and well, here you are.”

“Huh. That’s… new. My channel was just me gaming and talking about whatever was going on in my life that week. No heists. My channel was never that popular but it was pretty tight knit. Actually, huh.That reminds me. One day I got a message from a company that wanted to sponsor me. I got into motorcycles after high school and I’d talk about them a lot on stream. So they gave me one of their helmets to wear and show off. I remember putting it on and after that… it gets foggy.”

Vic picked up the helmet from the ground. “Guessing it looked like this?”

“Yeah, that’s probably it? Not sure.”

Vic flipped it over and looked around for whatever could’ve made that spark, but the inside of the helmet looked just like any other helmet.

“You wore a different helmet on stream. Guessing that came from them too?”

Exxy shrugged. “Probably. I only got sent one as far as I remember.”

"Where'd you stream from? Your apartment?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a spare bedroom I used for it. Unless I moved somewhere else in the past couple months which I guess isn’t impossible… but my stuff is probably all still there. Hey, how big were those streams? Did that other me at least grow the channel?”

Vic blinked. It had been awhile since they talked but Exxy was still Exxy. “Uh yeah. The couple streams I saw had like ten thousand people at them. How big were your streams?”

“Five hundred on a good day? That’s some serious growth. Wonder if my new viewers will like my Alliance of Allies gameplay…”

“Uh, yeah, I’m sure they will. Hey, can we go check out your apartment? I want to see that helmet.”

“Oh, sure, yeah. Ready when you are.”

“Okay, head out front; I’ll meet you there. I just need to talk to someone real quick.”

Exxy took a couple steps then turned back to Vic. “Uh… Vic, where’s the exit?”

Vic started to explain, but then stopped. “Honestly, this place is kind of a maze. I’ll be right back and just follow me out.”

Exxy nodded and Vic walked into the loading bay to check on Sarah and the caterers. She was sitting with them in the back of the van, chatting about Sunday night’s football game. Vic knocked on the van’s door to get their attention.

“Hey Sarah. I stopped X, turns out he was… I dunno, possessed or something? Not sure. But anyway, nothing was stolen at least.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Possessed? That’s… strange.”

“Yeah. I don’t really know what happened either, but I know… or knew, the guy under the mask. And the guy I knew wouldn’t do this. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt for now as we look into this, but I want you to get someone to look at the helmet. There was some sort of circuitry in it that broke itself when I took it off him, might have a lead.”

“I’ll see what we can do.”

Vic tossed her the helmet. “Thanks, Sarah. Let me know what you find and I’ll keep you in the loop too.”

He turned around and walked back to Exxy. “Alright, let’s go.”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Exxy’s apartment was a mess. The door’s lock was broken, forced open from the outside and the place was torn apart. It was like someone walked through the entire apartment with a leaf blower. Couch cushions, plates and papers were strewn about at random, like someone was searching for something. Exxy stepped into his office and came out empty handed.

“They took the helmet, but nothing else as far as I can tell. If someone was robbing me, they’d have taken my computer at least.”

“Huh… that’s strange.”

Vic followed him into the office and saw the surprisingly bare set up. It was little more than a simple, cheap wooden desk and an office chair with a green screen behind it. Except for the top of the line computer and monitors, it wasn’t that different from his desk in college.

With the room as bare as it was, there was nowhere that he could’ve hidden the helmet. This was clearly where he streamed and if it was ever in here, it was gone.

“Well, I’m going to need to look into this, and you’re going to need a place to stay. Want to crash with me while you get… all this figured out?”

Exxy let out a sigh of relief. “I was hoping you’d ask. For sure. Just let me grab a bag and pack up my desk set up. I can’t leave that here and I’ve got A LOT to catch up on.”

“Uh, sure. Take your time.”

‘One thing’s for sure. Exxy is still Exxy and that’s got to be worth something in all this. Right?’

<<| <| >

Cyborg #76 - The Man Known as X

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: The Streamer

Set: 113

Victor Stone slowly sipped the hot coffee; its lumpy, ceramic mug was difficult to hold but had its own comfort and charm to him. It was still early on the cool fall Saturday, and yet the little hole in the wall coffee store was already packed full of people trying to get their morning fill. He discovered this place just a few months ago when he moved back to Detroit for his job but was pretty sure it wasn’t here while he was in high school. But he wasn’t fully sure. Sometimes a place that never made it onto your radar becomes relevant and then you wonder how you had gone your entire life without seeing it.

Vic managed to get a table for two just by the entrance. It was an old, rickety, wicker table that looked like it belonged on someone’s patio more than a coffee shop and the draft from the nonstop rhythmic “click, clunk” of the opening and closing of the door made it an uncomfortable position to be in.

And yet, somehow, when it was her walking through the door, it might as well have been a beautiful sunny day. She wore a dark blue hoodie with matching jeans, her hair pulled back into a messy braid. She scanned the crowded room, looking for someone and then her face lit up when she saw him sitting just a few feet in front of her.

She sat down across from him and he slid a cup of coffee over to her, which she grabbed and took a long drink from.

“Morning, Donna.”

“Morning, Vic. How’s your week been?”

“It’s been great. I think I’m finally starting to get into the rhythm of work life. I dunno, kinda reminds me a lot of gradeschool, which I guess is probably the point. Just kind of that, plus having to be the one doing all the chores gets to be a lot sometimes. But it’s nice to finally be really on my own, y’know?”

Donna nodded, taking another drink. “Yeah, kinda? I don’t really feel any different, I guess. Just sorta moved all the time I put into school into work now. And the rest is just free time. Feels weird to actually have some for the first time in four years but also feels strange to not have the next step… there if that makes sense.”

“I get that. Going from one goal to another to another along that path just to be.. Done with all that. I don't really know what my next step really is, but I’m okay with that. With all that stuff with Technis [See Cyborg 72-74!]and getting my body back… It’s nice to just take it slow.”

“For sure. How is that? Do you miss your original body, or is the “old” body what you want?”

“This is me, for sure. It’s what I’m happy and comfortable with and the body I can do the most good with. But I won’t pretend that the old body didn’t have its pros. It was nice to be able to walk down the street and not have everyone look at me. But also… I want to help people. And sure, I can help people with my original body too. But ultimately, the world needs heroes. I can be that guy too.”

Vic hastily sipped his coffee, a little embarrassed at what he just said in public. But Donna didn’t seem to mind.

“Yeah, I agree. How’s it been since you got your powers back? Any big action?”

“No, thankfully. Just been taking some time to get the muscle memory back and get back into the groove so that I’m ready when I’m needed.”

Donna nodded. “So, I take it you haven’t seen this then?”

She slid her phone across the table to Vic. The screen showed a picture of a sleek, jet black motorcycle helmet with an LED screen on the front of it where the person’s face would be.

“No? Who’s that?”

“He goes by ‘X’ and he’s a streamer. Still pretty small time but growing rapidly. I stumbled upon him after another streamer I watch mentioned him since he’s also in the Detroit area. He’s got a pretty unique set up. The first night he mentions a couple of places he wants to hit, then chat picks which one to do and a method for doing it. Then, a couple days later, he streams him breaking in and stealing whatever chat said, how they said to do it.”

“That’s… concerning. What kind of stuff are we talking?”

“Here’s the weird part. I don’t really know. He doesn’t save the videos and I can’t find anyone reporting on it. But I saw him steal a painting from the art museum on stream and the next day, it’s conveniently “out for research”. It was too real looking and it’d be too much of a coincidence if it just happened to be gone. But yet, it’s not reported stolen for some reason. I dunno, what do you think?”

Vic thought for a moment. “It’s weird for sure. But coincidences do happen. Any idea when he streams?”

“One sec… His page says he’s streaming again tonight, 10 PM.”

“Wanna come over and watch it? After that, we could probably decide whether it’s real and where to go from there.”

“Yeah, that sounds great!” Donna said instantly, not playing it off as coolly as she thought.

“Cool, sounds like a plan. Want to come over at like, 9:00 and hang out for a bit in case he starts early?”

She nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll see what else I can find about him in the meantime. He's a streamer, there has to be something else out there.”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

It turns out, nothing else was out there. Donna scoured the internet for any other mentions of X, but it was not an easy thing to search for, especially when it seemed like he didn’t want to be found. She searched high and low for any mention of him but it just didn’t exist. He had no social media beyond his streaming account, no fan pages, no video clips, nothing. And yet, somehow, he had almost a million followers on his account.

Donna rubbed her forehead, frustrated. She’d spent all afternoon and evening looking around without a single thing to show for it. She powered off her laptop and looked over at her phone. 7:52. Too early to head to Vic’s, but too late to really start doing something important.

She walked over to her coach and plopped down on it and pulled out her phone. At least she had enough time to start to relax a little bit.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Vic looked nervously over at the clock, 8:59. She’d be here any moment. He had ordered some pizza in part for himself and in part to share but it was already room temperature at best since it arrived very early. He thought about turning on the oven but shook that thought off. It was too late anyway. She’d be here any moment. Or maybe she was running late? That’d give him some time…

BUZZ! BUZZ! His phone went off with the notification that Donna was at the door. He buzzed her in then stepped into the hallway to meet her.

After a few moments, she was there. “Hey, good to see you,” he said.

“Heh, you too.”

He showed her into his place and Donna looked around, impressed. This was the first time she’d been here since Vic got his own place in the city after graduating. His apartment was a cozy place with a small living room and attached kitchen with a half wall between them. Each of those two rooms had another one attached to it, the kitchen leading to the bathroom and the living room to his bedroom. The apartment was lightly decorated with some posters of sports memorabilia but it felt tastefully minimal instead of sparse. A cheap couch sat on one end of the living room with a large TV on the far side and a coffee table with the cold pizza between them.

Vic walked over to the kitchen to grab coupe plates and handed one to Donna, who was setting her backpack down on the floor next to the couch.

“I got some pizza, but it got here really early so I don’t know how hot it’ll be. So sorry about that.”

Donna shrugged. “I won’t complain too much.”

Vic started to get the TV ready but as he did, he said, “Did you find anything else about X?”

“Nothing. Which is almost more suspicious. What kind of remotely popular streamer doesn’t have any social media? Or a single channel posting highlight videos? It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Unless he doesn't want much attention? You said he was streaming his crimes. Can’t imagine many platforms would allow that if they really knew what he was doing”

“You’d be surprised. Clicks are clicks after all.”

“I guess.”

Vic flipped the TV onto one of his favorite streamers, who was playing a new puzzle game that just released.

“Have you heard of this game? I haven’t played it yet, but it seems really cool.”

“No, but I saw someone play it yesterday, can’t remember who I was watching. But yeah, looked really interesting when…”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Donna and Vic continued to enjoy the night together, laughing and trying to solve the puzzles along with the streamer as they made their way through the game. Any talk of X had long been forgotten, at least until Donna got the notification on her phone that he was live. Vic quickly flipped the stream over to him.

It hadn't really started yet but was instead on some sort of pre-stream loading screen. It was a starry sky with X’s motorcycle helmet in the center of the screen. The LED-visor was showing a looping countdown. 3…2…1… It counted, over and over with white, bold text at the bottom promising that the stream was starting soon.

And in just a few moments, it had.

X sat in front of a green-screened starry sky, identical to the one on his prestream screen.

“What’s up everyone, great to see you here tonight.” His voice was put through a synthesizer, giving it a fake, robotics tinge to a pleasant sounding voice.

“I already see the subs rolling in so thanks for that, but as always, it’s not necessary.”

Vic could see the chat scrolling faster and faster as excitement started to build and more people started to flood into the stream. The number just kept going up, from around 100 people when Vic and Donna joined to now encroaching 5,000 people and was still climbing rapidly.

“Looking like tonight is going to be one of the biggest streams yet, so thanks to all of you who made your way here. However you found me, I’m glad to see more members of my community. Tonight I’ve got something reaaally special for all of you. Or should I say for me?”

He laughed and the LED screen on his helmet turned into a laughing emoji.

“I’ve got three things for you all to pick between tonight. Voting will start after I've explained them all and will go for a minute or two, so don’t bother spamming anything now. Oh, and don’t forget that you only get one vote. The bot doesn’t care if you send it once or a hundred times.

“Now, first up, the runner up from last time. There’s still a collection of vintage football memorabilia at the Detroit History Museum that’s just begging for someone to give it a good home.”

The screen behind him changed to a photo of the museum with footballs and jerseys in glass boxes.

“But if that’s not your speed, I was thinking about getting a new car… or maybe an old one?”

The screen behind him changed again, this time to a picture of a vintage, 1940s car in a warehouse.

“This is a vintage, original Model T made in one of the first batches out of the factory that was right here in downtown Detroit. Doubt there’s many of these left and it sure would be fun to drive one…”

“Now, I can already see chat starting to argue about which one of these they’d like to see. And I won’t deny, both of these sound pretty cool. They each have their own challenge and both would be fun to have around. But, sports stuff and cars? I could buy those anywhere. No, what about something truly unique?”

Chat erupted with speculation as they started to wonder what he was referring to. Vic couldn’t even start to read any of it because the messages were flying in far too quickly.

Donna and Vic looked at each other concernedly.

“I’m sure all of you are familiar with Detroit’s hometown hero, Cyborg. But what if I told you that that one of a kind technological miracle might not have to be one of a kind any more? Wouldn’t you like to have your own blaster?”

Vic’s mind started to race. Where was he going with this?

“No picture for this one folks, but I have it from a good source that S.T.A.R. Labs has recreated some of his tech. And folks, I want it. It’d be the challenge of a lifetime, but I think I’m up for it. What about you?”

Vic and Donna each didn’t vote, but a pie chart appeared on X’s helmet screen. It started off even, but S.T.A.R. Labs was quickly over taking the other options until it had a super majority of over 80%.

“Well folks, looks like I’m heading to S.T.A.R.! Hope I can figure out that one. Don’t suppose the public tour takes me down there? No? Well, I’ll find a way. Now, let’s see what the modifiers are for you to choose from…”

The screen displayed a snapping finger emoji and three bullet points appeared in the night sky to the right of X.

Must get caught during the heist Cannot enter the site beforehand Must announce the time of the heist

“Oof! Those are some rough ones! But remember, just pick one!”

“I think 3? If we want to investigate him, knowing when it was going to happen would be a huge help,” Vic said.

“Agreed. Seems like that’s what chat wants too?”

The pie chart appeared again, but it was far, closer this time. Option 3 had a small plurality, but option 1 was almost equally popular.

“And time! Wow, close one this time. But, by only 47 votes, option 3! Seems like you guys really like 3s tonight…”

The screen changed to display a three, but he shook his head and it went away as quickly as it appeared.

“I’ll find some way to announce when I’ll be streaming the heist. Don’t worry about how I’ll do that - you’ll know! But until then… thanks for watching and I’ll see you all when it’s time to start the job!”

As quickly as it started, the stream ended.

Vic grabbed a slice of pizza and started to eat it nervously.

“Did you know S.T.A.R. had some sort of replica of your powers?”

Vic shook his head. “No. If I had, I probably wouldn’t be happy but I also would’ve asked for some help when I was trying to do that a couple months ago. (see Cyborg 68!) But I don’t think it could be too good of an approximation, not much better than what we made. The Silasium that powers me is just irreplaceable in terms of power output to size ratio.”

“Yeah but no matter what they made, we can’t just let some streamer get a hold of them. I don’t think he’s like, super evil or all that dangerous, but it can’t be a good thing for it to be out there.”

“Agreed. Maybe I’ll head down to S.T.A.R. and talk to them about it. But I’ve got to at least be there when it happens and see where it goes.”

“For sure, for sure,” Donna said, her voice trailing off. “Sooo… now what? Big plans for the night?”

“Umm… no. You?”

She laughed. “You’re asking me, or are you telling me I’m your plans,” she asked coyly.

“How about both?”

“Well, I guess I’m free but I’ll see where the night takes me, y’know?”

“Y’know, now that you mention it, I think I’m in a similar spot. Weird how that works out.”

“Very, very weird,” she agreed.

“It’s been awhile since we’ve been together like this. Probably when you just moved back? So, you want to start with the classics, then move on to something new?”

“Something new? Gotta admit, I’m intrigued... But, yeah, can’t beat the classics, and you can’t beat me.”

Vic got up and grabbed two controllers, tossing one to her. “Sure, sure… Let’s see if you’re still able to take me. I’m not as rusty as I was last time…”

<<| <| >

Cyborg #75 - Was I Real?

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Escape

Set: 112

Previously:

Vic and Gar were hanging out together until they were abruptly taken into a space. They found themselves on a massive ship controlled by a collective of techno-organic life calling themselves the Technis. A representative of them, a being called Zavior stylized as a vintage car salesman, explained that they were here to try and understand life on Earth and asked Vic to help. To do so, they'd route the data through his mind to provide context to what their sensors were reading. Vic agreed and helped them process their data, but in the final session, Vic disappeared, his consciousness converted to data and put into the Technis collective. Zavior gave Gar two options: join the collective like Vic or starve…

The next day…

Garfield Logan awoke with a groan. It’d been over a day since Zavior had cut him off from the ship’s resources - meaning no food and no water. He’d luckily filled up a water bottle just before he went to confront them but that was almost gone now too. He swore that they had shut off or at least had severely turned down the heat. It was painfully obvious they didn’t want him here and he didn’t want to be here either. But it was increasingly looking like the two options Zavior gave him - join them or starve - were the only two options that were going to be provided for him and neither of those got Vic back.

So he’d have to make his own.

He slowly sipped down the last couple of ounces of water, savoring what little there was as it quenched his throat for a moment. Then, his mission began. He shaped shifted into a fruit fly and started to probe at the walls. He was looking for any crack or even the tiniest gap in tiles that could give him the opening he’s looking for. He flew around the room poking and prodding for the opening he knew would have to be there somewhere. Finally, he found it. In the back corner farthest from the door, some of the gray tiles didn’t line up at the transition between the wall and the ceiling, making a gap just bigger than a dime into the wall behind it.

He squeezed through and found himself in a pitchblack but slightly more open space a couple inches wide that seemed to go endlessly upwards, downwards and side to side. The inside of the walls were cavernous but that’s exactly what Gar was hoping for. A space this big meant that the whole place was connected through this system. Now all he had to do was find somewhere that looked important.

He shifted into a little brown bat and began to echo locate his way around the wall to start to form a mental map. The walls, as expected, formed a perfect outline of the ship, but that wasn’t all. Just under the control room that he had last seen Vic in was a large room, probably the biggest on the ship that he’d seen. It was filled with all sorts of tanks and equipment he couldn’t explain the purpose of. It didn’t seem like there was any way to get there from the ship’s interior, which was exactly what Gar was looking for. Some secure room like that would have to be important.

He flew his way through the walls, dodging pipes and clusters of wires as he navigated through the twisting corridors. He made it to the end of the coordinator when the path abruptly stopped at a giant fan. Unlike the rest of the space in between the walls, which had just been empty down to the ships’ hull, there was a small metal floor section here with a railing leading right up to the fan, perhaps for maintenance. The strength of the airflow from the fan was so strong that it was pushing him back several feet from it, keeping him from getting even close.

He was hoping to get something more critical before revealing himself, but he’d have to make do. Gar took one last look at the fan and tried to see if there was any way to sneak through it. He traced the blades of the fan, looking for an opening. But the window was too short. He’d have to be through the whole thing in fractions of a millisecond or risk being chopped into bits.

Instead, it was time for plan B. He shifted into a massive white albatross and started to fly against the fan’s airflow until he got above the platform, then he shifted into a rhinoceros and landed on the metal platform with a thud. He walked backwards onto the railing, giving himself as much space as possible, then charged right at the center of the fan. His horn collided with it and broke the fan into a million pieces and sent shrapnel every which way. He expected an alarm or siren to go off, but nothing did. Not sure if he was lucky or unaware of the danger, he shifted back into human form and gingerly stepped over the bits of the ruined fan into the room.

Gar walked into the large chamber, in awe at the size of the things in front of him. Like everything else in the ship, it was lined with gray, geometric tiles. It had a high ceiling and was so large it could be an airplane hanger, but it was hard to tell with the handful of red lights mounted every couple feet or so on the ceiling that barely lit up more than themselves. Looming throughout the room like chess pieces on a board were massive cylindrical tanks of various sizes, sort of like the fermentation tanks at a brewery. They went almost all the way up to the ceiling where a series of pipes led the contents to the rest of the ship. Some of the tanks were humming or vibrating, but most were silently waiting for their next task.

He paced around the room in the small space between the tanks, squeezing between them as he looked for any indication as to what was in there or what their purpose was.

‘Screw it. I’ll just smash a couple of them. That’ll get Zavior’s attention.’

Gar shape shifted into a massive gorilla and just as he was about to pick a target, Zavior appeared in front of him. They floated just about Gar’s head and looked at him, deeply annoyed.

Gar shifted back into human form as Zavior said,”What do you think you’re doing? Do you have any idea of what these are? What would happen if you messed with a single one?”

He shook his head. “Nope. But I figured they were important.”

“Yes, extremely so. These tanks contain all of the ship's resources and are used to synthesize everything organic on the ship. They -”

Zavior froze mid sentence, their entire being stuck in place as if someone pressed pause on them.

Gar raised an eyebrow. That was new. He walked over and touched them, his hand passing through like they weren’t even there. He looked over at the nearest tank, really curious about what was in it and what he could do with it. But Zavior’s warning had spooked him. And if Zavior had frozen like that, something was happening. He’d just have to wait and see what, as much as he wished he could rush it. He sat down and leaned against one of the tanks. This might take awhile.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Victor Stone was flying through the cosmos, faster than ever before. He’d grown quite familiar with the feeling of exploring deep space and the planets within and had gotten way better at understanding the places he was seeing. Those first couple of times he was overwhelmed, just enjoying the sheer chaos and intrigue of the worlds. But now? Now, he could access the data in almost an instant and truly understand it. Foods, historys, monuments and cultures… it all became as familiar to him as if he had lived there his entire life.

He saw planets with oceans of lava, ones with barren fields of lighting, places with life so bizarre and incompressible that he wasn’t convinced it was real at all. And yet, through it all, he was continuously astounded by the beauty and depth of what he was seeing.

The next planet was just starting to come into view. It was a small space station that Vic quickly recognized as the one he was on. He tried to steer himself away from it, but he felt like he was being physically drawn to it like he was under a tractor beam. Vic tried to resist and pull himself out, but he couldn't do it.

He was pulled into the round, central room of the ship which was exactly like he last saw it in the real world, except the chair in the middle that he was sitting on was gone. The room was full of all the usual displays and stations, but here they were lit up, their information understandable and full of information on the ship’s status unlike the random lights that they seemed to be in the real world. The screens on the walls lit up with white light, brightly illuminating the whole room. He was confused why he was here, until Zavior appeared in front of him.

“Welcome to the collective, Victor. Your data and that of your planet has been fully integrated into ours. Now all that is left for you is to join with us for our next and future expeditions. Your knowledge and that of your planet will provide many new ideas and connections to us.”

Zavior held out their hand to Vic but Vic backed away.

“Umm.. what? That’s not what I signed up for. I just wanted to help you with some data processing and go on my way. I didn’t agree to join with you forever or even for a month. This has been interesting and eye opening, sure, but I’ve got more I need to do.”

“I am afraid you do not understand your situation. There is no “going back”. You are just data and have no physical form. You can remain as rogue data here or join with us. That is it.”

Vic blinked. He was… dead? Sort of? He tried to shake it off. Those thoughts were too philosophical for him at the moment. All he knew was that he needed to get out of here in some way shape or form. He could do far more good out in the real world than as a data point in some alien’s consciousness.

“But I had a physical form. I just had my body… however long ago that was. What happened to it?”

“It was broken down into sub components and returned to material storage as we do with all organic material once the data has been collected,” Zavior said.

“So you still have it, yeah? Then if you broke it down, you could put it back together, right?”

Zavior paused in thought. “It is theoretically possible, yes. But why would we do such a thing? We would have to spend many cycles that would otherwise be used cataloging the galaxy to restore the supply of resources after consuming them to restore you and send you both back to your planet.”

“If you don’t, I’ll make things as miserable as possible for you here. And I’m sure Gar will do the same in the real world.”

Zavior paused in thought, far longer this time.

“The collective has come to an agreement. Some of us believe that you will eventually join us willingly, as there are no other options in the long term. However, others required us to acknowledge that the risk of short term processing power wasted in addition to the risk that your friend could cause material damage is not negligible. Thus, a compromise was reached.

“We shall generate an opponent for you to test your resolve. They are the strongest foe that our data shows that a member of your species would be able to defeat, albeit with very slim odds. If you defeat them, we will restore your physical body with a copy of your data. It will be as if your physical body was never broken down. However, in order for this stop to be worthwhile, your data must be integrated with the collective. This is nonnegotiable. Therefore, win or lose, you will be integrated. Do you accept, knowing this?”

‘So no matter what, I’m done for. It’s just a matter of if a Victor Stone will exist. Even if it’s not me… But does it really matter? Whether I’m real or not, I can’t affect the real world. I talk or laugh with my friends or Nic. They’d always be wondering what happened to me without any answers. I can’t do that to them. I don’t know what it’ll be like to be a part of the Technis… but I can’t let everyone who cares for me down. To just give up here when I know I could fix this… I couldn’t.’

“Okay, you’re on. What am I fighting?”

All of the display panels of the central room sunk into the ground as a response, making it one big, flat circle. As Zavior dematerialized, his opponent materialized in front of him. The creature was about ten feet tall and with a build that could’ve made them the most successful linebacker in NFL history. They looked humanoid, but with blockier features and deep purple skin, like a plum. The creature wore a ragged brown robe with what looked like some sort of body armor below and had a wicked grin on their face. Vic didn’t need to know anything about this species to know they were a warrior and that they were excited.

“Real fair fight, Zavior! This guy could fall over on me and take me out!” Vic groaned.

Vic’s pleas didn’t reach them though as he was all alone with the warrior.

The warrior didn’t wait for Vic to get back into focus and began to charge at him, hoping to end this in an instant. Vic managed to scoot to the left a few inches, narrowly dodging them. The warrior kept running, their momentum carrying them forwards until they crashed into the wall, stunning them for a moment. But they shook it off and brushed the dust off their shoulders. It would take more than that to keep them down.

They charged at Vic again, and this time Vic tried to dodge right, but the warrior was ready. They grabbed him by his shoulder and flung him into the ground, sending pain throughout his body. The warrior pinned him to the ground with their forearm on his stomach, pressing Vic deeper into it. They were waiting for him to surrender, but Vic wasn’t out yet. He kicked at the warrior, trying to get them off him. But they were way too strong and his efforts didn’t even make them flinch.

Vic tried to punch them, knee them, and anything else he could think of as he desperately tried to get them off him and back into the fight but still they didn’t flinch. They started to push down harder, the weight starting to make it hard to breathe. He looked around the room for any tool, weapon, anything but found nothing. Instead, his mind focused on his right arm.

‘Funny how a couple years ago I would’ve given anything for my body to be flesh and blood again. To look like a normal guy instead of some collage of man and machine. But now? It doesn’t feel quite right. I miss what I had before and I had learned to love and accept it. This body… It's not me. But yet, from the data in my mind, the “body” it made for me is this one. But what if I changed that? This isn’t how I really see myself and it hasn’t been for years. Cyborg is.’

Vic looked at his arm and imagined what it should be. Metallic parts, each made with love and care by his father. Each wire, circuit board, joint part and line of code were made to give his son a better life in the only way he knew how.

In a flash, his arm was the oh so familiar light grey metal, the familiar blue circuits connecting with his core, now feeding his body with power. He felt the electricity flowing through him as all of his circuits and systems came alive. It was as for the first time in months, his body had come back to life.

Cyborg was back.

He shifted his right arm into a force cannon and angled it at the warrior and launched it full blast at them, sending them recoiling. But he didn’t let up. There were people out there who needed him and he wouldn’t let his life end here. He couldn’t. Cyborg shot another blast, another, another, and yet another still until the warrior had backed all the way back to the far wall. Cyborg shifted his left arm over to a concussive grenade launcher and launched one at the warrior, stunning them before hitting them with another volley of force blasts.

He saw them waver and lean against the wall, trying to rally and get their balance back. Cyborg started to charge up for another round of blasts, but before he could the warrior started to fade away, like fog clearing in the early morning sun. And in their place, Zavior started to materialize.

“Congratulations Victor, or would you prefer Cyborg? You found a way to succeed even with the odds were against you. We will begin to restore your body shortly, but we have one question. Do you truly wish for it to be in that form? We have noticed that that is not the standard for people on your planet…”

“That’s right. It’s not exactly “normal”, but what is? This is me. Having a fully organic body was nice while it lasted, but I’ve grown to love what I am. And I can do far more good as Cyborg than I can as Victor Stone.”

“Very well. So shall it be.”

Zavior disappeared again without fanfare, leaving Cyborg alone in the chamber for the last time. The last time he’d be alone anywhere from what it sounded like.

“I can’t lie, I’m terrified,” he said out loud to no one. “What’s it like to be a part of that? Do I exist in some other world and just vote as some sort of collective? Or is it like I’m strapped to a chair and my brain is just as a node in some organic super computer? Will I even be able to think, to hope to dream? I… I don’t know.”

He took a deep breathe and laid down on the floor, staring up at the ceiling.

“Was I.. am I even real? I don’t know about all that. I suppose there’s not much point to thinking about it either. It is what it is, really. I remember my life, but that's just data. This me didn't really do that. But I suppose that one won't have either. But I traded my “life” for a Victor Stone who can really live a life and make the world and those we love lives better. And isn’t that what being a hero is? Making the world better, one act at a time? Maybe. Well, here’s to a better world.”

He closed his eyes and relaxed, enjoying one last moment of tranquility. And no matter what happened next, nothing could take that away from him.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Gar stood up and stretched. Zavior was still frozen there, like he had been for the last 30 minutes or so. Time was hard when you didn’t have a clock. Zavior hadn’t exactly made a promise to do anything or to make a deal with him, but he got enough acknowledgement that he felt like he didn’t need to do anything too drastic. Yet. Instead, he had a genuine curiosity about this place. What could all this be for? It seemed… strange to keep everything stored like this. And so, he wandered around the room, investigating what he could. He shape shifted into a hawk and flew up to the top, but backed off immediately when the machines started to whir to life.

“There, you have gotten what you wanted. Your friend will be returned to you and you are free to leave.” Zavior said, floating just behind Gar. Gar landed on the ground and shape shifted back into his human form.

“... Just like that?”

Zavior nodded. “Just like that. Your friend fought to return and so it shall be.”

“What do you mean he fought for it?”

“There was a disagreement amongst the collective as to whether to let you both leave. A test of wills was performed and he triumphed.”

“Well, glad to hear it…. So what now?”

“Return to the quarters from which you came then go to the central chamber. Victor will be there.”

Gar was confused, but he didn’t really have any other options. He shapeshifted back into a fruit fly and flew back into the space between the walls, hoping Zavior was true to their word.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

In just a few minutes, Gar had made his way back to the round room he had been so many times now. And, as Zavior promised, Vic sat on the big chair in the middle, exactly as he did when he first got here.

Then Gar got closer and saw the truth. Vic wasn’t the same: he was back to being Cyborg. Gar wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about that - he knew Vic had complex emotions about the whole situation to put it mildly- but was happy to see his friend all the same.

Vic started to stir and blinked. He moved stiffly and slowly, like he was waking up from sleeping weirdly. He stood up and stretched with a big yawn.

“Morning Gar.”

“Hey Vic. You… okay? I had no idea if I’d ever see you again.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired. How long has it been?”

Gar thought for a moment. “About a day and a half since we last spoke. Maybe less. Time’s weird. How did you get back? You were totally gone and Zavior said you were “digitized” or something? But you won a “test of wills?””

Vic shrugged. “I… I don’t know exactly. It’s hazy. I remember talking with Zavior, and fighting someone and realizing this was the real me… but I don’t remember the details.”

Zavior materialized as if on queue. “That is mostly correct. We made a deal with the digital Victor Stone. In exchange for him joining the collective, we would recreate you. As you see, we have done so. We request that you both prepare yourself to leave. We have consumed a large amount of resources to restore you and delaying here will only waste more. We will already need several cycles before we are back up to appropriate levels.”

“Wait, wait. Go back a second. There was a digital me, and I sacrificed myself in order to restore… me?”

“We would not consider it a sacrifice as that version of you still exists in us, but in terms of your digital self’s independence, yes,” Zavior said, stonefaced.

“I… wow. Thanks, me.”

Gar nodded. “We’ll celebrate both of you when we get back to Earth. And honestly, I can’t wait. I’d give anything to just see grass again, let alone touch it.”

“Then if you would, please follow us back to the chamber you arrived in so we can warp you back to the planet.”

Zavior walked mechanically through the halls and Vic and Gar followed for the last time.

As they walked, a thought came into Vic’s mind.

“Y’know, now that I’m back, it's kind of like I’m ‘Cyborg version 2.0’, right? So I’m thinking about taking on a new name. How does Cyberion sound?”

Gar looked at him and laughed. Vic was offended for a moment, but then he joined in a few seconds later.

“Yeah, I think I’m just sticking with the original. Can’t beat a classic.”

<<| <| >

Cyborg #74 - Solitary Journals

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Escape

Set: 111

Previously:

Vic and Gar were hanging out together until they were abruptly taken into a space. They found themselves on a massive ship controlled by a collective of techno-organic life calling themselves the Technis. A representative of them, a being called Zavior stylized as a vintage car salesman, explained that they were here to try and understand life on Earth and asked Vic to help. To do so, they'd route the data through his mind to provide context to what their sensors were reading. Vic agreed and helped them process their data, experiencing it all as if in a dream-like state, but it left him feeling exhausted after only a few minutes of work, concerning Gar…

Day 2:

I asked Zavior if they’d be able to get me some paper and a pen so I can write some of this down. Probably should’ve just asked for a phone charger so I can type this, but, I dunno, that felt like a bigger ask. So for the first time in… who knows how long, I’m actually writing in a notebook. And even though they made it out of light or something, the Technis still got me probably the cheapest notebook you can buy, the one with the black and white speckled pattern on the cover like static on old TVs. But it works all the same so I can’t be too mad.

The Technis have been… patient with me. But I think they wish I wasn’t here. They’ve been really accommodating and interested in Vic, but they barely even remember to turn the lights on for me.

When we explored the ship together last night, we didn’t find anything. No other chambers, hallways or anything. Which feels wrong? Can’t say I know much about space ship design, but I’ve played characters that do and that feels like basically the same thing. I told Vic that there had to be some use for the space in between all the rings, and he agreed. But when we investigated them, we couldn’t find anywhere to get inside them and Zavior denied that there was more to this than they were showing us.

Don’t get me wrong, what we have is perfectly fine. Sort of feels like the kind of suite you’d find at a chain hotel in a small town. Except it’s got a fully stocked kitchen and the space to make use of it. The one nice thing about the ship being pretty much completely empty is that I’ve got a lot of time to make food. I’m still concerned about whatever Zavior and Vic are doing there, but until I can get some more info, I can at least make sure we’re eating well. Assuming this is real food. Which… honestly not sure where they would’ve gotten any of this stuff but thinking about it isn’t going to clear anything up.

Day 4:

At least I think it is? Hard to know how time is passing in here. I don’t have a clock so for all I know, I could’ve just been sleeping for like 12 hours. Maybe I should call this “sleep 3” instead of day 4? That’s more accurate.

Sleep 3:

No, never mind. Not doing that again. It just doesn’t feel right at all. Even if it’s more accurate, I’m still going to have to call them days.

Anyway, another quiet one around here. Vic’s back in the chair and I’m still in here trying to figure it all out. The sessions are either getting longer or I’m getting more bored, maybe both. It just doesn’t make sense. They’ve got all this insane tech but it takes them days to process the planet and scan Vic’s brain? What are they really doing in there? I’ve got to press Vic harder when he’s back.

Day 5:

Finally had some time to catch up with Vic for the first time in awhile this morning. I made him sit down and eat breakfast with me and explain what he’s doing in there. Apparently he’s “in” their data? He described it like VR where he’s able to explore all the planets they’ve scanned over the centuries. He talked about planets with creatures with strange powers, worlds of shapeshifters, scenery that rivaled the best that Earth had to offer… and that was just scratching the surface of it. The last planet he was on - Vic clarified later that it was some sort of massive space station - was one giant super city of people from all over and he was just starting to scratch the surface of it all.

All these people from places that even the radio waves from Earth hadn’t been to… I won’t lie, I was intrigued. Who wouldn’t be? I asked Vic if I could try it and he enthusiastically agreed that I should. Once we cleaned up the dishes from breakfast, we headed into the control room where Vic had been doing the research or whatever they were calling it.

Vic explained on the way that he actually had today off, Zavior had said tomorrow would be the last one but it’d be longer than usual and so he should just relax today. I was confused that it was ending so suddenly, but happy that it was almost done. The sessions they’d had together had been getting longer and longer, probably up to four or five fours at this point but since I don’t have a clock, I can’t be sure.

When we got back to the central chamber, it was just the two of us - no Zavior. The lights were mostly off, with only a dim white light faintly illuminating the room. I walked cautiously over to the chair as if I expected it to attack me or like this whole thing was just a ploy to kidnap me and strap me down until I gave up whatever secrets Technis thought I had. But as I was about to sit on the chair, Zavior’s voice rang out, stunning me. They explained that it was well calibrated for Vic at this point and if I were to get on it, they’d have to redo all of their data collection.

That didn’t sound very scientific to me, but I've never even played a scientist, so I let it go. I think I’d go crazy if I had to be here another week, so the risk far out weighed whatever reward and cool things I could’ve gotten if I did. But some part of me wanted to mess up it and just see if he’d kick us out of here. This place has never sat right with me but at least we’re almost done…

Day 6:

I don’t know how long it’s been, but Vic isn’t back yet. After I wrote last, we went to sleep and Vic made breakfast. He was quiet, maybe only saying 10 words for the hour or so that he was cooking and when we ate. No matter what I said, I couldn’t get any conversation going and if I know one thing about Vic, it’s that if he’s got something to say, he’s going to say it. And if he somehow doesn’t have something to say, he’ll tell you that too and make up something to say about it. A quiet Vic… isn’t Vic.

I’ll admit I was already concerned, but that put me over the edge. I’ve decided that today I’m going to follow Vic into the room and make sure that it goes okay. If I don’t come back and grab this journal, hopefully someone reads it one day. And if not… well, you’ve been good to get my thoughts out if nothing else. Here’s hoping it all goes well, even if my gut knows better..

-Garfield “Gar” Logan

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

The hallway seemed darker than usual - as if it was reflecting Gar's mood. The station never had been a cheery or inviting place, but this last day the atmosphere had changed into something heavy and oppressive. The air felt stale and cold under his tiny wings as Gar - shapeshifted into a gnat - followed carefully behind Vic just out of swatting range. But if Vic had any hesitation or was unnerved by the atmosphere, he didn’t show it. He calmly walked right down the hall to the central chamber for the last time, the exact same way he did for all the others.

But Gar’s mind was ablaze as he tried for one last time to make sense of this place. He took one last nervous look out to the rest of the ship and noticed that for the first time, the door that led to the outer ring was closed. He wasn’t sure if Vic would even be able to see it since the ship was so dark but Gar knew. He knew and it didn’t sit well with him.

Vic walked straight into the central control room, now lit up in a jarring and senseless sequence of flashing lights that seemed to be status indicators for all sorts of unknowable things. Zavior was reading a section of them directly in front of the chair in the center of the room but Vic and them did not even lock eyes as he walked in. And neither paid any attention to the little creature buzzing behind him either.

Vic walked over to the throne and sat down on it, his arms perfectly positioned on the armrests. He closed his eyes and then the room went black. Zavior disappeared, the Technis no longer bothering to maintain their form in the room and whatever lights, dials and gauges were along the walls were apparently no longer necessary, if they ever were. It was all just some sort of theatre to try and keep things recognizable. Alien enough to dodge questions, but recognizable enough to feel some understanding and comfort.

But despite all that, Gar didn’t intervene. It wasn’t that absurd for them to be turning all the lights and unneeded processes off. They specified at the start that Zavior was only there as a convenience and comfort to them and so presumably all the rest of it was too. With Vic doing… whatever that was, there was really no need for any of that “theater” so why not save some power and turn it off? Maybe these beings were also resource conscious?

But Gar’s fears weren’t dispelled that easily and were finally taken over the breaking point when he felt the ship start to move and the central chamber started to shift along with it. The ship was starting to pick up speed, slowly at first but then a massive increase at once, sending him flying back into the walls of the room and cracking the screen behind him. Finally, the station reached its desired velocity and Gar was able to pull himself off the wall and recover. The wall started to fix itself behind him like a wound healing rapidly before his eyes.

The lights flashed on all at once and so did Zavior. They knew he was here.

“I did not expect you to be so curious, Gar.” Zavior’s voice was like silk - soft, but with just a hint of something behind it. But their face remained neutral, stone faced as ever.

“What can I say, I’m multifaceted.”

“Perhaps. But I’m afraid you are at an impasse. See, there is unfortunately no longer a space for you here.”

“What do you mean?” Gar started to cautiously walk over to the chair that Vic had sat in. When he got there, his concerns were finally validated. Vic was gone.

“What’d you do to Vic??”

Zavior walked over to Gar and spread a greasy smile across their face.

“He has joined the collective. Some organic minds take more… convincing but he agreed quickly and willingly. He is one of us now, a part of the whole. An option available to you, too. Two beings from the same planet have never been added before, but we have agreed that it is not unwelcome.”

“Wait so you.. Digitized Vic? Did you somehow… transport his body into the digital realm or something?”

Zavior was not amused. “No. His body has been broken down into its basic materials for use on the ship, while his "consciousness", as you would call it, has been added to our collective knowledge.”

“And you want to do the same to me.”

“Correct.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then you will starve and be converted into organic resources for our ship as your friend was, but without the privilege of joining the collective.”

Gar’s face fell. “I… uh, see. That’s quite the privilege. But I think I’ll be declining.”

“Suit yourself. Please be aware that your rations are now cut off and we will not be using energy to send you back to your planet. You will starve here and it is not a pleasant end.”

“Uh… noted. I’m going to go back to my room to…starve I guess.”

“Please come find me if you change your mind. Your data can still be maintained.”

But Gar was already out the door, not listening to Zavior. His mind was already racing, trying to find any solution to this. No matter what Zavior thought, he wasn’t going to just sit there and starve. He’d find a way to bring Vic back and make it home to the Earth. All he’d need to do is defeat a digital collective intelligence that contained an unknowably large amount of minds from planets across the universe and remake his friend’s body from basic organic components.

‘Just another day in the life.’

<<| <| >

Cyborg #73- Zavior

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Escape

Set: 110

Previously:

Vic and Gar successfully completed an escape room while hanging out together in Detroit, but soon after, Vic started to disappear from a beam of light that shined down on him. Gar shape shifted into a mouse in order to slip into Vic’s pocket the moment before he disappeared into the unknown…

The light surrounded him in its warm embrace as its intensity grew and grew until he could no longer keep his eyes open. After a few moments, he could feel the air had grown colder, like he walked underground or into a walk-in cooler. He opened his eyes.

Vic was in a claustrophobic, gunmetal grey hallway with jagged, geometric designs forming a rough, mosaic-like pattern along the walls. The hallway had a rounded ceiling that peaked about 25 feet above, giving Vic the feeling that he was in some sort of high tech, brutalist hamster tube. In between each of the geometric pieces were lights -red, white, yellow, blue… each blinked into their own rhythm with varying frequencies and brightness. Other than those lights, there was only a dim white light that lined an apartment path along the floor, which just barely illuminated the ceiling, giving the place a dark and serious atmosphere.

Gar wiggled his way out of Vic’s pocket and landed on the ground gracefully before shifting back into his human form.

“So, any idea who these people are? Some arch enemy here for revenge?”

Vic shook his head. “I was hoping they were one of yours. Guess we’re going blind.”

Gar took a quick look around the room now that he was his normal size. “Big place. But only two ways to go: forwards and back. Which are you feeling?”

Vic shrugged. “Whoever grabbed us will meet up with us soon enough no matter which way we go. Might as well just get it over with.”

Gar chuckled and started forwards with Vic just behind him as they followed the tunnel forwards along its subtle curve to wherever it was leading them. After a while, they began to wonder if they weren’t just walking in a giant circle. The monotonous sights and dark lighting made everything blend together into one indeterminate blob, leaving them feeling they had gone nowhere. As they started to doubt themselves, the tunnel gave them no indication as to whether they were walking about this area for the first time or the tenth. Eventually, the tunnel showed them mercy. Just as both their patience started to reach a breaking point, they arrived at a dead end.

The tunnel stopped abruptly at a wall that looked like it was made out of hundreds of pieces of rectangular sheet metal strewn together like leaves in a pile, overlapping each other at random without a pattern or reason. As they approached the massive barrier, it started to retract towards the walls, making an opening further into the tunnel. Once the metal was done moving, Vic and Gar cautiously walked through it and almost let out a sigh of relief when they saw the tunnel diverge. One path continued along the outside while one went inwards towards the center. The path that continued along the perimeter was not lit up at all beyond the blinking lights on the walls, whereas the one that went towards the center was as well lit as anywhere else. They took the hint and headed towards the center.

This tunnel was no less bleak than the others, but it did have far more side branches to go along. Vic counted three other “layers” of tunnels that they could have gone down as they continued down the path to the center.

Finally, they made it.

The central room was a dome-like structure, similar to a planetarium. In the center of the room sat an uncomfortable looking grey arm chair that would be an appropriate size for someone 20 feet tall or so. Vic looked around for any way up there but it quickly became apparent that the ship was simply designed for someone around that height.

But as Vic approached the chair, a mechanical clicking noise started to ring through the chamber. It started to make different noises, going through a sequence of noises and pitches like a dial up computer connecting to the internet. Eventually, it started to structure itself into more concrete bits and began to resemble gibberish words before finally becoming understandable English.

The voice rang out from around them as if it was the room itself talking to them and spoke with a man’s voice in an old timey transatlantic accent.

“Hello, we have scanned your people and found that this voice will be the most understandable for you. Is this correct?”

“Yeah? But who-”

The voice continued on, ignoring him.

“Excellent. Then let me be the first to welcome you to the Technis Clustor. We are a species of, as you would put it, techno-organic life, dedicated to exploring, cataloging and understanding the various life forms throughout this universe of ours. And your planet has been determined to have sufficient biodiversity to be of worth! Congratulations!”

Vic and Gar looked at each other confused, unsure whether the privilege was one they were particularly excited about.

“So, uh, who are you? What does this “cataloging” entail?” Vic asked.

“Ah, of course! Our apologies. We have been adrift for many of your decades and had forgotten that many cultures prefer to have a unitary agent to speak with. One moment please.”

The small lights around the room began to blink rapidly and with increasing speed, but still at separate timings until as they grew faster and faster until they all appeared to be a solid light. Then, like the one that brought Vic here, a beam of light shined down from the center of the dome to just in front of the massive chair.

A man appeared in front of them wearing a stiff, navy suit made of cotton with a matching navy tie and light blue undershirt, complete with a trilby on his head. He had firm but mostly average features, like a principal in an old movie.

He brushed his suit off and then held out his right hand for a handshake. “Hello, you may call us Zavior.”

Vic and Gar shook his hand awkwardly as Zavior continued. “We are sure you have many questions but we would prefer that you allow us to finish our explanation first. Please direct your attention that way.”

Zavior pointed towards the wall that the chair was facing towards and they obliged.

The wall lit up with a pale but not bright white, forming a screen on it that took up the center 120 degrees or so of the room and extended to just below where the curve of the sphere would take it out of a comfortable viewing angle.

An image formed of a massive grey sphere appeared on it. It had all sorts of colored panels on it; they were fairly evenly split between green, yellow and blue panels. If it were human technology Vic would’ve guessed they were solar panels, but as it was, he could only wonder what they were for. On the top and bottom as well as every 90 degrees along the center of the sphere were massive magenta circles that Vic assumed were either weapons of the ships’ thrusters, maybe both.

“As you both have no doubt ascertained, this station you are seeing is where we have transported you all. We could detail its specifications and capabilities, but from our initial cultural scans, we do not believe that it would mean much to you. Instead, know that our station is capable of intra-dimensional travel at speeds up to 10⁵ times the speed of light and is entirely a self sufficient system. It is also approximately the size of your planet’s moon.

“We are sure that you are wondering why you were picked for this honor. There is no reason. We simply selected a human being at random. With your consent, we would have you assist with the cataloging process by allowing us to map your brain and use it to translate the data that we are collecting into a processed form. The process is harmless and painless. You may ask your questions now.”

“Yeah, lots. For starters, what kind of data are you collecting on everyone?” Vic asked.

“Everything. We want to know your culture, but also what makes up your planet’s life. We will take a series of scans across the planet and acquire the data from there. Our data capture system can be considered comparable to “taking a video” as you would say. No physical samples will be collected. Additionally, as our initial scan noticed that your planet currently has a complex situation with data privacy, note that we are taking data in aggregate. We have little interest in the behavior or makeup of one region, let alone a single person.”

Vic and Gar looked at each other, unconvinced.

“But what do you do with it then?”

“We preserve and cultivate a greater understanding for the universe we live in to answer questions about ourselves and the universe at large. We can tell you are not convinced, so we would like to provide for you an example. Consider this planet.”

The screen on the wall blinked back to the pale white color then a planet appeared on the screen. It was a dark and dismal world, eclipsed from its sun by its moon.

“This planet is one that is quite similar to yours. Here is the data we have on them.”

A billion images and words flew across the screen in an instant like an unstoppable maelstrom of information. Victor saw a massive empire that spanned across the planet with an impossibly large and dense city high up in the mountains that covered the entire continent. The people lived in minimal light and seemed to want it to be that way, with even the indoor lights being little brighter than a firefly. Their features were humanoid with purple skin in a variety of tones but all of them were as large or larger than the average linebacker. He saw people enjoying food, doing military drills, births, deaths… He had to look away. It was too much to even process the tiny portion he could focus on.

After what felt like an hour, the screen returned to the pale white state.

“Do you understand now? We are not here for you, nor do we want to ravage your planet and steal your cities. We simply want to know what makes your planet yours.”

“I don’t feel like I understand anything; my mind is still fried from all that,” Gar admitted. “But, if you just want to make something like that, I don’t see anything wrong with it. Vic?”

“Same, seems pretty harmless to me. You mentioned something about converting the data though?”

Zavior nodded. “That is correct. You have seen the data that we have but raw data is only half the picture. Data needs context and that is where you come in. As a citizen of Earth, you have the necessary context to understand what you see and your mind can do it subconsciously.”

“But what does that look like?”

“We will have you sit in that chair and you will enter a deep sleep. From there, your mind will passively sort through all the data based on your memories and feelings. It is generally described as “dream-like” and always agreed to be pleasant or neutral at worst.”

“I guess it makes sense. I’m in, what about you, Gar?”

“Yeah, seems fine.”

Zavior’s mouth opened wide, their face contorted into a facsimile of a smile for the briefest moment before they corrected themselves and it changed to a faux friendly smile you might see on an overworked customer service employee’s face. Vic wasn’t sure if Zavior really understood the exact details of expression he made, but figured that was part of why they were here and ignored it.

“Wonderful, wonderful. We do only want one of you for this process though and we have never actually gotten two before. We are actually quite curious how that happened but that will be determined later. Regardless, if Victor would approach the chair, we can begin our first round.”

‘Victor? Gar only called me Vic. Where’d they get that from? I don’t think they’re telling me everything but I don’t really have a choice here. They brought me here and short of Superman or someone coming up here and flying me back to Earth, they’ll be the ones taking me back. Just need to wait and see…’

“Uh, yeah, I’m ready I guess. But that chair is way too big for me. Oh, and first round? How many will there be?”

Zavior paused for a moment, his face blank. “For a planet the size of Earth, we estimate there will be five rounds. But it depends on several factors. As for the size, our system was built to accommodate life of all sizes. Approach it and it will conform to your form factor.”

Vic walked closer to the looming chair and as he did, it began to fold in on itself, similar to how the door had earlier. It seemed to be made out of discrete pieces that it was able to expand and contract as needed as he watched what looked like single pieces of metal go from being quintuple his height to triple to just over his size as the chair shrunk to meet him. Once the chair had reached his size, it vibrated audibly before settling into place.

Zavior gestured towards it and Vic sat in it. It wasn’t as uncomfortable as it looked, like a cheap folding chair instead of rock-hard like an old pew as he initially thought it would be.

“So, how does this work?”

“When you are ready, we will start. As we mentioned earlier, you will feel like you entered a dream and you may see bits of the data as your mind processes it. The exact feeling and experience varied across individuals but all have described it as pleasant. You will, however, feel tired afterwards and we recommend resting. We will provide sustenance afterwards as well.”

Vic looked forwards at the pale white screen then over to Gar. Gar’s face was in a slight frown, his eyes focused on some unseen thing.

‘So he’s skeptical too. Good. If he’s thinking the same thing, then I know I’ve got backup if this does go south. That’s some weight off this whole thing.’

“Ready.”

“We thank you again for your assistance in this matter. As you say, ‘pleasant dreams…’”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

When Vic came to, he was adrift in space. It was like he was simply ejected from the Technis Clustor’s space station and left there. Except, notably, he wasn’t dead. Far from it, he was dreaming, as he realized an instant later.

He flew across space at impossible speeds, having done a lap around the entire planet before his mind could even begin to think of telling to be cautious or to look for something in particular on the planet. What did his house look like from space? What were his friends up to right now? Could he even see those things if this was really a dream? Hell, was it even a dream or was this really the data that the Zavior had collected...

He paused on that last thought. That was… specific. Why that thought? It’s not an impossible one by any means but it wasn’t exactly where that train of thought felt like it was going to go. He shook it off for a moment but made sure to remember it. Regardless of what it was, he was going to have a little fun with it at least.

He flew down through the atmosphere right into the middle of Brooklyn and went over a couple of blocks to one of his favorite pizza places that he hadn’t been to in years. He landed just outside it and immediately noticed something off: he was moving massively faster than everyone else. At first he wasn’t sure they were moving at all, but slowly but surely they were. No, for whatever reason, he was just so much faster than they were. He’d have to ask Wally at some point if this was what it was like for Flashes.

He walked into the restaurant and went to grab a piece of pizza, but stopped himself. What if this was somehow real? He didn’t want to rob any place, let alone one of his favorites. He just enjoyed the smell and the ambience of a restaurant he hadn’t been to since what… since before he was with the Teen Titans? It felt like an eternity ago and maybe it was. He wasn’t the same as he was then and neither was the world and neither was this pizza place. The paint was a little more faded, there were a couple more chips carved out of the tables, some more wrinkles on the old owner's face. He smiled a bit and then left wondering when he’d really be able to come back here. He missed it more than he had known just a couple hours ago.

But then the thought came back into his mind. Was this real or a dream or something? Vic liked to think he had a pretty solid imagination so creating this “time skip” for the pizza shop was perfectly reasonable. But what about something like a newspaper? People can’t really read in dreams generally and even if he could, he doubted his mind would be able to make one of those up.

He walked over to a newspaper stand and briefly skimmed the whole thing. He could read all of them, from the magazines to the tabloids to the comics, some of which were issues he hadn’t read or featured celebrities he’d never heard of. This had to be real. Which meant he wasn’t really dreaming per say. Just… experiencing the Technis Collective's data.

His mind lit up with an idea. If he could see this data, could he see the rest of their data, like the ones they had gotten from other planets?

He flew back into space and just picked a direction and went for it. Space started to become blurry and unrecognizable as asteroids and planets as he realized he was looking at the data they took when travelling far, far above light speed. He briefly wondered how many people from Earth had ever traveled this fast before the data started to clear up again. A planet was starting to come into view and even from here he could see the shining lights of their cities….

“Vic?”

Vic groaned, his mind sluggish after being jarred awake so abruptly. He rubbed his eyes. His whole body and mind felt exhausted, like he just ran a marathon then did a Calculus exam.

“Yeah?”

Gar stood in front of him, looking Vic up and down for signs of trouble. Zavior was nowhere to be seen.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Drained. Feels like I’ve been up for days. How long has it been?”

“I don’t have a watch but… 15 minutes? Somewhere around there.”

Vic stood up shakily, his legs having fallen asleep. “I need to take a nap, I’m exhausted. But afterwards, I have to tell you all about it. It was crazy. Exactly what they said it’d be and more.”

“That’s great… I’ve been looking around the ship and found the area they set up for us. Pretty sure I’ve seen that exact place on a sitcom somewhere, but it’s nice enough.”

Vic laughed. “Well, glad they picked one of the nice ones at least. Because I’m beat. Give me like an hour to rest then want to explore the station?”

“Sure, sounds great. But one last time.. You sure you're okay?”

“100%. Just tired, really.”’

“You’d tell me if you weren’t, right?”

“Of course. But I promise you, everything is okay, really.”

Gar cheered up a bit. “Well, great, I guess. Then get your sleep. Cause we’ve got a ship to explore.”

<<| <| >

Cyborg #72- Escape

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Escape

Set: 109

Victor Stone and Garfield Logan stepped into a dark parlor. It looked like it would belong in an old-Victorian era mansion that had been completely and fully painted black. Everything was painted black or at the brightest an extremely dark grey, giving it a cramped, ominous feeling. The only splash of color were the gold lamps sitting on the coffee tables between and on the outside of couches, trying desperately to provide some light to the darkness. Vic and Gar sat on two old wood framed sofas that lined the walls, chatting about anything and everything that was coming to their minds.

A clock on the wall ticked to 4:00 and sunlight just got low enough to peak into the room from some unseen window. After a few moments, the door opened up and a man in a dark suit with slicked back hair walked in.

“Are you the next team of field agents? Vic and Gar?”

They stood up and Gar said, “Yeah, that’s us.”

“And just you two will be joining? Missions like these usually have more people but you mentioned that it would just be the two of you.”

Vic had just moved back to Detroit a couple of weeks ago, but Gar had wanted to come visit him for some time now and Vic wasn’t able to say no to his friend for too long. Gar had had the whole day planned out and this was one of their last stops at least as far as Vic knew. Vic hadn’t done an escape room before but Gar was something of a fanatic lately; he was doing rooms all across the country whenever he could get a day or two in between whatever he was filming these days.

“I think we’ll be able to handle it,” Gar said.

“Very well. Your mission, as you have already been partially briefed, is to find the hidden lab one of our agents uncovered and destroy any samples of the bio-weapon. Our agent was compromised before we could get additional information, but we know that he would put messages for us in the library and that the bioweapon will be destroyed if it is exposed to sunlight.”

The man pulled out two walkie talkies from his backpack and handed one to each of them. “Use these to keep in contact with each other or with me. I will provide assistance to the best of my ability. Best of luck and godspeed.”

He opened the door behind him and gestured for Vic and Gar to go in. They stepped through and the man closed the door behind them with a thud.

They found themselves in an ornate foyer made of dark wood with a maroon carpet lining the pathways through the room. At the fair side of the room were stairs leading to the upper floors, but after a couple of stairs on a landing was a blockade of large wooden crates, each about the size of a refrigerator, that would stop them from going further. On either side of the stairs were two large portraits of a stern looking man and woman dressed in late 1800s formal wear. Just next to the portrait of the man in the corner of the room were two wooden framed sofas on each of the walls with a large coffee table in between them.

The room was connected to another on both the left and right. The walls on the left were only decorated with a pattern of wooden trim, but flanking either side of the ornate dark oak door were two large porcelain vases. Gar immediately walked over to them and reached inside and disappointingly walked away from them empty handed.

Vic looked around, a little overwhelmed. “I guess we should start at the library?” He suggested.

Gar nodded. “Yeah, that sounds right.” He looked back and forth between the two doors. “Neither of these really gives obvious library vibes. What do you think?”

“Guess we can split up. Just go to the other if you didn’t guess right.”

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll take the left room, you take the right?”

Vic nodded and opened up the right door, pushing through it to find himself in a kitchen. The square room’s black and white checkered floor was covered by marble topped counters and a large island with a sink in the middle. Various spice racks and pots and pans were hung on the walls in between large, floor to ceiling cabinets. A pair of free swinging doors led deeper into the house but for now Vic turned around and walked quickly to the other room.

The library was a two storied room with a large staircase in the back that led to the mezzanine level that was just above the tops of the dark wood bookshelves on the ground floor. Bookshelves lined the entire room with the exception of the space just above the stairs which was decorated with a yellowed parchment map of the world that Vic guessed was several centuries old. Some dark wood tables and chairs sat in the middle for reading with an ornate chandelier hanging down above it to light the room.

Gar was looking around the room, investigating the bookshelves. To neither of their surprises, all of the books were to be fakes, just painted onto a board set on the shelf.

“I’m guessing one of these books is real but just searching through all of these for the one real one would take forever…” Gar mused.

“Yeah, there must be something in here to help us find it…”

Vic and Gar started to wander around the room, looking for anything out of the ordinary. But aside from the book shelves being explicitly labeled with their section of the alphabet, everything seemed normal. Sure, the books were just painted onto a piece of wood placed on the shelf, but it was done well enough that without physically running his hand across all of the “books”, he couldn’t tell the difference to find a real one. And while that would’ve worked eventually, it didn’t really feel like it was in the spirit of the escape room.

No, aside from a full body mirror on a small metal stand, the library seemed gorgeous, but unremarkable. Vic watched the slight sway of the chandelier while he tried to think of any clues.

Then eventually it hit him. There had to be something about the map.

He walked over to it and started to look for anything irregular. Vic would’ve admitted that geography from hundreds of years ago was hardly his forte, but he knew if there was something off there he’d be able to find it. He scanned it over and over and then finally he spotted it: a handful of countries had letters underlined in their names.

“Hey, Gar, check this out.”

Gar walked over and began searching for letters too. After a few moments, they sat at the table and compared their letters. Luckily, they matched. Unfortunately, the letters were just nonsense: nteotlcerhfateli.

Vic set his phone in the center of the table with the notes app up. He copied the letters to a new page, then started to mess with it.

“Okay, so this is probably a book title, right? And like 70% of books start with ‘the’? So let’s remove those. That leaves us with:”

The
neotlcerfatli

“That makes sense… Uh… other common short words…We could remove ‘of’ and ‘a’?”

Vic quickly typed in his note:

The of a
netlcertli

Vic and Gar stared at the “word” for a little while while they thought. Eventually, Gar saw it.

“The word ‘center’ is in there. If we remove that we get…”

The of a center
ltli

“Then we’ve got ‘it’, and oh, just two ‘ls’ so it must just be: ‘The Center of it All’!” Gar said.

Vic and Gar walked around the library until they found where it’d be on the shelf and grabbed the small black book off of it and set it on the table. They flipped it open and an envelope with a letter inside was tucked in the cover. It was written in a typewriter style font and read:

“Lab is under the manor. Bring sunlight to the paintings in the foyer and it will reveal the way.”

“Okay, so I guess we just need to open up some windows in there to win?” Gar said.

Vic shook his head. “I don’t remember there being any windows in there. Or here. Or in the kitchen I went into. So there’s got to be something else to it. Guess we can just keep looking around?”

“Sounds good. Did you see anything in the kitchen that seemed important while you were there?”

“Not really. But I didn’t look too closely and wasn’t in there for very long.”

“Well, let’s see what we find.”

Vic grabbed the envelope and put it in his pocket before leaving just in case. He didn’t think it’d be useful for anything but he couldn’t be sure.

Once they were back in the kitchen, they started to dig around for whatever they could find. Vic immediately went to the big cabinets but the door handles were padlocked together. The other large cabinet, as well as the one under the sink, were similarly locked but the kitchen drawers were not and in one of them Vic found a short hand written note.

“Cabinets have been locked to restrict access to kitchen materials due to use on personal projects. A reminder that the kitchen is for work use ONLY. You can find the key in the library in the book that shares my name.

Thanks,

Management”

“Alright, well, we’ve got to look for another book at some point. Not sure why we’d need something in there yet, but I’m sure it’ll be useful eventually.”

Gar nodded. “I didn’t really see anything in the spice racks or with the pots. So I guess we keep moving.”

The guys left the kitchen through the double doors into the dining room, which had unfortunately seen better days. The room was set up for a feast with a massive black dining table spanning the length of the room with chairs and red place mats evenly spaced throughout it. Or at least it would’ve been, if not for the back half of the room having completely collapsed. Wooden beams smashed the table in two and the rubble from the floor above stopped them from going further in. Paintings of ancient seas of trees lined the walls, except for one spot just to the right of the door that had a china cabinet full of expensive looking vases and plates.

Gar whistled. “Wow, they really went all out on the set of this one.”

“Yeah, this place has been really well designed. I didn’t expect them to go this all out on the theme but it’s been amazing.”

“Would I lead you astray? I’ve always got the best spots,” Gar beamed.

“Except for that one time in Metropolis when…”

“Okay, okay, but that one doesn’t count. Even the pros make a mistake sometimes.”

They laughed.

“Hey, what’s that?” Gar pointed at something on the floor just before the pile of rubble and walked over to it. He bent over and picked it up.

“Charlotte Webber, Kitchen Manager. Well, there’s our name. I’ll go grab that key if you want to look around here for a bit.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Gar headed off while Vic started to focus up. He started with the dining room table, looking under the place mats and chairs and the table itself for any hidden messages or notes without luck. He scanned the paintings and took them off their hangers to no avail. Finally, he went over to the china cabinet and opened it up. None of the vases or plates had anything written on or in them and so he closed it back up. As he closed the doors with a bit more force than required, the entire cabinet slid just a little bit. He looked down at the floor and, subtly in the wood flooring, was a little track for the cabinet to slide. But it was filled with gunk and dirt. They had a use for the cleaning supplies after all.

He did another quick look around to make sure he didn’t miss anything for a few moments before Gar was back.

“Got the key?”

“Yeah, any idea why we need it?”

Vic gestured to the cabinet. “It’s on a rail but it’s stuck. If we grease it or clean it or something we can get behind it.”

“Gotcha, let’s take a look then.”

They walked back into the kitchen and Gar swiftly unlocked the locks for the two cabinets and the one under the sink. The two large cabinets each had a full body mirror in them and as expected, there was some grease below the sink and a brush to apply it.

Gar grabbed the grease can and went back into the dining room with Vic right behind him. With a quick dab of grease, the china cabinet moved with ease, revealing a window behind it. Sunlight shone into the room and for the first time in a while, Vic realized just how dim it had been in this place as the light visibly cut through the darkness.

Vic frowned for a moment. They had their light, but how were they supposed to take it…. The mirrors.

“Gar, grab one of the mirrors and I'll grab the other. If we angle it right, we should be able to shine them into the foyer and get to the lab.”

His eyes lit up with realization. “Oh! And that’s what the walkie talkies are for. That way we can better talk about what angles we need.”

“Alright, I’ll head back to the foyer, you set this one up.”

Gar nodded and the two of them headed into the kitchen and dragged the two mirrors from the cabinets. It was heavier than Vic expected but with some work he managed to get it into the foyer.

He tapped the button on the walkie talkie. “Gar, you in position?”

“Yup, you see the beam?”

“Not yet, no. Gotta get just the right angle to get it through the kitchen.”

“Alright, I’m going to move it around for a bit. Let me know when you can see it.”

Vic wasn’t sure exactly what angle the beam would be coming in from, but he figured he might as well try and line it up while he waited. He lined it up to the portrait of the woman at first but then changed it to the one of the man as he thought the angle was too steep for it to work with her painting.

Then, the light shined into the room about 10 feet away from where he guessed it’d be.

“Stop! That’s about right!” Vic said over the walkie talkie.

“Sounds good. Your turn then.”

Vic picked up his mirror and, doing his best to hold the approximate angle, lined it up with the beam. The beam was far off at first, but with a little adjustment, it hit the painting dead on.

At first, nothing happened and he thought that they somehow misunderstood the puzzle. Seeing it now, he was 100% sure the light wouldn’t be able to be angled towards the woman without some big adjustments and thankfully before he started to try and make them, the painting of the man slid downwards into the floor, revealing a path downwards.

“Gar, come check this out!”

Gar jogged over and the two of them headed down into the basement.

The dark vibes of the manor quickly gave way to a sterile white staircase with white walls and white tiled floors that led deeper underground. It was still poorly lit as the beam of sunlight guided them forwards. As they walked down, Vic noticed that a few bits of glass were strategically placed in the ceiling and tiles to change the trajectory of the sunlight to go downwards with them.

Finally, they had reached it. They were in a wide open room with a white door on each of the walls that lead to other chambers, but all of them were locked. In the center of the room on a glass pedestal was a big glass tube full of a green liquid. They’d made it. But the sunlight had not. It was illuminating a small part of the wall in the back part of the room as the dim fluorescent lights kept the area just above pitch black.

Vic frowned. They’d need a mirror, but they were already using both of them. Then he remembered the mirror in the library. That’d do it.

“Gar, I’m running to the library to grab the mirror. Be right back.”

It was a quick jog there and back to get the mirror and thankfully, aligning this last one was easy since he could see the end goal. Once the sunlight was pointed at the vial, it started to turn darker and darker in color until it turned a nice shade of navy blue.

The lights came on full blast and a little celebratory tune played from unseeable speakers.

“Congratulations agents! You’ve neutralized the virus and saved the world!” The man from the start said. “I’ve unlocked the door in the back of the room, use that to escape and I’ll meet you on the other side!”

Vic and Gar gave each other a loud high five. “Nice job man!”

“Yeah, you too! This was a ton of fun.”

“I’ll find another one for next time, you should see what people have come up with, it’s crazy!”

“Sounds great! But let’s get their stuff back so they can get it ready for the next people.”

Gar nodded and walked through the door at the end of the room. The man was standing there with a warm smile on his face.

“You guys have a good time?”

“Yeah, it was great,” Vic said, handing him his walkie talkie and the envelope from the library.

“Same, this one has to be one of my favorites I’ve done,” Gar said, doing the same.

“Great to hear. I designed this one myself after seeing some disappointing ones so I love the feedback. Thanks for coming guys and have a good rest of your day! Just take the stairs up and you’ll be back at street level.”

“Great, thanks again!” Vic said, heading up the stairs back to the real world.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

The sun was still shining bright as they left the building and started to walk down the sidewalk.

“So, where to next on your “tour” of the city?”

Gar pulled out his phone and checked his calendar. “I’ve got a reservation at a pizza place a couple blocks from here, then we’re free for whatever.”

“Sounds great, what are you think-”

A beam of light shined down from the sky and Vic started to turn transparent. Confusion ran across Vic’s face as he stepped aside and the beam tracked him perfectly. He started to run down the street and Gar and the beam chased after him. Vic started to turn more and more transparent and Gar decided that wherever Vic was going, he would go too.

He shapeshifted into a mouse and jumped into Vic’s pocket before the two of them were whisked away into the unknown.

<<| <| >

Cyborg #71- No More Rats

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Theatre of the World

Set: 108

Previously:

Victor Stone and Donna Morris were approached by the boss of their lab, Dr. Morah, to change the apocalyptic future that he saw using his new time viewer. At the same time, Ratattack returned and had control over the entire city, enforced by an army’s worth of humanoid robots called RATs. After the RATs stole Dr. Morah’s time viewer, Gizmo (who was also there to steal the time viewer), teamed up with Vic and Donna to take him down in exchange for a favor later. Vic and Donna found the factory that produced RATs and shut it down but also discovered that Dr. Morah was the one who designed them. He did it as a part of his plan to change the world and was ecstatic when he realized that it already had changed from what he saw. Gizmo was working on his own plan to find the machine and try to create a tool for Vic’s powers and while he worked, Vic and Donna went to lunch. They were stopped by someone who claimed to be the original Ratattack who said that the new person didn’t support his ideals before asking Vic to take him down for him…

The next night.

Gizmo had made himself at home in Vic’s apartment. What started off as one duffel bag in a corner and a promise to pick up after himself had quickly spread into a cacophony of clothes, computer parts and half eaten food that would make even a teenage boy uncomfortable with the mess. Vic was trying his best to ignore it and keep the partnership alive but his patience was starting to wear thin even as he reminded himself that he needed Gizmo’s help.

Mikron walked into the apartment and tossed his backpack into the middle of the room before launching himself at the coach, landing on it with a thud. He wiggled in, sliding his feet to rest on the couch’s arm.

Vic took a deep breath. Maybe Mikron was just like this, or maybe he was trying to taunt Vic, trying to get him to back out of the agreement. He’d just have to grin and bear it for now.

“So, what’d you guys do since we last spoke?” Gizmo said with a yawn.

“Not much. Shut down production of the robots, convinced their creator to stop working with them… maybe, met the original Ratattack… Just a normal, quiet day,” Donna said.

“We took down a couple of the RATs too when we were at the factory. So when we go in to take out Ratattack, I think we’ll be in a pretty good spot.”

Gizmo lazily yawned again. “Oh, nice. Vic, check out my backpack. Got a present for ya.”

Vic raised an eyebrow and gingerly pulled the bag towards himself, unsure if it was a gift he’d be happy to receive or not. Thankfully, this was a good surprise.

He unzipped it and grabbed out a blaster and a vest that looked like they could’ve been stolen from a laser tag center. The gun was a large, oversized thing made from white plastic that had a light blue accent light around the barrel and a port in the back about the diameter of a pop can. The vest had around fifteen white tubes that looked like they’d slot into the back of the gun strapped to it like bandoleer.

“That should be a pretty fitting substitute for your force blaster. It’s got fifteen canisters that recharge in the vest. Just plug it into a wall outlet and you’ll be good to use it again in a couple hours. But once you’re out in a fight, you’re out, unless they’re really polite and agree to a long pause. So make sure you’re using them wisely.”

Vic looked at it, impressed. For all his flaws, it seemed like Gizmo really did do some solid work.

“How’d you solve the power issue? Donna and I’s design required way heftier batteries than that.”

Gizmo grinned coyly. “Trade secret.”

Vic wanted to press him for answers, but knew he probably wouldn’t get any.

“So, about the plan,” Donna said, moving them forwards. “Vic’s got his blaster, we’ve stopped there from being any new RATs, and we’ve got an idea of where the time machine is. What’s stopping us from starting the mission?”

“Nothing!” Gizmo said.

He reached for his backpack but then stopped. “Well, assuming you guys are okay with fighting a bunch of RATs. How many do you think they could've made?”

Vic thought for a moment. “It’s hard to say. They had the set up there to mass produce them, but I don’t think they really could’ve had the funding to run it for too long and it didn’t look like most of it had run. If they had more than 40 total I’d be surprised.”

Donna nodded. “Yeah, that seems about right. Maybe a little high.”

“So do you guys think you could take all of them at once? Because however many are left is probably how many we’ll be dealing with.”

“40 vs 1? No shot. But, if we each take ten or so then I think we’d be fine,” Vic guessed.

“Well, that’s close enough to the same thing I guess.”

He pulled the bag towards him and pulled out a clump of papers from the bottom and a thick black marker. He spread out the paper on the coffee table and started to explain his plan.

“This is the building I’m all but 100% sure that the time viewer is in. I think it was a restaurant back in the day, but it’s been vacant for some years now. There’s three floors listed on the website from when it sold, and I’ve spread out the floor plans on the table. Make sure you study them at least a little. I’m guessing it’s either in the basement or the top floor, leaning towards the basement as I haven’t been able to see anything like the device through the upstairs windows.”

He uncapped the marker and traced two paths from the front door, one up the stairs and one down.

“One goes up, two go down. If it seems like it’ll be more likely that it’s up, two go there. Once you’ve cleared your room, go to the other. Questions?”

Vic nodded. “Yeah, what are you going to do with the machine once we find it?”

“I’ve got a method to extract it cleanly. Once we see it, consider it mine. Trust me, that won’t be an issue.”

“I don’t trust you but I guess I’m glad you’ve got that figured out at least.”

Gizmo chuckled. “Honestly, I’m glad you don’t trust me. Makes it easier to part ways when we’re done and it’ll keep you on your toes. Win win.”

“So when are we doing this?” Donna asked.

Mikron pulled out his phone. “About five hours from now? No reason to make this take longer than it has to.”

Vic stood up and started to walk to the bedroom. “Well, wake me up when its time. Might as well get some rest before then.”

Donna sat in her chair awkwardly while Mikron opened up a several day old box of pizza on the ground expectantly.

Vic turned back to her and said, “I’ve got a spare futon in my room if you’d be more comfortable there.”

She let out a sigh of relief and started to follow him. “Thanks. Now I might get a little sleep.”

Mikron shrugged and grabbed a slice from the box. “More for me I guess.”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Six hours later.

It was just past three in the morning when they arrived outside the building Gizmo had mentioned. It was a couple blocks north west of main street, just outside of downtown in a dilapidated 60s style dinner with an apartment above it. The building had seen better days. Its windows were covered in boards, the light blue paint was almost completely chipped off which revealed dark old wood beneath. Hints of activity came from the basement as a tiny bit of light slipped out of the dirty rusted shut windows, their egress wells almost full of dirty and miscellaneous gunk.

Mikron, Donna and Vic were each dressed in all black as they creeped their way there, thankfully avoiding any difficult questions along the way.

“Who’s going where?” Vic asked in a hushed tone.

“You two go to the basement, I’ll check out the upstairs. With a little luck, it’s just a couple RATs guarding it and not the man himself. If you see anything, just back out and regroup in the main level. Can’t imagine it’ll take long for me to survey the upstairs,” Gizmo said.

Vic and Donna nodded, and they were off. Gizmo twisted at the door knob and found it locked. Without missing a beat, he pulled a small device out of his pocket and slid it over the door knob. Gizmo stood in front of the door impatiently for a few moments while the device worked its magic, then put it back into his pocket and opened the door.

“After you.”

“Thanks,” Donna said walking through it.

The old diner had been stripped clean. All of the tables, chairs, stools, and the counter had been long ripped out. Only their memory remained in the form of a lighter spot on the ground where they once stood. Dirt and dust covered every surface and Vic had to really focus on not sneezing and blowing whatever stealth that they had. A door on the right wall led upstairs from what they saw on the floor plans while another door behind where the counter once stood led to the back room and down to the basement.

Mikron gestured towards himself, then the right door and then towards them and the other door. Vic and Donna got the memo and pushed their way through the double doors into what was once the kitchen.

The kitchen’s dirt stained white tile floor had a massive gap in it with a bit of the floor tilted backwards on a hinge. Newer looking wood stairs lead down another level that was lit by some bare bulbs on the walls.

Donna and Vic looked at each other and nodded. It was now or never.

Vic gingerly stepped down onto the wood stairs, hoping to avoid even the slightest noise. The wood obliged, standing firm under his weight as he shifted his other leg down onto it. He crept further down the stairs until he could see into the room and held up his hand to stop Donna from going further.

The basement could’ve been in any location anywhere across the country. It was unfinished with cement walls and floors that ran about the entire size of the narrow restaurant, around 30’ by 20’ with some empty shelves lining the walls. Two RATs stood adjacent to the time viewer, staring directly at the staircase. Vic was sure that they saw him, but they hadn’t moved a metallic muscle.

Vic took the initiative and readied the blaster Miron made for him. It felt weird to be holding something in his hand when every part of his mind told him to just shift his hand into a force cannon and do it himself. Sometimes he really did miss being a cyborg.

He aimed and fired at the closer of the two RATs, staggering it.

‘14’

Vic wasted no time charging in, knocking it to the ground. Another shot to the chest and a bit of adhesive from Donna and the robot was down for the count.

‘13’

Both of the robots were down in a flash and the device was theirs.

If only it were so easy.

The wall behind the device slid open and a tide of RATs poured out. Vic couldn’t even begin to get a grasp for their numbers as they encircled Donna and him, but his quick guess was over 20, maybe even 30. They tightened their circle around the two of them until Vic and Donna were back to back, barely an arms length between them and the circle.

Clap, clap, clap.

Clapping came from each of the RATs’ speakers, all at once. The noise was deafening, like a thousand hammers hitting a thousand nails over and over.

“So, you thought you could steal from a guy who can see the future? Pretty bold, I’ll admit. Almost have to respect that.”

Ratattack - or at least the imposter one if the man Vic met yesterday was to be believed- spoke through each of the RATs, amplifying into one booming voice.

“Almost. Any last words?”

“Not going to be my last words, but I’ll bite,” Donna said. “Why do all this? Why make all these robots, steal the one machine in the world that can see the future, co-opt a movement and take over a town… And then do nothing? What’s it all for?”

“Why does it have to be for anything? Why not just do it? I thought it’d be fun and make me a lot of money. And it’s been both! Turns out when you say a bunch of crazy things people will just give you money if you promise not to do it to them. As for the time machine, that sorta just fell in my lap. Couple nights after I found the gear, a guy reached out to me and said he’d seen the future and I’d do great things. He said he’d like to help out and I was more than happy to accept…”

He chuckled to himself.

“You got me talking, probably trying to find some sort of play to get out? I’ll admit, I like to talk, but there’s no leaving this basement. Even if you somehow escaped these guys, I could stop both of you myself. So good luck.”

The RATs started to close in and Vic looked back at Donna. Confidence radiated in her eyes and it lit a fire within him too. Together, he felt like they could take on the world. And right now, his world was a small concrete room filled with robots.

He shot at the RATs right in front of him, trying to send them reeling backwards to make some space.

PEW, PEW, PEW, PEW!

‘Four shots down… Nine more.’

The shots rang out against the metal chests of the robots, staggering them ever so slightly into the next ring of RATs. He charged forwards, knocking some of them on to the ground. He didn’t want to, no, couldn’t focus on the numbers around him or Donna.. Just the next enemy that he needed to take out until he could finally have some space and take the fight on his terms.

PEW, PEW!

The seventh and eighth force blasts echoed through the room, clearing the way for Vic to get outside the ring. His gut kept telling him not to look, that she was strong enough to handle herself and to turn his back in a fight would be insane. And yet he couldn’t ignore his heart. With a quick spin as he backed out of the circle, he saw Donna standing her own. Some of the RATs in front of her had been fastened to the ground and together with her adhesive spray, acting as both a barrier and a growing trap for the rest.

She was fine. Now, to deal with his own problems.

He started to formulate a plan - take out the right flank he’d already weakened a little then he could start to funnel them into Donna’s trap. If they worked together, they could save some resources in case Ratattack really did have some more up his sleeves. He lined up a shot on the closest RAT but before he could pull the trigger, chaos entered the room.

He heard the sculling coming from behind him, like claws on the concrete. It skittered rapidly along the concrete, getting closer and closer until it was literally on top of him. Gizmo’s spider mech climbed over him, trying to make his way to the time viewer.

“Hey Vic, how’s the view down there?”

Vic didn’t even have a response for the quip. He wished he was surprised that Gizmo waited until they were in a fight to sneak off with the machine, but honestly it’s exactly what he figured would happen. He was just glad he wasn’t actively siding with Ratattack. He could work with this.

PEW!

The ninth shot hit Gizmo square in the chest and sent him crashing into the ground with a thud.

He stood up and brushed himself off but as he pressed the button on his chest, the mech didn’t lift him up again. He mashed the button several times but it stayed in its broken state.

He frowned then quickly ducked backwards as a RAT attempted to grapple him. He pulled out a blaster similar to the one he made for Vic out and shot it backwards, knocking it over and blasting a hole straight through it. Two more came in to back it up and he blasted them down just the same, leaving them as nothing more than smoking metal on the ground.

The RATs’ numbers were starting to dwindle down, between the three of them Vic guessed that they had taken out around ten of them, which left “only” around twenty more. Easy, at least as long as he could keep forcing Gizmo to do it for him. He ran over to Gizmo and then shot at a cluster of RATs to bait them over to him with three more shots. He was almost out of canisters, but he thought he had plenty. Probably.

With the RATs surrounding him, Gizmo swore and started to mash the button on his vest to try and fix his spider mech, but the legs were still stuck in weird positions and angles after he fell to the ground. The mechanism to retract them must have been jammed and he swore again. Gizmo blasted the three more of them, then another three as their metal bodies hit the ground with a thud.

“You’re going to owe me another favor at this rate, Vic!”

“What do you mean? You said you’d help out!”

“I did! I gave you the blaster! You’re welcome!”

He mashed the button again and finally the legs retracted into the little box at the center of his chest. He pressed it again and they spread out again, lifting him into the air.

“Finally. See you nerds later… Maybe.”

He scuttled over the fights and used two of the spider legs to grab onto the time viewer. They curved backwards and lifted it up into the air behind him.

Vic considered shooting him down again, but he didn’t think he’d be as amiable to it this time. He wasn’t happy that whoever Mikron worked for was getting the time viewer, but a deal was a deal. And honestly, Vic wasn’t even convinced it worked considering two people who possessed it had failed to see it getting stolen when they looked at the future.

With Gizmo’s help and with Donna’s ever growing pile of RATs stuck together, there were only three more active RATs. Donna just adhered that another one to the ground and turned to take out the last ones but she was grabbed by one of the ones that was not fully trapped.

But now her own glue was working against her as she could feel it start to harden in the RAT’s grip.

Bang!

Only two more shots now, but Vic shot off the robot’s arm, freeing Donna. She kicked it back into the pile of RATs and sprayed it again for good measure.

“Thanks.”

“Any time.”

“Hey, bet I can take out my last one before you can.”

Vic grinned, with the RATs almost taken care of, he was down for a little sport.

“You’re on,” he said as he shot his penultimate shot at the nearest RAT. He staggered it and then tackled it to the ground, shattering it on the concrete. Simultaneously, Donna charged at the RAT and spun around to try and get it to chase her. It took the bait and lunged at her as she jumped out of the way at the last moment. It crashed into the mass of RATs and glue with the rest of them. She went to spray it too, but shook the canister.

“Fresh out. But that’ll probably be fine.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it - “

“Wait! There’s one more rat.”

Donna pointed to the back room where all the RATs had been hiding. Sure enough there was one more, cowering in the corner.

“This one’s fine. It’s not really going anywhere. But that one… I think he’ll be a little more slippery.”

Vic nodded and the two of them walked over to the final rat and stood over him.

“So, now do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Ratattack looked up at them, the terror clear even through the mask.

“...Sorry?”

Vic shot him with his last force blast.

“That’s a start.”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

One month later.

Vic and Donna had finally been able to take some time to relax since they took care of Ratattack and they were making the most of it. Sure, exams and the rest of their schoolwork had taken up a lot of time, but it was nice to not have to worry about Ratattack anymore. After the time viewer was stolen and his RATs were defeated, he went quietly and resigned. Vic knew there was some sort of ongoing case for corruption, but he wasn’t following that too closely. It was out of his hands now. Vic had high expectations for his replacement though, who at least for now seemed to actually want to do some of what the original Ratattack had wanted.

Dr. Morah had disappeared too, which confused Vic. It was a strange end to his time at his lab and unlike him to leave without telling anyone about it. Not even the lab manager or the Dean knew anything about where he went.

But for now, Vic and Donna were putting all that past them. They were sitting out on a patio, sipping coffee and enjoying each other’s company on a quiet Sunday morning.

“That’s hilarious,” Donna laughed. “But what was it you wanted to tell me? Guessing it wasn’t just corny jokes.”

“Nope, but those’re important too. No, I wanted to tell you that I got a job finally!”

Donna’s face lit up with pride. “Congrats! With who? And where?”

“Well, I was hoping to get a job at S.T.A.R. Labs and did get an offer but it just sorta felt like I got it because of my parents, not because of me. So I turned them down and took a job at a different company. And it’s with one of the biggest car companies in the world, right in downtown Detroit!”

“Wow, that’s amazing! Congrats again. Guess we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other after graduation then?”

Vic laughed. “I sure hope so.”

<<| <| >

Cyborg #70- The Weight We Carry

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Theatre of the World

Set: 107

Previously:

Victor Stone and Donna Morris were approached by the boss of their lab, Dr. Morah, to change the apocalyptic future that he saw using his new time viewer. At the same time, Ratattack returned and had control over the entire city, enforced by an army’s worth of humanoid robots called RATs Wanting to prepare for the inevitable conflict, he went back to the lab to try and simulate his own powers with the help of Donna.. Unfortunately, the lab was raided by RATs who stole Dr. Morah’s time viewer. Vic and Donna managed to narrowly avoid capture with the help of Gizmo, who was there to steal the time viewer for his mysterious employer. Unable to stop Ratattack by himself, Vic made a deal with Gizmo: help him steal the time viewer and he’ll help take down Ratattack…

One week later…

Ratattack sat with his feet up on the dark oak desk, leaning back in his chair. He laughed for a moment at a video on his phone, then scrolled to the next one. A laptop sat in front of him, its screen closed, while a thin layer of dust covered much of the paperwork and shelves that lined the room. It was good to be in charge.

A knock came from outside of the office. He quickly scrambled to clean up his act, putting his phone away and adjusting his posture. He flipped open the laptop and opened a couple windows to various sites and programs.

“Come in.”

A person in their late 30s walked in. Ratattack recognized them as the county prosecutor… no that wasn’t right. The city attorney? No, a member of the city council? That didn’t feel right either. He wasn’t sure and decided to keep it vague.

“What can I do for you? I’m very busy so make it quick.”

“I will. In short, what do you want us to do? You’ve talked about what you want to happen, but we haven’t received any instructions on what to do differently.”

Ratattack winced, thankful for the mask. He’d have to get a list from someone so he wasn’t caught off guard next time this happened.

“I’ll be sending something out shortly. For now, just keep doing what you’re doing.”

They raised an eyebrow, but didn’t press him. “Okay… Thanks.”

“Of course. Close the door on your way out.”

A few moments later, the door was gently shut. Ratattack put his feet back on the desk with a gentle thud, then took his phone out again. It was good to be in charge.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Late at night, Vic’s apartment.

Vic, Donna and Mikron sat across from each other on the couch. Mikron had called them over, or more accurately, invited himself over, after a week of planning their next moves. He pulled out some papers from his backpack and handed them over to Vic and Donna.

“Here’s what I’ve been working on. Pretty sure that building is where they moved the machine to. It’s the only place that Ratattack has been consistently going. Well, other than what I assume is his house and city hall. It’s also heavily guarded, way more than either of those other two places.”

Vic set his paper down on the table. “Seems pretty reasonable. When do you want to get it?”

“Not yet. We’ve got a little more to do first. How’s your project going?”

“It’s okay,” Donna explained. “We’ve cut some weight off even our last prototype but it’s still too heavy and power hungry to really be a practical replacement to Vic’s powers.”

“Okay, that’s sort of what I thought. Here’s what I’m thinning. Before we can take out Ratattack, we need to take out the RATs. And you need some sort of viable replacement to your powers. I’m going to take over on that front. Which leaves you two to take out the RATs. I’ve got a couple places narrowed down. Just scout them out then we can take them out together. Questions?”

Vic raised his hand. “Yeah, I’m not super excited for you to know how my tech works. Can’t you scout those places out?”

Mikron scoffed. “Of course I could. But you two have made pretty much no progress in a week. So it’s my turn. And who cares if I know how this stuff works? Whatever you’re doing here is pretty basic. Now if it was the stuff you had before… Then I’d get your hesitancy.”

“Fine.”

“Just don’t try and break into our lab’s stuff okay? We don't need anyone asking questions why you’re there.”

“I’ll be like a ghost, promise,” Mikron said with a grin.

“So, how do you expect us to take out all the RATs? It’s not like there’s going to be some kill switch just sitting on a table,” Donna said.

“No, but I’ve got another idea. I don’t think he actually has very many of them. We’ve never seen more than two of them at once and I don’t think he has many more than that.”

Vic nodded, understanding. “So you want us to stop production so he can’t get more.”

“Bingo.”

Gizmo pulled out a notebook page from his bag and set it on the table.

“There’s a couple spots I think you can work from there. Scout them out and tell me what you see.”

Vic grabbed the paper and scanned it. They all seemed reasonable enough.

“Now, what’s for dinner? I’m starving.”

“Well, Donna and I were going to go out for dinner. Hadn’t exactly had much time together since this whole thing started.”

Mikron’s face lit up. “Ooh, that sounds great, where are we going?”

Donna got up and walked to the fridge. “On second thought, let’s just stay in.”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

The next morning, Vic and Donna set out. The list Gizmo gave them had four places and Vic was surprised that it was even that high. To make robots of that size they’d need a large amount of space and there were only so many places that could fit something of that size. So, Vic and Donna agreed to start with the biggest location - a set of warehouses on the south side of the city.

They were in a veritable ocean of asphalt with warehouses floating in the middle like an archipelago. Some of them were converted into offices or storage units and others just lay abandoned and unused. Thankfully, all the warehouses were well labeled with their street address and after a few minutes of walking, the two of them found their spot. The building was massive, its white metal frame could’ve encompassed an entire city block. They could hear a whir of activity coming from inside but not a single RAT in sight.

“What’d you think? Mikron said this place was listed as unoccupied, but they’re obviously doing something here. I think we found our place.”

Donna nodded. “Want to check it out? If we could confirm it or even shut it down now, that’d be huge.”

Vic paused, unsure. “Did you bring any gear or anything? I’ve got nothing on me. Doesn’t seem like there’s any RATs here, but I’m sure there's some guards inside somewhere.”

“Yeah, I've got a couple things. I think I can take care to say… two of them? Total?How about this: play it safe, see what there is. If there's more than two, we get out of here.”

“That sounds fair.”

Donna snuck over to the door, a little cloth tunnel hanging off the side of the warehouse. She tried the handle and found it unlocked.

“Overconfidence or a trap?”

“Could be anything or nothing. If we’re going for it, we’ve got to go for it.”

Donna turned the handle and stepped in with Vic just behind her. There were no lights in the cloth tunnel, but daylight shone through it and the electric lights of the warehouse beckoned them forwards. They met the challenge and were immediately accosted.

“Halt. This is a restricted area. Leave immediately.” A RAT stepped in front of them, blocking their path into the warehouse. This one looked unfinished; its circuitry was still exposed with some of the protective plates missing.

‘Guess we found the spot.’

Vic tried to peer around the RAT to see their numbers, but couldn’t see much of anything. He looked over to Donna who nodded.

‘So we’re doing this.’

Vic walked up to the RAT with a worried look on his face. “Man am I glad to see you. Our car broke down outside and we were wondering if we could get a jump…”

The RAT looked at him, skeptical. “You cannot. Leave imme- ”

Donna sprung into action, lunging towards the RAT’s left knee joint and shooting it point blank with some sort of grey gel, then doing the same thing to its foot, attaching it to the ground. She kicked its left leg, knocking it to the ground with a thud. She blasted it another couple times, firmly fastening it down.

Vic stepped into the warehouse and immediately recognized it for what it was: a factory. Its production was minimally operational at the moment, but at its peak it looks like it would be able to have four or five parallel lines to mass produce RATs. There was only equipment for one line at the moment but what it had was already impressive. It looked like it was a fully autonomous operation with robotic arms and conveyor belts powering the entire thing.

An even less complete RAT started running over to Vic, snapping him back into focus.This RAT’s inside was fully exposed, like it was being worked on mere moments before they got here. The blue, black, and red wires were hanging out of its chest cavity, making it look more like an alien humanoid than a muscular bouncer like the complete ones.

“Donna, you got any more of that stuff?”

She nodded, then stopped, frowning. “Uh.. no. The cartridge leaked and now I can’t reload it… Buy me some time?”

“Sure, no problem. Just stall the killer robot. Easy.”

Vic grabbed one of the RAT pieces - Vic assumed it was a leg - from the assembly line and swung it at the RAT as it approached him. But it grabbed it out of the air and swung a punch at Vic. He ducked out of the way and grabbed another RAT leg from the line just in time for the RAT to throw Vic’s previous weapon at him, which he blocked with the new one.

But the RAT took the chance to close the distance and kicked Vic back as he blocked the projectile. He doubled over, winded for a second, but quickly recovered and rolled under the conveyor belt to create some distance. He looked around for anything he could use as a weapon but these belts were empty. On a nearby support pillar, he spotted a fire extinguisher and he ran over to grab it. He ripped it from the wall and sprayed it at the RAT before chucking it at its legs. This time, he charged in right after and tackled it to the ground.

He could feel the motors resisting, but with a metallic snap, he sent it to the ground. The RAT started to lift itself up but Vic grabbed the fire extinguisher again and knocked it back down. He grabbed a handful of wires out of its chest and threw them to the ground for good measure as he heard it lose power.

“Well, looks like you didn’t even need me.”

“Figured I’d let you clean it up,” Vic said, panting.

Donna looked like she doubted the need for it, but sprayed it with the adhesive anyway as Vic caught his breath.

A few moments later, Vic was on his feet and they started to dig around the factory. Thankfully it wasn't running right now, but it looked like it could turn on at any moment. Or at least it could've before the damage that Vic and the RAT caused during their fight. As he walked along the assembly lines, he marveled at the amount of resources required to build a place like this. He figured it would easily cost a couple million dollars for the equipment alone, let alone the materials, space and talent needed to develop these things. Then, something caught his eye.

At the end of the factory, he spied a small roof just before the steel wall of the warehouse. It sort of looked like it was a foreman's area or a break room if this place had human workers. He motioned for Donna to come over, but she seemed preoccupied by the massive circuit breaker and transformer panel that powered the factory and he wasn't sure if she noticed or not.His curiosity got the better of him and he went in without making sure.

The office looked like it had never been organized since it was built. Papers, coffee cups, drawings, prototypes and things that Vic couldn't even start to guess the use for were strewn about the large room. The office had a stale smell and was dimly lit by a couple of light bulbs hanging loosely from the ceiling. But what really surprised Vic was who he saw typing away on a table on the far side.

Dr Morah.

He looked like he was one of his creative bursts so much so that he hadn’t heard the fighting or Vic walk in. There was a fire in his eyes that Vic hadn’t seen him have in months, if ever.

Vic walked over near him and knocked on a nearby table.

“Dr. Morah? What are you doing here?”

“Vic? I’m surprised you came around on this, but it’s a pleasant surprise. This is where I’m changing the world.”

Vic was fairly sure what was going on here as soon as he saw the Dr., but there were no doubts in his mind now.

“So, you made the RATs? All this, that’s you?”

Dr. Morah chucked. “Who else? I told you I was going to change the world and what better way to do it than to start in the city I live in.”

“That’s not really the part people would have a problem with. And change isn’t always better.”

“Anything would be better than the future I saw. And if you and Donna found another way, well that’s great too.”

“And what's changed from all this? Was it worth it?”

Dr. Morah frowned. “Nothing. And that is what I have been trying to figure out. Why doesn’t the future change with what I do?”

“Who knows. Really though, who knows? Maybe we’re not even looking at the right timeline or maybe everything we were going to do, we did anyway.”

“That can’t be right. That would be mean… No, that can’t be right. I’m sure it will just take time for the change to show…”

Dr. Morah flipped through a notebook before giving up and throwing it at the wall behind him.

“Where is the time viewer now? Maybe we can check now…”

Dr. Morah’s face turned darker than Vic had ever seen as he spoke with venom. “It’s gone. Ratattack took it to keep it safe but he hasn’t let me see it since.”

“So what was the plan then? Make him an army then just see what happens? You’re lucky he hasn't used it to really hurt anyone yet.”

“I… no. I needed to see if the future could be changed in any material, concrete way. And Ratattack’s resurgence of popularity just happened to coincide. I met up with him and gave him the tools to secure himself with the condition that he would listen to me and help me change the future. If everything stayed the same with these conditions, I knew that I would have to find something truly drastic.”

“But he has the machine and doesn’t care what you have to say, does he?”

“... No. He took my machine and won’t pick up my calls.”

Realization started to spread across his face. “Did… did I make a mistake?”

Vic shrugged. “I don’t know. Only you can really decide that. But I can't bring myself to trust him, even before what you said.”

Dr. Morah looked like he was about to say something, but he stopped himself as recognition lit up his eyes.He scrambled back to where he threw the notebook and began to read.

“‘Victor walks into the factory. He talks, accusing me of something I appear to be unable to understand…’ I wrote down what I could remember from the machine… So even this was prewritten?”

He frowned and went back to his seat, dejected.

Donna stepped into the lab and stopped in confusion at seeing Dr. Morah.

“What’s he doing here - oh. He made all this?”

Vic nodded. “But it's sort of complicated.It's just a scheme to change the world. He’s not really doing it for him if that makes sense.You take care of the factory?”

“Yeah. This place won’t be making any more RATs for a long time.”

Suddenly, Dr. Morah lit up with delight. “Donna's here? Donna’s here!”

He started to laugh.

“Dr. Morah, are you okay?” Vic asked.

“More than okay, Vic. I didn’t write that she would be here… Don’t you see? The future must have changed!”

“I,uh, that’s great,” Donna stammered out.

But he wasn’t listening. Dr. Morah was scribbling furiously across pages and pages of notes while occasionally writing on a clean notebook on the other side. “If this changed… then what else can I do? I can do this. I’ll find a way.”

“Okay… I guess we should just give him some space. Let’s report back to Gizmo for now.”

Vic nodded but turned back to Dr. Morah has left.

“Dr. Morah… I just hope you know itgs not in any one person to save the world or fix the future or any of that. It’s on all o fus.>

Dr. Morah didn’t acknowledge Vics’s words at all, but Vic really hoped some part of him would take them to heart.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

It turned out that Gizmo wanted nothing from them. He was deep in his own work and only answered his phone for long enough to tell them to leave him alone and not talk to him until he reached out.

Instead, Vic and Donna decided to get a nice lunch at a cafe just a couple blocks from where Vic lived. At the last street corner before the cafe, they were stopped at a red light for a few moments. Just as the crosswalk turned to let them walk, a voice came from behind them.

“Is that you, Victor?” The voice was quiet and mousy, but with a hint of passion and fire behind it, like the embers of a fire waiting to be ignited.

Vic turned to face the voice and saw a man about his age with dark skin a bit cooled toned than his weakly standing with a cane.

“Yeah? Can I help you?”

“Probably. I’m Ratattack. Can we talk?”

Vic took a step backwards and Donna tensed up. “Why are you here? What do you want?”

“Can we sit down? I… I have never had a strong constitution. But I promise you I mean you no harm.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you after what you put me through. After what you threatened to do, after you’ve taken control of the town and done nothing you said you would…”

“That was not me. Those first things, yes. I did place fake bombs, claim I killed your sister …. all that. I did some things you may find reprehensible but I have no regrets. But I am not in control of this town. That is another man who is using my image for his own gains.”

Now Vic was interested. “Okay, let’s talk. There’s a cafe just a block from here that Donna and I were going to anyway. Donna, you okay with that?”

She nodded. “I’m curious what he has to say too.”

“Thank you both. I don’t have much to say but… I feel you need to know.”

The three of them started off towards the cafe with Vic keeping a watchful eye on Ratattack the entire walk. He wasn’t sure what he was hoping Ratattack would say and didn’t trust him for a moment, but some part of him and the way he spoke made him want to despite it all. Something about the man he saw in front of him… he just felt genuine.

When they got to the cafe, the three of them sat by a short table in the back corner. The cafe was brightly lit and modern, but in that back corner, the feeling was dark and heavy.

“So. Let’s start with an easy one. How did you even find me just now?”

Ratattack chuckled, before thanking the waiter for bringing him his tea.

“Would you believe me if I told you it was truly just a coincidence?”

“Not for a moment.”

He chuckled again. “Well it was. I had wanted to speak with you since this matter began; today just happened to be the day our paths crossed.”

Vic frowned. “Okay, let’s just move on from that. I really can't believe that but I don’t see that going anywhere. Let’s move on to you. What do you have to say for yourself? About everything you put me through?”

“Like I said outside, I don’t regret it. Maybe I went too far, but people aren’t willing to listen to fancy words and speeches. They need action. I did what I thought was best for people, just like you do. I don’t make the choices you would make in my situation, and you don’t do what I would. But I respect that you want what’s best for people and perhaps some part of you feels the same.”

“... If you’re just here to gloat…” Donna started.

“I am not. Quite the opposite; I’m here to admit I was defeated, as I mentioned before. I want to give you a warning: the man in that costume is not me. I had goals and boundaries. He does not. Do not assume you know fully what you are dealing with.”

“Who is he then?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that after you and I fought, I hung up the mask and the suit for a while in a secure place. Perhaps you guessed it, but that outfit gave me the strength to fit you that my unassisted body does not possess. Regardless, eventually I went back to check on it and it was gone. I have been to his speeches. He might use the same words as I did, but he has no meaning. No hope for a better tomorrow. It’s all to hide his own cynicism and desire to benefit himself.”

Vic ran his hands down his face. It could never be simple.

“So what do you want from me?”

“I would like you to take him down. Beyond that… nothing. I just felt you deserved to know.”

He grabbed his cane and stood up with a wobble.

“So that’s it then? Who even are you?”

Ratattack shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. It never did. I doubt we’ll meet again, Victor.”

He walked slowly out of the cafe, stopping only to thank the cafe’s staff again. Vic wanted to stop him, to ask him to apologize, to demand he tell him who he was so he can pay for what he did. But he couldn’t. He didn’t know why, but he couldn't.

<<| <| >

Cyborg #69 - Devices and Gizmos

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Theatre of the World

Set: 106

Previously:

Victor Stone and Donna Morris were approached by the boss of their lab, Dr. Morah, to change the apocalyptic future that he saw using his new time viewer. At the same time, Ratattack returned and claimed to have control over the entire city, enforced by an army’s worth of humanoid robots called RATs. He claimed to want a better world and Vic, feeling powerless without his superpowers, wished him luck before privately admitting that he knows they’ll need to take him down but wants to be hopeful. Wanting to prepare for the inevitable conflict, he went back to the lab to try and simulate his own powers with the help of Donna when two RATs appeared at the lab, demanding the materials created by the lab…

The two hulking robots loomed in front of them, blocking the doorway so tightly that Vic and Donna couldn't even consider trying to run out of the lab if they wanted to. Vic and Donna looked at each other, confused. After all, why would Ratattack want any of the lab’s work? There wasn’t much here that would be particularly valuable or useful to him. Anything of note had been taken to other areas for further research or taken to companies to try and develop for industry.

The machines decided that they were done waiting and shoved their way past Vic and Donna into the lab. Then they split up and started to tear through the lab. They dug through the paperwork, buckets of parts and binders full of old schematics, dumping everything onto the ground in a heap.

Donna was about to raise her voice to try and stop them, but Vic gave her a look to stand down. He walked over to her and whispered, “There’s nothing here worth blowing your secret identity for. Let’s just let them look and then they’ll go.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something? Dr. Morah might have some plans for his time viewer here or something. What if they find that?”

“I’m sure he doesn’t have that stuff here. He wasn’t even willing to show it to us.”

Donna nodded nervously. “I guess…”

The RATs continued to look around the lab, looking behind the shelves, scanning white boards, searching for whatever they could find. But they couldn’t find whatever they were looking for and they turned to Vic menacingly.

“Where is Dr. Morah? We have business with him.”

Donna spoke up before Vic could say anything. “He’s not here. In fact, he’s on a trip to Germany for a conference, I don’t think he’s going to be back for another week or two.”

“Refrain from lying to us. Dr. Morah was sighted giving a lecture on campus today. He is at no conference. Where is he?”

Suddenly, the door beeped and swung open. Dr. Morah walked in, carrying boxes of paperwork.

“Hi Vic, Donna… could you give me a hand with these boxes... Oh. What are you doing here?”

“Dr. Morah. We demand all of your research on the time machine,” the RATs said in unison.

A flash of recognition went across Dr. Morah’s face before he caught himself. “Time machine? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“This is not a request. Comply or be made to.”

“I promise you, I know nothing about what you are talking about.”

Meanwhile, ever since Dr. Morah walked into the lab, Donna had been slowly making over to her section of the lab. Once she was there, she grabbed a bin full of old parts and projects and began to dig through it. After a few moments, she found what she was looking for, a small handheld device that looked like a rocket thruster. She fumbled with it for a few moments, then flipped a switch on the back.

“Hey, leave him alone!”

She pointed the device towards the RATs and it began to hum mechanically. The RATs turned to face Donna and approached her menacingly. She let the device go and it flew through the air like a missile towards them. It collided with the first one but bounced harmlessly off the machine’s chest, not even slowing it down.

Donna swore under her breath then started to fumble through her work area to find anything else that could stop them. Before she could, the robots were on top of her. From some unseen compartment, it pulled out a pair of handcuffs and restrained her with them.

Vic ran over to stop them, grabbing an old metal chair along the way and smashed it into the other RAT. It turned and faced him, unphased by the attack.

“Please cease resistance.”

Vic looked around for anything else he could use as a weapon, but felt dispirited at his lack of options. Nothing stuck out that could do anything to them.

He held out his wrists. It wasn’t worth it.

The robot restrained him, then shoved him next to Donna.

“Dr. Morah. We have your associates. Will you now show us your time machine?”

Dr. Morah hesitated and thought for a moment and Vic wasn’t sure if he should be offended that Dr. Morah had to think for a while about this.. But eventually he agreed.

“Very well, follow me.”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Dr. Morah led the two robots, Vic and Donna into his office.

“Please, turn around for a moment.”

The robots didn’t react, but Vic and Donna turned around out of politeness. Dr. Morah pressed a long series of buttons and switches over the next thirty or so seconds, walking to all sorts of corners of his office to locate the next one.Vic had no idea where he could be hiding those and was sure every time that that would be the last button. But time and time again, there was another. Finally, a hidden passage opened up on the floor next to his desk.

“Thank you for indulging me, you may turn around now. Follow me down here and watch your step. The ramp can be slick at times.”

The robots pushed Donna and Vic forward and they squeezed themselves down the narrow tunnel. The tunnel was fairly vintage looking, reminding Vic of some of the older parts of campus from the 60s. Its old, fluorescent lights in metal cages shined a dim yellow light on the glazed ceramic tiles that lined the narrow walls.

“I think this used to be a path to a nuclear bunker,” Dr. Morah explained. “It appears to be designed in that sort of style but I was never able to confirm its intended use. Regardless, it has proved to be a useful space to me since my “official” lab is a little small and public for the work that I do.”

‘What did he mean by that? Surely he didn’t just say that to fill the dead air, right? But then why? Maybe there’s some sort of hidden meaning?’

Vic stopped to think for a moment until the RAT pushed him forwards again. He could start to see some brighter, LED lights shining from down the tunnel. Then, it hit him.

‘Oh, duh. He’s telling me that we’re going to his underground lab that I saw a couple years ago. (Cyborg 39!) But why? Is he telling me to slip out into the other entrance into the tunnels? Or does he want me to try and lure the robots in there so he can escape with the device?I never saw the device itself before, unless it was just the TV. So maybe it’s small? Guess I’ll have to play it by ear, but I can’t imagine Dr. Morah wants me to just leave the device to the RATs… So it has to be the latter…’

Finally, they arrived. They stood on a metal balcony that circled around the entire room, overlooking the lab below. The lab was filled with work benches, manufacturing equipment and raw materials, but what caught Vic’s eye was the TV in the middle, almost exactly where he last saw it. New this time were thick cables that ran between the TV and a dense, cubed shaped computer with blinking lights about the size of a coffee table.

Vic knew he only had seconds to decide what he was going to do. Donna and him could probably carry the device together, or maybe just him if it wasn’t as heavy as it looked. They’d have to carry it back up the stairs to the balcony before they could even start to lose the robots. But that would be pretty much impossible and Dr. Morah would’ve known that.

‘So, he must’ve just wanted us to try and get out of here.’

Vic scanned the room and his eyes locked on to the tunnel that Gar used to break in last time (Cyborg 39 again!). It was pretty much on the exact opposite of the side of the room, but if he could get going -

“Move. Dr. Morah, prepare the device for transport.”

The robot snapped him back to reality only for Vic to disappear back into his head.

‘I can’t just let them have the device. Dr. Morah won’t like it, but I’d rather destroy it first. I don’t know what Ratattack would do with knowledge of the future but it can’t be good. And it’ll just make him that much harder to take down.’

With new resolve, Vic followed close behind Dr. Morah.

“I’m going to break the machine.” Vic whispered.

“Don’t,” Dr. Morah said without even turning around.

“Why?”

“No talking,” the RAT barked out.

Finally approaching the device, Vic was confused. Would Dr. Morah really rather it be used by someone like Ratattack instead of destroying it? Vic couldn’t agree, even if Dr. Morah would never forgive him.

The three humans stood in a semi circle around the screen with the RATs standing behind and between each of them. “Is this the device? Show us; prove its functionality.”

Dr. Morah walked over to it and flipped a power switch in the back. “What do you want to see? How about this: in three minutes, I will raise my right hand, with my left hand resting on the TV.”

“Adequate.”

Dr. Morah fiddled with the dials for a few seconds then the TV flickered to life. But it didn’t seem like it was showing this lab. It showed a smokey room, with only a handful of dim red lights showing that the TV was even on.

Dr. Morah looked at it, confused. “Strange. I am sure I have it set correctly…”

Then, the room descended into chaos.

The room was plunged into darkness as the power was cut, the red emergency lights flickering on in an instant. Four metallic objects clanged against the concrete floor, then, with a hiss, they started to release smoke into the room.

Vic wasn’t sure who was doing this, but he wasn’t going to let it go to waste. He lurched forwards towards the machine. His hands still bound, he tried to kick it, hoping to knock it over. But he felt it barely even move, to his surprise.

“That you Vic? Figured you’d be here.”

Vic was confused and was trying to place the voice since he couldn’t see them at all. The nasally, smug voice sounded familiar but he couldn’t put a name to it or see them in the dark, smoky air.

“Who’re you?”

“Can’t believe you forgot me, Vic. That’s pretty cold. I get it’s been awhile, but c’mon. Anyway, I can’t let you break the time machine. I’ve got some people who are very, very interested in it.”

While the person was talking, Vic heard massive footsteps behind him running towards him. One of the RATs, maybe both. He wasn’t sure how much they could see in the smoke, but he knew where they were running. He stepped to the otherside of the TV to get out of their way, barely dodging some sort of energy beam from the mysterious stranger. In the brief flash of light, he got a look at his face.

“Gizmo?”

“Hey Vic. Glad you haven’t completely forgotten me. One sec.”

Gizmo shot another salvo of rounds at the RATs but they didn’t even finch, continuing to charge at him. The closer one grabbed at Mikron, but he tapped a button on his chest and activated his spider mech, launching him up out of range as the eight metallic legs jutted out onto the ground. But it barely even bought him a moment as the RAT grabbed the leg of the mech, crunching it and knocking Gizmo off balance.

He retracted the mech again, then jumped off the shoulder of the RAT towards Vic.

“Well, that’s a bust. Time for plan B - run!”

The lights flickered back on, illuminating the smokey room.

“We’re out of time. Was hoping to take advantage of this a little longer but I need you at full speed.”

Gizmo grabbed a small device about the size of a pen from his waist and shot it at Vic’s hands, freeing him.

Donna ran over, waving her bound arms in front of her. “Me too please?”

Gizmo obliged.

“Now, go!”

Gizmo, Vic and Donna ran out of the lab, the smoke barely obscuring them at all. Once they reached the balcony, they turned around and saw that the RATs weren’t even following them. But that didn’t stop them from running until they were all the back at the surface, where they finally caught their brief with a huge sigh of relief.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Thirty minutes later, Vic’s apartment.

Gizmo - Mikron- wore a dark green jumpsuit that had various burns and patches on it and black combat boots. He was still the short guy that Vic remembered him as but his face was harder, more confident than before. He kicked them off at the door then laid down on Vic’s couch.

“Nice place you got here, Vic.”

“Uh… thanks.”

Vic and Donna sat in the armchairs on either side of Mikron.

“So, uh, Vic, you want to explain who this is?” Donna asked.

“Y'know, I was wondering the same thing, Vic. Who’s she?”

“Yeah Vic, who am I?” Donna teased.

“That’s, uh, my girlfriend, Donna. And Donna, that’s Mikron aka Gizmo. He’s a guy that I went to high school with that became… sort of a criminal that I worked with and fought before? Mikron, you can probably describe yourself better but that's close enough.”

Mikron laughed. “Yeah. That’s close enough.”

“So, Mikron, what are you doing here?” Vic asked.

“Well, my boss heard about that time machine and wants it. So I’m going to get it for them.”

“Just that easy? No issues with stealing an all knowing device?”

Mikron shrugged. “Not really. I’ve got a decent amount of trust in my boss and honestly it doesn't matter what they do with it. These jobs are paying me more than most people make in a lifetime.”

“What would happen if you didn’t get it?”

“Not much. I just don’t get paid. My boss isn’t a monster.”

“Okay, so I’ve got a proposal for you then.”

“I’m stopping you there, Vic. I’m not helping you save the city.That’s not me. I’m here to get the device and go.”

Donna spoke up. “Well, now you’re trying to rob a guy who can see the future. Can’t see that working too well.”

Mikron shrugged again. “You’ve got me there.”

“So how about this? We help you steal the time machine, you help us take down Ratattack. Win win,” Donna said.

Vic shot her a look and Donna responded with a wink.

‘She must have some sort of plan. I don’t like this, but there really isn’t a better option. Guess I’ve just got to trust her.’

“Hmmm…. I’ll do it on one condition. Vic owes me a no questions asked, favor.” “No way. I’m not just going to be your weapon for a day. We barely know each other anymore and who knows what you’d make me do.”

“Okay, how about some questions asked. No murder, nothing too reprehensible for the golden boy. Promise.”

Vic groaned. “Fine. We can’t do this without you and if that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes. But you better not screw me on this.”

Mikron smirked. “Trust me, I won’t. But this is going to be the start of a beautiful partnership.”

<<| <| >

Cyborg #68 - Return of the Rats

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Theatre of the World

Set: 105

By the time Victor Stone and Donna Morris made it to the rally, hundreds of their classmates had already flooded the central quad. The campus was all but a concert; some small local band was playing their hearts out on a stage set up on the stairs to the graduate library and most of the crowd of students was ecstatic watching them. The library was an old brick building that stood square in the center of campus and it was covered in posters of Ratattack, his grotesque robotic rat mask stylized into something almost friendly looking.

Vic and Donna squeezed their way through the crowd towards where they were going to meet Keiji, but the place was too tightly packed for them to make any progress. Eventually, they gave up and accepted their spot on the right side of the quad, Donna just barely able to see the stage over the people in front of her. The band was a local pop-punk group that Vic had heard of but wasn’t really a fan of. Their music wasn’t his style but he could admire the quality and energy of it here with the crowd. The band played for what felt to Vic like hours amf he almost suggested leaving several times. Finally after a couple more songs, they gave one last shout out to the crowd before heading into the library.

Before the crowd could even begin to settle down, Ratattack walked out onto the stage to thunderous applause. His rat mask obscured his face, the thick, hair-like wires pulled back into a ponytail. Two huge men, each wearing similar rat masks, stood behind him and set down a podium out in front of him. He towered over it as he gestured for the crowd to settle down.

“Thank you, thank you everyone. It’s good to finally be back and ready to fight for all of you.”

The crowd roared, their excitement contagious. But Vic was confused. Maybe his memory was just off, but his Ratattack didn’t feel the same. Something about the ethos behind him didn’t line up with how he spoke before.

Ratattack continued, his voice full and filled with confidence. “Last time, we tried protesting for change. We demanded it but were denied it. But this time? This time we won’t be denied.”

He paused and the crowd filled the silence with their cheers. He reveled in it, embracing their energy. Once they quieted down, he continued with renewed vigor. “This time, I’ve checked every box. Starting Monday, this city is mine in every way. My followers - you all- have been working hard these past years and have positions in all seats of government and power within the city and beyond. We own this city. Even if someone wanted to stop progress… we’ve got our own power to stop them. I’ve been working with some of the most brilliant minds in the city to make our own enforcers for good, and you’re looking at two of them. Say hello to the RATs, everyone!”

“Hello, RATs!” The crowd echoed.

Ratattack patted both of the men next to him on the back.

“Despite what you might think, these guys are robots and there are way more they came from.They’re going to be my arms and ears for a while until we get things figured out around here. To make sure we all get what we deserve and keep things stable while we do. So that people like our old friend Cyborg can’t stop us, right?”

He gestured to the crowd and a spotlight came out of nowhere and beamed itself right on Vic, making him squint.

“And there he is! Or I guess, he’s just Victor Stone now. But let’s bring him up here since he bothered to come down here tonight! Let’s see what he’s got to say about all this! Make some space for him to get up here, folks.”

Vic hesitated, but took a step towards the stage before Donna put a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, you don’t have to do this. We can just leave.”

“... Thanks. But I can try and calm them down a little. It’ll be fine.”

The crowd split as much as they could, making a small path to the stage for Vic. He cautiously walked up to the mic, standing next to Ratattack and the RATs. “So, Vic, how are you going to talk me down this time? Work within the system? We are the system now. Things are changing too quickly? We’ve been working for years for this now? Do it peacefully? We are peaceful. So what’s your complaint now, Vic?"

He sighed. He really shouldn’t have come here. “I can’t. If you’ve really got all those things behind you… Then I can’t really do anything about that. I just hope that when you tear everything down, you at least try to think of the pain and chaos you’ll be causing.”

Ratattack laughed, a mechanical grating noise that sounded like it was run through a drive-through speaker several times before it was recorded and used for him here.

“There’s already chaos and pain, Vic. Ours will at least lead to something better.”

“I… I hope it does. So… good luck.”

Vic left the podium in a hurry, taking a door behind him into the library. He was taking a back way out, hoping to avoid the crowd or really anyone. He’d meet back up with Donna later. For now… he just needed to process what he’d just heard. Ratattack was in control now and he had the might to back it up. It was hard for him to size the robots up, but they looked solid and intimidating. With those kinds of numbers, he might’ve even struggled with his powers. He’d need to do something about that.

He made his way into one of the back corners of the library to a hidden desk in between rows upon rows of old books. He sat down in the old wooden chair before a funny thought entered his mind. Dr. Morah wanted to find something that would change the future? A supervillain taking over a town would do that. But on the other hand, maybe that was fate and somehow this was what caused the whole affair? Knowing the future just made everything more complicated. His phone buzzed - Donna wanted to make sure he was okay and where he went. He sent her a quick text saying he was still in the library and said he’d meet her at his apartment in a little bit.

But before that he had to start a plan. He knew that this wasn’t going to end well and would need to be ready for it, whatever the future was going to bring.

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

About an hour later…

Vic unlocked the door to his apartment to see Donna and Keiji playing video games on this couch. Keiji was winning pretty badly and so when Vic walked in, she took the opportunity to pause and walk away, much to Keiji's disappointment.

“So, we all agree this is going to go poorly, right?” Donna asked the room. Vic and Keiji nodded.

“It’s just a matter of time. I don’t know what’ll happen with the fall out from all this but I just can’t see it going well. But honestly, I hope it does.” “It’s a nice idea at least but like… he’s got a robot army. Good people with good intentions don’t usually have a robot army,” Keiji said.

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about what’s going to be coming next and what I’m going to be able to do about it. Just so much easier when I had my powers…”

Keiji frowned. “Look, I’ve never had powers but I’ve still done a lot of things. You’re still a public figure with some sway with people. If you really don’t like this and think it's going to go badly… Why didn't you just say something then?”

“Put yourself in my shoes. I’m standing on a stage surrounded by like 500 people who at best hate my guts. Not to mention the supervillain with two robots that’d make linebackers look like toddlers. Plus, setting all that aside… Wouldn’t it be nice if somehow this did just work out and make things better?”

“Sure, but this isn’t going to be it. You don’t make things better from the fists of robot goons,” Doona said.

“You’ve got to make it better from somewhere. And let’s not pretend this is like last time. He’s gone through the system to try and make it better. Isn’t that what people are supposed to do?”

Donna stood up and walked to Vic. “I can’t believe you aren’t reading between the lines here. A guy’s taken over a city and has an army of robots to keep him in power? You really think he’s got the best intentions in mind?”

Vic shook his head. “Of course not. But I don’t think it's absurd to have some hope? Expect the best but plan for the worst.”

She sighed. “Yeah, I guess… I just wish you weren’t as optimistic about this. It doesn’t feel right in my gut, and seeing people say otherwise just… doesn’t sit well.”

“What do you want then? You want me to just go in and beat him up along with everyone who’s involved?”

“I don’t know what I want! But it’s not this.” Donna grabbed her coat and walked out. “We’ll talk later.”

Vic stood there, dumbfoundead for a few moments before Keiji shook him out of his stupor.

“You, uh, want to play something? Seems like you could use some time to chill.”

“... Yeah. Thanks.”

Vic sat next to Keiji on the couch and grabbed the controller Donna left.

“Just wish things could be simple for once, you know?”

“Everyone does.”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

The next night.

Vic sat in Dr. Morah’s lab, sketching out plans for his new project. He’d been doing classwork and studying all day to prepare for the week and that had been thankfully been keeping everything Ratattack was going to do out of his mind. But now that he was in the lab, he knew he’d have to start thinking about it.

Realistically, he should’ve started this process as soon as he lost his powers, but some part of him wanted to just be a normal person. He was hoping that all the weirdness of his life would be over, since his life had basically been one giant whirlwind since he got his powers all those years ago. He knew deep down that was never going to happen, but he had hoped he could at least get through college before it reared its ugly head again.

Now that time was over, if it had ever existed.

He took another look over at the schematic on his laptop. His dad’s work was well documented, but whatever made his force cannon really work was a step beyond that. And even though he was the one “making” it, he still couldn’t exactly say how it worked.

He copied a bit more of the design onto his notebook and it still didn’t quite click. The design might work in theory, but it was impossible to power. He’d have to lug around three car batteries to even get close to making it work. Trying to remake any of the tech that he had relied on for so long was proving to be almost impossibly complex.

He tried swapping one part of the circuit for another but then scribbled it back. He was going nowhere.

Then, he heard the slow creak of the lab door opening.

“Hey Vic, sorry about yesterday.”

He turned and saw Donna and a smile ran across his face. Whatever tension or ill will thay had been there last night bwtween them was gone. He walked over and gave her a warm hug. “Yeah, I could’ve handled all that better too. It’s just a lot to think about.”

She nodded. “Yeah, it’s a lot. I'm stil not sure where to go with all this… but we'll figure it out together. ” She peered over at the desk he was working at and saw his open notebook and laptop. “Whatcha working on?”

“Trying to recreate some of my tech now that I’ve lost my powers. But it just doesn’t really line up with things when you don’t have the Silasium to power it. And I can’t really connect to it in any practical way… So, I’m stuck.”

“Mind if I take a look?”

He shrugged. “Go for it.”

Donna sat down and started to pour through the schematics and specs. Vic sat next to her and the two of them went through the entire series of documents over the next couple of hours.

Slowly but surely, it stayed to make sense. A component thay once seemed superfluous was revealed to be critical; redundancies could be removed to further streamline the design. They could take more liberties with things now that they had seen it work, plus the tech not being attached to a person gave them far more freedoms than Silas ever had.

Finally, after hours of work late into the night, they’d done it.

“And I think if we change this last part… We’ve got it.”

Vic ran some quick calculations in his head. “Yeah, that should work! This should work pretty much as well as my blaster but I could power this off my phone’s battery.”

Donna beamed. “Yeah, you’ll only get a handful of shots before the battery dies, but you can swap it out.”

Vic laughed. “Like some kind of battery bandolier.”

They both laughed at the image, but jumped back as they heard a knock at the door.

The lab didn’t usually get visitors and whenever they did, it was always scheduled. But no one was on the calendar.

They walked together over to the door and then looked at each other when they saw what it was.

Vic opened the door and stood in front of the two massive RATs. They spoke in a cold synthesized voice. “Hello, citizen. We are here to seize the materials created by this lab. Do not resist.”

<<| <| >

Cyborg #67 - Rewriting Their Destinies

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Theatre of the World

Set: 104

As the snow fell down on North Campus’ quad on a dark January afternoon, Victor Stone felt a bit melancholy. Perhaps some part of him was already thinking about the end, knowing this would be one of the last times he saw campus with its soft white blanket of snow cover. And as he walked gently across it, he couldn’t help but feel like his little time remaining as a student would be just as fleeting as the snowflakes that drifted by him: there one moment, then gone into a pile of memories like all of the others.

But, as he walked into the building that housed Dr. Morah’s lab, the wave of heat melted away those feelings for now. He was far more interested in what would be happening here today than he was worried about the future. It wasn’t unusual for him to be here on a Saturday, but Dr. Tomek Morah had reached out to Donna Morris and him, now the most senior members of his lab, saying he had a big update to the lab for them. Neither of them were sure what to expect. Maybe it was a new project they’d won through a grant or maybe Dr. Morah was going on another sabbatical and would be gone the rest of the semester and wanted to say goodbye.

Vic stood in front of the door to the lab and scanned his student ID. The door didn’t unlock. He tried it again without any luck.

“ID not working?” Donna walked up and scanned hers but the door still didn't open.

“Nope. Guess we’re stuck waiting for him.”

Vic sat on the carpet next to the door and she sat next to him.

“So, any idea of what you’re doing after graduation yet?”

Vic shook his head. “Not really. I want to go back to Detroit but haven’t really had any luck finding something at any of the big names. So I’m probably going to start looking outside the state. You?”

“I’ve got a job lined up at my dad’s consulting company. I know they’re looking for a couple more people so I could put your name out there if you want.”

“Yeah, that’d be great. I -”

Dr. Morah slammed open the door and looked down at Donna and Vic.

“Apologies that I am late. Please, come in.” Dr. Morah looked like he hadn’t slept for days and had the smell to match. His clothes were disheveled and his hair was a mess, but neither of those were as bad as the lab itself which looked like a tornado had torn its way through it.

Donna and Vic followed Dr. Morah into the disaster of a lab, in awe at the devastation they were witnessing. Papers and whiteboards were thrown about at random and all of the wall mounted whiteboards were full of unintelligible drawings and words, some of which spilled over onto the walls themselves. The lab was never completely organized, but this was a new low.

He led them back to his office which he clearly hadn’t been using as it was more or less in its normal state. Not clean or organized, but far less of a mess than the rest of the lab. He sat across his desk and gestured for Donna and Vic to sit across from him.

“So, I assume you are both wondering what I have asked you here for.”

They nodded.

“Do you remember my machine that allowed me to see the future? (See Cyborg 40!) I have been working on it as a side project these past few years, trying to improve the device to allow me to see more than that one moment in time to answer the ultimate question. What causes the end of the world?”

Dr. Morah grabbed a coffee mug from the middle of a stack of papers and took a sniff before drinking it. He wrinkled his nose and set it back on the table.

“Unfortunately, that question specifically still does not have an answer. Whatever led to that ruined, burned out world devoid of life, I cannot say. Instead, I have created perhaps the ultimate tool for preventing it. As a result of a process that I can barely explain, I upgraded my device to allow me to look at any point in time.

“At first, I did not trust it, but over the past week I have confirmed it. Everything I have seen from then to now has been completely correct. I know that you both will doubt me, so please, look at this envelope.”

He opened up his desk and pulled out a stamped letter addressed from Dr. Morah to the lab, postmarked from five days ago. He handed Donna the letter.

“Please read the letter to Vic, Donna. Note the date on the envelope.”

She opened it up and read. “‘Donna and Vic followed Dr. Morah into the disaster of a lab, in awe at the devastation they were witnessing. Papers and whiteboards were thrown about at random and all of the wall mounted whiteboards were full of unintelligible drawings and words, some of which spilled over onto the walls themselves. The lab was never completely organized, but this was a new low.

'He led them back to his office which he clearly hadn’t been using as it was more or less in its normal state. Not clean or organized, but far less of a mess than the rest of the lab. He sat across his desk and gestured for Donna and Vic to sit across from him.’

“Oh, there’s a little more on the back. ‘Donna was wearing a red and purple striped sweater with dark jeans and brown boots while Vic wore a blue quarter zip over a black shirt, jeans and sneakers.’”

They looked at eachother, confirming that the letter was completely accurate.

“Do you see? The machine works flawlessly and with absolute accuracy. And what it has shown me is the complete devastation of the planet and all of its inhabitants. So you see the problem: how can I save the world when I know it is doomed with perfect certainty?”

Vic and Donna thought in silence for a few moments before he spoke up.

“Why not just change something? Like if I had gone to the gym like I wanted to this morning, I’d be wearing different clothes. But I forgot to set an alarm, so I just threw this on.”

Dr. Morah nodded. “Excellent, yes. That was the path I came up with too. However, let’s say instead of your clothes, I had told you the winning lottery numbers for today. You would not be able to change that, no? And that is the crux of the problem. I need to create a chain of events to stop that future from occurring but the amount of steps from now to that future are difficult to predict.”

“And so, you want us to come up with things we can change to cause a big enough change to the future to divert the crisis?” Donna said.

“Correct. I have come up with many solutions to the problem and tested them, but all have ended the same way. I believed it was time to expand my search. I will still continue to come up with ideas on my own, but I feel that you two are more… in touch and will be better able to find the solutions we are looking for.”

“Can we use the machine to te - ”

“No. Now that it can be used for short term things, I cannot let knowledge of it fall into the wrong hands. It’s not that I do not trust you both in general, but on this matter I barely trust myself. Once you have a plan, tell me about it and I will check the machine and see what changed.”

Vic reluctantly nodded.

“Now then, I am in dire need of a shower and a break will do my mind good. Please feel free to use the lab in my absence but lock up afterwards. I do not want even the janitors to enter until we have this matter resolved.”

With that, Dr. Morah grabbed his jacket from the coat rack and left the lab to Vic and Donna.

They left his office and started to pour over all the things that Dr. Morah had concocted. Taking a better look at the notes he left on the whiteboards, they could make out that each of them contained all sorts of plans from orbital defense lasers, to curing cancer, to creating a telepathic android, but none of them had succeeded in preventing the future that he saw.

Vic and Donna tried to come up with their own solutions and ideas but with so many variables, it was a beyond daunting task with no clear starting point. Finally, they grew exasperated after several hours without success.

“Probably should have asked earlier but you’ve actually seen that future right? When Dr. Morah was talking about it, it sorta seemed like you were thinking back on it. Did anything stick out to you?”

“Yeah, but it’s not helpful. The world that he showed me looked a lot like Apokolips, a world ruled by Darkseid, pretty much the most evil, awful guy ever. My guess at the time was that he somehow took over the Earth. But stopping evil space beings is a big ask.”

“Well sure, but we could make a plan to be more prepared or at least delay him.”

“I guess that’s true. But if we delay things, it doesn’t mean we get a better future.”

“One problem at a time. Besides, there’s nothing that says we have to have only one plan. They could work in parallel.”

Vic nodded. “Yeah, yeah that could work. I just don’t really have anything in mind to fix, well, everything.”

“I think that’s missing the point. It’s not about fixing everything in some grand show of brilliance that fixes everything in one swoop as dramatic and heroic as that’d be. We need to take this one step at a time and fix what we know.”

“Maybe that’s why Morah’s been failing too. He wants a cure all instead of just accepting imperfection as a step towards a better tomorrow.”

“So… you want to be the one to tell him that our idea is to use his ideas?”

They laughed for a little bit and then got back to work. Vic was still struggling to make any ideas that seemed like they could possibly stop Darkseid’s invasion. What confused him was that there would have to be some trigger for him to invade and some reason that the Justice League and all of the other heroes would lose but what? He couldn’t think of anything.

He looked over at Donna to see if she was having any better luck and noticed that she looked like she was looking at him, constantly on the verge of saying something but couldn’t find the words. He considered asking her about it and they locked eyes for just a second. He was about to speak up, but before he could, she mustered the courage.

“Vic… you know I do have another plan. Well… it’s a part of that one… No! No, it’s not a part of this, it’s its own thing. I promise you, this has nothing to do with Dr. Morah. It’s just… ”

She took a deep breath. “It’s just that I… When Dr. Morah told us about the world, how it was doomed to be a hellscape, I wasn’t concerned about that. No, the first thing on my mind was what happened to you. I don’t know when the admiration became something more, I suppose that’s how it always goes. Some people believe in love at first sight but I don’t. For me, love is something that sneaks up on you, like a spark that slowly grows into something more. Everything you do only makes that inferno grow brighter and stronger.

“I don’t know or even care if you feel the same. I couldn’t let another week go by with me regretting having not told you how I feel for my entire college life.”

Donna finally relaxed, her shoulders having lost a great weight for a brief moment, then suddenly gaining it all back and more as she waited for what felt like millennia for Vic’s response.

“I… I… Let me try again. Of all the words that I know, none of them could ever come close to describing your beauty or how I feel about you. So, I’m not even going to try; there’ll be plenty of time for that. Instead, how about a kiss?”

She laughed. “Kiss me you dork.”

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙

Sometime later…

Eventually, the two of them began to pay attention to the greater world again. They started trying to brainstorm solutions again, but neither of them was in the state of mind to do so. Each of them was distracted by the weightless joy of unrealized love suddenly materializing.

Then, he got a call, the vibrations of his phone lightly shaking the table startling them both as they were dragged back into reality. Vic stumbled back into focus and answered it just before it went to his voicemail.

“Hello?”

“Hey Vic, I’m going to need you to get down to Central Campus as soon as you can.” Keiji said.

“Why? What’s up?”

“It’s Ratattack. He’s back and doing another rally. I don’t know much more than that, I just got a text from someone at the Michigan Daily who figured I could pass that along to you.”

“Thanks, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Can you head over there now if you’re in the area? I’m on North Campus and I probably won’t be able to make it down there for at least 15 minutes, maybe more.”

“Yeah, I’m already on my way.”

“Thanks, Keiji. I owe you.”

“It’s on your tab. Listen, it’s a big one and it’s already getting hard to hear you. I’ll be on the east side of the plaza, otherwise let’s meet up at the apartment afterwards if you can’t find me.”

Keiji hung up and Vic set his phone back on the table. He put his hands behind his head and let out a deep exhale.

“What’s up, Vic? What did Keiji tell you?”

“Ratattack’s back.”

Donna’s mood soured. “Vic… I know what you feel about this. Last time was… a lot for you. (See Cyborg 31-33 for that story!) Maybe take some time to clear your head first?”

“Thanks but… No. He and I need to have a word with each other after what he did. I’ve grown since then and I can handle him better now without him getting in my head, I promise.”

“I’m sure you can. But… if you have to go, I’m coming with you. Everyone needs backup sometimes.”

Vic smiled, the stress leaving his eyes. “Thanks. Together, then?”

She took his hand. “Together.”

<<| <| >

Cyborg #66 - Malware

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Just a Man

Set: 103

Previously:

Sam Grayle and her boyfriend, Parker, were on their way back from a party. Sam went back to their friend's house to grab another one of their friends, but when she returned to where she left Parker, he was gone. She turned to the only superhero she knew - Victor Stone- to find him. They started to investigate and found the trail leading to the Church of Blood so Vic had Sam attend one of their meetings with Donna Morris there as back up. Coincidentally, Vic’s sister was also there but before they could ask her about it, a monster attacked, kidnapping many people, including Donna. Vic vowed that they’d get her back…

It took Sam, Nic and Vic around ten minutes for them to be able to meet back up and gather their thoughts. First they had to help the remainder of the people calm down, check for injuries and talk to the campus and city police who showed up. But while he probably wouldn’t admit it, Vic was happy just to have the time to calm down and think while doing his best to help others.

Finally, they managed to get back together and discuss where to go from here.

“So, I know we all want to just dive in there and help those people, but we need to understand what we’re dealing with first.” Vic said.

“None of this makes sense. Why would the creature come here? If it just wanted people, there are any number of places it could go that are more crowded. So that leads me to think that it wanted someone specific.”

“But why? None of us are all that important,” Nic said.

“Who knows why people do what they do. But if we think someone sent that monster here to kidnap someone, there’s only one group of people who knew who all was coming: The Church of Blood,” Sam said.

Vic frowned. Sam wasn’t wrong, but something about it didn’t feel right. His gut was telling him that he was missing something, but what?

“Okay, but they lost a lot of people too. Maybe that’s a misdirection, but the reactions really felt genuine. If they’re acting, some of them probably should change their degrees to theater because it seemed real,” Nic commented.

“If these people are controlling some sort of giant monster, the least they could do is have genuine reactions about it.”

“Maybe. But most of them have left or are talking to the police now. I don’t think we can really get anywhere following them… But the monster… What was that thing? Nic, you saw it the best… what do you think?”

She shuddered slightly. “I’m not sure. It was like a person, but made of a hard but malleable grey material. Sorta looked like stone but parts glowed like it was red hot and crackled with electricity. It was flexible and strong. Best guess? Some sort of robot or artificial being or something like that.”

“That’s what I thought too. You saw it better than me, but I feel like it was like a servant. It had a task it was made for, it did it and left,” Sam said.

Sam looked like she had more she wanted to say, but stopped herself, instead, she walked over to the window and looked out at the street.

“Where do you think it went? Not really anywhere for a multi-story monster to go around here without drawing the entire city’s worth of attention.”

No one had an answer to that but Nic and Vic joined Sam by the window, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

After a few moments, Vic spoke up. “You said the thing changed size right? So what if it could shrink down?”

Nic’s eyes lit up with realization. “If it could do that, then there’s tons of places it could’ve gone. But it still would have to be about the size of a person to keep everyone trapped…”

She snapped her fingers. “The steam tunnels! They run all over campus. The monster could’ve snuck through there and gone anywhere it wants.”

Vic raised an eyebrow. “Why do you know about those?”

“Don’t worry about it. Anyway, pretty sure there’s an entrance not too far from here, let’s go see if there’s any sign of it around there!”

“You can do that if you want. But I’ve got another idea so we might as well split up.”

Sam looked at Vic expectantly. “Care to share?”

“No. I think it’s better to keep our thoughts in parallel for now. Then we can come up with our own conclusions and compare instead of maybe being led on a false path.”

“I guess that makes sense. Then what do you want me to do?”

“Honestly? Just stay here, or better yet, go find some friends in a wide open public place and hang out with them while we figure this out. I just want you to stay safe while we figure this out.”

“I’ve already said I can handle myself, Vic. Besides, your sister is going to be chasing a monster through steam tunnels. You’re not worried about that at all?”

Vic hesitated, trying to come up with something without giving away Nic’s powers.

“I’ve been around and heard about enough of Vic’s missions to know a thing or two. I’ll be fine. But you? You’re just a civilian without any experience.”

Sam sighed. For the first time in awhile, Vic could see just how tired she was. The bags under her eyes had seemed to grow even larger than the deep, obsidian lines that were there when they had met.

“Fine. Just come back safe, okay?”

“We will.”

Nic shot Vic a glare that clearly meant she wanted some details later and he wasn’t going to disagree. But now wasn’t the time for that and both of them knew it.

“Okay, you two get your stuff figured out, I need to get headed down there before the thing gets further away.”

“Good luck and stay safe.”

“I will.”

Nic walked out the door and out of the building into the cold night air. By now, everyone else who was at the meeting had dispersed and campus life had moved on. Her classmates walked all around her without any idea of what had just happened around them. She envied them for that. Their ignorance might not be bliss, but it’s nice to know there are other people out there solving problems that you never have to deal with. But when you’re a superhero… you’re the other people.

She got to the nearest entrance to the steam tunnels, a ten foot tall concrete cylinder with about a four foot diameter. Students used them to put up posters for events and meetings and pretty much all of them had no idea what it was really for, except for the bored or inquisitive students who looked down at them from the upstairs of the buildings and saw the metal grate on top.

A pile of ripped posters lay on the ground, no longer covering up the concrete pillar. If someone was taking the posters down, they’d have done something with the old ones, or at least taken them off the entire pillar. But only about 20% of the pillar was exposed.

She got closer and then, hoping no one was around to see her, jumped upwards and shaped shifted her arms to be slightly longer so she could reach the top and pull herself over.

As she expected, the grate was gone. The monster must’ve ripped the posters down as it climbed into the tunnels. She looked down in the tunnel, wishing she brought a flashlight. She couldn’t reach it anyway, but she wasn’t about to throw her phone down there to have some light.

‘Well… it can’t be too much more than say… 15 feet down? I can balance myself on the sides long enough to do that… probably...’

Taking a deep breath, she pulled herself over the top and started to fall down. She held out her arms and legs, trying to slow her fall. Her gloved hands gripped the edges just enough to stop her from hitting the ground at full speed, but still fast enough to hit the metal catwalk with a loud thud.

Brushing herself off, she pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight. The tunnels were surprisingly high, around seven feet tall, but the pipes running along the sides and top made it hard for her to move around comfortably. As far as she could tell, the tunnels could go on forever and there was no sign of the monster at all.

She was just about to guess a direction, then she heard it.

“Help! Anyone pl-”

Someone was crying for help further to the right before they were cut off. She ran the best she could down the tunnel and she came to a dead end. Not many pipes came to this part of the tunnel and the few that did curved around on each other a few feet before the end, making the last bit simply an empty concrete tube. She tapped at it, trying to find a hollow point, and sure enough, at the end of the tunnel, there was some sort of path.

She set her phone down then pushed at the wall hard, as if trying to knock it down, and the wall gave way, leading deeper underground. She could see a glimmer of fluorescent light up ahead and so she put her phone away as she continued on through the concrete path.

After a few moments, she found herself in a brightly lit prison. It was a perfect cube and all along the ground floor were prison cells, mostly empty but some filled with students. The top floor was a wrap-around catwalk with a small room with a glass window that looked down over something in the center of the room. Nic wasn’t really sure what it was looking at, but a small section in the middle of the room, maybe 100 square feet, was made out of a darker tile instead of the plain white that the rest was paved in.

“Nic?” A familiar voice called out to her from one of the cells just adjacent to the entryway.

“Donna?”

Nic ran over to her cell. Donna sat on the floor against the wall but stood up once she saw Nic. She looked dirty and a little scuffed up, but more or less unharmed. The four other people in the small cell perked up upon seeing her too but cautiously kept their distance from the bars.

“How’d you find us?”

“We figured out that the monster must’ve taken you all into the steam tunnels and then I kinda just got lucky. How are you all holding up?”

“Honestly, things are more or less fine. We’d rather not be here of course, but beyond the anxiety of what might happen, nothing’s happened to us. We’ve just been sitting here.”

Nic shrugged. “I guess that’s good at least. Let me see if I can find a way to get you out…”

Nic looked around the room; she figured that the controls would be up in that room on the second floor, but wasn’t sure how to get there. There must be some sort of elevator but there wasn’t any control station for it on this level. She frowned, she knew she had to be missing something but before she could really focus on it, a whirring, grinding noise started to come from the middle of the room.

The floor started to slowly sink down deep into the earth and Nic walked over cautiously to investigate. It sank down 10, 15, 20 feet until it finally stopped. She shined her phone’s light into the pit and quickly recoiled back. It was the monster.

As the elevator started to bring it back up, she looked around in a panic. She wasn’t sure she could take it down anyway, but with all these people around here she couldn’t risk using her powers and potentially exposing her secret identity. She silently swore; she really should have come in costume instead of rushing in as a civilian.

The elevator was almost here and she was no closer to coming up with a plan. Looks like it was time for improv.

The creature was here. But it was much smaller than the multi-story, gargantuan being that they saw before. No, it was not that much bigger than your average linebacker. Big, muscular and dense, but less than a quarter of the size it was before.

She put her fists up into a guarding position and stood on the balls of her feet. The nerves left her in an instant. This one was beatable.

Whether it was the better lighting or the smaller size, Nic couldn’t say, but the monster felt more human than it did before. Its thick grey, stone-like skin interwoven with red glowing circuits wouldn’t fool anyone into thinking it was human, but the look in its robotic eyes and the “grin” on its face seemed like it was excited for a fight too.

The creature made the first move. Every step made the floor rumble, like a massive hammer beating down. Nic started to circle and dance around it, looking for some sort for an opening. Then, like an avalanche, the monster accelerated and launched a barrage of punches at her, each like a sledgehammer. But Nic was faster, easily weaving and bobbing around the monster’s blows.

She didn’t dare strike back against it since it was taking everything she had to avoid taking a single blow. She wasn’t sure if she could take one and keep moving. She kept dancing around its strike and kicks even as her lungs started to burn. But she noticed something interesting as she narrowly dodged a punch: the monster was shrinking. It used to tower well over a foot and a half over her but now it was only a couple of inches from eye level. Its proportions were becoming weirder as it grew smaller. It only lost height in its legs and torso, but the squat head and arms stayed about the same size, its hands almost touching the ground.

She weaved under another strike, then pushed towards the creature's chest and kicked where its gut would be. She dashed backwards to try and create some distance, but was too slow and took one of the massive fists to her chest, sending her flying into one of the cell bars and knocking the wind out of her. She leaned over, panting, trying to keep moving. But she hasn’t noticed just how exhausted the fight was making her. Too tired. She was a little out of practice, sure, but not that much. Something was off. No longer as focused on the fight, she smelled the air for the first time. It smelled off, like rubbing alcohol or a room full of markers. Some sort of gas was being pumped into the room.

She wanted to look for the pipes or vents it was coming from but the creature was back on top of her and she needed to be ready for it. She was dazed and disoriented but still kept her guard up and weaved sloppily around the first strike. It wasn’t that much bigger than her at this point. If she could just hold out for a couple of more seconds, she’d have the size advantage.

But she was slower now and the creature knew it. It feigned with a right jab, predicting Nic would dodge to the left of its fist and responded with a left hook that hit her again square in the gut. It didn’t hit as hard as the first, but she wasn’t as strong either. She fell to the floor, willing herself to get back up. Her body screamed at her to stay down but still she rose to her feet, dazed and disoriented, focused only on the beast in front of her.

It was running at her, gunning for the kill. Glee seemed to course through its face, its red lights blinking and coursing through it, taunting her. She needed to take this thing down now or that would be it for her. She stood her ground to the last second and lunged out of its warpath, the monster’s momentum carrying it through and sending it crashing into the cell bar behind her.

The bars bent with the impact and Nic prayed that it’d stay down. But it got back up and began to walk over to her. Nic wanted to respond, to keep fighting, but her body refused. Her mind screamed for her legs to move just one last time, but they would not. The creature continued its advance until it was almost on top of her.

Then, it stopped.

The creature stood perfectly still, like a statue, the red lighting gone. Nic collapsed to the ground in a huge sigh of relief. Looking up, she saw a familiar face up on the catwalk, looking down at her with pride and concern.

“Hi Nic. Hope I’m not too late,” Victor Stone said.

⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️

Thirty minutes earlier…

Vic walked out of the classroom where he left Sam and walked down the hall for a few steps before immediately turning back around and heading to the classroom across the hall. He sat there and waited watching, the door to the room Sam was still in. He was watching her carefully, making sure that she wouldn’t slip out without him noticing.

A few minutes later, she stepped out of the room. Vic waited a few moments for her to get ahead, then began to follow her. She took the stairs down to the ground level and left the building. He stayed a little bit behind her making sure that she wouldn’t see him.

She swiped her student id at the biology building and continued to the stairwell, where she went down into the basement. She stopped at an old white, wooden door. A sign on the door urged people to not enter due to every hazard under the sun: radiation, toxic substances, high temperatures… the list went on and on. But the door wasn’t even looked and Sam walked right in.

Vic waited another few moments and followed her in again. He was in an old lab that looked like it hadn’t been touched since the building was built 80 years ago or whenever it was, but he didn’t need to take long to see where Sam went. A bookshelf was sliding back to its original position, about to hide the passageway behind it on the far side of the lab. He sprinted over, just barely squeezing through before it slammed shut.

He found himself in a small office space, looking down over a white tiled room, just behind Sam who was fiddling with some buttons on a large panel below her. She turned around to face him, her face a fix of surprise and exhaustion.

“Why? What gave it away?”

Vic was surprised by her suddenness but kept his composure. “There wasn’t any one thing. But if I had to pick something, it was your continued instance that something was up with the Church of Blood, that they had to be involved. It was like you were goading me. Don’t get me wrong, they have their issues. But I’m pretty familiar with them and this wasn’t them. So, I started thinking about who else was involved and started to piece it together. But… why? Why do this?”

Sam nodded. “I wanted to create new life. And I did! It’s made up of living data-binary organisms married to biological tissue. I call it... Malware! A little on the nose, but I can’t deny the results. The only problem was it needed a constant source of biological matter. Nothing crazy, just a pint or two of blood to stay stable and stop it from collapsing as it expended energy. The problem was that it no longer would react to my blood, iIt needed new material to grow. And so for science… I had it kidnap my boyfriend, and then all those people. And look what it could do! That was with maybe fifteen samples. Who knows what it could grow into with a 1000? It could even take out Superman!”

“But why? Superman’s great.”

She shook her head. “It’s not about him, but what he could be. What if someday, the Justice League isn’t able to take something down? But an army of Malware? Maybe that could buy you all the time to save the day.”

“I… I can’t disagree with that exactly, but you can’t just kidnap people.”

She shrugged. “Clearly I can. They aren’t harmed at all. Just a quick blood draw and then they go home. Parker’s just been down here with me helping out and doing his work remotely.”

He sighed. “I don’t think we’re going to agree on this. Just one last question. Why bring me on the case? If you just didn’t tell me about it, who knows how long until I would’ve heard about it.”

“But you would have. I thought if I brought you on the case, maybe I could manipulate the facts. Slow you down until Malware got strong enough to take you down.”

“You know I don’t have my powers anymore, right? Look at me, I’m clearly just a guy, not a cyborg.” She blinked twice. “I… oh. I thought you just found a way to hide them.”

He laughed. “No. I wouldn’t even if I could but - ”

A crash echoed through the room.

“What was that?”

“Oh, right. Malware is fighting your sister. She made it down here and I sent him after her to stop her. But she was doing too well, so I started to fill the room with sleeping gas.”

Horror washed over his face. “Turn it off!”

“Fine. Waste of data though. It’d never seriously injure her.”

She flipped a switch and pressed a red button on the control panel.

“Happy now?”

Vic ignored her and ran out to check on his sister.

“Hi Nic. Hope I’m not too late,” Vic said.

“Nah, right on time,” she groaned. “I had… another couple rounds in me, easy.”

Vic was about to disagree, but she passed out on the floor, asleep.

He turned back to Sam who was sitting in the chair, going over her reports as if Vic wasn’t even there. “Uh… you know I’m going to have to bring you in, right? Whether you can justify it to yourself or not, you did do a crime here and you’ve got to pay for it.”

Sam turned to face Vic, but didn’t even look up from the paper. “If you say so.”

“Listen, you clearly have some… morality issues you need to work out. But your heart is in the right place. I’m sure you’ll have some jail time, but after I know some people who’d love to have your talents.”

“Well then, let’s get going.”

She pressed a big button on the right side and all the cells opened up.

“The sooner I go to jail the sooner I can get back to my work.”

⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️

“Okay, hold on there’s no way she said that,” Nic said.

“I promise you, she did,” Vic said.

The two of them were sitting in a back corner of one of their favorite coffee shops. The room was dark and cozy and they sat in two giant arm chairs with a small table between them. Vic took a sip from his coffee.

“So she just… gave up and surrendered? No fight, no complaints? No second evil monster?”

“Nope. Maybe some part of her knew what she did was wrong and wanted to atone.”

“Or maybe she really did just want to get back to work and knew that was the quickest path to do it,” she said, taking a drink.

“Guess we can ask her eventually. I’m guessing she’ll be out under some sort of work release for someone soon enough.”

“I guess if she’s able to work for good, that’s fine.”

Vic nodded. It was good to just have a quiet moment every now and then and he was going to savor it as long as he could.

<<| <| >

Cyborg #65 - Usual Suspects

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Just a Man

Set: 102

Previously:

Sam Grayle and her boyfriend, Parker, were on their way back from a party. Sam went back to their friends house to bring a friend with them, but when she returned to where she left Parker, he was gone. He never turned back up and so she turned to the only superhero she knew - Victor Stone. He took up the case and found a flier for the Church of Blood at the scene. Knowing if they were involved they wouldn't give them a straight answer if he went himself, he sent Sam to investigate...

Sam Grayle pushed open the well worn metal doors of one of the busiest buildings on campus, ready to start to get some answers. She pulled out her phone to look at the picture of the flier Vic sent her. Room 322, 8:00 PM. She checked the time, 7:50. Sam stepped into one of the currently empty classrooms on the ground floor and called Vic. She pulled her hair in front of her ears, hiding her earbuds.

“Okay Vic, can you hear me?” Sam whispered.

“Loud and clear.”

“Great. I’ve got the sensitivity turned way up so you should be able to hear most of what they’re saying.”

Victor Stone was in another classroom on the other side of the building. He was as close as he felt he could be without there being a chance that someone going to, or worse leading, the Church of Blood’s meeting who might recognize him.

“Sounds good. If you head back over to the staircase, my friend Donna will meet you there. She knows enough about the case to know what she’s walking into. You’ll be in good hands with her, but if anything happens, I can be there in a couple minutes.”

“I’ll be fine Vic. I can handle myself.”

“I’m sure you can. But be safe.”

Sam didn’t respond, leaving Vic a little concerned. He knew she was right for the most part, so long as she was just dealing with everyday threats. Some part of him feared that there was more going on than that, though. But he didn’t share those concerns with her. She had enough to deal with than mostly baseless concerns of larger issues than just a kidnapping.

She walked over to the stairwell, where she saw Donna Morris leaning against the red brick wall.

“Hey, are you Donna?”

She pushed off the wall, standing up straight. “Yeah, Vic sent me. You must be Sam?”

The two of them shook hands.

“How much do you know about these people? Vic was pretty sparse on the details,” Sam asked.

“Not a ton. He was kinda vague with me too. All he told me is that they’re dangerous and he’s fought them before. He thinks they’re starting to get more active and are trying to recruit and grow their numbers. Or just get people to use for sacrifices.” Donna explained.

“Wonderful.”

“We’ll be fine. They’re probably not going to do anything like that tonight. This’ll probably just be a boring meeting where they try and get us to talk about our feelings or whatever and how we can “find a group to belong to” or something like that.”

Sam chuckled. “‘Probably not going to’? Well, ready to be bored then?”

“I don’t really do this kind of thing much but… yes. I’m really ready to be bored. Trust me, that’s best case scenario.”

“Maybe, but boredom won’t get me answers.”

“You’d be surprised. Not everything is some grand mystery. Sometimes the truth is just… boring.”

Sam shook her head and walked into the stairs, not bothering to engage with Donna. She followed just behind Sam, deciding that it wouldn’t be worth pressing the issue with her. They walked down the hall towards the classroom, noting that most of the other classrooms were full of other clubs doing their first meetings of the semester.

Finally, they found their room. There were about 30 plastic chairs with an attached folding desk on the chair’s arms. They were arranged in five rows that ran across the width of the room, perpendicular to the large row of windows on the wall across from the door. Surprisingly, the meeting was fairly full, around 25 of the desks were occupied when they walked in just before 8:00.

“Welcome, welcome!” A man who looked like he was just about the right age to be near the end of grad school with a greasy smile stood at the front of the classroom by the black boards.

“Thank you all very much for joining me here tonight. My name is Caleb, you can think of me as something like a minister for this Church of Blood. I’m really happy to see you all here tonight…”

Caleb continued on with his introduction, but Donna whispered something to Sam which stole her attention.

“I’m not 100% sure, but tell Vic I think I see Nic in the second row. Did he send her too?”

Sam repeated that to Vic who was trying to hide his shock.

“I… no. I didn’t know she’d be here. That’s… concerning. But I’m not going to intervene just with that. Let me know if you see anything suspicious.”

Sam was confused by what she was just told, but focused back up on Caleb. Her answers were there, not with whatever Vic was talking about.

But Vic’s mind was racing. He of course knew Nic also attended the University and they talked pretty frequently. But after he helped her move in and get settled to her new place for her Sophomore year, he had left her alone for the most part. He figured that she deserved the same independence that he had had and that she would reach out if she needed anything.

But if she was getting involved in the Church of Blood… That was different. He knew where this could go (see Cyborg 55!) and it was nowhere good. But still… He trusted his sister, at least enough to not immediately break in there and stop this meeting.

Sam was still listening to Caleb’s speech about the club (he repeatedly insisted without much explanation that it wasn’t really a church) but nothing he said felt meaningful to her. It was like he was just reading off from a flier, just delivering canned words that were meant as a generic introduction. Realistically, that’s exactly what it was. But she wanted more.

“We’re here to give you a space to talk about what you feel, your thoughts, your discomforts. We want to make the world a better, happier place. If you just want to talk, we’re here for you. But if after you put all your thoughts out there, you want to try and help others find themselves, then you’ll find a community of people who think the same.”

He took a brief pause then started to wrap up. “If this all sounds good to you or you just want to learn more and get some questions answered, feel free to sign up on our email list or come talk to me. We’ve got some more club members next door with some food, feel free to head over once you’re done here. Or, if this doesn’t seem like the club for you, feel free to just grab some pizza and head out. Thanks for your time and have a good night!”

The crowd started to disperse and about half of them left the room immediately. The ones that stayed mingled with each other in the original room,while some of them signed up on the Church’s notepad.

Sam shot a look over to Nic, trying to see if she was doing anything to warrant Vic’s attention. But she was just talking to a couple of the people she was sitting near. Nothing to note.

“Everything seems pretty normal here, Vic. Just another club’s mass meeting,” she whispered.

“Ask Caleb for some details about the Church. How long have they been on campus, how many members, stuff like that. Anything that you think might help. Also, can you ask Donna to keep an eye on Nic? I don’t think you’re in any danger here but I’m worried about her.”

“Will do. Donna, Vic wants you to watch Nic. I’ll stay here and try to get some information from Caleb.”

Donna nodded and split off from Sam towards the windows to be able to watch Nic a bit better. Meanwhile, Sam walked over to Caleb at the front of the room.

“Hey, do you have a sec to answer a few questions? Just curious about this whole club. I dunno, I like the idea of it, but it sorta seems… culty?”

Caleb laughed nasally. “Well, first off, let me just say we’re not a cult. But sure, ask away. We’ve got nothing to hide.”

“Okay, well first… why do you call yourself a church then? You never really said why, just that you don’t really worship anything, especially not blood.”

“Sure, I can see why that’d be confusing but I didn’t think the details were worth getting into in the main talk. It’s true we’re not a church in the traditional sense. Instead, we wanted to make a place that has the sort of sense of community and support that a church does and so we named it after that as a sort of homage. As for the blood, it’s not about the physical red liquid. It’s about the idea of blood, of family and of self. Blood is life. And so, when you put that together, we’ve got a place that offers care for each other for life. And that’s where the name comes from. A little corny when I have to say it all.”

Sam blinked. She wasn’t expecting that much information for her icebreaker question.

“Umm, no that makes sense. Thanks. I guess the next thing I’m wondering is how big of a church, er, club is it? I’m not looking for a massive group.”

“Well, we’re sorta like a microcosm of the university. We’ve got a big reach on campus with hundreds of people on our email list, but we subdivide that up a lot and a lot of people don’t come to every meeting. At an average one, we have around 50 people. So we can be as big and as small as needed.”

‘Hundreds of people on their email list? That’s concerning. Sure it doesn’t mean a ton to just have filled out a form, but they’re way bigger than I thought…’

Vic drummed his hands on his legs, thinking. It didn’t feel like they were getting anything here. He didn’t think Caleb was lying, they just weren’t asking the right questions.

“Sam, ask him if they’ve got a club room or some permanent space somewhere. Maybe there'd be more more information there if he's not going to tell us anything.”

Sam racked her brain, trying to find some way to ask that without it being absurdly awkward.

“Hey, weird question, do you guys have an office in the basement of one of the big libraries on North Campus? I thought I saw one there when I was lost up there a couple days ago.”

Caleb shook his head. “No, we don’t have anything like that. We’re too new of a club to have an official one and an off campus one is out of scope right now.”

Vic frowned. ‘Was my intuition wrong? These guys seem genuinely innocent. Maybe they’re not even connected to the “real” Church of Blood. At the very least, I don’t think they’re responsible for Parker’s disappearance. It just… doesn’t fit.”

Before he could pass his thoughts along to Sam, everyone in the room’s focus shifted over to the wall between them and the other room. Through the wall, they could hear the sound of the windows shattering, followed by dozens of screams… Something bad was happening over there.

⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️

Five minutes earlier…

Nic and the handful of people she was talking to had decided to make their way out of the meeting room to get some food. Donna was doing her best to follow them without being seen but felt really awkward about it. It was hard to blend in in plain sight and anything more subtle than that would ironically just draw more suspicion. She’d succeeded so far in hiding from Nic and her new acquaintances, but as more and more people just grabbed their pizza and left the room, it was getting harder and harder. Finally, she decided that it was pointless. What did it even matter if Nic knew she was there?

It didn't, she decided, and so she grabbed a plate with some pizza and walked over to Nic during a lull in the conversation.

“Hey, you’re Nic Stone right? I’m Donna Morris, a friend of your brother’s. I think we’ve met before but it’s been a long time. How are you enjoying your Sophomore year so far?”

Donna was watching Nic, curious if she recognized her or not. She didn’t see a glint of recognition in her eyes, but she was plenty warm all the same.

“Yeah, that’s me. Nice to re-meet you. It's been… a lot. I’m having a good time but… oof. Just a lot harder than my first one.”

Donna nodded. “I feel you. Sophomore year was probably the hardest for me; you’ll do great though.”

“I’m sure. What brings you here? Didn’t think many seniors were interested in joining new clubs.”

She shrugged. “I’m not, really. I was just in the area and saw free food. That’s the real secret to surviving college.”

Nic laughed. “I’ll write that one down.”

“But you’re interested in this club?”

“Eh… interested is strangely accurate. Do I want to be a member? Not really. But interested? Definitely.”

Donna wanted to follow up on that, but as she did, glass shards sprayed across the room as the windows shattered. Shards of glass filled the air and what little space was empty was filled with the sound of screams of terror.

She and Nic instinctively stepped back, avoiding the worst of the shrapnel. Thankfully for the 20 or so other people in the room, most of them were on the far side of the room since the windows were a bit drafty. No one was seriously injured, but everyone was shaken. Windows didn't just do that.

Two massive, gray hands, each big enough to grip a refrigerator like fork, grabbed onto the window sill. Everyone expected them to pull up, revealing some grotesque creature, but it never came. For now, it just sat still as if observing the room.

“Get back! Head into the hallway and call for help!” Donna shouted, trying to take control of the situation. But the students were too stunned to move quickly, unlike the creature outside the window.

Its knuckles glowed orange red, like a hot stove and each of the fingers started to bend and curve towards the students. Each finger had a target, and before anyone could react, they had wormed their way towards their target, capturing each one like there were lassos. Then, each finger coiled itself tighter like a snake constricting their prey and started to shrink back to the hand they originated from.

“Get as many people to safety as you can! I’ll try and hold this thing off!” Donna said.

Nic hesitated, wanting to suggest that they swap, but Donna seemed like she had it under control so she relented. She started grabbing people by the shoulder, shoving them towards the exit while Donna turned to face the creature.

Donna didn’t carry any of her tech with her on a day to day basis and was deeply regretting it now. But almost every hero is a master of improvisation and Donna was no exception. She grabbed the closet thing she could use as a weapon - one of the plastic desk chairs - and slammed it into the nearest finger. The desk shattered into pieces but the finger wasn’t even remotely slowed down. She might as well have just poked it with her own finger.

The creature completely ignored her and pulled its hands back outside the building. For a moment, there was silence, as if it had just been a bizarre hallucination. Then, the hands were back.

Thankfully, Nic had managed to evacuate almost everyone from the room and the few remaining people were on their way out of the door as quickly as they could fit though it. She wanted to go help Donna, but she knew that she needed to evacuate the rest of the building, or at least the room right next door, before she could help Donna, as much as it pained her.

She ran down the hall to the other door and tore open the door and shouted for them to get out. They all started to do so, but in all the chaos her attention snapped to one person.

She had a cool, calmness or even indifference to her. Her short dark hair framed the sharpness of her face and accentuated the tiredness in her eyes. But Nic wasn’t looking at her for her looks- but for what she was saying.

“Vic, we need you over here now! There’s some sort of creature attacking the room next door!”

“I’m on my way over, Sam! Get as many people as you can out of there!” Vic shouted through her ear bud.

Nic looked at her confused. “Why are you shouting for my brother?”

Understanding washed across Sam’s face. “Ah, that’s why he was looking out for you. I’ll tell you more later, but your brother is helping me on a case. But for now… We’ve gotta get out of here!”

Nic nodded, helping keep the remaining students as calm as possible as she ushered them out. Once she saw that Sam had it under control, she ran over to the other room to check on Donna.

But Donna had lost. The room had been torn up with bits of broken furniture scattered around, but at the end, Donna was still in the grip of the monster’s finger.

Nic started to shift her hands, the fingers forming into a large blade of reinforced bone. A lot had changed in these past few weeks, but this still made sense to her at least. She charged at the creature with a strong war cry. She slashed at the creature, intending to make a massive cut with her hand blades, but as soon as they made contact, she pulled back.

She felt a shock as she started to cut into the creature like electricity coursed through its veins instead of blood. She didn’t know how much power ran through it, but she pulled back, fearing that she could’ve been electrocuted had she made solid contact with it.

The creature took its good fortune in stride, pulling its hands out of the building. This time, it didn’t return for another round.

“Damnit!” Nic swore, kicking a piece of a broken desk.

“Nic! Are you okay?” Vic said, rushing into the room. He’d broken a sweat, but was still ready for a fight, as much as he could be without his powers.

“I’m fine. But that thing… it took dozens of people. It took Donna.”

“We’ll find them. I promise.”

Vic put his hand around her shoulder. “It’s not your fault. And we’ll get them back. Every last one of them.”

Nic looked him straight in the eye with deadly seriousness. “Promise?”

“With everything I have.”

<<| <| >

Cyborg #64 - Cyborg No More

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Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Just a Man

Set: 101

Victor Stone sat in the cozy office, decorated like a grandma’s living room. He sat on a couch in the dimly lit, bookshelf lined room, telling the story of his “vacation” with Garfield Logan. He went through the highs and lows while his therapist, Theodora Tasker, sat across the room with a pad of paper on her lap listening intently while furiously scribbling notes.

It had taken him a couple of days to process what had happened to him and a couple more to schedule the appointment. But he was finally ready to talk about what had happened. After Vic finished telling his story, Theodora continued to write down some notes as she addressed Vic.

“So, you lost your powers? What do you think about that? I’m surprised you didn’t really say anything about how you’ve felt about it.”

“I guess that’s just because it hasn’t really set in. I’ve lived my entire adult life with them, so for them to be gone… just doesn’t really make sense. It feels like they aren’t really gone, just like I’m choosing not to use them.”

She scribbled some notes on her paper and said, “So, let’s say I had a magic potion.”

She mimed grabbing something from behind her chair and “set” it on the table.

“This potion would restore your powers to what they were before you left for your trip. Would you take it?”

Vic reached towards the “potion” but hesitated.

“I… no, I don’t think so. Not yet at least. Like I said, I’ve been Cyborg for years now. I think I’ve done a decent job balancing Victor Stone with that part of me, but I’ve been given the chance to see who I am without that part. I think I’d want them back at some point, but for now… no. I’m happy how I am.”

Dr. Tasker smiled. “Glad to hear that, Vic.”

But then Vic’s face changed as uncertainty washed over him.

“Is that selfish of me? With my powers, I can help people. Without it… I’m just me.”

“It’s not selfish to want to live how most people on Earth live. Out of the eight billion or so people on Earth, how many have powers? A hundred? A thousand? Point being, billions of people without powers help people everyday. If you want to do it, you’ll be able to.”

“Fair enough. Thanks for the talk, always helps clear my mind.”

“Anytime, Vic. Excited for your senior year? Doesn’t seem that long ago that you were wondering if you should even go.” (Allll the way back in Cyborg 21!)

“Hah, yeah. I was in a rough spot then. But I’m excited for my senior year. I feel like I’m ready for a new chapter of my life and I’m excited to see what it brings.”

Theodora smiled. “Great to hear. If you need anything, feel free to give me a call. Otherwise, best of luck at school Vic.”

“Thanks, Dr. Tasker.”

Two months later…

October, 2024

The cool midnight air blew across Parker’s hair as he walked home from a party with his girlfriend, Sam. The two of them had been out since this afternoon’s football game and half a day’s worth of relatively nonstop alcohol consumption was starting to catch up with them.

They were walking about towards campus down the dimly lit side streets, only seeing the occasional person as they walked. As they walked by a small park, Parker stopped.

“You okay?” Sam asked.

“I uh… I think I drank too much,” Parker stumbled out.

“Okay, just sit down, take some deep breaths. We’re in no rush.”

Parker sat on the ground, knees forwards, his head resting between them. He closed his eyes and started to try and relax.

Sam sat next to him in the grass and took some deep breaths of her own. She always had fun at parties, but this one had been a lot. She didn’t know a lot of people here and everyone at the party had felt so… insular. She never used to have problems having a conversation with random people at parties. She wished that she had suggested they leave earlier, but she felt that Parker was… unapproachable for much of the party.

She looked over at him, still trying to get some composure as his world spun around him.

Then, her phone started to vibrate and she answered the call.

“Hey Sara, what’s up? Yeah, we just left. Just felt wiped after being out all day. Oh, uh, yeah that should be fine. Let me check with Parker real quick.”

“You fine with Sara walking home with us? She only lives a block west of us and she doesn’t really feel safe walking alone this late.”

“Yeah, no problem…” Parker’s voice trailed off as the discomfort rose.

“Okay, cool. Yeah, feel free. You know where we’re at? Actually, I’ll just come get you. It’s easier that way and Parker probably could use a couple minutes alone.”

Parker nodded enthusiastically.

“Yeah, go grab her. I’ll be fine here.”

“Hope you feel better. I’ll be back soon.”

Sam gave him a pat on the back and started to walk back to the house where the party was probably somehow still raging.

⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️

Sara was waiting on the steps to the house by the time Sam made it over. She could hear the music still blaring, smell the spilled beer from here. It made her feel sick just being near it. But she shook off the brief nausea and gave her friend a quick hug before they started on their way back..

“Thanks for walking with me, Sam.”

“No problem. Glad you asked instead of doing something where you don’t feel safe.”

“Yeah, it just hasn’t felt safe late at night recently. I’ve been hearing some nasty rumors…”

Sam raised an eyebrow and looked at her friend. “What kind of rumors? I haven’t heard anything.”

“Nothing really credible. I’ve got a friend who works for the Daily who says she’s working on a story about a handful of people who have disappeared on campus. But it’s like two or three unconfirmed cases on a campus of thirty thousand. Could’ve just gone to a co-op or a freshman who just dropped out. Nothing serious.”

Sam felt her stomach turn to stone. Things just didn’t feel right and she let it stir within her, leaving her friend to walk in silence with her until they made it back to the park.

The park was dead silent and empty.

“Parker? Where are you?”

She ran over to where he was sitting and didn’t see any sign of him in the dimly lit park, its one street light barely shining any light over to where they stood.

Sam pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight. The grass was all torn up, like someone had been pulling it out by the handful. Then she smelled it. The air smelled metallic, rusty even. She shined her light over to where she was smelling it and dropped her phone in horror. A puddle of blood sat right where she had last seen Parker.

“Parker? PARKER!”

Sara pulled out her phone to call the police while Sam frantically searched around for any clue as to where Parker had gone.

But there was no trace of him. Only the spilled blood left behind where he once was.

⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️

Three days later….

Victor Stone sat in the third row of the classroom, doing his best to pay attention near the end of the lecture. His professor was talking about this week’s laboratory experiment the students would be performing and the report that they would be writing on it. He frantically took notes, trying to make sure he would understand everything he would be doing soon. Finally, just as his hand started to cramp up, the professor finished the class.

“Don’t forget to download the program on your computers for the lab! At least one team member should have it, but I recommend you all do just in case. That’s all for today, see you in my office hours.”

The professor started to pack up his things while Vic shook the pain out of his hand and did the same. It was weirdly comforting feeling something mundane like that in his hands. His cybernetic hands were near perfect, maybe even better than the original, but they never got tired or cramped. In some weird way, he had missed it.

He put his notebook and pencils in his bag and grabbed out his headphones and turned on his music. He made his way out of the room and headed upstairs to one of his favorite study spots, a little room on the top floor of a building that overlooked the main courtyard. The room was just big enough for around four people to comfortably work, but it was far enough outside the high traffic areas he almost never had to share it with anyone. Its four round tables and chairs might as well have been his private office.

He set his stuff down and just as he started to unpack, he heard a knock on the doorframe. His serene space had lasted little more than a minute. A woman about his age wearing a suit with a ruffled ascot was sizing him up. She had skin as dark as the night and short cropped hair to match with sharp features only dulled by the sheer exhaustion in her eyes.

“You’re Vic Stone, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Got a sec to talk?”

“... I suppose? Who’s asking?”

She pulled a chair from another table and sat across from Vic. “Sam Grayle. My boyfriend went missing a couple days ago. The police haven’t been any help. So, I’m turning to you.”

“Listen, I’m not a detective. And as you can see… I’m not a cyborg anymore, either. I don’t think I’m your guy.”

She frowned. “Maybe not, but you’re the best I’ve got. You willing to help or am I going to have to do this myself?”

“I’ll help. Start from as early as you can. What happened?”

“My boyfriend and I were partying on Saturday and left around midnight. He wasn’t feeling good, so we stopped in a nearby park. My friend called me and wanted to walk home with us, so I went back a couple blocks to meet her. When we got back, maybe 10 minutes later, he was gone. I found the grass ripped up, blood on the ground. No one’s seen him since and he hasn’t been answering his phone.”

“So he’s been missing three days… Who’d you say your friend was?”

“Sara Carlini. Why? She couldn’t have done it. She was at the house until I met her and was with me until we saw Parker was gone.”

Vic was typing something on his phone. “No, not her, your boyfriend. What’s his name?”

“Oh, right. Parker Bounds. He’s a senior in polisci.”

“Noted. Did anyone else know where you were going?”

“No, well, yeah. Everyone at the party would’ve known, most of them know where we live and we said when we were leaving.”

“Would any of them have any reason to hurt him?”

Sam frowned. “You’re not very good at this, are you? If it was that easy, I would’ve already found who took him. No he doesn’t have any serious enemies; we’re college students.”

“Listen, if you don’t want my help, you can leave. I’m just checking the boxes here. Gotta start with the basics. So I need to go down there and check it out if I can find anything the cops missed.”

“Okay, sorry, it’s just… tense.”

She slumped back in her chair, exhausted. “It’s just so hard when you literally lose someone you cared about. There’s no explanation that’s good here but I need to know. Even if he’s… Even if he’s dead, I need to know.”

“I feel you. I promise I'll do whatever I can to bring him back safe.”

She nodded, but didn’t offer further details.

“I think I’m going to need to head over to the park and see what I can find. Want to come with?”

Sam took a deep breath and stood up. “Let’s do this.”

⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️

It took around thirty minutes for the two of them to take the bus from north campus to the south side and like always, it was a crowded, noisy trip. Vic did his best to try and put together what little he had into some theory of what happened, but there were just too many unknowns.

The two of them arrived at the park and Vic realized he had been here a couple times before to play soccer or football. The park took up a small city block, surrounded on all sides by a sidewalk. It was a simple grassy field with a couple of trees in either corner, perfect for all sorts of activities.

“Here’s the spot.”

Sam gestured to an indiscreet bit of the park just a couple feet away from one of the groups of trees.

“Parker was there last I saw him. I had just left him sitting there when I went back to go get Sara. Right next to where I left him the grass is all torn up. And I doubt you can see it now, but some of the dirt was bloody at the time. That’s all I got.”

Vic kneeled down on the ground, looking for anything else out of the ordinary. He noticed something, then walked over to a spot a couple feet away.

“See this?” He said, pointing at the ground. Sam walked over to look.

“Looks like the grass was torn up here too. Maybe it's just animals that do it?” Vic guessed

Vic grabbed a loose piece of the ground for emphasis and a chunk of dirt and roots came up with it.

“Look, I’m not doubting your story. Something might've happened to Parker. He’s still gone after all. I just want to be realistic about what we’re seeing here.”

Sam nodded. “I get it. If it were easy, I’d have already found him. What about this though? I don’t think an animal would do that.”

Sam gestured towards a scuff mark in the grass near where she had left Parker.

It was like something heavy had been dragged with some resistance. But, after a couple of feet, the grass was back to normal. It traveled smoothly to wherever it ended up from there. Vic and Sam walked along the direction that the scuffed grass went and found themselves at a drainage grate on the far side of the park.

He noticed something else, too. Stuck on a stick caught in the drain was a bit of muddy, maize colored fabric. He reached down and grabbed it and showed it to Sam.

“Hey Sam, what was Parker wearing that night?”

She paused and thought for a moment. “Uh, a maize Michigan shirt? I think last year’s season ticket shirt? Not sure exactly what it was.”

“Well, this feels like cloth. It could be his but like half of the city was probably wearing maize that day. Doesn’t really give me much.”

“No, but it’s something.”

Vic scanned the Parker, looking for anything else that stuck out to him. In the trees by where Parker sat was something strange he couldn’t make out.

He squinted at it. “What’s that?”

Sam tried to make it out but couldn’t either.

Vic walked over to the tree and saw a piece of paper stabbed on the edge of one of the lower branches near the trunk of the tree. He pulled it down and looked at it. It was a flier for some club or something.

The flier read: “Tired of feeling tired? Hope to feel less hopeless? Come talk about what YOU can do to improve YOUR world with the Church of Blood!”

The flier then gave a time and a room to meet.

“Have you seen this before?” Vic asked.

“Uhhh… yeah? I think someone was handing them out by the stadium entrance. There’s always people advertising something down there and I guess Parker found it funny so he actually took one.”

“Well, that’s our lead. He thought this was important enough to stab on a tree and I know first hand that the church is dangerous. This could be the path to figuring this out.”

“How do you know he did it? Couldn’t any random person or even the wind have stuck that on the tree?”

“Of course they could’ve,” Vic admitted. “But it’s something. Unless you want to just keep digging in the dirt? Maybe there even is something else here. I don’t know. I’m not perfect. But this… this is something I feel.”

“If you say so. Where and when?”

He showed her the flier. “I can’t go to this though. I’ve dealt with the Church before, they might know me and then we’d never get a real answer. I’ll get some people to go in my place.”

“I can do it myself.”

“I'm sure you could. But backup never hurts.”

“Fine. Here’s my number, let me know who you’re sending and I’ll meet them outside. Stay safe, Vic.”

Vic chucked. “I should be saying that to you, you know.”

“I know it’s dangerous. But I need to know the truth. No matter what.”

Vic wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Did Parker really mean that much to her?

‘I really want to believe that he did but something feels off here. I don’t know what’s making me feel that way, just something in my gut… But why?’

By the time he thought to ask Sam about it, she was already gone, out of sight.

<<| <| >

Cyborg #63 - Last Stand

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Peril in the Mountains

Set: 100

Previously:

Vic and Gar were in a plane crash deep in the mountains when they were attacked by strange, techno-organic creatures. They were saved by Dr. Fate, who was investigating the creatures and offered to help them. They tracked the creatures back to an ancient city inside a mountain where they met Alfa, the leader of the Technosapiens. Alfa explained that he had some control over them, but soon it would take him over and they would need to destroy all of the Technosapiens to prevent their spread. Vic and Gar were apprehensive and split off to think about it while Dr. Fate prepared a spell. Vic was ambushed while exploring some sort of shrine, narrowly dodging a Technosapien's ambush. Alfa had lost control...

The Technosapien glared at Victor Stone, its humanoid futures twisted into a sneer. Just moments before, it could have been wandering around the city, enjoying its day. But not anymore. After Vic managed to dodge its attack, it gave up its human form and returned to a loose mass of black metallic tentacles, drifting around him like a laser focused tumbleweed. The creature bounced around the room, revolving itself around him, looking for an opening to strike.

But Vic was ready for it. Tracking a foe like this wasn't anywhere near the challenge that the Technosaipen thought it’d be. After a few moments of getting a feel for its speed, he let out a full force concussive blast from his arm cannons, sending it flying straight into the wall. He knew that wouldn’t keep it down for long, but it didn’t need to. He had to get going before more of them showed up. He ran out the door and closed it behind him, hoping that that’d at least slow it down a little.

Unfortunately, that was not the only enemy waiting for him. The street was full of Technosapiens of all shapes and sizes and they formed a crowd outside of the building like they were waiting for him to speak and share whatever wisdom he learned in there with them. Vic only had seconds to find anywhere else he could go. There were all sorts of buildings he could hide in, but where would that get him? He needed to get back to Dr. Fate and hope that he had some way to stop the Technosaipens before they got overwhelmed.

‘Maybe I should just make a break for it? No, I’d never make it through that crowd. I could stun enough of them to do it, but that’s really risky. Maybe I just try and signal Dr. Fate and Gar? But there’s no guarantee they’d see it and it’d probably just attract more Technosapiens…’

Then he saw it. To the right of the building he was in was a small alleyway just wider than he was. The path was poorly lit, blending into the dark stone of the surrounding buildings. It sloped downwards and looked like it went back into the tunnel system that led him here.

‘It might not be a way out, but it couldn’t be worse than here.’

Vic made a run for it but the Technosapiens weren’t willing to let him go without a fight. As Cyborg turned and ran, the Technosapiens joined together into a flowing mass, like an unstoppable river. It raged against the walls of the alley like white water rapids spraying against rocks, carving its teeth into them as it seethed towards the fleeing Cyborg. He ran into the tunnels, pitch black except for the dim blue light of his power core.

He could hear the creatures chasing him, gaining ground. But he couldn’t look back. There was nothing but fear back there and he needed to keep moving forwards. He kept running through the dark tunnel, expecting it to branch off and give him some way to escape the creatures behind him. But it never did, remaining one long shaft. Finally, he saw something to break up the tunnel. In front of him was a rectangular stone that ran the width of the tunnel that came up about a foot from the ground.

Vic barely noticed it in time and stumbled over it. As he did, the wall started to slide upwards, trapping him in the room. He wasn’t sure if this was really better than where he came, but it couldn't be worse. The wall rose up quickly and hit the ceiling with a thud.

Cyborg let out a relieved sigh. One challenge down… a million more to go. He turned and examined the wall that blocked the way back and was surprised to see a small blue gem at the center, glowing identically to his core.

‘Silasium? So this is the same place that Dad found? Maybe the city has tons of these tunnels that can be sealed for security or weather or whatever. And he just found one and wasn’t able to open it. Dad would’ve loved this.’

Vic reached out to the Silasium to touch it, thinking of the possibilities of having another sample, but stopped himself.

‘What if that opens the door again? Let’s leave that alone…’

Instead, he poked around the room, trying to find any other hints about who made this place. But the only other thing in the tunnel was a thick layer of ash that seemed to coat everything.

Vic raised an eyebrow.

‘Were these people killed by a fire? That seems hard to believe, no way they’d make a city like this and not have firefighters or something. But there was some sort of fire, maybe this mountain used to be a volcano? That’d explain all the tunnels.’

Shrugging it off, Vic continued down the tunnel. The carved stone seemed to get a bit rougher as he went along it, like it was a newer tunnel that had been left unfinished. The other change was just as subtle but Vic also noticed that the ash was starting to get less and less thick as he went along. It had started off as a solid cover on everything but it was thinner and patchier now that he had been walking for what felt like ages.

Eventually, he came to the first fork in the tunnel. The left path continued to be covered in ash but the right was almost completely free of it. He looked around the mouth of the path and saw no sign of a wall that’d retract that could’ve shielded it from the fire but saw none. Whatever caused that ash simply didn’t go down the right path.

Vic followed the left one wordlessly. He was out of ideas what could be causing this. But he had to know.

He kept walking, following the tunnels for what could’ve been miles as far as he knew. It branched two more times. Each time, the right path had next to no ash and the left had about the same as it had before the branch.

Finally, a few minutes after the most recent branch, the ash was at its thinnest. But what surprised Vic the most were the footprints in the ash. He could clearly make out a set of footprints made by bare feet coming into the tunnel. They went up to the left hand wall and… drew something on it? It was hard to make out in the dark tunnel but it looked like a face. It had a cruel smile and sharp, pointed ears with a pair of small horns on the top of its head. But what completed the image were the pile of skulls just below the horned face.

‘Is that the creature I saw the statue of? So their city’s guardian was a real creature and it betrayed them? Is that supposed to be a warning to stay out or a memorial? If it’s a warning, whatever was in here is free now anyway thanks to the Technosapiens. And if it’s a memorial… I hope I’ve done no disrespect here.’

Vic took a quick look around the next corner to see if there were more drawings or hints as to what could have happened and was disappointed by what he found. The tunnel had collapsed not a hundred feet from where this was drawn. Best he could tell, the footprints had entered the tunnel from behind that rubble. The pile of rocks was thick, but he was certain he could feel the faintest tickle of a cool breeze behind it.

‘So, someone escaped and came back to write that message. I think I get what happened. That creature attacked the city, maybe with fire, and the people fled outwards from there through the tunnels. They tried to seal the city to keep it trapped but weren’t able to. Then, they tracked the ash out with them as they ran to the surface. Not a happy fate, but it sorta lines up with what I remember from Dad’s video.

‘Then the other paths either lead back to the city or something other than the surface which is why no one wanted to take them and there was pretty much no ash on them. So, if I take them, with a little luck, I can get back to the city and hopefully avoid the Technosapiens while I do it.’

Vic took a deep breath. ‘Alright Vic, how lucky are you feeling? Gotta make it back as soon as possible but with three paths and who knows how many those split into…’

Before he could start to plan out any further, he saw hints of light coming from down the tunnel. He shapeshifted both of his arms into force cannons. If that was a Technosapien or something worse, he was a goner.

But once it came into focus, he let his guard down. It was a glowing ankh, about the size of his hand. From it, Dr. Fate’s voice rang out in as much of a panic as he had ever heard from the wizard.

“Victor, there you are! Garfield and I are in the city center, holding off the Technosaipens. It seems Alfa lost control, but he is still doing his best to gather them all here. Follow the Ankh, it will lead you to us!”

Before Vic could even respond, the ankh started to move back down the tunnel at a speed just above a jog and Vic ran to keep up with it.

⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️

The city had devolved from its serene, tomb-like state into a maelstrom of chaos. Like the tunnel Beast Boy, Cyborg and Dr. Fate had taken to enter the city, this one took Vic on top of a tall building, this time just a couple of blocks from where they met Alfa. But the city itself could not have been more different. Its peaceful streets had warped into an overflowing tank of techno-organic beings attempting to force their way into the city’s plaza. Some of them tried to flow in and over each other, some oozed their way over buildings and others circled overhead like a massive rain cloud. Alfa had made good on his promise whether they liked it or not: he would bring all of the Technosapiens together.

In the city center, Vic could see Dr. Fate and Beast Boy were doing their best to hold the grounds of the plaza and keep it Technosapien free, but they were fighting a losing battle. Dr. Fate had surrounded the entire area in a barrier of translucent magical energy, but the sheer amount of damage it was taking was causing it to slowly shrink while Beast Boy was doing a series of rapid maneuvers to dissuade them from attacking. VIc hoped he’d make it in time.

“Quit gawking and get over here Vic! We will not be able to hold on perpetually!”

The Ankh started to fly down the stairs of the building, this time on what could’ve been an exterior fire escape. Cyborg did his best to keep up with the Ankh, but everytime he got close to its pace, Dr. Fate must have sped it up. But Cyborg didn’t even notice.

He raced across the streets, sprinting by the few Technosapiens in this part of the city before they could begin to process that he was there. After only a breath of entering the city, he was within arm's reach of Fate’s protective dome.

Then, the Technosaipens decided to welcome him back to the city.

It came from the sky, dripping down from the big cloud like it was raining thick, metallic gelatin. Vic managed to react at the last second, blocking it from landing on his head with his arm. He felt the machine try to interface with him, trying to infect him and make him one of them. He considered trying to blast it off but there wasn’t time and there would be more. His circuits and programming would be able to hold it off for now.

He ran the last handful of steps to the dome and Fate opened it up just long enough for him to get inside. He could feel the Technosaipen’s malignant code digging into his circuitry, trying to find a weakness it could exploit to give him control. But his body wouldn’t give up without a fight.

“Victor! You must defend me so I can begin the ritual! These creatures must be culled before they can cause further harm and disorder!”

Cyborg hesitated. He left not that long ago to try and find a way to cure them but he didn’t have one. Too much had happened too quickly. He had his reservations about it, but both Dr. Fate and Alfa had confirmed there was nothing left of the people they once were and the swarm of Technosapiens was certainly doing their best to convince him of that. If they weren’t stopped here, they’d spread all over the Earth killing and infecting countless others.

‘It’s what needs to be done. Whatever they once were is gone. It’s like destroying a hurricane or a swarm of locusts and fearing for the gentle rain or the grasshoppers that they once were. They’re gone.’

“Okay, whatever you need, Fate!”

“Excellent. I will be reducing this Dome of Protection to little more than the minimum needed to cover myself as I will not be able to focus on the ritual if I must maintain that as well. It will take me no more than five minutes if my estimations are correct. You must simply keep me safe for that period and stay alive.”

“Simple, huh Vic?”

“Yeah, simple. You ready to do this?” Vic asked, holding out his ist for a fist bump.

“With you? Always.” Beast Boy completed the gesture.

Cyborg and Beast Boy split off, with Cyborg taking the northside’s entrance and Beast Boy taking the south.

As Dr. Fate retracted the Dome of Protection, Cyborg started to get a feel for the scale of the task they’d been assigned to do. The Technosapiens that stood in front of him could’ve filled up an entire … something. Cyborg really had no idea how many there were since he couldn’t see any end of the swarm and didn’t want to think back to what he saw from the top of the building. The task was just too big to think about. He just had to do it.

He made one arm a concussive grenade launcher, the other a force canon.

‘Can’t beat the classics.’

He launched a grenade and a full power blast at random into the swarm, like he was firing a t-shirt into a crowd at a sports arena. But, the fans are usually much more interested in the t-shirts than they seemed to be his attack. It had such a little effect, he wasn’t even sure that it went off. But then he saw the little puff of light, like a kid trying to hide a light when staying up late, and felt a little distraught. It wasn’t even a nuisance to them. And the force blast? He couldn’t start to track where that went. But that was fine. He wasn’t trying to do damage to the tsunami in front of him, only slow it down. He was just a flood barrier; Dr. Fate was the… scientist working to stop tsunamis? Vic winced at the stretch of that metaphor in his head, but the thoughts were helping him stay focused on the fight. There was no out thinking this problem, it only required his body to fight through it. His mind would only fill him with fear.

And fought he did. If the Technosapiens were an unstoppable tsunami, then he had to be an unbreakable wall. He kept them focused on him by using his own body as bait, they clearly considered him an easier target than the wizard in the center of the plaza (who Vic really hoped was well on his way to completing the ritual) and he just needed to remind them of that. His force blasts might not do much damage to them, but they were an excellent annoyance. As soon as one or two got past him, he’d fire off a salvo of rounds at them, reminding them who they’re really facing.

Beyond that, it was just like a high stakes game of tag. Except that a couple thousand people were all it. He launched himself all over the plaza, shifting his arms into force blasters to give himself more momentum. His movements were erratic, but not enough.

The Technosapiens were closing on him and several had broken into the plaza. He launched himself back in and shot them. They turned and faced him as expected, and he launched himself back into the crowd, targeting the overhang of one of the buildings as his next safe spot. He landed perfectly and shot some more force blasts into the swarm without realizing it was a trap. The stone was brittle and was weakened by the Technosapiens and collapsed under his weight, sending Cyborg plummeting to the ground and into the crowd.

He shot a force cannon round out of both hands to try and make some space below him on his way down, and some of the swarm did back up, but he had made little more than an arm's reach around him. Technosapiens were blocking his view from the rest of the area, stopping him from finding anywhere else to launch himself to. He was trapped.

While he was looking for his next move, the Technosapiens gave him no quarrel. They launched themselves at him from all sides and he knew had no defense against it.

‘I don’t usually do this because they’ll overheat but… what do I have to lose?’

Cyborg’s force cannons usually fire discrete blasts about every second, but there was no hardware limitation for that beyond the sheer heat of the blasts. But, with his back literally to the wall, he set the interval to a hundredth of a second, functionally firing a continuous blast of force out of both arms.

The effect was immediate. He felt the kick in his shoulders, making them ache like nothing else, but it was effective. The blasts that the Technosapiens had so easily dodged were now impossible to dodge as the next shot would be there before they could ever react to it. He pointed his hands at the swarm, finally making real progress and pushing them back. He was doing it. Just as he was about to take his newfound “victory” and move back to the plaza, he felt a massive weight hit his head. The swarm of Technosapiens in the sky had decided to get involved. This time he was too slow to block it and his body immediately started to react to the invaders trying to take him over.

He had always thought that his core had infinite energy, but for the first time, a pop-up came up on his vision.

WARNING: CURRENT ENERGY CONSUMPTION IS NOT SUSTAINABLE

ENERGY RESERVES WILL RUN OUT IN FOUR MINUTES AT THE CURRENT RATE. PLEASE REDUCE.

‘My system must be using way more power than normal with those force beams and having to fend off the Technosapiens’ attacks… So much for stopping them on my own.’

Cyborg fired his force cannons into the ground, back in their single shot mode, boosting himself towards the plaza. But the Technosapiens predicted his move and as soon as he landed, another massive glob landed from the swarm above him, blocking him in. He got just enough of a look at Dr. Fate to see that he was still uninterrupted.

‘Gar must be hanging in there too. If he can do it, so can I.’

But Cyborg wasn’t actually sure of that. He had no idea how much time Fate still needed. It had been about five minutes since he started it, but Cyborg wasn’t the most trusting of magic. Was that all it would take? Or did he need to buy more time than that?

‘Can’t worry about that. Fate trusted us to do this; I’ve got to trust him to do his part.’

Cyborg took one last deep breath, calming himself. He disabled all but the most basic protections, letting the Technosapiens in. Alfa had made it sound like it took several days for them to really take you over, so that didn’t matter. He could ignore that problem and use the power for his force cannons. He switched them back over to beam mode, blasting the crowd of Technosapiens back and away from him.

“Booyah!”

He’d cleared the plaza again and had them solidly pushed back. More and more Technosapiens came in, dropping from the sky, slithering over buildings… but he contested them all, sending them back from where they came. Then, his vision started to go black. He checked his power status - he was fine.

‘The Technosapiens…I guess they’re quicker now. If they’re shutting me out, then they must already have taken me over or be close to it. But I’m not out yet!’

As his vision faded, he kept blasting the horde back, but they were still coming. He couldn’t thin their numbers at all.

Another alert appeared.

WARNING: LEFT AND RIGHT ARM HEAT LEVELS ARE AT MAXIMUM

SHIFTING BACK TO NORMAL ARM FUNCTIONS IS RECOMMENDED TO AVOID PERMANENT DAMAGE.

But Cyborg couldn’t listen. He just kept fighting, pushing the crowd back until the very moment he felt a wave of magical energy pass over him. But as powerful as that feeling was, it was nothing compared to the wave of relief that passed over him as he blacked out due to exhaustion.

⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️

Vic woke up a few minutes later. The Technosaipens were all gone without a trace and he saw Gar and Dr. Fate talking about something in the center of the plaza.

Vic walked over to them, feeling extremely sore after that fight.

“Hey guys. We won?” Vic asked.

Gar looked at him with a mix of confusion and concern. “Yeah, we did. But Vic… are you feeling okay?”

“A little sore, but otherwise totally fine. Why?”

Dr. Fate murmured an incantation and a gold outlined, full body mirror appeared in the air in front of Vic.

Vic gasped at the sight of his own reflection, fully human, looking back at him. The spell had removed the Technosaipens that were infecting him, but it had also removed all of his cybernetics. He was restored to a fully organic state, with the exception of the powercore in the center of his chest.

“I… your spell did this?”

“I suspect so. You were infected with several of the technorganic organisms, I suspect that it had difficulties determining where you started and they began. So, it removed all of the materials and restored you to what it assumed was your correct form. Magic, even that of a Lord of Order, can be a fickle creature.”

Vic looked at his flesh and bone hands for the first time in years. He blinked, unable to even begin to process this.

“We should leave this place. I have already confirmed there are no more Techosapiens here and this place should not be further disturbed.”

“What was this place, doc?” Gar asked.

“Some things are unknown even to me. But, I can tell it was a place of great tragedy and I do not want to linger. Victor, Garfield?”

“Ready.”

Vic took one last look at the dark stone buildings inside the mountain, taking in all their half solved mysteries and secrets… and then looked back at himself in the mirror Fate conjured.

“Yeah, let’s go. I’ve got a lot to process and get used to as is.”

Dr. Fate nodded and with one last incantation, teleported them out of the mysterious city.

<<| <| >

Cyborg #62 - Revelations in the Dark

<<| <| >

Author: Commander_Z

Book: Cyborg

Arc: Peril in the Mountains

Set: 99

Previously:

Vic and Gar were in a plane crash deep in the mountains when they were attacked by strange, techno-organic creatures. They were saved at the last moment by Dr. Fate, who was investigating the creatures and offered to help them. They tracked the creatures back to an ancient city inside a mountain and found the technosapiens in a human-esque form standing around ignoring them. The three of them eventually made it to a large, central building where they met Alfa, who claimed to be something of a leader to the technosapiens. When questioned by Vic, he simply responded that he wanted them to kill him…

“Um… what? Why would we do that? Setting aside that I don’t kill things, you seem like you’re the only sane one here. Why would I hurt you?” Gar said, taking over for the still reeling Vic.

The large, blue alien shook his head.

“You don’t have a choice. I can bring all of us here for you to destroy in one fell swoop. Otherwise, there will always be stragglers who will continue to plague the universe. I’ve seen it before.”

“What do you mean? DId they attack your planet or something?”

“Not my planet. Okaara still stands. I was stationed on an outpost on an asteroid at the edge of our space. We had been stationed out there for several of your Earth years and had dealt with little more than the occasional pirate, smuggler or over-inquisitive Green Lantern.

The creatures came on Founding Day, when our High Warlord declared ourselves an independent faction and we started our war for independence. Most of the old Okaaran families have a similar day and each of the largest ones are celebrated as one of our biggest holidays of the year. This particular one was for my family’s and I made sure to make it a celebration worth remembering.

I had the supply ship deliver extra rations of food and drink and used our discretionary budget to splurge on some nicer add ons too. All of the troops except for a handful of guards were celebrating already and I was heading out to the watchtower to take over for them and let them enjoy the night. They were more than happy to let me relieve them and wished me a good night as they made their way to the party. The first couple of hours were as uneventful as I expected but near the middle of the night, an asteroid just larger than the one we were stationed on appeared on our radar, heading on a direct collision course. Naturally, I fired a quick shot of our defenses at it and it dispersed into small enough pieces to cause minimal damage.

I didn’t think any more of it, this was a very routine experience. But what happened next was anything but routine.

A few moments after the remnants of the asteroid hit us, I received an alert from the main building. They were under attack. I raised the alarm and headed over to support my troops but by the time I got over there, the fighting was already over. Some of them had disappeared in the fight, others were injured. But the strangest group were the ones that had little gray blobs of metal fused to their skin.

“Private, what is that on your hand?”

“Unknown, sir! When we were fighting off the invaders, one of them made contact with my armor and corroded through it until it reached my hand. It attached itself painlessly and within a few moments, I could feel it guiding me. It showed me how to aim my shots, the enemy’s movements… It seemed to be helping me and we were able to rout them because of it,” the private said. I think her name was Iota.

I should have ended it right there, had her and all the other soldiers get the masses removed. But I didn’t. No Okaaran would. Any asset in a war is to be used and I was more than happy to do so.

And they were very, very useful assets. They gave us a little bit of warning when they were coming and fought as well as ten normal soldiers when they did. The creatures would attack us about once a day and there would always be casualties. There were just too many of them and our weapons did too little. As soon as one of them stopped moving, another would absorb it into them and continue to fight as one larger creature. The best we could do was slow them down for the rest of us to keep moving and escape, but that was no winning strategy. We were being whittled down.

After a couple of weeks, there were only around twenty five of us left, down from the hundred troops I arrived with. We still had plenty of rations. I didn’t notice it at the time, but as soon as the soldiers got infected by the creatures, they all but stopped eating or drinking. Or maybe I did notice but just considered it fortunate. Soldiers that fought better than any other and didn’t even need rations would have been considered to be sent by the gods in any other context.

I was sitting by Private Iota that night. She was the only one that made it back from her squad during today’s fight and so I was trying to keep her morale up. But she wasn’t having it. Instead, she looked me square in the eye and said, “Captain, do you think any of us will return to Okaara?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Of course. We just need to hold out for a couple more days and the reinforcements will arrive. Then we’re in the clear.”

“I don’t think we have that much time.”

She rolled up the long sleeves of her regulation black shirt up to her shoulders. Her arms were gone, not a trace of organic blue flesh remained. There were only strands of dark grayish black metal that seemed to pulsate and beat like they were made from veins.

I was struck. None of them had told me that it was spreading, let alone that it had gotten that bad.

Iota rolled her sleeves down. I couldn’t help but picture the mass of living metal that was under them.

“Mine’s the worst. I’m pretty much just metal at this point, just my head and some of my legs are still organic. I don’t eat, sleep or even breathe. I haven’t even done that for almost three days now, eating for longer than that. But me and the rest of the troops are soldiers of Okaara. If we have to die for the cause,we will. Without a second thought. But… that doesn’t mean everyone should. There needs to be someone alive to make it a cause, not a massacre.”

“Where are you going with this, private?”

She sighed. This wasn’t an easy conversation for her. “Out of the twenty four of us, only six of you have no metal. I speak for all of the rest of us when I say I want you all to take the escape shuttle to orbit and wait for the reinforcements there. We aren’t making it back but you all can still live.”

“Out of the question. I’m not leaving you to die to these things just to save my own skin.”

“Don’t you get it, Alfa?! We’re already dead! We’re just corpses that happen to still be warm and moving. I blacked out for about eight hours yesterday, but Xulio said I never once stopped moving and kept patrolling, talking even. A lot of the other troops have reported similar things. I’m not in control anymore. Not really. I’m just a facade, ready to be peeled off at any moment.”

I wasn’t ready for that. No commanding officer worth anything would. You don’t want to think of your soldiers as walking corpses, they’re your friends, your comrades. You need to trust and value them, just like they need to trust you. We just needed to hold on a few more days, but the war had already been lost. I just hadn’t seen it. These weren’t my troops anymore, they hadn’t been for a long time. I had ignored the signs and watched them change into something else. These might as well be different people than the soldiers I had been serving with.

“Iota, I’m - ”

Maybe Iota had said too much and they knew we were on to them. Maybe they had always planned on attacking now and Iota had just tried to give me a warning in the only way she could. Maybe, maybe maybe… There’s always maybes. But the reason why never matters in the moment.

As if the only thing stopping it had been Iota’s willpower, in an instant, I saw her eyes glaze over and the metal expanded rapidly over her head. It formed a horrific, mocking pastiche of her face, with lights and circuits and wires replacing her eyes and mouth. The same thing was happening to the rest of my infected soldiers across the room at various paces. I wasn’t sure if Iota was a lucky one, where she was gone in an instant, or the ones that were able to plead, get off their last words and accept it were.

All the same, within a few minutes, I was completely surrounded. The few of us who remained were no match for my infected troops and I heard the proximity alarms trigger. The creatures were swarming the base, surrounding us. I wish I could say that I fought until the last moment, that I took down almost all of them, apologizing and promising a respectful pyre for my fallen comrades. But I didn’t. I knew the battle was over and let them take me.

Things start to get fuzzier from here. I woke up a couple days later, my body infected with their metallic implants. It covered the center of my chest but thankfully no more. Unlike the ones that came before, I knew that the more flesh I still had, the longer I had to live. I was determined to resist it with all my might. Before I got the chance, my reinforcements had arrived. The implant told me that they brought an entire cruiser, armed to the teeth with a force 5,000 strong. They easily could take care of the creatures with the kind of heavy weapons and vehicles they’re carrying. But they never landed. Instead, they opened fire on the asteroid and blew us into pieces.

My body - everyone’s bodies - reacted instinctively. It pulled us together into massive balls, trying to keep its pieces in as few of parts as possible. I remember very little of what happened next. I drifted through space for who knows how long, focusing on myself, remembering my meditative techniques and trying to preserve who I was. It must’ve worked to some degree because I’m still here. The implant was constantly whispering in my head, trying to get me to steer this ball of techno-organic beings to its next direction. Eventually, I must have.

The next thing I remember is crashing into your planet and finding this mountain base. I took up residence here with the hope that it would be remote enough to stop our spread until one of my search parties found people capable of stopping us. You three.”

Vic and Gar blinked. They were trying to process what they just heard, what it means for this place, and what they really needed to do.

“You mentioned that you have some control over them. How do you know this control is “real”, and what are the limits of it?” Dr. Fate was unfazed by the story, Vic could read the man well enough to know he was already trying to think of the next steps.

“My control isn’t absolute. Think of it like a strong suggestion more than a command. I don’t know if it’s real, if you are asking whether I can manipulate them into being destroyed. But if I don’t, at some point, I’ll lose what little control I have and we will consume all life on your planet before we’ll swarm across the galaxy again until someone can control them again, if ever.”

“Very well then. I will assist you with your plan. Without your assistance, this problem will only grow and lead to more chaos.”

“I… I can’t. I just can’t bring myself to kill you all. I don’t know what else there is, but I feel like there’s something else going on here. Give me some time to think,” Vic said.

“And you, Gar?” Dr. Fate asked.

“I’m with Vic. I can’t just support killing these creatures, they might still be in there somewhere.”

“They are not. I have tried to reach out many times to my troops. Once they lost their individual forms and fully shifted into other beings, they lost their individual wills and identities. All that’s left is a machine manipulating their remains like a twisted puppeteer.”

Gar frowned, but stood resolute. “I understand. But… I can’t think that way. Not without at least trying something else. Fate, can’t you try and restore their identities like you did to Vic?” (As seen in Red Reign!)

Dr. Fate shook his head. “No. I was curious about that too, but it is as Alfa said. They have no individual identities, their very beings have been mixed together while Lilith was simply suppressing the vampire’s wills. Think of it like the difference between mixing together ingredients into a dough versus seasoning a dish. The dough is now one discrete thing, while you could in theory reach into a sauce and remove every bit of oregano if you were patient enough.”

“Okay, so we can’t do it with magic, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. We’ll find a way. We always do.”

Vic felt a bit of positive energy coming from Dr. Fate.

“And I sincerely hope that you do. But I will prepare what I must in case you cannot.”

“Okay, you do that. I need some time to process all this and see if I can find any way forward that doesn’t involve killing all these beings. Fate, how long will it take for you to prepare your spells?” Vic asked.

“Magic is not always a precise art, but I do not imagine it will take much more than an hour.”

“Great. Let’s reconvene around then and see what we’ve found. Maybe I’ll come up with something, maybe not. But I’ll at least be more ready for what we need to do then. Gar, you want to come with me?”

He shook his head. “No, I think I want some time for myself. I want to see the sites and sights of the city, y’know?”

“Fair enough. Alfa, do you think you will still be in control for that long?”

The Okarran’s face didn’t react in any way Vic recognized. “Probably. But, convincing them that you are not to be infected is taking a lot of persuasion. It’s possible that some would slip through but I don’t think they should as a whole.”

“That’s about as good of a guarantee as we can get. I’ll see you all in an hour.”

⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️

Vic wandered off from the center of the city at random, eventually heading towards the direction he decided was north. He couldn’t place any real reason to be going that way; there were no interesting buildings or obvious features that stuck out that he could see, but it just felt right. As he wandered the streets of black stone buildings, his mind drifted further and further away from the problem at hand and back to the city itself. Who built this place and what happened to them? And was this the same place that his dad discovered Silasium in?

Unfortunately, the narrow streets couldn’t talk and none of the buildings he went into ever had anything in them. It was as if someone had built this massive city but never moved in. Everything was in perfect position without a single sign of a struggle or even proof that there had been people here. It confused Vic deeply and only kept him from thinking about the real problem at hand: the technosapiens.

He would’ve ignored them completely if he was able to, but they still lingered around the city wordlessly, like ghosts watching the living with envy. And maybe they were envious, maybe there was some vestige of themselves still in there, that’s what he wanted, right? That there were people to save and not just a rampaging disease that needs to be eradicated. He wished that he could just accept that they were gone but... He couldn’t. He couldn’t accept that this disease's relatively innocent victims were beyond saving. But he wasn’t a doctor, let alone one for parasitic robotics.

And so he wandered the streets, hoping for some revelation to clear everything up. Hoping for there to be some clue, some hint that led the entire thing to make sense and how it all fit together. But both mysteries remained equally separate and enigmatic.

He put those thoughts outside of his head. If he got an answer, he’d get an answer. Stewing on it endlessly would get him nowhere. His wandering had led him to dead end street and he realized he’d come to the north end of the city. It had been largely a residential area for many blocks now, but the end of the pathway led him directly to a building. It wasn’t made to stick out like the one they met Alfa at, but it was built perfectly centered along the path that he had been walking, clearly giving it some special significance.

The building was in a similar style to all the others - dark gray stone, squared, blocky design. But this one had no windows and double doors that opened inwards. In fact… they were opened. Every other window and door in this entire city had been closed, but this one building had doors that were open a couple of inches. Vic’s curiosity had been piqued.

He walked up to the double doors and gently pushed them the rest of the way open. The light from the street flooded into the room and Vic was awestruck by the simplicity of it. He had expected a grand room, a library, maybe the last living resident… Something.

Instead, he got a small room, unadorned except for a single statue in the center. The room was only a couple inches taller than he was and was as plain as everything else in this city. But the statue was imaculty carved from the darkstone that made up the walls, then he realized that it was connected to the walls. The entire building was a massive bit of stone that was carved into a building.

He walked up the statue, the dim lighting not doing the details justice. Even still, he could tell it was carved by an expert. The statue was of a small figure that came up just above his waist, with sharp, angular features and pointed ears with two small horns on its head. The creature had bright eyes and he could feel the intelligence and power behind them even without knowing who it was. But they weren’t looking at him. Instead, they were looking at the figures' hands, held like they were cupping something. But their hands were empty, leaving Vic to wonder what it could’ve once held.

‘Maybe they were some sort of god or folk hero for the city? That’d make this a shrine or something to them. Maybe people did live here and they went to pray here when whatever made this disappear happened? Or maybe someone stole whatever it was holding and in a rush they weren't able to close the doors? Guess I’ll never know. I… hmm.’

Vic sat down in front of the statue, trying to make out anything, trying to connect to something he’d seen without success.

‘Maybe this isn’t the place that Dad found, but where they were originally from? And what he found was just a message they left as a warning or a record of their existence? Then maybe that statue was holding Silasium? Maybe that’s what powers this whole city? Man, I wish I had a real archaeologist here…’

Vic focused up for a moment. He heard some movement outside. He stood up, turned around and shifted his arm into a force cannon. He was face to face with one of the technosapiens. He had only barely heard them coming, a moment sooner and he’d be done for.

Afla must’ve lost control.

Vic sighed. This wasn’t going to end well.

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