Seven had to return to school that evening, before the mirrors were ‘back online’ and had fully integrated. That meant Peter had to ask Akira to inquire of the house, and especially of Ffrwd Dylluan’s external facing mirrors, if his adopted mum had ever visited the house.
The mirror showed someone, a slight figure whose sex was indistinguishable in the dark, wearing a dark hooded coat or anorak, arrive in the rain late one night. She paused, then suddenly two masked individuals appeared behind her and grabbed her, dragging her away from the gate. Akira managed to force the mirrors to replay the incident a couple of times. One of the attackers held a glowing red object in his hand, which blinded the mirror for several seconds, then when it came back on, a white van could be seen driving away, towards the South. It had to be connected, surely?
Peter’s enhanced vision could make out certain details the others couldn’t. He recognised that it had been a white Leyland van. That wasn’t really that helpful though, there were thousands of them on the roads, but he was able to make out a partial registration, WXA20 something – that identified it as a Wessex licence plate, registered last year. That still meant a few hundred possible vehicles, but it helped narrow things down. Then he realised that there had once had vinyl signage on the side of the van, which had been removed. It took his improved vision to see that when some letters had been removed it had left traces of glue behind and dust had adhered to that in places. Something …ket Co. and below it, the words Little Russia, Wessex.
Peter muttered almost jokingly to cover his worry, “It’s a Leyland so had to have broken down before it reached Wessex. Let’s hope it’s left an oil patch we can follow all the way back to wherever they were going.”
Little Russia was a residential district to the south of the city, so named because it had been settled by Russian nobility fleeing their revolution, only for their houses to be purchased following the Soviet Union collapse by Russian Oligarchs. The van must have once been owned by a local business there. Hopefully they would remember who the van had been sold to or at least given them the full registration, so they could try to track down the current owners.
Akira sat down on one of the large sofa’s and went into a trace as he tried to view the recent past, his eyes turning chalky white as he did so. Unfortunately, he struggled to connect with the event. After all, he had nothing to get a reading from and then he smelt it, coming from the back of the mysterious van, a smell of freshly turned earth mixed with the stench of rotting corpse. Did that mean the person being kidnapped had died and been buried, or was it something else entirely?
Before he could analyse it any further, a call came in over their commdisks; from Marcus. It took Peter a few seconds to remember that Marcus was in fact Inspector Tolliver, the team’s liaison with the Wessex Police.
Marcus’ came immediately to the point, “Good morning team, I’ve a possible mission for you. A gang is confirmed to be running a drug manufacturing operation that we have jurisdiction over. Is there any chance you could assist in a drug operation that involves Metas? We don’t have an address yet, but we have reason to believe the drug is being manufactured in Wessex. Its use has resulted in several deaths across Southern England.
Each had been using a process called DNAscendant. It’s believed to grant those with the meta gene the opportunity to gain and/or boost Meta-powers, but has a high death rate in participants. The victims all died of a simultaneous stroke and heart attack despite all being in their early twenties and they all suffered massive pain in the last moments of their lives brought on by using the drug.
It’s surfaced before, supposedly supplied by a group rumoured to be known as Labyrinth, but this time it’s different. Its victims appear to have not been their usual rich and powerful. In addition, this version of DNAscendant, unlike the previous, appears to give powers to even to those without the meta-gene! Something that should be physically impossible yet none of the victims who had displayed meta-abilities after injecting the drug had tested positive for the meta-gene!”
A still dazed Akira muttered under his breath, “Would say nothing is impossible except the unimaginable.”
Unaware of Akira’s comment, Marcus continued, “Also, this process is supposedly only provided for a very high fee but in each of the recent deaths there was no indication that they could afford to pay for such an upgrade.
The chemical mix of the drug consists of several previously unknown organic compounds mixed with pure heroin! This heroin is not linked to any international source; it’s too pure, and forensics suspect that it’s a new strain of genetically modified opium poppy being grown hydroponically here in the UK. In its current form it’s deadly, but somehow the rest of the drug cocktail keeps the recipient alive, for a few days or weeks at least.”
Marcus paused for a few seconds then continued, “Recently several junkies in Wessex have been found dead after overdosing on pure heroin. Not only is this heroin being sold cheaply, but it has proved to be identical to the heroin used in the DNAscendant compound. Our intelligence bods believe the distributor may be stealing the heroin from Labyrinth and selling it on locally. That could mean that the factory making both may be local and we think it’s being grown in one of the mansions in Little Russia. From what we’ve uncovered, it’s highly likely that DNAscendant-powered Metas will be involved, hence wanting to give your team the heads-up to be ready.”
After Marcus had gone off-line, Mary swung a pendulum over a local map of the city to try to divine where to look first, but with nothing to give her a psychic ‘scent’ she was only able to sense that they needed to head South.
They sat down to see what they had to go on. The white van that Peter suspected had been used to kidnap his adopted mum had come from Little Russia or at least Wessex way and now this. Could his mum’s mystical Druidic powers over plants be connected somehow?
It was likely that someone connected with the DNAscendant process was stealing and selling on some of the heroin that’s been used as part of the manufacturing and selling it cheap (and uncut) on the streets of Wessex. The dealer was either lazy for not cutting the drug to make more money, or they wanted money fast, possibly to get away?
Mary in particular had a number of contacts who might be able to help. She also wondered if Naomi Van Helsing might be worth contacting, just in case she had any insights. Akira meanwhile was suggesting he went undercover as a junkie and tried to score then, hopefully, follow them back to their drug factory.
Peter however wanted to be doing something now and stated he planned to fly over the area, hoping to spot the van used for the kidnapping from the air. There was no reason to assume the drug situation and that were connected.
Mary explained that Little Russia was a prosperous area on the outskirts of the city and had numerous estates belonging to very rich businessmen, including several Russian oligarchs who had bought property in the area and were believed to have connections with the Russian Mafiya.
Akira in particular didn’t want the team to split up, but Peter insisted he would just be looking for the van and that he would be okay. After several minutes arguing about staying together as a team, it was agreed that Akira would accompany Peter on his quest while Mary chased down her contacts, starting with Tin-Hat Tommy. Tommy was Jamaican or spoke as though he was first generation, and he lived in Container Town so would be easy to trace. Tommy was a paranoid conspiracy theorist in the worst way, but he also had mad contact skills, and his cannabis use meant he may know someone who could help Mary track down the dealer she was looking for.
Tommy insisted on meeting up in a greasy spoon café some distance from Container Town and demanded she buy him a ‘full English’ before he would speak. After he had finished and was slurping down a large mug of tea, Tommy admitted he was aware of a new dealer selling some pretty sweet ‘H’, way too cheap. He was also a lot more polite than your average street dealer. Apparently, he could be found hanging around the Castle district particularly near the bandstand most Friday evenings.
Leaving Tommy, Mary headed back to the converted container she called home. There she found a gift from Marcus waiting for her, a small empty vial that had been used by the mystery dealer to distribute the heroin; he looked at the two labels – he immediately recognised the stylised L of the Labyrinth but there was something off about it – Labyrinth preferred to work from the shadows, not advertising their presence so blatantly.
On the other side was a mystical circle symbol, which he immediately posted through to Akira to see if he recognised it. He didn’t, but Peter did, he’d seen it before, tattooed on Megan’s wrists!
When Paragon and Akira arrived at the outskirts of Little Russia, they realised just how enormous the task facing them was. There was no way they could find the van without checking each van up close and personal, and what if it was inside a garage? Akira landed in a park and elected to try viewing the past again, hoping again that closer proximity might allow him to focus on finding the missing van. After a while, he got the vague impression that something has been in this area quite recently and was probably still here, somewhere. He was sure they had the right area, just not enough to identify where. Then he thought to focus on the smell he’d sensed before. That was pretty unique, after all, can’t be too many scents that smelt of freshly turned soil and rotting corpse.
This time an image formed in his mind, of an estate surrounded by a high wall. It took them a further hour before they managed to trace it. It looked protected, cameras covering the grounds and entry gates. There was no white van in the grounds, but there were what used to be stables converted into a garage some distance away from the house. The three-storey house was large and set some distance back from the gate.
Akira was able to focus on the psychic ‘scent’ again and was sure it was coming from the house itself, not the garage. He contacted Marcus and informed him that he was reasonably sure he had found the drug factory he was looking for.
Marcus checked the address and came back with some interesting news. The owner was Russian and had sovereign immunity, which made getting a search warrant almost impossible.
He explained that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia had decided to reintroduce limited sovereign immunity, supposedly for its surviving noble families. Needless to say, they were sold instead to any unscrupulous business oligarchs willing to pay.
Unlike diplomatic immunity, this only covered the named person and his direct family, not their staff and not their houses when not in residence. It only provided limited criminal and no civil immunity while abroad as most nations could elect to withdraw the immunity at any time, much to Russia’s annoyance. Still, the owner having sovereign immunity did raise issues for the Police.
It meant they couldn’t just barge into the house. Akira did think it would be possible to sneak in and check it out if he was to turn both of them invisible, so they could scout out the property first.
Before they did anything Akira contacted Banshee and told her what she had discovered. As he finished Mary saw someone come to her container door and recognised the face even as Naomi lit up a cigarette.
After their usual greetings were exchanged, Naomi told Mary that she didn’t have any information on the DNAscendant. She wanted to come to Wessex, so she could check out the rumours she had been hearing on the mystical network, that there was a massive mystical storm building over Wessex. It was as though someone was seriously abusing the city’s mystical energy. Mary decided to show Naomi the symbol on the vial. She recognised the mystical circle as being a Druidic symbol, used by certain followers of the Druidic arts. It was supposed to encourage nature and the growth of plants etc. She could sort of understand Labyrinth being involved in the distribution of DNAscendant, but their product usually used a longer, more complex process and was very expensive. There was no benefit for them in the long run in distributing such a flawed process.
When Naomi had left, Mary contacted Akira and Peter and told them what she had said. Akira had to admit he was feeling nauseous with the dark magic he could feel coming off the building in front of him and they asked if Banshee could join them.
Megan as Thorn had a mystical affinity with plants, her Druidic magic allowed her to make them flourish and grow. Unfortunately, her powers were limited in that they could only affect a few plants at a time, so she wasn’t able to focus on ending world hunger or anything so grandiose.
Akira turned both of them invisible then they waited. From the air, they had got the impression that there were multiple cameras around the building, and they didn’t want to risk accidentally giving themselves away. When Banshee arrived, they discussed their options and agreed that Banshee should go in first, but she could benefit from back up as it was a large building with outhouses. If Paragon was to stay invisible he would have to maintain physical contact with Akira at all times and they would still need some way to gain access to the buildings. It didn’t help that the security cameras they could see were also equipped with infrared sensors. They flew over the wall and into the grounds, trying to spot the location of the cameras.
In the car park, near to the old stables, they could see two cars and a parked van but not the one they were looking for. This was a red coloured Bedford, though it did have the same mystical burial scent as the other one.
Banshee ghosted inside the back of the van – it was empty, but there was a strong corpse smell inside it. She did find a small pitch-black tendril-like twig from some sort of thorny bramble stuck next to one of the wheel arches at the back as though it had been used to transport plants recently. She glanced at it. It was not like any plant she’d ever seen and even looking at it left a really nasty taste in her mouth.
Meanwhile, Akira and Paragon landed in a clearing surrounded by trees. Akira suggested that he enter the building alone by astrally projecting himself inside – in that form he wouldn’t register on cameras or sensors, but it did mean leaving his physical body unprotected and utterly defenceless. Paragon agreed to stay and protect his physical shell, aware that once Akira went astral they would both become fully visible once more.
Akira’s spirit left his body, though it was still connected by a silver thread emanating from his navels as he headed, incorporeal, towards the house. The first thing he saw was the conservatory at the front of the house. It was empty, but he sensed someone might be standing behind or close to the door into the house proper. He flowed through the door and saw twin cloakrooms either side of a long corridor. He floated past rooms either side where he could hear people inside. A man stepped out of one of the rooms and Akira saw that there was a bulge on his hip as though he was carrying a handgun under his jacket.
Even with the owner having what Marcus’ had referred to as Sovereign Immunity, no one should be going around armed like that, at least not in this country.
Akira moved quite rapidly through the house as he tried to find some way to get to the lower levels of the property. A house of this age and style had to have a basement. Akira’s intuition was telling him to head down not up. He found the stairs at the rear of the property and allowed himself to follow them down below ground.
He found himself in a dimly lit utility room with a small cupboard-like wine cellar off it. What was odd was that together they were only about a third of the size of the house itself. Most basements in houses of this age were the same size as the floors above. He entered the wine cellar by flowing through the door and checked it out. Something was really off about the basement, but nothing obvious he could see.
Outside, guarding his teammate’s physical remains, Paragon saw a young female walking round the side of the house and walking towards the car park near to where he was hiding. She was young, blonde and wearing unusual, yet somehow familiar, body armour. Her eyes were milky-white as she searched the grounds, though Paragon got the impression that her search lacked urgency and was likely a routine search of the grounds rather than responding to their presence.
She was still some distance away but was heading in their general direction, having seemingly patrolled the rear of the house. Peter was very aware that their concealment wasn’t that great if she wandered into the car park area as she seemed to be intending. They clearly couldn’t stay where they were, so Paragon picked up Akira’s near-lifeless body and, hoped the cameras were focused on the ground, rather than the sky. He then flew him back over the wall, to the pavement and roadside outside. There he proceeded to prop him up against the wall as though he was tending to a drunk friend (having just come from a costume party, he wondered, looking down at his own cloaked costume and Akira’s robes).
He just hoped that Akira’s astral form could find his body when he returned. Inside the grounds, Mary exited the van in her incorporeal form and saw the guard. The costume looked familiar as the young female gestured and a blast of air suddenly blew through the area. It was as though she was sensing the presence of foreign bodies on her Meta-created winds.
She reminded Banshee of someone she’d read about. The costume looked familiar and reminded him of the Dalton Defender, Aero, but that didn’t make any sense as this was clearly not her, despite the similar powers.
It was as though someone had duplicated her uniform and powers for some reason and placed it on a complete stranger. Aero had been part of a whole team of meta-elementals, could Dalton be hiring them out to criminals?
She walked forward, sensing the winds she was generating from her hands. Thankfully, her demeanour seemed to indicate without any success in tracing the others. She wanted to warn Pete, but while in her ghost state, technology like her commdots didn’t work and she couldn’t risk the pseudo-Aero sensing her presence if she turned corporeal to send a message.
She still assumed they were both still hiding in the trees next to the car park and would deal with the guard if she found them. Banshee followed her just in case and when she found nothing untoward, she headed back to the house with Banshee following on. The guard then went in and sat down in the conservatory, looking back out over the grounds. Banshee wandered inside the building and could hear people talking in rooms either side. To Banshee’s surprise, they were shouting and talking in English, not Russian. She stopped to eavesdrop on their conversations. She realised that in one room someone was being accused of cheating at cards, while in the room on the other side of the corridor they were talking about going to check on their guest. Banshee waited for a few minutes, but no one came out, so she elected to check out the house herself in the hope of finding this ‘guest’.
Unaware of Akira’s presence in the house, Banshee wandered upstairs and checked out the next two floors finding empty bedrooms, bathrooms, and a security room with a locked metal door. Inside was a gun safe against the wall and CCTV monitors being watched by a bored-looking man eating a sandwich with his feet up on the desk in front of him. Banshee looked over his shoulder, trying to see where a prisoner might be being kept. She could see on the monitors several dark rooms filled with strange looking plants as well as brightly lit rooms filled with row after row of hydroponically grown poppies. There was also a larger room lit only by candles, being monitored. Someone or something was moving in the corner of that room, but it was impossible to know what room it was or where it was located.
She glanced back at the darkened room. Something was painted on the candle lit floor, but she couldn’t make it out. She looked at the monitors of the darkened rooms and realised they were actually lit by black light and were ‘shining’ on bay after bay of strange looking plants; tall and pitch-black in colour they appeared to be utterly without leaves. They resembled ropey tentacles or thorny, tangled brambles, if anything. A luminescent green-white liquid was being tapped like a rubber tree from their warped trunks and collected in trays underneath. Whatever was going on, it was a fairly big operation.
As she exited, she could hear a voice coming from the room next door and seemed to be a man on a phone, but they were clearly talking in Russian. She headed upstairs again and checked out the rooms. There were no prisoners in any of the rooms, but there was an office occupied by a man in a smart Armani suit also talking in Russian to two others who were clearly armed. She elected to head downstairs, so far she’d only seen one Meta and possibly the owner of the property, but she still had the basement to check out.
A few minutes later, she arrived at the basement, but was unaware of Akira already being present. Akira on the other hand could sense Banshee’s presence and had begun to wonder if Peter, and more importantly his physical body, were safe. He immediately rushed back to where he’d left his body, only to find it missing and panicked for a moment, before he realised that the silver cord that connected his astral body to his physical led over the wall to the street outside. Following it back, he resurfaced from his death-like trance to then have to explain to Peter that he’d sensed Banshee’s presence in the wine cellar. He then had to explain why he hadn’t been able to talk to her or find out what she knew. All this independent investigation was a pain if they couldn’t share what they had learned with each other.
Akira stood up, then gestured to open a portal into the basement utility room he’d just left, so both of them could cross into the room. When Banshee saw them arrive, she realised that they had to be unaware that the room had CCTV in it. It was now only a matter of time before they could expect others to arrive to challenge them. Paragon looked up and also saw the small red dots along the top of the walks that meant there were cameras present. He immediately pointed them out to Akira who again turned them both invisible.
Behind them, they could hear clattering on the stairs as several people rushed down them. Banshee meanwhile realised that there had been something not quite right about the walls of the wine cellar and sensed the psychic smell of death. There was also a strong sense of evil emanating from the front wall of the utility room, but she elected to focus on the wine cellar first. She ‘pushed’ through the rear wall, only to find herself in a long underground corridor that led towards a lit area located near the front of the house. A strong tang of blood mixed with the corpse-like smell she’d sensed before, wafted her way from the other end of the corridor. She headed down as fast as she could and saw the hydroponic bays where the poppies were being cultivated next to several dark bays. The smell of blood seemed to be emanating from an indoor well over to one corner.
Meanwhile, Akira was also sensing that there was something located behind the front utility wall, the darkest magic and possibly a different ‘scent’ of death, as that coming from the wine cellar. Nothing was as it seemed down here.
Several armoured and costumed figures had now appeared at the bottom of the stairs and began to spread out. Akira immediately recognised some of them – or at least he thought he did. Electro, Geo, Hydro and Cryo.
The group standing in front of them were apparently one of Sir Damien Dalton’s Meta-team’s, part of Dalton’s Defenders. Bethany Dalton kept up-to-date dossiers on all of her father’s current teams and insisted that the Balance studied them regularly. Going by their uniforms, the people standing in front of them should be members of a team that had joined Sir Damien’s employ together, having previously worked together as independents known as the Elementals.
This group were wearing their costumes and apparently had the same powers as that team, but that’s as far as the similarity went. Some things were seriously different; the people in front of them were too young by at least a couple of years for starters, they looked similar but only in a superficial way and the Geo-look-alike clearly had a prosthetic leg. Finally, they were clearly under the influence of something, as their eyes were completely cloudy white without visible pupils.
Paragon heard Akira ask, “Do you think we should twat them?” He elected to remain silent, wait, and see what Akira did.
Akira had been here before and had the crazy notion that they had to do it again. He let go of Peter’s hand and allowed them both to become visible as he unleashed a chain of mystical blast at the four arrivals. He unleashed his first blast at the male, the Cryo want-to-be, but he managed to dodge. Damn, he unleashed blasts at the other three, hoping to catch them unawares and only managed to actually hit ‘Barbie’ leaving her dazed. Paragon flew over and tried to punch the Electro look-alike, but the punch went through, as though she’d managed to move out of the way at lightning speed.
Hydro, the ‘flower-power’ girl gestured and a pipe on the wall burst loose with the freezing cold water redirected to try to hit Akira, apparently hoping to soak him to the skin or drown him. Akira suddenly had a feeling that if she was successful, the kid, Cryo, would be next up. He dodged the blast, but the floor of the room was covered in water. Before they could react, both of them felt themselves being lifted off the ground as some unknown force, which tried to spin them around, aiming to disorient them. What was worse was they couldn’t figure out which of their attackers was responsible. Akira and Paragon managed to dodge away from whatever was affecting them both. However, the water in the room was now reacting to the altered gravity in the room and arced into the air, forming pretty rainbows. Electro moved in and unleashed ball lightning and again Akira dodged with a “Nah, nah na, nah na!” as he jumped clear of the water-soaked floor. Paragon wasn’t so lucky, the blast hit and earthed, but to her surprise, Paragon absorbed the blast with a big smile across his face. Cryo meanwhile unleashed a freezing blast, which turned all the water in the room into ice as Paragon rose off the ground. Paragon flew down and punched Geo, hard. It left her staggered as Hydro ran over and dragged her friend out of the room.
As they left, Akira turned and blasted the two remaining. Cryo collapsed unconscious as Electro took another blast and staggered back against the wall. Behind her, a loud scream could be heard through the wall.
Ignoring the injured Electro, he flew past her and hit the wall, smashing a large hole through it. Inside, he could see a large mystical circle painted in the middle of the room, apparently identical to the tattoos on his adopted mum’s wrists. Scratchy, alien writing had been painted in a dark red that he was sure was blood in several locations around the room. The mystical circle glowed with magical energy, showing Paragon that it was active. In the far corner there was a familiar figure lying on the ground whimpering in pain. Megan, also known as Thorn, was battered and bruised from being beaten up, her fingernails had been torn out and she was physically attached to a weird cylinder that seemed to be draining her energy. There were six other people in the room, an older man dressed in a smart Savile Row suit and five other goons, all busy drawing their guns.
Meanwhile, inside the growing rooms, Banshee could hear a faint whimpering coming through the wall behind her as she realised that the growing rooms at the end was the source of the turned earth and corpse smell she’d sensed earlier. She watched the tall black tentacle plants, easily four or five metres tall, the mass of thorny tentacles protruding from their trunks swaying back and forth in a non-existent breeze. Banshee substantialised herself and walked towards them, taking in the dripping luminescent green-white liquid dripping incessantly into the trays beneath each individual plant. They had been bound to posts though it looked almost as though the plants were trying to tear themselves free. The nearest bays were growing poppies, but what the hell were these and why did they need ultraviolet light alone to flourish? She then looked over at the old well in the corner and realised that there was a lot of blood lying around the base.
There was no prisoner down here as far as she could see, but there was something very unnatural and evil about this place. She felt sure she had to destroy this area at all cost. She examined the electrics, hoping to figure out how to sabotage them. In the end, she elected to go old school and take out the series of dark lights over the ‘triffids’ in the hope that would result in their eventual demise. She unleashed a shattering shriek at the lighting systems in the chamber and all the lights shattered. She realised it would take time for the plants to die, only to hear sounds coming from the dark chambers, like something trying to rip itself free.
In the other chamber, filled with rage and anger, Paragon flew in and tried to grab the man in the suit to smash his face in, immunity and diplomacy regardless. As he got closer, he could hear him mutter something about ‘Dark Young’ and ‘Shub-Niggurath’. As he grabbed him, he realised that he had heard Megan mutter those same names before, and not in a nice way. He smashed the man in the suit hard into the ground.
To his surprise, he got back up, dazed but still able to get back on his feet, as he broke free of Paragon’s grip. He appeared to be immensely strong. On the other side of the chamber, Banshee heard the scream and heard the wall on the far side smash. She turned insubstantial and flew through the wall. To her surprise, she saw a man holding his own against Paragon as well as the five ‘foot soldiers’, seemingly unaware of her arrival. She resubstantialised herself behind the boss man and unleashed a corrupting touch on him. For some reason it failed to have any effect on him as he ignored her presence in his attempt to handle Paragon’s righteous anger.
Through the gap in the wall, Akira saw the pain on the woman’s face inside the concealed chamber and the anger on Peter’s face. It caused him to ignore the men inside and Electro, who was still in shock from seeing the amount of damage Paragon had just inflicted on the wall behind her that could have been to her.
He started to gesture and mouth the words that spun the first Wheel of Weyan into existence and set it free to ‘repair’ the damage to Megan’s body. The Electro look-alike, seeing the look of anger on Akira’s face and having witnessed paragon’s strength up close and personal, grabbed her companion and ran for the stairs. Inside the chamber, Paragon was wrestling with the boss man using him as a shield against the others in the chamber, all restraint gone. He really wanted to damage him. An elbow strike to the face, followed by a full on punch to the stomach, only left him bruised. Then he realised that inky black tendrils were bursting out of the skin on his opponents’ arms and was trying to envelop him.
Banshee saw the tendrils burst out of the boss’s veins and saw that they closely resembled the plants she had deprived of dark light next door. She pulled out her staff, extended it and again turned insubstantial as she stepped in and inserted the end of the insubstantial staff into his hip before stepping back and letting go. The staff materialised, its tip poking out the front of his leg. He staggered back, oozing a black, oily liquid rather than blood.
Akira elected to try to take out the five men who were clearly in shock at the events unfolding before their eyes; a series of mystical blasts hit them from behind, as all five men collapsed before they could fire their guns.
Paragon moved in with a head smash against the monstrosity in front of him. Despite putting all of his strength behind the blow, the tentacles from the boss’s arms still had a vice-like grip on his own arms and the battered and bloodied face in front of him was smiling even as the black ichor dripped from his multiple wounds. Mary grabbed the staff and pulled it loose then turned ‘ghost’ and struck again this time to the chest before releasing it and allowing it to materialise. Her target collapsed even as a black, plant-like creature began to burst free from his chest.
Akira walked over to the injured woman; presumably this was Megan Smith, Thorn. She appeared to be rapidly healing as he examined the strange cylinder she was attached to. He moved her towards him with his TK leaving the cylinder behind. As she got closer he could her constant muttering of “Shub-Niggurath, the children of Cybele unveiled” over and over. Then as she passed Peter, she turned her head and spoke loudly, “burn it with fire…”
Paragon nodded and cremated the ‘passenger’ as it broke free with his eye blast, while Banshee explained about the bays full of what Megan called the ‘Dark Young’ next door. Megan again tried to stand and again collapsed, supported by Akira’s TK. “The black plants next door need to be destroyed, though the police will likely want the poppies as evidence.” She explained.
Paragon smashed his way through into the chamber beyond and saw the plants beyond, wriggling. A staggered Thorn muttered, “Destroy them. Nothing must remain of them to regrow or escape.”
Banhsee unleashed a shattering shriek at the black plants, while paragon fired off an eye blast incinerating them in the process even as Akira blasted them turning them to ash. In response, a gas pipe exploded and the flames became uncontrolled.
Outside, the Police was arriving but were unsure how to respond given the sovereign immunity of the owners and had called the fire brigade to deal with what they assumed was a gas explosion.
The remaining staff refused to make a statement other than claiming that they had fled the building when they had smelt gas. The series of explosions ripping through the basement seemed to confirm their story, even as the sweet sickly smell of burning poppy wafted out with the smoke.
Paragon flew Megan directly to the nearest hospital, even as several of the costumed Metas collapsed to the ground vomiting, apparently trying to purge their bodies of whatever they had been given to activate their powers. This version of DNAscendant was obviously not permanent.
Megan meanwhile confirmed that she had been kidnapped so that her ability to enhance plant growth could be used on the two crops growing in the basement.
Nothing about this operation seemed to fit Labyrinth’s operating style. Akira suggested to Banshee that they didn’t identify themselves to the gathered Police, but instead covertly left the scene. The body in the basement might prove an issue, though they were both convinced that he must have been dead long before they had arrived. That thing inside him had been responsible for animating the corpse. Let the explosion cover up the cause of death…
Banshee decided though, she would pay a visit to the Metas being taken to hospital and ask a few more questions, off the record.
Later than night
Banshee materialised in the private hospital room of Sharon Davies, aka the Hydro copycat. He’d already visited the others and asked them all the same questions “who gave them the drugs, and the costumes?” They all gave the same story about being contacted by an anonymous person who offered them the ability to become famous, all they had to do was agree to an interview. They’d each arrived at a different hotel, each had been interviewed by a Mr Smith or a Ms Jones in a hotel suite and they had left having agreed that they wanted fame and fortune. What happened to them after that was vague. They went home and somehow must have been drugged as they woke up several days later in a private hospital having had the DNAscendant process administered to them. Having powers was intoxicating and they willingly agreed to work for the unnamed company to pay for their continued treatment. No one warned them that withdrawal would result in organ failure and those that refused, vanished, never to be heard from again. So, what choice did they have?
As for the Labyrinth connection? Who or what was Labyrinth? Was the shared response. Seems the latest generation were seriously lacking when it came to knowledge of the Greek myths.
Friday evening
Banshee returned home after an unsuccessful evening looking for a dealer that never appeared. Seems when they closed down the factory in Little Russia they had also closed down the heroin supply at the same time and she lacked sufficient information to identify the dealer. At least there would be no more deaths for the moment, though she was still tying to work out the Labyrinth connection.
Superhero Adventures, UK Style 