Since they had handed over the remaining Hellstones to Adrian for safekeeping, things had not been normal. A number of chaotic incidents and thefts had occurred over the last few weeks, at least some of which were linked to Adrian Eldrich in some way or other.
The latest had been the theft of a 17th century French music box that apparently had once belonged to the infamous Adrian Vandaleu and believed to have mystical abilities. Allegedly, the music box had been responsible for a horrific haunting that Adrian has exorcised. The music box had been in storage for the last decade and was now up for sale by auction at Sotheby’s. Despite being under CCTV surveillance and guards at all times, the music box apparently just vanished overnight. The CCTV failed to show how, but a threadbare teddy bear had been left in its place, inside the security cage.
It didn’t help that Akira had that now familiar voice whisper in his dreams, “The third seal has been opened…” immediately following the theft.
The other, seemingly unrelated, issue had been three suicide bombings in Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh, apparently carried out by Metas, stormers in fact, each in crowded public locations.
The AML (The Anti Metahuman League) was having a field day in the media with their political wing, the Humanity First Party led by the MP Ted Reichman, getting a lot of public attention. They were stating that Metas, and Stormers in particular, were untrustworthy and should have their powers neutralised when in public. To make matters worse, the majority of the public had seemingly begun to believe in and accept their ‘us versus them’ narrative.
What was unfortunately true was that in each instance a physically altered Meta had appeared in a crowded location and had been at ground zero for the subsequent intense explosion though, according to Marcus, no evidence had survived the explosion to identify what type of suicide device had been used.
With so many innocent members of the public being killed or seriously injured, fear of the powered was at an all-time high and the authorities had started to request that certain HCP teams did not attend the incidents. Instead, Police across the country were being advised to call in the New Knights as a viable alternative to using local teams such as the Balance or London Watch, any authorised team in fact which were primarily composed of Metas.
Government and the media were pushing for the Police to use HCP-trained humans in powered armour as a ‘safer’ alternative to having Meta crimes investigated by “their own kind”.
Akira and Banshee hadn’t been impressed when they had encountered the New Knights at the Worthy Rally in Wessex several months before. They knew from that encounter that the armoured ‘knights’ were bigoted against Metas and that did not bode well for unbiased investigations.
As they sat around in the BASEment, they heard Frankie, the team’s resident AI, state that there had been another explosion, this time just outside King’s Cross Station in London. Eight people had been killed, including what police assumed was the suicide bomber, and a further 32 seriously injured. Again, a stormer was believed responsible.
Superintendent Julia Cunningham was on the scene and had taken charge and, unofficially, had sent through details to Frankie for their attention. It wasn’t an official request for their assistance, but it was an open invitation to attend the scene.
Peter was all for going immediately, being proactive and all that. The others agreed, and they set off for London.
On arrival, they were quickly ushered into the Command Vehicle, where the Superintendent explained what they had uncovered so far. CCTV footage from outside the station showed a crowded area just outside the station just as a red-headed, green-skinned female that looked familiar to both Banshee and Akira arrived. The female, they knew her only as Chambre, had been living in London Below before she and her fellow stormers had been asked to leave following the alien, Slaed’s attempt to use the Terminus ‘mind worms’ to control them all. As a result, sanctuary in the tunnels and passageways beneath London was withdrawn and she and her young daughter had to leave. They then stayed for a while in Container Town before finding a flat somewhere in London’s Shambles district a few months later. They also recognised two other stormers present in the crowd, but didn’t know their names. By their appearance, it was likely both were homeless and living rough on the streets.
Superintendent Cunningham interrupted their viewing to warn them that the Commissioner of Police had called in the New Knights to help with the investigation, and they were on their way to the scene. Once they arrived, it was likely they would insist that the Balance was no longer involved.
She smiled, “Of course, that’s assumes they know of your involvement, so be quick, and I’ll try and offer you what assistance I can. I happen to think that given this appears to be Meta-related that you are better qualified to investigate than them, but unfortunately it’s out of my hands, officially at least.
Like the earlier explosions, we’ve not found any evidence of the type of device used or chemical traces of any explosives, however the heat of the explosion was in excess of 3,000 degrees, which vaporised instantly anyone within 12.5-metre radius which meant the other two Metas present were also turned to ash. The explosion seemed to have radiated out from the female stormer, making her ground zero.” With that, she turned and walked back to the scene, leaving them to continue watching the CCTV footage.
Banshee remembered Chambre as being a good mum, someone who cared passionately about her six-year-old daughter. To date the child hadn’t shown any sign of meta abilities, but as powers often manifested at puberty that wasn’t unusual. She had to wonder where the girl was now and was she safe? They had left Container Town, due to unwarranted prejudice against her based on her appearance. Banshee had to admit it hadn’t been the residents of Container Town’s finest hour.
Akira left the others examining the CCTV and wandered outside, wanting to try and read the past from the site of the initial explosion. To his dismay, he was handed a disposable bodysuit, a pair of blue booties to put over his feet and handed a mask and gloves, even as the CSU officer reminded him to follow the designated path and avoid contaminating the scene. That, despite the fact that Akira knew they’d already bagged up and removed any trace evidence. He didn’t argue but put on the plastic outfit then headed towards ground zero. What remained was nothing more than ash and a hellish shadow burnt into the melted and shattered concrete. He wasn’t allowed to actually touch the scene, but as he placed his hand above the ash, he got a psychic reading anyway.
His postcognition powers kicked in and he ‘felt’ her presence as she first arrived at the scene. She had been extremely upset; she really didn’t want to be there. Her sadness flowed over him, what was missing though was any desire for revenge against anyone. There was a sense of sacrifice, as though she was doing it to keep someone else, someone she loved above all else, safe. She needed to protect someone close to her, no matter the cost. Akira relayed this information back to Paragon and Banshee in the Control Centre. Then he felt her pain wash over him, intense, burning all over her body, it felt insufferable as he tapped into that aspect of her being. Yet this was how she had felt even before the explosion occurred. The pain was so bad she had been wishing for death, just not here, and there was no desire to want to hurt anyone else. Only her love, for someone she referred to as her darling Elsie, outweighed that. That was the only reason she was there, out of love, not hate or revenge.
He tried to search deeper – looking for any trace of a bomb or explosive device, but she had no package on her, nor had she been wearing any special clothes like a suicide vest that he could ‘see’.
He heard Peter over their commdots argue that even with a 3,000-degree burn something, even if it was just a trace, should have been found at the site even if it was only as a residue in the ash.
Akira smiled and made some silly joke in response about she’d obviously been suffering from hot flushes.
Meanwhile, Paragon and Banshee had managed to persuade the technician to tap into the CCTV networks around the station to see if any of the external cameras had seen something that the Station cameras hadn’t managed to capture. Glancing out of the van window, he saw Superintendent Cunningham point at a grav-vehicle closing in, one with a chalice symbol painted on the bonnet. The New Knights were arriving. They wouldn’t have long before they would either have to leave or risk a confrontation. Flying independently beside the vehicle was the cyborg Galahad.
They heard Akira mutter under his breath, “Bunch of pantomime posers!” as Cunningham opened the door of the command vehicle and explained, “I have just received instructions that the only people to be allowed to investigate this are the New Knights. I’ve been ordered under no circumstances to involve Metas in the investigation. It’s now official, sorry.” She paused then, “That’s utter crap, stay in the van, watch the CCTV in case you can find anything useful, I’ll delay these tossers for as long as I can. You need to be away from here before they start asking to see CCTV footage, though.” It was quite clear that she had no respect for the Knights or for the Commissioners’ decision to overrule her.
As she stepped back outside, Paragon glanced through the window and asked, “Which one’s Merlin?” Banshee smiled, “Apparently they haven’t got one, at least not yet. They’re just a bunch of want-to-be’s. I’m sure someone claiming to be Merlin will appear when they need the publicity.”
The two of them turned their attention back to the video recordings. They saw Chambre standing by the taxi rank looking extremely distressed, tears in her eyes. She glanced over at the two stormers sitting on the ground begging and mouthed something that Banshee thought might have been a ‘sorry’ then all hell broke loose; her veins began to glow white across her body as she got closer to the other two stormers even as her eyes glowed black as coal. Then the veins on the other two also began to glow intensely bright and white as though they were burning up from the inside, each seemingly growing hotter and hotter as Chambre collapsed to her knees next to them. There was no indication of her touching a suicide vest or any other device, not that she was wearing anything that would have successfully concealed any such device, as she exploded.
What didn’t make sense was that the explosive energy flowed out from her body as she began to spontaneously combust, towards the other two Metas, before spreading outwards in all directions as all three of them vaporised. It was as though the detonation was trying to join all three stormers before they all exploded, the heat radiating out from all three, with the most intense and most powerful of the explosions being Chambre herself.
It was as they slowed down the explosion that they saw it; a sort of black residue blasted out of all three of the stormers by the explosion. The tar-like liquid seeming expanding as it was blasted clear of the explosion, beyond the range of the camera.
They tried to backtrack the three’s movements next, trying to see where the three of them had arrived from. Listening in over his Commdot, Akira confirmed that he was sure that all three had known each other before in London Below, though he thought it had just been on nodding terms.
Their technical support officer logged in to the M.E.T.A. database and confirmed the identity of the two beggars, though not who Chambre had been before her ‘conversion’ and confirmed that they hadn’t been infected by the same Silver Storm event. Other than them temporarily living together in London Below, (something only they knew) there was nothing else to connect the three of them.
Meanwhile, their technician had been multitasking and had managed to log into the Omnitech network of private CCTV and linked it with the city’s street network of cameras to try to trace where they had been before arriving at King’s Cross. Banshee smiled, she was sure Frankie must have had some hand in his gaining such easy access to the private and usually encrypted security recordings.
The two male stormers were shown begging all morning by the taxi ranks. However, every so often their eyes glowed black and the veins on their temples had glowed. Whatever had happened to Chambre, the other two had apparently been similarly affected.
They tried to backtrack Chambre’s route, but there were too few accessible cameras to make sense of her journey other than she come from the direction of the Shambles, an area of London not renowned for rich homeowners willing to pay for CCTV. After a few minutes of backtracking her route, they lost sight of her.
As they scrambled to try and trace her, Frankie interrupted them by informing them that she had tracked down what she thought was likely to be Chambre’s address. Paragon smiled, that was information that even the police hadn’t yet got, never mind the Knights.
Given there was a young daughter, they contacted Cunningham, explained what they had found and asked her permission to head there and check it out – with a female liaison officer of course.
She asked a female sergeant to check it out with them as Akira joined them in the Police transit and began to remove his disposable costume and booties as they headed deep into the Shambles district in search of Chambre’s flat and her daughter.
They gained entry to a single room but only after being warned to touch nothing, that they were observers only until the Crime Scene examiners arrived to investigate the scene. She was aware that the Superintendent was breaking protocol by allowing them to visit the scene first but also understood that they wouldn’t have even known about this place without their assistance in the first place.
The sergeant entered first and began to look for the little girl. Surprisingly, the door wasn’t locked. It had been pulled close, as though someone had left suddenly and in such a rush that they hadn’t checked that it had locked.
The three of them followed her. Inside there was a single small room, the mouldy wallpaper covered in children’s drawings plastered over almost every surface. There was no bed, only an old, faded and worn settee that apparently folded down into a bed – one shared apparently by both mother and daughter. There was a small Belling cooker on a table next to a sink stacked with dirty dishes that had served as their kitchen, and next to that a door that concealed a toilet and shower. The Sergeant immediately made a beeline for an old laptop on a shelf in front of the settee, but Paragon couldn’t help notice that there was no power pack or power cable anywhere. Looking at its worn condition, he was sure it wasn’t functional. As the Sergeant secured the laptop, she again reminded them that they could enter, but only if they stayed in her path and didn’t touch anything.
The Crime Scene Unit would be there in minutes, followed by a horde of officers to try to track down the daughter.
Akira followed the other two in and again tried to use his postcognition ability to try to read the past. He tried to focus on the settee, after all, there wasn’t a lot of other furniture in this room, and it gave out the strongest reading. Something terrifying had occurred in this room, and it was centred on the sofa. The Sergeant was busy looking for something that might indicate where the daughter might be at present, and failed to stop him from getting so close. He seemed to stumble as had to steady himself by touching the couch. His mystical senses kicked in. A massive wave of emotion, of grief and loss, washed over him – something to do with a mobile phone had had fallen down the back of the couch where Chambre had dropped it in blind panic, as she had rushed out of the room in distress.
Akira tried to right himself, while using sleight of hand to search for and pocket the mobile phone without anyone seeing. He would have to wait until they were alone to check it, but he was sure that whatever had caused the outpouring of grief, it was connected with whatever she’d heard or seen on it just before she’d rushed out to head to King Cross.
Paragon covered for him by asking their escort, “What of the child? Will you be able to protect her?” She nodded, “We just need to find her first. Hopefully she’ll still be at school. You said she was of age, any ideas which one though? There must be several in the area.”
In response, she put out a call on her radio to confirm that there was a child involved and could officers contact the nearby schools and try and identify her? Given the time, it was possible that she might have already left though and could be making her own way home.
A few minutes later the Sergeant got a call back that the child had been identified and had been picked up by one of her friends mothers’ who’d mentioned that she was taking them both to a nearby play area. They confirmed that a patrol car and social worker had been dispatched to find her and make sure she was safe.
The team made their excuses and left. The sergeant let out a sigh of relief, knowing that CSU would be there soon and would have to make note of everyone present at the scene. Better if she was the only one around when they turned up.
They headed to a nearby Greek café and examined the mobile phone. There was a video file, despite her anguish, she’d had the sense to hit record when a video had arrived. The start of the call hadn’t been recorded, but the file showed a young girl playing on a swing, seeming recorded in real time. Then a voice-over started, mechanical-sounding and distorted but completely legible – altered obviously to disguise the speaker. “…who? Her or you? You decide. You have exactly thirty minutes.” The picture changed to show a map, with the taxi rank outside King’s Cross Station clearly marked. Then the call went dead.
Akira spoke up, “She was clearly threatened. The daughter would be in danger if she failed to comply. Possibly the daughter would have become the bomb instead of her if she’d refused.”
“Any chance Frankie could track down the source of the call?” asked Paragon. Banshee nodded, “She has achieved similar miracles before. She’d need physical access to the phone though, to carry out a forensic analysis and to track the call.”
Half an hour later, the phone was connected up to the gestalt conglomeration that formed their physical access to Frankie, and she confirmed that the call had been ricocheted and bounced back and forth between several countries around the planet to disguise the source. However, she was reasonably sure, 87.352% positive in fact, that the call had originated from an internet café in Wessex itself.
As they tried to think what to do next, a call came in from Superintendent Cunningham, concerned about something she’d seen on the CCTV trawl they had started. Immediately following the event, some black fragments expelled from the explosion were shown seemingly moving on their own volition, oozing across the ground. Then a blurry shot of someone in body armour with their face covered in a mask and with a blue, unlit neon cross on their chest plate started to gather the semi-fluid fragments, which seemed to flow together unaided, and putting them into a container just before the camera feed went dead. The time on the camera showed this had occurred only a minute before the Police had arrived on the scene.
The victims from the explosion were mere metres away, but he didn’t show up on any other CCTV so must have ignored the victims, while electing to gather the fragments whatever they were. Were they, somehow, connected with the explosive device, whatever it had been?
Another CCTV camera had caught him walking towards an unmarked black grav-van a few seconds later before it took off and immediately flew away. The Police had checked, they hadn’t filed a flight plan despite being in London.
Paragon wondered, given how expensive they were, whether they would be able to trace the van itself? After all, there couldn’t be too many in London, even if all the vehicle’s ID plates had been removed or covered up? What was certain was that the New Knights were certain to follow up that lead. He asked Cunningham, who informed them that she was still not impressed, as they seemed more focused on the fact that stormers were involved to the exclusion of everything else. They’d already given out a press release stating that this had been a suicide bombing intended to maim and kill ordinary citizens.
She’d immediately made a complaint to the Police Commissioner, Sir Raymond Doyle, about their failure to comply with Police protocol by releasing their own press release without clearing it with her first. So much for following the evidence!
Banshee and Akira explained to Paragon that when they had met the Knights previously, it had become obvious that they were biased against Metas, viewing them as the enemy. Cunningham also confirmed that no such vehicle had been recorded as stolen.
As the call ended, they asked Frankie to track any and all black grav-vans known to be in London. A few seconds later, she began to list the known addresses of all registered owners and renters that fit the search criteria. She also stated that the figure seen briefly gathering the black ooze-like substance after the bombing might belong to a group known as the Purifiers, a proscribed terrorist group supposedly affiliated to the AML, not unlike the association between the IRA and Sinn Féin in Éire. Although the Humanity First Party claimed to have no connection with either the Purifiers or the AML, no one was fooled that they didn’t share a common cause and the Humanity First’s only elected MP, Ted Reichman, acted as a public spokesperson in putting across their shared racist message.
In the end, they separated, with Paragon in his civilian personae, seeking out the location of black grav-vans, intending to set off their alarms and check out who came out to check on them while Akira and Banshee followed up on the other leads.
“Time to head off to another café,” muttered Akira, “coffees are on you, Mary.”
The café turned out to be a sleazy, converted basement close to the centre of London, where people could buy time online on old-fashioned fixed terminals. They looked around. There was no CCTV installed, unfortunately. They confirmed that each of the computers had an integrated webcam, but they weren’t active all the time and the caller had never appeared on-screen, apparently sending a live feed through the console relayed from the playground and the computers didn’t record calls anyway.
Paragon had suggested checking out those who’d been there for some time, but this wasn’t a gamer café, no one used these old and battered consoles for hours at a time. Most of the users used them to call family and friends around the world using VOIP.
The sender must have logged in to one of them to send the call. Unfortunately, the system cleaned the browser history after each user and anyway, since all the computers shared a single IP address, it was impossible to identify which computer was used. The room was half-full of people speaking in multiple languages, calling family back home.
There was a single employee managing the place. He was there primarily to sell computer time with teas, coffees and what looked like very stale sandwiches. Inside, crammed into too little space, were a dozen tables set back to back. Near the back of the room was a single unisex toilet, though you would need a gas mask to use it. A faded sign stapled to the wall told them how much it would cost to buy a login to a specific computer for half hour at a time. Frankie had computed that the most likely computer used would have been the one nearest the toilets, as the stench ensured the most security.
Akira went over and sat down at the console and allowed himself again to view the past. Despite the location, a surprising lot of people have used that desk and system in the last 24 hours. It was impossible to ‘see’ what each had been doing on the computer, as the various raw emotions of each user swirled into each other. It didn’t help that the majority of them didn’t have English as their first language. Then one of the ‘voices’ caught his attention. This one thought in English and was more focused than all the other voices. This had been a young man, teenager probably, dark hair and focused on following a set of instructions. Akira ‘saw’ him plug in something that looked a lot like a memory stick, then he sat back and waited for ten, fifteen minutes before signing out and walking away. What came across strongest was that he hadn’t really known what he was doing, just following instructions. At one point, he’s looked down at the inside of his wrist with pride. Under a clean wrap of cling film was a new tattoo; three letters in gothic script, ‘AML’.
As they tried to see what else they could find out, a call came in from Frankie, “Designation: The Balance, we have a call coming in from someone claiming to know you. He uses the designation Repulse. Says he wants to meet you urgently. Claims it’s a matter of life or death. He said he needed to meet you at Dragon’s Gate, Wessex, as soon as possible.”
Repulse? He’d been one of the outcasts that had called themselves the Untouchables. Last time he’d contacted them they had found Slaed the Terminus controller of the ‘mind worms’. If he said it was a matter of life or death, then Banshee was inclined to believe him. She offered to set off immediately.
Akira on the other hand was inclined to continue their current investigation. After all, “It can’t be that serious if he has a choice; life OR death. Now, if it had been life AND death, that was serious… Life or death just meant you choose life, don’t you? You help him Mary, choose, and I’ll go and help Paragon.” Mary asked Frankie to relay that he was on his way and would be there as soon as she could, as they both set off for their respective destinations,
Meanwhile, Peter had been checking out his list of grav-vans, the first two had belonged to a bank and a very rich pain in the ass of a twerp. The third though had been parked up in an insalubrious warehouse district, and he surreptitiously gave it a shake to set off its alarm. In response, from out of one of the lock-ups came a man trying to hide now familiar silver and blue armour hidden beneath an ill-fitting coat. Success!
The purifier saw Peter standing by the van and immediately ran away. Peter tapped on his commdot, “I’m made contact.” He lifted off the ground and immediately flew towards his quarry. That’s when he saw that the Purifier had a box in his hands, which, as soon as he saw Peter again, he threw to the ground. A black ooze, like liquid tar, spilled out onto the ground and flowed out of the shattered container. Peter began to head down towards the ground, intent on catching his quarry. He saw the ooze and unleashed his fiery eye blast at the moving black mass pulling itself along the ground towards him. He intended to vaporise whatever it was, instead it seemed to absorb the heat of the blast, doubling in size as a result. The monstrous substance suddenly jerked upright as though trying to reach him, its fluid, viscous substance moving towards and trying to grab him as though it was somehow alive. He flew slightly higher and away from it and it oozed towards him again, still targeting him.
It moved towards him until it was directly below him and tried to stretch up towards him as, before, Paragon lifted a bit higher off the ground. It stretched out a pseudo-limp of bubbly, tar-like substance towards him but couldn’t manage to reach high enough up. Thankfully, whatever it was, it lacked the ability to fly. Paragon hovered above the stuff, unsure what to make of it. It continued to try and elongate itself up and up, targeting him. The Pacifier ran away, into a nearby back alley and appeared to be trying to get rid of the armour he’d been wearing. Paragon set off in pursuit only to see that the tar ball was still pursuing him, though thankfully it was not as fast as him, though still too fast for a non-sentient puddle of goo.
He flew down towards the Purifier, now devoid of his armour, grabbed him by his coat and flew him straight up, dangling from his fist, into the sky. Over his commdot he heard Frankie’s message then Akira saying that he would join him in a couple of minutes.
“Call off your ooze dog!” Peter snarled at his dangling prisoner. The man glanced up at him as though he was completely mad. He swallowed, then in an attempt at bravado said, “You’ll get yours mutie scum, just wait and see. I’m not afraid of a gene-joke like you. We’ll win in the end over your kind.”
Peter smiled, “I want to show you something. “and immediately flew higher even as his captive had to grab at his coat to prevent himself from falling out of it. He gulped, then started to swear at him, “After all, we’re the proper humans, not alien turncoats like you’se are destined to become; swearing loyalty to some freaky alien invaders, like the lapdogs you are… You’re not really human.”
He continued ranting for some time, and seemed to assume that all metahumans were advance troops for a predestined Terminus invasion in the near future.
“I don’t know anything about that to be honest”, He replied, when fear caused his passenger to catch his breath, “what or who is Terminus?” His captive looked shocked as he explained about the previous invasion attempt when ‘they’ had appeared over the skies of London and Wessex several years before. Paragon smiled. At least it stopped his swearing and insults as he ignored the attempt at trying to teach him their biased version of the attempted invasion, which apparently meant that all Metas, not just those converted by contact with the Silver Storm, had been created by them as infiltrators and traitors to the real human race. The rant seemed to last for hours but probably only lasted for a few minutes before he began to dry heave as though he was trying to vomit, but thankfully had nothing in his stomach to throw up as he hung from Paragon’s fist and heard his coat begin to rip under his weight.
Paragon smiled. “Do you want to call off your ooze?” He gulped again before answering, “I can’t, It’s not mine.” Paragon continued, “Do you want to show me where you got it from?” That led to an unexpected conversation about the Purifiers being organised into a covert cell structure, with instructions and messages only arriving using dead drops or as encrypted messages sent over the dark web, they never met their superiors. He did reveal that the substance had been left for him with a message that he was to release it near particular Metas, particularly stormers. It had apparently been reverse-engineered to ‘benefit’ humanity by only targeting and attacking people with the Meta-gene.
How does it know to seek out Metas?” Paragon asked. “How would I know?” his captive replied, angry at being interrogated while being held in the sky. “It’s designed to find and attack any Meta, but seems to favour stormers most of all. Don’t know why.”
“What if there is a three-year-old with powers, will it attack the toddler?” He looked angry at the question, “Of course, they’re not really human after all, and anyway they’re destined to become humanity’s enemy one day, they’re a Meta, they’re not really human.” “You’d kill a young kid?” Paragon continued, disgusted. “I just said they, you, aren’t really human, didn’t I? It’s not a child, it’s a fucking weapon! That’s what you all are, weapons built by an alien species to destroy real humans.”
Meanwhile, as Banshee flew towards her rendezvous with the Untouchables, Frankie confirmed he was tracking them as they also travelled towards Dragon’s Gate but that this time there was only three of them – each of them travelling separately for some reason; Repulse, Solvent and Blackstuff. What was going on?
Akira arrived, flying below Paragon and spotted the moving puddle of goo, which began to split as though trying to focus on both him and Paragon. There was something strangely familiar about the stuff. It seemed to specifically target Metas and potential Metas, not unlike the nanites that formed the Silver Storm or the Terminus control critters, but the way the polymorphic ooze moved and functioned reminded him a little of the creatures they’d seen when in the Arctic, what the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred, had called Shoggoths? This stuff was more primitive than either, certainly. Could someone have figured out how to somehow manufacture this by combining their attributes and program them? Could their exploding be some sort of glitch in their design? The ooze was certainly bigger, less mobile – they apparently couldn’t fly for starters.
He smiled as he shouted up at paragon, “Don’t drop another human from a great height please Paragon, it’s messy. At least not until I’ve had a chance to talk with him. Who knows? He might even be worth saving.” As he spoke, he began to cast the Light of Lamal, weaving the spell into existence as he muttered the words of power. A few seconds later, a pure, streaming ray of white light streamed out of his fingers, hitting the terrified Purifier in the eyes. Akira smiled, knowing that those illuminated by Lamal were compelled to speak the truth.
The hanging figure stopped squirming as his eyes glazed over. Akira began to interrogate him. “Where did you get that black ooze from?” “It was sent to my chapter, with instructions to release it at certain locations and times” the Purifier found himself saying. “We knew that they would target the stormers that our leaders had identified. After they were infected, someone else would contact them and tell them the location they needed to go to. I don’t know any more information than that.”
“Presumably one of the targets was at King Cross?” “There was a mutie gene-joke with green skin and red hair who we sent a parcel to her home address. The others were released close to the squatter’s camp, next to the Embankment.”
“How many parcels of ooze were there in total?” “I’m only aware of three or four being released. There has probably been more, sent to other chapters around the country.”
Paragon interrupted, “Where can we find your chapter?” In response, his captive rattled off an address in South London in the Lewisham area, explaining that was where he and his mates met, but it would be currently empty as they only met together when told to gather.
“How are you ordered to meet?” He paused, then replied, “We get an encrypted text message from an anonymous number.” Akira asked, “Is there a way to get this black oily stuff back into a container?” “Yes, once they have exploded out of their host we’re told to go and gather the remaining pieces. Once we have enough gathered, the rest will follow and rejoin with it, unless they sense another Meta close by. Their primary objective is to infect Metas as that’s how they multiply and grow.” Akira looked at him, “You just gather the stuff up in your hands to put into the box?” He glanced down at the ooze below them, continually straining upwards, trying to reach both of them as he spoke.
“Yes, we’re human. The ‘cure’ doesn’t affect those of us who are pure blooded. We’re not gene jokes, not impure like you. It’s only deadly to those who aren’t fully human.”
If only he could compel him to gather the stuff trying to infect them but that was beyond the Light’s influence. In the momentary silence, Paragon interjected, “So, why do you hate Metas so much?” The Purifier was silent for a few seconds, then mumbled something about how he had been told all of his life how dangerous they were and how he’s seen Meta’s on TV attacking humans. Metas like Death Metal, with no regard for others, attacking defenceless humans, stealing what she had wanted while he and his family had to survive growing up in poverty. Then as a teenager, he’d fallen in with a crowd who’d explained that these creatures weren’t really human but were in fact advance troops for an alien invasion. They explained their race theory, which he had accepted blindly and without question. That these aliens had a means of controlling Metas so even those that looked innocent would be turned into deadly killing machines against people like him and his family.
This spiel seemed to go on forever, and in the end Akira interrupted him by joking that Paragon should just drop him. Then Akira tried to contact Banshee who, given she didn’t have the Meta gene, should be able to safely gather the ooze gathered below them. Banshee replied that they should just try to get a volunteer, as she wasn’t going to turn around now.
The last thing Paragon’s captive said as the spell wore off, and he drifted into unconsciousness, was that there was one more group of stormers destined to die tonight. Another explosion. Akira tried to find out more, but it was already too late, the threat of being dropped had caused him to faint.
Paragon and Akira argued what to do about what to do about the ooze below and after a long discussion, Akira tried using his TK as he pushed some of it towards the dropped box but all he succeeded in doing was tearing segments off as the rest tried to stay where it was, gathered beneath them both. Frustratingly, as soon as he stopped ‘pushing’ some of the oily mass away it immediately tried to rejoin the rest.
It didn’t help that it was now twice as large as it had been originally, having expanded after Paragon had blasted it with his heat vision. Bad karma indeed. Paragon suggested throwing a force cage round it, then find a foundry and trying to melt the stuff. “No, no, no!” Shouted Akira, given Paragon’s eye blast had caused it to double in size, what would a ‘Terminator event’ like throwing it into a blast furnace do? Way too risky, instead he proposed they find a large industrial freezer and find out what happened when it was exposed to sub-zero temperatures?
In the end, Akira managed to trap the organism in a force cage and floated it up, even as Paragon placed the unconscious Purifier on the ground and searched him for his mobile phone. He hoped Frankie might be able to trace the source of the anonymous text messages, though he reluctantly accepted that even she couldn’t remotely hack the operating system.
Still he tried to argue for trying to destroy the agitated ooze in the telekinetic ball by throwing it into a steel foundry. Akira calmly tried to explain that he didn’t think that was a good idea, given what happened when he had blasted it previously. It just wasn’t worth the risk, and it would be better to dump in the Arctic circle which would take Paragon half an hour of flying carrying both the ball and Akira, then leave it there. Instead, they finally realised it would be easier to place it in a deep freeze and headed off to a frozen food processing factory Peter knew about in Swindon after they had dropped their captive off at a Police station and informed the Superintendent what they had discovered so far.
As they flew towards the fish finger processing plant, the ooze kept up its struggles, forcing Akira to focus all of his energy on keeping it contained until they had arrived and requisitioned a currently empty freezer to seal it inside on instructions not to reopen the door until the Police arrived with suitable containment facilities. They could hear the ooze battering itself against the door a second after Akira collapsed his force cage as it tried to squeeze itself out through the door seals, which thankfully held.
It was only after they were some distance away that Paragon was able to confirm that it had apparently gone dormant. With that resolved, the two of them headed off to join Mary in Wessex, even as Cunningham informed them that on her instructions the Artefact Research Centre was sending a containment team to the factory to gather the sample. She didn’t sound too happy.
A short time later, they both arrived at the Dragon’s Gate in Wessex and met up again with Banshee, who was still waiting for the Untouchables. They hoped they would be able to resolve Repulses’ problem quickly, so they could get back to the mystery of the Meta-seeking ooze.
Then they saw the three Untouchables walking towards them, though they were walking separately, keeping several metres distance between each of them. All three of them looked exhausted and sweaty, as though suffering from some sort of viral infection, and the team couldn’t help notice their eyes were black and every so often, their skin flared white with excess energy.
They walked through the ornamental Chinese gate into Wessex’s China Town, only to turn and stare as a large grav-vehicle with a chalice design on the bonnet dropped down behind the three of them, forcing the tourists and stallholders in the pedestrianised street to scramble to get clear. The New Knights had apparently been on their trail and were now decamping. They heard one of the armoured figures shout at Repulse and his mates to stop as they were under arrest even as Lancelot used his suits’ loudspeakers to order everyone to get clear as they were chasing dangerous terrorists.
It seems the information they had sent to Cunningham about the source of the King Cross explosion had either not reached the New Knights, or they had elected to ignore the information.
Paragon saw the punks’ veins glow fiery white and whispered into his commdot to the others that he thought they had to keep them apart, as he was pretty sure they had been infected by the ooze. “They need to stay calm and cool, possibly we should take them to the Arctic circle?”
Banshee shouted over to a stumbling Repulse, “What’s happening?” He replied in his perfect English with its undertones of a German accent revealing his place of birth, “Thank you for coming. Do not get too close. We have each been infected by a stranger with some form of weird black organism that was absorbed through the skin. I can feel it growing like a cancer inside me. The others have been similarly infected. Can you help us? The pain gets worse if we get too close to each other.
At least I think that is what has occurred; we were walking in London a few days ago when we felt someone stick something sharp into our arm or leg then we felt dizzy and next we know we found ourselves experiencing a fever as though we were burning up. The feeling got worse if we got too close to each other, as if we somehow magnified each other’s pain and the intense burning. Can you help us?”
Behind her, she heard Akira mutter, “doesn’t anyone actually read our reports? If they put them together, they might end up exploding… we need to stop the idiots in Iron tights from putting them together in the back of their equivalent of a black Maria.”
As they watched, the New Knights advanced towards the Untouchables and them while Lancelot shouted over, “Stand down, these are our arrests. You three, stop what you are doing and put your hands up.”
Paragon shouted back, “They’re not carrying a bomb, someone has turned them into bombs. If they get too close to each other, they will spontaneously explode. Let us handle this, okay?”
Their shout was ignored, so Akira began to spin a spell; the Somnambulant Spell of Sirrion, which created thin, pinkish mist, rising up from the ground, hopefully putting New Knights into a deep sleep. It wouldn’t take out the cyborg Galahad of course, so Paragon would need to deal with him.
The mist swirled up from the ground and the fake Arthur, with the two who called themselves Gawain and Lancelot, collapsed to the ground instantly. Seeing what happened, the other three must have held their breath as they moved out of range and immediately attacked. Tristan, Guinevere and the cyborg hadn’t been affected for some reason. Banshee shouted out one last “stand down, you don’t understand what you’re dealing with here. They’re not refusing arrest, just that they are victims themselves and need to be kept separate if they are to avoid being turned into human bombs.”
Unfortunately, the remaining three Knights ignored them and continued advancing. The Untouchable, Blackstuff, was the first to respond and attacked the cyborg Galahad by turning himself into a hot tar-like substance that flowed over and into his joints. The attack took Galahad by surprise, and he staggered back, trying to remove the living tar from his mechanical body.
“Why do we always end up with diplomacy devolving into a punch up?” Banshee whispered as she rushed in to grab at Guinevere, hoping to take her out with a corrupting touch, even as a smiling Akira began to chant, “Cat fight, cat fight!” Banshee risked a glance at Solvent and Repulse to check that they were still keeping their distance from each other.
They were, but that was unlikely to continue if the fight went on for any length of time. Spatial awareness wasn’t high on the agenda when punches were being thrown. She reached over to touch her, only to be blocked as Guinevere proceeded to somersault over her. She grabbed for Banshee’s head and tried to throw her to the ground. Banshee pulled herself free and reached out again to try to touch her attacker’s neck before she got clear. Her fingers brushed her and she sprawled to the tarmac, dazed.
Repulse had begun to rip metal free from off the pavement and shopfronts in an attempt to create a circling shield in front of Galahad, to protect them from an attack, with some free-falling fragments smashing into his chest and legs, causing him to stagger back.
Paragon shouted out to Solvent to “Stay clear and don’t get involved if you value you and your friend lives….” under his breath he added, “as well as ours.” He found himself struggling to breathe as her always-on acidic miasma caught at his throat and caused him to gag. He immediately flew up, clear of her poisonous aura, and targeted the also flying Tristan, slamming down on him, hoping to knock him out. It never occurred to him that he might just be a normal human inside the armour. He came down and knocked him comatose with a single blow.
Seeing Tristan collide into the ground, Galahad suddenly spun round as his arm cannon began to target Paragon. By the way he was pulling at the arm, they were reasonably sure that someone else was controlling the arm remotely. The blast missed as a result of his own actions, but only just.
Blackstuff’s veins began to glow, making the team wonder just how close the infected needed to be to each other to go nuclear? Could the fact that his body was currently morphed into a hot organic tar retard the explosive process?
Akira gestured, and suddenly Blackstuff found himself floating faster and faster up into the sky and away from his compatriots. At least if he exploded now, he wouldn’t now take out most of Dragon’s Gate.
Repulse was still trying to batter away at Galahad, hoping to keep his aim off-balance. Staggering forward, Guinevere tried to grab Banshee and judo throw her but she failed to get a proper grip.
Paragon immediately slammed down onto Galahad, hoping to punch him into reset mode. If he’d been a normal human, the blow would have killed him. As it was, it damaged his systems, leaving him struggling as he collapsed to the ground and his life support systems began to go offline. Realising his mistake, Akira immediately rushed over to check on him, to see if he was okay, even as he tried to keep Blackstuff ‘up and away’ from his companions.
Solvent immediately rushed forward to see what had happened, spraying acid towards Galahad to ensure he stayed down. Paragon dropped between them, taking the worst of the spray. As he glanced down, he saw she was also shredding small bleeds of black ooze from her body. These small streams of ooze were collecting together on the ground before flowing towards him.
He had got too close to her and whatever was inside her had obviously decided to target him! He flew up fast, which meant some of the acid spray hit Galahad’s prone form anyway, and the black ooze retargeted Akira instead.
Akira was forced to run away, out of the immediate range, and was rewarded with the oily substance immediately flowing back into Solvent’s body, temporarily causing her to spasm and collapse to the ground with the shock.
Banshee, was still struggling with Guinevere. This time she succeeded in getting a good grab on her bare skin and was able to unleash her corrupting touch on her at last. She collapsed to the ground. That only left the three ‘walking bombs’ to deal with.
In the distance, they could hear the Police heading their way. Banshee shouted at Repulse and Solvent to keep as far apart as possible, while Akira brought Blackstuff down to the ground on the opposite side of the gate before rushing over to Galahad and, with Paragon, began to check he was able to survive. He realised that Galahad was going into cardiac arrest and, opening his chest panel, the two of them began to administer CPR.
Banshee glanced into the sky as she began to walk past the unconscious towards the Police and arriving bomb squad to explain what had just occurred and what they needed to do to keep everyone safe. Above her, she saw a familiar sight hovering a hundred metres off the ground. It seemed that at some point either Jeeves or Frankie had decided to send their camera drone, Tinks, to monitor the battle. Given the downed New Knights sprawled on the ground, she wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not, as it would show that they had attacked first.
She stepped through the gate and was relieved to find that the Inspector in charge approaching them was Marcus.
Behind them, Blackstuff’s transformation into his hot tar form was struggling to maintain his shape as the heat he was giving off magnified his ooze production. Mary was forced to cut short her explanation to Marcus and head over to him, where she transformed back into Mary and manifested her harp to try to calm everyone down. It worked, Blackstuff started to cool down, no longer multiplying the ooze infecting him. It just meant they had an excess of the ooze now surrounding his body to be collected by ARC when they turned up.
Later that day
Having handed over Tink’s sealed evidence chip with its recording of what happened at Dragon’s Gate to Superintendent Cunningham and overseen the delivery of the three Untouchables and ooze to the ARC facility in London, the three of them sat down in the lounge area of the BASEment and considered their next move.
They had advised the staff at the ARC to try using the same Kairomones, a unique type of pheromones which the Challenger-Wildeman family had discovered stormers (and to a lesser degree all Metas) excreted, which attracted the terminus control parasites, to see what effect it had on the ooze.
They considered trying to get ahead of the game by releasing their own press release about today’s events but had been warned against it by Marcus who explained that while an active investigation was ongoing into the incident it would definitely alienate them to the police.
Paragon was therefore surprised when the wall screen in the lounge suddenly flared into life showing a local news broadcast even as a sweet female voice behind him muttered, “You don’t mind, do you, I think you’ll want to see this.” Having not heard anyone approach, he was caught in surprise by the closeness of the voice and spun round to see a tall, easily 6 foot 6 tall model of a woman with short red hair and a dazzling smile, holding the remote. Banshee smiled as she gazed upon her. “Annie, long time no see. What brings you to the BASEment?” She laughed, “Frankie asked me to visit. You’ll see…”
On the screen, the reporter was explaining that a recent video of events had been sent to the studio showing their recent adventure. It appeared to be Tinks’ recording, but only the Police and the courts had the means to unlock evidence tapes. Thankfully that meant no one would be able to accuse them of releasing the recording as it had to have been done by a ranking Police Officer. Neither Marcus, Inspector Tolliver, nor Superintendent Cunningham would have done it, so who?
The video clearly showed an anomaly – everything was as it had happened in reality except at the beginning where Galahad was seen targeting the Untouchables with his arm cannon almost immediately and without warning just before Akira had brought down Arthur and the other two with his mystical gases. That hadn’t happened, so how?
Annie smiled again. “Seems someone has hacked the police files and released the recording as well as the information proving that the stormers had been as much the victims of these recent outrages as the innocents who’d died. They had also accessed and shared the King’s Cross CCTV footage to show how they were reluctant to be where they were and explained that they had only gathered as the result of blackmail. It also shows the presence of the Purifier collecting the black ooze afterwards.
ARC will put out their own press release soon, confirming what the black stuff does, and that the three Untouchables are infected. Your conflict with the New Knights can then be explained as you preventing them from being harmed as well as stopping them from bringing the Untouchables into close proximity with one another. The fact that they wanted to arrest them and put them altogether in a van would have resulted in a massive explosion and no doubt the death of more innocents (as well as the extermination of the New Knights). In fact, by attacking them and beating them up so severely, you in fact saved their lives!
There should be enough evidence in fact to prove that it was the Purifiers who were responsible for the explosions and were prepared to slaughter many more innocents, not the stormers, and were doing this in order to have the mutants perceived as dangerous terrorists. Hopefully, that will also by implication, taint the reputation of the AML and the Humanity First Party… Not bad for a day out, eh? Look I need to head back to the office and see what mess Sam’s made of the latest case but take care of yourselves and be aware the New Knights will be coming after you.”
M.E.T.A. – Metahuman Evaluation and Tracking Authority.
Superhero Adventures, UK Style 