Superhero Adventures, UK Style

Inspired by Chapter 4: Sea Change from Emerald City Knights

A couple of days had passed since the attacks, days that had consisted of filling in dozens of official reports, writing their statements and doing press interviews (though how much information they were able to provide the reporters had been extremely limited due to this still being an active investigation, much to Banshee’s relief). The rest of the time had been quiet, punctuated only by the mysterious disappearance of two of the Stormers, both youths.

Washout and Singularity had both vanished on their way back to the META Evaluation Centre (a quick check had revealed that Cannon and Dreadnought had been enroute to the High security powered wing at Belmarsh Prison prior to transferring to Deep Six). One minute the two youth had both been secure in the back of the transport then they’d just vanished; whoosh, gone in an instant. Was it somehow connected to the fact that several of the escaped Metas (All Stormers) had still not been found after the breakout? Had Tempus pulled another of his temporal rescues and if so why take the two kids and not rescue the seasoned professional mercenaries?

Meanwhile the team had elected to help with the city’s clean-up efforts and were currently in the Little Russia district helping to fix windows and repair damaged properties shattered in the assault when the never silent Dispatch’s channel started to break up before going completely quiet. A solid blanket of white noise replaced it as something blocked the transmission. They changed to the team’s dedicated channel two, only to find that whatever the signal interference was, it had also silenced Frankie.

X-Ray could ‘feel’ the electronic pulse, nagging at him, like a constant annoyance.

Before they could do anything, X-Ray’s mobile signalled that he had an incoming text – Frankie had sent them a message, old school. Brian read it out, “Designation: The Balance. Redshift Energies, Stormers” then a second text, “NOW!” followed by an image of a map directing them to an industrial compound on the northern edge of Silicon Dell, the city’s technology and innovation region.

It was Banshee that remembered where they had heard of Redshift before. When she’d first arrived on this Earth, when the team had first encountered the silver storm, the recovered Nanites were being transported by a tanker from Redshift.

Annie had subsequently discovered that Redshift Energies was a wholly owned subsidiary of a company called Paladyne Industries, which was a shell company owned by the military supplier, Severn Avionics Inc. who had a contract with a covert Government department, P.I.S.C.E.S. – The secretive Paranormal Intelligence Service for Counter-intelligence, Evaluation and Support.

That transport tanker had been enroute to P.I.S.C.E.S’ secret base on St. Kilda Island when their transporter had been attacked. Did that mean that Redshift was being used to store Nanites?

As Mary put it, “When Frankie says jump, we jump.” They immediately took off, heading towards Redshift’s compound.

As they flew above the houses towards Wessex’s industrial district, they could see a familiar figure in a side street, her back to a wall, using street furniture and anything else metallic she could liberate to swat at something apparently invisible. Their favourite friendly foe, Death Metal, either in an act of vandalism or defence had ripped loose street signs and railings as well as a couple of metal dustbins and was levitating them while trying to use them to swat and seemingly fight an invisible opponent or three in the streets below.

X-Ray heard Akira mutter “Death Metal.” That couldn’t be good and he expected the worse, so was caught off-guard when Banshee explained that she was a “good baddy.” That could be taken a couple of different ways, he thought as he tried to see what she was fighting. His enhanced vision immediately saw several small bugs on the ground, crawling towards her.

She saw the three of them hovering above her and gave them a friendly wave before shouting up, “Got another one!” as one of the street signs swung around her in an arc. “Hey hiya, where’s tall, dark and brooding? Haven’t seen his handsome face since the shopping precinct while I was helping myself to some pick n’ mix.”

Akira assumed she meant Paragon who she’d taken to embarrassing by her overt flirting. Her ‘pick n’ mix’ had been the more valuable contents of several jewellery stores she’d tried to ‘liberate’ during an unexpected interdimensional excursion by demons and Omegadrone troops from Terminus.

He shouted down, “He’d got himself another team. What are you playing at?”

She smiled back as she gestured and one of the metal bins smashed into the ground in front of her. “I was walking along, just minding my own business like I usually do, when these tiny cheese-string-like bugs with metal on them, began to attack me. Thankfully I’m really good at ‘Whack-a-mole’ and batted them away before they could get to me.” She pointed towards the ground at something she’s just hit with her free-floating railings, “There’s another one. They give off the weirdest magnetic signature I’ve ever experienced.”

There was nothing obvious that Akira and Banshee could see, but to X-Ray’s enhanced senses, he saw a 3cm long, multi-limbed bug twitching on the ground that was clearly regaining consciousness. Embedded in the back of its vicious looking head was some sort of small, solid-state electronic component like an antenna that gave off an identical signal to the white noise that had flooded out their comms. There were several others on the ground around her, most were now all completely splattered by the magnetic onslaught that Death Metal had unleashed on them.

He described what he saw and heard Akira state that they sounded like “Terminus control bugs” to which Banshee replied an enthusiastic, “Squash them!” They explained that they were attracted by the scent of kairomones, a unique type of pheromones, which all Stormers gave off though the bugs were known to attack other Metas. Once they had burrowed into their victim’s brains, the bugs took complete control over them on behalf of the Terminus. The metal attachment was new; it was almost as though the control bugs were themselves being controlled.

X-ray shuddered and murmured, “Okay, let’s crush them, squash them or do we want one alive?”  As Death Metal was a Stormer, she was clearly their primary target. “No, just destroy them with extreme prejudice” was Akira’s reply. “They should be inactive at the moment as their Controller, the Terminus clone Slaed, was currently being held completely incommunicado in the Deep Six penitentiary. These though are clearly active and attracted to a Stormer, in this case Death Metal.” Akira smiled, “And who wouldn’t be attracted to her?” He shouted down, “With Paragon gone, we have a bit of a vacancy, if you fancy coming along with us If we twat the Nanites attacking you?”

She smiled, “I think I’m doing okay on my own. It’s fun and I’ve some shopping to do after I finish here.” Akira wondered if she intended to pay, but they had to get to the Redshift complex once they dealt with this situation. He explained why he thought her ‘cheese-stick’ bugs were trying to attack her as she smashed another into the ground. He replied that it was likely her ‘magnetic personality’. She laughed in reply.

X-Ray suggested they grab one before they were all squashed by the enthusiastic Stormer. Banshee unleashed a frosty blast of the Breath of Manannan where she assumed the bugs were even as X-Ray grabbed one of the undamaged bugs in his Gravi-Kinesis field as well as some of Death Metal’s ‘toys’ much to her obvious displeasure as she tried to smack him with the edge of one of her levitated signs in response. It missed and when he looked down at her, it was obvious that she wasn’t really angry at him, she just didn’t want his interference. 

Meanwhile, the captive bug was trying to break free and was intent on getting as close to him as it could, despite being imprisoned in the gravity bubble. He had no intention of allowing it to get too close. Meanwhile Death Metal had finished smashing all the remaining bugs leaving him holding the only still living specimen or what Akira had started to call his ‘pet’. He asked, “Can one of you manage to deactivate this thing?” Akira had to ask what he intended to do with it and whether he had a plan for it? “I want to find out what frequency it’s working on. If we can block that, we might be able to deactivate it or possibly find out where the control signal originated and who’s controlling it.”

He reached out with his senses and was able to confirm that it was working on the same frequency as the whiteout that was blocking their comm signals. He was unable to triangulate the originating site from just a single signal but he did manage to get a general direction – towards Silicon Dell, their proposed destination. In fact the radio whiteout might not be deliberate, it might just be a side effect of trying to control the bugs? Was it connected with whatever was happening at Redshift? Now what to do with the receiver and its insect-like host? Akira was all for just squishing it or they could take it with them? Meanwhile Death Metal took her leave and headed off with another little wave of her fingers leaving the discarded signs, bins and railings behind.

X-Ray explained his intention to keep hold of it in his grav-bubble on the off chance that once they got closer they might find other bugs, which would provide him with a second signal and allow him to hopefully triangulate the origin of the signals. Akira muttered, “If you want to keep it as a pet, you’re welcome. Just keep it away from me.” That put X-Ray on the defensive and he began to state that “wasn’t his intention and…” Akira and banshee didn’t wait, they headed off towards Redshift murmuring about how they were told to be there NOW, that was what they’d been told by the ever-truthful Frankie, to head there NOW! Not play with bugs and collecting samples.

X-Ray looked down at the smashed and splattered remnants of all the other bugs, sighed and squashed it, dropping it onto the street before following them.

Within minutes, they could see their destination and a pillar of smoke emanating from the main building as well as a fight going on in the grounds outside as three Metas, presumably the Stormers, were chasing and attacking the fleeing staff. One was a female who was manifesting some sort of energy chain that she was using to attack, another a male in a skin-tight suit was unleashing some sort of energy blasts at two fleeing employees. The final one they recognised, the youth Washout. Behind them, the building was on fire. They had to assume that there might be others inside. X-Ray wondered where Singularity might be if Washout was here. Washout and he had escaped together and had likely stayed together. Akira nodded in agreement, “They’re not shopping, I’ll tell you that much.”

That’s when they noticed their glowing silver eyes, the coordinated yet jerky movements and the fact that none were speaking. It reminded them of zombies from the films. They acted as one, herding the staff away from the main building.

Akira and Banshee had met Terminus-controlled Metas and even mind controlled mundane’s before, but for the most part they had seemed and acted reasonably normal. These people were clearly under someone’s control but unlike their previous encounters, there was nothing natural about them. Their eyes were solid silver in colour, they seemed incapable of coherent speech and their zombie-like, shambling movements meant that this was either something else, or possibly something more?

Banshee read their auras and confirmed that they each had the ugly yellow stain in the back of their heads that indicated that they were under the influence of control bugs. That was when they remembered that Dalton had once been infected with one at one point even though he wasn’t a Meta, forcing them to ‘remove it’. They had the knowledge and X-Ray had the necessary surgical skills, they just lacked the right tools with them.

Banshee unleashed an aura of fear on the three apparent Stormers but only Washout was affected by it. The female stumbled slightly but it didn’t stop her attack. Akira blasted all three of them, starting with ‘water boy’ but apparently missed though due to Banshee’s attack at the same time, it caused him to stumble and knock himself unconscious. Akira moved onto ‘chain reaction’ and his blast seemed to daze her.  His last shot had a surprising result; his blast caused his target to split into two identical figures. Akira whispered that he ‘hated when that happens!’ and continued to blast away.

X-Ray was caught by surprise at the doppelgänger, yet elected to target one of them anyway. Thankfully, his blast didn’t create another dupe as his target fell to the ground at the intensity of the blast. His target responded by firing back at him, dazing X-Ray in return. He erected his shield as a response now that the ‘bolt had horsed’ as Akira put it.

Akira, aware that the dupes could be hurt and appeared to not be able to double up if the damage was intense enough to bypass his ability to create copies of himself elected to target the boy shooting streams of water from his hands first and then the downed dupe. His blast hit the boy and he crashed into the ground, staggered. He then tried to target the bruised dupe and hit the other one instead caused him to collapse to his knees – hit but not out. Despite their injuries, none of them cried out…

One of the dupes fired back at Akira but missed, though the blast skimmed his arm. Akira shrugged off the attack as the female with the chain attacked a still substantialised Banshee. She swung the psychic chain at her, which extended out far enough to reach her. The chain wrapped around Banshee’s arms and began to burn her as she turned insubstantial and unleashed a shattering shriek hoping to wreck the metal whatsits on the control bugs she assumed were nested in the back of their brains, in their cerebellum. It was worth the risk. She focused on the ‘twins’ as they had their backs to her and the wave washed over them as one of them collapsed unconscious and vanished. The other looked injured as blood leaked from his silvery eyes.

X-Ray took inspiration and adjusted the radiation blast to go for a frequency of ionising radiation that he thought might interact with the control signal he sensed and hope it would stop the other ‘twin’.  For it to work though, without potentially killing the man, he needed his blast to be precise. He focused and then blasted the rear of the twins neck. The blast apparently worked as his eyes returned to normal even as he collapsed unconscious. This one didn’t vanish so he assumed this had to be the original.

Only the female with the psychic chain remained as a clear threat, outside at least, so Akira blasted her knocking her into the wall behind her. She responded by unleashing her chain at him in response but he dodged even as Banshee unleashed a shattering shriek at the Chain lady. The cry washed over her head, but failed to destroy the unit controlling the bug in her skull.

X-Ray meanwhile tried to focus on the active control bugs in Washout and Chain’s skulls in an attempt to try to triangulate the location of their Controller. His senses focused on the first floor of the building in front of them but he felt a distortion in the signal as though it was being bounced off or through something inside. He immediately headed towards it aware that he was still feeling dazed as he flew towards the windows on that floor. Below, all of the civilian staff outside had fled leaving Banshee and Akira to deal with the last remaining Stormer.

Akira fired and staggered her. She responded by fleeing back towards the building using her chain to pull herself up to one of the broken windows on the first floor. Before a dazed X-Ray could stop her, she crashed through it and landed inside. Banshee unleashed another shattering shriek as she did so, causing her to collapse on landing, her chain evaporating away as she went unconscious, X-Ray could see her eyes returning to normal, thorough blood was leaking from her ears as she became comatose.

Inside, X-Ray could see that this level seemed to consist of a series of isolation laboratories and a couple of very large canisters, one of which was being partially levitated, dragged across the floor to an open portal by a silent, struggling, silver-eyed Singularity. Unlike their previous encounter, the black hole he’d created was stable despite also trying to move the heavy container at the same time.

Surprisingly, it appeared as though a mind-controlled Singularity was capable of creating and maintaining a stable Einstein–Rosen bridge connecting two disparate points in space-time while multitasking; in this case, the portal appeared to link the labs and somewhere that smelt of the sea and felt chilly. There was the sound of waves breaking against what he assumed was either a shoreline or a nearby shoal of rocks – the portal appeared to link to some sort of deep-sea platform or oilrig in the ocean.

A newly arrived Banshee wondered if it was still connected to P.I.S.C.E.S. and the location she could see was somewhere close to St. Kilda? All X-Ray could be sure of was that the control signal was emanating from the other side.

A still distant Akira muttered something about turning it, whatever it was, into onion soup once he caught up with the other two.

Inside, X-Ray and Banshee saw that Singularity was not alone. There was an overweight youth with spines all over his head and body standing this side of the portal, searching one of the labs at the other side of the building was a floating female, only partially visible as though not fully present and another of the dupes standing by the portal itself.

There might even be others going by the sounds coming from the labs, though that might be trapped staff unsure whether to hide or run.

The container currently slowly being dragged across to the open portal was unmarked and appeared to weigh about five tonnes. The kid was clearly struggling. X-Ray relayed to the others what he had observed then elected to interfere with the containers passage to whatever was on the other side by using his gravi-kinesis to stop it in its tracks.

The dupe walked over and began to help push the container across the room. He was stronger than expected so Akira unleashed his Theurgical-kinetic ability to ‘push’ the container backwards towards the dupe and over him. Caught by surprise, the dupe was squashed by the sudden and unexpected change in direction and collapsed underneath it. As Akira had suspected, this dupe vanished rather than bled out.

Caught by surprise at Akira’s apparent decision, X-Ray exclaimed, “That was brutal, what if he had been the original?” “I was pretty sure the original is the unconscious fella in the courtyard below.” was the reply even as he dragged it towards the window. The human ‘porcupine’ unleashed several spines in their general direction as a sudden flash from inside caused part of the wall close to them to explode out and fall into the courtyard below. Akira dodged the falling bricks, which tumbled through her. Akira saw what he thought might be plasma burns on some of the blasted masonry.

Meanwhile Banshee found herself being confronted by a ghostly female flying through the hole towards them. It focused its assault on a floating Akira. He managed to dodge her touch, her arms outstretched as she tried to touch him with glowing hands. In response, he shouted over to Banshee, “Looks like you got a girlfriend here, Banshee!”

Banshee pulled out her bo staff and headed towards the other female, hoping her insubstantial weapon would be phased right to affect her spectre-like opponent. She swung for the head hoping to damage her control bug. The staff connected and seemed to daze her. She was clearly in phase. X-Ray grabbed hold of Singularity in his G-K and slammed him through his own portal, which immediately started to waver and begin to collapse.

Akira suddenly felt sure Banshee would do her usual and jump through after them, landing who knew where. If the control signal was blocking their comms then it would also block their trackers which meant she would be alone without any way of knowing where she’d ended up.

Except for the ghostly female who was outside the building with them, the other Stormers immediately abandoned what they had been doing and dashed towards the closing black hole and began to jump through to the other side. The three of them flew in and headed towards the portal themselves. As they got closer, they could see a distant shoal of fang-like rocks through the hole in reality, see the distant coast that made them think this was not located near St. Kilda but somewhere more southern.

Akira had a premonition that someone was waiting for them on the other side, someone or thing vaguely familiar. He summoned Ahgrazul’s Compass and felt the spell embed itself on the back of his eyes. His now enhanced sight looked at the scene beyond the portal. He realised that he was looking out onto the Celtic Sea, about midway between Cornwall and the Bay of Biscay, in international waters. He focused and a name came to mind. The platform was located near the treacherous rocks of Point Phorcys, historically known for wrecking shipping in the past.

It was Frankie who subsequently informed them that Phorcys had been the ancient Greek sea-god of the hidden dangers of the deep. He and his wife Keto (Ceto) were also gods of the largest of sea creatures. For some reason every attempt over the centuries to build or place a warning beacon on the rocks had failed, often with serious loss of life.

X-Ray used his enhanced sight at the same time and made out a man standing on the helipad, a short man, dressed in an expensive suit tailored to fit, his head covered in a full-face helmet that covered his face. The helmet was giving off a now familiar energy signal, the one he’d been trying to identify since their comms had been blocked. The escaped Stormers were all rushing over to his side. X-Ray vaguely recognised the rocky formation sticking out of the ocean behind them even as he heard the sound of automatic gunfire nearby.

Akira had briefly glanced at the container now jammed into the smashed window and muttered that he thought it likely contained deactivated Nanites, possibly from those recently deposited in the Stadium. Meanwhile Banshee turned and rushed towards the closing portal as he tried to target them all with a shattering shriek hoping to damage the control units on their parasites. Two of them collapsed – the ghost and the kid with the spines – before they reached the portal.

Behind them, Akira felt a migraine start as the medallion around his neck activated unexpectedly and an image of a short man in a helmet that covered his full face appeared before his inner eye. One word filled his mind, Controller. For a second he wondered if this was the man who called himself the Professor but he was six feet tall, well-built and wore a face mark not a helmet.

 Almost involuntarily, he started to fly towards the portal and for a couple of seconds the portal stabilised. The others elected to join him on going through to the other side.

Banshee remained insubstantial as she stepped through the hole in space and time and found herself on what she assumed was an oil platform but one without any form of drilling mechanism. The sound of gunfire was louder now and clearly came from the other side of the platform. This was clearly located in international waters.

X-Ray stepped through behind her, shield up. The antenna tower was clearly broadcasted and boosting the signal from the helmet of the man standing on the helipad. He considered taking out the tower but with portal collapsing behind them it would no longer have the range to affect Wessex, or anywhere on the coast for that matter.

Akira was the last one through, just as it collapsed. There was clearly an assault occurring there as two sets of armed personnel fought each other and both sides were heavily armed with military-grade weaponry.

Despite everything, Akira’s migraine again increased as he felt an intense signal emanating from the ocean depths. Was this why the medallion had activated on its own, he wondered?

They only had to deal with the remaining Stormers who were standing immobile while awaiting instructions from the Controller and there was whoever was engaged in the firefight and figure out why they’d wanted the Nanites?

Was this Controller here to seize this, what was this place anyway? A deep sea research station possibly or was he here for another acquisition connected to the Nanite theft?

Out of the blue, Akira suddenly sat down on the platform, cross legged and asked his companions, “Do you fancy a swim? I fancy going down under the water. I intend to go astral and would benefit from Banshee making my physical remains insubstantial so I’m not so vulnerable. Watch my body please as I’m rather fond of it.”

With that he closed his eyes and projected his Ka out from his body and down into the ocean depths. Down he went, deeper and deeper until several hundred metres down in the dark he ‘saw’ an ancient dome poking out of the silt. It was manmade or at least made by unknown sentient’s as the history and weird organic-looking yet metallic composition of the construction impacted on his mind. The rig was located directly above the dome and there was a menacing energy being given off that drove away any life from the ocean around it.

Nothing had stirred on the seabed below for millennia but it was surrounded by some sort of mystical shield preventing him getting a clear reading.

Was this the remnants of a crashed spaceship? That felt more likely than it was the remnants of a dwelling so deep beneath the sea. There was a strong sense of life, no, thousands of life signals but they were not necessarily sentient, emanating from the dome but again he wasn’t sure why or what they were other than they were small and squirming.

Akira had a feeling that this contained a breeding colony of control bugs hidden in the depths. Was that why the man in the helmet wanted control of the platform? Aware there wasn’t anything he could do for now, he headed back towards his physical body.

Once he ‘awoke’, he thanked Mary for looking after his body and explained that he thought he had found a crashed spaceship, which he suspected contained a colony of control bugs, thousands of them, under the dome.

Was the rig there to raise it to the surface and if so, for what purpose? He knew that P.I.S.C.E.S. had previously been secretly infiltrated by Terminus, as had the Government including infecting the Home Secretary, before they had found a way to identify those infected with control bugs and discovered how to remove them. Was this an official operation and if so, by whom or was this down to the Terminus or something like Labyrinth? They discussed what Akira had discovered and what they should do now even as the battle continued elsewhere and most of the Stormers (except for Singularity who stayed beside the Controller) went to intervene in the fight happening in the other side of the platform. Meanwhile Akira was convinced that being that close to the control bugs was likely the cause of his migraine.

Banshee elected to unleash his shattering shriek on the Controller’s helmet despite the distance between them. The shriek damaged it slightly and they noticed that some of the Stormers looked dazed and appeared hesitant to continue fighting. Akira followed it up with a mystical blast, straight at the helmet. The double attack shattered part of the faceplate and stopped it broadcasting. The Stormers collapsed as the Controller grabbed Singularity around the neck and began to use him as a shield. Then the shooting stopped as half the soldiers collapsed unconscious. Despite not being Metas, they too must have been infected.

The kid started to struggle and wrestle with the Controller as though trying to break free. He had to have a strong will to not have collapsed once the control bug in his head went inert. In the struggle, he managed to knock the helmet off and Akira and Banshee found themselves looking at the face of Sir Damien Dalton. Singularity suddenly opened a portal behind him and Dalton stepped through and vanished even as Singularity finally collapsed to the ground.

Then the platform began to tilt dangerously. Several explosions erupted on the other side of the platform as the north side legs were shattered, causing dozens of staff and invaders alike to fall into the ocean even as an large oblong ship rose out of the sea crashing into the rig and rose into the air. This ship was what had been beneath the dome, a metallic, organic-looking creation unlike anything they had ever seen before. It headed straight up into the sky and headed north at speed, vanishing from sight in seconds. X-Ray turned and unleashed a blast at the antenna tower anyway then contacted Frankie to request she send the Crate on remote to collect them.

Meanwhile Akira cast his usual “Repair Everything and Anything” Wheel of Weyan spell to put the rig back up-right sufficient to not collapse into the sea completely. Meanwhile X-Ray and Banshee did their bit to rescue anyone who’d ended up in the water and tried to heal the major wounds that had been inflicted on each, while waiting for the authorities to turn up and tidy things.

Before the guards that were originally on the rig were taken into custody, the team did a bit of interrogation to try to find out who employed them and what (if anything) they know about the ownership/purpose of the rig. They either knew or refused to dsy snd in the end it was Frankie who eventually found that there was a link to P.I.S.C.E.S. through Severn Avionics.

When they finally returned to the BASEment Mary called a meeting. Mary frowned and puffed furiously on her pipe to such an extent that sparks flew up to the roof. “I’m muggydored,” she croaked “Does seem that Devious Dalton lied to us about not being part and parcel with the Big L, no real surprises there. But what was he doing trying to drag a big can of sleeping Nanites to that rig, right next to a ship-full of control parasites?  Was he hoping to put them together somehow? Presumably against the will of those who built the rig in the first place.  

If Labyrinth is really against Terminus ~ and not on the same side ~ then you’d have to think the rig-builders were Terminus-allied, assuming they were there to protect or otherwise assist the worms survive, or even escape…” She snorted and puffed on her pipe then shook her head, “And given ‘Controller’ Dalton seems to have equipped himself to control control-worms, maybe he’s hoping to turn Terminus fifth-column Silver Stormers against Terminus when the time comes.  Kind of what we’d like to see happen, only without the coercive control. You know, I think we should be doing something about that – see if we can provide an alternative for the Stormers, something between being banged-up by the authorities and zombified by Dalton.

I wonder if a control bug-infected individual was to be attacked by another bug, would it be able to take control of that person or would the presence of the first bug prevent it?

Speaking of whom, maybe our first order of business is to try to track him down and put him a few questions.  Wonder if it’s worth speaking to young Singularity, see if he knows just where the black hole he threw over your man might take him?”

X-Ray smiled, “I think we need to explore the possibility that the Nanites might be used to either infect or destroy the bugs – I am beginning to think that Dalton could be doing the right thing, but in the wrong way.  As for the kid, I think this proves he needs training and I’d like to propose we befriend Singularity if he agrees to accept internship with The Balance, and hopefully he might give us the information we need to track Dalton down.”

Frankie interrupted their meeting by stating, <<Designation: The Balance, it appears that Dalton’s body double was appearing at a public event in Cardiff all day, providing him with a rock-solid alibi – again.>>