X-Ray had been spending as much of his spare time as he could with Singularity since Raggedy had gone all ‘invasion of the body snatchers’ on the boy, but for a number of reasons Brian hadn’t discussed what had happened that day with him, until now.
Stacy, meanwhile, was kept busy with her new job as a PA at Leonidas Industries – even at home where she was having to familiarise herself with various work protocols and procedures. She had been there a week but was still to meet her manager, Mr Hierei, no first name given, which led Brian to suspect he might not be much of a people’s person, but she said her fellow workers seemed nice.
As a result Brian had been spending much of his free time with Chris, though he did manage to persuade Stacy to take some time off last weekend from her studying. They had gone with Chris to a nearby theme park before visiting the Wessex Experience, a world-famous museum and visitor attraction detailing the original Saxon settlement, which was located beneath St Hughes Shopping Precinct.
The day after, Singularity and X-Ray were back in the BASEment and it was finally time to talk about what had happened.
Brian had tried to explain why he’d had elected to spin Singularity around while he’d been possessed, explaining that he’d done that rather than resort to a potentially violent and dangerous assault on him. He’d hoped to use the experience as a teaching moment, to explain that there were almost always other options you could use other than resorting to violence, even if it can sometimes take a while to see it. Unfortunately, Chris had no memory of being possessed or of Brian’s unorthodox approach to expel the ghost that had controlled him and only remembered ‘waking up’ on the floor, dizzy and then spewing his guts up!
Brian had to admit he didn’t think his ‘lesson’ had taken root! Not least because of the level of embarrassment Chris had experienced. If anything, being reminded of it resulted in even wilder behaviour during his practice session and in the end, Brian retreated and left Mikey (who hadn’t witnessed the projectile vomiting and pretended to be completely unaware of the incident) to organise his training schedule for the rest of the day.
Instead, Brian contacted the Challenger-Wildeman family and found himself talking to their ‘Uncle’ Jack Wolfe. He confirmed that Max and Tess had begun checking the crate of old magnetic tapes that Mekha-Prime has tried to steal. Stopping the theft of the tapes by an advanced robot had been Brian’s first challenge when he’d moved to Wessex, and he was curious as to why a robotic A.I. from the future (or so he was told) had wanted access to computer data from the 60s’.
Jack informed them that the data on the tapes had been heavily encrypted but it appeared, from what little they had managed to decode, to be a blueprint to create an advanced computer, possibly even one capable of developing artificial intelligence. The core data referred to an E.V.A. but they were unable to determine what that was and surprisingly they had also found mentions on the reels to a religious fundamentalist group located in Europe, Amish-like in their traditions and rejection of technology, called the Mannheim Brethren. They had been a small, secular group living in rural Germany in the 60s’ but they had subsequently vanished without a trace by the early 70s’. An internet search of the name Mannheim found an advanced technology company in Amsterdam which shared that name but there was no obvious connection to either the tape data or the Brethren that the family could find.
Jack admitted he had no idea why the tapes had been marked Project Chronos and while time travel was technically feasible and some people, including X-Ray’s partners on the team, claimed to have travelled through time, the technology to achieve time travel was currently beyond human ability – for the present at least.
X-Ray thanked Jack and asked to be kept informed of any developments with decoding the tapes. He thought for a few minutes then elected to place a call through to the Secure prison facility nicknamed Deep Six.
The facility put him on hold while they checked his credentials. After listening to several minutes of banal elevator ‘muzak’ on a loop, he was put through to the acting prison governor who informed him that as he was neither family or legal representation he wasn’t entitled to any information of the prisoners incarcerated in the facility but, reluctantly she confirmed that Kaos and his Kult members were still in the prison and as healthy as was possible, given they were in stasis.
The call was cut short. With Frankie’s assistance he found a list of powered individuals, primarily Eastern European, that Kaos had worked with previously, but they were primarily minions, not part of the Inner Chamber, and the majority of them were themselves in prisons across Europe. The group still managed to keep its grip on the country of Czechia despite this, and the criminal syndicate was now being led by a mysterious female known only as Nula, ‘Zero’.
Finally, he did a deep dive into the background of the Dalton Defenders. Things got very confusing because it turned out there were a clear dozen or more corporate teams, all formed by Dalton Technologies, all paid employees and not registered with the HCP programme, or they had requested the removal of their licenses when they’d joined one of Dalton’s corporate teams.
As they hadn’t committed any crimes (officially at least) he was unable to get more than their code names and speculation about their powers from online groupie sites. He was surprised to discover that the first team put together by Sir Damien Dalton had listed, as one of its probationary members, one Banshee. No powers were officially listed for any of them, but they clearly were corporate lackies and not heroes, paid primarily to protect Dalton’s corporate assets and important personnel. While their media presence was good, it was clearly paid for, as people who’d actually had contact with them weren’t that impressed, considering them ‘corporate shills’ and not the most powerful of Metas. They were considered well trained and extremely well equipped. He knew unless he had a good reason that neither the Police or M.E.T.A. would provide him access to detailed information and he wasn’t sure how much he could trust online reports by groupies and trolls.
The latest team was composed of four Metas that were still in their teens, most of them had worked together before joining the DD’s but they were still young and immature. This team acted as personal bodyguards to Sir Damien. Three of its members – Aero, Hydro, and Pyro – had previously being part of a London-based HCP-certified team known as the Elementals until Sir Damien had recruited them. A newcomer named Electro rounded off the new team.
Brian sighed. It was proving to be a long day.
Superhero Adventures, UK Style 