Adventure written in collaboration with AI
After the country-wide V.E. (Victory in Europe) and V.J. (Victory in Japan) celebrations were over, it was back to repairing the cities affected by the Terminus invasion. This included the retrieval by the Government of abandoned suits of powered exoskeleton armour and alien technology, especially discarded weapons.
The team had been contacted directly by the mysterious Dispatch. According to her, some weapons in particular have been mysteriously vanishing from supposedly secure facilities, after recovery but before they can be sent to the ultra-secure storage facilities at the ARC (the Artefact Research Centre set up by the Challenger-Wildeman Foundation) or the Government’s selected contractor, Omnitech, for examination, secure storage and presumably where appropriate, potential replication.
Dispatch then asked if she could add Inspector Marcus Tolliver into the call. Banshee explained to Celestus that Marcus was the team’s local police liaison and a good friend. The screen in the lounge came alive revealing Marcus in a state of barely contained annoyance. He quickly explained that the secure, top-secret storage facility in Wessex’s Silicon Dell where the government has been stockpiling some of the abandoned technology and weapons left over after the attempted Terminus invasion, had been attacked the day before. Not by a bomb blowing the doors off and not by a crew of masked men bypassing or assaulting security, oh no, but by what appeared to be… absolutely nothing.
He played them the security footage from the vault explaining that this was taken at the time of the robbery. What they saw was a silent nightmare: an empty hallway and the stacked vault on separate camera feeds, the vault door’s complex locking mechanisms glowed for a fraction of a second, and then the heavy door simply swung open. It’s as if a ghost had opened it, seemingly from the inside and then several bays of alien technology simply vanished.
Marcus explained that “a couple of days later, a low-level gang used a pulsed energy rifle during a bank heist in Canary Wharf, a weapon of alien origin believed to have been part of that weapons haul. The government was more worried about the weapon theft itself than petty criminals using the stolen weapons.”
He wanted to know if they could assist? X-Ray turned to the others and stated “it has to be done, can’t have power weapons turning up on the streets.” The others agreed.
Twenty minutes later they were heading towards Wessex’s Silicon Dell and an unmarked high security storage warehouse facility, its exterior a dull, grey, windowless monolith of government-grade concrete and steel. Marcus had arranged for the team to gain access to the facility in order to investigate the site of the theft. It took them twenty minutes to pass through security and gain access to the vaults deep underground. The building’s defences were intact, and even more perplexing there were no signs of forced entry.
The police were baffled by the complete lack of clues. There were nothing caught on camera, no fingerprints not even smudges from gloves, no thermal residue, no electromagnetic pulses recorded. It was as though they’d been robbed by a ghost.
X-Ray scanned the now empty vault with his enhanced senses while Celestus physically examined the vault door and walls. There was nothing, no sign of damage and the lock had been operated seemingly from inside the vault, but there was nothing to indicate how as the mechanism was in perfect working order. Celestus examined the door’s time lock which as far as he could tell was untampered with though he noticed that the timer was out by a single second.
the walls were perfectly solid, built to withstand a major siege, which only deepened the mystery.
He examined the door again to see if it could be tampered with, but it was a solid 30 cm thick security door and the walls were reinforced as well, there was no way someone could have physically broken in. He left X-Ray and Akira to check for energy signals left over from someone possibly teleporting in, though how anyone could teleport in blind, without materialising inside the walls was anyone’s guess, especially with the Faraday Cage layout installed into the walls and door which should have interfered with any teleport attempts.
Forensics had already examined the scene and found nothing amiss. The whole setup could have withstood a nuclear attack. Cerberus and Banshee asked to examine the CCTV recordings for themselves and headed off with the security officer to see what they might reveal.
X-Ray analysed the ambient energy readings for any unusual energy variations or power signatures left behind by the alien tech, including looking for any signs of gravity fluctuations. He found only the normal, low hum of the facility’s power grid, with no sign of the immense energy that the stolen weapons would have radiated, but he did detect traces of residual tachyon emissions in the bay (recognisable from their recent time travel adventures).
It seemed their time travelling escapades weren’t quite over yet!
Meanwhile, as Celestus watched the primitive VCR playback, he witnessed the vault door spring open for a second, followed by a room full of weapons suddenly and instantaneously disappear before their eyes. Whoever did this had to open the door to get in but nothing was seen going through. Had he managed to teleport the weapons away somehow? Looking at the recording it looked as though the door was only open for a second before closing and relocking again. The bays were also emptied during that same period. Whatever had happened had seemingly occurred in less than a second. This was backed up by the timer mechanism being out by a single second.
Did this mean someone had been able to either stop time, move at such a speed that they failed to register or interrupt the recordings in some unknown way? If so, why was the timer out by a second?
Back at the vault Akiva laid his hands on the door and unleashed his ability to view the past. He ‘witnessed’ nothing that could be mystically orientated; unable to detect any residual auras—magical, dimensional, or temporal that could explain the theft. His hands tingled as he felt a momentary chill, a brief ‘cold spot’ in the fabric of reality in the hallway outside the vault that had now sealed itself.
He could feel something had occurred here, he just couldn’t say what.
On her return to the vault, Banshee used her mystical awareness as she tried to phase through the vault door while relocked, feeling for any residual energy or a lingering aetheric echo. She could feel a subtle, buzzing static as she passed through the solid matter, a ghost of a passage where one should not exist. Banshee had discovered a subtle shimmer, a faint dimensional warp just large enough for a person to pass through, a momentary tear in space and time, too brief for cameras to register, that had now fully closed (or healed?).
She also got an impression that the ‘cold spot’ in the hallway Akira had found, was the remnant of a teleport trail that ended somewhere in the direction of central London. They just needed someone with the ability to teleport to try to follow it!
Akira was too busy examining the scene to realise that Banshee had found a possible trail until Banshee loudly repeated her comment directly in his ear… She explained she had found a dimensional tear in the fabric of reality if only they had some way to track it.
Akira smiled and started to manifest the gesture, words and mental state of mind to call forth the Airts of Ahgrazul and use the Ahgrazul’s Compass spell to track the echo. He then created a portal as the spell directed, opening into an empty, dark tunnel. It was Banshee that identified the location as one of the labyrinthine abandoned subway tunnels of the London Underground before Akira closed the portal again.
Akira called the team together and asked if they wanted to risk teleporting blind into the (hopefully) abandoned tunnel. X-Ray smiled, “Why not? It’s not like following you has ever got us into trouble before!”
The sarcasm failed to register with Celestus who solemnly replied, “It’s what we are here for” and as Akira reopened the portal into the dark immediately stepped through. X-Ray muttered under his breath, “Seriously no, we’re not!” but he followed Celestus through anyway.
They stepped out into an unlit tunnel. X-Ray momentarily flared up revealing signs painted on the wall that showed that they had arrived somewhere near King’s Cross, approaching an underground station called Hobb’s Lane, in a disused and seemingly abandoned tunnel section of the London Underground. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and rust, and the only other illumination seemed to come from the occasional passing train running through on parallel tracks next to this tunnel; the light from the speeding carriages briefly shining through gaps in the wall that separated the two lines. Thankfully the rails in their tunnel had been removed at some time in the past, confirming that this tunnel was no longer in use.
As the train passed by, X-Ray reduced his energy burst instead lighting up just his hands and creating a more discrete light for himself and others. In the distance they could now see what seemed to be a station platform beneath a string of lights which someone had hung up and which illuminated six people on the platform, all gathered round a large crate. X-ray mentally switched off his flaring fists and plunged the team once more into darkness, made worse by the light up ahead.
It was time for ‘Team Stealth’ as Akira turned invisible, reaching over and conferring his mystical ability on Celestus. Banshee then turned herself and X-Ray both invisible and insubstantial before they proceeded towards the gathering and the light.
On the platform it appeared as though the six men were haggling about something, presumably whatever was in the crate. The team moved along the track towards the arguing men looking to see if they were armed. If they were, it was not obvious though they could hide almost anything under their hoodies and long coats. As they got closer, flashes of metal on their waist seemed to indicate pistols or some other form of weaponry tucked into their waistbands and belts. Their arguing got more heated and one of them, wearing a coat with the legend “Blackwall Runners” painted across the back, whipped out a glowing baton that crackled with energy and menaced one of the others with it even as a compact energy shield flared into life. Seemed as though their negotiations were not going well.
Two others reached into the crate and pulled out a pair of some sort of energy pistols and handed them to two of the men before holding up what looked like glowing batteries that spat out raw, actinic light.
X-Ray was unwilling to wait any longer. These were clearly some of the weapons they were looking for. He reached out with his little understood ability to assess the capacities of others and was convinced none of the men on the platform were powered beyond their weaponry. The energy output was excessive from both the weapons under their coat and the weapons in the crate which were actively powered up for some reason, unlike the pistols handed over to the buyers earlier. His reading of the pistols in particular identified them as plasma blasters. Whispering, he passed the information back to the others hoping he wasn’t just talking to thin air. He tried using his commdot transmitter unsure whether they worked whilst insubstantial (he later remembered they didn’t). They continued to get closer, now floating above the ground to avoid accidentally tripping and making a noise, hoping to overhear how the men on the platform had obtained these weapons after they had vanished from the so-called secure vault.
These were clearly not the actual hijacker unless they had access to even more advanced technology than they had shown so far. They also seemed to only have access to the one crate of weapons rather than the dozens stolen. Celestus thought if they weren’t the actual thieves they probably knew who was. It was time to have a little talk with them before the deal went any further.
X-Ray checked for exit routes off the platform on the assumption that when they were confronted they would either fight or flee instead of being sensible and talking. He noted that there were stairs leading towards the surface at the other end of the platform, the tunnel at the other end was also another way out, though without light they wouldn’t be able to run fast down that route. Finally, the gaps in the walls led to the still in-use tunnel, complete with a live rail and scheduled trains running through the otherwise supposedly abandoned station. Akira was all for stealthily surrounding the gang and buyers before revealing themselves and conducting a Q&A session as to how they’d got their hands on these weapons… To subdue and interrogate or carry on listening in? That was the question.
Banshee was of the opinion that they had got as much information as they were going to get by overhearing the sales pitch and argument ongoing about price. Akira reluctantly agreed and whispered that the sellers had to be their focus as it was unlikely the buyers knew anything about what they wanted to know.
X-Ray quietly suggested they focus on the apparent main seller, the guy who’d done most of the talking so far, and knock all the others unconscious before they could react.
Celestus whispered {blade} to himself, still in awe as his psychic blade emerged from his closed fist. Apparently being invisible and insubstantial didn’t affect his ability to call forth his new powers!
He wanted to rush them and tap each of them in turn with his ‘blade’ starting with the main ‘talker’, forgetting that as soon as he pulled free he would become visible to all.
Realising what he intended, Akira stayed with him as they flew up and rushed the platform. The psi-blade touched the primary speakers’ shoulder, draining him of all his strength and causing him to drop semi-conscious onto the ground. As far as the other gang members and buyers were concerned there was no reason for his sudden unexpected collapse. They responded by pulling out weapons and grabbing at activated pistols from the crate as they nervously spun around hoping to see who or what had apparently attacked one of them.
They were looking in every direction including, surprisingly, upwards. X-Ray was glad to see that the attacked gang member was only drained of all his strength and therefore would still be capable of being interrogated once the attack was over. He focused his gravi-kinesis on the crate causing it to rise into the air and threw it towards the largest cluster of gang members.
It hit something mere centimetres in front of the first gang member; there was a flash of blue light indicating it had been deflected by a personal energy shield! Either they had extraordinary reflexes or the shield had been active already and had deflected it automatically. As the crate hit the ground it set off something inside; a ray of plasma shot out and bounced off the roof causing a cascade of shattered bricks and tiles to rain down on the gangster’s heads as they looked around baffled at the lack of an attacker.
He heard one of them, clearly spooked, ask if this place was ‘haunted’? Banshee smiled and unleashed an aura of fear in response. All of them, except for the ‘Speaker’ still drained of his stamina and strength, immediately began to run for the stairs or opposite side of the platform and the tunnel, heading into the darkness.
Still invisible, Akira approached the figure on the ground and whispered in his ear, “Where did you get the weapons from?” The man managed to find the strength to raise his head off the ground and look around for the source of the voice. Again Akira asked “Just tell us where you got the weapons.”
As though in response, six weaponised drones materialised around him floating in the air, their needle-like blasters glowing with excess energy. The drones had two wings that contained twin blaster spikes on each that were in the process of powering up, a pair of aerials around the twin lens on the main processing section and a rear jet that could be angled down to allow for Vertical take-off when required.
Akira immediately responded by trying to multi-blast the new arrivals only to see the blasts pass through their chassis; they were apparently insubstantial!
Akira and Banshee immediately recognised the drones as they were of a type used previously by the villain Dreadnought and apparently Labyrinth, but they had never seen them turn insubstantial before.
Celestus assumed that despite being out of phase they still had to require visual sensors to guide them. He shouted out “guard your eyes!” Then {Flare!} he thought as he felt the energy build-up inside him spill out as the psychic energy was converted into a blast of blinding light. Thankfully his teammates had taken the precaution of looking away, and although they all saw spots before their eyes it didn’t temporary blind them. The others were not so lucky and as for the drones it was clear they too were blinded as they randomly fired in all directions. One of the blasts hit Banshee dead centre of her body, but the blast passed straight through, hitting the wall behind her.
While they focused on the drones the gang members stumbled away down the tunnel.
X-Ray manifested his force field around himself and unleashed a wide angled radiation blast at the drones knowing that his blast would affect even something insubstantial, admittedly at a lesser level than usual. The blast rocked all six drones and three of them burst into flames and crashed onto the platform, thankfully missing any of the current occupants.
Meanwhile, the ‘Speaker’ lying on the ground was still ignoring Akira’s enquiries muttering that they were under attack by “ghosts and spectres!” It was when he added the word “again” that it really caught Akira’s attention…
Listening carefully, Akira managed to figure out that the gang was almost gifted the weapons, had no idea where they had come from only that they had been delivered by these ghostly autonomous drones that could phase through solid objects, for the gang to sell in return for a percentage of the sales, for a tithe, a tenth of the money raised.
He heard Banshee shout out that they were phasing in and out of contact and there was a 50% chance that their blasts and attacks would work on them. That was what Akira wanted to hear; he’d just been unlucky last time.
If they were phasing in and out of reality then it might be worth another multi-attack on the remaining three drones threatening them. He focused and unleashed his ethereal energy at all three and was rewarded with them exploding rather spectacularly, highlighted by several bulbs exploding above them and the light from a passing train in the tunnel next to theirs.
X-Ray noticed that there was a radio signal being emitted by one of the crashed drones, unidirectional, he also sensed a replying signal which he triangulated as coming from somewhere close to Tower Bridge! Close to or underneath? They had to investigate further.
The drone had clearly tried to report home and send a diagnostic report as to its failure to complete its mission.
They still had their now recovering prisoner as all four of them materialised around him, Banshee with her most intimidating face on display as she began to question him about the source of the weapons. Surprisingly he refused to answer their questions or be intimidated by her despite her spectre-like appearance.
Akira was of the assumption that he knew very little useful information at least regarding the robbery itself, though a quick call to their A.I., Frankie, and a subsequent search on the serial numbers of the guns in the crate confirmed they were part of the stolen cache of weapons that had been taken such a short time before.
Their captive continued to claim that he’d been ‘gifted’ the weapons by a ghostly figure. X-Ray pushed in and demanded to know where this had happened and under what circumstances? He felt sure he had been telling the truth despite how implausible it sounded.
He claimed he had no idea who the supplier was but again mentioned a tithe on the sale price which would have been confirmed by the ‘spooky machines’ and he gestured tiredly towards the crashed and smouldering drones.
The money was to be left in an old abandoned tunnel under the Thames that led nowhere except to the middle of the river itself. He explained that the entrance was a post-war concrete building close to the north side of Tower Bridge. They couldn’t miss it, it was the size and shape of a post-war public toilet but with a single metal door and looked abandoned.
Ten percent sounded way too low for such exotic weaponry, what was really going on, they wondered.
It sounded unbelievable, yet the source was clearly intimidated by them. Akira knelt down, grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up so they were staring into each other’s eyes menacingly. It was as though they were forming an orderly queue, so each could interrogate him in turn; like that scene from the film Aeroplane! thought a bemused X-Ray as he was forced to turn away to hide his smile.
‘Speaker’ admitted under Akira’s interrogation that he was due to take the percentage of the money and leave it in the tunnel tonight. Seemingly, this ‘ghost’ needed money but wasn’t greedy.
Unfortunately, they hadn’t completed the sale before the team had interrupted them. Akira asked, “How much money were they expecting from the sale? Ten percent of what?”
“We were never told, just that we got to keep ninety percent of the money we made. We did wonder what a ghost wanted with money…” “Ghost?” asked Akira. “Well, what would you call someone who walked through walls, though I did wonder about those things” and pointed at the downed drones.
He continued, “the potential profit for us was huge. And this ghost only wanted a small percentage, though I got the impression that recharging the weapons might be the real money earner, and only he had that.” That part of the deal was still to be negotiated, and that was where their involvement as sellers ended, for the moment at least.
Akira pulled the others back and suggested that he could use his mystical abilities to make himself look like Speaker and infiltrate the drop-off site pretending to leave the money before following this ghost back to where the rest of the weapons were being stored. Unfortunately, as X-Ray pointed out he’d already been notified that his drones had been destroyed so he’d be prepared for any deception or intrusion. “He’ll be bloody furious!”
They eventually decided to scope out the location, but first they needed to secure their prisoner and the crate of weapons. They grabbed their prisoner and headed towards the stairs and street level, with Akira levitating both their now struggling prisoner and the crate with a single gesture.
As soon as they got closer to the surface, they placed a call to Marcus requesting he arrange for secure transport for the prisoner and the weapons. They confirmed that King’s Cross Station was nearby, and they’d surfaced in a shabby, rundown side street called Hobbs End.
Within minutes, a Police van and a police car rolled up. The crate was loaded into the van which sped off towards the ARC facility in North London whilst ‘Speaker’ (or one James Hadrian Smithe according to the Police National Computer’s facial recognition system) was handcuffed, searched, read his rights and loaded into the car with strict instructions from Banshee that he was to be kept incommunicado and denied a phone call for the next couple of hours.
They didn’t want him contacting this spectre fella (or any of his accomplices that had temporarily fled the scene) and giving him any more warning before the team had checked out the drop-off point.
They headed off towards the river tunnel and having arrived at Tower Bridge decided to first see what it looked like from the outside, so Celestus suggested he dive into the grey polluted water of the Thames and look for the rough outline of the tunnel in the muddy riverbed. X-Ray did question this as he said, “Do you really think the bad guys are going to jump in the River Thames in order to access an underwater secret door?” Unfortunately, Celestus had already made his mind up and dived into the murky depths of the Thames for the second time in (his) recent months.
Akira tried to justify Celestus’ actions by saying, “There might be something down there like a submarine.” All Celestus could think was, how could humans let their rivers get so polluted and dirty? Still, it appeared a little cleaner that it was back in 1940!
He swam along the riverbed towards the bridge and saw that there was some sort of tunnel leading from both banks towards a domed edifice in the middle of the river. The South side went under the riverbank and presumably ended in an impressive looking building – clearly the tunnel was designed to be entered from both sides and its purpose was to access the dome in the centre of the river.
There was no underwater entrance to either the tunnels or the dome. Whatever it was, there were no obvious external indication that it was still in use. He resurfaced and flew back to the others and told them what he had found, even as he dripped filthy water. Akira grabbed some plastic bags and transmuted them into a towel-like absorbent material before trying to help dry off the worst of the water.
As he helped towel him down, Akira said, “So, there’s a tunnel running between the two banks and some sort of building on the riverbed mid-stream?”
“Yes, in the middle there is a large block-like structure and there are no visible entrances…”
Banshee suggested that it might be a Cold War nuclear bunker for use by the Government officials then stationed in the building opposite perhaps? They were all the rage in the 1950s she remembered. They needed to find the entrance on the North Bank as described by ‘Speaker’.
They went searching and found it fairly quickly; a 1950s styled concrete building resembling a public toilet. It wasn’t, but that was what it looked like with its flat concrete roof and lack of windows. The only door was locked and sealed. There was no obvious indication that there was anything special about it. Banshee phased through, only for an alarm to sound despite her being insubstantial. That was unexpected…
Despite the darkness, she was able to feel that there was another door opposite set into the wall. The area inside the block building was much smaller than the outside, a Tardis in reverse she thought, smiling to herself. She assumed the interior door led to steps down to the tunnel, or possibly a lift.
The alarm stopped suddenly. So much for stealth, she thought as she phased back out to join the others. She offered to phase the others through, only for Celestus to punch the door which fragmented into a thousand bits. Part of the surrounding concrete was also affected and created a cloud of dust. Akira smiled and muttered under his breath, “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody door off!” as he stepped inside. There was no alarm this time. Now they only had the interior metal door to deal with. This had no locks, handles or obvious access mechanisms on view and was clearly designed to withstand a nuclear bomb at ground zero.
X-Ray stepped forward and tried to sense any electrical signals from the door or its surrounding wall.
Halfway down the door was a concealed panel that was still active. He could feel a pulse of electrical energy behind it. He reached out and touched the area, only for it to slide open to reveal a fingerprint reader. “That’s a bugger!” he said aloud. Celestus interrupted to observe that they should have kept that man as he would have been expected and therefore would have had access.
Then the door clicked open. Clearly they were expected, either as themselves or as ‘delivery’ people, who knew which applied. Nothing for it but to step through and head down the stairs as Banshee whispered “Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly.” It didn’t help.
Emergency lighting flared into life revealing a narrow set of stairs heading down to the riverbed and the tunnel below. Banshee turned ‘Casper’, and they all disappeared from view as he extended his power over the rest of the team then they walked down the stairs hand on each other’s shoulder with a force field-shielded X-Ray leading the way.
This was immediately followed by a whirling sound echoing up from below. Red lights started to swirl from the roof of the stairwell, spinning up and down but originating from thin air. The stairs were apparently protected by automated defences: phased and invisible sentinel turrets presumably. X-Ray was clearly not happy as red targeting lasers swirled up, down and from side to side above the stairs. They were seemingly tracking movement and fired a series of compressed energy pulses at something moving below. Hard-light barriers flickered into life to prevent passage. Something or someone (their spectre?) had rendered these physical objects insubstantial, for at least part of the time. Thankfully, the only thing the lights could target were scurrying rats, though some appeared to be firing randomly! X-Ray focused and tried to bend the targeting lasers and force the energy shields to flicker off. Being insubstantial themselves, the lasers passed right through them.
The team took flight together and speeded down the stairwell while X-Ray unleashed a blast at the nearest turret. He was rewarded with a stream of smoke emanating from the roof and a turret materialised, clearly burning. Unfortunately this meant the turrets further down had a target to focus on. Someone didn’t want anyone coming down, thought X-Ray. Clearly the door opening upstairs was an invitation to a trap!
Celestus whispered, “We have two alternatives; we can either retreat or take the remaining turrets out.” No vote was necessary as they attacked. The turrets appeared to be sited about every ten metres as Celestus warned his teammates “they have to be using some sort of optical sensors, so cover your eyes… {FLARE!}”
The stairwell lit up as bright as the midday Sun. Celestus took advantage of this to see what was in front of them. The turrets were invisible except for the red targeting lights shining out from the thin air. His brilliant flare of light caused the first turret to go offline and materialise, seemingly no longer functional. It did give the other turrets a source to target and several fired, their blasts passing right through, hitting the wall behind them. Akira had had enough, he multi-attacked them back!
He blasted the remaining four turrets in turn; the first one he hit went offline, the next shot either missed or was not powerful enough to down it. Two left. He aimed, fired and was rewarded when both exploded. Banshee unleashed a shattering shriek and the remaining active turret blew up as did one of the offline turrets.
Celestus pulled free of the invisible daisy chain, materialised and now visible, he flew up and pulled the remaining turret from the roof and threw it down the stairs causing it to explode and causing the energy barriers blocking the stairs in front of them to dissipate.
They speeded down the stairs to the bottom and hurried along the tunnel having once more joined the others in being invisible and insubstantial, towards a large metal door in the distance only to hit an energy barrier midway along blocking any further progress.
X-Ray examined the energy; formed of hard light, he succeeded in warping its light weave sufficiently to create a passage through it and managed to get the others through it as well before it weaved itself back again, so it now blocked their exit.
“I’ll have to do the same on the way out, otherwise we will be trapped down here with Spooky!” he muttered. The door in front of them swung open, and they hesitantly stepped through.
The room’s decor confirmed Banshee’s suspicion that this was a long forgotten, once high-tech nuclear bunker located beneath the Thames at London Bridge. It was a relic of the Cold War, but the rusted-out console panels had been retrofitted with sleek, glowing alien technology.
In front of them was a man wearing a black and dark grey suit with red accents. Part of his body was outlined with wisps of energy, black and smoke-like, suggesting a dark vigorous transformation was occurring. The rest of him appeared to be translucent, glowing white or light blue and was outlined with wispy, flame-like energy, suggesting an ethereal transformation was occurring. His face also reflected this duality: his hair was black where it hadn’t already been converted into restrained energy. He had a sinister expression on his face, with a wide smile and glowing red eyes.
The two Labyrinth Drones were positioned either side of him, dark, mechanical with a purple glowing central core, their four articulated arms ended in blaster emitters glowing with light blue energy.
The man was emitting tachyon energy and was clearly, uncontrollably, phasing in and out. He was looking in their direction despite The fact that they were clearly phased themselves, as well as invisible. Akira pushed X-Ray and Celestus away so they became visible while (hopefully) remaining hidden themselves.
The man in front of them did not appear surprised.
He introduced himself, “I am Dr. Aris Thorne, what can I do for you gentlemen?” Both introduced themselves and explained that they were part of the Balance, and they were here to end his meddling schemes.
He smiled. “Sometimes the ends justify the means. At one time I was a Government scientist in charge of Operation Alien Echo, a covert project set up and driven by a belief that humanity deserved free access to energy. When the invasion occurred, we saw the intruders apparently had access to just that, unbound, unlimited energy. Unfortunately during my research into the alien energy sources I accidentally merged with an alien phase-shifting device, becoming a being capable of turning both myself and objects insubstantial. In the process, I learned how to control this energy only to discover that our government had no plans to share this bounty with the people of Earth and was planning to keep it all for their own use. Don’t you see, the government’s hoarding of alien tech is a betrayal of humanity’s potential? It should be about the continual survival of the human race.”
Celestus asked, “What threatens it?”
Thorne responded, “We’ve just survived an alien invasion, the Government is trying to stockpile alien weapons, hiding the energy generators so only they can power these weapons…” He gestured behind them towards a glowing globe floating above a table. “Stockpiling them for their own purpose and not for the benefit of all.”
X-Ray responded, “Your answer to the Government hiding these away is to give them to a bunch of street punks for a tenth of the sale price.”
“Unfortunately this world does not resolve around do-gooders like yourself. Even scientists need money to pay for research and equipment. I needed money to continue my experiments on the energy globe here.” He gestured behind him towards the glowing, floating globe. “I’m trying to figure out how the energy is generated in the first place, and how we can safely harvest that energy. I obtained this from one of their giant alien robots!”
“Couldn’t you obtain that in a legitimate way rather than putting these weapons out on the streets?”
“Hah, all they want is to keep their access to this energy a secret.”
“So you’re what? Linked to Labyrinth? Looking to use these weapons for world domination?”
“Who? What? No all these were gathered from the war zone and put into hiding, horded away.”
“Fair enough then, So you’re not Terminus, and you’re not a criminal world conqueror in waiting, so who are you operating on behalf of?”
“Humanity! Look around, this place was designed to protect Government officials, members of Parliament, not people like you and me! They were the only one’s they cared about. You and I could happily be burnt to a cinder as long as they, their kids and mistresses survived.”
“That’s the way it’s always been.”
“Doesn’t make it right. This power, if controlled properly, could help all of humanity, but instead all they want to do is store it away until the elite need it for themselves. Now this energy globe, if I could figure out how to harness it safely, could be used to keep all of humanity safe and power cities and entire countries for free. No one else needs to die due to war if energy shields can be erected over entire cities.”
As he talked, X-Ray tried to analyse the energy from the globe. It was clearly unstable and chaotic in its output. It was a mixture of tachyon and the same energy that occurred when Banshee turned insubstantial. While the catalyst that activated her transformation was clearly mystical in origin, the energy released, whilst currently unidentifiable, was physically present. In other words, he could sense it, and the “Doctor” here, was giving off the same energy signal all the time!
Meanwhile, Akira stepped away and materialised before asking ; “Where did you get your glowing globe from anyway?”
He looked surprised, “I found it, in one of those giant robots! Unfortunately, one of the side effects of exposure to the raw energy was my transformation.” He reached out, and his hand went through the wall. “I phase in and out, not just of reality but also skip through time, though that is currently uncontrollable.”
Insubstantial and capable of time travel (apparently)! X-Ray continued, “So, you want to weaponise this energy? Get it on the streets. So much for protecting people!”
“No, I want to create defence grids, to protect humanity against future invasions. We’re no longer alone in the Universe, and our neighbours appear hostile. It’s so nobody else has to die!”
Akira interrupted saying, “Apart from the people killed by the stolen weapons you’re distributing onto the streets.”
He tried to explain that to achieve that, he needed money for specialist equipment in order to make the output compatible, other than with the charging of weaponry. He went on. “They only have enough charge in them to demonstrate their value, but not enough to be a real threat. They can emit one or two shots at most before their batteries are drained. I’m the only person that can recharge them, and I have no intention of doing so.”
X-Ray wondered to himself if the Challenger-Wildeman family would like to speak with this guy. He interrupted the battle of words to calmly suggest they might know some people who might be able to help with the analysis of the alien energy without the need for him to steal or put the risk of death on the streets. They might even work out a way he could retain the energy source and continue his research.
While he talked, Akira put a call through to the Challenger-Wildeman’s and asked Jack Wolfe, the children’s guardian, if the family might be able to assist, only to be reminded they already were involved through their Artefact Research Centre and no, he had no information about glowing balls, but it sounded as they were extremely unstable and excessive exposure might lead to mental instability in anyone exposed to them for any length of time!
Suddenly Thorne shouted, “Enough talk, you are a threat to my work and therefore a threat to the survival of humanity itself.”
The two drones began to power up as though responding to some silent command, as Akira tried to recall a spell that would render him compliant and cooperate while X-Ray and Celestus prepared for battle.
Banshee materialised and changed back into Mary, leaving herself completely vulnerable to attack. It was the only way she could unleash a Geas of compulsion on the Doctor.
The spell required the constant maintenance of ‘The Three’; the will, the words, and the wave – to help shape her magic. Most actual spell casting was ‘woven’ using short incantations (most often in ancient languages; in her case she used the Gaelic) accompanied by specific gestures and the focused will of the caster. She knew that this was because certain words and gestures acted as psychological triggers to alter the perceptions of the mind, allowing one to summon an extradimensional force to override the usual laws of nature. Unlike Akira, who’d stepped beyond the psychological need for the Three when summoning her most often used spells, Mary needed to speak the words of power aloud even as her fingers wove the memorised patterns as she created the right mental state of mind to breach reality and take control of Thorne’s mind.
At the same time, Akira called upon the Bidding of Bal’Hemoth, apparently to support Mary’s attempt to control his mind. It was a contest of wills and at first Akira wasn’t in control, but gradually Thorne became compelled to power down the drones and come along quietly with them.
The drones however were pre-programmed to defend and remained ready to do so, drawing energy from the globe. Celestus wondered if the globe was somehow controlling Thorne and/or the drones?
They had to take them out. Unfortunately, Celestus thought the Doctor was controlling them, and he unleashed a psi-blast at him, even as Akira screamed “No!”
The blast hit, staggered him and broke the spell’s hold even as the two drones attacked Celestus and X-Ray. Their initial blasts missed completely, but it hit X-Rays’ force field and left him dazed as he unleashed his energy blast against both. One exploded and smashed into the ground, the second blast bounced off its energy shield as Akira responded with several shots against the remaining drone, which smashed into the roof before crashing into the ground.
Mary responded by again establishing her Geas over the Doctor and this time she had full control over him.
Electing to leave the ‘snow globe of doom’ where it was, they marched a compelled Thorne out of the underwater fallout shelter and back into the tunnel that led back to the surface. They went up the stairs, passed the shattered remnants of the turret and into their grav-vehicle, the Crate. Destination the Challenger-Wildemans’, who hopefully could manage to restrain him, despite his energy state. They also made another call to Marcus to secure the entrance to the tunnel until the ARC could arrive and remove everything inside. Presumably they could also safely transport that energy globe and keep it under secure conditions.
Thorne should be able to claim mental instability brought on by exposure to the globes’ energy, assuming he ever went to trial and didn’t just vanish into a Government laboratory somewhere as a guinea pig.
At least the theft of alien weapons was solved, even if the public never found out. It seemed that Thorne had teleported into the hallway (that area didn’t have a Faraday Cage embedded into the walls, they’d need to sort that!), then stopped or compressed time while he phased through the vault door, opening it from the inside and teleporting the crates away.
Superhero Adventures, UK Style 