Superhero Adventures, UK Style

Adapted from and inspired by a concept
from Nick Shepley / Arclands Online

Write up by Ant L. (Team Archivist)

The city’s largest public screens, from Piccadilly Circus to Canary Wharf, went dark before flickering back into life. The virtual intruder, seen only as a dark silhouette, spoke with a synthesised, chilling clarity that bled through all emergency frequencies.

“Attention London. You are about to witness an exquisite display of leverage. I have planted three E.M.P. bombs designed to render your entire glorious, greedy city dark. One at the Millers Court Substation, off Dorset Street, another at the Mitre Square/Osborne Street Substation, and the final one near Aldgate Station, all located in the crowded Shambles area of London. Should police approach the bombs, should you attempt to evacuate, or should any of your costumed pets interfere… the entire city goes dark. Pay the ransom quickly as the countdown begins now.”

With London Watch distracted by an apparent terrorist attack on the Greenwich Naval Academy, the team were contacted by Marcus, and asked to enter the perimeter in stealth mode, then find and hopefully disarm the bombs.

“How much is the ransom?” Akira asked, breathlessly, having just arrived in a rush. “He has not said,” Celestus replied, “nor has he stated the length of the countdown.” Mary and X-Ray were also there, in costume and ready for action.

“If we’re even sure there are any bombs…” said Brian.

Mary was accessing a computer terminal and looking at a city map, focussing on Aldgate station. “And yet,” Mary said, “all three devices were supposed to be at these locations…” She pressed a key and the map changed to a wider-scale shot of The Shambles district, “which were all within a very small section of The Shambles. So how will this affect the whole of London?”

Brian was rubbing his chin, deep in thought, “This could all be a distraction as well.”

“Is anyone here particularly vulnerable to E.M.P.s?” asked Akira.

“I have no way of knowing,” Brian said, “I mean, it might screw up my E.M. field…I really don’t know unless it happens. Can we verify that this terrorist attack at Greenwich is real?”

Mary tapped away at the computer terminal again. “The Police are certainly taking it seriously,” she answered. Almost immediately, the team’s dedicated comms were compromised. Static and a high-pitched whine blocked all outgoing calls and all but the most vital incoming signals.

“Oh, for the…” Mary tried, but nothing that Frankie could do was able to counter the problem. Nobody spoke, but everyone was wondering the same thing – was this another assault by Labyrinth?

A frantic, coded message broke through to X-Ray’s internal comms—an anonymous tip reported a major gas leak at his family’s home. Local contact numbers were already dead, there was no way to get in touch with Stacy or Chris, and emergency services across Wessex were unable to be contacted.

“For goodness’ sake…!” His eyes developed the strange hint of fiery orange that accompanied his rising powers…especially when he got angry… and threats to his family made him especially angry. He turned to the others, “There is a gas leak at home, and I cannot get in touch with either Stacy or Chris. All the emergency numbers are down, too!”

“It’s probably another distraction…” Akira said, smiling, but then he frowned as he also received a direct communication, a lost signal call apparently from Morgan and Angharad (his foster parents), followed by a text stating that they had been seriously injured in a hit-and-run – a call-back went unanswered.

“It’s probably more fake news,” he said, “Our comms have been compromised. Nobody should have my direct number except my foster parents and you lot; similarly with X-Ray’s number for his wife I suspect.”

“Or someone could be messing with gas mains and running people over…” declared Mary, in a tone that made Akira pause. X-Ray looked at each of his teammates in turn. “This is probably Labyrinth.” A pause, as they all registered what each had been thinking.

“You could be right.” Celestus had only witnessed the recent cyberattack and smear campaign against The Balance but, despite not encountering Labyrinth himself yet, he was aware of just how devious the organisation could be.

“So what do you think we should do?” Akira asked Brian, aware of his feelings for his wife and adopted son.

X-Ray was obviously torn between family and duty, pacing the room and rubbing his temples as he thought. “If we check out one of these potential distractions,” he said, “it will either be true or false, and then that will give us a better idea as to how to treat the rest of them.”

“A gas leak sounds more pressing, doesn’t it?” Akira said, “And it’s closer than any of the others. Let’s go there, all of us; I think it’s too early to split up yet, and besides, our communications may go down.”

With a plan of action finally in place, it was a matter of mere minutes for the team to fly to the home of Brian and Stacy, finding her and Chris outside, and the tell-tale smell of rotting eggs in the air…

Chris had, rather brilliantly, created one of his ‘black holes’ and sucked an awfully large amount of the escaped gas into… well, goodness only knows where… and Stacy had been able to locate the mechanical problem; a section of piping had been cut, deliberately – someone was definitely out to get Brian’s family! Stacy knew where the gas supply had a shut-down valve; changing into her diamond-form, she made short work of the aged and slightly rusty lever that shut the piping off from the mains supply.

Akira became concerned for his own family, “I think we should check out this ‘hit-and-run’ as soon as we get your family safe.”

“TikTok…TikTok.” The voice came, unbidden, across their comms units, taunting them amidst their predicament.

“Shall we get your family to the BASEment?” Akira asked, eager to get moving. Mary held a hand up to silence the young mage, “No. Why send them away when they have useful powers in their own right? Bring them along.”

“I’d like to get them out of the house for tonight,” X-Ray said, knowing full-well that Stacy would argue every move to get them to a safe location away from Brian. “Go and get them, bring them along; the extra hands may prove useful,” Mary said, brooking no arguments from anyone.

“Marcus is still waiting for us to attend the bomb sites… tell you what, I will teleport myself to check on Morgan, you lot get yourselves to Aldgate and see what you can do. I will get back to you as soon as I can,” said Akira, summoning a portal to his old home.

Morgan and Angharad were, in truth, safe but in hiding, and the Abbot of the Sanctuary at Skomer Vale refused to say where they were to anyone contacting them. An assassin was possibly on their trail or so they assumed, given the attempted hit-and-run.

The Abbot was pleased to see Akira, but also reticent to reveal much information. He admitted that an attempt had been made on his foster parents lives, thankfully unsuccessfully he was relieved to say, and as a result Morgan and Angharad had gone into hiding.

“I don’t know where they are now, and I don’t want to know. In fact, the fewer who know, the better, I’m sure you agree? They were not injured, but I do fear for their lives… I have received several calls asking after them, though the caller won’t give their name or details.”

Akira was both concerned and grateful, “Please continue to divert attention. It sounds as though they have everything under control… that was my biggest concern. Thank you for your help; I shall now return to the team.”

With Brian carrying Stacy, and Chris enjoying a lift from Celestus, they and Mary landed outside Aldgate Station. The police had set up a road block, and barriers lined the pavement; dozens of commuters thronged the Aldgate High Street, many less interested in the bomb threat and more concerned with how they were going to make their connections.

The underground station was perhaps no more than three-hundred yards from the Aldgate Pump, a historic former water pump located at the junction where Aldgate High Street meets Fenchurch Street and Leadenhall Street in the City of London. The pump was considered to be the symbolic start point of The Shambles, at the East End of London.

The Police had not been made aware of the team’s expected arrival, so Mary quickly gave the details to the officers. More Police and station staff were still escorting travellers out of the station, and the senior officer was insistent that nobody was to enter the premises.

A glowing circular portal signalled Akira’s arrival. He immediately sought out Mary. “Okay?” she asked.

“Yes, it seems so. Nothing more for me to do there, anyway. What’s happening here?”

“Organised chaos,” she replied, “The Police won’t let anyone in, including us.”

“Time to go invisible, then!” Akira said, with a cheeky smile, and he led the way over to Celestus, X-Ray, Stacy, and Chris. “We need to get inside stealthily,” Mary explained, “so Akira and I will help ye to turn invisible and intangible.”

“I’ll stay out here,” X-Ray said, “with Stacy and Chris. Crowd control is looking like an issue at the moment, and I can use my force field to hold them back, or for blast containment, if needs be.”

With that, Banshee, Akira, and Celestus vanished from sight. Moments later, the three were passing unseen through the descending corridors of the station, past the ticket booths, barriers, and onto the main platform. A few more seconds and the group were floating outside a door, painted dark blue, signed “London Underground Power & Electrical Department”.

The door handle had a mortice keyhole, and higher up there was also a cylinder keyhole; several warning stickers adorned the door. None of this mattered, as the trio floated through the dense wood and metal with no resistance at all.

The room was large, hidden, as it was, within the solid walls of the station construction, and well-lit for what should be a locked, rarely used room; maintenance and inspections would normally occur only once or twice a year, barring malfunctions, but lighting was quite often left on year-round.

They noticed a large cylindrical device immediately, since it was completely out of place, totally dissimilar to any of the electrical machinery in situ for the transference of power from the National Grid relays to the track and residences outside. The bulky, complex device was humming gently. The air around the device didn’t feel electrically charged as a major E.M.P. device should have; instead, a subtle, unnatural vibration resonated through the concrete floor.

Celestus noticed a new CCTV camera with a steady red light on it, pointing directly at the device, which was bolted into the concrete floor, and he immediately pointed it out to Akira and Banshee. The camera was clearly a Wi-Fi enabled device, and the red light was a laser focused beam, with its end-point visible on the cylindrical object.

“We’ve got to stay invisible,” Akira whispered, “for fear of setting this thing off.”

“That camera is recording, or it could be streaming a live broadcast,” Celestus noted, “it is bound to be monitored.”

“It could be linked to the other two bombs,” Akira said, “so if we set this one-off, the other two might go off as well.”

Banshee was standing between Celestus and Akira, one hand on each teammate’s shoulder, rendering them all insubstantial and invisible. “As long as we stay like this, you will each have both your hands free.”

Akira looked at her, “But how do we deal with it?”

Outside the station, The Shambles continued its day. Notorious slums, known as Rookeries, were full of families living in dilapidated, often condemned, terraced houses tucked away in narrow courts and alleyways. It was a place of extreme poverty, high crime, and overcrowding. Its conditions were a stark contrast to the wealth of the nearby West End. Aldgate Station was surrounded by old terraces, many of which now had people leaning out of upper floor windows, taking in more excitement than they had seen for a long time.

Brian looked about him; together with Stacy and Chris, he realised that there were hundreds of people in the immediate vicinity, all of whom were at risk of death or severe injury if the ‘bomb’ turned out to be conventional and not an E.M.P. device. He decided to share his concerns with the police officer-in-charge.

“I think you would be best suited not only getting people far away from this particular situation, but also evacuating this street at least, if not some surrounding areas.” The man looked at him aghast.

“You think this could be an actual explosive, not just an E.M.P.?” the Inspector asked. Brian took a deep breath, “The trouble is, we cannot take any chances.”

The officer looked around him, the severity of the moment dawning in his eyes, “So what you’re saying is that you want us to start an evacuation, as best we can?”

“Yes, and we will help.”

The officer removed his cap and wiped his brow, “It won’t be easy in this part of the city…”

“I appreciate that, but we will join in. We will go door-to-door, we will try to get people out, but you need to draft in as many men as you can!”

It didn’t get off to a good start. The first few households flatly refused to move out…at least for X-Ray. A few doors along, Stacy was having much more success, and a steady stream of people were leaving their homes with hastily gathered ‘emergency’ belongings, and the occasional pet. Even Chris, who was helping to urge people to move away from the station, was doing well.

“It’s the diamond legs…” he told himself, as the man with the beer-stained string vest in front of him tried his best to hold back his vicious, highly aggressive, wide-eyed chihuahua.

Down in the sub-station Akira, Banshee and Celestus, still ghosted, were examining the device. It was about four-feet tall, and one-foot in diameter. It was exceedingly hi-tech in its design, with several ‘pipes’ that jutted out near the base and ran upwards through mountings that had a dim neon blue glow emanating from small transparent windows, before re-attaching to the cylinder a few inches from the top. A small rectangular box set on one side just above the glowing mountings caught the eye of Celestus.

“Do not move the device,” he said, pointing at the box, “that is what you call a ‘Trembler’. It detects movement, and could easily be wired to trigger the device if it is activated.”

Akira waved his hands, then reached down to touch the floor. “I’m going to read the past…” he said, slipping into a trance-state for a short time. “Ah!” he said, “Dreadnought and Cannon… setting the device up… so, Labyrinth is involved for sure. I can’t see how they got in… probably keys for every lock… and they set up the camera. Dreadnought is good with electronics… he uses drones as well. Okay…” Akira snapped out of the trance, “Any ideas?”

Silence was the only response. “My force cage won’t do much; it certainly won’t stop an E.M.P. pulse.” Brows furrowed and minds raced, but the solution remained out of reach.

Above time passed, and X-Ray eventually persuaded more families to leave their houses, though it could be argued that the sight of their neighbours trailing down the street had more to do with their decision than Brian’s pleading. He set the cat-basket down and thanked the old woman for her cooperation, then raced back to the police lines.

As he approached, several officers reacted to messages coming in over their radios. Brian tuned in using his E.M. powers to listen in to the radio frequencies, and heard the awful news that there had been an explosion at the Mitre Square substation!

More reports came in over the next few minutes. The explosion had brought the surrounding buildings down, dozens of people were feared dead with many more injured; one voice described the scene ‘like a war zone’.

X-Ray frowned. An E.M.P. pulse wouldn’t have caused buildings to collapse…surely it had to have been an explosive device?

Emergency services were being called in en masse, with all other 999 calls being put on hold unless they were specifically a Category One ‘shout’. Crucially, a power outage was mentioned, but it had only lasted for a short time, and although electricity was out in the area supplied by the substation, it was already back in the surrounding neighbourhoods, having been shored up from the National Grid by the controlling company.

So, definitely not an electro-magnetic pulse…

Above the distant rooftops, a large plume of smoke could be seen rising into the sky. Brian’s heart sank. What would happen to all these people if their homes were destroyed? And there was still another location under threat!

Then a radio message reported witnesses who were describing an earthquake, rather than an explosion; buildings had crumbled from the epicentre outwards, as though concentric rings of subsidence had affected them. Brian scowled. This had never been a threat; this was a set-up!

Down in the electrical room, Banshee had positioned Celestus under the CCTV camera, out of sight of its capture area. Akira was now invisible under his own power.

Transforming into Mary, she now appeared as a typical bag-lady, and she shuffled around the device, looking this way and that, as though seeking a spot to rest. Bending closer to the ‘bomb’, she prodded it with her finger a couple of times, feigning innocent curiosity.

Unexpectedly, she felt a humming, a vibration, emanating from the device. A thought occurred to her, and she laid her hand on the top of the machine; turning both herself and the device insubstantial, she floated them both down into the foundation concrete…

Seconds later, Akira and Celestus saw the floor begin to buckle and crack, shards of broken concrete bubbling up to form a massive mole-hill of debris. From the camera, they heard a laugh. They had been right about the feed being live and monitored; they just hadn’t realised that it was a two-way system.

Below ground Banshee sensed the device triggering, and realisation dawned, “It’s not an E.M.P., it’s a tuning fork… a weapon of vibration.” It was a sonic resonator! Its power surge would create an earthquake… She immediately tried to flee back into the room.

The first shockwave caused Celestus and Akira to bounce as the floor wobbled, and they could hear the station above and around them groan and creak. Thin cracks began to appear in the walls and the ceiling, spreading like frosting on glass, indicating structural collapse was imminent.

Outside Aldgate Station, X-Ray, Stacy, Chris, and the police and civilians, were witness to the terrifying sight of the houses, offices, and road surfaces buckling and cracking, the effects spreading away, widening, causing mass panic and rapid destruction. There was nothing they could do.

Down below, Banshee floated up and, with a nod to Akira, became flesh and blood, grabbed him, and turned them both intangible, just as the first shards of roofing began to fall, passing through them to bounce on the buckling floor. Celestus knew that he had the strength to withstand the falling masonry and punched the door clean off its hinges, stepping out onto the broken platform before rising and flying off towards the stairwell to the surface, Banshee and Akira in his wake.

X-Ray flew hither-and-thither, his force field blocking as much falling brickwork as he could manage. He concentrated on the major collapses, knowing that he could not be everywhere at once, and grateful that his flight speed was enabling him to zip around the area with incredible rapidity.

Below him Chris, Singularity, created his signature ‘black holes’, sucking as many falling fragments into the unknown as he was capable of. He was scared – any young teenager would be in his shoes – but Brian had been teaching him well, and he steeled himself, gritting his teeth, pushing his powers to the point of exhaustion. Besides, if he died here, he would never see Seven again…

Stacy was more limited in her usefulness, but her little-known power to harness sunlight within her diamond body and channel it into coherent laser blasts did come in useful. Where her arm could not reach, the lasers could, blasting large chunks of brickwork into smaller, less harmful shrapnel.

Together, the family held the line. Injuries were inevitable, but even as the houses broke and collapsed, they worked tirelessly. The destruction widened away from them, yard by yard, street by street, but here, in the High Street, the Wellinghams’ saved lives.

“We couldn’t have stopped it!” exclaimed Celestus, as he helped to clear rubble aside so that paramedics could gain easier access to the High Street.

Akira shook his head, “The only thing for us to do now is get to Miller Street and see if we can prevent that bomb from going off.”

The devastation wasn’t a localised event; they learned that each of the two resonators had destroyed hundreds of square yards of The Shambles. The death toll would be in the hundreds, and the cost of rebuilding would be inestimable. Even now, tremors still erupted in an ever-increasing circle of effect, toppling the pre-war buildings like so many dominoes.

Mary asked about the Miller Street site, to be told that the tremors there had ceased after a couple of minutes, though the radius of the effect was huge.

It was time to get moving. On the way to Mitre Square, the team discussed options, knowing how difficult it was going to be to disarm or otherwise interfere with the final resonator. X-Ray knew that sound and vibration did not fall into the E.M. spectrum, so his usefulness was limited; Singularity barely understood how his powers worked, and couldn’t even guess whether using his black holes to swallow the device would actually trigger it; Banshee knew that she could turn it into a non-solid effigy, but whether she could move it or make it safe was open to question.

“My portals have a range of about one-hundred-and-twenty miles,” offered Akira, “so I could reach somewhere over the Channel, or even out into the North Sea?”

“And my gravikinesis could literally ‘shoot’ the device into your portal at high speed, hopefully before it had chance to unleash any shockwaves into the actual substation!” said X-Ray, delighted to see the smile on Stacy’s face as she clung to him.

“I have to know the location that I am teleporting to before I can actually create a bridge there,” Akira followed, “so I would have to visit the site first so that I could lock it in to my mind. Once I’ve done that, it should work fine. I can fly out east right now; give me about half-an-hour…”

“No!” X-Ray blurted, “Let Celestus take you; he is much faster than you, and that would save you time.”

Celestus flew alongside Akira, deftly grabbing the young man around the waist, “I can fly at around two-thousand miles per hour as I understand your language and units of measurements. Hold on!”

Whilst superfast fliers may not always know locations, it was an established fact that they possessed an innate coordination that defied scientific explanation. Celestus was able to determine Akira’s maximum portal range, and his flight path directly east, in the blink of an eye.

Comparably, X-Ray used the planet’s electro-magnetic field to chart his flight paths, an ability that came instinctively.

Allowing time for Akira to catch his breath and visually map the area of the North Sea that they hovered over, Celestus and his passenger met the rest of the team at Mitre Square just seven-and-a-half minutes later.

The Balance were on top of crowd control, and it had been entirely necessary. News of the other two sites had reached the local populace and panic had set in; hundreds of people were hurrying through the streets on foot, but some of the more desperate families were trying to drive through the massed throng, tooting horns and pushing people aside with their vehicles.

Banshee had reverted to Mary, and she was now plucking at her harp strings, crooning a calming melody that had the refugees walking at a steady pace, making room for the young and the elderly, showing deference to the disabled, and leaving their vehicles where they stood.

X-Ray, Stacy (as Kristal), and Chris (as Singularity), were helping with the flow of bodies; the police were extremely grateful for the assistance, and the evacuation began to speed up nicely…which was when Celestus and Akira arrived.

Taking X-Ray with him, Akira noticed that the substation control building had, thankfully, a window in it, and he quickly saw the tell-tale red light from another CCTV camera. He expected the door to be locked and, after trying the handle, he wasn’t disappointed. He waved Celestus over.

“Could you open the door for me, please?” he asked with a smile.

The alien prince grabbed the handle and pulled, breaking the tough wood around the latch. He was about to rip the hinges off when he spotted wires leading from the back of the door into the darkened interior of the control room. He took a look inside.

“Strange. I think these wires were connected to an alarm system, so it is a good thing I did not rip the entire door off! I take it you have seen the camera?”

Akira nodded and touched Brian’s arm, turning them both invisible and guiding him into the room. This time the device was bolted to the floor.

“Ah!” Brian whispered, “I didn’t realise they were bolted down! That will cause a delay in actually moving the bomb. I shall have to focus everything I have into hitting those bolts…give me a few seconds…”

Akira watched intently as Brian’s eyes turned a shade of burnt orange, his face showing the strain of focussing his gravity control onto a tiny, resistant object…dust motes began to sizzle around his body, and a soft glow began to emanate from him.

“Now!”

Akira gestured, and a circular portal appeared on the other side of the resonator. A bolt popped into the air, then another…he saw the trembler activate…heard the sound of creaking metal and breaking concrete…then, with a roar from Brian, gravity warped, and the resonator shot through the portal, appearing about one-hundred-feet above the North Sea.

Akira closed his fist and the portal closed just as a blast of salt-tinged air blew into the room. Brian sank to his knees, sucking in air; Akira hoped that the resonator would not have an effect on the ocean.

Outside, on the street, all was eerily quiet, with the exception of Mary’s melody. Celestus supported X-Ray as they walked back to the police cordon, and was surprised when Brian suddenly declared, “Hold on! I am picking up a strong signal…” he frowned, then, “it’s not the police…got it! An activation signal, for the bomb, coming from…” another frown of concentration, “that way!”

He pointed west, an area that had not been affected by the bombs.

“It’s not too far away…and they keep trying…”

“Come on,” shouted Akira, floating into the air, “let’s go track down some baddies!” It may not have been the world’s greatest battle-cry, but right now it was just what The Balance needed.

The team followed X-Ray’s lead as he tracked the signal to a dark, condemned warehousing park on the edge of The Shambles. It was, perhaps, no surprise to find Cannon and Dreadnought standing outside one particular warehouse unit, a two-floor affair clad in old, flaking corrugated metal panels.

Dreadnought was a known hi-tech wizard, and there were four flying drones hovering near him. His cream-coloured bodysuit had a couple of red accents framing his waist, and triangular red eye patches, but it was his twin control gauntlets that were his greatest strength.

Cannon, by contrast, appeared to be made of an unusually dark blue energy; he looked rather like a shadow-man, but for the constellation-like “stars” that seemed to glow and flash within his silhouette. He wore small sections of grey armour plating at various points around his body – feet, knees, neck, shoulders, backs of his hands, and several others – but their more physical presence only added to the strangeness of his form.

The Balance had luck on their side, and they had arrived unexpectedly; the two members of Labyrinth were caught off-guard, Dreadnought still tapping the controls on his gauntlets, possibly trying to figure out what had happened to the last resonator.

Banshee wasted no time; an eerie high-pitched wail rang out from her throat, aimed straight at the drones. With unerring accuracy, Banshee blasted two of the drones out of the air, much to Dreadnought’s annoyance.

X-Ray set Kristal down on the pavement near the end of the road before flying ahead of the group, distancing himself from his teammates.

“Stay back! I’m going to try something!” he yelled, and activated his force-field and his gravity-bubble. There were no flashy effects, no lights or energy glows; in a heartbeat, the remaining two drones fell like stones to the tarmac, engines overloaded. They hadn’t been destroyed – their metallic carapaces prevented them from being crushed – but they would be impaired if Dreadnought could get them off the ground again. He and Cannon had also been caught in X-Ray’s gravity-attack, being thrown back into the side of the warehouse building like rag-dolls. Dreadnought took a thump from the metal walls, the wind knocked out of him; Cannon seemed uninjured, and began to prise himself away from the wall.

“I’ve got to hold the drones down,” Brian shouted, “keep the pressure on this pair!”

Celestus had dropped Singularity off with Stacy, who kept her adopted-son behind her as much as she could, just in case. The princeling Celestus was now back in the air, facing the villains, tensing himself for the psionic attack he would make against Cannon.

His mind reached out, and…contact! The psychic lash struck Cannon like an army of migraines; he doubled over, clutching his head, a scream tearing from his fleshless form.

Dreadnought raised his right arm; a plasma beam erupted from the gauntlet towards Celestus, who narrowly avoided the blast.

Shaking his head, Cannon also discharged a dark energy beam, this time against Akira. Once again, the blast was avoided, as Akira’s nimble form leaped to one side.

Landing gracefully, Akira gestured in the style of a Shaolin monk, and several curving arcs of coloured energy shot into Cannon’s unsteady form, blowing him backwards where he hit the tarmac, sprawling, unconscious.

A shriek ripped through the air as Banshee screamed her rage at Dreadnought. The villain staggered back as the shockwaves hit him, but he remained standing.

X-Ray had thought his next move out. He released the drones but managed to catch Dreadnought with a separate change of his gravity-bubble, lifting him twenty-or-so feet into the air.

Celestus did not need to be asked twice. A second psionic blast hit Dreadnought as he hung precariously in midair, but he remained active. Celestus couldn’t believe his eyes! This Labyrinth seemed to be a mighty foe, if they had men that could withstand his power!

However, the two remaining drones, though unable to lift off due to their damaged motors, could still utilise their target lock capability. Servos whirred, and the guns rotated on their mountings…just as Akira hit them both with his mystical energy attack, shattering them both into scrap, small explosions marking their demise.

“We could always talk to Dreadnought, now?” Akira said, the question hanging at the end of his words.

Banshee hmphed and let out a scream that stunned the super villain into a stupor. X-Ray lowered him to the ground, letting him fall the last couple of feet and relishing the groan he heard on impact.

“Or…” Akira shrugged, and floated down to the road, looking at the fallen men, “…we could interrogate them whilst they were discombobulated!”

“Did you notice the other substation as we flew here?” Brian asked, “They could well have been looking to plant a fourth resonator.”

“Were you on your way to plant another bomb? Or is there a fourth bomb already planted?” Akira stood over Dreadnought, who was obviously still wobbly from Banshee’s scream, and struggling to sit up in any way.

“I’m not talking…to you!” he spat, playing the tough guy, even though he was in no position to enforce the role. Perhaps he was safe in the knowledge that he worked for Labyrinth; perhaps he was simply misguided.

“Let’s see,” whispered Akira, gesturing with his hands, “as I compel you to tell the truth!”

A noise that sounded remarkably like a squeak left Dreadnought’s throat as Akira’s magic took hold of his mind, and he slid back flat on the tarmac, his entire body relaxing.

“Is there a fourth bomb planted?”

“Not yet…”

“You were on your way to do it?”

“I was coming back to meet with The Professor, and he would instruct us where to place the fourth resonator.”

“So, where were you going to meet the Professor?”

The rest of The Balance were standing around Akira now, eager to hear whatever they could discover. Young Chris was in awe, for a moment at least, until he wondered whether Seven could compel him to tell the truth… His eyes went to the left, and he followed that with a nod of his head, motioning to the warehouse next to them.

Akira looked at his teammates, “Is there anything anyone else wants to know, before I…”

“Yes,” X-Ray cut in, “where’s the rest of Labyrinth?”

“Labyrinth is everywhere,” Dreadnought said, flatly, “Switzerland, Belgium, they were in England…”

“So where is the head man now?” X-Ray asked.

“I don’t know where Taurus is…”

Brian turned away, fists clenched, furious. They knew that Taurus ruled Labyrinth, that went all the way back to the days of Ancient Greece, but to think they might have had his location in their grasp…

Akira took a different tack. “How would we contact Taurus?”

“Through The Professor,” Dreadnought replied.

“Let’s go and get The Professor!” Celestus said, champing at the bit for more action. He had seen what Labyrinth could do, even if Cannon and Dreadnought were the first of its roster that he had actually encountered, and he was keen to stop them from causing The Balance any more problems.

Akira looked at the warehouse. “The Professor is obviously the one we really need to interrogate”, he said.

“What shall we do with these two?” Celestus questioned.

Banshee tried to contact Marcus, but the CommDot signals were still not cooperating. “We will have to take them to the Police in a while,” she said.

“Is The Professor armed?” Akira asked Dreadnought, still calm under the young monk’s influence.

“He is always armed…”

“What can we expect by way of his defences?”

“I have no idea. I was not around when he set them up.” Truth was nice, but not always useful.

“But there will be at least one other resonator with him…”

“The one that you were on your way to pick up, you mean?”

“Yes. They were not as powerful as The Professor expected. They have only destroyed about two-thirds of the Shambles. He is not going to be happy until he has taken down the whole of The Shambles; otherwise, it’s not worth the money.”

“But they never asked for any money in their broadcast,” said Celestus.

“But you must have been paid to set the bomb, is that what you’re talking about?” Akira was genuinely curious now.

“No. I’m talking about the fact that he has been buying up the land…”

Eyebrows raised at that revelation…”Buying the land?”

“Yes, Labyrinth is buying the land.”

“So, they were going to develop it in some way?”

“The easiest way to develop it is to clear the land.”

The heroes were slowly realising what had been going on, and were more disgusted as a result. Wholesale destruction, hundreds dead, more homeless… all for greed, all for profit… heartless and cruel.

“Come on,” Celestus piped up, I shall take these two to the Police at Aldgate, then we shall take down the Professor.”

The team surveyed the warehouse whilst they waited for Celestus to return. There were windows on both floors, many of which were broken in one way or another, and several boarded up. No lights were visible, and even with the power disruptions caused by the collapsed buildings and the explosions, it was still possible that electricity was connected to the building.

“Let me see if there is any power going through this place…” And X-Ray reached out with his powers, trying to sense the subtle shifts in frequency that told of wavelength, and marrying it to his innate combat abilities, of which he was still getting used to after all these years.

“There is electricity,” he announced, “and it is powering a phase-shift dampening field. There is definitely CCTV as well… ah, some on the outside for sure, possibly some on the inside.”

Akira stepped over to Brian. “Will it affect our powers?”

“I couldn’t say for sure,” he shrugged, “mine, perhaps; yours? No idea. This Professor is a bit hot-on, though!”

“I suppose we could expect that from the head honchos of Labyrinth…” Akira said, returning his gaze to the building. The cameras had probably picked them up already, so any idea of stealth was probably useless.

“I suggest I go first, smashing through the roof,” Celestus said, examining the structure from across the road. The Shambles was old, and badly maintained; that held true for this industrial estate, and the warehouse did not look as though it would offer the alien prince any great resistance. He rose into the air, flying over towards the roof. “Once inside the main section I shall set off my flare power,” he said, “, so please cover your eyes.”

The others watched as he smashed through the old roof that was quite possibly made with asbestos. He found himself in a kind of attic space, timber floored, not much taller than the height of a man, some old packing crates left behind from former days of usage. With the space showing no signs of occupation, Celestus smashed through the flooring and dropped into the main warehouse.

Unfortunately, and somewhat strangely for Celestus, the blinding flash of light that he expected to explode from his skin didn’t manifest. He felt a tingling all over his body, but nothing else happened.

He landed with a thud on the dusty concrete floor of the large main warehouse, mainly empty, only old scraps left behind… apart from the far end of the room, where he saw the silhouettes of tables, equipment, and a man. Something made a whirring sound…

Brian had told Stacy and Chris to remain outside the building, but to keep alert and ready for action if necessary, then he joined Banshee and Akira at the side of the warehouse.

When they heard the crashing sounds of Celestus tearing through the roof, Banshee touched the men’s shoulders and ghosted them through the wall.

Now, invisible and intangible, the trio were inside the structure; Celestus to their right, walking towards their left, where stood the man who had plagued them this afternoon.

he Professor. There he stood, the same image of the man they had met in Switzerland several months before. Smart blue suit and white shirt, face masked by a metallic façade; human-looking, but the features were sharply angled, mechanical…and a microphone mesh completed the wrongness. He seemed to be waiting…

Around him, tables held numerous computers, monitors, and other types of electronic devices, some of which X-Ray sensed were radio transmitters.

Some of those devices exploded in showers of squealing metal and sparks as Banshee blasted them with an ear-piercing howl.

Celestus stopped dead… then realised that his friends were there.

X-Ray reached out, bending radiation to create an energy cage around The Professor, but felt only a sharp pain as a feedback surge exploded around his fingertips; a dampening field was working its own type of magic against The Balance!

Almost immediately, two grenades looped over the tables, exploding with sound and fury before they reached the floor. Akira reacted with dextrous alacrity, cartwheeling out of the blast radius; Banshee and X-Ray managed to shield their eyes, avoiding the flash, and X-Ray’s force field withstood the explosions, shielding Banshee from the effects as well.

They were now visible and solid again, but the time for hiding was over.

Celestus timed his psionic attack to perfection, catching The Professor unawares and causing him to stagger backwards a couple of paces; whether he was further affected he could not tell, as the mask did not show emotion.

Smoke drifted across the battle scene as Akira brought his multiple mystic blasts to bear on their antagonist, further staggering him and blowing part of his mask away, revealing his cheek and lower jaw.

At their prior meeting, The Professor’s voice had been heard through a modulator, giving him an eerily mechanical tone, as well as the disguise of not hearing his real voice. Now, much to Akira’s unease, the laughter that drifted through the smoke was not only unwelcome, but entirely human…

Stepping forward past X-Ray, Banshee targeted what remained of the mask with her shattering screech. The man spun as the sonic beam hit him, the mask erupting into shards that rained upon the hard floor around him…before he steadied himself and the team saw, with some horror, that his mouth was taped shut!

The man stared at them with wide eyes, the fear evident as he stepped back again, barely able to stand.

“It’s not him!” Celestus roared, realising that their enemy could not possibly be this frightened thing he saw before him. Banshee actually let out a laugh as it hit home. “A decoy of some kind!”

X-Ray had been reaching out with his enhanced senses, and noticed more electricity flowing up the walls and reaching machinery high up near the ceiling. His acute eyesight focussed on two short-barrelled cannons that were targeting the group. Flicking his eyes back to the man, Brian noticed that his arms hung by his sides – he was not holding a control mechanism.

“He’s not The Professor” said Akira, the voice filtering through his Commdot, “He’s just a decoy!”

Brian reacted swiftly, destroying both cannons with individual gamma bursts from his hands; hot metal, scorched wood, and blasted brick rained down in the far corner of the room, a cacophony of destruction that signalled the end of the conflict.

Celestus sensed that the need for violence was at an end. Instead, he wheeled around, looking for figures in the gloom. He saw no-one, but did pick out several CCTV cameras like the ones situated in the substations; all were trained on The Balance, and the man posing as The Professor.

“He’s not here!” he yelled to his teammates, then pointed to an object behind the farthest table – there, they saw the fourth resonator, deactivated but intact.

“We should destroy it…” he said, beginning to step towards the device. “No! Leave it!” yelled X-Ray, “If we can figure out how to defuse it, remove any command mechanism, it becomes our resonator bomb!”

Celestus nodded, understanding Brian’s logic. To satisfy his urge to break something, he lifted into the air and circled the room, smashing every camera he saw.

Once done with that, Celestus landed next to the man and held him steady as he pulled the tape from his mouth. Strangely, the man did not move his arms…

“Please, don’t…they’ll kill my wife! My wife…if you don’t…!” The man made a guttural sound, and keeled over, unmoving.

Celestus looked shocked as he turned to Brian. “X-Ray, is any of this computer equipment still working?”

“Not that I can tell…” came the response. He truly believed what his senses told him, but he couldn’t help but wonder whether the dampening field had caused his powers to misfire as they sought to correct themselves with the Earth’s EM field.

“And I think we may need some medical assistance for this man…” Brian walked over and knelt by the unconscious man, “I’ll check him over.”

That was when the voice came over the speakers that had survived Banshee’s attack. “Ha! Did you truly think that I would risk my genius against your crude fists? I did not desire a quick end, only a new beginning!”

There it was… modulated… mechanical. “Soon this slum, this stain on London, will be mine to sculpt anew!” The sound ceased, the connection cut.

Silence.

Akira stood next to X-Ray as the doctor finished checking the man’s vital signs. “I know you want the resonator device at the top of your Christmas wish list this year, X-Ray, but I feel it should join its compatriot in the North Sea.”

Celestus joined them. “I agree. We do not know how he controls them.”

“It could be dangerous, especially if we take it back to the BASEment. Let’s just send it to join the other one, eh?” Brian looked up at them, a resigned look in his eyes. A nod. “Yeah, alright then.”

Celestus hefted the resonator up as Akira formed his portal over the North Sea. A second later, it was gone.

‘I guess that when the time comes, I will just have to be the bomb,’ he thought to himself. Outside he seemed calm, professional; inside, he seethed.

Of all of them, Brian wondered only of Akira. He was clever, astute…could he sense the anger that burned in Brian’s heart? Did he know that Brian now saw Labyrinth as a cancer to be cut out, expunged…destroyed?

An image of Tempus rose in Brian’s mind. ‘Only Time will tell.’

But the indignity was not over. Outside, even in this unused part of The Shambles, public address systems, both PA speakers and large screen TVs, crackled into life.

“The Balance damaged Miller Street substation. They broke the devices. The chaos, the destruction, and the deaths that resulted, is their responsibility. I hope it was worth the trip…” Ultimately, as they knew, that message would be heard all across London.

***

Back at the BASEment, Banshee followed up on what they had learned from Dreadnought, asking Frankie, the team’s AI, to search for matching references. The Shambles had been marked for demolition for quite some time. The Challenger-Wildeman family had made a proposal some years ago to replace a section of the Shambles with an eco-village, in which the current residents would be encouraged to become part-owners… *

But that had been blocked by the planning committee of the local council. Instead, the land had subsequently been purchased outright (at a vastly reduced cost) by a holding company belonging to the Swiss-run company, Labys Consolidations, one of several fronts for Labyrinth that The Balance were aware of, and they would have been unable to demolish and rebuild on the land whilst the buildings were tenanted or leased out. It would now be cheaper to sell back the leases to the new landowner than to rebuild, especially given the scale of the devastation, the clearance of the property residents, and a previous inability to source affordable property insurance by the then-landlords and leaseholders.

The news reports were mixed: London was saved from a major power outage, but the focus was on the police discovering that the “bombs” were fake, and the damage caused to The Shambles area.

* See Episode 3 – No More Mr Nice Guy

***

The Rule of Three

A mastermind assumes failure. Their plans were not a single, fragile chain of events but a robust web of possibilities. For every critical step, they have at least two backup plans.

Plan A: The Obvious Path. This is the path the heroes were meant to discover and thwart. It is often the loudest and most direct.

Plan B: The Deceptive Path. This plan is initiated if Plan A fails. It often appears to be a desperate move or an escape plan, but it is actually a secondary route to the same objective.

Plan C: The Inevitable Path. This is the fail-safe. It is the slowest, most subtle, or most costly way to achieve their goal, but it is already in motion before the heroes even appear. It might be a corrupt official, a slow-acting poison, or a deeply embedded piece of malware.

Stopping Plans A and B only means that Plan C will eventually succeed unless the heroes uncover its existence in time.

Plan A: was to try to trick the team into disarming the “bombs,” which secretly just activated the sonic resonators.

Plan B: If the team discover the sonic nature of the devices The Professor had a lieutenant, Dreadnought, ready to manually trigger the devices from a safe distance, causing a less effective but still devastating cascade.

Plan C: The Professor had already spent months bribing city inspectors and falsifying structural integrity reports for the target district. Even if his main plot fails, the area is already condemned on paper and will be slated for demolition within the year, achieving his goal slowly.

Behind the Scenes – The Professor’s First Move

The Professor, having previously discovered that X-Ray has a civilian family living in Wessex, had sent an anonymous tip to them stating that their building had a (real) gas leak, and then rendered them uncontactable (phone cut off, mobile signals blocked), forcing X-Ray to choose between helping his family evacuate, or staying with the team to stop the main threat.

(Natural gas itself is odourless. In the UK, an odorant is added to help detect leaks. This is usually tetrahydrothiophene, which gives off a strong, sulphur-like smell which most people describe as similar to rotten eggs, a deliberately unpleasant smell so that even a small leak is easy to notice.)

Akira’s foster parents had almost been run down by someone who then tried to chase them in his car forcing them to go into hiding once they managed to escape their pursuer.

The Professor had forced immediate, agonising choices on X-Ray and Akira. Did they trust the contacts, abandon the primary mission, and use their powers to assist their families? Or did they stay, prioritising London, and risking their family’s safety? The team would lose their main energy experts for the crucial initial analysis if they left.

The Professor’s Real Goal

The E.M.P. bombs were a feint. Their true purpose was to draw the team to specific locations. The real devices were sonic resonators hidden in the cylindrical device that, when activated in a precise sequence (using the team’s arrival as the trigger), would create a resonance cascade designed to shatter the foundations of the Shambles, one of the city’s oldest districts.

The aim was to allow him to buy the leases on the land for pennies on the pound and rebuild the area. It is also an opportunity to discredit the team by claiming their actions were responsible for the destruction…

The long-term threat remains: The Professor still possessed the falsified structural integrity reports (Rule of Three: Plan C) that were originated by Vandam Properties.

The Challenger-Wildeman proposal to replace a section of the Shambles with an eco-village, that the current residents would be encouraged to become part-owners in, had been blocked by local politicians (some of whom had been ‘bought’ by Labyrinth).

Mary became Mary Weirdigan in the Millers Court substation in front of the cameras; she had then been identified by facial recognition software and linked to the Balance and Container Town.

Brian’s family had already been compromised, and Akira’s adoptive parents targeted. The Balance of Power had tipped in favour of Labyrinth…