True Dark

by Niall Teasdale

  Clearly, New York was no longer worth his time. He had certainly succeeded in destroying the place. What did you do after laying waste to the Big Apple? Well, the politicians had not been ready to hand over the ransom last time. Maybe they needed a more immediate threat.

  Turning toward the south, Magmatic sank himself back into the lava and began to tunnel.

  Washington, DC, 23rd September.

  Magmatic was not exactly an educated man, but he had gathered enough understanding of geology through practical experience to work out how to make a volcano. It helped that he could control the flow of molten rock, but his primary method of making life hot for the surface world was a rather more simple and practical one: he tunnelled.

  He was very good at tunnelling. Occasionally, denser rock would slow him down, but nothing much could stop him. He did not need to breathe, and he could absorb energy from lava, so eating was not an issue. Even the immense pressure at the bottom of the planet’s crust was not a problem to him. So, he would dig his way down to the mantle, forming a mantle plume, an artificial version of the hotspot which had formed the Hawaiian islands over the course of millions of years.

  By the time Magmatic was making his way back to the surface, riding the wave of magma, his exit from the New York vent had been noticed by scientists checking the data. Cameras had spotted him before he had submerged again, but no one had any idea where he was going. No one took much notice of the smoke rising up from the crater where the White House had once stood until it was still rising, thicker and darker, after more than an hour. An overflight by helicopter had been arranged and the aircraft was there just in time to see the first explosion of lava into the pit.

  Volcanic activity in Washington, DC was not a normal phenomenon. By ten a.m., the UID and the military were scrambling to deal with Magmatic’s arrival in the capital.

  New Millennium City, MD.

  ‘What do you want, Magmatic?’ Captain Freedom’s voice was quite clear as he shouted to the figure on the slowly growing lake of lava in the White House pit.

  ‘They must be using some pretty awesome microphones,’ June commented. They were watching the feed from an ACPN helicopter which had been granted permission to observe the meeting. If you could call it a meeting.

  Captain Freedom was hovering about twenty feet in the air and a good fifty to eighty feet away from Magmatic. The Captain and the Union of Ultrahumans had been able to determine much of what Magmatic could do and staying out of his reach was absolutely the best way to avoid him snuffing out your life like a candleflame.

  Magmatic looked pretty impressive: he was over nine and a half feet in height, appeared to be built out of semi-liquid rock, and no longer resembled whatever human he had once been. He looked, in fact, like some sort of lava golem out of a fantasy movie, but he was very real. Freedom was one of the strongest people on the planet, able to lift something like ninety kilotons and punch at a level that could flatten buildings. Magmatic was stronger and somehow able to take the Captain’s powerhouse punches. His face was a barely defined mask with a mouth and eyes that glowed a fiery red. Ribbons of duller red wound over his black torso and limbs like rivers of lava.

  ‘One billion dollars,’ Magmatic shouted across to the hero. ‘I want a billion in gold, and I want DC.’

  ‘What?’ Freedom shouted back.

  ‘I want DC. I want the humans moved out. I want to be left alone. Give me DC and I won’t take anywhere else. Don’t and I’ll sink this berg anyway and move on to New Millennium. You’ve got until noon tomorrow to decide. Give me what I want, or I start taking it anyway.’

  ‘I’m going to get changed,’ Penny said, getting up from the sofa.

  ‘What do you think they’ll do?’ June asked. ‘I mean, they’ve got a bad habit of giving in to demands recently.’

  ‘And they lost the centre of Washington when they did. Anyway, that was handing over someone they didn’t really want down here causing trouble. This is handing over money and land. Essentially, they’d be granting sovereignty over part of America to a villain. Not going to happen.’

  ‘You think they’ll call in the Union?’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll call in the Union. And I’m pretty sure the Union will want me there.’

  Andrews Field, MD.

  ‘We got lucky last time,’ Captain Freedom said. ‘We can’t rely on that a second time. For starters, we don’t know what triggered his rise this time, so we can’t be sure how long he’ll stay dead if we put him down again.’

  ‘I believe,’ Doctor Ultimate said, ‘that I have a working hypothesis on that, actually.’

  Cygnus had been right: the government had called in the Union after about four hours. It was now five p.m., five hours after Magmatic’s ultimatum had been given, and the Union’s heavy hitters were in a bunker under Andrews Air Force Base, with Captain Freedom and various members of the Army and UID. The first stage had been for the Army and UID to present the situation, which was bad. As in New York, Magmatic was hiding beneath the surface which made the use of nuclear weapons unlikely to be successful. No one really knew whether a nuke would stop Magmatic anyway.

  ‘You didn’t know that much about him in New York,’ the Captain said.

  ‘I would not say that I have been studying Magmatic for the last twenty-seven years,’ Ultimate replied, ‘but I put considerable effort into analysis of the observational data we had following the events in New York City. My hypothesis is that he required magma to reactivate his body. You managed to separate him from his supply. The reopening of the vent at The Lake recently must have flooded wherever Magmatic ended up. The same event gave you the opportunity to dig your way out.’

  ‘He came up weeks after I did.’

  ‘Captain, you heal exceptionally quickly. Magmatic is tough. He is hard to damage. However, there is no evidence that he heals faster than a typical being of his mass.’

  ‘If he gets reactivated by lava,’ Cygnus said, ‘we need to make sure he can’t get to any.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Ultimate agreed. ‘In New York, I had begun to formulate a hypothesis, with some evidence to back it, which suggested a better course of action than the plan we eventually had to go with.’

  ‘You wanted to launch him into space, as I recall,’ Freedom said.

  ‘I did. I believe some considerable portion of his power stems from him being in contact with the ground. I believe his considerable resilience comes from an ability to redirect energy into the ground. His rather formidable ability to trap people in lava certainly requires that both he and his target are in contact with the ground.’

  ‘Which is why I fight him in the air. The problem we have is that we have no way of getting him into space. He weighs… almost five hundred pounds. Adam and I can both lift that kind of weight, sure, but neither of us can get into orbit. We had the same problem twenty-seven years ago. It was going to take too long to build something which could hold him for long enough to get him up there.’ Doctor Ultimate smiled. Brightstar and Adamantium were smiling too. Cygnus was not. ‘What?’ the Captain asked, looking between the three senior Union members.

  ‘Twenty-seven years ago,’ Ultimate said, ‘we did not have Cygnus.’

  Cygnus sighed. ‘How heavy did you say he was?’

  New Millennium City, MD.

  Cygnus pushed up on the bar with a grunt. ‘What’s that?’

  June checked the panel beside the weight machine. ‘Four thousand pounds.’

  ‘Good.’ Cygnus lowered the bar into its rest position and then shifted out from under it. ‘That should be enough to let me lift him without worrying over flight speed.’ She had been trying out new configurations for an hour after coming back from Andrews.

  ‘This is a really crazy plan.’

  ‘I’m not exactly happy about it but I don’t think there’s a better option. I mean, if this is the best Hugh can come up with…’

  June gave a sigh. ‘Yes, but… Distract him for long enough for you to sneak up o
n him, grab him, and then get him out of the atmosphere? Someone is going to get hurt and I’m worried that it’ll be you.’

  ‘Well, you’re not the only one, but if we can’t stop him, he’s going to turn New Millennium into a volcano.’

  ‘I know. I’m going to fly up when you leave tomorrow. I’ll wait for you up there. I might be able to help if anything goes wrong.’

  Cygnus flashed June a grin. ‘I’m not going to argue. Just stay out of his reach. He can do a lot of damage, which I am hopefully going to avoid by keeping out of reach of his arms.’

  ‘I’ll stay clear. You just make sure you stay alive.’

  ‘I promise. I mean, if I’m dead, who’s going to get Magmatic into orbit?’

  Washington, DC, 24th September.

  ‘You’ll need to be quite careful as you approach him,’ Doctor Ultimate said.

  ‘I planned to be,’ Cygnus replied.

  ‘I’m sure you will be, my dear, but specifically, analysis of Magmatic’s reactions in the fights in New York suggest he can sense vibrations in the ground around him.’

  ‘If I put a foot down, he may detect me and react.’

  ‘Precisely. You will need to fly in. I’ve instructed Adam to be as… clompy as possible. Hopefully, that “noise” will mask anything you may produce.’

  ‘Right.’ Cygnus turned to where the rest of the team were getting ready. They were in a UID mobile control room about a mile from what was now called the ‘DC Volcano.’ Monitors lined the walls of the container-like vehicle, most of them showing various views of the pit with its bubbling, leaping lake of lava. ‘Everyone knows to get clear when I grab him, right?’ she asked. ‘I’m going to be going from zero to very supersonic in, well, very fast. It’s going to be like a bomb going off.’

  ‘Oh, I plan to stay well clear,’ Brightstar said. ‘Honestly, I may get a couple of good hits in when things start, but as soon as Adam and the Captain engage, me firing into that melee is likely to cause more harm than good.’

  ‘I believe I will be sufficiently protected,’ Adamantium said. ‘I am far more worried about Magmatic’s fists, so I would appreciate a speedy resolution.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ Cygnus replied.

  ‘You’re really sure you can do this?’ Captain Freedom asked, his brow furrowed. ‘Like Adam said, Magmatic is lethal. He punches harder than I do.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s going to be able to get any good punches in. I’ll grab him from behind and take off straight up. He’s going to be hit with about a thousand Gs when I take off. If I’m lucky, he’ll black out. Either way, I should have him in low orbit in a few seconds. And I managed to pack in some defences.’

  Freedom shook his head. ‘Quite amazing. I am going to have to watch you, young lady.’

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe you’ll get to watch me get my head knocked off.’

  ‘That,’ Adamantium said, ‘is why the Captain and I will be holding Magmatic’s attention once Alison has got her hits in.’

  Cygnus flashed the metal man a smile. ‘Thanks. Let’s go see if he wants to play.’

  ~~~

  It was difficult to judge expressions on a face like Magmatic’s. He did not look pleased to see the group waiting for him when he rose up out of the lava at midday, but that judgement was largely based on the way his eyes seemed to burn brighter and his fists clenched.

  ‘You people just don’t get it, do you?’ Magmatic rumbled. ‘You can’t stop me. None of you can stop me.’ He raised a hand and pointed at Captain Freedom, who was hovering at the edge of the pit, maybe thirty feet away. ‘Do you really want to spend another thirty years buried under a volcano?’

  ‘To stop you?’ Freedom asked. ‘Sure, if it comes to that.’

  ‘I am going to sink every last one of you!’ Magmatic’s hand flicked toward Adamantium, standing not far from where Freedom was hovering. Molten rock erupted from around Adamantium’s feet, rapidly flowing up his body and encasing him. ‘Now you’ll–’

  Magmatic was cut off as Brightstar opened fire. White light blazed out, striking the rock man in the chest. Smoke billowed from the area she was hitting as his outer skin of hardened rock was blasted away. Beneath, his ‘flesh’ glowed with the hot red of new lava. Magmatic let out a roar and charged forward, even as Adamantium burst free of his rocky prison. Magmatic was making a beeline for Captain Freedom, however. Brightstar launched another, weaker, volley of energy before Magmatic could cross the distance, her beam blazing into his glowing chest and causing him to roar, but he kept on going, raising a fist in readiness for his attack. Freedom saw it coming and let it pass by him as Magmatic closed the distance. Then the Captain hit back, the sound of the cosmically boosted impact ringing through the air. Magmatic barely seemed to notice, though the lava beneath his feet rippled as if a big stone had been dropped into it. Adamantium drove his fist in a fraction of a second later, producing a lesser shockwave and just as little reaction from Magmatic, and that was when Cygnus arrived.

  Sliding in behind Magmatic, Cygnus wrapped her arms as far as she could around his thick waist before shifting her posture to bring her legs down to just above the lava at Magmatic’s feet. He just had time to say ‘What?’ Then she was rocketing upward. Below her, Captain Freedom and Adamantium flinched as the hypersonic shockwave blasted outward from her trajectory. Brightstar was pushed back a hundred feet before she regained control of her flight pattern and looked up to where Cygnus had vanished into the sky.

  Magmatic did not black out. Despite what Cygnus had said, it was going to take her around fifteen seconds to get him up to orbital height at two hundred kilometres and he was not going to make that easy for her. His initial tactic was to try to slam his elbow into her arm and so break her grip. He was trying to hurt her. She imagined he was shouting obscenities at her too, but they were already at over forty thousand feet, the thin air was rushing past, and anything he might have said was lost. After five seconds, he had managed to hit her once but not with all his strength. Her force field flared as he struck, but he did not penetrate it. He began to struggle, scrabbling at her arms to free himself. With her enhanced strength and better position, they were fairly even, but he eventually managed to get his fingers under her forearms and break free, pushing away from her as he did so. Cygnus shifted her trajectory and followed about ten feet from him, watching as the realisation dawned that he was not falling back to Earth.

  A blip on her radar alerted Cygnus to something approaching from behind her and she shifted her powers to her more normal space configuration. As June slid in beside her, Cygnus reached out and looped an arm around her waist, pulling her in closer and enveloping her in a force field which also happened to give them an air supply. June did not need it, but it did let them talk.

  ‘We need some way for these earpieces to work in a vacuum,’ Cygnus said.

  ‘Yeah,’ June agreed. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Nope. I’m a little worried he might not be high enough, but he didn’t manage to get a hit in.’

  Magmatic was thrashing around like a mad thing, apparently unaware that more or less all he could do was twist himself about on the same trajectory. When his twisting brought him around to where he could see the two heroines flying nearby, linked at the waist, his eyes burned brighter and he opened his mouth to rage uselessly at them.

  ‘He looks pretty pissed off as it is,’ June commented.

  ‘Sure does. And I think he’s high enough that it’ll be a while before he deorbits. I’m not really sure what Hugh wants to do with him. Leaving him up here seems a little… cruel. But having him on the planet is basically letting a walking natural disaster loose.’

  ‘Not our call, I guess. We could probably come up and get him down if they want him.’

  ‘Well, Hugh thinks he doesn’t need food so long as he can draw energy from magma. I figure that means he’ll starve to death up here. It’s not exactly a nice way to go, but…’

  ‘Not our call.’

&nb
sp; ‘Cygnus? Are you receiving?’ Doctor Ultimate’s voice came in over their earpieces, cutting off the conversation.

  ‘I’m here, Hugh,’ Cygnus replied. ‘How are you actually reaching me up here?’

  ‘Via a number of connections to ground stations. That also means we’re tracking Magmatic. You seem to have been successful. Were you hurt?’

  ‘No, I’m fine, but I’m not sure he’s high enough.’

  ‘That won’t be a problem, my dear. You never got to slow down to match orbital velocity and you were exceeding the Earth’s escape velocity when you let go.’

  ‘Uh, he managed to get free. Remind me exactly what escape velocity is.’

  ‘Essentially, he is travelling too fast for orbit and will continue outward. His velocity is insufficient to escape the solar system.’

  ‘Oh.’ Cygnus looked around at June and got a shrug in reply.

  ‘I’ll put a rush on a decision over what should be done with him. Frankly, I’m not sure what we can do, but we may want you or Astraea to stabilise his orbit at some point. For now, you can come home.’

  Cygnus looked down at the blue-and-white ball below her. It looked rather serene at the moment and she pulled June tighter against her. ‘Okay, but I think I’ll finish this orbit and swing down when we get back to America.’

  ‘As you wish,’ Doctor Ultimate replied with a smile in his voice. ‘Enjoy the view.’

  ‘We will.’

  New Millennium City, MD.

  ‘Reports on Magmatic’s trajectory from the Union of Ultrahumans and NORAD indicate that he is continuing on into interplanetary space. He is expected to pass beyond the orbit of the Moon in approximately two hours. Doctor Ultimate has stated that his orbital path is quite predictable and that he can be retrieved when necessary. However, Magmatic’s fate is currently in the hands of the government and, potentially, the United Nations.’