“Gods below,” Winn-Dar exclaimed. “You really mean it!” He surprised Donna by laughing heartily. A smile transformed his Neanderthal features. “Hah! I did not think the world of humans produced such warriors!”
Jason backed off and helped the chieftain to his feet. “It produced Ray Palmer, didn’t it?”
“That it did,” Winn-Dar agreed. He gestured to his troops, who obediently lowered their weapons. “Although I fear your world has also done its best to crush his spirit.” Satisfied that the battle was over, Donna approached Jason and the chieftain. “This is true,” she admitted, recalling the heartbreaking events that had afflicted the Atom in recent years. “He has seen much sorrow in our realm.” Winn-Dar nodded gravely. “He did not speak of it, but his woe was plain to see when he passed through here some time ago. In years past, he was a merry hero who once did my people a great service, but now he seems to have lost his way. We told him that only powerful magicks could undo the doom that had befallen them.”
The Monitor joined the conference. “And where would one seek such magicks?”
“For that, you must consult the shaman.” The chieftain turned to address his people. “Bring forth the Wise One!” Waving blades of grass parted behind the warriors and gfsutif noun se
a newcomer entered the meadow. A hooded cloak, dyed a brilliant shade of red, hid the shaman’s features. Small and slight of build, the nameless mystic walked softly through the grass. Charms and amulets adorned her slender arms and neck. A necklace of cowrie shells rattled gently as she approached them. Winn-Dar and his warriors bowed their heads in respect.
Jason shook his head in disbelief. “You gotta be joking! We’re not seriously planning to take our marching orders from some pint-sized witch doctor?”
“Quiet,” Donna shushed him. “On Paradise Island, one learns to heed the counsel of the oracles.” She bowed her own head to the hooded figure and pressed her palms together, forming a steeple beneath her chin. “We are honored by your presence.”
“Hail, travelers,” the shaman greeted them in a high-pitched, mellifluous voice. She drew back her hood, revealing the elfin features of a young girl who appeared no more than six years old. More evolved than her Neanderthal cohorts, her waifish face was fine-boned and delicate. Large golden eyes hinted at wisdom far beyond her apparent years. Straight red hair fell past her graceful shoulders. Arched eyebrows gave her a distinctly fey appearance. “I am K’Dessa, high priestess of this realm.”
“You?” Jason laughed at the very idea. He knelt down in front of the little girl. “You’re barely old enough to—” K’Dessa didn’t let him finish, “I was igniting suns when your people had fins, Jason Todd.” Arms crossed boldly over her chest, the tiny shaman met Jason’s startled gaze with total confidence. “Yes, I know who you are. I also know from whence you and your companions have come, and what you desire. Ancient prophecies foretold of three travelers who would become the ‘Challengers of the Unknown.”' Her golden eyes gleamed with occult knowledge. “The Ray Palmer passed this way on his journey, but he has left the inner worlds behind. You must seek him amidst the myriad Earths of your own plane of existence.”
Myriad Earths? It took Donna a moment to realize what K’Dessa meant. “The Multiverse?”
Unlike most mortals, Donna was well aware that there were at least fifty-two alternate versions of Earth, located in parallel universes separated by sturdy dimensional barriers. Had the Atom somehow learned how to slip past those barriers?
“Aye,” K’Dessa confirmed. “Unable to find peace here, he left to find a new life on another Earth.”
“Which Earth?” the Monitor demanded. “Which universe?”
K’Dessa shook her head. “That I cannot say. I know only that the spirits have spoken to me of a great disaster that only the Ray Palmer can avert. Find him you must, so allow me to send you on your way.” She raised her hands above her head. An unearthly green glow radiated from her childish form. The cowrie shell necklace rattled a percussive melody. Unseen voices chanted from the ether, and the world of K’Dessa and her people began to shrink away before Donna’s eyes. “Farewell, Challengers. And should you encounter the Ray Palmer in time, tell him that we are praying for him ... and for all the worlds that be.” Donna grabbed on to Jason’s hand as the shaman’s spell whisked them away.
28 AND COUNTING.
' IET80PILI1.
located five hundred feet below the city, Project Cadmus was the world’s foremost genetics facility. The top secret think tank, whose existence Jimmy had stumbled onto a few years back, struck him as his best shot at getting to the bottom of his mysterious new powers. Fortunately, the project’s scientists seemed eager to oblige.
“We’ve been tracking your exploits as Mr. Action,” Dr. Serling Roquette divulged as she escorted Jimmy through one of Cadmus’s many underground corridors. The sixteen-year-old prodigy looked and dressed like any ordinary teenage mall rat, complete with flip-flops, denim shorts, and a faded black T-shirt advertising a punk rock band Jimmy had never heard of. Few people would ever guess that the slim young blonde was actually the project’s head of genetics. “You come up with that costume yourself?”
Says the girl with the two-toned spiked hair, Jimmy thought. “That bad, huh?”
Serling shrugged. “I’m more curious as to why you took up crime fighting. What exactly makes that a natural response to incipient meta-human capability?”
“Maybe it’s not for other people,” Jimmy answered, “but I’ve been on the sidelines of the hero scene for years. ‘Superman’s pal,’ you know?” He tried not to sound too ungrateful. “And it’s been an honor, but still... a part of me feels left out and less than. Like I’m starving to death with my nose pressed up to the bakery window.”
“Really?” Curious blue eyes peered at him through the lenses of her chunky white eyeglasses. “Because most costumed vigilantes have complicated, stressful lives.”
“They also have a purpose,” he explained, “and ... a destiny, I guess. Things I always hoped would materialize for me someday.” They walked past a series of experimental labs and menageries. Windows offered glimpses of various genetically engineered oddities, like a glow-in-the-dark chimpanzee and water-breathing rabbits. “I suppose I hoped that my new powers meant that I’d finally earn a place at the table with the people I admire most.” He neglected to mention his humiliating audition at Titans Tower. What good are these wacky powers if I can’t fight beside Earth’s greatest heroes?
Stainless steel doors parted with a whoosh as they arrived at a high-tech laboratory packed with futuristic hardware so advanced that Jimmy couldn’t begin to guess its functions. Computers lined the walls. A flat steel bed was surrounded by robotic arms, also known as waldoes. Impressive-looking scanners and lenses were affixed to the ends of the arms. Dials and gauges were installed in the sides of the examination table. A posted notice read: WARNING. MUTAGENIC MATERIALS. HANDLE WITH CARE. A glowing green crystal, embedded in some sort of X-ray projector, looked suspiciously like kryptonite.
I hope Doogette Howser here knows what she's doing. Unpleasant memories of Arkham surfaced as, at Ser-ling’s request, he stripped down to his boxer shorts. Blushing in embarrassment, he thought he heard the teenage scientist snicker, but maybe that was just his imagination.
He lay down atop the cold metallic table while she attached electrodes to his chest and temples. She confiscated his signal-watch, then strapped his limbs to the table. “Just to keep you from squirming.”
“What does this thing do again?” he asked nervously. “You won’t feel a thing,” she assured him, tightening his bonds. “It’s like a CAT scan, only more metaphysical.” She retreated to the safety of an enclosed control room at the south end of the laboratory. A thick sheet of transparent Plexiglas cut her off from Jimmy, leaving him alone in the sterile chamber. The apparatus around him started humming ominously. He tugged experimentally on his restraints. “How different?”
“You ever hea
r of biofeedback?” Her voice emerged from an intercom overhead. “This device measures your brain waves and cerebral activity. It then manufactures a three-dimensional, holographic composite of your subconscious mind for analysis.” As she expounded learnedly on the sophisticated technology involved, it was easy to forget that she was still just a teenybopper. “Past studies, you see, suggest that the brain waves of metahumans are significantly different from those of normal humans. ..
“I’ll take your word for it,” he interrupted. Suddenly, being an everyday mortal didn’t sound so bad. He didn’t care for the idea that there was something weird going on in his brain. I like my gray matter just the way it is.
“Just relax,” she told him. “Let the Ambient Neural Ultra Spectrometer do its thing.”
Talk about a mouthful, he thought. “Why don’t you just use an acronym?”
“Think about it.”
She flicked a switch, and automated sensors whirred around Jimmy’s supine form, scanning him from a variety of directions. The humming of the machine seemed to penetrate his skull, so that his whole brain felt like it was full of static. His forehead started throbbing painfully. Brightly colored energies arced between the elevated scanners. The flashing lights hurt his eyes, forcing him to squeeze them shut. Swollen veins pulsed beneath the electrodes affixed to his temples. Wait a sec, he thought. I thought she said this wasn 1 supposed to hurt!
“Okay, we’re up and running,” Serling reported via the comm system. “Oh-to-the-crap!”
Her startled exclamation caused his eyes to snap open. His jaw dropped as he spied the source of her consternation.
A shimmering holographic wall had materialized above him, winding like a serpent just below the ceiling. An ineffable golden light radiated from the immense wall, while the armored figures of bizarre alien beings appeared to be melded to the dense stone or marble. Their empty eye sockets glowed with preternatural energy. Their immobile faces and bodies blended with the hard, unyielding substance of the barrier. Planetary spheres floated above and below the coils of the wall, which dwarfed the surrounding holographic worlds. An incredibly complex equation, couched in exotic, indecipherable symbols, snaked its way along the length of the wall.
“Come again?” Serling asked aloud. Whatever she had been expecting to find buried in Jimmy’s unconscious mind, this clearly wasn’t it. “Who Spielberged your synapses?”
•‘The Source,” Jimmy whispered hoarsely. Somehow he knew instinctively that the awe-inspiring panoply represented something called the Source Wall, which divided the physical universe from a higher realm beyond. The Source was the ultimate mystery behind all of Creation, at least according to the New Gods. And the figures adorning the Wall were no mere sculptures; they were the Promethean giants, a race of ancient immortals who had sought to breach the barrier, only to become part of it for all eternity. It was said, although by whom Jimmy could not recall, that the soul of a New God returned to the Source upon the death of its corporeal shell.
gseumiiewi in
Had Lightray’s spirit already rejoined the Source? What about Sleez’s?
An agonizing spasm prevented Jimmy from ruminating any further on the subject. Electricity crackled around his aching skull. An excruciating sound, like shattered glass scraping against bone, filled his ears. His mouth tasted like ash. Ozone tickled his nostrils. Prismatic auras obscured his vision. Nausea twisted his stomach in knots. His brain felt like it was going to explode. “I don’t feel so good,” he confessed.
“Jimmy!” Serling blurted. “Your head! It’s growing!”
What? He spotted his reflection in the polished steel ceiling. The teenage genius wasn’t joking; his brain was literally expanding beneath his scalp, blowing up like a balloon. Throbbing veins stood out upon his inflated cranium. A terrifying thought gripped him: What if his head Veally did explode? “Something’s wrong!” he cried out. “Stop this!”
“I’m trying!” she shouted back. Lifting his oversized head from the table, he glimpsed her through the protective Plexiglas screen. She was frantically working the controls, but without any obvious success. “I can’t shut it down! Your brain is telepathically attacking the spectrometer!”
The holographic Source Wall blinked out of existence. The static in Jimmy’s brain diminished in volume and, for a moment, he thought the worst was over. “You’re doing something!” he encouraged Serling. “I feel different...
Different, but not necessarily better. The pressure inside his skull gave way to a soggy feeling all over his body. Spikes protruded from his skin even as his body softened into a flabby, gelatinous mass. Ringed suckers opened up along his arms and fingers, so that he looked like some bizarre genetic hybrid of an octopus, a porcupine, and a jellyfish. Only his red hair, blue eyes, and freckles kept him slightly recognizable as James Bartholomew Olsen. Sticky electrodes slid off his slimy skin, only to get tangled in the quills. “Help!” he gurgled. “What’s happening to me?”
“I don’t know!” Serling answered. “You’re overloading the sensors!”
He heard a definite note of panic in her voice. An overhead monitor erupted, emitting a shower of white-hot sparks onto Jimmy, who yelped in pain. Oozing free of their bonds, his elastic limbs flailed about wildly. An automated sensor arm crashed to the floor. A salvo of razor-sharp quills speared expensive electronic equipment. Sparks and smoke filled the laboratory, along with the smell of burning circuitry. A blaring alarm assaulted his eardrums. Crimson heat-rays shot from his eyes, leaving scorch marks on the walls and ceiling. A second later, icy blue freeze-rays cracked the Plexiglas screen between Jimmy and the control room. “RED ALERT!” a recorded voice announced Aver the loudspeaker. Blinking red lights flashed around the laboratory, bathing the chamber in an eerie bloodred radiance. “RED ALERT!”
“Sorry!” Jimmy said, flinching at the rampant destruction. He yanked the remaining electrodes off his skin and rolled clumsily off the table onto the floor. His arms and legs were stretched all out of proportion, but somehow he managed to stand upright. Concentrating with all his might, despite the emergency sirens and lights, he fought to keep his rubbery bones at least partially solid. “I can pay for this....”
“Those sensors are three million apiece!” Serling informed him.
“Okay, I really can’t pay for it....” He looked around desperately for someplace where he couldn’t cause any more damage. And not just because of the money; with his powers out of control like this, it was only a matter of time before he accidentally hurt or killed Serling. The Plexiglas screen between them looked like it was ready to shatter at any minute. I gotta get out of here... pronto! His frantic gaze fastened on a circular drain built into the floor. A brilliant, if revolting, strategy popped into his overstimulated brain. Grimacing, he flung himself onto the drain and let his flesh and bones melt into a syrupy mess. The sickening smell of raw sewage wafted up from the pipes below. “This is gonna be gross. I just know it.” Leaving Project Cadmus behind, he slid down the drain.
27 AND COUNTING.
METROPOLIS. EARTH-THREE.
The eldritch chanting of the spirits still echoed in Donna’s ears as the newly christened Challengers of the Unknown suddenly found themselves standing on a rooftop overlooking a brightly lit modem city. Neon signs garishly adorned towering skyscrapers and casinos. Horns honked impatiently in the streets below. A blimp drifted by overhead, advertising an X-Treme Wrestling tournament. Although the sky was clear, the weather felt like fall—and much cooler than the microscopic jungle world they had just departed.
“We’re back on Earth,” she realized. “But which Earth?” The Monitor consulted a display screen upon his right gauntlet. “The third,” he informed them soberly. He glanced around at their surroundings. “This is their Metropolis.” Of course, Donna thought. Scanning the skyline, she spotted the Daily Planet Building to the south. Much like the other buildings in the vicinity, it seemed gaudier than the Metropolis she was familiar with, more like Vegas or H
ub City than the Big Apricot. Lottery numbers flashed upon an illuminated ticker running along the equator of the spinning bronze globe atop the newspaper’s corporate headquarters. Gazing down from the rooftop, she spied a proliferation of strip clubs, liquor stores, gun shops, and graffiti. The open display of vice reminded her of Jimmy Stewart’s nightmarish glimpse of his hometown in It’s a Wonderful Life—after all the good he’d done had disappeared. She scowled in disapproval. Surely Ray Palmer wouldn’t choose this ugly mirror world as his new home?
“Hey, Donna.” Jason gestured with his thumb at something behind them. “Check this out.”
Donna realized belatedly that they had landed in front of an enormous billboard bearing an oversized photo of a glamorous, raven-haired woman wearing a ruby-studded tiara. A black leather choker adorned the model’s throat above a generous display of cleavage. Crime Pays! proclaimed the huge block letters printed 011 the billboard. The jarring motto, as well as the cruelly seductive look on the woman’s face, kept Donna from identifying the subject of the portrait right away. “By the gods,” she gasped as she finally recognized her sister’s classically beautiful features, “is that Diana?”
Vandals had defaced the billboard, spray-painting a bright red mustache and whiskers onto the woman’s smirking face. A scrawled message, Slime Preys! provided a terse rebuttal to the sign’s original message.
“I suppose you think that’s funny?” an indignant female voice challenged them from above.
Spinning around, Donna looked up to see three costumed figures hovering in the air above them. The newcomers resembled distorted versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. The latter was clearly the woman from the billboard, minus the painted-on facial hair. Hands on her hips, she glared down at the Challengers, clearly unamused by the mischief done to her portrait. In place of Wonder Woman’s star-spangled uniform, she wore the tight leather gear of a professional dominatrix. A silver lasso dangled from her belt.
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