“I won’t deny I’ve found your moralistic petulance amusing,” Darkseid replied, his arms crossed boldly across his barrel chest. “But, frankly, this sort of rank barbarism is beneath me. I grow weary of it.” He yawned theatrically. ‘Time to put your interference to an end.”
Twin Omega Beams shot from his eyes. Soaring toward Darkseid, Superman braced himself for the agonizing touch of the death rays, but, at the last minute, the parallel beams suddenly executed a sharp turn, veering around Superman and heading back toward ... Jimmy!
Jimmy gently eased Forager’s helmet off as he knelt beside her. To his relief, he found her breathing steadily.
Her multifaceted eyes fixed on his as she gradually regained consciousness. A trickle of turquoise blood escaped her lips. He placed his hand against her neck and tried to take her pulse. It seemed a bit rapid, but how was he supposed to know what was normal for her? She wasn’t exactly human after all....
/ don’t care, he thought. She’s the only good thing that’s happened to me since this whole mess began.
The blare of gunfire, as well as angry grunts and curses, rang out behind him. Despite his concern for Forager, he couldn’t resist glancing back over his shoulder at the heated battle going on only a few yards away, as Donna and Jason fought furiously to keep Mar}' away from him. Unfortunately, even though they outnumbered her two to one, they seemed to be losing ground at the moment; whatever Darkseid had done to Mary' had obviously amped up her powers to a frightening degree. Jason fired round after round of ammo into the indestructible super-vixen, while Mary grabbed on to Donna’s throat and yanked her off her feet, just like Captain Vyle had done to Jimmy in the slave pits of the Armagetto. He winced in sympathy. “Jeez. They don’t have a prayer, do they?”
“Jimmy?”
“Forager!” He temporarily forgot the fight as he turned back to his alien sweetheart. “You’re awake!” Placing one arm beneath her, he tenderly lifted her head from the ground. He felt a nasty bump beneath her silky purple hair. “Great, ’cause we gotta—”
“Jimmy!” she exclaimed. Her golden eyes looked past him at something above them. “Coming for you ...!’* His head pivoted in time to see Darkseid’s Omega Beams zipping toward him. Hoping to lure them away from Forager, he jumped to his feet and ran away from the sizzling scarlet rays as fast as he could. He zigzagged madly across the uneven terrain, trying to shake the beams, but they copied his every turn. “Yikes!” he shouted. “They’re following me!”
Forager tried to get up, but, lacking the strength, collapsed weakly back onto the ground. “Forgive me, my Olsenbug! There is no escape for you!”
A jagged stone cliff blocked his path. He frantically tried to scramble up the side of the ridge, but the loose gravel kept sliding out from beneath his feet. He fell, scraping his knee on a sharp-edged boulder. Blood soaked through the knee of his grimy coverall. “Ouch,” he yelped, but the pain was nothing compared to the excruciating agony that transfixed his body as the Omega Beams struck him from behind.
“No!” Forager cried out in despair. “JIMMY!”
He expected the souls of the New Gods to explode from his chest, leaving a smoking corpse behind, and yet, to his surprise, the intense pain was over in an instant. Jimmy stared down at himself in confusion, wondering why on Earth he was still alive. His skin tingled all over.
' “Huh?” ”
A Boom Tube heralded the return of Darkseid, who teleported back into the gorge, only a few paces away from Jimmy. A moment later, Superman came flying back onto the scene. He looked equally baffled by Jimmy’s survival. His X-ray vision checked his friend out from head to toe.
“What have you done to him?” Superman demanded. “Nothing, really,” Darkseid said smugly. “I’ve merely unlocked the fail-safe I installed in him when I made him into my cosmic vessel.” He waved his hand at Jimmy, and a queasy feeling came over the perplexed reporter. “Say good-bye to your super friend, Olsen!”
Jimmy’s joints locked up. His pink skin took on a bright emerald hue, and a luminous green aura suddenly enveloped his body.
No! he thought. What are you doing to me now? Superman gasped out loud and crashed to the earth, as though he had suddenly lost the ability to defy gravity. A sickly green pallor came over his face. Bulging veins protruded from beneath his skin as he writhed in torment on the rocky floor of the gorge.
Ohmigod! Jimmy realized. I’ve turned into kryptonite!
Superman tried to crawl away, but Darkseid casually zapped him in the back with his searing eye-beams. “Oh no, Kryptonian. You aren’t going anywhere.” He turned to smirk at Jimmy. “And neither are you, Olsen.”
His emerald brow furrowed in concentration, Jimmy strained to reverse the transformation, but without any success. Waves of killing radiation spilled from his body, making Superman weaker and weaker. He tried to get away from his friend, only to find himself frozen in place. An anguished grunt escaped his lips, but otherwise he couldn’t move a muscle.
“It’s useless to struggle,” Darkseid informed him. “I control you now.” His arms clasped behind his back, he strolled over to where Superman lay dying. “Besides, don’t you want to be at your dear friend’s side as he breathes his final breath?”
This is a nightmare, Jimmy thought. Paralyzed, he could do nothing but stand by while Darkseid used him to execute the greatest hero on Earth. Jimmy didn’t want to die, but, at the moment, he would have gladly traded his own life, not to mention all his newfound superpowers, just for a chance to save his best friend. Please, don’t let this happen!
Darkseid savored Jimmy’s misery. “There is nothing you can do, Olsen. Darkseid pilots you now and the controls are embedded deep within your very core....”
5 AND COUNTING.
< JIMMY’S BRAIN.
The cerebellum, the “little brain,” was tucked away in the hindbrain, below the much larger cerebrum. Synapses sparked between clusters of neurons linked by branching dendrites and axons. Fatty layers of myelin protected the neural fibers, while pulsing veins and capillaries throbbed with every heartbeat. An eerie green radiance lit up a convoluted maze of grooves and folds leading through the cerebellum’s twin hemispheres. Overlapping lobes quivered like jelly. Dripping neurotransmitters smelled like brine. The temperature inside the brain was hot and feverish.
“Ow,” the Atom moaned, slowly stirring to consciousness. He found himself sprawled atop a bed of damp, sticky glial cells, where he must have collapsed when zapped by a sudden burst of intense brain activity. His own microscopic nerves still felt fried from the jolt. Would it have killed whoever rewired this brain to properly insulate it, he thought crankily, so that minuscule people like me don’t get electrocuted when it fires up?
He had taken refuge inside Jimmy’s brain during Mary Marvel’s sneak attack outside the Hall of Justice, hoping to get to the bottom of Jimmy’s on-again, off-again powers. Exploring carefully, he had made his way through the cerebral cortex down to the hindbrain before being knocked out cold by ... what?
Something happened to Jimmy; that’s for sure.
Lifting himself from the gooey brain matter, the Atom took a moment to get his bearings. Jimmy was obviously still alive, although his blood was pumping at an alarming rate. He could hear the posterior inferior cerebellar artery beating loudly deep beneath his feet, like a subway car shaking the pavement above. The synapses were still firing like they were supposed to, creating a strobe effect inside the brain’s muggy interior, but how come everything was so ... green?
Contrary to popular wisdom, the “gray matter” of a living brain was usually flushed red with blood. Ordinar-iiy, hiking through the brain on foot was like spelunking through caves of spongy red jello, but now everything around him was suffused with a strangely familiar emerald effulgence that seemed to emanate from every cell and fiber of Jimmy’s brain. Looking around in confusion, it took the Atom a second to recognize the distinctive green tint.
It’s kryptonite, he realized in shoc
k. Jimmy’s radiating kryptonite?
The Atom didn’t know how that was possible, but he guessed that Superman was somewhere nearby—and in serious trouble. All the more reason for me to figure out what Darkseid’s done to Jimmy’s brain and shut it down, pronto!
The bouncy glia beneath his boots felt like a children’s moonwalk ride as he investigated a network of metallic filaments intertwined with Jimmy’s own ganglia. The Atom had been tracing the path of the artificial-looking circuitry right before he had been shocked unconscious. Crystalline flecks glinted amidst the filaments, which were intricately wedded to the pulsing brain matter. Ray was a physicist, not a neurosurgeon, but he had shut down enough evil telepaths’ brains to know his way around, and this bizarre biological circuitry was like nothing he had ever seen before.
It’s like H. R. Giger meets RadioShack, he thought. How in the world am I supposed to get a handle on this?
The cerebellum played a crucial part in controlling the human body’s senses and motor controls, so he knew he had to be careful what he did here. One mistake could render Jimmy blind or paralyzed or worse. Yet he knew he had to do something about the alien apparatus infiltrating Jimmy’s brain. Beneath the toxic glow of the kryptonite, he cautiously reached for an array of blinking crystals that looked like they might be a transformer of some sort.
Maybe if he cut the current... ?
ZZAKT! He yanked back his hand as emerald sparks stung his fingertips. “Okay, so much for that plan,” he muttered. Getting electrocuted again wasn’t going to help Jimmy any, let alone save the universe from Darkseid’s malignant designs. The Atom paced back and forth before the baffling technology. Even though he had no idea what was going on outside Jimmy’s skull, he couldn’t help sensing that time was running out. He remembered Darkseid gloating over his master plan back in his fortress on Apokolips. Who knew how much longer they had before the arch-villain turned the entire Multiverse into a living hell?
Think, Palmer! He concentrated with all his might on the insidious improvements to Jimmy’s “green matter.” Gritting his teeth, he scrutinized every nanometer of the corrupted neurons, looking for some clue as to how to disable the arcane circuitry without killing or crippling Jimmy. He would have killed for an instruction book written in any earthly language. You’re supposed to be a genius, so figure this out!
“fire you enjoying your last moments, Kryptonian?” Darkseid gloated. “I know I am, although I admit my attention’s been usurped by young Mary.” He turned away from Jimmy and Superman to admire Mary’s lopsided battle against Donna and Jason. “Look at her fight. Such power. Such vigor. Such angerP* He chuckled in approval. “When the Fifth World dawns, I just might let her live.”
Her opponents, on the other hand, were unlikely to last that long. Running out of ammo, Jason holstered his gun and tackled Mary head-on. A twelve-inch knife appeared in his hands and he jabbed it straight at the golden thunderbolt emblazoned on her chest. Darkseid admired his ruthlessness, but not his lack of common sense. The tip of the blade shattered against Mary’s insignia, leaving him defenseless before her superior speed and strength. A backhanded slap dropped him like a sack of potatoes. He landed flat on his back amidst the rubble and didn’t get back up again. Blood seeped out from beneath his skull, staining the floor of the gorge.
“Jason!” Donna cried out. She flew at Mary with her fists stretched out before her. Sunlight flashed off her silver belt and bracelets. Her outraged face no longer held the slightest bit of sympathy for the other woman. “I swear by the gods, Mary... !”
Mary laughed at Donna’s approach. “You want your boyfriend so badly?” She grabbed Jason by one ankle and swung him like a club at the oncoming heroine. Jason’s head smacked against Donna’s face, knocking her out of the sky. She crashed to the ground at Mary’s feet, providing an easy target for Mary, who clobbered her over and over with Jason’s limp body. She looked like she was playing a grotesquely brutal game of Whac-A-Mole, using the former Robin as her hammer. Donna tried to fight back, but every time she lifted her battered face from the debris, Mary pounded her back down into the dirt... until Donna finally stopped moving. Only her labored breathing revealed that the super-powerful Amazon still possessed a spark of life.
“Heh,” Mary casually tossed Jason aside as she stood triumphantly over Donna’s prone body. “How about that? Looks like I’m the last girl standing!”
Indeed, Darkseid thought. It seems Eclipso was right to see potential in you. A pity she did not live to see her efforts bear such delicious fruit. . .
The unnatural green light flooded the inner corridors of Jimmy’s brain, serving as a constant reminder that something was terribly wrong. The Atom realized that there was no time to conduct an exhaustive analysis of the artificial implants infesting the cerebellum. I can’t stall any longer, he realized. I have to do something.
His eyes zeroed in on the blinking array before him. At a loss, he wondered how his fellow League members would handle a situation like this. I know what Hawkman would do, he thought. The avian avenger, who was probably Ray’s closest friend in the League, had a fondness for medieval weapons like maces and battle-axes. What did Carter say once? His teammate’s words of wisdom came back to him:
“When in doubt, break things.”
The Atom took a deep breath, then grabbed on to the crystalline array with all his strength. Hostile electrical impulses shot up his arms, numbing him, but he didn’t let go. The alien gizmo resisted his efforts to wrench it free, but, using the white-star technology embedded in his costume, he increased his strength disproportionately to his size. Sparks flew from the infected synapses as the entire array came free at last. Jumping backward from the unleashed energy, he let the crystalline lattice slip from his stinging fingers.
The kryptonite glow flickered all around him, then went out entirely. The emerald brain matter took on a more natural reddish hue. Only the strobe-like glare of flashing synapses allowed him to see his way around the murky cortical folds. Bright arterial blood pulsed warmly beneath his feet. He could only pray that meant Jimmy wasn’t brain-dead yet.
I did it! he exulted. I think....
His triumph was short-lived, however, as a loud scut-ding noise suddenly echoed through the winding convolutions, growing louder by the second as the source of the uproar grew ever nearer. To his alarm, a horde of silvery alien insects came rushing toward him. Vaguely resembling beetles, they clattered over and under each other in their eagerness to tear the Atom apart. Although the size of fleas, they looked as large as king crabs to the tiny Atom. Their scaly shells bore the same alien circuit patterns as the array he had just dislodged. Angiy pincers snapped at him.
“Uh-oh,” he blurted. What were these things? Apoko-liptian antibodies?
His only consolation as they swarmed over him, biting and clawing at his flesh, was the realization that he must have done something right to stimulate this kind of attack.
He could only hope that it wasn’t too little, too late.
“Mack!” Jimmy gasped.
He felt a sudden shock at the back of his skull, then realized that he could move again. The bright green glow of the kryptonite evaporated, and he stared down at his hands in wonder, watching his flesh turn pink again. Thank goodness! He had no idea what had broken Darkseid’s spell, but he couldn’t have been happier. He glanced anxiously at Superman and was relieved to see the Man of Steel recovering as well. The greenish pallor retreated from Superman’s complexion as Earth’s yellow sun restored his strength. His swollen veins constricted. Yes! Jimmy rejoiced. It’s a miracle!
Darkseid was taken aback by this unexpected turn of events. “This can’t be!” he objected. “You’re mine to control!”
Oh yeah? Jimmy thought. We’ll see about that. He sensed instinctively that something had changed fundamentally inside his brain, freeing him from all of Darkseid’s fiendish constraints. He could feel the stolen power of the New Gods surging through him, merging with the unique abiliti
es Darkseid himself had endowed him with. He was in command of the power now, not the other way around. Now he just needed to take it to the max—and buy Superman the time he needed to recover fully.
Jimmy clenched his fists and concentrated. A hoarse grunt erupted from his throat as yet another freakish transformation racked his body. The soiled coverall came apart at the seams as his size and mass increased at an exponential rate. Thick, olive green scales spread across his exposed skin. Webbing formed between his fingers and toes. Bony claws sprouted from his nails. Darkseid, Superman, and the entire gorge seemed to shrink beneath his gaze as his head ascended toward the clouds.
“Holy Moley!” Mary exclaimed. She craned her head back to take in the entire mind-boggling sight. “Now, that’s freaking sweet!”
Jimmy Olsen, helpless cub reporter, was gone. Towering in his place was a colossal turtle-man standing over fifty feet tall. Bulging reptilian eyes sported beady black pupils. Overlapping layers of homy scutes, each the size of parking spaces, armored his mammoth body. Only his flame red hair and freckles rendered him recognizable as he loomed above the startled villains like a prehistoric behemoth.
“You want the power inside me, Darkseid?” Jimmy reached for the smaller-looking New God with his giant claws. “Come and get it!”
4 Jteis COimTHUG.
SITilOE METROPOliS.
lie suburban community of Bakerline was usually a quiet place, comfortably removed from the fast-paced hubbub of the city. Strip malls, supermarkets, and fast-food restaurants served miles of peaceful residential neighborhoods, where the biggest news was generally a bake sale at one of the local churches, or maybe a hotly contested high school football rivalry.
But none of that mattered today as the innocent suburb was laid waste by a titanic battle between two enormous, inhuman figures. Jimmy Olsen, now a gigantic turtle-man, grappled furiously with Darkseid, who had grown to equally Brobdingnagian proportions to confront his former pawn. Banks and hardware stores were smashed to smithereens as the wrestling giants lurched against them. Broken glass and masonry rained down into the streets. Flames erupted from collapsed homes and buildings. Gushers sprayed from fractured hydrants and water lines. Sirens blared above the thunderous din of the battle as ambulances, police cars, and fire tracks raced through the endangered community, trying futilely to cope with the devastation left in the giants’ wake. Abandoned vehicles blocked traffic. Screaming men, women, and children ran frantically through the streets like extras in a Japanese monster movie.
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