The Dragon Star dropped her head back down and stared at the table top, her hood slipping forward to shadow her face. Sam wasn't sure, but she thought she could see the wet tracks of tears on the dead girl's face.
"Well, they're coming to get you," Conroy said. He slouched in his chair, stroking his chin in thought. "After the initial transmission, I negotiated a bounty and they agreed to send one of their own power cores, providing enough raw energy for me to take you out once I'd built the supergun – Hephaestus' design, I'm guessing, which you've all forgotten even exists."
Conroy paused and allowed himself a chuckle. He glanced at Bluebell and a murmur rippled around the room. Conroy raised an eyebrow and continued.
"Oh, I don't blame you. You got Hephaestus to design a weapon that could be used against other superheroes. That kind of thing is too dangerous to have lying around, even locked in the Citadel of Wonders. So it was never built and all memory of it erased. All you were left with was the knowledge that there was important information entrusted to a series of individuals. What that knowledge was, you'd forgotten."
Linear sighed dramatically and shook his head. The other superheroes remained silent. Conroy turned back to Aurora. "After assembling your weapon with the Thuban power core integrated, I was to hold the Dragon Star's body until they arrived to collect."
Aurora drummed his fingers on the table, then paused, and fixed Conroy with a look.
"But…?"
Conroy smiled again. "But is right. As your friend here said, the Thuban expand by absorbing civilizations they come into contact with. The Earth is no different. Sure, they're coming to collect their outlaw, but sure as hell they'll collect the other seven billion people on the planet while they're dropping by."
Conroy pointed at the black memory cube from SMART. "After months of regular communication, Blackbird intercepted the other transmissions, the ones routed through your satellite system that you never received. SMART, I presume?"
"Not SMART." The Dragon Star turned her hood to him, and reached into the folds of her cloak. She removed a small plastic disk, two-inches square. The metal spindle embedded in the center glinted as she held it up. "Me. I received the transmissions, but fearing for my freedom I hid this from my friends. I feared they would not understand my position. I am the very thing the Seven Wonders exist to fight, a criminal."
Aurora shook his head. "You underestimate us, Dragon Star. We uphold natural justice, a universal tenet." He raised a gloved hand and gestured at Paragon. "But Paragon is correct − SMART was not a part of our computer system, it was the computer system. I'm afraid, Dragon Star, that the messages you received were not only read by me, but were also received by SMART. Here we failed – Hephaestus' skill was too fine. He created an infinitely logical machine intelligence with a mind and will of its own. Seeing a traitor in our midst, it did what it was designed to do – protect the Earth, at any cost. I fear SMART saw first the Justiciar, then ourselves, as the primary threat, one that had to be eliminated in order for the Thuban menace to be neutralized."
The room was silent after that for some time, each person around the table lost in their own thoughts. The Seven Wonders were disintegrating just as the world faced one of its greatest threats.
Joe cleared his throat, and had the attention of the whole room. He nervously adjusted his tie and rubbed the top of his closely shaved head.
"So, what are we waiting for?"
Sam looked at him, shaking her head in confusion. Linear buzzed on his chair. The others sat and stared. After a few more seconds, Joe tapped his fingers on the shiny table top, leaving big smeary fingerprints.
"The Cowl built a weapon specifically designed to take out superheroes. The Thuban have sent the power supply so we know it works against their own kind."
The detective looked around the room, waiting for the penny to drop. Conroy sat back in his chair, a broad smile across his face.
"So goes the theory," he said.
Joe made to move from the table, then sank back into his chair.
"So let's go get the power core and shoot some aliens."
The Apollo Fortress was, quite literally, a smaller version of the Citadel of Wonders. Same layout, same facilities, all just a little reduced. Control One, with its conference table and observation windows. A Nuclear Forge, with yard-thick walls half the thickness of the furnace's cover itself. Sleeping quarters that were never occupied. An infirmary.
A morgue.
The room was lit in clinical blue, as if the choice of lighting somehow reinforced the chilled temperature within. Since the Apollo Fortress had been built, the morgue facilities had never been used. And now it was doubling as an evidence locker. Exhibit A lay on the slab, his skin washed a flat white by the blue lighting, a sheer plastic sheet draped over his body from head to toe.
Tony Prosdocimi, electrocuted by SMART. The first deliberate killing of the Seven Wonders in the team's history. His death, the pivot on which the future of the Seven Wonders, of San Ventura, of the world, perhaps, turned.
The morgue was quiet and cold, much like Tony's body. The gentle hum of refrigeration was amplified a little by the general hum of the moonbase's life-support system. While the latter wasn't of much use to Tony, not anymore, someone would have to perform an autopsy at some point, and it was easier to slice into a cadaver that wasn't a flashfrozen slab of meat.
The air moved. A light on a console flashed green as the environmental systems compensated. Balance restored, the morgue lay still.
A rustle of plastic, a tug at the sheet covering Tony's body, a nudge at the table on which he lay, a tap reverberating around the flat, hard walls.
The light flashed green and the air moved again. But this time, balance was not restored. The green light was joined by an orange light: something wrong, something beyond the control of the automated systems. An alert sounded, a faint ping echoing in the morgue quietly, almost as if it were impolite to disturb the sleep of the dead. The alarm sounded again, and apparently satisfied that all attempts at gaining the attention of the morgue technicians – who weren't there, who never had been there – had been made, fell silent. The orange light remained.
The air moved with more force, like someone rushing around the room, looking for something, in a hurry. The movement rattled the table and swirled the heavy condensed mist on the floor up into the air. The mist spiraled clockwise and anticlockwise as it was drawn through the currents of air, caught in the wake of the hurried actions of… nothing.
The table rattled and there was a tap again, and the air rushed to fill space which had been occupied a second before with a faint pop.
The plastic sheet which had covered the body of Tony Prosdocimi sank several inches, flattening itself against the sucking coldness of the morgue slab. The orange light went out and the green light came on.
The morgue was quiet, the air still, and Tony's body was gone.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
An infinity of light, and infinite color. Tony closed his eyes against the endless void and screamed forever.
When forever came to an end and his scream faded out across the universe, he stopped, and waited, not breathing because he did not breathe anymore, not moving because there was nothing for him to move. His eyes − what he thought, believed were his eyes, what felt like his eyes − were screwed tightly shut. All around him, the voices murmured, so many that they were an indefinable rush of white noise. For a hundred thousand million years the voices increased in volume until Tony could take it no longer. He opened his eyes − what he thought, believed were his eyes, what felt like his eyes − and looked at the world around him.
There was no form, no shape, just… an awareness of space. Tony knew that he really had no senses, no form or substance that could perceive form or substance. But he retained an awareness of his being, his mind attempting to map his twenty-three years of body memory onto the curve of space-time, the ultimate phantom limb syndrome. Finally, Tony formed himself, his bein
g, his existence, into a single coherent thought.
So, this is what it's like to be dead?
As soon as he thought it, the voices ceased their murmur and began shouting. Infinite sound, a three-dimensional weight, crushing Tony to a singularity. He cried out again, and pushed at the void. His arms stretched out for light years in either direction, sweeping the sound away, pushing the void to the ends of the universe, clearing a space for his own formless, non-existent existence. He closed his eyes.
Good.
The thought was not his. In his mind, his eyes opened, he spun around, searching for the hidden presence. He ran, looking under things, behind things, opening doors, drawing curtains, racing up stairs. He ran across oceans and through cities. He was not alone.
We are the Thuban. You are the Thuban.
Tony stopped, and drew deep, calm, non-existent breaths. He closed his imaginary eyes and opened them again to look out at the void of no particular color that wasn't real. His mind told him that he was swimming upwards, being pulled, drawn by an invisible force to meet his new friends. No, not friends. His new masters.
Life exists in many forms. The man called Tony was but one. But he was nothing, his existence was merely infinity divided by zero. So one phase of existence ends, so the next begins.
Tony understood. Calmer now, he could gather his thoughts. Gather himself. He was dead. He remembered.
remembered the summer sun and the million windows of the city catching it and throwing the rays up to him like spotlights as he flew low over the plaza picking up the girl and dropping her and letting the wind catch his cloak and the cowl and the power shimmering beneath his skin and infusing his mind and he was the most powerful man on the world and it was his for the taking and nobody could stop him and
Tony shook his head, then jerked as the memory of pain exploded brilliantly inside him.
Nobody could stop him, except the Seven Wonders. The Seven Wonders killed him. They broke the rules, and they killed him. He had left the world, that wonderful, shining, sun-soaked world.
The Seven Wonders killed him. The Seven Wonders killed me.
Tony wept for eternity, and then when eternity ended the Thuban spoke again.
Do not lament the passing of an age. Our eyes are now turned to the Earth. The Earth will be welcomed to the Thuban. Through you, we will bring them to the Next Age.
Tony spoke. He found it was just the same as speaking when he was alive, except he had no larynx and no voice, and his words made no sound, and there was no air to carry the sound that wasn't there.
"Why have you chosen me?"
The void rippled, and the infinite opaque kaleidoscope shifted. Was this Thuban laughter? The sound of the group consciousness of the gestalt gasping at the stupidity of the question?
We have chosen you because you are our choice. You are powerful, a superman among your kind. You have the ability and the will to see to this new task. That you were sent to us now is fortuitous. Nothing in the universe happens by chance.
Tony felt a flush of pride. He was special, he was powerful. They knew it, they said so. This was… justification. An elucidation of truth, and confirmation that he had a purpose and that his actions had a meaning.
Tony smiled to himself with a mouth that was not even yet a thoughtform. Not even death could stop him. Here he was, still in existence, freed from the limitations of humanity, in communion with the powers of the universe, chosen by them to be their tool on the Earth. Tony smiled again and his silent laugh echoed without sound down the corridors of space-time.
"What is my task?"
The void rippled again. A thousand million voices whispered into his imaginary ears at once, answering his query.
You must collect our power core, sent to the Earth as part of our earlier, illogical, disagreeable plan. You must return the fugitive to us, as our earlier, illogical, disagreeable agent has failed us. You must destroy the superhumans who protect the world. You will give us your life and that of all your kin. Together you will help the Thuban transcend humanity and join the glory of the light in the Next Age.
"How do I do this? I'm dead. The Seven Wonders killed me."
Your life was merely one state of being. We can fashion another for you. We have already claimed your physical form and we will use this as the template for something new. You shall return to the world with the meteor shower. You will rain down upon the city with a might that no human has yet seen. There are none who will be able to prevent this.
Tony spun on his axis, imagining his arms outstretched as he flew on the wind, exhilarated and bewitched and filled with a joy and happiness that belonged only to the insane. But Tony had read once, in his old life, that if you thought you were mad, you probably weren't. Tony wasn't mad. He never thought he was. He was happy. He was an angel sent from above, a specter of vengeance and justice, a power beyond the pathetic abilities of the Seven Wonders. The Thuban would turn his old body into something new. He would be a god − a living god, the embodiment of light and good and all that is right. Converting humanity to the Thuban was not punishment, it was reward.
And even as he thought it, the Thuban looked into his mind and saw the image there. Crowned and winged, smiling beneficently over the spires of San Ventura with a shadowed face.
As you wish. It is time for you to return to the world and do our work. We are transecting the space between worlds to reach the Earth, but you will be there to prepare for our arrival. Go to your task.
Tony screamed. The mental projection of his old form was suddenly as heavy as a planet, as a solar system, as a galaxy. He flexed his arms to pull against the weight, and found he had arms again. He pushed upwards, finding feet and legs and a torso and launching himself against the void. Then the infinitely open and light space split in front of him and folded in on itself, becoming a tiny, sticky cell filled with darkness. He turned again, punching and kicking at the ever-decreasing sphere which threatened to crush him. The walls of the void closed in and adhered themselves to him, a brilliant plastic envelope of fire and pain. Tony screamed again, but the taut substance would not let him open his mouth.
Eventually he opened his eyes. It was night, and the ground was wet and sharp. He felt outwards with one hand, his new-old body registering the textures and the temperature and the form.
He stood up on the damp grass under the street light, which dimmed the instant he looked at it. Around his feet, the dull dark of the grass took a monochromatic tone as his shadow, thrown from a sun that did not exist in this plane of being, spilled downwards and outwards from him.
Tony smiled, and looking up, regarded the night sky above his head. Already the first few slivers of the oncoming storm of solar flotsam and jetsam were scratching at the Earth's atmosphere, leaving white marks that faded in a second.
Tony took a breath, and found he did not need the oxygen. The night stretched out around him, and soon the grass and the street light and the small block between a football field and a grandstand in which he stood grew to an inky black.
Power. The Thuban had looked into his mind and saw his new selfimage, and had crafted the form perfectly. An angel of light and glory, bringing new wonder to the world.
The Living Dark that had once been Tony Prosdocimi lifted from the wet grass and flew into space.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
They flew in fast and low, not that up or down had any meaning in the vacuum of space. Above/below them an ocean of rock and dust swept downwards/upwards, its direction shaped by the Earth's magnetosphere as the planet gently tugged what would become the annual Draconid meteor shower into its fateful orbit.
Linear, protected in space by the Slipstream and holding his mask in one hand, pirouetted, and Sam gasped. Enclosed in an almost undetectable energy shield tethered to the Dragon Star's powerstaff, she lay on her back/on her front and absorbed the sights offered to her. Linear came to within touching distance of the detective, winked at her, then curved back above them all before repointi
ng towards the Earth. Behind him was nothing but open space, but without the filtering, obscuring atmosphere of the Earth − and the air pollution of San Ventura − it was a dazzling hemisphere of lights, so bright and dense that they left Sam's vision dotted with purple smears. She blinked, and turned like a swimmer, risking another glance at their destination.
The Earth. It was bright, too bright to look at directly, like looking at the sun on a clear day. If she brought her fingers up to her eyes, the energy envelope around her was thick enough to shade some of the glare, and peeking between her fingers she could, after a moment to let her eyes adjust to the light, just make out North America. There were no clouds over the West Coast at all. It was another beautiful day in California.
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