Blood Sisters

The Terrible Trio stepped out into a dimly lit room deep under the mountain. The Dead Man walked over to the wall to a power box and pulled the lever down. Florescent lights high above flickered on one at a time. All around them, covered in thin nylon tarps were the old machines of Dr. Daedalus. “Finally” Victor said. With Michaela's strong arms and The Silhouette's shadowy tentacles he had the equipment he needed moved into place. Then, one machine at a time he connected cables and powered them up. The room began to fill with a low-frequency hum as the old equipment woke from their long sleep.

Victor was like a kid at Christmas “Ahh, my dear Dark Lady”. He gave her a squeeze and a fond look. “I have been waiting a long time for today”. She gave him a forced smile, he still made her uncomfortable. Victor noticed this and spoke quietly to her in Spanish “Don't worry, once this is over, we can take some time together, Candelaria. I only kill when I must, please believe that” The Silhouette looked straight at him with her moonlight eyes “Don't feed Allison Ashton to that monster. If Miss Liberty dies today, I will not be with you tomorrow”. Victor nodded in understanding. Michaela looked over at the pair suspiciously. The vampire started to pace, anticipating her kill.

Victor then busied himself with syncing up the machines. Looking over their operation from the master control panel he set up. He gave a frown and tapped his foot “not enough power... I need more power”. From up above the sounds of the battle echoed down through several floors. He got an idea. “Silhouette, please have one of your tendrils move that machine over here” he pointed as he asked.

The Midnight Mistress complied, and Victor again hooked up cables. He started to make some quick modifications. Above, a loud pounding was heard. “Such is the folly of the Gods” Victor quoted.

Several minutes passed. As the machines heated up the room started to get uncomfortably warm. Victor took a minute to find the ventilation system and the sound of large fans above joined with the loud humming below. The room began to sound like a factory, filled with the noise of metal and power. The Dead Man double checked his settings and the status displays. Then he looked over at his dark lover “let's go get her”. With a long last look of silent warning at Victor, The Silhouette reached out her hand and they dropped into her shadow.

***

Goldstar stood his ground as the revenant charged him. He could sense all the signals that the agents were transmitting to the synthoid zombies but they were a tangle, and he did not have time to figure out which one was controlling the one about to hit him. Raising his hands in front of himself, Goldstar charged up a massive energy wave. His formidable force-field dimmed as he drew on more and more of his energy reserves. A crackling blast that heated the air in the room pulsed out of Goldstar's hands. It burned right through the revenant, which disintegrated into ash, then kept right on going until in melted through all sixteen inches of the armored wall, destroying some of the electrical conduits that fed power into the control room. Half of the computers and all the lights in the room went dark. Goldstar, who's force-field now lit the room went down on one knee as he recovered from the revenants blow, and the huge expenditure of energy he used to destroy it.

As the shining man of the seventies stood back up, many of the technicians in the room surrendered. The agents who were no longer controlling a revenant stood and leveled their weapons at Goldstar. He ignored them and simply raised his hands. Thin rays of energy shot from his fingers striking each of the agents, the ones pointing guns, then the ones controlling synthoids. One by one they all grunted and slumped as Goldstar's restrained energies shocked them into unconsciousness.

Jenny appeared above the mountain, a gold orb rising in the sky, her white body-suit was still smoldering from the damage done by her force-field, and she was in a lot of pain. Miracle heard a loud whop-whop-whop above her and saw an Army helicopter that had been patrolling above the prison below. Miracle managed a smile. She waited until her ascent into the sky slowed to a manageable speed, then did a quick port to below the copter and grabbed hold of its landing struts. Jenny hung there for several long moments as she caught her breath and shook off the blow that almost finished her. “Whew” she whistled.

Below, in the ground floor of the R&D facility Agent David cursed. The remaining revenants were now rogue as their handlers lost control. He reached into his suit and pulled out his PDA, quickly tapping in a code so he could get at least one under control. He sent it after 1-8-7.

Cricket suddenly realized that she was on her own. The girl was still struggling in a pile of bloodsisters, Broadsword and Wildfire were each getting their ass kicked by a revenant, and the last one was heading right for her. To top it off, Allison and Jen had disappeared and Goldstar was nowhere to be found. Her resolve wavered and she felt a panic start to grip her. There was a loud clank behind her and Cricket looked towards the huge open doors which were slowly closing, locking her in the mountain. “No!” she cried, her heart sinking.

***

Miss Liberty fell on her knees, her strength was ebbing out of her like water from a burst dam and waves of nausea were crashing through her. She looked up and saw The Silhouette and The Dead Man standing over her. Allison felt heavy, her own body becoming too much to lift. “What... what are you doing Davos?” she said. The Dead Man, bent down closer to her and said “I have enhanced the function of your power bracers, Miss Liberty. They are now drawing your bio-mutant energy out of you, faster then you can generate it.” “I have to get you plugged in over here, before they overload, if you don't mind.” She glared at him.

Like a viper Michaela was on Allison, her claws raked across her chest, tearing through Allison's beta-cloth easily. Blood splattered from Miss Liberty, she groaned as she fell over on her side and clenched at her chest. It was pain like she had never felt before. Allison looked at her hand, covered in blood. She had never bled before from a wound.

Victor snapped at Michaela. “Not yet! We still need her dammit!” Silhouette pulled the vampiress off of Miss Liberty, wrapping several shadow tentacles around her. “RELEASE ME!” Michaela spat at The Silhouette. The Dead Man cursed “Michaela, you will control yourself or I swear, you will not get your vengeance today”. The vampire snarled at Victor and The Silhouette. “Very well, but know that you are both dead. When this is done, I will feast on your marrow”. The Dead Man smirked “you need to find some new lines, Michaela. Those are getting old”. He looked at The Silhouette “let her go, we have work to do”. The Dark Lady looked scornfully at the vampiress, but did as Victor bid. Michaela growled at Allison, but kept her distance.

The Dead Man hoisted Miss Liberty up and carried her over to the machine he had modified earlier, strapping her down and wrapping several bands of electrodes around her body. He spoke quietly to her “Allison, it is somewhat ironic, but I need to use you as the power source for the machines behind me”. He whispered to her “the same machines that are going to rid you, and every New Human on this Earth of our powers forever”.

Miss Liberty moaned, she felt sick and the pain from her wound was like fire on her chest. “Victor... please, my daughter... my family...” the sound of battle above still thundered down into the room. Davos said “It will all be over soon, Allison.” Victor looked over at The Silhouette and gestured to a machine with a large nine foot steel band, like a huge ring resting vertical on the floor “Stand there and open a door into shadow”. With a puzzled look, Silhouette did as he asked. Davos went to his master control panel, throwing a switch. Miss Liberty yelled in pain as bio-mutant energy was pulled out of her through her bracers, which started to glow hot. The large machine before the Silhouette flared to life, and she felt her own essence flowing into the inky black rift forming in its ring. “Muerte! What are you doing?!” The Silhouette cried in alarm.“Patience, Candelaria. Trust me.” The Dark Lady tried to pull back, tried to close the growing vortex into shadow, but she was caught as if in a current, swept along out of control. Michaela growled in alarm, snarling at Davos “What is this, Dead Man?!”

***

As the massive doors were nearly closed, North Star skated in the room, a shower of ice spreading out in front of her as she skid to a stop. She looked over at Cricket then quickly scanned the rest of the room. Wildfire was in a smoking heap unconscious against the wall, one of his arms hanging at an unnatural angle, A revenant looming over him. Broadsword was barely standing, his steel flesh taking a pounding from another revenant, he saw North Star and called out “Winter...” but before he could finish his statement the revenant on him got in a blow into his abdomen. Broadsword's gasped for air as his diaphragm spasmed. His heavy metal body crashed across the floor and he hit the wall with a sickening clang. His head dropped against his body and he slid to the floor.

The revenant controlled by David reached Cricket and grabbed a hold of the girl, pulling her from the crowd of bloodsisters. Cricket struggled against the gray flesh of the synthoid, but it was stronger then her. She got a hand free and punched it in the face, tearing open its skin. Sickly green energy flowed out. The revenant clutched Cricket around the neck with a grip of steel. The girl struggled for breath. The synthoid drew back a fist and punched Cricket in the head once, twice... Crickets neck snapped back violently and her vision blackened. The agent had the revenant carry the semi-conscious girl towards a device that looked like a large x-ray machine, table and all. Agent David moved over to meet it.

North Star slid into action, there was a revenant bearing down on Broadsword to finish the job. She poured a deluge of water over it and froze it in thick ice. “That won't hold it for long” she muttered. Winter then sent a flow of water at the revenant carrying Cricket, freezing its feet to the floor.

It was a desperate move, but all she could do was buy time and hope. Looking over her shoulder she saw the remaining bloodsister synthoid's coming at her, she sprayed out a wave towards them and froze it into an ice wall, catching some of the bloodsisters within it. “Where the hell is everybody?!” she yelled. Winter paled as she saw the revenant that had been pounding Wildfire start towards her.

***

Allison was moaning, fighting to keep conscious. The deep rends in her flesh from Michaela's claws burned. Worse, whatever The Dead Man had her strapped to that was powering his mad devices felt like it was ripping her guts out with a barbed wire net. The scalding heat from the bracers had overcome the ability of beta-cloth under them to insulate, and Allison's wrists started to burn.

The Silhouette was clenching her teeth, trying to fight against the machine that was tearing out her own energies, opening an ever deeper, ever wider gap into the shadows. Michaela had started towards Davos, but stopped, looking at Miss Liberty and The Silhouette struggling and in pain. She smiled wickedly “I underestimated you Dead Man. This torture is delightful”. Davos ignored her and kept working Deed's machines from the master control panel “Muerte, please! Stop this!” Candelaria pleaded in Spanish. Davos called back “It's going to be okay, stop fighting it, I promise you will be fine, just hang on, keep that shadow door open”. She scowled “you should have told me, bastardo!”

Victor completed his adjustments, then turned around to watch his plan unfold. He paced and smiled. His vanity overcame his better judgment and he began speaking, raising his voice to be heard over the cacophony around him. “You know, I always admired Aristotle.” he smiled, he had been waiting a long time for this. “Aristotle was not a scientist, he was a man of reason. He thought about the world he observed and surmised much about the nature of things that, while not scientifically accurate per se still established many essentially correct paradigms that shaped much of the science that followed him.” Silhouette, still struggling, looked at Davos like he had gone mad. He continued unabated “To that end, while I am not a scientist, I have had more then a century to observe and think about things, and what a century it was, the scientific advances have been logarithmic. I have found again and again that my guesses about the nature of the universe have been largely confirmed by those that do have the mathematical and scientific training as time has passed.”

Allison turned her head weakly towards The Dead Man. “Are you really going to do this?” Victor smiled “Yes”. She strained against her bonds “Dead Man, you're no Aristotle, your just a madman”. Liberty gritted her teeth against the pain. Suddenly there was a loud crash from far above, Victor looked up with satisfaction “Perhaps, Allison. I guess we'll see”. Looking back down at her, then glancing at the console readouts, He continued. “I was not able to replicate these devices that William Deeds built, but I can use what I do understand about them to implement new applications for his technology.” Davos gestured around him to illustrate the point. “Deeds himself was not a trained scientist, he did not understand how these machines he built worked, just that they did. All he ever used them for really was failed experiments in time travel, and to transport the All Stars across the globe”. Victor shook his head at some private memory, then said loudly “honestly, I don't know how these devices work either, but I do know -what- they do”. Michaela stepped over to Allison, savoring her discomfort and looming despair. She dipped her fingers into the wounds she had made in her chest, prompting a yelp from Miss Liberty. The vampire licked Allison's blood from her fingers.

The Dead Man droned on “As Silhouette's ability as shown us, there are other dimensions that can interact with our universe”. He smiled coldly as the ring containing the rift to shadow whined louder as its power ramped up. Allison wailed as more energy was pulled from her. “Imagine for a moment that we were just two dimensional beings, there would be no up that we could sense. However, it is here, in the same universe, effecting all the matter and energy that exists in our two-dimensional world. That is, there might be something above us, who's existence, or who's mass we could only detect indirectly by how it effects the space-time we can observe”. Miss Liberty moaned in pain, she was drenched in sweat, fading in and out as she fought to stay conscious.

“Stay with me Allison, you don't want to miss this” Victor was the side of her table, and he patted her cheek. The noise from the battle above began to fade. Victor glanced up, then over at his control panel. Satisfied he continued his lecture. “It is the same for our existence as three dimensional beings. We cannot detect most of the mass that must be in our universe, when we add up all the mass in the universe that we can observe, it is not enough to create the gravity needed to hold our universe together. The science of the day describes this phenomena as dark matter. The Silhouette is able to show us exactly what dark matter might be; it is shadow-stuff”. He smiled. “Victor... just shut the hell up!” Allison moaned. Her husband was a physicist, this was getting absurd. She didn't understand him either.

The ring machine was vibrating loudly, a deep resonance issuing from it like a huge tuning fork. Candelaria dropped to her knees, wincing in pain, trying vainly to pull herself away from the tendrils that had formed, chaining her to the portal. Victor continued “In other words, the shadow world that The Silhouette can access, is not a different universe, but rather it is a part of this universe that is above us and thus we cannot observe it with our three-dimensional perceptions”. The Silhouette spat “Victor!” she looked over at her apologetically “soon”. He turned back to Allison.

Victor started to pace as he spoke “I believe that when a shadow falls on matter, the mass of the shadow is essentially undetectable as its mass for all practical purposes becomes part of the mass of the object on which the shadow falls. However, if a shadow falls on nothing if you will, say like in the emptiness of deep space, its mass can be detected independently, but indirectly in the way that its mass effects the space-time we observe. Obviously the shadow footprint of a small object like a person, is infinitely smaller then the shadow footprint of say, a galaxy, but the shadow of a galaxy falls largely in empty space... and we detect the mass of this shadow as dark matter.” He cocked his head, as if having a new thought “put another way, a shadow is always there, or at least the effect of its mass is, its just that we can only see whats not there, since it would be transparent to photons... hm” he muttered to himself “no EM interaction, shadow only normally interacts with gravity... yes”. He glanced over at Candelaria “normally”.

Allison gritted her teeth and shot a fiery look at Davos, her pain reviving her. “I don't care what your doing, Victor, get on with it, I am sick of hearing your voice”. Allison strained against her restraints, glaring at him, and at Michaela who was giving her a ghoulish grin. Allison winced, the beta-cloth under her bracers was smoldering now, and she could feel her wrists getting seared.

Victor nodded “wait, Miss Liberty, we are getting to the good part” he smiled. Allison rolled her eyes, The Silhouette stared daggers at her lover. “As we have seen” he gestured at The Dark Lady “the distance traveled in the shadow dimension does not correlate with distance in regular space-time, Silhouette can take what seems to be only a few steps and travel miles of distance before stepping out of another shadow. To that end, shadow must not follow the normal curvature of space-time, even though its mass creates curvature, you can bypass space-time curvature by entering it, finding a straight line between any two points. Further, it seems shadow connects everyone, independent of distance, because everyone casts a shadow”. He smiled a shark smile, speaking low so only Allison would hear “Which is exactly what I need, because it is through these connections to shadow that I intend to draw out all the bio-mutant energy, just like yours Allison, leaving you all powerless.”

The rift machine flared now, and tendrils of darkness started to spread out into the room, Michaela was enraptured by the shadow, feeling the power flowing around her. Allison started to glow with the bio-energy flowing from her. She gritted her teeth against the pain, pitting her remaining strength against the bonds at her wrists. The Silhouette was bowed low, her head bobbing as she began to fade.

Victor leaned in closer to Allison as he continued “You know, you are likely going to survive this, and the world will need to know what happened. Only you will know the answer, so make sure your hearing me. Don't worry if you don't get it, your husband will, just remember” Allison ignored him, fighting to get free. He spoke to her as quietly as he could, just over the machines that roared around them. “String theory tells us that there should be many more dimensions, which as I have said are part of this universe in ways that we cannot necessarily measure directly, but effect the universe as a whole just as any other aspect of it. Like shadow, I suspect what we call bio-mutant energy is also a part of the universe that for reasons I have yet to fathom we have only recently started to interact with.” The Dead Man took a moment to glace around, everything seemed to be functioning as planned. There was no noise from far above. He continued “Nearly everything we can observe about New Human powers does not make sense within the physics of the universe that we know, it is this bio-mutant energy flowing from its dimension into ours that allows these things to happen, once the process we are beginning here with this device draws enough bio-mutant energy into shadow, the process should reach a point where it will self-perpetuate, bio-energy will enter the world, only to be drawn immediately into shadow” Allison wailed and turned her face towards The Dead Man, sweat running down her hot skin “Fine, so what! Is this how your going to get rid of New Human abilities? Your one too, Davos! If you lose your powers, you'll die!”

Michaela looked at the Dead Man, suddenly suspicious. Victor glanced at Michaela, then continued to speak to Allison “Yes I will grow old and die like everything else. To be honest, immortality is not all you might think, when the time comes, I welcome my death. It is a small price to pay in order to save Mankind as we know it”. Allison was shocked “WHAT?!”

Victor smiled and spoke directly into Allison's ear, his breath brushing her skin. She cringed. “Have you noticed that there are no trees, or bacteria, or mammals with powers? There are no flowers wearing spandex suits battling the forces of evil. No super-dolphins or super-chimps either, so it is not just a question of intelligence. Therefore it must be a function of natural selection. The abilities that New Humans display have been increasing in power so long as we have been keeping track, at first there was no betas, then there was the first gamma... and now, since about 1975, starting with you, Allison; we have been seeing omegas. Every generation has more and more people that display powers. That genotype, our genotype, will eventually be the dominant genotype, and the other strains will become extinct, I don't want this to come to pass, I don't wish humanity as we know it to become extinct, so as you can see, I am saving the world.” Victor heard a loud tone start to beep from his console. He sighed “Finally” he looked around him at the darkness, churning all around them like a black hole, sucking in bio-mutant energy through Miss Liberty. “Okay folks, here we go”. He pulled out his PDA and pressed a button, then grabbed the table Miss Liberty was restrained on as he braced himself for the inevitable.