Scott followed after Midas cautiously, unwilling to spend any more time as a block of gold, at least on that particular day. In the stairwell he found pieces of the discarded disguise, including a jacket, tie, most of the fake beard, and a pair of glasses. In the jacket pocket was a small folded piece of paper; a list? a timetable? It was written in Greek.

Back at Vincent's compound, Phoenix Talon called Reilly to give him an update.
    "I'm out at Don Vincent's, the League of Nations just attacked here, I don't think there's any survivors."
    "God, they're having a lousy day—did you just say 'no survivors?'"
    "I think so."
    Reilly sighed heavily.
    Phoenix Talon went on, "Silverblood is gone, we're gonna try to track him down. They didn't get him, that's what they were after, that was the point of the attack, capturing Silverblood. It was unsuccessful. Needle is following Kymrik."
    "Okay, how's everybody else doing?"
    "We got here a little late. Scott got turned into gold for a while, but he's back, then he went with Needle on pursuit duty."
    "Okay, keep me informed of what's going on I guess. Do we know which members of this group are in town?"
    "So far, Kymrik and Midas, we know Mind Lazer, we figure Jack Ketch...."
    "And Rue Morgue and Ley Lady," Reilly finished. "All right. What are you guys gonna do now? You two?"
    "We're gonna check out the old TECH base."

    Meanwhile, down in the Blobcave....
    "Y'know, it's getting to the point where I don't like television," Larry remarked.
    "Just now you don't like television? I've not liked television for years."
    "It's these constant reports, the whole 'Day of Fire' thing."
    "There's a new one coming up," Sphinx warned him. "Apparently Silverblood just blew his way out of the Don Vincent mansion, got into a fight with some League of Nations people."
    "You don't suppose that's Don Vincent inside him again the way he was doing before? The very nice old gentleman who smelled like a robot?"
    "Hard to say."
    Larry sighed restlessly, unsatisfied with these noncommittal responses. "So what else can we do?"
    "I'm continuing to look to find out where Ms. Hoagland would go."
    "Do you think they're going to go after her again?"
    "They seemed pretty irate, from what you said, as I recall."
    "Hm. Good point, that. What do you have so far?"
    "The problem is I'm not entirely sure...."
    "She did make a reference to a storm crow, doesn't that tie in with what Scott said Tía Ramirez said?"
    "M-hm." He continued working.
    "So she wouldn't be able to leave town," Larry concluded.
    "Probably not of her own volition," Felix agreed. Mystical harbingers didn't get that option.
    "Which means she's gotta be somewhere. Drawn to battlefields, perhaps? Where have we had battlefields?" Boston was lousy with the things. "But it should be a future battlefield, that's what she should be drawn to.... I don't know," he sighed. "If we were precognitive, this would be easier."
    "If we were precognitive, we never would have gotten caught," Felix pointed out calmly, with which Larry had to agree.
    At the other side of the cave Stephanie had finished the filing and now wore a confused, worried look—not for the first time that day. After a hesitation she went over to the cooler and poured herself a mug of water, then reached into her pocket, pulled out a choker with a green stone on it. She put it in the water.
    "It floats," she murmured, staring at it for a moment. Then she put the stone back in her pocket and turned with sudden decisiveness. "Guys? I've gotta go out to get some stuff and so some things."
    "I'm not entirely sure that's the wisest course of action right now," Felix observed.
    "What are you doing?" Larry asked more directly.
    "I can't tell you. I just have to do it."
    "If you get into costume, we're disowning you," he warned.
    "I'm not going to get into costume," she sighed. "It's the last thing on my mind. I gotta go, though." She left as the phone rang.
    "Hello, Chaos Central, how may I help you?" Larry chirped. "Where should I direct your call? What can I help you with today?"
    "You can direct my call to the translating Greek department, please," Scott told him.
    "Translating Greek department on line two."
    "Yes?" Felix picked up.
    "I just found Midas, or what's left of his disguise. There's what appears to be a timetable that was left behind in the pocket. I don't read Greek."
    "Bring it down. Unless you can tell me the letters?"
    "Shoot; I can't do that. Squiggle, other squiggle...."
    "I thought that might be a problem. Why don't you just come down."
    Scott headed into the sewers, carefully protecting the paper within himself, moving at full speed toward his secret headquarters.

    Thunderbolt and Phoenix Talon roared toward the old chemical factory that had once housed TECH and was now a field of rubble. There were no lights anywhere; Phoenix Talon held his flashlight but didn't turn it on yet while Thunderbolt scanned around for energy sources. Nothing. After some searching the pair found a hole leading down into the rubble pile—where Lucky and Needle had dug out last time the Revolution had been in the neighborhood. Silverblood couldn't turn to gas, but was fairly malleable; it could easily fit down there.
    "We don't know how it's going to regard us, although I guess it would probably be safer to assume that it will see us as enemies."
    "That's always the safer assumption for us," Thunderbolt nodded somberly.
    "We don't really want to find it, we just want to make sure they don't find it. It can stay here for the next ten years."
    "At the moment, it seems capable of taking care of itself."
    "Silverblood?" Talon called for lack of any better idea. The normal night noises paused, then slowly came back. Nothing for it; he turned off the light and entered the tunnel, moving quickly, evasively, and silently the entire way down. At the bottom he paused, listening to the darkness. He moved, flicked the light on and off, moved, flashed the light. In this fashion he made his way deeper into the cavern, eventually finding what must have once been the control room. A small red light blinked slowly on an emergency generator, barely illuminating the room.
    Above, Thunderbolt heard a car approaching and quickly concealed himself behind a rubble pile, unhappily aware of the lack of energy sources for him to draw upon. A door opened and someone got out; he heard a heavy tread and a creak as the car's shocks adjusted, then the door closed. A voice spoke in German.
    "So there is a chance that this miserable piece of metal has ended up here?"
    A second voice replied, although he'd only heard one person leave the car. This one spoke German with a French accent. "There is supposed to be a very good chance of it, assuming that they weren't able to capture it originally."
    "I still feel that my own technology is superior to this."
    "Of course you do; you're German. That's your job. Americans innovate slightly better than you do. How are we going to get down there?"
    A bright light suddenly illuminated the scene.
    "Shut that off," the French voice snapped. "Just turn on your night vision."
    "Well you were bragging about it earlier...."
    "I was hoping that you could see. I can see quite nicely." The two voices circled around a bit. "There, there's an entrance."
    Thunderbolt finally got a look at them; there was a large man in a bulky suit, probably some kind of armor hidden under there, which explained the car's creaking. A scan confirmed that there was a nicely efficient battery incorporated into it. He was wearing a hat that covered the half-face helmet. On his shoulder sat a monkey wearing a very small beret. The large man was probably Blitzkrieg, the One-Man Tank, a low- to mid-level inventor sort. They'd found the passage Phoenix had used.
    "I don't think that I'm going to be able to fit down there," Blitzkrieg observed.
    Rue Morgue sighed and swung around from the hat brim, looking the man in the eye. "We brought you here because you were supposed to be the expert with alien technologies that would help us handle this. You mean to tell me now that you cannot get to where it is?"
    "Don't take that tone with me, monkey!"
    Morgue slapped him. "I'll take whatever tone with you I like. I'll go down there and see if it's there, and if it is down there, you're going to have to find a way to get your metal carcass down that hole!" He paused. "Do you think anyone could have gotten here before us?"
    "Nonsense. With my driving and a good German automobile, there's not a chance."
    Below, Talon had worked his way around the edges of the room, peering cautiously into crannies with brief shines of the flashlight. There, he thought he saw something slither into a corner. He flashed the light there again, trying to hit where it was going instead of where it had been. And then he realized that it was standing directly behind him.
    He moved, dodging even as it lashed out at him, smashing a piece of concrete with a pseudopod. "Look, I don't want to fight! Is there anybody in control? Hablas español?" It was between him and the way out.
    A familiar hologram began forming around it.
    "Don Vincent?"
    "Phoenix?" it said.
    "Yeah. I don't think we were introduced."
    "You have to—help—" It winked out again. Another pseudopod extended, not to strike directly but emitting a beam of focused sonics that shattered more of the concrete behind him as he ducked and rolled.
    "Don Vincent, we're trying to rescue you, the League of Nations is after, um—" He wasn't sure of the correct pronoun, under the circumstances.
    "Need—power—" The hologram continued to flicker.
    Phoenix, unaware of events above, gave Thunderbolt a call.
    Hearing the explosions from below, Rue Morgue took one last swipe at Blitzkrieg. "Good German engineering, hm?" He darted down the whole. "You stay there!"
    Thunderbolt's phone rang. "Yes?" he answered calmly.
    "What!" Blitzkrieg shouted, firing an electrical burst in the direction of the sound. Thunderbolt absorbed the unintended gift of ammunition easily, allowing it to hit him square in the chest.
    Phoenix Talon, of course, heard this. And things had been going so, well, badly. They seemed to have gotten worse. "Paul? Paul, what's going on?!"
    "One second," Thunderbolt replied. "I'm okay up here, Rue Morgue's on his way down, just so you know."
    "This is both good and bad," Talon allowed judiciously.
    "He's en route. I'll just be a moment."
    Phoenix Talon looked around for power sources Silverblood could access and didn't find anything useful; the place had been too thoroughly destroyed, and the emergency generator was on its last leg.
    Thunderbolt continued to draw energy from the battlesuit's stores, sending the power indicator on the visor from bright green to low amber as the man took two staggering steps back.
    "It's Thunderbolt! I always wondered what would happen when Blitzkrieg and Thunderbolt met in battle!" he shouted in German. His feet sank deep with each step due to the weight of the armor. He raised one arm, and something ratcheted up on his shoulder, ripping the suit. That would be a missile.
    Thunderbolt dove out of the way. The targeting systems had been thrown off by the electrical field surrounding him, and it exploded somewhere behind him, sending chunks of concrete and metal flying in all directions.
    Phoenix Talon heard the explosion above. Keeping an eye on the entrance tunnel, he spotted the crouched bipedal figure in the corner, which seemed to be changing size and shape. He popped a flash, caught a glimpse of the grotesque figure of Rue Morgue mid-way through changing into his orangutan form. The beret changed size to fit him, and clothes came with the transformation.
    "Odd, I thought I would be facing a mountain gorilla."
    "A mountain gorilla's dexterity is somewhat inefficient for this," was the unruffled reply as the assassin slapped a plastic explosive charge to the wall and set the timer. "Good-bye, Phoenix Talon."

| Top |