Post edited 9:11 am – October 14, 2009 by Bucky
Post edited 9:12 am – October 14, 2009 by Bucky

Colin Crenshaw awoke with a start.  His head was swimming and his body ached from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.  He remembered falling from his balcony, powerless, and the doctor (or was it scientist, or superhero?) who had come to his rescue.  He also remembered something about nanotechnology and things coming out silver for a while.  As he ran a hand over the inside of his left elbow, he felt gauze and tape that covered the injection site.

Damn if that needle was bigger than it needed to be.

Although he was sore, he had to admit that he felt and, at least from what he could see, looked better than he should have.  He knew that fall should have killed him and he was indebted to this other man for saving his life.  As he rolled to his side and flipped his legs over the side of the small bed, he scanned the tiny room for any sign of his miracle doctor.  He could see that the space which he was resting in was not meant to be a recovery room, but what could have been done to make it work as such had been done with great care.

I'm really going to have to thank this guy – once I find him.

Colin called out in a horse whisper, his throat raw.

“Hello?  Hello, are you there?  I'm awake and feeling much better-”

Colin liked this guy.  Even though he seemed a little jittery and flighty, he also seemed very genuine and hearing bad news come out of his mouth was much easier to take than ususal.

“Well, if Prestige and the other heroes are handling the big problem, there's no need for us to try and jump in.  At this point, we'd really only be in the way.”

Colin took a few steps around the room, stretching his back and legs.  He felt much better than he originally had thought and was glad for it.  Perhaps this guy would make a good partner, at least until he got his powers back.

“Okay, first thing we need to do is find Dr. Colossus.  He has my back-up suit, jet pack, and ray gun.”

Colin could see that Spencer looked a little confused and did his best to fill him in.

“About a year ago, I faced a villain named Dead Red who had built a weapon capable of stealing a person's powers.  Colossus cobbled together the weapons I needed to take him down and set things back to normal.  I told the Doctor, who is actually more of a scientist now that I think about it, to hold onto them in case I ever needed them again.  Well it sure looks to me like I need them again.”

Colin walked over to the good doctor and patted him on the shoulder, casting him a smile and a wink.

“Looks like you and me are going to be working together–at least for a little bit.  You ready for this, ready to hang with Solace's favorite son and play with the big boys?”

Without waiting, he began to gather his belongings together and put the rest of his clothes back on.

“Next we need to head back to my place and see if we can find any signs of what caused my sudden power loss.  I can only hope that this isn't Dead Red again.  I barely got the better of him the last time we met, and who knows how much more power and how many more followers he's gained since then.”

Colin laughed and looked toward Spenser.

“Don't you just love being a superhero?”

Colin frowned a bit.  He could see that Spencer was feeling a bit nervous, and nervous got you killed – or even worse –  in this game.

“Hey man, settle down.  Everything's going to be fine.  We just need to split up and start looking around for anything that seems out of place.  Do you have any kind of sensory powers?”

As he made his way around the main area of his apartment, Colin began to retrace the last few moments of his day before the fall from the balcony.  What had been different?  What element was out of place?  Was there something that didn't belong?

He walked over to his dining room table and pushed aside the book his agent had given him as a birthday present in order to get to his cellphone underneath.  As he punched in the numbers for Dr. Colossus, he leaned toward the main room and called back to Spencer.

“You find anything yet?  Oh, and we really should call each other by our code names in the field.  I would hate for either of us to put our private lives at stake because we were being careless.  What should I call you anyway?”

Colin balked for a moment and then took a few deep breaths-counted to ten.  Feeling his way around the kitchen, he managed to find the small flashlight he kept in the utility drawer.  Turning it on, he made his way in the dim light to the closet that held the circuit breaker for his apartment.

“Hold on a minute, I'm going to see if we can flip this back on.”

Opening the box, he found the main breaker was flipped and went about setting it again.  With a flash, all the power in the apartment came back on, leaving Spencer to watch the computer boot up.

“Okay man, I think we're good here, let's see if we can figure out what happened.”

Colin made his way back into the office and forced a small laugh.

“I see you saw the underwear ads that I've been looking through.  A local designer, Mitch Jennings, is trying to get Furystar to model his new summer line.  I just can't seem to decide which one to agree to, so I figured I set the screen saver to cycle through some choices, kind of have it going in the background, see if anything suited my fancy.  Anyway, that reaction my computer had to you touching it was pretty unusual, so I'm going to take a look and see if anything appears out of place.”

Colin pulled the case out from underneath the koa wood desk and unhooked the aluminum side panel, leaving the system running, while at the same time looking around inside with the flashlight.

“What in the hell-”

He reached into the case and pulled out a small grey organic-looking sphere-about the size of a golf ball.  It had been stuck to the inside of his computer with some kind of tacky substance that it was even now releasing as it pulsed visibly in his hand.

“-it this?”

It was then that his cellphone rang with a loud chirp, cutting through the silence, making both men jump a little.  Colin reached into his pocket with his free hand, flipping the phone open, answering it with a gruff hello.

“What?  Okay.  I'll be there as soon as I can.  I'll be bringing Doctor Spectrum with me as well.  Who is he?  It doesn't matter-if I vouch for him, that's more than enough, right?  Call me back if anything changes.  Right.”

Colin hung up the cell and cast a dark glance toward Spencer.  The other man asked who it was, what had happened.

“That was Icarus, a fellow hero and good friend of mine.  It seems that I'm not the only one in Solace suffering from a case of massive power failure.  Like me, he knew the first place to head was to see Dr. Colossus, maybe get a heads-up on just the heck is going on.  He's there at the lab now and figured he should call me before alerting the police.”

Spencer tilted his head to one side and frowned.

“Why is that?”

Colin stood up with the strange organic sphere in his hand and held it out toward the other man.

“Because he found several more of these, all of my back-up equipment is gone, and Dr. Colossus is dead.”

Post edited 7:16 am – November 3, 2009 by Bucky
Post edited 7:18 am – November 3, 2009 by Bucky
Post edited 1:20 pm – November 3, 2009 by Bucky

Colin looked at Spencer sideways and frowned.

“For a doctor-a man of science and modern medicine-you do some alarmingly stupid things.  No offense.”

Pushing past the other man, Colin made his way back into his bedroom, opening the closet and pulling out a few items.  Within a minute or two, he was back out in the main room, dressed in a pair of dark slacks, t-shirt, leather jacket and combat boots.

“Since I can't call my costume due to my lack of powers, this'll have to do.  I'm going to need to rely on you a lot in the next few hours, so try not to do anything else that might… cause massive area-wide blackouts of Darcie Isle, or any other island, for that matter.”

Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, he pulled out a black domino mask and a tube of spirit gum.  Affixing the mask to his face, he looked at his reflection in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall.  Adjusting the mask a bit, he looked back toward Spencer and smiled.

“I've always wanted to try this, you know, no powers, like the street-level guys.  For the sake of my reputation though, call me something else in the field.  I don't know, Darkstar… Sunset, something.  Anyway, it's time for us to go.”

Leading Spencer to the balcony, picking up the organic sphere on the way and pocketing it in his jacket, Colin leaped onto the railing and pointed vaguely in the direction of the Central Isle, toward the laboratory of the late Dr. Colossus.

“Alright Dr. Spectrum, lets head for Colossus' lab.  Icarus and the rest of the Dynasty have already begun a more thorough investigation of the crime scene.  I'm also hoping that you and Icarus might be able to use the facilities to identify what these spheres are made from and who might be their creator.  I can safely say that I doubt Dead Red has anything to do with this, as his beef was mostly with me, and this problem seems to be more widespread.  Anyway, let's get to it.”

Throwing himself off the balcony, his arms spread wide as he began to plummet to the ground, a large smile crossed the depowered hero's face.

Let's see how he handles the unexpected.

“Catch me if you can, rookie!”

“Not friends, but friend-singular.  The lab belongs… belonged to Dr. Colossus.  He was a great man and a mad scientist if there ever was one.  He held degrees in physics, medicine, engineering, and even philosophy, if I recall correctly.  I'm going to miss that crazy old coot.”

Colin thought of the little person he knew as Dr. Colossus.  Three feet tall, almost all of it head, he had to use a mechanical set of spider legs to move about his lab.  Seeing him for the first time left a lasting impression.  He rarely left the safety of his lab because of how he looked, but man, what stories he could spin…and the man could really tell a dirty joke.  To think, he was gone now, his genius taken away too soon by whoever had taken his powers, as well as the powers of at least a handful of other heroes.  As he thought of this, he looked out past the energy of Dr. Spectrum's forcefield and eyed the other hero's costume and smiled.

“I get the feeling you had a little inspiration when putting your look together.  I'm not sure why it seems so familiar, but I do like the color scheme an awful lot.”

Spencer's cheeks flushed as he banked slightly, making his way toward the small brownstone that the other man now pointed out.  As they neared the building, Dr. Spectrum could make out a trio of figures on the roof.  He knew who they were by their costumes-Dash, Icarus, and Zeppelin of the Dynasty.  They, along with a man know as Progeny, made up the newest team of young heroes to surface in Solace.  As Spectrum glided both he and Colin to a soft landing on the roof, the others made their way to meet them.  The handsome young black man known as Icarus held out a hand to Spectrum and smiled.

“You must be Dr. Spectrum.  Colin said on the phone that you were coming to help.  To be honest, we could use anything you might be able to offer.  The old man's lab is a bit of a controlled chaos.  We're not even sure what were looking at with some of this stuff.  However, we do know that these “spheres” have to hold some key to solving this mystery.”

Icarus nodded to Dash, who laid out four more of the spheres, each one in a small glass jar.  When she did this, everyone sat in stunned silence as the pieces began to pulse, slamming themselves against the sides of their containers until they had fallen over.  Once each of the jars was on its side, they began to roll toward each other until the glass of the jars was the only thing separating them.  Colin jumped as the sphere in his pocket began to pulse and then shot up and out into the cool night air, rolling toward the collection of overturned jars.  Once it neared the others, it began to roll to each, stopping for a moment before going to the next.  Colin pointed and grimaced.

“Okay, now what in the heck is going on?  Are these things really alive?”

Zeppelin wrapped an arm around Dash, who seemed to be taking all of this rather badly, and frowned.

“Pretty nasty, right?  I can't believe we never saw these things.  I mean, they were right under our noses the whole time, hiding out in each of our own homes.  I feel violated-disgusted-and angrier than hell.”

Icarus made his way to the collection of rattling jars and pulsating spheres and then looked back at Dr. Spectrum, his eyes narrowing.

“Nasty is a good way to put it, but to answer Colin's question, I'm not sure if they're alive or not.  They obviously exhibit some signs of locomotion, but alive?  That's something I'm hoping our new friend can help me answer.”

Dr. Spectrum walked over and stood next to Icarus.  As he watched the jars clinking together, the free sphere moving from one to next, he let out a sigh and spoke almost in a whisper.

“I can tell you one thing… they're alive alright… because they're talking to each other right now, probably sharing information about each of us.  We could be looking at some kind of hive mind.  I mean, I think, at least, that would be my first guess upon initial examination.”

Icarus put a hand on the other man's shoulder and nodded.

“So where do we go from here Doc?  Do we search Colossus' lab again for clues or try to use these “spheres” to get to the bottom of this?”

Colin moved forward and joined the other two men.  He crosses his arms and kicked a bit of gravel at the rattling monstrosities at his feet.

“We could also split up and try to do both.  Speaking of splitting up, where's Progeny?”

Dash lowered her eyes and tried not to sob.  Zeppelin held her tighter and planted a soft kiss on her head.  She whispered.

“We don't know.  We can't contact him.  What are we going to do?”

As his hand touched the pulsating round of organic mass, a flash of light and a flare of white energy shot from the object, through Spectrum, and into the sky.  The whole of the hero's world was now made up of white light and a sound like static burning in his ears.  He couldn't see the orb in his hand, but he could feel it begin to pulse faster.  It wasn't until he took in a breath of air that tasted like battery acid that he realized the pulsing was corresponding with his heart rate.  Pushing out with his mind and yelling until his throat felt raw, Spectrum tried desperately to make contact.  Finally, as he was about to drop the sphere back into the container he held in his free hand, another burst of white energy flashed, far brighter than the first, and with it came images in his mind.  He had made contact, but with what?

0011101בקרוב יחזרו הורים. 10001010בקרוב נהיה אחד עם הגוף שוב. 0100010טעות, אתה לא חבר של הגוף010110 כולו. אתה תופסק על ידי הורים1100101.

With that, the light bursting from the orb was extinguished, and it began to break apart in Spectrum's hand, little pieces of what looked like clay, circuits, and wire being blown out of his hand and into the sky surrounding him.  It had taken a Herculean effort on his part, but the hero had made contact with the orb.  However, he still wasn't sure what the message that flashed in his head had meant.  He was sure that some of it was binary code, but what of the other symbols?  He was sure he thought he had seen them before, he just needed a moment to think about it.  When it came to him, a small smile crossed his lips and he whispered his answer into the warm rushing wind.

“It's Hebrew.”

No sooner had the words passed his lips than he felt a sharp change in his body.  He had pushed himself and his powers much farther than he ever had in trying to reach the sphere, to make contact with the foreign intelligence, that his reserves were spent, but more than that, he could feel the base level of his abilities leaving him with an alarming speed.  He felt his body begin to fall, and a yelp of fear jumped from his lips as he began to plummet through the clouds below.

“He's falling.  Icarus, you need to get up there and do something.”

Colin pointed to his partner, rapidly descending toward the city below.  Icarus ran toward the edge of the roof and as he neared it, stopped short and yelled back toward the rest of the Dynasty and Colin.  His eyes were wide and sweat was pouring from his head and down his face.

“My powers!  They're gone!  Just like the rest of you.”

He looked toward the falling hero and screamed.

“Oh my God, what have we done?  What have I done?”

Colin swore, not knowing what to do.  Zeppelin hustled toward the edge of the roof, wishing for a miracle.  It was then that Dash raised her eyes to the sky and pointed.

“Look!  There.  Coming toward Dr. Spectrum!  Those colors… it's him!  He's not dead!  He's okay!”

At that moment, Spectrum's terminal dive was suddenly cut short, as he found himself in the arms of an imposing young man wearing a costume of red and black.  It was the elusive Progeny, and it looked for all intents and purposes like he was feeling no ill effect or loss of powers.  The same obviously could not be said for Icarus and who knew how many others.  Progeny shifted Spectrum into a more comfortable flying position, moving him around as if he were weightless.  As he began his slow descent toward the others waiting on the roof, the rescuing hero looked down with kind eyes the color of ripe cherries and introduced himself.

“Hello there.  I'm Progeny of the Dynasty.  I don't believe I've ever met or worked with you.  I hope you weren't too injured when I caught you.  Between how fast I was flying and the speed at which you were falling, I had a feeling the impact would be quite jarring.  I have to ask though, what in the world were you doing, falling out of the sky like that?”

Icarus frowned as he stared at the words and symbols on the page.  It was obvious he didn't want to say what was on his mind, but he did anyway.

“I fear that my ability to understand languages has gone the way of my flight powers.  However…”

Taking the paper with him to a spare computer terminal in the lab, he sat down and proceeded to get to work.  First he placed the paper on the scanner and scanned the images into the computer.  Then he began to type furiously on the keys, his eyes glued to the screen.

“… thank God for Google translator.  As near as I can tell, this is what it says-”

He turned the over-sized monitor toward the group and read the words on the screen aloud while the others read it to themselves.

0,011,101 Parents will soon return. 10,001,010 soon become one with the body again. 0,100,010 mistake, you're not a member of the entire body 010,110. You will be stopped by parents 1100101

“Obviously the binary is not translating along with the Hebrew, but the message seems fairly clear aside from that.  It's apparent that these spheres are part of a much larger device or creature.  However, your guess is as good as mine as to what that it exactly.”

Icarus got up from the swivel chair near the terminal and made his way over to Spectrum, putting a hand on the doctor's shoulder.

“Any ideas Doc?”

As Spectrum was about to answer, the oversized hero known as Zeppelin walked over to the terminal, looked at the message, and then sat, the chair squeaking under his considerable mass.  As his fingers began to plod slowly across the keys, he called back to the rest of the group.  His voice was wavering, it was apparent he was not used to doing much of the thinking or problem-solving for the young hero group.

“I was just running this through my head… these things are made of clay and electronics and stuff, right?  Well, being Jewish and seeing things as they are, I can't help but remember this story my grandpa used to tell me as a kid.  Have any of you ever heard of Judah Loew ben Bezalel? He built this monster of clay, this golem, to protect the ghetto in Prague from anti-Semitic attacks.  Could we be dealing with some kind of techno-organic animated monster thing?”

Colin walked over to Spectrum and gave him a look that said he really didn't know what else to say or do.  However, in spite of all of that, he knew he needed to be the level head and the voice of experience in this crowd of fledgling heroes.  Walking over to the screen that still held the message they had gotten from the sphere, he read it again softly to himself, and then turned back to face the others.

“I agree with Spectrum.  There are a lot of things going on here that don't add up, but prove that we are in a vulnerable position right now.  It's obvious that someone we all know has either sold us out or was forced to talk, and I don't like either of those possibilities.  For now, I am going to assume it was Dr. Colossus until we perform the autopsy and solidify his cause of death.  We also need to get to the bottom of those spheres and find a way to use them to our advantage.  Finally, we need to draw out whoever is doing this, bring them out into the open – and for that, I don't see any better option then the that one Spectrum provided.”

Colin eyed Progeny from across the room and nodded his way.

“Just do what you do.  Try to look normal.  Let us know the minute you come across anything that doesn't seem right – we can't afford to lose anybody else – especially our only ace in the hole as far as powers are concerned.”

Progeny nodded and made his way out of the room, glancing to each of his teammates as he did so.  He flashed them aall a wide grin.

“Don't worry.  I'll take care of this… of all of you.”

Dash waved to the retreating hero and whispered to no one in particular.

“I sure hope so.”

Colin looked back to the remaining heroes and raised a hand, counting off the options they had in front of them.

“Spectrum and Icarus need to do an autopsy on Dr. Colossus.  They then need to get to the bottom of those spheres.”

Zeppelin piped up again, not confident, but needing to get something off of his mind.  He had a hard time looking the others in the eyes and held his massive head down as he spoke.

“If these spheres are part of a larger thing, and can communicate with each other and stuff, is there a way we could use that to find out where the main sphere or monster is?”

Icarus nodded and Colin rubbed the stubble on his chin thoughtfully.

“It's a good theory.  I want both of you doctors working with that goal in mind.”

Colin then turned his attention to Dash and Zeppelin.  He put a hand on both of the heroes shoulders and tried hard to force a smile.

“You two are going to need to look into all of our past dealings and see if there's something that we are all missing – some odd connection that could explain this vulnerability that we all obviously have.  We need to make sure that we are the only ones being affected by this and its not something bigger, something that could bring down every hero in Solace.  We also need to see if there's anyone else available that we can round up to help us with this.  Can I count on you two to handle that?”

Zeppelin shook hands with Colin and then nodded a farewell to the two doctors.  Taking Dash by the hand, both young heroes made their way out of the lab.

“That leaves me.”

Spectrum looked at Colin and narrowed his eyes.

“What are you going to do?”

Colin adjusted his mask and jacket and walked over to the other two men and straightened his shoulders.

“I have a hunch about these spheres' origin that I need to investigate.  I'm beginning to wonder if we might be dealing with something beyond just science.  This whole golem thing has me worried, and there's really only one person in all of Solace who might be able to shed some light on the magical aspects of all of this.”

Icarus frowned and shook his head, raising a hand in protest.

“You can't possibly be talking about Midnight Dawn.  No one has seen him in what – 40 years?  Solace doesn't have a magical protector anymore.  We're on our own here.  The only thing that path of reasoning leads to is a dead end and wasted time.  Time none of us can afford to waste right now.”

Colin made his way toward the door and waved off Icarus' remarks with a gloved hand.

“Dead or alive, there might be something in that old man's sanctum that we can use.  We're running out of options here and I'm not about to limit possibilities or avenues of help for any reason.  You and Spectrum have plenty to do here and I'll only be in the way at this point.  Let me do this.  I promise I'll be careful.”

Spectrum looked over to his new friend and nodded gravely.

“You promise to be careful and call the moment you get into anything that's over your head.  We're partners now and I'm not about to have your death on my conscience.  I sure I'll have more important things to think about in the future.”

The doctor forced a laugh and a smile and Colin himself smiled and chuckled as he left the lab.  Icarus then walked over to a rack of lab coats and shouldered one on.  He tossed one to Spectrum and frowned.

“Well doctor, where should we start?”

As the needle was taken from his arm, Icarus winced and put pressure on the small wound with a bit of gauze.

“How long do you think it will take for the nanites to take effect?”

Spectrum made his way over to a bio-hazard waste bin and tossed the used needle into it.  He tried to look positive, but there was really no way to hide the slight frown turning down the edges of his lips.

“It's hard to say, really.  With myself, the effect is almost instantaneous, but with Colin, it took a long time just to heal his bodily wounds.  So the short answer?  I don't know.”

Icarus stood up and walked into another lab where the body of Dr. Colossus was laid out on a cold metal slab.  He couldn't hide his sadness very well and tried hard not to let the tears come.  There would be time to mourn the doctor after the danger had been taken care of and the mysteries of the day solved.  As he began to move a tray of tools toward the operating theater, he eyed Spectrum in the other room and nodded.

“Might as well use the time wisely, eh?”

Spectrum nodded back to the other man and began to walk toward the other room.  As he neared the door, a sudden thought hit him.  Turning wildly and rushing to the microscope that held the remnants of the sphere, he took a long look at the sample and then raised his head, glancing at the technology that surrounded both of them.

“I can't believe I missed this before-”

Getting to his feet, Spectrum made his way to a desk near the corner of the lab and began digging through the mass of notes and papers left there by Colossus.  He could hear Icarus beginning to work noisily on the corpse inside the other room, but would not allow himself to be distracted.  Underneath a large binder, he found another object that only solidified his new theory.  It was an old yellowed photo of Dr. Colossus standing next to a man in a long black trench coat and fedora.  Between them stood a large mass of man whose features were more of an impression than a reality – a being of magic clay and future technology.  Flipping the photo over, the back had a note written in small clipped cursive.

Myself and Midnight Dawn upon the completion of Project Progeny – July 1932.

A sudden burst of sweat broke across his brow.  The pieces were all there, be he just needed to figure out how they all fit together because right now, the timeline-the truth as he knew it-didn't make any sense. However, one thing was certain, somehow Dr. Colossus and the Midnight Dawn were the ones who built the mechanical golem that was now running roughshod over the city, stealing the powers of its heroes.  But why?  How?

“Oh my God-Project Progeny!”

Spectrum could feel the nanites coursing through his blood, his powers coming back to him in a rush of adrenalin and electrical impulses as he jumped from the desk chair and ran toward the operating theater.  Aside from the initial burst of noise that had come from the room, it had grown far too quiet.  Panic was beginning to set in as he turned the corner and was terrified by what he saw within.

“I wondered how long it would take for you to put the pieces together.  You alone were the one wild card in the equation-the one variable I hadn't planned for.  However, it seems that we will now be able to balance that out.”

The room was covered in blood spatter.  Icarus' body was broken-surely the wounds fatal.  He lay on the metal slab, a beast in black and red hovering over him.  It was Progeny, viscous gore covering his mouth and hands.  Slightly behind him, bent over the fallen hero, spectacles hanging on his nose-sweat running down his face, was Dr. Colossus.  His eyes were mad with a passion that perhaps no one would ever fully or truly understand.  He chuckled and smiled.

“It appears the cat seems to have gotten his tongue, my son.”