Hisham Selim

Moondancer

Captain Jack McNeal

Dr. Jackal

Sydney Todd-Strange

Cmdr. Edward Castillo

Captain Dane Casey

Captain Monica Kwok, M.D.

Dr. Stephen Strange

Col. John Clayton

Anvil

Nicholas Ares

Memphis

Anubis

#148

Game Date: 10/26/02 - 10/27/05

“At roughly 02:45 GMT,” Nick Fury, Supreme Commander of SHIELD, says from the large video screen in UNCLE Seattle’s situation room, “a shop owner in the city of Asyut, in Upper Egypt, along the Nile, was riding his bike in to get an early start on opening. Asyut, for those of you who aren’t history nerds, was originally called Syut, and later, the Greeks renamed it Lycopolis, which means…”

“City of the Wolf,” Rainier says, shaking his head. “Named such for the local importance of the jackal gods, Wepwawet and…”

He doesn’t have to finish.

“Ironical, don’t you think?” Nick says without much humor. “The shop owner’s riding along, minding his own business, when there’s a big flash of light in front of him, and suddenly, a man in what was described as 'ancient garb' appears out of nowhere. The shop guy’s frozen, doesn’t know what to think. The mystery man looks around, asks the shop guy what the date is. Shop guy answers. Mystery guy seems pleased. Mystery guy asks him what gods they worship in this city now. Shop guy’s Christian, like a lot of the city, tells him ‘the one true God’. Starts talking about Jesus, as Christians are apt to. Mystery guy seems curious, says he’s never heard of that god before.”

“That was long after his day,” Rainier adds, quietly.

“To the point, please, Nick,” Commander Edward Castillo, head of UNCLE Seattle, says in his calm, gruff voice. Having served with Fury directly in SHIELD for a number of years, and having become a friend of his during that time, he’s one of the few men in either organization who would dare to address the Supreme Commander in such a way.

“Mystery guy,” Nick goes on, “tells him he’s going to serve as a messenger. Tells him to tell the world that their real true god has returned, and to prepare for his eternal rule. Mystery guy then whacks the end of his staff on the street. And he smiles. The few feet around him and shop guy? Fine. Everything else? Massive earthquake. Buildings for blocks around just collapse.”

“How many dead?” Castillo asks.

“The digging out’s still going on. Estimates go as high as ten thousand, give or take.”

“Jesus,” Dyna Girl whispers, seated at the same conference table as the rest, and covers her mouth with her hand, her eyes wide in disbelief. The rest of those assembled are horrified as well.

“And mystery guy then vanishes into thin air.”

The mood in the room is deadly somber. Seated around the table are Rainier, Dyna Girl, Castillo, Captain Dane Casey, Moondancer, Vortex, Nightsable, Moonspider, Max, Commander Sydney Todd-Strange of UNCLE San Francisco (formerly Forte’s Mist), and her husband Stephen Strange. The big screen in front of them shows Fury, but also a smaller window within it showing Dr. Jackal, back at the Forte base, still recovering from his near-death at the hands of Cassian rebels (see Forte 2000 #142), and another showing Colonel John Clayton, head of Canada’s SHIELD division known as BRAND (also known to most in the room to be former Forte founding member Phantasm).

“He was the one witness. Luckily, my people got to him first. And it WAS luck. GBS and every other cable news network are all over the site now. Just turn on your TV, you’ll see.”

“You getting this, Tinker?” Sydney asks.

“I am,” Lucy ‘Tinker’ Toy says into her Forte radio, on speaker at the conference table, but in actuality back at her airplane hanger home. “I confirmed with Horus, Nick. Asyut corresponds with the location of the royal city in his era. It’s right where Anubis disappeared from, thousands of years ago.”

“So much for the ‘mystery’ in ‘Mystery Guy’”, Vortex comments.

Tinker goes on. “That’s right when Horus first sensed him, Seattle time. He started screaming about me getting Nightsable to teleport him there right away. Before I could argue further, and I WAS arguing, Anubis vanished and reappeared in Alexandria. I got our team mustered, but he vanished again, and went off Horus’ radar. We think he’s gone from this plane and traveled to Amenti. Probably wants to check out the state of his kingdom and get it ready for all the new arrivals. How long before he’s back? Anyone’s guess.”

“Why Alexandria?” Nick asks.

“Unknown,” Lucy says. “But there are Brotherhood operatives in the city, and they’re checking it out.”

“How’s Horus?” Nightsable asks her.

Lucy stops her pacing in the plane hanger and looks back toward her living room, where Horus and the Brotherhood of Horus—Hisham Selim, Salah Abul Naga, Issa Nazif, and Sadiki Fahy…along with a few newcomers—are talking urgently and excitedly, while most of the Brothers are busy cleaning and loading automatic weapons. They’ve turned Lucy’s home into a staging area, and it’s making Lucy nauseous.

“Addressing his troops,” she says, with obvious distaste. “This is the day they’ve waited their whole lives for. The great war. Brotherhood guys and Priests of Anubis are probably already starting to kill each other all over the world, just to welcome it properly.”

“We’ll need their intel, Tinker,” Colonel Clayton interrupts. “Don’t do anything to piss ‘em off. We’ve all got the same goal here. If they can lead us to Priests, maybe that’ll get us some info that’ll give us an edge.”

Not answering, she watches Horus, watches the child that she’s grown to love all but disappear, and the avenging god and little general take over, preparing to find and kill his older brother. It breaks her heart.

“So, in short,” Fury says, “it all just hit the fan.”

“We knew he’d be coming,” Rainier says. “We just didn’t know it would be this soon. If he’s off in another dimension doing a troop inspection, then that buys us some time. Time to find that third scroll. His people, it seems, have one, and now we have another. Without all of them, he can’t summon the Stormbringer demon, and he can’t unleash the global death storm.”

“Global death storm,” Fury repeats, shaking his head. “Almost makes me miss Hydra.”

“We’re getting ready attempt interrogation on the Scorpion Cultists,” Castillo says. “Stephen is going to try and negate any mystical booby traps, assuming that’s what happened to the Knights of the Light suspect that went up in flames when he talked to Forte in Rome.” (See Forte 2000 #146).

“Yeah, it could have been spontaneous combustion,” Clayton adds with a roll of his eyes. “Or really, really bad gas.”

“On our end, Colonel,” Tinker says, “we’ve got that to go on. And we’ll be coordinating with the Brotherhood and seeing what they can offer us, maybe give us some good raid locations. Davis and Stephen are going to continue examining our scroll and see if that can yield something we can use. Also, Stephen’s just back from another dimension. He and Poltergeist have a good lead on the location of the demon.”

“That’s promising,” Nick says.

“Well, the catch is that it won’t appear in that location until it’s summoned, wherever that exact location is. The demon literally ceases to exist after it’s done its thing, and doesn’t start to exist again until someone dials 1-800-kill-my-world.”

“Lovely.”

“The mystic community is engaged, Nicholas,” Stephen says. “Even now, Zatanna and Encantida are traveling the realms, searching for answers. We will be prepared.”

“Let’s make sure it doesn’t come to that,” Dr. Jackal says. “The most important thing now is that we find that scroll, and Tinker’s team is on it. And we need to keep Horus hidden from Anubis. That spell Stephen cast when Horus first showed up should keep ‘mystery guy’ from getting a bead. I hate to say it, but he may be our only shot at taking this guy out. We need to keep him in reserve. We have no real idea how powerful Anubis is, but based on what just happened in Egypt, I’d say we have our hands full. When he shows again, we’ll throw everything and everyone we have at him, from Forte to Justice Squadron to Paragons—”

“To THUNDER,” Nick adds. “I’ve recalled all team members and they’re on gold alert standby, ready to deploy.”

“But still…if what Horus claims is true, he may be the only one that can take him out. We keep him hidden, but we can’t discount the possibility that he’s right. We may have to give him his wish and cut him loose.”

“For God’s sake, Jack,” Tinker says angrily. “He’s a KID. Is everyone here forgetting that?”

“He’s a god, Tinker,” Castillo says, chin resting on his folded hands as he listens and thinks. “Or at least what counted as gods in his time, which puts him on the same power level as Anubis. He’s waited thousands of years to face him. I don’t think anyone can stop him if he wants to engage. Not even you. It’s a factor. We can’t discount it. The stakes are too high. Ten thousand may already be dead, and Anubis did that in seconds.”

Tinker goes silent again.

“Well,” Nick says, breaking the tense quiet, “then let’s do like Jack said and make sure it doesn’t come to that. We’ve got a few pretty god-like cowboys of our own this day and age. Let’s take this yahoo’s toys away, draw him out, and give him a proper welcome to the twenty-first century. Tinker?”

“Yes, Colonel?” she answers.

“You’ve got the ball. We’re on Forte’s lead here. You people do your thing. Let us know the whens and wheres and what-the-hells and keep us dialed in. Good luck, Forte.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” the heroes of today’s Forte answer in semi-unison.

Fury logs out, but Jack and Phantasm stay on a bit longer to discuss things further with the others. Clayton talks about the cult searches in Canada that have brought some good arrests for BRAND, but nothing related to this. Jack says he’s just gotten an update from Vanguard and Angel Flight, and nothing new to report there, but they’re still on it. Sydney reports that her cult expert, Azrael Morrison, is still on the hunt back in San Francisco and listening for any leads. Also, she and Castillo discuss how UNCLE is on full alert nationally, and all offices are coordinated and preparing for this. Rainier offers that these are scrolls that have been hidden for a very long time, and it’s possible that the third one may not even be found. It’s a miracle that two have surfaced. Moondancer suggests that would be nice, but that doesn’t seem to be the way their luck is running. Their best bet now is trying to get some info out of Major Slam Bradley, high priest of the Cult of the Scorpion (see Forte 2000 #147), whom they have in a cell downstairs.

The conference ends, and Tinker disconnects and goes back inside, where the Brotherhood and Horus are. She can’t stand the excitement and resolve radiating from all of them. Tinker joins them and fills them in on what just happened in the conference. Hisham tells her he’s waiting for word from his people in Alexandria, and will let her and the others know as soon as he hears anything. Horus, having ditched the civilian kid clothing that Lucy had bought for him, is now back in his robes. He tells his people to stand firm, that the day has arrived, and soon they will be victorious. He asks Lucy to stay in constant contact with Nightsable, as, if Anubis appears again, he’ll need a teleport to that location immediately. Lucy tells him that that may not be necessary, that the heroes plan to attack him first, and she lets him know that Earth’s modern heroes have taken down their share of cosmic bad guys. Trying hard to be patient with her, he tells her again that this is his responsibility, and that she doesn’t know his brother like he does. Horus insists he’s the only chance to stop the mad god once and for all.

Lucy finally leaves and needs to go outside for some air. Hisham joins her, and suggests, calmly, that now is not the time to cast doubts on Horus’ mind. The young god prepares for battle, and needs his focus. Lucy lashes out at him, saying he claims to love Horus but is willing to let him go get himself killed. Hisham, still calm, explains that he does love Horus, and has for the whole of his life, before ever meeting him. But he also knows Horus has a destiny, a path that he himself has chosen, and Hisham has no doubt that Horus will win the day. He asks her to have faith in Horus as they do.

Back at UNCLE HQ, Slam Bradley has been moved from his cell to a reinforced conference room in the sub-basement. Castillo, Rainier, Dyna Girl, Moondancer, Max and Stephen Strange approach it. Stephen verbalizes that he’s not comfortable doing what he’s been asked to do, but understands the importance of it. Rainier thanks him again, saying if there was any other way, they’d take it, but their options now are very limited. They enter the room, where Slam is bound to a reinforced chair, and his mouth is bound as well to keep his mystical extra-long whip-tongue in check. Captain Jack McNeal, head of UNCLE Seattle’s STRIKE team, is guarding him, along with two more of his elite team. Castillo dismisses the others, but asks McNeal to stay. He does, standing at the door with rifle at his side and at the ready.

Dyna Girl walks up to Slam and unlatches the binding around his mouth, telling him that if he uses his tongue for anything besides talking, she’s going to take it to school for show-and-tell. With it removed, the cocky Bradley insists he’ll tell them nothing. Rainier says they don’t want him to tell them anything, because his new pal Memphis has made sure that he’ll burn up if he starts to talk. Slam doesn’t believe it, Rainier says they don’t care much if he does or not.

Stephen sits across the table from him, and chants briefly and makes intricate gestures with his hands. They can all feel a slight tremble in the air, and feel a hum behind their ears. Stephen focuses, and quickly lets them know that yes, there is such a spell on the man, and he negates it. Slam, no stranger to magic use himself, still refuses to believe it, and again says he’ll never talk.

“Actually,” Moondancer smiles at him, “you will.”

Stephen begins another spell, speaking incantations not born of this world. Sensing what’s going on, Slam starts to struggle, but Dyna Girl, behind him, holds him and clamps her powerful hand over his mouth. Soon Slam goes limp. Dyna looks to Stephen, and he nods at her. She takes her hand away and lets him go, and his head nods forward. He’s now under Stephen’s trance.

Castillo, knowing how many laws this is breaking, especially with no attorney present (good thing no one knows that Moonspider is actually James Avalon, villain attorney, and will probably end up defending the guy), simply says, “Do it.”

This is Rainier’s interrogation, and he asks all the questions. With no chance of him bursting into flame, and with him under Stephen’s trance, Slam answers them all.

Slam was approached by a man calling himself Memphis, and Slam is able to give a detailed description of the thirty-something, dark-haired man. This Memphis had intimate knowledge of the Cult of the Scorpion and their beliefs, and claimed to be a messenger from the lost king (the Scorpion King, that is, lost when Forte burned up his mummified corpse before the cult could resurrect him (see Forte (original series) #287)). Memphis said the King’s spirit was ready to be reincarnated, and a group of scrolls were needed to bring him back into his new, more powerful vessel, and he would then, with his faithful followers at his side, overthrow the world and start his new kingdom. Memphis gave Slam some information, and set Slam and the Cult on the path.

Rainier asks how they’re supposed to deliver the scroll when they find it. A cell phone call is to be made to set up a drop. Finally, the lead the team has been looking for. Slam doesn’t know much more, as Memphis kept him, understandably, in the dark. And, apparently, the Priests were not working with this group as they were the Knights, so they weren’t with the Cult, and, presumably, don’t know that the scroll has been found or what has happened to the members.

Castillo orders Slam’s belongings be brought in, and McNeal retrieves them. Among them is his cell phone. Rainier gets Tinker on the radio at this point and lets her know what’s happening. She agrees they should make the call. A tap is set up to monitor Slam’s phone, so that the heroes and UNCLE can listen in, and Rainier has Stephen make Bradley place the call. A man with an Egyptian accent answers, and Slam tells him that it’s done. The man, pleased, asks their location, and Stephen has Slam say Guatemala. The man gives him a meeting place in Buenos Aires, and a time the following morning at 8am (Argentina time, which will be 3am Seattle time) to allow for flight time in the Cult’s chartered plane (that’s still sitting in Guatemala, actually). Bradley is to come alone.

The call ends, and everyone discusses whether or not they felt it went right, and decide there seemed to be no suspicion. Rainier asks Slam if that was Memphis on the phone, and he says no. Probably one of the higher-up Priests of Anubis, Rainier figures. While they still don’t have a line on the third scroll, at least they have a possible location on Memphis, and they’ll take what they can get right now. They want to actually make the drop (of course, not with the real scroll), but obviously aren’t going to be taking Slam along. Sydney, listening in on all this with the others upstairs in a monitoring room, says she thinks she has an idea. She gets on the phone to a residence that’s on her speed dial.

Bruce Wayne answers the phone. “Bruce?” she says. “I was wondering. Can we borrow your wife?”

Bruce Wayne (the retired Batman) is married to Miranda Delaria-Wayne, better known as the former Forte heroine Cincoflex. Cinco, a shapeshifter, had made a number of infiltrations for the team over the years taking someone else’s form (once even impersonating the Pope (see Forte (O.S.) #101), something all in Forte pray will never get out to the public). She and Sydney discuss it. Miranda has been retired from heroing for some time, and has been busy with her company, juggling their two homes in Seattle and Gotham City, and raising their son, Morgan Tomas. She stepped away for many reasons, mostly due to the tragedies that came upon her being in Forte (such as the death of her then-love Shrike, the second Forte member to die in the line (see Forte (O.S.) #95)) and her mental breakdown that resulted. But she and Bruce have been kept informed on the happenings by Dr. Jackal, and she’s aware of the stakes, and doesn’t hesitate to help. She says she’ll come down to UNCLE and check out Slam to be able to properly copy his form. She does remind them, though, that she can’t change her voice, and if she speaks, it will be in a woman’s voice with a thick Brazilian accent.

Dyna asks if Stephen would be able to just put Bradley to sleep, now that they’re done with him, so they don’t have to hear him rant all the way back to his cell. Stephen agrees this is probably best, and does so, and Slam is locked up again. They all convene back in the situation room, and Castillo pulls up a SHIELD satellite shot of the discussed location. It’s a warehouse. Max asks why, if they know where it is, they don’t simply bust in on the place right now. Tinker, back on the radio, doesn’t think it’s a good idea to tip their hand. They don’t know for sure if it’s just a random location or a base for the Priests, for one thing. For another, with this kind of time built in, it’s possible Memphis himself will show up, and if they can get him, they’ll have a huge source of information. It’s agreed that a team should definitely show up early and do recon, but wait for the drop time to make a move.

Rainier and Stephen will continue to work on translating the scroll, which, it turns out, is written in an unknown language and will take them both time. It’s decided that Nightsable and Vortex would be best suited to heading to Buenos Aries early, as they’re the two best to do recon (thanks to teleportation and super-speed, respectively). Before the drop time comes, the rest of the team can be brought in, along with Cincoflex. In the meantime, the rest will keep following other leads and stay ready in case of Anubis’ return.

Samantha and Paul, in civilian garb posing as a tourist couple (even taking the time to get their camera bags from home), teleport to Buenos Aires, where it’s a bustling afternoon in the city of sixteen million. They walk the streets together, hand in hand, near the drop, stopping to look at shops and restaurants just to complete their act. Samantha takes particular enjoyment in the masquerade, enjoying walking with her arm in his and stealing occasional kisses. All for the act, after all. They find the warehouse and scout it out. They decide to risk some interior recon, and they slip behind a building across the way, and Samantha teleports into the office she can see through an upper-floor window. She sneaks around inside, finding people there, and figuring out quickly that they are Priests of Anubis. This is one of their bases, all right. There are living quarters, and there are stockpiles of weapons. After almost getting discovered, she teleports back out, figuring that’s enough, and doesn’t have time to go through the office at all. No sign of Memphis. They report back in to the team. She and Paul park themselves at a tango bar within eyeshot of the warehouse and take a table on the patio, where they both buy and smoke cigars and enjoy each other’s company. Paul comments that being in Forte sure lets you visit a lot of nice places. While still on the clock, and on watch, they end up having a romantic day together, despite their ongoing discussion on what to do about their feelings for each other (see “Interlude”, the fiction piece taken from Forte 2000 #147), and despite, or perhaps due to, their fears concerning what they’re about to face.

When evening comes for them, Tinker calls and tells them to get a room. For a base for the team, that is. They do so, again finding something within view of the warehouse, and though the temptation is nice to think about and joke about between them, they do use it for recon only, and keep an eye on the warehouse, talking the Argentinean night away and learning more about each other (and making eyes at each other a lot). Finally, the call comes, and Samantha opens up a portal. Max, Moonspider, Dyna Girl, Moondancer and Cincoflex step through. Tinker felt it best to stay with Horus, and Rainier’s still translating. The assembled heroes spend the night talking, with Cincoflex going on and on about South America and all the things to do in Buenos Aires and how they’ll all need to take a trip down here together when this is all over so she can show them around. Not having properly gotten the manic Cincoflex exposure before, Vortex and Moonspider are quite amused.

Holly and Chelsea end up taking a shift on the roof, and have time to talk. Holly asks how things are going with her and Davis, and Chelsea ends up—with an unusual shyness—confiding that they’d had the big talk (see “Interlude” again), and exchanged the “L” word (no, the OTHER “L” word…). Holly is ecstatic and happy for them. Chelsea was kind of worried about that, knowing that Holly hasn’t always approved of her being with Davis. Holly admits that was true. But also acknowledges that Chelsea has changed a lot since the early days of her and Davis, and this past month Holly’s seen how they’ve been together, and how happy Chelsea makes him. She definitely gives her blessing, and the two heroines share a hug. Holly says she’s glad they’re now friends, and hopes Chelsea plans to stick around, maybe even think about joining the team full-time. They’d be lucky to have her.

Morning comes to Buenos Aires, and the team readies. Cincoflex transforms her malleable form into Slam Bradley, and takes the replica scroll case that Tinker had whipped up, and heads to the warehouse at the appointed time. The others watch from the room and await her signal.

She crosses the street with the briefcase she brought, and as she approaches the door, it opens, and a couple of Priest soldiers with guns slung over their shoulders let her in. She steps in and sees probably twenty of them standing around. But again, no sign of Memphis. One older-looking Egyptian man walks up to her and asks her (Slam) if she brought it. She opens the briefcase, takes the case out, and hands it to him, and his eyes burn with evangelical greed. They all seem excited, and as the old man raises it high to show them, they all cheer. He asks her if there were any problems retrieving it. She makes a gesture with her hand that says no-not-really and shrugs. The head Priest begins to look at her oddly. Suspicious, he takes the cap off the case on looks inside. Looking into it in confusion, he reaches in and pulls out a rolled piece of paper. He unrolls it, and it’s a flyer for an upcoming event at the Forte Museum. He angrily demands to know what this is. She replies, aloud, in her female and accented voice, that it’s all for Forte charities, and they’d really appreciate his support. When his face contorts in rage and alarm, she speaks the standard Forte code-phrase (“Ducks in a blender”) into her radio and punches the Priest square in the face with long-stretching arm.

A teleportal opens and the rest of the team drops in, and gets to work jumping the armed Egyptians. Though they fight with fanatic fervor, they’re no match for a group of supers, and after most are disarmed by Vortex, they go down easy and are subdued. Max calls back to Seattle to let the others know, and that, sadly, Memphis is a no-show. The rest check out the warehouse, and the office. The paperwork and computer information they find, however, is mostly in ancient Egyptian and coded. Looks like a job for Rainier. They gather it all and think about questioning the Priests, but then worry about the same combustion issue and think better of it. Better to handle that back in Seattle.

They’re just getting ready for extraction when one of the Priests falls over. Nightsable rushes over to him, and as she does, another one collapses. Then another. Realizing what’s happening, Cinco shoves her stretchable hands into the mouths of two of them to keep them from biting down, but it’s too late. All of them fall over dead. Vortex yells for Nightsable to open the portal, and as she does, he grabs them, one after the next, and runs them through, right into “the Boneyard”, the medical bay at UNCLE Seattle, and yells for Dr. Monica Kwok. She rushes over and starts checking them, yelling to her staff. But the Priests are already gone and beyond reviving. She finds, in the molar of each of them, a release tab, with an extract it will take her all night to identify…a rare herb from the Upper Nile region in Egypt, a deadly poison.

Dyna Girl, frustrated and angry, apologizes to Tinker over the radio, and says they should have thought of that, considering who they were dealing with. Tinker says no one could have foreseen something like that, and tells her not to take it out on herself. It’s after 3:30am in Seattle, and Tinker insists they all try to get some sleep. Everyone goes home and does—after saying good-bye to and thanking Cincoflex—save Rainier, who drinks a lot of coffee and gets to work translating the information the team brought back and coordinating via web conference with an UNCLE cryptography expert out of the Washington office. He tries to get Chelsea to head back to his place and sleep, but she opts for catching a few z’s in a spare bed at UNCLE HQ instead.

In the morning, the team are awakened by radio calls from Rainier, telling them to get to UNCLE as soon as possible. They arrive to find the code has been cracked, and they now have a treasure trove of information about the Priests and their bases. Combining and comparing this with information provided by Hisham, they’ve identified numerous targets worldwide, and already have Nick Fury on the video screen, and Nick is preparing to dispatch raiding teams. Rainier reminds him of the poison teeth, and Nick says the teams will be going in with stun weapons to make sure they get live prisoners…which is much more than they’d get, Tinker says via radio, if they gave this full info to the Brotherhood. Most exciting, however, is the discovery of an address in Alexandria. Castillo pulls it up on satellite, and it’s a villa in the city’s Greek Quarter on a street called Al-Horreya. It’s possible this is where Anubis went to before disappearing again. Without hesitating, Tinker, tells the team to get there now. Again, Rainier will stay on the scroll (which he’s been dying to get back to all night), and Tinker will remain with Horus and in constant radio contact.

They land, via teleportal, in the city known as the “Pearl of the Mediterranean”, after 7:00pm local time. They exit on nearby pre-selected rooftop, with the Mediterranean Sea sprawling in the distance. Without Seahawk’s armor’s built-in telescopic visor that they usually depend on for surveillance, they make due with the enhanced vision of both Moondancer and Nightable. The villa is dark, and there appears no movement around. When Tinker agrees, Nightsable teleports in. The team waits, and she quickly reports all clear, and opens a portal for them, and they all enter.

The richly-ornamented home, covered with Egyptian art and artifacts, certainly doesn’t seem like any kind of troop barracks. They search around and it appears it’s a home for one man only. The name of the owner, an UNCLE check has already determined, is Adom Awad Affifi, and almost certainly false. But there is a passport here, in that name, that at least provides a photo of the man. Further checking reveals a computer and paperwork, in the same code that they discovered earlier. And also, a locked room that’s immediately sinister. It’s dark, and filled with art centering on the jackal-headed god Anubis, and there are ancient mystic texts there and a table covered with herbs and animal parts, suggesting some kind of spell or ritual. The details of the contents are radioed back to UNCLE, and to Stephen, and he says the spell cast was likely some kind of beacon. So, Moonspider surmises…this is probably the home of Memphis, who prepared the beacon for when his god returned. When Anubis did, he found his modern-day head lieutenant, and probably took him along to Amenti.

The computer, the papers, and all other relevant items are taken back to UNCLE with them, where Rainier can easily decode them. The laptop has information on different cults throughout the world, thorough histories and profiles and membership lists, all information invaluable to UNCLE and SHIELD.

One file in particular raises interest. It’s information on a person familiar to some of them, a well-known young industrialist named Gareth Collins, as talked about in the tabloids as he is in the financial news, known for his world-hopping exploits with starlets and the like. A meeting was set with him in London three weeks before. This seems to be the only other meeting set besides the ones with Knights of the Light representatives and Slam Bradley of the Cult of the Scorpion. It stands to reason this has something to do with the third scroll.

While Collins isn’t listed in the file as being part of any cult, the fact that he’s a young billionaire leads Tinker to surmise that he’s part of the Legacy Club, the dark-power-seeking group of corporate prodigies that the Paragons stopped when Cleveland’s new team of defenders first came together (see New Paragons #’s 1-3 and Forte 2000 #147). All the members of that Legacy Club perished, but it sounds to her like a new Legacy has taken its place, this time in secret, as there’s no longer the social club front that the old group used to use. They do some UNCLE checking on Collins, and his current whereabouts. At last mention, he was off sailing in the Caribbean, which certainly sounds like a cover story. This sounds like just what the heroes have been waiting for, and they need to find him. Lucy says they’d increase their chances several times over if they knew who the other members of the new Legacy Club were. And, she says, after a little thinking, she thinks she knows just who to turn to to find out. She asks Samantha for a teleport, risking leaving Horus and his followers for the moment, in hopes they won’t do anything rash while she’s gone, because this is a meeting she has to make herself.

Nicholas Ares, owner of Ares Global Enterprises, returns from a meeting at his company’s Seattle headquarters and enters his office’s reception area. He notices his secretary standing by her desk, nervously. When he asks what’s up, she says there are some…people…waiting to see him in his office. Intrigued, Ares enters.

Standing in his office are Moonspider, Moondancer, Vortex, Nightsable, Max and Dyna Girl, with Tinker leaning on the front of his desk with her arms crossed. He enters, smiling that sure smile of his, and closes his office door, asking to what he owes the honor of such famous visitors. Tinker tells him they need some information. Amused by this, he reminds her that her team has been causing problems for him and his company since they first came together (Forte is well-convinced that Nicholas Ares is dirty and involved in all manner of illegal activity—possibly even complicity in the Karrigon invasion of Seattle (see Forte 2000 #’s 1-3)—but have never been able to pin anything on the slick operator), so he wonders why she thinks he would suddenly feel compelled to assist them. She says she’s not thrilled about it either—as Max crosses his own arms and stares holes through the man—but that the fate of the world may be at stake.

She says she wants to know who’s in the Legacy Club. He looks confused and asks what that is, and Dyna Girl tells him to cut the crap. Tinker says he knows well what it is, and knows that it hasn’t gone away, just underground. She says they know Gareth Collins is a member, and Ares has well-documented dealings with Collins’ company, and had been photographed with him at a number of ritzy social functions. She says she also knows Ares may be a soulless bastard, but he’s not stupid, and when it comes to business and the people in it he knows all the dirty secrets. And she also knows how these billionaires tend to run together. Ares is a bit out of their age group, not being part of the “new blood” that marked the Legacy Club, but she knows he knows who they are, and probably even has some kind of dealings with them. Ares insists that if such a group still existed, he certainly would have no part of them, being an honest businessman, and resents the implication.

Lucy steps forward and stands before him, with an aura of controlled and simmering anger. She says, again, that they’re talking about the fate of the world. Of everything and everyone, including him and all his precious holdings. That all his schemes and dreams are about to come to a final end. She knows he’s aware of the earthquake, and probably already has loads of intel about it and UNCLE and SHIELD’s involvement. She says they have to find the Club and stop what they’re doing to stop what’s coming. And once they do, Ares and his riches will be safe again, and he’ll be free to go along with his plans for power or domination or riches or whatever he’s really after. But she has no time for games. She needs the information. Right now. And he’s GOING to give it to her.

Studying her and looking thoughtful, Ares finally smiles and says that come to think of it, he might know of a way to get the information she’s so interested in. And if it helps the global community, which is the primary goal of A.G.E., then he’s certainly willing to help if he can. She tells him to quit “jerking her off” then and do it. Ares steps through the other heroes with an “excuse me” and sits at his desk, going to his computer. He pulls up some files, acts surprised and pleased, and says what do you know, his investigative team does have a file on a new Legacy Club. He’s shocked that they didn’t think such a thing important enough to bring to his attention. He’ll have to have a very terse meeting with them about that. Dyna Girl rolls her eyes as Ares prints out a list of names of known and suspected members and hands it to Lucy, telling her that’s all he knows, but he hopes it helps. She highly doubts that’s all he knows, and tells him he had better pray that none of their activities trace back to him in any way. With a smile, he assures her that won’t be an issue. And that he hopes that if any of those young hotshots are involved in something like what she’s talking about, that they’re brought to justice and get their due. He’s pleased to be able to help Forte in any way, as he has great respect for their team and what they do for the Seattle community and the nation. Lucy tells him his shoes look very expensive, so he might not want to make her throw up on them. Always a pleasure, he tells her, locking eyes with her. And he’s sure that he and Forte will have dealings together again very soon. Count on it, she tells him back. With that, she tells Samantha to open a portal, and she and her team step through it back to UNCLE.

Dane runs over the list and starts doing all manner of checks and cross-references of the famous names, while Tinker and the others watch the array of computer screens and try to make sense of it all. Castillo, too, is watching in quiet, tense contemplation. Some of the men are occasionally spotted in photos together in the society pages. Checks on their companies don’t immediately reveal anything. A check on their current whereabouts shows that two of them—Anderson Locke and Travis Chase—arrived, separately, in Chicago this morning via their private jets. Dane does further cross-referencing with the members and Chicago to try and find out what they’d be doing there (neither Locke nor Chase have offices in Chicago). Finally, a very small mention in an archeological journal discusses a rumored new wing that may be added to The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, underwritten by a handful of corporations. One of the ones mentioned as a possibility is Locke Dynamics.

Moonspider suggests they get into the Field Museum’s computer and find out if there’s something big scheduled today. Nothing major shows up, no new exhibits beginning today. However, some closer checking into their private intranet shows that a couple of tours had to be rescheduled, due to a last-minute private tour arranged for a group listed as the Historical Preservation Coalition. Browsing through the Museum’s e-mail server shows some notes about needing to take care of these guys and really put on the show for them, as they could mean a lot of money for the Museum.

Bingo.

And the private tour is scheduled to begin…

Ten minutes ago.

That’s it. Sounds like chances are good the third scroll is there, and the Legacy Club has gone to collect it. Tinker tells the team they’re going, no time for recon or being polite. They’re just going in. She tells Moondancer to stay with Rainier, as she wants two of them in town at all times, and wants two with the scroll. Rainier will continue with his analysis. Stephen has left to meet with the mystics to follow a lead on the Stormbringer. The rest of their team is going to Chicago.

Nightsable checks the satellite map and opens a portal, and she, Dyna Girl, Tinker, Moonspider, Vortex and Max rush through. They come out into the Illinois afternoon, right in front of the Field Museum, and quickly go up the steps to the massive marble structure (unfortunately, along with a lot of civilians, who are quite stunned at the sight of them) and between the great white columns through the front doors of the north entrance. A security guard just inside does a jaw-drop. Tinker quickly approaches him (not having to, of course, introduce herself or her familiar companions) and tells him there are a group of businessmen being led on a private tour, and the heroes need to know where they are right now. He makes a rapid radio call and tells the heroes that group is currently in the acquisitions room, a place off-limits to non-employees—except, of course, for a group that plan to build a new wing. She tells him he needs to stop new people from coming in and have his people start getting people out, just in case. She doesn’t think there’s going to be a problem (as they are just rich guys), but she’ll personally apologize to the patrons before leaving for their inconvenience. He gets right on it. She tells Vortex to go find the billionaire boys club. He zips away, and is back in seconds. He says they’re back there, being led around by what look like Museum mucky-mucks. And that all nine of them appear to be there. Fish in a barrel.

They quickly consult the map provided by the guard, Nightsable nods, and a portal opens. The team steps through, and into the acquisitions room, an expansive chamber stacked high with all manner of crates and ancient treasures. There stand the Legacy Club, in their stylish suits, and they, and the Museum directors with them, stare in shock as a group of well-known heroes appear.

One of the directors demands to know what’s happening, and Tinker asks that they please leave, that the team needs to have a talk with these men. The Legacy members look nervous, to say the least, and the directors resist, but Dyna Girl ushers them, politely but firmly, to the exit.

Gareth Collins is there, and smoothly asks if there’s some kind of super-villain threat to the museum going on. Tinker tells them that Forte needs to speak with the Legacy Club, and the mention of their secret name turns some of them pale. She says she knows what they’re doing, and what they’re after, and tells them they’re being duped. Memphis is a liar and no great power is going to come to them. They’re being used to help destroy the world. Some of them look at each other doubtfully, but Gareth says he has no idea what nonsense she’s talking about and starts to explain their reasons for being there. Tinker cuts him off and tells him to save it, that it’s over, and to show the heroes where the scroll is. He mentions his attorneys, and Tinker says she’ll be happy to entertain any lawsuits later. But seeing as how she has evidence that they’ve restarted a club that tried to rule the world a few years ago, they might want to think about cooperating, because their stocks are about to take a tumble.

The princes of industry look at each other nervously, but suddenly, there’s a flash of light from behind the heroes. Everyone turns.

There stands an imposing, bearded man with black hair and piercing, dark eyes, wearing Egyptian garb and a regal cape. Next to him stands a man in a suit, sans tie, identifiable to them as the man they saw on the passport of Memphis.

Anubis speaks.

“So,” he says, in a deep, menacing, but eerily calm voice. “These are the modern gods I’ve been told of. Pity. I’d hoped to be less…underwhelmed.”

“Vortex,” Tinker whispers, her eyes glued to Anubis and her palms starting to sweat. “Get people out of here. RIGHT now.”

Vortex vanishes in a blur, speeding past Anubis and Memphis. Anubis turns his head that direction after he’s gone, not seeming bothered. “A cotemporary of Anuket,” he comments. “How…derivative.”

The remaining heroes steel themselves, trying to prepare for what’s to come, but Anubis’ lack of movement is unsettling as hell.

“Gareth,” Memphis says, joining his hands behind his back and looking smug as anything. “I’m very impressed. You’ve done well. But I’m afraid the situation has changed. We no longer have need of your services. But your new god thanks for your time.”

The rich boys all back away a few steps, trying to figure out what’s going on, and how it’s going to affect them. Nightsable, meanwhile, whispers to Tinker.

“Should I—?”

“No,” Lucy says immediately, knowing exactly what she’s talking about and having no part of it. She turns her attention to Anubis, stoking up her nerve. “So you must be Anubis. We’ve heard a lot about you.”

“I should hope,” he says, amused (mostly by himself). “I understand your particular group has been preparing for my arrival. I’m sorry to tell you that it’s all been in vain.”

“Do we have to hear about ‘vain’ from a guy wearing a dress?” Holly asks, pretending to be less nervous than she is. Lucy says her name quietly, signaling her that now is not the time, and that it’s not a good idea.

Back to Anubis, she says, “Whatever yours plans are? They’re not going to happen. You come from a different time, when maybe you could get away with going on a global killing spree. Times have changed. You’re not a god here. You’re just a powerful tyrant with mental problems. Our kind are used to dealing with yours. You picked the wrong century.”

“Yes,” he nods, musing. “An age of ‘heroes’. I’ve been told. Beings with the power to rule but not the ambition. Higher beings who consort with mortals and bend to their will. Serve them. Beyond misguided. Quite sad, actually. How far this world has fallen since my kind ruled.

“It will be a mercy…what I will do to it.”

And the way he says that sends a chill through everyone.

“We kind of like it the way it is,” Lucy answers. “You don’t realize it yet, but you don’t stand a chance. We have the power to stop you.”

“You wouldn’t be speaking of my young brother, would you?” he smiles, coyly.

She hadn’t been, no, but now Lucy breaks out into gooseflesh, and her mouth goes dry, at his words.

“My servant here has told me how the boy has slumbered the centuries away in wait for me,” he says. “I’m told you are the ones who hide him from me. A clever spell. But you can’t keep him from me. We are rivals of old, woman. Brothers with unfinished business. And it is most unwise to stand between brothers at odds. I can assume your history teaches you that as much as mine has me. Ours is an ending written long ago. We are ordained to face one another. One final time. Why do you stand in the way of his destiny?”

“Because we don’t need him,” she says, suddenly with anger overcoming her fear, “to put an end to you. I’m sure he’ll be disappointed he wasn’t the one to finally kick your ass. He’ll get over it.”

He laughs a small laugh. “I see he’s worked his charms on you. He always had that gift. And a weakness for women, ingrained into him by our doting mother. She and I were…not so close as they.”

“Drop you on your head a few times as a baby?” Dyna Girl can’t resist asking, slowly clenching and unclenching her fists beside her.

Ignoring her, he continues staring Lucy down. “If you see him as a child, woman, you are mistaken. He is a god. A weak, pathetic god, but a god nonetheless. He is so far above you that you should tremble in his presence and kneel before him and kiss his feet for allowing you to look upon him. My hatred for him does not diminish that. He is of the divine. And for all his weakness, the heavens will still shake and the spinning worlds shudder when I tear his heart still beating from his breast.”

Lucy stares right back at him, her breathing getting more pronounced and her rage slowly building.

“But first,” he says, changing the subject conversationally, “I believe something that belongs to me is here. I’ll be taking that now.”

“No,” Lucy says, flatly.

He raises an eyebrow and looks amused. “I was asking?” he asks with godlike sarcasm.

“You’re not taking it.”

“And I promise you,” he answers. “You’re not stopping me.”

“Can we all just—” Travis Chase says, taking a careful step forward and raising a hand. “Take a moment here? I can see things are a little tense. Sometimes,” he starts to explain diplomatically, putting on his best boardroom style, “When people—”

Anubis points a hand at Chase, and creases his brow, and all humor leaves him as quickly as his motion happens. A blast of dark energy explodes from his spread fingers, and rips through the young statesman’s chest. Suddenly, there’s all but nothing left of him between his armpits and waist, and what is left slumps to the floor with a wet thud.

“Dyna, go!” Tinker screams, grabbing for a weapon. “Get him outside!”

Not needing to be told twice, Dyna Girl takes off flying like a rocket, right at the Egyptian menace, fist ahead of her and teeth bared. Anubis turns his head back just as she’s about to reach him. With a move so fast she can barely see it, he throws his arm at her and grips her with a crushing hand around her neck, stopping her dead and holding her up by her throat.

She grabs at his hand, struggling for breath and to recover from the brutal speed of his action, as he holds her momentarily in the air, her feet dangling above the cold cement floor.

“Sweet child,” he smiles at her with sadistic charm. With that, his face turns violent and he spins and throws her toward the exit. Dyna Girl smashes through the acquisitions room wall, through two more walls behind it, through the skeletal remains of a displayed dinosaur in the main hall, over screaming and now-running Museum patrons, right through the thick marble wall of the Museum’s north entrance, and out across the expansive lawn before it, where she eventually lands, tumbling, and stops, unmoving.

“Nightsable!” Lucy yells, and Nightsable runs for him. As she does, she calls open a portal behind him, one that he either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care about, and he stays focused on her. At the last moment she springs into a twisting flip and disappears, only to reappear behind him, between him and the portal, and hook her arm around his neck. With her momentum and her impressive strength, and with moves taught by her fathers—Dr. Jackals of two Earths—she flips him off his feet and through the portal, immediately leaping through after him. Max takes flight, soaring through after her just as it closes.

Memphis is very steamed. “You fools!” he yells, spitting a little. “You dare lay hands on your dark god?”

“Oh SHUT the Hell up,” Lucy says, and whips her bean bag gun around, firing at his chest. To her surprise, he twists and dodges the shot. When he turns back around, his eyes are a crackling deep crimson. With pronounced fury, he whips off his jacket and starts for her. But halfway there, he’s met with a soaring kick from a leaping Moonspider, and the blow sends him spinning back and fighting for footing as Moonspider keeps on him.

Lucy gets on her Forte radio.

“This is Tinker!” she yells on the open channel. “We have engaged Anubis! I repeat, we have engaged Anubis! HELP!!”

Seeing Moonspider grappling with Memphis, she turns around to address the remaining members of the Legacy Club, and to find out from them exactly where the scroll is hidden in this vast room.

She finds them all standing together, next to the dead body of Chase, facing her. They all look resolute and cold. And each of them has a different something pulsing from their hands. Collins’ hands appear on fire. Locke’s steam with freezing mist. Kendall Baines flexes his fingers beside him, and they radiate with a green, living energy as he stares her down.

“Uh oh,” she mutters.

Anubis is picking himself up, angrily, when Samantha decks him, letting out a battle scream. He stumbles back a few steps with the blow, but doesn’t seem dazed by it in the least. Max, coming up from behind her, flies right past her with both fists ahead of him, his cape flapping in the Chicago wind. Anubis reaches out and grabs his wrists and simply hurls him, sending him soaring out over lake Michigan, where he rights himself and starts to fly back. But by then, Anubis is already stalking toward Nightsable.

She runs to meet him, does a flying leap, vanishes, and reappears right in front of him, both boots slamming into his chest. He backsteps with the blow, and she completes a backflip off his chest, landing on her feet. She stands in defensive pose, ready to face him, but doesn’t expect him to suddenly take flight and freight train into her (no one having known he could fly at this point). He hits her in her center, doubling her over and forcing her breath from her in one great cough, and he flies them both back at the Museum. He rams them into one of the giant marble columns and it shatters with the blow, with her taking the full brunt of it. They drop to the cement below, with stone and dust raining down on them. Dazed and somehow still conscious, and unable to breathe, she can’t even muster awareness of her surroundings, much less concentrate enough to teleport. Her head bobs as her eyes go glassy and her mouth hangs open. With a twisted smile of satisfaction, Anubis grabs her face with his powerful hand and brutally slams her head into the remains of the column. Again, more of it shatters, and Nightsable goes limp and crumbles to the ground, her hair a tangled veil over her slack, unconscious face.

Max is on him with a scream of rage and plows into him at top speed, sending both of them through the last of the column and into the stone of the north facing wall, barely noticing the blue blur of Vortex running and in out with citizens, depositing them on the Lake-facing lawn of the nearby John G. Shedd Aquarium. Max rains vicious blows down him, getting angrier with each one. But Anubis grabs his costume by the chest with one hand and throws a blow of his own, a punch that sends Max flying back across the lawn. Before he lands, he’s caught by Dyna Girl, who’s only just come to her senses. She lands with him, keeping an eye on Anubis, and asks if he’s okay. Max is not, and can’t speak, only able to stare blankly outward and breath through his bleeding mouth. She lays him on the lawn and tells him it’s okay. That she’s got this one.

She stands up, steaming, and calls to Anubis. “You want to see ‘sweet’, mother $%&*?” she yells at him.

“I do,” he smiles, darkly, purposefully walking down the steps in her direction. Which is exactly what she wanted, to get him away from the building.

She takes a few steps toward him to get some distance from Max. “You ever hear of a guy named ‘King Tut’?”

“I have not,” he says, reaching the bottom of the stairs, shrugging with his hands.

“Well, you know what you guys have in common?” she asks, taking a few more steps.

“Please, tell me,” he answers, crossing the lawn, wearing a calm, menacing smile.

“You both dress like drag queens,” she says with a humorless grin. “And you’re both DEAD!!!”

She shoots into the air, and Anubis flies up to meet her.

Tinker dodges another blast of fire, barely diving behind a crate in time as the flames tear through the container and set priceless pieces of history ablaze. She twists and lands on her back, and Tyler Baron leaps over it, though the flames, with his long, razor-sharp claws out, ready to gut her. She whips her gun around with a flour round in it, and his face explodes in white powder. Choking and gagging, and blinded, he lands on his feet and staggers back into another crate, wiping at his eyes. Lucy jumps up, kicks him in the nuts, and finishes him with an elbow to the back of the head after he drops to his knees. And she keeps running.

“Lucy, will you GET us there?” Rainier is shouting into her ear through the radio, and she can hear Chelsea barking similar sentiments.

“Nightsable’s not answering,” she whispers, running low between rows of antiquities, eyes and ears sharp. “She must be out. We can’t teleport. Where’s Stephen?”

“Off-world,” he says, his frustration evident. “In another dimension somewhere. Chelsea just tried Sydney. Sydney can’t reach him.”

“What about Prime?”

She hears him speaking to Dane Casey, telling him to get on that NOW. “We’re trying that, Lucy. And we’re getting the call out to anyone in your area.”

“Do it fast,” she hisses. “They’re alone out there with him. They need help.”

“What’s YOUR situation?”

A crate blows up next to her in a burst of green, and she ducks and takes off running. “Not good.”

“Lucy, get out of there!”

“I have to find the scroll!” she yells, vaulting another crate with both hands, landing in a roll on the other side and coming up running. “We can’t let him get it!”

“How are you supposed to find it?”

She jumps, spinning in the air, and lets a Tinkerang fly at Baines. It bursts out into thin wires when it hits his chest, and the wires snake around his torso and deliver a staggering electric jolt. He convulses loudly and falls on his face, knocked out and with his pants growing dark in the crotch. Lucy lands and back-rolls back onto her feet and gets moving again.

“Beat on one of these rich pricks until they tell me. Get Prime, Davis. Get anyone. We’re not going to last.”

Moonspider is having an unexpectedly tough fight with Memphis. What they thought was a normal guy seems to be magically augmented. He’s tough, he’s fast, and he seems quite expert in the forgotten Egyptian fighting style he’s using. He and Moonspider are trading blows and blocks. Finally Moonspider lands a kick on him that sends him tumbling back into a pile of framed butterflies, and glass shatters with his fall. Memphis sits up and his eyes ignite, and crimson beams shoot out from them. Moonspider ducks and manages to dodge the twin blasts. Memphis keeps on him, blasting away, and Moonspider leaps and flips over crates that blow apart with Memphis’s blasts. He lands near an African collection and grabs and hurls a spear at his attacker. Memphis twists and the spear sails past his chest, and he turns back angrily to find Moonspider flying through the air at him. He grabs and flips Moonspider to the ground. From his back, Moonspider kicks up with both feet and strikes the man in the face, staggering him. With a roll and a flip, Moonspider is back up and spinning with a kick that further stuns his attacker. With a leap, Moonspider rams both feet into his chest, and Memphis flies back and crashes through a large crate, and dust and hay blow out from it.

As he’s about to follow, Moonspider is struck in the back with a blast of ice and flies forward, in a lot of pain. Clutching a crate to stop his fall, he turns his head and sees Anderson Locke there with his frosty hands, and next to him, Morgan Silver, whose hands appear to now be covered in stone. Anderson comments to Morgan how much he hates supers, and Morgan, fists at the ready, agrees. They both rush Moonspider with sneers of anger.

Dyna Girl throws a vicious one-two combination of punches that rock Anubis’ head back and forth and spin him around in the air. She follows up with a flying uppercut that sends him flying up and outward, and flies right after him. She throws her momentum and strength behind a devastating roundhouse, but he dodges this one, grabs her arm, and spins and throws her back toward the museum. She crashes through the 60-foot tall sculpture/spire that stands before the north stairs, and it breaks in two as she passes and hits the ground, crumbling cement. She gets up and sees Anubis flying toward her, and grabs the broken-off upper half of the spire, and as Anubis soars in, she swings it with all her might. It connects, and like a line drive to center field, Anubis is sent hurling through the air.

She drops her improvised bat (wondering how much they’re going to have to pay for it) and flies right off after him. Anubis’ long arc takes him out over the lake, and he smashes through a moored sailboat, anchored there with many others. She rushes there, praying there’s no passengers on it, and sees the hole in its shattered deck gushing water as the craft beings to sink. As she lands, Anubis smashes through the deck and grabs her by the neck, slamming his forehead into her face. She’s staggered by this, and he follows up with a lightning-fast blow to her stomach. She doubles over, now without breath, and he immediately grabs her, harshly, by the back of her hair, yanks her back to the edge of the faltering craft, and shoves her head and shoulders below the waves. He holds her there with his unfathomable strength, and she struggles, but without leverage, without her full senses, and with the stunning cold of the late October lake disorienting her further. He holds her there with a sick and smug satisfaction on his face.

Further showing signs of his high school football glory days, Max soars in, leading with his shoulder, and ram into Anubis’ chest, sending the both of them through what’s left of the boat and through two others. Holly pulls her head out of the lake and collapses on the rapidly disappearing deck, gasping for air and coughing up frigid water. She can only watch as Max relentlessly showers blow after blow across Anubis’ face, and manages to duck two of Anubis’ return punches before starting again. It’s a rare thing to see Bobby angry, and though she’s seen it before, she hasn’t seen it like this. Hacking and trying to recover, she finds herself both proud of him and strangely afraid of him.

Anubis grabs Max and smashes him to the deck of the damaged boat they’re on. The angry god throws a wide punch down at him, but Max dodges and Anubis’ fist goes through the deck. With a spinning move from his back, Max knocks Anubis onto his side, rolls over him, grabs the villain’s cape as he does, and then takes off in flight, dragging Anubis through the air with him. The pair zoom over the coughing Dyna Girl as the boat finally starts to disappear into the waves beneath her.

Back over the museum grounds, Max flips Anubis by his cape, and purposely misses the lawn and flings him down into cement. Following right down with him, Max is quickly punching him again, putting everything he has—strength and rage—into the flurry, his mind locked on the ten thousand innocent men, women and children dead by this madman’s hand, and what he did to Samantha.

Anubis rams his knees into Max’s stomach, immobilizing him, and throws him off, onto his back. Rising to his knees, Anubis grabs Bobby by the throat and pulls back for a punch. Dyna Girl rockets in from nowhere with a punch of her own, and Anubis is sent soaring, back into another of the museum columns that breaks apart. She lands with another punch, snapping his head back onto the steps, then another, then another, gripped by a rage of her own. He backhands her and sends her spinning back through the air twenty feet, where she lands hard near the remains of the spire. Anubis gets to his feet, running his hands back through his wet hair, and starts walking toward her as she struggles to rise. With a chill, she sees his smile, and suddenly realizes that the bastard is enjoying this.

A blue streak suddenly spins around Anubis, almost invisible to the eye, and he starts spinning in the air as a miniature tornado erupts around him, pulling debris and leaves into its funnel. Anubis spins faster and faster as Vortex streaks around him, increasing and sustaining the funnel. Holly shouts out triumphant approval. Vortex finally zips away, and Anubis falls to his knees, disoriented. As he staggers to his feet, Dyna Girl hurries up to him.

“All the way back to Kansas, Dorothy,” she says through clenched teeth, and she pulls back for her biggest punch, letting it fly. Anubis overshoots the lawn completely, and finally lands on South Lakeshore Drive, where traffic screeches to a halt and horns blare. Holly drops to a sit on the stairs, exhausted from the punch. Vortex suddenly appears and asks if she’s okay. She lies and tells him yes—she’s incredibly sore and knows it’s going to be so much worse later in the day—and she tells him to go see if he’s out and make sure no people got hurt. He does so and shoots off that way. She takes a moment to catch her breath, and sees Max limping up toward her, asking, too, her status, and she in turn asks his. He’s been better, but he’s in one piece. She nods and tells him to come on, that they have to finish this, but then notices Nightsable laying there in a pile of rubble, not moving.

Before she can rush to her friend, she either hears or senses something, and looks up and sees Vortex fly past her, his body limp. He smashes through a second story window of the museum, by some miracle missing the stone wall, and glass rains down on her. She’s still recovering from the shock of that sight when she turns her head and notices the Buick Regal flying through the air at her. It hits her before she can react, and she and the sedan smash through the north entrance doors and into the museum.

Also in shock, Max finally looks back and sees Anubis flying toward him. The god is angry, and Max realizes he’s suddenly the only one left standing on his team. Knowing he has no choice now, he takes a breath and tightens his muscles, and focuses. Anubis continues to close. Summoning all his concentration and anger, Max calls deep within himself. He unleashes the power within him—that thing which his mentor and coach, Dan Murdock, named “the max effect” once they had discovered it together—and an invisible wall of kinetic energy slams into Anubis. He flies back, though not as far as he would have had he not be flying at high velocity toward Max, as Max collapses.

Holding is himself up with one hand on the ground, Max breathes hard, trying to get some strength back, trying to stay conscious. Finally his head stops spinning, and he’s able to raise it up.

He sees Anubis walking slowly toward him, and his heart sinks.

Anubis tells him he’s impressed, and he’s enjoyed this sparring, but that now he has things to attend to. To Max’s distress, he doesn’t even look winded. But Max knows he’s all that’s left standing between Anubis and the scroll. So he, slowly and carefully, fights his way to his feet. Anubis magnanimously tells him that he has courage, but it would best serve both their interests if he’d just stay on the ground. Weakly, Max tells him not a chance, and prepares to start fighting again.

They both hear the sudden roar, and both look to the west. Out of nowhere, a state-of-the-art jet, flying suicidally low, rockets past, right over them, shaking the ground and breaking windows out on the museum. Max loses his footing and falls to the ground again. In the jet’s wake, a hulking figure in white and red, with a crimson star on his chest, round sunglasses of a matching shade, and a full, waving cape billowing behind him, shoots by Anubis, hitting him with both mighty fists, and Anubis, once more, goes flying. The Russian-born hero Avatar turns his body and quickly decelerates, and starts heading back. The jet, an experimental VTOL craft called the Virtue, is already making a sharp turn and heading back around.

“Afternoon, Forte,” the voice of Starman, one of the founders of both the original and current Paragons, says through the Forte radios. “We just happened to be in the neighborhood, thought we’d see if you could use a hand.”

“Yes!” Tinker whispers hungrily, raising a cheering fist, from her defensive position with her back to a crate from Madagascar. She immediately goes back to reloading her weapons and priming new ones, feeling at least a little better about her teammates outside after hearing that in her ear.

“Are you people STUPID?” she yells upward to her stalkers, wherever they may be. “What part of ‘used’ are you not getting? There is no prize! There is no deal! That guy outside is going to kill you and every other person on the planet! So would you please quit screwing around and help me stop him instead of wasting my time?”

Collins, from somewhere nearby, disagrees. He says there’s always a deal to be made. If this Anubis is going to be the new CEO, then they had best throw their chips in with him. He figures taking the heroes out will be a sign of good faith. Plus, if they have the item that he wants so bad, that puts them in a bargaining position. Tinker calls back to never mind on her question…they ARE stupid.

She suddenly jumps with a gasp and whips one of her guns out as a woman appears right in front of her. A woman still pulling up one of the boots on her familiar costume. Tinker quickly grabs the former Forte heroine—Nightshift—and pulls her down, out of the line of sight of the hunters. Nightshift whispers an apology for being late. The Chicago-based retired heroine (and retired thief before that) is a teleporter, but unlike Nightsable, she can’t teleport over great distances. Or even so-so distances. She had to get in her car when she heard the call and drive over here at top speed, and then teleport in. Tinker thanks her for coming, and very quickly, in small, efficient words, lays out the situation. Nightshift gets it all, and the two women from two different Forte eras quickly formulate a plan of action.

Moonspider is on the defensive. Simply fighting a fairly-trained rich kid with rocks for hands wouldn’t be a problem on its own, if not for his buddy shooting the ice and keeping Moonspider off-balance and on the move.

He manages to confuse them into splitting up, then gets to work on Silver, nailing him with a boot to the head as he runs around the corner where Moonspider lays in wait. Unfortunately, whatever magic gave him the stone hands seems to have made his skin tougher, too, see he doesn’t go down with that one. So Moonspider keeps nailing him and avoiding his undisciplined blows.

But suddenly Moonspider’s hand is hit with a blast of ice and frozen to the wall. He fights to get it free, but can’t. Silver takes advantage and rushes him and starts throwing punches. Moonspider, even with one arm pinned, works with what he has and keeps zipping his head out of the way as Silver’s hands keep hitting wall, and returns blows with his feet, still struggling with the ice that’s holding him. Locke is approaching, though, and raising both hands for a final chilling assault.

Anubis picks himself up and is very displeased…and fed up. The Virtue is headed back his way, but Avatar is coming even faster. He sees a flaming figure (the Paragons’ muscular fire-wielder, Blaze) and a figure garbed in black (Knightmare, leader of the Paragons, founding member of both versions of the legendary Cleveland hero team) exit the jet and come flying his way as well.

“I tire of this,” he says with annoyance.

He holds out his hand, and the air around it shimmers, and suddenly his long staff appears into it, one of Egyptian design but with a pair of deadly blades at its top. As Avatar flies at him, he sidesteps and slashes expertly with it, and a long gash opens in the passing hero’s arm, gushing blood. Avatar flies a bit further and tumbles to the ground, mostly from the shock. He’s supposed to be one of the strongest and toughest men on Earth, and that blade went through him like paper.

Anubis then points the staff up at the approaching jet, holds it there, and a loud blast of energy comes from it. Starman, the pilot of the Virtue, banks at the last moment, but the blast still shears off one of the craft’s wings, and the fuel in it explodes. The flaming craft veers, with all control lost, and blazes by, heading straight for the Aquarium. It sheers off the building’s “Caribbean Roof” tower, and the roof of the Virtue pops at the last moment—with Starman and Import flying out, carrying Diamond Fist and Helix, respectively—and the famed craft plunges into Lake Michigan and loudly explodes.

Watching this, stunned, Max gets to his feet, and thinks to check on Nightsable before trying to help. He pulls debris off his teammate and finds her unconscious, with blood trickling down her forehead. He yells toward the building for Dyna Girl, but gets no response. He gets on the radio and tries her, and Vortex, but again gets only silence.

Knightmare, cutting the jets on his jet-belt, whips his staff around as he passes Anubis and whacks him on the head. He lands and rolls and comes back up without pause, rushing Anubis with staff twirling. Using his own staff, Anubis swings at him with a lightning-fast move, but Knightmare ducks under it, and comes up with a kick to a pressure point on Anubis’ side. The martial art the veteran hero uses was actually created by a super-computer and taught to him while he was trapped for two (mental) decades in a virtual reality world, and has been used to devastating effect on foes normal and ultra-powerful alike. But this foe seems immune, and goes back to staff-swinging at him, and Knightmare goes back to dodging and trying to counter, trying different spots that SHOULD be weak points.

Diamond Fist, the female-bodied heroine with the mind and soul of original male Diamond Fist from the 80s Paragons, along with Helix, the clone of a cosmic heroine and an escapee to Earth from a galactic empire that tried to make her part of a super-army, drops in and joins the melee as well. The three hand-to-hand fighters works as a unit, keeping Anubis off balance, striking when they can—Knightmare with violent precision, Diamond Fist with calm artistry and glowing fists that focus pure will into diamond-hard hits, Helix with unchained battle lust. Their attacks do nothing, but at least the trio manage to avoid his returned blows.

A booming voice yells “Clear!”, and without hesitating, the three of them dash in three different directions. Left alone, Anubis looks up and see Blaze up above, aiming his hands at him. Blaze unleashes a pillar of roaring flame, and the whole area of lawn around Anubis goes up in searing, growing circle of fire. Blaze focuses and keeps the attack pouring on, fully intent on cooking the villain and leaving nothing of him behind. The area grows so hot that the other heroes have to run back further, and even Max, up at the Museum entrance, finds himself holding an arm up over his face to shield from it and covering Nightsable with his body to protect her.

After a few seconds more of this, an blast of energy erupts from the center of the flame, and Blaze is struck and taken out in one shot, and sent soaring. Starman quickly flies after him to catch him before he hits the ground. Anubis, meanwhile, steps calmly from the now-dying wall of flame, mildly singed but otherwise intact.

Import, the British heroine, whose power is to open small portals to other dimensions that are made up entirely of energy, does just that with two circles that appear in front of her upturned palms. The primal energies she releases create a deafening roar, and both streams connect with Anubis and blow him back a good fifty feet. Using similar portals beneath her feet for propulsion, she flies after him, intent on keeping up the assault. Avatar is back up, hurt but with the nanites that originally gave him his powers (passed on by the dying 80s icon Captain Avatar) already healing his wounds, and he joins her. Hating to leave Nightsable, and not anywhere near ready for combat, Max takes shakily to the air to at least try and help the others.

Import keeps blasting him on the ground. Avatar lands on him (with her letting up her blasts at the last moment) with both mighty feet, driving him into the ground and knocking his staff from his hand. Max lands and joins him, and the two caped heroes land blow after blow. Anubis’ hands, though, suddenly grab each of them by the throat, and they both go immobile look shocked and wide-eyed and his hands pulse with some kind of spell or energy. He stands up and holds each of them high, continuing whatever it is he’s doing, and both the heroes’ bodies start to shake and their eyes roll up.

Import blasts him again, screaming some very British curses at him, managing to not hit either Avatar or Max. Anubis backpedals but keeps his footing, but is forced to drop both the heroes. And both of them drop and don’t get up. Import tries to nail him again, but he jumps out of the way, and unleashes a blast of his own that connects and drops her right out of the air. She drops about 15 feet to the lawn and lands face-down, unmoving.

A blast of angelic light hits Anubis in the back and sends him across the lawn. Starman flies in, blasting further as he passes, unleashing the powers of the angel whose essence gave him his abilities during a suicide attempt in the 80s. He sails past Anubis, a bright blur, and Anubis leaps to his feet and takes to the air to pursue. He stops, confused, suddenly facing no less than twenty Starmen, all hovering in the air around him, looking ready to attack. All but one are light illusions generated by the hero. Anubis pauses and studies them, looking one to another. Finally he smiles, and says that only one carries a soul. With those words, he flies through several of the copies and grabs the real Starman. The famed hero struggles against the frightfully powerful arm around his neck as he’s held from behind. Anubis says he senses a higher being within him. And higher beings, he says, belong in the heavens.

Anubis grabs him with both hands, raises him, and brings Starman crashing down on his raised knee. The heroes that remain below will never forget the sickening, shocking sound of Starman’s back breaking. The hero goes limp and wide-eyed, and Anubis simply drops him and lets him fall the twenty feet to the ground, smiling with evil satisfaction.

Moonspider, still pinned, with Silver trying to pummel him and Locke about to freeze him, positions his head at just the right spot. Silver takes another punch, and Moonspider ducks it, and Silver’s stone hand shatters the ice around Moonspider’s trapped one. Moonspider grabs Silver just in time to spin him around and in front of him as Locke lets loose with his frigid blast. Silver goes stiff, frozen in place. Locke’s jaw drops when he realizes what he’s done, and Moonspider leaps from behind the Silvercicle, flips in the air, lands in front of Locke, and shuts it for him.

“What’s the matter?” Tinker’s voice says, floating up from behind some crates. “Having second thoughts? Don’t think you can take on a girl with no powers? You got no guts?”

Collins creeps between the rows, hearing more taunts and insults and challenges from her, and tells himself they’re not bothering him, that he’s going to make her eat those words in a few seconds, and then they would see how cocky she is. He hears her voice getting louder around a corner. He flames up his hands and gets ready, then jumps out into the open, ready to roast her alive.

Instead of her, he sees a stuffed toy likeness of her, sitting on the floor, with a speaker in place of its mouth, cranking out pre-recorded, generic challenges and insults.

“Sucker,” Tinker says behind him. He spins around, and she fires her bean bag gun on automatic. The bags pummel him…in the chest, the stomach, the face. He goes down.

Hearing this, Nicholas Browder comes running, his sparkling hands covered with diamonds in front of him, ready to shred her with flying shards of jewel. He doesn’t notice the tiny clear glass marbles she’s just spread on the floor, and he pinwheels and loses his footing and falls on his rear end. He tries to sit up frantically, falls again when his hands slip, and then a flying bolo wraps itself around his neck and zaps him with a serious electric charge. He, too, is out.

Yashodhan Nehru and Tanner Donnell, next to each other with their backs to a large crate in a dark corner, look at each other at the sound.

“That’s both of them,” Yash whispers in his Indian accent. “This is a very very bad idea. I told you so.”

“I know,” Tanner says, nervously. “Chase never said anything about super-heroes and big wizard guys. Bastard deserved to get wasted for getting us into this.”

“What do we do?” Yash asks him.

“I think we should surrender and give all our riches to needy charities,” a voice above them whispers.

They both look up and see Nightshift’s smiling face as she lays atop the crate and hangs her head over the edge, looking down on them.

In a panic, Tanner throws his hands up and unleashes a funnel of high-speed water. Nightshift disappears, and the water splinters the top of the crate where she just was. She appears between them and throws an elbow into Tanner’s face, sending him stumbling back, and high-kicks Nehru, forcing him back the other direction. She turns around as Tanner is raising his hands, and she releases the black energy that courses through her, blasting him right off his feet and through a couple of mannequins dressed in Mayan ceremonial attire.

She turns back to Yash, who’s recovered from her kick, but now looks unsure of himself, looking at the unconscious body of his old fraternity brother straddling a Mayan warrior. His hands pulse with some kind of orange magic.

Nightshift crosses her arms and stands there looking at him. “Last man standing,” she says. “With all that cash you must have dabbled in some betting over the years. What do you think the odds are of you beating the spread here?”

He gulps, considering his options.

Something cold and metal presses against the side of his temple, and he hears the sharp whine of Tinker’s sonic pistol powering up.

“Do you have any idea what this many decibels will do to you at this range?” Tinker asks him. “Deafness will be the least of your problems. You’ll be lucky to wake up remembering how to tie your shoes.”

His hands glow brighter for just a moment, and then the orange light flickers out and disappears. Nightshift smiles and nods and gives him an approving thumbs-up.

Tinker gets close, keeping her gun where it is, and speaks into his ear.

“You secret-handshaking dickheads have made me screw around with you in here when my friends need me out there. If anything’s happened to them, that means I pin all the blame on you. So you want to be on my good side right now. And the only way to do that and save yourself from, believe me, what I’m very much looking forward to doing to you, is to take me to that scroll. And I mean RIGHT now.

“Where is it?”

His vision red with rage, Knightmare spins his staff and aims the tip up at Anubis. He triggers it, and a red blast of concentrated energy rips from it, and into Anubis. Anubis spins around in the air from the blast, from a weapon calibrated to take down the level of villains the Paragons are used to battling. Knightmare fires again, and again, his aim perfect, and Anubis is blown from the sky and drops to the grass. Knightmare fires his jets and is after him before Anubis’ fall has ended.

Anubis angrily jumps to his feet, and is hit again and staggers back, and Knightmare keeps coming. Anubis holds out his hands and his ancient staff flies from where it lies and soars to them. As Knightmare fires again, Anubis spins his staff and deflects the blast, then the next. Knightmare drops in front of him, and Anubis swings his staff, and Knightmare ducks below it. He swings his own staff and strikes a blow across Anubis’ face, then another, but on the third Anubis blocks with his staff. The two warriors then do combat with their staffs, blocking each other with each swing, with Knightmare never letting up, feeding all his bloodlust into his moves.

Knightmare blocks a downward strike holding his staff up with both hands, but Anubis strikes again with an impossibly fast follow-up, and the blade on his staff cleaves Knightmare’s in two. With only a slight pause, Knightmare whips off his cape, and he flips over Anubis, pulling the black garment over the villain’s head, blinding him. Holding it there, he begins throwing bone-crunching punches and kicks to Anubis’ back and kidneys.

Anubis yanks the cape from his face, wresting it from Knightmare’s grip, spins around, and grabs the Paragons’ leader by his costume. He raises him up bodily and slams him to the ground. Noticing Diamond Fist running at him and about to reach him, he slings Knightmare’s body, and it flies into Diamond Fist, and both Paragons fly back and tumble across the ground together, and neither rises when they come to a stop.

Helix leaps on his back, giving a war cry and screaming in her alien language, and tries to claw his eyes with her fingers. He thrashes around and struggles to get her off his back, and manages to get a piece of her costume and throw her. But she grabs onto his cape and holds on, and drops to her feet in front of him instead and starts throwing her whole body into rapid-fire punches to his chest and face. He spins his body around, throwing his staff in a circling arc meant to cut her in two, but she leaps above it, goes back to work, and manages to keep dodging his return strikes and swings.

He jams the end of his staff into the ground instead, and the ground shakes violently, momentarily unsettling her. It’s enough for him to land a punch across her face, and blood flies from her mouth and nose, but her combat training keeps her from being thrown back, and she rolls with the blow instead. She pivots back around to face him again, but is met with a thrust of his staff. The blade and the top third of the staff drive through her midsection and out her back.

Blood dripping from her open mouth, the girl from the cosmos can only stare mutely down at the staff, her mind trying to catch up with what’s happened, and grab at the staff weakly with shaking hands. Holding the staff firm with both of his hands, Anubis smiles, enjoying the spectacle, and tells her that he doesn’t know if a soul born so far from Earth will find its way to his kingdom, but if so, he assures her they’ll see each other again. With that, he yanks his staff back out, and Helix can only gasp, and the girl falls to the ground, twitching, her mouth moving but unable to form words.

What’s left of the Buick slams into him, and it and Anubis bounce loudly across the lawn, tearing up sod and grass and cutting deep furrows into the Earth. The car lands with him still under it. Dyna Girl, smeared with engine oil and marble dust, her costume torn and her hair sticking every which way, flies after him, her face quivering with black anger.

She lands, grabs the corpse of the sedan with one hand, and flings it off of him. Without pause she’s on him, and starts jackhammering him with one massive punch after the next, screaming gutturally with each one. She grabs him by his armor’s chest plate and hoists him up, holding him there, as she pulls back and slams her other fist into his face. Holding him to keep him for being thrown back, she keeps him there, and keeps punching him, not letting herself tire or stop. She grabs his head with both hands and yanks it down as she throws her knee up, and there’s a loud crack of bone against bone as he falls back and hits the ground, and the appearance of blood from his nose only drives her on.

She continues to punch him, relentlessly, to the point of exhaustion, screaming and swearing at him. She yanks him back up and spins him around and wraps her arm around his neck, putting the remainder of her strength into choking him, tasting victory.

She screams as an onslaught of black mystical energy suddenly envelops them and charges through her body, a pain like she has never known. She looses control of her limbs and spasms, feeling agony in every atom. It goes on for what seems like en eternity, until it finally stops. She starts to fall, and Anubis turns around and grabs her, staring into her face for a moment with ancient hate before spinning her harshly around. He pins her arm behind her and holds her up by it, and speaks quietly into her ear.

“You have spirit, child,” he says, caressing her cheek with his free hand, actually sounding groggy. “I only wish I had the time now to properly break that spirit. But that time will come.”

Anubis yanks up on her arm and breaks it, and Holly screams again. He grabs her then with both hands and throws her with all his considerable might. Her body smashes through the north face wall of the Museum, sending marble crumbling down, and continues through every wall of the building and out through the south wall, where it finally crashes into the side of a stopped Kenworth on East William L. Mcfetridge Drive. A crowd gathers, quickly but cautiously, at the side of the truck, but Dyna Girl does not emerge.

Tinker harshly shoves Nehru toward the direction he’s pointed them to, while Nightshift hurries along in tow. Tinker is on her radio, calling outside for a status report, having just heard another loud crash. She gets no answers from any of them. She tries the Hero System band that Starman’s call had come to her through and tries to raise any Paragons. Silence from that team as well.

Nehru suddenly stops as they round a corner, and she and Nightshift nearly run into him. Tinker asks, impatiently, what the problem is, and tells him again to take them to the scroll. Nervously, he points ahead, toward a crate with its front laying on the ground before it. Tinker’s heart drops. She rushes forward, pushing Nehru with her, and finds the open crate filled with Chinese artifacts from the Shang dynasty. Trying not to damage anything inside, she starts rifling through the items, asking him aloud where it is. Nightshift looks at Nehru, who only shakes his head in confusion.

Moonspider comes running up behind them. Tinker stands and asks him where the rest of the Legacy Club are, and he tells her that they’re out. She looks back at the crate, frustrated, then stops and looks back at him.

“Where’s Memphis?” she asks.

Moonspider shakes his head and said that’s what he came to tell her. He’d gone back for Memphis, and the man was gone. Angered, Tinker throws a punch and decks Nehru, knocking him out, and tells the others to come on.

Anubis views the scene around him and wipes blood from his face with the back of his hand, looking down at it with some fascination. He looks up again and sees Memphis come walking down the stairs of the Museum, smiling, holding a jeweled scroll case in his hand. Anubis, too, smiles.

Memphis crosses the lawn, and Anubis walks that way to meet him, asking if those inside had presented any problems. Memphis, withholding the whole truth to look better in the eyes of his god, says nothing that he couldn’t handle. Anubis eyes the scroll hungrily as Memphis approaches. Now, Anubis tells him, they will acquire the final—

Nightsable appears next to Memphis and slugs him. She catches him before he falls and grabs the scroll from his hand, and then she opens a portal next to her and tosses his unconscious body through. The portal snaps shut.

She stands there, trying to keep steady footing as blood continues to drip down her forehead, holding the scroll in her hand. Anubis’ countenance goes dark. He asks her where she sent Memphis. She says somewhere safe. He looks at the scroll and holds out his hand and tells her, sternly, to give it to him. Still looking woozy, she simply shakes her head. He repeats himself and takes a step forward.

A small, round portal opens beneath her hand. Nightsable drops the scroll, and it vanishes into it, and then the portal vanishes as well.

Anubis’ face starts to grow red, and his upper lip twitches.

“Oops,” she says, swallowing, trying to sound brave and cocky.

It happens so fast she doesn’t realize it before he’s on her. Anubis, enraged, has his hands around her throat and is choking the life out of her. She can barely make out him screaming “Where?!! Where is my scroll?! Where?!!” He thrashes her around above the ground like a rag doll, and her eyes start to bulge and her hands vainly and limply swat at his wrists. There are white spots overcoming her vision and the pain in her throat is unimaginable. Her consciousness starts to falter.

He stops shaking her but continues to squeeze as her face begins to turn blue, and he stares at that face with hate and frustration. He looks upward, then closes his eyes, as if trying to sense something. After a few seconds he opens them again, seeming to have found what he’s looking for.

“That will do,” he says, nodding to himself. He looks at Nightsable’s face, and he tells her, “You’ll tell me soon enough. Mark my words, girl.” Then he punches her brutally in the face, and her body goes slack as if a puppet with all its strings cut at once. Holding her up by her collar, he does something with his other hand, and he opens a portal of his own, a spiraling dark red one. He carelessly tosses her into it, and Nightsable vanishes. The portal closes after she’s gone.

Anubis turns and looks toward the west, seeming to focus. He holds out his hand, and his staff appears in it. After a moment, he disappears, with a flash of light, into thin air.

“I repeat,” Castillo says into the phone, getting darker and scarier, “this is an alpha blue level priority. This overrides yours protocols. If you can’t process this, then get me your superior right now. Or you get me on with the damned President.”

“Come on, come on,” Rainier says over Dane Casey’s shoulder, watching him on the computer, near Castillo in the main control center of UNCLE Seattle.

“I’m trying to get the satellite retasked,” Dane says, frustrated. “The Baltimore office has it tied up for a Priest cell location in Michigan.”

“I need to see what’s going on there,” Rainier says. “Do whatever you have to do. Hack it if you have to, Dane. We both know you can.”

The room is abuzz with activity, with agents darting back and forth, checking computers and making calls. Captain McNeal is there as well, giving orders to his STRIKE team. Rainier and Moondancer are standing with Castillo and Casey at the head of the room. Moondancer is pacing nervously back and forth, getting less patient with each passing moment.

“What’s the word?” Rainier asks Castillo, turning to him.

Castillo looks disgusted. “They say Prime is under, on deep assignment. Secret Service protocols won’t allow for outside contact.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Rainier says, putting his stony hands on the back of his head. “We’re all out of teleporters. We need to get out there, and we need her to get us there.”

“I’m getting Fury pulled out of a meeting,” Castillo says. “If I don’t have the juice to make waves at the White House, we’ll see what a call from the Supreme Commander can do.”

“Sir?” Corporal Jason Freis says, rushing over, a young man who was just a rookie agent just transferred to the Seattle branch in 2000 when the Karrigon invasion, and his actions alongside Dane Casey and then-desk agent Cassie Garland, made him national news and jumped him up in rank (see Forte 2000 #3).

Castillo looks at him and nods.

“We have reports of an aircraft down on scene,” he says.

“The Virtue,” Rainier says, feeling suddenly ill. He fights off the urge to punch the desk in front of him, because he knows what that would do to it. “Dane, come ON, will you—”

“Got it,” Dane says suddenly. “Patching through to the main monitor.”

Everyone looks up at the large video screen on the wall as the satellite image from Chicago pulls up. The room goes silent. The famed Museum looks half destroyed. There are craters in the lawn outside it, and flaming pieces of aircraft wreckage strewn about. The Aquarium’s roof is on fire. And, most disturbingly, there are unmoving bodies of costumed individuals scattered around the scene.

“No,” Moondancer breathes.

Rainier stares in disbelief, unable to move or take his eyes away from it for a moment. Then he reaches for his radio control, ready to start calling anyone on his team and see if any of them are still up. Or still alive.

“Perimeter breach!” someone shouts.

Confused at the shout and the sudden commotion, Rainier turns around.

Anubis stands there in the center of the room.

Agents pull sidearms and level rifles. McNeal’s is out in a moment, and sighting right between Anubis’ eyes. Moondancer grabs a mystic arrowhead from her pouch.

“Wait!” Rainier shouts. Some agents look at him, some keep their eyes on Anubis, all feel the almost unbearable tension in the room. Anubis simply glances around, looking disinterested.

“Lower your weapons,” Rainier says, raising his hands carefully. Agents look from him to Castillo. Rainier turns his head and looks at Castillo, letting his eyes speak his words for him.

Castillo, with his sidearm out and aimed as well, locks eyes with him. Finally, reluctantly, he says “Do it.”

Slowly, and carefully, the agents of UNCLE overcome their instincts and lower their guns. Dane puts his back in its shoulder holster slowly, but keeps his hand close.

Anubis notices the actions, but doesn’t seem to care much. He looks back at Rainier, and Moondancer. “More ‘heroes’” he says with a slight grin. “This age is festering with you.”

Rainier takes a careful step forward, around the desk and toward Anubis. Moondancer starts to follow, but Rainier lightly puts a hand back and stops her where she is, and takes another step.

“Let these people go,” Rainier says. “They’re not like us. They’re just mortals. They have nothing to do with this.”

“I assume you realize what I’ve come for,” Anubis says, sizing Rainier up.

“Just let them go,” Rainier repeats. “And we’ll talk about it.”

Anubis shrugs. “As you wish.”

“Clear the building,” he tells Castillo over his shoulder. “Do it now.”

Still glaring at Anubis, Castillo pauses just a moment. Then, making his decision, he raises his wrist to his face and speaks into his customized UNCLE radio, built into a watch that he wears turned round. “This is the Commander. All units, evacuate base. This is not a drill.” He looks at his agents in the room, and he nods. They slowly begin to back away, heading for the exit.

He turns his head to McNeal, the one man in the room who hasn’t lowered his gun, still having it trained for a head shot. Noticing the movement, McNeal finally turns his eyes toward his superior. Castillo locks eyes with him. McNeal looks back at Anubis for a moment, then, realizing that there was something more in that glare, looks back to Castillo again. Castillo, seeing the recognition, nods purposefully. McNeal looks back at him, with indecision, and with anger. Castillo lowers his head but doesn’t move his eyes, a look that says there’s no room for discussion. He nods, in slow motion, to McNeal again. McNeal, perhaps the only man that can stand up under that look, stares back at him defiantly. Finally, though, he shoulders his weapon and heads for this door.

“Clear it out people,” he says to the retreating agents, keeping his eyes on Anubis. He waits as they all leave, Dane being the last. He backs out the door, his hate-filled stare staying glued to Anubis until he disappears. But while the other agents run for the main halls, shouting to other agents in other rooms to get out, he breaks into a run and heads for the motor pool, and for the fastest set of wheels he can get his hands on. He has a pick up to make. And he hates himself for it.

Castillo is the last one to leave the room, watching Anubis all the way as he slowly exits. Anubis turns back to Rainier. “At least you have them trained well. Though, if I may offer my experience, a few beheadings would serve to make them obey your commands faster.”

“Chelsea, go,” Rainier says quietly.

“You wish,” she says back, watching Anubis with a dangerous glare.

“Please,” he says, with quiet desperation.

“I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you, Prince Valiant,” she says back. “Deal with it. I’m staying.”

“You have two things I desire,” Anubis says. “You have my scroll. And you have my brother. I come for both of them.”

Rainier chooses his words carefully. “I know where you’ve come from,” he says. “You left behind an age where you and your kind were worshipped and revered. And feared.”

“With good reason, on all accounts, I assure you.”

“You need to understand. Things are different now. You’ve traveled far into the future. Into a different world. The gods of your age have left this realm behind and moved on, long ago.”

“This ‘Jesus’ has not. I’ve already found his worshippers here. Tell me, where might I find him?”

“Give it about a month,” Chelsea says. “You’ll be able to find him in little mangers in every mall in town. Barring the usual lawsuits, of course.”

“That’s…something completely different,” Rainier goes on, bringing Anubis’ focus away from Chelsea and back to him. “I speak of your kind. They chose to walk away and let humanity follow its own destiny and stay out of history’s way. You’ve seen the world outside. Civilization has evolved beyond anything your people could have imagined.”

“Yes,” Anubis nods. “I have seen. Man has made machines to fly with. Man uses tools to emulate godhood. I find this distasteful.”

“The age of gods has passed. Your race had their time. But they understood that that time had to end. They made this choice with wisdom and foresight and embraced a new path. I appeal to that divine wisdom now, Anubis. A world abandoned by the gods could surely have little value to you.”

“It’s not the world that interests me, stone one,” Anubis smiles. “It never has. It’s the souls that it contains. So many of them now. Man has prospered, and spread across the Earth. So many, many souls to fill my new kingdom. When they have found their way there, I promise you, mortals will learn to worship gods again. That is the age I bring. That will be the age of Anubis.”

“But why must worship be your only desire?” Rainier asks, opening his hands reasonably. “What need do you have of the prayers of men? Someone with your power and your potential. Your people have traveled to new worlds, to other dimensions, they’ve found—”

“Enough,” Anubis says with a sigh. “I thought this talk would amuse me. Once or twice in an age, even I can be wrong. It appears this is one of those times. Bring me my scroll while I’m still gracious enough to allow you the choice.”

“I can’t do that,” Rainier says, sad that he had actually held out hope.

“Then I shall simply take it,” he says, matter-of-factly. “And kill you, and your whore, and everyone else within reach of my wrath.”

“You really,” Chelsea says, “should have picked a different word.”

She slings her arrowhead with a cry, and it explodes on his face. Raising the backs of his hands up, Anubis takes a step back and shakes his head. Rainier charges him, pulls back, swings, and puts him through the wall.