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.

Jack McNeal speeds out of the UNCLE garage, cranking the wheel of the sedan and sliding out onto the street, causing traffic to screech to a sudden halt both directions. Gunning the engine, he leaves the honks behind him and barrels down the street. Taking a moment to look in his rearview mirror, he suddenly brakes and skids sideways to a noisy stop. The motorcycle coming up on him brakes as well and slides to a stop with its tires smoking. McNeal jumps out of his car, leaving the door open, and runs for the motorcycle and its screaming rider.

He whips out his badge as he runs and shouts. “Federal agent! I need your bike! Now!”

The young rider looks at him with confusion and an expression that says no way, no how.

Annoyed, McNeal whips out his sidearm and jogs with it leveled in front of him. The kid’s eyes go wide and he ducks. He slides quickly off the purple Japanese crotch rocket and lays it down on the street, stumbling back away from it with his hands held up in front of him. McNeal shoulders his gun, grabs the bike, pulls it back up and mounts it.

“Smart move, Tetsuo,” he says to the kid, then guns the bike and squeals off. He crouches low and gives it everything it has, weaving in and out of traffic, speeding toward the last place he wants to go right now. Tinker’s place.

“Oh, God.”

Tinker stands still on the steps of the Museum, with the equally stunned Nightshift and Moonspider on either side of her. They see the flames, the smoke, the ruined landscape, the debris. And the bodies of heroes lying all around.

She breaks into a run, not thinking to look around for Anubis or Memphis, when she sees Max, lying face down on the lawn next to Avatar. Moonspider takes off after her, but he does start looking all around and above. Nightshift stands where she is for a moment, unable to process what she’s seeing. It’s been a while since she’s been part of this world. And she doesn’t recall ever seeing something quite like this.

Tinker drops to her knees next to Max and carefully turns him over. Blood still drains from his nose and his open mouth, and his eyes remain closed.

“Bobby?” she yells, pulling off his helmet without caring who’s around. She takes his head in her hands and puts her face close, and yells louder. “Bobby? Bobby, can you hear me?”

Moonspider almost reaches her, but then looks over and spots Helix, writhing on her back, holding her guts in with her hands, moaning. He calls to Tinker and runs to the girl without seeing if his teammate is following. He drops to a knee and leans down next to her, and the girl coughs blood.

“We need medics!” he yells back at Tinker, then looks down at the girl again. “It’s okay,” he says to her, softly. “You’re going to be fine. Hang on, love.”

The girl begins babbling in an alien language, gasping for breath and looking vacantly up at the sky, trying to focus.

“Incoming!” he hears Nightshift yell.

He stands up immediately, looks around, and sees what she’s talking about. A figure is flying through the air toward them, fast. Holding another figure. And the figure comes so fast that it’s barely two seconds before he recognizes the both of them.

Thunderbolt streaks onto the scene, carrying the metallic body of Anvil, a former member, and leader, of the original Forte team. They land and he comes running over immediately. Thunderbolt, for all her years as one of the world’s premiere defenders, is momentarily lost in shock and stands looking at the scene.

“Oh, Jesus,” Anvil says, dropping down on the other side of Helix and looking her over. “We’re too late. God DAMNIT.”

“Doesn’t look like there’s much you could have done,” Moonspider tells him. The two heroes just met less than a month before, when both were fighting against the clock to save the life of Dr. Jackal (see Forte 2000 #142).

“Caris?” Anvil says, holding the girl's head. “Sweetie, it’s me. You with me, tough girl?” Living in Ohio, Anvil, even as a mostly retired hero, has found himself working alongside the new Paragons on several occasions, and becoming friends with the group. The look of pain on his face tells Moonspider that the friendships are close. Helix looks up at him with a spark of recognition, with tears running out of her eyes. Her face shifts through various masks of agony.

“Terri!” he yells back at Thunderbolt, carrying even less than Tinker for the secret identity crap right now. Thunderbolt is already over near Diamond Fist and Knightmare, checking them both, and she looks up at his call.

“You need to get her to S.T.A.R., right now!” he shouts, then he goes back to Helix, stroking her short orange hair. “It’s okay, kiddo,” he assures her. “We’re gonna get you fixed up. You know how Doc McGetty loves any excuse to check out your DNA. You’re gonna make her day.”

He takes her hand, and she coughs more blood. Moonspider takes a look at her wounds, wondering how she’s still alive as it is. Thunderbolt appears and gasps, and drops next to them all.

“I’ve got her, Mark” she tells Anvil, kindly putting her hand on his shoulder to move him out of the way. He stands, and Thunderbolt, daughter of Superman, lifts the warrior girl carefully and easily.

“Get her right to—”

“I know,” she says, again with patience and sympathy. “She’ll be okay. I promise.” She stops, though, and looks around uncertainly. “Wait, is he—?”

“He’s gone,” Moonspider says. “Don’t know where, don’t care. We’ll be okay. Go ahead.”

She nods at him, sadly. And their introductions will have to wait for another time.

She starts to turn, but Helix suddenly starts yelling out in her alien tongue, frantically, with a strength it doesn’t look like she has left to muster. Thunderbolt stops, and Helix throws her head to the side, looking at Moonspider. She struggles to raise her shaking hand toward him. Not knowing what else to do, he steps up and takes it.

She looks into his eyes, gasping, and starts speaking. At first, her words are just gibberish to him. But quickly, he finds he starts to understand them. More than understand them…feel them. Helix, since coming to this world, has been either unable or unwilling to learn more than a few choice words of English (mostly ones taught to her by Import of little use in polite company), but the woman from the stars is also a broadcast empath. This ability lets her speak to others, as well as understand them. And as she speaks to Moonspider, gripping his gloved hand, he hears, and sees, what Helix saw—Nightsable taking out and teleporting Memphis…Nightsable teleporting the scroll away…Anubis brutally beating Nightsable and casting her into a portal to who knows where. And Anubis vanishing.

Moonspider, overcoming his disorientation at the strange experience quickly, squeezes her hand. “Thank you, love,” he tells her. “I’ve got it. You go get better.” He looks up and nods to Thunderbolt, she nods back, and shoots up into the sky and streaks out of site.

“Mark,” Nightshift says, hurrying over. Anvil sees her and quickly hugs his former teammate.

“I’m sorry, Harry,” he says to her. “I wanted to be here. I never would have gotten here in time, so I had to find Terri. She was in Europe somewhere, saving some people from a landslide—”

“It’s okay,” she says, quickly hugging him back and planting a kiss on his metallic temple. “You’re here now. Come on, we’ve got more wounded.”

He nods, looks over her shoulder, and spots Import. “Check Knightmare,” he tells her, and she teleports there without answering, while he runs for the unmoving radio-diva-turned-super-heroine.

Tinker, having watched all this and seen that Helix was taken care of, frantically rifles through one of her costume’s pouches and pulls out smelling salts. She breaks the pellet below Max’s nose and waves it, and even then he doesn’t move. But suddenly, he gasps and shakes his head.

“Oh, thank God,” she breathes. “Bobby? Can you hear me?”

Max coughs and slowly, painfully, turns his head, blinking his eyes.

“There you go,” she says, smiling at him deliberately, trying to look calm. “Can you move?”

“I’m so cold,” he croaks, and that word sends a bolt of alarm through her at all the things that might mean, medically.

“It’s okay,” she tells him, forcing an even faker smile. “Don’t try to move. We’ll get you checked out.”

Moonspider comes running over next to her and starts checking out the enormous Avatar, who’s still not moving.

“Bobby, honey?” she says, trying to keep him focused. “Bobby, where’s Holly?”

He slowly shakes his head. Tinker starts looking all around, trying to find her other teammates.

“Don’t know about Holly,” Moonspider says, feeling for Avatar’s pulse. “But he’s got Sam. Bastard’s got Sam.”

Tinker looks at him, wide-eyed. He nods. “There’s more,” he says. “But not now. Triage first.”

She hears a commotion and looks to her left. Knightmare is fighting to his feet, with Nightshift trying to stop him, and he’s knocking her hands away. He starts limping madly across the grass with her following, trying to hold him and talk reason to him, but he continues to shout something Tinker can’t make out. Nightshift, hearing his words, stops and looks toward the direction of his passage. Tinker sees her tense as she spots something. Then she vanishes. When Tinker’s peripheral vision catches Nightshift’s reappearance, she stretches her neck to look over that way. She finally sees what Nightshift is now kneeling over. A man in white and yellow. Starman.

“Don’t move him!” Knightmare yells hoarsely, mostly overcoming his limp and now running to the site.

Tinker’s heart sinks even lower, and she’s close to being overwhelmed by all this. She starts looking around again, desperate to find her friends. She leans back down to Max.

“Bobby, where’s Paul?” she asks, loudly, as she’s not quite sure he’s completely with her. “Where’s Vortex?” Max forces a few more breaths, then struggles to raise his arm. On the second try, he gets it high enough to point.

“Window,” he says.

She turns her torso and head behind them, back toward the Museum, and sees where he’s pointing. Up at the shattered second story windows of the crumbling building.

“Oh, no,” she moans. With that, she’s on her feet, running as fast as her legs can take her back to the Field.

Anubis throws armored concrete off himself and starts to sit up, but Rainier is on him again. The stone giant swings down viciously, planting Anubis into the floor. Then he raises his arm and quickly strikes again.

On his third swing, Anubis catches his fist, and he grabs the hero’s mighty arm and flings him behind them. Rainier goes through yet another wall, and more of the first floor of UNCLE HQ becomes rubble and dust. Fuming, Anubis jumps to his feet, angrily patting powder and debris off his armor.

With another cry, Moondancer flies through the last hole the pair opened and flings an arrowhead into his face. He swats at the explosion like a pestering gnat, and she throws another, this one going off harmlessly on his chest. He eyes her venomously as she pulls out another, floating in the air above and before him. He flies into the air, charging at her, with one had outstretched to grab her. She throws her legs up as he closes their gap, and plants her palms on his shoulders, vaulting over him as he passes. His momentum carries him up past her, crashing through the ceiling and into the second floor. Flying to ground level, she turns and keeps watch for him, and backs up to the wall that Rainier went through, standing next to the opening.

Without looking back, she knocks on the wall. “You all right in there?” she asks.

Rainier smashes through the wall on the other side of the opening, throwing plaster and steel outward, and swings his fist just as Anubis comes flying through the ceiling at Moondancer. The punch catches the villain square and sends him hurtling back, loudly through another wall.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he says quickly, running through the wall after Anubis.

She takes time to grin. “That’s my guy,” she says quietly, then leaps into the air and follows.

In one of the classrooms, Rainier finds him picking himself up from a shattered podium. Not pausing for words, not wanting to give Anubis a moment to think or act, Rainier charges him. He didn’t, however, know Anubis was that fast, and takes the punch before he realizes it’s been thrown at him. He has time to think that he’s never been hit harder in all his time playing super-hero as he takes out the south break room and both genders of restroom in his involuntary flight back.

Moondancer flies in and drops to a one-kneed crouch, slinging two arrowheads at once, scoring two head shots. Anubis steps back, then throws his hands in her direction, and Moondancer barely leaps clear as the dark energy he releases all but evaporates the wall and part of the floor where she stood. She rolls and comes up on her feet, then has to dodge again as more of the classroom—and the storage room behind it—are destroyed. He keeps on her, blasting away, as she takes flight and slams through the double exit doors…doors which he quickly makes into memory.

He jerks his head around at the sound, but too late, and sees both of Rainier’s gigantic fists swing down on him. He’s knocked through the media screen on the wall, through the records room, through one of the meeting rooms. Rainier charges after him, shoving anything that blocks his path violently out of the way.

Reaching the villain’s seeming stopping point, he’s met with a punch from the side, one that spins his rocky head around and makes him stumble. Anubis strikes him again in the face. Then in the ribs. Again in the ribs. Another cross to the face. And finally an ungodly blow to the chest that send him through thirty feet of UNCLE real estate. This time Anubis is the pursuer, smashing through after him relentlessly. He finds him still on the ground, snarls, and stalks after him.

Moondancer flies over him, grabs his head with her inner knees, and rolls in the air, using all her flight power for momentum. As her back hits the ground, he’s thrown over Rainier with the force of the flip, and smashes a pair of unfortunate agent’s desks. She rolls to her feet as Rainier starts climbing to his.

“No parking on the dance floor, baby,” she huffs to Rainier, grabbing under his shoulder and attempting to help him up. “Don’t let up. Just keep swinging. We can take him.”

She shoves off of his arm and throws herself back as a desk flies at them. It smashes easily against Rainier and explodes into pieces. Rainier does a quick check on Chelsea, then turns back to the risen Anubis.

“You’re starting to anger me,” Anubis warns, menacingly.

“I’m just GETTING started,” Rainier tells him, stalking forward.

Anubis raises his hands, but not at Rainier. He blasts his black, roaring energy past Rainier, and upward. Rainier turns his head and sees the ceiling come apart on the other side of the room, right over Chelsea. She backpedals and starts flying backward when he loses sight of her in the avalanche of debris.

“Chelsea!” he shouts, turning that way.

Anubis is on Rainier’s back, one arm around his neck, one hand against the side of his head.

“The first law of subterfuge,” he grins, “is distraction.” And he begins trying to pull Rainier’s head off.

Rainier struggles against him, grabbing up at him, in the wake of the tremendous pain he’s feeling. If he hadn’t realized it before, he now understands just how frighteningly strong Anubis is. His neck is screaming, and Anubis has him held fast, squeezing and pulling, and Rainier suddenly panics with the reality that villain might actually be able to break his neck.

Groaning and fighting for breath, and hearing loud, disturbing cracks in his rocky skin, Rainier drops onto one knee. Anubis grips and pulls even tighter. After another moment’s straining, Rainier suddenly roars gutturally, bows low, and pushes up with all the heralded strength in his arms and legs. He and Anubis crash through the second floor, and the rest of that room collapses into the first. They fly through the third, where Rainier purposely lands with all his weight on his back, right on top of Anubis. Anubis’ grips loosens, and Rainier flips over as quickly as his size will allow him, and grabs Anubis’ head and shoulders with one hand and shoves them through the floor. Yanking him back up with a wounded wrench from the floor, he slings him across the room, and walls on this floor gain violent new doors as well.

He gets to his knees and leans over the hole their passage made, looking for any sign of Moondancer. “Chelsea?!” he yells.

Anubis flies through the wall, right at him. Rainier leaps to his feet, letting him come, letting a very uncommon inner rage overcome him. He grabs at Anubis as he hits, and they both fly through two rooms and out the side of the building, and plummet to the street below.

McNeal leaves the highway at a suicidal speed, but revving the screaming engine even harder. He somehow makes the turn—laying him and the bike almost completely over—and jets down a familiar road. One he’s driven many times in the past couple of weeks on his way to watch over Tinker and Horus. To make sure they were safe. He almost laughs at himself, cruelly, for that, considering what he’s about to do.

He ducks low and forces even more speed out of the bike, screaming along ever closer to the airpark.

“Move!” Castillo yells with a rare use of volume. Agents, all outside on the street now, having been listening to his orders to clear out surrounding buildings and block off the streets, look up and run for cover. Rainier and Anubis, and a healthy sampling of the building, crash into the center of the street.

Anubis ends up on top, and starts hammering Rainier with godly punches that go off like miniature sonic booms. Rainier manages to get a swing in, and knocks Anubis across the street and back toward the UNCLE building, where he smashes partially through the reinforced outer wall. Rainier rises with effort, holding his side and grimacing, and gets unsteadily to his feet.

“Get those people out!” Castillo shouts to his men. “Now!”

Agents start rushing into the buildings across the street, start shouting, start pulling people out and herding them down the street. To safety, if such a thing is possible now.

Anubis dusts himself off again, not happy with the chalky mess on his divine armor. He looks up at Rainier with an acid glare, holds out his hand, and calls his staff to him from nothingness. Rainier pauses to look at the scene around him, now that he can, to make sure people are clear. They’re starting to be. He breathes hard and looks at Anubis, and at the shimmering axe at the end of his long staff.

“Pulls a knife in a fistfight,” Rainier says with a pained grin. “The word I’m looking for here is a vernacular variant of the modern English ‘vagina’.”

“Your words,” Anubis says, coming forward, starting to spin his staff martially, “no longer hold interest for me.”

“You’d get along great with some of my students,” Rainier answers, letting him come, taking the pause to catch his breath and give the agents time to evacuate as many citizens as possible. “Did I tell you I teach an undergrad course in ancient history?”

Anubis does not answer. But keeps walking.

“I only mention that,” he says, and then proudly channels Chelsea, the woman he loves, “’cause I’m about to make your ass my next lecture.”

Anubis charges, snarling and swinging. Rainier rushes him. Raising an arm, Rainier blocks the first downward swing, catching the staff just north of center. He punches with his free hand, but Anubis spins easily under it. Anubis swings has staff in an upward arc, slashing it across Rainier’s chest.

Rainier staggers back, surprised. His hand goes to his chest, where it finds a long groove. He looks down on the street, and pieces of rock that used to be part of him lay there. And the pain suddenly sets in.

Anubis smiles wickedly and twirls his staff around some more, then charges forward. Recovering, Rainier jumps back and avoids the first swing, but the second catches his arm and more small chunks of him break off. And more when the next one swipes his shoulder.

Not knowing either that that could happen or that he could hurt in such a way, he overcomes his shock and swings at Anubis, who sidesteps the swing. He tries again, and Anubis jumps back out of the way, spinning his staff and bringing it back down on Rainier’s arm, making the hero cry out, despite himself.

Anubis goes for a hard head swing, but Rainier manages to barely duck under it, then comes up with punch that knocks Anubis off his feet and sends him flying back. He hits the ground but jumps back up immediately, still holding his staff, and charges at Rainier again, not planning to lose the advantage. Looking quickly around, Rainier suddenly grabs the Pontiac parked on the street next to him and swings it at Anubis like a bat. Anubis flies back from the blow, crashing back through the wall of the UNCLE building. Dropping the car loudly, Rainier runs after him. Anubis smashes a hole next to the one he’d just made on his exit, and flies by, swinging his staff, and a chunk of Rainier’s shoulder goes flying. The hero grabs the shoulder and drops to a knee in pain.

Turning in flight and spinning his staff, Anubis changes direction and flies back at Rainier. Rainier sees him approaching, over his shoulder, grinds his stony teeth, and spins around as he springs up on his legs. He leaps into the air, and right into Anubis, and the two take out the front wall of an office building as they go through it. Landing on top of Anubis, Rainier pins his arm and yanks the staff from his hand, throwing it far inside the building. Recharged by this victory, he begins throwing punches down on Anubis, and the room shakes from the force of them.

Anubis gets his feet up and kicks out at Rainier, hurling him back through the wall, across the street, and into the second story wall of UNCLE, where his body shatters more of it, and he and debris tumble to the street. Anubis storms out of the other building and walks across to him. Rainier, sitting up, breathing hard, watches him come.

“You missed Pompeii completely, didn’t you?” Rainier asks, curiously.

Ignoring him, Anubis keeps coming.

“Reenactment?” Rainier offers with a raise of his eyebrow.

He throws out his hands, and raging streams of molten lava erupt from them, engulfing Anubis. Blinded and coated in the rock-melting magma, Anubis staggers back. Rainier springs to his feet and unleashes another blast, pummeling Anubis with jets of scalding, thick liquid, blowing him back toward the office building. Pausing only long enough to run and get closer range, he watches Anubis thrash and wipe at his face with his arms. Rainier hits him again, throwing him into the building, and the building itself catches fire from the unnatural heat. Something, Rainier figures, he can deal with AFTER.

He leaps through the flames, into the building, and flies right back out. He’s caught in the chest with column of black magic force, and more pieces of him mark his trial as he flies back into the street, landing on his back and crumbling concrete.

He lays on his back, his chest smoking, and at first can’t lift his arms. He raises his head on the second try to get a look at his chest. Over it, though the smoke, he sees the flaming form of Anubis emerge from the building. Anubis angrily wipes lava from his arms and chest like a man covered merely in mud. The skin beneath is reddened, but not burned.

Rainier gets his hands beneath him and sits up, only to be blown back down by another staggering blast. The pain is even worse this time. As he gets closer, Anubis lets loose again, and Rainier cries out as the sustained blast cooks his insides and throws rocks from him into the air. Anubis keeps it up as he continues to walk, enjoying the cries of pain. He finally stops when he stands over Rainier, who now can’t move anything but his head, and that only slightly.

Anubis looks down at him, and flips lava from his hair and wipes more from his face.

“A worthy adversary,” he says, nodding away his rage. “That, I gift you with. I may have a song written of my victory over you, and your death. Through that, you will live on in my kingdom. Let that honor carry you from this world and its cares.”

He lifts his hands and unleashes the biggest blast yet, seeming to strain with it as he does for its sheer magnitude, and Rainier screams again. And then his head falls heavy to the street, and he moves no more.

Energy beams rip through the air and light off of Anubis’ armor and skin. He turns to the source. Some behind cover, some not, UNCLE agents and officers fire at will, showering Anubis in crimson rays.

“Do not stop!” Castillo yells, standing in the lead, blasting away with his upheld sidearm. “Fire! Fire!!”

Near him, Dane Casey fires an aimed energy rifle from a standing position, grimly sighting down the barrel and hitting his target again and again. Seattle’s finest advance, taking up positions, showing no fear, giving no ground. McNeal’s STRIKE team plug away with their heavier armament.

Most of the beams simply bounce off, some find purchase. From the sheer volume of force, Anubis is forced back, one step after the next, holding up his arm to block rays from his face.

“Fire!” Castillo shouts again, as if he needed to repeat the order, and keeps squeezing away at his trigger.

Finally, perhaps through sheer ego alone, Anubis lowers his arm slowly, puts his arms to his sides, and stands there, glaring at them, letting their shots come. The noise in the street is deafening as agents continue to blast, trying not to lose heart as their target holds ground and now refuses to yield to their onslaught.

Anubis throws an arm straight. A blast of mystic blackness rips from him, tearing through the fifth story of a now-evacuated office building. Debris rains down, and the upper floor collapses, and the roof falters and goes over.

UNCLE agents look up as the avalanche begins, and leap from their cover and run for their lives. Castillo turns at the sound and begins shouting for his men to move, waving his gun frantically to accent his orders. Dane drops his rifle and runs at Castillo, leaping into him and knocking him clear as a chunk of building shatters on the street where he’d just stood. But the moment of salvation is short-lived, and they’re both buried in a hail of rubble. The whole of the destruction hits ground. Some agents get clear. Some are buried and pinned. Some, like Corporal Jason Freis, hero of the invasion, and two seasoned members of STRIKE, are crushed instantly.

Anubis watches this with only slight satisfaction. The dust begins to clear with the October wind, and cries of pain and desperation come to his ears. Agents rush to help their comrades. Dr. Monica Kwok runs fearlessly into the mess, frantically checking downed agents.

The force that hits Anubis in the chest knocks the breath from him and sets his lungs afire and his spine to tingling. He feels himself flying back, then feels the street beneath him. He sits up in confusion and some actual pain, feeling his chest.

Chelsea Wildheart—Moondancer—stands there wielding her mystic spear, dust from the UNCLE ceiling still thick in her long hair, her dark eyes blazing.

“If you ever meet a guy named Powermaster,” she says, “ask him if he remembers this thing. You two will have a lot to talk about.” The tip of the spear glows and radiates with mystic light.

He stands up and forces a cocky smile at her. “My, my,” he says. “You’ve kept secrets from me, whore. You hide magic most ancient.”

She chances looking away from him and looks down at Rainier, the worry plain in her eyes. Hearing the commotion to her right, she looks that way and takes in the heart-wrenching scene playing out in the Seattle downtown afternoon.

She looks back at him and fully embraces all the hate that’s welling up in her.

“You SO,” she growls, “picked the wrong town, you prehistoric piece of shit.”

He smiles and signals for her to come. Moondancer does.

With a scream, she charges. She swipes with her spear, and ready, Anubis dodges it. He throws a strike at her, and she rolls back and avoids it, coming back up with an upward slash. Jumping back, he avoids it by inches.

She rushes him, swiping and stabbing, and he dodges each attempt, frustrating her. She swings at his legs and he leaps high as the arc passes beneath him. He throws a punch that could shatter a boulder. She spins out of the way, and as she does, spins her spear around and jabs it in his back. With a cry of more surprise than pain, Anubis flies forward as the sound of thunder peals from the blast that ignites with the hit, bouncing twice on the street before stopping.

Chelsea twirls her spear around several times and it whistles in the air, and she stops the spin with her other hand and starts toward him. Anubis climbs back to his feet, still forcing a smile but not fooling either of them with it, feeling his back with his hand.

“I’m going to feed that to you,” he tells her darkly.

“I’m glad you wore the skirt,” she tells him back, spinning her spear some more. “That’s gonna be proper attire for you when I make you my BITCH.”

He’s the first one to charge this time, taking flight. She leaps over him, using her own flight, and tries to stab at him, but misses. They both land on the ground and turn and come back at each other. They meet, and strike, and dodge, both with furious speed, neither able to land a blow. She lets her old battle lust guide her, blocking out all thought and fear, moving continuously and looking for any opening, any weakness. Her swings with her spearhead leave a glowing wake to mark their passing.

He grazes her, which is enough to send her stumbling back and fighting to stay in her feet. She catches herself on a building wall, turns her head, and his fist is coming at her. She yanks her head clear as his punch shatters the wall. She dives clear and somersaults gracefully to her feet, spinning with her spear, as he hurls a chunk of the wall remains at her. With no time to dodge, she swings her spear and blows it apart, and it showers her with bits of concrete.

Before she can see clearly, he’s grabbed her by the front of her buckskin costume and hoisted her up and to him. He pulls back for a swing. Keeping one hand on her spear, she grabs into her pouch with the other and pulls out and ignites an arrowhead. She slams it against his ear, badly burning her own hand, and he drops her and grabs his half-deaf ear. She hits her feet, crouches, and springs back up, swinging her spear with both arms and her full might. It ignites across his face, and Anubis sails back into the same building, the last of the wall somehow stopping him and dropping him and its pieces to the sidewalk, where he lands on his back.

Using her flight to augment the leap, she jumps high, spinning her spear, and holds it with both hands, downward, as she comes down on his chest, barely noticing her own primal, murderous howl.

She stops dead as Anubis grabs her spear with both hands, stopping the pulsing spearhead just inches from his heart. She’s still holding on when he uses it to fling her into the wall behind them, where her shoulder and head hit, and when he throws his arms to fling her the other way. Her hands finally lose their grip from their trusty, familiar weapon as she flies across the street and smashes into the side of a phone company truck. Leaving a deep, wrenching dent in it, she drops face down onto the street.

Anubis stands, looks at the spear with a mix of curiosity and anger, and flings it like an Olympian, high in the air. It disappears over the Seattle skyline.

Tinker’s grapple line hurls her up to the window she chose as its motor zings. She leaps into the window and lets her grip on the line go, landing and looking frantically around.

“Vortex?” she shouts, but gets no answer.

She darts from room to room, finally finding a path of toppled exhibits and broken glass. Knocking things out of her way, she finds the end of the trail, and a blue-costumed, unmoving body.

“Vortex!” she shouts again, running to him, throwing a rack of broken pottery off of him. He’s sprawled out at an odd angle, and there are tears in his costume and cuts on his face and body from his journey through the window. The blue designer sunglasses he wears with his costume are askew, and one lens is broken. She wants to shake him but is afraid to move him, so she touches his face instead.

“Paul?” she says, leaning over him, looking down with her face to his. “Paul, come on. Can you hear me?”

Finally, after some more trying, she rouses him.

“Don’t try to move,” she says as he looks up at her, squinting. “Just lay still. Tell me what hurts.”

“Everything hurts,” he groans, getting up on his elbows and straightening his bent leg out, despite her protests. “Is it over?” he asks, feeling a cut on his face tenderly and hissing.

“It’s over,” she says, quietly.

He looks at her. “We didn’t win.”

She shakes her head. “Anubis is gone. We don’t know where. He took out the Paragons.”

“The Paragons? When did they show up? How the hell long have I been out?”

“I think a couple of them are hurt pretty bad. Really bad.”

He hears the weight of the last two words in her voice more than in the words themselves.

“How are WE?” he asks, suddenly very nervous.

“Max is awake, but we need to get him checked out. I don’t know what Anubis did to him. We haven’t found Holly yet.”

“We haven’t FOUND Holly?” he says, forcing himself to sit up with a burst of strength born of panic.

“We found you,” she reassures him. “We’ll find her. She’s probably out cold in the building somewhere.”

“Where’s Samantha?” he asks.

She looks at him but has trouble answering.

“Where’s Samantha?” he asks again, louder, on the verge of anger at her lack of response.

“We hear Anubis took her.”

He glares at her, then looks at the floor, then at the ceiling with an angry inhalation. He spits out words that would shock his high school students.

They both look toward the windows as the first distant wail of screaming sirens can be heard. Tinker, seeming very tired, gets on her radio.

“Moonspider?”

“Yeah, boss?” his voice responds.

Not liking the word at all right now, she says, “Get Bobby’s helmet back on. Medics are coming.”

“Already done. Got Vortex?”

“Yeah,” she says, smiling weakly and picking glass out of his hair in a very motherly way, but his thoughts are elsewhere and he doesn’t seem to notice. “He’s okay. Let’s find Holly.”

“Paragons are looking for their man Blaze, too.”

“Then let’s help,” she says. “I’ll be right down.”

She rubs her eyes and gathers her strength. “I think you should wait for the medics before you get up,” she tells Vortex.

“Not likely,” he says. “Just…give me a sec.”

She nods to him and gives him his moment. In that moment, she realizes she needs to fill Rainier in on what’s happening. It only strikes her then as odd that he hasn’t checked in on them.

“Davis?” she says with an adjustment to her radio. She gets only silence in her ear implant in return. She does a quick check to her watch control to make sure she switched to the right recipient. It checks fine. “Davis?” she says again. Still nothing.

Feeling justifiably paranoid on a day like today, she switches over to Moondancer instead. “Chelsea?” she says, her voice raised a bit, though she didn’t mean for it to be.

After a long moment—

“Lucy?”

Her heart stops. It’s Chelsea’s voice, but it’s ragged, and it’s broken, and it’s laced with pain. The other conscious members of Forte hear it, too, as Moondancer’s radio is set to team broadcast. Vortex looks up at Tinker, suddenly forgetting his pain.

“Chelsea?” Tinker says with her voice tight, involuntarily putting a finger to her ear.

“He’s here.”

Tinker’s face goes white.

“Anubis is there?” she asks, already knowing the answer.

“Yes.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Lucy moans, looking sick. “Chelsea, what’s happening?”

“Davis is down. He’s not moving, Lucy.” The almost childlike tone in that sentence sends tingles up and down Lucy’s spine.

“Where’s Anubis, Chelsea?” she demands fearfully.

“Coming for me.”

“Oh, God. Chelsea, get out of there! Get out of there now!”

“I’m not leaving Davis,” Chelsea answers.

“Chelsea, no!” she shouts. “He took out two teams here! Get out now! We’ll get help!”

“I’m not leaving him,” Chelsea repeats.

“Chelsea!” Lucy yells into the radio. “Chelsea, get OUT!”

Chelsea’s voice answers, but they can’t understand her words. Lucy realizes quickly that the words are in Cherokee. And whatever they say is spoken with reverence and resolution.

“CHELSEA!”

More Cherokee.

Lucy looks back up at Vortex, her eyes wide, her breathing heavy.

“Run,” she tells him.

Vortex looks at her, still hearing Chelsea’s chant in his ear.

“RUN!!!” she screams.

Jolted back into the moment, Paul Seaborn grits his teeth and gets a leg under him and struggles quickly to his feet. His hand goes to his side for a moment and he winces, but he quickly ignores it. He grabs the broken shades off his face and tosses them. Papers in the room fly as, in a blue blur, he’s gone.

Moondancer gets unsteadily onto her feet, using the damaged van behind her to brace herself. Blood is coming from her ear, and more from a deep gash across her forehead where concrete tore off skin.

Anubis walks toward her, crossing the street, taking his time. She drops a hand into her pouch, and it comes out with a glowing tomahawk in it, dressed in feathers. It’s the most dangerous thing in her arsenal, something she’s almost never used against the living. She has used it, however, to tunnel through solid rock.

He doesn’t understand her words as she speaks, calling up a prayer chant taught to her by her grandmother, Moon Chases Stars, the woman who always made sure she understood her heritage, even when Chelsea had for so long turned her back on it and her people. And yet, years later, she is recognized and revered by the whole of the tribe as the Ghigau (ghee gah oo)…The War Woman, the highest and greatest honor a Cherokee woman can know. A girl who had left their ways for the white world and credit cards and Starbucks returned to them as their sacred champion.

She stands tall and twirls her tomahawk easily. Anubis looks at it, and her, and slowly shakes his head, telling her without words that she shouldn’t bother.

You have desecrated my land, she tells him in her people’s tongue, and slain the children of my fathers. You have brought wickedness and death to my home. For those whose spirits cry out from the Earth, I speak, and I stand. Your days have come to a closing. The soil will drink of your blood, and your wickedness will be feared no more.

She crouches, holding her blade out with an outstretched arm, and sidesteps, slowly circling him. He watches her, seeming almost aroused. But not concerned.

“Let us finish,” he says simply.

With a warrior cry, Moondancer charges him.

She swings with her tomahawk, and like her spearhead, its glowing blade leaves a swirling trail in the air. He dodges. She keeps swinging, downward, sideways, upward. He ducks and jumps back from all of them. He swings his fist at her, and she ducks beneath it, and goes on the defensive as he throws blow after blow, backing her into the street, not able to connect.

Dr. Kwok, distracted from her treatment of a badly crushed leg on a young agent, sees this and watches, watches as these two do battle, lunging and giving ground, spinning and counter-moving. Chelsea dodges one punch with a flying back flip, landing on her feet and swinging high, and he barely catches her wrist with his and stops the blade from hitting his neck. Monica tries to focus on the wound, trying to stop the bleeding and save her fellow agent’s life, telling herself that has to be her priority. She has never felt so helpless before.

Chelsea dodges another blow by taking flight, but he spins and catches her with a backhand, sending her hurtling at the side of a pickup truck. She tries to slow herself with flight, but it’s not enough, and she crashes into the door and the closed window shatters. She lands on one knee and one hand, feeling the stabbing pain in her back, and looks up to see him right on her. He throws a punch, she dives backward, and the truck flips onto its side and flies into the UNCLE lobby. When he turns, she’s flying by and swinging. He jumps, but her tomahawk catches his cape and tears it easily down the middle. As she stops and lands on her feet, facing him, he looks down and back at his cape, and does not look pleased at all. This makes her darkly smile.

The blur that is Vortex rematerializes into a man, and he hits the ground, tumbling, somewhere outside of Pierre, South Dakota. Rolling on the highway, on his back, he holds his knee. Using his speed so completely on his injured leg has caused almost unbearable pain. It throbs and screams at him, and his winces and sucks breath through his teeth, realizing that breathing his causing him pain, too.

He rolls onto his stomach, smacking the road with his hand, as the pain dies some with him off the weight, and off the speed. His body does not wanting him moving.

He tells his body to go to Hell.

Hopping back to his feet, pausing for just a moment to test his weight on the leg—and getting the results he expected—he nonetheless drops to start position, his fingers on the ground, looks resolutely to the northwest with a few deep and angry breaths, and streaks off again toward Seattle.

They continue to duel, by ground and by air. At one point, in his frustration, Anubis slings a car at her, and Chelsea, with a scream and a massive downward swing, cleaves it in two, and the two halves fly past her and smash into an already destroyed building.

Tiring, she knows she has to end this quickly if she’s going to be the one to end it, and presses him, swinging at him in a blocked-off intersection, chopping through the air as he evades. He ends one of his spins with a swinging elbow that catches her in the midsection, and she flies back, doubled over, all the way back to the UNCLE building, only saving herself from a possibly fatal collision by using some flight to slow her. She still hits hard and rolls, stopping with her knees bent up, gripping her middle with her arm, fighting to breathe. When she’s finally able to pull a deep gasp, she coughs it back up with blood.

Anubis’ feet land in her field of vision, and she stares dumbly at his sandals for a moment. Then he grabs her by her hair and pulls her up.

Wanting to grab his hand and try to stop the terrible tearing pain in her scalp, she instead fights the urge, and, as he yanks her up, she screams and swings up with her tomahawk, using both hands. It tears, remarkably, through his armored chest plate, cutting a diagonal tear up to his shoulder. He drops her, and she keeps her footing, stumbling back defensively.

Anubis staggers, putting a hand to his chest, between the now rent parts of his armor. When he brings his hand back out, it’s bloody.

Seeing this, perhaps as shocked as him, she huffs two quick breaths, charges, and starts swinging again, screaming all the way.

He dodges her, but not as quickly this time, perhaps trying to process that his armor and skin had given way to the strike of a mortal woman (or perhaps that two mortal women had made him bleed in one day). She keeps him on the ropes, then keeps herself from his (perhaps desperate?) return blows, and goes right back at him. The tight muscles in her arms scream at her, and her lungs burn, but she will not, cannot, yield.

He throws a fatal punch at her, but overextends, and she rakes her blade across his side as she jumps clear of it. More armor splits, and Anubis looses his footing and falls to his knees.

Spinning around behind him, Moondancer sees her final opening, and takes it. She takes her tomahawk in both of her hands, swings high, and brings it hurtling down at the back of his head.

His hand grabs hers at the wrists as he spins, stopping her arc cold. As she struggles, he stands in a burst of speed and wraps his other hand around her throat.

Moondancer screams.

His hand pulses with tendrils of mystic energy, and her body begins alighting with the same. He raises his arm and lifts her high, keeping his grip tight, continuing to do whatever it is he’s doing to her—and whatever it is, it’s the same thing he started doing to Max and Avatar.

Moondancer’s tomahawk drops from her hands as her arms fall. It hit the street and bounces once before falling on its side.

Rainier’s eyes slowly open, but only halfway. He sees the sky and the buildings above him, though through a blur. He hears a sound somewhere nearby. The sound of a woman screaming.

He turns his head, and sees Anubis, with a locked grimace of dark satisfaction, holding Chelsea up by her throat. Her whole body is shaking violently, her hands twitching at the end of rubbery arms behind her.

“Chelsea,” he croaks, and fights to turn over, fights to find a way to his feet. He feels several times too heavy. His chest feels raw and constricting. His strength seems to have left him all together. But he fights.

Anubis watches her face, watches her eyes roll up and her jaw work between gasps and blood-curdling screams. And he smiles, his smugness back now, his momentary self-doubts forgotten.

He pauses what he’s doing for a moment, and Moondancer dangles in his grasp. He looks into her floating eyes, seeming to see or sense something there.

Rainier gets on his side and gets a hand under him and pushes up with unfathomable effort, and somehow makes it to his knees.

Anubis studies her face curiously, then slowly smiles.

“You have the taint of Khonsu,” he says, looking her body up and down, then back to her face. “How intriguing.”

His moment of interest past, he tightens his jaw and his hand bursts into mystic, black radiance again. And Chelsea screams again.

“Chelsea!!!” Rainier screams.

She jerks and shakes with great tremors now, and Anubis focuses. She blurts out one final and terrible scream, and with it, Chelsea Wildheart’s soul is torn from her body.

She goes slack in his grasp. The nimbus around Anubis’ hand crackles less, and then disappears all together.

On the street nearby, the glowing radiance around her tomahawk seems to flicker, and then dies, leaving only cold stone.

Having realized he heard something else, Anubis looks casually to his side. He sees Rainier, kneeling there, holding himself up with his hands, his face shaking in, and locked in, shock.

Anubis tosses Moondancer’s corpse that way. It lands with a thud in front of Rainier, and rolls the rest of the way to his knees, stopping face up.

Rainier looks down at her lifeless face…her open mouth, her half-lidded eyes, the drying blood on her forehead and neck. He cannot think. He cannot breathe. He cannot take his eyes from her.

Anubis walks slowly up to him, taking time along the way to feel the wound under his armor and check for blood. There is less now. In fact, her tomahawk had only barely pierced his skin.

Rainier, his arms seeming to move independent of his mind, puts his giant hands beneath Moondancer and lifts her carefully. Her left arm grotesquely drags the street as he does. He looks down on her, holding her on his knees, and brushes hair away from her face with a stony finger. Her head bobs slightly with each of his movements. He runs his finger over her cheek, perhaps hoping against hope that she will wake, that everything will be all right, that his world did not just end in the passage of seconds.

“Your woman is dead,” Anubis says, calmly, with a quiet tone that almost hints at sympathy (or some abomination of it), or perhaps respect. With those words, any hope that pulsed in Rainier dies. “But I have your other one. The purple-caped one. She’ll tell me where she sent my third scroll. And my servant. In truth, I have little need for him now, but he IS my eyes and ears to your world. She will tell me, be sure of that. But perhaps I’ll return her to you when I’ve finished with her. If you do as I ask.”

Rainier can barely hear his words.

“I’ll return in two days’ time. I have preparations to make. I’ll grant you that span. When I do return, have my brother ready for me. No more hiding him. He and I must finish things before what is to come.”

He turns his head away from Rainier, back toward the UNCLE building. Staring at it, he closes his eyes and focuses. After a moment, he holds out his hand. A small rip in reality opens above it. And the second scroll, now gone from the UNCLE basement, falls into his palm.

He turns back to Rainier, holds out his other hand, and his staff appears in it.

“Two days,” he repeats. “Do not test my patience. My mercy knows limits.”

He looks back behind him again, and, almost as an afterthought, strikes the end of his staff on the street.

A great rumble follows, shaking the block around them. With a horrifying wrenching and scream of metal on metal, stone on stone, UNCLE Seattle’s headquarters collapses. Its floors pancake on atop another, and a mammoth dust wall billows out with the deafening crash as upper floors collapse into the sub basement. Tons of debris spills out across the already covered street. An institution that pre-dates Forte, and that sheltered and aided the team from its inception to this day just shy of fifteen years later, is gone.

Rainier watches numbly, still nearly catatonic in his shock. His head tilts upward, and it sees the face of Anubis, who smiles darkly down on his. The dust cloud reaches them, and Anubis disappears from sight in it, and Rainier instinctively shelters Chelsea’s body with his arms. When it passes and begins to settle, Anubis is gone.

Shouts and screams can be heard at the end of the block, some frantic, some authoritative. Davis Alexander moves his arm, revealing the love of his life, cradled in his hand, her blank eyes staring at nothing. Slowly, but with increasing severity, it begins to sink in. He puts his arms beneath her and pulls her to him, and his body begins to shake. From the corners of his rocky eyes, rivulets of searing lava begin to spill.

With a monstrous gasp, he turns his head to the sky, and his prolonged scream echoes across the towering downtown buildings.

Vortex appears some fifty feet behind him, skidding to a stop and falling to the street. Racked with screaming pain, he struggles to pull his face from the asphalt. Raising himself with his shaking hands, he takes in the devastation on the street ahead of him, and finds it hard to believe his own eyes. Then he spots Rainier. And in the rocking, hunched-over giant’s arms, he can see the hair of Chelsea blowing in the dust-filled chill wind.

Slowly, he puts his face back on the street. And slowly, he puts his hands together on the back of his head.

Minutes later, Jack McNeal arrives with Horus.

Far, far too late.

To Be Continued!

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