[IC] Rogue Continuum: The Singularity Crisis (A DC and Marvel RP)

---

They were marched through the sterile, white hallways one at a time. Half-a-dozen individuals each flanked by a pair of red-armored guards. Their basic cloth outfits, devoid of any color, matched their drab expressions. The six had been through this routine before and knew what to expect.

For some, this short journey had been repeated so often they had lost count months ago. For others, the more recent guests of this place, they could count the number of times they had been lead down these halls on one hand. For all, it marked another opportunity for death.

The six had started their marches separately. None of them had any clue to the existence of the others; a few were even under the impression they were lone prisoners of this strange hellscape as they had not seen a single soul aside from their captors in months.

Six survivors stolen from their homes and stripped of their freedom and dignity, forced to face pain and suffering and terror daily, denied any hope, and made to perform for the sadistic pleasure of others. Six one-time heroes and warriors whose existences were now little more than that of dolls to be played with and tossed away once they no longer provided sufficient entertainment.

Then, their isolated paths converged.

The child; the soldier; the scientist; the vigilante; the cowboy; the alien.

Each of the six were no strangers to this process. Each time before the games the individual prisoners would be brought here to change into their uniforms and collect their gear. Each time they would be rendered unconscious through the metallic collars around their necks, the same collars that inhibited their abilities and weakened them physically. Then they would awake inside of a vast arena filled with deadly traps and often equally as deadly foes, temporarily free of their inhibiting shackles, where they would be forced to survive through any means necessary.

For the six, though, this was the first time in all of their many collective months of captivity that they had been brought into the chamber at the same time as another. This was surprising to all, though more so for the few who had not encountered another being outside of their abductors until then.

Then came the gaunt man. Tall with sharp features and silver hair down to his waist, he was familiar to the six. Major Domo. He had at different times appeared to each of them in the past prior to their very first matches, explaining their circumstances then. As guests of Mojo, the master of this world and an entertainment mogul, the six had been told they were expected to compete in a wide host of deadly games where their chances of survival were minimal, all for the enjoyment of a bloodthirsty audience.

This was the second time Major Domo made himself known to the six, and the second time he explained their circumstances. This time each of the six had earned the highest honor of being selected to compete in the highly-rated battle royale event. Six would enter. One would survive.

For some of the six, this news was a shock. For others it was just another sadistic twist that had come to be expected, their hearts and minds already dulled from past experiences.

Heroes. Warriors. Saviors. Protectors.

Soon-to-be murderers and fodder.

However, the six never had a chance to embrace the honor of shedding blood for the battle royale. Soon after they all entered a single, large chamber filled with their costumes and gear and had prepared themselves for the upcoming skirmish, an explosion ripped through the facility. A massive hole was blown through one of the walls of the room, and several of the six had been knocked from their feet from the shockwave.

The chaos of the moment distracted the six from the realization that simultaneous to the detonation their inhibitor collars had disengaged and clattered to the floor. Soon, though, as they recollected themselves and took stock of their new situation, the realization donned on each of the six one by one.

It took only a moment for the word to be uttered from the lips of one of the six.

"Run."

The six did run, together, despite just moments ago preparing to face one another to the death, each of them now sharing a common goal: escape.

Racing through the identical hallways with random selection, the six collectively fought their way through the complex. With their armor and weapons having been provided to them just moments before the explosion, and their fantastical powers and skills now returning after their shackles had been removed, the battles with the guards were quick and decisive.

One of the six revealed to the rest that months ago, during one of his forced marches down the stark-white halls to the waiting chamber, he had witnessed something that would possibly enable escape from their hellish prison. A device carried by some of the guards that apparently allowed for mass transportation. Teleportation or a portal to someplace else it couldn't be sure, but certainly a way out of whatever complex they were currently trapped in.

During their next skirmish with the guards who chased down the six, they managed to retrieve the device from one of the fallen red-armored troopers. A thin tablet-like apparatus roughly five inches long and affixed with a touchscreen displaying a scrolling list of alien symbols unknown to all of the six.

The more technical-minded of the six scoured over the gadget hoping to unlock its secrets of transportation. The rest tried to buy them time as the hordes of Mojo's armor-clad soldiers swarmed their position. There wouldn't be enough time, however, and it became clear to the six that despite possessing the device the lack of knowledge in how to use it would spell their deaths.

In this final battle between captives and captors, the six slowly became overwhelmed by superior numbers. One of their group was struck down, the vigilante sacrificing himself for the child, and the six became five.

In what was perhaps a last-ditch effort or a bout of futile frustration, one of the five pressed a random sequence of symbols on the display. Be it a miracle or sheer dumb luck, something was activated as a thin, silverly translucent beam fired into the air from the apparatus. From that beam, just several feet away from the five, formed an oval, silver doorway of shimmering energy.

None of the five knew for sure that this was in fact a transportation system. Not one of the five had any guarantee that it was indeed a doorway and not some sort of disintegration field. And not one of the five cared.

For the five it was an escape from their captivity, one way or another.

For the five it was a chance. Hope.

The remaining five of the six survivors of Mojoworld stepped into and through the energy field.

* * *

Minutes later, Major Domo stood at the spot the five had departed from, surveying the aftermath of the quick but costly battle. He prodded the corpse of what was once a member of the six with the toe of his boot. The man had an amused look on his sharp-angled face. It had been some time since he had witnessed something so entertaining, ironic considering the nature of his master's business. Still, as much enjoyment as he had gotten from watching the contenders flail around in their desperation, their possession of the device and its apparent use would spell trouble sooner than later.

Turning on his heel, the thin, silver-haired man strode off back the way he had come. Mojo would want to hear of this. And what Mojo wanted, Mojo got. No matter what or who he needed to go through to get it. One way or another, Major Domo knew, his master would reacquire these gladiators gone rogue.

[Retired]

M A R T I A N M A N H U N T E R

---

M'gann M'orzz, a Martian Manhunter, one of many elite operatives tasked by the enigmatic group of beings known as the Guardians of the Galaxy, was lost.

She hailed from another world. This wasn't an entirely new experience for her as she, a citizen of Mars, had lived on Earth for years before recent events, and for decades prior the Manhunter had traveled the greater galaxy, visiting countless planets and celestial bodies during her stint as an agent of the Guardians. What was new to the alabaster-skinned alien was the idea of being from an entirely different reality than the one she found herself in at that moment. Truthfully, she had also spent the last half-year in yet another alternate reality, though at the time she hadn't realized it.

For months, M'gann had found herself a captive in a strange world where she had been forced to participate as a gladiator in sadistic and brutal games that had threatened to claim her life at any moment. She knew nothing of the place nor the entity responsible for her abduction aside from one name: Mojo. All that had changed just hours ago. Now the alien found herself in what she, and those who accompanied her, believed to be a universe similar to but simultaneously completely removed from her own.

M'gann let her eyes scan the handful of strangers settled around her for the hundredth time in half as many minutes. They were, by all accounts, a ridiculous collection. She and her stark-white, hairless form was the only non-human of the bunch. The rest were made up of a child; two adult males of uncannily similar tall, blond, model-like features; and a horribly disfigured middle-aged man.

The child, a young boy with pitch-black hair, stood out even further among the fivesome due to his overly dark, hooded wardrobe marked with chains and skulls. The two handsome humans, while a closer look could differentiate them well enough - one was fairly more muscular and taller by several inches - were only particularly distinct as a result of their chosen outfits. One wore bright red and yellow, decorated in golden lightning bolt motifs, while the other was garbed in militaristic gear of muted blues and red. Both of whom, M'gann had learned, were doppelgangers of people she had once known.

The taller of the two had identified himself as Steve Rogers. Although he looked remarkedly different than she had ever seen him, the name held meaning for the martian. During her early years as a Manhunter, M'gann had been assigned duty working alongside a Lantern, an intergalactic peacekeeper. At the time, Rogers had been a small, rail-thin man in his seventh decade. This unrecognized version of the man she once knew, however, stood over a foot taller, possessed significantly thicker biceps, and was about half the age. Despite the changes, though, M'gann still sensed within him the same quiet willfulness and determined kindness. Even if it didn't shine quite as brilliantly within him as she had once been used to.

Barry Allen, the man dressed as a colorful storm, was known as The Flash where M'gann came from. On her world, he was a brilliant scientist and a member of the Justice Legion, a collection of hundreds of powered beings living on Earth who had united to defend the little blue planet from extraterrestrial threats. While not familiar with the man, only having met him a handful of times in passing, M'gann still knew of his reputation as a trusted, virtuous hero. It was this double of Barry Allen that had put forth the idea of alternate realities. He had suggested the five of them had been taken from their respective universes, transported across dimensional lines, and held as inmates on a world existing in another universe. It was a theory that held weight in M'gann's mind and seemed indisputable given the facts of their situation.

Barry was now in possession of an "omni-universal transporter," as he had called it, that the group had 'liberated' during their recent escape. The device, visually similar to an ovoid Earth smartphone, had opened a doorway out of nowhere and deposited the five to their current location. The former prisoners and gladiators had fallen out of the sky as soon as they had stepped through the ethereal portal, plummeting several dozen feet before splashing into ice-cold waters. It had taken more time than had been pleasant for any landmass whatsoever to be located among the vast ocean, with three of the five forced to tread water for an uncomfortable stretch of minutes while M'gann and the child, the only ones of the impromptu group apparently capable of flight, raced towards the horizon in search of safe harbor. They had to fight against unusually powerful winds that whipped about wildly in seemingly every direction. In the end, all they had been able to locate was a short, metallic spire that jutted out of the blue expanse and provided just barely enough surface area for all to sit.

It was there that the five of them first introduced themselves. Six, the child; Jonah, the man with a nearly melted-off face; and both Barry and Steve. The stories they shared were brief, dialogue between the group was stinted for a myriad of reasons including uncertainty and unwillingness to open up, but almost identical in nature. Their experiences being abducted and having to fight to survive were shared amongst all, though some seemingly had endured more than others. It was also there, on that tiny, isolated tower protruding from the depths, that the five realized Barry's theory proved true.

Hours after their landing, with dusk beginning to settle, two undeniable realizations had been made. M'gann had found herself waiting for the evening to arrive, and as soon as the orange glow of the sun began to fall below the horizon the martian's gaze had swept across the heavens searching for familiar, comfortable features. Mars, her homeworld, was visible to the naked eye. The red planet was a tiny, gleaming speck among the stars, but it was another celestial body that captivated her attention. Earth's moon. Large, pale-yellow, and almost full. Only a quarter of the orb was obscured by clouds, giving it the appearance of a partially eaten cookie. She had stared at the distant object for several minutes, finding its presence to have a calming, hopeful effect that was abundantly appreciated after many months of hell.

The comfort was fleeting, though, as she soon realized once the obscuring clouds moved away from the yellow globe that the moon was far from full. Several smaller chunks of space rock orbited around the once spherical satellite, creating a haphazard halo.

Destroyed, she had realized. Gone.

The moon of this Earth had been obliterated in an undeniably catastrophic event. It was this that caused the Martian to truly embrace the notion of alternate realities. This, she told herself, was not her home.

The high winds and lack of any visible landmass then made sense to her. The damage to the moon would have had a disastrous effect on the Earth. After she voiced these observations to the others it didn't take long for the other shoe to drop. While M'gann had had her eyes turned to the heavens, taking note of the moon, Steve had fixed his attention to the very structure they sat upon. The metal construct, strangely alone amongst the waves of the ocean, had felt familiar to the soldier. It had taken him some time to match that familiarity, but it had become all too clear what it was that the five had made their resting place.

The Empire State Building. Or, rather, the spire of the massive skyscraper. Only a scant few dozen feet remained above the risen oceans. M'gann and the others knew then that they found themselves in New York City. The ruins thereof.

M'gann M'orzz was lost. Lost among an endless sea of alternate dimensions and far from her own home reality. Lost with a collection of strangers who just hours ago had likely been preparing to kill her to ensure their own survival from the horror of Mojo's death games.

However, M'gann M'orzz, the Martian Manhunter, was not without hope. This was not her reality, but her home was out there. Her life, her people, her planet, and her love were somewhere among the infinite cosmos, and no matter how titanic the odds were stacked against her she intended to return to it. To him. She had not persevered through months of hell, determined to return home, to submit now.

M'gann would find a way back. No matter what obstacles she faced.

[Bounce]

_{far from home}

Central Park wasn’t something that the corpse-child associated with whales.

Instead, a pod of humpbacks were the traffic that the hellspawn encountered over the streets of New York. Schools of minnows darting in and out of apartment windows. An eel slithering through the interior of a yellow cab that was flipped upside down, resting against a pile-up of cars that had been pushed up against the side of a building that only partially remained.

A vibrant community of aquatic life was thriving, in part because there was plenty for the creatures to feed upon. Bloated corpses, the saltwater leeching the skin from off the bodies, were present by the hundreds of thousands. Whatever had happened, it had been long enough ago that the waters had settled, but not so long that the sea had claimed its dead.

One thing was certain, no one had seen it coming.

Sediment clouded visibility nearer to the ground, but the child was still able to navigate as he explored the streets of New York. Collapsed building facades and storefronts shattered by cars and other debris made for quite an apocalyptic tour of the Big Apple.

A vending machine lay on its side, punched through the interior of a convenience store. A pair of chains snaked along the front, before pulling the front off of the frame. Rummaging through that, the boy gathered up a few intact pouches of snacks and bottles of water.

Drifting back from out of the ruins of the storefront, the small form of the shackled hellspawn ascended toward the surface of the dark waters. In many respects, this was nice. He was free. He was in control. He’d lost track of time in Mojo’s bloodsport games. He’d nearly lost himself to the games. Escaping here -- wherever here was -- was still liberating. A chance to try and redeem even some mere shred of humanity.

Diving for food and water probably wasn’t quite enough to redeem an agent of Hell, but what was it that Garfield had said to him?

Small steps. It all begins with small steps.

The corpse-child crested from out of the ocean. Billowing from out of his slight frame, the black-and-red cape unfurled from out of his very being, flaring outward like a demon’s wings as the boy drifted a meter above the surface in mid-air. Water dripped from off his body, which was shackled and burdened by chains that hung from off his arms and legs. The rustling sound they gave seemed haunted, invoking the memories of countless millions crying out for justice from beyond the grave.

As he approached the spire of the Empire State Building, he called out to the group that he had escaped with. “It’s true,” the child announced. “We’re in New York.”

Well, a New York, most likely. Just like he was dealing with a Miss Martian or a Flash. Six didn’t know the Flash well, other than by reputation, but the Outsiders had crossed paths with the Martian enough to where she ought to have known who he was. Instead, she’d had to ask his name.

And the other two, Six had no idea about. The Martian seemed to know the one named Steve, but seemed equally as confused by him. “Whatever happened, it happened quickly. And recently enough that there’s still bodies floating down there,” the young hellspawn added.

Probably not a detail they were wanting, but with the bodies breaking down, one or more was likely to float up to the surface. Best to prepare them now for that happening. Especially with three of them literally swimming through a sea of corpses.

M'gann closed her eyes and drew her breath in slowly. Her head turned slightly to the right, then to the left, as a brief frown flashed across her features.

Opening her eyes, the alien explained, "My race has the ability to reach out and touch the minds of others. For us it is an intimate act, an extension of our purest selves, and not something we do often nor lightly. At the barest level, without intruding on another's thoughts, I am able to sense the presence of other sentient minds in my immediate vicinity."

She hesitated briefly before continuing. "But try as I may, I am unable to find another mind outside of those here. I can feel no one. Not a single soul in all of Manhattan. I fear those bodies you found are only a few among many millions."

So, this Martian had the same abilities as the one familiar to him. That made sense.

Glancing over at the bald woman, the child merely gave a nod in agreement. He was inclined to agree. If anyone was alive nearby, he should have been able to sense fear, doubt, hunger, or any other negative parts of humanity.

The child’s cape unfurled outward, revealing wet caches holding bottles of water, tins of spam, and a few intact, sealed pouches of snack mix or chips recovered from vending machines. The chains seemed to animate themselves, as they offered out a bottle of water to each of the four.

“It’s not gourmet, but I was able to dig these out of the ruins.”

[Supermaxx]

N O M A D

---

'New York, 1932. I was tiny back then: shorter and skinnier than just about everybody I knew. Timid, too. Kids liked to pick on me so I didn't have a whole lotta friends. Had Buck, though, and he was trouble enough for the both of us. Parents were taking me to Coney Island that weekend and I convinced 'em to let Bucky come along. We were s'posed to spend the whole day there, but the weather took a turn just after lunch. Mom and pop wanted to head back, but we weren't ready yet. Hadn't been to the beach yet, and Bucky loved the beach. Wasn't much of a swimmer, myself, but I would'a done anything for Buck...so the two of us slipped away first chance we got.

Weather was bad enough that they'd closed the beach off for the day. Said the water was dangerous. We didn't think it was worth gettin' in trouble for nothing, so we worked our way 'round to the pier where they usually offered boat rides to tourists and old folks. They were closin' that down, too, but not as tight: nothin' the two of us couldn't slip by. I still remember starin' down into those choppy depths and thinkin' it could'a been twenty feet down or the deepest part of the ocean and I wouldn't known the difference; it'd swallow me up either way.

Buck offered me fifty cents if I jumped in first. I said he was nuts. He said he'd be in right after me. So I took a running leap off the pier and fell for what felt like a year before I hit the water. It was scary, but I was proud of myself for doin' it- then a wave hit me like a truck, and I went under. My heels were over my head before I knew what was happening. Didn't even have time to hold my breath.

I remember my chest burning. S'strange thing, burning underwater, but that's the best word for it. Try as I might to hold what little air I had in my lungs, I only lasted a few seconds before I inhaled. Every moment of it crawled by, refusing to just get it over with. I've been beaten, stabbed and shot more times than I can count, but that day always stands out as the worst of it. I've never felt so helpless. S'not like I can stem the blood loss or punch out the sea. You're helpless for every slow, agonizing moment of it.

Buck didn't lie, though. He went right in after me.'

New York, now. Whenever now is. Steve stood at the edge of of the Empire State Building's spire, looking out after the vast ocean stretching to the horizon in every direction. He kept one hand wrapped 'round a thick, metal cable so he didn't go blowing away in the wind. It was hard to wrap his head around where he was, even after the fast guy explained it. This was surely New York, but not his New York? And it wasn't the future, either, or maybe it was- but not really? His head hurt just thinking about it.

It wasn't fake seemed to be the point to take from all this. Everything that happened in that twisted psycho-circus full'a spacemen was the real deal, not Steve losing his marbles. And this was a real New York full of real people, who'd met as grizzly an end as he could possibly imagine. The scale of it was incomprehensible. The tallest building in the world was up to its antenna in water. That could only mean that everywhere looked like this. The entire damn planet was flooded. This was ripped right out of the pages of Genesis, just...without any ark this time 'round, if the martian and the freaky child were to be believed.

"...And the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh." He muttered to himself, nary above a whisper. Then he gave a small prayer for the dead and looked to the rest of that strange group of people.

The boy had taken a dive to confirm their suspicions and scrounge up what supplies he could find. It was no duty for a child yet he seemed weirdly nonplussed about the whole thing. Steve thanked him and ate what no one else did- his body was far and away more efficient than a peak human's. He could live off that last meal he'd eaten for a few more weeks before things got dicey. Still, even super soldiers had to eat and drink eventually.

Try as he did to stay focused on the task at hand, his mind wandered. All five of them were from different worlds...realities. Each seemed wildly different from the rest according to what conversation they'd shared in the few hours they'd been stuck together up here. He wondered if there was anything they all had in common. For as different as they were, there was plenty he recognized from their stories, too...seemed like no matter what world they were from there was always a New York, for example.

Steve cleared his throat and spoke up against his better judgement, looking to the fast man from the future that seemed to know so much. He asked that little, terrifying question that'd been chewing at the back of his mind: "Do we always lose the war?"

[BangoSkank]

Weapon Hexx

"Never did like these big cities. Folk all living on top of each other, dying on top of each other."

The cowboy out of time stepped up near the edge of the metal platform in the middle of a sea and hunkered down on his haunches looking down into it's depths. New York City stretched out below them, somewhere in that murky expanse. He'd tried to stay away from the big cities and never made his way to the big oceans while he was living. It was always prairie or desert or mountains, always moving. Made it to the Gulf of Mexico but that don't really count. When he came back they'd kept him mostly working in the Heartland. Chasing the wickedness men got up to far from the prying eyes of big city life. Here he was now, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of New York City, surrounded by some few million dead.

"United States won the war in my world, course I was still a corpse when we did. Other countries helped too."

Rising up he dusted himself off, more out of habit than need, and moved back away from the edge. He could swim well enough, wasn't entirely sure he really needed to breathe anymore, but testing that out didn't seem productive.

"New York City was big for us too but it weren't no aquarium. I was dead for a while, like I said, so sometimes I can talk with the recently departed. Sort of. Like the kid said though, I'm getting nothing out here. No souls. Too far down maybe, or too far gone. Don't like this place. Too many dead, too quiet."

Great expanses of land felt like home, great expansive cities felt like a giant trash dump on top of what might otherwise have been a fine home, great seas felt like some other creatures domain never meant for man. This place, a great city turned into a great grave beneath a great sea, felt like an abomination. A natural abomination but an abomination all the same. He dug his fingers into a tin of Spam and made himself as comfortable as he could manage on this strange platform in stranger seas.

[DocTachyon]

The Flash was still thinking underwater, even as he ran across it.

He thought the prison was an extrapolation of the indestructible collar that he could still feel hanging off of his neck. An act of mad science against the typically inalienable forces of the universe, some expression of mutancy or magic festering in the prison’s very foundations that put him in deep. Past drowning, where the danger wasn’t the water filling your lungs, but the pressure, threatening to send cracks across your skull. So deep and black that no light, no matter how fast, could penetrate.

He knew his speed would come back after he escaped. His field of view would seem to pull out as everything slowed to a crawl around him; his brain would accelerate to keep pace with his new view of reality. Instead, the only thing he could think about was the run.

The others he’d met in the prison were being flown across. Barry insisted on running it for himself. A dead sprint across open water, nothing like the twists and hairpin turns of Mojoworld’s trials. A chance to run and think and just maybe a chance to go fast enough to become whole again.

He had dashed over oceans in the blink of an eye. But those were his oceans. Placid sheets of blue that to his eye moved only glacially, preserving the fish and creatures beneath as if in amber. This sea was alive, angry.

The water’s surface shifted as sands in a hurricane, dunes and valleys reshaping themselves before his very eyes. With every hand of brine that crashed across his costume, a boot would plunge into the deep, the force of his step and surface pressure mismatching, only to send him skipping like a stone across the water, legs pinwheeling above and beneath him.

A part of him wondered if this was another of the challenges. Maybe they were meant to escape. An extended bout that would see them picked off, one by one. A massive VR rotunda with climate control and tide machines to sell the illusion. But the blown out remains of the moon hanging in the sky and the whirring device on his belt told him otherwise. The tides were real. So was the death that lingered beneath.

---

The rooftop was a chance to rest and recollect, and to attempt to explain the intricacies of the multiverse to the uninitiated. In the prison there were other possibilities -- time travel, wormholes, pocket dimensions. But to Barry, it had been plain as day once he saw the others. He knew he was just one Flash out of a community of red and gold runners in every shape, size, and variation, and knew that for the rest it was just the same.

This Steve Rogers was younger and yet sourer than his. He carried the same willful determination in his gait and his gaze, but the hopeful spark that Barry had come to associate with Captain America had long since gone out. He took the concept of the multiverse the hardest. In his world, he was the only costumed avenger, and now he was thrust into countless trillions of worlds chock full of them. Barry felt for the man, having his understanding of the world pulled out from under him. But at least he was alive, not cut down like the Batman they had crossed paths with.

And not a corpse like Damian. Six, Barry had to keep reminding himself. Not the Robin he had come to know, but a body with glassy eyes and pale skin, cloaked in a symbiote of some kind. It wasn’t of the same ilk as Venom’s, a supervillain from his earth, but something to keep an eye on, nonetheless.

Then there was M’gann, this time without her innocence. Not a member of the Titans but a full fledged Martian Manhunter. At the least, she was easier to separate from her counterpart than Damian -- she wasn’t green.

Jonah Hex, Barry only knew of from history. From the endless tomes of Central City Library that he’d read cover to cover again and again. A western adventurer, bounty hunter, and sometimes-lawman eking out an existence in tumultuous times. This one was similar enough to the legends. A hardened cowboy type with an iron on his hip and snake in his boot or somesuch. He described himself as a man out of time. Not brought just from his universe, it seemed, but from his future as well.

For Hex’s sake, hopefully Mojo’s device could travel in time, too. He had been studying the device as the child scavenged for food, watching the symbols dancing and shifting in the top left corner of the screen. Sometimes they’d change so fast even he would miss their transition. On his world he’d have been able to record every symbol a thousand times, test pattern variations, and determine for certain how to operate it. Instead he felt like a kid again in Central City Arcade, meaninglessly mashing buttons as Iris’ combos flattened him. Really, he shouldn’t have needed the damn thing at all. He could take everyone into his arms and run them home to wherever that was for them. He could be fast enough to defeat The Rival. He could see Iris, his Iris, one more time. He wanted to chuck the device into the sea, never to be found again.

But the device was coming to life in his hands. Symbols migrating from their corner to the screen’s center, growing in scale as the device began to ping, as it had done before sending them here.

“I think we have another doorway coming, people…” Barry said. He looked out over the ocean, dead in every regard but for the warring tide on its surface. “Unless anyone’s keen on finding this world’s Atlantis, it’s our best bet.”

Moments later, another rift opened in reality. With his full speedforce, Barry had slipped and slid through the walls between times and dimensions, but this was a hole. Almost like a boom tube, a shimmering silver circle hanging on nothing that promised passage to elsewhere.

“Well… Once more unto the breach.”

[Bounce]

---

_{something wicked this way comes}

---

Was he always the youngest?

The Outsiders had been treated as kids, but they’d all been teenagers coming into their own. Six was...

Well, to be honest, he wasn’t sure. How old was he? How old wasn’t he? Did it even matter now? Was this just what he was?

He’d had all these doubts before -- all of these and more -- but Garfield had a way of distracting him from them. Convincing him, for a little while, that it didn’t matter. Selling him the idea that who he chose to be was more important than what he was.

In the killing games on Mojo’s World, none of it had mattered. There hadn’t been time to think about it. Just survive. Now, on the rooftop, the corpse-child found all his doubts creeping back.

But, they weren’t past survival mode just yet.

"Do we always lose the war?"

"United States won the war in my world, course I was still a corpse when we did. Other countries helped too."

Swallowed up by the cape that seemed to have a life of its own, moving in ways that defied either wind or physics, the small hellspawn just seemed to shrink in an indistinct form. In truth, he’d pulled his legs up, sitting cross-legged upon the air as he hugged himself with his arms like a child huddling behind a security blanket.

He drifted away from the others. It was just more comfortable that way. But, though he tried to hide it, the conversation over the tins of spam was actually... nice. It was almost normal.

Six didn’t know anything about either of the two men -- Steve or Hex. So when Hex made reference to having been a corpse, the child immediately snapped his head up.

Had the man come back from being dead?

As the two men conversed, the boy drifted a little closer. Yes, he definitely said it. Hex had been dead, but now he wasn’t. He was alive. To Six, the man felt like the rest. Alive. The hellspawn had questions that immediately flooded his mind, but how to ask them?

Hi, you don’t know me, but I’m dead. And I made a deal with the devil. Or, a devil. Maybe. I don’t really remember, but I’m told that I did. Could what brought you back to life work for me? Asking for a friend.

Yeah... that wasn’t likely to go over well. People reacted all kinds of ways to the idea of Hell being a real place. Most simply refused to believe it was real. He doubted any of them wanted some demonic wannabe as part of their merry band of...

...well, whatever this was.

Justice League Multi-Verse? Garfield and the other teens had felt like Outsiders, but this group here, they were the real Outsiders. To each other as much as the world they now inhabited.

The child seemed to stand up in mid-air, his form becoming thin and straight as the cape was pushed to one side. A hand started to reach out toward Hex as the child continued to ask with the questions that conflicted both his head and his tongue...

“I think we have another doorway coming, people…”

Saved by the Barry.

Withdrawing back into the sanctuary of his symbiote, the boy hoped that his awkward almost asked question was missed between the conversation and Barry’s announcement.

It had been a stupid question anyway. His predicament was his problem to deal with.

Gliding over toward where the Flash was holding up the device that had brought them here. A number of things were glowing, and the man didn’t seem to understand it any more than the corpse-child by the look on his face. But, Six couldn’t argue with the reason behind what the man said next.

“Unless anyone’s keen on finding this world’s Atlantis, it’s our best bet.”

“We don’t know whether these portals can be tracked or not,” Six remarked. It made sense. Major Domo must have some way of tracking whatever hounds he sent to worlds to collect specimens for the games. “I vote for staying on the move.”

The Flash started to say something, but Six didn’t hang around long enough to find out what it was. If Garfield had taught him anything, it was to bail before the adults could speak.

Well, that, and leaping before you look.

What would Garfield do?

Probably not the best question to ask, but Six really wished the green teen was with them right now. So, instead, he’d just have to settle for trying to do the best he could to keep that memory of Beast Boy alive.

----------------------------------------------------------------

EARTH
Hollywood, California | 2019

This was uncomfortable.

The green teen standing beside him in the elevator made an exaggerated flourish as the doors opened. “Welcome to the Hub, little dude!”

The cape that masked the child-corpse’s slight frame seemed to bristle. “-tt-” the boy uttered with a click of his tongue. Six had been fine by himself in the abandoned mission back in Metropolis. This was unnecessary.

With a sweep of his hand, Garfield knocked the hood from off the boy’s head. “Come on, let’s introduce you to the team.”

Bringing his hands up from under the cape, Six reached back to lift the hood back over his head. Instead, he found himself being taken by the hand and forcibly dragged along. All the while, Garfield was calling out things. Here’s the gym. Here’s the kitchen.

Six could hardly claim to be paying attention. This was just some teenage club house. The kind of pretty place where other people belonged. As soon as Garfield just let go of his hand, Six was going to be back in Metropolis before anyone even missed him.

“...and here’s your room.”

Shoved forward, the small hellspawn stumbled into the room. It was simple. A twin bed pushed up against a wall. A dresser. Some trinkets.

And...a large poster of Space Trek 3016 on the wall?

But, what resonated with the boy was the notion of where they were. Turning his head so that he was looking back at the taller teen, the boy seemed to grapple a moment with the question. Unconsciously, he’d grabbed the sides of his cape and was fidgeting with it, before he finally voiced, “This is mine?”

Garfield just seemed to blow past the question, instead he stepped inside and commented, “I wasn’t sure what you’d like, but I tried to think about what my room at Happy Harbor looked like.”

At the quizzical expression from the child, the green teen added, “When I joined the team, I wasn’t much older than you.” Garfield gave a cheesy grin, the room lapsing into an awkward silence. Then, “Oh, here’s a Switch.” With that, the teen picked up a red and blue device, pressing into the hellspawn’s hands. “It’s kinda used, but I don’t really play it anymore.”

The boy turned the rectangular device over in his hands as he examined it. Buttons. Screen. But, what was its function? Finally, he looked up to ask, “What’s it for?”

“Playing video games!”

The corpse-child just gave a tilt of his head. Now, he had only more questions.

“You know what video games are,” Garfield uttered casually. Then caught the look on the boy’s face and grew more serious as he asked, “Right?”

More awkward silence.

“Okay, vdeo game lessons later,” Garfield stated, taking the Switch from out of the boy’s hands and setting it back on the dresser. Pulling open a drawer, he revealed some folded shirts. The one on top was black with a red S shield. “We gathered up some clothes for you. They’re some hand me downs, but we didn’t know your size.”

The boy didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. Crossing them, he grabbed hold of the sides of his cape and seemed to fidget side to side as he wrestled with how to respond. “I...” the boy began, simultaneously humbled and embarrassed at the situation he found himself in. Finally, he admitted, “I can’t exactly take this off.”

“I might be able to help with that.”

Six had been so caught up in what Garfield had shown him, he hadn’t even been aware that there was someone in the doorway. A tanned looking teen. He didn’t look familiar, but the child hesitated, as he felt as though he ought to know who that was.

As though picking up on the dilemma, Garfield moved up next to the other teen. “You’ve met Blue Beetle,” the teen uttered, giving a flourish as he added, “Well, this is Jaime.”

Jaime took a step froward, dropping down to a knee so that he was on Six’s eye level. “I have a symbiote,” the teen remarked, prompted a surprise reaction from the hellspawn. “It’s not exactly the same, but maybe the scarab and I can share some tips to help you manage with yours.”

“How old are you, Six?”

A third person popped into the doorway, though now Six was aware that there were several teens starting to congregate.

“That’s Halo,” Garfield supplied, before adding. “You haven’t met her yet.”

“Uh,” the corpse-child stammered, unaccustomed to talking about himself. Or having people ask about him, for that matter. “I’m ten,” he said finally. Then, he paused, and seemed to walk it back. “I... was ten, I mean.”

What did that even mean? Shrinking back away from Jaime, the boy seemed to withdraw back inside of his cape as he glanced down to the floor. “I... You wouldn’t understand.”

A hand landed on his shoulder. Glancing up, the hellspawn found himself looking up into the eyes of the girl. “You died.” It hadn’t been a question. “So did I. I was fifteen, just a few years older.”

The hood and the domino mask seemed to melt away. The cape retracted so that the slender figure of the chain wrapped boy was clearly visible. His mouth hung open for a moment, glancing from Halo, to Jaime, to Garfield, and then back up at the girl as he felt, for a moment, like he was understood. “Really?”

A hand landed on his other shoulder, as Garfield offered, “You’re not as alone as you think you are, brah.”

----------------------------------------------------------------

DESTINATION UNKNOWN
Present Day (?)

How long had the jump been?

An instant? Somewhere between there and here, Six’s mind had wandered back to the Hub. A sharp pang bit deeply into the core and fiber of his being, as though some part of him had been lost.

He missed them.

It was a strange feeling. One that the boy tried to shake off.

It was a distraction. He needed to focus on now. As the others began to emerge from out of the portal, the hellspawn hovered up from the ground, the cape swirling about his small form, as the corpse-child took stock of the situation.

For one, there was the alarm. For them? Or something else?

Bare concrete walls. Reinforced? “We’re in a bunker of some kind,” the boy noted. Bare pipes and compartment markings. Very military.

Thin colored lines decorated the floor, snaking off in different directions. It seemed they were in some kind of hallway, which arrived a dead-end split off to either side. A T-junction. Some colors went left, some went right.

The lights were dim. Emergency lighting?

The Martian piped up from behind him. "It is strange. I can sense the presence of other lifeforms. Their minds surround us, dozens within these walls, but not a soul to be seen."

“Yet,” the child amended ominously. Still, he’d take it as a blessing. For now.

Risking it, the boy closed his eyes and tried to meditate on the darkness. There was something. Not malevolent -- or, not malicious at least -- but he could feel...

...death?

Not yet. But close.

“Be on your guard,” the child offered cryptically, as his eyes flashed with necroplasmic charge as he opened them. “There’s a predator here.”

Okay, so with that said. Looking at the colors on the floor, the child stared at the dead-end ahead. Left? Right?

Was there a third option? If Garfield was here, there'd be a third option. But he wasn’t. So, instead, the child turned and looked at M’Gann and then at Barry before asking, “Uh, which way?”

In the absence of teenagers, adults would have to do.

"Keep right n' keep slow.”

Steve was the one who’d spoken up, as the man seemed to step forward of the group. “Good chance we're bein' funneled into somethin' nasty, so hop behind me when the shootin' starts, kiddo, got it?"

“Right,” Six echoed, drifting in the air as the boy started down the side corridor.

Wait, he hadn’t answered about the other part. “And got it,” the boy affirmed, fumbling awkwardly with that part. It was strange stepping into a team like this.

He’d fought the Outsiders. Then he’d been helped by the Outsiders. And then he’d become an Outsider. It was complicated, but it had all just sort of happened.

He supposed this was just sort of happening, but he still didn’t know who any of these people were. Sort of. Flash seemed like Flash. And M’Gann was... well, even the M’Gann of his universe had been mysterious.

[Retired]

M A R T I A N M A N H U N T E R

---

Stepping through the shimmering doorway was a strange experience, even for one who had spent decades traversing the galaxies. M'gann was familiar with many forms of instantaneous travel through various hyper and warp drives, to Zeta and Boom tubes, and everything in between, but the interdimensional portal that connected realities was new to the martian.

There was no sight, no sound. The moment her body passed through the liquid-like threshold of the doorway, all senses ceased to be. There was nothing to perceive, not even a blackness, just a complete and utter absence of everything. Yet she was aware. During the process, that instantaneous moment where M'gann was transitioning between universes, the martian's thoughts were all she had. Despite understanding on a logical level that she likely existed between dimensions for an imperceptible, infinitesimal amount of time, that moment seemed to stretch on and her thoughts began to drift toward memories of another world.

Then, it was over and her senses returned in a sudden rush as M'gann rematerialized in another reality. Immediately she was accosted by the blaring of an alarm. Dim lights and the forms of her new, unlikely, and forced-upon comrades greeted her. It took a second for her to gather herself, but as soon as she did the martian began stretching out her awareness even further than her physical senses granted. Eyes closed, she pushed her mental perceptions outward rapidly. Unlike the last world they had arrived on, here M'gann found signs of life. Sentient thought patterns abounded within the surrounding two miles with no less than forty present within just a few hundred feet.

What comfort that knowledge might have brought, after the devastation they had come from, was mitigated by the obvious and rather unsettling lack of lifeforms, human or otherwise, noticeable from the bunker hallways they now stood in. With so many sentient minds within the concrete walls surrounding the fivesome, there ought to be some visible or auditorial sign of activity. That, coupled with the unmistakable warning alarm echoing throughout, left the Manhunter with only one conclusion. Something dangerous lurked among them.

A conclusion the child who called himself Six supported. M'gann wasn't sure what methods the shadow-clad boy had at his disposal, but she trusted the veracity of his claims of a predator within their midst.

She wasn't as sure about the words of another companion.

"Deep breaths fellas," the cowboy, Hex, spoke. "We're surrounded by enemies, don't know what they are, don't know where they're coming from, and we don't know how many there are. We got them right where we want them."

The man had an unusual sense of battle tactics if that was his thoughts on their situation. M'gann highly doubted they had anything, certainly not in any preferable way. The alien eyed the oversized firearm strapped to Hex's waist. Regardless of his poor understanding of who had the advantage over whom, she hoped, at least, that the man wouldn't be a liability should things turn dire.

The five moved through the corridors cautiously and silently. Each hallway they turned down was virtually identical both in construction and an eerie lack of life. Someone had once lived or at least worked here, that much was obvious, and one would expect to find some sign of recent activity. Yet none was to be found.

After several minutes the group arrived at the end of a corridor, no other pathways available to take, just a solitary, heavy steel door. Above the frame, the word SECURITY was embedded into the wall, and to the left of the entrance was a nameplate that read HEAD OF SECURITY - JIM HARPER.

Despite whatever facility they found themselves in obviously running under emergency generator power, an electro-magnetic lock held the door firmly closed. Not that locked doors had ever posed a problem for a Martian Manhunter.

M'gann stepped past the others, gently pulling Six, who had taken the lead thus far, back behind her.

"Allow me."

One of the greatest traits afforded by martian physiology was control over their molecular structure. This enabled the race to shapeshift into innumerable forms, either altering their physical features in any way they sought fit to take, or even perfectly adopting the form of another being down to a cellular level. It also granted them the ability to lower or heighten their molecular density at will. When heightened, a martian's already considerable physical durability and strength were increased exponentially. When lowered, however, it allowed them to perform the race's most well-known and regarded ability: phasing.

M'gann stepped through the metal security door much in the same way she had the interdimensional portal that had taken them here. In both instances, the doorways posed almost no resistance to passage. The Manhunter's body seemed to first meld into then slide through the door before she appeared on the other side. Once inside the security room, it took but a moment to find the methods to disengage the lock. Unfortunately, that method was a two-factor authentication system requiring both a keycard and a handprint scan. Neither of which M'gann possessed.

A minute passed for the four outside the security room. M'gann had yet to return and the door had yet to unlock.

The Flash shifted his weight from foot to foot. "I don't like it," he declared, "I'm going to look for another way in. Back in a—"

No sooner had the words left his lips before they were greeted with a heavy, metallic thunk followed immediately by a sharp snap. The thick metal door that had been magnetically sealed was pulled back and away from the entrance, not by its hinges but with the entire massive door torn from its frame. Behind it, M'gann held the door firmly in one hand, lifting it away and setting it to the side against a wall where it rested with a resounding thud.

"Apologies for the delay," she said. "It appears I did not have the proper credentials."

With the way cleared for the others to enter, M'gann turned her focus back to the room's interior. It wasn't a large space, relatively speaking. The hallways behind them had been easily wider but the five of them could fit with minimal cramping. The reason for the limited space was blatantly clear. A massive bank of video monitors covered an entire wall. Twenty-four in total in a six-by-four grid. Each monitor displayed a different room and was labeled accordingly. Set at the base of the surveillance wall was a long touchpad keyboard.

Along the opposite wall sat a modest desk adorned with minimalistic items. Whoever Jim Harper was, he appeared to be a person of function over form as M'gann noted a distinct lack of decoration or personal effects. Atop the desk was a computer, a distinct screensaver casting a glow across an empty chair.

There was one object that caught M'gann's immediate attention, however, and she strode quickly over to the mostly empty desktop. Her hand reached out and wrapped around the ceramic mug that sat in one corner. The dark brown liquid inside was nearly filled to the brim, and both the cup and its contents were room temperature.

It was the first sign of human presence they had encountered since arriving, and it disturbed her far more than the incessant screeching of alarms that had followed them throughout the complex. Whatever had happened here wasn't recent. Yet there was no sign of damage or struggle. If there had been an incident or evacuation, why were there no rescue or medical personnel swarming this place? If there had been an infiltration or attack, why was there no evidence of assault? And, more importantly, if individuals were remaining in this area as she knew there to be, why were they nowhere in sight?

Something wasn't adding up.

She turned to the others who had already begun to investigate the monitors and computer. "I am going to scout ahead. It will be quicker for me to move alone; I can go where I please unobstructed. If I find anything I will return immediately."

Then, she stepped through the wall and disappeared.

[Supermaxx]

N O M A D

---

Steve took a reluctant step toward the floating liquid silver. It didn't look like something he should touch, let alone walk into. First time didn't kill him, though, so why should the second? His stomach churned, and he was back at Camp Lehigh, stepping off a C-47. Man was not meant to fly. Inhale, exhale. Don't hold your breath or you'll lose it. Striding forward, he shut his eyes, and let the silver whisk him away across time and space. Just like the red fella said: Once more unto the breach.

Then his boot hit concrete. An alarm droned overhead with eerie familiarity. Fast as he could blink the shield slipped from across his back and the pistol leapt from its holster on his hip. After so many years, checking their surroundings for danger was less of a deliberate choice and more of a natural function of his body. There was an eerie familiarity to their surroundings: hard angles, reinforced concrete and not a window in sight. It was a bunker on the Atlantic Wall blown up by a hundred factors. It was a HYDRA research facility built into the Swiss Alps. Places like this were designed for bloodshed rather than human habitation. The architecture itself was wrong. Hostile.

"I'm assuming by predator you don't just mean a lion or, I don't know, a big crocodile."

The kid wanted to lead the way. Rogers felt something seize in his chest. It was pretty obvious he wasn't your average ankle-biter, what with the flying and supernatural senses, but it wasn't a logic thing. It was a visceral, gut reaction to seeing a child thrust in this position. Rogers took in a gulp, like physically swallowing would somehow help him cope with the cognitive dissonance of it all. This wasn't home. Things were different here, and he'd have to accept that.

Continuing on in formation they arrived at a heavily reinforced door blocking their way to 'SECURITY.' That was promising. He was readying himself to try to pry it open when the Martian stepped forward and kept stepping even as she hit solid steel. It was hard to contain his surprise. There was no containing his jump when the whole damned door came tearing outta its frame like it was made of notebook paper. "Would it kill you for a warning next time?"

Going through that door was like stepping onto the set of a Twilight Zone episode, or a panel in a Flash Gordon comic strip. There was a massive bank of two dozen screens stretching from wall to wall along one side. They were far more advanced than anything he'd encountered back on earth, even the bleeding edge tech of 1960. He gave a whistle of astonishment. Fascinating as this all was, a question itched at the back of his mind: if this really is a lockdown then why is the security station unmanned? Maybe they knew Rogers and his people were coming this way and made a quick escape, but that felt a weak explanation. This would be a hardpoint in the facility's defenses with few exceptions. And there was the matter of the monitoring feeds in front of him as well: as far as they showed this entire place was devoid of anything or anyone, save for the five of them. Something else was going on.

He leaned his shield against the lone console and holstered his pistol.

'Why's future tech gotta have no buttons,' he wondered to himself, staring like a slack-jawed moron at the buttonless slab in front of him. Anyone from a timeline closer to this one was busying themselves with other work: namely, Flash and Martian were off scouring the rest of the facility, leaving the cowboy, the weird boy and him alone to sleuth. Detective novels were never his thing. He'd always been more of a superheroes and Sci-Fi guy. This was way outside his comfort zone.

But if Flash Gordon taught him anything...

Steve Rogers cleared his throat, "Computer," he began in a commanding voice, "Access camera feeds."

Nothing happened. Did it require a specific input before coming on? That was a common enough trope. "Uh, this is...Jim Harper, computer."

Still nothing. A rush of embarrassment hit him, as he hadn't the foggiest idea what in the hell he was doing. Moving on quick as he could, he examined the podium more closely. It turned out to be some kind of...keyless keyboard, with the shapes of buttons drawn on the surface- another piece that looked like a movie prop. May as well give it a go, though.

He placed a finger against the surface and lo and behold it actually worked. One of the monitors switched its feeds! Excited by the discovery, he began pressing the other buttons in consecutive order, soon discovering that the grid on the keyless keyboard matched the grid of screens, and each screen could be rotated through a set number of camera feeds. An ingenious piece of technology, really- and the security cameras in this timeline looked better than a feature film in his.

There were more empty hallways, the interiors of offices nobody had bothered to clean up after a shift, a break room with an untouched pot of coffee on the counter. Then another shifted, and Rogers saw an exterior camera for the first time. The background was dominated by a mountain and what looked like desert or arid grassland, and there was a tunnel dug into the side- the entrance to this very facility, he guessed. And there were people around. Dozens of emergency and military vehicles surrounding barricades erected around the tunnel entrance, soldiers set up in defensive positions, and all sorts of scientists and business-types milling around.

"I feel like I've seen this place before." He wondered aloud, digging through decades of memories. A photograph he'd pulled out of a file cabinet. He'd broken into an Air Force colonel's office to gather intel for the resistance. It was a joint project with HYDRA to build complexes in the heart of mountains across the States to protect from nuclear attack- the Nazis were paranoid the Japanese would nuke them all to hell and take the whole world with them. Was this...Bare Mountain? No, that was New England. This was the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado! Construction wasn't even underway back on his world, but they'd picked the spot, and he'd seen nearly that exact patch of land in a photograph from...God, how long had it been? Time on that prison planet was hard to track.

Still mulling over that revelation he kept moving through the different camera feeds, worried more and more by what he was seeing. There was a meeting room with all the chairs and the table stacked against a heavily reinforced door that looked like it'd been bent near to the point of snapping from its hinges. Many of the feeds were cut off, like the cameras they were coming from were just gone. And there were finally signs of violence. Small, dark stains from what could only be blood on a carpet. A human hand print pressed against a wall, staining it crimson.

Then there was the cafeteria.

"Good God..."

The cafeteria was drowned in a sea of red. It was smeared across tables, on the counters, the floor and the walls, like somebody had taken hundreds of cans of paint and dumped them from the ceiling. Trails of the stuff led off in every direction: maybe they were from bodies being dragged or the wounded trying to flee, it was impossible to tell. Sickening as the scene was, there was also a profound strangeness to it. Where were all the bodies? This much blood would've came from...God, he couldn't possibly tell how many people. But there wasn't a single corpse left behind. No viscera, either. It was literally just a sea of blood.

"Hey! You need to see this." He barked back over his shoulder at Hex and Six. "There's something out there and its killed everybody in here, we got to- Lord, and those two went out on their own! Damn it all." His chest felt like it was being pulled apart at the seams. Have to breathe, recenter. His people needed him. Some truly wicked thing had descended upon this place and they'd come stumbling right into the center of it. "We need to find some way to warn 'em what's coming their way before its too late."

[BangoSkank]

Offices. Homes to domesticated men and with all the trappings. Couldn't hardly ken to it. Jonah had been round them long enough to pick up on their habits and their tells a little. Could tell a lot about a modern man by his office. Plain coffee cup. No cutesy shit. No ironic tagline. Gotta inspect further. Coffee inside was coffee, not sugar water with a splash of bean. Swished it around and it didn't change color, no creamer. As it moves around you can see the sides of the cup. Look for rings. There were none. Harper cleans his mug after every use. Attention to detail even where it hardly matters. Good modern man. Proper modern man.

Jonah dusted himself off, doing little to no good, before sitting at the man's desk. Chair was likewise a good proper chair. Firm, upright, and at an appropriate height for it's purpose. It was comfortable to sit in yet the ass was not all blown out. He did not spend a lot of time sitting. This was not a desk arranged to "take a load off" or for a long nap as the day drew to a close. A quick look under the desk confirmed what Jonah already knew. There was no foot rest down there. Files on the desk. Acronyms. S.W.O.R.D. That didn't sound good. Sounded military. Sounded experimental. Sounded familiar.

Neat lunchbox beside the desk, closed. Sandwich partially eaten on the desk but far from anything it might contaminate or be contaminated by. Corned Beef, Swiss and Sauerkraut on Rye. A Reuben. It looked good. Jonah immediately folded it in half and engulfed it with his mouth. Two large bites and it was no more. One drawer left to inspect, the only drawer left askew. There was not much inside of it. This was Agent Harper's dedicated weapons drawer. Inside the drawer was a large safe, sturdy looking, clean, open with the key still sticking out of the lock, gun and magazine missing. Uncharacteristic.

Jonah liked the man. He was meticulously clean. Never something that had applied to Jonah in his life, or now his after-life, but he had come to understand the importance it played in the modern world. Harper was attentive to the small details. He wasn't lazy. He was clean. He was prepared. He was a thoroughly modern man but he likely would have done just fine in Jonah's time. Whatever had happened it must have happened quickly and been immediately and clearly a great danger for him to leave as quickly as he had. When they found out what had set the alarm it would not be a sma-

"Good God..." Jonah heard another world's Captain America utter,
"Hey! You need to see this. There's something out there and its killed everybody in here, we got to - Lord, and those two went out on their own! Damn it all! We need to fins some way to warn 'em what's coming their way before it's too late."

[DocTachyon]

The first death in Barry’s life was his mother, killed in contempt by the Reverse Flash. It was quick, brutal. Barry would always remember the way the Reverse Flash looked just after, not looking at Barry, but just past him, lips twisted into a cruel smile.

Barry saw death for the first time as a young man, as a sear of black scarcely visible through the lightning storm that crackled between his and Pietro’s footsteps. Both boys thought it a trick at the time -- surely it was only a madcap Mirror Master illusion, or some obscure machination of the Reverse Flash. Only a clue to a grander scheme, not a threat in itself.

The next was watching it approach and then fade into impossible distance, faster than Barry could hope. Death was a man, a black racer, unbound by his speed from the limitations of space or time, able to snatch Barry’s mentor’s soul and be gone, almost before he could notice.

Since, Death had lingered in Barry’s perception; a streak skating through those disasters he wasn’t quite fast enough to reach, even dogged on Death’s heels, blowing his lungs out with the effort. Over time, Barry could get closer, no longer a dozen meters behind, but half that. A quarter. An eighth. Soon he was close enough to see Death was not cloaked in ethereal robes, but a costume, like Barry’s. It was black and sleek and seemed to stretch on forever, encircling everything Barry loved.

Eventually, Barry grew to outpace even Death, able to grab Batman and run from his grasp until the caped crusader could be returned to proper life. For a time, Barry thought he could outrun Death altogether. At the height of his speed, he could stay one step ahead of the racer, maneuvering everyone and everything out of his reach, keeping Death just at bay. If he pushed himself, maybe there would be no death, not ever again.

Mojoworld proved otherwise. When Batman died, the other Batman, Barry hadn’t even gotten a chance to see the racer claim Batman’s soul, he could only feel the racer’s presence worming into the back of his mind as Batman lay dying.

It was like that here, too. He couldn’t see the death, but he could feel it, footprints burned into his mind. The Black Racer was near. Had he already collected? No: had he come for them?

He juggled the questions in his mind as he zoomed through the facility. Whatever had happened here, it started fast. Several rooms had shattered coffee pots, glass exploding from too much time on the burner unattended. Computer terminals, awoken from their slumber by lightning-fast inputs, showed an array of half-written research reports and emails. Some had stopped mid word. He would’ve stopped to read them, tried to get a greater understanding of the facility, if it wasn’t for the blood.

He had excused the first few droplets he saw. Maybe someone had slashed their thumb with a papercut, or let a drop of their bloody nose loose onto their desk. The deeper he drew in the facility, the deeper the blood became -- in one hallway, reinforced at either side with haphazardly lain office equipment, the blood stood in a pool just up past the soles of Flash’s boots. Its deep red stained his bright costume darker as he ran.

There had been a battle here, he could tell from the desperate, slipshod construction of each barricade he encountered, but there were almost no signs of a real fight. Just officeware stained crimson. He had searched easily hundreds of meters of facility, winding halls and all, but beyond the blood, he only had two signs of what had happened here.

The first was the cuts. In a whirlwind glance as he dashed past, he thought it was the trace of an attack, a wild slash by someone endowed with claws like Wolverine’s. There were four cuts, each so deep in the walls that they consigned themselves to darkness before Barry could see their ends. They were too accurateto have come from Wolverine, maybe too pristine to have been made by a man at all. They appeared to be of equal volume, each carefully inches apart. Too far for a clawed hand, too perfect for the random variation of biology. There bore inside was smooth to Barry’s touch, sanded down to precise, flat features. The concrete that should have been in the wall, be it dust, rubble, or thick slices of it simply removed, were nowhere to be found.

Then, deeper, there were the shell casings. Four, exactly, with matching bullet holes that traced up the facility’s walls and onto the ceiling. The shooter was unconfident, or injured, firing at a target larger than them. Much larger, if Barry had to guess. The cases laid in a puddle of blood, at least as big around as Cap’s shield. Maybe the gunman hit his target, shots blasting through whatever it was and leaving their marks in the walls… But the blood spatter didn’t support it. There would be clean arcs of blood slashed against the walls from the bullets exit, but instead the patterns seemed almost random. Like, all at once, the blood had been evacuated from the shooter’s body.

Odder still, the shots were the only sign of a fight. He expected a discarded magazine, a torn scrap of armor or clothing. He’d have settled for a post-it note that read “oh, no”, but there was nothing. Whatever was here, whatever presence Six sensed, it had covered its tracks well… Too well for them to see it coming if it came back.

“M’gann?” Barry tried to project his thoughts as he ran, feet pounding down the corridors to the security room, “I’m almost back to Steve and the others. I think we’re in trouble...”

Barry rounded the last corner before his destination and stopped flat in his tracks. Where he expected the familiar steel door, laying crumpled beside the entrance, was a featureless steel wall. Had he gotten turned around? He was The Flash! He could run circles around a facility like this… He used to run circles around facilities like this. He gulped, and thought again.

“... I might be in trouble.”

[Bounce]

---

_{something wicked this way comes}

---

“We're surrounded by enemies, don't know what they are, don't know where they're coming from, and we don't know how many there are.”

The cowboy had a firm grasp on the situation. Six couldn’t help but share the strategic analysis as the man named Hex spo...

“We got them right where we want them.”

The boy’s head spun around as if on a swivel. A look of confusion twisted the child’s features that were visible beneath the hooded cowl and domino mask. Was the cowboy making a joke?

The Nomad spoke up, asking the boy, “I'm assuming by predator you don't just mean a lion or, I don't know, a big crocodile.”

The boy’s black and red cape fluttered around the youth’s ambiguous form, as he began floating in the air along the path they had chosen. “Both would be apt comparisons,” the child remarked cryptically, as the group arrived at a dead end.

There were shadows. Six could always...

“Allow me,” M’Gann’s voice announced, as the woman pulled the hovering child back a pace, before she ghosted through the barrier.

Picking back up on the question that Steve had asked, the boy explained, “What I feel is a killer, but... there’s no malice. No envy. None of the usual sins that I’d associate with murder.”

Barry decided to take a jog as they talked, though no sooner had the Flash departed than the door came off the hinges as M’Gann tossed it aside. “Apologies for the delay. It appears I did not have the proper credentials.”

The boy murmured his approval, still hovering in the air as he floated inside of Harper’s office. The Martian had handled that quite efficiently. In fact, it sparked a thought. Her ability, as well as his own, meant that they could potentially split up to cover more area...

It seemed M’Gann was already of that same thought. “I am going to scout ahead. It will be quicker for me to move alone.”

With that, the Martian was off, leaving the boy to contemplate doing likewise. Barry would have a good catalogue of the hallways and pathways, but M’Gann and Six could venture between floors or...

“Computer.”

Steve’s voice broke the silence, commanding respect as he... thought he was using some kind of voice recognition operating system? “Access camera feeds.”

On second thought, maybe leaving the office to the cowboy and Nomad wasn’t the most efficient use of teamwork. Floating down to the ground, the cape seemed to dissolve into the child’s small frame as it became visible, a black suit with white lines reminiscent of the chains that seemed to bind him. It might have been remarkable to realize just how small he was.

Coming around the desk, the boy examined the computer there. A screensaver was active, but the desktop immediately appeared when Six moved the mouse. No password protection thus far. “If there was a voice assistant, it’d probably answer to ‘Siri’ or ‘Alexa, play Despacito,’” the boy commented, reaching forward to explore the keyboard and clicking around on the desktop.

“The clock is set for the U.S. Eastern Time Zone,” Six commented aloud, before adding, “Current year is Twenty Twenty-Two.”

On the desktop was a folder labeled FIELD REPORTS. The contents contained monotonous notations on daily activities. “This facility is known as Cadmus Labs,” Six noted aloud as he browsed through the available data. “This report was authored nine days ago and it makes reference to a sentient weapons observation and response department...”

There were a lot of sub-folders within the directory. Sorting by recency, EVENT T-212-73 and EVENT S-89-17 were the newest entries. Both were password protected, but the file properties were visible. The two folders were created one week apart, six and five weeks before the current date.

And there was another folder in the main directory that caught his attention. THE DNA PROJECT. That was created six years ago, and wasn’t password protected. There were no loose files, only more sub-folders – with password protection on them. KR SUBJECT 01, KR SUBJECT 02, GENOMORPH, G-GOBLIN...

“Good God...”

Steve’s voice pulled the boy away from the computer. Floating up over Nomad’s shoulder, the boy stoically peered at the images of the bloodbath on the screen.

So what’s what he’d sensed.

Honestly, the vibes in that cafeteria would probably have been a good place to recharge. There was sure to be some restless souls or spirits of vengeance he could tap for some necroplasm.

However, now wasn’t the time to think about that. Instead, it had exposed an oversight and a vulnerability. They’d divided the team, but hadn’t established a means of communication. “-tt-” the boy uttered, disgusted with himself. “I should have thought to have the Martian link us telepathically before she ghosted out.”

It was a rookie mistake.

Closing his eyes for a moment, the boy applied his own, twisted form of empathy. The same miasma of killer instinct met him, except this time he pushed beyond the first impression. M’Gann and Barry were both out there. Whether they’d stumbled across the same information or whether someone had stumbled across them, someone had to feel some negative emotions.

Right?

“I’ve found Barry,” the Hellspawn announced. As he opened his eyes, green hellfire flickered from out of the eye holes on the domino mask. His voice was deeper, almost demonic as his cape seemed to furl outward, as though melding with the dark corners of the room. As the boy stretched out his hands, green flames seemed to flow along his hands and arms.

The Flash was uncertain. Afraid.

“I can teleport us to him,” Six uttered flatly, in the same altered tones.

Grudgingly, the Nomad and the cowboy seemed to exchange a glance. And then it was done. The lights flickered overhead. As the shadows consumed them, the three were swallowed by the cape that flowed from out of the boy’s body. And then they had vanished.

From across the facility, Barry might have noticed the shadows along the wall seeming to swell. The lights flickered, as the shadows detached themselves and took human form.

Then the inky darkness receded, revealing the black and red cape as the child appeared in eldritch hellfire. The smell of sulfur and brimstone seemed to linger in the air, as the hellspawn reappeared in front of the Flash.

.

[Retired]

M A R T I A N M A N H U N T E R

---

Bare, concrete walls pushed in on empty hallways. Dim red lighting seemed to pulse to the beat of blaring klaxons that would never die. Their wails echoed through the vacuous corridors, screaming to warn those who could no longer heed the call. Every path through the expansive complex blurred together in monotonous fashion; each hallway passed through revealed only more of the same. Nothing of any notable substance.

A blue cloak rippled through the air behind the stark white alien's form. M'gann M'orzz slowly levitated along each corridor she came across, her powers of telekinesis effortlessly lifting and carrying her wherever she saw fit. Eyes swept across every inch of concrete walls, exposed metal pipes, and anything else she came across. Nothing escaped the Martian Manhunter's gaze, regardless of seeming insignificance.

Something had happened here, that much was certain. A dangerous presence lurked within, and with no way of knowing how long she and the rest of her assorted group were stuck in this place, that danger needed to be discovered, evaluated, and, if need be, eliminated.

Years of extensive training and practical experience patrolling the greater galaxy, hunting down insidious criminals, and uncovering grand conspiracies had drilled upon her the importance of understanding what one was up against. Being forced to travel with a handful of strangers, some of whom could well be threats on their own, was uncomfortable enough of a situation for the martian. She didn't want to add to that with additional unknown potential threats.

M'gann drifted to the right side of the long, drab corridor. Her body continued floating up to and through the solid wall, entering the room on the opposite side. A few dozen seconds later, she reentered the hallway before repeating her ghost-like trick with the left wall. Each room that M'gann slipped into was little different from the next. Dissimilar purposes, of course, from offices to break rooms to storage closets, yet all revealed the same minimal levels of information.

She continually drifted through the hallways, phasing into each room she came across, carefully observing and analyzing as she went along. The monotony of it all was broken several minutes later as M'gann's senses picked up something from a distance.

A voice called out to her, muted, though not courtesy of the incessant alarms. It was Barry Allen. The version she had found herself an outcast with. The man was speaking to her, or at least he was trying to. Without a mental link established between the two of them, the thoughts sent her way came across as if they were underwater. M'gann could feel that Barry was projecting his thoughts out toward her, and she could certainly detect his psionic presence, even pinpoint his exact location if need be, but attempting to understand the context of those thoughts was nearly impossible.

She supposed it was only natural for this Flash to try and contact her mentally. M'gann had mentioned briefly on the previous world that she had the ability to sense and reach out to the minds of others. What she had failed to explain at the time, however, was that martian psionic communication required a pre-established link from one mind to another. In her culture, it was something usually reserved for family, close friends, or mates. Even as a Manhunter it was uncommon for psionic connections to be formed among units during missions unless close bonds already existed. It was an intimate act as a shared link meant that all of one's most treasured thoughts and memories could be handed over to another with little effort.

A frown flickered across her features for a second. She hadn't considered the notion until just then, but M'gann began to ponder on the potential necessity of a link between the five of them. If they were forced to continue hopping from one reality to another, with no guarantee of finding their respective home dimensions anytime soon, and every world they arrive at possibly being rife with danger, the ability for discrete, long-distance communication might be crucial. She would need to work on a solution for that, the martian realized.

More important matters were at hand at the moment, however. If Barry was attempting to reach out to her it was likely he had discovered something of consequence, be it answers as to what had occurred in this mysterious bunker complex or perhaps even with the device that had brought them all here from their former prison world.

M'gann turned around in mid-air and began floating back down the long corridor. She had made it less than a hundred feet before her senses once more picked up on something.

Her head snapped to the left, though there was nothing there of course aside from the concrete wall. Nor was there anything immediately beyond that wall, she knew, because just minutes ago she had stepped through it to the cluttered custodian closet beyond. But beyond that there was... something. A presence. Maybe five hundred feet in that direction; multiple corridors, and walls between her and whatever it was.

Her frown returned, brow narrowing intensely. It was a life form. One of those she had sensed earlier upon the group's arrival, though much closer than before. Too close. The Manhunter should have been able to sense it nearing much sooner. M'gann's sensory range easily covered the entire complex, and although she hadn't been actively focusing on tracking everything within up until that point, a sentient lifeform, as she knew it must be, should have alerted her long ago before coming so close. What was more, there was something familiar about the presence, though it was difficult to place at the moment.

She barely had time to consider this before her senses flared again. Another one, though this time further away, pinged within her mental radar. More than two thousand feet in the direction she had originally traveled from.

The direction she had left the others. The realization hit her quickly.

Barry's attempted message. A warning? A cry for help?

M'gann let her psionic power envelop her completely, the telekinetic force that had kept her suspended and lightly floating forward now propelled her like a rocket down the corridor. As she raced down the hallways, passing freely and haphazardly through any wall in her path, her senses picked up another presence. Then another, and another. Each of these three new lifeforms arose closer to the second she had detected, all within the same direction she was now headed. All within several hundred feet of the rest of her party, who she now could sense gathering together in one location.

The child called Six had been right earlier. There was a predator lurking within. The boy's intuition hadn't been entirely correct, however, as it became blatantly clear to M'gann that there wasn't just one.

It would become clear to Six and the others as well very shortly as four of the unknown predatory lifeforms converged on their position.

[Supermaxx]

N O M A D

---

"I can teleport us to him."

A weight formed in Steve Roger's gut. Knowing it needed to be done to help Allen didn't stop a shiver from running up his spine. That dead boy's powers came from a source all too familiar to him: his preacher had beat the fear of the devil into Steve since before he could walk. It wasn't like the Mojoworld tech- that wastoo fantastical, too 'out there' to be real. That was stepping through a doorway into dark room devoid of all sound or noise. This, though?

Six's cape swallowed the light. Darkness rushed in around him in the same way a torpedo might punch a hole into the side of a submarine and send the ocean cascading inside. It enveloped Steve Rogers. His throat tightened as smoke scratched at it. His nostrils flared at the bite of brimstone and sulfur. All he could do was repeat a silent prayer to his maker for protection from whatever entity lurked behind the black. The Seconds passed by in agonizing slow motion, teasing Rogers with the possibility that this was his new reality.

And then he stumbled onto the bare concrete floor of the complex, letting out the breath he'd been holding. It took him a moment to shove his anxiety back down into his chest.

Once he had his bearings he turned to glare at Six over his shoulder. "I am not doing that again," he snapped. Maybe it was harsh of him to blame the child for what had been done to him, but he couldn't ignore what he'd just been subjected to. It was anathema to everything he'd ever believed. This blasted trip was bringing all his base assumptions into question, each confrontation threatening to tear away one of the anchors to his past. He could only hope this ordeal would be over soon.

Rogers straightened himself out and turned to address the Flash: "Good to see you’re in one piece. We've got a situation. Something’s run roughshod through this place’s occupants and we’re pretty sure it’s still here. You seen the Martian?”