Crossover Earth '98
by Paul Cocker and Jay Shaffstall
Eventually, Jakob Khan awoke to the steady rumbling of turbulence and the whimpers of prisoners. Darkness pervaded the barge's hold, and his heightened sense of sight was bleary, but he still knew they weren't on the mean streets of New York anymore. The airy sounds, the whine of a turbine, they were being taken to the starship.
He smelled the other slaves well before his vision could vividly make out their shapes. There were too many civilians to be confined in the space provided, and, aside from the slight breeze wafting through the creases around the hatch, it was uncomfortably hot. No one said anything, but the guards' weapons clanked as the transport lurched through air pockets or swayed side to side from gusts of wind.
Jakob could still feel the blow that had knocked him out. A squad of alien troopers bombarded him with strange tranquilizer guns, and he supposed from the pains in his ribs and lower back that the same aliens took the opportunity to kick him thoroughly while he was unconscious. If only Jakob was awake when they did that.
A young boy gaped as Jakob awoke. Jakob towered heads and shoulders and sometimes more above the other captives. His face seemed hewn from granite. People, as they always did, spied at him when they thought his attention was elsewhere. Jakob knew it, as he knew everything that went on around him.
"Are you a superhero?" the boy asked Jakob in a whisper.
"Shut up, kid," Jakob said in a deep, level voice.
Even though it was dark, the boy tried to assess Jakob some more. He saw that his massive upper body strained inside a windbreaker. He had on jeans and running shoes. A bandanna was tied around his head, hiding any evidence of hair there. Perhaps he wasn't a superhero, but he certainly looked like he could tear a Dodge Ram in half.
"Goldberg," the boy continued.
Jakob scowled. "What?"
"Bill Goldberg. Only the biggest, meanest bad-ass in pro wrestling. You're him, right?"
"Listen kid," Jakob snarled. He then turned to face the boy, lowering his head so that the youngster could see his angular face and bleak, never-changing eyes. "Shut-up or I'll shut ya up."
Suddenly a guard hammered the back of Jakob's head with the butt of his rifle. The cords in his neck tensed as Jakob stifled a growl through clenched teeth. He looked at the alien with a hard glare.
"Everything comes back in spades," he said with a sick smile. "Your turn's on its way."
The air transport buckled, and Jakob could see streaks of wispy clouds through viewslits in the hull. He shifted, leaning back and craning his neck so as to get a better glimpse at his destination. More clouds, feathery tendrils of cirri, washed the scene outside in white. The transport kept rising, parting the clouds like shears through wool. But he couldn't see an end to the layers of clouds.
For about six minutes the transport continued to rise, finally breaking through the mass of clouds, revealing something on the other side. Something solid, green, and gargantuan. He was looking, he immediately realized, at the starship. It was a huge cruiser, a sprawling rhombus of alloy the size of a township, its superstructural features as big as brownstones and water towers. There were conical structures and ziggurats mounted with guns and cannons. The ship loomed silent, unresponsive, the flickering of its blue and yellow running lights was the only sign of activity in the ship.
The transport dropped down and hovered across the ship's landscape. As it proceeded across the plane of systemry, a yawning threshold materialized along the face of an upcoming wall. The transport then disappeared within it.
In a monitoring station deep within the starship, a lanky, pale-skinned humanoid slouched back in his command chair. He had been watching video screens for several Earth hours now. The alien oversaw his reptilian troops, made certain that their herding of slaves went on schedule. The city loomed, filling up several screens, and swelled as the images were magnified to better show the prime target areas.
He turned to another wall of screens. Here, he kept note of the barges shuttling back and forth, transporting the slaves to the main ship.
Another skeletal alien approached the commander, obsequiously reporting. "Lord, we are receiving a communication from the commander over site four."
The alien leader lifted up a headset. "Route this directly to me."
The alien crewman nodded, retreating swiftly to carry out the order.
The leader listened in silence for several Earth minutes, acknowledging an unseen voice. Veins pulsed from his bald head as he smiled.
The serried line of slaves walked down the ramp of the transport and onto the main deck of the hangar. The armed alien guards escorted them, one hissing the occasional order. Jakob's gaze weighed the threat in every guard. There was an air of readiness about him, a wolf on the brink of his charge.
He wondered how fast these aliens actually were. Could he break from the line and flee without being caught? Well, that was doubtful, especially since there was ten of them. Ten armed with laser rifles or plasma throwers or whatever their weapons were. No, Jakob would have to engage them. His keen nostrils could almost smell the pending confrontation.
As the lead guard marched by Jakob, hissing and burbling again, the large man stiff-armed him in the face. The guard's jaw snapped with a loud click as it caved in from the impact, wicked teeth splintering from his now pulverized mouth.
Before the guard fell to the floor in agony, Jakob sprang to next nearest alien -- the one that hit him with the rifle butt. Seemingly startled, the reptilian could do no more than bare its forked tongue before he was upon him. Jakob's hand lashed out, his fingernails becoming sharp weapons, and split the alien's skull. Gore splashed and the reptilian humanoid crumpled, dead before it even collapsed.
"That's for butting me," claimed Jakob.
Jakob sensed the guards gather themselves, but they moved into position faster than he thought, and as quick as Jakob was, he couldn't outmaneuver a laser. The photon blast barreled into him, throwing off his feet. With animal reflexes, he twisted, turning his fall into a dive. He tumbled and came up as more weaponfire peppered about him. A third guardsman tried to tackle Jakob before he could flip and roll behind a nearby shuttle, but missed as he sidestepped and thrust out his hand. Razor-like nails met scaled flesh, tearing a fist-sized chunk of the reptilian's side away. The alien bellowed liquidly and backed away.
The line of slaves scattered, civilians screaming and scurrying from the fray. Some ran for the safety of the shuttle, others found cover elsewhere.
The air heated up as more streaks of energy erupted about the hangar. Jakob jumped, hurdling two guards, and somersaulted over the beak of a different shuttle. As he landed, a guard grabbed hold of him. The alien wrenched his arm and threw him to the floor. He was strong, not quite as strong as Jakob, but nevertheless strong. And he was tall too, nearly standing seven feet! Teeth loomed menacing in the alien's gaping mouth, and Jacob drew back his fist. Maybe he could choke it before it acted --
The alien screeched and stumbled, then fell forward to land facedown at Jakob's feet.
"What?"
Jakob heard the clanking of weapons and spun around to see that all the reptilian guards had fallen to the floor. They all struggled, but some ghostly force kept them pinned down, as if anchored...
Then Jakob saw the source of this strange phenomenon. A silhouette of a meager man, half standing, half floating, emerged from the hangar's bay door. It shifted towards him yet no limbs or body parts moved. It was stark black, lacking any features or detail, and looked more and more like a man-shaped rift cut from the very fabric of reality. A pulse-like strobe beat where its chest may have been, but since it was absent of any depth or vivid description, it could very well have been its upper back.
Jakob glowered at the humanoid anomaly, revealing his pointed incisors. "Anchorman," he muttered.
Static crackled as a speaker erupted from the hovering man-thing. "So," he said, in a synthesized voice of James Earl Jones, "we meet again, young Jedi."
Jakob wasn't exactly sure how Anchorman recognized him right away. He was unaware of the KAGED program and how it created the energy-absorbing field composing the shadowy man. He had no idea that it eliminated his normal five senses, making way for an extraordinary means of perception. Anchorman was a living gravimeter, able to perceive the various grades in mass and density in the objects that surrounded him. Jakob, even in his civilian clothes, couldn't hide his girth and weight from such an all-encompassing sensory unity. With bones as dense as lead pipes, Jakob was like a beacon in the night to Anchorman. Therefore, Anchorman knew right away that Jakob was indeed the maniacal criminal known as Mastiff.
Jakob was about to pounce on the odd hero when two other figures stepped out of the shadows. One, a young male, stood with open hands ready to strike; the other, a teenaged girl in a blue-and-white bodysuit, crouched to one knee, a hand touching the floor.
Still sounding like Darth Vader, Anchorman said, "Meet my stormtroopers."
Jakob leapt. "I don't got time for this shit." Just inches from swiping Anchorman, a booming cacophony radiated from the young man's hands. The sound seemed almost solid, like a blunt attack, and rocked Jakob backwards.
"This is Thunder," the unmoving Anchorman continued.
Jakob staggered, stepped on a long patch of ice, and slipped, ultimately crashing into the landing gear of a shuttle. He immediately rolled back to his feet and glared at the girl touching the floor.
"And that is Kelvin."
Kelvin stood straight, a seventeen-year old with cropped blonde hair, average height for a girl her age, curvy and long-legged. She had icy blue eyes, slight freckles, and a small nose. She wore a form-fitting white uniform with blue gloves and boots that hugged her calf muscles. The suit looked similar to a riding outfit, replete with blue piping.
Jakob smiled. "Cute trick with the ice. Won't happen again."
He then glanced over Thunder. The young man was black, about nineteen or twenty, well-built. His jeans and white, long-sleeved t-shirt fit nicely over his physique, revealing his strength without flaunting it. A yellow stylized T sat on his shirt, the stem of the letter jagged and tapered like a bolt of lightning. His posture was confident, bordering casual. Thunder looked like he had street smarts, and was rarely surprised by anything.
"It's quite simple, Mastiff," Thunder started. "You can either help us, or we're gonna take you out."
Halfway across the space vessel, an alarm sounded, and the gaunt alien commander looked up from his plans. His features darkened as he tapped into the surveillance cameras and captured an image of a large, well-muscled man overpowering a reptilian guard.
The commander gritted his teeth, beady red eyes glaring beneath his pronounced brow. "Who is this malcontent?"
"One of the slaves, Lord," a crewman replied.
Rows of monitors held frozen images from the security console. On one screen, the man was locked in combat with three fully armed guards. On another, the man pressed a reptilian over his head. On yet another, the same man evaded a series of gunfire.
The commander studied the images closely. "Fascinating. He has the bearing of a Myllactian dire wolf!"
"Scanners are also reading a strange gravimetric anomaly in that same sector," another crewman added.
"Alert security!" the commander ordered, slamming down a fist. "I will not brook such incompetence."
The commander turned and stalked off down a corridor, almost running into several ensigns. The aliens scurried to get out of the way, cowering as he passed. A dry chuckle rattled past the commander's thin lips.
"So we have a metahuman onboard. Apprehending him will be quite profitable."
Anchorman and Jakob worked their way down a corridor, both apparently uninhibited by its dim lighting, while Thunder and Kelvin followed closely behind. It was a hexagonal passage way, although somewhat lengthened horizontally, a steady thirty yards wide by some twenty yards high. The walls, oddly variegated and leaf-shaped, appeared to be constructed of an unearthly ceramic. There was no ceiling per se, save for a great expanse of beams, carefully allotted, past which lay a web of conduits and sinuous tubes -- the spacecraft's seemingly never-ending bed of arteries.
"D'ya think those civilians got off the ship?" Kelvin asked.
Jakob replied, "Go ask Jesus."
Kelvin cocked back her head, a perplexed look on her face. "Huh?"
"Talk to someone who gives two shits."
She rushed forward, looked at him, but he didn't flinch. Even with her control over ambient heat, she felt Jakob's chilling coldness. Kelvin huffed, adding, "You might not, but I do, quite frankly."
Thunder smiled. "Don't bother, Kel. We've got ourselves a hard-ass here."
They moved parallel to the long axis of the starship, a good one thousand yards until the first fork, a symmetrical X-shaped intersection at the end of a lengthy bend, with matching corridors stemming directly to the far left and right. The archways were marked by a serried line of trimwork that, like the walls, seemed to be ceramic. Here, the gallery of servos above were awash in fluorescent light.
Jakob's nose twitched, a slight sneer crossing his features as he immediately headed down the right corridor. It proved to be a different world down this hall. Hexagonal still, but enclosed with ridges and trusses; the walls were matte gray, lined with an ongoing series of light panels.
Jakob's nostrils flared. "I can smell 'em."
Static crackled and Anchorman spoke up. "I'm picking up impressions behind the walls. There are civilians there."
Jakob looked at the walls carefully. He touched a flashing panel. Instantly, the section of wall beside the panel dissolved to an off-white translucence, then faded to crystalline clarity. The corridor turned out to be a series of holding cells.
The cell before him revealed T-Bone, Flea, and Rottie of the Dog Pack, along with members of the East Enders.
Martial Blade hollered in contempt, "You! Don't think I don't know who you are!"
Mastiff sighed. "Ya wanna prize, kid?"
Martial Blade then looked at Anchorman, open-mouthed. As an East Ender, he felt a duty at marshaling the law. But as the team's co-leader, he also felt that he especially had to stand out when dealing with wrongdoers. "What on the world are you doing with him!"
Thunder shrugged. "We made a temporary truce. Figured we could all use each other's help while on this ship."
"Ya don't hafta like it, Zorro," explained Rottie. "But the guy's right. We got caught while fighting each other. Let's not make it worse than it already is."
"I agree," added Torch, the East Enders' other resident leader. "There's bigger fish to fry right now."
"Torch's right, Blade," another team member affirmed.
"Ah, Jake," Rottie stepped glumly out of the cell. "I'm glad to see ya."
"Me too!" Coydog added, nervously. Meanwhile, T-Bone tried -- and failed -- to keep from blinking.
Jakob folded his arms before his chest, his eyes locked on the East Enders. "Whatever." But then he started to smile. A shapely brunette in leather and high heels stood beside Martial Blade. She was gorgeous, which was a weapon in itself, and the lady knew it. Everyone could tell Jakob had met this woman before.
"Welly-well. Whatcha doin' all cooped up, beautiful?"
The lady was Singularity. In fact, her presence could've caused a volatile situation. While she and Jakob have just recently met, her history with Anchorman was just as unnerving.
While Anchorman, with his normal five senses blind and working entirely off of a sense of density variance, could no more identify Singularity than he could any other normal human in the cell, Singularity knew the faceless void that was Anchorman. She'd been brought in on Dr. Slyzinski's gravity research due to her ability to control gravity. Having her as an example to study gave the good doctor a head start with his own equipment.
Unfortunately, Dr. Slyzinski stumbled upon the fact that the true backers of his project wasn't the United States government, but someone else. He fled the project and took the prototype with him. Only recently had Singularity's employers heard rumors of a super-powered hero operating in New York who might be using something like Dr. Slyzinski's equipment.
Singularity's mission in New York was two-fold: one, retrieve Dr. Slyzinski so he could finish his research; two, eliminate the Truant. So far there'd been more complications to both missions than ever before.
She estimated her chances of capturing Dr. Slyzinski, fighting Mastiff, and escaping the alien ship. Finally, she decided to play it safe, and not use her powers. She knew that Slysinzki could detect the use of gravity powers, and didn't want him to be alerted before she was ready to move. Then, once she had Slyzinski in hand, she could proceed with the Truant.
This was better than a vaction; she'd never had so much fun in her life. Singularity moved slightly behind Martial Blade and looked defiantly at Jakob.
"Hope these aliens use you as target practice, Mastiff," she said.
Jakob forced a laugh. "Whatever ya say, sweet peaks. I know no one's gonna get all misty over my corpse. But ya ain't gonna kill me. No more than I'm gonna rip out your pretty little spine. 'Cause the way I look at it, ya need my help."
Singularity snorted in a most unlady-like way. "The day I need your help, Fido, is the day I hang up my heels."
Martial Blade looked at her, puzzled, but made no comment.
Jakob looked at the East Enders, shook his head, and sighed. "Whatcha doin' with these bed-wetters, anyway? I mean, I thought we had a thing goin' on."
"In your dreams, creepoid."
"Ev-er-ree night."
Just then, the clamor of footfalls was heard. A nearby wall hissed open, and hands appeared as several guards entered -- hands with big, mean guns. Like the guards that occupied the slave transport, they were lizard-like humanoids, tall and thickset. Unlike those guards, however, these guards well all clad in silver armor, with sturdy skullcaps.
There was a quiet moment, as Jakob and the three heroes fanned out, preparing themselves for battle. Then, the quiet was broke, as Jakob's acute ears picked up more footfalls.
"We can take these four," he said. "But more's on the way."
The guards dealt first play: they opened fire, each of them already with a target in mind. Jakob dodged an ion blast, which swept across the wall behind him, dismantling several flashing panels. A length of matte gray wall instantly dissolved, revealing more and more captives in cells.
Throngs of civilians rushed out of the open cells, spreading out, filling the corridor in a writhing mass of confusion. They scream, hollered, and wailed as energy fire continued to burst about the area. Some civilians fell to the lethal streams of energy, but most flooded the halls and seeped down the bend, exiting whatever portals presented themselves.
Kelvin took her eyes off the alien in front of her, her features cast in sorrow as she looked at the dead New Yorkers that littered the hall as charred husks. Taking advantage of this, the alien raised his weapon, drew a bead on her, but never fired. A wave of unbearable sound streaked across the air and disrupted the weapon, causing it to explode in the guard's armored hands.
Startled, Kelvin waved a thank you to Thunder, but he already moved down the hall.
The guard screamed in a sibilant tongue. He dropped to his knees, and Kelvin finished him with a stroke of her hand, fusing him to the floor in an instant shell of ice.
Jakob bore down on the alien that kept firing at him. Plasmic fire lanced about him, but never hit. Reaching the guard, he snatched the gun away.
"I'll be needin' that," Jakob said.
With his other hand, Jakob dug his fingers into the guard's chestplate, breaking through. He tore into the armor like it was aluminum foil, piercing the protective layer with sharp fingernails. Creating an instant handhold, he then hurled the guard over his shoulder and threw him into the adjacent wall. Ceramic tiles gave way as the reptilian bounced off the wall, sinking to the floor, unconscious.
Anchorman's rigid form canted forward, as if attached to some unseen axis. The air then buckled about him in diaphanous ripples, a gravitic anomaly spreading outwards. Suddenly, a guard was lifted off his feet, levitated over his partner, and dropped. Both aliens went down. Hard.
The reptilian aliens were out, but through the commotion of the free-for-all, Singularity managed to make a quick exit.
"Where'd the babe in leather go?" Rottie asked, his heavy voice squawked.
"Somewhere cozy," Jakob said sarcastically. "More guards're almost here. No time for cocktails."
As the Dog Pack picked up the alien weapons, Anchorman floated down the hall and stopped. His radio crackled again. "A doorway -- there! It leads towards the core of the ship."
Jakob padded towards the static, ghostlike hero. "Ya heard the spook. Let's go."
He then sank his hands into the steel section of the wall, peeling it back. The team charged through the opening onto a catwalk. Both the Dog Pack and the East Enders came to a dead halt. They found themselves in the middle of a stupendous silo, two hundred feet across and nearly five hundred feet deep. Steam fizzled eerily from slight crevices below.
"What's this place?" T-Bone asked.
"Your friggin' tomb if ya don't move it!" Jakob barked.
Rapidly, they sprinted down the catwalk to another door. Instinctively, Jakob extended his right hand and sheared through a small console along the doorframe. Delicate wires and circuitry sparked and the door hissed open.
The team reeled through levels of the ship. They made their way deeper into its bowels, skimming past intersecting halls one moment, while veering down others the next. Anchorman aided them with his special, omnidirectional awareness, as did Jakob with his heightened sense of sight, smell, and hearing.
Down another hall, alien guards were taken by surprise as the group bolted into their midsts. As the troopers opened fire, Anchorman took point, plowing three of them over in a wave of intense gravity. The other reptilian guards beat a hasty retreat before the advance of Torch and Kelvin. Balls of fire and ice bowled down the aisle, chasing the aliens as if they were runaway fivepins.
The team made their way into a nearby room. From a glass-walled observation deck, a big forearm locked around a guard's throat, removing him from active duty.
"Whatcha doin' down there?" Jakob asked the guard wryly.
"I'm no alien, but that looks like the main bridge to me," Kelvin ventured. "There must be a main control grid down there."
"Let me guess," Martial Blade smiled. "You watch Babylon 5."
"Looks like something important, anyway," Coydog added.
They briefly watched the alien technicians toil about the bridge. The room was a labyrinth of strange instruments with banks and monitors crossing and criss-crossing the area. Exotic chairs hovered about, guiding the aliens along walls and panels of consoles. Ensconced in the computer arrays, their hands worked, scaly, reptilian fingers moving over flashing lights and small toggles.
"Screw this waiting shit," Jakob said and hurled the alien guard through the glassy plane. Shards rained down upon the reptilian body which now lay sprawled atop an oblong apparatus, and before the techs could react, Jakob and the rest of the team dropped to the main floor and had the aliens covered.
"See," Jakob said. "As easy as that."
As if in response, a door snapped open and a squad of guards leapt into the opening. Jakob and the Dog Pack opened fire simultaneously, and the guards sprang for cover, as did the techs. Crackling blue-green discharges of energy spiraled from ventilated muzzles, snaking through the air like things alive. Shots peppered the area, setting off eruptions of power from the computers.
"We can't take control of the ship by destroying the bridge!" Thunder hollered over the din of the energy blasts.
"Take control of the ship?" Jakob laughed. "Get real, kid."
Martial Blade and two other East Enders tackled an advancing guard, overwhelming him, tripping him to the floor, and disarming him. Torch summoned a fiery wall, the flickering plumes protecting him as well as obstructing him as a potential target. Unlike the Dog Pack, they were not armed with such exotic weapons, and weren't insane enough to try using such foreign firepower.
Kelvin, flustered, looked at Anchorman, whose anomalous gravitic cocoon defied him normal human stimulus. He merely hovered in place, a silent phantom, as the center of his chest pulsated with a faint light. The young meta sighed, returning her attention to the damaged computers. She held her hands out toward the miniature fires rising from the banks of equipment. The gesture wasn't necessary, she knew, but it helped her focus her powers. She absorbed the heat from the flames, quickly reducing them to mere sparking circuits.
All of a sudden, the entire bridge, the entire ship, began thrumming with a bizarre tremor over the loudspeaker, something that made the two gangs' hair stand on end. The techs cocked their heads, registering it, and immediately fled.
"Uh, did we do that?" Flea asked.
Jakob shook his head. "Nuh uh. No way."
Anchorman's radio-voice crackled. "Aliens are fleeing all over the ship. We should do the same."
Martial Blade looked upward, timing the vibrations over the speaker to himself. A look of terror crossed over him. "Let's get out of here! It's some sort of countdown!"
"For chrissake!" Jakob yelled.
Intense fire cleared the doorway; perforated reptilians now collapsed there, dead or dying. With practiced calm, the Dog Pack fired wild shots as they moved. The East Enders followed suit, with Torch, Martial Blade, Kelvin and Thunder using their powers on stray alien troopers. Anchorman glided behind the team, an aura rippling off his rigid, shadowy form.
They slewed and whirled and fired along, coming around a corner only to run head-on into a trio of guards. Before the Dog Pack opened fire, antigravity buckled the air, hurling two guards to either side, slamming the middle one to the ceiling. Then the gravity around the guards was restored and they crashed into one another, now unconscious.
Then the team continued to barrel through the starship.
In the ship's central control house, the lanky alien commander entered a chorus of alarms. He glowered at his security staff.
"What manner of disturbance is this?"
A security officer pressed a button in chagrin. "I-I do not nuh-know, sir... A signal from the cruiser in site two... Something that has disrupted the subspace network. This security warning is concurrent with the entire fleet."
"Circumvent it."
"I-I cannot, sir." The officer's eyes bulged. "Someone or something has breached our encryption codes, our entire security system has been sabotaged... Auto-destruct parameters have now been activated... Countdown sequence has been initiated!"
"This cannot be -- so many slaves at our fingertips. Now, it's all for nothing! How could this be? How?!"
But the security crew ignored their commander, retreating from the chamber, and fleeing down the stretch of corridors.
Standing alone, the commander wheeled around the room, desperately punching keys and switching levers, all to no avail. "This is impossible!" In one swift movement, he deployed his sidearm and blasted a nearby monitor apart. "No!"
The moments that past were like snapsnots of the escaping shuttles' position in flight, lasting only a fraction of a second. Pods and barges jettisoned from hatchways and escape chutes as an ever-escalating series of explosions lit up the starship. The cruiser swelled, its hull breaking apart, gathering toward the final, climatic detonation.
By curbing the gravitic web that embraced the Earth, Anchorman had carried the team from the starship, and safely sent them cascading down to a crested embankment by the East River. Everyone rushed for the cover of a nearby stone-corbeled pier, blinking at the sight of the explosion.
The shockwave slammed into escaping shuttles, hurling them into new trajectories. The heat and flame of the explosion roared on, melting the clouds and filling the sky with a hellish firestorm. In the midst of this blazing crescendo, a stray craft swayed over the hellfire. While the other shuttles hurtled towards water and land, this one headed skyward, rocketing into the stratosphere.
But everyone's attention was on the starcruiser. The ship was clearly blown into fragments and, as the inferno started to calm, the fragments began to fall. Even a small piece of the ship was deadly, for not all the force was contained. Rivets, structural panels, and pieces of armaments pelted the New York landscape like tiny meteorites.
The East Enders lay dazed, paralyzed with awe, as the effects of the explosion finally drifted. When they found that they had the strength to rise, they came up only to their knees, swaying. Torch heard a shout and looked up to see the Dog Pack running off down an alley like madmen.
"Look," he said, exhausted. "They're getting away."
"Let them go," Martial Blade replied. "We've been through too much for one day."
Meanwhile, Anchorman hovered in place, his sensory unit reaching out. He couldn't pick up Jakob's density signature, but he knew that someday they would meet again. And he knew when that day came, the two parties were not going to make a truce.