Countdown. Part 15

Jimmy recalled his nauseating trek through Project Cadmus's sewers. How come I keep ending up as a tunnel rat?

The booming machinery gradually receded into the distance. The glowing circuitry grew ever brighter. Jimmy sensed that he had progressed from the factories into Darkseid's gloomy palace. But where was Forager? An itch at the back of his brain guided him to a vertical shaft that led to a rusty metal grate many yards above Jimmy's head. A trickle of turquoise liquid dripped down the ladder before him.

Forager's blood?

Jimmy climbed the ladder. The bars of the grate were slick with the alien fluid. Jimmy lifted it just enough to peek out into the chamber above. Please, he prayed. No Parademons or overslavers, please . . .

"Forager!"

His insectile traveling companion was shackled to a canted metal rack, like a b.u.t.terfly mounted for display. Although scratched and blackened in places, her chitinous armor appeared more or less intact, suggesting that she hadn't been tortured too severely yet, but fresh blood continued to seep from a wound in her shoulder. Jimmy remembered her being zapped by a Parademon's laser-rifle during their initial battle with Darkseid's strike force. He could hear her panting raggedly beneath her helmet. All six wings were retracted.

To his relief, she appeared to be alone in the dismal torture chamber, which was crowded with elaborate metal apparatus whose s.a.d.i.s.tic functions Jimmy didn't want to think too hard about. Being careful not to let the metal grate clang loudly onto the floor, he shoved it aside and hurried over to the upright rack. Forager's helmet concealed her expression. Jimmy couldn't tell if she was conscious or not.

"Hang on!" he said. "Let me get you out of there!"

He started to gently remove Forager's helmet. "Thank G.o.d you're still alive. . . ."

And, he discovered to his surprise, strangely gorgeous.

Glossy purple filaments, resembling human hair, swept across the top of her head. The elegant planes of her face had a l.u.s.trous vermilion sheen. Multifaceted compound eyes sparkled like polished yellow crystals. There was only the slightest hint of a nose, but her lilac-colored lips were plump and inviting. Slender antennae rose from her flowing purple locks.

Her alien beauty threw Jimmy off balance. Cool your hormones, he scolded himself. She's a human-sized bug for crying out loud!

He rapidly undid the clasps binding her wrists and ankles. Weakened by her ordeal, she slumped forward. He reached out to catch her. "It's okay," he a.s.sured her. "I've got you."

"O-Olsen?" she said weakly, sounding dazed and disoriented. Her antennae tilted toward him.

"That's right." He propped her up as she tottered upon shaky legs. Their close contact made it hard to concentrate on the business at hand. A honeyed fragrance tantalized his senses. "It's me, your pal Jimmy."

"Olsen!" Without warning, she lunged at him, knocking him backward onto the floor. Straddling him, she seized his throat with both hands and began squeezing the life out of him. Adrenaline, or the insect equivalent, boosted her strength, so that she suddenly seemed as fierce as ever. Jimmy's eyes bugged from his sockets. He gasped for breath. "Kill you! Must kill you!" she chanted, as though brainwashed. "Jimmy Olsen must die!"

"Forager, stop!" he wheezed. Her powerful hands clamped down on his windpipe; unable to breathe fire, the best he could manage was a few faint sparks. "What are you doing?"

He tried to shake her off, but her grip was like a vise. "Kill you . . . kill," she repeated over and over, while buzzing like an angry wasp. "Must kill you!"

Jimmy's arms went elastic, wrapping around her from behind and pulling her off him. He sucked in the fetid air as her fingers came away from his throat. His scaly limbs encircled Forager like the coils of a boa constrictor, binding her arms to her sides, yet she continued to writhe violently within his grasp as he scrambled to his feet. It took all his strength just to hold on to her.

He had no idea what had come over her. Why's she so mad at me? It wasn't my idea to star her in a sci-fi version of Hostel. "Stop it, Forager. You've got to snap out of this!"

At first, he didn't seem to be getting through to her. Then, to his surprise, the circuitry embedded in his scales emitted a brilliant flash that lit up the entire chamber. Even stranger, the light show was accompanied by a series of electronic pings that seemed to be coming from inside his very skull. What in the world? Jimmy thought. Now what?

The dazzling flash had an immediate effect on Forager. She stopped fighting back against Jimmy's pliable arms and shook her head in confusion. Her antennae twitched back and forth before turning again toward Jimmy. He saw his own reflection multiplied in her compound eyes. "Jimmy?" she said uncertainly, as though truly seeing him for the first time.

"Maybe," he replied. With his scaly skin, elongated arms, glowing circuits, and beeping skull, he barely recognized himself. "I'm not so sure anymore."

She scrutinized his transformed appearance with obvious fascination. Her gaze traced the complicated pattern of the circuitry etched upon his body. She listened carefully to the last few pings before they faded away. "Was that . . . ?" She sounded like she could barely believe what she was thinking. "Where did you get a Mother Box?"

The question startled Jimmy. A Mother Box, he knew, was a kind of living computer often employed by the New G.o.ds. Among other things, they could be used to summon Boom Tubes of the sort that had transported him and Forager to Apokolips in the first place. But what does that have to do with what's happening to me?

"I don't have a Mother Box," he insisted. He wondered if Forager's own ability to produce a Boom Tube had been disabled by her captors. Probably, he figured. They wouldn't want her teleporting out of here.

"But . . ." she protested.

Come to think of it, Jimmy thought, Mother Boxes ping just like I did. He shrugged his shoulders, not ready to cope with yet another mystery. "I know." Frustration soured his voice. "Just chalk up another one for Jimmy Olsen, boy freak." He released his hold on Forager. "I'm just glad whatever happened calmed you down."

"Forgive me, my Earth-bug," she said sheepishly. "The only way I could deal with the pain they were inflicting on me was to go into a waking trance." She winced as her fingers delicately explored the bleeding wound in her shoulder. "I was simply protecting myself on instinct."

He thought that over. "And your instinct was to kill me? Nice."

"Yes," she admitted. "I . . . I have no excuse."

"Whereas I have no use for excuses," a third voice interrupted.

Jimmy and Forager spun around to see a smirking, middle-aged woman enter the dungeon. Her gaunt, haggard face reminded Jimmy of Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz, only without all the green greasepaint and warts. A ruffled green velvet gown, with a high collar, gave her a faintly medieval look. A matching cape was clipped to her heavily padded shoulders. Lacquered black hair met in a widow's peak atop her high forehead, as well as rising in hornlike peaks above her temples. A cruel smile evoked generations of mercilessly strict schoolteachers and librarians.

"Bernadeth!" Forager buzzed angrily.

Oh great, Jimmy thought. I remember her now. Bernadeth was one of the Female Furies, an elite corps of warrior women and a.s.sa.s.sins devoted to Darkseid himself. Plus, as if that wasn't scary enough, she was also the sister of Desaad, and said to be just as vicious as her s.a.d.i.s.tic brother.

"Better you had killed this mortal," she informed Forager, "than let him live to sample my charms." She drew a two-foot-long blade from a sheath at her side. The doubleedged weapon glowed radioactively.

Jimmy stepped in front of Forager, s.h.i.+elding her with his body. "Shees.h.!.+" he exclaimed. "Where does Darkseid dig up these nightmares!"

"Watch out, Jimmy!" Forager grabbed on to his arm from behind, as though afraid he might do something foolish-like maybe take on the sword-wielding hag unarmed. "Beware her fahren-knife! It burns her victims from the inside out!"

Judging from the quaver in her throaty vibrato, she was speaking from personal experience. Jimmy's blood boiled at the thought of Bernadeth torturing Forager in this very chamber. "You'll never touch her again, you s.k.a.n.k!"

He mentally winced at his own tough-guy dialogue. "s.k.a.n.k"? Yup, you're really going to make a top-notch reporter someday, Olsen. . . .

"How deplorably touching," Bernadeth said with a sneer. "If futile."

Raising her glowing blade, she sauntered toward her targets. Forager tugged frantically on Jimmy's arm, urging him to flee, but he gently disengaged himself from her grip. "Stay back, Forager." Porcupine quills shoved their way up through his skin. Fire sprayed from his lips. "I think I can handle this."

Bernadeth swung the fahren-knife at Jimmy, only to get a face full of needle-sharp spines before her irradiated blade could connect with his head. More quills speared her velvet gown. "Yeeeagh!" she shrieked as the freakish attack caught her by surprise. Her body convulsed in agony . . . or was it ecstasy?

"Pain . . . delicious pain!" she moaned in rapture. A twisted smile spread across her face as she paused to savor the experience. Her pale, cadaverous features flushed with excitement. Fervid green eyes coveted Jimmy. "Come to me, pain-bringer. It has been too long since Bernadeth took a consort." A crooked finger beckoned to the flabbergasted porcupine-boy. "And make it exquisite!"

Jimmy's quills wilted. "Umm . . . pa.s.s?"

"No more delectable torment for Bernadeth?" She sighed in disappointment, then raised her glowing blade once more. "Then all the more agony for you!"

She charged at him with unexpected speed. The fahren-knife came swinging at his skull. Jimmy strained to launch another volley of quills, but, before he could even try to defend himself a second time, parallel beams of crimson energy zoomed through the doorway, striking Bernadeth's sword hand. She screamed again, this time less eagerly, as the lethal weapon went flying from her grip. She dropped to the floor, clutching her seared hand. Smoke rose from the scorched velvet glove. The nauseating stench of burning flesh and fabric added to the fetid odor of the torture chamber.

"Wretched meat-thing!" she snarled at Jimmy. No trace of perverse affection remained in her furious eyes. "The master looks favorably upon you!" She turned her attention to the empty doorway through which the twin heat-rays had come. "Bernadeth did not know, Lord Darkseid! Forgive me!"

Jimmy belatedly recognized the parallel rays as Darkseid's dreaded Omega Beams. They were like Superman's heat vision, he knew, only a hundred times more deadly.

Forager gazed at him in confusion. "The Dark Lord is protecting you?"

So it seems, Jimmy thought. But I'll be darned if I know why.

"Now would be a good time to make ourselves scarce," he decided. "You got another Boom Tube ready to go?"

Forager shook her head. "They confiscated my transport controls."

I was afraid of that, he thought. Just our luck.

They retreated back the way he'd come, rapidly descending the ladder into the byzantine maze of tunnels below. Jimmy led the way, turning this way and that, anxious to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the grisly dungeon. Not until Bernadeth's frantic pleas had completely faded into the distance did he slow down and attempt to get his bearings. He glanced around the leaky, slime-encrusted conduits, looking for some sort of familiar landmark. This was the route he'd taken before, wasn't it?

Forager kept close to his side. "Where now, Jimmy?"

"I don't know," he admitted. Translation: He was completely lost. How do I find my way out of here?

PING! His head started chiming like an impatient cell phone. Forager stared at him agog. "Jimmy! Your eyes!" Luminous circuit diagrams, like the ones on his scales earlier, s.h.i.+mmered across his field of vision. "I know that pattern!"

"Pattern?" The circuitry danced before Jimmy's vision like floaters.

"Mother Box," she said in awe. "And more: I see the Source in your eyes."

Jimmy gulped. "Maybe I'm turning into a New G.o.d."

"No." She eyed him thoughtfully. "Something else. Something . . . unique."

He wasn't sure he liked the sound of that. "Is that the real reason you tracked me down?"

"Yes," she confessed.

"So . . . I'm just prey to you?" He was surprised at just how hurt-and disappointed-he felt. "Something you can capture and exploit?"

She came nearer to him, so that they were only a few inches apart. He inhaled her perfume with every breath. "You were. Yes."

He pinned his hopes on her use of the past tense. "And now?"

She placed her hand gently upon his chest. His protective quills receded from her touch, leaving flushed pink flesh behind. He swallowed hard, dousing the last embers of his fire-breath, as she pressed herself against him. His body sensed instinctively that there was no danger here, at least not of the physical variety. His arms circled her waist, pulling her closer. Their lips met and he tasted the sweetness of her nectar. She buzzed fervently. Her antennae caressed his brow.

Jimmy hoped he knew what he was getting himself into.

Bernadeth crouched upon the sticky, bloodstained floor of the torture chamber, wherein she had spent so many blissful hours. She heard the redheaded Terran and his subhuman handmaiden flee the fortress, but made no effort to recapture them. Her throbbing hand testified that there were agendas at play here beyond her ken, and she had no desire to inadvertently incur Darkseid's wrath once more. Mere physical punishment was one thing, and even had its virtues under the right circ.u.mstances, but demotion and/or summary execution were altogether different matters. Bernadeth had fought and schemed and betrayed to gain her current ranking in the Female Furies. The last thing she wanted was to lose all that because of one innocent mistake.

I'm not to blame, she thought indignantly. n.o.body told me that miserable worm was under Darkseid's protection!

Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside and she flinched in antic.i.p.ation of her lord's extreme displeasure. "I was deceived," she called out nervously. "The cunning mortal tricked Bernadeth." She kneeled before the doorway. "Please forgive this unworthy one. . . ."

A brilliant glow entered the dungeon as a luminous figure appeared in the doorway. "Forgiveness is no longer an option," a stern voice declared. A crackling nimbus of energy emanated from the figure's extended right hand.

"You?" Bernadeth squinted into the glare. Her eyes widened in surprise. She groped for her fallen blade, only to find it worryingly beyond her reach. "You're not . . ."

"The Fourth World is coming to an end. I am the harbinger." He stepped into the dungeon, illuminating every dank corner of the chamber with his preternatural radiance. "Your time has come . . . and, unfortunately for you, there is no pain in death."

Bernadeth's black heart exploded into flames as cosmic vengeance consumed her.

16 AND COUNTING.

PARADISE ISLAND.

"This? This is the reason you deserted your training?"

Athena stared down at the severed haunch of the giant warhound, which rested at the foot of her throne. Armored guards flanked the throne, while additional Amazons stood watch over Holly and Harley as they faced Athena's judgment. Holly couldn't help noticing how much grander and more opulent the beautiful temple was compared to the miserable barracks she and the other newbies had been stowed in. Marble friezes, depicting the founding of Themyscira, ran along the tops of the walls. Towering caryatids, sculpted in the likenesses of great Amazon heroines of the past, supported the high ceiling. An exquisite Persian carpet surrounded the throne. Incense perfumed the air.

Rank has its privileges, Holly thought, and something here is really rank.

She did her best to conceal her resentment as she defended herself before the scowling G.o.ddess and her armed attendants. "If we'd deserted, we wouldn't have come back."

"Yeah," Harley said. "We just figured, since we've all been busting our behinds, maybe some fresh meat would help keep morale up."

Holly shrugged. "The big dog was all we could find." Canine blood smeared their soiled chitons, which had definitely seen better days. Hauling the grisly trophy back though the woods and underbrush had been a ch.o.r.e and a half. "Not exactly prime barbecue material, but beggars can't be choosers."

"You slew the hound yourself?" Athena asked skeptically. She leaned forward to inspect their prize. "With what weapons? How did you fillet the meat from its bones?"

Outnumbered and unarmed, Holly tried not to look too worried. "We found a stash of old weapons in the hills."

"There was all kinds of rusty old Amazon junk," Harley attested. "No cute shoes in my size, though."

Athena pondered their words for an endless interval. Is she buying this? Holly fretted. A trickle of sweat ran down the back of her neck. Even with Harley at her side, there was no way they could defend themselves against Athena's elite honor guard. She prayed that Hippolyta had not overestimated her ability to put one over on Athena and her warriors. Otherwise, we might be doggie chow.

The counterfeit G.o.ddess rose from her throne. Her regal face held an inscrutable expression. She approached the two accused deserters.

"I shall expect you to show us this weapons cache later," Athena declared. "For now, your prowess speaks volumes." She laid approving hands upon their shoulders, bestowing her dubious blessing upon them. "There is a place in my elite for those who show such initiative." Her grip tightened, digging painfully into their flesh. Her gray eyes flashed a none-too-subtle warning. "Do not, however, let it happen again."

She released her grip and Holly let out a sigh of relief. OhmiG.o.d, she thought, we're actually getting away with it. We're not dead!

Harley nodded a little too eagerly. "Okeydoke!"

"I think what she means is," Holly explained, "we live to serve."

At least until we find out who you really are, lady, and what your game is.

APOKOLIPS.

"I don't understand," Mary said. "What are we doing here?"

A moment ago, they had been on Earth. Then Eclipso had used the mystic power of the black diamond to transport them across the universe to possibly the most evil place in the cosmos. Mary had never been to Apokolips before, but she knew of its dread reputation. The wizard Shazam had often spoken ominously of the h.e.l.lish planet and its infamous overlord. The New G.o.ds were supposed to be just as formidable as the old ones from which the Marvels drew their powers . . . if not more so.

"Don't worry, dear," Eclipso said soothingly. She guided Mary down a torchlit corridor. Dense stone walls gave the alien fortress a forbidding atmosphere that made Zatanna's spooky mansion seem like Disneyland by comparison. m.u.f.fled screams escaped dungeons several levels below. An open window offered a glimpse of a smoky black sky. The crimson glow of the Fire Pits penetrated the corridor, so that the somber walls seemed splashed with blood. "I wouldn't have brought us here if I didn't think it was time."

Time for what? Mary wondered apprehensively. Surely Jean doesn't think that I'm ready to take on Darkseid himself? Her nerves faltered at the prospect. I've learned a lot lately, and I'm stronger than I've ever been, but Darkseid has defied the entire Justice League.

She took a deep breath of the palace's hot, oppressive air. Her costume clung stickily to her skin. Apparently, Darkseid wasn't big on air-conditioning.