Part Four

Shaking her head in a vain effort to get the ringing out of her ears, Vic pulled her badge holder from her left back pants pocket, opened it and clipped it to her blouse pocket. Vic noted that the hallway outside was unsurprisingly now completely clear of crowding, though she'd had a bit of a wait to get in here. Her ears were still not working right, so she took a moment to look around. There were several other women in the restroom, all frightened, some screaming. The bullet, fortunately, had hit the far wall tile just past the last stall. Vic looked at the wall, winced and wondered what was on the other side of that. Hopefully, nothing important.

"I'm a federal law enforcement officer," Vic shouted, pointing at her badge. "I'm calling the local police. Please be quiet. The danger is over."

She wasn't actually certain of that. There could have been more hit men or even women waiting to act if this one failed. All the more reason to call quickly for backup. Though she did take time to pat the gunman down and flex-cuff his hands behind his back. Besides the usual, which she left in place, she found a concealed holster and a couple of speed loaders, filled with .357 JHP. The speed loaders and his folding knife were placed with the gun, on the floor against the wall, inside the restroom and beside the door. Where she could see them. That done she pulled out her cell phone.

Her regeneration still hadn't finished with her ears, but by now she could hear well enough for a call. Vic hit the speed dial for the closest precinct. When the operator answered, Vic asked for a cop on night station duty shift there whom she had worked with before.

"Cal? Vic Peltior. I was involved in a shooting at the Call of the Wild nightclub. No fatalities - at least, not that I know of - the only injured person I see is the gunman, and he's just stunned. I need cops and paramedics at the women's restroom just off the left side of the dance floor now."

While she waited for him to forward that information to the appropriate people, one of the women in the restroom tried to push past her.

"Sorry, no," said Vic, pushing her back; being very careful about where she touched the woman. "You need to wait for the police to take your statement."

"I have to go!" the woman said, emphatically.

"There's an empty stall right over there," said Vic, deliberately misinterpreting her.

"No, you idiot! I mean I need to 'go' go!"

"After you give your statement. If you leave now you will be regarded with suspicion. Maybe even considered a suspect."

"I had nothin' to do with it!"

"The you won't mind wai..."

"I don't want to get involved!"

"Too bad. You're already involved. You can wait, or be... Yeah, I'm still here."

That last into her phone as the detective got back to her. Vic almost absently blocked the woman again, as she tried again to squeeze past the martial artist.

"That's good. The witnesses are getting antsy. Okay. Thanks."

She hung up and looked at the frustrated woman.

"Five to ten minutes."

She then stood in the doorway, blocking all the other women from leaving and anyone from entering until the first uniforms got there.

* * *

"Babe, what took you so long?" said Michelle, when Vic finally rejoined her.

"Someone took a shot at me," said Vic, as quietly as she could and still be heard. She looked curiously at Michelle.

"Didn't you hear it?

"No," said the beautician, looking worried.

"Well, it's all over now. Suspect is in custody, nobody hurt. Let's dance..."

"Are you sure?"

"Well, I don't want to ruin your evening, but if you want to head out..."

"No, I'm okay. Like you said, let's not let this crap ruin our evening."

* * *

"Okay, the guy was definitely after you," said the Detective Vic spoke to the next day, at the station which was handling the case. "He's denying everything - including that he even had a gun - but we've verified that there's a bounty on you. Again."

"So was it Banpresto or Rokuro behind this?" said Vic, frowning. "Or even Abraham Stone? Or maybe someone else?"

She felt a bit distressed at how many enemies she had made in the past few years. Of course, she had also made a good number of powerful allies... Still, she was starting to understand why most supers who worked in law enforcement wore masks. Especially the freelancers.

"Okay, this guy is denying he was there for a hit," said Detective Grimwaide. "He says you attacked him. However, besides witness accounts and security video from the hallway outside the restroom supporting your statement, we've managed to access his phone and home computer. He was hired - and paid - anonymously. Obviously not for the first time, either."

"So he didn't even protect the data trail proving he was hired to kill me."

"He did, actually. We found out right away that his phone and computer were encrypted. Knowing you were the target, we started working with the FBI on the case; especially since the guy is from out of state. They put a rush on this and some of their people unlocked his phone and computer very early this morning. According to them, the devices were secured with a common, Black Web encryption package which was broken by the FBI a couple of years ago, but is still being sold by its vendors as unbreakable. We also suspect that he's been responsible for multiple killings for hire and several 'warnings.'"

"Wow..." said Vic, startled. She gave a wry laugh. "So me having a public ID may lead to several unsolved cases getting solved."

"True, but I wouldn't recommend this method of bringing a hit man out," said Grimwaide, seriously. "Not even for a super. Anyway, we're still going through his records. Aside from the encryption, he used code words and terms and personal slang for a lot of things. Since he's refusing to help us with this, figuring those out is going to be a lot slower."

* * *

That same morning, the Assembly had an unusual guest. A US Army secure information specialist landed in a helicopter on the pad atop the mountain the team's headquarters was burrowed into. He entered through the security station built immediately below the outside level. Once cleared, he was escorted to the base's main conference room. He brought no references with him, his information being conveyed entirely in person, by voice, from memory.

"Are any of you familiar with Project Iceworm, in Greenland in the early Sixties?" said Colonel Woll. Who was far too young to have been personally involved in something from that time.

"Oh, yes," said Dr. Gorgeous, nodding. She and the other team members were seated around the large, oval table in the team's main conference room, a recent replacement for the large, rectangular one which had originally been here. The Army officer stood at the end nearest the big display screen, but had not requested to use it. "It was a project to dig a nuclear-powered base into the ice sheets of Greenland."

"Actually, that was Camp Century. Iceworm was the secret project Century was the cover for. Iceworm involved digging what were basically single-unit ballistic missile launch sites into the ice in several places. No live missiles were actually emplaced; this was all experimental. Like Century, prefabricated structures were inserted into cavities excavated into the ice. As happened with Century, they soon learned that ice was actually much more fluid than expected, even when hard-frozen, and that it could exert a lot of force. However, while they were still digging the holes, something else happened at one of the test sites. Something much more urgent than ice flow.

"During the initial phases of the project, one construction crew working a few miles from the west coast of Greenland, several miles south of the Thule base... uncovered something," said the Colonel, looking like he had a sour taste in his mouth. "Something which had been there for thousands of years. It killed - and ate - six of the construction workers before they put it back on ice, with some help from outside. The crew knew even before they revived the thing that it was from another world; it was found in the remains of a crashed spaceship.

"The construction crew thought the creature was a crew member, and that they were recovering it for examination. Later investigation showed that the thing was actually either a pet or a specimen the crew of the wrecked vehicle had picked up on another world, and that while frozen, it was still very much alive. It may even have escaped during flight and caused the crash."

He shook his head.

"If it hadn't been for Kid Dynamo... No-one knows how he found out about the problem or got there in time, but he was the one who figured out what powers the thing had and then how to stop it."

"So they just left it buried in the ice?!" said Champion, not sure how she felt about that.

"It had been there for thousands of years. They figured it would be there for thousands of years more. The event was in 1960. Nobody knew about global warming back then. The whole thing was quickly investigated, quickly buried - literally as well as bureaucratically - and forgotten."

"That's one dangerous pet," said Thunderer, not sure she believed this tale.

"Ever see what happens to a hog which goes feral?" said Maciste, dead serious. "They have been known to kill and eat people."

"What I'm upset about is that they found alien artifacts and literally covered them up," said Thunderer, obviously irate. "That's a violation of multiple laws and treaties both the US and Denmark are signatories to. The stuff they left there could have helped us against the Shilmek!"

"There are provisions in all those laws and treaties which allow delay of notification of alien artifacts in matters involving national security," said the Colonel. "The matter was actually due be declassified a few years ago, but release of those items was put on hold because of the problems with the Shilmek. Only, due to the delay, nobody officially knew this incident existed to look at!"

"So, is this... thing, this creature, what the Moon Scouts were actually looking for?" said Champion.

"Not likely," said the Dr. Gorgeous. "They were digging in apparently undisturbed rock nearly four billion years old."

"This was much younger," said Colonel Woll, nodding. "The test cores from where the construction crew found the creature showed that at the depth of the wreck the ice was only about ten thousand years old at most. They knew from the condition of the ice around it that the wreck had melted at least a few meters into the ice where it landed. So, this thing couldn't have been in the ice more than a few thousand years. As a double-check, we - or, rather, my predecessors - asked the surviving Subterrans to look in their records. They found no mention of the crash."

"That ship on the Moon couldn't have been there for billions of years... could it?" said Champion, still worrying about that.

"The Lunies say it was there for at least several million years," said Dr. Gorgeous. "It was in a huge and very old lava tube which was in turn covered by later lava flows. This shielded the ship from impacts and observation and most radiation. I doubt we'll ever know why it was there or what it was really after, but it appeared satisfied by whatever the Moon Scouts dug up."

"We're getting off topic," said Thunderer. She stared directly at Colonel Woll. "Why is this thing so dangerous?"

"It can produce telepathic compulsions," said the Colonel. "It started out influencing just one or two of the construction crew at a time, but expanded its capacity rapidly. By the time it was defeated only two men were completely free of it, and one of those was Kid Dynamo. As best they could tell, it's not actually intelligent. Maybe as smart as a clever monkey. It would... consume one or two crew members, then go into a digestive torpor. While it would make some effort to conceal itself before this - and insert compulsions to obey and protect it which continued while it was digesting - the two resistors were still able to find it before it revived. They then flooded the chamber where it holed up with water, which quickly froze. Yes, they're sure they got it. Not only did the predation stop, they could see it in the ice."

"You say the number it could influence kept increasing," said Dr. Gorgeous. "Are there any hard estimates for a limit on that?"

"No. It wasn't free long enough, fortunately. Also, we don't know why those two weren't affected. Maybe they never would have been, due to some innate resistance. However, if its domination ability continued to expand at the pace measured during those two days, within a month it could have controlled all of Europe."

"So why are we getting this briefing?" said Dr. Gorgeous, pointedly.

"After the report from the troops in the second helicopter, Greenland called in some of its supers to check the silent ships. None of them were confirmed resistors, but the degree of the compulsion was unknown, so it was decided to risk those proven to have strong wills. None were able to resist the compulsion, however. Fortunately, the team had the sense to program their autopilot ahead of time for a quick pass over the ships, and as happened with the troops they were all right afterwards."

"Didn't they have any psi shielding?" said Champion, surprised.

"No," said the Colonel. "Psi effects are not common, and domination even less so, especially since those planetary domination dampers were installed. Neither Greenland nor Denmark have anybody handy who are known resistors, either. So, they're putting out a call for people who can investigate with a reasonable chance of not falling victim to the effect. Otherwise, their only option is to call in a missile strike."

"So, this thing was dumped into the ocean as the ice thawed," said Dr. Gorgeous, frowning as she worked out several scenarios in her head. "Or maybe the ice melted enough for it to revive, and it went into the ocean as the likeliest close source of nutrition. Either way, it revived and swam out to the retrieval ship. Has anyone backtracked to see if it got any other ships on the way?"

"We thought of that," said the Colonel, nodding. "So far it doesn't seem to have. We're still looking."

"So," said Dr. Gorgeous, again. "It got in, maybe just by holding onto the cargo pod. However it acquired access, it took out the whole crew - through domination, physical superiority or a combination - before they could send out a distress call. Several hours after that, it just as quickly took out the crew of the Coast Guard vessel. It's domination is strong enough or different enough that even with the planetary counter-generators it can still control people at a distance of at least hundreds of meters... This is not going to be easy."

"Also," said Champion, "if it did swim from the ice sheet to the ship it is at home in the water; even very cold water. So sinking the ships may not kill it, even if you use missiles to blow them to pieces."

"We know this won't be easy," said the Colonel, quietly. "That's why we're informing as many teams as we can."

"What are the chances that any of the two ships' crews are still alive?" said Champion.

"We have no idea. We're trying to get drones in there now. We - the governments of the US and Denmark - are hoping one of the super teams we've asked for help will be able to find out more quickly than we can. T.O.W.E.R. has offered to help, and actually has jurisdiction, since the ships are currently in international waters. However, as a courtesy they're holding off until Denmark gives the OK."

* * *

Several teams in the eastern US were not contacted by the government on the matter of the mind-controlling alien creature. The reasons for these omissions varied. For example, The FX was too new to be on the list of the person deciding whom to brief. Tricorne was left out because their means of public contact were through The FX. Fortunately, communications between established teams was good, and the Assembly contacted the trio about the matter.

"Too bad Vic couldn't be here to help us teach, this year," said Gadgetive, a bit wistfully, as she channel surfed madly from the big couch in the entertainment corner of the main room.

Blue Impact and Energia shared glances and slight smiles. She'd never admit it, but the team's gadgeteer had come around to "tolerating" Vic.

"Well, she's working full time, now, and she just moved into a new apartment," said the team leader.

"I think most of the slack has been taken up with that local martial artist Vic's teacher recommended," said Energia. "I am also very glad we were able to get someone in to teach about magical things. That gal Dr. Piano recommended does a pretty good job, despite describing herself as a 'layperson in the mystic arts.' I've sat in on a lot of her classes at The FX."

"There's no such thing as magic," said Gadgetive, absently. "Clarke's Third Law."

Blue Impact - who had quite a lot of first-hand experience with magic, due to her long association with Dr. Piano - opened her mouth to reply, but was interrupted by an alarm from their communication system.

"Speaking of Dr. Piano, I wonder what the Assembly wants with us?" she muttered, as she hurried to that corner of her lair.

"Who was speaking of Dr. Piano?" said Gadgetive, confused, as she and Energia joined their teacher.

Champion greeted the trio briefly, and asked them to activate their holographic video conferencing system. She explained she had an important briefing for them and several other teams, which included graphics. Soon Tricorne was looking at a map of the ocean west of Greenland. As Champion gave the preliminaries, this changed to a satellite image, which was then zoomed in on the targets. The members of Tricorne noted that The FX was among the teams participating, thanks to their recently installed communications upgrade.

"Drones have been sent around the ships, which showed no signs of life... until the drones were shot down," said Champion. "We think the creature must be in torpor, with the crews of both ships given instructions to stay out of sight and protect it."

"There aren't that many resistors handy for a quick response," said Blue Impact, frowning. "Are you planning to use some sort of artificial psi barrier for the rest?"

"Yes, but we really want to get more information before we go in. Working against that, the more time we take the more likely that thing is to awaken and either take some action to get more people under its control, or simply eat more of the crews. From what little we know of its past behavior, we may at most have another two days."

"Has anyone checked to see if this thing is controlling any sea life?" said Energia.

"Yes," said Dr. Gorgeous, nodding. "As best we can tell, everything from cetaceans down to shrimp are avoiding the two craft. There have been studies in the past which showed that most terran animals instinctively avoid areas with intense psionic fields. We really need information about what's going on inside those ships, though."

"Genius crumbs," said Gadgetive, knowingly. "Micromechanical probes. Ike Kenniman was telling me about this. Before he did, I didn't know the technology had been developed except irreproducibly by a few mads. This new stuff, though, is mass produced. Probably due to the knowledge infusion from the Shilmek after the war. Unfortunately, I don't know where to get any."

"That is news to me," said Dr. Gorgeous, looking impressed. "I'll send out feelers to see if we can get some of that quickly enough to help."

"Bowman might be able to provide more information about that," said Energia. "I remember Template telling me he was interested in microtechnology."

"What we really need," said Dr. Gorgeous, frowning, "is to find Kid Dynamo. However, he hasn't been seen since the mid-Sixties. The Intrepids say they're looking for him."