Premiere #48: Journey into Vortex


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The penultimate chapter at last, served in all its desperate urgency by... the Hooded Hood.
Mon Jul 14, 2003 at 04:53:41 am EST
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Phase Shift and Windblosom, by Dancer


Premiere #48: Journey into Vortex

The Red Watchman hovered in technologically-compelled twilight between life and death, his every moment agony, his body a blind, twisted, mangled wreck. But his mind was intact, his hatred undiminished.
His telepathic abilities were gone, seared away when Premiere had burned out the portions of Assak Malevi’s brain that granted him his powers, but somehow he was aware of his visitor, and could communicate with him.
“Good evening,” said the Hooded Hood.
“You’re dead,” the Watchman told him. “This is another fever-dream.”
“Dead, yes. A real inconvenience,” the cowled crime-czar agreed, “But I may get some use out of it. However, I am not amused that your interference caused my demise, and thus I have come to speak with you.”
“I’m not afraid of you. You’re weak and compassionate.”
“Indeed? Well in my weakness and compassion I have made a few arrangements on your behalf. The alterations you made to Dancer’s brain, for example, never happened. Nor did a number of contingencies and failsafes for your eventual restoration and return. Nor did your doomsday scenarios to destroy Technopolis and your world.” The Hooded Hood leaned over the crippled archvillain with a malicious smile. “In fact I’ve arranged that you have a long, quiet convalescence just as Premiere intended, screaming away in your own personal world of absolute pain for the rest of your miserable days.”
“Wait… Hood!”
“It’s a good job I’m weak and compassionate,” the crime-czar said. “And dead, of course. Otherwise I might have done something nasty.”
And he was gone, leaving Assak Malevi to his screaming.

_______________


The massive city of Technopolis twisted through the Interdimensional Vortex, a frail knot of matter protected by flickering generators that maintained its tenuous existence against a conceptual tide . Within the scarred silver buildings the citizens cowered and awaited their fate.
“How’s it going?” Windblossom asked Phase Shift as he joined her on one of the balconies of the Tertiary Command Center. “Did the transfer take this long last time?”
“Last time we were at full power and the Red Watchman was augmenting the process,” Martin Hernandez explained to her. “This is a rather bumpier journey.”
Kareen O’Connell stared up at the flaring purple-yellow skies. “There’s a kind of wild beauty to the journey, all the same,” she noted. “There’s beauty everywhere, isn’t there?”
Martin felt his throat tighten as he saw her radiant face look up in wonder. “Yes,” he choked. “Kareen…?”
“Martin?”
Phase Shift had fought mad science villains when he thought he would certainly die, but that wasn’t as frightening as this. “Kareen, I know I never rescued you, and that I… well, when we were with Mad Wendy and I didn’t know what I was doing… But sometimes I think you… maybe…”
“Yes?”
“Kareen, I love you. Will you lifepartner me?”
Windblossom blinked. “Of course not,” she answered.
“Oh. Right.”
The girl’s elfin face screwed up into a bubbly smile. “But, if you’d like to take me to dinner one night, maybe show me a holo or some zero-G dancing or something, then maybe we should start from there?” she suggested.
“That… that would be wonderful.”
She tilted her head upwards and kissed him, as she’d been wanting to do for some time. “You don’t have to rescue me to date me,” she confided in him. “You just have to be you.”

_______________


“Any luck?” demanded Lisa, looking over Al B. Harper’s shoulder.
“Nope,” he admitted. “I have no idea where Technopolis went, and without their tech to help us we can’t even contact the Technoverse and see what Starpom Omega knows.”
“Premiere sent that neutralizer pulse deliberately,” Drury fumed. “The son-of-a… He took out all working Technopolis-tech so we can’t use it no more!”
“Very wise,” admitted Xander the Improbable, sauntering onto the SPUD command deck. “Paradopolis is safe, by the way, thanks for asking. We misplaced Space Ghost and Mad Wendy, but the Yurt is happily eating a MacDonalds.”
“Please tell me you mean the burger not the building,” winced Lania.
“But there’s no word from Premiere,” said Dancer, and she had tears in her eyes.

_______________


“Condition Red!” shouted Dr Fallister as the sabotaged dimension-jump engines burned out in an explosive spray of sparks. “Shut down before we lose half the City!”
But there was nobody in the section left alive to respond to his commands. Technopolis jolted and yawed as the bubble of reality around it began to dissipate. A series of searing explosions indicated the catastrophic systems cascade had begun.
In a black and white blur, Premiere dived into the fireball. Lightning fast punches shattered key conduits as Victor Brooke’s enhanced senses allowed him to follow the very electron flows that were causing the surges. By the time Phase Shift, Windblossom and a handful of walking wounded science heroes had arrived on the scene the fires were under control. Premiere emerged carrying one of the injured scientists.
“Situation?” he demanded of the Chief Trans-Conduit Technician.
“We’re dead,” reported Dr Fallister quietly. “The protective field’s collapsing, and then we’re nothing.”
“Can’t we… repair the generators or… or something?” Phase Shift demanded. “We can’t let it end like this after everything we’ve been through. Millions of people are depending on us!”
“Yes,” agreed Premiere quietly. “We have to save the day.”
Windblossom looked on in alarm as the last science hero clapped Phase Shift on the shoulder. “I’ll save Technopolis today,” he said. “After this it’s up to you.”
“What? Wait…”
Premiere picked up the broken conduits and held them in his fists. “I once used my power to supplement the force field generators and save Paradopolis,” he reported. “Dr Fallister, I’m going to power up the dimensional jump mechanisms and get my people home.”
“You’re nearly dead!” objected Windblossom.
“If I fail, we are all dead,” Victor Brooke replied. “That’s not going to happen.” He grasped the energy transfer cables and gritted his teeth. As he shuddered the failing dimensional envelope modulator flickered back to life, drawing its power from a new source.
“Is… is he doing it?” Phase Shift gasped at Dr Fallister.
“Y-yes,” swallowed the scientist. “But we have a problem…”

_______________


“Busted!” admitted Hacker 9, as he hung from the wall of the helicarrier computer core by two staple arrows.
“Yep,” smirked Trickshot. “I thought all you Technopolis bozos went back with the city, ‘cept for the ones in custody.”
“I slipped away,” shrugged the young science villain. “Because… y’know. I could.”
“Well you’d better get down here and give us a hand. Something’s gone wrong with the dimensional jump and we don’t know what.” The archer rubbed his forehead wearily. “It’s serious.”

_______________


“You’re supposed to be a sorcerer!” complained Goldeneyed. “Sorcer something!”
“It doesn’t work like that,” answered Xander the Improbable hotly. “This is scientific dimension-shifting. The Manga Shoggoth might have been able to calculate what was happening but right now he’s reforming in that bucket there from being sprayed across Technopolis. The Dark Knight might have used his… contacts to find out what was going on from one of the greater Offices, but he’s dead right now until he gets another reboot. Your best bet is to question Pegasus since she apparently sabotaged the generators so they couldn’t be used again then got injured before she could warn anybody what she’d done.”
“Why would she do that?” frowned Sorceress.
“A dimensional transfer that big, it causes all kinds of nasty ripples,” the master of the mystic crafts answered. “You know that. Wounds. Scars that don’t heal.”
“Like the radioactive wasteland west of Gothametropolis?” suggested Chronic.
“Like flaws in the fabric of reality. Evidently Pegasus’ mysterious employers weren’t keen on that happening again,” Al B. Harper noted.
Across the room Amazing Guy floated cross-legged, his face contorted as he concentrated his cosmic awareness to discern what was happening in the void between dimensions. “I’ve got them,” he breathed, his eyes flicking open. “I can see the city, still pushing through the vortex, very slowly.”
“Can you get to them?” Dancer asked eagerly. “Can you get me there?”
“Are the generators still working?” demanded Hatman practically.
“I can’t do anything to help them,” AG admitted. “They’re in the deeps beneath reality, at the very edge of existence. The generators are down, but the reality field holding Technopolis together is still going. I don’t see how… wait, it’s Premiere. He’s powering it with his own life force.”
“Is he strong enough ta do that?” Dan Drury scowled.
“No.”
“We have to do something to help them,” Dancer demanded.
Xander the Improbable touched her arm gently. “This is beyond our limits now. They’re on their own.”
Amazing Guy flinched and tumbled from the air. “Oh no!”
“What? What is it?” cried Valeria.
“They’re not alone,” AG warned. “Before I lost contact I saw… It’s like Xander said. Nasty ripples. They’re not alone. The city’s been found. When its bubble faltered they were invaded.”
“Invaded? Invaded by what?” worried G-Eyed.
“Hero Feeders.”

_______________


They shimmered into the Generator Station, gray humanoid silhouettes that glided like ghosts amongst the technicians and scientists. Anyone they touched blinked out of reality, erased past and future. They were the Hero Feeders, parasites of the vortex, and they devoured existences.
There was no way to fight them. They came straight through the science police and heroes that tried to stop them until the reached the one they had come for. Phase Shift and Windblossom were all that blocked them from the weakened man who was keeping a city alive.
The Hero Feeders had come for Premiere.

_______________


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Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2003 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2003 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.


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