Boogeymen Gaiden: Cold Equation

I woke up with the flash drive digging into my cheek.

You'd think the fact that I didn't wake up where I'd gone to sleep and that I woke up face down in a parking lot with the sound of explosions in my ears would be more of a concern, but then again, if you're seeing this, you should probably know my life, our lives, tend to have somewhat screwed-up priorities.

Okay, I'll admit it. The explosions were also a concern. But considering I couldn't really detect any waves of heat, nor did I feel the burning sting (or worse) of freshly-impaled-into-me shrapnel it probably meant nothing had exploded near me. Yet. I'd prefer to keep it that way, but you can't always get what you want.

Certain things needed to be checked before I did anything, including move. Well, first I confirmed I could move. Then I confirmed I was wearing my coat. The coat was good. The coat was full of the things I needed to make this bad situation less bad.

Then my hand. The familiar ring. It might as well have just been a ring here, but it was a comfort.

I inhaled air through my nose next. I smelled burning plastics and scoured stone, but I didn't smell anything dead, and that was a good sign.

Then I opened my eyes.

A car tire stared back at me. The car it was attached to had seen better days. The fact that its occupants might also have seen such things was why I slowly got up.

Parking lot. Worse places to be. So I got up.

Specifically, a parking lot in the middle of a war zone. Destruction and chaos. Smoke in the distance. So, a Friday for my ilk. I joke, but I know a bombing campaign when I see one. It's not something I would really care to know, but ever since I got recruited, dad's been filling my head with crap I always have trouble keeping straight. I know a lot about bombing because that's a favourite tactic for militaries to try and deal with annoying superhumans. If you can't annihilate them, you can give them plenty of more immediate issues to deal with while you tried to think of a Plan B.

I doubted the bombs had been for lil' old me. I did, however, have the vaguest inkling of an idea of what they were for.

We've come a long way since the mass droppings of World War II, where planes had to basically take out their targets under the rule of 'more dakka', as the geek I date would call it. Technology's evolved. Nowadays, you can drop a bomb down someone's chimney if you want. It not only makes sure you (in theory) hit what you want, but can avoid collateral damage.

No such care here. The city had been laid waste to, with there clearly intending to be no survivors and nothing mucb left afterwards.

I also know the difference between something that's been assaulted from above, and something that's suffered it from within. That kind of difference can be important to figuring things out, as I looked around and saw it.

I knew where I was now.

The White House is very recognizable. It was the building that had suffered explosions from within.

I don't know why it hadn't been partially blown up (from inside), any more than why Washington had been blown up (from the outside, and above at that), or what was on the flash drive that was still stuck to my cheek

I do, however, know how a window shatters when it's struck by a bullet.

I also think I have a fair idea why someone's shooting at me. Well, beyond the fact I seem to have stumbled onto the set of Red Dawn.

I also know, even as I recoiled, how the situation can be complicated even more, and listened for the sound of it. I wasn't disappointed. Once you heard that moan, you knew to zero in on it with your senses.

Revulsion on a primal level does that for you.

My name is Kyra Collins, and I am currently being shot at in a parking lot near the White House, with minimal cover available, while at the same time, dead bodies refusing to be very dead or body-like are heading right for me, eager to say hello with their teeth. Everything literally wants me dead, none of my teammates are coming to help me, and worst of all, I still don't have half a clue what's going on.

Trouble calls a lot in my life. I can live with that.

What I hate most is when it bellows in my ear.

"So…no apparent improvement in capabilities or tactics…and no apparent aging. Considering how unhealthy the man was, that's the big one. So, time travel?" Noel said.

"Most likely."

"I'M FINE. THANKS FOR ASKING." Kyra said, glaring at her parents as they consulted the afternoon's battle on a hologram projector.

"You have the ring, sweetie. And it's just molasses. There are much worse things to be soaked in." Noel said.

"Or you could just go take a long bath." Raven said. Kyra went with the ring, producing hard-light constructs of homeless people with squeegees to get the sticky mess off. Kyra hadn't planned to take a faceplant into a tub of boiling syrup, but those were the breaks when you had to be the one to tank some nutcase trying to ride a bomb into your city. Considering the liquid had been BOILING, she could have come out of it a lot worse. Personal shields ruled, until you deactivated them and realized the guck was still on them, and hence was now on you.

"So you knew this asshole, mom?"

"Language, Kyra."

"He WAS an asshole, Mom. You should have seen the way he ogled Sierra."

"I'm familiar." The Titan sorceress said, shifting light-keys to call on a projected file. "He called himself Control Freak. We linked a few alias' to his name, but never managed to track down who he was behind all them. It's quite possible with his techniques, he literally erased whoever he really was from history."

"Or he decided to pop a Delorean into the world and screwed up." Noel said. "Not, unfortunately, in a way that made him fade out of existence."

"…I've never seen that kind of magic, mom. What was that?"

"Ferroppenens arcana, Kyra. Technosorcery. Blending science with magic."

"You told me that was impossible."

"That's never stopped some." Raven said, giving her daughter a serious look. "It's a very rare practice, Kyra. Mainly because it's like mixing oil and water. Most don't bother to try, and nearly all who do…live to regret it. Or don't. Or worse. The universe doesn't like it when you play dice with it. Especially if you decide to break out the twenty-sided versions."

"And one of the people who succeeded was THAT guy?"

"Big things often have small beginnings." Noel said. "Believe me Kyra, Raven and I have already beaten that hole in the wall with our heads."

"I just take comfort that by nature or cost, he was, then and now, so obsessed and unhinged that he can't really grasp what he could do with that power."

"Thankfully, yes."

"He's still proven to be quite troublesome and annoying. Especially for a streak of Halloweens." Savior said. He left out what Control Freak's 'accidents' had inspired someone far darker to do. "So what happened?"

"Overall or at the end?"

"Both, but at the end first. You can shower before you give a full report."

"Tried to grab his wrist. Got his remote instead. I think I broke it. Everything tasted purple for a second and then he was gone."

"Considering I don't remember him ever taunting us about knowing our future, maybe we've seen the last of him." Raven said.

"That or he's gonna show up and bother our grandchildren."

"Who says I want kids?" Kyra said, crossing her arms, wincing at the warm squelch stickiness that accompanied the motion.

"Go shower, sweetie. You'll feel better clean."

Admittedly, an immensely long shower did work wonders for mood. Kyra had been feeling fine when she'd gotten to bed that day.

Then she'd woken up. Not in her bed. Not in her gear.

Things had gotten worse from there.

Other things I know: cars make poor armor. Good makeshift weapons for throwing (even better if you DRIVE them into someone) but despite what movies say, they really can't take a barrage of bullets and leave the hero untouched so he can shoot back.

Another thing I know: any port in a storm.

Yet another thing: White House. Ruined parking lot. And one car being a limousine. It was a bit of a logical leap, but considering the pincer I was caught in, one I decided to gamble on. So I dove for the limo, doing my best to get myself between it and where the shooter was coming from. If they had more than one vantage point, I'd probably get ventilated anyway. If they didn't…

The muffled thuds brought a slight smile to my face. Cars make poor armor, but you don't drive around the most powerful and important people on the planet in vehicles any yahoo could completely alter the government by by emptying a handgun into the nearest window. Certain properly built cars made EXCELLENT armour. Now, if I could just get rid of the zombies.

The shooter did not deem to shoot them for me. Neither did they find something of greater interest, nor spy Michael Jackson and go pester him for their big break. They kept coming straight for me.

I recall somewhere in my reading that the traditional image of a zombie is wearing a suit, when in reality, since most probably died in hospitals or sick at home, it would be more likely that they'd be wearing thin gowns, or sweat pants, or nothing at all, the clothes long gone. Not this time. The masses coming for me were all dressed in proper business clothing, blood-splattered white shirts and power ties, broken off heels completely ignored as they bee-lined for the fresh prey. Their faces and hands were soaked with blood, scraps of flesh dangling from several fingernails, the eyes a mindless milky-white, and the sole sound being that ever-constant, ever-insistent moan. I remember a few justifications for why zombies moan in my readings as well; to me, it's all pointless. When you've managed to arrange circumstances where the dead get up and walk, then the rest is just nonsense. Dead things should stay dead, not get up and walk around. If they started doing that, then what did it matter if they moaned, or ran, or lit their farts on fire to fly? The dead were not staying dead; there really wasn't a need for JUSTIFICATION when the natural order of things had been crossed that hard.

I know this is rich coming from me, but keep in mind that a lot of my people's experiences with resurrections tend to involve lies, misunderstandings, or board clearings. We really, generally, four times out of five, do not have people come back from the dead. They were either faking it, not properly dead by their biological standards, or someone punched reality in the balls and changed how things went (and that counts shit like getting stuck in the crossfire of a war between life and death entities). It's rare for someone to be no heartbeat, no brain activity, cold finished meat RIP to get back up and start being active again. And anyone who DOES fall under that category tends to provoke…some kind of discomfort around anyone who has sense.

So you can imagine what you get when you add mindlessness and flesh eating to that kind of thing. Only the bravest or stupidest don't at least get a little quiver of fear.

I sure as hell didn't…though I suppose there were other factors in play there too.

Kyra was barely aware of her door sliding open. She was too busy gasping air into her lungs, her senses trying to adjust for this final violent snapback. The same bare awareness made her realize she was still in bed, her sheets soaked with sweat, the same sweat covering her body.

"Kyra?"

Her mother's voice was soothing. Too soothing; she was using her powers. Kyra decided she'd be mad later, as she grabbed onto her mother, trying to calm the hammering in her heart, the explosive blast of adrenaline in her brain. She was back. She was alive. She was safe.

It was strange to see her dad run in. He worked so hard at always seeming to be in control, the master of all he surveyed. It snapped back into place once he inspected the two and discovered Kyra wasn't bleeding to death or horribly mutating. After that, it was best to let Raven handle things; Noel went for the more practical issues and began sweeping the room, looking for whatever had brought them there.

"…how did…?" Kyra finally managed to gasp out.

"Silent alarm. Rigged to go off if your heart rate spikes." Noel said, having produced some sort of scanner-wand from somewhere: he was waving it over every inch of exposed space he could find.

"…You have my room BUGGED?"

"No. A bug involves violating your privacy. We have a system to warn us of subtle signs of sudden, unexpected threats."

"…No one's stuffing me in a fridge, Dad."

"Likely." Noel said, his tone clear that he didn't want to take chances either way. Kyra wasn't sure if she wasn't mad at that particular fact, or if her mother was soothing that too.

"Not getting any readings, Raven."

"Same here." Raven said.

"Unless that Crane impostor figured out how to put his own head back on, I doubt she's been exposed to prompting chemicals. Especially with this kind of delay." Noel said, putting the wand down on his daughter's desk drawer. "What happened, Kyra?"

"…I…went somewhere else."

"Willingly?" Noel said. He didn't bother asking for clarification. The life of a superhero.

"No! I just went to bed and…woke up. There."

"…computer, check the scanners. Look for any errors that indicate that Kyra wasn't in the room. I don't care how small a window it is; if she stops showing up, tell me." Noel said into his communicator. He sat down at the foot of the bed, Raven still holding Kyra at the head of it. "Are you hurt?"

"…I don't think so."

"No." Raven confirmed.

"…Where you went. Your ring. Did it work?"

"…no. I…I…" Kyra said, raising her hand, looking at the sigil of green that lay there. A green beam of energy sprang out, swooping around the room and turning into a few simple shapes before it returned to her ring. "I charged it just before I went to bed. I always do that."

"Did it not work in a no power sense, or in a didn't operate sense?"

"I don't know."

"Right. It's all right Kyra. You're safe now." Noel said, sliding over to pat his daughter's leg. "They got their one free shot, and blew it. Now what happened?"

Rule No 1 of Zombies: Shoot Them In The Head. Even BRICK knows that, and his pop culture knowledge is lacking in the same way my patience with vending machines is. Get the brain, and the zombie re-died and stayed down this time. There were always complications of course. Lack of ammo. Trouble with aiming.

Not packing a gun at all. I have the last one covered though.

I don't remember exactly when I decided to use chains as a weapon, make it 'my thing'. It was probably born from a little girl wanting to mimic her parents. I got some of mom's telekinesis, so I found something to stand in for the Shimmer and was off to the races. Even after the ring picked me, I've always kept up with the chains. It's a good backup. The main reason I'd been so bad off, that first time, was I didn't have them or my ring. I'm a good brawler, but I'm not THAT good.

Most people would probably tell me I was crazy anyway. Chains were bludgeoning, wrapping weapons. Zombies didn't respond to a beating or a hogtying, and human skulls don't crack like eggs unless you start getting into the higher levels of superhuman strength. Which I don't have. Mom was nice enough to pass that on, but she can throw tanks around with her tricks. Me, I'm lucky if I can levitate a motorcycle.

But no one ever said I couldn't stick something ON the chains. Like say, a nice long thick needle.

I could also say I could make any snake charmer jealous, as my hands found the switch inside my coat cuffs that activated the specific lengths of thin mental wire and the magnet-based electronics built into the arms and shoulders of my coat. Turned on, it kept my chains all nice and tucked away and stuck in place so they didn't burden me. Turned off, it magnetically called the chains out and then deactivated, leaving them to me and my talents.

Having to crouch behind a car (which was still being shot at, probably to keep me pinned) made it harder, but far from impossible to fight back. My chains slammed into eyes and nasal cavities, ramming and boring in before I did a little quick swivel to pulp the diseased mess of the brain that lurked beyond and yanked them back out. And while I couldn't swing the chains hard enough to crack skulls unless I REALLY tried, grabbing heads and slamming them together often worked just as well. I tried not to let my stomach be turned by it all. Maybe they were just machines made of meat being driven by the virus within them, but they didn't start out that way. It's impossible to desecrate a gun, after all. And it being them or me only took me so far.

Just because I could fight back, though, didn't mean I could win. For every zombie I took down, another one replaced it, eating up the ground in front of me…

And then there was no more ground. They were on me before I could move.

Maybe I was more tired than I realized. Then again, I've been tired since this started. Might have something to do with lack of sleep, considering for the last two weeks every time I fall asleep…

"I woke up in a forest. Don't know where. States, I think." Kyra said. Her human and young woman instincts were still fighting a mighty war with her training, part of her just wanting to curl up and wait until the bad feelings went away. But her dad wanted info, and in truth, she wanted the answers that info might bring. "Was in my sleeping clothes. Up against a tree. Thought I was being pranked at first. Then I checked my ring. It was still on my finger…but it had no power. I'd recharged it before I slept, so unless I slept for days…"

"You didn't." Noel said. To confirm it, he actually removed and held up his watch and communicator, two different things showing the exact same time, before he activated the TV display of the communicator and found the nearest 24 hour news channel to also display the time. Attempting to completely assuage her fear that she was on solid ground and safe, and no one was screwing with her in time-passed terms. Considering one of the Titans' old enemies, Mad Mod, had loved his crazy wheels within wheels perception games, it made sense that it was his first reaction.

"Right. So I thought I was under attack. Didn't know who, or how, or WHY, but I decided I needed to not just lie there and wonder how they drained my ring. Needed to get the lay of the land. So I climbed some trees. Did some walking. Didn't have shoes, that wasn't fun. But I'd have gladly walked barefoot for miles considering what happened next."

Her parents were silent. Listening. A small robot of Cyborg's design doodled into the room, a tray with various items perched on its back. Kyra took the water offered from said tray, trying to make sure with her still-heightened breathing the water didn't go down the wrong tube.

"It was a deer. Didn't run from me, that was the first indicator. Then it went FOR me, and suddenly things just went nuts. Tried to bite me. When I climbed a tree to get away, it stayed right at the case and kept snapping at me. Wasn't normal. Eyes were wrong, and it smelled bad. So I made with the mind bullets and took it out, because thankfully my telekinesis still worked. Then I got back down onto the ground and basically, having no idea what was where, and not knowing how to find out what was wrong with the deer and not wanting to try, fail, and find out if it had friends that also wanted to say hello, I just started heading in one direction. Managed to find a road instead of another deer. I probably should have gone the other way when I realized I was heading towards something with smoke rising in the distance, but at the time I wanted ANYTHING that resembled a human place so I could figure out what was going on."

"How SNAFU was the situation once you arrived?" Noel said, having produced a notebook he was writing things down in with the Shimmer. A nice thing about that was that he could write without looking at the notebook and keep his focus on his daughter.

"Pretty fucked up…sorry mom." Kyra said. "Stuff was on fire, people were running around, there was gunfire…and people were being attacked by other people. Except they weren't normal."

"They were like the deer." Noel said.

"Yeah. Mindless. Crazy. But I noticed something as I was trying to get around and find someone sane. The mindless ones, the…"

"Zombies." Raven said.

"Zombies I guess, yeah, they wouldn't pull people down and rip them apart. They'd just grab them and bite them and then leave them alone, and after a minute or two the person'd just get up and they were a zombie too. I didn't see any eating."

"Magical-based plague?" Noel said to Raven.

"Possible, but I don't know all the details. What happened, Kyra?"

"A group of four of the zombies found me. Attacked me. Made a tactical choice. I stood there, screwed up my focus, and mind-bulleted all of them. Drained me, but it was better than being chased down and swarmed. The last one was right on top of me when I got it. Got blood all over me. I was pulling myself up and wiping my face…"

Kyra went quiet.

"Don't really know what happened then. I felt a brief pain in my skull, felt a sensation of falling…and then it was just darkness. I felt this clenching heat and pressure…and then I woke up here again."

Noel and Raven looked at each other.

"…Kyra, when you fought Control Freak…when you beat him, did anything out of the ordinary happen?"

"Well, like I said, he vanished…and I got the idea of what a color tas-"

"That. That's the key. The trigger. I'd bet my company on it." Noel said. "Raven, we need to isolate it and figure out if it was accidental or on purpose. Kyra, do you want to go back to sleep?"

"Not really."

"Okay. Tell me everything else that you haven't already. Everything you remember. No matter how small."

Later, Kyra would realize how this, for the most part, made her stop focusing on what had happened to her that had made her wake up.

Now I know what you're thinking. I'm not in my bedclothes now. So surely Dad would never let me get yanked somewhere without the very best armor that no human or zombie, no matter how hungry they are, could bite through. And you're right. Outside of my head, the zombie could chew on my clothes all they want; their teeth are far more likely to give out than my armor.

That's not the problem though, and that's probably why the snipers who'd chased me into this position assumed I was dead. Even if they couldn't bite me…

I think I was shot that first time. Shot without realizing it. Why was I shot? Was it not clear I wasn't bitten? Maybe…but there's something else.

I know things now. Like what's causing this.

The virus is called Kellis-Amberlee. It has a rather depressing history of good intentions being bricks in hell's road. There was a Dr. Kellis who wanted to create a specialized 'retovirus' or something that would eliminate the common cold, like, it would attack any cold virus that entered the system, a super-vaccine since a vaccine can only handle one form of virus and there are hundreds of cold variants. Meanwhile, there was another doctor who was doing the same thing, making a special virus that would target cancer cells instead. He had a successful test subject, an Amanda Amberlee. Both were working. Amberlee had been cured of her cancer. Kellis' virus was in successful animal testing phases. The human mind was standing tall and proud.

Then some asshole wrote a muckraking article about the Kellis cold cure and how it was never going to be released to the general public, instead used to make sure the rich never got colds any more. And then some MORE assholes decided, hey, the plot of 28 Days Later worked out great, let's go stick it to the man and go steal this virus, this UNTESTED, EXPERIMENTAL VIRUS, and spray it into the atmosphere so everyone will be cold free and we won't have to pay a cent.

It worked! The cold cure worked! It spread all across the world. Right up until it found people who had the Amberlee virus in them, caught off the initial test subject and, lacking cancer, just sitting there. The doctors had no idea of each other or their research, so of course, no one had any idea what would happen when two specially designed, NOT FINISHED BEING TESTED viruses met. The answer was, they merged and became something else. They still cured cancer. They still cured the common cold. The problem was, they started attacking a bunch of other shit too. Rather than just cure diseases, the new hybrid virus had a whole new purpose. Spread. Propagate. To do that, it destroyed and rewrote the human brain, turning a person into a meat machine for the virus. Sounds bad, as bad as my situation, right? They're biting at me. Scratching at me. Trying to infect me, like they've infected so many other people in this world…

It's worse than you think. Ever now. It's why I was (likely) shot that first time, and why no one was shooting at me now.

Colds are contagious. Ergo, the unfinished Kellis cold cure needed to be just as much so, if not more. That didn't change when it merged with the Amberlee virus.

In this world, EVERYONE is sick. It's been 25 or so years since the viruses merged and created the first zombies. Since then, it's spread everywhere. Everyone, every human, hell every mammal above forty pounds, has the Kellis-Amberlee virus in them. Dormant. Waiting for a trigger to wake up.

Like active Kellis-Amberlee. The kind that make people zombies. Forget bites and scratches. You get a drop of infected blood on you, that can be all that's needed for the virus in your own body to wake up. Hell, I've heard that in some cases the virus can 'turn on' without any outside factors whatsoever. The odds are against it, but anyone in this world, at any time, could randomly turn into a zombie in the space of a few minutes.

When I killed that first zombie, I was covered in blood. If I wasn't infected with Kellis-Amberlee by this world's atmosphere by then, I certainly was at that moment.

And now the zombies had me pinned down. Trying to make me one of them. I'd have to tear them apart to get them to stop, and I'd be soaked with infected blood.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't…

"The heck is that?" Kyra said. She was getting tired of being tested, and her father producing a giant needle was not doing anything to change her enthusiasm, especially since he'd vanished several hours before, leaving her mother to do all the actual tests. She couldn't even hang out with her team, because her mother needed to 'isolate' things.

"You traveled there with the clothes on your back. I'm going to assume that anything inside your body will go as well. Mainly because I didn't find any of your teeth fillings or the screws in your right knee on your bed." Noel said. "I don't know if you're going to go to the same place, but if you are, I'm not taking chances."

"What, you whipped up an anti-zombie cure?"

"Even I'm not that good. No. These are nanomachines, sweetie." Noel said. "You'll need to charge them with your ring before you go to bed, and hopefully they won't get drained of power like your ring was…figure anything out in that regard, dear?"

"Not yet. Have a few theories but nothing concrete."

"Wait wait….you have disease-preventing nanomachines?"

"Within the last eight years, yes."

"So why wouldn't you give them to me before?"

"Because even with your ring recharge, they only last a year and cost fourteen million dollars a shot." Noel said. "Hence, I was saving them for times like this. Provided they work, and I'm pretty damn sure they will, you could go shower with the contents of the Level 4 are of the CDC and not get a case of the sniffles. It will even handle things like prions."

"What nows?"

"Prions. Rogue proteins."

"There are ROGUE PROTEINS? How does THAT work?"

"Raven, would you mind explaining?" Noel said. Kyra turned to look at her mother's confused face, and then a large stab of pain shot into her arm.

"OW!"

"Machines are in. We'll run some tests before you go to bed." Noel said. "And keep more than one eye on you when you do sleep, Kyra. On that note, I'm afraid you won't be going to sleep in pyjamas."

"I hate my life…"

"I'm aware." Raven said. "Don't worry, Kyra. We'll make whoever or whatever is doing this hate your life worse."

And damned if my dad won't find me a third option. The nanomachines did travel with me, and as far as I know, they work. I can't get infected by Kellis-Amberlee. Still, that doesn't mean I want them biting my face. What to do, what to do…

Oh yeah. What superheroes do. Punch it.

Zombie faces, it seems, don't stand up well to fists wrapped in chains backed by telekinesis that lets you get around little things like the rather large risk that you'll end up breaking your hands if you normally do something that unconventional (read: stupid). Blood flew, my face and neck peppered by broken teeth as I hammered away at my immediate attackers, before I finally got them clustered in a way that I could chain-lash them all backwards and down and chain-blade-downward stab them while they were down. A spike of pain rammed into the back of my eyes; I was overdoing it. And I couldn't just stay here and tank zombies as the possibly-lone-immune-to-zombie-plague-death person on this planet. At the very least, the shooters might move to flank me, and my nanomachines don't shrug off bullets as well as they do zombie viruses.

I learned that the hard way…

The second awakening wasn't much different. Kyra reared up, gasping, her face covered with sweat, her heartbeat slamming into her chest. The main difference was that her parents were right there, and she hadn't been taken by surprise.

That, and she'd gone to bed in her 'professional' clothes. It hadn't helped her, though it did confirm to Noel that she took her clothing with her.

"How long was I asleep?' Kyra finally asked when she calmed down.

"About an hour." Raven said.

"You never left this room. Your body stayed here the whole time, even down to the microsecond level. Wherever you're going, you're not being fully transported there." Noel said. He didn't push for new information. She'd tell him when she was ready.

"Woods again. No zombie deer." Kyra said. "I found another road…there were some crashed vehicles on it. I saw some people near a crashed van…I was heading for them, and BAM. Lights out. Like last time. I don't think I was there ten minutes."

"…time dilation." Raven said. "Like how dreams seem a lot longer than they actually are."

"None of the people you saw saw you?"

"No. I didn't want to call out to them until I had some cover. I don't think they even knew I was there."

"…sniper." Noel said. "How do you feel, Kyra?"

"Lousy."

"Do you want to go back to sleep?"

"Not really, but I don't want to stay up either, because I feel lousy."

"We want to give you a tranquilizer. See if that helps." Raven said. "I would have preferred a magically based one, but it might interfere with my efforts to try and puzzle out what happened to you."

"…If you say so." Kyra said. "Couldn't hurt."

Didn't help, either.

It's funny how small the world is. Because that crashed van?

It somehow found its way to this parking lot too. I just saw it, scouting an escape route from where I am. I woke up right next to it. I'd bet money its their flash drive now in my pocket.

Which likely means the drivers are here, or were here. Who knows?

It's not like I know them. Or they know me. But this process sure as hell thinks we should know each other…

"I didn't get shot this time."

It was seven hours later. Kyra wasn't sure how her parents had been going so long, unless they were sleeping in shifts. Her dad was probably delegating his job to his seconds, something Kyra knew he generally didn't like to do. Micromanaging was in the blood.

"What happened, then?"

"I was driving a car I 'borrowed' when everything went hazy, and then I woke up here." Kyra said. "…When I got there, there was someone in front of me. Another sniper, I'm pretty sure."

"Aiming at you again?"

"Aiming away from me. I popped up on the roof he was using as his firing point. He didn't notice me. I basically decided that you don't need to pull the traditional sniper crap for zombies, hence his intentions were not good, and decided to kick him while he was down."

"…Instead of asking him who he was." Noel said.

"I was in a bad mood."

"Understandable. What happened then?"

"We fought. I knocked him off the roof. Didn't WANT to, but I forgot the length of my chains. It's been a while." Kyra said. "He tried to jab me with what looked like a pen. When I checked his gun, it fired the same thing."

"A pen?"

"Likely an injector of some kind." Noel said. "Did you see who he was firing at?"

"By the time I sought to check, they were long gone. It was a parking lot, and I was distracted. There were a lot of noises behind me. Not BEHIND behind, to my rear. More zombies. Another outbreak. It looked like a convention center; I was on one of the outside buildings."

Noel looked at Raven, before writing something down.

"…Dad, can I see that?"

"Sure." Noel said, handing it over. Kyra felt relief as she looked at the notes. It was everything she was saying, with theories written in the sidelines that wholly supported her. The average parents, even in a universe like theirs, would probably assume she was using the wrong drugs, or going nuts. Her father took her completely at her word, rather than thinking it was all in her head.

The last thing he'd written was 'intentional'.

"Intentional?"

"A zombie outbreak, a man trying to jab you with a pen that also served as ammunition to a gun. I have a feeling that wherever you were, there wasn't a zombie attack due to bad luck." Noel said.

"…well, actually…I went into the building…but I had no idea what I was doing. I was just wandering around, fist-fighting with zombies and trying to avoid anyone with guns. I didn't want to be shot. Again." Kyra said. "Eventually, I found a computer. So I took a gamble, braced the door, and decided to sit down and see if I could access the internet."

"…How very Dawn of the Dead of you." Raven said. "…it's a movie reference. Go on."

They called it The Rising. It started in 2015 on this world I'm on; the current year is 2041 or so, I think.

Kellis-Amberlee managed to hit all the best notes of a pandemic. Due to how it was formed, there was no singular source, and hence it started up in multiple places around the same time. Worse, the national media was notoriously slow in actually identifying it as a threat, instead laughing it off as people taking an obsession with fiction too far. I suppose, on some level, I don't blame them. Would YOU want to believe the dead have gotten up and started trying to eat people?

The internet, though, they realized the actual threat far quicker than the mainstream. Probably because so many of them had consumed so much fiction about this kind of crap that they were able to predict all possibilities for when it happened for real. Their efforts kept a terrible situation from going completely FUBAR. The world was still devastated, though. Hundreds of millions dead. Whole countries lost. And of course, the fact that the virus spread to every mammal on the planet. The world ceased to exist that year. A new world completely took its place. A zombie singularity.

An interesting side effect was that, in the public mind, it made internet bloggers as valid a source of information as actual news. Not surprising. The ability of the world wide web to spread information and misinformation is still barely beginning to be tapped. Something like this would be all that would be needed to give bloggers that kind of legitimacy.

Quite frankly, I'm amazed it worked out so well, that way. But that's just me. I don't think consuming fiction of an event, even vast amounts, will prepare you in any way for it happening in real life, even IF it mirrors the fiction. Heck, I think it would actually have the opposite effect. Unless you're outright delusional, in which case you have bigger problems, no matter how deep you're into zombie stories, all that consumption is just going to reinforce, deep down, that that's all they are. Stories. No matter how much you think and plan about the idea of a zombie apocalypse, deep down you know more than anyone it could never happen. It's fantasizing. Mental self-indulgence. If it actually happened? Yeah, 'normal' people aren't going to be able to handle the dead getting up and trying to take bites out of them, but the fan boys aren't going to be able to handle it either. We all have a set view on reality, and it doesn't really matter what kind of boot the foot is wearing when it kicks you in the teeth. It hurts all the same.

Still, enough of them managed to keep a handle on themselves enough to save lives. Better a body count of hundreds of millions and 1/10th the world lost than billions and one half.

It's a funny thing though…lots of people have made up zombie apocalypses, but not many people think about what a world that survived them would be like. Those that do seem to focus on the idea of pockets of the world hiding away from endless legions of the wandering dead, but what would a world that mostly recovered be like?

The answer isn't a good one.

Imagine a world where you need to take a blood test to do just about anything, go anywhere, because despite how long the odds are, anyone can turn into a zombie out of nowhere and start spreading the joy. Blood tests to get into your house. To get into your car. Your workplace. The highway. The supermarket, the movie theatre, the park, ANYWHERE. There's a blood test next to every toll booth. The police don't carry breathalysers much anymore, they carry blood tests. Not like they have much of a job any more in a lot of ways. Why?

Imagine a world where a generation has grown up to be terrified of large groups. Because large groups means one person zombiefying by any means means in a minute you have ten freshly bitten victims, and in five you have two thirds of the group. Large groups mean death. They play the frickin' Super Bowl in a sealed, empty arena which everyone watches on television and no one complains.

Imagine a world where to be a reporter (or blogger, as the new hip thing is) means you have to have a certificate in firearm use. Especially if you're a kind of blogger called an Irwin, who basically go out into areas with zombies to let people at home live vicariously through them as they hide behind locked doors.

Imagine a world with no more hamburgers, steaks, or bacon, because every mammal carries the virus and every cow and pig could turn into a zombie at any moment, especially with their lesser awareness of the world. Imagine a world where smugglers can openly run their own gas stations, because they do it in areas that can't be properly defended against zombies. Imagine a world where large windows and wooden doors are anathema, and the proper thing to be is square, boxing, and without a single thing that exposes you to the outside world.

Imagine a world where people are so terrified of a larger outbreak that they'd even blow up the United States capital to try and make confinement absolutely sure.

Imagine a world ruled by fear. Overwhelming, terrible fear, The zombies were beaten, but it doesn't much matter. Nearly everyone is the walking dead anyway. There's no life to live. There's just too much danger.

But hey, I shouldn't pass judgment, right? I'm sure there's plenty of people in MY world who never want to leave their houses because of my people. And we cause most of that fear on purpose.

By itself…I can understand the fear.

It's the rest that I can't tolerate.

The fourth time was much like the first time, and Raven and Noel noticed.

The third time, Kyra, after plundering the computer for everything she could, had left, fled the building, and tried to find something, anything. She'd failed, and two hours later had faded away (or so it seemed) while she was driving down the road.

For the fourth time, Noel had tried sewing her lantern inside her coat so she could take it with her. Based on his daughter's reaction, he didn't think it had worked.

"…The lantern…didn't work. It wasn't there."

That confirmed it. After checking to make sure their daughter was all right, they waited for the usual report.

"…Came out in a city this time. Was wandering around, just trying to figure things out. It was normal. Quiet. It wasn't a BIG city, but big enough. And then, just…zombies."

"An outbreak?"

"A bad one. This virus can spread fast, I've figured that out…but this was TOO fast. It went from normal quiet city to zombies EVERYWHERE in like ten minutes. Too fast."

"Did it all come from the same direction?"

"I really don't know."

"Something that large, that quick, suggests multiple points of origin. More deliberate infection. Seems like assholes with injector rifles is a problem there." Noel said, writing notes.

"Noel." Raven said.

"Oh. Right." Noel said, putting the notebook away and sitting by his daughter, putting a hand on her back. "It's okay. We're working around the clock to help you."

"Are they all operating on the same delays you are?" Kyra said.

"…A fair cop. I admit that in situations like this, I feel a little more comfortable trying to solve the problems rather than state the obvious…but then again I've always tended towards being an asshole. But don't worry Kyra. Just because I'm…"

"Yeah yeah." Kyra said, her tone irritated. "So, zombies. No way to charge my ring. I made do…and then that van drove past me."

"The same one in the woods, The overturned one."

"Yeah, and I realized something seeing it now. It was in the parking lot that sniper was going to fire into."

"Same van?"

"I think so."

"So what happened then?"

"Well, I couldn't chase the van, there were no convenient cars to borrow at hand, and I couldn't swing after it like you, so I figured I'd go back the way it came. See if I could find SOME sort of connection…but no more than five minutes later, I heard planes, and…"

Kyra followed.

"A loud booming noise, and then just…heat. Terrible HEAT. It became unbearable, and then I woke up."

Noel looked at his wife. He'd speak his suspicions later.

"…Kyra, you've seen that van three times. There must be a connection. You need to try and make contact with the people inside, maybe."

"And tell them what? Hi there, I'm a girl from another dimension who's popping into your world because of a broken magic TV remote, how 'bout that zombie apocalypse?"

"Well…I wouldn't open with that." Noel said. "But, at the very least, you should try. There might be an answer."

If there was, though, Kyra had no luck in getting in, as she was unable to make contact during the fifth time she crossed. And the sixth. And the seventh.

And by then, new problems had emerged.

…My mom told me a story once.

There was an evil force that was told that its undoing would come at the hands of a band of 'seven soldiers'. So they used their great dark powers to target any team made up of seven members, destroying them before they could oppose them. But the forces of good, or destiny, were not so easily thwarted. They gathered seven champions of all stripes, and they set out on their own journeys. Their task was unknown to them, purposely. These seven soldiers would face and defeat this great evil without ever meeting one another or knowing the others existed. Their efforts and deeds would play off and interact with each other (without their knowledge) and insure that the prophecy came to pass. Since we're still here, I assume it worked.

Now I'm having my own soldier story. I know the people in that van on the basis of their number and genders, and that's it. I don't know their names, their histories, their motives, their desires, or how much further they intend to go. And as far as I know, they have no clue I exist. We're playing off each other's actions; they do something, so I do something, and so the cycle goes. Maybe. I just don't know.

For a superhero, the unknown is both our greatest weapon and our worst enemy. Our enemies don't know who we are, and in their failings, what we're capable of in the most important things. And to not know an enemy, that they're coming, what they can do, what they could be planning, is the worst situation for us to be in. Even now, pinned down here, I don't really have much of a clue why Washington and the White House are ablaze, why I'm being shot at when I really shouldn't be, or what's on this damn flash drive that I happened to wake up to being jabbed into my face. But I suspect the van group is involved…though they're just the group now. Their van's overturned, and with the chaos here, who knows if they'll be able to come back for it this time.

I do know one thing though.

I am done sitting out here waiting to be shot or for more zombies to find me.

I might not have been able to take my lantern with me, but my communicator was another story. None of the phone numbers work here, but it picks up wireless signals fine. And my usual cluelessness of where I was didn't affect me here. I knew where I was. I just needed to pinpoint EXACTLY where, and then…

It was a long run through the parking lot to the bushes and the grounds around the actual White House. More than long enough for a sniper to get a bead on me. I've grown to loathe snipers.

I also, however, have learned a few tricks to counter them. Sniping's not as easy as the movies makes it look; you can't just look through a scope and pull the trigger. My telekinesis can't shield me from a sniper's bullet, because I need to know it's there, and by the time I do, it's probably already made impact.

But what it CAN do is put it behind me like a big giant hand, and push. A push I control. So not only can I run a lot faster than the average person, at least briefly, but I can stutter step my speed and throw off pre-aiming. Not to mention weave effectively from side to side. Basically, you wanna hit me while I can run? Then you better have an actual magic bullet.

You know that old impossible test from pre-school, the 'Can you stand in a bucket and then pick yourself up' challenge? I can actually do that too. I am truly a girl of many, many talents.

Of course, that just helps me until I get here. If someone's shooting at me from a sniper's perch, then the grounds are probably crawling with Secret Service.

Or worse.

What could be worse, you might ask?

Always a question I hate answering.

They thought she didn't know. The lone thing they were keeping from her, probably under the idea that it couldn't help her. But she knew her own self well enough to have puzzled it out.

She wasn't getting any sleep. Not exactly.

She slept while she was here, and who knew what happened to her in the other world (did she vanish when she woke up here? Or had she left a trail of identical corpses scattered across that other United States?). On the surface, she got plenty of sleep. But none of it proper sleep. REM sleep. The kind where the brain fully shuts down to recharge. It didn't need much, but she wasn't getting any. Her parents had been trying to compensate with medication, but it was going to catch up to her eventually anyway. And her mom couldn't use spells, because she was STILL trying to untangle whatever bizarre quirk had caused her to start this dimension jumping, and more spells would just further muddy the waters because of Control Freak's blasted technosorcery.

No wonder they weren't giving her orders any more. Lack of sleep screwed with the head, and she'd be better off if she could make her own decisions.

Except she couldn't do that either. She didn't know what the hell was going on. Some people might have just thrown up their hands and started finding a place to hide every time they switched worlds, but even if she wasn't a child of two superheroes, Kyra didn't think she could do that. There was something going on here. Something bad. A world in the shadow of a zombie apocalypse had enough troubles; it didn't need spontaneous outbreaks and sudden giant explosions in cities.

Whatever she did, sitting around and hoping someone else handled it was not an option. If she didn't know what was going on, then she'd go wreck shit until someone deemed to tell her.

That would work.

Wouldn't it?

I think the sniper thought I was dead. The fact I had to wait for another zombie to come along probably helped, but once that was done…

On your marks, get set…

Off to the races I went. The sniper was even nice to provide me with a starter's pistol equivalent, as I sprang over the car and started running for the White House.

It took them eight seconds before the first puff erupted from the ground, the bullet glancing off the parking lot pavement and going off to who knows where. The sniper was trying to adjust to me and failing. I'd feel good, except I was too busy running, weaving through the cars. I passed a few zombies, but by the time they really registered me I was already gone.

Another cracking puff. That one was closer. I needed to weave more.

The White House lawn was probably really pretty in autumn, with all its well tended trees. A place I wouldn't mind relaxing in, once times were better. At the moment, the only thing I needed to know about it was any pitfalls, and how likely I was to catch a bullet.

Speaking one, one slammed into the ground in front of me, just falling short of having me run into it. Either this was a very well trained sniper, or there was more than one. Get close. Get inside their range…

Get around the zombies all crowding around the actual White House.

It's too bad there's really no women's football leagues. I'd have made a decent player, as I shoulder-barrelled my way through the groupings and began scrambling for the tantalizing close building. I don't know what it was called, I couldn't even remember precisely what side of the White House I was on. All I knew was I wasn't entering the front with the pillars…

And there were men there. Men in black combat armour with guns, shooting at zombies. I have no idea what Secret Service are like out of their suits or disguises, but I did have one gamble up my sleeve for what I was about to do. The Secret Service existed to protect the President. The White House was clearly compromised, no real place to mount a defence. The Secret Service probably would have retreated with the President elsewhere. Which meant these yahoos probably weren't the Secret Service.

They still had guns though. And I doubted they cared I wasn't a zombie.

The fact that they started shooting at me the second they saw me was a pretty strong confirmation.

"It's wrong, Dad. It's all wrong."

"Find something new?" Noel said, looking over computer readouts. Kyra could tell her father was frustrated: all his power and money and knowledge and connections, and this problem persisted.

"I ended up in Florida. It got hit by a hurricane. There were zombies everywhere."

"They…travelled on the hurricane?"

"No. I found what looked like a makeshift refugee camp. A school, sealed up like a drum. I grabbed some guard, knocked him out, stole his outfit…yeah, that old trick worked."

"The classics are the classics."

"Then I just went around acting like I belonged, and I picked something up. The people had nets everywhere, were covering themselves in bug spray, tried to seal themselves in like sardines. It was the mosquitoes, dad. They were carrying the virus. They could turn people into zombies by biting them."

"…That was not part of what you learned that time in the convention center."

"No, and I'm pretty sure it would have been front and center. It was pretty clear this was completely new, out of nowhere…and Dad, I got a bad vibe from that camp. It didn't strike me as a group of scattered people being protected. Just…held in place."

"Until that was no longer practical." Noel said. "I think you are correct, sweetie. It looks like someone's found a thread on something and is pulling, and the people whose interest in keeping their web intact are fighting back. And you're in the crossfire."

"…What do I do?"

"…I wish I could give you something concrete, sweetie, but with this situation…" Noel said. "You keep yourself as safe as possible. And if you can do that for others…well, you don't need to impress me."

"…please tell me you've got something, anything new."

There, Noel had no answers.

Kyra was bleakly not surprised.

There are two kinds of special forces types in my experience.

The first are the real deal, men forged into fierce weapons, the very concept of being all that you can be and all that. The people you want on your side and that require special care if you're against.

Then there's the other kind. The ones that got into the field to serve themselves, who wanted to be the biggest, meanest badass on the block and had enough physical skills to get past all the technical tests and details. Jumped-up, swaggering thugs, who love lording their power over people, who look for any excuse to do what they want, take what they want, without consequence. Everything wrong with military training, structure, and purpose. They're everywhere. Hell, I've met Green Lanterns like that.

The real things, men like John Stewart, may he be resting in peace and may I be doing his ring proud, will keep fighting until a fight is done, or they are. The rest are done as soon as they realize it's a fight.

You know a good way to separate that kind of wheat from the chaff?

Throw a zombie head at them. These zombies aren't the kind who can keep biting and infecting when they're decapitated…but remember. Every person on this planet has the virus in them. All you need is one drop of hot blood in the wrong place…

And you get panic. Which means you shoot wide. Which means I close in and smash you in the face with my chains, grab you up, and throw you into your nearest friend while I borrow your weapons and promptly show why I'm not trained for them. I don't need to hit you with bullets, though; I just need to fire them off so you can show what you are. I can decide what to do from there. If you think you're hot shit and are actually just shit…

Well, I know a few tricks. Some from a dark knight. Some from aliens with their own fighting styles. And some from my dad, who works so hard to understand people and actually succeeds every now and then.

If you had anything going for you, you'd know I'm no one to mess with.

None of these eight nitwits did. Which is probably why, thirty seconds later, I was throwing one through the window. The rest were down and possibly about to be eaten by zombies, but I was beyond caring.

I needed to get inside. I needed to get ANSWERS. I needed to KNOW.

I knew a good place to start.

"Communicator, this is Kyra, code words 'We didn't need any trees and how did you pull off your own hand'" I said, removing my square, boxy communicator from within my coat. It looked less atheist pleasing, or whatever that word was, but it had more functions, and one of them could tell me what was on this flash drive.

Acknowledged.

"Maximum firewalls. Virus scan. Then figure out what's on this flash drive." I said. "And get me a map to the White Hous-"

Moaning, a few zombies crossed around the corner of the hallway.

"Actually, just figure out what's on this drive." I said, plugging it into the communicator and getting my chains ready.

Zombies were most dangerous in close quarters. No fear, no ability to feel pain, a mind wholly devoted to a singular goal. It was a good way to get surprised, and even if I couldn't be infected, I didn't want my arm being dislocated, or someone getting their fingers in my neck and trying to yank my head off. I wasn't surprised to see one of the black-costumed and helmeted thugs among the zombies. Its armor, however, posed a few problems.

So I pushed it backwards until I could deal with its lesser-armoured brethren. By the time it got up, it was a quick one-two to yank its helmet off and eye-poke it to re-death. There are no problems that don't have solutions.

"Now. Get me a map to the White House." I said, heading down the wrecked hallway. They weren't the last zombies I encountered, or black suited goons with guns. I surprised the latter by just ducking away around a corner when they shot at me, and when they came around, tossing a freshly-killed zombie corpse on them and letting them deal with the issues while I ran away. I needed to know where to go, and lacking any information (again, damn it), I began to consider just going straight to the Oval Office and figuring things out from there…

Scan complete. Flash drive does not contain files.

"Really?" I said, so surprised I actually stopped in my tracks. "Then what DOES it have on it?" Surely it couldn't be empty.

Drive contains custom retrieval and projection program. Said program attempts to retrieve deleted, shredded data and send it elsewhere.

"…How do I activate it?"

The program is self-activating and the drive is not damaged. Plug it in.

"…all right. Computer, get me a map to the White House and start scanning." I said, removing the flash drive and putting it in my pocket. "Look for hidden doors, staircases, anything that resembles a laboratory or a large bank of computers." And then I'll…what? Plug it in and hope it does something? Is that all I can do?

God, I missed all my resources back home. My Corps. Oracle. My teammates. My parents. That's the key to being a successful superhero you know. Networking. Yeah, I was as surprised as you. All by myself here, I was left fumbling in the dark.

But hey, in a zombie apocalypse, the worst thing to do is to stop moving. That's when you're done in, one way or another. So I kept moving, my communicator slash scanner doing its job.

It was a good thing I had it. I never would have had a clue to stop where it told me to stop. It looked like a normal hallway with a normal wall.

Until it directed me to a button hidden behind a clock. The lighting that turned out showed just how delicately placed the main lighting in the hallway was; like glare off of clear glass, the lighting kept the part of the wall that concealed the doors looking like every other part of it. A perception trick. Good for zombies and humans alike.

The concealment part was easily torn off. The doors didn't prove that hard to yank open. For a few moments, I considered getting in and just inspecting the buttons.

No. Being trapped in a small box didn't appeal to me. Instead, I got out my laser pen. In my case, it was literally a laser pen, straight out of James Bond. I couldn't take my lantern with me, but I could take smaller items like my communicator and this, and I promptly cut a hole in the floor of the elevator car, dangled my way through it, and upon confirming the shaft went down instead of up, began descending into the depths.

I expected the elevator to start up and come crashing down towards me the whole time as I climbed down, a flashlight floating next to me via my telekinesis. That was one cliché that didn't play out. The doors at the bottom were more firmly closed, but they weren't fused shut and hence I could pry them open.

The hallway that greeted me was white.

Too white, perfect white, white white white. Sterile white. Dead white. White that spoke of nothing instead of possibilities. Beyond lab white, just…white that wasn't right. You get the picture? The intensity of the color bothered me.

So much that I started when the intercom came on.

"…You. The disappearing girl." The voice said. "Your world planning an invasion?"

They thought she couldn't handle it.

They'd stopped even telling her to survive. They were focusing entirely on the issue; whatever she went through in the other world no longer was important to them. They didn't think she could do anything, and ordering her not to try would just ensure she did. They were trying to trick her.

Screw that. She was Kyra Collins. She was the mythmaker, the name taker, the evil-in-their-boots quaker. Who cares if she didn't know what was going on precisely? She was the good guy. She knew right from wrong. THAT would guide her.

There was so much suffering over there. So much fear. And it wasn't just because of the terrible luck of what had happened when two man-made viruses had met. She was SURE of it.

Her creed was no evil would escape her sight. That they would beware her power.

She'd been working at it. Training. She could do it when it counted. She knew she could,

She would teach them the folly of their ways.

Even if it meant she stopped waking up at all.

I stopped.

How to respond to something like this? Could they hear me? They could clearly see me…Well, one way to find out.

"Sure. I decided to cut out the middleman and go see your leader personally. He wasn't at home, so I thought I'd make sure he wasn't hiding." I said.

"So. You speak English."

"I am actually speaking Rigellian. By an astonishing coincidence, both of our languages are exactly the same." I said, as I started down the hallway, picking directions at random. If there was any place to retrieve and send data from in the White House, this one was probably my best bet. "Invasion? What the hell are you on?"

"Don't insult my intelligence, child." The voice was male, and speaking in a neutral, lacking-in-emotion tone that either indicated complete control or a dear wish for one. I've heard my dad using that tone more than once. Considering the chaos happening above her, I would wager on the latter, but you never know. "I'll admit it's far-fetched, but here you are. After we killed you."

I stopped.

So I did die. I died more than once.

…It felt…kind of wrong to know that.

"Repeatedly." The voice continued on. "Yet we never found a body, or an amplified corpse, and then you turned up again elsewhere. You don't fear the zombies. You engage in hand to hand combat with them to a suicidal degree and come away without becoming one of them. You cross the country in the space of days without ever showing up on the radar. And you're always where it's inconvenient to us. If one eliminates the impossible, then whatever is left, however improbable, must be true. And after the dead came back to life, I'm willing to think of some really ridiculous things. Like a girl from another world. Seems you're willing to believe your own nonsense as well. So what did the Masons tell you?"

I tried to keep my own face neutral as I continued on.

"Enough." I said.

"Of course. You children are all the same."

"I'm not a child," I said. I finally had found myself an obstacle: a locked door. A door that was metal and set into the wall, lacking anything resembling hinges. A door that, instead of having a keypad, had a place to put her hand. A blood test.'

I ripped the panel off instead. It didn't really matter what test result I got. If I was being watched, then I doubted I'd be let in.

So, lacking a key, I needed a lock pick. Fortunately, my communicator had a lot of tricks built in. I'd never had to use them, though. Normally, if there was a door, Donar or Brick made sure it vanished quickly.

"You run around shit disturbing, telling people to 'rise up' and trying to 'save the world'. 'Tell the truth'. You don't have a goddamn clue how the world works." The voice was saying. Careful. I needed that exposition.

"I am rubber, you are glue." I said. A much-understated weapon in a superhero's arsenal was irreverence. Too many villains had a pathological obsession with being taken seriously; refuse to, and they made mistakes.

"Well then, tell me. What do you think will happen when the world finds out there's no cure?"

"…Live with it." I said. With a crackling noise, the clamps I had attached to the wires and circuits glowed with electricity, and the door opened; I quickly dashed through before it could close again.

"Yes, the strange girl from another world would think it's that simple. Take away people's hopes."

"…That's not hope. It's a lie." I said. I needed to keep my answers simple, make them feel the need to fill the void. "A lie never works out, especially not in the long run."

"Of course. Truth. The great, glorious truth. Serve it and all will be well. The Masons have pissed in your ear and you still think it's raining."

"They didn't try to kill me."

"Oh no. They just want to kill everyone else. Tell me, child, what the hell do you think will happen if they release this information? Actually get it out? Reveal all the details as THEY see it?"

"Something that won't work out for you, I'd bet." I said. I'd found another door. Another blood test pad. Strange…I hadn't run into any on the upper White House. Maybe I'd take a lucky route? Or maybe…

…someone locked all the doors open. There had to be a reason why there were masses of zombies swarming through something as secure as the WHITE HOUSE.

"And right back to your child toys. This isn't about TRUTH, you stupid girl. It's not about MORALITY and FAIRNESS. It's about LOGISTICS, that's the ONLY thing that's important! How do you think the world is going to react if they spread the information you want, they wanted, everywhere? You think they're just going to 'live' with it? THEY'LL RIOT. They'll lose their heads and turn on everyone they think they can take their anger out on, and every single fragile barrier we have against being wiped out as a species by the amplified will be torn down and left trampled in the dust! We're not like YOU, child! Every single one of us is sick! And for everyone who reacts in a controlled way, there will be five thousand people who won't! They'll start a new Rising and be eaten before any of them have a clue what they've done! It doesn't matter how much you hate what we've done, child. Our world is the ONLY ONE THAT CAN SURVIVE. The rest is NONSENSE."

"…then you shouldn't have tried to shoot me." I repeated. I wanted this voice from above to keep going. The puzzle pieces were finally falling into place, somewhat. These Masons had stumbled onto something, and when the forces behind it pushed back, the Masons had clearly pushed back even harder. Pull the thread. That's all it takes, really…

And me in the middle. The proverbial monkey.

"…fine then. I'll ask you this. When the world is falling apart, will you be there trying to stop what the Masons have done? Or will you just wait until there's nothing left but the dead? If you're not here as an advanced scout of SOMETHING, and you've sided with THEM…you going to be here to fix THEIR mess?"

I couldn't help myself. I paused in my lock picking.

There was no cure to Kellis-Amberlee, according to the voice, something the powers that be clearly didn't want getting out. That, and who knows what else, was so important to be hid that they'd set off deliberate zombie attacks and blow up cities, including WASHINGTON of all places, to keep it quiet. If they were right, if people would react that badly…

They were right.

Mob rule was the worst thing that could happen to people. It turned normal crowds into vandals, murderers, terrorists. It made most people completely lose their common sense under a flood of emotion, adrenaline, and the heady freedom of the often-wrong idea that there would be no consequences for it. In a world like this? Where all it could take to create a zombie was a single drop of blood?

Could I fight that? Could my team? Could all the resources I have access to?

…could I even bring them here?

Could I come back myself?

Was I helping set off a new Reign of Terror, except infinitely worse?

The door buzzed open, startling me. I headed through anyway, continuing onward. Just standing there was bad. If they thought they'd reached me…

"So you want to kill the world." The voice said.

"Stop writing checks your ass can't cash." I said. It was lame, and I knew it.

"My god…you are just like them. They refused to understand, and so do you." The voice said. "It wouldn't surprise me if you thought we unleashed the virus to begin with."

"Did you?"

"NO! We adapted to it. We did what we had to keep the world together. To save the human race, everything we'd made!"

"Cowering behind walls. With anyone who refuses to be pigeonholed crushed like they were the ones committing the crime."

"You're not listening, little girl. This has NOTHING to do with right or wrong. It's all about the numbers. The odds, and understanding them. You want to play this game, stranger? By those rules? Do you really think you'll win? Do you really think a world like this, with people as they are, can survive if you play that way? Do you want to take a chance with something THAT big?"

I stopped.

"You hate us. Think we're what's wrong with the world. Grow up. Just grow up." The voice said, the neutral tone having long given way to weary, angry exasperation. "'We' didn't pop out of nowhere when the Rising happened. People like us have been in charge, have understood, long before the Rising happened, and if you idiots don't kill us all, we'll be in charge until the sun burns out. That's how things WORK, child. There is no perfect world where we all hold hands and get along. There's just the real world. What's needed to keep it going. It's not what we chose, it simply IS. And a group of jumped up computer nerds who think that what they're doing hasn't been tried and failed a thousand times throughout history is NOT going to break that trend. It will just break everything. So will you."

The hallway seemed too bright. Too illuminated, compared to me, with my dusty dirty clothes, my sweat-soaked hair.

They were right. Damn them, they were. It was a giant, GIANT gamble. Humanity had escaped death by stupidity so many times, but you could only push it so far.

"You are NOT the hero. The only rising will be people from the dead. Until the dead is all there is."

I said nothing.

A world like this. My ways.

What was the right thing to do?

I didn't know.

So I took a step forward.

"Have it your way." The voice said, and I heard the clinking sound above me.

What is a world that has endured a zombie apocalypse like? Imagine blood tests everywhere. Imagine no more burger chains.

Imagine security protocols that make you take off all your clothing if you go anywhere beyond your own back yard, as you take a shower where you have to literally be soaked in bleach between sprays of water (and you better close your eyes, because it's on you if you don't). Because the virus was everywhere, and anything could make it go active. There was no half measure. Kill it. Fear it. Do whatever it takes to keep it out.

The sprinklers in places like this don't just shoot water. In the event of breaches, something was needed to annihilate not only the zombies but the massive amount of virus they carried.

In this case, it was formalin, an immensely intense version of formaldehyde…and acid. Sulphuric acid. Which it promptly bathed and soaked the whole hallway in. Nothing organic could have survived that.

No coat I wear could provide the proper protection. No nanomachines.

I'd blundered in head first, and I'd lost.

Maybe it was best…

Then again...maybe not.

Ever since I'd come here, my ring had been purely decorative. Whatever caused the transfer drained it dry, forcing me to rely on other tools. Maybe some people would have just written it off entirely.

Me? I'm stubborn. I tried things. Things I had no idea if they would work, but I had faith. I had will.

This time, I ever remembered to get the crap off my shield before it gave out.

With the shield having shorted out as I stood up, I was left standing in a hallway of smoking, bubbling liquid that began to try and eat into my boots, the foulness of the concoction invading my nostrils. I'd done it. It was the barest fraction of the power of my ring…but it was enough. When it counted, I'd managed to hold onto an inkling of my power. It had saved me, when I needed to be saved most.

"…how…"

The neutrality was gone from the voice. It was baffled. Completely baffled.

And he couldn't just drench me in death liquid again. With the paranoia of the times, the design of these kind of defences caused them to dump their full tanks in one blast. That's the problem with last resorts. People have trouble thinking past them, beyond what would be expected.

"You wanna know where you screwed up? I said, and made my way through the acid-pitted floor to the door that ended at the hallway. There was no blood test machine, no keyhole, nothing to indicate how to get in. Odds were, it needed some kind of remote to open it. And I wasn't strong enough to tear it down, even WITH the whole hallway having taken a caustic chemical bath. "You're right. I tell the truth, the Masons tell the truth…it might very well destroy the world. People are dumb, panicky animals too often. Maybe they can't handle the truth. MAYBE."

Locked doors like this are interesting. They basically tend to work via a series of gears moving into place, and then something snapping into place so the gears COULDN'T move unless it was removed. You either had the key, enough brute force to knock it down…

Or you had a power that could reach into the guts of the door, yank the holding mechanism back, and force the gears to run the other way. Of course, you needed to know where the mechanism was…

Which is why I have a communicator with potent scanners…

You also needed enough mental force to do it. It wasn't like unhooking a chain lock, after all.

"You brought up math. How odds are, I could be destroying the world. That I'm putting my trust in bad numbers. You're right. I could very well be killing everyone." I said, as I reached out and found the length of metal I needed to push back within the door. "But I KNOW that if I do nothing, I'll be leaving the world in YOUR hands. You, who think this is all best. Because you're in charge, with all the power, and hence can never be wrong. To you, this is a good world. To me? I see a world ruled by fear."

A clenching pain shot through my head again, and the world went wonky for a few seconds. I'd been pushing myself hard, maybe too hard. I'd never had to use my telekinesis to this degree in this world before…maybe it was having unexpected side effects…

"A world that can only survive through fear is not a world worth keeping. I know that, plenty of others do, and they'll save the world."

"THE WORLD IS NOT MEANT TO BE SAVED!"

"So all we should do is exist. By your standards." I said, as I tried to drag the door open. The gears resisted, locking up, but I'd finally gotten leverage, just a little leverage.

"STOP IT! STOP!"

A world ruled by fear.

Kyra Collins, you have the ability to overcome great fear…

"I won't. Neither will they." I said. "I will…RISE…to the OCCASION!"

The gears finally gave out.

The gunshot followed a second later.

The air felt heavy on me for a bit. I waited for the pain. The darkness. For it all to fade away.

It didn't come. With one final yanking crunch, I shoved the door open.

I didn't know the man in the room. He could have been anyone on the street. Some guy in casual business wear and a lab coat His identity was even harder to determine by the fact that the gunshot had come when he'd shot himself in the head. He'd been cornered, and I, the impossible girl, had survived the impossible. He couldn't take it, and took the easy way out.

That's the thing about those who think that the best way to handle things is fear. It makes them think fear has no hold on them. This is never true, and they can never handle it. Those who rule through fear are in turn ruled by fear.

I was a Green Lantern.

Do the math.

I did a quick scan to assess I was alone in the room, and then I pulled the bastard out of the chair and tossed him aside. Normally I would have shown some more respect for the dead…but not now. I was too tired.

There was a hallway off to the side that led to what appeared to be a laboratory. The massive computer banks and the several screens showing chaos in the streets and live feeds from TV and the internet were far more to my interest. Here was a man who told me things I needed to know…

But still so many holes. So many unknowns.

Still just part of the story. Not the lead. Not the director.

Still, now, though…it was time for my close-up, as I sat down in the chair. The world went fuzzy around me again. Computers. Filled with data. Useful data, likely here if anywhere…and I didn't think I could look anywhere else now.

So…what did I do? I either stuck the flash drive in with the assumption it would work, or I didn't. I either listened to part of whatever conspiracy had likely caused so much of the death and destruction I'd seen…or I exposed them and took the chance that in this damaged world, it really wouldn't be able to handle the truth.

Or maybe I had a third option, in that others were already doing things. The Masons, whoever they were. Maybe I wasn't a help, but just a random factor tossed into their world by accident.

…but the only way to be sure would be to decide through action, or lack of it.

When I came back, what would I find?

What was I willing to live with?

One of the screens was showing a girl, a boy, and a man in a suit. The girl and boy looked familiar. I wish I knew how to turn on the sound. What they were saying looked important.

It was funny. In a way, a zombie was much like me. They were, in a sense, creatures of pure willpower. Singular, malignant willpower, but willpower nonetheless.

So then.

Life or death decision time.

Literally.

Because the world was fading away…

Kyra's eyes popped open, and she sat up in surprise.

"GOT IT!"

Kyra registered her mother's voice before it felt like every part of her body was suddenly blasted with a sledgehammer. Losing control of her limbs, she jerked and thrashed on the bed for what felt like an hour before she finally stopped.

"Kyra!"

Her mother was there, and her father. That was really all she could make sense of for a while. She was too weak, too tired.

"…what…happened…"

"We got it, Kyra. We found the mystery element, and we cut it. It's over. You're safe. In all ways." Noel said.

"Wha…no…what did I do…I can't just…"

Kyra tried to get up, but her head was swimming. She felt her mother pushed her back down.

"Kyra…your brain hasn't been registering sleep correctly. Your thought process has been altered…didn't want to tell you because we didn't want to risk you trying to prove us wrong…"

"But…I don't remember! No! I need to know!" Kyra slurred.

"You're going to sleep first. We'll have a full debriefing when you wake up." Noel said. "Don't be alarmed, Kyra. You're free."

"But…buuuuuuu…" Kyra said.

Then there was darkness.

She dreamed, but she did not live.

It's been two months since then.

I don't go to another world when I sleep.

I don't know how to find my way back. My efforts have all hit dead ends. Maybe the only one who knew was Control Freak, and he's gone.

Did he do it on purpose?

Would it change anything if he did?

…I had the flash drive out…but my head was swimming. It woke me up in my world. Maybe it provided the extra key my parents needed to finally stop this strangeness. I can't remember if I got the flash drive in or not.

If I actually made the hard decision.

…Maybe I'll never know.

…Would it change anything if I did?

…This isn't how it's supposed to go. My stories are supposed to end with all the details recorded, to go over to study or understand if needed. They're not supposed to end with me yanked out of the narrative with still only half a clue of what I was a part of.

The truth…it's not just hard to deal with. Sometimes, it's damn elusive.

I did my best.

So did the Masons, whoever they were.

So did whatever opposed them. Us.

…I did my duty.

God help us all?

"…Hey. George. Check this out."

The End