M'gann stops suddenly in place, and then grabs onto Wally's arm. She wraps her arm through his, and tugs him over until she can throw her other arm over Artemis's shoulders and plaster their sides together. She holds out a hand and says, "Robin, Robin, hurry, take my hand, hurry!"
He does, and she pulls them all in close. "Someone's opened my mind," she says. "Hold on."
"What?" Wally starts, but they're picked up and thrown down corridors, hurtling around corners and narrowly missing doors, until they burst through a sand-colored door, crying out at the impact.
They fall in a mess of limbs, made worse by the sand. "Is everyone okay?" Wally asks.
There are affirmatives from Robin and Artemis, but M'gann hugs herself and shivers.
"No," she says miserably. "We're in my mindscape now."
"How did we get here?" Robin asks. "We've never been drawn towards a mind like that before."
"I think someone else found the door," she explains. "Someone entering my mindscape would pull me back to it, and I wanted to make sure we didn't get separated."
"Good idea," Artemis says, and looks around. "So, who entered? And is this Mars?"
And that's when Conner and Kaldur fall on them, literally.
Wally zips out of the way, and Robin rolls. Megan floats up and back, and Artemis reacts by taking three massive steps back and manifesting her bow. The boys groan and twitch.
"What happened?" Conner asks.
Kaldur clutches his head, but stands up. "I think...we fell."
"Sorry," M'gann says. "I'm so used to keeping up my mental wards that they're instinctive, now. I never meant for you guys to get caught in them."
Artemis helps Conner up, and he brushes her off, though Kaldur accepts Robin's help. "So if this is Megan's mind, then where's her fear?"
Robin smiles. "Oh, good, you guys figured it out."
"Conner did," Kaldur admits, and Conner snorts.
"I know the feel of metal meddlings," Superboy says, brushing off the last of the sand.
And then a shriek tears through the air and their heads, and they hear it as much as feel it. It hurts, and hands over ears doesn't help.
And then the landscape starts to move. What everyone took for giant rocks stand up, poke out stilts, and start moving. The motion is awkward and lumbering, but surprisingly fast. And the sound keeps going.
"What the heck are those?" Wally asks, voice high and edging higher.
"I told you!" Megan shouts, taking deep gulping breaths. "My fear!"
"You said spiders!" Wally shouts back, already running, left and right and zig-zig-zagging. "You said spiders, not giant creepy eat-your-face monsters!"
"Shut up and get to that outcropping!" Kaldur yells, his voice carrying well on the wind.
They stumble and scatter, dodging rocks that aren't rocks, and a few that are. It's a few minutes before they reconverge on the high rock ledge Kaldur had pointed to, and they crouch behind the meager cover, gasping for breath in the thinner air.
"Those are not spiders," Artemis says after a second.
"These are spiders, Martian spiders. They fold in their legs and pretend to be rocks, see? They're terribly patient, and they wait for their prey, so they hate to be cheated of it. And they're not just carnivores, they're psychovores. They get into your head and nibble out all the thoughts and dreams, and pull at your soul with their sticky fingers until it hurts so nice that you can't scream anymore..."
And no one has anything to say to that.
Finally, Robin says, "Okay. Weaknesses? Or should we just not get caught?"
M'gann shudders, and looks a little terrified and lot miserable. "We just really need to get out of here," she says, barely audible over the hunting screams from the creatures.
"Right," Kaldur says. "Out, we can do that. How do we get out?"
"The Place-Between?" Artemis offers, glancing over her rock.
"No," M'gann says, "I couldn't get us there safely. I'd need to concentrate, and..."
"Right," Conner says. "So let's find the door."
She slides him a surprised glance and says, "Door?"
"Every other mind has had a door; yours must, too. So let's find it."
Artemis sneaks a look over the ledge, and jerks her head back down double-quick. "You might not have noticed, but we've got a whole planet here! How are we gonna find a single door?"
"Split up?" Robin suggests, dipping a hand into his utility belt.
"No!" Megan and Wally say in unison, but Kaldur nods slowly.
"We're going to have to," he says. "We've got too much ground to cover. But in pairs, at least, and constant communication. Wait, M'gann, can you link us up here?"
She gulps. "Well. Technically, yes, I could, but I won't. Remember how the spiders eat brains? It would be like putting up a giant sign saying, 'Free buffet!' Very bad idea."
"Great," Wally moans. "I'm never gonna be able to look at a spider ever again."
Robin smacks him gently on the back of the head. "Focus," he warns.
"Ow! I am, I am focused! So there's always been a door, right? But it can blend in, too?"
"What?"
Kid Flash winces and kicks over a stone on accident, and there's a mad, desperate scramble for the next outcropping up.
"No, look, it's always in a place where it makes sense to have a door, right? But, like, not always a door-door, like Rob had," Wally pants. He's getting tired, and is a little bit frustrated because he's having trouble communicating his idea properly, and, oh, yeah, a whole lot terrified.
The rest shake their heads, because they weren't in Robin's minds, but M'gann nods and Robin says, "Oh, yeah."
"So," Wally continues at slightly-faster-than-normal speed, "It could be a cave or a historic door-structure or anything, really, right?"
M'gann gasps, and says, "The vault!"
Kaldur is inclined to ask about this vault, but the scrabbling sounds of spider legs are growing closer, and the only important question is "Where is it?"
"Oooh, uh, this way!" she says, pointing left, and Kaldur says, "Three-"
"-Two-" Conner counts,
and "-One!" They shout in unison, and the team breaks cover yet again, heading west around the mountain, and hopefully, to safety.
"How far?" Robin calls to M'gann, who's a few feet off the ground.
"A mile," she answers, "Maybe two..."
"Shit," Artemis says numbly. "This is gonna suck."
"Shut up and keep running!" Kaldur yells, and then, "KF, Superboy, get there as fast as you can, and get that door open!"
"On it!" Kid Flash responds, and takes off.
Conner says, "Arrrrgh!", or something like it, and he leaps and he's gone.
And then Robin darts away, further up the mountain. Kaldur is about to call out for him to rejoin the gang, but he drops a handful of capsules that explode into smoke, and the spiders shriek louder and head for that.
"Cowabunga!" He calls, and leaps off the side of a cliff.
Megan yells wordlessly, and veers right to catch him. He holds up his arms, and she snags his hands, putting a lot of pressure on his shoulders. He winces, then smiles up at Megan. "Thanks for the lift!" he says, and she dips close to the earth, setting him down at running speed.
"Robin!" Aqualad calls in frustration.
The Boy Wonder just sends him a thumbs up, and they save the rest of their breath for running.
And then they can see a door, vast, carved into a cliff face on the next mountain over. Conner looks insignificant by it, straining to get the left side open farther than a crack. Wally's on it, too, pushing with all the speed he can muster, but the door really is that heavy.
"It's the vault," Megan says. "Long ago, when we had a civil war, the green Martians locked the white Martians in here and it was meant to stay closed for all time..."
Kaldur makes a leap of logic, and says, "This isn't the real thing; it's only in your mind! They're not opening the actual vault!"
"Right," Megan says, and swallows, but suddenly Conner and Wally are making much more progress.
And then the ground quakes, and a giant limb, red as the dust, lands between Megan and Artemis.
"Go!" the archer screams, but she's tiring, just a little.
Conner is waiting at the door, but Wally heads for them, and scoops Artemis up. "I gotcha," he says, and passes through the door and into blackness. Kaldur waves Conner through next, because they need to get as many of them out as quickly as possible now.
The limb lifts, and two others come down. The body is lowering itself, and Megan is babbling, "Watch out for the web, it's a paralytic, and the saliva is a paralytic hallucinogenic, and also the fangs are venomous, and-"
Kaldur reaches the door, but Megan is flying directly over Robin, who's almost there, dodging around the spider leg forest all around them, as more and more land every second.
"Go!" Robin says, but Kaldur is the leader, and that means he's responsible, and so he waits, reaching out a hand towards them, and one of the spiders makes a vrrrrp noise and aims its spinneret, and Megan grabs Robin under the armpits and hauls ass through the door.
Kaldur grabs the edge of Robin's cape, and lets their momentum pull him along-
-as they fall, tumbling, into endless darkness.
...
To be concluded