Chapter 9: Spectre Projector

Steve Barkin walked cautiously down Lumley Avenue, searching for survivors of the last plasma blast. It was about like lightning; you were either hit or you weren't. Much of the city looked like a war zone, blasted and burned. Town Square was completely uninhabitable now, a crater engulfed in plasma fire. They'd found Kim Possible there, almost dead, just prior to the onslaught. Couldn't believe it was really her. Got her out just in time. By now the cops had taken her to Middleton General Hospital; at least it was in a safer part of town.

"Safer," of course, was pretty relative at this point.

He'd continued to police the area. Leaving the city was virtually impossible, roads jammed, air travel impossible. This seemed his most reasonable course. No more dangerous than 'Nam had been, really. And at least you knew who the enemy was. He glanced into the sky, eyes cold. He sincerely hoped Kim would pull through. Good kid. Strange choice in boyfriends, but a good kid.

He had some sincere hopes for the green freak responsible for all this ruin, too. They involved certain torture techniques that not more than ten people on the planet knew. Some of his old combat training. After what she'd done, she deserved it. Not long after the Lorwardian invasion crisis, he'd seen Shego and Drakken on CNN, announcing their reformation, their general pardon, and, of course, their engagement. Despite appearances, he hadn't bought their repentance tale for a second. Some people are just born rotten. Who could say what Drakken was up to now? Probably something nastier than Shego's seemingly random assault on Middleton.

And to think he'd once dated her, too. Poor judgment call, he mused. Was I just desperate?

As he passed an alley lit mostly by the flickering of the energy cloud overhead, he thought he saw someone move in the deeper shadows.

"Hey buddy! You all right? "

So far there hadn't been any reports of looting, but he'd knew that was on the way, sooner or later. Came with the territory. On the other hand, someone might be hurt down there.

"Hey!" No reply.

He walked down the alley, away from the flickering streetlights, seeing no one. As he stepped into shadow, a sense of alarm came over him; he whipped around, surprisingly agile for a man his size, ready for a fight.

He was not at all ready for what towered behind him.

He was confronted by a huge metallic cone, bristling with long, irregularly shaped spines oozing greenish slime from their razor-sharp tips. Three eyestalks surveyed him, yellow orbs staring malignly. A mouth gaped open in the monstrosity's bulk, filled with lamprey-like teeth. He reeled from the stench of stagnant water, of rotten meat, of high-school science experiments gone completely wrong.

"Cheese and crackers!" He'd disciplined himself to use that expression instead of profanity; as a teacher, he felt he owed it to his students to be a good example. Sometimes it seemed less than adequate.

This was one of those times.

The creature attacked with unexpected speed; Barkin moved just as fast, throwing himself to one side, grabbing a length of pipe sticking out of a dumpster, smashing it against the quivering spines. There was the ringing clang of metal against metal, swept away by the raging wind, the constant roar from above. With a shriek like feedback, the thing spun on its axis, came at him again; he found himself against a wall, knowing that, finally, his number was up. Spines stiffened toward him. He swung the pipe with all his strength, stumbled forward as it whooshed through empty air.

Then he was looking at nothing but graffiti-sprayed walls and dumpsters. Hallucination, nightmare, one of Drakken's creations, he had no intention of finding out. Without looking back, he bolted from the alley. Behind him something again shimmered into existence, again disappeared, snarling as it vanished, cheated of prey.


The jeep screeched to a halt just before it collided with the barricade around Town Square; a policeman met Ron as he jumped from the vehicle. "You can't go any further, son; it's certain death out there. Global Justice or no Global Justice."

"Global Just – oh, you mean this uniform. Never mind that. I'm looking for Kim. Kim Possible. She was here, fighting Shego. In Town Square."

"Yah, poor thing. Took a real beating at that she-devil's hands. Some young folks and a guy named Barkin saved her. A real take-charge kind of guy, and a good thing, too. She probably woulda died if he hadn't been here. We got there just as the fire started falling; there'd been no chance for her then." He spat on the ground. "I guess Shego was making sure she got her."

Probably would have died. He was too late. Way too late. "Where is she?"

"Middleton General." He glanced up at the chaos in the sky. "I hope. Things have been pretty bad. A person can get 'emselves killed about anywhere." Recognition dawned in his eyes: "You're Ron Stoppable. Man, man – I'm sorry – I wasn't thinkin'."

"It's ok. Thanks." He got back in the jeep, took off toward the hospital. The cop watched him depart, unaware of the thing behind him, shambling forward with unnatural silence from beyond the barricade. A mass of twitching pink flesh, corpulent, eyeless, headless, radiating a sickly glow. Fanged mouths in its huge clawed hands, fixed in hideous grins.

A second later gunfire punctuated the constant thunder, followed by screams and a dreadful liquid gurgling. The horror was still ripping huge chunks from its prostrate victim when it flickered and faded away.


Dr. Anne Possible scrubbed her hands carefully, immaculately, never looking up from the sink, her features fixed and emotionless. Whatever she thought about the situation, she could not allow it to affect her skills. Not now. Especially not now. If there had only been another neurosurgeon available. If only the damage had not been life-threatening. If only things had gone as they had always gone before, with the villains behind bars and Kim home in time for dinner.

If only she and Jim had stopped their daughter years before, when she went on her first mission. If only they had listened when Team Impossible demanded that she quit the world-saving business. What had Jim said? "I thought it was more of a hobby." How could they have treated it so lightly? Now it had come to this. And now it was time.

She stepped into the operating room, terribly aware of the look in the eyes of her surgical team, the way they tried not to meet her gaze. Looking down at the young woman on the operating table whose face so mirrored her own. This should not be happening, she thought, and steeled herself for the ordeal.

"Scalpel," she said, and then the lights went out.


Ron entered the crowded hospital just as the power failed. Ahead he saw a hazy violet glow; there was a commotion, a rustle of panic in the darkness. The lights came back up on emergency power; greasy black smoke was spewing from the upper corner of the hallway, where the ceiling met the wall. Something began forming from the smoke, something made of disjointed, unconnected geometrical shapes, bearing a grotesque resemblance to an emaciated, abstract dog. It glowered ravenously at the terrified crowd, eyes burning like stars, purple drool dribbling from the misshapen gash of a mouth.

Without hesitation, Ron pushed his way to the front, standing between the people and the creature. "Get out of here," he shouted, without looking away from his alien enemy.

He didn't have to tell them twice.

The entity howled, a sound so low and deep that it was felt rather than heard, and lunged, moving anomalously, as if passing through invisible angles. Ron drew on the mystical monkey power, his birthright, and met it head on with a kick that could shatter armor plate. The creature fell back, turned, shrank into the corner of the floor, only to emerge from an angle of the table behind Ron, quickly growing to full size, fast as a rattlesnake, maw wide open. Like lightning, Ron turned, seized the jaws as a desperate man seizes the jaws of a crocodile, holding them open by the strength of fear. The rush of the thing carried him back against the wall and through it; he hit the floor hard, still wrestling with the snapping, drooling fiend until suddenly, without warning, it wavered and vanished, howling subsonically as it did.

Ron stood up, dusted himself off; he was bruised and his clothes torn, but at least he was in one piece and his pants were still on. From behind him there was a noise; he spun to find himself facing a janitor, white-faced, staring in fear.

"Everything's cool, pal. Go change your pants and you'll be fine." The janitor fled, presumably to do just that. Ron looked around anxiously, but apparently his assailant was gone.

He hoped that was "for good," but something within told him there was much more and much worse to come.


Shego's whole world was the lifeless darkness between the stars. The only sound in that lonely eternity was her anguished breathing; the heavy beating of her heart the only measure of time. She fought to simply open her eyes, to recover even that much power over the body that was now her prison, and failed.

"Another failure in a life of failures. You cannot escape us." The voice of the gestalt thing that called itself Nyarlathotep hissed through the psychic vacuum, mocking her unspoken thoughts. "Neither will Team Go come to save you. Or stop you. They clung to meaningless concepts of good and evil. When great Cthulhu sent me forth with the summons, they refused to reply. The same force that keeps you alive consumed them. Total destruction to all who defy us."

It reveled in the abyss of her despair.

"We are the incarnations of entropy, the instruments of chaos. Unlife. Disorganism. If the gate could be opened from our side, the very fabric of infinity would now be screaming in fright and frenzy. Instead we must depend on chance - and on the weakness of lost souls like you. In other planes of existence we have known many minions: Abdul Alhazred, the Comte d'Erlette, Klarkash-Ton the Atlantean, countless others."

She struggled desperately to shut out the vile buzzing, but it would not be silenced. "Not one would obey like you have. No other bore such blinding hatred, so easily manipulated. You dreamed a destiny and thought it real; gained a child's understanding and thought yourself a god. Foolish creature. We owe Kimberly Possible much; without her, you might have escaped us. You should know that she still lives. The vendetta that brought you to this was in vain."

The Haunter of the Dark reached out to drink in her dismay, but found none. Instead, deep, deep within her nearly broken mind, it was disgusted to discover the smallest ember of hope.

"She will not stop us. You did see to that. Already we manifest ourselves, here at the leyline nexus, for longer and longer periods. When Cthulhu arrives in this world, the bond will be made irreversible; your destiny will be complete. Until then, we have made you untouchable, indestructible. No hostile hand, no weapon of vengeance can reach you through this majestic storm. Have we not honored you with devastation's glory? Have we not given you impregnable defense? Are you not feared across your planet? All your dreams have come to pass."

Hanging in space, her suffering infinitely worse than anything Steve Barkin could imagine, tears flooded her closed eyes, leaked between the eyelashes, evaporated in seething plasma before they could run down her cheeks. Long, long ago, she remembered hearing the story of Judas the traitor, who spent eternity in hell for betraying one man.

She had betrayed the whole cosmos.