"Dr. Poole!"
Adam and Reggie materialized in the lab to find the doctor crouched down behind an overturned table. The ordinarily tidy workspace looked as if a giant hand had taken the entire room and shaken it violently. Dr. Poole himself was almost prone on the floor, brandishing a length of metal pipe like a policeman's truncheon.
"Adam! Get down!" the doctor yelled. Adam and his companion hit the deck just as two spheres, blades extended, screamed through the space they had occupied only milliseconds before.
"Oh, shit," said Reggie, shifting his shotgun to a more useful position. "Not these things again." He scrambled to find a suitable place from which to draw a bead on the lethal killers now loose in the lab.
"Wait, Reggie!" Adam yelled, intent on getting them out of there as quickly as he could focus on a destination. "Dr. Poole! Can you reach me? I'll try to teleport us out of here!"
A pop and hiss of dynamic telekinetic energy heralded new arrivals in the lab. "What the heck is going on here?" asked Megabyte, as he and Ami took in the condition of the room. "Woah!" he yelled, finally seeing the two spheres as they performed mid-air pirouettes at the opposite end of the lab and charged back to engage their quarry.
Ami dove to the floor, ending up beside Reggie. The man had his shotgun pointed square in the middle of Megabyte's back, the redhead being between them and the advancing spheres. "Who are you?" she asked, wondering if she shouldn't just disarm the stranger and ask questions later.
"Long story," he said. "Kid! Get out of the way!"
Megabyte stood frozen, his feet rooted in place as if hypnotized by the sight of the advancing orbs. Panicked, he reached out with his mind for anything he could use as a weapon. A metal bowl, resting where it had fallen on the floor, flew into the air to intercept the spheres a meter from the young American's forehead. The three objects collided with a deep, resonant chime that seemed to fill the room, and the results were dramatic.
Both spheres seemed to freeze in mid-air, as if caught in a picture on high-speed film, and exploded with tiny flashbulb-like pyrotechnics. Pieces of chrome-plated shrapnel rained down onto the lab floor. From his position behind the overturned table, Dr. Poole was distracted by the magnified image on the amazingly undamaged microscope monitor.
Adam, Ami, and Reggie cautiously emerged from their respective hiding places, eyes peeled for any signs of additional attack. Megabyte stood in place, unable to will himself to move. He looked down at the silvery shards now decorating his sneakers.
"What just happened?"
"Good question, Red," said Reggie, still scanning the room for assorted boogums. "I've seen those brain drainers do a lot of weird stuff, but that's the first time I've ever seen 'em just…pop."
"That's not all," said Dr. Poole. He had once again taken up his position by the microscope, probably the only thing in the lab that was undisturbed. "Marmaduke, would you pass me that bowl, please?"
Megabyte grimaced. "Sure, if you stop calling me 'Marmaduke'," he said, mildly embarrassed at the use of his given name. He picked up the bowl, now sporting twin dents where the spheres had impacted on its surface, and handed it to the doctor.
"Watch the monitor," Poole said, and struck the bowl with the piece of pipe he had used to defend himself. The same chime rang out from the bowl's surface, and the effect on the yellow fluid could be seen immediately. All motion suddenly stopped, as if the display was nothing more than a pre-recorded movie and Dr. Poole had pressed the "pause" button on the remote control. The sound from the bowl faded, and the spherical cells suddenly resumed their motion. Poole struck the bowl again, freezing the cells in place. They started moving again only after the sound dwindled away into nothing.
"Sound," Adam said simply.
"Yeah," said Reggie, looking at the display over Adam's shoulder. "That's it! Damn! Why didn't I see this before? Those dimensional doors of his are just huge tuning forks."
"What's a tuning fork?" asked Megabyte, picturing an orchestra sitting down to dinner. Ami filled in the missing pieces.
"A tuning fork is a u-shaped piece of metal, designed to vibrate and sound a specific pitch when struck. They're used to tune musical instruments."
"Here," said Reggie, taking his tuning fork out of his pocket and handing it to Megabyte. The young man struck it on the edge of the table, producing a sound similar to the one the bowl had made. The tiny yellow spheres on the monitor froze in mid-dance.
"That's how he's able to do what he does," said Adam. By using sound waves at specific pitches, the Tall Man is able to open hyperspace doorways."
"The spheres probably operate on the same principle," said Megabyte, back on firmer ground where technology was concerned. "Sound waves supporting them and providing thrust. The sound from the bowl probably disrupted those frequency fields, and poof! No more spheres."
"It's not magic," said Adam. "It's not the undead or evil. It's science."
"I don't believe it," said Reggie, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "I've been fighting this bastard for years, and here you guys come up with the most important piece of useful information about the Tall Man ever, in a matter of minutes."
"Dr. Poole," Ami interrupted. "How is Michael?"
"Mike? Here?" Reggie began to look furiously around for any sign of his missing friend. "Where is he?"
"He's fine, Mr….uhm. I don't believe we've been introduced," said the doctor, extending his hand.
"Reggie. Reggie Bannister." Reggie took Dr. Poole's hand and shook it.
"Mr. Bannister, your friend is currently in a stable but comatose state. His blood has been replaced by that yellow fluid, which is spreading a plague-like disease in the United States that causes its victims' heads to explode. I haven't been able to figure out why your friend seems to be unaffected by it or even why he's in a coma. Is there anything you'd like to tell me?"
"We'd better sit down," Reggie sighed, rubbing a hand over his forehead. "It's a long story."