Author's Note and Disclaimer:
The following chapter is inspired by Venom series from Marvel Comics.
Disclaimer: I do not own DC Comics or the CW TV shows Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow or any other characters or elements pertaining to the mentioned franchises.
"Hey, Susan. How are you doing?" Rachel asked over the phone.
"Working on a story." Susan replied. "Just out of curiosity, what do you know about the Dominators?"
"You mean the UFO creeps that showed up around Thanksgiving? Not much."
Susan went to a warehouse and used a picklock to open the door. "Look, I need your help. I think it might be worth your time."
"What do you mean? What's going on?"
Susan opened the door and faced four metahumans, one who was flying in the air, another one, who was in a gaseous form, another one, who seemed to have his body formed by some kind of an energy and another one, whose skin was made of steel.
"Grab her and see what she knows." The man with steel skin said.
"I'm more concerned with who she might have talked to." The energized man said as the woman turned into mist and forced herself into Susan's nose as she passed out.
"Don't worry, X-Ray." The man flying in the air said. "She doesn't know enough to tell anyone and even if she had, who would be fool enough to take us on?"
"Susan? Are you there? Sue?" Rachel asked as Susan's phone fell on the floor.
Rachel panicked as she hung up and dialed another number. "Diggle, are you there? I need your help." After a minute, she groaned. "You're in Gotham? What do you mean by… damn it! OK, thanks. I'll try someone else." Then, she dialed another number, panicking. "Yeah, is it Barry Allen? My name's Rachel Gibson, I need your help. I'm a friend of John Diggle and Tommy Merlyn."
Later, Tommy entered the apartment and was surprised to see… "Barry? What are you doing here? What's going on?" Then he noticed his girlfriend on verge of tears.
"That's what I'm trying to figure out." Barry said as he turned to Rachel, holding her arms and trying to console her.
Tommy approached Rachel and gently held her shoulder. "It's OK, Rachel, breathe. Take a breath and start from the beginning."
Rachel took a breath. "I don't know exactly what was going on but my friend, Susan Williams went missing."
"The reporter from News 52?" Tommy scowled as Rachel nodded, trying to explain the situation.
"One minute I was talking to her and she was working on a story about the alien attack but then, out of the nowhere, she disappeared. She's in trouble, Tommy, I just know it." She wailed.
"OK, we need to get our facts straight, do you know where she was when she vanished?"
Rachel nodded as she went to the laptop. "I traced the signal of her phone to the docks but it went dead. I tried cameras but in the last three days, they've been shut down for some reason." She went over the footage as they saw buzzing on the screen.
"Let's go take a look." Tommy said, turning to Barry. "I hope we can get along fine."
"We'll see. At least you're not as broody as Ollie." Barry chuckled as Tommy smirked.
Later, the Docks
"Well?" Merlyn asked as the Flash zapped on the rooftop.
"Nothing." The Flash said. "Whoever was here, must have packed up already. And I can't see Susan anywhere."
"Let's check her apartment." Merlyn said.
Later, motel
"According to her credit card, she's been staying in Pell Motel." Rachel said as Merlyn and the Flash entered the motel room and saw the walls decorated with various photos and articles, some of them over sixty years old.
"Project Rainbow… battleships vanishing without trace… invisibility… flying saucers…. Teleportation…" The Flash went over the articles on the walls.
"Looks like she's been investigating the Dominators." Merlyn deduced.
"Yeah, I'm not surprised, it's Susan's bread and butter." Rachel noted.
Merlyn picked up newspapers from the desk, when suddenly, the hotel room lit up in flames. "Whoa!"
"What the… We gotta get out of here!" The Flash yelled as Merlyn jumped out through the window, while the Flash quickly got the people out from the hotel as it was being consumed by flames and outside were waiting four metahumans, while the speedster groaned as he showed up next to Merlyn. "Not you, guys again!"
"Who the hell are these bozos?" Merlyn demanded.
"You can call us… the U-Foes!" The flying man said as he threw cars telekinetically at Merlyn, who dodged, while the Flash was trying to outrun the woman, who turned into mist and the energized metahuman, who fired energy blasts at him and the people were getting caught in the crossfire, being crushed by the debris the man made of steel was throwing, sliced in pieces by the energy blasts or poisoned by the mist passing by them, while Merlyn fired a grapnel arrow, retreating quickly.
"We need to get some distance between us and people around!" The Flash ordered.
"Who the hell are they?" Merlyn asked.
"U-Foes, the Justice League ran into them a while back!" The Flash explained. "Run! We're outnumbered!"
Merlyn nodded as he tried to run on the rooftop but it collapsed as the man made of steel threw a bus as the edge of the rooftop collapsed and Merlyn fell down as everything quickly faded to black.
Later, the Lair
Tommy groaned as he felt pain surging throughout his entire body before he got up, grinning in pain as he felt bandages wrapped around himself.
"Easy, Tommy." Rachel said as she and Barry were at his bed.
"What happened?" Tommy asked.
"We were outnumbered and you almost died. I had to get you out of there." Barry explained as Tommy nodded.
"Thanks. I appreciate it, Barry." He shook hands with Barry. "Who were those bozos back there?"
Barry went to the computer and turned on the footage and then, showed the photos with profiles. "Cisco calls them the U-Foes. They were members of the crew that helped build the particle accelerator in S.T.A.R. Labs. Dr. Wells, well, Thawne, kicked them out from the project few months before the accelerator exploded because they were trying to exploit the energy the accelerator would produce, to their own goals.
Simon Utrecht, or as Cisco calls him, Vector. He helped Cisco, Caitlin and Hartley with the calculations for starting the accelerator. Secretly, he created a device that would siphon the dark matter energy from the accelerator and Wells was on him. Caitlin, Cisco and Hartley wanted to turn Utrecht in but Wells didn't want negative PR. He has powers of telekinesis and can harness and fire cosmic energy."
"The flying guy." Rachel realized as Barry nodded.
"Ann and Jimmy Darnell, siblings. Quantum physics and fuel propulsion specialists. Vapor and X-Ray. Watch out for those two. Ann can alter her form into any known gas, lethally poisonous if you inhale her. I've faced a meta with same powers before. And Jimmy is practically a living energy field, intangible and there's no way you can physically harm him. He can change frequencies of his body and turn into various energies, from UV to gamma."
"Noted." Tommy nodded.
"And the last one, Michael Steel. Ironclad. One of the engineers, who helped build the accelerator. He's literally…"
"A Man of Steel." Tommy nodded.
"The nickname's already taken." Barry smiled. "Be careful, not only he's invulnerable but he can shift his own weight to the point, where he can crush a building or hover in the air, light as feather."
"What are they up to?" Tommy asked.
"I don't know but we can't beat them on our own. We're gonna need more backup." Barry said.
"Ollie and Dig are unavailable." Rachel pointed out.
"I'm not talking about them." Barry smirked.
Elsewhere
Susan was strapped to a metal chair in some warehouse as she tried to call out. "Hello? Is anyone out there? Because… whatever this is, you don't scare me!"
"False bravado." Vector gloated as he neared her. "I wonder if you tough-as-nails reporter types actually receive training to develop that particular skill set and if it helps in situations like these." He charged himself with red energy as he tried to caress her cheek.
"Don't touch me!" Susan snarled.
"You might not be afraid, Miss Williams…" He turned on the light as in front of Susan were more chairs, to which were strapped people, whose bodies were either decaying, were glowing but were apparently dead or were hemorrhaging. One of the men neared Susan with an orb on pedestal as he put on protective glasses.
"Listen, you really need to think this through." Susan pleaded. "I'm here on an assignment, I'm working on a story. People are gonna come looking for me."
"Yes, yes, I know, who you are." Vector mocked as he went over the ID cards Susan had. "Susan Williams, News 52. Also, Health Inspector, Licensed Masseuse, Child Services, all these different identities and I'd be willing to bet there's no one who will miss any of them."
Susan looked in horror as the orb was charging. "You better hope this device you're testing… whatever it is… doesn't give me superpowers, because as soon as I start spouting fire from my ears or bench-pressing buses, you're gonna regret it."
Vector laughed. "We've been running dozens of trials, since we found this location, I'm not worried about any "positive" side effects." He turned to the decayed corpses strapped to the chairs in front of Susan as she paled. "Speaking of which, we're running low on test subjects. Maybe a few college students or runaways from the Glades to mix it up."
"Good idea." One of the scientists said.
"So, you've been abducting people to play "Doctor" in Alien style?" Susan scoffed. "You uncover this… treasure trove of bizarre technology and because you're not smart enough or patient enough to figure out what any of this does, you're just "beaming up" a bunch of would-be guinea pigs?" She demanded as the orb was shining brighter, surging with energy, almost blinding her.
"I've never been the one to wait for what I want." Vector smirked. "Once we found the warehouse and figured out the transduction equipment, we were able to pull together quite a few worker bees in addition to a fair number of… let's call them sacrifices to the gods of science."
Susan screamed in pain as in her mind flashed memories of funerals, berating and being yelled at by some people as the machine powered down.
"Lucky girl, you survived. Some sort of memory machine that's dredging up all your dirty secrets, huh?" Vector smiled, intrigued. "Let's run it for a bit longer to see if there are any adverse effects to overexposure."
Elsewhere
"Is this the address?" Tommy asked, in disguise as Barry nodded as they entered a house, where inside were skeletons, misshapen and deformed skulls and heads and other bizarre sightings, like in a lair of a mad scientist.
"Creepy." Barry said. "I'm guessing that's why not many people visit this guy." They entered a small office, where a bald man was putting together a face from skin grafts on a skull as besides him were jars full of skulls of various sizes.
"Hey, you're not supposed to be back here. I mean, staff only, you know? I mean, who are you? Can I help you?"
Barry showed his badge. "Barry Allen, CCPD, Crime Scene Investigation. Are you Jimmy Z. Johnston?"
"What do you want?" The man asked, nervous. "Look, if this is about the…"
"We just have some questions, that's all." Barry said. "This is a friend of mine, he needs some help."
"Help? OK." The man said hesitantly. "I mean… all those folks should know better than to send strangers to my work, since I could get in trouble because of all these… uh.. constant interruptions."
"We're not gonna take up much of your time. Word around is that you're some sort of an expert on Project Rainbow."
"I'm an expert on a lot of stuff people don't wanna know about." The man said as he put his hand on desk. "But the Philadelphia Experiment, huh? Man! Are they playing that movie or cable or something? No sane person asks about this stuff, much less two people now in one week." He scoffed. "People start disappearing off the street and the conspiracy nuts crawl out of the woodwork, huh? You a reporter, too? Trying to scoop the other one maybe? Just… all these questions are enough to make a guy paranoid… if… y'know, a guy like me ain't paranoid already."
"Let's just say we're some curious folks." Tommy said.
"Well, Mr. Curiosity, the Philadelphia Experiment wasn't any hoax, we ignore and ignore the problem and what happened?" The man said as he started to eat his burger. "All it took was a battleship-sized chunk right out of your keister. In the late 1643, the U.S.S. Eldridge vanished for a brief period of time. Some say it never happened at all, others that the ship was rendered invisible. Some people know what really happened."
"Which was?" Barry inquired.
"Teleportation… transduction… space-folding. The Eldridge moved… for a short time… to some other place. The Project Rainbow might've been officially shut down but those wheels are still turning, son. There are branches of the government… off-the-books outfits, who've been figuring that stuff out for years." He crossed his hands. "All the fringe tech they don't want folks to know about, all the people they wanna keep quiet… They just sweep it all under the sub-dimensional carpet, they got these little satellites buzzing all around all the time… and if they want you ghosted… well, then that's what happens." He said, circling his fingers in the air. "All those people, who are vanishing, it's got Project Rainbow painted all over the wall. I can't tell you why people are getting zapped en masse but I can tell you this. There's at least a few warehouses, where any nutso, who believes in conspiracies even more than I do, here in Star City."
Later, Starling Docks
"Your backup is here?" Merlyn asked over the comms.
"Standing by and ready for your signal, Merlyn." The Flash promised.
"Good."
One of the thugs turned on the camera as Vector whirled on X-Ray. "You said Merlyn was dead."
"I thought we killed him, Vector." X-Ray protested.
"He looks pretty spry to me, maybe you need more supervision to get the job done."
The rooftop exploded as Merlyn jumped down with a sword. "Nice digs, guys, it's got real Hangar 18 aesthetic." He saw Susan strapped to a chair. "Let her go and this will be over quickly."
"You're joking, right?" X-Ray laughed as he flied towards Merlyn. "A sword? Against us?"
"It's not an ordinary sword, you asshat." Merlyn threw the sword as it hit X-Ray in the chest before it flew right threw him. "It was forged by Goddess of Wisdom Athena herself! And it belongs to a friend of a friend! Let's see you deal with the speedster and the wrath of the gods of Olympus!"
And on cue, the Flash rushed in as from the ceiling jumped down a woman with red corset armor and tiara and bracelets with a golden lasso, a sword and shield.
"Wonder Woman! The Flash!" One of the thugs panicked.
"Kill them!"
They started shooting as Wonder Woman blocked the bullets with her shield and threw it towards Ironclad, taking him down as the Flash sent Vapor flying with cyclones forming as he spun his arms.
Vector and X-Ray fired energy blasts on the ground but Wonder Woman managed to absorb it with her bracelets before getting her shield and bashing both metahumans with it, knocking them on the floor before Merlyn fired an explosive arrow but it unfortunately hit the device that the U-Foes were using as it began to overload.
"No!" Vector yelled.
"Oh, no." The Flash paled.
"What did you do?!" Wonder Woman wailed.
"Stop them before it's too late…" Vector ordered before he and the U-Foes started to disintegrate.
"Get these people out of here!" Merlyn ordered as the Flash managed to get Wonder Woman, Merlyn, Susan and the surviving hostages from the warehouse as the device exploded, turning into a portal that consumed the building.
"What the hell was that?" Merlyn demanded.
"I guess you sent them packing." The Flash quipped. "We should call the Justice League, investigate what the hell were they doing."
The next day, Rachel's penthouse
"How did the U-Foes get their hands on this thing?" Lyla asked as Diana, Tommy and Barry filled her in the following day.
"It was supposedly part of Philadelphia Experiment." Barry explained.
"Our scientists took a look at it. It's Dominator tech." Lyla nodded. "If it was messing with the space-time continuum, it makes sense."
"So, we've got aliens snooping around in Star City again?" Tommy demanded.
"I don't know." Lyla said. "Let's just hope we've seen the last of them. Thanks for debriefing me, Tommy. Barry. Diana." She was about to turn around as Tommy stopped her.
"How's Laurel?"
Lyla took a breath. "Figuring out some mess in Gotham. It's better if she tells you." She turned to Tommy. "I think Oliver would have been proud of you." She smiled as Tommy smiled back as she walked away.
"Barry. Diana." Tommy shook hands with them. "It was an honor to work with you."
"Likewise."
"The honor was ours, Tommy." Barry and Diana chuckled. "If you want, you could join the Justice League."
"No offense but I'm not a team player but if you need an extra hand, I'm willing to help." Tommy smiled.
"Fair enough." Both Barry and Diana nodded.
"You think the U-Foes are gonna return?" Tommy asked.
"If they will, we'll be ready." Barry promised.
Elsewhere
"Star City has a new vigilante. He must be dealt with." One of the members of the Ninth Circle said.
"That's what you pay me for." The man with the sword and an Australian accent promised as he stood at the circle table.
"I hope you'll live up to your reputation. You and your jackals." Moira asked. "If I may ask, why did you change your name to 'Kane Wolfman'?"
"To protect myself from my father's sins." The man said. "Let's just say I wanted to collect a blood debt someone owes my father."
"I see. If Merlyn gets in your way, should it be necessary, lethal force is authorized." One of the circle members said as Moira glared. "The payment will be triple your usual salary."
Kane left the room as Moira turned to the council member. "What is his real name?" The council member handed her the file as she read it and then, glared. "Are you certain?" The man nodded.
"Your orders, Queen Moira?"
"I don't want Merlyn dead." Moira said. "Once Mr. Wolfman finishes the job, kill him."
"Is it because of what his father did?" The man asked.
"An eye for an eye." Moira said simply as the council member nodded.
"Why don't you want Merlyn or the vigilantes dead?" He demanded as Moira glared at him. "Out of sentiment?"
"They're all I have." She said simply.
"You knew the price, when Damien Darhk brought you back."
"I never asked for this…"
"But you cannot leave."
"I will find a way." Moira vowed. "Try to stall Wolfman as much as possible. And find Slade Wilson."
"You want him dead?" The councilman asked.
"No. I want to make him wish he was dead."
So, what do you guys think about it?
Please review and let me know if you are enjoying this so far