Chapter 10: Perilous Preparations

"You maniacs have gone way too far. I need to be at the hospital! My daughter – " Jim Possible was so angry he was finding it hard to speak. "Global Justice or not, you'll get nothing from me. Take me back."

"Shall we shoot him, sir?" asked a GJ man. Helpful chap.

"No," said the man in the scuba suit. "You need to, oh, patrol the perimeter or something. Some perimeter patrolling could be very helpful right now. Leave Dr. Possible here with me; I'm sure we can come to some sort of mutual understanding."

"Listen, Agent Aqualung, I'm sure you don't understand just how unmutual I can be." Whoever the scuba diver really was, his voice was familiar; probably someone he'd encountered during one of Kim's adventures. Kim – "I'm leaving." He glanced at the trigger-happy GJ agent as he strode purposefully toward the door. "Pal, you'll have to shoot me to stop me."

"We're ok with that." Rifles came up.

The man in charge hastily intervened. "NO! No one shoots anyone. Jim, it's me." He yanked the deep-sea helmet from his head. "Drew Lipsky."

As one, the rifles swiveled toward him. "Dr. Drakken, you are under arrest. Anything you say can and will be used –"

"Yeah, I've already heard that once this week. I believe you were ordered by a Status Orange Fifteen GJ agent to protect and obey the man in the scuba suit. I'm still in the scuba suit, boys. You break the rules at your own risk."

The agents looked at one another in confusion. "He's got something there. The guy was Orange Fifteen."

"Go patrol the perimeter while you work it out. Post a couple of guards at the door. I'll be here with Dr. Possible if you decide to shoot me."

The disgruntled Global Justice men filed out the door; Dr. Possible stood staring at his old college rival, his daughter's greatest nemesis. The man who once saved the world. "What makes you think I'll listen to you?"

"We're men of reason. I had nothing to do with what's happening in Middleton. Shego told the world that I was behind it, but that was a lie." It hurt him to admit that; he hated to condemn her in front of this man, but he had to have Possible's support.

"My daughter almost - my daughter's in the hospital because of her."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry it's come to this. But time is running out for us, and I need your help. Cards on the table – I'm in over my head with this thing." The machine lay before him, access panel open. "But if we can get it working before she wrecks the continuum with that hyperdimensional vortex, I might be able to bring her around."

"'Bring her around?' What are you talking about?"

"I know my wife, Jim. She hasn't been herself for weeks. Weird dreams, strange names from her dreams, finally this power surge and megalomania. As I'm sure you recall, I'm an expert on mind control. Someone's using her."

Possible was examining Drakken's project, interested in spite of himself. Science exercised a strange pull on his fancies. "Another brain tap machine?"

"No. Telepathic amplifier."

"Mind reading device. Still seems pretty unethical to me, Drew."

"Maybe none of us are as good as we think we are," he replied indignantly. "I'm not going to tell you I didn't have some plans for this. Just some money-making schemes. Nothing big, really. But now I can reach Shego with it. Mental communication can't be stopped by her plasma field. And if someone does have some sort of control over her, I think I can break their hold." And then he'll answer to both of us, he thought. I'll hold him down so she can get a better shot at him.

"You're pretty sure of this."

"Is the Coriolis effect an inertial force? You bet I'm sure of it."

"Who is it, then?"

"Dementor."

"I'm almost sure he's in prison. In Europe."

"He's always hated me. And Shego and I have something he can never have."

"He couldn't upgrade her powers like that. And that vortex! What would he gain by it?"

"It's him. I don't know what he's up to, but it's him. I'm dead sure of it. He's using my own specialty to destroy everything I care for." Choked up with emotion, he struggled to compose himself. "You gonna help me, or not?"

Dr. Possible had walked to the door, was looking up at the madness that filled the sky. In Middleton his daughter might be dying; if he didn't help Lipsky, they might all perish. "No choice. Hand me a soldering iron." He looked a half-finished circuit board over. "Prescribed delay time isn't where it should be, here. Needs a bigger capacitor."

"I knew you were the man for the job."

Middleton was quickly becoming a menagerie of monstrous forms phasing in and out of existence, things unaffected by any weapon, unimpeded by any barrier. Whatever they were, they were remaining incarnate for longer periods every time they appeared. Some of them brought ice and snow; some came in flame; some drove people to madness with their mere appearance.

Ron had no more vanquished the evil canine-thing when cries of raw terror came from somewhere down the hall. He ran toward the tumult, the blue glow of mystical monkey energy surrounding him, determined to do what he could to hold off this cryptic invasion.

Hovering in the hallway was a constantly shifting mass of iridescent spheres. Nothing more.

There's nothing frightening about it, he told himself. It looks like a crazy Christmas ornament. Like an atom diagram from a science book. There's no need to be afraid! And yet he was. Regardless of his own power, he was shaking uncontrollably, his heart hammering.

And somehow he knew that the thing was aware and amused by that.

An orderly burst through the doors leading to the operating rooms, froze in his tracks before the ominous entity, as a tentacle of energy shot out, touched, engulfed, disintegrated the man before Ron's eyes. An inhuman voice crackled through the air, speaking words that no man could understand; a hundred more tentacles burst from the entity, moving across its surfaces like the sparks that emanate from the center of a plasma globe, destroying any matter on contact.

A wall flared, melted, vanished; another wall; beyond was an operating arena, an operation in process. A nurse turned, was caught by the tentacles, evaporated. Another drew back, screaming. Somehow the surgeon continued to work, never looking away from the patient.

With an effort of will, Ron shook off fright's paralysis. "Hey, ugly!" He flung a chair through the air, which vanished in flame before striking the hovering horror. "Over here!"

It didn't move from its position, but cast out a dozen flailing tentacles, a mass of certain destruction. Ron jumped, spun, twisted, hung suspended in the air a second, dodging the lethal feelers with the supernatural agility of his hou quan acrobatics, all too aware that if those feelers even brushed him, he was gone.

"That all you got?" He didn't know if it could understand him or not; it just seemed like the thing to say. "I've seen scarier things in the Museum of Modern Art!"

Its anger roared in his mind; it came at him like a meteor, literally seething with power.

"Come on, then!" He leaped and spun down the hallway, away from the operating room, the thing right at his heels. "Let's do this!" He flung himself through the doors leading into the parking lot; doors and wall were atomized as his pursuer burst forth right behind him. Drawing on the heart of the monkey power, he spun, seized two automobiles by their bumpers, raised them into the air and slammed the thing between them. With a crackling sound and the smell of molten metal, the cars dissolved in his grasp; he barely released them in time to avoid the same fate himself. But the monster was flickering, fading in and out. Its undiminished hatred focused on Ron, battering him psychically, then it flashed and vanished.

"Man, I hope there aren't any more of those around."

There was a sudden darkening of the sky, a shadow where no shadow had been. He spun around, looked into the air. Something was forming. A barely visible, greenish-black haze was spewing from nowhere, beginning to coalesce into some sort of misshapen, miles-high colossus. A voice straight out of nightmare crashed across the earth, an eerie alien phrase that in other worlds was known and feared as the ultimate of evil incantations:

"PH'NGLUI

MGLW'NAFH

CTHULHU

WGAH-NAGL

NAFL'THAGN."

"This wouldn't be cool," Ron said to himself, "even if it wasn't gonna hurt us."

The leviathan menace slowly grew ever more solid, ever more real, its already thunderous chant growing louder and louder. Great Cthulhu, lord and priest of the Old Ones, was finally emerging from the lightless, lifeless void called Outside to seal the doom of a universe.

Carrying the telepathic amplifier, a GJ truck careened through the streets, dodging the craters, the plasma bolts, the shapes of midnight that lunged at it as it passed. Right behind it was a jeep, pulling a mobile generator. They pulled up at the barricade surrounding Town Square; hastily GJ agents ran cables while others stood guard.

"This is as close as we can get, sir," a GJ man reported to Drakken. "Beyond this point the plasma blasts are constant."

Drakken nodded, climbed up in the cab of the truck, donned the helmet. ""You'll have to control the device," he told Jim Possible. "Once I go in, I won't be conscious of what's going on around me. No matter what happens, don't turn it off until you see some results. If I seem distressed, I want you to boost the power, not cut it. OK?"

"I'm an astrophysicist. You're the one with the mind control expertise. I'll take your word for it."

"Jim, I hope – I hope everything comes out all right for you. And your family."

A shadow fell across the ground; they looked beyond the barricade to see an emerald and black mist seemingly oozing out of the air itself, beginning to form a shape that towered above them into the energy-engulfed heavens. A thick, clotted voice reverberated through the air, intoning gibberish.

James Possible felt the beginning of uncontrollable dread eating at his practiced, scientific composure. "Now what?"

"Start at three-quarters power. Let's do it."

Drakken closed his eyes.

Possible advanced the sliders, monitored the gauges, threw the master switch. A beam fired from the parabolic antenna toward the tiny figure far above, hovering in the midst of the plasma storm.

"Good luck, Dr. Lipsky."