Hawk and Scout flew their skybikes low across the dessert horizon near Sector 3 searching for the supposed wreckage of Dread's ship. Sitting on the backseat of Hawk's skybike, Jonathan was just about ready to call off the search when he spotted a pile of debris.
"There. Two clicks, nine o'clock," he said over the radio headset.
"Got it," Scout replied. "Readings indicate it's Dread's."
"Any signs of life?" Jonathan asked in response.
"Negative."
"Let's land and check it out. Proceed with caution."
Reaching the twisted metal that once was Dread's personal ship, they dismounted the skybikes and took out their scanners. Scout was the first to reach the cockpit.
"It's empty!" he yelled.
"I'm not getting any readings on any type of remains," Hawk added.
Jonathan walked around the circumference of the crash. "No footprints leading out, but the way this wind is blowing the sand around, they could have been covered up by now. So where'd he go?"
"Maybe Soaron carried him out?" Hawk suggested.
Scout rolled his eyes in disappointment. "Great. Well, so much for wishing him dead."
"He still could be," Hawk reasoned. "Even if he was rescued, we don't know the extent of his injuries."
"He's mostly metal!" Scout argued back.
"We're not going to find out anything else by standing here," Jonathan broke in. "We're wasting time. We have to find Locke. I really hate to say it, but he could be the key to finding out what's going on."
"So you really don't know who you are, do you?"
Dread stared back at the woman who held out a bowl of stew for him to eat. Now that his arm was feeling better, he was able to grasp the bowl with both hands as he sat up in the cot, freshly dressed in borrowed clothing. The feel of the linen tunic against his skin was very strange to him, comforting yet unaccustomed. He didn't even realize he was hungry until the aroma of the stew wafted through his nostrils. Hungry? Was that the sensation he was experiencing? When was the last time he ate anything? When he took a swallow of the stew, it felt like a foreign object sliding down his throat, but he was amazed at the taste and the satisfaction it gave him, so he kept eating it.
In between bites, he tried to think of his name and replied to her question. "I think my name is…Taggart…Lyman Taggart. I don't…I don't remember what happened to me."
"Well, Mr. Taggart. Maybe you're playing with me, maybe you're not- you do have quite the bump on your head. But regardless of your amnesia, you're still gonna get what's coming to you."
"I don't understand. Why do you speak to me in such a manner? What is it that you think I've done? Who do you think I am?"
"An abomination," she seethed. "You're Lord Dread, ruler of the Dread Empire, destroyer of human life. You're hell-bent on turning us all into machines thinking you can create some kind of machine-world utopia. You destroyed our planet in the Metal Wars. You rip children away from their parents and brainwash them with your evil litanies. You raise them up into legions of men and women who follow your every lead; they kill innocent people all in your name. You have no remorse, no heart. You're a monster. You digitize our loved ones and annihilate our homes. You have us hiding out in the dessert in tents, fending for our lives, living on scraps like pigs, waiting for the next inevitable attack from the Bio-Dreads. None of us are ever truly safe. You've taken away our freedom, our humanity, our future."
Metal Wars? Bio-Dreads? These things sounded vaguely familiar to him for a reason he did not know, but to think he was responsible for it- it didn't make sense.
"No, this can't be," he replied quietly, inwardly trying to remember anything that would trigger his memory into what was really going on here, hopefully grabbing at something that would prove the woman wrong. This woman obviously wouldn't care no matter what he might say, he thought. She clearly had a vendetta against him.
"First thing tomorrow morning I'm sending out the distress signal to alert Captain Power. You'll be taken into custody and then you'll meet your fate. So you better rest up, because it's the last peaceful rest you'll ever get."
Power…why did that name sound familiar to him?
Scout took the lead in following the transmitter's signal from Jonathan's stolen skybike. They were somewhat disdained to learn that the trail led them to Tech City.
"Didn't think we'd ever have to come back to this creepy place," Hawk said as they landed in the vicinity of where just months before they had met up with Mindsinger, the woman who uploaded Jonathan into the Cyberweb through a virtual access link, the process of which almost killed him.
"It makes sense that Locke would hang out here," Jonathan replied.
As the three men dismounted the skybikes, they were immediately thrown off by their surroundings; this wasn't the same city that they remembered. The lights, the sounds, the music, the energy of the city, the tripped out people- all were gone.
"Wait, are you sure this is Tech City?" Jonathan asked.
"Hey- my global position device never lies!" Scout announced, hurt that his Captain would second-guess his navigational skills.
Jonathan popped open his scanner. The incessant beeping sound it made told him that his skybike's transmitter was just around the corner of the building that they were in front of. They made their way around and sure enough, there in the fog sat his beloved skybike, unharmed but abandoned.
"Isn't this Mindsinger's place?" Hawk said, squinting his eyes and tilting his head upward at the damaged building, trying to pick out any familiar markings.
"Yeah," Jonathan replied. "Looks like the Bio-Dreads finished this place. Dread probably ordered it; I'm sure he didn't like the fact that we were able to get some of his data from the Cyberweb."
"Captain, if we were able to get data from the Cyberweb, then Locke…"
"…must be inside trying to do the same," Jonathan nodded as he finished Hawk's thought. "You think it would still work after all the damage that's been done to the city?"
"If the system's been damaged, Locke certainly is tech-savvy enough to be able to bring it back to life," Scout offered.
"Right. Okay, we go in. Let's find out what that weasel is up to. Stay sharp."
Going in with guns drawn, they crept through the building, stepping over debris and moving under and over fallen beams from a partial roof collapse. There were no bodies lying around which meant that the inhabitants were probably digitized before the damage had been done. It was common for the Bio-Dreads to destroy a town after digitizing its people so that the New Order could rise up from the ashes.
It didn't take long to reach the room where Mindsinger's access point to the Cyberweb was. Electricity had been restored to this central area, and they found Locke sitting silently in a chair hooked up to the virtual reality goggles, unaware that he now had company in the room with him. He was jacked in to the Cyberweb!
Hawk's first instinct was to flip the switch off, but Scout stopped him.
"No, wait! He's in too far. If you do it that way you might kill him and we'd lose any information he might have."
"So what are we supposed to do, wait until he comes out of it? How does that even work?" Jonathan asked impatiently.
Scout studied the console. "He's got himself on a timer. Fifteen more minutes and it automatically fades out and safely brings him back to reality."
Jonathan frowned and crossed his arms. "Forget that, there's got to be another way. I want to talk to him NOW."
"I think there's a way to speed up the timer," Scout said as he wangled some of the buttons and moved some switches. "Bringing him to a slow fade….now."
Locke was startled as he jumped up from the chair. "What the…"
Taking off the virtual goggles, he wasn't surprised to see who was in the room with him. All guns were pointed at him. He held his head in his hands and closed his eyes tight in pain. "Major brain freeze, man! Information overload!"
"You're going to tell us everything you just found out," Jonathan threatened, stepping closer with his gun still drawn.
"Easy, Live Wire! I was planning on it!" Locke opened his eyes and took a stance of surrender, holding his hands up in the air.
"Do you know what happened to Dread?" Hawk asked.
"Couldn't get a read on him. He's off the grid, man. Access denied. He's no longer connected to Overmind."
"So he's dead?" Scout hoped.
"He disappeared into thin air. No one in the Empire knows where he is. But that's the least of our worries."
"What do you mean?" Jonathan pressed.
"Mass hysteria at Volcania. Overmind's tripped into hyperpower mode. He used all of his stored-up energy to create himself a new army of Bio-Dreads that are able to mass-digitize whole areas in one sweep. There are literally hundreds of these things- I saw them! Bigger than Blastarr! They're being called "The Silencers." I saw Overunits and Dread Youth running for their lives- they were screaming- many of them have already been digitized, others have escaped. The more people that get digitized, the more powerful Overmind becomes. There's, like, no one left at Volcania except for machines, and just before you pulled me out of the Cyberweb, one of them grabbed on to my link. They know I'm here and their coming for me. We've got to get out of here."
"If you're lying…" Jonathan tightened his jaw, mulling over how much of Locke's story to believe.
Scout took some readings from his scanner. "Uh, Captain, I don't think he is. We've got trouble headed our way."
"How many?"
Locke let out an incredulous nervous laugh. "How many? Look, you don't understand. One or nine hundred, it's not going to matter. We're dead meat if we stay here. There's no weapon you can throw at them that will make a difference; there's no way to take them down. Even your power suits aren't going to save you. This is the start of the end of the human race. Game over- you copy?"
Hawk was getting rather fed up with the way Locke was seemingly blowing things out of proportion. No one tells the Power Team that they aren't capable of taking down Bio-Dreads, especially not after what Pilot did. Stepping closer to Locke, Hawk started to go off. "Now you listen here, Locke-"
He was cut short when the ground started to shake in rhythm. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
"They're here!" Locke panicked. "Run!"
Before they could stop him, Locke let his fear get the best of him and he took off in a terrifying run, not thinking about which direction would be the safest.
"Great," Jonathan sighed.
"I suppose we should go after him," Scout said.
"Do we have to?" Hawk asked with sarcasm.
Jonathan groaned at the thought. "Better power up. Let's see what we're up against."
"Scanner reads there's only one of these things out there, whatever it is," Scout added.
After the men shouted the command to power up, the suits gave out the warning that they were only at 10% power level.
"Guess it's been a while since we've been able to charge up," Scout reminded the group.
Jonathan shrugged. "It'll have to do for now. I'm sure we can rig something up later using the electric receptacle back at the hideout."
The "booms" were getting louder and closer as the ground continued to shake. Jonathan plotted their next move. "All right. We grab Locke and head to the skybikes and get out of here. Quick and easy. If we can throw some shots at this thing to stall it, do it, but let's not waste too much time and resources. Got it?"
They rounded out of the building just in time to see Locke trying to take cover, but The Silencer easily spotted him. Jonathan halted Hawk and Scout from running out any further and they took cover back from where they came from, hiding in the darkness of the building's entrance. Peering around the door frame, they could still see what was going on without being spotted.
Locke was telling the truth. They were getting their first look at what a "Silencer" actually was, and the sight was enough to paralyze them. All they could do was watch. If they interfered, they knew they'd be in trouble. This type of Bio-Dread was unlike any other. Standing at least ten stories tall, the gigantic hunk of metal moved along the ground with precision despite its weighty mass which was causing the ground to shake with every step it took and leaving craters in the earth in its wake. Haunting red laser eyes burned through anything that got in its way. When it spotted Locke, its enormous torso opened up wide and a bright white light swept across the entire area. The Power Team instinctively knew that if the light touched them, they would be digitized, so they moved a bit deeper into the building where the light was not penetrating. It was such a bright light that the men had to look away so that their eyes wouldn't get damaged. They heard Locke scream, but then everything went silent. When they opened their eyes to glance back at the monster, they knew Locke had been digitized. The Silencer's torso closed back up just as wings came sprouting of its arms, and then it shot up in the air like a rocket and flew away with super-sonic speed.
Now their name was understood. The town was once again eerily silent. They were made to silence the earth from the human race. It took a minute before anyone said anything, but then Scout interrupted the silence.
"Captain-" he was about to say what they were all thinking. How in hell were they supposed to defeat these things? A team of five against hundreds of indestructible massive machines capable of digitizing them before they even had a chance to fight back? And the speed in which they could fly- even the Jumpship couldn't fly that fast. Making a getaway would be impossible.
"Don't," Jonathan quietly cut off Scout. "Don't say it. It's not over."
Hawk and Scout looked disbelieving at their Captain. "It's not over," he repeated, this time with more volume in his voice. "This is not how it ends."
Wordlessly and noticeably dejected, they got on their skybikes and flew back to the hideout. All the way back, Jonathan was trying to convince himself to believe his own words.
