Day 27 of 100

Volume 1, Chapter 14

BREACH EARTH, WAR QUARTER
(ARGUS designation)

STEIN LABS

Some days she wanted to shed this persona she had taken on, didn't want to be Seeker anymore, or… at least for one day, at least for one tiny hour… five minutes… just to be Lena Luthor again. In those times, she would have wanted nothing more than to sit away in her old house again, with her mother and little more to her world but that which she was allowed to be aware of. Back then, she hadn't known that there could be war, that people could live in this constant fear, that there were other places, that there were things like… Mist…

Oh, she didn't regret what she'd made of her life, not in the slightest, not… not every day, almost never, just sometimes. She was proud of what she did as Seeker. But… but… Times would come, and something would seem to cut her down to the bone, and then… then the cover of being Seeker wasn't enough anymore, and she'd remember. The house… her mother… before her mother had been killed, and she had been tossed into this world she didn't know, forced to make something of herself that would protect her in a whole other way than the walls of her home and her mother's words had done for all those years.

She sat here now, in Stein Labs, holding the cup of tea Laura Zeta had handed her and told her to drink after that panic attack she'd had upon her return from the site of the test deployment. She sat, she drank, and in her head she heard her mother's voice, calling her name. Lena… Lena… Who are you now?

When the alarm was heard, the call to shelter, her hands fumbled and she nearly dropped the mug, her fingers splashed with hot tea which now loosened her hold, letting the mug slip and crash to the ground, breaking and spilling its contents at her feet. She remembered the first time she'd heard it.

Somehow she hadn't, not until she'd discovered the world outside her home for the first time. It really didn't seem possible that her mother had managed to insulate their walls so much as to keep her from hearing it before, but she had, and so Lena Luthor had been seventeen years old the first time she'd heard it, the same day she'd started off on her own, already thrown off balance by the trauma of her mother's death and her discovery of the war. And she didn't know, couldn't have.

Call to shelter… Might as well have called it 'Here in this unending string of bad days, somehow, it is about to get much, much worse, so you had best run and hide if you have any desire to carry on living.' Eight times she had heard it over the years, each one etched into her memories whether she liked it or not. She could have hidden, hopped off to Haven, or Dark, Light, off to Main Earth, to wait out whatever event had deserved the call, but she never did.

She stayed. She did what she could. She helped.

Today was the ninth, and she felt bolted to the ground, weighed with an aching fear in her body, in her lungs, and maybe it wasn't that she needed to be Lena Luthor in that moment. Maybe it was that she didn't feel she deserved to be Seeker if she was just going to stay and hide.

"Run… hide…" she mumbled, to no one and everyone. "Run…"

"What's that?" Jax asked, oblivious to her, more concerned with the thrumming sound of the alarm.

"Call to shelter," Laura told him, the concern etched in her face, while Doctor Stein tapped at one of the screens, bringing up what information he could find. As calm and collected as he usually was, now he saw this and he looked like a crack had split across his composure. When Laura saw what he saw, her hand moved to cover her mouth in silence, much as Wells watched and looked vaguely defeated.

"What is it? What's happening?" Jax asked, moving to look.

"The weapon," Seeker spoke quietly. "They did it, didn't they?" She looked at them, they looked at her. They didn't have to say it; of course they had. "What do we do now?" she asked.

X

OUTSIDE THE WAR ARGUS OUTPOST

The agents in War were trained for this quarter, prepared for just about anything, but now this... They were paralysed, not for a refusal to act but an inability. There was no approaching the site of the weapon's deployment. Whatever masks they had were not yet equipped to get anywhere near. At present time, the only ones in possession of altered masks which would protect them were the four sent out into the test site, and Stein and the others currently modifying more down at the labs.

What little they had been to learn from the test site told them plainly that, while going into Mist without a mask would make you ill, possibly scar you for life, or, if left untreated, end up killing you, this weapon, made of the Mist water… it was like a death snap, more treacherous than the air in Mist could ever be. And it was still out there, clinging to whatever unfortunate live thing came near it and bringing it down to perish. The test site had shown it plenty. Even the ground beneath the victims looked dead.

No one could go near the site of the hit, not until they had a mask with a shield strong enough to protect them.

"Where was it?" Kara asked, yanking the mask from around her neck and back on to her face, even as Alexandra did the same. "Where did the weapon hit?" The sisters looked back to Ralph and Slade expectantly. Their people back on the ship had to be telling them now, they could see it on their faces.

"West Quadrant Infirmary," Slade told them. Kara felt something halfway between defeat and rage. A hospital… Hospitals in War were practically hallowed ground, protected, off-limits. Going after the sick and the injured, it just wasn't done. And now they'd done it. Worse than that, they'd hit it, with something that would prevent them from helping, so long as they couldn't protect themselves, and now… whoever was in there… There'd just be no going back for them, would there?

"The masks…" Alexandra looked to Ralph. "There are more being made at Stein Labs." There was little else to say. The sisters were let back out the gates, where the younger Danvers led her sister in the direction of the place they called the WQI.

X

THE BREACH SHIP WAVERIDER

Getting in touch with Doctor Stein and his small team had been easy. The schematics of the original masks were already at their disposal, but now they were being provided with what modifications they had already made, confirming that they indeed worked, that they had protected the four who had gone into the test site. They were modifying more now, but it would be slow going.

"Let me see," Catherine Grant had come to stand at the screen. "I may have spent the last few years playing computer generated… butler… If I get to be myself again, now's as good of a time as any to show you all what I can do. I just might be able to help you speed up the process."

"We're all going to have to mask up until this is over, aren't we?" Winn stated, standing at her side. "They're going to turn War into Mist 2."

X

OUT IN WAR QUARTER

The call to shelter was not something any of them could ignore. There was no telling what had warranted its activation, if the threat was near or far. No telling if the enemy was around the corner. When the call came, all they could do was run and hide, waiting for the bells that would lift the order. It wouldn't mean complete safety, not in their city, but it would be a return to the day to day.

That day, when the call began to ring across the city, they couldn't know the what, the where, the why. They couldn't know the struggle happening to control it, to stop it. But they knew to run and hide.

If they should find themselves stuck out there, somewhere too far from home, far from a friend, somewhere they could be certain to find shelter, then there was one thing they were sure of: in time of need, there was no safer place than one of the hospitals.

"Come on, hurry!" the girl called to her brother and sister, urging them on. "We're almost there!" she grasped their hands as they reached her, and together they ran, the spire of the WQI there up ahead. All around them, others were running in that same direction, a circled mass descending upon the infirmary.

They only just had seconds to see them up ahead, only a glimpse of bodies on the ground. And then it was in them. And then they were gone.

X

The projected limits of the strike's effects had been as much as he could be given for a target to open his breach. Jax dashed through it, the mask around his face one of the latest modified by Stein and the others. His appearance on the scene, along with the breach he held open behind him, was enough to grab some attention, which was a good thing. There were people running all around him, on their way to take shelter… on their way to an unseen death.

"Hey, hey, through here, you'll be safe, I swear, come on!" he motioned to them. Maybe it was the mask that scared them off, or the appearance of the great blue hole in the air. Maybe it was that, as far as they were concerned, the one true place of safety lay ahead of them, not with this strange masked man. "The hospital's not safe! That's where they attacked! If you go to it you'll die! Listen to me, please!" he shouted.

"Jax!" a voice called to him, and turning his eyes to the sky he found his friend and teammate flying to him. The Atom had joined him.

"They won't listen," Jax motioned to the runners, his breach fizzing out of existence.

"Right," Mike frowned, looking around. After a moment, he pulled his helmet off, then turned to Jax and motioned to his face. With a brief hesitation, he deactivated and pulled down the mask. Technically speaking, they were safe here, the Mist strike shouldn't touch them, though they weren't far off from the limit, and there was no telling whether it would shift and spread. "Hey, hey, excuse me, sorry," Mike planted himself in the path of a woman running in the direction of the WQI and she stopped short, startled. "Ma'am, I'm terribly sorry, you can't go that way."

"Get out of my way!" the woman tried to push him out of the way.

"Listen, listen! The attack was on the WQI, the call to shelter is because of that. If you keep going that way, you'll die," he told her, plain and simple. She stared at him, then cut and ran past him. "Seriously?" Mike blinked, watching her go.

"I have an idea," Jax told him, pulling his mask over his face again. "It will either be really good or really bad. Just… stay here, okay?"

Another breach was opened, and this time Jax ran through it, closing it immediately. Mike turned and tried, again, to stop people from running toward the hospital, and again and again he failed. No wonder Jax had looked so discouraged.

When he began to hear an outcry building around him, he worried that the spread of the affected zone was nearing them, but that wasn't it. Some of the runners were slowing, stopping, and looking up. Mike turned to see what they were looking at, only to find about the most massive breach – he knew – Jax had ever opened. The intent behind it was not even to let anyone through it, but rather to let them see. Through the breach in the sky, they could see the WQI, see the bodies… see what happened when people came close.

After it closed, another breach brought back Jax, and then once again, he opened the way…

"This way to Stein Labs, let's go!" he shouted.

Now the runners heard him, and they listened. They ran through the breach, there on the other side to be welcomed by Seeker, who would guide them to some place to sit, and wait for the bells of release.

Hovering in flight, the Atom would be joined by Superman, and Valor, and then Firestorm, too. In the sky, visible to everyone, they would be able, at each of their designated points, to direct people running in search of shelter, ensuring that they did not head for the WQI. Some of them would be directed toward Jax and the breach into Stein Labs. Others would be shepherded to other shelter points, like the North, South, and East Quadrant Infirmaries, and even past the gates of the ARGUS outpost. This decision had not been made lightly, but allowances had to be made under the circumstances.

Not everyone would follow, which was to be expected. Some did find shelter at home or with friends and family, or in any other number of places. The goal was not to force them out of their homes, but then that was alright. The flying team had been equipped with upgraded masks to distribute where needed, and more would be coming, as Catherine Grant's contribution to the cause began to be put to use. She had managed to create a tool that would in essence infect the standard masks with the ability to modify themselves, like new programming introduced. Now, they only needed the masks and in no time they would be modifying. And then they could be distributed.

There wouldn't be enough, they realized this, not for all of the city, not yet, maybe not ever. And there was still a possibility of more attacks… and of whoever was doing this to find a way to increase the strength of their weapon, so that even the augmented masks no longer did their job.

They couldn't think about it. They just had to keep going.

X

Despite what they'd just been put through back at the resistance base, Ralph and Slade were out there now, working to help cordon off the infected area. Those working around the WQI had already been equipped with the new batch of masks, and it seemed they were all on edge, waiting for the moment where one mask or another might fail, waiting for the arrival of more runners. They'd have to act quick to stop them going forward.

A few had already been stopped, and to their dismay they had found that, without the masks, they had been pulled away only to show symptoms starting to creep up. Some became ill at once, one had ended up dying… All of these had been guided into an area nearby, where they were presently looked after by Mag, and J'onn, and some ARGUS medics, while those on the cordoning off team had started to pull back, widening their perimeter, hoping it might keep any others from getting far enough that they became ill.

"I could have sworn the last line was safe when it started," Nyssa told Patty and Rene, working alongside her. No one dared to suggest aloud that maybe the Mist was spreading, but they were thinking it. How could they not?

X

STEIN LABS

While Seeker and Laura Zeta were working to direct all those brought to take refuge in other parts of the building, both Stein and Wells were watching the images from the small cameras they'd thought to mount on their team's masks. These showed the viewpoints of the Danvers sisters, along with their two friends, Mistral and Ragman. The girl was wearing the mask previously used by Seeker, while the man had gone in with nothing for protection other than his coat of rags. That he was still alive and well could be counted as both miraculous and impossible.

They were inside the WQI.

The images were in no way encouraging. There were bodies everywhere, the people… Patients, and visitors, staff, doctors, nurses… As the four of them walked through it all, foolishly seeking survivors, the air felt tight and empty, even from the safety of Stein Labs. They could hear the breaths of their masked friends. They were horrified, terrified…

When one of the viewpoints had broken away from the others, it had taken the others turning toward her for the men watching it all to understand what was happening. The young one, Mistral, had moved toward a pair of bodies on the ground, a man and a woman. Her hand reached like she meant to touch them, then stopped, knowing she couldn't and wishing so much that she could. Sobs filled the room, echoing out from the screen.

There was no need to ask. These were her family. The two men would be willing to bet she had volunteered to follow the sisters into this place, knowing deep down that they would be here, and that it would be too late to stop their deaths. Her friend the Ragman was now standing with her, crouching and putting his arms around her. For a few moments, there was only this, only a girl mourning her parents and a friend lending comfort, as much as one could.

"Doctor Stein?" He and Wells looked up to find both Seeker and Jax standing there. "There are no more coming in," Seeker told him. "What would you like us to do now?"

Bringing the people into the vast building had been an easy decision, despite the potential risks. Of course now that they were here, all they would be left with would be the big question of what to do with them. There was no telling how long this would last. Could they provide for them if this stretched on too long? How long before they were forced to turn them out again to fend for themselves?

"Once they're equipped with masks, they can be helped back to their homes," Wells offered. "However many are left behind, we can provide for them. How many are there now?"

"Two hundred and nineteen," Seeker informed him.

"Right, then let's keep working," Stein turned to the other man, and they nodded to one another.

TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 2)