His day began in darkness.
It was a cool, deliberate darkness caused by one being sealed away from the light twenty feet underground. Outside, white heat would have been smoldering on the dunes of the Sonoran desert, and the suffocating air would have been almost too hot to breathe. Inside the concrete and steel structure, conditions were dark and the air-conditioning kept the interior at a comfortable 68 degrees.
When the kinks in his neck, joints, and extremities made it clear to him that there would be no more rest he wearily opened his eyes, staring at the gray of the ceiling, letting out a sigh as he mentally planned out the coming day. First, he decided, he would use up some of his precious water supply to treat himself to a shower. Next he would prepare a delicious feast of a breakfast consisting of canned lamb and rice. He would of course have to recheck the baffles and sensor dampeners that concealed his hideaway from the eyes in the sky. He would then spend the afternoon cleaning and perhaps reward himself by putting on yet another film from his collection on the old movie projector. After night fell, and between the hours of one and five A.M, he would don his outdoor clothes and walk to one of the nearby towns to see what he could scrounge from the local grocery stores and specialty shops.
There was no more grand planning, no more crimes of the century. Gone were the baroque and grandiose lairs he had enjoyed building and inhabiting: the abandoned mirror factory, the sewer headquarters, the carnival maze - all gone. Only this bomb shelter remained, buried in the earth and secure.
On some days, he woke in a panic, feeling an onset of claustrophobia, requiring several minutes to calm down, convinced that the narrow cot he was slept in was a coffin and he was buried. I am not dead yet. He would repeat to himself. Not dead yet. Not dead yet. Until the pace of his beating heart slowed.
There was always the routine to keep himself focused, what he did every day - every day for an entire year. Ever since they had come, and changed everything, and he had been forced to go into hiding, to scrounge for food and supplies, and conceal his face from all the eyes that were set in place to specifically look for people like him.
Now, eyes squinting in the dim electric light, he stood up, attempting to quiet the headache caused by the blood rushing to his head. He could never forget that he lived in the desert, and just the thought of it brought the familiar imaginary dryness to his throat and psychosomatic symptoms of dehydration. The thought of all those billions of grains of sand colliding as the wind blew across them, as though symbolizing purposeless desolation.
Not entirely purposeless, he reminded himself. After all where would we get mirrors from if not grains of sand?
He drank some bottled water that sat at the bedside of his cot. He swallowed and immediately felt better.
Just as he was about to set the plastic bottle back, he paused, sensing the intrusion before he heard it; an intuition gained from years of past criminal endeavors, a life of running and hiding.
Somewhere there was a pounding.
Startled, his hand dropped the plastic water bottle, which bounced on the floor of the bunker, spilling its liquid contents.
So I've been found, he thought. They're here at last.
He had thought he had been careful, taking cautious actions. And indeed he had been. He had buried himself in the hope of escaping, planning every detail and making every preparation. Purchasing the bomb shelter, equipping it with the baffles and white-noise generators. The bomb shelter had been an easy buy, paid from his nest-egg of successful robberies. For the first few months, he had busied himself with installing the baffles and the sensor dampeners, and then his attention turned to the matter of acquiring supplies through the tried and true method of burglary.
But now that all of that was in the past, and today the ones he had sought to hide from were literally knocking at his door.
There was no fear in him. At first he might have felt frightened in those early days when he had feared discovery, but now after the many months the fear had been burned out of him, faded in the face of a repetitive daily schedule that included drills for just this event. He knew what was to be done if he was to stand a chance of evading capture.
He rushed to the bedside drawer, hands rummaging through it, setting aside candles, band-aids, a flashlight and batteries, until he found the silver bracelet. He took a second to turn it over, grinning slightly at the way the light caught and reflected the pattern of interlaced circuitry.
Lifting himself to his feet, his hand came to the lever set into the nearby bedroom wall. He pulled the bar down, and was satisfied with the whir that the mechanism made.
Without hurry, he made his way to the restroom, to the mirror. A stranger stared back at him, brown hair greasy and lank, fringing eyes that were deep-set, dark-rimmed. He was surprised to find strands of gray in the hair around his chin and temples.
It had been so long since he had last seen his own reflection - mirrors were a harsh reminder of his past and its failures; the things that resulted in his current circumstances. Now his past was rapidly catching up with him, and now there was only one possible escape.
One last time.
He extended his hand to the mirrored surface, fingers spread in a precise hand-gesture. Small diodes lit up on the metallic surface of the band, and, at the touch of his fingers, the silvery reflective surface rippled as though it were a pond of water.
Closing his eyes, he levered himself up onto the sink, and then slid through the mirror's frame. The silvery surface parted briefly, allowing his form to pass into realms inconceivable to most. But they were familiar to Samuel Scudder.
With each succeeding impact, the metal of the lead-lined wall began to deform under the assault of the ceaseless pounding, making a sound like a blacksmith's anvil under a mighty hammer. And then, finally the knuckles of a fist pierced the wall, four delicate looking knuckles breaking through steel and concrete to expose the interior to the exterior, producing four shafts of dusty light. Those four knuckles were attached to a woman's fist, one that slammed through steel and concrete. Having made a breach, the woman's second hand worked in tandem with the first to pull at the gap, widening it with a low screech of stress metal and the dull scraping of shattered stone. Puffs of concrete dust rose up to catch the growing light.
The white of the sunlight turned green as the two costumed heroes entered the false hillside that they had located and penetrated.
The woman was Diana Prince, ambassador to the world of men, princess of the Amazons, and known to most everyone as Wonder-Woman. She held a fistful of torn metal, which she threw away with a ping-ping at the floor. She worked to widen the hole she had made enough to fit through. When she succeeded, she stepped over the gap and tilted her head for any sounds in the darkness.
Accompanying her was Hal Jordan, part-time pilot of Ferris Aircraft and the Green Lantern of Space Sector 2814. He followed her in, illuminating the area in front of them with a flashlight formed of radiant, green energy that floated several inches above the similarly-colored power ring on his right hand.
The two stood for a moment, breathing in the cool air-conditioned space. They seemed to be in a hallway with walls that measured seven feet high, and extended for a dozen yards to what looked like an empty elevator shaft. Darkened light bulbs were strung up every few feet, ones that were probably connected to a gasoline-fed generator when they were active.
Hal Jordan paused, and from his ring came scintillating beams of emerald light that traced the walls of the corridor; wherever they touched, a web of wires, conduits, and the circuits of electronics were outlined. They were everywhere, embedded in the walls, ceiling and floor and concealed from casual view.
The Green Lantern turned his head for a moment, as though listening to a voice only he could hear. "See this?" Jordan said, in a tone that indicated that he was fascinated. "My ring is telling me that this runs throughout the entire structure. It's a standard bomb shelter, so it's already impenetrable to x-rays, but these mask the heat signature...not that we could detect much this far underground."
"Must have been expensive," Diana commented.
Just as the two heroes took another few paces into the tunnel, something fluttered silently out of the darkness from the empty elevator shaft at the end, something as large as a man. A monster from a fever dream.
It crawled, and it scuttled into the light with dead silence. Its eyes were huge and ink-black, multifaceted, protuberant lenses, gleaming darkly and hungrily. Beneath those twin eyes, smaller, point mandibles worked ceaselessly. Above those eyes short antennae quivered.
Without warning it leapt up, suspending itself on massive, pale wings that were the color of mold, the hue of sickness. As those wings flapped and folded and spread with horrific grace and beauty, a segmented body suspended between three pairs of multi-jointed legs. In flight it was clear what it was.
It was a moth - a moth grown to impossible dimensions.
With no warning, the moth launched itself into the air, flying at them in chilling silence. Diana and Jordan ducked and crouched as the thing flew past them, circled and landed on the opposite end of the corridor.
"Hal," Diana said. "Are you...?"
"I'm fine," the Green Lantern said. "Any idea what we're dealing with?"
"Might be a mutation," Diana said. "This area is near where several nuclear tests occurred."
"Radiation doesn't really do that," Hal said. "This is something else. Ring, identify threat."
"Processing..." the ring replied in a synthetic simulacrum of Hal Jordan's voice. After a moment, the ring said. "No threat,"
"Clarify," Hal ordered.
"Apparent threat to user consists of manipulated photons across fixed wavelengths. Where the manipulated photons intersect-"
"Ring," Jordan interrupted. "Are you saying that the moth is a hologram?"
"Affirmative."
The two heroes stared at the approaching monstrosity. For the all the world, it looked like a real insect of enormous size. The heroes knew that much from prior experience, having had innumerable encounters with such monsters under the earth, in dungeons located in Eastern Europe, as well as other dimensions and alien worlds.
They watched the moth twitter its twin antennae in agitation; its front legs patted the floor in an acoustic signal of warning. It kept its distance, but looked ready to launch itself at them.
"Ring, can you disrupt the hologram, make it go away?"
"I can," the ring replied.
Oh good, Jordan thought. It's going to project this area with anti-photons and the image will...
His thoughts were interrupted as a thin beam the width of a needle shot forward only to curve at an abrupt angle. There was a crystalline ping as the tiny mirror apparatus concealed in an upper corner of the corridor's ceiling shattered into multiple glass fragments under the blunt impact of the ring's ray.
"I guess that's taken care of," Diana said.
They walked forward, eventually coming to where the corridor ended, at the empty elevator shaft. Shining the ring's light down, about fifteen feet down, they saw that the elevator carriage was on the bottom floor.
Diana reached for the red lever that would recall the elevator carriage, only for Hal to stop her. "Wait," he said. "I think he was expecting us. That's why he set the moth loose on us. What if we get into that elevator only for it to fill with gas or concealed gun ports or something like that? I have a better idea."
He held the ring close to his heart. From it came a series of green lines and jade gears that met at right angles to form the outline of an intricate, green elevator carriage. Gleaming, cross-worked doors of emerald hue parted, revealing an interior worthy of the elevator of a five-star hotel.
The two heroes entered, and the false elevator's doors closed. Standing in the carriage, Hal directed his construct down the shaft. Being only twenty feet down, it was a short ride but Hal insisted on providing simulated elevator muzak, to which Diana smiled. The ride down then encountered a large jumble as the construct encountered the actual elevator carriage. Having been built out of will, and powered by the fundamental forces of the universe, the constructed elevator easily crunched the real elevator carriage occupying the bottom of the shaft, flattening into near two-dimensionality.
Exiting, they found themselves in a small vestibule which only had a single steel door with a rotating lock. Turning it and opening the door brought them to another long hallway, almost identical to the one on the ground flood, only this one had several doors in it.
The first door in the hall that Hal Jordan opened was revealed to be a wardrobe; the beam of his light flashed over racks of civilian clothing. In the center of them, obvious as a flag, was a yellow and olive-colored, leather costume adorned with a side holster and numerous pouches.
At least we have the right man, he thought, and turned to see Diana entering the room on his left. Jordan pulled at the sleeve, bringing it forward to show her.
Diana pulled a small communication device from her side. Pressing down the talk button, she said "We've found him. Tell the colonel to bring the van and a detachment of operatives. But tell them to keep their distance until we've dealt with him. We'll bring him to you. Do not follow us down here. I repeat we will handle him and bring him to you."
"Acknowledged, Wonder-Woman," a woman's voice on the other end said. "Dispatching operatives to your location now. Good luck." Diana put the communicator back on her belt and followed Hal Jordan down the hall.
Past the wardrobe, Hal entered a general purpose living room/dining room, which contained an old sofa, and an old film projector along with stacks of tinned film reels. Hal turned the light to the right - four rows of carefully organized floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with large cans of food and stacked cardboard boxes. He picked up one of the cans and read the label.
Dog food.
Jordan looked around, seeing no sign that the inhabitant of the bunker had owned a pet, leaving him the only conclusion that the canned dog food was for the occupant himself to consume.
The light illuminated rows of canned dog food leaning against the wall. The shelves above them filled with bottled water, kerosene lamps, boxes of matches, soap powders, detergents, and the like. There were sealed cardboard boxes from dozens of different brands of grocery stores, probably containing more of the same filling the rest of the bunker's space.
Next they entered the bunker's small kitchen. It was a cluttered place, but also stark and minimal. There were tall shelves filled with more canned dogfood and bottles of beer, shelves and racks and bins laden with bottles of wine and liquor, and other racks brimming with paperbacks, magazines, and newspapers. Cigars and cigarettes were stacked in boxes and cartons, and tins of pipe tobacco were displayed in haphazard mounds on the single countertop.
Exiting, they both entered the second to last room in the bunker. It turned out to be a bedroom, and it was there that they saw the body of the man they sought.
He hadn't been dead long. His eyes were open bulging from his pale, congested face, and appeared to be looking upward. The mouth was slack, exposing his teeth, and a purple tongue protruded from his mouth. His thin, malnourished body dressed in his cowled orange and green costume – the very same costume that they had found hanging on a rack down the hall – dangled from a supporting metal beam by a length of sturdy rope. His weight had stretched the tendons and muscles of his neck to what looked like an absurd length.
Both heroes entered, walking around and eyeing the hanged man hanging in the middle. Being in the same room as a corpse should have made them uneasy, but instead the manner of the heroes was casual, almost incredulous.
"Did he really think that this would fool us?" Diana asked. She reached out to touch the hanged man, and at her touch, the image turned to static where her finger made contact with it.
"Don't be too critical," Hal said. "I mean he probably put a lot of effort into this. I'll be the first to admit that it is a very good illusion. Every detail, I would say, is perfect."
"But it was still just another hologram, like the moth upstairs," Diana said. The two heroes looked up and saw a second crystalline projector set in the corner of the room's ceiling.
In the bedroom, near the cot, they noticed that there was a one-foot-wide, eighteen-inch-high recess in the left-hand wall. A steel rod with a rubber hand-grip protruded from a slot in this recess. It was in the down position.
Diana walked over and raised the rod, which made a ratcheting noise. There was a sound of gears clicking somewhere in the walls. With a hum and sizzle the image of the hung man dissipated.
They next entered the adjoining bathroom, where they found a sink, a small corner shower stall, more packaged food, bottled water, and a corner toilet. But what most held their attention was the large mirror above the bathroom's sink.
"He's not here," Diana declared, after they had searched each of the five rooms in the bunker.
"Where could he have gone to?" Hal asked. There was a note of sarcasm in the man's voice as his finger tapped the surface of the large mirror above the sink in the bathroom. "Ring, locate previously designated target."
"Request acknowledged," a synthetic sounding voice coming from the ring said. "Subject found. Subject no longer located in space sector 2814."
"Location of subject?" Jordan asked.
"Designated subject is now residing in fifth continuum."
"Show me," Jordan commanded.
An instant later, a green dotted line appeared in the air, leading from the ring right into the center of the mirror before disappearing into a hazy green blur. Still, the direction was clear.
"Hmm," Hal said. "Then we might as well take it with us." He pointed his ring at the mirror, from which came a multitude of transparent green tools: hammers, screwdrivers, crowbars and levers. As Hal's brow furrowed in concentration, the constructed tools attacked the mirror's wooden frame, extricating it from the bathroom wall it was attached to. In a few minutes, he had loosened the nails and fasteners. Instantly the tools disappeared, only to be replaced by two green-glowing hands of stupendous size cradled the extricated bathroom mirror.
With the mirror-frame with them, the two heroes retraced their way to the empty elevator shaft. Together, they ascended to the ground floor, walked again the length of the ground-level hallway. Diana went first out through the hole in the wall, followed by Jordan with the mirror.
Now outside, in front of the formerly concealed entrance of the bomb-shelter and blinded by the desert sun at first they could not see the assembled men, nor the van. But he could hear the subdued whirring of helicopter blades.
Blinking, they saw that there were two black helicopters - each a small single-rotor transport, a single unmarked van painted white, and a platoon of SDI commandos and a team of technicians securing the perimeter. Both the van and the helicopters lacked any form of insignia or identification.
The technicians were sweating in their blue coveralls, their hips weighed down by the array of tools and monitoring equipments on their belts. Their eyes were alert, eager and curious.
The commandos were armored in Model Kevlar vest with ballistic steel shock plates over the heart region. Each wore a shining black riot helmet fitted with shatterproof acrylic face shields equipped with built-in microphones for continuous coordination and communication. Like the technicians, they wore utility belts, but these were festooned with ammunition, handcuffs and various grenades.
They put on an admirable brave front, but there was an almost palpable atmosphere of anxiety. Perhaps it was the auras of the two heroes; an almost palpable feeling of power and authority. Or maybe it was because they were assisting in the apprehension of one of the last great super-villains. They gripped their weapons slightly tighter as Hal Jordan and Diana Prince approached them.
With care, the two glowing green hands placed the mirror in the center of the commotion. Hal motioned for the crowd to take a step back.
"Ring," Jordan commanded. "Retrieve designated target from fifth continuum."
"Retrieval commencing," the ring replied. A pencil-thin ray of green light extended from the ring, instantly breaking into a dozen tendrils, each with a miniature human hand attached to it. As one, the hands reached into the silvery surface of the mirror. The light did not refract or reflect but was absorbed as though the mirror were the event horizon of a black hole.
A second later, a brown-haired man burst forth from the mirror's surface with an audible gasp, shot from the black wooden frame like something vomited from the maw of a great beast. Now fully returned to the world, he landed in a pile on the ground. He struggled against the multitude of hands clutching at his shoulders, ankles, wrists and midsection. Instantly Diana reached for the golden lasso strapped to her side. In a moment too fast for the unaided eye to follow, she had wrapped the lasso around the man's shoulders. She pulled tight, and the man fell over like a wrangled steer.
One commando pulled his arm outward, and plucked the silver bracelet from his wrist. After a second of examination, the commando handed the object to a technician who then placed the bracelet into a small, plastic evidence bag. The commando then replaced the bracelet with a metal handcuff.
Without his green and orange costume, the brown-haired man looked powerless and mundane. He now wore only a white t-shirt and blue jeans. Once the brown-haired man kneeling in the dust of the desert floor had been fit and athletic, but now was soft and lanky from a lack of exercise, as well as a diet of bland meats and rices. His eyes, blinking against the desert sun, were bruised from his habit of sleeping during the day and prowling at night.
"Samuel Joseph Scudder," said a loud voice. "Also known as the Maker of Mirrors."
The voice's owner stepped out from the crowd of soldiers and technicians, a man in his mid-thirties. He was strikingly handsome, with neatly coiffed brown hair. The bright desert sun glinted off his mirrored shaded sunglasses. Unlike the commandos and techies, he wore a black t-shirt, dark pants, his hands were covered in black gloves; a holster carrying a M1911, semi-automatic pistol adorned his side. The way he walked and carried himself indicated that the man more than self-confidence. There was a subtle but unmistakable arrogance in the man's expression, in his walk towards the prisoner kneeling in the sand. The air of pride about him seemed natural, an aura of animal magnetism that allowed him to be convincing even in his arrogance. Most would see him as a confident and a friend. Whatever arrogance he had possessed was justified, at least to himself, if not in others.
"That's Mirror Master to you," Scudder replied, a grim smile etching itself across his unshaven features as though an old joke fitted through his mind. "Seems you have the advantage of me."
"Name's 'Lord,' " The man smiled at the baffled look on Scudder's face. "No, that isn't a title. I'm Special-Agent Maxwell Lord. And these gentlemen," he gestured to the assembled soldiers and technicians, "will be your entourage for your trip back to our secure facilities. I'm sure that you'll find them to be amicable to your special needs. The place you're going is what I like to call the 'the Menagerie' you'll be treated with first-class care and providing lots of rewarding and exciting activities. Some of the other guests I'm sure you'll recognize, and know from prior encounters. Let's see, that would include Hartley Rathaway, James Jesse, George Harkness...Too bad we never found Snart. Oh well, I'm sure you'll make do."
"Who ratted me out?" asked Scudder, face angled towards the ground.
"We now have certain...resources," Jordan said.
"Yes," Maxwell said, removing his shades. "Our G.E.E.C computer tracked your purchase of this shelter to a banking account under an alias you were known to have previously used on numerous occasions. That, and the break-ins that were reported in the local towns all but confirmed that you were up to your old tricks. The locals in these parts haven't been too keen on your nocturnal activities. Strange... there were never any reports of money being taken. So somehow there were some doubts that it was really you."
"Only took what I needed," Scudder said. "Food and clothing mostly."
"We took our time in finding you," Maxwell said. "You were not a priority, being just a petty crook. Not a Felix Faust, a Weather-Wizard, or even a Fearo..."
"You could have joined us, Sam," Hal said, interjecting. "We extended our offer to every super-villain in the world, not just the Legion. After you had served your time, someone like you could have helped us immensely. Other than dog food, you would have least had a nice steak once in awhile. You would have a comfy bed rather than a cot in a bomb shelter buried twenty feet underground. What did you think you were hiding from? There are no more warheads..."
"Oh, I was hiding from your new eyes in the sky," Scudder said. "You know, 'Big Brother is Watching', and all that..."
"How do you know about that?" Maxwell asked. "Who told you?"
"Oh, I heard things," Scudder said. "I'm more … what you would call perceptive than I've been given credit for. Had a lot of time to think about these things. Did my own investigating, you could say."
"Whatever that means," Maxwell said. "What's important is that today you've made us all very happy. Your name was one of the last things on our 'scavenger hunt' - one of the last of the so-called 'super-villains' unaccounted for. Judging by the state of your living conditions I imagine that things have been rather rough for you."
"Yeah," Scudder said. "Ever since the Legion o' Doom went poof and disappeared, I've been out of work. Used to do commissions for them. Now look at me."
"Where is the Legion of Doom?" Maxwell said directly.
"Haven't the faintest," Scudder muttered.
"He's telling the truth," Diana said, giving the lasso a tug for emphasis.
"Shame," Maxwell Lord looked off into the sunset. "We were hoping that you knew." Maxwell Lord paused, and turned his back. "Also sorry that the Flash couldn't be here to see this. One of his most persistent enemies kneeling in the dust."
"When you see the Flash again, tell him it was only business. Had I known this is how I ended up, I'd have never messed him...would have never have even put on the costume. Tell him..."
Scudder swallowed and then whispered. "Tell him I'm sorry."
"I'm sure he knows how you feel," Maxwell said. "Put him in the van."
Diana withdrew her lasso, and the restraining commandos led Scudder to the white-painted vehicle parked next to one of the helicopters. The rear doors opened, revealing an interior that had been entirely covered in black spray-paint, which had then been smeared. The inside was matte-black, with not a single reflective surface. The windows had been entirely blacked out. The commandos seated Scudder and attached his handcuffed hand to a length of metal pipe set in the middle of the van's back.
Maxwell next pointed to the technicians and said. "I want you all to sweep that entire bunker. Be sure to get everything in boxes for the haul back to H.Q within the hour. We're on a schedule here, and I want to be out of here while its still bright and early."
The team of technicians surged forward, taking out their tools as they converged on the hole in the side of the artificial hill where Scudder's bunker lay.
As one of the techies passed, Hal Jordan tapped his shoulder and whispered, "elevator's out. I'm sorry about that."
The technician smiled politely and pulled out a length of robe from one of the pouches. "I can handle that, sir. Won't be a problem."
"Glad to hear it," Jordan replied.
"Agent Lord," Diana said.
Maxwell turned and smiled. "Please, call me Max. All of my friends do."
"Could we have a moment?" she waved him aside. "Away from your men?"
"Of course," he said. "For you, anything."
"Green Lantern, Wonder-Woman," the agent said. "Let me first say I am a great admirer of both of you. I have roots in Coast City. What you both did in central-"
"Mr. Lord," Diana cut him off by raising her hand. "We were expecting Colonel Wilcox."
"Yeah, about the colonel," Maxwell said. "Apparently he had an assignment in Manhattan. He wanted to inspect the facilities of the new domed habitat being built there. So the department sent me instead."
"I see," Diana said.
"Is this going to be a problem?"
"Oh no," Hal said, a sarcastic tone. "That's just fine. It's not like we're unused to having billionaire industrialists arresting super villains. What really bothers us is why, after so many months of apprehending these guys, are we only now hearing that they are being sent to a secret facility and not to any kind of normal prison? Does the colonel know about your 'menagerie'?"
"I'm sure that he does," Maxwell said.
"For some reason I doubt that," Diana interjected. "I think that he would have mentioned it had he known."
"Well, we are the Secret Department of Investigation..." Maxwell said. "It's not in our business to let things like that be known. I'm not aware of his exact reasons for keeping you in the dark about this. I don't know why considering what you and the colonel have done together...some truly outstanding things, I might add."
"Together, yes," Diana said. "We want continue to do great things, but cooperation is built upon a foundation of trust."
"So, you trust Colonel Wilcox," Maxwell said. "But you're saying that you don't trust me because I'm not him? I'm sorry if I disappoint, but that you haven't given me much of an opportunity to prove myself. Tell me. Is there anything that I can do to put your minds at ease."
"Yes, I believe so," Diana said. "We would just like a small reassurance. A small service."
"And what would that be?" the agent asked.
"Full disclosure," Diana said. "One day we would like to perform an inspection of our own of that 'facility' you told Scudder about."
"The inmates are doing some very important work for us," Maxwell assured. "And since you and the other 'Super Friends' were the arresting persons, I have some reason to suspect that your presence there would trigger undue anxiety in them, possibly leading to a significant disruption in their work-schedule that could cause an unacceptable delay-."
She cut him off. "How many of our Rogue's Gallery do you have locked up there, and how are they being treated?"
"What do you mean?" Maxwell asked.
"For instance," Diana began "Do they have the same chances for rehabilitation and reform as they would in a normal prison, or do you plan to keep them as permanent residents? Are they ever going to have their day in court? Do you schedule parole hearings for your inmates?"
"Please, I understand your concern, but I'm only-" Maxwell's eyes narrowed slightly. "If you meant people like Scudder or Mardon or Hall, or any of the countless petty rogues, I could begin to agree with you. They are human beings...well most are human, and they do have basic rights that we must acknowledge, but..."
"Go on."
"But would you say the same for one individual in particular? One special guest at our little resort that I could name?"
"Who?" Diana asked.
Maxwell stared at Diana, his voice going low. "The one we keep locked up in a silver-lined vault at the end of the hall on sub-level six. I personally make it my business to see that the garlic hung on his cell door is always replaced and kept fresh. The guards on sub-level six don't have guns, but they got plenty of holy water and crucifixes delivered straight from the Holy See."
Diana gave a slight, involuntary shudder.
"Yeah," Maxwell said. "That one. Would you like to open his cell door for a face-to-face interview? Maybe he would tell you if he was being mistreated or not. No, probably not. I imagine his throat's pretty dry and he can't talk. He'd need something to drink first. He's always thirsty and it's been awhile since he's had an open artery to suck on. Maybe you'd like to accommodate him. Just open the door, bare your throat. He'll take care of the rest..."
"You should have destroyed him!" Diana exclaimed. "Driven a stake through his black heart..."
"Oh," the agent said. "A change of attitude, princess? What if studying his blood leads to a cure for sickle-cell anemia? What if next week through reasons that aren't immediately clear, his curse ends and he's human again? Who knows? It's a new year...1980, a whole new decade. Just one year since that historic speech at the U.N has seen more change than the last hundred years. Look, why does even it matter that I'm the arresting agent, and not Wilcox? My superiors in the department felt that I was perfectly qualified-"
"Well, for starters, he always respected the super villains at all the previous apprehensions," Jordan said. "He never cracked jokes, or treated the situation with anything other than the utmost seriousness. It was a seriousness that came from prior experience. He just knew just what he was dealing with. He didn't...he didn't not taunt a bound giant."
"You think of Scudder as a giant?" Maxwell asked.
Hal swallowed and said "Scudder found a way to take a piece of simple glass and used it to take over his mind of his defense attorney. He could open doorways to entirely new realms of existence. In other words, Scudder did things with a hand-mirror – like the one you shaved with this morning – what I thought only something like my ring, the most powerful weapon in the universe, was capable of. To this day, we still have no idea how he did it. That, at least to me, is a frightening thought."
"And Scudder's only one of many others," Diana pointed out. "That is why we need to make sure that the genies are in their bottle. We need to inspect your 'menagerie', and determine for ourselves which ones we need to lock up forever and which ones can be redeemed and offered a chance to reform. We can't do anything like that without full disclosure."
Maxwell nodded, his tone softening. "I will pass along your request to my superiors in the department. Best that I can do." He paused. "I see that you are under a lot stress. We all are. Rebuilding this messed-up world from the ground up is hard work. That's the reason I came out here. So that I could personally pitch in and help in some small way and-."
Both the two heroes and the agent stopped, and turned at a sound.
The sound was a rustle, as though something were shaking in the sands at their feet. At first they didn't notice it. Then there was a groan, like the cracking strain of old wood expanding due to a change in temperature.
Everyone present turned. They looked and saw that the mirror frame was moving, rattling from side to side as though alive.
"What is that?" Maxwell asked.
The mirror frame skipped; it bounced. It angled itself upward to stand vertically, before turning to the right to balance on one of its corners.
All those present stared mesmerized, the spectacle so bizarre, too surreal.
Still balanced on one corner, the square mirror-frame did a merry pirouette.
"Something..." Jordan began, face set with determination. "Something else is coming through. Something from the mirror dimension that Scudder was in."
As the it spun, the mirror's frame changed. The lines of the frame's edges seemed to bend and warp, as though it was made of rubber instead of glass and wood.
"Get back!" Maxwell shouted at his people as the mirror frame continued its bizarre transformation.
Its edges and corners bent and contorted around themselves in impossible violations of geometry.
The frame cast peculiar shadows, cast by things or beings beyond the mirror's surface, appearing to twist around each other and swarm across one's field of vision. The viewers felt an onrush of nausea as they were offered brief glimpses of a reality existing in more than four dimensions; dimensions not meant for human sight. One of the soldiers displayed symptoms of epilepsy. Another removed his mask and vomited hard.
Then, without any sore warning, the mirror frame launched itself into the sky like a propelled rocket, blasting desert sand particles in all directions.
For a moment, everyone was stunned. They stared upwards, seeing the mirror-frame spin and twirl before disappearing into the blue sky.
Maxwell Lord was first to shrug off the shock. He ran to the window of the nearest of the two black helicopters, saying to the pilot. "Did you get its direction?"
The pilot looked at the oscillating radar screen, saying "It's on an eastward trajectory."
"Get the Brother Eye satellites on this," he told the pilot "Find out where it is going."
"On it," the pilot replied.
"Where is it heading?" Maxwell asked a moment later.
After a pause, the pilot said. "Metropolis. The object is heading in the direction of Metropolis. In fact it's there right now."
"Did you hear that?" Maxwell said. "It crossed the continent in less than a minute! What are we dealing with? Have anything like this happened before?"
Diana shook her head, saying "We need to get back there." She grabbed Hal's shoulder.
"Superman," Hal held the ring to his mouth, speaking into it. "Something else came out of Scudder's mirror. I repeat, something came out of the mirror and it is now heading in your direction. I repeat. It is heading in your direction."