"So, what's life like at the Bugle?" Red asked Rick as they sat in the Student's Union Building, sipping coffee after class. "Is Jameson really the ticking time bomb all the rumors say he is?"
"Jameson is…interesting," Rick shook his head. "Fortunately, I don't have to deal with him much. Most of what I do is typing and copy work-formatting, spellchecking, stuff like that."
"How's the money?" Red queried.
"Not that great," Rick said glumly. "Peter says Jameson hires inexperienced college kids because he doesn't have to pay them as much as full-time workers. Still, I'll have enough to cover the rent for this month, and maybe have enough left for a bag of day-old French fries," he finished with a rueful smile.
"So are you feeling better now?" Red asked him as he finished his drink. "I mean, with everything that's happened over the last few months…"
"For now, yeah," Rick nodded, finishing his own coffee. "I'm just glad to be going back to class. I'll have an easier time holding everything together now."
"You know…" Red hesitated. "I've always been meaning to ask you, but there was never really a good time…"
Rick merely raised an eyebrow.
"What was it that messed everything up in the first place? You remember, around four months ago?"
Rick suddenly felt all the old panic, all the old fear, come back again as he frantically tried to think of an excuse.
"Look, I…I'd really rather not talk about it. I just want to forget…uh…it's not really important…I mean…I've taken care of it," he fumbled, knowing full well that Sleepwalker could hear and see everything he saw and said.
Red only looked at him doubtfully.
SLEEPWALKER #33
"THE COLOR OF HATE"
On a continent already wracked with civil wars and massacres, the conflicts plaguing the African country of Somalia were among the very worst. Since the collapse of the former Communist dictatorship in the 1990s, the country had become a lawless hell plagued by civil war between different armed groups fighting for control. Criminals and black market arms dealers had flocked to the country en masse, and groups ranging from the Secret Empire to HYDRA to Magneto's Acolytes to A.I.M. to the Leader and the Latverian government under Doctor Doom all worked to expand their influence in the area, seeking power and profit.
Mr. Jyn leaned back in his chair and smiled widely. Pruitt Industries had recently landed an important contract with some of the local warring clans in the area, and Mr. Jyn had insisted upon visiting firsthand to ensure that his employer's customers were satisfied with their purchases.
Even with all the gunfire, all the screaming and shouting, no one seemed to notice the tall, dark-skinned man as he stood in the middle of the chaos, the lights of the exploding bunkers flashing in his eyes and the roaring of the burning fires echoing in his ears.
All around him, people were fighting and dying, all around him was gunfire and bloodshed, all around him was fire and killing.
Mr. Jyn stood serenely in the midst of the chaos, savoring everything around him. His grin became all the wider as he realized that his success here would only make his employer Harold Pruitt even more money.
He stood there for a day and a night, before he recalled his coming meeting with Doctor Doom about the electrical components Doom wanted, and that Pruitt Enterprises could provide…in approximately half an hour, if Mr. Jyn's calculations were correct.
Latveria was many hundreds of kilometers to the north, and making flight arrangements on such short notice would be almost impossible, not that Mr. Jyn concerned himself with such things.
He needed only a couple of minutes to tidy himself up before he was at the front gates of Doctor Doom's imposing palace in the Latverian capital. Impeccably dressed and coiffed, Mr. Jyn was led in and informed that the good Doctor was seeing to the final details of some matter of state, and would be with his guest shortly. At Mr. Jyn's request, the guards who had let him in brought him a newspaper, which he perused while waiting for the esteemed Emperor of Latveria.
There was news of a coup in the Congo, funded by blood diamonds…an invasion of Wakanda by the Azanians and their Supermacists, who had become that country's superhuman champions after obtaining the technology needed to empower them…firebombings carried out by the Friends of Humanity…
Mr. Jyn's smile grew all the wider, even as he heard the heavy footsteps of the Latverian ruler echoing down the hall.
Mr. Jyn knew that Doctor Doom could probably see him for what he was, and he was far too strong to deal with anyway, which was why Mr. Jyn had never bothered to deal with him directly. But now, in the capacity of working for someone else, he was certain that Doom would be most intrigued by his offer of the reverse-wired electrodes and satellite equipment that the Doctor claimed to need for another one of his 'projects'. In a demonstration of that legendary altruism he was so famous for, Doom had implied that he looked forward to working with Pruitt Enterprises on many such projects in the future…
All the more profit for Mr. Harold Pruitt.
All the better for Mr. Jyn.
With the ever-increasing number of people who had developed superpowers since the late 1990s, and the fact that many of them had become what had become commonly referred to as 'supervillains', national governments had been forced to come up with new ways of incarcerating these criminals when they were finally captured and convicted of their crimes. Supervillains who possessed no actual powers and committed their crimes using specialized skills and equipment were typically sent to Attica Prison in upstate New York, while certifiably insane and exceptionally dangerous villains were typically sent to the Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane, equipped with special cells and restraints to prevent its villainous residents from using their powers to escape. Special restraints that could inhibit the superhuman abilities of those who wore them, but otherwise did not interfere with the workings of their bodies, had been originally designed by Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four and marketed by Stark Enterprises and were placed on every super-powered criminal that was housed in the place.
Ravenscroft was but one of several special prisons built to house supervillains, another being the Vault, located in the mountains of Colorado. Yet another such facility was found in Riker's Island, the infamous New York City penitentiary, part of which had been converted to house supervillains. Commonly referred to as the Raft, it had become known for the notorious costumed criminals it housed within its thick concrete walls.
One such resident was a slim young woman with bright blue eyes and long golden hair, notorious for her haranguing the guards and her fellow inmates with diatribes few of them truly understood, and even fewer cared about. She had come to the prison a scant three months ago in early November, after she had attempted to incite a violent riot in Times Square and had been defeated by Sleepwalker. Originally named Selena Slate, she refused to let anyone address her by that name, preferring her superhuman codename of Spectra. Born of parents who had been involved in the violent social protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s, Spectra had inherited her parents' beliefs and their admiration for revolutionaries such as Che Guevara and the Symbionese Liberation Army, carrying on their dream of violent upheaval and overturning of what she viewed as oppressive power structures and institutionalized oppression.
Surrounded by books on radical anarchism and violent revolution, Spectra sat alone in her cell most of the time, as her cellmates had all become tired of her endless preaching about such things as power structures, institutionalized patriarchy, and the need for violent social upheaval. The only people who would come to see her were like-minded supporters, with whom she had long, rambling discussions on visiting days, most of which the guards quickly tuned out in annoyance.
Today's visitor was a young black woman, whose ranting exchanges with Spectra had made the guards so bored and distracted that they did not notice her taking a small plastic device out of her boot and quickly press it, so that it began glowing brightly. The machine was a device Spectra's followers had purchased from A.I.M., a global terrorist organization whose goal was to establish a new world order based on science and rationality above all else…which they carried out by committing bombings, kidnappings, murder and other horrible crimes, while also raising money by selling deadly weapons and technological devices to anyone who could pay the right price…including a machine that could emit a strong electromagnetic pulse.
If the guards had not paid attention to Spectra and her supporter until now, they did so when her shackles suddenly came loose. Immediately, Spectra's body began glowing with a myriad rainbow of colors, as her superhuman powers returned to her. As the prison guards drew their batons, Spectra immediately began radiating a series of colored lights. The red light she emitted broke her shackles, the white light hypnotized the guards and put them under Spectra's mental control, and the green light projected an illusion that made Spectra look like her follower and the follower resemble a human, depowered Spectra.
Completely under the rainbow-hued woman's spell, the guards opened the doors to let Spectra go, as her follower went back to take her place, putting on a set of specially prepared dummy shackles to heighten the disguise. In the meantime, Spectra casually pocketed the device and walked out of Riker's Island, checking out as the woman who had come to bring her the EMP device…which was conveniently made of plastic so it got past the metal detectors.
When she was far enough from the prison, Spectra shed her disguise and took to the air, leaving a colorful energy trail in her wake.
Now…she thought as she streaked away over the rooftops, the revolution shall begin anew, but first I must prepare…
Mid-January saw Julia resume her typically busy routine of attending classes, community activism, and interning at the Daily Bugle, but now she found herself spending more and more time with Peter Parker's girlfriend Gwen Stacy and Phil Urich, another Bugle intern. They had all heard the rumors swirling around the meteoric rise of Pruitt Industries, and all shared similar concerns.
"So, let's review," Julia began, as they sat together at the Coffee Bean one afternoon. "So far, we've got rumors of…what? Child labor in some of their African and East Asian operations…trade in blood diamonds out of the Congo and Sierra Leone…dealing technology to groups like Latveria, Magneto and the Leader…and just how the hell is he getting ahead of groups like Roxxon and Hammer Labs on the reconstruction contracts in Iraq?"
"That's just what we've heard so far," Gwen shook her head. "Still, they're just allegations, nothing more…right?"
"Well, I've begun digging through the Daily Bugle's foreign correspondence and what we've been picking up on the newswires," Phil Urich said thoughtfully as he rubbed his chin, "but so far everything looks above board. Whoever Pruitt's PR man is, it's like he's a freaking wizard or something."
"So that's it?" Julia asked in surprise. "The Bugle hasn't been able to dig anything up?"
"Well, we haven't been able to do too much on the Pruitt file anyway," Urich reminded her bluntly. "Jameson's been so dead-set on proving connections between the Friends of Humanity and Senator Robert Kelly, that he's had us working around the clock on that before anything else," he explained for Gwen's benefit.
"Why are you guys so interested in Pruitt Enterprises, anyway?" Phil wondered as he leaned back in his chair.
"Something just doesn't seem right about them," Gwen shook her head. "You know how we've gone after Roxxon, Oscorp, Hammer Labs, or Utrecht Industries, right? Companies like Stark Enterprises and Richmond Industries are the good ones, they don't pull the same kind of crap the others do. But everything we've been hearing about Pruitt Enterprises is just as bad."
"And it's happened so soon, so fast," Julia noted. "All these things suddenly happen at once, and all of a sudden Pruitt Enterprises comes out of nowhere to become the hottest thing on Wall Street. Is that really a coincidence?"
"I don't know…" Phil hesitated.
"There've been some other rumors I've been looking into," Julia frowned, "about Harold Pruitt's dealings with Senator Thomas Finster. Maybe Jameson will be more interested in that?" she asked ironically.
Even as he sat waiting for Mr. Johann Schmidt in the fancy South American hotel, Mr. Jyn could feel that something was wrong. In many ways, of course, he was well aware of everything that was said about him and his dealings, but he also knew how great a threat they posed to his activities.
And this current threat could pose a serious complication.
He carefully gazed at his hand, turning it over as he mulled how best to approach the problem.
One finger would likely suffice for the nonce.
"It's a nice day, isn't it?" Alyssa asked Rick, snuggled up against him on the sofa as they looked out over New York City through the window of her apartment. "Think the snow might melt soon?"
"And then the roads will be even worse than before?" Rick asked her ironically, his arm draped around her shoulders.
"Well, at least we won't have to wear those bulky coats and jackets anymore," Alyssa shook her head. "I don't know how the superheroes handle it-I mean, they're all just wearing spandex and tights!"
"They probably get plenty of exercise to keep warm," Rick grinned. "Apparently there was a huge jailbreak at Attica Prison a couple of weeks ago, and a lot of the supervillains who were incarcerated there escaped. Cyrus told me all about it-the Beetle, the Shocker, 8-Ball, the Vulture, Stilt-Man, Blacklash, the Porcupine and a bunch of other guys broke out on New Years' Eve. Some guy called the 'Trapster' organized it all, apparently."
"So how come we haven't seen these guys looting and plundering New York?" Alyssa wondered.
"Who knows?" Rick shrugged. "Most of them are probably living it up in Florida or someplace like that, or they moved to a city where there aren't as many heroes."
"Is something the matter, Mr. Hagrees?" Fancy Dan asked the tall, red-headed man as he recalibrated a large mechanical device in the brightly lit room, ringed with computers and strange mechanical equipment that made it resemble a strange cross between a computer lab and a garage. As one of the Enforcers, the lieutenants who handled the day-to-day business of the Kingpin's criminal empire, Fancy Dan was in charge of internal affairs and administration, recruiting and promoting the criminals and support staff of his employer's syndicate.
"Well, I don't know…" Jeff Hagrees shook his head doubtfully. "I mean, I don't meant to sound ungrateful, but…" More commonly known as the costumed criminal 8-Ball, Hagrees had been incarcerated in Attica Prison after his defeat by Sleepwalker until his escape on New Year's Eve with many of the other supervillains of Attica Prison. His search for lower-profile employment had led him to be hired by the Kingpin as one of the crime boss's engineers and weapons designers.
"But what?" Fancy Dan prompted.
"I fucked up the last time I took on Sleepwalker," Hagrees muttered, as he returned to working on the device, tightening it with a recalibration wrench. "I wasn't able to destroy him, so how come the Kingpin was willing to give me a job after I failed?"
"Oh, you didn't fail, Mr. Hagrees," Fancy Dan grinned. "In fact, I can say that the Kingpin was quite pleased with your efforts, and you did exactly what he was hoping you would."
"But I didn't destroy Sleepwalker," Hagrees protested.
"The Kingpin always thinks five moves ahead of his opponents," Fancy Dan said enigmatically, a wide grin crossing his face, "and always takes variables into account. If you had killed Sleepwalker, all would have been well and I am certain the Kingpin would have found further assignments for you. Even if Sleepwalker defeated you, the results of your activities as 8-Ball nevertheless were to the Kingpin's advantage, and he has seen fit to reward you with this position as one of his engineers."
Jeff Hagrees was about to ask what he meant, before he shrugged and decided there was no sense looking a gift horse in the mouth. He recalled how the Kingpin had ordered him to rob a post-modern art show by some nobody artist at some third-rate gallery and firebomb a hospital, both during his second crime spree as 8-Ball, both of which he had successfully pulled off before Sleepwalker eventually stopped him. Neither activity had seemed very profitable, but the Kingpin had paid him $40,000.
How the Kingpin could have profited from these things, Hagrees had no idea.
Nor did he particularly care, smiling as he returned to work with a renewed vigor.
Rick and Alyssa lay on the sofa for quite a while, as the sun set and darkness crept over the New York skyline. Alyssa seemed to have fallen asleep in Rick's arms, even as Rambo was similarly dozing at the edge of the couch. Rick himself continued to stare out the window at the glittering New York lights, before his gaze was suddenly caught a streak of light passing through the night air. Gently setting Alyssa down and walking to the window to get a closer look, Rick was surprised to see the streak was a multicolored rainbow trailing behind what looked like a female figure glowing with the same rainbow lights and flying through the air.
Suddenly, Rick felt a wave of dizziness overcome him, as Sleepwalker tried to alert Rick of the necessity of releasing him.
"No, not here!" Rick shouted involuntarily. Rambo looked up in surprise as Rick staggered, even as Alyssa woke up in alarm.
"Rick?" she mumbled as she tried to figure out what was going on. "Why are you-"
"No! Just a minute! I've got to get back to-" Rick was saying to himself, before he cursed out loud and ran for the door.
"Rick, what's going on?" Alyssa asked in alarm, as she tried to follow him, Rambo right behind. She barely got out into the hall before Rick ran back into his own apartment and slammed the door in her face, locking it despite her attempts to get in and follow.
"Rick!" Alyssa pleaded, slamming on the door. "What are you-" she began, but there was no answer. Frantic with worry, she ran back into her own apartment, intending to get her cell phone and try and reach Rick.
As she ran for the windowsill where she had left the phone, she happened to glance out of the corner of her eye and see a shocking sight-a tall, gaunt green-skinned entity dressed in blue clothing with a dark purple cloak, hood and arm and leg wrappings, with insect-like compound eyes that glittered in the night, emerging from the window in Rick's apartment. Apparently too intent on pursuing the trail of rainbow light to notice her, the creature did not seem to notice her as it took off into the night.
Alyssa Conover stood there for several minutes, her mind whirling as so many things seemed to suddenly make sense, and so many things suddenly no longer seemed to make sense.
It was not until she stumbled over the couch and fell into a sitting position that she realized she had staggered backwards without realizing it.
She could only continue to stare at the ceiling, as Rambo barked and ran around, confused by what had happened.
The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street was one of the prime financial centers of the world, where billions of dollars in trades were carried out every single day. Even with the rise of superhuman crime in the last several years, as supervillains attracted by the city's wealth attempted to steal some of it for themselves, New York's financial services remained as vibrant as ever, built on a foundation developed over centuries of expansion and development.
The traders who were working that day had seen many strange sights in their city over the years, but perhaps none so surprising as the streak of light that crashed through the ceiling and finally came down to hover above them, taking the shape of a slim young woman glowing with rainbow light, the colors shifting all around her with a life of their own. They could only stare dumbly as she laughed out loud.
"Oh, Ward, if you could only see me now," the rainbow-glowing woman smiled as she looked around at the stunned traders. "I suppose some of you little Eichmanns had to have survived…I guess it's up to me to finish the job!"
"What are you talking about?" one of the traders demanded in bafflement.
"I'll be taking back your blood money," Spectra said simply, "and then I'm going to destroy you all." Her hands began glowing with energy, one yellow and the other orange, as she prepared to fire.
"You shall not attain the opportunity, Spectra!" Sleepwalker shouted as he plunged into the stock exchange and deflected her light beams with his warp vision.
"Sleepwalker!" Spectra shouted, firing a blast of kinetic red energy that the alien dodged, before she caught him with a burst of burning orange light, that caused him to shout in pain. "I might have known that you'd be ready to defend these bloated pigs!"
Sleepwalker did not reply, except to warp some of the tall display cases and monitors around him in an attempt to entangle Spectra. As she used her razor-sharp yellow light to cut herself free, the guardian of the Mindscape flew in and struck her with a one-two punch combination that left her stunned and falling to the floor. As Sleepwalker flew down to catch her, she created a solid barrier of red light behind which she flashed a burst of her illusionary green light, and seemingly vanished, even as she conjured a bevy of flashing lights and sounds to confuse the alien.
Cursing, Sleepwalker looked around frantically, trying to ignore the panicking traders and bystanders as he tried to figure out where Spectra would strike next. A burst of purple light struck from his right before he could react, stimulating the pain impulses in his nervous system until he began writhing in agony, unable to defend himself from the burning orange light Spectra then seared him with or the solid battering ram of red light she used to slam him into a row of computer monitors with a loud crash. Stunned, Sleepwalker staggered to his feet as he warped the debris into a barrier to deflect the freezing blue light Spectra tried to use to slow him down, noting how the metal became cold and brittle under the effects of the light.
Shattering the broken debris with his warp beams and then using them to fling the wreckage at Spectra, Sleepwalker caught her as she blasted them away and then flung her into a large wooden desk, which splintered under the force of the blow as Spectra created a barrier of red energy to shield herself. Looking around, she saw Sleepwalker charging at her and instinctively radiated a field of purple light to protect herself, before Sleepwalker stopped short and warped the ground beneath her to come up and entrap her as she struggled to free herself. Even as Sleepwalker continued to maintain the pressure, Spectra focused her white light in a concentrated burst at the alien, attempting to hypnotize him the way she had the prison guards at the Raft.
Spectra could not have known that a resident of the mental plane like Sleepwalker was exceptionally resistant to mind control and other mental attacks, and so the alien threw off the spell, but he lost critical seconds as he struggled to resist. Spectra broke free with another burst of red light and focused it into a concentrated burst that held Sleepwalker in place as she tore into him with her sharp yellow light. Even as the alien deflected her yellow light with his warp vision, Spectra used her red light to fling Sleepwalker into the far wall with a heavy crash and flew after him, determined to finish the alien off and then loot the stock exchange-he had cost her too much time already.
As Spectra prepared a blast of purple light to override Sleepwalker's nervous system and keep him from resisting, the alien looked to his left to a set of large glass doors, which he focused on with his warp beams. Stretching the glass out and reshaping it as quickly as he could, Sleepwalker fashioned it into a large mirror-like prism that refracted the light and sent it washing back over Spectra. Stunned by her own light, Spectra recoiled in agony and collapsed to the floor, her entire body stinging uncomfortably as her nervous system reacted to the purple light. As his foe collapsed, Sleepwalker stood up and used his warp beams to once again raise the group to entrap her, encasing her up to the neck until she could not move.
"Why do you continue this to engage in this struggle, Spectra?" Sleepwalker asked her as the police came in and placed the power-restraining shackles on her, even as he used his warp beams to free her from the concrete prison he had encased her in. "Why do you perpetrate this cycle of violence and misery?"
Spectra stared sullenly at the floor, images passing through her head of friends being beaten by corrupt police, Oscorp pollution poisoning the rivers and the land, hungry children falling asleep on cold, hard floors. Then, as if she was coming out of a trance, she looked back at Sleepwalker.
"You want to know who causes all the violence and misery?" she spat in disgust as the police led her away. "Take a look around."
Rick woke up some hours later, blinking at the clock radio. Stretching as he got to his feet, he cursed inwardly as he realized that he had abandoned Alyssa for no reason, and knew she would be furious. Hoping she would still be home, he left his apartment and tried the door of hers, finding to his surprise that it was unlocked.
"I knew you'd be back," he heard Alyssa say as he made his way in. As he looked around, he found her still seated on the sofa where he had left her, her back to him.
"A…Alyssa?" Rick began tentatively.
She didn't turn around.
"It all makes sense now," Alyssa said absently, still staring out the window as she petted Rambo, who was curled up in her lap.
"…What does?" Rick asked, as a sickening feeling began in the pit of his stomach.
Alyssa did not respond.
"Aly…please…look at me…" he pleaded.
Alyssa remained silent.
"Alyssa!" Rick finally said, as he came over and sat down on the couch next to her, where she finally turned to look at him. To his amazement, her eyes were sad and haunted, marked with a recent shock.
"I know all about it," Alyssa began.
"All about what?" Rick started.
Alyssa closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she sighed sadly.
"I know you're Sleepwalker."
(Next Issue: Rick finally tells Alyssa the truth behind his odd behavior of the past several months, sharing his secrets for the first time. But how will Alyssa react to Sleepwalker's presence in Rick's mind? And how will Sleepwalker explain himself to Alyssa? All this and more in Sleepwalker #34: To Tell the Truth!)