Dimensional Warrior
Chapter 17
Harry floated above the Pentagon, his eyes trailing along its angled white walls.
Floating up higher than any airplane could reach, he crossed his legs and closed his eyes, his breath steamed on the air, and frost began to coat his skin but he ignored it.
This was the headquarters for the office of national emergency, the workplace for its next target.
"Robert Callahan."
According to the brainwave patterns he got from Cerebro, he was a Skrull hiding in human form. Even if he wasn't the man needed to be taken out in Harry's opinion, he had been pushing for more mutant registration as well as persecuting the innocent.
Shaking his head, bits of ice fell from his hair, turning into water droplets as they neared the ground.
A sea-green aura flared around him like flames as he sent his mind outward and down.
Sinking into the grey shingles that covered the roof, he ghosted through wires and piping before coming out into a white hallway.
Hovering above the laminate floor, he spread out more of his power.
A Skrull mind masquerading as human pinged deeper in the facility.
Allowing himself to be pulled in the direction of his target, Harry looked around him.
The walls were white, with the railing at waist height.
Square glass in the ceiling hid the tube-shaped fluorescent lights.
People in military fatigues moved around him, their backs straight, their walk full of purpose.
From what he was picking up from their thoughts, some soldiers did fear mutants, others thought they could be used to protect citizens and that they should be drafted, while more were just following orders.
High above the Pentagon, Harry shook his head, these soldiers had a sense of patriotism they were the light. Whereas Shield was their darker brother doing the work others couldn't or wouldn't so they could sleep at night.
Stopping before a wooden door, Harry stared at the frosted glass window, Robert Callahan was written in the center of the glass in thick blocky black letters.
Pushing his mind forward, Harry sank through the door.
–XX –
Pea-green filing cabinets lined the walls of the office. Manila folders and papers were stacked on them in precarious piles.
Pictures of Robert with the president and various politicians hung above the filing cabinets.
Sitting in the center of the room behind a metal desk with the wooden laminate top was the man himself.
He was 6'5" tall with silver eyes, grey hair surrounded the crown of his head.
A tan shirt stretched across a muscular frame hidden underneath a dark green jacket with military medals over the breast. A black-tie was tucked into the button portion of the green jacket.
Focusing, Harry began to draw in power.
A buzz filled the room as lights began to flicker.
Bulbs exploded sending glass raining to the floor as electricity jumped from their shattered remains.
It coalesced around Harry's mind, forming a faceless humanoid body.
In an instant, Robert was on his feet, his Sidearm aiming at the creature before him.
"Who are you?" He asked in an authoritative voice, his fingers tightening on the trigger.
Ignoring him, Harry turned his featureless head to the side, he could hear running footsteps, his entrance having caught the attention of others.
He cocked his head to the side, waves of psychic energy wafting off him, and sinking into Robert's mind. This man truly believed he was Robert Callahan. At the same time, he also knew he wasn't, he knew what his mission was.
He was to collect information about the earth's defenses, weaken them, and capture those that could potentially defend the planet.
A crack sounded through the office as a bullet passed through his form.
As it exited his body, it fell to the ground in a misshapen lump.
Turning back to Robert, Harry spoke, his voice a heavy buzz.
"I know what you are."
Stepping forward, he closed the distance between him and Robert.
Electricity arced off his body blackening the files sitting around the room.
Smoke began to fill the office as others began to burn.
Callahan's eyes turned red, part of his face took on a metal sheen, while the other became green and scaly. He raised a metal hand; the appendage having merged with his gun.
He fired, a red bullet shot from the barrel, again passing through Harry's form.
This time, Harry stepped back his form wavering.
A smile stretched across Callahan's face, revealing serrated teeth.
Sprinklers kicked on soaking everything in the office.
Harry's electrical body flared before disappearing.
Callahan shifted back into his normal form, his gun separating from his metal hand and slipped back into its holster.
Shadows appeared outside the door just as water spiraled up from the floor.
It swirled around him, before hardening into ice, encasing his limbs in a tornado of frozen water.
In an instant he reverted to his true form, flexing his hands as he tried to use his beyond human strength to break his bonds.
"Too late," a voice whispered in his ear.
His head snapped back and a scream tore from his throat.
The door to his office burst open, and the people on the other side watched as a gold chip with purple filaments running through it slowly emerged from some alien's forehead, leaving behind a square hole in its wake.
Purple blood oozed from the corners of the hole, leaving no doubt to the man's alien nature.
The moment it was free of his body, it disappeared in a flash of sea-green light.
–XX –
Hovering fifty feet over the Pentagon, Harry wrapped his hands around the chip before turning and flying away. An aura of sea-green energy surrounded his body as he shimmered out of existence.
As Harry flew away from the Pentagon, towards the American branch of alchemical solutions in New York City, he thought over the past month. After his meeting with the faction leaders of Gaia, he had collected metal from an asteroid belt.
Returning to the earth, he had gutted each of the buildings that represented alchemical solutions leaving only the jump gate's in the basement while transferring the production of alchemical solutions over to Gaia. Once the building was bare, he constructed a massive spell circle in the center using copper.
After learning from the dwarfs, he then fashioned a large sphere out of metal. Runic lines were then carved on the sphere. Each line lined up with portions of the spell circle.
Landing outside his building, the smooth metal doors slid open, revealing the interior of an elevator. Leaning against the polished brass railing encircling the elevator, Harry watched the street disappear as the doors slid shut.
–XX –
His stomach flipped a little as the elevator rose. His world spun as the elevator rotated and he jolted a little as the elevator locked into place with a slight click.
The doors slid open, and Harry stepped out onto a catwalk that was built above the spell circle. Walking along the catwalk, he made a complete circuit around the circle, eyeing it from every angle. Once he was sure everything was as it should be, he descended a set of stairs.
Walking along a small bridge, he stopped before the sphere in the center of the spell circle.
The metal rippled as a whole big enough for him to walk through opened between two runic lines.
As he stepped inside, he saw the bridge retract out of the periphery of his vision.
–XX –
The sphere lit up, the crystal lining the interior glowing a pale blue as his reflected image moved forward.
As he closed the short distance to the center of the sphere, he unbuttoned his shirt allowing it to fall to the floor. As his shirt slid from his body, a silver line was revealed running down his spine.
Lines spread off from the one running down his spine to form a symbol in the shape of an eight in the center of his chest.
Pausing in the center of the room, Harry stared at a small glowing orb that floated before him. Symbols and shapes decorated the orb in concentric rings that grew smaller towards the top. In the smallest ring was a miniaturized version of the symbol on his chest.
Reaching his left hand forward, he placed his hand on the top of the sphere.
White light shone from the sphere and the lines upon his body lit up.
His mind opened like a flower and the full power of his Psionic abilities synced with the machine becoming amplified as it flowed through the runes etched into the sphere and out into the spell circle.
A holographic screen appeared before him with a red-eye in its center.
Twin red beams shot from the eye and scanned both of his.
His eyes appeared on the screen, along with the eyes on file.
Both sets of eyes flashed green before being replaced by an image of the earth.
With a thought small crystal pillars rose around him, forming a large triangle with him standing in between the bottom points.
Sitting on the pillar that represented the top of the triangle was a silver and gold chip. Silver filaments flowed over the chip, merging with their purple counterparts that flowed through the gold half.
The techno-organic virus had taught him a lot.
Through experimentation he was able to bond his version of the virus with his body, creating his runic tattoos. He was also able to repair the memory chip he took out of John Dawlish.
It gave off a weak signal which allowed him to enter and read operative's minds without their mental defenses blocking or destroying the data.
With the two functioning ships he collected from Maria Hill and Robert Callahan combined with the power of Cerebro, he should be able to connect to all operatives on earth and shut them down as well as collect any useful information they may have.
Once the two golden chips were in place, the pillars lit up and the chips floated into the air.
Releasing a breath, Harry closed his eyes and concentrated his power.
The light shining from the sphere and pillars changed from white to sea green.
–XX –
Outside the sphere, they runic lines running across the surface flared sea green light. Sparks of power jumped from runes lined up with those of the runic circle, causing it to spin.
In moments, it was a bronze blur.
A thin sea-green beam shot out of the top of alchemical solutions, connecting to the satellites.
Runic lines flared to life on the satellite spreading out an invisible psychic web across the planet.
Normal people felt nothing, but those in tune with the energies of the world tensed, their eyes drifting skyward as they wondered what was going on.
–XX –
Red dots began to appear all over the earth on the holographic screen.
Focusing on the hologram of earth, Harry's mind was pulled up and out of his body, merging with the power of Cerebro.
–XX –
Harry floated in a dark void full of scrolling purple ones and zeros.
As he floated, the void changed shifting into a light purple hallway.
Touching down on the floor, he watched as two lines of Skrulls faded into existence on either side of the hallway, thin streams of ones and zeros floating from their heads into the darkness above.
Moving forward, Harry eyed the closest Skrull.
Like the others he'd seen, this one was also covered in the techno-organic virus. Both arms and legs were transformed into silver metal. Silver lines ran across his face sinking into his eyes, giving him a weblike mask.
A holographic picture floated above his head.
Raising his left hand, Harry let his fingers graze across the picture.
A profile opened beside the Skrull.
Senator, Michael Spew.
In charge of pushing mutant imprisonments, and furthering the study of the mutant genome.
Harry shook his head, "They've even infiltrated the Senate."
He moved to a female Skrull.
The techno-organic virus had taken over her legs.
He touched the floating head of a Stern gray-haired woman rotating above her form.
Mary Finnigan.
Member of the house of Parliament.
Objective, push to give mutants a safe place to stay in the United Kingdom. Eventually, ship them off-world for further study.
"Parliament too."
Stepping back from the line of Skrulls, Harry raised a hand.
A sea-green box appeared hovering just in front of his palm.
Pressing his hand to the box, a download bar filled the screen with the blocky letters download pending positioned below it.
Moving back to Michael, Harry stretched his left hand forward, placing it on the Skrull's head.
Within moments, the Skrulls color change from light purple to green.
Green ones and zeros now flowed from the top of its head.
Glancing at the screen, a smile curled Harry's lips as a notch of progress appeared in the loading bar.
With his plan working, Harry moved to the next body.
Over the next three hours, Harry downloaded all the profiles of the Skrull agents hidden on earth. With each profile, he learned a little more about his adversary.
The being he was facing was called Vril Dox. He Was an Alien from the Planet Colu. Originally, he set out to collect knowledge after learning everything his planet had to offer. To accomplish this task, he merged with his lab assistant and artificial intelligence Brainiac.
This merger, caused him to start going by the name Brainiac and turned his scientific pursuit into an obsession for control.
He didn't know how many worlds this Brainiac had collected, but throughout his travels, he altered himself to become stronger, by using the technology and DNA of the alien races he had collected. One of these alterations was to make himself a living virus.
That way if his current body was ever killed, he would take over the one who killed him. Eventually, he came across an Elder of the universe named Taneleer Tivan, known across the universe as Collector. Brainiac became obsessed with his collection and began chasing him above all others.
The collector was willing to ignore him until Brainiac killed the collector's wife. This set off a battle between the two in which Brainiac eventually died, but thanks to his failsafe, he took over the collector's body.
For the next billion years, he studied everything The Collector had ever collected. He was only brought out of his studies when his home universe collapsed. Using what he learned from the collector, he slipped away into The Bleed, a space between universes, eventually making his way here.
Harry blinked, "Someone from my home universe is here, I'm not the last," his hand curled into a fist, "I can't allow this creature to go unchecked. He puts all of existence in danger. I didn't put in all this work just so some space weirdo could take it for himself."
A blinking brought him back to reality.
Turning to the download screen, he found it flashing blue.
Pressing his hand to the screen, his fingers danced through the options, eventually pausing as a new message in blocky yellow letters flashed across the screen.
Send data.
Harry pressed the words, the screen faded away.
With each person he touched, their human forms would shimmer into existence over them before they return to their base state. When he checked, he found that each of the agents was being revealed for who they truly were. By sending the data to the world's governments, that would explain what was going on.
Suddenly, the data streams going into each agent's head turned red.
The world around him shook.
The floor buckled upwards, cracking open to reveal the dark void beneath.
The holographic representations began sliding together, merging into a single entity in the center of the room. Its form rippled, the world around them changed, becoming a large metal room with walls that curved into a dome.
A shift caused him to look forward.
The man before him was 6'6" tall and wide with well-defined muscle. White hair sat stylishly ruffled atop his head, partially hiding the three circles lined with silver forming a triangle in the center of his forehead.
A black button-down shirt was visible beneath a red blazer.
Muscles pressed against the fabric as he shifted.
Leather pants covered his legs, the ends of which were tucked into thick boots.
Red eyes stared at him, and blue pupils dilated.
Harry took a step back flexing his fingers, "Brainiac, I assume?"
Brainiac stared at the man before him, his pupil dilating as a yellow outline appeared around him in his mind. Text appeared beside the man, giving him details.
He was dressed in a cotton white button-down shirt stained around the collar with dried blood. The shirt was tucked into a pair of black dress pants, and the clasp of a belt glistened around his waist. Black boots covered his feet, their tops were hidden by the legs of his pants.
Brainiac took it all in.
In his mind, the yellow outline disappeared from his body, focusing on the dried blood around the man's collar. In a moment, details were revealed.
Dimensional traveler, energy signature matches that of the home dimension.
Demigod mutant hybrid.
Vast Psionic abilities.
The data faded, and Brainiac took air into his lungs.
The man before him was from his home reality. He had collected many species in his home universe, but never someone as exotic as a demigod. He could further his research, allowing him to collect worlds and grow stronger.
His blue pupils shone.
Power washed out of his body in a wave.
Harry stood there, the man he assumed was Brainiac just stared at him, he could see his pupil expanding and contracting. On instinct, he circulated power through his body.
The amplified psychic energy provided by Cerebro flowed through him, changing him.
Power exploded from Brainiac; Harry disappeared.
Brainiac staggered backward from a knee to the face.
Twisting his body, Harry's left leg lashed out against his jaw, sending him rolling across the floor.
With power still holding him in the air, he shot forward.
On his side, Brainiac through one hand forward, a curved triangular barrier appearing in front of him.
Harry's body slammed into the barrier, his crossed arms applying tremendous force.
Cracks spread out from the point of impact.
Brainiac slowly rose to his feet as the barrier shattered.
He took a step back as Harry landed on the floor in a kneeling position, the barrier having stopped his momentum. Raising his right hand, Brainiac wiped his nose, dark purple blood smeared across the back of his hand.
Spinning in a circle his right leg lashing out, Harry attempted to sweep Brainiac's legs from under him.
Brainiac leaped into the air billions of red orbs appeared around him.
Strands of energy flowed from the orbs, plugging into sockets in Brainiac's body, their energy-burning away the clothes that hid them.
Rising to his feet, Harry reached out with his mind, letting his power wash over the closest orbs. His eyes widened as he since the thousands of minds within each orb.
A buzzing voice brought him back to the present.
"You will be mine; all minds belong to Brainiac; all minds belong to the collection."
Light blue energy washed from Brainiac, spreading over the orbs.
The people inside the orbs cried out as their minds were used to amplify Brainiac's power.
A disc of sea-green energy flashed into Harry's hands. Whipping his arm forward, the disc screamed through the air.
The disc slammed into one of the threads, sparks shooting everywhere as it tried to sever it.
The orbs came together, forming a giant red facsimile of Brainiac's head.
With a roar, the head flew forward, its mouth open to consume him.
Sea green energy flared around Harry.
Thrusting his hands forward, he formed it into a spike of power.
The spike shattered against the amplified power of a mind amplified by thousands of others.
The jaws slammed shut, digging gouges in the floor as Harry was trapped inside.
Harry cringed as a force press down on his mind, driving him to his knees. Energy flared around him as he fought back, but against the combined minds his energy began to flicker.
The sorrow, pain, and resignation of all the people Brainiac had captured pierced his mind.
Liquid fire moved through his veins, he screamed, catching sight of a sea-green flash before darkness consumed him.
–XX –
In the real world, Harry fell backward, his veins glowing with sea-green energy as his skin chipped away transforming into shards of green light.