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The Heart out of New York.
Colonel White sat back at his desk as he listened to the report he had asked for from Captains Blue and Scarlet following the destruction of the Second National Bank in New York, and he mused on the latest Mysteron threat which had been fulfilled. It was mostly his own decision and ultimately his own responsibility the bank had been destroyed in the first place; while he had been surprised to learn 3 men had announced to a watchtower guard they were Mysterons and they planned on hitting the Second National Bank of New York, he had felt it made perfect sense.
The last threat had made it clear the Mysterons planned on striking at human greed, after all, but after a while, Colonel White had simply not seen the point in risking Spectrum lives in protecting a bank. Sure, while it would be inconvenient for the customers of the branch to lose their bank, their money and their accounts were safeguarded by the branches of the bank organisation, so there was no need to worry.
No, he had been more concerned with the safeguarding of New York's population.
They were more important than a bank; with how the Mysterons had gone out of their way to threaten Earth, every human life had become precious.
"…we were heading for the bank when a grey saloon matching the description and registration number sped towards us," Captain Blue was saying. "There was only one man in it, a man who looked like Captain Black."
"When we realised it was him, we changed direction and started chasing him," Captain Scarlet added. "We quickly managed to catch up with him only for him to accelerate and turn a sharp corner, but when we turned that corner we came to a dead end. There was no sign of the saloon and no sign of Captain Black. He had just vanished into thin air."
Colonel White sighed. He wasn't surprised; ever since Spectrum had learnt Captain Black, who had mysteriously disappeared following the Zero X mission to Mars, which ended disastrously with the attack on the Mysteron complex, was the human out of the trio of men sent to investigate strange signals from Mars and resulted in the Mysterons declaring war on Earth, chosen to be under the control of the Mysterons, they had been trying to catch the Mysteron Agent.
Granted, Colonel White had come to wonder if they even could catch him, considering his Mysteron abilities but they needed to try. If they could try to talk some sense into the Mysterons, make them see they didn't need to fight this war of nerves, the war could end.
Hearing this latest power of the Mysterons hardly came as a surprise to Colonel White, and judging from the expressions on the two men in front of him, it looked like they weren't surprised either. The Mysterons had the power to duplicate planes, passengers and crew alike if they wished, with that in mind it shouldn't be difficult for them to disappear out of thin air.
"Go on."
"There's no more to tell; we heard the explosion, and we went back to the bank. It had been destroyed. We had the Spectrum police specialists go in, and they found the dead remains of three men," Scarlet said grimly.
"Yes, their records have come to my attention; two of them were professional criminals, while the third was a consultant in the company who constructed the strong room that was broken into," Colonel White informed the two men.
Blue and Scarlet exchanged a quick glance before they turned back to Colonel White, both of them picturing what had happened. "He told the other two who were professionals about the strong room, and they must have assumed Spectrum had stored money inside," Scarlet nodded as he worked it out.
"That's the only explanation we can come to, especially since all three men are now dead," Colonel White didn't bother making a remark about the obvious being stated since he had expected it, really.
"I still can't work out why the Mysterons decided with this one, Colonel," Captain Blue shook his head in frustration. "Was it just because they wanted to prove to us we are a race of savages or was it more complicated than that?"
Colonel White didn't like the thought of the human race being nothing more than a race of savages, but everyone on Cloudbase knew that was how the Mysterons saw them, ever since that disaster with the Zero X mission. Why was it every single mission and expedition to Mars tended to end in some kind of disaster; first with Zero X landing in a region of Mars with those peculiar 'rock snake' creatures which belched balls of fire at the spacecraft after the explorers destroyed one of its fellows, and now with the Mysteron complex that was destroyed because the crew were terrified by the thought of encountering more of Mars' hostile natives.
Was that the future of human space exploration?
Colonel White hoped not.
He hoped that a solution for the war of nerves against the Mysterons came about, and soon.
"Perhaps, Captain," White replied, wondering when he had become the expert on the Mysterons. "It's possible the Mysterons realised they could make a comparatively harmless strike, against that trio of crooks to tell us all people on Earth are at risk from their war of nerves." It was better saying that than saying humans were automatically savages. "The Mysterons likely saw and recognised the three men for what they were before they announced their threat, and they decided to make use of it for their own ends. They targeted them for their greedy natures, taking advantage of their short-sightedness in not taking the Mysteron threat seriously and it killed them as a result when they came face to face with a true Mysteron."
"I wonder how they reacted when they realised they were facing a true Mysteron," Captain Blue remarked.
"We will never know, nor can we know what was said; the bank's CCTV cameras were not recorded in another building to preserve their information, but we can only make assumptions," Colonel White replied.
There was no doubt within their minds the three criminals who had been so sure they had the city, and therefore the bank to themselves had been shocked when Captain Black revealed himself, likely telling them they proved the Mysterons' points about humanity's corruption and greed which had brought them to their deaths.
There would be nothing the three men could do.
They weren't armed. They had expected the whole of New York to be evacuated and hadn't seen the point, and all they had on them were simple explosives, judging from the preliminary forensic reports. They had not found any tools. Colonel White wished the two professional thieves had thought to pack more explosives or a cutting laser, and get out through that way, and even get out of the bank. If they'd possessed that kind of forethought, then they would have survived. A part of him almost chuckled at the dark irony of the three thieves deciding Spectrum's mercy was better than the cold hard threat of being blown up by the Mysterons, within the very bank they had planned to rob in the first place. But he didn't. The three men were dead.
"How have the New York authorities taken the destruction of their bank, sir?" Captain Blue asked, changing the subject away from how the threat had been fulfilled.
"They aren't happy, but when they discovered how localised the Mysteron threat had actually been, well they were pleased their city had not been harmed," Colonel White replied.
In truth, he was less concerned about the destruction of the bunk, although he had needed to spend 10 minutes listening and fielding off the anger of numerous New York officials, especially the commissioner of police of the city who was angry about the fact the threat had actually been a disguised attempt by three common criminals about the waste of time.
But he wasn't going to shed tears on the destruction of a bank, not with the whole world in danger from the still unknown power of the Mysterons.
"You mean they're angrier we fell for a con from a common crook?" Damn it, why did Captain Scarlet have to hit the nail on the head. But he nodded anyway.
"Yes, but the good news is they understand the dangers of the Mysterons. Don't forget that. We'll triumph over them, soon," Colonel White hoped everyone in the control room didn't hear his inner concerns about that hope.
The Mysterons continually showed off their limitless mastery of matter and energy on every encounter. Could they really stand up to that kind of power? Colonel White didn't know, but he hoped it was so.