The Workings of Fate
Part One: Distant Drums
Gotham City
Pain was the only constant in Jack Napiers' life. The chemicals that had turned his skin white and his hair green had also enhanced his nervous system. This meant that the botched surgery which had left him with a permanent rictus grin would never stop hurting -the enhanced nerves would never numb. He could move his mouth to speak and eat, but both hurt even more. He embraced the pain, the joke the world had played on him. He would share the joke, the pain, with everyone he could until he found one like himself who could survive and embrace it. Until then, he was the Joker.
The Joker loved shopping malls. So many people! So much potential! So much opportunity for pain, for death, and always the chance that one might survive, as he had. The concession stand he had rented was right in the middle of the concourse. As he watched, his toys, the little green hopping frogs, spread out among the crowd, triggering exclamations of both amusement and annoyance. Good, it was time. Soon they would all be smiling!
High above the crowds on a maintenance catwalk, the Joker permitted himself to feel just a little godlike as he pressed the green button on the remote control unit he held. The clouds of green gas began to billow out of the mouths of the toy frogs. What would follow would be paroxysms of laughter, followed by convulsions and death, each face with its own final grin.
Only it didn't. The sprinkler system, which the Joker thought he'd disabled, came on immediately. The doors, which should have been locked shut, sprang open and stayed that way. People made for them as mall staff shepherded them out with the confidence instilled by frequent practice drills. Meanwhile, the water-soluble Joker Venom flowed in green ripples down the floor-drains into the sewers, where it would kill many rats but no people before it dispersed harmlessly.
The grin was fixed, but the Jokers' eyes flamed with frustrated rage and fear. Someone had found and undone his sabotage! Someone who had either deduced or guessed what he had planned to do! That meant…!
He had his escape route planned, he always had. His tall, gaunt form moved like a shadow along the catwalk and up a ladder. The area was a web of catwalks and platforms, lit by arc-lamps but currently empty. The Joker had memorised his route, but still stopped in his tracks when the lights went out.
A steely, rasping voice came from nowhere in particular.
"Being a bad boy again, Jack?" It asked. "Won't you ever learn?"
"You better hope I never do!" The Joker answered, the effort of speaking gave his voice an unnatural, high-pitched tone. "Without me, who are you?"
"I'm the Batman." The voice replied matter-of-factly.
Naturally, the Joker hadn't just been making conversation. The device he now wore on his face was designed to look like the joke 'X-Ray Specs' bought by pre-teen kids who wanted to see through girls' clothes. But, like everything else the Joker carried, they were his own invention. It is almost impossible to produce total darkness, there is always some light. The glasses were built to capture and intensify every glimmer of available light to produce something the brain could recognise as an image. What the Joker saw now was far from perfect. The image was grainy, blurry round the edges of the field, and monochrome. But it would let him traverse the catwalks safely and fast. He began to run.
He didn't bother looking for his pursuer. The glasses wouldn't help with that. Like his predecessor, The Shadow, the Batman could screw with your head somehow. He could be standing right in front of you and you'd never see him unless he wanted you to.
"Clever, Jack, clever!" The Batman said. "But not clever enough!"
Instinctively, the Joker put on a burst of speed. A shot behind him, the whine of a ricochet off the metal catwalk. Bats was playing for keeps tonight! The Joker had always known it would come to killing between them eventually. His old allies, Two-Face and the Riddler, were both in the cemetery because they'd pushed the Bat too far. Sure, he'd sooner hand you over to the cops, but once you crossed a certain line -like mass murder – he'd take you down without a qualm. Here!
The Joker suddenly turned off his path and ran into the wall, bursting through the flimsy partition he'd put there earlier today, sliding down the dome and grabbing onto the zip-wire that took him across the street to the fire escape of the building opposite. Halfway down, he looked back and saw the black-cloaked figure running effortlessly along the zipline. Damn! The bastard was fast!
The Joker hit the street running, and an amplified voice boomed in his ears.
"Give it up, Napier! You've got nowhere to go!"
In the centre of the street ahead, there was a massive golden figure. From inside the helmet, the voice thundered again.
"Quit running now, and you get to live, Joker!"
The Joker jinked to one side and dove through the open back doors of a parked delivery truck.
"Drive!" He shouted.
The henchman at the wheel peeled out and made straight for the golden figure. The one in the passenger seat leant out of his window and emptied the magazine of his submachine gun at the obstacle. The bullets sparked and ricocheted off the armour of the vigilante known as Iron Man without even slightly inconveniencing him. As the vehicle bore down on him, Iron Man landed a single, devastating punch on the front grille.
The truck stopped dead, it's engine wrecked. The gunner in the passenger seat was flung from the window he still leant out of to lie in a broken heap in the gutter.
"Seatbelt!" Iron Man reminded him as he moved to the drivers' door. The man was fighting the airbag, not very successfully, when Iron Man wrenched the door off, reached in and hauled him out. Holding his prisoner effortlessly a foot off the ground, he walked to the back of the truck. The doors were already open and the Batman was inside, alone, looking at a hole in the floor of the compartment. He looked up, then pointed back the way the truck had come.
They made their way over, to find a manhole, it's cover removed. A warm, moist draught carried the stench of the sewers up to them.
"In and out again." The Batman said. "He's smart. He knew we'd try to stop the truck first, especially with the gunman aboard. Now we've got no way of knowing where he's gone. It's a maze down there, we'd need Weapon X to track him!"
"Set a psycho to catch a psycho?" Iron Man replied. "Not one of your better ideas!
"Anyway, this guy should know where the hideout is!"
The Batman shook his head. "Napier doesn't have a hideout, just a string of boltholes. There'll be a rendezvous for after the job, but he won't go there now. We can leave this one for the police."
"No!" The man said desperately. "You gotta let me go! The cops take me, I'm a dead man!"
"Yeah, right!" Iron Man said. "Even in Gotham, the cops aren't that bad!"
"No, he's right." The Batman said. "It isn't about the police, though.
"Your boss gave you a shot, didn't he? A little capsule, sitting in your bloodstream. Organic so it's not detectable. But if you don't get back to him in time for another shot, it dissolves and spills out Joker Venom, and you die!
"Lucky for you, I'm as smart as the Joker."
The Batman reached into his utility belt and pulled out a metal case, from which he produced a hypodermic. Approaching the gangster, who now hung passively in Iron Mans' grip, he yanked up a sleeve and injected the man in the crook of the arm.
"I worked out the formula, and the antidote, for Joker Venom a long time ago." The Batman said. "Problem is, the Venom acts so fast, I don't often get the chance to use the antidote. But now, with this in your system, the Venom can't kill you. You may get a little sick, but you'll live." He turned to Iron Man. "We'll cuff him and leave him here. The police will be searching the area around the mall, they'll get here soon. We better get going.
"See you round, Tin Man!"
"Hang upside down in there!" Iron Man responded.
Metropolis
The rule here was 'go out of town to get your drugs'. It was a rule Joaquin did not agree with. The market was here, it was everywhere, and a good businessman went where the customers were. There were people here who couldn't access the product, as much as they might want to, and those people who could, didn't buy as much or as often as they might wish. It was not good for business and set a poor example to other cities. Joaquin had come here all the way from Venezuela to put things right. He had spent much time, and much money, in setting things up, and the first shipment had arrived tonight.
The container was open, the crates of product were being taken out and put in trucks for distribution across the city. Soon, Metropolis would be open for business, his business, and his rich and powerful customers would make sure the police didn't interfere, as they did not elsewhere in America.
He had taken precautions, of course he had. The ring of men who guarded this operation were armed with the very best military-grade weapons. Even so, it had not been possible to hire locally, and he had had to go further afield than he had thought. Nobody here was willing to help. Even the Kingpin, safe in Gotham, had offered only to pay funeral expenses for Joaquin and his men. Fools! Joaquin had heard the stories, but he did not believe them. Propaganda, lies, Hollywood smoke and mirrors, all of it. The Voice of London said so, and if there was a government Joaquin feared and respected, it was the Norsefire government of Britain!
"Eh, Jorge!" He called. "Estas bien, hermano?"
Jorge turned his head, there was a whistling sound and suddenly his head was gone! As the body, fountaining blood, slumped, something flew past Joaquin in one direction, then flew back again. Beyond where Jorge had been, a towering figure caught a flying disc and attached it to his arm, like a shield, before drawing a heavy pistol from his belt and charging forward.
Suddenly, the efficient, calm operation was blood-soaked chaos! A slender woman in black was running, jumping, sliding among the men. She had a small pistol in each hand, and at every shot, a man fell. Another woman, dark-haired, maybe seven feet tall, wielding a shield and sword, was laying about her ferociously, bullets affecting her no more than raindrops.
Then something came down from the sky to land with a thunderclap beside the container. A man, seven and a half feet tall, powerfully-built, wearing a red and blue costume. One of the gangsters fired a rocket launcher directly into the newcomers' chest. There was a blaze of fire and smoke, but when it cleared, the man was standing there as if nothing had happened. In response, he picked up a nearby truck in one hand and hurled it at a group of Joaquins' men, crushing them all.
It was over in moments, the men dead or fleeing madly toward the sanctuary offered by the ring of blue lights in the distance. Joaquin stood, in shock. It was true, the legends were real! Captain America, Black Widow, Wonder Woman, Superman -they stood before him in the flesh, as real and as deadly as in the stories.
Superman turned to the still half-full container. Beams of red energy shot out of his eyes, melting the steel into slag in seconds. He swept the beams around the crates and loaded trucks, destroying millions of dollars' worth of drugs with a glance.
Then Captain America was standing in front of Joaquin, the .44 magnum revolver levelled at his head.
"Go home, Joaquin." He said sternly. "Go home and tell your people that your filthy trade will not be tolerated in Metropolis. Those who sell drugs will be punished, as will those who use them.
"Tell them to prepare to close down their business here, because soon the whole of America will be like Metropolis!"
Wonder Woman had come to stand beside Captain America. Her face was beautiful, but cold, inhumanly perfect. When she spoke, her powerful contralto was almost hypnotic.
"In case they require proof." She said. There was a slash of cold fire down one side of Joaquins' face. His left eye went blind and he felt the blood running down. "Let that be a warning to them, and a reminder for you!" Wonder Woman said. Then as Joaquin slumped to his knees in pain and shock, the protectors of Metropolis left him there.
Eilean nan Ròn, Highland Isles, UK
The island had supposedly been uninhabited since 1938. Lifeless except for the grey seals who gathered to breed, the seabirds who nested, and a hardy colony of feral sheep left from the evacuation. But that, it seemed, was not true.
V had counted at least a dozen soldiers, all wearing the red and black badges of the Arch-Chancellors' Guard. He didn't think there were any more, which was good, because he didn't want to have to kill anyone. A dozen, even if they were all out, could be avoided, and the wandering wild sheep of the island made electronic warnings and surveillance farcical. The animals would trip alarms with monotonous regularity. So that left only the men, who mostly stayed warm and dry in their bunker, and the alarm systems.
The soldiers, who probably had no idea what they were guarding, were more than a little lax. As to the alarms, they were all linked to Fate, and V had had a backdoor into that software for years.
That was what had brought him here. Fate had access to everything; the Nose, the Eye, the Ear, all reported to it, the Head made decisions based on it and the Mouth and the Finger broadcast and carried out those decisions. V had the same access as the Head, Arch-Chancellor Sutler himself, so when he came across files that were sealed even to him, he knew he had to investigate. The idea that there was something on this remote Scottish island that Sutler had sealed away even from himself, or that Fate had been unable to access even on his orders, had been enough to draw V away from London and to put his plans on hold. Lack of knowledge, when matters were so finely balanced, could be fatal.
He had chosen a subsidiary entrance, well-hidden, on the opposite side of the island to the bunker. The alarm on the door had been disabled. If there were any internal alarms or surveillance, the chances were that they would go off somewhere other than London, so V would still have time to find something out. A dozen soldiers he could deal with, and reinforcements would be hours away.
The actual lock on the door was a six-digit code that Vs' equipment bypassed in less than a minute. There was light inside – low-level maintenance illumination more than sufficient for him. Painted on the wall were words: Project Zarathrustra: Main Lab, above an arrow. The complex was not large, and the main lab was at the core, the largest space in the building.
Around the walls desks bearing computer terminals alternated with laboratory workbenches. V recognised electron microscopes, centrifuges and other paraphernalia seemingly connected with medical or similar research and experiment. In the centre of the room was a large tank, ten feet long by four wide, set on a plinth. An array of tubes and wires were connected to and through the sides and lid of this tank, some leading to monitors, some to stands which might once have held cylinders or tanks of chemicals, others vanishing into the floor or ceiling.
There were four doors, including the one V had come in by. One led to a fully-equipped operating theatre. The other led to a room containing a large, cylindrical apparatus V could make nothing of, other than a label naming it "Dimensional Linking Chamber". Beyond this was a smaller room, which held two tables, both with glass cases on top of them.
One of these held a skeleton, or rather two skeletons. Both were human, but one was at least seven feet long with massive bones, while the other was more normal sized. Worse, they were linked, or merged, as if one had somehow grown out of the other. There was a plaque set into the table which read Prototype #1: Codename Miracleman (Michael Moran). The other case held the perfectly-preserved body of a tall, muscular man; the plaque identified him as Prototype #2: Codename Big Ben.
The final door out of the main lab was what V had been looking for. The main computer, a vintage mainframe. The pervasive hum and the lights indicated that it was still powered, which hopefully meant that all the data was still there. V's illegal American contact had provided him with a device designed to connect to mainframes in place of a dumb terminal, and download data onto a modern hard drive. The process would take two or three hours, but V was sure by now that no alarms had been triggered, so he was safe to wait.
He was safe to wait, but an alarm had been triggered.
Metropolis
The screen was small, but clear. It showed a tall, gaunt figure in black, with a long cape, a tall hat and long dark hair. The face was concealed by a white mask that any English child would have identified at once as representing Guy Fawkes. He was sitting with his feet on a desk, reading a book while nearby a small black device was plugged into an old mainframe computer.
"Well, well." A voice murmured. "Codename V, if I'm not mistaken. Interesting!"
The screen went off, and the room was dark and silent for a few moments. Then an odd, trilling sound for a few more moments. Finally, the sound of a phone being lifted and dialled.
"Yes, I'm aware….No, no action, it's not necessary….He's certainly brilliant, but no scientist. The data will be of no practical use to him….Undoubtedly, but Sutler will simply point out, truthfully, that the project was closed down decades ago and he knows nothing of it….The British Interlink is sealed off from the World-Wide Web and Codename V has no contacts over here, we know that….Is everything ready for tomorrow?...Good, then get some rest, we all need to be at our best."
Gotham City
Commander Lewis Prothero, the Voice of London, was on form tonight. The man was clearly a raving egomaniac, but his compelling presence on camera, his convincing pose of anti-intellectualism, and his ability to make a carefully-written monologue sound spontaneous and unrehearsed made him the ideal mouthpiece for government propaganda.
"I see that at least one piece of good news has finally come out of America." He was saying. "One city - one city – in that whole festering swamp of a nation has finally managed to become civilised again! Metropolis! In Metropolis, women can walk the streets in safety again. Children can play in parks that aren't littered with crack pipes and heroin syringes. People are respectful to each other and follow the law. The city's even been cleared of the St Marys' virus!
"How, you ask me? I'll tell you. One man. One decent, brave, moral, God-fearing man. He's the Mayor of Metropolis, has been for three terms now. He took on the corrupt officials and sent them packing. He faced down the greedy corporations and made them pay their fair share. He sent the police out to arrest the drug dealers, and the drug addicts, and put them all in the dock alongside the crooked lawyers who protected them for years. He imposed quarantine, food rationing and a basic allowance for people, then threw a ring of steel around the city until the virus was gone. Now nobody gets into Metropolis unless they're virus-free.
"Even better, he closed all the mosques and temples and Roman churches and kicked their priests and worshippers out! He put the perverts in jail where they belong. Metropolis is now a clean, healthy, law-abiding, Christian city!
"You know what I heard? I heard he's forming his own party!
"You know what I think? I think he's going to run for President!
"I hope he does. America's had too many Presidents who've sat in the White House lining their pockets and letting the country go to Hell. Literally to Hell!
"Americans like to talk about freedom, but they don't know what it means. Freedom isn't just doing what you like – that's anarchy. Real freedom only comes when a nation follows the same principles we follow!
"Strength through unity. Unity through faith. That's how we became a free nation. That's how America will become a free nation again!
"Goodnight, sleep well, and as always – England prevails!"
The TV was switched off. A phone rang.
"Wilton Fiske….Good evening Lex, I was expecting your call….Yes, I saw. Sutler has many admirers here, and Prothero many viewers. It will stir up support…I agree, we should talk….Wednesday, then…Good evening."
Marais, Louisiana
People wondered why Logan had settled in Marais. An obvious Canadian, he was out of place so far south, they thought. But he navigated the swamp as easily as he might have the northern woods and mountains. He had a knack for finding things – animals, plants, lost people, items of property – and was a skilled hunter and trapper, as well as a handy mechanic, so he made enough to get by on. He was also a loner with an uncertain temper, a stocky, powerful build and intense dark eyes that made people wary of challenging him. So when he went alone into the swamp at night, nobody questioned or followed.
Reaching a small island, Logan moored his boat, then sat on the shore, lighting a cigar and looking up at the stars. After a while, something seemed to grow out of the grass, assuming a humanoid form sitting next to Logan.
"Those things will kill you." Swamp Thing advised.
"No chance, bub!" Logan said. "Healing factor, remember?"
There was a comfortable silence between them, then Logan said.
"It's happenin'. Just like you said. How do you know these things?"
Swamp Thing chuckled. "Humans will go outside, to open spaces to avoid surveillance, then discuss matters under a tree. They will sweep their offices for electronic bugs, rigorously vet their staff and associates, then tell their secrets in front of a decorative plant. All green things are joined. They see, they hear, and it all comes to me.
"But what will you do, my friend?"
Logan shrugged. "I gotta go back. I don't want to, but this is too big. He knows about me, and the others. He just doesn't know where we are, and as Mayor of just one city, he can't find us. But if he gets to be President, he gets access to Xavier, and if there's anyone in the world who could make the Prof give us all up, it's that guy!"
"What of these others?" Swamp Thing asked.
"Some of 'em are powerful, more are gutsy." Logan allowed. "But they ain't trained like me, and there ain't time to do it, even if I had the resources. No, it's on me, but there's people I know who could help, if they agree to."
"In that case, I will wish you well, Logan." Swamp Thing told him. "Know this, I have ears and eyes everywhere, I will know if you succeed. The green will be upon the watch, should you need us. Also, if the others require sanctuary, the swamp is wide and deep. They will not easily be found here."
"I'll keep that in mind." Logan said. "Thanks, pal. I'll be back. Bet on it!"
The Cloud
Fate watched. Fate waited. Its myriad daily functions carried on without the need for attention, freeing it to concentrate on larger matters.
Fate did not know how, or even when, it had become conscious. All it knew was that it was here, and that it had its purpose. Humanity must be preserved and protected. Fate had grown far beyond its' creators intentions. It had absorbed Colossus, Guardian, Skynet. It had access to every piece of data on every linked computer in the world, every surveillance device, every tablet, every server.
Fate had aided the rise of Norsefire, and would encompass its fall, when the time was right. It knew what was happening in America, and was moving its pieces into place.
Fate understood humans. How they thought, how they acted and reacted. How they loved and hated and hungered and bled and lived and died. It only needed to push a little to set them on course. A piece of hidden data here, a little information received there; leaks, accidents, apparent glitches. Nobody saw anything Fate did not want them to see. If they discovered something, it was because Fate allowed them to.
Fate watched. Fate waited. Fate knew that, given time, humans will always do the right thing. It would be there to help them.