He should have been dead.
When he had first been consigned to this place, he certainly believed he had passed the threshold of the living into the beyond. For a long time, he believed this place to be the penance for the sins of his life and he had indeed made it to hell. Following that realisation, he had felt for the first time in his existence, the notion of true fear. In this place of pale shades, where he had neither form nor control, he had almost gone insane. Loneliness was not something he was ever able to stand.
Not since the accident.
It was hard remembering the old days. Only his will had kept his memories intact. Even so, time had eroded large parts of it away. The memories of his childhood, his parents, first loves and other pearls of life had withered away during his confinement in this place. Only the darker memories had remained intact. The memories that engendered emotions like anger and wrath still lived inside his consciousness with clarity.
He remembered the accident with similar clarity. Strangely enough, it was the memories following the accident that withstood degradation. Even now, he could still recall the day of the accident. The sun had been shining hard on him and his friends. Prior to that morning, they had been petty criminals on the eve of planning their biggest job yet; the raiding of a nuclear facility. They had driven out to the site in order to make a final reconnaissance before the night's activities. He remembered thinking it was a beautiful day and how this score was going to make him rich beyond his wildest dreams.
Suddenly, the ground shook and he looked up just in time to see the brightest flare of light appear in the distance. By rights, he should have been blinded immediately. Unfortunately, his sight remained long enough for him to see what was coming at them. It took a moment to register what had taken place. When it did finally hit home that someone had detonated a nuclear warhead, it was too late to run or do anything because they were at Ground Zero.
At the time, there had been no chance to question why they had survived the initial blast. However, by the time the shock wave came thundering at them, he had no illusions as to their fate. The last conscious thought in his mind as he was swept away was that it would be a quick death.
Except he did not die and neither did his friends.
Instead, they had been transformed into beings of unbelievable power. Ironically, he who was always considered the smartest of them all had been given the most power. Although physically, his transformation was the most startling. Part of him had been converted into pure energy and he found that its force was his to command. His mind had expanded beyond the realms of the world he knew, until he was able to see dimensions as easily as he was able to see the full spectrum of energy. Very soon, it was easy to manipulate energy and thought in a way that made him near invincible.
Following the accident, the Extremists as they called themselves, became the leading voice of terror across the planet. They were no longer considered petty anything and the superheroes of the era became regular opponents. When his companions suggesting raising the stakes, he had been the only one to object. Holding a planet ransom to the threat of nuclear arms was profitable if it worked, however if it did not, the consequences would be devastating. Unfortunately, the plan went ahead. During a confrontation with the superheroes, the warheads detonated.
This time, there would be no survival for them or anyone. A hundred nuclear warheads had been poised above the planet, controlled magnetically by the Extremist. During the battle, that controlled wavered long enough for those warheads to plunge into the atmosphere. The bright flash of light that appeared this time did not simply blind him momentarily, it flung him into another dimension.
There were times over the next few years where he wished he had died, many times over. After the initial disorientation had worn off, he realised this dimension was beyond human comprehension. Even with his heightened mental abilities, the design of his human mind was unable to cope with a realm of existence that had little use for corporeal form. Ironically though, in this place where physical laws were not applicable, it was still his mind that was his greatest weapon. Thought and energy existed side by side. As he had a certain level of mastery over both, he was able to perfect his powers with a great deal of accuracy. For a long time, he became lost in the power of this dimension, unaware of how much it was changing him as the years went by.
Despite his increased powers, there was still one thing he could not change. Whatever this dimension was, he appeared to be the only one in it. For years, he travelled through it, searching for another mind other than his own and finding to dismay, that he was alone here. Energy here was disembodied, like a clay sculpture waiting for someone to mould it into shape. Life never had a chance to develop because there had never been anyone who could manipulate the energy to become something more.
He travelled from one end of the realm to the other and finally decided that he could not bear the unending silence. He needed the others. He needed to get home. By manipulating the spectrum of energy that existed in this dimension, he opened himself a doorway to his world. It never even occurred to him what had taken place during his absence. Considering the events that brought him to this dimension in the first place, in retrospect, he should have expected it.
What he found was a world he helped destroy.
The warheads had done their work well. The world as he knew it was completely dead. Not one living thing breathed on the parched earth. As he travelled across the planet, desperately seeking life, he saw nothing of the like. He found thousands, no millions of graves belonging to the 'lucky' who had survived the initial explosion only to die of radiation sickness. Cities remained deserted. The oceans were lifeless and the silence that was carried with each breath of the nuclear winter, seemed to carve a deeper whole inside of him.
Until one day, a miracle happened.
He returned to his home town to find an amusement arcade still running. As he approached it, he could see Ferris wheels still turning and the roller coaster making its ascent up the tracks, colourful lights sparkled and happy music blared throughout the park from speakers. There were people walking up and down the aisles, buying cotton candy and sipping on sodas, completely oblivious to the fact that the world outside was gone. He could see them, talking and laughing as they enjoyed the day and yet he could sense nothing from them. They were not real. They had no life force. On further investigation, he learnt that Wacky World's entire population were made up of highly sophisticated robots. All possessing personalities of their own and designed to mimic whatever human behaviour their designers had programmed into them.
At first, he had been dismayed by the discovery until he found that the replicas included perfect copies of his associates, right down to every mean bone in their body. They recognised him as one of their own and welcomed him back to the fray. They lingered on that dead world for sometime until the fateful return of the Silver Sorceress. The Sorceress had been undertaking some inter-dimensional travel of her own and one of the places she had visited was world very much like her own. Tearing from her mind, the spell she used to make the crossing, he opened a door in the dimensional barrier and the newly united Extremists found a new world to conquer.
Unfortunately, the world they had chosen as their new domain possessed an overabundance of superheroes and the new empire they sought to create died before it even had a chance to begin. The Sorceress in the meantime, had recovered long enough to give her life to send him into the oblivion where he had since been trapped.
This prison was unlike any other he had ever known. It made less sense then that dimension he had been trapped in before. Where physical laws had no meaning there, at least the energies conformed to his manipulation. Here, he did not even have that much power. This place seemed to exist just above the surface of the real world, almost like a seamy underside that went unseen by most. It lived in tandem with the real world and he was able to see out of it, as if a man pressed up against a mirror but could not affect what lay beyond. The living was close enough to touch but not enough to reach. Not that he was alone in this spectral dimension. There were others who moved through this place as if it were a halfway point between the waking world and somewhere else he had yet to be able to penetrate. He saw them sometimes but their minds were too centred to hear him and the opportunity to escape was lost.
Those who came were not always visitors, some remained here. They were disembodied like himself but driven insane by the unreality of their situation, being neither dead but definitely not alive either. Had it not been for his earlier imprisonment, he might have very well joined them. To save his own sanity, he watched the outside world, seeking a way to escape while making up plans of revenge at the same time.
Revenge had kept his memories alive. It reminded him of who he was and what he had been. It maintained the link to the past that threatened to fade away, the longer he remained trapped in this realm like a wraith. He dreamed of those who imprisoned him here and those who had played a part in it. He understood that the Sorceress was beyond his reach because she was dead but there was others. The Justice League.
Those costumed buffoons who had robbed him of his friends because he had seen what became of them. Helplessly trapped, he watched them frozen as museum relics and then offered for a brief moment of revival, before they were torn to pieces by the heroine named Supergirl. They were his friends and recipients of the minute traces of warmth he was capable of feeling. Seeing them die killed his final hopes for the possibility that they might be able to rescue him. It finally drove home to him that he would be the only architect of his freedom.
It was shortly after this that a new being made its appearance. At first, he was uncertain of what it was. Its mind was almost non-existent. It functioned on a basic level, capable of little more than carrying out tasks that some higher power had imprinted on its mind. It travelled through limbo that was his prison, unaware of itself but except the duty it was forced to perform. He followed the being for a number of days, trying to assess what it was and how he could use that to his advantage. Its mind, he quickly learnt, was easily overcome. The being possessed no independent will that could prevent the invasion.
Inside its mind, he could feel nothing but gray.
It was not merely a colour to see but also feel. It permeated his soul like an enveloping blanket of cold that made him flee on first contact. Only after several attempts, was he comfortable enough to take permanent residence within the soul and invent the dream essence that remained trapped inside its neutered mind. The dream essence itself had the substance of a fading afterthought, inert and dying. As it remained imprisoned inside the being, it bubbled away like death denied. The whole concept was eerie and far beyond his understanding. His world had been one of science. Physic and quantum theory had more coherence than the unreality of the mysticism surrounding the being and its world.
However, he forced himself to become accustomed to it for this was his only means of escape. The being had the ability to walk out of this place and into the waking world. Probing into the memories trapped inside its comatose mind, he learnt that the being had once called itself a Gray Man was responsible for collecting residual dream essence from the dead. Like himself, it too once possessed its own dreams of power and conquest and like himself, those dreams had withered to dust because of the Justice League. The irony of it did not escape him.
It was easy to take over the Gray Man's existence. He wondered if somewhere inside the lobotomised mind of the Gray Man, some aspect of what it had been still remained trapped as he was in this spectral limbo. If so, he would like to have believed that it would have approved of his tenancy. He was mildly surprised that the Lords of Order who imposed the condition on the Gray Man had not opted to keep watch over their neutered servant. Then again, he was never one to waste an opportunity with meaningless questions.
Slipping through the dimensional planes for the Gray Man was like moving through a dispersing fog once the sun had come out. Instead of finding himself pressed up against the barrier that separated his world from reality, he had moved through it effortlessly. It was as easy as stepping into another room, except this room was an entire universe. He emerged in a busy street corner of a city somewhere in the world and felt the sunshine on his face. Closing his eyes, he allowed the heat to press into his skin as he took a deep breath. No one took notice of him. This was after all, the city.
Taking in the smog filled air, it never tasted sweeter to him and for a moment, he almost wept from the sheer experience of it.
I am still here Sorceress! He wanted to shout out loud. I am still here and you are dead! I am stronger now than I ever was and nothing will stop me this time! He started to laugh with utter abandon, exultant at the power he now commanded at his disposal. Collect dream essence from the dying? No, no, that simply would not do. He would have to expand his programming a little.
Dream Slayer, the new Gray Man was back.
***********
Catherine Colbert had a bad dream.
She sat up in her bed, sweat running down her body and plastering her lingerie to her skin. For a moment, she merely sat in the darkness of her penthouse apartment, trying to remember what exactly the dream had been about. She was not prone to nightmares but the potency of this one could not be denied. Even now, minutes after she had awakened, she was still trembling from its after effects. Beyond the windows of the balcony, she could see the Eiffel Tower, standing watch above a canvas of myriad lights.
Paree as always was beautiful. After her brief sojourn in New York during her League days, Catherine was thrilled to return home to France once again. Although Paris offered little comfort either. During her days as the liaison in Justice League International, Paris had played host to the embassy. It was hard to think of the League without ultimately bringing her thoughts back to the friends she had left behind.
She still had no idea what had possessed her to suggest to the others that they should form a new team. Certainly, Catherine had no intention of returning to that life again, no matter how much she may have enjoyed the craziness. All her life, she had wanted excitement and adventure. After being the head of the Justice League for a time, Catherine could say with utter certainty, that she no longer craved such things. In fact, the quiet days ahead seemed infinitely more inviting.
She supposed that her real motivation behind her suggestion at Warriors was not so much that she missed the adventures, rather that missed them. Although she had little to do with Justice League America until the end, Catherine found she had the same feelings towards them as she did with the European branch. The members of Justice League Europe were even more scattered than those of the American branch. At last report, Kara had joined a new group called Sovereign Seven. Wally was now with the new Justice League, Sue and Ralph were jet setting across the planet and there had been no word on the whereabouts of Captain Atom.
Catherine tried hard not to think about the friends who were dead. Not just Tora and Rex, but also the Silver Sorceress and later on the Crimson Fox. There were so many ghosts living in the shadow of the new League that she understood the anger felt by the survivors of the old. The world had forgotten the League created by Maxwell Lord even though it had fought just as tirelessly as the new team to make it a better place. Perhaps, she did not want to see them forgotten any more than they already had been.
And maybe she missed their insanity in her too conservative life.
"This is doing me no good," she said out loud in her native French. "Time to leave the nest for awhile."
She climbed out of bed purposefully and padded towards the enormous wardrobe on the other side of the room. Stepping inside, she made her way to the far corner of the wardrobe and dressed warmly. Taking in Paris at night often helped her think and work out difficult problems. Her involvement with the Crusaders certainly fell into that category.
"Madam Colbert's little girl has some hard thinking to do." Catherine sighed.
No matter what she decided of course, the League would never be as fun as it used to be. She remembered the days when she would periodically turn up at the Embassy, driving Captain Atom mad with her flirtations. The Captain was so confused during those moments. Not only did he have to contend with Catherine's little remarks but the full fledged seduction that the Crimson Fox would subject him to. Not to mention Kara's temper whenever she had to fight off Wally's advances and Ralph's penchant for mysteries and Sue's determination for him to have them.
Mon Dieu, she missed those crazy Americans
It took her a few minutes to slip into her clothes. A short time later, she made her exit through from her building to the streets of Paris. The night air was exhilarating and the thrill of moving through a city that never went to sleep was equally enticing. According to the time, it was three or four hours before sunrise but Paris was far from quiet. Even as she walked through the winding streets of cobbled pavements and avoided the rude taxis that sped past, this was after all Paris, she could see nightclubs alive with song and laughter. There were still people in having deep discussions in late night cafes, drinking coffee and enjoying aromatic pastries.
The night was electrifying to Catherine.
Usually on these strolls, Catherine made her way to the Seine, at the Ponte de Sully. The Ile St Louis was glowing radiantly under the moonlight. Although the area looked as if it belonged in a postcard from the 14th century, hidden within was a collection of shops and late night cafes.
She was far from it when she suddenly heard a scream. Catherine froze where she was and immediately tried to close in on that desperate cry. Although she felt fear and wondered if this was something best left for the police, the terror in that cry compelled her forward. She was a black belt in martial arts so she was fairly confident that she would be able to handle herself.
The scream came from a pitch black alley a block away. Grateful that she had chosen to wear comfortable running shoes, Catherine ran forward. Her mind and body were tuned for fight so her entire body felt like a coiled spring about to snap. By the time, she reached the maw of darkness that ran into that alley, the scream had descended into a series of mindless shrieks that only made her run faster. She was close to the heart of it now.
As she raced down the narrow passageway, the grimy lamp hanging from one of the building revealed to Catherine the woman who had screamed. Standing close to her, were two men. One man was lying flat on the cobble stone ground while the other stared at him transfixed. The man upright seemed mesmerised by the unconscious one before the woman's scream brought his attention back to her.
Uh Oh.
Catherine thought. This was not good. This being Paris, no one had yet answered the woman's cries for help. Catherine realised she would have to deal with this on her own. For an instant, she almost turned back when suddenly the man reached for the woman who had not the sense of mind to run from danger.
Her screams died abruptly.
Catherine came to a half in front of the man. By now, he had the woman firmly in his grip, his arm locked around her throat. His other hand was cupped over her mouth. Catherine looked into her face and saw pure terror. She surveyed the scene and decided immediately that this was no robbery. The attacker was in his late forties, certainly too old too be a mugger.
"Let her go." Catherine warned, feeling impotent even though she approached him with bluster and false bravado.
"Catherine Colbert," the man said with a smile. "Its been a long time." His eyes glowed with grey light.
That stopped Catherine in her tracks. How had he known her name? This man was a stranger to her. "I am afraid its longer than you think." She replied trying not to show him that he had surprised her. "I do not think we have met." She said coolly, trying to sound indifferent to his claim.
"We have met Catherine." The man replied. "You and your Justice League friends know me well."
He still did not seem familiar but that was no reason to provoke him. Not when he still had a hostage. "That changes nothing," She retorted advancing towards him. The woman had resumed struggling now that it appeared help was on its way. "Release her or I will be forced to press the issue."
He glanced at his squirming victim before raising his glowing eyes to Catherine once again. "I always aim to oblige." He smiled again. This time, his grin seemed to fill up his entire face and Catherine could not deny the shudder of fear that ran through him. He released his grip of the woman, removing his arm away from her throat. The woman was poised to run to safety when suddenly the man reached into her chest as if there was no flesh or bone to prevent it. She let out a cry as his arm penetrated straight through her body. When he retracted his hand a moment later, she collapsed on the floor. Her body was almost grey with lifelessness.
Catherine took a step backwards when her composure returned. "Who are you?" She asked, half whispering.
"Not I Catherine," the man replied rather smugly. He could sense her fear. "We. We are together now."
"I, we, that does not answer my question." Catherine demanded. She wanted to attack but she had seen what the man had done and knew that it was a foolish exercise. It was wiser to keep a cool head until she knew what he was capable of in a face to face confrontation.
"Tell them, we are coming, Catherine Colbert." The man answered, taking a step back into the shadows. "Tell the Justice League, they will dream gray."
And then he was gone.