"You have got to be kidding me!"
"No, sir, Captain Atom, I am afraid all the controls are shot. The reactor is going to blow sky-high, and soon!"
"All right. I'm going to get some elevation and figure out the best way to handle this."
He shook his head, watching the chaos and thinking back to how it had begun. Captain Atom had gotten the call from the Monitor while half in his sleep and slipped from his bed next to his wife, Bette, changing into Cosmic form as he moved out to the balcony, then launched up into the sky. The homing device he had been provided was left blinking and sending a strong signal.
He had been nervous and not ready, despite all the preparations and hype he had gotten from the Monitor. He had been on and off retired and wished he still was now as he hovered, staring down at the chaos in the Nuclear Reactor Control center.
He had been recruited by the Monitor six months ago, and had quickly adapted to the weirdness of finding out your universe is one of several billion and that on other worlds there were even different yous. He had learned that on most worlds he didn't exist, and that on those worlds, there were few heroes.
Apparently a lot was different on his world. Nuclear energy had a more powerful effect than in most, here. It seemed to have a quantum level effect which caused ripples of shifts every time an explosion or reaction went off. And heroes came and went here like clockwork. He felt like he was renewed in a way. He hadn't been in action in awhile and ever since he had returned from his time jaunt after destroying the Kryptonite Meteor, he had been less wiling to miss time with his wife and twin children, both of whom had been born in the few months since he had been gone.
It all seemed strange but one thing he had learned, back as soldier Nathaniel Adam, was that you sometimes just listened and accepted what was told to you.
So, he did and met with heroes from other worlds, including two who seemed to know him. And their plans went forward. Until now. Somehow all the prep hadn't prepared him at all for the utter chaos here. The reactor was quickly spooling up for a blow and the venting and cooling programs were lost, the control interfaces were screwed up and the only way left to stop it was to enter the reactor room and halt the reaction. Plus Captain Atom wanted to absorb all the energy of the pseudo-explosion and release it as the Monitor has instructed. If things worked right.
Monitor had warned that someone was influencing events and now Captain Atom knew it. No way would all the back-ups and release valves and plans fail otherwise. It had to be sabotage of a huge sort and now... He shook his head. No time to worry. Now it was time to act.
He entered the main reactor and realized blinked then slapped his forehead and sighed as he floated over to the control rods. And stared. He wasn't really sure you actually could bend rods into that shape... and , looking closer, he wasn't sure there actually were ends to those rods. He tried to follow them around but his eyes swam and he gave it up. He scanned the room and saw the maintenance hatch designed to allow a descent from above. He smiled, then shook his head. No getting ahead of himself now.
He sighed, no hope for it now, but to absorb the full brunt of the explosion and hope to release the energy right as the Monitor asked him...
The countdown reached critical and the reaction began and he concentrated, working on absorbing every once, every iota of energy as it came out of the reactor. He strained and willed himself to hold on as the level of power he was absorbing grew and grew and grew and he felt like he would explode with the denial of the quantum leap and of release. He felt his consciousness straining and darkness at the edge of his eyes, but then finally the reactor was drained. he had successfully absorbed all the power and radioactivity of the materials here.
With a roar he fled straight upward through the previously spotted maintenance hatch, shattering it instantly. He shot upward and out the other end of the shaft and then into the sky, higher and higher. He shot off as fast as his power could take him and soon was arriving at the pre-planned point. He felt like he was bulging with power and he screamed as he waited for the signal which seemed to take forever to come. When it finally came, he screamed again and released the energy all in one blast, directly at the Lagrange-5 point between Earth and the Moon. There was an explosion of darkness and then, he fell into that darkness.
When he awoke he was in a strange bed, and he stumbled out of it, to find himself looking into a mirrored door at an image of himself still in Captain Atom form, though slightly altered. He tried to change back, but couldn't. He tried harder and suddenly had a sinking feeling. He wasn't changing. He was stuck...
