Mutation

Chapter Eight

Backpack beeped as it went through another area of code that together Richie and itself was working on. The reason that it beeped was that it had detected an anomaly in one part of the string of data.

Richie looked over the string of code that Backpack had highlighted to get his attention, "Think you're right Backpack but that has to be one of the unknown pieces of a large jigsaw" He said with a slight sigh and rose up out of his chair to walk around to work out this large and complex puzzle.

"I know I'm missing something but what" Richie muttered as he walked up and down past his desk where Backpack was working on the coding still.

Adam watched from the doorway as the young blonde genius walked back and forth talking to himself or to Backpack, he could never tell which. He guessed that Virgil could tell most of the time where he could not. There has to be someway that I can help, just feel so useless standing here and being able to do nothing! Adam thought to himself as he watched Richie continue to pace.

Watching Richie pace made Adam's mind wander, he thought about the encounters they had had with the creature that Virgil had transformed into then over to where he had fought side by side with Static, seeing him knock out countless criminals. It was then that he realised that something so simple was different between the Static he knew to the creature that was really a trapped Virgil that he wondered how they had all missed it.

"Richie! The creature, its blue" He called hoping to snap Richie out of his muttering and pacing.

Richie froze in his pacing, "What did you say?" He asked keeping his back to Adam.

"The creature that Virgil has become… its energy is blue but isn't Virgil's energy a purple white colour?" Adam asked Richie moving into the headquarters a little more.

Richie stayed still for a while going over what Adam had said, "Of course! It's so simple!" He said racing over to the computer and started typing at a super speed, interrupting Backpack's work.

Backpack looked up with its green optic eye and bleeped in a questioned tone. "Its just so simple Backpack, we need to compare the energy signatures of Static and of the creature" Richie said talking to the robot and focused on the work in front of him.

Adam dared not look at the screen in case that he would get a headache from the speed of the strings of code flying across the screen, how Richie could read what was going on the monitor was questionable but still Adam knew that he could.


A loud roar followed closely by a rocking explosion rocked the small community around one of Dakota's many power transfer stations. The creature had overloaded the breakers for this station causing it to shut down.

The police got back up on their feet as the creature tore the fences around the station down and headed off towards the streets once again to continue its search for energy. Once on their feet, they drew out their firearms and started firing at the creature but the bullets just simply ricocheted off the creature's force field.

Sensing the points of impact against its sensitive shield, the creature growled in anger and threw a energy wave back at them with a backhanded fashion as if it did not care about the police's attempt to stop its search. This energy wave sent the police back off their feet and stunned them for a few minutes giving the creature time to get away without trouble.

One of the young men had reached over to his bike that he had placed away from what they had classified as a dangerous and active crime scene and up to his radio.

"Chief Barnsdale, the creature is on the move again… this station has been overloaded" He managed to say before giving way to unconsciousness.


Adam had fished out a can of drink from the fixed refrigerator as he continued to watch Richie and Backpack work together on this new point of view of how to get the Virgil they knew back out of the creature.

Shenice had recently returned a little scuffed from what she told him was when the power transfer station the creature had been feeding from had overloaded resulting in a shockwave. She had been talking to the lieutenant in charge when the shockwave had shook everybody, sending them either off their feet or into nearby walls of the buildings.

Richie leaned back against his chair flexing his hands slightly as Backpack finished up for him. "We got it, the energy that Virgil uses has been switched so that its no longer natural to him which explains why the creature is on that energy hunger rampage" He said as Backpack beeped and showed a string of code on the monitor. "That's right Backpack, print it out"

Adam got up off the couch he had been sitting on, threw the empty can over into the bin before heading over to Richie's desk. "So have you found a way to get Virgil back? All of that energy can't be good if we want him back the way he was" He said worried that when they did get Virgil back that he would either have no powers or be dangerously overloaded with the wrong type of power.

Shenice looked between the two older heroes wondering what they were going to do now and how she could become involved. "So what's the plan of action?" She asked breaking the small silence that had echoed around the station after Adam had spoke.

"We know what's happened now," Richie said. "Now we just need to know how its happened. And that is easy to find out." Without further explanation Richie stood up and hurried over to the cupboard where they kept their battered, battle scared cleaner.

Taking out the cleaner Richie removed the dust bag from the cleaner and carried it over to his lab equipment. After the incident where he had almost blown up his father's garage he kept his chemistry stuff here. He placed the bag on the desk and retrieved a energy zap cap from his belt.

"Richie what are you doing?" Adam asked confused into what the metahuman genius was up to with the beaten up cleaner's bag and a energy zap cap.

"It was the dust that caused the energy to change," Richie replied, "but I need to know how if I am to reverse it."

"And how does an energy zap cap help?" Shenice asked confused into the experiment Richie was about to conduct will do.

Richie inwardly sighed realising that Shenice hadn't caught up unlike Adam. "I think I understand Richie, the energy in the zap cap was put there by Virgil before the incident yesterday so it would be unchanged" Adam said with Richie nodding.

"Precisely, so if I'm right then the energy inside this zap cap will change to what the creature is made of" Richie said as he tore the bag carefully so not to cause too much dust around the area he was working at.

With the bag torn and the dust inside revealed, Richie worked on adjusting the zap cap so that he could open it slightly. He had already hooked Backpack to the zap cap so it could record the results of when he added the dust to the stored energy inside. "Ok, so if I am right, the dust caused the change so if I add some of the dust…" Richie talked through what he was doing by picking up a old and battered teaspoon, filling it with the dust inside the bag and gently moved it across into the zap cap.

Backpack had connected itself to the computer so that any data he was receiving could be displayed on the large monitor, which Richie glanced over at as he sealed the zap cap and moved back over to the computer.

Adam moved closer to see but all he could see once again was strings of code flying across the screen but what he did see was the code changed on one side to match the other side of the screen. "What is going on Richie?" He asked confused to why the data was doing that.

"The date on the right is the energy signature of the creature, Backpack managed to record it after the latest encounter with it…" Richie said in a half thinking tone as he continued to watch the data change. "The data on the left is the energy coming from the zap cap over on the desk over there" He said in the same tone, pushing his glasses up slightly.

Shenice went to talk when the alarm on the police scanner went off, "If that is a metahuman on the rampage, he or she has lousy timing!" She muttered earning a slight laugh from Adam.

"Since when do they ever?" He said as he headed over and turned the alarm off to hear why it had sounded.

"The creature has started its attack on the power transfer station at 32nd Street" A panicked police officer spoke across the radio.

"At least we now know where it is" Adam said shifting back into his Rubberband Man costume as he had changed into his civilian clothes while Richie had worked at his computer. Shenice nodded and headed towards the door but noticed that Richie had not moved an inch away from his computer.

"Are you coming or not?" She asked seeing that he was deep in thought and shrugged. "Guess not, just you and me" She said to Adam before leaving the gas station with Adam close behind.

Richie soon started typing once again, unaware that he was alone in the gas station. He knew what he had to do now, how he could reverse Virgil's transformation. He just hoped that there was enough time left to do it in.