"Lightning, are you sure about this?" asked a nervous looking Mercy. "We're about to fly directly into a storm."
Sure enough, dead ahead, the sky was a charcoal gray, and lightning branched out in all directions. It was like a blanket draped across the sky, and in the eyes of any other group of people it surely would have spelled certain doom.
"I'm sure," said Rio. "It's there. Francesca said so."
"Did the mysterious and invisible woman inside the knife also happen to tell you how to not die in said storm?" asked Magnus, tinkering with Platinum's inner workings.
"Well, for starters, I'm going to have to be outside the jet," Rio answered, walking back to the loading ramp.
"Sorry, what?"
"It'll take my Living Lightning to help propel us through the storm and get us to the other… you know… the other side."
"The other side of the storm?" asked Barry.
"No, no… she said something about how Themyscira exists on another plane, or something mystical like that. My Lightning is what's going to get us through. I just have to do it at the right time. Then it's just the matter of landing the plane."
"Much easier said then done," said Mercy, raising her voice as she opened the ramp and the sounds of the storm began to echo into the flying machine.
"I'll do what I can with my strength," said Rio, "but I've never done anything this intense before, so…"
"So I'll be out there with you," said Victor. "I can hold onto the outside of the jet magnetically, and I can be there to help you with the workload, and resuscitate you if anything happens."
"This is not how I thought I'd die," remarked Slade, watching his teammates agree to a plan that was damn near suicide. "I always figured it would be a heart attack."
"Relax, Major," remarked Victor, walking out on the ramp with Rio and climbing around to the jet's exterior as she flew up top. "We're not dead yet."
"Everyone clear?" Mercy called out.
"Clear!" Vic responded.
"God help us," Mercy muttered, closing the ramp as they entered the storm.
"Ready, Captain?"
"Ready!" Rio shouted, flying at full speed to keep up with Mercy's piloting. Rio then took a deep breath, balled up both fists, and began to summon the Living Lightning once again.
Victor looked up as Rio's powerful bolts began to surround them. It got brighter, and brighter, until the entire jet was engulfed in magical electricity, shielding them from the dangers of the storm. Then, Victor's vision began to change. His vision went completely blank in his cybernetic eye, and with his natural eye he began to see a shift. The sky started to change. The storm seemed to fade in and out, being replaced by a calmer one. And down below, an island began to take shape.
"Holy shit," said Slade. "You're all seeing this, right?"
"I… I see it," said Magnus. "But I don't believe it."
"Well I sure believe it," remarked Mercy. "We're beginning our descent. Hold on."
"Okay!" Rio cheered. "That worked! We're here! Are you ready to land, Mister Stone?"
Rio looked over to see her cyborg teammate… glitching? He twitched as the lights on his body flickered on and off, until he eventually just went limp. Thankfully, his magnets were still engaged, so he stayed firmly planted on top of the jet.
"Oh god. Oh god!" Rio quickly bolted to the cockpit window to get Mercy's attention. "Hey!" she yelled as she frantically waved her arms.
"Something's wrong," Mercy called out to the others inside with her, attempting to read Rio's lips. "She's saying… Victor."
"He must be down for the count," Slade realized. "We'll have to do something to help her land this damn plane." Slade looked as Magnus, who had gone back to tinkering with his robot as if nothing was wrong. Slade then looked at the Flash, who had a glint in his eye.
"I have another idea," said Barry. "Can you open up the ramp again?"
Mercy looked back as she did as he requested, then looked forward again at the approaching beach, making a hard turn to the right so she was now flying along the shoreline. "Whatever this is, it had better be fast. We're almost on the ground!"
"Okay, here goes… okaayyyyyy…" the Flash held on tightly as they got closer and closer to the beach, then, once he could jump down safely, he rolled onto the sand, and in the blink of an eye, he was in front of the jet, running backwards. Focusing, Barry then began rotating his hands opposite each other, faster and faster, until he was creating a backdraft that acted against the jet's momentum.
At the same time, Rio got behind the jet and grabbed onto the ramp, digging her fingers into the ramp and pulling back as she attempted to slow down as well.
"Is this actually working?" said Slade.
"We need more stopping power, or we're going straight into that rock!" shouted Mercy, addressing the rapidly approaching cliffside.
"Okay, got it!" Magnus shouted triumphantly, finishing his work and slamming Platinum's casing shut. "Project: Platinum, on!"
As the android's eyes lit up, Slade reached for his sword, preparing for the worst.
"Directive," Magnus yelled, "stop this plane!"
"Affirmative. Directive, stop plane," Platinum repeated, then slid past Slade and grabbed onto the back of the ramp alongside Rio.
"Slade, Magnus, hold onto something!" Mercy ordered.
Platinum's feet dug into the sand, and gave Rio and Barry the help they needed. The jet came to a screeching stop just a few yards before the cliffside.
"Project: Platinum, rest!" Magnus called out. The android powered back down, and once everything was still, he stood up and ran over to check on her diagnostics.
"We are… good," said Mercy, standing up as well.
"Well, most of us," said the Flash, making his way back around to the group. "Wilson lives to die of a heart attack another day, but what about Vic?"
"I can't get him off," said Rio, who was now back atop the plane next to Victor. "His magnets are too strong. He's breathing though, so at least he's not dead."
"Great. Now we're down two soldiers," said Slade, exasperated. "And did anyone see where my sword landed?"
"I can take a look at him," said Magnus, pulling out his pipe and lighting it up. "Although his robotics are bound to be pretty different from Platinum's. It could take me a while to figure out what's wrong."
Rio helped Magnus up to where Victor was, as the rest of the group made their way out onto the beach.
"So this is where Superior Man came from?" Barry remarked, looking up at the island's features.
"The thing to do now is find him," said Slade, sheathing his relocated sword. "Miss Graves, you should probably come with us. If all the legends are true, Amazons will be easier to get along with the more women we have in our party."
"Wait a minute, you're just going to leave me here?" asked Magnus.
"You have your robot," scoffed Slade. "It seems like you fixed her up."
"She'll need more work before she can stay powered on for long periods of time," said Magnus. "You guys did quite an electric number on her."
"I'll stay," said Barry. "Wilson, you and the ladies can contact the jet if anything goes wrong, and I'll be there in a flash."
"That's that," said Mercy, rolling her eyes at the softball of a joke. "Major, Captain, we should get moving. Do we have any kind of lead on Superior Man's location?"
"I can feel a concentration of magical energy… that way?" Rio said, pointing up past the cliff.
"That way it is," said Slade. "I don't suppose you can fly us where we need to be?"
"I don't think it would help. My powers feel… different here. I don't exactly have a good handle on what I'm supposed to be feeling. Just kind of a directional pull."
"Then we walk," Slade nodded. "Lightning in front, Mercy in back, lest we make any new Amazon friends."
Barry watched as the trio walked up the hillside away from the beach, then began to pace back and forth. Slowly, at first, then faster. Much faster. After a while, he was making his way to opposite ends of the beach in mere fractions of a second. He even took a few laps out onto the water to test his surface tension.
The minutes passed, and a now very bored Barry turned his attention up to the roof of the plane, where Magnus was examining Victor with a scanner tool of some kind. "Yo, Doc, any luck?"
"You know, you guys can just call me Will," the scientist responded, his teeth clenched around his pipe. "You saved my life. I think we're beyond formalities."
"Will. Got it," said Barry, darting up to his new friend's vantage point to watch him work more closely. "So Will, what is it exactly that you're doing here?"
"I'm scanning for any corruptions in the software," Will responded, waving his tool around Victor's limp body like a security guard with a metal detector. "The problem seems to be…here."
Will pressed on a compartment on Victor's arm, opening it and revealing the microchip Victor had taken from Barry before the drop in Italy.
"This clearly doesn't belong here," Will said, removing the chip and examining it.
Suddenly, like magic, Victor booted back up. He blinked as his cybernetic eye lit up and his systems came back to him. "Woah. I guess we made it in one piece."
"Hey, there he is!" said Barry, poking Victor's chest. "What happened up there, buddy?"
"Clearly malware, right?" said Will, lifting the chip up and letting the light hit it.
"Not malware," said Victor. "I got a full read on it right before it locked me out and shut me down. It's something much more interesting. Flash, where did you say you got that chip from?"
"Guy I fought back in my first year. Scientist," said Barry. "Something DeVoe. Carlton, or Carter…"
"Clifford?" Will piped up. "Clifford DeVoe? The Thinker?"
"That's the guy," said Barry. "He wore this device he called the Thinking Cap, and always went on about his grand plan. Real mad scientist stuff."
"Clifford DeVoe was a mentor of mine," Will explained.
"Small world," Victor remarked.
"The Thinker's 'grand plan' was genuine artificial intelligence. Victor, do you mean to tell me…"
"I've been analyzing it in the background ever since I plugged it in," said Victor. "I started to suspect it early on, but now I'm positive."
"So, if this is an AI, does it have a personality?"
"Not that I could find," Victor continued. "If it did, I would have shut down a lot sooner. It's essentially a blank slate. Pre-programmed and ready to learn. My guess is it'll adapt to any neural framework that's compatible with it. My network was definitely not compatible. That's why I shut down. I'm too organic."
"I learned a lot from DeVoe. A lot of my tech is a next-gen version of his," said Will, climbing down and walking over to the currently lifeless Project: Platinum. "Compatible, you say? Maybe it's a bad idea, but…"
"Flash, come in Flash," Captain Lightning's voice suddenly echoed out of the cockpit.
In the blink of an eye, Barry was at the comms. "Flash here."
"Hey Flash, we… we found him."
