Young Justice: The Gold Corps: Shattered, Chapter 19: Procedures

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I don't own either Young Justice or the Green Lantern Corps. Be nice if I did, but I don't. Hope you enjoy this newest chapter! I know I had fun writing it.

But events are unfolding that won't be fun for anybody.

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Chapter 19: Procedures

Earth, Bertran's Antarctic Fortress: Megan lay silent and unmoving in the scanning apparatus. "I truly wish we had some measurements of your brain prior to the incident," Bertran said. She saw Megan's anguished look. "Now, child, fret not. I have heard of this process you were subjected to. It's quite easily spotted; the only problem I foresee is how deeply rooted the meme may be. It has had time to entrench itself within your subconscious for some time now. I don't doubt but that I can detect the meme. The only problem I see is that its removal will be a very delicate procedure."

"How—how will you do that?"

"There is a way…a way beyond magic and science alike…whereby we can actually send agents into your subconscious mind and, very delicately, see to the removal of the meme. This is a precise and complete maneuver, more akin to micro-surgery than any of the other means, such as subjecting you to various energies. That is probably where the Guardians and the Martian Mystics failed: their techniques were a tad too broad-based, lacking the delicacy for this procedure. Plus, and not meaning to speak against them, I'm sure they did their best—they probably took the notion that the problem lay with you, rather than this alien meme that you've been infected with. Such a meme as you have in you is akin to a tapeworm: it is a living organism, or close to it, in its own right, and needs to be addressed as a separate organism, one that is unwelcome."

"So…you'll actually send somebody into my mind?"

"Essentially. The meme is planted in your subconscious, and there is a phenomenon known as a universal subconscious, sometimes called psychospace or dreamspace. Properly prepared beings can enter it and effect changes there, on individuals. These changes then become part of the person's waking existence. It's a very proactive approach, and a very effective one, if properly done."

"But…you'd still have to send someone into my mind?"

"Well, yes. As with microsurgery, it's best performed up close and personal. Even with the help of properly tuned and calibrated instruments, doing the matter by hand, as it were, is still the most reliable and effective way. This way, complete control is assured."

"Can—can I choose who I want to go?"

Bertran sighed. "That, child, is up to your teammates. I can provide the process and the transfer, but who actually goes is not for me to decide. Though I am sure they would honor your wishes."

…..

"Yeah, we've already got two people lined up, Megan," said Nightwing, already going over the forms, readying them for placement in their charts. He was barely paying attention to her. The two were in her quarters, as she was moving back in. Ragnar had made himself scarce, knowing the horror meme was still in effect. "It's simple. From what Bertran tells me, all our operatives gotta do is go in, blast this meme thing, and signal for pickup. Couldn't be simpler. I wish all our problems were this easy to solve."

Megan was unloading the precious few items she'd been able to have at the Martian colony. She felt so horribly guilty, as though she were wearing a sign, "I cheated on my boyfriend!" "So….w-who did you select?" This was gonna be pretty personal, after all…

He ruffled some sheets, her discharge papers. "I'll keep these locked away, of course."

"Thank you, Dick." Moving a glass figurine as she spoke.

"At first I thought to send Wonder Girl and Batgirl. But Batgirl got called out…bat family business. Likewise Wonder Girl. The Justice League needed her.

"Then I thought to send in Artemis and Aqualad. They work well together, but the same thing happened: Red Arrow and Artemis got called away, and Aqualad had to go undercover. And Kid Flash is out; way too sensitive a subject, and beyond his experience level, anyway.

"So that just left Rose and Ragnar."

Crash! Went the figurine in Megan's hands. He looked up, his attention finally drawn to her at last.

Megan Morse stood up against the wall of her quarters, braced up against the wall itself, the back of one hand pressed up against her mouth, as though trying to stifle a scream. "Rose and Ragnar? Dick, please, please tell me that's a joke! I'll, I'll even promise to laugh if you do!"

He was puzzled. "Well, no. Rose is a good operative, she's got the experience, and wasn't needed anywhere else, unlike anybody else. Everybody else is three deep in previous assignments. And Ragnar, frankly, because he's the only person who can stand to be around Rose. They've worked undercover before. They were the ones who worked that undercover op just a month or so ago. That didn't work out too well, but they both seemed to work well as a team under fire."

Now an altogether different kind of flush came over the green girl. "Oh?" She raised an eyebrow. "Have…have they been going on a lot of missions together? Undercover missions?"

"No, that was really the first, and so far, the only one." He chuckled. "From Ragnar's comments, he wasn't too thrilled on being paired up with her again, but there's just nobody else. And besides," he turned to her, even as he started to leave. "You know Rose. I know you two don't get along, but you don't have to. You'll be out like a light the whole time. All she has to do is just do her job. And she's good at that. And Ray's your boyfriend, so you know he'll take good care of you." He turned and left.

Alone in the quiet of her quarters, Megan sat and thought, running her hand through her auburn hair, over and over. Tomorrow morning. Rose and Ragnar. Going into her mind. Her deepest, most private secrets. The absolute two worst choices in all Creation. She looked up towards the ceiling. "I don't suppose you could just kill me now, could you?"

…

The next morning: Rose was already waiting in the transfer chamber when Ragnar showed up. "Couldn't you be on time, for once?"

"I am on time. This is the scheduled time of departure, Rose."

"True operatives are always early. Here you drag in…"

"I'm really not in the mood, Rose."

"Get in the mood!"

"Quiet, you two." Nightwing's voice came over the comm badges they both wore, and that they'd wear into dreamspace. That ensured the badges would work; Rose had a complete life-support system built into her uniform, complete with a foldable transparent heavy duty plastic space helmet, which she now unfurled around her head. They were taking no chances. There could easily be areas of dreamspace that would be inimical, and perhaps not even survivable, by any unprotected human. For that reason, Ragnar was enclosing them both in a protective bubble-field of his ring's golden energy, at least until they could determine the conditions of their surroundings. The knowledge that she had to depend on this total idiot tested Rose's already scant patience even more. It showed up in her nervousness. "Alright. We've identified an area of dreamspace that ought to be, at least, close to where you need to go. Rose, you have that sensor?" Bertran had given them a specialized sensor that was set to determine when and where they would be getting close to the wave signature that was Megan's dream self. It should also work to point out the horror meme.

The key word being "should." Conditions in dreamspace, or psychospace, were mostly unknown, and distances impossible to gauge from this side. In order to have any chance at all of finding their target, they first had to get some needed intel on the environment it lived in.

"Yeah, I've got it. It's turned off, just like you said." Bertran had suggested that, at least until they knew more, it might be best to approach dreamspace as if it were a hostile electromagnetic environment: all unnecessary electronics should be turned off, lest they short out.

Hope that doesn't happen to my suit, thought Rose. The thought of having to depend on Ragnar for support just galled her. They were a team, yes, but the less she depended on him, the better she liked it. He was just such a noob.

"Good. Well, here we go." In the control booth, he flicked a switch…

…and a circular curtain of light descended upon them from the projectors above, enclosing them totally in its radiance. When the glow disappeared, they had vanished.

…..

Rose and Ragnar materialized in what appeared to be empty interstellar space. There was no sign of a planetary body, nor any feeling of gravity. The distant stars were just like those in the "real" world. Rose wasn't expecting a weightless environment, and choked for a moment, as her body accustomed itself to the "falling" feeling. "Careful," Ragnar said, right alongside of her, his ring projecting the golden-light sphere of protection around them, "You throw up in your helmet, and you'll have to swallow it back down."

"You'd like to see that, wouldn't you?"

But he wasn't paying her any attention, instead looking steadfastly at his ring. "Hey, over here? Remember? Mission?"

"This…can't be." He looked stunned.

"What?"

"There's an atmosphere here. A breathable atmosphere. Nor can I detect any limitation to it; it appears to be as limitless as this void is." He turned to her. "You won't need your life support system, at least not here. It's safe to remove your helmet."

"You—you're kidding. Air? Here?" She looked around at the space surrounding them, the faraway suns…. "How can that be?"

"I don't know, unless it's a function of this being, essentially, a…different kind of space than we're accustomed to. This isn't just some other dimension or universe or something. This is dreamspace. Maybe one of the natural laws here is that there's a human-breathable atmosphere even out here in what looks like interstellar space."

Still she looked around, taking it all in. She couldn't see the air, of course, but the sensors on her suit were reading in the green… Grumbling, she unfolded the helmet back, and took a deep breath.

Nothing. No particular odor, just air. One part of Rose's mind worked on how that could possibly be, but another just accepted it. "Well, I'm still gonna keep my guard up. Just because we can't tell any limits to this…atmosphere, doesn't mean there aren't any."

"A wise decision. Have you the sensor Bertran gave us?"

"Yeah." In the midst of getting used to this strange reality, she'd momentarily forgotten about it. Now she pulled it out, switching it on.

The sensor sent out ranging tachyon beams, searching for objects with mass. It was thought that, wherever Megan was, whatever form her guise was in this universe had to have some difference in mass from its surroundings. Once such masses were detected, the sensor could begin narrowing down the results.

Except there didn't seem to be any. Rose dialed the scanner down; tachyons were funny things: the less energetic particles actually traveled faster, completely opposite to baryonic matter, such as was commonplace on the human side of the light-speed barrier.

So now she dialed in the least energetic. There, on the very edge of the sensor's range was what appeared to be a planetary body. "It's the only mass I'm registering. As good a place as any to start."

"I wish we knew what we were looking for."

Shrug. "Part of this mission is finding out what to expect. Are people 'reflected' as people here, or as who knows what? They might be something we wouldn't even recognize as people. But let's go take a look."

"Right." He extended his hand. She'd already expressed her displeasure at being just carried.

"Got an idea. Weightless void; just let me get a handhold in your belt and hold on. So long as you don't accelerate too hard, I can just hitch a ride. That way, you keep both hands free."

"Good idea." And she latched onto his belt, and they took off for the coordinates of the planetary body they'd sensed.

…..

Thirty minutes before: At Bertran's Antarctic base, Miss Martian was lying on the special gurney, preparing to undergo the sleep process that would, hopefully, grant Rose and Ragnar access to her subconscious mind. Arisia was there, of course, partly out of curiosity, but mostly in an effort to soothe Megan. "Look, Megan, it'll be alright. I mean, Bertran says this isn't a mind reading sort of thing, it's more like a kind of psychotherapy, or, or dream interpretation. But look: even if, even if, worst case scenario, and he does find out….Megan, he loves you! I'm told he's pretty much languished the whole time you've been gone. Probably the only reason you don't have several boxes of old letters is because there's no postal delivery on Mars, and anyway, the Mystics probably wouldn't have allowed that. That's just simply not gonna change!"

"Oh, Arisia, my head knows that, but my heart….well, actually, my head doesn't know it too well either! I know he'll be hurt! I, I…took someone else! There's just no way around that!"

"Oh, come on." Arisia sat next to her, as the automatic machines began to arrange themselves into the proper configuration. She leaned over and hugged Megan as fiercely as she could, considering their respective positions. "Five years from now, you'll both look back on this and laugh. Promise. It won't be anything at all. You'll be wondering what you were so worried about.

"Now go on to sleep. When you wake up, this whole thing's probably gonna be solved. And if not," Betran had cautioned them that it could easily take several tries, since the procedure was so radical and unknown, "if not, well, we'll try again. And again, and again. Megan, you've got the entire universe, just about, working in your favor. Now we're getting the help of another universe. How can this fail?"

Tears formed in Miss Martian's eyes. She returned Arisia's hug, then readied herself. "I….thank you, Arisia. You're a good friend."

To be continued…