With the smoke gone and the lights back on the temperature in the artifact wing thankfully returned to normal. I'd never felt anything like it, but having watched the Justice League fight off supernatural threats for years made it seem a little less otherworldly. Still, it's a lot different having something like that happen to you, instead of just watching it on the news.
After I helped Oliver to his feet I had him sit down, mostly so he could catch his breath. Getting caught square in the chest certainly will take it a guy I supposed. So while he was in the middle of a coughing fit I started looking around the small warehouse, hoping to find some clue as to what the hell that smoke creature was, and where it had taken Sara. In the dark I must have missed the the metal bay doors, no doubt housing specific collections or groups of artifacts, not an uncommon practice when cataloguing such a large collection. I opened the first door closest to the now inert statue that had spewed out the smoke in the first place. There wasn't much in the way of a label, unlike the other bays, something I no doubt would mention Ms. Jones, but I certainly wasn't expecting to find a chest plate attached to a set of wings at the back of the storage unit.
It was like I was drawn to the wings, and the almost bronze like chest piece. They seemed familiar, like I'd seen them before. Part of me was wondering if they weren't somehow connected to my dreams, but then I remembered the old news clippings from the Green Arrow's early days, the ones about Hawkman. That must be how I remembered them. But I was shocked when I took the last step toward the plate and put my hand on the red hawk logo in the center that it lit up, shining pretty brightly in the unlight space. I heard Oliver walking into the unit as well, but he didn't seem so surprised. When I looked back I saw the look of a man on a mission. He handed me a small chip and tapped his ear.
"Watchtower, two for emergency zeta transport. And send the big guy down for some hardware pickup from the storage wing of the Star City Museum. He'll know what I'm talking about when he see's it."
Within seconds a bright light wrapped around us, and I felt this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach, but in a flash it was gone, and was the ground we had been standing on apparently. A small wave of vertigo passed over me as I tried to get my balance, and Oliver noticed.
"Don't worry, it happens to everyone the first time they get zeta-beamed anywhere. Heck, Mr. Terrific still almost hurls every time and he's been doing this almost a decade."
"Hey, I heard that!" A guy in a black leather jacket and a T-shaped mask stood up from the behind a computer station on the level above, looking down at us on what looked like a giant transport pad straight out of Star Trek.
A hologram of a red-headed woman popped up to our left, a strikingly realistic hologram. "Hello Oliver, nice to see you back on Watchtower. Remember those DNA scanners you made sure we installed after our little run in with our Earth-3 counterparts?"
"Yes Tess, and I also remember paying for them as well."
"So if I said they were picking up a match on your guest, you would say…?"
"I'd say that I know, and that's why he's here."
I was never really a fan of people talking about me like I wasn't there, so I cut in. "Hi, the guest has a name, you know."
The hologram's glare made me rethink my approach. "Yes. He does. He also shouldn't be on Watchtower without prior approval, regardless of Oliver's inability to follow the rules."
Oliver didn't seem to like that. "Hey, I helped write those rules. And I brought him up here for a damn good reason. Has Superman picked up the stuff yet?"
While the two continued to bicker I felt myself drifting off, their voices falling off into the background. I walked to the side of the pad, rested my head against the wall as a headache suddenly started assaulting the back of my brain. Suddenly I was in an old clock tower, a large stain glass window blocking the sunlight from the sunrise. Computer monitors were everywhere, and some kind of laser device was sitting on a table opposite me. The holographic redhead was there, but she was a real flesh and blood human, and she was screaming at a much younger Oliver, who was looking at me like he was asking for help. But then someone grabbed my shoulder, pulling me out of whatever it was and I realized I'd been hallucinating. Shaking my head I looked back at Oliver.
"Hey, you still with us man? You look like you're about to pass out."
I waved him off. "I'm good, just a really strong headache."
The redhead walked around me, almost like she was scanning me. "I think you should head down to the medical bay with Oliver, Mr. Jameson. I'll have Superman meet you there for a debrief about this 'darkness' as Oliver puts it."
Oliver nodded. "Not a bad idea, but hang on a sec, got a few pressing things to run by you, Tess."
As Tess and Oliver talked off the side I walked to their right, in the direction of the massive window, hoping to get away from all the people coming and going from Watchtower through the same pad I'd arrived one. When I finally crossed the 40 or so feet to the window the sight took my breath away. I'd seen images and videos from astronauts from space, but there's just something about looking down at Earth from orbit that's mesmerizing, though even that word leaves a lot to be desired. It was strangely quiet in this little offshoot of Watchtower; I would guess it was probably designed with that in mind, so I was able to focus on the memory flash I'd just had. Now that I was experiencing them while awake, and that those visions contained the very people I was now with made it very clear to me that they were real. I'd pretty much always felt that way, but now that belief was absolute. Being so deep in thought I completely missed that I was no longer alone.
"I always liked this spot. Gives me a reminder of what I'm fighting for, what we're all fighting for." I looked over to my left at the source of the voice and saw my viewing partner was none other than Superman himself. "I mean, I'd rather have our base somewhere on Earth, but I just couldn't get Batman, the first one, to agree to it."
I nodded. "I hear he was a stubborn one."
Superman chuckled at that. "Oh you have no idea. At least the new one's not quite so bad."
I let the conversation kind of die down for a bit, so the two of us just stared out into space in silence for a few minutes. I put my hand on the glass; just reassure myself it was real. Once my fingers touched the surface I was surprised to feel it wasn't actually glass.
Superman must have seen the look of surprise, or maybe he was just used to explaining it to newcomers. "It's actually a transparent aluminum alloy. Took some doing, but it's a lot of more structurally sound than any other tempered glass option Queen Industries had at the time."
As he was explaining the window I felt lightheaded, like before. And just like before, I suddenly wasn't on Watchtower, I was back in that weird clock tower place with the huge stain glass window. This time, though, there was only one person with me, and the two of us were just leaning on a railing, looking down at the computer stations below. In the memory, I didn't turn, but I could feel like I know the other man, knew him well in fact. So when my head turned, I was pretty surprised to see that 'memory me' was standing next to Superman, someone who I had only just met for the first time. Even in a memory, without the familiar 'S' on his chest, it's awfully hard to misplace a 6' 4" Kryptonian. Standing there, I felt at peace, unlike the first memory in which I felt panicked, like something was amiss.
But just as I started speaking to this younger Superman, the memory went fuzzy, and whatever 'memory me' had been saying was lost, muffled in the background as the vision faded in a flash of light. Suddenly, I was back on Watchtower with Superman grabbing me by the shoulders, and my head throbbing so hard I thought it was going to pop off my neck. I ran my hands along the side of my head, squeezing my eyes tight to try to cope with the pain. I didn't have to have them open to hear the worry in Superman's voice.
"We're going to the med bay." I very quickly realized that Superman had super sped me to the med bay; I had barely even felt the tug of motion as he covered the distance to the medical facility. My head was getting worse, but I could make out Superman speaking to the doctor.
"We need to see what's going with his brain Emil."
I opened my eyes a bit; I noticed I was already lying on a hospital bed. Just before the pain seared back up again I saw an elderly doctor with glasses looking over a chart on some kind of holographic pad.
"I know. I just wish Carter had managed to actually tell us how this works. Reincarnation isn't exactly something I'm familiar with."
I thought my headache was bad, but as soon as the doctor mentioned the name Carter, it went to a whole new level. I screamed in pain, no doubt freaking the hell out of Superman and the doctor. But the pain just stopped after that, though instead of waking up in the Justice League hospital bed, I saw only blackness. It was a weird feeling, like my consciousness was separate from my body, but that feeling of weightlessness only lasted a moment as light, color, and sound all assaulted me at once. Streams of visions, like the ones from earlier, rushed by me, but by focusing I've found that I could slow them down somewhat. Some scenes were just the dreams I'd had before, but others were new. I saw a young blonde girl, no more than 13, looking guilty as she handed me a golden staff. I could feel myself annoyed as she looked up at me. There was a man, shaking on the ground, with a golden helmet in his hands. Like a punch to the gut the scene changed to woman lying in my arms, her bronze winged helmet cracked along the eye socket, her eyes unmoving as she lay motionless. The sorrow quickly morphed into rage as I was suddenly watching my arm swing a mace down onto a man's head, the spike sticking violently into his skull. As most as quickly as they assaulted me, the visions slowed, until I could tell that I was watching the final one. I felt pain, shooting through my abdomen like a red hot poker, and wind in my face as I was falling through the night sky. I could feel heat, like an open fire all around me and a woman just out of reach of my outstretched hands. I caught up to her, shielded her as I turned over on my back, slamming into the pavement. The edges of the vision were cloudy, like I was dying. The younger Superman suddenly sped into my field of vision. The memory faded to darkness after that. It's hard to describe, but it was like I suddenly remembered who I was, and who I'd been in my past lives. In the darkness I heard Superman and the doctor briefing Tess on my situation.
"So he's in a coma? That's your profound medical diagnosis?"
I heard the doctor sigh. "I don't know Tess. This is all way beyond my area of expertise. As loathe as I am to admit it, we should have called Constantine or Zatanna for this. Carter's reincarnation doesn't exactly fall under the purview of accepted science, even for me."
The two let the conversation lapse; I guess they were looking to Superman for his input. "I'm sure Michael, or Carter, or whoever, will be fine. I doubt we did anything to screw up a 4,000 cycle just by bringing him here. I'm more worried about the girl this shadow thing took. The creature doesn't match any known entity we've encountered before."
I figured now would be a good time to let them know I was awake. I opened my eyes, letting them adjust to the observation lights above. "That's because my wife and I trapped him in a statue two hundred years ago." I looked down, and the shock on their faces pretty much said it all. I rolled out of the left side of the bed, my head still ringing slightly. Superman reached out to steady me, but I waved him off. "I'm fine, Clark. Nice suit, by the way. And yes, I remember everything."
While the doctor and Tess still looked shocked behind him, Clark didn't miss a beat. "So you know what that thing was?"
I nodded. "He calls himself 'The Shadow Man'". About 1,000 years ago he was a tribal leader in Africa that stumbled upon a Thanagarian artifact, likely from the same crash my wife and I salvaged our wings and weapons from. It gave him the ability to alter his physical form and literally become a shadow."
"And the girl?"
"Well there's the rub, Clark. That asshole took my wife." I brushed past Superman. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go get my mace and then go kick his ass." I studied the door, quickly realizing the problem with my plan. "Though if someone could show me how this door works and help me get my gear that would be great."
A/N: Please review!