The Campbell Chronicles
Chapter 3
Amanda Waller strode down the stark white halls of the Cadmus project, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, her black high heels clicking on the linoleum floor.
She paused beside Amanda Spencer, a woman with short blonde hair, blue eyes hidden behind silver-framed glasses, and tan skin. She clutched a clipboard tightly as Amanda Waller stopped beside her.
"Why am I here?" Waller asked, "You know I don't want people learning of our connection."
Spencer licked her lips, "Something escaped from one of our decommissioned rooms and killed Adam Winterbourne. We thought you should be informed."
Waller gestured, her clear coated nails reflecting the light, "Lead the way."
Spencer stepped in front of Waller, her lab coat swishing back and forth as she led the way down the hallway.
Waller's hand drifted to her side as they moved, her slender fingers running over the Glock in a holster at her waist. While she didn't believe she needed it tonight, its presence on her hip gave her a small measure of comfort.
They turned down the hallway, and even from a distance, Waller could make out the dented plaster at the far end.
As they drew closer, Waller caught sight of a pair of green combat fatigues covered in ashes.
Spencer stopped beside the ashes and gestured, "This is what is left of Adam Winterbourne."
Waller knelt, the fabric of her dark blue skirt stretching taut, "Do we know what did this?"
"Something escaped from this room," Spencer gestured to the large doorway beside the ashes, "and seemed to drain the vitality from Colonel Winterbourne."
Standing to her feet, Waller smoothed her skirt before stepping into the room. She squinted in the red light of the room, taking in the dust and cobweb-covered machinery. She moved forward, her Brown eyes roaming to take in every detail of the room.
Stopping before a circular space free of dust, she glanced back at Spencer, "What was here?"
Spencer looked at her clipboard. "An an egg-shaped piece of unknown metal we had acquired from a defunct facility, which had unearthed it in the 50s."
Kneeling, Waller eyed the footprints in the dust leading from the clean space to the door. Straightening, she turned her attention to the four smears on a piece of equipment, "Dust this room for prints."
Spencer made a note on her clipboard.
Turning, Waller allowed her cigarette to fall from her mouth, "I want to see the videotape from the camera outside this room."
"Of course."
Stomping on her cigarette, Waller led the way out of the room, Spencer trailing behind her.
–XX –
Nicholas floated above the clouds, the things he acquired from the Falcone estate orbiting around him. With a gesture, the jewels stilled in the air.
The diamonds broke free of silver, and silver melted, joining together to form a solid bar.
The process repeated with gold, and when it was finished, Nicholas had a small pile of jewels and a bar of silver and gold floating closer to him.
The gold, silver, and jewels hovered before him as threads shot out of Nicholas's back, weaving together to form three duplicates of him.
As he turned to face them, their features and hair changed to red, blonde, and black.
The one with red hair's eyes changed from yellow with an orange ring around the pupil to Brown. The one with blonde hair's eyes altered to a vibrant green, and the one with black hair's eyes transformed to a pale blue.
He gave the jewels to the redhead, the gold to the blonde, and the silver to the black.
Once they each had their items, another thread emerged from Nicholas's body, weaving into an exact duplicate of himself. By this point, his energy dipped to the level it had been before he attacked the Falcone estate, but at least his body did not regress to its aged state.
With a gesture, the loose cash flowed over to his look-alike; "when the sun rises, open an account with a bank and deposit the money." He looked at red, blonde, and black, "Once you have sold your items, meet with him," he jerked his thumb at his double, "and give him the money to deposit."
"Are you sure it's a good idea to make this many duplicates and weaken yourself before going to the Maroni's?" His double asked?
"Probably not, but I can't carry the goods around while I'm there, can I?"
His four doubles nodded before the blonde-haired one raised his hand, "What are you going to do with the paintings, stocks, and the bonds?"
Nicholas curled his fingers, and the stocks and bonds floated toward him. Grabbing them, he folded them over and stuck them into the inner pocket of his jacket, "I'll keep them with me and use them as an anchoring point for the changes I make to reality."
The blonde leaned forward again, "About the paintings."
Nicholas rubbed his eyes, regretting making the doubles already, "If you're so interested in them, take them to a foreign country and sell them for cash." He looked at the four of them, "I'll meet up with you when this is over, and we can merge back together."
Nodding, the five of them headed their separate ways.
–XX –
Nicholas hovered over the Gotham docs, the smell of seawater, fish, and algae filling his nose. Slowly, he drifted toward the warehouse.
Unlike the Falcone family, the Maroni family split their time between living in renovated warehouses and a ship. They did a lot of international business and were the primary drug import for Gotham.
Floating over a warehouse that looked more rundown than the others, Nicholas took in the rust on the outside and the loose boards over the Windows. He could hear scurrying inside as tiny claws scuttled along the wood and concrete.
"Clever."
Maneuvering himself higher in the sky, Nicholas shifted into a cross-legged position, placed his hands on his knees, and closed his eyes.
Pushing his will in a certain way, a blue facsimile of his body emerged from his flesh and floated down toward the building.
As his astral form entered the warehouse, his breathing became shallow, his pulse slowed, and his eyes flicked beneath their closed lids.
–XX –
In his astral form, Nicholas sank through the corrugated metal roof and touched down on the concrete floor. He looked around. Large crates created a maze throughout the building.
Shafts of moonlight shone from rectangular windows near the ceiling.
Blue pulses shot throughout the warehouse as he sent his will outward. They swept throughout the room, painting a three-dimensional picture in his mind as dust danced into the air in thick clouds.
Moving toward the back wall, Nicholas applied pressure to a section of the floor with a force of will.
Stone ground against stone, and a section of crates moved aside, revealing a staircase leading into the earth.
Red threads blossomed around him as Nicholas made his way down the staircase. His fingers danced across them as he removed the sight and sound of the passageway opening.
Lanterns sat in rectangular recesses the length of the staircase.
Long shadows stretched across the cinderblock walls, forming a cage around him as he descended.
Stepping off the stairs, Nicholas was in a long hallway covered with a plush red carpet.
Men in dark suits with slick back hair moved throughout the room.
Nicholas watched them move from room to room, thinking about his plan. If he was to make it look like the Maroni family attacked the Falcone's, he couldn't feed on these people.
Shaking his head, Nicholas began walking down the length of the red carpet. He passed what looked like offices and storage rooms.
At the end of the carpet were two large wooden doors with polished, curved golden handles.
Leaning forward, he phased through the door.
On the other side of the door was a large sitting room.
Red couches sat end to end, forming a half circle in the center of the room.
Black chairs with red borders sat equally spaced around the couches.
Small tables sat beside the chairs, and a large coffee table sat before the couches covered in papers.
Sitting on the center couch was a man in a gray suit. His red tie drew the eye away from his face.
His dark hair was cut short and slicked back.
A cigar hung out of one corner of his mouth as his Brown eyes flicked through the papers.
This man was Sal Maroni, the current leader of the Maroni family.
Sitting in the chairs around the couch were men in dark suits, their guns visible in shoulder holsters peeking through their jackets.
Moving around the room, Nicholas stopped behind Sal Maroni.
'I didn't expect to find him this easily, but I'm technically a ghost.'
Nicholas placed his hands on either side of Maroni's head and closed his eyes. Red threads came from Sal's temples and wrapped around Nicholas's fingers.
Nicholas jolted as Sal's reality became his to manipulate.
Screens shimmered into existence around him, and he took in events that actually happened and manipulated them ever so slightly.
Two days ago, Sal Maroni sent six men to case the Falcone estate with military technology in the new memories. Those six men attacked the estate tonight and took out Sofia Falcone's men. Once the men were down, they retrieved the stocks and bonds of businesses the Falcones owned in the city, giving Sal control of their territory.
Once they had the bonds, his men ransacked the house for cash and other valuables. They would remember going throughout the city to fence the goods, but what happened to the money would be blurry and indistinct.
Taking the stocks and bonds out of his pocket, Nicholas stared at them.
These would be the anchoring point for the changes in reality.
"So much for making some easy money," threads of reality flowed from Sal to the papers in Nicholas's hand and from the documents in Nicholas's hand to Sal, weaving a complicated braid between them.
Flicking his hand, the documents floated down onto the table beside Sal, and a pulse shot throughout the underground facility as memories of the events appeared in people's minds. Bruises appeared on the six men, along with two of them having fresh gunshot wounds.
While he was connected to the changing threads of reality, Nicholas took three years off the life expectancy of everyone in the building.
His astral form shone brighter as he grew stronger.
There, his actions tonight were now covered by the Maroni family. He would take them out soon enough, but he needed to prepare. Tonight had shown him that there were facets of his powers that he didn't understand, and that had to change.
Stepping back from Sal, Nicholas closed his eyes and released his astral form.
–XX –
Nicholas opened his eyes, releasing a small gasp as energy rushed into him. He floated there, getting used to the feeling of the energy within his body. Slowly, he flexed his fingers. "I wish I knew I could gain strength from shortening someone's potential life span. It didn't give me as much energy as draining the body to ash, but at least I would've left a body behind."
"Granted, that would've left witnesses, which is bad at the moment."
Shaking his head, Nicholas flew off into the distance.
–XX –
The sun was beginning to peek over the horizon, painting the clouds below him pink as his doppelgänger met with him. The three with different colored hair burst into red threads that sank into his body.
Turning to his double, Nicholas inclined his head, "How did it go?"
His double handed him papers, a driver's license, birth certificate, Social Security card, bank card, and a high school diploma.
"You got this in a few hours?"
"I found another Campbell family," Nicholas looked up, but his double waved his hand,. "No relation to us. However, their last member was close to your age and died in a car accident after partying too much. I was able to use my limited control of our powers to insert our immediate family into these Campbells and add vague memories of you being born and going to school."
"Thank you," Nicholas said as he slipped the papers into the inner pocket of his jacket.
The double nodded, "No need to thank me; I'm you." With those parting words, the double turned into red threads and sank into Nicholas's body.
Nicholas floated there; his eyes closed as he absorbed the memories of his doubles. Opening them, he stared at the rising sun, wondering what to do next.
–XX –
Amanda Waller watched on blurry camera footage as a withered figure drained energy from Colonel Adam Winterbourne.
The figure shifted and changed as the energy from Colonel Winterbourne sank into its body.
Amanda removed the cigarette from her mouth as the figure blurred offscreen.
"Is the energy he drained from Winterbourne similar to what Parasite would take from a victim?"
Parasite was a mutant that could drain his victims' energy to strengthen himself.
Spencer looked down at her clipboard, "I don't know. We would have to run tests on the ashes."
"Do that," Waller gestured to the blurry video, "and see if you can clean up that video; I want a face we can look for."