The Campbell Chronicles
Chapter 6
The waves crashing against the ocean filled Nicholas's ears as he floated above a large ship, watching people move on deck as they checked chains holding large containers in place. This was the Maroni family's actual base of operations.
Once a month, they left Gotham for the Cayman Islands to exchange money and drugs with their suppliers.
Tonight would be the last night that ship ever made the journey. It wouldn't make it to its destination.
Pulling his balaclava over his face, threads shot out of Nicholas's body, weaving into two more copies of himself. His lips formed a thin line as he felt his energy dipped some, but not as much as when conversing with the green.
He glanced at his two doubles, "I take it you know the plan?"
The one on his left grinned, "Of course we do; we are you."
Nicholas looked to his right, and the copy nodded.
"For the duration of this excursion, you will be Beta," he pointed to the left. "You will be Alpha, and I will be prime."
"Oi, why do I have to be beta," the one on the left exclaimed.
"Because you have a big mouth."
"Doesn't that mean you have a big mouth?"
"Shut up, and let's do this."
Together, the three dropped down, landing silently behind a container.
– XX –
Rust flaked off the deck beneath Prime's feet as he shifted to look around the container. Drawing back, he glanced at Alpha, "Search the ship, find out how many men were dealing with." He turned to beta, "As we move through the ship, categorize anything valuable. I will shift it to cash once the missions are done."
Beta gave him a thumbs up as Alpha opened his eyes, "I'm counting ten people from the Maroni family and ten low-level workers of the family."
Prime leaned against the container, tapping his fingers together. Slowly, Prime closed his eyes, "I'm going to have quite a bit of blood on my hands at the end of the night."
Alpha's eyes hardened, "But by doing this, you save future victims."
"That doesn't make it any easier."
"Nor should it; if this starts becoming easy, it's time for us to retire."
"True," Prime straightened, "remember, don't drain the bodies to dust. Leave a wound that looks like it could cause death, and leave at least one witness, but make sure to rework their minds so that they think the sons of Sofia Falcone carried this out."
"Let's move," Together, they step around the container. In unison, they moved toward the bodies lying sprawled out across the deck, the ship gently rocking beneath their feet.
Kneeling beside the first man, Prime locked his gaze on the man's chest, not wanting his face in his memories despite his criminal past. Placing his hands on his T-shirt, which was damp with sea spray.
White energy flowed from the man's extremities and into Prime's mouth. Images flashed through his mind as he absorbed the man's life and knowledge.
The body cooled beneath his hand as the skin grayed.
Stopping just before his victim's muscle mass was devoured, Nicholas moved to his next target.
In less than three minutes, Prime, Alpha, and Beta had dealt with the five men on deck. Rising in unison, they moved to the door leading deeper into the ship.
Prime sent Alpha and Beta to either side of the door with a gesture.
Grabbing the handle, Prime opened the door.
Before he could get it all the way open, something slammed into the other side and exploded, blowing the door off its hinges and sending Prime sailing in an arc through the air. He slammed into the deck of the ship, landing on one of the bodies of his victims. Their bones broke on impact, breaking the skin and painting his back in blood.
Ignoring the blood now smeared across his back, prime rose to his feet, seeing Alpha and Beta do the same out of the corner of his eye.
Footsteps in the shadows drew Prime's attention back to the doorway.
A man emerged from the doorway, holding his beige-colored Fedora on his head. He looked over his yellow sunglasses at prime. "Since I took this job, every trip has been boring." His red mustache twitched as a smirk curled his lips, "except for tonight."
Keeping his gaze on the newcomer, prime gestured for alpha and beta to go below deck.
The man watched as Alpha and Beta disappeared.
"Not going to try and stop them?" Prime questioned, bringing the man's attention back to him.
The man shrugged, wrinkling the shoulders of his beige jacket, "I'm much more interested in what's going on between the two of us," he gestured between them.
Prime narrowed his eyes.
Reality shifted, showing Prime the strings that made up the man and the strings connected to him.
"Who are you?"
The man bowed at the waist, "I am Elias Lynn."
Prime stared at the threads that made up Elias as they pulled back, revealing a shining white core speckled with black stars.
"What are you doing here, Elias?"
"I'm just here to make sure things run smoothly," he shrugged, "usually they do, but then again, the Maroni family doesn't typically anger a meta-human," he clapped his hands together, "So, what did they do?"
"They hurt innocents with their actions. Therefore, I'm taking them off the board," Prime replied, his voice distant as he examined Elias's core.
'His soul contains energy from the exterminator.'
Elias laughed, bringing Prime back to the present, "And your actions don't hurt innocents," he gestured around them, "these men may commit crimes, but their families could be innocent."
"I didn't say I was only killing them for the victims."
Waves crashed against the ship, sending water across the deck between them.
"Regardless of what they've done, do you think the families of these men want them to die?"
"Probably not, but do their family's wants outweigh the blood of the victims."
"Enough of this philosophical crap," Elias leaned forward, a bolt of pale green psionic energy shooting from his wrinkled forehead.
Prime slid to the side with grace as the bolt zoomed by him, throwing the bodies of the crew into the ocean. Stepping forward, he appeared in front of Elias.
Slamming a palm into his chest, he sent the man soaring through the air. The redhead slammed into the doorframe, leading deeper into the ship.
Elias rose to his feet with a grunt, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth from where he bit his lip.
"Tell me something, Elias, do you have dreams of another life?"
Elias' eyes widened. "How do you know about that?" He asked, a hint of fear in his voice.
"I see your soul, Elias, and I think you have been reincarnated; I think you come from another universe."
Elias spat to the side, "You're crazy."
Prime snorted, "You're not the first person to tell me that recently."
Elias's Brown eyes flared green behind his yellow glasses, "Then maybe you should take a hint." Spectral green chains rose from the deck and shot toward Prime, their barbed ends poised to pierce his flesh.
Prime weaved his way through the chains, wincing as one of the barbs nicked his shoulder.
Grabbing the next chain to shoot toward him, he pulled Elias through the air, slamming his fist into the man's face. His nose broke beneath Prime's knuckles.
As Elias fell to the deck, Prime knelt beside him, "I don't suppose I could convince you to let me alter your memories so that you think the Falcones did this."
"Go to hell," Elias screamed, blood running down his face, "I may be a criminal, but at least I accept myself and don't try to hide my actions behind a veneer of self-righteousness."
"Fair enough, that may be true, but I am trying to improve the world." On instinct, Nicholas reached forward. Elias stiffened as his chest opened, unraveling threads revealing the white light speckled with black stars.
His eyes widened, and terror filled his voice, "What is that?"
Nicholas glanced away from the light, "Your soul." With a sharp yank, he pulled it free of the man's body, causing his eyes to glaze over and his body to fall limply to the deck. Raising the light to his face, Nicholas turned it in his hands. His reality-warping powers had their limits, and he could not discover any more with them, but without mental defenses, his telepathy told him a bit more. For the mind may have forgotten, but the soul never would.
Elias Lynn had once been a mutate in his family's native universe. When the exterminator that devoured his reality was killed, his soul was released along with others to be reborn in this universe.
Nicholas lowered Elias's soul, a thoughtful expression on his face, "Does that mean I would see doubles of my family now reborn from their alternate universe counterparts?"
He shook his head, "If that happens, I'll deal with it. Although, it will be hard."
Raising Elias's soul, Prime's eyes flared blue with an orange center as he set about altering events in the man's memory. Once he was finished, he slipped the man's soul back into his body and healed his injuries.
Rising to his feet, he waved his hand, cleaning the blood away from the fight. He frowned as most of the bodies of the Maroni family that were on deck were gone, having been thrown overboard during the fight.
"Nothing for it;" it wasn't worth pulling them from the ocean, especially if the Sealife would take care of the evidence.
Stepping over Elias's body, Prime went below deck to join Alpha and Beta.
–XX –
Entering through the door that Elias had blown off the hinges, Nicholas passed a small kitchen.
Large men dressed in warm clothes were slumped over a small round table, their eyes staring blankly into the hallway. Pipes crisscrossed overhead. One dripped water onto a large rust spot on the floor. It was clear they weren't concerned in keeping the ship in pristine condition.
Following the connection with his doubles, Nicholas went through a door and down the staircase into the ship's hold; the stairs creaked with the boat's gentle rocking.
"Is it done," he asked, meeting Alpha and Beta at the bottom of the stairs.
"Yes," Beta turned around, gesturing for him to follow.
With a snap of his fingers, lights clicked on, revealing two tables with duffel bags full of money and a small chemistry lab in the corner.
Nicholas walked over to the tables, "How much did we get?"
"Around 500,000," Alpha answered.
"Not as much as I wanted to grab, but not bad for a night's work."
"Believe it or not, most of the Maroni family's money was tied up in legitimate businesses."
"Unsurprising, they needed a way to clean this," Nicholas gestured to the tables.
Pulling up his mask, Nicholas rubbed his eyes, "It looks like I'm going to have to go to the mint after all."
"After that there's a trip to Metropolis and a meeting with one of the tech companies there."
Beta and Alpha nodded, walking toward him, their bodies unraveling into threads that sank into his flesh.
Nicholas felt a rush of power and watched the threads of reality shift before him as an idea blossomed in his mind. Stretching forth his hand, the threads of reality shifted, weaving together in a new way as a portal to his home in Gotham blossomed before him.
"Interesting."
Closing the portal, Nicholas looked around him, "Now, what to do with this place? I was originally going to let it be discovered, but with so many dead, it would draw too much attention."
Floating into the air, Nicholas gestured; the ship broke apart around him, transforming into its base parts.
Reopening the portal, screws, bolts, glass, panels of metal, and bits of wood floated through the portal, stacking into neat piles around his home.
Closing the portal, Nicholas looked at the remaining bodies floating around him. Releasing a breath through his nose, he slowly clenched his hand into a fist. The bodies condensed with the action, becoming little more than floating balls of blood with a bit of bone.
Glancing at Elias, Nicholas opened a portal beneath the man and allowed him to fall onto the streets of Gotham. He probably should've killed him, but knowing that Elias was a reincarnated soul from his family's old universe gave him pause for some reason.
With the alterations to his mind, Elias won't remember going on the trip; he would have caught a nasty stomach bug and had to cancel at the last minute.
Looking up at the sky, Nicholas hoped his actions improved the world. Since he had woken up in Cadmus, he'd mainly acted on instinct, keeping the law like he did billions of years ago.
In Brigadoon, anyone who performed actions that hurt another, whether directly or indirectly, was judged by a psychic tribunal. If their actions were malicious, they were condemned to death.
Nicholas shot into the sky, heading back toward Gotham. Laws had changed while he was away, but to him, they seemed to have changed for the worse; most criminals did not learn from their mistakes, and the prisons they had created were a revolving door, a school for the wicked to get worse.