Part XX
"Sivana, what's taking so long? Return at once!"
Mister Mind's voice seemed to sound inside Dr. Sivana's ears and he shuddered hard, shaking his head like a dog with a flea.
"Get the hell out of my head, you creepy caterpillar!" Sivana snapped angrily. "I did not give you permission to—"
"The Wizard's Champion has opened a portal to the Rock," Mind told him, his psychically projected 'voice' tight with impatience. "I deflected it away from the main Throne Room, but it won't be long before the three remaining cheeses and their costumed pals find their way to our position. Secure the Eye of Sin and get back here so Atom can enact the phasing shield!"
Sivana glanced at his spectacled reflection in a nearby suit of armor. His gaze lingered on the magical eye that glowed in his scarred face, and his thin lips stretched into a smirk.
"Don't get your mandibles in a twist," he said. "I have the Eye in my possession and I'm returning to position. Don't raise the shield until I get there."
"You have sixty seconds, Doctor. No more," Mind said coldly, and Sivana breathed a sigh of relief as he felt the worm's psychic presence fade.
"Loathsome larva," Sivana muttered. "I'll show that ridiculous worm. I'll show all of them: Dr. Sivana's is not a mind to be trifled with! And once Teth-Adam arrives, once he learns I was the one who summoned him—"
"Enough," another voice resonated through him…the collective voices of the Sins that whispered in his head, filled his wiry frame with power. "The door is here. Stand back."
"Wait," Sivana said, looking all around the craggy offshoot corridor he'd stumbled across while searching through the Wizard's Library. "I don't see anything! You said you would lead me to—"
A crack appeared in the rough rockface and began to widen, dust and flakes of stone hailing down from the ceiling as the door rumbled open. Sivana shielded his head with his arms, then gleefully ducked inside the dim space, casting his glowing gaze over dozens upon dozens of shelves carved into the rocky alcove.
"The Wizard's Multiv-Arsenal…" Sivana breathed, the Eye of Sin providing him the knowledge he needed to recognize what he was seeing. "A storehouse of weapons from across the Multiverse, confiscated from their rightful creators and collected here by the Council of Wizards! Ooh, so many familiar names! Lex Luthor... Joker... Darkseid...! But what's this? Chronos? The Reverse-Flash? The Batman Who—? Ah ha ha!"
He dashed to a particularly crowded shelf labeled with a very familiar name indeed. "Sivana!" he crowed. "Just look at this technology."
"There are more timelines than the one you know, Doctor," the Sins chorused. "Other life paths your alternates have taken."
"It looks like a good many of them must have been scientists," Sivana said, running his hands over the sleek, complex-looking weapons. "Inventors. Geniuses, nearly on par with myself!"
"Choose what you wish and get going," the Sins warned. "The Champion will soon be here. And Mister Mind will not hesitate to raise the shield without you."
"How can I possibly choose!" Sivana exclaimed. "These weapons have such devastating potential, such— Ah…and what is this?"
He lifted a complicated, gun-looking device in his bony hands and checked its weight. "Not bad. Well balanced." He checked the label. "'Dr. Sivana's Patented Suspendium'," he read. "Sounds intriguing. I'll take it," he said and tucked it in the back of his belt, where its bulk would be hidden by his leather jacket.
"All right, I'm ready," he said and moved swiftly back through the corridor and the library beyond, feeling the stone floor rumble beneath his feet as the hidden door slid closed behind him. Striding past the Thrones, he glanced up at the kidnapped children, bound and gagged and dangling unconscious from the distant ceiling; at the empty alcoves where the Sins had stood as frozen statues before he'd reclaimed the Eye. His wicked grin grew as he cut a diagonal path across the Throne Room to the cave where the rest of the Monster Society were waiting.
"Now!" Mind ordered the moment Sivana joined them.
Mr. Atom tapped at his computer console.
An eye-crossingly intense shimmer wavered over the Throne Room, over each of the gathered Monsters, and Sivana had to take a deep breath to hold back the nausea. When the shimmer faded, the Throne Room looked as it always had. The Seven Sins appeared to be back in place; the children dangling over their respective Thrones like a spider's supper could no longer be seen. And though within their hidden alcove the Monster Society could see each other and their adult captives, Rosa and Victor, tied up and unconscious in a corner, they knew to any visitor they, too, would appear to be cloaked.
"Invisible," Ibac muttered. "Not a bad trick. And replacing the Sins with holograms..." He nodded approvingly. "This might just work."
"It will if you keep your mouth shut," Mind said. "Atom's shield has placed us and our captives a fraction of a second out of phase with the Champion's reality. That means as long as this phasing shield is in place, the Champion and his tights-wearing lackeys will not be able to see us, but they may yet be able to hear us...albeit as a distant whisper. So say nothing. Do nothing until I give the signal. I want to observe what these 'heroes' will do."
To Be Continued...
References include - The Multiversity, by Grant Morrison; Shazam! The World's Mightiest Mortal (Vol.1), by Denny O'Neil and C.C. Beck; TNG: The Next Phase; TNG: Time's Arrow I/II; Justice League: Action; Shazam! (1981); Batman: The Brave and the Bold; Justice, by Alex Ross and Jim Krueger; Shazam! (movie); Shazam! Volume 1, by Geoff Johns. *Note: I made up the Multiv-Arsenal.
I know this is short - I've been working on a lot of original projects lately and I haven't had a chance to get as far into this chapter as I wanted to. Rather than wait another week or more, though, I thought I'd split the chapter in half and post the bad-guy bit, then I'll post the second half later, once I get a chance to write it out without having to rush. Hope you don't mind.
Thanks so much for reading and for your reviews! They really help me keep on going. Stay tuned for Section II! :D
