When Victor had been a young boy, he'd loved visiting his father's lab. To a child, it had seemed like a place of mystery. The room was lined with anonymous metal pylons blinking with beautiful lights. It was Christmas every day in STAR Labs.
Although he was twenty-eight years old now, the Las Vegas theater reminded Victor of that feeling.
The auditorium was dark and hot, both due to the massive congregation of bodies and the heavy coat and hood he wore. He did his best to pull away from the people sitting beside him, not wanting them to notice the unusual cool and smooth qualities of his right arm or the dimmed red light and blue lines that shone beneath his hood. Fortunately, when faced with a three hundred plus pound man in a hood, most people already did their level best to avoid contact.
Lights in blue and violet shone around the dark walls, moving in increasingly excited patterns. The mumbling of attendees quieted as the punk rock anthem rose, a harbinger of the performance to come. From no obvious source, a dark fog began to crawl across the stage in the room's center. Slowly it rose, forming a monolith of smoke that refused to leave the borders of the stage, as if held in place by glass walls. Victor lifted his head to see how the vaporous column kissed the ceiling. He was as impressed as the other customers, but unlike them his fine-tuned auditory sensors had picked up a whisper just before the trick: "Emoks."
The music dimmed as an announcer took over the sound system. "And now, ladies and gents, we present the greatest magician of her generation, and heir to the most majestic legacy in show business! She is the Sorceress of the Unspeakable, the Mistress of Magic: Zatanna!"
The invisible walls fell. The tower collapsed over the crowd in waves, obscuring all vision and eliciting screams of excitement and fear.
In the midst of the fog, Victor's left eye glowed a brilliant red. While everyone else in attendance was rendered blind, he was able to witness a singular human figure appear at the stage's center. She did not come up from a trap door or lower from the ceiling. One second she wasn't, and the next she was.
As the smoke cleared, the woman tipped her hat to the audience. Her long black top hat, tuxedo vest and black tailcoat clashed dramatically with her fingerless gloves and torn fishnet stockings. The same could be said for the fiendish smile resting below concentrated, nervous eyes.
"Welcome to the show!" she shouted, unaided by a microphone. "For my next trick, I'll need a volunteer."
After the show, Zatanna slumped in front of the mirror in her dressing room. Her hat lay on the counter beside her as she carefully wiped the stage makeup from her face. The eyeliner and foundation seemed to come off in clumps, layers that reminded her of icing. Maybe it would be worth investing in a makeup artist. She definitely had the money, and she would look ridiculous if the stage was any closer to the audience.
But then, her dad had never needed anyone to do his makeup.
Zatanna was almost finished when something heavy hit her door. She jarred violently, dropping her face wipe, as adrenaline shot through her system, restoring the strength she thought had been drained during the performance. The noise came again, and only then did it occur to her someone might be knocking. Knocking with a very heavy hand.
"Who is it?" she asked.
"Just a fan," came the reply. "I need to talk to you, Miss Zatara." The voice was deep and booming. And there was something discomforting beneath it, a hum.
Zatanna frowned. There shouldn't have been fans backstage. Not unless someone had worked their way past the theater's heavy security. Something like that could only be managed with great feats of strength, guile, or magic.
"Draug," whispered the sorceress. The invisible energies around her coalesced, forming a shield of refraction that fully encircled her body. For just a second she could see how the light from her vanity mirror warped into kaleidoscopic prisms before the shell evened out and became imperceptible. This barrier was the most basic spell in her arsenal, but she had hardened it with experience and the wisdom bestowed by her father. She knew from previous bouts that it would deflect anything from a bullet to a death jinx to a lightning bolt at least once. It would give her plenty of chance to respond to any threat.
Zatanna wearily rose from her chair and opened the door. She didn't bother with her showman-like smile. "What can I help you with?"
The man before her was large. He was almost nine feet tall and broad shouldered enough that two full-sized men could squeeze into his coat and hood. Other than that she could tell little about him. His coat, extra-extra-large sweat pants and black boots fully obscured his characteristics. "I have a problem that I think you can help me with. An opportunity you'll want to take. Can I come in, please?"
Zatanna crossed her arms. "Sir, I don't know how you got back here, but I'm a magician. I don't take odd jobs or do house calls."
The man looked down the hall in both directions. Zatanna readied herself, expecting him to take violent action. Instead, he threw back his hood.
The right side of the man's face was entirely normal, the only notable traits being that he was bald and his face looked much too young for someone his size. His frame was that of an adult, but his face belonged to a boy of sixteen. His black skin looked soft and unblemished, and the expression he wore was equally calm and unthreatening.
But the left side of his face ruined this gentle image. Primarily because it was not a face. While the mouth and chin carried from the right of his head to the left, everything above the lips was inorganic. Instead of skin, there was a gun-metal grey surface with a red light in the spot where a left eye should be. Beneath the grey material, which was semi-translucent, soft blue lines stretched out in a loose grid-pattern. Little white blips ran through the blue lines at even intervals, making Zatanna feel as though she was watching blood travel through veins.
Zatanna took a step back. Then another two, until she had backtracked into the center of her dressing room. The man took this as permission to enter. With alarming grace, he quietly closed the door behind him.
"You're Cyborg," she said.
"Victor will do just fine," said he, waving a hand in the air to indicate the faux pas caused no offense. The right side of his mouth curled up into a smile, but the left remained flat.
And then her eyes moved to his right hand, raised in the air. As his sleeve had fallen back she could see that the appendage was made of the same stuff as the upper-left quadrant of his face. Grey with blue lines. The fingers were perfectly articulated, with knuckles and rounded tips. She suspected they even had fingerprints. Were it not for the material of which it was composed, his hand would have appeared entirely real.
"You work with the Justice League," said Zatanna, absently, feeling as though she were in a trance. "Is that why you're here?"
"It is."
They knew, Zatanna thought. They knew she was operating independently and she would be tried as a vigilante. Either that or forcibly drafted into their army.
Her hand flexed as Zatanna considered what spell she could conjure to make her escape.
Victor remained silent. His one eye flitted about her form without really looking at her. Zatanna's skin crawled as she got the nagging suspicion he was examining the borders of her invisible shield spell.
"So, why are you here?"
"Like I said, we need your help."
It was we now. Not that she knew what to do with that information.
"I'm not a superhero," she said. "I doubt there's anything I can do for the League."
"Oh you aren't, huh?" The evident humor in his voice was spoiled by the persistent humming under it. She noticed that the left side of his mouth never fully opened when he spoke. Did he have a speaker somewhere making up the difference?
"Do you mind if I take my coat off? I'm boiling in here." Zatanna nodded. Victor unzipped his coat, shrugged it off and hung it on the coatrack beside her door.
Victor's full form was… puzzling. Beyond the wrist of the hand Zatanna had already seen, the cyborg's arm appeared to be composed of flesh and blood up till the shoulder. The transition from metallic hand to natural arm was an abrupt one, with no fastening device to hold the two together.
While Victor's right arm appeared human, his left was completely unnatural. As soon as the armed separated from the torso it was riddled with deep crevices and fissures, clearly different from the blue veins and arteries that marked every artificial piece of his body. The hand at the arm's end was also less convincing than his right one. While it was still roughly the same size and possessed human form, the fingers were wider and clunky, marred with similar separation as the rest of the arm. Zatanna got the impression that although the right arm had been constructed to convincingly simulate a human limb, the left upper limb was actually a collection of various components bound together in the general shape of an arm.
The cyborg's chest was mostly hidden. Strapped over his abdomen, Victor wore a wide metal plate. It was markedly different from his mechanically body both in the fact it was a much darker shade of grey and lacked his characteristic blue veins. It hid everything except for his shoulders and neck, with straps over the shoulders holding it in place. The only thing she could see was that the left side of Victor's neck was metal and the right half organic.
While Zatanna was still staring at the unorthodox human before her, a blue tube emerge from Victor's left shoulder and a cylinder of light was projected around his upper body. Once it solidified, Zatanna was able to make-out three pictures that were being project in little boxes around the cylinder: a man being held to the ground with arms of concrete, two men trapped in a suspended cage that had appeared in the middle of a street light, and a man dangling off the edge of a building, his foot firmly held in the jaws of a gargoyle.
"Over the last year, I've picked up seven reports from police in various cities of men being found trapped in unnatural conditions such as these. In each of these cases the men had criminal records, mostly purse-snatchers or muggers, and in five of these cases witnesses reported a person matching their description committing a criminal act on the night they were found. Also, none of the men died in any of these incidents. Tell me, Miss Zatara, is this your work?"
"I'm a stage magician. The magic isn't real, Victor."
Victor raised his remaining eyebrow. "That so? Your dad would have said different. According to a few people I trust, John Zatara practiced real magic along with show magic. It wouldn't surprise me if you had inherited the best of both worlds."
Zatanna caught herself not breathing and forced an inhale of oxygen. Someone knew about her dad? Who would he have told? Who on the Justice League could he have known? She thought magic was meant to be kept secret.
"I don't know who did those things. Plenty of superheroes use magic of some kind. Why would this one be me?"
"Well, Doctor Fate has been missing for several years, and he never bothered with street level crime anyway. If this were the Specter, those men would be dead. There aren't that many heroes using real magic, Miss Zatara. Also, five of these cases happened in cities along the path of your most recent tour. Another occurred two blocks from your apartment."
Zatanna's mind floundered. He knew. There was no denying the truth. She could fight. But then, she'd never fought anything like… She didn't even understand what he was. And she didn't know what he wanted.
She took another breath. "Okay. Why are you here?"
The hologram shut off and the projector descended back into Victor's shoulder. With all pretenses removed, he let himself relax, even as the woman he was speaking too maintained a defensive stance.
"Like I said, we have a problem. Someone stole something bad, something very bad, and we think we know where it is. Whoever stole the thing is a magic practitioner, and a dangerous one. Going in without a practitioner of our own would be a mistake. Will you help us?"
Zatanna looked at the floor and thought. "You say this whatever-it-is is dangerous. What happens if you don't get it back?"
Victor shrugged. The movement seemed awkward and forced, something he thought he should do in the situation but didn't remember how to. The right shoulder rose and fell naturally enough, but the left didn't rise nearly as high and fell much faster. As it did, Zatanna heard the sound of components coming apart and reuniting. Victor seemed much older in that moment, like an old man who forgot how his body betrayed him.
"It's hard to tell. Best case scenario, maybe nothing happens. We just stay on guard forever, worrying about when the thing will crop up again. Worst case scenario, a lot of people die. We'd need an expert to tell us for sure either way."
"I'm not a superhero," Zatanna repeated.
"And I'm not asking you to be," said Victor. "I'm just asking you to help us make sure no one dies from something I don't understand. From what I've heard, your dad sometimes used his magic to help people. What about you, Miss Zatara?"
That was a barb to egg her into action, but he was right. For all his talk about keeping magic quiet, her father had used it to help people. Many times.
And her? Well, wasn't the reason she interceded in those other cases that she couldn't stand by and let people get hurt? Wouldn't that be what happened if she took no action after hearing Victor's story?
Zatanna exhaled through her nostrils.
"Please, it's just Zatanna. And I'll do it, provided someone gives me more information."
The right side of Victor's mouth rose in his half-smile. "Knew you'd come around. Let's get out of here. Don't want to keep them waiting too much longer."
Justice League Operations
Episode 01: Black Magic Woman
The Javelin looked like something from a movie. It was sleek with a pointed tip indicative of its namesake. Its two wings stretched slightly past the sides of the main body before forming forward-pointed blades, making the vehicle appear like three swords bound together. Zatanna could imagine Will Smith flying it just outside of the ozone layer to spear through an alien mothership.
It flew smoothly and Victor was a capable pilot. She was grateful, because it was hard enough not to freak out as she watched the sky peal back and the two of them were wrapped into the black sea of space.
"So I take it this artifact was detected off planet?" said Zatanna, wishing that she had asked more questions before agreeing to this job.
"Nah," said Victor, "We're not going after it just yet. Gotta meet up with our crew first."
Zatanna decided there was no point asking further questions and took a sip of the sports drink, Gatorfuel, Victor had offered her. His Javelin had a hefty supply of the stuff, at least three six-packs. The magician wondered if he could even drink them.
These trivial issues dropped away from her mind when she noticed the structure they were drifting toward. From a distance, it appeared like a rough ball of space trash, asteroid shards, and various other types of debris that had clumped together in the outer atmosphere as they orbited Earth. But as the Javelin grew closer, Zatanna could see it had a concrete nucleus. A platinum-grey mechanical structure, displaying signs of architecture and intentional design.
The debris surrounding the satellite parted, and the resulting hole in the barrier was too perfect in size for the Javelin for it to be accidental. Victor piloted his ship through the debris, and Zatanna got her first clear look at Justice League's secret headquarters.
It looked almost like a building, if buildings extended up and down to pointed tips and weren't actually built on anything. It had to be several miles in length. At the satellite's middle a number of bridges extended outward, connecting the central mass to a series of compartments that formed a ring. Though the structure was made from a substance recognizable as metal, there was something inhuman in its construction. It reminded Zatanna of documentaries she had seen on television about alien civilizations and artifacts. (That was real, proven alien civilizations, not the ones History Channel had once mused of.) The way that moonlight shined through the debris cloud and shone off of the satellite only increased its otherworldly aura.
"What- what is this?"
"I know, I know," said Victor, "It's not much, but it's home."
When the Javelin got close enough, a port opened on one of the satellite's ring compartments. Victor brought the ship inside and parked it beside six identical Javelins. The hanger door closed and seconds after the Javelin's side doors opened. With six seats, each big enough to fit someone of Victor's size, Zatanna found there was little room in the ship to move. She struggled out of her seat and nearly fell as she disembarked. The cyborg moved with ease and grace, as though his heavy mass bore him no burden in this familiar environment.
"Follow me, Z," said Victor, "There's a lot to catch you up on and not much time to do it."
Victor led Zatanna into a hallway, the interior of the ring she had seen around the satellite. It was well lit with a navy carpet and a few potted plants at the edge here and there. If she had been asleep for the trip, she might have thought they were at a hotel on Earth.
"Victor, seriously, what is this place?"
He favored her with an amused look. "Okay, I'll clue you in. But first, tell me what you know about the Justice League."
Zatanna thought back to the news specials she'd seen on superheroes over the years. She had never considered herself a big fan and hadn't spent any considerable effort keeping up with current events, but she would have had to live under a rock in order to be completely ignorant about the cape community. "The Justice League formed around ten years ago with nine members to begin with. Sometime afterward they signed on as a special division of ARGUS and doubled in size. Now the U.S. government sends them out to deal with any super-crimes they can't use regular law enforcement to handle, plus to handle alien invaders and whatever. Now the Justice League's members are essentially the only superheroes in the country not considered vigilantes or criminals."
Victor nodded. "Yeah, that's the public story. Most of it's true. The League did start ten years ago, it has expanded, and we are considered part of ARGUS. But we have way more than twenty members. I won't tell you who all, but we have people all over the globe working with the League. And the United States government is the main world power willing to publicly work with us, but we don't limit ourselves to it. Any time we see people in trouble and we can justify getting involved, we are there.
"This place is the Watchtower. It's the Justice League's secret club house, and where I live. We keep watch over the whole planet from here. We watch over plenty of other places too. The tower is made up of technology coming from Earth, Mars, Thanagar, and even Krypton, brought together courtesy of Kord Technologies. It represents what the League is: The best of all worlds coming together for a greater good."
Zatanna noticed her mouth was hanging open and closed it. "Why did you bring me here? What makes you trust me with all this?"
"This isn't a spur of the moment decision, Z. We've had eyes on you for a while. The League is always looking for new talent."
Zatanna didn't look at him. "That's a bit stalker-y. And I've told you, I'm not a superhero."
"I know," said Victor. "Neither was I."
Victor stopped and a door in the wall beside them opened. He gestured for his guest to enter.
The room inside did not belong in a clandestine super-team's covert space station. It was a normal looking meeting room, with a row of chairs and a projector mounted to the ceiling, setup to display images across a blank wall. Fluorescent lighting made even the mysterious composition of the walls appear mundane. The only unusual quality the room had were the three people waiting in it.
At the front of the room was a broad-shouldered man in body armor. He had short cropped, blond hair and wore no mask or cape. His outfit was navy and black, with a triangular eye symbol, the ubiquitous logo of the agency ARGUS, on the upper right breast. Zatanna got the impression he wasn't a superhero either.
The young man sitting before him though certainly seemed superhero-ish. His costume was mostly black, with a familiar green logo on his chest. He wore a mask that only covered his eyes. It was green and jagged, the material composing it bright but indistinct. His unkempt black hair flopped over the top of the mask. He was the only one using a chair. He looked over his shoulder at the sound of the door sliding open and met Zatanna with an unsteady grin.
Finally, at the back of the room was another costumed young man. He was clad entirely in red, including his domino mask. His suit included a hood but he was not wearing it, leaving his orange hair visible. His vest and jacket were similar in bulk and construction to the blond man's armor, but he left his arms bare up until the black gloves that began at his wrists.
He leaned against the wall, arms crossed. On the floor beside him, his quiver of thirteen arrows also leaned. The quiver was a mechanical construction, made of metal that had been painted crimson. It had no external walls to hide its contents, instead leaving the arrows and the metal clamps that held them exposed to the naked eye. Each of the arrows was clamped into a specific location, presumably both to keep them organized and to make sure they didn't fall out. The arrows were the same in shape and color, but differed in width and in their variety of arrow head.
The archer nodded at the two as they enter the room. His face did not change expression. His mask, which used white lenses to hide the eyes, revealed nothing.
"Miss Zatara," said the man at the head of the room, "I'm glad Victor got you on board. My next call was going to be Sargon the Sorcerer."
Zatanna took a seat beside the man in green, with Victor sitting on her other side. "And I guess you're from ARGUS?" she asked.
"I'm Captain Steve Trevor, liaison between ARGUS and the Justice League. When my organization has a problem, they send me up here to get a team together and supervise any sensitive operations.
"Since everybody's here now, I'll try and explain the situation."
The room was kept in total darkness, so the video was shot in night vision. Every object in frame was colored in with either shades of grey or harsh, eye-biting emerald. Almost every object.
The room was filled with shelves. Boxes and drawers made up most of it, leaving much of the room's content anonymous. A few things were left out in the open though. Zatanna noticed a Spartan helmet, a child's story book, a statue of a raven that appeared to be breathing, a sheathed katana, a necklace bearing an oval gemstone, and a heavy black book which had been bolted to the shelf beneath it.
In five points around the room, situated in an imaginary pentagram, five soldiers stood. Each of them wore body armor identical to the captain's, plus masks, night-vision goggles, and automatic machine guns. Zatanna noticed the uniforms had been modified to make room for different totems and sigils. Despite their heavy level of conventional armor, she could see that none of them had prepared magical defenses stronger than her own basic guard spell.
A circular symbol had been drawn on the floor, spanning the entire room. Not all of it could be seen, some was covered by shelves and other parts hidden behind people, but Zatanna could recognize some of the sigils and glyphs within it. It was a containment spell, or rather it was a combination of dozens of different containment and protection and anti-detection spells. It was a hybrid of countless religions and ancient rites. Zatanna could not imagine the amount of work that must have gone into constructing the complex ward, not to mention how much more spiritual energy would be needed to power it. Despite the green filter, this symbol still managed to appear a deep crimson.
"This is a classified ARGUS site referred to as the Black Room," said Captain Trevor, "Where we stash any dangerous magical artifacts. Or anything magical we don't understand. Or anything potentially dangerous we can't wrap our heads around scientifically. There's a lot of bad stuff here, which is why we take every measure to defend it from intrusion. Every agent stationed here is a trained warlock and is escorted to the location while sedated by agents who do not know the site's purpose, that way no one knows where it really is.
"And somehow, someone still found it."
When the timer in the upper right corner of the screen reached 01:40:32, there was a flicker of movement behind one of the guards. The source of the movement was unclear, the air itself just seemed to coil. In the grimy recording, this was interpreted as an abrupt burst of static. Suddenly the guard was on the ground, his goggles shattered.
The other four guards broke position, moving toward the disturbance. They had not moved far when one guard on the far side of the room burst into flames. He writhed and attempted to pat the flames out himself, but fell over, colliding with a shelf. A Spartan helmet fell to the ground, but the shelf itself stayed rooted to the spot. The guard tried to pull his own helmet from his head, but it had melted into place.
The other three guards reached the initial scene of disturbance. One guard raised his rifle and was immediately thrown backwards by a bolt of kinetic energy. He hit the wall at an awkward angle. His neck snapped.
The remaining two guards raised their hands toward the center of the room. Zatanna recognized from their stance that the duo was casting an invocation of some sort. The crimson ring on the floor flared with sudden life. They had raised a magical alarm. The lines on the floor were on fire. The flame passed harmlessly over the shelves, their contents, and the Spartan helmet on the floor. The guards were not so lucky. Their armor did nothing to stop the mystical flame. The pair were incinerated almost immediately, alongside the remains of their friends.
Afterward, the inferno subsided. There was only quiet in the Black Room.
"Does anyone see something wrong with this picture?" asked Captain Trevor.
"Yeah," said the man in the back, "Where'd that black book go?"
"Precisely," said Captain Trevor. He rewound the tape to when the black book had been bolted to its place on a shelf. Then he played it in fast forward. One instant the book was there, the next it had vanished. "And that's what we need to find."
The man in green cleared his throat. "So, just how bad is this book?"
"We don't know how much damage it's capable of creating," said Captain Trevor, "What we do know is that it was formerly the property of Felix Faust. In his hands, it created an army that nearly overwhelmed Doctor Fate and a Justice League strike team. How much of a threat it is now depends on who stole it. On that front we have no leads. We have it on good authority that Faust himself is still in Hell. Morgan la Fey's soul is still contained in the Black Room, Circe lost her magic power the last time she fought Wonder Woman, and the Enchantress is currently sealed inside a host body. Those are the only magic users ARGUS is familiar with that we believe would have the power and motivation to retrieve the book."
"I can't speak to motivation," said Zatanna, "But I'm not sure if it would take someone of extensive power to be your book thief. All the hexes cast in that video were rudimentary. They already had some type of invisibility charm equipped before they appeared, something they could have achieved with an artifact. Then they used a kinetic spell and two different flame jinxes. It's more impressive they were able to get around the containment spell chimera on the floor, but with some outside help or just time to research it most practitioners could manage that."
"Great," said the man in red, "So this magical WMD is in the hands of an amateur. Very comforting."
"I'm not saying that. All I mean is that the thief could be anyone, and we shouldn't rule out any possibilities."
The man in green looked from Zatanna, to Captain Trevor, to Victor. "So did we come here to guess who swiped the thing? I don't know how much help I'll be with that."
"No," said Victor, "That part is just speculation. I have a pretty good idea where we can find our book."
The projected image changed. Now there was a picture of a rural town shot from above. "This is Midvale, Kansas. There isn't anything special about the place, but since an hour after the book was taken, no one in the town has made a phone call, sent an email, or streamed a movie. No one has accessed the internet in any way shape or form. No one has left the town in that period either."
"Okay, that's weird," said the man in red, "But it's not a very strong basis to claim it's where this book is at."
"Yeah, but it's what we have. The time frame lines up too well for me to believe this is a coincidence. We need to act on it. This book is too dangerous to leave in the wild."
Zatanna looked around at her new comrades, realizing that no one except Captain Trevor had bothered to make introductions. "Uh, speaking of we, I'm Zatanna."
"Yeah, I know you!" said the man in green, turning in his seat. "I'm a big fan, actually. I'm Green Lantern."
Zatanna tilted her head, taking a second look at his face. "No offense, but you don't look like either of the Green Lanterns I've heard of."
"There's a few of us. I'm new."
The man at the back of the room took a step away from the wall. "And I'm Arsenal, provisional League member."
"Arsenal?" muttered Green Lantern. "I thought you were that Speedy guy. Arrow's sidekick."
"It was Speedy, but that was some time ago. And I'm nobody's sidekick. While the Green Arrow is on leave, I'm the one watching over Star City and keeping an eye on the Justice League."
Arsenal turned to Victor. "Cyborg, I need to ask: Why are we using this team? The situation calls for… more experience."
"The book is a serious threat, Arsenal. But this is the Justice League; we never handle one crisis at a time. Our A-team is handling a Brainiac situation over the South Pacific. Another team is working to defuse a nuclear situation in Hong Kong. Superman and several others aren't even on planet right now. Luckily, I have team captain status within the League, meaning I can assemble a team from any official members, probationary members, or approved candidates.
"As for why this particular team…" Victor raised all five fingers on his right hand and began to count them off. "Zatanna is here because we need an expert in magic. You're here because we'll want someone who can fight from a distance. Trevor must be here because we're going after a high value ARGUS asset. Having a Green Lantern tends to be good luck. And I need to be here because I'm the only one who's an actual Justice Leaguer."
Green Lantern raised his eyebrows. "That's the first time my name has been in the same sentence as "luck." Except for the ones with "bad" in the middle."
"Wait, hold on," said Zatanna. "I agreed to help the Justice League with a mission. This… This is not that. I don't feel comfortable going into a dangerous situation with people who aren't certified."
Arsenal scoffed. "Sorry, show girl, but you're the last person who should be complaining about that. I've been protecting Star City for five years. What's the biggest danger you've faced? Someone hocking a tomato?"
Zatanna's hand curled into fists. She felt the magic flowing through her, forming crystalized orbs around her hands. Still greater energies lingered in the periphery, waiting for a conscious summoning. With a thought, she could show this boy. With a word, he would learn danger.
"That is enough," spoke Trevor. The captain's brow was furrowed and his arms crossed. "Cleary you have forgotten, but this League is an ARGUS institution. In ARGUS, we act like professionals and put the mission over personal scruples. This mission especially deserves the undivided attention of capable operatives. If that isn't what's being provided, I'll be glad to take it elsewhere."
"Sorry Captain," said Victor, his face still impassive, "I should have made team expectations clear before inviting these guys to the Watchtower. As for you, Arsenal, if you would prefer not to be zombified or teleported to Hell by whatever has that book, I would recommend you stop antagonizing our single magic user. We need Zatanna get through this alive. But I'll give everyone one last chance. If you are not willing to participate in this operation, say so now."
Despite a tense moment of silence, and a concerned look from Green Lantern, no one spoke up.
The Javelin touched down in what had once been a cornfield. Despite being late summer, well before harvest season, the ground was bare and dry. It was like this for a two-mile radius around Midvale. Not a blade of grass was to be found. When the Javelin landed, the earth made only a soft crunching noise.
The plane's five passengers disembarked. They were less than a quarter mile outside town limits; not far for five adults in fit condition. As they moved, the team found cars stopped on the roads just outside of town. Arsenal pressed his face against the tinted window on the passenger's side of one car. The interior was entirely empty. "At least there aren't bodies inside. In other news, I'm officially convinced something weird is happening in Midvale."
"I'm not sure how reassuring that should be," said Victor. "The residents may not be dead, but when Faust last laid on hands on this book, he raised every living creature in the vicinity as a member of an undead army."
"Yep, and about that," said the Green Lantern, floating a few feet above the ground with a glowing aura, "What is League protocol for undead armies?"
"Mine's right here." Arsenal patted the quiver of arrows over his shoulder. "I came loaded with my crowd control quiver. I should be able to hold off whatever we run into, at least for five minutes."
"Just don't get bitten," said Trevor. "I'd hate to shoot a young hero in the head."
"Ha! Funny, Captain," the Green Lantern said. "…Why isn't anyone else laughing?"
Zatanna kept her mouth shut as they made their way to the town. The others still weren't entirely sure if the oddities around Midvale were the work of black magic yet, but her doubts had evaporated the minute they touched down. There was something in the air around them. It was unfamiliar, imposing. It was the aching of a once broken limb before a rain storm. She didn't know what it was, but she knew it meant trouble.
The magician considered warning the others. But of what would she be warning them? Black magic was not a homogenous force. It took many forms, and Zatanna was no expert on any of them. After all, it had been ten years since she'd last seen the black arts practiced in person.
Fortuitously, another member of the team was able to put her misgivings into words.
"I'm picking up something strange," said Victor as the five passed the sign reading Welcome to Midvale: A little piece of Heaven. "It seems like some kind of… radiation."
"Excuse me?" asked Green Lantern, his aura flaring to be even brighter.
"Not of the nuclear variety, my sensors would register that. All the matter in this area is vibrating at a specific frequency. Or maybe there's a field over all of it vibrating at that frequency, I'm not sure I could tell the difference. Point is, the frequency doesn't match up with the outside of the town, or with us."
"Are we at risk for contamination?" asked the captain.
Victor nodded. "Yeah. I'd say we've already been affected, but minimally. My best estimates are that we have twenty minutes until full contamination, assuming the effect doesn't get stronger as we go further into the contaminated field."
The captain didn't slow his tread. "Thank for the information, Victor. Even more reason to grab the book and get out."
Zatanna flexed her hands, willing her magic shell to harden. She had no idea if it would protect her against whatever had taken the rest of Midvale, but it was worth a shot.
The inside of Midvale was no less ominous than the outside. Just like at the town's edge, no vehicles were moving and no plant life remained. And despite being the middle of the night, the streetlights remained off, as did any other sources of artificial lighting. (Zatanna was grateful for the full moon, without which she would have been entirely blind.) But by far the worst part was that, as dead as the town looked, it was clearly not empty. The sound of footsteps could be heard resonating throughout Midvale's streets. It sounded like enough feet to include the entire population of the town and then some. The fact that no one was in view posed the question: Where were all those people?
As the group passed the town fire station, which stood a story taller than its neighbors, Victor stopped. "I brought Arsenal to be our eyes in the sky. It isn't much of a crow's nest, but this will have to do."
Zatanna flexed her fingers. "Hold that thought. Rewot, dnetxe!"
The station's roof dipped downward in its center for a moment, like a slingshot being readied, before rocketing into the sky. The body of the building stretched to follow, thinning at the base and shaft. By the time it ceased, the fire station was twice and then another half its original size, half the height of a Metropolis skyscraper.
The four men spent a second gaping. "Will you be able to aim from up there?" asked Victor.
"It shouldn't be a problem," the archer said, avoiding eye contact with the magician. "Does anyone want to give me a lift?"
Green Lantern projected a wide, cartoon hand from his ring and scooped up Arsenal. "Up you go, my young Arrowette!" The translucent emerald arm extended before safely depositing its package at the tower's summit.
"You have eyes up there?" Victor asked.
"I can see the whole town perfectly, Cyborg," Zatanna heard Arsenal reply over the ear piece Trevor had given her. "But I don't see any hostiles. I don't see anyone at all. The town's empty."
Zatanna tilted her head, concentrating. Still, she could hear footsteps and, somewhere in the distance, voices.
Capt. Trevor's hand rested over his holster. "Victor, would you be able to detect this army if its members were invisible?"
The cyborg pursed what remained of his lips together. "I have no idea."
The four members of the team trudged further into the Midvale. They had made it two blocks from the fire station when Zatanna noticed movement from the corner of her eye. She turned her head.
They were children. Two of them on a porch, a girl and a boy. They had matching orange hair and freckles, most likely siblings. The girl was hunched over, playing with toys Zatanna couldn't see from a distance. But the boy just sat there at the edge of the porch, leaning on one arm while the other dangled limply at his knees. He was watching them.
Zatanna cleared her throat. "Guys. The locals spotted us."
Victor looked toward the porch from the corner of his right eye. "So, there are some people left. If we had man power to spare, I'd have someone keep an eye on them. But we have to stay on-"
"Shit!" exclaimed Capt. Trevor, who had walked slightly ahead of the team. The man drew his gun and glanced around, seemingly at nothing.
"Captain?" asked Victor.
"Tell me someone else sees this. What- what is this, Zatanna?"
With caution, Zatanna stepped toward. It was heavier in the air, the presence. It had fallen over all of them like a fog, and she had been too busy patting herself on the back for the transfiguration hex to notice. The vague awareness of the evident danger manifested in Zatanna as a heavy weight at the pit of her stomach. She considered stepping back, back toward the Javelin, back to safety.
Then the fog broke.
The reality of Midvale peeled away, and Zatanna realized she was not in a small Kansas town. She never had been. She was in a sprawling, decrepit mass of residences comprised of streets curving at impossible angles in architectural cacophonies. The full moon over head hung lower and shined brighter than before. The homes that lined the street cast dark shadows now, and they twisted painfully in the moonlight.
The distant voices were louder.
Zatanna spun in a circle, taking in her surroundings. Her dread was changing into something different. True, this nightmare Midvale was somewhat horrible. It was unnatural, eldritch. But it was also impressive. As a wielder of magic with some experience trying to make the natural order bend to her will, she had to hand to whoever had managed to create a vista so improbable. She found it oddly beautiful.
Until her eyes rested again on that porch. In that instant, her respect curdled into mute horror.
The girl remained in her position, hunched over. "Playing," Zatanna had thought. Now the magician could see she was talking. The girl still had her orange hair and freckles, but where before she had possessed the soft features of a child, now her face curved forward at a sharp angle, forming a muzzle and fangs. And the objects she "played" with were her hands. Or they ought to have been hands. They had been pressed into a new shape. Perhaps they resembled what her face had once been. They stared up at their canine owner, whispering.
Meanwhile the boy had retained most of his original body, except for the arm that hung. Now there swung a crimson, two-pronged claw. Drool hung from his slack jawed smile.
One of her comrades caught Zatanna as she stumbled backward, retching. "No. No, no, please…"
Green Lantern was the first of the others to respond. "I've been to a lot of planets before but this is, uh, new. Are we on Earth anymore? Is this- is this what Hell's like?"
Collecting herself, Zatanna shook her head. "We're still on Earth. We're in Midvale. This is what's left of it. That book, whatever it is, has generated a field of magical energy. It's the same energy Victor picked up earlier. It's infected everything in the town, including the space that Midvale exists in. The thief has been warping everything within that field into its current form, hidden behind a perception shield. That way no one on the outside could see what they had done until they were infected too."
The Lantern brought a hand to his mouth. "Just like we are."
Capt. Trevor looked toward Victor. "How long do we have until the contamination takes full affect?"
"Eight minutes, maybe."
Steve nodded. "That will have to be enough."
"Anyone want to clue me in? What are you all talking about?"
Hearing his confusion, Zatanna realized Arsenal was still on the wrong side of the thief's perception filter. The magician closed her eyes, willing the town's terrifying visage to leave her mind, and focused on recovering her mystic energies. "Nepo sih seye."
"What am I- oh damn. Cyborg? Next time the League is having a magic issue, find a different archer."
"Roger that, Arsenal. Now that your vision's cleared up, could you point us toward anything that looks suspicious? I'd rather find that book and get out of here before we join the scenery."
"Agreed. And I think I've spotted the place. Get walking, I'll guide you."
There was a rumbling in the ground. Not an earthquake. The vibrations of something large. From between two building, Green Lantern spotted something the size of a bus with black fur walking down a parallel street. "Captain? I don't suppose there's still time to opt out of the mission, is there?"
The archer's voice led the quartet through the latticework of dark Midvale. They must have walked twice of Midvale's original length in the process, but the threat of dreadful mutation sped their way. With three minutes left on Victor's count, they reached the center of the constructed place. Upon seeing it, each of them recognized the building Arsenal had described.
Zatanna imagined it had once been Midvale's city hall. Parts of it had been, at least. Like a tumor, the building had grown and metastasized, absorbing surrounding structures. Viewing it from the outside, she could see a few storefronts, the post office, a grocery store, some lampposts, and a tree fused into its bloated artifice. Even as she watched the structure grew, tendrils of brick and concrete reaching into its neighbors, warping and remolding them as they offered no resistance.
"This is the center," she said, "The nucleus of their world. This must be where the spell was originally cast."
"Meaning it's where the book is," surmised the captain.
"Maybe."
"Definitely. We don't have time for a second location."
"Or for talking," said Green Lantern. "Let's just find the book before we all turn into lobster people."
And Green Lantern grasped the nearest doorknob of the malformed structure. There were two results at approximately the same time. One, he realized the door had been sealed. Two, the distant sounds of a thousand people walking suddenly became not so distant. And began to sound more like running.
Lantern drew his hand away from the door. "Was I not supposed to do that?"
The captain flipped off the safety on his weapon. "Arsenal, what's coming in our direction?"
"I think I figured out what happened to all of the people."
And that's when the mob rounded the corner.
If Zatanna looked closely at any one of them, she could guess what kind of person they had been before. She could infer what job they'd had, if they'd been married, or how old they had been from the clothes they wore and the objects they'd chosen to wield. But what differentiated the figures was less interesting than what made them the same. Every member of the mob featured human skin, but it had been rearranged. The people of Midvale had curved spines, leaving them in a perpetual stoop. Their mouths and noses had been merged into a single protrusion, a flat and cylindrical snout. Their eyes were pinched, black things, possessing cunning without intellect. The mob rushed forward toward the quartet. They held pipes, bats, coatracks, and rakes. There were hundreds of them.
Steve Trevor and Green Lantern pointed their weapons at the approaching mass.
"No!" exclaimed Zatanna. "We can't hurt them. They don't have control over themselves."
Lantern lowered his ring. Trevor didn't follow suit. "Things will be worse for them if we don't live to find the book. Defend the team first, worry about casualties later."
Zatanna wracked her brain, trying to come up with a hex to pacify the crowd before the captain could fire. Her misadventure with the League could not end in a massacre.
"Everybody, cover your eyes NOW."
Zatanna spun around as the hog-mob made it within a yard of the crew. She hoped that Arsenal's aiming hadn't been overstated.
There was a horrible bang and a flash of light that the magician could see through her eyelids.
The air became filled with pained squealing. Zatanna opened her eyes. The army of abominations had halted their charge. Some were rolling on the ground in pain. Some rubbed desperately at their eyes, as if trying to restore feeling to a numb limb. None of them were unaffected.
The Captain lowered his gun.
Green Lantern clicked his tongue. "Guess that's our equivalent of a nonviolent solution."
"No one's dead, right? I did my job."
No sooner had Arsenal spoken, a large black shape, only slightly shorter than the buildings surrounding it, appeared from around a corner. Two massive yellow eyes examined the team. The creature crouched forward, lifting its tail and hindquarters into the air. A pink tongue ran over the top row of ivory fangs.
"Mmmm-rrrow?"
"No one is dead yet," corrected Green Lantern. "Have any more fireworks?"
A second arrow arched through the night sky and exploded against the monster's side. But the burst of heat and light seemed muted. A third followed and disappeared entirely into the shadowlike fur.
"I'm beginning to think this isn't an ordinary cat."
The gargantuan hissed and broke into a sprint. The immobile hog men she trampled over seemed to melt into her paws, leaving nothing behind as she proceeded.
"Victor?" asked Captain Trevor. "Would you mind helping with this?"
Through the entire conflict, the cyborg had been facing the door which Green Lantern failed to open. His right eye was shut while his mechanical left eye scanned the door's surface. "Already occupied."
A beam of light project out from Lantern's aura, reshaping itself as it flew toward the furred behemoth.
"Extraordinary felines require extraordinary measures."
The shape that formed out of the green light was clearly meant to be a quadruped, but its proportions were physiologically confused. The beast's abdomen was far too small, leaving its four legs to project out from the side like a spider's. The legs were stick thin but ended in gigantic paws. The head was similarly oversized. The face was far too emotive for a dog. It almost resembled a human, except for the muzzle filled with teeth. Despite the uncanniness of the being, it didn't strike Zatanna as disturbing like the residents of Midvale. It seemed more like a cartoon, a child's interpretation of dog. And it was familiar.
The holographic hound growled and launched itself at the feline. The shadow beast squealed in rage, but was forced to halt its charge. The hound attempted to use its teeth and claws, but the cat's fur melted away from every attack. With no means to harm a thing of darkness, the dog was helpless as the cat wrapped herself around it and shank fangs into its neck.
Green Lantern gasped in pain.
"Can you feel that?" asked Zatanna. "I thought Lantern projections were indestructible."
"I… told you… I'm new."
"Got it," said Victor, drawing everyone's eyes away from the fight. "320 decibels in the lower right quadrant."
Victor pointed his left arm toward the door, palm extended. All five of his brutish fingers bent backward into the dorsal surface of his hand as the supine surface split in two to accommodate a cylindrical barrel that extended outward. Zatanna felt mild vindication as the fissures down the length of his left arm split open, allowing the limb to inflate to twice its previous diameter. The barrel expanded with it, until it resembled a cannon rather than a gun. The blue veins on the cyborg's mechanical components increased in radiance, shifting to an unearthly white.
The cannon fired.
It was quieter than Zatanna had expected, like a sonic boom had just occurred five thousand feet in the sky above her. Nonetheless, the residual kinetic energy knocked her and Captain Trevor onto their asses.
The door flew off its hinges.
Victor's arm returned to its default form in a third the time it had taken to morph. He looked at his fallen allies. "Stop slacking off and get in the damn tumor-house."
The inside of the "tumor-house" reminded Zatanna of a shopping mall. The main structure was a twisting, awkward hallway without consistent width or height. It looked like being on the inside of a vein, if veins were composed of brick and cement. Intermittently, the walls would open into various chambers. The openings were abrupt and there was little to tie the chambers together. Here was an abandoned apartment, here a shoe store, over there a classroom, and so on.
And then there was the doorway behind them, with no door to keep out the shadow-cat monster or the hog men who were gradually recovering their faculties.
As soon as the last of the team were inside, Zatanna turned back to the doorway. She shaped her hands to form a circle around the doorway, concentrating her locus of power on that space.
"Edacirab."
A stream of objects from nearby chambers flowed toward the opening, like blood platelets to a wound. Zatanna saw shelves, cages, desks, shoes, televisions, fish bowls, chairs, candy wrappers, discarded clothing, loose bricks, a washing machine, and plenty of other things. They formed a layer of trash over the wall where the door had been and stuck in place. There was a flare of colorless energy that only the magician could perceive as the borders between the random components vanished, merging them permanently.
Zatanna lowered her hands. "That'll hold. We have all the time we need to find the book."
"I doubt that," said Victor. "According to my sensors, each of us is now fully contaminated. We could become just like the people out there anytime."
"That's swell. Any good news?"
"Actually, yes." Victor hesitated, tilting his head as if listening to something far off. "The Hong Kong situation just cleared up. The co-chairman is coming in to provide us with support."
Captain Trevor shook his head. "No. Absolutely not. The last thing we need is to give this thief a founding member to infect and control."
"I agree, but they'll have more time than we do now. And frankly, we aren't in a position to turn down help."
The captain turned back toward the hall. "Fine then. We fan out, find the book before the cavalry arrives and before the thief twists us into another of his monsters."
As Captain Trevor departed from the rest of the group, Zatanna couldn't help but wonder why the thief had waited this long to start changing them. Or had he? Had Captain Trevor always walked with that stoop?
Victor looked into the middle distance as he spoke through their coms. "Arsenal, we're going further into the structure. Do you have us covered from the outside?"
Silence.
"Arsenal, do you have us covered?"
"Sorry. Yeah, I got this. Just try and hurry with that book so I can get the hell out of here."
The three made their way down the hall. As they proceeded, the limited light streaming through Zatanna's barrier faded out entirely. Green Lantern increased his aura accordingly, while Victor transformed his left arm into a gigantic flashlight. Eventually, they came to a fork in the road.
Green Lantern looked down both halls. "Any idea which way the captain went?"
Victor activated his coms. "Captain Trevor, can you report in?
"…Captain Trevor?"
There was silence.
Victor sighed. "Okay, we have to assume the enemy got him. Hopefully, once we get the book, we can retrieve him too. For now, we move on. Lantern, take the left hall. Zatanna and I will take the right."
"What?" the Lantern cried in dismay. "Why do I have to go alone?"
"You at the very least have basic Lantern training, and have been operating as a superhero on Earth for over a year now. Zatanna, by her own admission, is a non-superhero who has no experience with these situations. Plus, I'm the least super powered of the three of us and would prefer to have a sorcerer at my back."
"Yeah, well, so would I."
Zatanna considered insisting on going on her own, but Victor was right. How would she react if she was ambushed by more of those monsters? And if he did find the thief, how affective could Victor hope to be against a magic user?
Green Lantern gave in and the group of three split in two.
Victor and Zatanna checked each of the chambers they passed. Not very thoroughly. Most of the rooms were simply demolished former establishments without so much as a magazine. It occurred to Zatanna that the thief might have transformed the book into a different object to better conceal it, but she decided not to voice this possibility. The needle-in-a-haystack scenario they were currently in was bad enough.
They'd been searching for around twenty minutes when Victor peaked his head into one doorway and groaned loudly.
"What is it?" asked Zatanna, stepping out of an office space she'd been examining.
Victor turned to her with a frown on his half-mouth. "I think I found a lead."
He'd found the town library.
"Hell-oo-oo?" Lantern called down the hall. "Anyone home? Come out come out, wherever you are. And please don't turn me into a pig-person."
The dark hall bore no reply.
The Lantern's glow faded slightly as he floated through the alien hallway, giving each a cursory scan. His ring, on the face of it just a generator for hard light weaponry, was actually a very advanced piece of equipment. With limited input from his mind, the ring was able to scan contained areas for any object that fit his definition of "book," whether he could see them or not.
It helped him sometimes to think of the ring as if it were another person. His partner. If the ring had his back, it meant he was never alone.
Even if he was alone, in a strange and dangerous place.
Green Lantern wanted for the book to be found. He wanted for the League to be able to help those poor people. Mostly though, he wanted his ring not to find any book. If he finished this hallway without finding anything, that meant he could go back and join the others.
The ring went off. It had found something.
The Lantern floated into the chamber before he could tell what it was. He forced his aura to light up the room. There was a reclining chair attached to the floor, a desk with various papers and a computer on the surface, a tray of metal tools…
It was a dentist's office. A dentist's office with a bookshelf.
"What kind of supervillain would hole up at the dentist's? Not even evil likes going to see the dentist."
He considered just leaving. Surely the ring had just picked up the normal books on the shelf. This was a dead end.
But it might not be.
The Lantern landed, planting his feet on the ground, and walked to the bookshelf. Systematically, he began inspecting the texts on it. An anatomy book, a procedural manual, random magazine, photo album, some brochures…
Something rustled behind him.
The Green Lantern turned. "Somebody there? Vic? Captain Trevor?"
The sound came again. It wasn't footsteps. It was something small. Something metallic.
He looked down at the tray of tools. They were moving, rolling on the tray.
"Oh. Oh, this is very bad."
The Lantern lifted his ring, but before he could will anything limbs of liquid metal wrapped around his body, constricting his arms to his sides. They were coming from the chair, flat metals arms jutting out from its sides.
The chair pulled the Lantern on to it. He struggled, trying to think of something to melt the arms. (Maybe a welding torch. What did a welding torch look like again?) But suddenly the tools from the tray leapt to him. They had only been six or seven implements before, each roughly the width and length of a finger. Now there were dozens. They grew and changed, shaping around his body. Green Lantern was trapped within a metal exoskeleton.
It was dark. He couldn't move.
Kyle Rayner screamed.
Moonlight streamed in through the library's glass skylight, giving the whole room a sickly glow. Everything in sight reflected the nausea within Zatanna. Her mind kept floating back to those children, the boy with the claw…
"Any chance you could narrow it down?" asked Victor. "I can try scanning the room, but it will take me a while to process so much data. And that's assuming they didn't switch the book's cover."
Zatanna considered her options. Her magic couldn't perform any action on command. Her reverse spells were a short cut, a way to quickly activate a wide variety of Magiks she had learned. More than a few had some ability to locate different forms of magic, but none were foolproof.
"Dnif tnemtnahcne," said the sorcerous. Her hands assumed a mystical blue glow. Zatanna concentrated for a second, willing her charm to grasp upon any stray threads of magic. "It's not working. The field they cast over this town is interfering with my ability locate any magical presences from a distance. If I get near them though, I think it will let me know."
"That'll have to do. Start feeling around for some clues. I'll start scanning in the library and see if I come up with anything."
Zatanna moved across the peripheral walls of the library, running her fingers over the spines of shelved books. None of them registered as possessing magical properties. But as she moved closer to the back of the library, where shelves cast shadows to block the pale lunar beams, she felt something. A tugging. A tinge of the unnatural just different enough from the surrounding field to be discerned.
"Mmmm-row!"
Zatanna jumped at the cry from behind her. She turned to face the beast, but it was only a normal cat. The small black feline scampered off into the shadows, toward… something. Zatanna squinted. It was a tall shape. Faceless. Hooded
"Etanimulli!"
The paltry blue glow of her hands turned white and expanded, until the library was devoid of darkness.
It was a cloaked figure in the corner. Clearly a woman. Her robe was a deep emerald with golden lining. The cat rubbed against her ankles for a second before vanishing into the folds of her cloak, as if it were only another shadow.
The woman stepped forward.
"So, the Justice League has hired a magician. A nice effort, but a little late. And this doesn't really look like your area of expertise, does it?"
Her voice was low, her tone biting. As she walked forward, Zatanna had to exert a conscious effort not to step away, not to back down.
"Whoever you are, hand over the book. We have back-up coming, and I am not afraid to curse you."
The figure's hand appeared from within the cloak's fold. Gripped in it was the black book from the video. It looked the same as it had, except for the fact that six dark purple eyes had formed on the cover. One of them blinked as they looked Zatanna over.
"Oh, this book? Darling, I could hand it to you, but you'd never be able to handle it. Trust me, we are all safer if this stays in my tender loving care."
Victor appeared behind the woman, silently stepping around a bookcase. His left arm was already transforming into its cannon form. "Then drop it. Or you can take one step closer to my teammate. Then I'll drop you."
The woman froze. "The Cyborg. Your story is just too sad. A promising young man loses his body before he had the chance to do something with it. I know how it feels to lose everything. But I got it back. Who would I be if I didn't give you the same opportunity?"
Victor's canon had been expanding into firing state when suddenly it stopped. He glared at his appendage with incredulity. His stomach started to twist and he collapsed to his knees.
"What's happening? Why can I feel my legs?"
Ripples traveled across his sweatpants. From the outside, it looked like a nest of ants had taken up residence. The compartments of Victor's cannon began to separate, but slowly and involuntarily. Something was pressing up through the cracks. Pink, exposed muscular tissue.
Victor's right arms grabbed the cannon and pulled it to his chest. "No, no, please," he moaned. The blue veins across the metallic half of his body flared white and then went dead.
The process didn't stop, but Zatanna turned away. She couldn't watch the rest of his body be engulfed.
"You all belong to me," the robed woman said, "All of your friends have been claimed."
She waved her hand and a goblin appeared at her side. He had black eyes, a pig's snout, blond fur, and the tusks of a boar. And he wore ARGUS armor.
Under her breathe, Zatanna conjured "Draug." She enforced her barriers and stared into where the woman's face would be. "Who are you?"
"I am the last daughter of Hecate. I am the Queen of Aeaea and the master of Scylla. My blood is the legacy of Nymphs and my wisdom is the terror of men! I am the bastard child of Zeus, and the rightful commander of beasts!"
The woman threw back her hood. She had long, red hair and olive tinted skin. Her eyes were yellow and dancing with cruel jubilance. The angle of her features was as sharp as her flesh was soft. Her smile was wide, voracious.
"I am Circe."
"Nice to meet you. Gninthgil tlob!"
The sky went white and the glass in the ceiling burst inward, but any conjured bolt was snuffed out before it reached the book thief. The only sign there had been lighting at all was the sound of thunder that came seconds later.
Circe frowned. "Very rude, Zatanna. You should at least introduce yourself before you kill someone. I gave you that courtesy."
The magician extended her hand toward the robed woman. "Sedalb fo ssalg!"
All throughout the library, shards from the broken skylight rose into the air. They clung together, forming into spears before hurling themselves toward their conjuror's opponent.
Circe raised the book in front of her chest.
The spears continued their trajectory toward Circe, but just before they could strike her each one rushed straight into the book's cover. Upon making contact, they all vanished.
Circe lowered the book. "I was giving you the benefit of a doubt, young lady, but it looks like you can't even make this entertaining for me."
Zatanna tried to open her mouth for another jinx, but found that she couldn't. Her lips were pressed together. No, that wasn't right. Her teeth were sealed together. No…
Zatanna tried to move her tongue to find the problem. But it wouldn't move. Because there was no tongue.
Her hands went to her face. Below her nose there was only flat, seamless skin.
She thought, desperately. Zatanna put all of her will into any useful jinx she could remember. Leah. Nruter ot lamron. Xif!
Nothing.
She collapsed, knees and hands on the floor. Adrenaline was kicking in. Her body was trying to hyperventilate. Zatanna couldn't breathe.
She was struck in the side. Zatanna went rolling till she hit a wall.
Above her, the woman grinned.
"Now, are we ready to talk like grown-ups?"
Eventually, Kyle calmed down. Screaming was pointless. No one was coming to help him.
He remembered when he was a child and some of the kids locked him the dumpster behind the school. It had been a lot like this. Dark. Suffocating. He'd panicked. Thrown himself against the walls. But in the end, none of his efforts meant anything. He had remained there, until the following morning. By the time the teachers found him, he was calm. He'd found his center.
Kyle needed that center now.
Though he could not see or hear inside the metal coffin, eventually Kyle remembered that he was not blind. He still had his ring. It was an infinitely complex, infinitely sensitive instrument. If he focused his will through it, he could sense something- someone- outside.
What was the most complex, distinct signature he could seek out? Of course, Victor.
It took longer than he had expected. Victor's body was highly unique; the intricate electric dispersal system attached to Victor's heart was something the ring could pick up without any concentrated effort. But now all that Kyle could detect of it was an echo.
Victor had been switched off.
Kyle shifted gears. If someone had gotten to Victor, Zatanna couldn't be far from him. The Green Lantern concentrated on the signal generated by Victor's Justice League communicator and searched for an identical signature. Sure enough, there was another in the same room. That'd be her.
Neither of Kyle's teammates were in good shape. Both were on the ground, neither moving.
It was the infection. If they had been fully contaminated when the three of them were together, it was even worse now. He could feel the strength of the book's energy field. It filled both of them. Their bodies crackled, like radios set to the wrong station.
But if he could ID the signal, could he push it back?
The ring was a very advanced piece of equipment.
Kyle imagined the field as something tangible. Something he would draw in one of his comic books. A tidal wave. And he imagined a contrasting force. The unstoppable force to its immovable object. The matter to its antimatter. An antidote.
He locked onto his friends' location in his mind.
Hang tight, guys. Good vibes are coming your way.
Zatanna had almost passed out when feeling returned to her tongue. Or rather, her tongue returned to her.
She ran her tongue over her teeth, making sure everything was back in order, as she caught her breath. Circe was still standing over, and with Zatanna's face pressed toward the carpet, shouldn't have been able to see her recovery. Zatanna wanted to keep it that way. At least until she had a plan.
"Teg eht lleh yawa mrof em!"
That was almost a plan.
The witch screamed in surprise as a kinetic force slammed against her, bashing her against a wall. Zatanna scrambled toward the door on all fours. Behind her, she heard the goblin that had been Captain Trevor let out a demented cry.
"Reirriab!" The displaced books on the ground suddenly formed a wall, separating the chamber into two sections: One with Zatanna and one with everyone else.
She touched her earpiece, activating her coms. "Green Lantern! Arsenal! Get to us now! We found our thief."
"Roger that, showgirl. On my-"
Bang!
A bullet pierced through the wall of books. The magician ducked before two more followed it. Then the goblin was breaking through, using his fingers, or appendages that rested somewhere on the line between fingers and hooves, to pry the wall apart. He coughed and sputtered and smiled down at her. She was about to ready an offensive spell when a sonic projectile was fired from the other end of the room, collapsing the wall of books and Trevor.
"You alright?" asked Victor. He was speaking to Zatanna, but his attention and his sonic cannon were trained on Circe.
"Yeah, I'm good. She won't be."
Circe rose to her feet. No bruises, no shaking, no sign that being hurled into concrete damaged her at all. She still had the book in her hand. "It's a miracle. You've both been cured, for now. I guess that means you aren't my playthings any more. But this town still is, so…"
Zatanna felt herself sinking. She looked down. The ground was still there, but her feet and ankles were gone. Gradually, her legs were fading into the library floor. She looked toward Victor, who was having the same realization. "The book! Get it away from her!"
He fired his canon a second time, but the projectile never made contact. The sonic energy simply vanished into the book's cover, just like the glass spears.
"You thought you could use Midvale's air against me? Sorry. You have your team, but I have this town. And your forces are starting to run low."
That was when the wall behind Circe exploded.
Zatanna sank to the ground and closed her eyes as smoke and debris filled the air. The cement floor that had held her now felt soft, like mud. She pulled herself free and made her way out from the chaos, heading toward the hallway.
Behind her she heard shouting and cursing. Some of it was from Circe. Some from someone new.
"…shouldn't have come here… friends will die… Midvale will burn!"
"Not anymore. Put it down, Circe. Give up."
There was a scream. From the dust cloud, a cone of glass flew at Zatanna's face. She readied a spell, but before she could speak it someone intervened. A figure stepped before her at inhuman speed and the missile shattered against their body.
The shape was a person. A woman, at least six feet tall with long black hair. She wore red and blue armor, with sandals and a golden tiara. At one hip was short sword, and on the other a golden coil of rope. She held her wrists out in front of her, both coated in golden bracelets, as though they were shields.
Zatanna gazed up at her in surprised awe. "Wonder Woman?"
The figure turned and smiled. "It's Diana, to my friends."
"Chairman!" said Victor, who was still sealed to the floor on the other side of the room. "You've been infected by the field, just like the rest of the town. If we don't get the book soon, she'll be able to change you just like she did Captain Trevor."
Diana spared the pig-goblin a glance. He still lay unconscious on the floor from Victor's attack.
"The Pact of Jupiter binds you, Circe. You cannot take life from a fellow daughter of the gods, lest you lose your immortality."
Circe smiled. In Wonder Woman's attack, Zatanna saw the witch's robes had been torn into rags. Now the short purple dress below it had been exposed. Across its material ethereal clouds of black drifted, as though they were shadows being cast onto a wall.
"True. So, I won't kill you, Princess. But there are plenty of things this book can do that don't involve killing. All very entertaining."
The shadows pealed themselves from Circe's dress and flew at the warrior woman. Each took the form of a cat.
Zatanna pointed one finger toward the feline demons. "Seittik eb enog!"
Without enough to time to scream, the litter dissolved into vapor.
Wonder Woman walked toward her foe, slowly and with intent. Circe was forced to step backward at the same pace. "You should be rejoicing, Princess. This town was to be the new birthplace of the gods. A kingdom from which to usher in a new age of night and madness. There would finally be a world that embraces goddesses such as us."
"I already have my world. Surrender, sister."
Circe opened the book in Diana's direction and a sonic projectile identical to Victor's was fired. With a single bracelet and mythic reflexes, the Amazon deflected it.
When Circe's back hit a wall, the witch closed her eyes tightly and slammed the book shut. "If my kingdom is not to survive, then neither shall we."
The ground began to shake. At first Zatanna thought the ceiling might collapse, but then a stalactite emerged from the ground, almost impaling her. Another tore in half one of the few surviving bookshelves. Several others jutted forth, one barely missing Victor's right leg. Circe wasn't calling down the sky, she was raising the earth.
Diana dashed forward toward the witch, sword in hand. She almost sliced through her arm, but the witch was fast too. She darted aside at the last instant, running toward the hole Diana had made in the wall. Circe almost made it, but tripped over a rising spike.
She was falling but the book was still in her hand.
For a second.
Whoosh.
There was an arrow.
On the ground, Circe felt an emptiness in her grasp. She found that her book was many feet away, pinned to the ground with a red arrow. Outside of her grasp, the tomes six violet eyes had vanished in nothing.
"No!"
The woman crawled, desperately trying to reach for her last shred of power. But before the book came within a grasp, another voice cried out.
"Nrub!
The tome was engulfed in crimson flame.
Circe looked on in dismay. Her two hands curled into fists. She bashed them against the ground and silently sobbed.
A crimson archer looked on through the broken skylight above. An earnest smile crossed his face as he lowered his bow.
"Not a bad show at all. Welcome to the club, show girl."
Now this is where the Justice League meets, Zatanna thought. Back at the watch tower, she found herself sitting at a round table, accompanied by Victor, Green Lantern, Arsenal, Diana, and the recovered Captain Trevor. The room was a large, echoing chamber in the center of the League's satellite headquarters. Its walls were lined with reflective metal panels. She assumed they must serve some anti-surveillance purpose. The table itself was massive and carved from stone. There was nothing alien or unnatural about it. It was grey, heavy, Earth-based rock. Four words had been inscribed in gold on the table's surface: Let Justice Be Done.
The captain drummed his fingers on the table. Zatanna wondered if he was trying to shake the memory of having hooves. "The director is going to be pissed off. Our objective was to retrieve the book. Your recruit destroyed it."
"And I wasn't thrilled about my last-minute filling appointment," Green Lantern chimed in. "Things happen."
"The League answers to ARGUS. We give you the legitimacy you need to operate and help fight your legal battles, and in return you protect our assets. This has been the arrangement. If that arrangement needs to change-"
Diana cleared her throat, interrupting the captain. All eyes turned to the co-chairman. "The last time I fought Circe, I eliminated her source of magic power. Essentially, she became a non-threat. Yet somehow, ARGUS allowed a solitary, non-powered witch to steal a weapon with which she could have killed the entire country. I do not know how this was possible, but perhaps the Justice League should rethink our arrangement with ARGUS."
The captain was suddenly sitting very still. "Do you mean that, Diana?"
"It's Wonder Woman or Ms. Prince, Captain. And that entirely depends on ARGUS's performance moving forward."
Trevor rose from his chair. "Understood. I'll give my report to the director and let him know about your… conditions."
The tension eased once Trevor left the conference room. Green Lantern almost allowed himself to lean back in his chair, then his eyes flicked back to Wonder Woman. He assumed his formal posture.
"So, Victor, how did the new talent perform in the field?"
Victor took a second to consider. "Nobody died. That's impressive on its own. The witch had us outmatched, but given how little information we had to work with that makes sense. Negating the alteration field was an especially inspired move on Green Lantern's part, and Zatanna held her own against Circe, however briefly. And Arsenal was competent."
"Competent? Seriously?" asked Arsenal. "I held off those hogs the whole time you were playing I-Spy. But I still lose points for not shooting magic."
"This isn't an exam, Arsenal," said Diana, "Just a performance evaluation."
Zatanna cocked an eyebrow. "Don't tell me you're jealous of a showgirl."
"Not likely." Arsenal rose from his chair. "But if the mission's over, I think my time is better spent watching Star City. Call me the next time you need "competence.""
"Oh right!" said Green Lantern. "Speaking of time, its morning now, isn't it?"
"Yeah, barely," said Victor. "It's four o'clock in your time zone."
"Oh man, I am so behind schedule. I'll be taking off too. That is, if I have leave to, um, leave, ma'am."
"Of course, Green Lantern. Thank you for your help."
Victor pushed away from the table. "And unless Arsenal intends to fly home, I guess that's my cue. I'll see you later, Diana. And Zatanna, thanks for your help. I came to the right magician."
As the doors closed behind the three men, Zatanna heard Arsenal say something about "borrowing a Javelin."
"So…"
Zatanna turned to find that she had Wonder Woman's full attention. The older woman was leaning on the table, hands clasped in front of her face. "How do you like it?"
"Like what?" asked Zatanna. "The Watchtower? The team?"
"How do you like saving people?"
"I… I don't know. Being there was horrible. What she did, she created some of the worst things I've ever seen. But putting it right, that did feel good."
Diana nodded, as if this was an answer she got a lot. "There are a lot of bad things out there waiting to be put right. More every day."
"I know there are, and I try to help in my own way. But situations like this are better handled by you or Superman. I'm not a superhero."
"Do you think the people of Midvale care whether you have an emblem on your chest, or a fancy costume? You saved them with skills that I don't have. Not every job is a job for Superman, or me. That's why we have a Justice League."
Diana raised a hand in surrender. "Sorry, I'm not trying to strong arm you into signing up. Take a few weeks. Think about it. I just want you to know that your skills could do a lot of good here.
"But I do have something I'd like to give you."
Diana slid a card across the desk. Printed at the top was Justice League: Provisional Member. Below was a picture of Zatanna. In the photo she wore her top hat, and it hung at such an angle that the brim and its shadow obscured her whole face, save a Cheshire cat grin. Beside that was a name: The Magician.
"We didn't know what codename you would want, so I thought we would start with something general."
"Thanks," said Zatanna. "But I only perform under my own name."
The card in the magician's hand shimmered for a second. When the shine faded, the picture and name changed. Now the picture showed her face in full, and the name read Zatanna Zatara.
"Is that a sign of interest?"
"It's a maybe," said Zatanna. "But if something like this comes up again, feel free to call."
And then the magician disappeared.
In a cell, somewhere not on any maps, Circe sat. As agents had dragged her there, she'd made a big show. She had kicked and spat and threatened. Done all the things a humiliated supervillain was supposed to do. But now she had time to herself. Now she had time to think.
Circe was aware these wouldn't be her permanent facilities. This was a room designed to hold recent admits. That meant it had severely heightened security, meant to counter any know power set. And that meant it wouldn't have any security cameras. Not all rogues could be trusted with reflective surfaces.
The witch looked at the ground, just in case any unperceived watchers were there to read her lips. "The Book of Thoth wasn't the tool for doing in the princess after all. Pity. But it got me where I needed to go, in any case. If I can trust my partner with the next step, I should have a new opportunity any day now."
She rubbed her hand across her left inner forearm. As she did, a purple glyph appeared. It was a diamond shape with an iris and pupil at its center. At either pointed end of the diamond there were three eyelashes, six in total.
"Oh Princess, I hope when we meet again that you'll remember: You got your friends involved first."
