by The Eurostar
Prometheus X has returned, for the first time.
The ageless being, the first light of creation, the smiling god that had walked over the Earth before dinosaurs or mammoths, he who taught men fire and music, art and love, opens his eyes for the first time in that precise moment when Ritchie Stevens finally, after so many refusals, accepts his final fate to become the spirit of light.
"Heroes of the Earth, you have been deceived. You gave your life to accomplish a false task that a malevolent mind set up for you." The mysterious being turns his shadowed head to right and left, slowly. "Look at your actions... what the perverted brain of an evil being has managed to make you perform... lives of innocents taken... that has to be repaired."
Prometheus X simply blinks, and the universe itself is reversed.
An entire state reduced to dust is reshaped in its former image. Buildings collapsed reform from rubbles. Dead bodies stand up and smile.
And the dead and wounded Vanguardians, and MBLers, too, stand up, their lives infused in them again, their wounds sealed, their minds soothed.
"The wrongs have been repaired, incomprehension has been settled. Now it's time to work together." Prometheus opens his arms, the sides of his coat in his hands, embracing in the gesture all those present. The heroes are engulfed by the impossibly big coat, and then they vanish altogether, leaving behind a silent house, where Jennifer sleeps quietly with her unborn child.
A fierce wind coming inland from the ocean hits La Perdita, and hard, pouring rain washes over the steel exterior of the Complex, the high-tech Vanguard Headquarters.
Inside, unaware of the chaos of nature, three ingenious minds are busy battling the worst computer virus the Complex's mainframe has ever experienced. Something has hidden the correct information in the multiple servers, replacing it with false information.
Grissom Montag, a cigarette half-smoked, with all the cinder hanging from the tip, types over the keyboard in front of the setup of multiple monitors in his bedroom.
Behind him, Dr. Henry Quantos watches all the moves by the Englishman, nodding every few seconds. But the real player is the third: Jym, the synthetic life form in charge of Vanguard security and the alien companion of Adem Different. What has been happening is a chase, a game of hide and seek played across the virtual information highway inside the internal network of Vanguard, between the alien software and the virus, something uncannily similar to Jym, but of terrestrial origins.
Basically, the virus has been running away, and Jym has been following it to metaphorically try to capture it. What Griss, with Quantum's support, has been doing is shutting off, one by one, the doors through which the virus is trying to escape, confining it into smaller spaces each time. At first, he was cut from the Internet. Griss teleported, all at once, the plugs between the infranet and the world wide web. Then, when Jym had let the living virus escape in the server farm, he closed off all the hubs. And now, the chase is hard disk by hard disk, with the quick fingers of Griss dancing over the keyboard performing Unix commands letting, sector after sector, one hard drive after another die off after the virus has left one for the next.
It takes just minutes. Grissom Montang has been sweating madly, when finally his three-fingered hands close in fists and shake the desk. "I did it!"
"WE did it!" corrects Jym, who had downloaded himself over the handheld computer of Griss a fraction of a second before the virus could find that way out. Teleported away, the Palm cable disconnects from the server port, leaving the virus caged into the last hard disk active.
Grissom breathes a sigh of relief, stands up, and goes to the server farm a few levels below. Taking the hard drive from the server, he takes it back to his bedroom and connects it to his own laptop after physically dismounting all wireless devices.
It takes hours to break the codes. But at the end, printed in black ink on white paper, after having erased any trace of the virus and of his code, the truth sits in front of Grissom's eyes.
He stretches his arms, massages his neck, and then stands up, taking the papers and going down to the assembly room, looking for Dr. Quantos.
Quantos is not alone, however. There with him is an assembly of people as colorful as the crowds he saw the last time he had been in Rio for the carnival. As if nothing had happened at the funeral of Kristofer Schanz, his comrades are befriending their mysterious attackers.
"Grissom, we have been framed," says Brianna, moving toward Montag as soon as she becomes aware of his presence.
Griss waves his paper above himself. "Yes, and I know by whom."
A few minutes later, the assembled members of Vanguard International and the Meta Board League sit around the long, rectangular meeting table of the team. At one end is a screen on which the virus is shown.
Grissom clears up his throat and begins to explain. "Our computer network has been invaded by something that we can describe as a virus, but which is something much more complex, a sort of living program, a software able to move across the Internet and local networks. Nothing new to our time -- we have fought similar things -- but much more sophisticated, and of a peculiar nature that makes it seem to not be a descendant of existing technology. Its filename is Lexicon."
Smasher stands up. "Lexicon! That's one of the IBG's tricks!"
Grissom frowns and raises his open hands. "Please, remain calm. I have been... we have been able to crack it, although it has required a complex effort, to decipher the mission of the virus itself. What we found was amazing. It contained the plan of the complete setup, because it was the Lexicon, controlling the computers in our present and your past, directing the entire mission."
Rhyme Guardian raises a hand, then, as if surprised by his own action, puts it down and simply raises his voice. "What mission? Who is behind this?"
"Who it is? This is something not revealed by the code. What it's trying to do? Yes, but... look, I don't really understand that part of it. Cosmic stuff doesn't really suit my knowledge," he says, looking at Tayden. "Maybe here there is someone who can help me with that."
Rhyme Guardian whispers to Smasher next to him, "If only Prometheus would have stayed with us and not disappeared like he always does."
Tayden nods at Griss without saying anything. Grissom shrugs, perplexed, and then continues. "The plan basically was to bring the MBL of a past we forgot about, in the year 1999, to our present to fight and destroy Vanguard, and be destroyed in the process."
Agent F7 frowns. "But this doesn't explain why we ended up in 2003 instead of 2001. Lioness has never, ever failed at identifying the precise spot for her travels!" The woman smiles at her man.
Rhyme Guardian nods. "Yes, that's true. Something must have diverted our trip here."
Grissom points at some lines on the listings. "That's true. It was a being called... the Hypertime Entity."
"The H.E.! We should have guessed it was his fault!" shouts Smasher, standing up again.
"It's not his fault," continues Grissom. "He's just an ally of the mysterious man behind this. He has won the Hypertime Entity's help granting him a passage to this continuum, while in your time he was destined to be destroyed by the sacrifice of your timeline's Edulcore Cicciotto. Or, at least, that's what is codified in the file listing."
Lioness looks at Rhyme Guardian. "But... how it is possible that in 1999 Prometheus would have led us into a trap? I can't believe it."
Grissom opens his arms. "It wasn't the true Prometheus, whoever that was. It was a metahuman from our present, brought back in time to deceive you, a shapeshifter called Mimic, an old adversary of ours."
Adem Different moves uncomfortably on the seat. "This means... that the plan failed just because you met Cicciotto in Thunder City, and he recognized some of you from what Nowhereman had told him when the group was known as the Revolutionaries, or else you would have attacked us again, and we would have destroyed each other in the process, like we were doing in New Jersey."
Rhyme Guardian smiles. "Mmm... maybe, or maybe not. What Nowhereman told us, about the chronal scrambler that allowed him to remember the old reality, is not anything that even an ingenious inventor like he could have created in minutes with just spare parts from his utility belt. I'll bet it was a failsafe created by Prometheus before the changing of the time stream. He prepared, in advance, the failure of this trap."
Grissom shrugs. "I don't know. What I do know is that, in this moment, according to the Lexicon code, somewhere in the present our mysterious enemy is allowing the coming of the Hyperboard Entity into our time continuum."
Smasher stands up for the third time. "The H.E. will be unstoppable here! It is a nearly indestructible force in our time. Here, with so few metas, mostly frail, there'll be no way to defeat him. We have to find him before he's completely set foot in this present!"
Zed strikes the broken desk with his gauntlet-covered fists. "Patrick is right! There's no time to waste!"
Grissom shakes his head. "Sadly, mate, there is no reference to the location for the transfer of this being into our time in the listing. It could be anywhere! We'll not know until manifests."
Lorena Burgos, the Lioness, stands up. "I can find it... if that man will help me," she says, pointing her index finger at Phil Smith. The Unidentified frowns. "What do you want from me?"
"Just your mind," the white-and-silver-costumed woman responds cryptically, "and a quiet place!"
A few minutes later, Lorena and Phil meet in the greenhouse on the roof. Luscious vegetation fills the place. The level of humidity is intolerable for Smith, who is wearing his usual black shirt.
"Please, can you unzip my costume?" asks Lorena, turning her back toward the man and raising her long, red hair with both of her hands.
Phil hesitates. "I... what do you have in mind?"
The Lioness turns her face back, looking at Phil from above her shoulder with a mischievous smile. "Just undressing. I must feel the bond with the green world. And the costume is a heavy barrier."
Phil shrugs and moves the zipper handle down the back of the Latino woman. Without turning, she takes off the costume, revealing a sumptuous bottom, simply framed by the strings of a thong. Smith gulps.
The woman sits down in a lotus position. She closes her eyes and begins breathing deeply. "What should I do?" asks Phil cautiously.
Lorena opens her eyes and smiles. "Sit comfortably. Loosen up. And open your mind to me."
Phil's lips twist, reflecting his perplexity, but he follows the request. Soon, he feels his mind invaded by twigs and liana vines. It is strange, and, far from being violated, he experiences a peaceful sensation. Along the twigs, his mind wanders along the green, the vegetable life of the planet, and he feels his mind growing like a seed that germinates and becomes something else, becoming bigger, and stronger, and wider... wide as the whole planet. And then he feels the Lioness' presence, like a white butterfly that flees along the branches of his own mind, exploring the connections, the diversions, embracing the same consciousness that Phil has found, that Phil has become.
And meanwhile, his knowledge still grows, like branches extending and diverging and producing gems, and flowers, and fruits, and seed, to colonize new territories, finding new ways to reach distant spots, where the green is frail and spare, across the ice, the rock, and, finally, the sand.
"I've got it!"
Phil opens his eyes suddenly. The nude woman smiles triumphantly. "I have found it, Phil, thanks to you." Phil nods, feeling only the loss of all that peace.
A few minutes later, the MBL and Vanguard rejoins again in the meeting room, where Kit Piper has had the table replaced in record time.
"Do you have the coordinates?" asks Grimm, dryly.
Lorena smiles, shaking her head. "No, it doesn't work that way. I have not seen the place, or read the latitude or longitude. I felt the H.E. And now I can bring all of us there."
"But you don't know what is waiting for us there?"
"No," says Lorena, shrugging. "But I doubt they are waiting for us. They believe us destroyed, no?"
Grimm, who would have frowned if he had eyebrows, says, "No, I don't think. Things here are always more complicated than that. I think your world was fairly simpler."