The Authority: Stormfront #3

[Spider-Man Beyond]

The Multiverse Presents


Stormfront #3
Nanotech Genius

Written by Tony Peterson (Starfall)

Edited by Daniel Dyer (Spider-Man Beyond)

Multiverse logo created by Tony Peterson (Starfall)

Previously:

Jack Hawksmoor and Angela Spica are the first two former Stormwatch operatives that Jenny Sparks has managed to contact. Their planning session was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a teenage kid. The spirit of the Doctor, another old Stormwatch operative, has come along with him.[/color]

~*~

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Doctor? Aren’t you the Doctor from Stormwatch?” Jenny asked curiously.

The specter nodded. >>Yes, I was once. But a few years ago, before the turn of the century, I was kidnapped by men working under the orders of Rose Tattoo. I do not know what their purpose was, only that they placed me in suspended animation fluid and began to siphon my powers. What ends they carried out with the very power of the Earth’s own shaman at their disposal I can only imagine, but I have no doubt it is not good.<<

Jenny thought she had a very good idea what they were using the power for, though couldn’t figure out how it would aid them.

Jeroen, the new Doctor, seemed curious despite himself and slowly raised his head from his knees.

Angie seemed hesitant when she asked, “And how did you…?”

>>Die?<< The specter of the previous Doctor asked. >>Why, Rose Tattoo, of course, though she was “aiming” at young Jeroen, here. But I was able to thwart her threefold, first by saving Jeroen’s life, second by transporting him to you, and third by freeing myself from their imprisonment.<<

Jack arched a brow. “Don’t take this the wrong way, buddy, but you’re dead. That’s hardly what I call freedom.”

Hovering above them, the ghostly Doctor merely shook his head. >>Do not fear death, young man. It is not the end but a new beginning.<<

Jack had opened his mouth to respond but Jenny cut him off. “Let’s focus, boys, shall we?”

The Spirit of the Twentieth Century turned back to the Doctor. “Why were they trying to kill Jeroen, anyway? So long as you lived he couldn’t inherit any of the Earth’s magic. What threat was he to them?”

The dead Doctor spread his hands. >>I cannot say for certain, but I can hazard a guess. I believe that by killing Jeroen while I yet lived, they hoped to break the chain that binds the Earth’s shamans together.<<

“I think I speak for all of us,” Angie said, “when I say, ‘huh?’”

Though the dead can’t sigh, his shoulders slumped as if he would have, had he the ability to draw breath. >>Every Doctor is the next shaman of a long line dating back to the origins of magic. He inherits every memory and every magical skill of the shaman before him, for he is only the latest in the line. Each Doctor is merely the next link in a long chain, his place in that chain determined by forces even I do not know long before his birth. I believe that Rose Tattoo intended to kill Jeroen before he could inherit his birthright, and because I would be left without a successor, the Earth’s magic would not pass on.<<

Jack seemed unimpressed. “Well, if all of this is controlled by forces ‘even you do not know’, wouldn’t it just fix itself? Wouldn’t the powers just pass on to, you know, the kid’s successor?”

Shrugging, the Doctor replied, >>For all I know, yes. But, really, what did they have to loose? If they killed Jeroen and the powers continued to pass on with my death, they hadn’t lost anything, as they take no exception to killing. But if, by killing Jeroen, they really did disrupt the chain, they would stand to gain a great deal.<<

“There would be no shaman to combat Rose’s powers,” Jenny said softly, “and all she’d have to do is pick off the rest of the Stormwatch operatives one by bloody one.”

Equally awed, Angie put in, “She’d be damn near unstoppable.”

>>Yes,<< the Doctor affirmed. >>I believe that was Rose Tattoo’s plan.<<

~*~

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Canadian Wilderness

“Well?” the larger of the two men asked, looking around the rundown hut they had found themselves in. His eyes narrowed as he looked around carefully, searching for any trace of the woman they were seeking. With one well-built hand, he pushed his platinum hair back off his face.

Across the room, the other man was crouching on the floor, examining clothes, papers, and even the odd utensil. His nostrils flared once, twice just to be sure. He turned around to look at his companion. As Midnighter always did when he looked at Apollo, he couldn’t help but think how lucky he was to have snagged him.

Often, back when they had been in Stormwatch, Apollo had been called the most beautiful man on the planet, and it was true. It was almost as if he really was that pagan sun god of old, come down from on high. His wide blue eyes were set perfectly placed into a sloping, high cheek-boned face. Framing this perfect visage was the pure white fall of his shoulder length hair. Though he carried himself with poise, he was not feminine. Rather, he called to mind visions of the great cats of the wild. Graceful, but effortlessly deadly.

“She was here,” Midnighter replied, “and not long ago either. This scent is definitely more recent than seven years.”

“So it’s true,” Apollo said, his voice quiet with wonder, “she really is alive.”

If Apollo was the sun god, than Midnighter was his opposite; the night’s bringer of war. Where Apollo was tall and broad, Midnighter was shorter and almost stocky. His muscle built over years of bruise and scar tissue. His lover was dressed all in white, with a golden circle on his chest, and even in this Midnighter was his antithesis. He dressed in black, with a silver half-moon emblazoned on his breast. His uniform sported a helmet-like cowl that left all but his eyes and lower face covered.

Apollo stepped forward to Midnighter, his voice thick. “God, she’s alive.”

“I can’t believe it either,” Midnighter said, squeezing once on Apollo’s hand. The two settled to wait in silence for their friend.

~*~

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Seeing as how most of what they were talking about was going over his head anyway, Jeroen took this opportunity to study the strange people he was suddenly in the midst of. The only one he could understand was the blond one. Well, he could understand the phantom, too, but maybe that was because it was speaking in his head as well as out loud.

The male was tall and very broad across the chest; his arms seemed solid as well. His hair was dark and cropped short, not even long enough to touch his eyebrows. Brows that sat above eyes that, unless Jeroen was mistaken, seemed to be glowing red.

Sitting next to him was the woman that had been covered in metal when he’d arrived. How she’d gotten it off so quickly, Jeroen didn’t know, but now he could see the attractive woman underneath. She had long dark hair, longer than even the blond’s, that matched her dark eyes and tanned skin.

Last was the blond, the one he could somehow understand. She had a strange air about her, as if she would be really pretty if she didn’t pull her hair back into a severe pony tail and dressed in something more elaborate than white T-shirt with England’s, he thought, union jack. Her icy blue eyes seemed to carry more bite than her companions, and every now and then she would flick them his way and he’d resist the urge to shudder.

“I think the more important question,” she was saying now, “is how Rose was able to find Jeroen in the first place?”

>>This is a valid question,<< the spirit responded, >>one to which I have no answer. Not even the current Doctor knows who his successor will be until the time has come to pass the mantel. Somehow, Rose must have found a way to penetrate the magic protecting our identities.<<

The other woman said something, but Jeroen didn’t understand.

>>Quite possibly,<< the phantom obviously did, though, >>as I said I have no idea what they were using my powers for. Though, I’ve never come across any spell that would reveal the next Doctor, so if they were using my powers to divine this knowledge they would have to be augmenting it with some outside force.<<

“Yeah, about that,” Jenny said, “obviously you’ve realized I’m still alive, despite the fact the century ended seven years ago. Since the night I should have died I’ve been steadily draining in power. I thought it was just me getting older, so to speak, an after affect of me not being dead. But what if it’s not? What if that’s how they found the new Doctor? They’ve been somehow draining me of my powers and using them to jack up the already incredible abilities of the Doctor?”

>>I suppose,<< the dead Doctor said while he let what Jenny had said sunk in, >>that it wouldn’t be impossible, but again, I’ve never heard of any such magicks. There’s nothing I’ve ever come across that would allow them that kind of power. However, it’s a notion we can’t discount, and if it’s true it means they’re more dangerous than even I imagined.<<

Just then the spectral figure turned to look down at Jeroen. >>You’re going to have to stay with my old teammates until we figure out just what Rose’s plan is.<<

<“But I can’t even understand them,”> Jeroen protested.

>>Ah. Well, that’s easily remedied.<<

A strange sensation swept over him then, even stranger than when he had teleported. It was like an itch inside his skull, like someone was pouring a pitcher into his head. And then out of nowhere came the feeling like he’d been punched in the face.

His head recoiled, and he sprawled backwards.

“What did you do to him?” came the voice of the dark haired woman. It took him a few seconds before he realized she was speaking in English.

>>Implanted the English language into his head. We really don’t have the time for him to learn it the conventional way.<<

Jeroen felt wetness above his lip and raised a finger to touch it. It was blood.

>>Sorry about the nosebleed, it happens sometimes with mental magic.<<

“It’s alright, kid,” the blond said, grinning, “everyone bleeds the first time.”

~*~

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Some so-called high-priority prisons’ security seems like a joke, a parody of real penitentiaries. Overweight, sweaty pensioned security walk the halls smacking their nightsticks against the bars because they think it makes them look tough. They dress in nothing more than their ugly uniforms, and adjust their caps every time they pass a reflective surface. Others, though, actually are what they claim to be. Their guards patrol the halls in pairs, each wear the latest combat exoskeleton technology. Only the highest grade TomorrowTech weaponry strapped to their hips, no nightsticks for them.

But even these are put to shame by Skywatch.

Reportedly the highest class penitentiary in the world, it is all that remains of the defunct Stormwatch. Made from nanotechnology and equipped with alien security systems, it is tales of this place that even the worst criminals tell stories of to scare each other. A sentence here is life, no probability of parole. There aren’t three square meals a day, only a perfectly balance vitamin tablet. Each cell is solitary, consisting of a metal slab with a single blanket for sleeping. Not even the guards have television.

Once Stormwatch disbanded, the United Nations focused all their energy into converting the whole of Skywatch into a prison. They succeeded admirably. No one has ever escaped.

Of course, the fact it floats in the cold vacuum of space beyond even the orbit of planet Earth might have something to do with that.

Only those with security clearance from the head of state of their country can gain entrance. If it is not presented the moment the airlock opens, the guards fire immediately. As such it was nigh impossible to break in, but Rose Tattoo was a woman used to getting her way.

It was stupidly simple for her to take over the shuttle bringing up supplies. Even simpler for her to kill the guards responsible for unloading it. The backlash of her power fried the cameras in the area, allowing her to make her way unnoticed by doing nothing but killing a guard every so often. Finally, she arrived at the cell she was looking for.

“Kaizen Gamorra. Long time no see.” She struck a pose with her arms crossed beneath her ample breasts, weight shifted provocatively to one hip.

He was laying on his bunk, and he rose very slowly to look at her. Gamorra had never been a handsome man, and spending the better part of a decade in his own private hell had done little to improve his homeliness. His face was narrow and gaunt, stretched too tightly across the bones of his face like children are want to do with plastic wrap. He was typical of Asian build, and was shorter even than she. His narrowed eyes, once striking in their intensity, were now in desperate need of a lift.

“Well,” he ground out in his gravelly voice, “the Spirit of Murder in the flesh. And to what do I owe the honor?”

Rose allowed her most brilliant, winning smile to swarm across her face. “I’m here to break you out, of course.”

Gamorra arched a thin, reedy brow. “Indeed? Why would I want to leave my happy little home?” He spread his arms mockingly to gesture about him.

“A roof over my head, a bed each night. My own little private hell, courtesy of the esteemed government you once worked for.” He rubbed his hands against his chin, exaggeratedly thinking. “And you betrayed them, didn’t you? What would make me trust you enough to expect better?”

“You’re Kaizen Gamorra,” Rose wheedled, “the most feared bio-terrorist of the past two decades. The devastator of London, dictator of Parousia, instigator of the Raze of Moscow, father of the most terrifying bioengineered warriors to ever grace the planet. Imagine the sweet chaos your release would bring to the world. Just imagine the sheer and utter panic at Skywatch’s first escapee being you.”

She shrugged. “Besides, I think I know of a certain group of people you’d love to get a second chance at obliterating.”

“Oh? And who, pray tell?”

“Why, Stormwatch, of course.”

~*~

[Spider-Man Beyond]

So, the blond was Jenny Sparks. She had electrical powers and was something called a Century Baby. This was why he could understand her before, apparently.

The other woman, the darker one, was Angie Spica. She called herself an engineer because she copied some dead genius’ nanotechnology and implanted it inside herself.

Jack Hawksmoor was the man, and his powers weren’t as understandable. He could do most anything he wanted to, it sounded like to Jeroen, so long as he was inside a city.

“And you’re the Doctor,” Jenny said. “We could really use your help.”

Jeroen started to reply, but Jack got there first.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Jenny. He has no experience.”

“Look, Jack, Rose is the Spirit of the Murder. She’s one of the Century Babies that don’t follow a yearly cycle, but that makes her no less powerful.” Jenny sighed. “Bloody hell, Jack, you think I like putting a kid in danger? But I’m not even close to my full strength and we’ll need everything we can get to stop her.”

“I will do it.” Jeroen said quickly. He had to slow down to continue or he would get his English mixed up. “If I do not help, then this Rose person will keep trying to kill me. It is the only choice, really.”

“He doesn’t need to put himself in direct danger,” Angie offered. “He can stay back away from the fighting and do his thing.”

She looked toward the spirit of the previous Doctor. “All a Doctor has to do to perform magic is will it, right?”

The spirit nodded.

“Well then, as long as Jeroen can see what’s going he wouldn’t need to be right in the thick of it.”

Jeroen winced at Angie’s pronunciation of his name but didn’t correct her.

Jack still didn’t look happy but Jenny was nodding in agreement. “I like it. It gives us the advantage of a shaman without putting him in unnecessary danger.”

Tossing her hair over her shoulder, Jenny turned to Jack. “I need you to go to Tibet while Angie and I investigate.”

“What?” Jack burst out. “Why?”

“Li-Min, she returned to her monastery, but I can’t transport there. It’s protected from magical intrusion,” Jenny pointed out. “Angie could fly there but wouldn’t be fast enough. You’re the only who can get there in a reasonable amount of time. The Monastery should be large enough to qualify as a small city, and even if it’s not, you’ll only need to be there long enough to convince Swift to join us.”

Jack grumbled beneath his breath but the only audible thing he said was a clipped “Fine,” before heading outside and preparing to transport to Tibet.

“So what’s the plan, Jenny?”

“I was thinking we asked the dearly departed Doctor to whip us up a teleportation spell to take us to Holland then we can look for traces of Rose Tattoo.”

Angie’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “But, couldn’t you have just done that with Jack? Then he could be with us when we search for Rose…”

Jenny gave her a significant look.

“Ah.”

Nodding at Angie’s understanding, Jenny looked up at the hovering Doctor.

“Well, can you do that?”

>>No, not any more, but I can show Jeroen how. He possesses all of my power now, so it should not be that difficult.<<

“All right then,” Jenny said. “Let’s get to it.

~*~

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Breaking Kaizen Gamorra out of the famed Skywatch prison was even easier than Rose had expected. An unmistakable light had entered Gamorra’s eyes when she’d mentioned Stormwatch’s name. The light of bloodlust and vengeance. Knowing she had him, all Rose had to do was extract the small cylinder from her pocket, withdraw the living mouse that had been inside of it, and use her power to kill it. The shockwave fried the circuitry in Gamorra’s cell and made it easy as pie for Rose to pry it open.

After that, Rose had simply summoned a door and they were off.

They arrived in the room that had been set aside for Gamorra’s use. He practically began salivating when he saw all the pretty toys she’d left him.

“Contained within this room,” Rose told him, “are all the major biological breakthroughs of the past twenty years. A great number of them yours.”

She smiled her darkly beautiful smile. “And this is just the first level.”

He waved one hand at her. “Go. I need to be alone.”

As she turned to leave, her smile turned from merely dark to downright feral. Soon she would have an army of bioengineered terrorist warriors at her command. Soon, the entire world would kneel at her feet.

Continued...

[Spider-Man Beyond]

The Authority: Secret Files #3

As recovered by Jenny Sparks from the computer of Jackson King
The Origin of Angela Spica

For her entire life, there was never anything special about little Angie Spica. She was the average trailer trash. Her father had run out on her and her mother before she was born. Her mother worked various poorly paying jobs to make up the difference. Angie struggled in school, clear up until high school. She was never any good at anything.

But then, as she got older, she discovered something. She wasn’t bad at school, she was simply too good. As she rose through the ranks of high school and started taking harder classes, it began to make more and more sense to her. Chemistry, physics, calculus, all the so-called hard subjects she passed with flying colors.

When it came time for entrance exams to colleges, she blew them all out of the water. College representatives were lining up to tell her she was accepted. For the first time in her life things were going right.

The school she finally chose wasn’t the most prestigious one she’d been accepted to, but it was the highest level school that had given her a full ride. It was there that her life began to take an even weirder turn to greatness.

One of her professors was a member of Stormwatch’s black ops team. She didn’t know it at the time, but almost from the first day he met her he began grooming her to become his successor. When he had her in class he would push her harder than any of his other students. The original Engineer saw something within her, her potential and her intellect.

Years passed in this manner. Angie prepared to take on a position she wasn’t even aware of. One day, her professor didn’t come to class. She didn’t know it at the time, but he had been killed in a Stormwatch operation. It was a day later that her professor’s death truly impacted her.

She received a strange E-mail from him, posthumously. At first it all appeared to be a bunch of gibberish, but eventually she realized it was actually a complex code. When she deciphered it, and, of course, she did, it was revealed to be a very odd set of instructions. Instructions both for her, as well as blueprints for technology the likes of which she’d never seen.

Along with these files was an electronic dossier filled with all the information that the previous Engineer had been keeping from his successor. It told her all she could ever want to know about the teacher she’d so idolized. Angie also learned from this file everything about Stormwatch, or at least everything he had known.

What caught her interest the most was some information about technology that her professor had invented. Nanobots, semi-sentient nanotechnology that responded to thoughts and manifested as liquid metal. The details of her idol’s most accomplished work thrilled her. The things it could do were practically limitless.

For the first time in her life, Angela Spica became inflamed with passion about something. She could change the world, save the world. She would even be doing it to honor the memory of her dearest friend.

Following the instructions that had been bequeathed to her, Angie went to the Engineer’s house and climbed down into the basement. There she discovered a wondrous machine, the last invention of the Engineer. The previous Engineer gained powers from regularly injecting his blood with the nanobots, but he had since discovered a better way. This machine would take a person’s blood and totally replace it with nanotechnology. Angie strapped herself in, and several hours later gained all the abilities of nanotechnology.

Angie joined Stormwatch as the next Engineer when Jenny Sparks was leading the team. She was active for several years before Henry Bendix’s betrayal was found out. Angie was responsible for using her technology to take out several worldwide bombs Bendix had planted. It was during this that she faced the greatest test of her mastery over her powers; she actually created copies of herself from the nanotechnology to deactivate all the explosives at once.

Since the disbanding of Stormwatch, Angie has taken her genius to more mundane circles. She has become a college professor, still honoring her deceased idol even if it is in a different way.