The Monolith gyrated. Zodiac stood at a window of the city-sized satellite, looking at the void of space from his personal quarters.

"Avatar to Zodiac...," his communicator suddenly pealed.

"Come in," the alien replied.

"The situation in Dublin has been pacified. Unfortunately, Mastodon managed to escape. I'm currently tending to injured civilians."

Zodiac turned to look at the communications unit impassively. "I'll have Trinity transported down to assist--"

"That won't be necessary. Avatar out."

Zodiac gazed at the communicator for a moment.  "Zodiac to Trinity."

"Yes?"

"Did you monitor that transmission?"  There was a pause, and the channel changed to an open holographic link displaying the Ready Room.  In the small purple reproduction, there were three copies of Trinity, two hunched over consoles and one standing next to Paragon, who was connected to a nest of cables passing up and out of focus.

"She didn't, but I did,"  replied one of the Trinity from the consoles.

"I am scanning for transport signatures, in case Mastodon's escape was hasty enough to leave any," said the other console twin.  "Oh, and Paragon is busy checking some readings from a nuclear power plant in North America."

Zodiac looked at the hologram for a long moment.  "Keep me informed."  He shut down the comm-link. He had delayed long enough.

Zodiac strode out into the corridor, the purple force-fields winking off before him and on after him.  There were some ramifications to the minor trouble in Ireland, but it did not seem significant to the overall modus of the Royal Elite.  Avatar would report the actual target later, after he had cleaned up the mess.  There would be plenty of time to integrate the new data configuration.

He approached the Ready Room, where Paragon hung in a cradle of cables and Trinity was at several terminals, scanning and searching for relevant readings.  The Monolith was currently over the Japan Sea, orbiting rapidly to the East and North, but there were sufficient satellites and other specialized equipment to provide fairly detailed views of any part of the planet.

Paragon stirred, his face betraying nothing, as he announced, "Sensors are picking up a plasma cascade."

"Is it a breach in the thermonuclear reactor?" asked one of the Trinity.

"I believe so, but such a reaction should produce an enormous burst of X-ray and gamma radiation, which in turn would've superheated the reactor core and surrounding air.  There are low-frequency light surges, leading to visible light bursts..."

"Paragon?"

"There's a shockwave, but not in the respect of an explosion of increased air pressure.  This explosion is controlled. It's expelling in the forms of ion and plasma jets."  In his voice, there was what passed for concern, mixed with curiosity.  "I'm going to the transporter.  This needs to be investigated first-hand."

Trinity began to move away from one of the consoles, but Zodiac motioned her back and began programming the transporter himself.  She had other duties at the moment, and Paragon needed time to disengage from the Monolith's sensor and computer systems and re-orient himself before entering a possible disaster area.

"What are the coordinates?" the alien asked.

"4th Street Power Station," Paragon informed him, as if that were all he should need to know.

Zodiac nodded, turning to Trinity.  "This station was the first in a new design of thermonuclear power plants, and had received international attention and protests over a number of years.  Aside from the skiing, it was perhaps the only reason that environmental activists ever went near Salt Lake City."

Paragon marched towards the platform of the shunter bay.  Above him, a massive crystalline sphere hovered via various electromagnetic fields.  Groups of transmission conduits snaked up from the sphere, suffusing it with fluorenscence.  Zodiac stood before the shunter's console and his spidery fingers worked along its flickering keys.  The alien looked up at Paragon, nodded, then the android's figure shimmered in a baleful red glow and vanished.  The air which replaced him was cold but tangy with ozone.  Zodiac frowned.

"I've got Mastodon," Trinity said, looking up from her bank of monitors and gauges.  "Upper Narmada, India.  Near the Narmada Sagar Dam.  There are at least two other metas there.  One's a cyborg -- I think it's Hex, of the Sisters of Hope."

Zodiac concentrated for a moment, considering the possible configurations of the known forces.  "Recall Lioness and Outsider.  Have her meet me at the Sagar."

"I'll also call up some reservists," the triplet added, "and alert Avatar."

The alien flew over to the bay and landed upon its platform.  "I will let you know if it is unneeded."

Two of the Trinity smiled.  "Better safe than sorry," they said together, then laughed a bit, as one shifted the controls, instantly transporting Zodiac to India in a ray of tachyons.

"I've got something else," the third of  the Trinity said to the others.  "Look at the Jakarta readouts."  A holographic diorama suddenly materialized in the middle of the room, showing angry crowds flocking about a charred Christian church.  "It seems dozens of bombs had gone off in similar churches all across the major cities of Indonesia, killing dozens and wounding hundreds.  Muslim mobs are gathering."

"They'll be hell to pay," a cold whisper came from behind her.  She grimaced as Outsider pressed buttons to alter the readouts, his rapid-moving fingers not really connected to his arm in any perceptible way.

"Remind me to get the lights in here fixed," Trinity said to herselves.

"Don't even think about it," growled the Outsider, in a way that almost made Trinity wish she hadn't said it.  In fact, the other two of her did wish she hadn't said it.

"Looks like Jakarta is your cue, ladies," the dark vigilante proposed.  "All aboard."

Trinity glanced at her twins uncertainly.  She retrieved the medic case from a compartment above a nearby bulkhead, then began to move towards her dopplegangers.

"The people down there need some calming down," he added.  "You'll play the role of U.S.O. entertainers.  Go put on a show or something."

The three glanced at each other briefly, then locked arms and meandered to the shunter, almost like Rockettes.  "Calm, Cool, Collected -- that's us."

"Yeah, but which is which?"  he said as he activated the shunter.  One of them -- "Collected," he thought -- stuck her tongue out at him.

He fired off a round from his ghost-gun, the bullet parting the fading afterglow of where the Trinity once stood and dissolved into the bulkhead.  Then, and only then, did he chuckle darkly.

Lioness appeared at the shunter bay a few moments later.  He dispatched her to Zodiac's coordinates without explanation.  Explanations were for wimps.  And if there was anything Lioness wasn't, it was a wimp.

Hmm.  Everything seemed to be settling down, thought the ominous vigilante.  Avatar was still playing Florence Nightingale, the reactor seemed to have been shut down completely, and the India team looked as if they could hold their own against the invaders. Hex and Zodiac should be able to handle any two of Autocrat's boys -- Lioness is just a little insurance policy.

The Outsider liked insurance.

So, he settled down to review some readings, looking for anything else out of place.  The usual number of meta rumbles going down everywhere but Ireland and Santo Domingo.  France was pretty quiet, too.  Hell, he could go for some French food about now.  Especially the French version of Greek food.

Ireland wasn't surprising, what with Bubba Babylonia on the premises, healing the wounded.  The Outsider started scrolling the readouts across Ireland at random, just in case.  You know, there were Babylonian gods of healing, of course, but The Outsider couldn't really remember Avatar using those particular powers outside of an important battle.  It just wasn't the kind of bigger-than-life stuff that...

It was just a momentary blink of the eye, but something changed on the readout, and he didn't like it.  It was about 11:30 Greenwich Mean Time, and people just sort of appeared coming out of a restaurant.

He quickly backed up the readouts, and watched them again.

Yep.  Appeared from nowhere.  And in the same place, a little over an hour before, they suddenly disappeared.

The Outsider frowned, then grimaced.  Studying the current readings, it looked like a wall had been altered, too. About the same as when someone gets thrown through it, he said inwardly, then it's fixed.  The game's a foot.  And this foot stunk.

The Outsider had as much time as he needed to make the decision.  Hmm, I could run back through two weeks of data, but even with the Monolith's fifty miles of fiber optics I'd be tied up for a few hours...  Or I could take a minute or two to pop down and have a first-hand look...

As much time as he needed.

Before he left, he scribbled a note on the wall in dark gray chalk:

Gone to Dundalk, Ireland.
See 10:28:43 and 11:39:26 GMT.
O.

"Protectorate, we could use some help here."

"Protectorate, this is Salvage. Did you need something?"

"Protectorate, it's White Ensign in London.  A commercial jetplane claims to have witnessed an explosion while over Ireland.  Our sensors have no such readings.  How's the Emerald Isle looking topside, mate?"

"Protectorate, we need help, now..."

But there was no answer.

Ground fog sprawled across the early morning streets of Dundalk like winter ghosts.  In the shadow of dilapidated buildings, the charred, mangled corpses of Irish citizens only added to the fog's allusion.

The Outsider sat perched atop a skeletal church for the longest time, pondering the implications of the incurably rugged scene.  It was tough knowledge to swallow, a bitter truth that hit him like a cold front.  His hands gripping part of the roof's cornice, so hard that his gloves hid his bone-white knuckles, the dark avenger finally swung off the building and floated down to the ground.  The Outsider took a few hard moments to let the dreaded revelation sink in.

Ireland was dead.

What was formerly a country of wooded slopes rising from river valleys, verging with quilted farmlands, simple homes, and larger cityscapes, was now the aftermath of annihilation.  The landscape had been eroded to crags and outcroppings, reduced to something tortured and unnatural.  Lengths of roadway could be seen here and there beneath deposits of demolished stone, or hardened magma.

After surveying the genocidal aftermath, the Outsider mused.  Ireland was no stranger to war.  The country survived thousands of years of conquest and sacrifice, its land a sponge soaked in its bloody history.  The souls of invaders, holy men, and tyrants enriched the very soil under the Outsider's boots.  And now the Royal Elite had rode roughshod over Ireland like the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse.

"Outsider to Nerve Center," the shadowy man said out loud.  "Execute surveillance sweep.  Longitudinal coordinates: ten degrees west to six degrees west.  Latitudinal coordinates: fifty- two degrees north to fifty-five degrees north."

The faint sound of static punched through the receiver on his wrist-watch.

"Nerve Center...," the Outsider said again.  He sighed and added, "Now, that figures."

Even with his comm-link jammed, unable to activate the computer for transport back to the Monolith, the Outsider continued to work along the Irish wasteland.  He fell back on a basic constabulary strategy of inspecting afield for possible leads.  Of course, this was grueling and time-consuming.  But he had a little time, and he didn't exhaust easily.  The sun shifting into the moon overhead didn't weigh on him either.  In fact, his senses grew sharper at night, his strength doubled.

Four hours, the Outsider sifted his way through the ruins, inspecting the sites and installing remote cameras.  Even in the most desolate timberlands and meadows he was rarely alone for any span of time.  The land had its share of casualties, broken bodies festooned about the landscape and within the rubble.  And amidst the murdered Irish was the occasional dead body of a mutant, its unmoving, misshapen form a mockery of the humanity it had assaulted.

Abruptly the Outsider decided to stop counting.  He was no mathematician, and for the moment he had found enough to sate his curiosity, to rouse speculation.  The evidence, the mysteries, and the gut instincts that tied them together.  He had worked his way through Dundalk, and all its adjacent boroughs, finally coming to one indistutable fact -- the numbers of the dead didn't add up to the actual populations of the townships.  The Outsider stood atop a hill, staring down a ravaged hamlet.

He turned away from the Irish village and stalked the down the other side of the hill.  After a few miles, the landscape started to change and evening turned into night.  Forests were thinning into treestumps and freshly trampled pathways.  In the distance, he saw streams of smoke float above a treeline and combine into a ghostly twister which dispelled into the night sky.

Then the Outsider stopped.  He heard movement coming his way.

There was a stout branch within reach, and he jumped up to catch it.  The dark vigilante dangled from it, and swung himself up like an acrobat, then hauled himself onto the branch.  He sat securely on the branch and kept his wind.  The Outsider pulled a nearby branch towards him, and he was hidden behind its thick leaves.

"Return to camp," a voice then said.  "I'll give this area one last look."

The Outsider could hear the mutants now, blundering around below.  They weren't skilled sentries, only looking at random, unused to following broken twigs and trampled grass.  The one mutant left his partner and headed in the direction of where the smoke came from.  The other was directly below him now, his forked tail swishing as he looked about.  The mutant had  menacing clawed hands and the lumps on his bald head looked to be the buds of demon horns.

The Outsider leaped from his branch, and onto the mutant.  He wrapped an arm around the monster's throat, tightening his grip.  The mutant struggled.  The fiendish man-thing groped for the Outsider's face, but the shadowy hero pushed it away.  The two fell to the sloping ground, and the mutant was pressed beneath the vigilante into the mulchy earth.

"Alright devil-boy," the Outsider whispered harshly.  "You might get to see Daddy Satan tonight.  Unless you want to tell me what I can expect to find over at that encampment."

The choke hold bit into the mutant's neck, and his disfigured face was blood red.  Noises burbled in his throat, but the vigilante felt his head shake.

"To die in the name of Autocrat is to die an honorable death," the mutant finally fought out.

The expression revolted the Outsider.  He had heard it used too many times to rationalize the Royal Elite's cause.  "Nice speech," the vigilante rattled.  "You can give it again to the worms and maggots -- you'll be their food soon enough."

The mutant writhed, pushed, and struggled.  The Outsider humored the fiend and relaxed his hold, allowing the horned mutant to free himself.  The two got to their feet and engaged one another.  The mutant bared his ugly, gnarled claws -- the Outsider beckoned him.

Yowling, the mutant charged the shadowy hero, his thick wiry muscles tensed with rage.  At the last possible second, the Outsider side-stepped the charge and swung his right hand out in a knotted fist.  With his head rocking back on his neck, the man-thing's tongue expanded to fill his mouth.  Emerald blood gushed from his nose, his eyes rolled upwards to show only white.

The mutant was dead.

Melding with the shadows, the Outsider then skulked towards the source of the spewing smoke.  He expected to see a small settlement, a few dwellings clustered around a hillock, upon which stood a mutant encampment.  He found much more.

The Outsider hunkered down behind a toppled tree and looked down at the clearing below him.  The mists and vapors of the moors slightly veiled the land, which at first glance looked like a bomb had hit it.  Then it resembled an open wound.  The land was a swollen heap of earth, clotted, crumbled and smeared.  Giant steel ziggaruts dotted the area like beached leviathans, flanked by fluted smoke stacks that coughed out billowing funnels of gray.  Throngs of Irish countrymen lined up outsides of these stepped towers, overcrowding them.  So often destroyed, so often reborn, the citizens of Ireland proved they were no strangers to death, and a postholocaust calm prevailed here.  Mutant guards stood on ledges and watched over their captives.  The Outsider pictured these mutants as pop-up targets, but he knew he couldn't start taking the monsters down without endangering the citizenry.

The Outsider grunted.  It seemed the Royal Elite had beachheaded Ireland, managing to somehow lock out all communications systems.  He was certain that similar base camps were located elsewhere.  He needed to return to the Monolith.

The Outsider rose from his crouch and stepped into the shadows.  And like that, he was gone, only to step out of another patch of shadows yards away.

He needed to return to the Monolith.
 

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