Upper Echelon
by Scott Bennie

And when I awaken, I find myself alive inside an acid trip, wondering just where the fuck I am. The sky is black, highlighted by unsettling purple undertones like punk hair highlights, and the sky is doing this crazy cloud-like drift only makes it feel more surreal. And man, is it ever fucking cold here. My first instinct is that they’ve drugged me, but no it doesn’t feel drugged, though my entire body hurts and I feel weaker than I have in years.

My back is on a flat rock face that’s got enough juts that my chiropractor would shudder if he could see it, but it doesn’t bother me too bad. The gravity’s so low here that it almost feels like I’m flying, which is another big flashing sign that says, "Tommy, You’re Not In Nebraska Anymore." Turning my head, I find myself looking with blurred vision at a huge slab of black granite, about five hundred feet across, suspended in the middle of space. A rock in the so-called astral plane maybe? It feels like I’m breathing, taking sharp labored breaths in air that’ll freeze your lungs. That’s what you get when you allow the Black Mass to book your vacation.

"Ooooh" I say (or something like that -- I have to moan manfully, y’know), and I give a fish-out-of-water flop onto my stomach. I barely manage to suppress the urge to puke. After a second or two, my vision focuses on the rock-face: jet black, shiny as lacquer, and lit by yellow veins, like molten gold mines arranged into a circuit.

And I see a man’s foot, and I look up to someone a man looming over me. He looks human, but he’s big -- 6’5" at least, and built like a fucking battleship. Just like most of the guys I’ve bumped into lately -- since when did I acquire the "attract macho man" superpower, and how come I didn’t get the "attract lusty babe" power instead? His skin has a weird, almost bluish tint, and there’s a pattern of bright yellow lines, like a computer circuit, imprinted on his skin. He’s wearing a faintly plastic, translucent covering that fits over him like a second skin. Maybe it is a second skin.

"I wasn’t expecting company to come a-calling today," he says.

"Where"

"English?" He smiles, displaying a set of white human teeth. "When I saw the Omega symbol, I was hoping you’d come from Earth. Which side are you on?"

"I’m from Nebraska," I say.

"That’s not what I mean!" the big guy says. His accent is vaguely Midwestern, I think. "Unless the world’s fashion sense has really gone to Hell in a hand basket since I left, you’re a meta who openly displays his powers in public. That means you’re either a superhero or a supervillain. So which side are you on?"

"Does it fucking matter?" I reply. "After all, if I were a supervillain, I’d just lie."

"That’s true," the man says. "Well, we’ll let your actions answer that question. What’s your name?"

"Omega."

"Aren’t you a little young to be Omega?" he says. "The only ‘Omega’ I remember was at least 35, and that was back in the Seventies."

"You’re shitting me?" I say.

"Doesn’t anyone remember their history anymore?" The big guy shakes his head. "Georgia? The Alpha-Omega lawsuit? Happened around the time of Watergate."

Shit. Suddenly I do remember there’d been a pair of metas who called themselves Alpha and Omega, minor league superheroes from Atlanta back in the seventies who mostly used their powers to preach the Bible, screw each other’s mistresses, and embezzle each other’s money. It’s surprising that Marvel Comics didn’t sue either of those assholes. "I don’t have a fucking partner named Alpha. That Omega’s ancient history."

"What year was it when you left?"

"2001," I answer. "The year of Hal."

"Oh my. And the world’s still standing?" the guy asks.

"Barely," I say. "The Royal Fucking Elite pretty much destroyed Ireland last year, and the Black Priest’s on a fucking rampage, there’s some new brain-bitch who’s starting to manipulate a lot of mean shit, and god knows what fucking else is around the corner."

"I was afraid of that," the big man says, shaking his head. "I kept warning them about the Elite, but did they ever listen to me? I’ll bet they still approach these problems like dinosaurs."

Warning them. The government? The Protectorate? And if he is referring to the Protectorate, and this is some featureless void, then the only person this guy could be is "Holy shit!" I gasp. "You’re fucking Echelon, aren’t you?"

The man looks hard at me. "Yeah. The villain. The traitor." Fuck, there’s a lot of bitterness in those words. "Echelon."

I get to my feet casually, and leap on him. He’s half-expecting it; his backhand nails me hard in the chops as I step into him, and he counters with a football tackle around the mid-section, and wrestles me to my back. Fuck, I’m feeling weak, incredibly fucking weak, since I went through the portal. "I really don’t want to hurt you," he declares.

"What’s the matter, Eche-scum?" I sneer. "There’s no one here to betray me to?"

Echelon raises his hand -- and lowers it without throwing a punch. His face settles down, after a moment of extraordinary rage.

"You don’t want to pick a fight with me, kid; for one thing, it wouldn’t be much of a fight, and for another, we stand a better chance of getting out of here if we remain civil and work together. I’ll give you one chance to show me some respect," Echelon says.

"Respect? You fucking sold us out to the aliens!" I snarl.

"Maybe I did. Or maybe you’ve heard a lot of propaganda and lies, and I’ve been done very, very wrong," Echelon snaps. "Maybe I was just playing along with the aliens, pretending to be on their side so I could figure out what they were doing, trying to keep humanity from getting gang-pressed into some alien slave mine!" Echelon snaps back. "Maybe instead of sitting back and waiting for the ‘Gothwogs’ or the ‘Dagglan-what’s-their-names"

"We used to call them the ‘dagnabits’ or the ‘goddamits.’" I smile. But Echelon doesn’t look amused.

"to come to us and put billions of lives at risk, I decided to launch a preemptive strike and infiltrate them."

"Fine. You were Shirley Fucking Temple, all curls and lollypops," I snap, dipping once again into an old movie reference.

"I don’t like your mouth, Omega," Echelon says.

"Bite me," I say.

Echelon hits me again. We trade punches, but I’m still weak from what the Black Mass did to me, not even close to a fucking match for somebody who’s in Avatar’s league when it comes to physical strength. Shit, when will I learn to pick the best time for a fight, and just keep my fucking mouth shut?

He wrestles me down to the ground and locks a half nelson to grind my face into the surface of the rock; I squirm to my knees, perform a sit-out and reverse the hold; he surprises me by doing his own sit-out and keeping me down.

"Ohio State heavyweight champ in high school," Echelon says.

"Nebraska State here," I reply. I don’t mention that I only took silver in junior year.

"How about we stop with the insults and get to know one another before we decide that we need to hurt each other?" Echelon suggests.

"Fine," I say, and he rolls off me. He looks like he enjoyed our little match.

"Now before you get me mad again," Echelon says. "I’d like a chance to answer some of the lies you’ve heard about me. Let’s talk turkey. Throw me some questions."

"Well, what about you and Avatar? You had a major case of ingratitude over everything he did for you."

"Ingratitude?" Echelon snaps. "For what? For not being understanding when he didn’t give me a fair break? I was his teammate. How many times did I get called on the carpet and have to listen to the same lecture over and over again? ‘Teammates don’t abandon each other’? ‘Teammates need to trust each other? But when we came face-to-face during the invasion, and he had a chance to practice what he preached, did Mr. Loyalty show me enough trust to give me two seconds to explain what had happened, why I did what I did?"

"There were aliens fucking everywhere -- they didn’t have time," I say.

"I don’t buy that excuse for a second," Echelon answers. "They gave me hell for being impetuous, for never taking the time to do the right thing. You think they could practice what they preached."

"They thought you’d betrayed them. Do you know what they do to traitors on the battlefield," I say.

"Don’t you dare lecture me about the military!" Echelon snaps. "I served my country. Trust me, there is a huge difference between being a soldier and being a superhero; the superhero has to be both commander and soldier, and the number of times we’re called upon to improvise would make a jarhead’s head spin."

"Really?" I sneer.

"You must be new in the game. Have you ever been in a serious fight, Omega?"

"I’ve seen a few," I say. It’s best to keep the asshole talking about himself, and not to let him wonder about me. It’s also better if he thinks I’m a second or third tier player, a rookie that’s no threat to him, at least until I get my strength back.

"When you get into a few more scraps, you’ll realize that fights are a messy, uncertain business. Mistakes happen. I did what needed to be done to save humanity. That’s all I did -- improvise."

"And you were improvising when you shut down the Monolith so the bulk of the alien fleet could safely reach to Earth..."

"That wasn’t me, that was the implants!" Echelon whines. "I fought them as hard as I could, it just took me some time to shake off what they’d done to me!" Echelon shakes his head and turns away. "If they’d only given me a chance to explain myself, we could have worked things out. Instead, they drove me away when the alien fleet returned. He drove me away." I can practically see the emotional wounds reopen as we’re talking. "He destroyed my life."

"So why didn’t you stay?" I ask, hoping I’m not pressing the point too hard. "Why not remain on the big blue rockpile and clear your name?"

"Well, I was still half-crazy at the time," Echelon says. "Clearing your head after you’ve been mind controlled is hard, especially when the aliens practically raped me to implant their controls. They put technology into my body that even they barely understood. I wasn’t exactly in the best condition when I regained control. And instead of treating me with understanding, the Protectorate betrayed me. The people who I had thought were my friends turned on me. Have you ever experienced that, Omega?"

I remember the sight of my girlfriend Rachel and my best buddy Kenny making out behind the school. "Not really," I tell him.

"And I had all these new powers that allowed me to survive and fly in space. I figured I’d spend a year or so exploring the solar system, and that I’d cool down, and they’d cool down, and we could talk. But even after one year stretched out to nine, that never happened. I couldn’t forget -- or forgive -- Avatar’s action."

"So you wandered the stars for nine years. What’d you see out there?" I ask.

"Oh empty space," Echelon tells me. "Mostly."

I get the distinct impression there’s a lot he’s not telling me, but I’ll pump him later. "And then you came back to Earth with the Zero Prison apparatus in 1995, to lay a trap for Avatar," I say, continuing his story.

"Has everyone forgotten that when I returned, I fought crime for several weeks trying to prove myself?" Echelon says. And they still didn’t take me back -- I don’t need to use telepathy to pick up that thought. "It wasn’t a vengeance trip, and it wasn’t a trap, it was just supposed to be a fight. A good ol’fashioned fair fight, man against man. But the god of self-importance was too good to agree to a ‘common brawl.’" Echelon mocks, his voice doing a weak imitation of Avatar’s baritone.

"So you destroyed Lincoln Center?"

"It was unoccupied," Echelon says. "It was close to the Protectorate’s New York shunter bay, and I needed to attract Avatar’s attention, so it was an ideal target. Let’s face it, who really gives a damn about the Lincoln Center except for a few artsy types? I figured once I beat Avatar, I’d put him in the alien prison for awhile, maybe for a few months, and teach him some badly needed humility."

I don’t buy this bullshit for a second, but it’d be fucking stupid to challenge it directly. "What’s that old saying: ‘you were hoisted on your old petard?’" Whatever the fuck that means.

"Too true. Avatar didn’t see it as a fair fight, or (more likely) he didn’t want one. He was always a little threatened by me, and now, my powers were clearly superior to his. I enjoyed beating him. I was on the verge of showing the world that I was the better man when he got hold of the controls, hurled me into this dimension, and threw away the key. It was like a great mouth had opened in space, with huge teeth you couldn’t see until you felt them bite."

 "I noticed." That’s the only thing I can say.

"I must have drifted in this void for years," Echelon continues his tale with a faraway look. "I was nearly powerless when I first arrived, it took me months to become strong enough to generate even a rudimentary gravity field. I tumbled in space like a gyroscope, and I didn’t know if I’d ever stop. And even after I gained some control, I flew around for more months, possibly years, before I found anything that even resembled land, something on which I could enjoy the simple pleasure of standing, of feeling pressure against my feet."

"Well, it looks like you’re doing better now," I note. His face suddenly twists in anger.

"It’s taken me six years!" He stomps over to a protruding boulder and kicks it to fucking pieces. "Six years of my life, complete wasted! Fifteen if you count all that time I spent wandering in space! How do you think that feels?"

"There are a lot of people who think that you should have died fifteen years ago," I counter.

"If the Outsider or Paragon had pulled the same stunt with the aliens, do you think that people would be calling for them to be disintegrated? That Avatar would flex first and ask questions later?" Echelon roars. "Do you? They would have been forgiven a long time ago, and they’d be back to eating milk and cookies with the rest of the gang." He sighs. "But I shouldn’t take it out on you. You’re just a kid. You had the rest of your life ahead of you, and now it’s been stolen from you, too. I should be feeling sorrier for you than I do for myself."

I don’t believe that sympathetic bullshit either. Instead, I nod stupidly. "It sure is cold in here," I say.

"It’s this place. It dulls biological functions. Most of the creatures trapped here are in a sort of hibernation. Especially the big ones."

Big ones. That sounds a little ominous. "What kind of creatures are those?" I ask.

"Well let me show you." Echelon actually smiles. "Do you feel up to a trip?" he asks me.

******

I figure that before I kick Echelon’s ass, it’d be a good idea to find out what the neighborhood’s like, so Echelon and I fly off the asteroid and head out into space. Echelon tells me to plot a course toward a concentration of gas pockets that are vaguely discernable in the distance. Apparently, Etch-a-sketch sees into the cosmic ray section of the electromagnetic spectrum, and that makes it a lot easier for him to navigate around here.

Echelon has some way of travelling through this void at near light speed, and when he does it, holding onto me, he asks me if I can do it too. It turns out I can, though it takes a lot of effort. It’s a lot harder to access my mojo here, and even when I can, it’s a lot weaker.

"Don’t try to do this in any sort of atmosphere or a dust cloud," Echelon says.

"If it’s such a vacuum, how come we can hear each other talk?"

"The place is also filled with, I dunno, a semi-telepathic ether," Echelon answers.

"Ether?" How did a dumb-ass ex-Draughtsman, a glory-crazed, power-hungry nanotech cyborg, pick up this sort of specialized knowledge? But I smile and accept the explanation. "Just what is this dimension, this Zero Prison?"

"Zero Prison?" Echelon asks. "You said that name once before. Is that what it’s called?"

"Apparently, there were records of the device that you were using in the Monolith’s records. Paragon uncovered them."

"Who else?" Echelon laughs grimly. "Well, after six years, I finally have a name for my torment." Echelon adds in disgust. "This is a red letter day. As for this dimension, it’s a prison created by some advanced culture for beings that can’t be easily killed."

"I take it you’ve tried to escape?"

"Only for most of the last five years. Some of the beings trapped in here have searched for millennia," Echelon says. "Of course, they aren’t superheroes like us," he adds, punching my bicep like a schoolkid. I punch him back, and we briefly get into a mock kid’s fight, which ends when he puts me in a headlock and gives me a noogie.

"How do you know I’m not a fucking supervillain?" I ask.

"You haven’t tried to make a deal with me yet," Echelon answers. Shit, he’s smarter than I thought! But he jostles me and points at something in the distance. "Do you see it?"

"There’s something out there," I say, squinting hard to see more than a great big dark spot in front of an ionized gas cloud.

"Everything’s dark to you in here, isn’t it?" Echelon asks. "That would be wonderful." He moans and swallows hard, as if he didn’t want to me to hear him saying it. "Can you see it now?"

It’s a dark shape, a deep purple whale-like cylinder with white barnacle spurs. It’s resting near what looks like a vent of small gasses that I can smell in the distance, like strong spices prickling my skin. For the first time since I entered the Zero Prison, I feel warm.

"I call it ‘Lusitania,’" Echelon says.

"It reminds me of Fantasia 2000," I quip.

"Fantasia 2000?" Echelon asks.

"Disney’s sequel to Fantasia," I explain. "It had this stupid sequence with these phony looking CGI flying whales."

"CGI?"

"Computer graphic image, or something like that," I answer. "I guess you’ve missed a lot of movies. I’ll have to show you The Matrix. It rocked."

Echelon has to think for a few seconds whether "rocked" means good or bad in the year 2001. "Did they ever make another Star Wars movie?"

"Yep. The Phantom Menace," I tell him.

"That’s a stupid title. Please tell me they didn’t botch that one," Echelon says.

"They didn’t just botch it, they Jar-Jar’ed it," I say.

"Jar-Jar?"

"Uh huh?"

"What’s a Jar-Jar?" Echelon asked.

"It’s a word coined in 1999 which means: ‘I will screw this movie up by sticking in a dumb-ass racist caricature that only a brain-damaged five-year-old will find funny, and which will annoy everyone else so fucking much that this movie will turn into a complete suckfest,’" I answer.

"You’re quite the critic, Omega."

"Yeah. Darth Maul was cool, though. And the final light saber duel almost saved the movie."

"Well, a lot of good it’ll do us to think about movies," Echelon says. "Unless we escape, I’ll never see this Matrix."

"Actually, when we get back to the Rock, I’ll use my powers to show it to you," I say.

"I’ll believe it when I see it," Echelon says, and turns his attention back to the whale. "See those glowing rocks? That’s our target. We need to bring those back to home base."

"You brought me out here to work?" I moan.

"I thought you Nebraska farmboys were supposed to be the hardest working stiffs on the face of the planet." He slaps me on the back. I see that Echelon is in a fucking patronizing mood.

"We are," I say. "Except that I just spent the last week running around the globe pursuing my archenemy’s darkest secrets, ended up getting exiled into an alien dimension, and I’m really fucking tired."

"I see. So who did put you in here?" Echelon asks. "Who is your arch-enemy?"

"Uh the Zebra," I stammer, biting my tongue when I’m tempted to name the Brack Yeast. "And there’s also the Brickyard."

"The Zebra? The Brickyard? Those don’t sound like very tough arch-enemies to me." Fortunately, Echelon was out in space during the start of their careers, so I can get away with this bullshit. "Now Pantheon, or Soldier Six, or the Blueprint, or Autocrat, or the Black Priest, or even Mass Destruction, now those are arch-enemies that a man can be proud of. You need an enemy who can push you, Omega. Get off the farm and live a little."

"Pantheon hasn’t been seen in years. Mass Destruction was last defeated back in 1992 and all its members are still in Purg. Soldier Six reformed, then got run over by an Iraqi tank column during the invasion of Kuwait and died. And I’ve never even heard of the Blueprint"

"That’s not surprising," Echelon says. "He was a very clever man: an architect and a thief who had the magical power to alter a building by changing its blueprint. He used this power to create a secret tunnel into Fort Knox that was undetectable by its security system -- and a cart system to transport the bullion. He escaped with millions. It took me two years to catch him." His chest sticks out in pride (and it was pretty swollen to begin with).

"I’ll bet the government was pissed."

Echelon nods. "They never announced the theft publicly. Instead, me and a few other of the other Draughtsman chased him around the globe." Echelon had originally been a member of the Draughtsman, the US government’s battlearmor brigade, until an accident back in ’81 led to some experimental cybernetic reconstruction that transformed him into a full fledged superhuman. "It was like trying to catch a badger blindfolded it felt so good when I finally caught him. So what was your hardest case?"

"Well" I have to think for a minute. "There was this woman who named herself after a flower, and she had this partner, some big muscle-bound goofball who juggled chainsaws." I say. "They kinda gave me a little bit of grief awhile back. But I hooked up with this great looking supermodel, and we watched while Dr. Wight kicked their butts."

"The Dr. Wight solution." Echelon laughs. "Always good on short notice."

It’s not a fucking funny joke, but I laugh. We close in on the space Moby, or the Roseanne, or whatever you want to call it. "What so special about these rocks?" I ask.

"They’re material we can use to build and expand our base," Echelon answers. "The creature’s excrement"

"Ew!" I say, even though it doesn’t fucking smell (and how I’m able to smell anything in this void, I haven’t a fucking clue).

"I had the same reaction at first. But it’s solid enough, and it seems to be free of conventional parasites," Echelon reports.

"And it doesn’t smell like shit," I add.

"That’s definitely a point in its favor!" Echelon smiles slightly.

We proceed to the edge of "Lusitania," and I can’t describe how big the fucking thing is. According to Echelon, it’s about six miles long and nearly a mile in diamter, a dark greyish purple colored thing without discernable markings except for a few burn marks. Echelon calls it a living asteroid. It appears pretty docile. Echelon tells me it’s a creature that pulverizes and devours planets, some years ago, it encountered some alien race who tried to throw the critter into its sun, and when it that didn’t work, they Zero-Prisoned it. I wonder how Echelon knows all this, but I don’t think to ask.

We begin to move the alien shitlog away from the whale, a tough task. There’s no real sense of gravity here, but there is inertia, and a lot of it. It takes the two of us using a lot of muscle to get the rock on the correct course.

"Twelve hundred tons, at least," Echelon says. "The creature arrived in this dimension about the same time I did. Its metabolism has slowed down noticeably, so it’s excreting less often."

"Now you sound like Dr. Wight," I say.

"Watch it, or I’ll make you my sidekick," Echelon warns me, with a small, annoying clever smile. "Eventually its bodily functions will slow down to the point where it won’t excrete anymore. Although by that time, we may be able to safely approach it at close range and harvest directly from the creature’s body."

"What the fuck are those?" I say, noticing a pair of creatures coming in at two o’clock.

"Oh joy," Echelon mutters.

They look like some sort of gangrenous husks connected by threads of mucous, and weaving large web-like wings. Echelon looks annoyed. He twists a control on his forearm, his arm glows, and he points his hands at the creatures. In a matter of five seconds, they melt into unrecognizable mucous blobs, which curl and die with little yelping sounds -- like a puppy that’s being kicked to death.

"Good, the gossamer’s undamaged," Echelon says, flying over to alien remains and inspecting them. "It’s a little sticky, so we’ll need to dry it. I think the husks are unsalvagable, but microwaves will do that."

"What the fuck were those things?" I shout.

"Keep the volume down and watch the language." Echelon scowls. "I don’t know what they are. Just another alien parasite. I don’t think they’re actual exiles -- alien criminals aren’t wimps who melt in five seconds when you set the microwave to ‘high,’ otherwise most of them would simply have been executed by the authorities back home."

"You’ve encountered these ones before?"

"Uh huh. They swarm around Lusitania. I’ve encountered them quite a few times. Annoying critters."

"Are they intelligent?"

Echelon looks at the bodies. "Don’t think so. And definitely not now," he adds, another joke that isn’t funny. He obviously sees the frown on my face, and it pisses him off. "It’s not fun and games out here, Omega. It’s life and death. Those things almost killed me once -- that slime they’re covered in is a nasty toxin. And if they can almost kill me, what do you think they could do to you?"

How do you know I’m such a wimp, asshole? But I don’t say it, except through my body language. "You’ve never killed, have you?" Echelon asks.

"I’ve slaughtered pigs and chickens," I say.

"Look at these creatures like pigs and chickens," Echelon advises me. "And you’ll be okay. We’re the good guys, Omega. We deserve to survive. And the only way to survive is to use whatever’s at our disposal -- anything that we can get our hands on."

"Spoken like a true hero," I snap, and he grabs me.

"Nothing is more annoying than a moralist in a survival situation," Echelon says, and he shoves me. "So pretty boy, stop being an annoyance, and start thinking like" He looks for the right words to manipulate me. "like a Nebraska farmer. Because everything here is a crop."

"Nah," I shoot back. "You don’t need a farmer, you need a fellow parasite."

"Okay, a parasite then," Echelon says. "Here, whoever is the best parasite, wins."

"Whatever." I nod, figuring I shouldn’t further provoke him. I decide to hold my tongue, and wait for the best chance to do some dentistry on this asshole with my fists.

We dry off the gossamer and roll it up, and then we fly around in a circuit, collecting material that Echelon had previously cached in small deposits. After some time has passed, we’ve gathered a fairly large collection of various odd alien remains. I haven’t a clue what he wants all this shit for.

"Omega, maybe we can tow this. You wouldn’t happen to be able to generate a small force field around this?"

I nod and oblige. Again, using the magic’s as hard as hell, but I manage to protect our cargo for transport at light speed.

"You’re going to come in very handy." Echelon smiles at me as we’re flying back. "We may actually make significant progress on the base before Regina returns."

"Regina?"

"My wife." Echelon smiles. I have a lot of questions about that statement, but I figure they can wait until later. Echelon points out another nebula feature, which he’s using as a roadmap back to the base. It’s an uneventful trip.

"We need to see if we can integrate this new rock into the original base," Echelon says. I nod, park the rock next to the main slab, and concentrate on it. With a lot of effort, the new rock shifts, flows, and integrates itself with the face of the original. Echelon’s eyes open wide. "Very nice. Can you reshape as well as integrate?"

"It hurt like hell doing just that," I say, puffing hard.

"It would be nice if we can flatten the surface some more, and keep a good spacefoil shape underneath. I don’t know what it would do to the helio-field though" He’s talking to himself. "Let’s give it a trial." He walks around a hilly area of the main asteroid. "Can you flatten this section into a plane?"

"I’ll try," I say, and I sit down and concentrate. It takes me about a half-hour, with some long breaks, but eventually I flatten out the surface of the asteroid, extending it like a sundeck. I lay down on my back, exhausted, only to have Echelon jump on me and start wrestling me. "What the fuck are you doing?" I snap.

"Teaching you a lesson," Echelon says, grinding his elbow into the bridge of my nose. "Always be ready to defend yourself."

I’m tempted to joke that he’s trying to cop a feel, but I don’t say a thing. Instead, I wriggle around for a bit, but I’m so fucking exhausted I couldn’t put up a fight even if I were at full strength. It’s not much of a fight -- he’s using sheer muscle, not agility -- his reaction times are as crappy as my strength. But strength is all he needs. After about five minutes of lying on top of me and playing alpha male, he gets off.

"You need to work on your conditioning -- sidekick," he says with a wry little superior smile that I’m learning very quickly to despise.

"Fuck you," I puff. The asshole’s simply playing games and trying to establish dominance, and he thinks I’m stupid enough to bond with him if he roughs me up.

"Ohio two, Nebraska zip," Echelon boasts, and he starts laying down some of the web. "And we’re really going to have to work on that mouth of yours."

"Fuck you!" I snarl.

He just shakes his head condescendingly, and finishes placing the gossamer over the new section of the asteroid’s surface. "Okay, now it’s my turn to work up a sweat," he says, sits down in a lotus position and begins to glow, and spark, and slowly, a shower of golden particles leap off Echelon’s body. They do a Tinker Bell sparkle on the web, form nice little ILM special effect patterns along the gossamer, and then transform themselves into the same computer pattern that lines Echelon’s body.

"What the fuck is that?" I say.

"I’m setting a pattern for the helions to follow so I can integrate this new mass with the rest," Echelon answers.

"Helions?" What the fuck is a helion?

"The particles that the aliens put in my blood stream. Photonic robots, about the size of an electron," Echelon answers.

"I thought they were nanites."

"Nanites? Do you mean nanobots?" Echelon wonders. "Like in Paragon’s body?"

"Yeah. We call them nanites these days," I inform him.

"I need to brush up on the lingo." Echelon smiles. "No, I’m not nanotech. The principle’s similar, my critters are a lot more advanced -- and a lot more biologically friendly. They allow me to tap into energy systems and convert freely between energy and matter. And how’d you perform your trick?"

"Magic," I admit, reluctantly.

"Ah the M-word," Echelon says with a smile that vanishes quickly. "You must be more powerful than you’re letting on if you can actually use magic here. The ether seriously dampens natural magic, and almost complete cuts off interdimensional magicks. This is a very good place to strand a sorcerer."

"How do you know all this?" I wonder out loud. The guy’s an engineer who became a grunt, not a fucking adapt.

"Regina told me, and I trust her authority," Echelon says enigmatically. "Now to integrate this mass with the rest."

"It looks plenty integrated to me," I object.

"Not to my specifications," Echelon replies. "I’m about to show you the sort of power that the Protectorate can only dream about." And having said that, there’s a shower of light particles that really erupts around Echelon, and suddenly the earth shakes, and I can feel the entire Rock shake under our feet, pivot, and head toward some destination of Echelon’s choosing. The Rock is glowing so bright it’s almost burning my fucking eyes out -- I can barely make out the computer markings that criss-cross the Rock that are doing overtime on the sunshine. There’s a roaring sound, like an engine, as the Rock breaks the ether.

"What are you doing?" I shout.

"Quiet!" Echelon shouts back. "I need to concentrate, you idiot!"

I don’t have any sense of imminent personal danger, so I decide to go along for the ride. Echelon looks like a fucking geyser of erupting particles and the lightshow is fucking everywhere. After about ten minutes, it gets boring to watch, but Echelon’s too preoccupied with his glowing to say anything. I don’t have a watch on the costume, and I’m not sure how the time flies in the Zero Prison, so I just have to sit back and be bored. I use my powers to reproduce the last Limp Bizkit album and crank it up as loud as I can.

"That’s not music, that’s noise!" Echelon shouts at me. "Things have really gone downhill since I left!"

"It beats all your old Duran Duran and Rolling Jurassics vinyl shit, asshole!" I shout back.

He ignores the response -- fuck, I hate it when people nip a good, friendly argument in the bud -- and we continue on our course straight for the middle of Fucking Nowhere. I look for subtle changes in the world around us, but our course is as smooth as a computer algorithm. It must have been incredibly boring to be stranded here for years.

After awhile, the Rock finally approaches what looks like a lightning storm, a Jacob’s ladder eruption that’s shooting between two big gas clouds. I have a bad feeling about this. "It’s bigger than I was expecting!" Echelon shouts. I nod stupidly. "If you can insulate yourself, you’d better do so." I nod again, and use my magic to give myself a healthy glow.

Echelon takes a deep breath, and we find ourselves shooting directly into the lightning. I feel my costume tighten around me, and my hair’s standing straight up. Echelon’s glowing so bright my eyes can’t stand the sight of him (well, physically now as well as morally). And then, suddenly, we’re in the center, and there’s an incredible sense of calm -- the thunder sound stops, and the universe seems to hold still for a moment, and then Echelon screams and falls to one knee.

And we’re out again, and shooting out of the storm. The exit’s a lot rockier than the entry; the Rock bucks and buckles, and it’s hard to keep our footing. The Rock’s really glowing now, though Echelon’s features are finally becoming discernable again. It takes him about another minute of heavy concentration to get back to normal, and by that point, the Rock’s getting normal again too.

"What’d you do?" I ask.

"I charged up the heliosphere," Echelon answers. "I’ve been lacing the Rock with helions, pieces of power. They’ve now been charged. We’re now sitting on about 30,000 tons of energy-laced rock, all of which can be unleashed at my command."

"What do you intend to do with it?" I ask.

"I’m saving it for a rainy day," Echelon answers, and he falls to his back. "Damn, that takes a lot out of you."

"Great!" I smile, and I leap on top of him and start wrestling with him. Echelon struggles, but in ten seconds he’s thoroughly at my mercy. It occurs to me that maybe this is my shot -- maybe this is when I can take out this disgrace to spandex and prevent him from ever betraying or hurting anyone else again. But I can’t, at least not yet. Sorry Outsider, I ain’t a hit man. So we wrestle instead. I grind his face into the surface of the rock, and when he tries to escape, I put him in a "bow-and- arrow" and roll him into a near side cradle. He tries to roll with me, but he’s locked. I get to my feet and raise my arms, hoping that if I act obnoxious, I’ll get to him.

"Okay, we’ll give one to Nebraska," he finally says.

"Make it two," I say.

"Don’t push it, kid," Echelon warns me, still puffing on his back. "We should get some rest. After that we’ll take the Rock to the place where I found you, just in case someone else comes through the looking glass. How’d you get here?"

"An enemy hit me with the same device Avatar used to send you here."

"Who was it?"

"Some werewolf- looking guy. I dunno," I bullshit, referring to Hellhound, the Black Mass’s fucking hound dog.

"How’d he get hold of the device?" Echelon asks.

"I think he stole it from some laboratory that the Protectorate gave it to five years ago." That lie should be reasonably convincing. I don’t want to mention that Hellhound stole the device from the Protectorate right after the big Avatar/Echelon fight in ’95, or that Hellhound took the device with him when Avatar threw Dogbreath into a Babylonian hell a few weeks later. That might tip Echelon off as to how much influence Mr. Black has on my fucking life.

"Well, that means he might send more superheroes here," Echelon says. "Maybe even the Protectorate. That would make my day."

That’s the biggest smile I’ve seen on Echelon’s face yet -- by far. "So Clint, you still Jonzing for revenge?" I ask.

"Still ‘Jonzing?’" Echelon squints in confusion. "Uh like Indiana Jones?"

"I dunno where the expression came from." I shrug. "Let me put it another way. Does revenge give you a hard-on? Does the thought of getting back at Avatar make you cream your tights?"

Echelon’s eyebrows could dig holes with the depth they were now furrowing. "Does everyone talk like you?" he asks me in a really pissed-off tone.

"Pretty fucking much," I answer with a smirk. Swearing seems to be a way to get at him, not to mention as long as he concentrates on my fucking mouth, he might overlook some more important matters. "So you and the Protectorate still have ‘issues’?"

"Well, I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to see that me and the Protectorate will have to have some sort of a showdown when I get back home," Echelon says. "And that Avatar and I have a lot to settle. To be honest, I want the world to see it. I don’t care if they hate me for what I do to that bastard, but I intend to beat Avatar into a bloody unconscious pulp while four and a half billion people watch"

"It’s up to six billion"

"The more the merrier," Echelon says. "But I don’t want him dead, and I certainly wouldn’t wish what I’ve been through in the last five years on anybody, even that pompous jerk. Honestly, I just want a life again. That’s all, a life."

"Let’s say you get back home, beat Avatar, and persuade everyone to forgive you. What do you intend to do with your life after that?" I ask.

"I’m not staying in the superhero business, that’s for sure. And I’m not going to the other side either." Echelon says. I was expecting the ‘I haven’t given this much thought’ answer, so it’s a little disturbing how certain he is. "I’m an engineer at heart. I think I’ll go into consulting. Maybe I’ll build something."

"Like your own continent?" I suggest.

"I’m going to get some rest," Echelon says, ignoring the suggestion except for a brief Mr. Spock-style eye-cock. "We’ll talk later."

"In the morning."

"There are no mornings," Echelon tells me. "Right now I’d kill for a morning."

******

I get to sleep as well, which is a fucking surprise, since normally I don’t sleep in my superhuman form. But it gets cold, so I sleep. And I dream too. I have a dream where I’m in Echelon’s body, and I’m fighting Avatar, and we’re both slugging it out, but I’m the better man. And when Avatar’s beaten, I hold up his body over my head in a military press, parade in a circle with it like a trophy. When I throw him down, he groggily regains consciousness, grabs my legs and begs me to replace him as the leader of the Protectorate (which is odd, given that Zodiac’s the leader the last time I checked). I consider his request for a fraction of a second, say in Echelon’s voice: "Go to Hell, you son of a bitch!" and then I break his neck in disgust.

And that’s when I awaken, and I’m covered in gauze. Echelon’s second skin that’s now draped over both our bodies -- he’s sleeping about eight feet away from me. I’m no longer cold, and the sky looks a lot brighter. "What the fuck!" I snap, and I begin to tear the fabric off me.

"Easy, Omega!" Echelon shouts. "The helion weave is the best possible insulation when you’re sleeping in this prison, and you looked like you were freezing." He’s breathing hard -- something happened to him while I was asleep too.

"Is the weave telepathic?"

"Is it?" Echelon says. "It’s concentrated ether, produced by mental exertion, if I weren’t able to produce it, I’d be indecent."

"C’mon," I observe. "Muscleheads like you enjoy running around in the buff."

"I hope the world hasn’t gone that far downhill." Echelon shakes his head. "No, I really do envy your suit. You don’t appreciate how good it must be to feel something comfortable against your skin." I’d offer to make him a new Echelon costume, but I want to hear about the weave.

"It’s uncomfortable, but is it telepathic?" I ask again.

His concentration snaps back to me. "I know it’s got some neural enhancement capabilities; maybe that and the ether caused some telepathic overlap. I dunno." He pauses. "I’m sorry. You must have brought back some really bad memories of Avatar. That’s not what I normally dream about."

"Sure," I say, not at all convinced he’s shooting straight.

He gets up, and closes with me. "And what about your dream of the Black Priest?"

"Huh?" I say. I don’t remember dreaming of the Asshole.

"I saw the Black Priest appear on the Rock, and I was asleep, and you got up and lunged at him, and he just laughed at you, and you couldn’t move. Then he said: ‘Do not think this prison is an escape for you, Chosen." Echelon gets over to me and touches my shoulder. "What’s between you and the Priest, Omega? What’s a Chosen?"

"Well, the Priest and I don’t exactly get along"

Echelon nods, then out of nowhere hits me with a right cross that fucking stuns me.

"You thought you could play me for a patsy!" he snarls, shouting through a twisted face with a voice that seems to echo everywhere around the dimension. Fuck, the asshole sure snapped quick! "You thought I was a fool? You told me that your arch-enemy was The Zebra?" He’s fucking lost it. "If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s a liar, Omega! You’re the only human I’ve had a chance to have a civil conversation with in the last five make that fourteen years, and the first thing you do is swear at me, and lie at me, and shake that blond hair and that tight costume at me like some prancing degenerate"

"Hey!" I snap, getting to my feet. "Why should I trust you? As far as I fucking know, you’re Benedict Arnold in tights!"

"Maybe I am!" Echelon snarls back, and he pushes me to the ground with a double-handed shove. "Maybe Benedict Arnold was just a patriot who made one mistake! He was afraid that the Colonies were going to give away their freedom to the French, and given how the French treated their subjects, who’s to really blame him?"

I get off the ground again. Man, he’s got a shitty temper. "Maybe you’re right. But put yourself in my place: should I trust you the moment we meet, given your reputation? Maybe if you were me, you’d be cautious too. If I had already decided you were a completely unredeemable threat, I’d have tried to take you out when you were weakened after you absorbed the lightning storm, so give me a fucking break!"

"Okay, I’ll give you one break, if you promise me that you won’t lie anymore." Echelon declares.

"Is it alright if I refuse to answer some questions?"

"Probably," Echelon says. "I just can’t take the lies, the games. I haven’t really had a chance to get to know another human being in fourteen years. You’ll forgive me if I’m a little crazy right now."

Part of me thinks this is absolute bullshit manipulation, and another part of me wonders how I’d nuts I’d go if I spent most of the last fourteen years alone. Fuck, I remember how I acted when most of my friends deserted me.

"Y’know," I said. "When I was four, my granddad returned from a stay in Japan and he brought back all these Korean bootleg action figures of you. You had wings on your head, and I thought your blue costume with the big "E" was just the coolest thing."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"You must have been so disappointed after the invasion." Echelon shakes his head.

"I was only four. I got over it," I answer. "It’s not like I needed to go to a fucking shrink. I just played with other action figures and made yours the bad guy."

"I was never the bad guy," Echelon insists.

"Y’know not too long ago, I had to deal with this vindictive bitch, Orchid, who saw me mouthing off on television and I guess she decided that I represented a cross-section of every asshole who’d ever caused her pain, so she decided to make my life a fucking hell. She framed me for murder, three times stupid frames really, more or less done as an afterthought to her crimes. I was found innocent, completely cleared, there shouldn’t be even the slightest doubt in anyone’s mind if they followed the evidence trail. But to this day, I’d be willing to bet that at least two out of every ten people in the States still think I’m another O.J."

"Hmmm, I’ve definitely been out of touch," Echelon says. "I was only back on Earth for a few weeks in ’95, and I vaguely remember that Simpson had been charged. Did they actually convict him?" Echelon asks.

"Man, we really have to bring you up to speed." I smile. "I guess the point is -- who the fuck am I to judge you, just because you’ve got bad press, and you’ve been through shit that would justify a decade’s worth of therapy bills?"

A tear rolls down Echelon’s cheek. "Thank you, Omega," he tells me, embracing me. "There were times when I thought I’d never again hear someone talk to me like you just did. Funny what that can do to a man."

"Hey, no need to go chick flick on me," I say. I’m bullshitting of course, this is all bullshit, because every fucking instinct tells me that Echelon’s playing some psychodrama with me. But part of me tells me that if this psychodrama actually ends in a redemption, it may be worth playing along. (And the other part of me tells me I’m being a complete idiot.)

Echelon grips my shoulders, and twice gives them a good shake. Fuck if I know what that means. He’s probably trying to come on to me -- God knows how long this asshole’s been without sex. "How about we agree not to talk shop?" he suggests.

"No capes, no cowls, no spandex?" I state.

"You think you can handle it?"

"Shit, there’s got to be more to talk about than Avatar or the Black Priest or the Ziggurat or any other fucker. You’ve seen the fucking cosmos!" I poke him. "So give me a grand tour, asshole!"

"My question first," Echelon says. "Who’s the President?"

"That’s spandex," I say.

"The President’s a meta?" Echelon wonders. I shake my head.

"The President has power. Power is spandex," I reply.

"That’s either very cynical or very, very smart," Echelon observes. "Okay, I’ll give you that one. Here’s another question. Do you have a girlfriend?"

"That’s a spandex question too," I say. "My ex-girlfriend was murdered by spandex, by that bitch Orchid."

"There are times when I really hate those people," Echelon says, shaking his head.

"And my current girlfriend is spandex, but she wants to ‘just be friends.’"

"Oooo, you gotta hate that line." Echelon’s smile is more genuine than any I’ve seen on his face so far (except for those smirks that I’ve wanted to surgically remove). "Your turn, Nebraska," he says, rubbing his hands. "Gimme your best shot."

Okay. He asked for it. So I hit him, hard, in the fucking face.

"Ow!" Echelon rubs his jaw, and then he tackles me and tries to rough me up. We wrestle for a bit; the interesting thing about this particular contest is that I’m a lot stronger. I’m not quite in Echelon’s league – the ether’s still suppressing the magic that would put me at his level -- but apparently sleeping in that weird plastic neural sheet has helped to heal me and insulate me from some of the nastier properties of this dimension.

Thirty seconds or so later, I’m pinned, and Echelon delivers a few hard punches to the ribs and a nosebreaker for good measure. I manage to throw him off, but this half-friendly scrap has clearly gotten out of hand. He realizes that too. "Okay stop. Stop," he puffs. "Your question," he adds a few seconds later, still breathing hard but trying to avoid mentioning the fight.

"Who’s Regina?"

"That’s a spandex question too," Echelon says, "but I’ll allow it. A Princess of the Blood, or something. An alien shapechanger. She was exiled here when her royal family got overthrown on her homeworld or something."

"How’d you get married?" He just laughs. "C’mon man, inquiring minds wanna know," I say.

"We met in here when I was on patrol. She was this vaguely humanoid blob, we had a fight, and I won. Apparently in her culture, duels end in marriage, so according to her, I was her husband."

"You married a blob?"

"She’s adopted the form of a human female now. One of the losing conditions," Echelon tells me. "Though it’s not a perfect female -- it would have helped if she’d had a model of a human female to work from."

"You didn’t want a wife with a dick?" I laugh.

"You’re disgusting!" Echelon snaps. I’m practically on the floor. "No, stop laughing, it’s not a joke! You’ve got no sense of propriety, no sense of decency! You’re everything that I feared would happen to our kids come to life!"

"No, that’s Columbine," I retort. "But from where I’m standing, you shouldn’t get so fucking self-righteous on me."

"Really? Just because people have accused me of being a traitor?" Echelon sneers.

"Fuck no," I retort. "Because you were given goddamn lecture after goddamn lecture when you were a member of the Protectorate, because you wouldn’t live your life they way they wanted, and you fucking hated it, and now you’re handing me the exact same bullshit that was handed to you."

I think that got to him. "Maybe you’re right," Echelon says. "But do you have any standards?"

"When it comes to my mouth, not many," I admit. "But you’ve already given me one lecture about being self-righteous when you killed the fucking big moth-spider things, so obviously my moral compass ain’t completely busted." Echelon doesn’t say much of anything. "Yeah, I got a real nasty sense of humor. But it keeps me sane. You should try it some time."

Echelon decides to take the remark personally -- his fists clench, and he looks like he wants to hit me, but he doesn’t this time. I shrug and smile. "Now aside from getting upset and trying to beat the shit out of each other, is there any work we can do that might actually help get us home?"

Echelon nods. "I need to build some protective domes. I could mark off some circles and dig out the Rock, and then you could reshape the Rock into the proper structure."

"How extensive do you intend to be?"

"Very," Echelon answers.

"Your own private Monolith?" I chide, mentioning the name of the Protectorate’s base. He glowers at me.

"There is essentially no place for the people who are stranded in this dimension to gather. They drift for an eternity, spinning impotently in alien space. That’s just wrong. I can’t let this cruelty stand." Echelon says. "I intend to create a base of operations, which the people who are stranded in this dimension can use to enhance the quality of their lives."

"They’re criminals," I say.

"Like you?" Echelon snaps back. "You don’t deserve to be here. The worst thing I ever did warrants maybe a few months in Purgatory Prime, not an eternity in hell. And Regina doesn’t deserve to be here either. There are probably a lot of good people here who were falsely imprisoned, or who are minor criminals who deserve better. And once we’ve constructed a base of operations and gotten to know each other, we can work to combine our powers and get home."

"Given that most of the people in exile here are so fucking powerful they can’t be executed -- by civilizations who make ours look as technologically backwards as Biafra by comparison -- you could invite them all to come home with you and form an alliance of the most fucking powerful supervillains that the world has ever seen," I say.

He seems as shocked by my bluntness as by my language. "And what would I do with this group?" Echelon says. "Take over the world? Don’t be an idiot. Trying to manage the day-to-day business of an entire planet is the only hell I can imagine that would be worse than the one I’m in."

"You could do a major thump on the Protectorate," I suggest.

"I probably don’t even know half their current members," Echelon answers. "That would make for a really hollow revenge. And sure -- there’s Avatar, but I want to beat him on my own. The reason I want build this is because I’d like to leave behind some sort of a legacy to these people, that’s all." He pauses. "Are you a member of the Protectorate, Omega?"

"Fuck no," I say. "I’ve only been a superhero for less than a year. After you left, they got a lot more careful about recruiting young hotheads."

"What’s the current membership?"

"Pretty much the old timers. Except for Trinity, she’s the new kid. Ringlet left two years ago, Britannia got kicked out about three, maybe four years ago and went on to form the Sisters of Hope. Oh, and Seneschal got hitched to Elizabeth La Fey and retired back in ‘93."

"They actually let that idiot on the team?" I nod. "Did everyone forget how he just happened to cause nearly a half billion dollars of damage to New York City?" he says in disbelief. "I’ll bet the insurance companies loved that decision," he mutters sarcastically.

"The Protectorate have been pretty stagnant, lately." I pause, getting the really bad feeling that I’ve said too fucking much. "But we’re talking spandex again." It’s a good bullshit excuse.

"Fine. Let’s get to work."

So we work. The first job is to construct a small spotter’s tower on the front of the Rock. He’s the engineer and the muscle, I’m the construction crew. I’d be the muscle too, except that I’d rather not step on his niche. Still, it’s interesting learning about how to make a spiral staircase, and a dome, and a good strong arch, and other shit. He’s not exactly up to speed on his architecture, and we’re probably overcompensating on the supports, but gradually we build something we can use.

"It’s kind of silly to build a spotting tower when we both can fly, ain’t it?" I say, halfway into the process.

"More wisdom from the Cornhusker?" Echelon snaps back sarcastically.

"Fuck you," I say, but I keep working.

After the spotting tower’s finished, we get to work on the main dome. This one’s a lot harder, and we bitch at each other at least seven or eight times. It’s not the "me and Michael may shout at each other at the top of their lungs, but we still know we’re buds" bitching either, it’s "a pair of assholes who don’t get along" bitching, the sort of bitching where one of us might try to kill the other guy at a moment’s fucking notice. Shit, I miss Michael. Fuck, I even miss Michelle. And I wonder how Sarah and John are taking the news of my disappearance, or if anyone’s even noticed that I’m fucking missing yet. And as the work progresses, I can’t get them out of my head.

"You need a break?" Echelon asks, seeing that I’m getting distracted (and having calmed down from the last temper tantrum."

"Probably," I say after a few seconds of thought. "But I ain’t taking one."

"Well, you’ve got a foul mouth, but you do work hard," Echelon tries to compliment me.

"Whatever," I dismiss it, and we keep working.

In days, with both of us working at top speed, we manage to finish what we set out to do – transform the Rock into a fortress, with real architecture. After a couple of days, the conflicts between me and ‘Etchy n’ Scratchy’ do settle down a bit -- we’re cool but civil to each other. Finally I decide to do something to break the ice, so I summon a beer and some hamburgers for us, and magically recreate The Matrix and Gladiator and a few other cool movies. I ask Echelon what he encountered in space, just for conversation, but he says he doesn’t want to talk about it. I don’t press him -- it’s nice for us to be civil with each other for once. The food in particular is appreciated.

"Now, that’s what I call a superpower," Echelon says, his words barely understandable as he wolfs down his third burger. "I guess I was wrong about you."

"I guess."

"Well, I’m a nice guy, and that means I can recognize other nice guys," Echelon boasts. "And right now, you’re a nice guy. And my taste buds, which have spent the last five years in hibernation, think you’re a real nice guy."

"Fucking right," I say, passing him a bowl of chili. "By the way, there’s one thing I was wondering."

"Oh?"

"Where’d you lift the Zero Prison apparatus?" I ask. "You just didn’t happen to find it drifting out in deep space?"

He has a look on his face like I’d kicked him hard in the balls. "I will never do you a bigger favor than I am doing right now by not answering that question. Now pass me some more chili."

I do, although his stubbornness sours the mood. Even worse for our newfound friendship, Echelon gets sick a few minutes after he finishes the meal, and he spends about an hour in space puking and shitting. I expect he’s going to take it out on me, but he admits that his metabolism wasn’t ready to handle food, not after going years between meals.

But we’re still fucking cold to each other. We don’t come to blows, but we do have a really fucking nasty shared dream on the third "night". In it, I’m working on the farm back in Milford, and suddenly Echelon flies in, and attacks me with a pitchfork. He’s screaming something about being second-rate, and there was no way that I was destined to save the world, and we have the most fucking vicious fight imaginable. He impales me, and I keep fighting. I break his neck, and he keeps fighting. He gouges one of my eyes out, and I keep fighting. I break both his arms and he keeps fighting. He begins to rip off my costume -- to rape me I guess -- and then we both wake up out of dream state like we’d been hit by a truck and we just fucking look at each other, covered in sweat.

"Do we need to talk about that?" I finally say.

"I I don’t know," Echelon says, as spooked as I am. At least that’s not an act.

"Maybe we should go our separate ways," I suggest.

"That was just a dream," Echelon says, calming down. "Maybe it means we haven’t been getting along the way we should, but I wouldn’t read anything more into it. For one thing, I’m not a a deviant."

"Well, dreams are weird shit, and I agree, we’ve been at each other’s throats way too much lately." I say, choosing to dismiss what just happened. "But let’s look at it from a different perspective, the base is pretty much complete, so you don’t really need me anymore, do you?"

Echelon’s mouth begins to quiver slightly. "I’ve been alone for most of the last few years," he says, an obvious understatement. "Maybe I’m not very good company, Omega, but I’ve got a heart of gold, Omega, I’m really a good guy at heart. I really like having you around. And we’re close to where the portal to the real world should reappear, should anyone trigger it again, so it’s in our best interest to stick together, stay close. Please don’t go."

"Fine. I’ll stay, no biggie," I say. The truth is I don’t know just how much of Echelon’s "I’ve been alone for most of the last fourteen years so how could I not turn into a sociopathic psychotic" act is a put-on anymore, and that’s a lot more frightening than thinking he’s just a manipulative asshole.

******

Several sleep-cycles after we’ve completed the base, I decide to do some scouting without Mr. Emotional Baggage tagging along. I’ve gotta admit to a certain amount of curiosity about the one other creature I’ve encountered here, and that’s the space Moby, Lusitania, or whatever the fuck else you wish to call it.

It takes me a few flights to get the hang of navigating in the ether. It feels like zero gravity at first, but the inertia plays tricks on you; once you’ve built up any sort of momentum at all, it’s a real bitch to change direction, and likewise to decelerate. I’ve done a bit of flying with Echelon on a few retrieval missions, but it takes more than one flight to adjust to the weird physics of this place.

After about three voyages, I’m ready to depart for the gas anomaly where Lucy’s parked. I head in a slight curve, using our original position as a bit of a bearing. After about an hour traveling at near-light, I’m there. It’s a big, big, whale, if you call something vaguely whale shaped that floats in the middle of an extradimensional void a whale. I approach it cautiously, and when I get within about a mile from it, I decide to contact it telepathically, to see if there’s a discernable intelligence inside.

And, to my surprise, I make contact with a multitude of voices in reply.

I’m outside, I say. Who are you?

The jumble tries to explain itself. The loudest and most intelligent voice tells me that it’s an intelligence that’s evolved, quite by accident, in what passes for the creature’s liver. A number of the creature’s organs have evolved into intelligent life forms. Fucking weird. The liver-mind is a harvester by nature, sending out organisms that swim through the creature’s skin and collect nutrients; the organisms produce a metabolic change that nourishes the skin as it sustains itself. I learn a lot of facts about the creature; ten of the creature’s generations equal the lifespan of your average star; twelve of the creature’s organs have humanoid levels of intelligence, but its brain (or its motor control center) only has an animal intelligence; the creatures that attacked me and Echelon were essentially the creature’s sweat, which perform double duty as an external defense mechanism. Y’know, this shit is really going to freak out all my biology professors when I start classes at UCLA in summer.

As I converse with the creature, I become aware of a heightened sense of danger, and suddenly then there’s a shudder in the ether that feels like someone’s trying to grab the space around me and fold it into a paper crane. The creature’s liver-mind tells me that Flipper’s stirring and she’s not happy -- the creature has a negative reaction when it detects telepathy, and right now it’s pissed.

The guppy begins to make a slow, labored turn in my direction. I shut down the telepathy, and I book back in the direction where I hope the Rock’s located. The next few seconds are a blur, but the sense of extreme danger I receive urges me to get the hell out of there, so I book faster than I thought possible. I may as well be blind, because whatever I’m doing, I’m moving way faster than my brain’s ability to accurately process the data on a physical level.

Of course I get hopelessly lost. It takes about a half-minute for me to slow down, and by that time, nothing looks familiar. Fuck, I may even miss Echelon.

To make a long story short, I wander in the void for days maybe weeks. It’s completely empty out here, I’m completely alone, and that’s really enough to drive me fucking nuts. Maybe this gives me some insight into what Echelon went through. Or maybe I’m just being soft, maybe he’s just a crazy asshole who’s feeding me a line of bullshit, and deep inside me, I’m just a fucking stupid four year old kid playing with action figures and hoping Echelon really isn’t one of the bad guys. As I’ve said before, who the fuck really knows what’s in another person’s soul? Telepaths and psychiatrists may think they do, but even they’re just fucking eavesdroppers.

After a long time wandering in Zeroland, I get some sort of an image of an object in my mind, not so much physically, but telepathically suggested by the ether. I’m drawn to a chain of six beings, dangling behind ether creature body parts on a tether. One of them is a green Star Trek-like woman who appears to be human -- she’s the leader. Next to her is a huge guy with skin like orange-red rocks, and bones like vestigal wings jutting out of his shoulders. The third being on the chain resembles a flying wolf whose torso tapers to a serpent-like body, and it’s surrounded by a host of little glowing gnats. The fourth being is hard to describe -- at first glance, it appears to be a glowing pair of blades that are being manipulated by an invisible man, until I make out the appearance of something that looks like a black amoeba manipulating the weapons. The fifth being is an ornately crafted wooden box, and the only thing that suggests that it’s a living being are the green gossamer-like tendrils that occasionally come out of it. The sixth being is a feathered humanoid with three eyes and a tail.

Alien criminals? Well, they can’t be worse than the scum I deal with at home. In an instant, I will myself over to them.

"Human?" The woman says, holding up the palm of her hand in greeting. I stare at her for about a minute -- yes, she’s a major looker, with huge breasts and a muscular frame -- and after about five seconds I return the favor.

"I’m called Omega," I say, realizing that I’m about the last fucking person on Earth who should be establishing diplomatic relations with anyone. On the other hand, she did recognize my race. "You know us?"

"Your race calls me Regina," she says. My eyes widen. "Do you know the Echelon?"

"Oh yeah," I say. "We’re sweethearts. I’m trying to get back to him right now."

"Join with us, and we will go together."

I take up a link in the chain between Drexar (the big guy with the shoulder spikes) and Regina. She tells me that Saragon (the Serpent-Hound) has senses so keen that he could detect me at a distance of several parsecs. In the culture of Livrum (the living Box), beings capable of exceeding the speed of light are divine creatures, and he insisted that they intercept me so it could worship me. Regina’s mission has been to gather people and bring them back to base, so Echelon could start working on his Sid Meier complex and establish his "civilization."

They’re all criminals, although some of their alleged crimes are rather dubious. Saragon was the result of some animal hybrid experiment and escaped into the Zero Prison to avoid being destroyed when the populace of his world turned against science. Drexar is an engineered supersoldier who couldn’t stop killing when the war ended, a quality he has in common with the Vast, the jellyfish thing who gives me the impression that he’s an alien general who believed in winning by any means necessary, a philosophy that wasn’t universally accepted in his culture (especially after you commit war crimes). The winged humanoid, Zabreza, is an alien sorceress who was forced to destroy an entire city when she was compelled to act on a family vengeance-quest -- a geas, she calls it. And Regina’s also a sorceress. She says she can see a shitload of magic in my soul. As for Livrum, no one really knows what it is, or what crimes a box is capable of.

I decide to shut the fuck up and not talk about my favorite subject (myself), so I sit back and listen to a lot of stories about alien worlds. I hear about cultures that are even weirder than the shit back in Los Angeles, and yet there are still a lot of similarities to the people I know back home. Life’s strange, ain’t it?

Regina and I have a long conversation about Echelon. She barely knows the guy, and finds herself frustrated that she hasn’t been able to have sex with him and consummate the marriage. I show her mental images of human female anatomy (barely suppressing the temptation to make a joke about Regina’s vagina), and give her some awkward advice on how to sexually satisfy a human. I avoid saying anything negative about her husband, although I explain that he was exiled here by accident, mainly because of poor communication between him and his teammates after he was mind controlled. It seems like a good spin at the time.

We also discuss the use of magic in the ether. Regina notes with some astonishment that my use of magic is instinctive rather than learned. "If you were to study sorcery"

"Lady, in my experience, when you get that serious with that shit, you either get sucked into another dimension like Seneschal, or you’re forced into solitude like that archmage over in Maryland, or you completely lose your soul like most of the others. The only guy I know who has managed to avoid any of the usual hangups is Doc Wight, and I don’t want to be short," I say. Of course, I'm not being truthful -- there’s also Michael and the Stones, but that’d spoil the joke.

"Omega, you have a wonderful gift, and incredible potential," Regina tells me.

"’Wonderful gift’? Man, that psychobabble would fit like O.J.’s glove back on Earth," I reply.

"Obviously, I don’t understand your culture, not yet," Regina tells me. "But you will never reach your full potential without a dedicated study of the arcane."

"The arcane?" I laugh. "I thought high school was the arcane."

Regina senses I’m not a receptive audience for her advice and changes the subject. She does tell me one thing she’s discovered here that’s useful -- I can work my magic normally, if I attune myself to the dimension. I’ve been naturally attuning to it (which is why my magic’s been slowly getting more powerful), but she says that with a little meditation, I should be able to get back to my full powered, bad boy, butt-kicking self.

We do a lot of talking, and I spend a lot of the trip in meditation, and that does seem to help increase my power. The most annoying thing is Livrum -- it’s attracted to me, and keeps singing songs of praise about various parts of my godly anatomy, and occasionally I can feel it brush my ass with its tendril. It promises not to do that more than three times each day: it claims that if it makes physical contact with a god more often that, it would risk death by ecstacy. I suppose I should appreciate being worshipped, given how big of an egotistical prick I am, but like Doerksen’s crush on me, it gets fucking annoying after awhile.

A few days later, we finally arrive at the Rock. Echelon’s fucking astonished to see me in Regina’s company, but he says nothing until he’s finished charming the new additions. He does test Regina and ask her what I said about him. Regina demurely claims that I told her about the injustices that his people had done to him, and that she understood him better. Regina also says nice things about me. That seems to piss Echelon off a little.

After several hours of talk and entertainment, Echelon grabs my arm and leads me into a private chamber. "I missed you," he says, blank faced.

"Sorry about that It was an accident," I say, but (as I expect) Echelon hits me in the face, and when I go down, he adds a kick to the ribs for good measure. Asshole.

"You promised you wouldn’t leave! You gave me your word!" he shouted. You know, Echelon’s code of honor has a discomfiting, Mafia-like simplicity to it.

"What’s the matter, Echelon?" I snap as I get back to my feet. "Were you worried I made my way back home and left you behind?"

He wrestles me into a wall. "We had a deal"

"Bullshit," I snarl, stopping his sentence in mid-utterance. "First of all, you goddamn psycho, get your fucking hands off me or I’ll fucking remove them."

"What did you call me?" he gasps.

"I never promised you that we’d go home together. Now, I do want to find a way to get both of us back, because I don’t believe that even you deserve this shit"

"What did you call me!" he insists.

"Oh, I hit a fucking button, did I?" I snap back, pushing against his grip. It holds, much to my annoyance. "What would you call someone who starts hitting people because they’re way too fucking insecure? It sure as hell ain’t ‘normal’, is it, asshole?"

"How dare you"

"I’m telling you nothing you don’t know up here," I say, tapping his forehead. "Now get your fucking hands off me, and if you’ve got a problem, let’s talk it out." Shit, I’ll bet half the people I know would be having a fucking heart attack if they could see me right now, being the reasonable one.

"I’m so tired of your disrespect," Echelon says. "All I wanted"

"was a friend?" I complete the sentence for him. "Maybe in Ohio, or in the military, or in the Draughtsman, you can bond with people by beating the shit out of them at the slightest provocation, but that doesn’t fucking work with me. It ain’t your past that bugs me, mister. I can even overlook how screwed up you are, because I’m a poster boy too."

"You need discipline," Echelon insists. "Someone to come down on you."

"Maybe. But you’re not the one," I say. "You ain’t my dad, and there’s no fucking way you can fill those shoes."

"You need to be molded," Echelon says.

"And you need to calm down and recover your fucking sanity way more than I need to be fucking molded," I reply. "You know, maybe we should’ve gone toe-to-toe, had a real fight, when we first met. Only trouble is that if you’d won, you’d think you owned me, and if you’d lost"

"Don’t be absurd," he says with a laugh. "There is no way I’d ever lose to a punk like you."

"If you lost, you’d fucking resent it and I’d take Avatar’s place as the guy who keeps you awake at night," I reply.

"In your dreams, kid." He tells me with a shrug.

"No," I reply. "In yours. I’ve seen them, asshole."

Echelon has the sourest expression I’ve ever seen on a human face in my life. "If you want the beating of your life, Nebraska, I’ll be happy to deliver it," he says. "I’m sure our new guests would appreciate some entertainment."

"Let’s do it," I say, and without a second look, we walk into the center of the big dome.

******

Another day, another fucking fight. Shit, this has gotten old; I’ve been a superhero less than a year, and already I’m beginning to get sick of this bullshit. But I can’t think like that. Next to my fights with Avatar and Autocrat, this is probably the biggest challenge of my life. It also irritates me that Echelon decides to fight me macho style, bare-chested: aside from the fact that he doesn’t have a costume, I guess he thinks the muscle show will impress the spectators. I shrug and do the same, even if he’s got the advantage in the size of his chest and biceps. Give me a few years dickhead, I’m still a growing boy.

We bullshit to the newcomers and tell them the fight’s a training ritual. Drexar and the Vast, both ‘true warriors’, see through the obvious excuse. Drexar responds to the bullshit with a contemptuous smile that reminds me of a fucking cheshire cat -- it’s nice to know our species have at least that much in common.

"How about the loser has to kiss the winner’s ass?" I tell Echelon as we close to combat range.

"You’re almost as depraved as Avatar," Echelon retorts through grinding teeth. "And when I finish with you, we’ll need to construct a body cast." I smile, concentrate, and add density and a bit of muscle to my frame.

"Kiss my ass," I say.

"Fine," Echelon says. "And when I beat the snot out of you, you’ll give me your costume."

"Sure," I say. "After all, you’ve wanted to get that off me from the start."

"Go to Hell." Echelon doesn’t bother hiding his anger.

"I was already there." I smile back. "I shared a dimension with you."

"Let’s shut you up," Echelon states, and he throws the first punch. It’s a bit wild and I manage to dodge it. I connect with a blow to the face that drives him up slightly and then sends him headfirst ten meters into the wall of the dome. Big cracks form. He gets to his feet, closes again, throws another punch. It catches me partially on the shoulder, but it’s not enough for me to keep from throwing a counterpunch, that catches him solidly in the stomach and forces him to drop to one knee. I follow it up with a roundhouse, but he drops under the punch, tackles me, and puts me to my back. "Two point takedown, Nebraska," he quips.

But I’m in my groove, and before he can cinch the hold with his Avatar-like strength, I’m using his momentum, a whizzer armlock, and a bit of footwork to reverse the throw and put him on his back. I try to drive a knee into his gut, but he powers out with a surge of strength and throws me off.

We roll to our feet. His moves are tentative -- seeing that I’m not the pushover I was when I was first trapped in the Zero Prison, he’s hesitant, showing as much rust as an abandoned tractor at the end of winter. Me, it feels fucking great to be operating at full power again, even against an opponent in Avatar’s league. I wait for him to commit to throwing another punch, and when he refuses to throw one, I nail him in the nose with a hard jab, breaking it. It’s just too bad that I hadn’t had a chance to get in touch with Old Glory and do our proposed training regimen, because if I had only one-tenth of Glory’s fighting skill, I’d have no problems making this guy my bitch. On the other hand, if the guy weren’t so rusty, this fight would probably turn out as bad as my scrap in Dublin against Avatar.

Breaking his nose is like waving a red flag at Echelon. He snarls and charges at me, blocks a right cross with his forearm, and catches me with a punch in my right ribcage. Fuck, that hurts. I feel a rib crack, but it doesn’t break my fighting stance, and I counter with my own body blow. He connects with an uppercut and a roundhouse that sends me flying to my back, and then he decides to fly after me in mid-flight. But I’m the one who catches him, and I take control of our course and drive him hard into the ground. Echelon lands with a thud, and I throw the best roundhouse of the fight into his face, a real jawcracker that almost breaks my hand. He responds by a punch to my injured ribs, kicks me off when I instinctively clutch my side, and then jumps on my back and gets me in a reverse chinlock that turns into a neckbreaker. He’s trying to kill me, the asshole. But I was pretty much expecting this.

I sit down, pull up on the arm, and try something new -- using my flight in reverse, trying to push downward and extract myself from the hold. I could always become intangible, but if this ain’t a physical battle, Echelon would tell himself that I cheated. I risk breaking my neck, but the gambit pays off, and I manage to wriggle myself out of the hold. I land on my feet, and when he charges, I sidestep him, grab him in a suplex (or, as we real wrestlers call it, a "suplé") and drop him hard on his head and stay on his back. He muscles his way back to his feet -- shit, this mother-fucker is really tough -- and tries to pry my fingers loose, but I suplex him again. He rolls over to his back, which is a huge mistake -- I get on his chest and hit him with a right roundhouse. I can see the confidence leave his face, as I connect with a second punch, a hard left. This guy’s unbelievably tough, but he’s going down today, and we both know it.

That’s when the room explodes. Echelon glows, and eight streams of energy pour out of the wall and ceiling from every direction and strike me. It’s like a normal man being hit by 50,000 volts. I convulse off Echelon’s body and spasm for a few seconds. The energy flow doesn’t stop -- I feel like Luke Fucking Skywalker in Return of the Jedi, after the Emperor’s hit me with lightning bolts for the eleventh time.

When it’s over, Echelon is on top of me, hitting me with repeated punches to the face. I’m blacking out by the third punch, but I’ll bet he doesn’t stop there.

******

When I awaken, I’m naked, except for a loincloth made of translucent ether cloth that’s been wrapped around my crotch. I groan and struggle to my feet. Man, I must look like shit. My knuckles and chest are still bloody, and I see burn marks all over my body. It’s not quite as bad as what Autocrat did to me, but it wasn’t a fucking picnic either.

"Awake?" Echelon says, wearing the Omega suit. Fuck, it’s weird seeing it on someone else, especially someone that fucking huge. "Good. From this point on, I’m not taking any more garbage from you. You’ll do as you’re told, and right now, the only thing I’m letting you do is breathe."

"Fuck you," I reply. "You didn’t beat me, all the goddamn power that you stored up in this cosmic shitlog beat me. I kicked your ass."

Echelon’s face suddenly acquires a slight, smug smile, and yet again his mood shifts, as he senses being hard-assed isn’t working. "Well it’s true that you’re very tough, a very worthy opponent, Nebraska." The condescension in his voice is enough to make me puke.

"And you were a cheating piece of shit, Ohio," I say. "And don’t give me any ‘no rules’ bullshit. We both know what the ground rules were, and you broke them."

"It doesn’t surprise me that you’re a poor loser." Echelon shakes his head. "But I can forgive that. If you were smart, you’d think a little harder about what I did to you. You were nothing to me. You didn’t even dampen the power reserve. I can kill you with a thought."

"Spoken like one of the good guys," I snap back.

"I am a hero," Echelon says, offended. "And I can also say there’s no way a creep like you could possibly be a superhero." (Well, I’ve heard that one before). "When we get back, I know you’ll have a lot to answer for. How many people have you killed, Nebraska? How many lives have you ruined?" He pauses. "Was your girlfriend really murdered by some supervillain, or did you do it?"

He’s trying to get to me, but I ain’t playing the game. I could get under his skin, but that’s way too easy to be fun, and too dangerous. "Wait until we get home, and do the math, you fucking puke," I say. He smiles. "And just how do you plan to get home, Echelon?"

"Now that I’ve had a chance to see what these people can do, I have a plan," Echelon answers. "First, Saragon’s senses should detect the point in space where the portal last opened. Then Regina and Zabreza will use their magic to open it, extend it, and move it to low Earth orbit so we can take the Rock through. From there, we attack the Protectorate, and take the Monolith as our new base."

"So all that ‘I’ll be nice to the Protectorate’ crap you told me earlier was pure bullshit?

"You were the first one to lie to me, so now you know how I felt when you betrayed me!" Echelon counters.

"And you’ll do the same thing to Avatar that you did to me."

"No," Echelon answers. "I didn’t kill you. I’m not killing you. I’ve debated between putting Avatar into exile or giving him a quick death, and I’ve concluded that the quick death is the merciful thing to do. Once he’s been sent to Valhalla, or whereever morally degenerate legendary warriors go when they lose their final battle, then I’ll take up my new job"

"Ruler of the world?" I mock. Echelon spits derisively.

"Don’t be an idiot, Omega. When I said that nothing’s worth that amount of pain, I meant it. I’m going to be a consultant. When somebody, somewhere, be they a person or a government, does something I don’t like, I’ll perform a ‘consultation’ and put a stop to it. As long as they respect my veto, everyone will be free to run their own lives."

"And you?"

"Me and my comrades will enjoy a good, prosperous life in the Monolith." Echelon’s smile reaches truly epic proportions."

I pause for a second. "But what happens when one of your comrade’s calls in a marker and asks for your help against their own people? Are you going to force the human race to go halfway across the galaxy to fight in some forsaken alien war?"

"That’s not part of the deal. They get a ticket out of the Zero Prison and a chance to enjoy their life with me, nothing else." Echelon says, his mood changing yet again. "I know what I’m proposing sounds harsh, but it’s for humanity’s own good." He sighs. "You yourself said that the world was in a lot of danger. What did you say about what just happened in Ireland? And the Black Priest? The Protectorate sits back and waits for things like this to happen, and good people die. But I won’t sit back."

"You’ll be the pro-active superhero team," I mock.

"Pro-active? What the hell does that mean?" Echelon asks the question that everyone who’s heard this post-modern bullshit has asked. "But I will be an aggressive superhero. Isn’t it about time someone played offense for a change? After all, look at the Black Priest. People have been trying to catch him after the fact for centuries, and they haven’t even come close to collaring him." I start laughing. "Do you doubt me?"

"Fuck no," I say. "I had the exact same conversation with Dr. Wight not long ago. There’s only one problem with your theory, Etch; it may take a lunatic to get Earth back into shape -- but you’re not the loon to lead us!"

"Are you sure?" Echelon says with a bit of a laugh. "You don’t really know me. I’ve had a very hard life"

"Yeah, it’s been a complete piece of shit. And that’s why you’ll crack like a fucking egg the first time there’s any serious pressure on you!" I say. "I don’t know why the fuck I want to help you after the bullshit you just pulled, but let me try to reason with you one last time."

"Fine," Echelon says. "Even though I won the fight, I’ll still listen, because that’s the sort of man I am." I almost roll my eyes.

"Echelon, when you get back, deal with all the criminal stuff first, then get some rest, some psychiatric help, and maybe a few hundred kilos of Zoloft, because you’re even more fucking burnt out than Halcyon. Don’t try this whole god from orbit thing, because even if you get past the Protectorate, it’ll end up killing you. Maybe you’ve got the potential to be great again, but you need rehab."

"Once I get back in my own universe, I’ll be a lot better," Echelon says. "You’ll see." I guess he’s dropped the whole ‘Omega has to be a supervillain’ line. Shit, is Echelon’s greatest metahuman power Super Attention Deficit Disorder? "I can do any job I set out to do, can’t I? After all, even though I was rusty, I still beat you. It is my destiny to triumph over anyone who stands in my way."

"Like Avatar?" I chide.

"I did beat him. And if it hadn’t been for the Zero Prison, the world would know it. I’ve beaten Avatar, and Metatron, Esprit de Guerre, Core, Ares Dark, Magnus Red, Pantheon can you name one opponent I’ve faced that I haven’t beaten?"

"Well, how about El Brazos Fuerza," I say, and the name rattles him.

"What did you say?" he says in an astonished voice. He probably never expected to hear that name again as long as he lived.

"El Brazos Fuerza," I repeat. This is a really stupid thing to bring up, especially after what Avatar told me, but it’s pretty obvious now that Echelon is three light years beyond all hope, and I’ve got an itch to be an asshole and take down his smugness by a few notches. "You know, you keep saying that your destiny is really fucking important and so much greater than mine, but Brazos told me when he gave me his boots that ‘the future belonged to me.’ The funny thing is, he never mentioned your name, just mine."

"His boots?" Echelon stammers numbly.

"A gift from the big guy, after I showed him just how good we Nebraska boys are at arm wrestling," I boast.

Echelon doesn’t react for a long time. Instead, he looks at me with a pale, numb face. "You should have been my protégé," he finally tells me, and then he turns and walks out of the room. And as soon as he disappears from view, I have a feeling something bad is about to happen, so I immediately become intangible, and sink through the floor. It’s probably the best fucking idea of my life. At that moment, the room erupts in a white helion disintegration field. If I had been in the room just a fraction of a second earlier

"Good-bye Omega," Echelon says (I can hear clearly through solid rock, my "super-voyeur hearing" power comes in useful once again). "Thanks for the suit."

******

To expose myself would pretty much guarantee certain death, so I remain hidden inside the bedrock, and I pray that Saragon’s super fucking senses don’t extend into solid rock as my magic isn’t powerful enough to obscure me and keep me intangible at the same time. But Saragon and Miss Feathers have taken off to search for the portal, so I suppose I’ve been cut a small break.

"Where’s Omega?" Regina asks. "He was pleasant company on the way here. I wish you’d bring him to the table."

"The poor boy is sulking, after my victory." Echelon bullshits. It sounds like they’re eating from the provisions they brought. "I’m afraid his attempt to show-off backfired rather spectacularly."

"The boy fought well," Drexar says -- well, that’s not really what he says, but that’s the gist I get from the ether’s translation. "When can I face him?"

"I don’t think anytime soon," Echelon says. "He’s terribly impetuous. I wouldn’t be surprised if he runs away again."

His is a luminous power. I never thought a box could have a voice, but I guess the ether works in mysterious ways. He shall return when you least expect it. I have foreseen it.

"Now that’s a paradox." Echelon chuckles. "Since you’ve warned me he’ll return, now I’ll be expecting it."

"Livrum is a prophetess," Regina states.

"So was the Greyhag, back in ‘82." Echelon laughs. "She still went to prison. I like to handle life as it happens. We’re prisoners, and until recently, thinking about the future made me want to slit my wrists."

"So bring it on," Drexar says; I wonder if he’s Mastiff’s extra-dimensional cousin, separated at birth by some cosmic event.

There’s a bit of a commotion, and I hear three words from Regina that send a chill through me. "He’s found it."

******

I’m not sure how this is going to go down. Echelon moves the Rock onto an intercept course with the Portal. Drexar and the Vast spar with each other in the main arena. Regina tells Echelon that she needs to meditate before casting her spell, so she retreats into the same dome where Echelon "executed" me.

"Omega!" I can hear Regina whisper. "I know you’re alive and I know you’re in hiding. I need to talk with you."

Can I trust her? I probably have no choice -- and she is an incredibly gorgeous green-skinned alien space babe, and if that’s good enough for Captain Kirk, it’s gotta be good for Tommy Champion. I ascend through the floor, willing myself into a tight pair of Blue Jeans and a Mossimo ripped-T as I rise. "Lady, I’m putting my life in your hands." I tell her.

"Then it is secure as heart’s blood." Regina states. I don’t understand the reference, but I think I get the gist. "You have been well wronged."

"By your husband?"

"My husband no longer," Regina says. "When a husband dishonors himself in a lawful duel in the presence of his wife prior to consummating their marriage, the union is annulled."

Man, that’s a silly fucking rule. It’s probably meant to punish husbands who get too drunk after the ceremony. "Uh, you wouldn’t happen to be a Klingon, by any chance?" I joke.

"I do not think so," Regina answers.

"Could’ve fucking fooled me," I say. I was never a big fan of Star Dreck, though the Klingons and the Borg were cool. "Uh the person who wins the duel in which one’s husband is dishonored they don’t become the new husband, do they?"

"Not unless you press a suit," Regina informs me. Shit, human law is bad enough without having to worry about an alien fucking legal code.

"How about if we have sex instead?" I suggest.

"Agreed, but first we must combine our powers to make our own portal. Zabreza alone cannot accomplish it. If we join forces, we could escape on our own."

"What about Echelon?" I ask.

"Aren’t you going to strand him here, after all he’s done to you?" Regina’s disbelief is pretty much understandable.

"Well," I begin. "Because of his fucking ego, Echelon tried to take on an army of invading aliens by himself, got himself mind controlled, and then turned off the Monolith’s defense systems so the aliens could get through to Earth unmolested. A lot of people died because of his negligence. It was criminal. He needs to answer for it, and the people he hurt need to see that."

"For revenge?" Regina asks.

"Yeah," I say. "Although these days we bullshit ourselves and call it ‘closure.’" I stop and think for a second. "How long would it take us to open the portal together?"

"About an hour," Regina says.

"Shit!" I exclaim. "I don’t think we can get away with quietly slipping away, and once Echelon catches us, we’re toast. Maybe we can try something else." A plan starts bubbling in my twisted Nebraska brain. "Echelon’s on the top of the Rock?"

"Yes," Regina informs me. "On the observation tower, using his power to steer the Rock toward the Portal."

"Where else would he be?" I say, mostly to myself. "And where’s Saragon? Still at the portal?"

"He should be returning soon."

"At least Saragon doesn’t know that I’m persona non grata. Echelon still wants to keep the fact he’s a murderous asshole a secret. Probably even from himself. Can you quietly get the hound in here when he returns without alerting the big E?"

"I can." Regina’s agreement is music to my fucking ears. "You do have a plan?"

"Uh huh. Something incredibly risky and stupid," I say. "It should be a lot of fun."

******

Regina manages to dog collar Saragon and deliver him to me, and I sneak away from the Rock and have my fun. A small mind link with Saragon allows me to tap into his senses and keep an eye on how the effort at the portal is proceeding. To my annoyance, it goes faster than I’d hoped.

It doesn’t take the Rock long to arrive at the portal location, and once it’s in position, locked in orbit around a small crack in the ether, Echelon instructs Regina and Zabreza to begin their ritual.

Within an hour, a portal’s open. Within two, it’s been expanded so the Rock can pass through. They perform a ritual to fill the domes with a sustainable atmosphere so everyone doesn’t die once they hit airless space, and then they begin the final ritual to switch the portal destination so once they pass through, they can put the Rock into low Earth orbit.. The Vast is generating some sort of psychic caccoon, a telekinesis field that will allow him to be ambulatory in space (and if necessary, on Earth), and Echelon is watching everything with a megalomaniac’s grin. He’s probably getting a serious hard-on from the thought of his imminent, triumphant return. And in my costume too, the shithead.

And that’s when Saragon and I come riding in, decelerating from light speed (man, that’s a bitch) and I cheerfully wave at Echelon.

"Hey, Etch! Nice threads!" I shout. Echelon glances at me and isn’t sure how to react. "Incoming," I add, and I tag with Echelon with a psychic signature, just as Lusitania, whom I had Saragon track down, comes running through.

Things go nuts. There is a sound like grinding gears, and one second the sky’s empty, the next second, Lusitania tries to swallow Echelon, and ends up hitting us all, hard. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on Echelon’s face, the murderous stare, as he begins to concentrate on killing me.

But before he can gather up enough helions, we’re all swept through the portal. I hadn’t intended that -- I’d hoped to grab Regina, leap through, and close the sucker from the other side, but that plan is a wash. I’m not sure where everyone lands, but given that we were starting to get a decent view of the planet (at least a hundred miles up), it’s likely that we’ve been knocked and scattered across half the hemisphere. Lucy bounces off the portal, shattering into space whale chunks, a few of which fall like meteors into our dimension. The Rock cracks, and Echelon, still trying to control the very large section on which he’s standing, ignites as he passes through the gate, and goes hurtling upward in a streak of blue. I don’t know where he went, or what happened to the others.

I tumble in a beautiful dive from low orbit, feeling cushioned by a thick layer of invisible ether that wrapped itself around my body when I went through the portal. I land in what I later discover is the middle of fucking Labrador, hurting like a son of a bitch. But it’s good, so fucking, fucking good, to be home, alive.

******

"Our intelligence indicates that Echelon attempted to reach orbit with the section of Rock on which he was standing -- and succeeded all too well," Zodiac tells me. I’m in the main council chamber on the Protectorate Monolith, and for someone who isn’t even a member of their fucking club, this feels an awful lot like a court martial. Everyone’s here except Avatar, who’s still sulking manfully in his chamber. "He ricocheted off Earth’s atmosphere at trans-light velocity"

"He didn’t burn up?" I ask. Zodiac shakes his head.

"After five years in the Prison, he wasn’t used to the physical laws of our universe, and still trying to adjust as though he were flying in the ether. But we’re almost certain the helion field protected him, and the ether also had interesting properties."

"Yeah," I say. "Residual inertia armor. It cushioned me when I hit the dirt in Labrador. The transfer of momentum was way different in that dimension, otherwise we all would have been pulped when Lucy hit us. If I were a physicist, I’d write a paper on it."

Trinity is about to agree with me, but she gets cut off by Lioness. "We’ll take it up with Hellhound, if we ever get the device back from him," she says, and leans forward with a sigh. "That’s another threat to worry about."

"You won’t get any arguments from me," I respond. "But I guess the big question is whether you have any idea where Echelon is?"

"I don’t think Omega needs to know that," Lioness interjects. Paragon says nothing. The others openly disagree.

"He opened a warp gate, Omega." Trinity finally tells me. "Our best guess puts him somewhere around Canopus."

"He might warp back any day, or it might take him a hundred lifetimes," Zodiac says.

"It’s not like he has star charts to help him navigate from seventy-four light years away," Trinity observes, trying to be optimistic.

"I’m sorry," I say. "I really fucked up. He should never have been allowed to come back. How much damage was done by the Lusitania and Rock chunks when they came through against the portal and struck land?"

"Most of them fell into the Atlantic and into uninhabited regions in Northern Quebec and Labrador. No casualties or damage have been reported," Zodiac says.

"Yet," Lioness adds. "But what damage is Echelon and six alien supercriminals capable of inflicting on us? Did you have to go into this Rock with guns blazing and a giant space whale in your wake?"

"You had a chance to take him out earlier," the Outsider adds. "Sometimes, Omega, you gotta shoot Old Yeller. For someone that everyone says is such a ‘badass,’ you need to toughen up, kid!"

"To think we actually considered making this clown part of the team!" Lioness expresses her disgust. No one objects to her statement.

"Fine," I say. "Guilty as charged. Anyway, that’s the whole ugly story. I’ll do what I can to help with the mess." Suddenly I can’t wait to leave. "Bye."

I get up to walk out. No one’s sad to see me go, and I can’t blame them. I’m stopped when the door shoots opens just before I reach it, and I find myself six inches away from Avatar.

The demi-god stops me with an outstretched hand. "I read the report," he tells me. "Thank-you for trying to help him."

"He was really fucked up," I say as I shake my head. "I should've seen it from the start."

"You probably should have," Avatar agrees. "And I should never have left him there."

"Excuse me!" Outsider interjects, getting to his feet. "You do remember that Hellhound stole the Zero projector just a few weeks after you imprisoned Echelon? And that you then accidentally knocked Hellhound and the Projector into Hell? It’s not like you had easy access."

"Everything you say is true," Avatar replies. "But, as your President Truman said, ‘the buck stops here,’ with what I did. And I always liked Truman."

"Please," I beg the big guy. "You don’t need anything else to feel guilty about" Shit, that was a really piss-poor thing to say. "Let me bear the burden of guilt on this one, okay? Maybe if I hadn’t been such an asshole, been a little more diplomatic"

"Then you would have become what he wanted you to be -- a puppet," Avatar replies. The Outsider nods; everyone else is too busy watching the situation. "You’d have been reduced to his protégé, a reflection of his glory. You’d be forced to do most of his dirty work, and he’d point at your triumphs only to take credit for them. Such a hollow life isn’t worthy of you, Omega. It’s not in your nature, just as it isn’t in mine, or" and he looks at the Outsider. "in the nature of anyone else in this room. You gave him a chance. He failed. It was his choice."

"So what do we do if he comes back?"

"That will depend on the situation," Zodiac says. "No human being knows more about what’s beyond the solar system than Echelon. I think he will come, sooner rather than later, and not alone."

"He was real quiet when I asked him about what was out there in deep space," I observe.

"We all have to deal with these recurring problems, kid," the Outsider says. "For us it’s Echelon, the Royal Elite, and Pantheon. For you, it’s Hack and Orchid that keep you awake at night. Am I right?"

"Well, there was a remark that Orchid said to me about Nike and parasites that’s been bothering me for months," I begin to say.

"I wasn’t looking for specifics," the Outsider shuts me down. "Tell it to your therapist." I look embarrassed.

"I’m certain when Echelon returns, Mr. Champion will do his best to work with us, and that we will be appreciative," Avatar tells the room.

"Yeah, it’s been a wonderful partnership so far. First, you nearly kill me, and then I release your arch-nemesis. Where the fuck do we go from here?" I can’t quite read the look on Avatar’s face -- I don’t really know if Super-God has a sense of humor.

"I believe there is plenty of room for improvement," Zodiac interjects. Fuck, if E.T. can tell a fucking joke, what isn’t possible? "We will keep you informed."

I walk out the door to the teleportal, what the Protectorate call a shunter, and Avatar walks with me. "You still doing the whole God in exile bit?" I ask.

"You still doing the whole hunt the Black Priest bit?" Avatar counters.

"Nah, I thought I’d just hand him the keys to Armageddon and see where he drives it." I can see that my jokes are as tasteful as ever. "Shit, let’s talk about something else. Were you and Echelon ever friends?" I ask. "I mean real friends?"

"I haven’t had a real friend since the old times, since Enkidu," Avatar refers to his companion from the Epic of Gilgamesh. "There are many people to whom I’d entrust my life. There are also many people to whom I’d entrust my intimacy. But with a true friend, even more than a lover, you entrust everything, because they will always add to what you have. They are rarer than people think, Omega."

We keep walking, not saying much of anything. "Do you think you could have been his friend?" I finally ask.

"Do you?" Avatar shoots back.

"Well, we’re both ex-wrestlers, both spandex gloryhounds who shoot first and ask fucking questions later," I iterate. "We both have really lousy tempers, we both get physically abusive when we’re pissed and we both tend to screw up a lot." I swallow hard. "I’m going to be spending the next month trying to figure out why I’m not going to turn out anything like him."

Avatar smiles, and we arrive at the shunter bay. We shake hands, say our good-byes, and I beam down to Earth, down to that prison of six billion fucking souls to which I’ve been confined by the laws of nature and psychology. All places are prisons, we just don’t usually fucking realize it until things get bad, but all places are prisons if we really want them to be, because sometimes prisons look safe and simple. It’s when we try to break free from our prisons that we risk destruction, like Echelon, and though I may hate the guy, there’s a part of me who understands him, and even admires what he tried to do. I don’t know if that makes him more or less evil than the asshole who sent me into prison. I can tell I’ve got a lot to think about.
 

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