The next thing I knew I was lost in the golden haze. Maybe I wasn’t as dead as I thought as I was. When my hard light body finally reassembled itself I looked up to see an assembled SWAT team aiming cautiously in my direction.

“Er… I come in peace?” I smiled sheepishly.

“Let her go,” came the order from the captain. He turned away for a brief second to consider the unconscious Lady Snow. “And somebody get her collared and clamped!”

Oh gods, I thought: here comes the avalanche. “I can explain everything.”

“You threw yourself into the middle of a delicate operation,” the captain grunted. “Fortunately nobody was hurt. Can I say the same for you?”

His concern surprised me. “I’m fine… I think.”

“You think?”

“Well I’m still in one piece, aren’t I?” I laughed, though the captain was having none of it.

“Can’t say that I’m too thrilled that you’re here,” he muttered, “but on the other hand you did just put another Society member on your belt. If that’s something you were inclined to keep doing I don’t imagine there would be a lot we could do in turn to stop you.”

Was I hearing things? It had to be my imagination. If I didn’t know any better I could have sworn that I had been given an unofficial endorsement from the MMCD. Even more shocking was the idea that the city’s big guns were taking me seriously as a hero.

By that point I was beaming. “Sir, I promise that I’ll-“

“You’ll talk to me next time we cross paths,” he ordered. “We have a way of doing things around here. The last thing we need is some snot-nosed meta punk getting in the way of our job. Capice?”

“Yes sir!” Assuming there was a next time, anyway.

The captain removed his gloves and offered me his hand. “Captain Salvatore Ramirez,” he said haughtily from under his moustache.

I took it and smiled, but still he expected a name. Nothing sprang immediately to mind. Firefly: no, too derivative. Shimmer: no, too vague. Shimmering Girl: no, too long. Glowstick Girl: no, too tacky, but nice alliteration… Glimmering Girl? Then I had it: “Glimmer Girl, sir.”

“Glimmer Girl,” he repeated back to me. Already I was regretting that spur of the moment decision for how childish it sounded, but little did I realize how much it would come to mean to me in the years to come.

I was relieved as I took to the sky. Me: three, bad guys: nil! It was unbelievable, like something out of a science fiction movie yet there I was living through it.

* * * *

“The Red Wraith will speak with you shortly. Please hold.”

Punching Judy tapped the wheel nervously as Moonlight Sonata played over the telephone line. There was something about being out without her make-up that left her feeling so much less than whole that not even smashing through walls could make up for it.

From her fixed perch outside the police perimeter she’d managed to catch glimpses of both goldilocks flying away and her compatriot being led off in cuffs. Things hadn’t gone according to plan, or had they? Perhaps it was all as the Red Wraith had anticipated.

She watched the tiny blip on her handheld tracker suddenly disappear as the hero flew out of range then cursed the radioactive compound for not doing its job. Somehow she had the distinct feeling that her boss wasn’t going to be happy.

The phone clicked and from it followed a deep, ominous voice. “Yes?”

“I don’t know how to tell you this, chief, but, er… hero girl just flew off my radar,” Judy explained with caution. She half expected for him to then reach through the phone and throttle her.

“Did Lady Snow manage to touch her?” he asked.

“Well, yeah, I think so, but…”

“Then her job is done,” the Red Wraith mused. “The compound we used is applied by physical contact and will stick to her for weeks. The only downside is that it is for short range tracking, but no matter. We have agents all across the city. Someone will pick her up soon, I’m sure.”

“Better hope for her sake she doesn’t show her ugly mug around here again, huh?” The unpainted clown laughed, though the Society’s figurehead was not quite jovial. His silence quieted her swiftly leaving her feeling as small and pathetic as a scolded puppy.

Unfazed by her emotion the villain continued. “What of Lady Snow?”

“Captured. They’re carting her off to the Chamber as we speak.”

“Make sure they never get that far,” he murmured darkly.

“Chief?”

“We’re the Society of Sin, Judy,” he exclaimed boldly. “We look after our own. After all, what good is a citizenry if they’re all behind bars?”

“You gotta point there,” Judy nodded and watched as the MMCD started to pull apart their barricade.

“Make the appropriate arrangements,” the Red Wraith commanded and promptly hung up the phone. He probably had bigger fish to fry, after all.

Reaching with her uninjured arm toward the bag in the passenger seat Punching Judy removed a canister of greasy white face paint. “Time to go to work,” she cackled, smiling at the prospect of putting a bunch of tight-ass cops in their place.

“Man, I love my job,” she laughed and slipped on an oversized boxing glove. Even if it was just another Thursday the work never got boring.

* * * *

Artemis, once returning from watching over the fledgling hero, descended into the darkness of the subterranean TASK facility. It had been an interesting afternoon as they often were in his line of work, but the day was not yet done.

Finding his way to a hall on the lowest level he followed the trail of fluorescent lights to the temporary workshop of Dr. Fellows. There the cantankerous physicist was no doubt processing the things learned from his studies on the shimmering girl. Up until then the doctor had been keeping his findings to himself, but the director demanded a report and Artemis was there to collect.

The spy weaved his way through the benches and the large, discarded pieces of machinery as he sought the man out. When there was nobody to be found he ventured a solid “hello.”

“Ah, Mr. Crowe. You’re right on time,” the doctor’s voice echoed from a concealed workstation in the corner. Stepping out from behind the blast shielding he cradled an odd mechanical apparatus fit around his arm as an exoskeleton. Its immediate purpose seemed sinister.

“Director Striker is expecting a report,” the agent stated flatly.

With a brief, curt smile Dr. Fellows nodded “of course” and offered forward a plain manila folder. “Do give the Major General my highest regards and tell her to expect a full briefing in the next week.”

Artemis took stock of the scientist in the same way he would an enemy combatant. Having never seen a piece of meta-science like the arm brace sported by Fellows he was more than a little uncomfortable.

“Ms. Striker has also requested you turn over your private notes on the shimmering entity,” the spy continued warily.

“I will have them made available with my next report.”

“I’ve already taken the liberty,” Artemis interjected, earning a cool, furious glare from the other man.

An uncertain silence lingered, but was soon broken by Dr. Fellows. “I see,” he said and scratched his beard with concern. “Am I to assume that she is already in possession of these notes?”

“Yes.”

Artemis studied every subtle movement expecting the doctor’s betrayal. His fingers danced over the customized 18d glock holstered at his side in anticipation of the firefight that was sure to follow.

The doctor, unwavering as ever, fixated on him with his unblinking gaze. “Is this how it is going to be, Mr. Crowe?”

“Looks like it.”

“You must understand that what I’m doing is for the benefit of all mankind,” he explained. “Ms. Striker has already set her dogs onto me, yes?”

“Strike force ETA two minutes,” Artemis smirked. “Bad luck, chum.”

“And how did you honestly expect to pin me in one place for that long?”

“Oh, not hard,” the agent mused, his hand arching to his hip like a cobra preparing to strike.

The air was thick, like soup nearing the boil. Each soldier snapped and drew their weapon, pointing them across the room at one another in a Mexican stand-off.

“It’s not long now before fifty TASK agents swarm this room,” Artemis chuckled. “You’re not going to get away.”

“We’ll see,” Fellows frowned and steadied the frame surrounding his arm.

Artemis paused and took a deeper look to the device Dr. Fellows had constructed. It hummed threateningly like many of the tech weapons he’d previously encountered, though the configuration was new to him.

“So what’s this supposed to be?” the agent asked. “Does it shoot solar beams that are going to fry me to ash?”

“Nothing so barbaric.”

Something was wrong, but when Artemis noticed it was already far too late. His breathing had become heavier and his opponent without taking a step seemed to be drifting further and further away.

He didn’t bother to negotiate: such business was for more patient men. Without hesitation he unloaded a half dozen bullets clear into Dr. Fellow’s chest only for them to be embedded in the wall.

“Impossible,” the spy gasped weakly as the air was grew even thinner. “That was… a direct hit…”

“Your aim is perfect, Mr. Crowe, though your target is not what he appears,” Dr. Fellows mused. “What you see here is no ‘science fiction gun’ but rather a graviton generator. Ask your tech department what that is and they will tell you that for a human to possess such a device with our level of understanding is most improbable. Not me, however, for I, dear boy, have evolved!”

Trapped within a vacuum the agent fumbled and fought his way toward his aggressor, but the mad physicist was always two steps out of reach. Slowly Artemis’ feet began to grow heavy while his lungs prepared for imminent collapse. Whatever was being done to him was effective and in its lethality, just as Fellows had intended.

With Artemis spread out on the floor Dr. Fellows released his hold and gave the unconscious agent a swift kick to the abdomen. He may have yet recovered, the scientist mused, but it did not matter: neither he nor all of TASK could stop him now, though there was still much yet to be done.

* * * *

For the first time in weeks I was able to get some sleep. Maybe I was getting used to letting the shimmering girl out, or maybe I was emboldened by my unlikely victory. Whatever it was the weird alien energy inside wasn’t jumping to get out like a hyperactive dog cooped up in a yard.

Staring at the ceiling the shadows began to fade. My awareness drifted and waned until I was unconscious and no longer part of the world. I felt like I could have slept for weeks and probably would if I had my way, but a sudden visitor wouldn’t let me get the chance.

“Justin,” the voice rasped. “Justin!”

I pried my eyes open lazily, half convinced that I was still dreaming, though the hand that gripped my shoulder to shake me violently said otherwise. Snapping awake I tried to fight off the attacker but was held down. My screaming was stifled by a gloved hand pressing down heavily over my mouth.

“Easy, boy. We don’t want any attention,” the intruder whispered. Suddenly I recognized his voice.

Dr. Fellows flicked on the bedside lamp and eased away cautiously. From the wild look in his eyes I had a feeling that he hadn’t come for a midnight training session. What’s more he was probably working behind the back of his fellow agent.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked impatiently and readied a sharp kick in his direction.

“We need to move,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because TASK are coming for you,” he explained. “Things have taken a sharp turn downhill, Mr. Cade. You and I have no friends here, so please, for the sake of your family and loved ones we must flee.”

“I don’t buy it,” I told him suspiciously. “If TASK wanted to hurt me up they wouldn’t have allowed me to have all this freedom in the first place.”

Dr. Fellows blinked incredulously. “Hurt you? No, I think you have the wrong impression. The last thing they want to do is hurt someone as valuable as you. What they want is to turn you into an agent of the new world order.”

“Okay, now you’re spouting conspiracy theories at me…”

“Do you doubt me?”

“Gee, do I doubt the guy who looks like the lovechild of Grizzly Adams and Hannibal Lecter? I don’t know, Alex. Can I take ‘well duh’ for a thousand?”

Growing ever more agitated Dr. Fellows peered out the window to make sure that he wasn’t being followed. He turned to me, leaned down and whispered as calmly as he could.

“You don’t have to like me,” he said. “That doesn’t faze me one way or the other, but you cannot be allowed to go with them. What you… what the shimmering girl leads to is far more power than any person or persons should ever have.”

“Wow, you make it sound like I’m carrying an atom bomb in my chest.”

“In a way you are,” the doctor explained, “and so much more. What you carry inside you is the raw untapped potential of reality itself, the very heart of the multiverse.”

Clearly he was delusional. “Wow, you really are a crazy nut job, huh?”

“It’s true. I saw it myself.”

“Was it while you were high smoking secret government issued narcotics like the kind they gave your daddy in ‘Nam?” I scoffed.

“Actually I saw it when I rescued you,” he said seriously. “Don’t you ever wonder where you were for those two months? One second you’re trapped underground, the next you were in a park next to me. Much time had passed. What do you think happened for you to arrive there?”

I shifted uncomfortably. It was true: I really did want to know, but “why start telling me all this now?”

“Because I couldn’t risk Artemis learning about it. He would have shared that knowledge with his superiors and started exactly the scenario I’m trying here to avoid.”

Suddenly I was terrified. What if he wasn’t crazy? So many bizarre things had been happening it was getting hard to separate fact from fiction, but even if the things he was saying were true how could I just abandon my bed, my family and my life in the middle of the night?

“You have to promise me,” I told him sharply, “that once we’re away that you’re going to tell me everything. No secrets. You hear me?”

“That’s perfectly reasonable.”

Against my better judgment I slipped some shorts over my boxers and found a clean shirt, but the doctor told me that I wouldn’t need them. “Just bring your costume,” he said. Reluctantly I complied.

The doctor’s tension was making me nervous. If he was right then there was going to be a swarm of soldiers kicking in our door and terrorizing my Mom. I, on the other hand, would be long gone. Suddenly I felt extremely guilty.

“I promise you that your family will be safe,” he said more aggressively. “Now take my hand. We haven’t a second to spare.”

“You’re Peter Pan now?”

Flexing his arm in my direction Dr. Fellows showed me the impressive piece of hardware mounted to it. “This is a graviton generator. With it I am able to affect the density of objects, their mass, their weight, as well as bend the fabric of space itself so that we might move instantaneously from one point to another.”

“Uh, no hablo Espanol?”

“It means that we can teleport anywhere,” he snapped. “Now please! We need to move.”

I felt uneasy taking his hand like I’d just made a deal with the devil. Still that was no reason not to make light of the situation. “That’s pretty awesome. Does that mean I can call you Dr. Vortex?”

He smiled widely: it was the first time he’d even so much as smirk at one of my dumbass cracks. “I like that,” he said. “Yes, I like that a lot.”

The doctor placed his hand on my shoulder. I don’t know what happened next but the world around us blinked and faded away. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any stranger someone came along to take it one step further.

* * * *

The world had turned seemlessly beneath our feet casting Dr. Fellows and I to another location miles away with only a single step. It was trippy. A sudden chill in the air made the unreality of it all into stark truth. One moment we were safe in suburbia in the warmth of my bedroom, the next we were on an icy concrete floor inside a very large, cavernous space.

“Where are we?”

“Somewhere safe,” Dr. Fellows said flatly before disappearing into the void.

“Where are you going?” I asked and listened impatiently to his confident footsteps moving slowly farther away. At least he knew where he was going while I was left stumbling like an idiot.

An uncomfortable silence lingered, the kind that predators lurked in. Soon my imagination began to make shapes in the inky nothing of the terrifying snake-like creatures that could have been there right before my eyes but were always fast enough to elude my grasp.

“Er… mind turning on the lights?” I called.

“Soon,” he returned, but only after a moment’s hesitation. Something was distracting him. Why didn’t that make me feel any easier?

“You know I could just use my powers,” I explained. “Glow in the dark is one of them. Maybe my name should be Lady Night Light.”

No laughter, no nothing. That was no surprise. All I could hear was the fumbling around on the other side of the room while I stood stranded like a helpless kid. Bah, who was I kidding? I was a helpless kid, even if I was the kind who’d taken Jackie Frost or whatever her name was only a few hours earlier.

Finally I’d had enough. “Come on, doc! This isn’t cool at all!”

Even less cool was the sharp, blunt force colliding with the back of my head. Between the moment it struck and the moment my face hit the ground I could feel my brain bouncing on the walls of my skull. Then, it got dark: that is to say, even darker than before.

* * * *

Along a shadowy avenue a sole figure crawled through the refuse like a starving rat in search of a last rotten morsel. He fumbled noisily and blindly, chasing the shapeless being he was ordered to follow on the tiny screen. The only light around in the absence of streetlamps was that which rested in his hands from a tiny emitter lit up with a single, pulsing blip.

Reaching into their pocket the figure drew a phone and dialled the first number on the call list. After but a single ring there came the familiar reply of “the Red Wraith will be with you shortly.”

A moment of silence, and then “yes?”

“I’ve found the girl,” the anonymous figure reported. “Warehouse district, opposite the Cleveland Road weigh station.”

“Hold your position,” the Red Wraith ordered then clicked the phone down.

In the darkness the agent waited, eager for the battle to begin. He did not know the target they stalked, nor did he care. All he knew was that the Red Wraith was getting personally involved meaning that there was going to be a bloody fight. Such was the way of things in Milestone City when an interloper crossed his turf.

* * * *

When I woke there was a heavy pounding in my skull and a weird sense of gravity like my stomach was trying to fall out. Just as bad as the ache in my skull was that of my arms which had been stretched out and forced to support my whole body in the mechanical ring which held me.

My heart crashed against my chest, beating frantically to give me the strength to pull free, but it was no use: I was clamped tightly in place with no chance of escape. How…?

I stopped to think, reliving every moment that brought me up to that point. Homophobic bully chasing me into a sewer, check. Meeting the supernatural entity that gave me superpowers, check. Being drafted by a pair of spooks and forced into herodom, check. Scary science fiction BDSM device from Hell? That I couldn’t explain.

“Ah, you’re awake.”

Through the haze I could barely make out Dr. Fellow’s shape. At least the lights were on and I could see where he was. Whether that reassured me or not was still up in the air.

“What…” I spat at him. “You… son of a…”

“I need you to use your pow-ers now,” he enunciated slowly. It took a few times for the statement to circle around in my ears for the message to sink in. When it did it was like a splash of cold water to my senses.

“No.”

“Why not?” he reasoned. “Don’t you want to get out of here?”

“You want me to use them…”

“I won’t tell a lie, Justin. I do want you to use your powers,” the physicist continued with wobbly words like jelly, or maybe that was just me. “It’s for a good cause. We’re going to save the world, you see. You can appreciate that, can’t you? Your costume says that you do.”

Something came out of my mouth. A four letter word, I think: something that would have sounded more defiant if I’d added an insulting noun to it. Eventually I followed up with “cartoon supervillain.”

Fellows scoffed and turned back to his work somewhere out of view, muttering something to himself as he went. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he railed. “You’re not even a human being.”

Again the words turned in the tumble dryer of my mind until I grasped their meaning. “What’dya mean I’m not a human being?”

He continued his work, ignoring me all the while. Even if I had the right words I didn’t think he was the kind of guy who could be reasoned with, meaning somehow I had to MacGuyver my way out of the situation. A pity I didn’t have any bubblegum or matches.

My focus returned and there I noticed was a large cannon with a glowing blue orb at its heart. Behind it stood Dr. Fellows still wearing that stupid blank grimace of his: the one that seemed even more condescending by saying that he wasn’t going to take pleasure in torturing or killing me.

“James Bond got out of something like this once. If only I could remember how…”

I laughed and the bad jokes kept coming. Hysteria was driving me, the only thing keeping me together enough to hold onto sanity. Maybe I could die with a shred of dignity if I held on long enough. I looked down to see I was in the ridiculous golden costume: the one with the skirt and the gloves. That wasn’t helping me either.

“This won’t kill you,” Dr. Fellows informed me as he pulled a switch, “but it will hurt more than anything you’ve ever experienced.”

A bolt of lightning lashed out and struck my chest, cooking me from the inside out with white heat and ripping at my nerves like a hand in a spider web. Every point on my body screamed at once as though I’d become a human pin-cushion driven by agony. Seconds felt like minutes as I sat there locked in place.

My mad scientist captor continued. “No more jokes, Justin? Maybe now you will understand how serious all of this is.”

I fought the clamps until I was numb, but their hold was too tight. My fighting spirit was being drained slowly away, crushed into a weak little ball along with my organs. Anything I had that could be used to pry myself out was drowned out by climbing pain. All that kept me in my mind was the sudden hatred for the cold, callous and cruel doctor watching nearby.

“Doc,” I screamed more than I did roar, “I’m going to-AAAARRRRGGGHHHH!”

“Three months I’ve been chasing you,” he lamented. “Three months since the original Justin Cade disappeared into the heart of the protoform, the result of which was you. One month since you first took human form and completely usurped his existence. Why?”

“I… I…”

“Is this fun for you, or was his experience simply the only prism you had for viewing this world? Such a pity that a creature of your power should be shaped by a boy of such small imagination. Just think, the things you could have done by now, the things you might do yet…”

A sickly copper taste crawled all the way into my sinuses. The unmistakable taste of blood was everywhere, even in places I didn’t know I could taste. It welled up inside me as the beam pounded against my organs. Soon it went beyond my throat and into my head, my limbs and all my digits, a raging torrent forcing against flesh as though I were going to reach critical mass and explode. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold…

In the back of my mind I wondered why I’d even bothered to resist. There was no way I could ever hope to explain it, only that I got the feeling that it would be a lot worse if I complied.

Who was I kidding? That wasn’t even an argument. My id might have wanted to slight Dr. Deranged over there but every other burning cell in my body wanted to let the shimmering girl go. After another few torturous seconds I began to see things on their level: it wasn’t as though I wanted this thing inside me in the first place!

The world of hurt crumbled away as flesh transformed piece by piece into hard light. The living hologram was out of her box, leaving me to bask in a wave of relief.

“Excellent,” the doctor remarked. He stood there hypnotized by the dancing sparks flecking away inexplicably from my torso.

A strange sensation came over me, one that defied description. It was like falling in every direction at once as gravity ran hog wild. Have you ever felt your head spin while every ounce of oxygen was sucked out of your lungs? In some ways it was worse than the torture: I couldn’t even articulate a scream.

Suddenly the wall behind us exploded. Smoke and debris filled the air, clogging the engines of the torture rack that contained me. Thank you, gods! I almost screamed up to the heavens. Someone had come to rescue me! Never did I think I would be so happy to see Artimes’ face.

Dr. Fellows stared incredulously as he deactivated the machine. “Who in the devil are you?” he queried.

I collapsed, exhausted, feeling the weight of my body wrench on my arms as I took a solid form. Finally I was able to breathe again and in my panicked state drew air as slowly as I could manage. There was even hysterical laugh that escaped my lips horrified at what I’d just been through but so thankful I was about to be free!

Then I heard the deep, raspy, supernatural voice of someone who definitely was not an agent of TASK. “My name is the Red Wraith,” it explained wickedly, “and this is the Society of Sin. We’ve come for the girl.”

By the girl, of course, they meant me.

In my renewed panic I forgot to feel humiliated by that remark. They must have been after me for what I’d done to Madame Snow or whatever she was called. Cold Mama? Frigid Woman? Not that it mattered: I’d punched the Society of Sin clean in the nose and they wanted retribution.

“You can have her when I’m done with her,” Dr. Fellows informed them. “We’re in the middle of an important experiment here. The entire world is at stake!”

“Is that so?” the villain laughed. “Well… that’s never stopped us before.”

* * * *

TO BE CONTINUED…