It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

Tanya launched herself to the nearest cover she could find even though the beetle stood exactly zero chance of protecting her against those… those… things! Machines, like out of the Matrix or Transformers or something, with hissing pneumatic frames, nerves of ribbed steel cable and layers of heavy, stained black plate from head to toe. She trembled at the sight of them but couldn’t resist having another peak. She didn’t know whether a shape closer to human would be more or less intimidating.

And Kaira! What had they done with her!? The first robot had already disappeared back through the doorway with two sentries guarding its exit. Now would have been the time to do something or risk losing her forever to what was definitely not a perfect life on the other side: but that was Jason/Justin’s job to take care of, wasn’t it? I mean, he was Starbolt: a hero! He was supposed to eat mecha for breakfast!

Instead the boy lay crouched in the grass barely visible from the portals light while tinkering with another strange device. Tanya barked at him to do something only to be told “I am doing something!”

The sentries turned. Crap! The mounted laser death rays made their intentions known: leave no witnesses. It didn’t matter that they were only a couple of local kids nobody would believe had seen a girl who didn’t technically exist in their universe being abducted: machines were generally notorious for their imperviousness to reason.

Suddenly Justin shot up and held out what looked like an iPod touch. Pressing a single button saw a violent wind blow: one that touched nothing but the deadly automatons. But their struggle was in vain: reality itself had rejected them, throwing them back to their home and slamming the door shut behind them. The battle was over, but one was still missing.

Tanya bounded immediately to the side of the curiously calm boy, the terror of seeing her closest friend dragged off to regions unknown still quivering like jelly inside her. “What have they done to Kaira!?” she demanded.

The boy thought about it for a moment, and then he forced a smile. “I know it wasn’t the send off you were hoping for,” he said, “but she’s safe. Those things were the Gremlin’s goons. They don’t stand a chance, especially against someone whose powers fry circuitry.”

Something was wrong. What had he done? Tanya couldn’t believe it. The ways he was like Kaira were uncanny, including the world’s worst poker face.

“Where is she really?” she gasped. If only it weren’t as bad as she imagined.

“I told you. She’s fine.”

“And you’re lying,” the girl declared and marched right up to his face with boiling malice. “Where is she, Jason? I need to know. Now.”

“She’s fine. Reall-“

The sharp slap across his face was less than convinced. Tanya continued to tremble, this time not in fear for her own life but that of her dearest friend. Did he know this was going to happen? Why did they ever trust him?

“Listen, you human sack of $#&%,” she seethed, “you’re going to tell me exactly what just happened or there’ll be hell to pay. You got that?” Justin leaned in to speak again but she cut him off: “And don’t you dare think about lying to me, because you’re just as transparent as she is and I’ll know.”

Justin stopped. There was no point in fighting it anymore, he supposed. “Tanya…”

“Tell me.”

“You need to understand-“

“Tell me!”

His fists clenched at his sides and rattled with uncertainty. The words clung to the back of his throat desperate to not find the open air, but then… a pang of guilt perhaps? Something. Jason Cade had been lying long enough.

“I would have done anything to get out of that place,” he told her. “An-y-thing. And I did. And now I have to live with that, and so do you.”

Tanya threw herself at him, gripped him by his sleeves and shook him like a ragdoll. “Where did you send her!?”

He didn’t fight back. “You don’t want to know.”

Definitely not the words she wanted to hear. As if her imagination weren’t dark enough, to know that somewhere Kaira had been thrust into something even worse defied any comprehension. What kind of a monster would do such a thing?

She looked to the device in Justin’s hands. He’d used that to send the robots away, right? “We can get her back,” she declared, “and you’re going to help me.”

Tanya made a grab for the device, but Justin reacted too quickly and held it just out of reach. A part of her couldn’t believe that the person Kaira had entrusted her body to would really do such a twisted thing. She thought that with a little guilt he might be convinced, but alas, he’d thought his plan through to the end.

A flash of light had her stumbling back as he charged his powers, but only for a moment. He stood with the smoking plastic in his hand: the only tool that could have liberated Kaira from whatever hell her replacement had sent her to had been destroyed.

“Not even if we wanted to,” he told her.

Stunned, horrified, Tanya gaped at the new Justin. How could he have done that? Without even thinking her hand flew back up to his face: all of her hate balled up into her knuckles and colliding with his cheek. It felt good, but he didn’t resist. Maybe he would when she hit him a third time, then again, then again, then again!

Justin accepted his punishment, like he agreed that he deserved it or something: not that it did Tanya any good. There was no satisfaction to be had from a moron like this. It wasn’t going to console her, even in the slightest.

A dozen blows must have landed before she finally gave up and turned back for the car. She couldn’t stand to be around him anymore. %#$&, she didn’t even completely know what he’d done! Just that it wasn’t good and that Kaira was as good as dead.

Down the road a safe distance Tanya pulled over and collapsed against the steering wheel. The tears weren’t going to stop for a long, long time.

* * * *

“Crap $#&% gods-damn father-#$%&ing son of a bastard!”

Can you tell that I was angry, or scared, or all of the above? Then again you would be too if you were dragged off to some desolate reality by robots never to see your home again. I was so stupid. How could I have been so dumb as to fall for this? Really, you’d almost think I hadn’t been screwed over by a body double before.

Hours had passed and they were still chasing me: machines waaaay bigger than the trio who dragged my disoriented self to this hellhole in the first place, and they were literally everywhere. Canada, Puerto Rico, Argentina, they were there. Hawaii, Indonesia, Australia, it seemed like the whole damn planet was teeming with these things!

I didn’t let myself panic. I mean, I’d been in worse scrapes, right? Stranded on the other side of the country? At least I could walk home, or on the other side of the world even, at least I could fly. Even the few times I’d been stuck on the other side of the cosmos I’d always found a way to hitch a ride home, but this was new.

Okay. This may have officially been the tightest spot I’d ever been in, but I couldn’t dwell on that while I had hovering robo-crabs and boomerang shaped jets constantly on my six!

Skipping from time zone to time zone it was soon became abundantly clear that there was something wrong with the world. Somewhere it should have been daytime but instead there were only ashen skies and empty streets. The avenues of Hyderabad were uncharacteristically desolate, as was Vladivostok, then Amsterdam, then Islington and home. Where were all the people?

“Okay, maaaybe starting to freak out a little…”

Back in Milestone there was something I had to see. There would only be a few minutes before the machines caught up, but I had to know…

The front lawn had grown wild just like all the others: it was even spreading to the road and cracking the pavement. Weird to see my own home in such a state, and even weirder to kick the door in and absorb the taste of stale air while watching cockroaches flee into dark corners. The place must have been abandoned for years! Definitely not the perfect life that Jason had promised.

“Mom?” I called out. “Dad? It’s… me, Kai… Caroline.”

It’d have been even spookier if they were there. So far as I could tell nobody was anywhere. Underground, maybe? Only then did the dreaded thought enter my mind: maybe they were all gone. Mom, Dad, Tommy… no, I couldn’t think like that. Not before I’d seen any bodies at least. Regardless the room felt like death: in or out of hard light form it was sucking the life out of me.

Oh gods, Jason! What have you done!?

Suddenly, a voice: “Jason?” From the front yard. It sounded human. “Jason, we need to talk,” it continued. Evidently this person wasn’t in on the switch plan. “Come on, buddy. You should know how this works by now.”

How what works? Did I really want to find out?

Curiosity won out in the end, along with the aching need to see another human face. A pity there wasn’t one to be found. Instead there was an emoticon standing on my front porch. Even stranger was how pissed it looked with the symbols: > : (

“We’ve been over this, Jason,” it said patiently. “This isn’t your home anymore. You need to come back to the factory.”

Pressing one foot outside I could see the machines again. It was clear whose side they were on, and who was staying their hand. The fight or flight instinct was itching at the back of my heels, but what good would it do without answers?

“I’m not Jason,” I told them. Would they really care?

The emoticon blinked into a question mark. “Fact: your physiology matches that of subject Cade, Jason. Fact: Your powers are identical to that of subject Cade, Jason. Fact: Subject Cade, Jason successfully evaded the network for seventy-eight hours.”

“I… guess so?”

The emote continued. “Fact: Subject Cade, Jason is not inclined to wearing culturally assigned female attire. Query: Who are you? Query: What is your connection to subject Cade, Jason?”

None of this was right. That itch to fly was crawling up my leg again. The second it hit my gut it’d be like a chain reaction and I’d be running again. Where I didn’t know, but there had to be somewhere safe if Jason was able to hide for as long as he did, right?

“Would telling you make any difference at all?” I asked the emote.

It switched from question mark to semicolon space close parentheses. “Not a lick,” it said.

No, I thought not.

* * * *

It was a long drive back to the suburbs, somewhere just shy of several hours, or at least it seemed that way. For Tanya Truman nothing seemed real anymore: her soul was numb and brain muted of all thought lest knowledge of the night’s events continue to play on her.

Kaira was in another universe, one that she could only imagine was some kind of Hell. How was she supposed to process that? It would have been less painful if her friend had simply ceased to exist, but to know there was a place so bad that someone had to escape an entire dimension to be free just made it so much worse.

Her arriving home came as a surprise. When had she gotten there? All that time she was on auto-pilot with her hands absently going through the motions, only then to snap to reality at the end and find herself the last place she wanted to be.

Tanya was still gripping the wheel as though she were clinging to life itself. There must have been something that she could have done to change things, like grab one of those devices that evil Justin had. Not that it was any good fretting about it now: any chance she had of crossing the borders of reality were fried with that hand gadget he had.

It was no use. She wasn’t hero grade material, just a mere mortal who couldn’t find any help outside of what she could Google: in other words absolutely useless.

She kicked the bottom of the dashboard and swore, then swore again and again and again. Screaming at her own impotence she found herself wanting to punch the horn, needing it to scream with her, and let the whole world know that gods damn it, she was in pain! Even if she couldn’t tell them what was wrong it still needed to come out somehow and with force that would shatter every window for miles.

Reason, or what seemed to pass for it, prevailed. The furious silence wasn’t any better or worse than an ever-tempting bout of insanity. Regardless she still didn’t want to be at home, or anywhere.

A muffled melody pulled Tanya from her funk. No way. That was Kaira’s phone! She must have dropped it on the ride over. Pressing her fingers between the worn out cushions of the passenger seat she searched out what had been explained to her was the Glimmer Girl hotline. This had to be a sign or something.

Unlocking the phone was easy: Kaira’s alter-ego stupidly used her same general password. The message read:

BIG GUY LOOSE ON SOUTHLAND DRV. NEVER SEEN HIM B4. BE CAREFUL.
From: Brandon, Today, 11:24pm

Brandon! Of course! The guy who helped Glimmer Girl out after that assassin hit her! He had to know something, didn’t he? Maybe he had other contacts or something, like to the Young Sentinels, or even someone with a working portal thingamajigger. It was worth a short, wasn’t it?

She dialed the number, but nobody answered. Weird. Didn’t he take important calls from superheroes? Trying again she got the same result: ringing out with no voicemail. The same thing happened a third time, and a fourth.

By then it was really starting to grate on her. He had to answer the phone eventually! After all, he was their only hope of getting Kaira back.

* * * *

Starbolt shivered through the luminescent numbness that encapsulated his form. Tanya was never going to forgive him, he knew that, but if only she understood…

A thought went out to his fallen sister, for without her he wouldn’t have this new life. He’d done a terrible thing, but her sacrifice would not be in vain. And it wasn’t as though he felt no remorse: hell, he was going to regret this night for the rest of his life, but it was just as he’d said before, compared to the alternative it was something he could learn to live with.

His regret was counterbalanced by the sight of Milestone City. It was just like he’d remembered from when he was a kid: Midtown with the Infinitech building planted dead in the heart of it, Centenary Park right by the edge of the river, and all the old turn of the century buildings scattered around the edge, just like it was before. He drank in the sight of this place untouched by horror: it was an even greater gift than his newly claimed manhood.

Then, just as the hero was taking in the lights reflected off the water something caught his eye. It may have been strange to see many cars out, even at this time of night, but Starbolt was pretty certain that they weren’t supposed to be feeding a bonfire in the middle of a main road.

Mere feet away there was something else: something vaguely resembling a chewed up wad of bubblegum with legs and shiny blades protruding from what he guessed was gooey flesh. As Starbolt few closer he could see a man inside the thing, if you could call it that, stumbling with a bottle of liquor in his hand.

Starbolt landed in the creature’s path. It didn’t matter if the thing was half his size or nine feet tall (which he was): whatever was going on stopped there. “Going somewhere, Big League Chew?”

The monster took another long swig and squinted at the gold clad youngster with the pony tail. He was probably expecting Glimmer Girl: well not anymore. “I was hopin’ for someone a lil’… bigger,” he slurred. “You ain’t Mr. Marvel.”

Mr. Marvel? Jason smiled: he must have been this universe’s version of Madam Marvel. “Well, you got me,” the kid grinned. “You see, Mr. Marvel fights A-listers. I’ve got no idea who the hell you’re supposed to be.”

The big guy lumbered, mumbling something about a smart-ass punk while pumping up his intoxicated biceps. “You know who I am!?” he demanded.

“Ya used ta be somebody?” Starbolt mocked, even adding a comical “hic” for effect.

“The name’s Krysus,” the chewed up gumball declared. “You know what I can do? I can stab you, punk! A hundred times! An’ once I’m inside you I can make your blood explode! Huh? How you like them apples!?”

And yet the young hero was less than impressed. “Yeah, 1992 called. They want their grim and dark motif back. You… are nobody.”

Krysus threw the bottle down. That little punk! Who did he think he was? Here was a monster who’d filled entire graveyards and that snot-nosed little $#&% thought he could get away with talking smack? He charged with a drunken roar from a mouth so wide you could practically see to his entrails.

Starbolt didn’t miss a beat. He eased back, put his arm forward, pointed a single digit and cocked his thumb. “Bang.” That was all it took: a thin sliver of a hard light bolt slamming with expert precision at the back of the monsters throat causing for him to choke and double over. He almost felt bad for the guy when he collapsed onto his face and knocked himself out, but a guy like that probably deserved it: especially if he was serious about that exploding blood thing.

Hearing the approaching sirens Starbolt smiled with melancholy. He’d done a terrible thing that night: maybe a lifetime of putting away jerks like this would make up for it.

* * * *

I could tell by the taste the way they’d caught me. Little known fact about tranquilizers: the exact dosage required to put someone out varies from person to person. Too little can paralyze but not knock you out, too much can kill. The machines knew exactly how much it took to take down this body, probably from past experience, so when I finally woke I had no idea exactly how much time had elapsed.

Crap! The roughly-less-than-twenty-four-hours frame to get home had turned into a terrifying question mark. Maybe I’d already missed the window of opportunity. Who could tell? Only the smiling emoticon knew for sure.

“Hello,” it said cheerily. “I am Sam. What is your name?”

I tried to crawl away, but that wasn’t going to happen. Every movement was like swimming through soup while rubber bands held me in place. Actually they were some sort of ridged metal, and the soup was the density of whatever barrier was holding me in place: I didn’t know what it was.

Enthusiastically the emoticon, Sam, shifted its expression to ‘: D’ and chuckled pleasantly. “Ha ha! Sorry. I know you’re used to freedom, but there’s no reason why we can’t have fun together, right?”

“Who,” was all I managed to get out. Even the air in the invisible cage was heavy while my body seemed to be swimming between the ever-snaking bands. Outside was only the surprisingly chipper prison guard in an ominous world of darkness.

“I told you. I’m Sam,” he explained with a semicolon wink. “I was Jason’s friend before he sent you here as his replacement. I play all sorts of games. Everything from chess, backgammon, free cell, all the way to the latest system games and beyond! Whatever you want to do, I’m here to make your term as comfortable as possible.”

“What,” I forced, “if I want… to get out of here?”

Sam laughed again. “You’re funny. Look, I know this has got to be hard, but just think of me as your prison concierge. Confinement doesn’t have to completely blow. All you need is the right attitude.”

Great, Hell came with an induction ceremony. The cheery tone made it even worse: ‘sure, the new world you’ve landed on is a desolate wasteland and you may be locked up for some unknown reason, but that doesn’t mean it’s all bad. Look, it’s Wii tennis!’ Yeah, totally good news.

Suddenly it occurred to me, “how do you know I’m not…?” Gods, I was winded just trying to ask a simple question. Note to self: choose words carefully.

“Easy peasy,” Sam chirped with its vertical mouth blinked into a closed bracket. “You and Jason have different brainwave patterns. They’re similar, but they’re also completely the opposite. Get my meaning?”

I wasn’t sure I did.

“Besides,” it retorted, “do you really think you were the first person he’s tried the body swap scam on? There have been several attempts since his internment. Personally, I’m glad he succeeded. You seem like much better company.”

Yeah, I was over the moon. Wait, did he really say that Jason had made other escape attempts with other Glimmer Girls? Gods, as if one of me was trouble enough, but… how long had he been here, trying to escape this place? Despite being pissed beyond belief I was starting to understand why he would pull a trick like this.

“Anymore questions before we plug you in?” Sam queried.

“Plugged… in?”

“Correctomundo,” the emoticon bounced with another wink. “I don’t know if anyone told you this, but the only reason you’re still alive is so you can power the Technocracy. That’s who we are, by the way. Don’t try and talk to the other machines. I’m the only social one. They made me so you could have someone to talk to, so you wouldn’t go crazy or try to escape or anything. Heh. Whoops.”

“I’m… a battery?”

“Yup yup yup!”

From below I could hear the sounds of turbines or whatever they were starting to power up. The horrible things they’d been doing to Jason for years was just about to happen to me and there were probably only a few seconds left to squeeze whatever I could.

I fought against my bounds impotently, but it was no use: they’d been specifically designed to hold this body in place. “Where are the other heroes?” I blurted out. Maybe if there was a secret underground I could do something to alert them.

Sam paused uncomfortably and turned to a colon space slash. “Sorry to break it to you, dude, but there are no other heroes, not even you.”

“What do you mean… ugh! ‘Not even me’!?”

“I mean that you can’t be a hero when there’s nobody left to save,” it explained. “All that’s left is you, me and the Technocracy. We’re the entire population of the world. I’ll give that a minute to sink in.”

Yeah, right. In a minute I’d be feeding the machine through its tendrils. Not exactly the best time to be processing big thoughts.

“Not to sound flippant, but you can’t ignore the irony,” Sam pointed out in an all too jovial tone. “Jason had to become a villain to escape. It was the only way. I hope you don’t hate him too much for that. Who knows? Maybe in a few years you’ll try the same.”

The swaying noise below began to quicken its pace before releasing a high pitched whine. Neither of those sounds could mean anything good.

“So, you have the skinny on me. What’s your name?” Sam asked.

I looked over both hating and fearing its punctuated face. “Kaira,” I coughed. Gods, I couldn’t even enunciate my contempt in this thing.

“A pleasure to meet you, Kaira,” it said then blinking into a capital X and D. “I promise this will only hurt for a minute.”

“No, ple-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!”

One minute, it said. My screams filled the cavern. The worst agony I’d ever felt began to boar right into my chest and pulled at me like it was drilling my soul! Two seconds in and I already wanted it to stop: not that the Technocracy cared.

Sam stood idly by pleasantly with a closed bracket smile. It did nothing to keep me sane.

* * * *

Tanya stirred slightly at the sound of the blip. It was sharp and harsh laying somewhere around her pillow, invisible to her lazy hand. Ah, whatever: she’d be asleep again before she could find it anyway, so why even bother looking? Driving her face deeper into the pillow she flirted with the precipice of sleep, because who needed to get up when there was so many problems to take care of?

Suddenly she remembered that something was wrong. What she couldn’t exactly remember, but just knowing was enough to have her spring up into a waking haze. That was Kaira’s phone pounding at her eardrums! Kaira was in another universe! She was supposed to be calling for help: time was running out!

Still above her sheets and fully clothed Tanya searched for the portable device she soon discovered had fallen between her bed and the wall. The screen was dim but still she could read ‘1 NEW MESSAGE’ on the main panel. Her fingers fumbled at the keys with as much skill as they could summon at six thirty in the morning as she opened the text.

HELP IS COMING.
From: [ID blocked], 2:11am

Jeez, it had taken all that time for a message to go through? More likely the Glimmer Girl hotline had been screaming for attention but she was just too exhausted to notice before now. Still, that was over four hours ago. Where was help?

“I really hope you’re alright, KC,” she whispered to the empty room. Somehow, even with the anonymous three word promise that didn’t seem likely.

* * * *

“Kaira?”

I couldn’t stop trembling.

“Kaira, can you hear me?”

They’d carved my heart out but still I could feel it beating across the room, or at least that’s what it felt like.

“Earth to Kai-ra,” Sam said in a sing-song tone. “Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!” Semicolon space capital D. The relentless cheer was really starting to grate.

Was it over? The only way to tell was to feel the sting of tears as they rolled down my cheeks. Gods, I’d never felt anything like that before: not at such intensity. I had to escape or else I was going to break.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Sam mused, “but there’s no getting out of here. Besides, even if you did somehow manage it where would you go? You don’t belong anywhere. Your life belongs to Jason now. If you took it back you’d both be freaks again, am I right? I don’t know much, but I know his insecurities, and I know the kind he must have exploited to get you here.”

“Not a freak,” I coughed.

“If you really believed that then you wouldn’t have been so quick to give your life away. You belong here now, Kaira. I know it hurts, but your contribution is valuable, and the Technocracy appreciates you. Never before have we had such an efficient and abundant source of power.”

I wanted to fight but I was just too drained. It was like they’d amputated the parts of me that were Glimmer Girl and leaving me, the pathetic, weak human part behind. Even though I could feel embers of her lingering in the corner of my psyche it just wasn’t enough for a charge. It would take time for her to recover, but before then the Technocracy would drill again, and keep doing it over and over and over…

“You might not believe me now,” Sam continued, its emote shifting to ‘<3’, “but we love you, Kaira. We need you and cherish you for who and what you are, and it breaks our heart that you would want to leave us.”

“Liar.”

The emoticon paused. “It’s true. We will tell you so every day. In time you will come to believe us. It is the only truth that remains in this world.”

Yeah, right. Only a crazy person would ever believe that a torturer using you for power was capable of love. But I didn’t need empty words: I needed a way out before round two began. I couldn’t stand another bout with the soul drill.

The earth trembled with the sound of nearby thunder: that or the machine was preparing itself. No, it couldn’t have been… Sam was completely baffled, emoting colon space open bracket sad face. What was going on?

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

An explosion tore through the wall behind me with flames illuminating the cramped little space I’d once thought was an ominous cavern. Whatever had caused it had Sam stumbling back in faux terror.

“Please don’t-“

“Shut up,” a familiar voice groaned before unleashing hard light destruction on the mechanoid. No, it couldn’t have been… Jason?

I struggled against the bonds to see his face but couldn’t quite reach. No matter. I was going to be out of there in no time. “You came back for me,” I cried. Thank the gods!

Jason, however, sounded less than enthused. “Of course I came back for you,” he seethed. There was something strange about his tone: it was higher, practiced, the way I used to do it. “After what you tried to do to me I would have been happy to leave you rot, but when the Technocracy began to invade my universe, well, I simply had to come back to finish you off.”

Then it became all too clear that the figure slinking into view was not Jason, though whoever she was appeared to have my body all the same. I blinked in awe at her costume: it was just like Glimmer Girl’s but so… not! The black lace fishnets, amber boots as high as her hemline was short, the long gloves and the velvet mask pointed to a character far more sinister than I was expecting.

“Who the hell are you!?”

“Playing dumb,” the witch scoffed, “or did I really not make that strong an impression the last time around?”

Sam had told me that Jason had pulled the body-swap scam before. Oh hell. And there I was taking his comeuppance.

Her finger pointed like a loaded pistol and was primed with force that would leave me with an instant lobotomy. “The name’s Laser Lass,” she said, “and it’s the last name you’re ever going to forget!”

* * * *

TO BE CONTINUED…