Stone Walls - Part Three

Hangfire saw the yard of Belle Reve Penitentiary for what it was: a battlefield, albeit one with few clear lines drawn. Years of training and experience and no small amount of inborn perceptive abilities allowed the cagey veteran to appraise the chaotic, surging masses and identify them as separate contingents, and thus assign them some meaning as his dark eyes swept across the area enclosed by the prison perimeter.

The armed guards normally responsible for Belle Reve's security were one of the largest forces warring in the cold, rain-swept night. To their credit, they were disciplined in the face of adversity; to their detriment, they were only human, armed with mere guns against the threat of all-too-easily abused preternatural gifts. The guards barely outnumbered the ranks of prisoners filling the yard, and the prisoners had the advantage of metahuman strength and powers now that they were freed from their power-negating cells. The incarcerated villains, all in modified versions of the standard issue orange jumpsuit, showed neither organization nor cooperation, scattering at diverse and sometimes contradictory purposes. Some prisoners ran as fast as they could for the ice ramp by which Belle Reve's walls had been cleared, while others chose to flex their muscles or flash their claws and settle old grudges, sometimes with the guards, sometimes with one another. The prisoners were also subject to rapid changes in trajectory: Hangfire saw a stocky prisoner with glowing bioluminescent green flesh pummeling another inmate senseless, then running toward potential freedom once his opponent stopped moving; nearby two would-be escapees went down in a heap as their feet inadvertently tangled, but rather than resume their sprint for the ice ramp the two began to trade blasts, one shooting narrow red beams from her fingertips, the other emitting crackling jagged blue spheres from the palms of his hands.

Hangfire heard a rumbling basso voice call out, "Weed!" and wondered for a moment if yet another category of prisoners had announced its presence, those who cared neither for escape nor revenge, but only a fix. A high-pitched female voice answered immediately, whooping, "Quarry!" and Hangfire could see the two prisoners running toward one another. The man was a huge hulk whose entire body was covered in large gray stone plates, and the woman, no more than a girl, was petite with long, unruly brown hair, knotty with twigs and leaves. The two met and Quarry swept Weed up in an embrace, which quickly proceeded into a shamelessly passionate kiss in the middle of the muddy yard. Hangfire looked away uneasily.

In addition to the prison guards and prisoners, smaller units were near the heart of the fray. The Suicide Squad, manned by compliant prisoners and rumored to be administratively headquartered at Belle Reve as well, had been deployed to back up the prison guards during the breakout attempt. The alliance was strained, however, and the Suicide Squad had proven seemingly determined to live up to its name. Siren lay on the ground, grievously wounded, her life in the hands of the Crime Doctor. Skorpio and the Electrocutioner were also unconscious, the extent of their injuries impossible to make out in the dark, stormy night, and the final two members of the Squad - Bronze Tiger and Backlash - were incapacitated.

Bad Blood had volunteered their services to the prison in advance of the assault, but their involvement had so far yielded few positive results. Pierce and More had both assumed undercover roles which placed the two teammates inside the prison at the moment, and Hangfire had no idea how either man fared amidst the cellblocks. Karnival had essentially exhausted himself in psychic combat, Clotty's new robotic body had been taken out of commission, and Sojourn had ethereally disappeared. Valence and Ember, both capable of swift flight and to varying degrees able to use their powers at a distance, had just barely been able to maintain presence in the melee. Hangfire watched with a sinking feeling in his gut as Valence was drawn into a mano a mano brawl with a furious prisoner.

The final coterie, the prime movers of the assault and instigators of the breakout riot, were LocoForce and their hired help. Unfortunately, from Hangfire's perspective, the band of mercenary villains appeared to have the upper hand. Minotaur had been incarcerated in Belle Reve for months, and his teammates Headhunter and Bayonet were now searching through the prison for him. Loki had lost his duel with Karnival, and Silencer had been an early victim of the Suicide Squad's Electrocutioner, but Protocol and Genocide remained to take casual potshots at prison guards. Similarly, LocoForce's hirelings Shatterfist and Hellhound were down and out but Bolt and Deadline sparred unflaggingly with Ember in a dogfight overhead, while Shrapnel had nearly reassembled his explosive metallic body near the crumbled inner wall of the prison. LocoForce had made the first move, sparking the powderkeg of Belle Reve into a full-blown riot, and the criminals-for-hire were determined to control the game through the final moves as well.

Hangfire observed every back and forth with a sniper's cool detachment, with not a muscle quivering, but that was due less to his training than to the fact that he was currently encased in a block of ice from the neck down thanks to Headhunter. Had he been able to reach his tactical weapons, or move at all, his studied perspective on the riot might have allowed him to intervene at the battle's ever-shifting critical focal points. Instead, his numb limbs only strained in vain as localized Armageddon unfolded all around him.

Sudden Death lunged at Valence, knotting his fingers into the shoulders of Valence's jacket and swinging his head forward. The last time Valence had seen the convict, he had long blond hair that could have been the pride of a lifelong surfer, but now Sudden Death's pate was shaved bald. Valence twisted awkwardly, and Sudden Death's forehead struck hard against Valence's skull just above the ear. Valence knew that Sudden Death's goals had been twofold: first, to try to break Valence's nose, a standard headbutting stratagem which Valence had successfully thwarted; second, to absorb the kinetic energy of the blow and feed it into his explosive metahuman power.

"I'm gonna blow you up real good, boy!" Sudden Death boasted.

"Boy?" Valence scoffed, casting around for anything ferrous he could use to put a barrier between himself and Sudden Death. "Last time anyone called me that, it was a nun." Most of the metal in the area was either in the equipment used by the prison guards or within the structure of Belle Reve itself. Valence magnetically unwound the steel cables looped around his shoulders and wrapped them around Sudden Death's chest and upper arms, but the criminal refused to release Valence's jacket even as the steel cables constricted. Sudden Death threw a knee into Valence's midsection with surprising quickness, and Valence doubled over, allowing Sudden Death to lock Valence's neck in a viselike hold between his elbow and ribs.

Valence shot straight up into the stormy night air with Sudden Death hanging from his shoulders. They nearly collided with a soaring pterodactyl-man, who shrieked menacingly but flew onward through the rain, away from the prison. When Valence had propelled them both to a height of nearly one hundred feet, he willed away the magnetic forces bearing them aloft, and they began to freefall.

"Is this supposed to scare me?" Sudden Death demanded, grinning sadistically.

"Too much to ask?" Valence responded, just before the pair slammed into the prison yard. A half-second later an explosion engulfed them, as Sudden Death converted the kinetic force of impact into a roaring blast. The muddy smoke quickly cleared in the cold rain, revealing that both Valence and Sudden Death had survived the conflagration, the criminal due to his immunity to his own power, and the alien thanks to a hasty electromagnetic shield which had protected his head and vital organs but allowed the costume and flesh of his limbs to be well-scorched.

With Sudden Death still holding him in a brutal headlock, Valence did not even attempt to get to his feet, but rode the magnetic currents straight up into the air again. This time he ascended to nearly two hundred feet before surrendering to gravity again. The results were the same: hard impact with the sodden, chilly earth, a slightly larger explosion, and a battered Valence clamped at the neck by Sudden Death.

"Once wasn't enough for you?" Sudden Death sneered as they rose into the air again. "Cuz I can do this all day!"

"See, the thing is," Valence said, "I don't think you actually can."

The grappling pair rose two hundred and fifty feet and then shot down again, not in freefall but impelled by Valence's magnetic flight. They struck the prison yard and Sudden Death exploded, but Valence was already climbing the night sky before the smoke had dissipated. They reversed at three hundred feet and rushed toward the ground below, Sudden Death exploded, and Valence was airborne yet again.

"What the hell?" Sudden Death asked, with worry beginning to creep into his voice, just before they collided with the ground and he exploded for the fifth time that minute. Valence declined to answer as their parabolic flight recommenced. Sudden Death released his chokehold on Valence and tried to push free, but was held fast against the hero by the steel cables under Valence's magnetic command. The duo slammed into the ground accompanied by the biggest explosion yet, and were already a hundred feet up in the air again as the blast's thunder echoed off the tops of the stunted swamp cypress surrounding the prison.

"Stop!" Sudden Death bellowed at the top of his lungs, just before the twosome hit the dirt and he exploded yet again. "Oh, God, please, stop," Sudden Death begged breathlessly, just before another slam and detonation. "Stop or I'm gonna puke!" Sudden Death moaned feebly.

Valence changed his trajectory ever so slightly, but increased his speed. Instead of plowing straight down, he crashed Sudden Death into the broadside of the ice ramp that crested the western prison wall. Sudden Death exploded, and the paroxysm shattered the sloping wall of ice with hundreds of fissures cracking open across its face. Both the heat and concussion of the explosion did their damage to the ice ramp, and huge frozen chunks flew in all directions, carrying would-be escapees with them on wild rides that would end in unconsciousness. Tons of ice collapsed all around Valence and Sudden Death, and the cycle of take-offs, descents and explosions came to an end.

"Waller, wait!" Belle Reve's warden, John Economos, chased after the stout patron of the Suicide Squad as she stormed down the corridor. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to get to the bottom of this damn mess," Amanda Waller snapped back at her colleague. "Literally, I suppose."

"You ... what?" Economos nearly tripped as he caught up with Waller, and struggled to catch his breath. "What did you mean ... what you said before? They're not here for Kellogg?"

"It was all a set-up," Waller insisted. "They gave us Kellogg so they would have a plausible target to feint at. I knew it was too easy."

"So the breakout isn't ... real?" Economos shook his head.

"It's real enough, but Kellogg isn't the one they're trying to spring," Waller said.

"Who, then?"

"I'm not sure," Waller admitted, "but I have a bad feeling we'll find the answer in the fallout shelter."

The words stopped the warden in his tracks. "Even you aren't supposed to know about the fallout shelter, Waller."

Waller never broke stride. "Write me up for snooping tomorrow if you want," she called back over her shoulder. "Are you coming with me or not?"

Economos hung his head, but followed Waller's footsteps.

The double iron doors were heavy and studded with bolt heads, their surface dulled with age. A faded sign bearing a symbol of three inverted yellow triangles in a black circle hung at eye-level, with missing chips of paint revealing a patina of rust beneath. When Bayonet unleashed a dark energy bolt to blow a hole in the middle of the doors, the fallout shelter sign clattered down the corridor like a tin leaf in a strong wind.

Inside the doors was a small room containing stacks of canned food and bottled water, a drab green foot locker with a two-way radio set atop it, and a small cot. Bayonet stepped into the cramped shelter, aimed his hands at the floor, and sent ebon energies downward to smash through the material underfoot. An elevator shaft was revealed through the gaping hole, and Bayonet dove into it, gliding downward on his metallic wings.

"The problem with trying to live the hero lifestyle," Minotaur opined, "is not so much whether or not you believe your own hype." He jumped up, grabbing onto the reinforced steel mesh that covered the light fixtures running the length of the ceiling in the prison corridor. "Maybe you are as noble and loyal and trustworthy as the public thinks you are. The problem comes when you think everyone else lives up to your hype. That everyone has even the capacity for loyalty. That's there's some kind of honor among thieves."

More charged forward as Minotaur maintained his hold on the steel cage overhead and swung his hypertrophied legs upward. The kick missed the Bad Blood strongman but crumpled mesh and shattered the fluorescent lightbulbs beneath it. The illumination flickered as shards of broken glass showered down on More, who reflexively skidded to a halt and threw an arm over his eyes against the blinding debris. Minotaur dropped to the corridor floor and advanced on More, jabbing a massive fist into More's ribs below the arm shielding his eyes. More woofed in pain and spun away, shaking his head and flicking tiny glass shards in all directions.

"So basically you're telling me you're scum," More surmised. "As if I didn't know."

"I prefer to think of myself as morally unprescribed," Minotaur countered. "And I'm telling you, you don't even know what that means. You think of us as criminals who break a few laws but still draw the line somewhere. I'm telling you that I have yet to find a line I won't cross under the right circumstances."

"Fascinating," More replied sarcastically, lunging at Minotaur. He threw a right cross into Minotaur's jaw, causing Minotaur's head to snap to the left side. Minotaur, unfazed, started to turn his head back to a forward-facing position, but More's elbow met his jaw line on the follow-through and cracked Minotaur's head to the side again. Minotaur's expression darkened and he opened his mouth to express his displeasure, but More immediately hooked his elbow back again, smashing into Minotaur's temple and twisting his head from left to right. "I'm sorry, did you have a point to make?" More asked.

Minotaur slowly stretched his neck and rolled his shoulders. "Just that I hope I get to see you again after this whole thing goes down. Tonight is just the beginning. What comes next ... for a Mom-and-apple-pie type like you, it's going to be brutal," Minotaur smirked viciously.

"What do you mean, what whole thing?" More demanded.

Minotaur shook his head. "Nah, I'm done talking. Let's just beat the hell out of each other."

More obligingly responded in kind, and the corridors of Belle Reve shook with echoes of two titans attempting to grind each other's bones to dust.

Amanda Waller and John Economos arrived at the ruined fallout shelter doors and peered at the ragged gash in the floor of the camouflaged elevator. "I don't think the car's going to move down the shaft, with its frame all warped like that," Economos observed.

"Then I guess we'll have to climb down," Waller retorted. "Unless you have any other ideas?"

"I don't know, Waller, you're the one who knows more than she should about my prison, are you aware of some back staircase?" Economos asked mockingly.

Waller ignored him. She had already hiked her green skirt to a decidedly unladylike height around her ample thighs, and was lowering herself through the forced opening in the floor. Economos heard her grunt as she slid off the floor and her weight clapped against the heavy cables running down from the underside of the secret elevator.

Economos stepped to the edge of the hole. "And what are you and I supposed to do when we catch up with whoever else is down there?" he called into the gloom. Waller made no answer, but Economos could not tell if it was because she had descended too far to hear him, or could not spare the breath while focused on shimmying down the elevator cables. He stood in indecision for a span of seconds, then turned to the shelves along the wall, opened what appeared to be an unmarked toolbox, and pulled out a weapon resembling a sawed-off shotgun overlaid with several experimental technological enhancements. Clutching the stock tightly, he stepped over the edge of the gash and reached out for the cables to brake his fall, and managed to restrain his reflexive scream of terror to a small yelp of fear.

Pierce charged at Headhunter, who raised his gauntlets in a warding gesture before unleashing a freon wave. Before the supercooled slush could strike him, Pierce flattened himself along the iced-over floor and slid between Headhunter's legs. The one-time Checkmate knight swept his telescoping bo staff into the backs of the knees of LocoForce's leader as he passed, knocking Headhunter off balance.

Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Pierce set the goggles from his Probe disguise on the ground, their lenses pointed at the space where the doorway had been before Headhunter had frozen the entire control center. Pierce tapped a button on the side of the goggles repeatedly, and a moment later a rapid-pulse laser emitted from the center of each lens. Steam hissed from the surface of the ice wall as the gelid sheath over the doorway began to melt. Satisfied, Pierce spun around to face his opponent once again.

He was met immediately by a frigid column expelled from Headhunter's fingertips. The force of the projectile floe knocked Pierce backwards; he rolled with the impact all the way to the far wall, then kicked off the surface and sprang toward Headhunter again. The bo staff swung through the air in a blurry arc and cracked against the side of Headhunter's skull, the echo sharp off the ice all around. Headhunter staggered.

Pierce pressed his advantage. A flurry of kicks and punches assailed Headhunter, who only managed to block or counterstrike against half of the blows, while the others scored painfully. A concentrated icy blast encased Pierce's left forearm in dull white crystals from elbow to knuckles, then shattered as Pierce without hesitation swung the frozen limb into Headhunter's shoulder. The mercenary dropped to his knees, clutching his battered deltoid.

"Isn't this the part where you're supposed to offer me a chance to do this the easy way and surrender?" Headhunter asked.

"Not in the mood," Pierce replied shortly, planting the sole of his boot in Headhunter's solar plexus with an explosive side-kick. "Not today."

The heels of Bayonet's cowboy boots clicked on the sub-basement floor, but the sounds seemed to be hushed, eaten up by the damp, irregular stone walls. Given the nature of the Louisiana swampland, it was a minor miracle that Belle Reve Penitentiary could have a sub-basement at all, but no feats of engineering could prevent the prison's hidden levels from seeping moisture and encroaching moss and mildew. The area felt like an ancient dungeon, half-wild, with animal noises coming from the shadows and smells of decay everywhere.

Bayonet stopped in front of a door beneath a tag reading "261-58 ECKS, S." The door was a steel alloy, incongruous amidst the rock-and-mortar walls, with an electronic lock. Bayonet popped a shiny blade from his forearm and drove the point deep into the lock. With a few twists of Bayonet's arm, the security device spewed sparks and was reduced to a twisted wreck of wires and scrap. Bayonet jerked the blade free, and the door swung open.

Inside the cell, sitting on the stone floor between a crude hole from which an ungodly smell floated and a threadbare pallet, was an old man with thin pale gray hair and a wiry gray beard. He looked at Bayonet blankly, without moving or speaking.

"Ecks," Bayonet said gruffly. He reached into a front pocket of his blue jeans, dug out an object the size of a business card, and flipped it through the air to the prisoner. "Hold on to that. We're getting out of here."

Ecks's prison jumpsuit was frayed and worn through in spots, its orange color hidden beneath stains and smears of a dull brown. The metallic object Bayonet had produced stood out starkly on his lap. For a few moments it seemed Ecks would not or could not respond to the mercenary standing in the doorway of his cell. Then he twitched a grimy hand toward his lap and pinched the metallic card between two bony fingers.

"DON'T MOVE!" Amanda Waller's strident voice caromed off the sub-basement walls. She stomped down the center of the shadowy hallway, her high heels occasionally scattering the contents of murky puddles. John Economos trailed a pace behind her.

Bayonet looked back over his shoulder and smiled wolfishly before swiping a hand across his belt buckle, causing it to radiate dazzling white light. The belt buckle's twin – the metal shape held by Ecks – was engulfed in a similar glow. The auras rapidly expanded to swallow both men in white coronas that cast harsh shadow across the scaly sub-basement surfaces.

"NO!" Economos shouted, bracing his weapon against his shoulder and pulling the trigger. The modified shotgun fired, its report nearly deafening, but its intended target had vanished. Chunks of masonry near the cell door were blown apart, leaving smoldering holes far larger than conventional ammunition could have gouged in the walls, but the gun otherwise had no effect.

Waller and Economos reached Ecks's cell and looked inside, confirming that the aged prisoner was no longer within. "I still just don't get it," the warden groaned. "Simon Ecks? What did they want with him?"

"I have no idea," Waller responded. "And that is exactly what scares the hell out of me."

Pierce spun his bo staff in a slow, menacing pattern as he raised it high over Headhunter. The leader of LocoForce, flat on his back, seemed to brace himself for a blow he knew he could not evade. Then an electronic chime sounded from the area of Headhunter's belt buckle, and the ice-throwing mercenary's entire body relaxed. Luminous white spread out across Headhunter's form and blinked him away.

Stabbing the end of the telescoping staff into the rime-crusted the floor, Pierce vaulted himself feet-first toward the frozen doorway. The ice, weakened by the continuous application of laser heat, shattered under Pierce's boots. The one-time knight tumbled deftly into the Belle Reve hallway and immediately set off at a run for the structural breach and the prison yard beyond.

"Ah, hear that?" Minotaur asked. "That's my ride."

More spat a pinkish glob of blood and saliva at the floor. "I don't hear anything," he challenged.

"Oh, you mean the fact that my teleporter plate was surgically embedded in my sternum where Bell Reve security wouldn't be able to scan for it means that only I can hear it?" Minotaur taunted. "Isn't that interesting." He took a quick parting shot, bouncing his knuckles off the bridge of More's nose, before the white light fully enveloped him. More swung a haymaker in response, but his huge fist swished through empty air.

When the final component of Shrapnel's metal-mosaic body clicked into the center of his forehead, the lower half of his haphazard facial fragments scraped against one another to rearrange in a horrifying rictus grin. Shrapnel detonated and sent a razor-sharp barrage in all directions, soon met by screams of pain from guards and prisoners alike.

Hangfire concentrated so hard that he became half-convinced he could feel his brain vibrating in his skull. Under normal circumstances he had always thought of his metahuman ability to deflect and redirect incoming fire as an autonomous forcefield that clung to his body, but on some level he knew that there was a deep mental connection that he himself controlled, and he summoned that control now. He reached out with his psyche for as many of the jagged bits of Shrapnel as he could locate, far away but whizzing in his direction, and exerted his influence over them. He drew the flying razors toward him, increasing their velocity, causing them to burrow into the iceblock trap and deflecting them away from his body at the last possible moment, to shoot out of the ice at a different angle. Each bladed ingot drilled narrow slashes into the ice until the entire block burst in a shower of sparkling shards and water droplets.

Hangfire ignored the stinging cold numbness in his limbs and drew his pistols from their holsters. He sighted Deadline, weaving around Ember, solidifying long enough to take potshots at Hangfire's teammate and then phasing to intangibility before Ember could lay a flame-wreathed hand on him. Hangfire watched, guns unwavering, and caught the timing of Deadline's passage back and forth from substantiality. He fired six rounds, three from each gun, while Deadline was intangible. The six bullets tore into the flying discs strapped to Deadline's boots as the villain turned solid and blew the anti-gravity devices apart.

Unexpectedly falling, Deadline panicked and flailed. Ember dove and reached out for Deadline, who grabbed at Ember's hands. As their fingers closed around one another's wrists, Ember sent a roiling cascade of flames up Deadline's arms. Deadline howled and was unconscious by the time Ember landed on the ground.

Hangfire pointed at Clotty, Bronze Tiger and Backlash. "De-ice them," he told Ember. "I'll go check on Valence." Ember nodded and made his way towards the flash-frozen robot first, while Hangfire sprinted for the pile of ice boulders near the prison yard's inner wall.

As Hangfire neared the cold, crystalline rubble, a single chunk of ice dislodged from the pile, and Valence crawled out of the hole it revealed. "You all right?" Hangfire asked. "What is that smell?"

"Sudden Death vomit," Valence replied tiredly. "He really did ... oh no."

Hangfire turned around, following Valence's line of vision. At first nothing in the prison yard's stygian chaos seemed any more noteworthy than anything else. Then he detected what Valence had noticed: Silencer, Loki, Protocol and Genocide were all shining with a steadily growing white luminescence. "Damn," Hangfire spat.

"Looks like now's the time to see if this trick Enigma taught me is really gonna work," Valence announced, soaring away from the ruined ice ramp. He flew past Ember as his teammate turned superheated attention from Clotty's robotic form to Bronze Tiger's glacial prison. Clotty was immediately airborne, thrusters jetting from the heels of shoes, thin tie flapping past one shoulder, fedora angled downward. Clotty blindsided Bolt in mid-air, driving an atomic-powered shoulder into the small of the villain's back and eliciting a sharp cry of pain.

Valence gathered more and more crackling green electromagnetic energy around him as he picked up speed. He closed on Loki's unconscious form sprawled in the mud and aimed an arc of emerald lightning at the center of the slowly irising white glow. Filaments of pure electromagnetic interference spiderwebbed through the teleportation signal and scattered it. Valence barely had time to see Karnival, Sojourn and the Crime Doctor approaching Loki before he was hurtling across the yard toward Silencer and administering the same countermeasures against LocoForce's marksman. Valence banked sharply, then sped like a wild dynamo toward Protocol and Genocide.

"I want to say again for the record that I highly doubt this will work," the Crime Doctor huffed.

"Well, you don't seem to have any better ideas, and it's all I can think of," Sojourn retorted. "We need to throw a serious psychic wet blanket on this riot. Karnival would do it alone if he could, but he's exhausted. Loki wouldn't help if he had a choice, but he's comatose. I can make a temporary spiritual bond between Karnival and Loki, but we need Loki actively using his power."

"And you think I can ... provoke him to a point where he engages in mental self-defense," the Crime Doctor finished. "I'm flattered, although only modestly so since I think you're delusional."

"It's a good plan, it might just work," Karnival said, his voice cracking from the residual strain of his duel of illusions with Loki. "You're thinking more like Pierce every day."

Sojourn half-smiled at the comparison as she kneeled beside Loki and took his hand, holding it tightly despite all her misgivings. With her other hand she grasped Karnival's fingers; he squeezed her hand reassuringly. Sojourn closed her eyes. "Whenever you're ready, Doctor," she said, infusing the last word with as much sarcasm as she could muster.

Across the yard, Valence barreled toward Protocol and Genocide. Both were nearly completely white within the auras of their teleportation signals, although Genocide's greater height and bulk meant he would be a few more seconds fully energizing. Valence blasted Protocol with shocking green, the arcs of interference almost disappearing in the overwhelming white before scattering it and leaving the Russian looking all around in confusion. Valence tossed an electromagnetic volley at Genocide.

Genocide brought his scarlet bioorganic weapon up like a seasoned gunslinger, almost faster than the eye could follow, lining up the rifle's muzzle with the snaking green electrical lance. Valence's attack was swallowed by the alien gun, and Genocide's aura continued to expand and intensify. A grunting, unearthly sound that approximated laughter sounded from the head of the aura, just before Genocide vanished completely.

"What is going on here?" Hellhound demanded volubly, with the dawning realization that Genocide had left him behind, and Protocol had been attempting the same. "Where's ...?" The question remained unfinished as Hellhound crumpled facedown in the mud, felled from behind by a butterfly kick to the base of the skull. Bronze Tiger's snarling mask pivoted, looking for another target.

The Crime Doctor held a lancet lightly in one hand, handle end resting against his palm, double-edged surgical blade inches from his fingertips. He drew the tip of the blade in featherweight swirls around the irregular countours of Loki's face, from his temple down to his earlobe and across to his upper lip and down to his chin and back up to his nostril, and then abruptly the blade lifted from Loki's cheek and darted into the corner of LocoForce's illusionist's eye socket, disappearing in a stream of crimson.

Sojourn kept her eyes closed but felt something far worse than the sight of Loki's eye weeping blood. Insane, punishing images begged for release from Loki's psyche, and Sojourn was nauseated and chilled to her soul as she acted as a conduit for them to reach Karnival. She felt her teammate's fingers clamp harshly around her own as he felt the unclean touch of Loki's visceral reactions to the Crime Doctor's torture. But Karnival did not falter.

A horrific creature loomed large in the field of vision of every Belle Reve escapee in the prison yard. Twisted and malformed, it appeared as two separate entities fused on a vertical midline, the right side completely antithetical to the left and yet each an inseparable half of the whole. The left portion was bestial, its ruined flesh one continuous suppurating wound interrupted at random by claws, fangs, and stingers, while the right side was more human in shape but utterly androgynous and with skin as cool and pale as mausoleum marble. The horror reached out with multiple arms offering an embrace unfathomably worse than death.

All around the yard, orange jump suits collapsed as the relentless illusory assault drove each prisoner's consciousness into sanity-preserving retreat. Within a few minutes the primal screams and maniacal laughter of the tumultuous riot had been silenced, leaving only the prison sirens and the occasional order shouted by guards and the steadily diminishing rain.

Simon Ecks had been given a shower, a clean set of clothes, and a sumptuous meal, although he had eaten very little of it. Now he sat in a small room, windowless but well lit, with pristine white walls and a blemishless steel floor. The room's only furnishings were two black leather armchairs; Ecks sat in the smaller of the two, facing an empty seat that evoked something of the grandeur of a throne. The prisoner liberated from the secret sub-basement of Belle Reve waited to meet his benefactor.

The door opened, and the click of bootheels rang on the steel floor panels. Scarcely realizing he was doing it, the aged Ecks rose to his feet at turned to face the man who entered. Ecks was met by the imposing sight of Baron Blitzkrieg in his full regalia: golden armor and faceplate, blazing orange gloves and boots, imperious purple cape which the Baron gathered mindfully across one arm as he lowered himself into the larger seat.

With an impeccably erect bearing, Blitzkrieg gestured at the other armchair. "Sit, please," he said. As Ecks retook his seat, Blitzkrieg went on, "It has been a long time coming, this meeting. Too long have I been forced to wait to inform you that you will have the honor of assisting me in ushering in the new order."

"What ... what do you want with me?" the old man rasped, his voice still weak from the disuse of solitary confinement.

"Not want," Blitzkrieg shook his head slowly. "Need. Alone we can make the mighty tremble, but together ... only together! We can remake the world in a single night. Baron Blitzkrieg ... and Doctor Double X!"

MESSAGES WRITTEN IN BLOOD ...

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NEXT ISSUE: Bad Blood sorts through the wreckage at Belle Reve to try to determine if their efforts there were a success or a failure. But once they leave the prison grounds, they find themselves targeted for destruction!