Joe awoke many hours later. His arms and legs were pins and needles, tingling as though he’d been sitting on them for some time. In point of fact, though, Joe wasn’t sitting on anything. His legs were firmly manacled together, and his arms were likewise shackled above his head. He was attached to some unidentifiable work of machinery. Over his shoulders, Joe could barely see two other people chained similarly. Simple geometry told Joe that there was probably someone tied completely behind him, as well, making four people all together. Must be Kyle, Charles, and Rina, Joe thought. He was wrong.
When Rina finally came to, she was locked in a small, dingy dungeon cell with Kyle.
“Hey there,” she said, trying to smile.
“Yeah,” said Kyle, shrugging.
“Kyle-“ Rina began, moving in close.
“My minions have served me well,” the cold voice intoned. “Three beings from dimensions not our own. Dimensions filled less with costume champions and more with the weak, sniveling sorts whose lives I might easily come to rule. Three beings to serve as dimensional ‘addresses,’ and a fourth whose power will take me there. You four young men will die when I drain your energies, but delight knowing that you die to serve Doom.”
A chill ran down Joe’s spine as his worst fear was confirmed. It seemed that Dr. Doom was speaking to whomever Joe could not see. Four young men, he said. Not Rina. Kyle, Charles, and I, I suppose, though we’re from ‘dimension,’ not ‘dimensions.’ Who has the power to take us home?
“You can’t take my power!” cried a voice which Joe recognized as Access’. “It’s too much, it’s not right, it’s in me!”
Doom spoke only one word, only one syllable, yet he spoke that syllable as though it was a Shakespearean soliloquy.
“Die,” he said as he pressed a button. The machine around Joe began to hum, and Access began to scream in pain.
It’ll be us next, thought Charles. And we can’t let Doom win. Visualize the Negative Zone. Feel the energy in your hands. FLEX.
BOOM! The roar of an explosion racing from Charles’ hands deafened everyone in the room. The energies Doom had already managed to drain from Access went swirling into the room like a thousand tiny will o’ the wisps before uniting in a wave of cosmic energy. The wave rolled over Doom, his machines, and his castle walls. In its wake, the wave left everything crystalline and fragile. The wave rolled off Charles, Joe, Access, and their fellow prisoner.
In the dungeon, Rina and Kyle could see the wave approach. They both knew that it meant the end of their lives. Both had less than a second to think about their lives- and their deaths- about all the incredible things that have happened to them between the two. One had enough time to think about things he never had, while one seized the opportunity- one last moment together- to act on the only thing she had left. Rina grabbed Kyle, and pulled him into a passionate kiss.
And in one instant, all over this now lost, cold crystal planet lives end before they ever had the chance to begin. Friendships torn asunder are never to be mended together again. Potential is left unfulfilled. Opportunities that collapse are left uncorrected as life slips through their fingertips in a whispered flash of energy. Dreams die. The world ends with neither bang nor whimper but in an eerie, silent shimmering shroud of glass. A world, which like one man’s dreams, proved to be such a delicate thing. And when not handled with enough care is so easily…
…shattered.
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Chapter 17
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