Gar walked across the storage facility that BADGE was using to gather the strange crystals and study them. Agent Justin waved at him to come to the laboratory section. Suddenly, a hole opened and Nightshadow appeared with an armload of crystals.
“Where do I put these?”
Gar jumped back in shock and then pointed toward the bins in the second building. “Take them there. The agents will sort them.”
“Gotcha.” Nightshadow strolled on.
Gar gathered his wits and found Justin with Dr. Henderson and several other BADGE scientists.
“Oh, Gargoyle, good. Have you heard from Nova?” Justin asked.
“No. He left for his special mission with EB. Why?”
“I have important news.” Dr. Henderson held up her computer tablet. “You’re the senior official here, so I need to report to you.”
“Me? But, Justin...” Gar pointed at the man next to him.
“I’m in charge of the agents, but I report to either you, Nova, or Chase...and sometimes Strange Quark. The only one here is you, so that leaves you in charge.”
“Oh...uh...okay. What did you find?” Gar put on a stern face, as he imagined Nova would look.
Dr. Henderson walked over to an area where several other scientists were busy at work with crystals and large computers. “We have determined that the crystals directly result from Morphonic Energy.”
Gar asked, “but the crystals haven’t been on Earth for a long time?”
“We have always known that they are a recent development, and the scientific community suspected they were connected to morphons. However, extensive testing has not been conclusive. Right now, though, with all these crystals and the accelerated growth, we are able to understand them better.”
Gar asked, “if Legion sent the Morphons to Earth, and the Morphons create the crystals, is this just part of what Legion wanted?”
“Not exactly. Dr. Bigos, if you would.”
A bald man turned a swiveled computer screen to show his myriad of data. “Our sun emits a sort of radiation that is rare. It is otherwise harmless and has gone relatively unnoticed by astronomy until this incident. That radiation reacts with the morphons and causes the crystals to grow. It forces the unique frequencies of morphons to bond together.”
Dr. Henderson said, “what we found is that these crystals aren’t all the same. Each is 99.89 percent identical, however that last tiny percentage makes a pretty big difference. The morphons inside them resonate with one of the six known frequencies, making each crystal slightly skewed toward one morphon element or another.”
Justin asked, “how does this help explain the current situation. Why are they giving people powers? Why are they growing so much faster?”
“We don’t have those answers. I’m afraid it would take a lot more time to figure that out on our own.”
Justin said, “we need answers soon. If the World Corps is behind this, we need everything we can to stop them.”
Dr. Henderson calmly answered, “we’re already working on a way to, hopefully, expedite answers. We’re going to wake up one of the sedated Avatars and hope they can provide answers.”
Gar said, “but they’re permanently put to sleep by the World Corps. How do you wake one?”
Another doctor walked over, holding one crystal. “I’ve been studying the Avatar’s data. They aren’t living beings like you or me, they are much more like our Mr. Gar here.”
“Me? How?”
She touched his chest, “you’re made of stone, you’re not a living being by biological standards. However, you were crafted out of raw materials and then given life through a core of energy. It’s the same for all the avatars. They each contained that sort of core. We saw this when they first arrived. Now, when we study them, we find that the core energy is missing.”
Dr. Henderson took the crystal from her associate. “That’s where these come in. We believe we can craft a core of the same harmonic energy type of one avatar and introduce it to them. If all goes well, it’ll work like a transplanted organ and they’ll come back to life.”
Justin said, “that’s a stretch. Bringing them back will be hard, hoping they have answers is just a gamble.”
“We can only hope.”
***
Delta sat with Alpha and Gamma in the meeting room. Beta remained on a screen, remotely joining from the U.N. HQ in New York.
“Are you sure this will work?” Gamma asked.
Delta nodded, “yes. The mercs will make the drop off in a few moments, and we’ll sit back and watch the mayhem.”
Beta looked over the sheet of paper. “I gave you these twenty locations. I can get at least ten more in moments. Protests are popping up across the world hourly after this vote was announced.”
“No, these twenty will do fine. Just be ready to grab the attention of the news before BADGE has a chance to say something, even through their sycophants at the Sentinel.”
Alpha slapped the table, “this is completely unnecessary. We have BADGE on the run. The public opinion continually grows our direction. Why send more crystals out to random people and cause trouble at these protest rallies?”
Delta sat forward with rage in his eyes. “Because, BADGE is still allowed out there. No one has fully called for the sweeping arrests of anyone connected to BADGE. I want Nova cowering on his pathetic little space station, unable to return to this planet before we complete this. I need him out of the way! Our plan is moving too slowly!”
Gamma kindly said, “but, sir, BADGE has gone into hiding. Everyone fears them. The public loves our heroes and looks to them for security. What if one man is still free? What good is Nova without BADGE having power?”
“Nova is a dangerous man! More dangerous than any of you can possibly fathom!” Delta spent a moment fuming while the others gave him strange looks. He suddenly snapped to a screen and pointed at a merc waiting, “deploy! Now!”
***
A crowd of anti-BADGE protesters filled the street in front of the local Fight Club in Mexico City.
“Get out of our city! We don’t want villains here!” A man yelled and threw a baseball at the head of a woman in superhero tights.
She caught the ball and dropped it on the ground without flinching.
This same pattern of violence had continued for three days, with the heroes remaining silent and still in the face of this anger.
A man ran up between the club and the protesters and yelled, “if they were villains, wouldn’t they have hurt us by now? Think! They are good people!”
This was met by a hard right hook and he went down. The crowd turned even more violent after that.
The director tapped the hero on his right and whispered, “look up there?”
Both saw darkly dressed World Corps mercs watching. Before either could do something about this, five different people went wild with powers blasting through the crowds. Bodies crashed into each other and the pavement exploded. Random civilians held those powered crystals and were attacking like mad people.
The last thing the club director saw were the eye-beams from a fourteen-year-old girl before his body was thrust back through the glass doors of the club.
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