Screaming with incoherent, guttural grunts and wordless voices surrounded him like a dark haze. Ghostly visages in a dark void grasped at him. Something grabbed and yelled at him, thrusting hands into his face. He fought hard to get away, to push them off, but it seemed like he couldn’t see through the dark brown fog that filled his eyes and mind.
“No, I don’t want this!” He screamed into this misery. Yet, nothing listened. They kept pushing and holding him.
“No! NO!”
“No!” Alex Fae Murphy sat up in his bed, sweat on his brow and a heaving chest, gulping in breaths. His hands trembled as they brushed his face.
“Where am I? What... oh, it was just a bad dream.” His sight settled as the dream that filled his mind faded back into the depths of his subconscious. The bedroom came into view. Furniture, pictures, and a few discarded clothes filled the dense, dark shadows.
While the bewildering nightmare gradually stopped haunting his mind, a deep void of something missing pained his heart. Yet, he couldn’t recall what he was missing.
“Honey?” Krystal touched his arm.
He looked over and saw his wife laying in bed next to him. Her body always emitting a slight purplish glow. That terrible sense of loss still touched his heart as he looked at her, though he felt a thorough joy at just seeing her.
“I… it was just a bad dream,” He whispered.
She smiled, her face half buried in the fluffy pillow. “It was just a dream. Oh, I think I hear the baby. Do you mind?”
“I’ll get her. You go back to sleep.” He sidled out of bed as gently as he could and walked over to the crib in the corner.
The baby stirred in her sleep. She was building up to a good cry. He took her out of the bed and held her up against his shoulder. Rocking gently, he walked her out of the room into the living area. The house was a beautiful, pristine modern cottage out in the woods. The living room had a series of windows that gave him the most amazing view of the landscape in the Cascade mountains. Everything in the house was clean. In the distance, on the horizon, were the earliest hints of the sun about to rise.
Alex sat down on the couch, holding the now comfortably sleeping baby. On the coffee table was the holo-projector with a green light flashing.
“Good, the morning news is here.” He pressed the button.
A holographic display projected up into the air with the day’s news articles. The leading headline was pretty normal these days. “Day one thousand of no crimes on earth. Peace continues to reign.” He read the first few paragraphs;
‘Experts praise the glorious efforts of BADGE and the Leagues around the world to bring us an era of peace unlike any in history. Some elude to this being a modern Pax Romana, but even that contained conflict and crime. Today, no police department or superhero organization reports any illegal activity and no alien invasions or strange creatures from a void have appeared. This grand peace all started three years ago with the downfall of the Renn Tech Corporation. Experts weigh in on how, exactly, the destruction of a computer tech company affected world peace…’
He flipped the story to the next, which was a gushy article about how meta-humans are now using their powers for other activities to help communities. Leagues have become educational and recreational organizations who don’t fight crime any longer.
“Oh, look. Arx has another movie coming out.” Alex looked over an entertainment article detailing the next blockbuster action movie starring Arx, who has returned to the silver screen after everyone forgave him for what he had done in the past.
Five filler pages of ads from various sponsors buried the next article, which then caught his attention. The headline read, “Could Director Nova have been a villain in disguise?” He opened that article and read it, “With the new age of peace, one person remains strangely missing: Director Nova of BADGE. While BADGE remains in operation, the founder of the organization has been missing since the fall of Renn Tech. Dr. William Odell, a professor of criminal psychology at Harvard has written a paper about the potential that all the criminal activity, from Legions appearance years ago that began the age of super humans to the modern age of dark creatures from space and powered villains roaming out streets, could have all been connected to a man who not only encouraged the criminal activity, but profited from it. His sudden disappearance three years ago leaves this a mystery that may never be solved.”
Alex sat back with the baby, angry in his heart at this. It was so wrong to call Nova a villain, to subject him to that kind of unfair scrutiny just because he was missing.
“When did he go missing?” Alex asked himself. It seemed as though he couldn’t pinpoint the day that Nova had vanished. As he thought about it, his head hurt. A sharp headache shot through his skull for a moment. It was nauseating. He stood up to pace with the baby for a moment. The pain quickly subsided as he got in some good, calming breaths. He paused at the windows and took in the view of the early sunrise, letting the news drift into the back of his mind.
The morning finally arrived in its full glory and Alex sat at the counter of the kitchen, his face in his hands. Krystal walked around with their baby in one arm and a spatula in the other.
“You want more pancakes?” She asked.
“No, six is my limit.” He pushed his syrup smeared plate away with one hand while his face remained planted in the other.
“You okay?” Krystal took the plate.
He nodded in his palm, “Sure. Just this lingering headache.”
“It’s any wonder. You barely slept last night and got up so early. You should go back to bed and get a couple of hours of sleep. That will help.”
Alex shook his head. “No, I have to get to work. We both have jobs.”
“Hardly. BADGE is just operating because it can. We don’t fight crimes any longer. Seventy percent of the staff have quit or reduced for budget. Without Nova, BADGE really doesn’t have much work to do.”
Alex looked up. “It’s because of Nova that I’ll be going back. We’re still looking for him.”
She nodded with a remorseful look on her face. “It would be nice to see him again.”
“I agree. And, the media is feeding on this. This morning’s news…”
“I saw it. Shameful, really. Grab some random professor to write a hit-piece article about something he truly doesn’t know about. They don’t know Nova, they don’t know what he did and sacrificed for this world.”
Alex got up from the stool and straightened out his BADGE uniform. “I’m going to head up to the station.”
“I’ll be here with the baby.”
Alex smiled at her. “You know, we have an entire army of out-of-work superheroes who would love to babysit. You can get back to your work.”
“I enjoy spending time with my baby. Is something wrong with that?”
He leaned over the counter and kissed her pouting cheek. “Nothing wrong with that. Have a great day. I’ll be home later.”
He waved his hand and vanished in a flash of magic. He was instantly in the docking bay of the BADGE station. Protocol said that unless it was an emergency, magical transport should always be in the docking bay or mess hall, never the Operations center.
Usually, dozens of workers, robots, and heroes working busily would greet him, but now just a few robots tended the neglected shuttles.
Alex made his way through the quiet station, empty mess hall, and to the lift. In moments, he finally found other living souls here, not just robots. Chase and Justin watched the monitors while robots worked the computers. Only here, in Operations, did it seem normal, at least at a glance.
“Morning, Alex.” Chase casually looked over several screens.
Agent Justin pressed a button on a computer tablet and spoke to a person on the field. “Did you find any evidence at the location in Italy?”
Someone on the other end answered, “No. Most of this old place has been left to rot for centuries. Are you sure Nova used this once? It looks like no one has used it since Michelangelo painted the chapel.”
“Will do. Furious Squirrel out.”
Alex asked, “Anything at all since I was here last?”
“Nothing,” Chase said sorrowfully.
A plump nerd walked out of Nova’s office. It was Gamer G, “Same reports all day. Just dust and relics where Nova once lived.”
Alex pointed an accusatory finger at Gamer G. “What is he doing in there?”
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