the New Minute-Men, Issue #1 (Turn H)

"Gotta be a control panel or some sort of circuit access around her," she thinks, "Why else try and keep me away from here?"

Slowly, she feels her sight return to her, and she searches the corridor. Blinking, trying to compensate for her diminished eye sight, she finds a panel, half opened, near the large bulkhead that sealed off the chamber.

Then, looks down at the unconscious male, laying at her feet. He is young, probably only a teenager, with Asian features. In his right hand he is holding, just barely, a wrench that looks like it fit the bolts holding the panel in place.

He lets out a long, slow moan, and begins to stir, dropping the wrench with a tiny clanking noise.

"Oh... my head...."

"That's exactly what I was thinking," Warbride says. "But we can't afford to leave anyone behind. Right now, we need to regroup... use each other's talents to help compensate for our individual weaknesses."

"Yeah," Trish says, "but aren't we already ruining our chances of fooling Newborn, using the Doc as a decoy? I mean, Newborn has got to know that he's unconscious, doesn't it? The doc isn't responding to any orders. Newborn is going to know we're up to something."

"That's true," Nexus says, looking over to Warbride for a moment, "but how do we know that we can't still use the doctor? We need to at least try."

"Yeah, Pocahontas, and you could at least try to get some water for Big Blue!" Trish snaps. "Or is that asking too much?"

"Look... it's not that easy," Nexus answers, the anger apparent in her voice.

"This accomplishes nothing," Typhoon says, his deep voice resonating through the small room. "Arguing does not stop Newborn."

Ignoring the bickering of her teammates, Meridian says, throwing a strand of hair from her face, "Newborn mentioned we were out of it's sensor net. If we can stay that way, we might be alright. But we'll undoubtedly have to go back in to reach the core. If we can blind Newborn -- if we can disable the sensor net with an overload of some kind -- our job will be a lot easier." After a moment of silence as the other ponder the idea, the woman smiles weakly, adding, "Anyone able to generate a huge EM pulse?"

Beneath her visor, Warbride smiles, and says, "It probably has fiber-optic backups, to guard against that."

Clicking on her communcator, Warbride asks, "Mouse... do you read?"

"Trust me, you don't want to know," Mouse answers. She turns back to the panel.

He looks up at Mouse, and his eyes grow large with surprise, "Hey! You're in the new Minute-Men, aren't you? Mouse... you're Mouse! Gosh, am I happy to see you!"

He gets to his feet, and sticks out his hand, after wiping it on his pants.

"Yeah, sure kid, now shuddup unless you've got something important to say," Mouse says, turning her attentions back to the panel, ignoring him.

"My name is Kevin... Kevin Liu," he says. "Listen... my little sister... she's in trouble...."

"Merdie," she transmits, "I've got a kid here calling himself Kevin Liu, claims his sister is in here. Might be that girl you've been having problems with. I don't trust anyone who's been in here long... damn machine might be controlling them."

She stares at the kid, then asks, "You want to help? How do I kill this pile of junk?"

"Trish...?" Warbride asks. "Can you retract the skin, so I can get at the drone?"

"Ah, sure," Trish says, hopping up from one of the chairs she has been sitting in.

She moves over to Warbride and Hendricks, and touches his back, bathing it in orange light. Slowly, the skin on that covers his spine, and the drone, ripples, like it is made of water. Then, it parts, the ripples carrying the skin back, revealing the chrome back of one of the drones.

"Eww...." Nexus says, curling her lip in disgust. "That's disgusting."

Without looking up, Trish says, "Well, you take the powers you can get, you know?"

Katie, seeing the "operation" that's going on, covers her eyes and turns away, still clutching to Meridian's legs.

"What's the plan?" Trish asks, turning to look at Warbride, still concentrating to keep the rip in the doctor's back from splitting, actually hurting him. "If you're going to try to remove it... I don't know if we can do that without killing him. See the legs, how they've sprouted those tentacles? It's hooked right into his central nervous system."

"We're not going to remove it," Warbride says, as she begins working on the outer shell of the drone, trying to open it. "We're going to rewire it, so it will accept our commands."

"You're trying to build a remote control geek?" Trish asks.

"Exactly."

"We might as well be back in D.C.," she says, "for all the good we're doing."

"Our people are inside that thing. Turning around and leaving isn't an option," Cardinal yells, turning back to flash Robin an angry glance.

"Relax, Stephen. I didn't mean to suggest that we actually leave," she says, softly. "It's just that we're not doing anyone any good, out here. The Peacekeeper squad is still a half an hour away. We can't cut through the jamming field Newborn raised to communicate with the team."

She pauses, letting out a heavy sigh, and then adds, "Besides, if he take off, we'll just be shot out of the sky by those missiles."

She drops her hand from her eyes, and looks out across the horizon, seeing motion, far off.

"Do you see that?" she asks, getting to her feet. She stands over Cardinal's shoulder, pointing at the spot.

"No, I don't see anyth... wait a minute," he says. "What is that?"

Suddenly, a small light begins to blink on the jet's instrument panel, and Cardinal reaches over to flip a switch next to it, saying, "I'm picking up an incoming transmission."

"Is it the team?"

"I don't think so," he answers, leaning back in his chair, a forced smile spreading across his face.

"This is Brad Adams, with channel 8 news, live on location outside of El Aguilar, Utah... or more accurately, what was once El Aguilar. Already, we have endured missile attacks, laser blasts, and have been witness to full-fledged warfare between the Minute-Men and an army of robotic marauders, outside of NASA's Shangri-La test colony. Ordered to land, we have had to approach on foot, but the question remains, what is the government trying to cover up? What are the Minute-Men fighting? We don't know. What force is behind this army of metallic soldiers? Again, we don't know. NASA, I have been told, refuses to comment, but channel 8, KGID, will learn the truth. Can governmental lab be the new Area 51? Are the Minute-Men battling some kind of extraterrestrial force, gone horribly out of control? Is this the beginning of the end, for all of humanity?"

"Oh, God," Robin says, starting to laugh.

Cardinal gets up from his seat, removing the strap that holds his sidearm in place, within his holster. Heading for the door, he checks his communications headset, and says, "Contact me when the Peacekeepers make it in."

"What are you doing?"

"Those reports are going to get themselves killed."

"Yeah, and we already warned them...."

"I'm a G.H.O.S.T. agent, Robin," he says. "You're not. You wouldn't understand."

Cardinal steps off the plane, and heads off towards the reporters, slowly crossing the dusty field, alone.

"Yeah, they do sort of look like them," Trish answers, turning toward Warbride. "You think Newborn might have copied Network's cybernetics?"

Meridian, trying to divide her attention between Katie, the impromptu operation that Warbride and Trish are doing on the Doctor, and maintaining the force field, is suddenly hit with a powerful blow, that throws her off balances and causes her to fall to the ground. She barely manages to maintain her field, which is crackling and throwing off brilliant sparks. Turning to look, she sees one of Newborn's Peacekeepers battering at the field she has erected, each powerful hit vibrating through her as she feels it bashing against her field.

Katie screams, and scurries down, to the fallen heroine.

Standing, her face hard with determination, Meridian concentrates on the extra-dimensional field she is summoning, strengthening it, fighting back the relentless assault of the Peacekeeper.

"I'm fine, Katie," Meridian says. "Just stay back, dear."

Typhoon steps toward the opening in the wall, standing ready, in case the battlesuit manages to break through.

"Better hurry, Iron-Butt," Trish tells Warbride. "We've got company."

Warbride, her superhuman intelligence allowing her to make sense of the fantastic technology she is seeing before her, works wonders with the small drone, rewiring some of it's communications equipment. She should be able to use her suit's communications array as a relay, between the drone and Newborn, allowing her to edit whatever signals pass between the two of them. "It's ready," she thinks, as she shuts the access panel on the drone's back.

"Look, I don't know what your problem is, but my little sister is loose somewhere in here," he says, his voice shaking a little. "I thought the Minute-Men were supposed to be heroes. Don't you care about anything?"

"I'm not hero, kid, I'm here to do a job, to pay back some of the bad I've done in the last eighty or so years. Your sister's with the rest of the group," Mouse snaps. "Last contact I got she was fine, nice kid, pretty. Too bad about what electro-brain did to everyone. She's gonna have nightmares for centuries."

Mouse pauses to study the body, "No, I really don't give a shit at the moment. I've got a tinker-toy to kill and I don't know how. People, yeah, I'm good at killing people, but machines? If I don't win this I'm dead, and so are the only two people in the world I really give a dam about right now, and your not even on the long list. Now either help, or get lost."

"Let me guess," the young man says, after listening to Mouse, "you're the team negotiator, right? With diplomacy skills like that, you couldn't miss!"

He stands, consciously aware of how sunken his chest is, how underdeveloped his growing body seems, and then he puts his hands on his hips. Looking like he is mimicking a stance from Electro-Woman and Dyna-Girl, he says, "I don't know how to kill it either, but I've been pretty good at staying out of its way. It was experimenting on me and my sister, and something happened... we managed to escape. I think... I think I might have superpowers."

He beams.

"Right!" Nexus says, moving towards the outside door. She looks through the peep hole, and turns back to shout, "There are more of them coming our way!"

She reaches down, and hits a panel near the door, where a red light suddenly comes on.

"I hope that was the lock."

Typhoon gets up and moves towards the door, wobbling a bit, the heat still crashing in around him.

"I don't think you're in any shape to...." Nexus starts to say, but she is silenced as Typhoon digs his hands into the metal frame holding the door in place. He squeezes, bending the metal of the door jam out of shape. Now, even if the team wanted to, they couldn't open the door.

"Close him up," Warbride says, turning to Triage. "He should be ready."

"Got it, boss!" Trish answers, slowly molding the flesh of the doctor's neck back over the drone. "Do you think this is going to work?"

Nexus, standing at the door with Typhoon, turns back and asks, "More to the point, do you think it's a good idea? I mean, shouldn't we have removed that thing when we had the chance?"

"I don't think we have the time I'd need to remove it," Trish answers. "It burrowed into his spine and bypassed the electrical currents from the brain, into the body. It gets really tricky in that region... I'd hate to rush, and screw up!"

Warbride turns toward the Katie, and removes her helmet. She approaches her slowly, then she sits down and asks her, "Do you know who I am?"

A deafening smash hits the door, it's sound echoing through the small living space. Nexus covers her ears, eyeing the bent metal door with a look of shock on her face.

"I hardly think this is the time for introductions."

"Do you know who I am?" Warbride asks, again.

The little girl nods her head.

"Good. Come here and sit on my lap," Warbride says, patting the ceramic plating that covers her legs.

Cautiously, the little girl climbs on to the armored Minute-Man's lap, holding one of her fingers in her mouth.

"Now, Katie we're in a lot of trouble and we need your help. You've been here and so you can help us. You'll get to be an honorary Minute-Man. Do you think you can show us how to get to the main computer room?"

"I don't know," the girl whispers. "Daddy works there, but Daddy's gone now."

"This is really important, Katie. If we can get there, we can help your daddy," Warbride says.

"They're coming through!" Nexus shouts, as a fist busts through the metal door, swinging inches from her head.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Thoom!

"What was that?" Kevin asks, pivoting around to stare down the long corridor.

Straining, Mouse and Kevin can hear heavy tapping, far off, the unmistakable sound of armored feet. The sound continues to get louder and louder. Whatever it is, it is approaching.

"Probably a battledrone or two," Mouse answers, absently, as she studies the wiring. "Their kinda noisy like that. Damn, I wish I'd learned this stuff; tubes are about my limit."

"I'm outta here!" Kevin says, as he darts over to the heavy bulkhead that the two have been trapped behind. He puts his hand up to the door, shuts his eyes, and wrinkles appear around his eyes, and on his forehead. Straining, he slowly mouths, silently, "Come on... work...."

Then, the air around him, around Mouse, grows dark as his body absorbs all the light, sucking into his teenage frame. Suddenly, he is gone.

"Ka-Ute.... Somebody remind me to tell Warbride about that kid," she mutters. "Better yet...."

Mouse makes a quick report to Warbride, warning her of what to expect. Then, reaching into the access panel she starts unplugging connections, randomly plugging them back into different slots, throwing switches into random positions.

"If nothing else, this oughta piss off tubes for brains," she tells herself.

The pounding of feet get closer and closer.

Finishing her project, Mouse shrinks, then takes a deep breath and blind teleports again. This time into the center of the vertical access tunnel.

"Maybe," she decides just before she vanishes, "I'll be small enough not to be noticed by whatever sends things up."

"If we get rid of the robots, can you show us how to get to the main computer room?" Warbride asks Katie, again.

"I might be able to," she says. "I'm scared...."

"It's going to be okay," Warbride assures her. "Meridian, blast a hole in the floor. I want the rest of the team to get into one of the back rooms. When the Peacekeepers break in, they should follow the doctor down into the lower levels. When they're gone, Typhoon can rip us an alternate route through the opposite wall, so we stay out of the sensor net. I doubt Newborn has any sensors inside the bulkheads, so we should be able to slip through the compound, without it even knowing. Trish, put something against the hole in the wall, so the Peacekeeper's can't see where we're going."

"Ah... how about this pillow?" she asks, smiling nervously, as she picks up a pillow from the long sofa where they operated on the doctor.

Typhoon leaves Nexus guarding the door, and picks up the entire sofa, throwing it toward the hole in the wall. Meridian barely manages to drop her field in time, and the sofa gets wedged in the gash.

Warbride pulls on her helmet, and it seals, with the hiss of compressed air making a lock. Over her comm-link, she transmits to Newborn, "I thought you were more prepared, but I see you're not. Typical, your just like all the rest and you know what... I'm coming to get you!"

For the past eight hours, he has been slick with the liquids of his own body, locked in a cold sweat, experiencing it for the first time since he has become the being now known as Network. Suspended in the air, dangling from his own, thin interface cables, limp from exhaustion, he has been dripping sweat twenty feet to the floor, creating tiny puddles.

"Why... why are you... doing this? You know you'll be stopped," he says, weak, barely able to open his eyes. "You can't win."

"Win... lose... those are human concepts. I am beyond such things now. Of anyone born of this world, you should understand."

Network raises his head, slowly, to face the giant display monitor before him.

"Then... what do you want? What do you... hope to accomplish?"

A blast of bone shaking agony crackles through Network, the pain so great that he momentarily loses his body, everything going white. When he was still human, he would have screamed, but he takes the jolt silently.

"What... what...." he struggles, after the pain subsides. His pain editors, small computers that reduce the sensation of pain that he feels, have long been burnt out, leaving him to feel everything. "....are you building?"

A second blast of agony rips through him, throwing him around, dangling like a marionette at the end of his own interfacing links. Below his thrashing form maintenance and labor drones work silently, building, their dark bodies resembling worker ants. As the pain ebbs, he looks up to watch Newborn's monitor slowly scroll:

\.... Completion cycle estimated at 00:45:22....
\.... Completion cycle estimated at 00:45:21....
\.... Completion cycle estimated at 00:45:20....

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