“And to think,” the man sitting in the leather-padded chair across from me commented, his lips twisting up into a little smirk of self-satisfied humor, “they all thought that I was absolutely crazy.”

I nodded, not quite sure how I should respond to this comment.  Throughout the whole interview, I’d always had the slight, sneaking suspicion that my subject was, in fact, just the slightest bit crazy.  But I knew better than to say this out loud.

Fortunately, the man just chuckled a little to himself, and then leaned forward to pour himself another glass of champagne.  Beneath our seats, I felt the private jet shift slightly as the pilot adjusted the course.

“Shouldn’t be much further, now,” my interview subject commented, sparing a quick glance out the jet’s nearest window.  “It’s a bit out of the way, I know – but that’s part of how I became so successful in the first place, isn’t it?”

I nodded again, mentally telling myself that I had to pull this interview back on track.  “So, Mr. Gibbs, did you see something in the tech world that tipped you off, something you spotted before anyone else?” I asked him.

Across from me, the man’s smile faded somewhat as he leaned back in his chair, interlacing his fingers behind his neck.  “A hole,” he commented at length, his brows furrowed a little.

Jefferson Gibbs was not a small man.  From the moment that I had arrived at the airport for this interview, I had felt slightly dwarfed by his presence.  Even as he leaned in to shake my hand, I felt like I had stepped into a circus, like I was up on stage with a trained bear.

Initially, I had worried a little about conducting this interview on a jet – would Gibbs even fit inside the private plane?  But once we had climbed the steps, I saw that the man had completely redone the interior, replacing the rows of smaller seats with just a couple larger swiveling leather monstrosities, in which we now reclined.

“Saved so much on fuel that I could afford the whole interior being redone,” he explained to me, as we settled into the seats and prepared for takeoff.  “But with energy so cheap now, well, gotta put that money to use somewhere else!”

The man maintained a ferociously genial attitude, and he seemed to keep grinning at me no matter what question I asked.  Once again, as I saw him flash his wide, white teeth at me, I had the feeling that Jefferson Gibbs had a screw loose.

“A hole?” I repeated, hoping the man would elaborate.

And for just a second, that smile went away.  “Yeah, that’s what I said, isn’t it?” Gibbs growled, leaning forward aggressively.  I kept my face neutral – a well-practiced skill as a reporter familiar with the rich and powerful – and the man relaxed after another minute.

I don’t know if he decided that I wasn’t a threat, or he just wanted to brag some more, but Gibbs’ anger vanished as quickly as it had appeared.  “See, everything was in place except for one missing piece of tech,” the multibillionaire elaborated, glancing again out the window.  “And I knew that, if I could push the demand for that tech high enough, someone would figure it out and make the rest of my investment profitable.”

At face value, the strategy sounded absolutely insane.  But there was no denying that it had worked for Gibbs.

When he started, the whole world deemed him crazy.  A minor player in the computer science world, whose singular claim to fame was a patent on improving microchip density, Gibbs stunned the world when he announced his plan to build several geothermal heat engines out in the middle of the Sahara desert.

Admittedly, the idea had several merits.  Geothermal heat engines, which relied on using the temperature differential between the hot desert surface and the much cooler interior of the Earth to generate power, were some of the cleanest and most efficient energy plants in history.  Land in the Sahara was incredibly cheap, and once the high initial cost of the engine had been paid, the device would run for many decades without needing more than routine maintenance.

“But there’s no need for power out in the middle of a desert!” critics pointed out in the papers around the globe.  “Forget the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ – the guy’s building a power plant for nowhere!”

And indeed, without a market, Gibbs’ investment seemed doomed to failure – until, just weeks before the plant was set to come online, the Tesla Motor Company announced that they’d made a huge leap forward in battery technology.

Suddenly, batteries were smaller, lighter, and capable of holding hundreds of times their previous charge.  Everyone wanted to switch to battery power – and they needed someplace to charge those tanks.

Gibbs had the cheapest fuel line for that demand – and as power poured out of the Sahara, the man shot to the top of the Forbes 400 Richest Individuals.

“Ah, here we are,” Gibbs interrupted my thoughts, nodding towards the window.  I turned and looked as the jet banked in a descending circle.

Down below us, in regular lines across the undulating tan sand of the Sahara, steel towers rose up from the ground.  Each tower was topped with an array of black panels, gathering in the heat of the brightly burning sun above us.  That heat, I knew, would be conveyed down into the earth, where it would mix with the cooler air rising up from the bowels of the earth and would drive a series of electricity-generating turbines.

Across from me, Gibbs stared out the window at the source of his great fortune.  The expression on his face was unusual.  He looked almost hungry, desiring, as he stared out at his power plant.

The man had taken a great risk building this plant, I knew, no matter how vociferously he insisted that the strategy made sense.  I wondered what his next leap would be – and whether he’d be able to get lucky twice in a row.

I glanced up from the paperback sci-fi novel held just below the counter as the bell over the front door jangled.  As soon as my eyes focused in on the man’s face, I sighed.  I put the paperback away, bracing myself and taking a deep breath, trying to prep for the confrontation I was sure to begin momentarily.

In my head, I whispered a silent but fervent curse to UPS for delaying the recent clothing shipment to our store.  Didn’t they know that we had regular customers?

Extremely regular, a few of them.

“Hey, Albert,” I called out, leaning over the counter a little and giving a wave of my hand to get the man’s attention as he shuffled in.  “Listen, buddy, little problem…”

The man glanced over at me, pausing in his usual pattern that he followed.  I could see confusion pass briefly across his face, accompanied by some other emotion that I couldn’t quite place.  Was it fear?  “Yeah?” he grunted, looking at me from beneath lowered brows.

“Listen, I know you’re in here every day to pick up a pack of socks,” I said, trying to sound as apologetic as possible.  “But our restocking shipment hasn’t arrived yet, even though it was supposed to be here by Tuesday – and we’re all out, buddy.”

The man blinked, and I braced myself for some sort of assault or tirade.  I really had no clue what was going to come out of this strange little man, but I really just hoped that he wouldn’t start knocking down displays when he freaked out.

I mean, the man has to be some sort of crazy, doesn’t he?  He’s been in every day for the last six months – every single day I’ve worked here – and he’s always buying the same thing.  He strolls in, picks out a single six-pack of white athletic socks, and pays for it in cash.

When I first started working here, I used to imagine that maybe he was some sort of alien, and he was trying to study humanity through socks – or maybe I just read too many dollar store science fiction paperbacks.  All of us employees had our own guesses.  Mary thought that he used them instead of toilet paper.  Carl insisted that the man jerked off into them and then threw them away.  My boss, Tom, swore that he’d once seen the guy eat one.

I really didn’t know what Albert did with these socks, or why he needed a new pair every day – but this day was going to definitely throw a wrench in the works.

I was expecting him to get angry, maybe yell a bit.

But I wasn’t expecting him to stare at me with wide eyes, his whole face going pale with shock.

“No, no,” he gasped out in strangled tones, staggering forward towards my counter.  I leaned back a little, concerned that this might be a ploy to get close so he could take a swing, but the man’s hands just landed on the counter, as if he had to struggle to stay upright.  “No, you can’t be out!”

“I’m really sorry, man,” I offered, not sure how to handle this outburst of sheer panic.

The man stared up at me, his eyes so wide that the irises were fully visible.  “But you don’t understand,” he insisted.  “Now I can’t feed it – and it’s going to spread!“

What the hell?  I just stared back at him in confusion.  “What?” I managed.

“The plant!  Oh god, the plant!  If I don’t feed it, it’s going to grow out, searching for food – and once it learns that there’s more, well, it will explode!” the man hissed, waving his arms at me as if this would somehow make things clearer.

I just shook my head at him.  “Plant?  Albert, slow down.  Are you telling me that you feed these socks to a plant?”

For a moment, the man affixed me with one wide eye, glaring at me as if wondering how I could be so dense.  “Yes,” he snarled at me.  “When it crashed into my back yard, I did as ordered.  I was a good little servant.  And I convinced it that only I could bring it the food it wanted.”

I nodded, certain that this guy had to be off his meds for something.

But Albert saw my expression, somehow read my thoughts, and shook his head furiously at me.  “You don’t believe me – not yet,” he accused me.  His hand reached down for his left sleeve, unbuttoning the cuff and hauling it up.  “But just wait!  It will grow, and you’ll see!”

This time, as the man shook his left forearm at me, I felt my mouth drop open as I stared.

All up the man’s arm ran a line of round, puckered scars.  It looked almost like the tentacle of some giant octopus creature had wrapped around him, burning marks into his skin.  I couldn’t think of anything else that could cause such a pattern.

“And now, it will grow!” he continued, shaking his scarred arm at me.  “It only stopped before because I convinced it!  Now, now it will know that I cannot be trusted, and we won’t be able to hold it!”

Inside my head, I felt myself lurching, reality sliding off at an angle.  Albert couldn’t be talking truth, right?  This had to all be some sort of crazy self-delusion.  But I couldn’t tear my eyes away from those scars wrapping around his arm.

“Albert, wait,” I said, my voice sounding to me like it was coming from somewhere far away.  “What if we fight it?”

The man just stared at me, but I was already moving, ducking out from behind the counter.  Fortunately, the store was empty aside from the pair of us and Tom was in back.  My replacement was due in at any minute, and I’d be off duty.

I hurried down the aisles of the store, Albert tagging along behind me.  Finally, I found what I was looking for, and skidded to a stop.  Behind me, I heard the other man suck in a breath.

“It might work,” he said doubtfully.  “There’s a chance.”

I nodded.  “You know, I’ve always wanted to fight an alien,” I remarked, staring up at our store’s selection of weed killer, shears, and other trimming implements.

I reached up and lifted down one of the big pairs of hedge trimmers, feeling its comforting weight in my hands.  “What do you say?” I asked, giving the pair of oversized scissors a test snick together.

For a minute, Albert just stood there, looking at the wall of weaponry.  And then, suddenly, he reached forward and picked up a bottle of poison.

“Let’s do it,” he said fervently.

The two of us loaded up, getting ready for battle…

I stared up at the hole in my ceiling, trying in vain to blink back tears as I watched the caped man vanish into a dot.

In a sudden burst of anger, overcome with impotent rage, I stamped my foot.  I stamped both feet, jumping up and down and waving my arms and screaming, not caring about the ruined bits of electronics that were further crushed underfoot.  Tears were rolling down both of my cheeks, now, but I didn’t bother to try and wipe them away – I knew that they’d soon be replaced by their fellows.

How the hell could the damn man believe that he was doing the right thing?  Even as he flew away, he called back over one shoulder, with that pompous smirk, that “the authorities were on their way.”

Yeah.  Like they’d do anything but help me up, apologize, and pat me on the back with sympathy.

Finally settling down a little, I took a deep, rattling breath, feeling my rib cage creaking.  I had to remind myself that I was getting older, that I didn’t have the same strength as I’d once possessed.  I was a crippled shell of a man, trying to undo the mistakes of the past – and blocked, prevented.

I bent down, gathering up the few remaining components that had escaped PowerBolt’s assault.  “More like PowerBrat,” I snarled to myself, the words more sorrowful than angry.

Not much had escaped his blasts, of course.  Most of the integral components, including the main drive chip that had taken me hundreds of painstaking hours to assemble, were smashed to splinters.  I could perhaps recycle some of the incredibly rare raw materials, but I’d have to rebuild all the complex assemblies.

Even though I knew that it was no use, I couldn’t help raging against the man in my head, endlessly replaying what-if scenarios.  I had been so close!  The machine had been powering up, getting ready to take me back to the chosen moment, when PowerBolt came smashing in.  Just a few more minutes, and I would have been gone, finally beyond his reach!

“Saving the world from meddling interference,” he announced to me, as his blasters turned my hard work to rubble.  As if he had any right to judge humanity, to single-handedly condemn it to live with its horrifying mistakes of the past!

I tried to think of what I could have said to him, to convince him that my “fiendish quest” was for the best, but I knew that there was nothing.  I’d even tried, once, back when I thought that I had more time.

I had captured him, bound him with energy fields to contain his power beams, and tried to explain my reason why the past had to be changed.  I showed him the photographs of those people, suffering on the edge of death.  I read him accounts of the Allied soldiers when they finally discovered the atrocities that their enemy had been committing.  I even showed him my wrist, let him see the tattooed numbers that were still faintly readable.

And then, when I set him free, he knocked me out, dragged me out of my research laboratory – and set the building ablaze.

There was nothing I could do, no way for me to change the man’s mind.  This had been my last chance, and it had failed.

My eyes turned towards the device in the corner, covered with a white sheet.  I could feel my hands trembling, but I forced them to be still.  It was the only way.

I pulled the sheet down, revealing the sleek, dangerous lines of the machine hidden beneath.  I’d never built anything like this before.  Years ago, I had sworn that I never would.  A weapon?  It was wrong, it was what my captors had demanded from me.  I swore upon my soul that I would never create another device intended for harm.

But now, I could see no other option.  And it was for a good reason, in the end, I told myself.  And even I didn’t know the extent of PowerBolt’s strength – maybe the weapon would only cripple him, giving me enough time to escape to the past.

But I had to use it, now.  I could feel the cancer deep inside my bones, growing stronger each day as it sapped me.  I knew that I didn’t have long.  This next attempt might well be my last.

And I wouldn’t let myself fail.

With trembling breath, I returned back to my bench, beginning the long and painstaking process of reassembling the time flux components.  But my eyes kept on being pulled off to the corner, to the sinister weapon that stood there.

A weapon of such elegant simplicity.  And the logic behind it had been so simple.  A natural chain reaction, amplified from the subatomic level up to vastly heightened strength.

I estimated a roughly seventy percent chance that the entire ionosphere would ignite, and an eighty percent chance that life on Earth would be extinguished within two months.

But if I could go back, could change the past, I wouldn’t ever have to use it.

With one last, deep breath, ignoring the tightening in my chest as my heart beat shallowly, I returned to my work.

I stared into the crackling chamber, trying in vain to see through the flickering light at the small block of aluminum that had been placed within.  “This isn’t bad for my eyes, is it?” I asked, probably too late.

But behind me, the scientist standing at the control panel just chuckled.  “Nah, it’s fine,” he told me.  “These goggles are really just for the over-zealous safety people.  They spend most of the time protecting my forehead.”

After another minute of staring fruitlessly into the small chamber through the thick protective glass panel, I gave up, turning back around.  “So, can you tell me more about this ‘brane shifting’ phenomenon?” I asked, hoping vaguely for some good quotes that would help provide a solid finish to my article.

“I can, but probably nothing that you’ll actually understand,” the other man replied, scratching at a small beard on his chin.  “Gimme a second to think about a good analogy.”

The man might be wearing a lab coat and goggles, but he still didn’t seem like much of a scientist to me, I couldn’t help thinking.  Under the white coat, which hung loosely open in the front, he wore faded jeans and a button-up plaid shirt.  Between the clothing and the aw-shucks attitude, he gave me the impression more of a part-time farm hand than a serious researcher pushing the boundaries of science and physics.

And despite the fact that he still looked like a fresh-faced youth struggling to grow his first beard, Professor Gene Hardy had his full doctorate.  Every time I considered that, I felt quite inadequate in my own qualifications, nothing but a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

Because I’d taken a couple science classes, my editor had assigned me to the science beat.  I now spent most of my time nodding and putting on an understanding expression as professors and academics spat gobbledygook at me across their messy, paper-covered desks.  Despite the expression, however, it almost all went over my head.

A good analogy would be a welcome break from my usual dense line of science that my interview subjects tried to feed me.

Dr. Hardy made a couple last adjustments, and then stepped away as the violent blasts of light from within the heavily armored chamber began to subside.  “All right, let’s try this,” he said, stretching his arms back behind his back so that his joints popped.  “I’ve got an analogy, but I’m not sure how it will hold up.”

I nodded, checking my voice recorder to make sure that it was running (it was).

“Everything in the universe,” Dr. Hardy began, “has its own location.  Coordinates in space and time.  This location is an integral part of every object – it defines that object’s existence.  Without a location, a thing can’t really exist.”

He held up a finger.  “At least, we assume.  Remember that all of this is theoretical – we’re pretty much just guessing.”

“But of course, things aren’t ever as simple as what we’d like.  As it turns out, this location, these coordinates embedded in every object, also contains the history of that object.  People who believe in homeopathy will rejoice when they hear this – the coordinates of some object don’t just tell where it is now, but also where it was, showing how it’s moved around the universe.”

Hardy scratched his chin again.  “My analogy is to compare it to a FedEx package,” he said.  “If a package has been bounced around a bunch by FedEx, you can look at all the airport and location codes stamped on it, and you can figure out both where it is – the destination address – and where it has been – all the other airports that package has passed through.”

I nodded.  “Okay, that sort of makes sense,” I said, not lying.  “But so what’s your big fancy machine here doing?”

“Well, like I said, this is all pretty much just educated guesswork at the moment,” Hardy replied.  “And while that’s good enough to get into some scientific journals, it’s not really useful in the real world.  So this, here, is all supposed to prove the theory.  We erase the coordinates, and poof!  Object vanishes.”

The light and energy crackling inside the chamber had almost completely faded away, now, and Hardy gestured towards the viewing panel.  “Oh my god,” I gasped, as I peered inside.

The aluminum block on the platform within the chamber had vanished.

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool,” Hardy agreed, but he wasn’t looking as happy as I would have expected.  “See, erasing the coordinates from the object makes it disappear.

“But once it’s gone, it’s gone.  It’s proving to be a lot tougher to get it back…”

When I stepped out of Starbucks, latte in hand, and spotted the alien in the street, my first thought was Oh, please god no.

My second thought was Great, now I’ll have to explain to my boss why I’m late.  Why do I have to live so close to the ground zero?

I knew why, of course.  My bank account was distressingly low, and rents were cheap around the alien’s landing sites and established bases on Earth.  No one really wanted to live next to our overlords, be constantly reminded of how our people had been conquered.

Besides, I thought as I watched the alien shamble up the street, bellowing out tinny commands through a small metal box clamped in amid the green tentacles, our alien overlords turned out to be real jerks.

I started to turn away, hoping to maybe duck up a side alley so I could still make it to my office on time, but the alien caught the movement and gestured to me with a tentacle.  “You, Human!” it rasped at me from that tinny little box.  “You Will Bow!”

“Can I not?” I asked, knowing that it was no use but giving it a try anyway.  “This coffee is really full, and I don’t want to spill on my new pants-“

With a bellow, the alien reached into its nest of tentacles and produced a large laser cannon, which it hefted with considerable difficulty.  “Puny Insect, Do Not Test The Might Of The Kalaxaranian Empire!” it bellowed, its eyes waving with agitation at the end of their stalks.  It leveled the weapon and squeezed off a shot.

Unfortunately, stalked eyes are not good for sighting down the barrel of a weapon, and the shot went wide.  Ten feet away from me, a parking meter exploded in a shower of quarters.  “Dammit!” the alien growled, trying to adjust its wildly fluctuating aim.

I knew that this would just take longer, add to my delay.  “Okay, okay, I’m bowing,” I called out hastily, setting down my cup of coffee on the ground beside me.  I got down on my knees and waved my arms forward towards the alien, the weird gesture that these idiots insisted was a sign of honor.

The alien put away the laser cannon quickly.  I couldn’t read tentacle gestures, but I would have bet that it was signaling relief that it didn’t actually have to shoot any more.  Really, the whole thing was embarrassing.

The aliens had arrived a few years previously in a giant horde, all set to invade us, their ships blistering with weapons.  Unfortunately, although the monsters had cracked the cold fusion barrier and carried technological marvels, they had simply no sense of tactics or skill in battle.  They simply landed and started blasting away at trees and squirrels, succeeding only in causing a few scattered forest fires.

The Powers That Be, however, decided that, to best explore the tech of these new invaders, it would be easier to just surrender, rather than crushing them in a fight.  We give the aliens some lip service and a few trinkets, our esteemed leaders figured, and in return we get a new leap forward in technology.

Well, that part worked out all right.  My cold fusion powered Jetta was testament enough to that.  Scientists were already predicting that energy issues would be fully solved by the end of the decade.

But no one had figured on the aliens leaving behind a force to “Ensure Peace And Order In Our Loyal Conquered Subjects.”

So now, whenever one of these big blobs ambled out of their compound into our world, we all had to scrape and bow, pretend that we were subservient.  It was, I thought to myself as I watched my coffee cup tremble on the ground, a royal pain in the ass.

But after a few minutes, the alien was satisfied.  “Carry On With Your Tedious Lives, Humble Servants,” it rumbled, turning and meandering off down another street.

I waited until it was out of sight before leaping back up to my feet, grabbing at my coffee cup.  A small wave sloshed over the edge and caught my hand, making me curse, but I didn’t slow down as I hurried up the street.

I was definitely late, now.  Great.  Just great.

This story begins here.

The explosion erupted out of the compound like a gout of flame, a huge, rising, massive pillar of fire bursting up from Hell itself.  The heat and energy signature of the explosion registered even on the satellites orbiting the compound, far above.

Military troops had been positioned outside the compound, waiting for the signal from Captain Electric to move in.  Unfortunately, they were far too close to the explosion’s epicenter to escape.

Most of the troops, heavy armor units, were vaporized where they stood, the metal chassis of the hulking machines melting into slagged piles of annihilated metal.  At least the troops inside the machines died instantly, their bodies flash-fried into little more than ash…

Out further, several other units had been en route to the site when the explosion went off.  They were far enough away to escape certain death, although the shock wave swept across them, forcing vehicles to swerve off the road or be sent tumbling by the raw power pouring out.

The world, understandably, went into shock.

It took quite a while before the details of what had happened at the center of that explosion were made clear, at least to the few individuals with high enough security clearance to access the restricted files.

The signature of the power release was mapped to the central core unit of PowerPlug, the sidekick to Captain Electric.  The man carried around a nuclear fusion battery on his back; it was understandable that the thing would experience a catastrophic meltdown at some point.

Unfortunately, Captain Electric, one of the world’s foremost superheroes, was also believed to have perished in the explosion.  He and his sidekick were fighting against Dr. Hazard, a brilliant but disturbed individual who put his created robots to many malicious uses.

Both the hero and his sidekick were given full military funerals with all honors bestowed upon them – even though there were no bodies to bury.

But just after the explosion went off, the site was abandoned – there were no vehicles close enough to reach the epicenter that had survived the blast.  Choppers were immediately scrambled, but it took them nearly an hour to reach ground zero.

And thus, no one  saw as, about five minutes after the initial blast turned the compound into rubble, the rocks shifted slightly, moving aside.

Slowly, a gloved arm pulled itself up out of the rubble, clearing a path up to the sunlight as the dust settled back down.

The arm hauled itself up, clearing the way for the rest of the body to appear.  A man, bruised and battered but very much alive, crawled out, blinking in the cloudy sunlight.

It was hard for the man to rise to his feet; he suspected that he’d broken several ribs, and possibly one of his arms as well, from how his left arm dangled down uselessly at his side.

But he managed to climb to his feet, and limped slowly away from the center of the explosion.

There were still patches of the man’s costume sticking to his figure.  The outfit had been all but destroyed by the fury of the eruption, but it held together and did its job long enough to protect the figure within.

On the back of the torn, tattered suit, the shape of a lightning bolt was still faintly visible.

Silently, filled with raging determination, the man staggered away.

Any observer, looking into the man’s eyes, would have turned away and shuddered.  Those eyes burned with an unhinged, deranged fire.

The man was filled with a red-hot determination.

He was not done with this world yet.

Continued from Part I, here.

“Captain…” I felt paralyzed, unable to move, unable to think.  This couldn’t happen.  My own mentor, my oldest and strongest friend, the pillar of my entire life – he had just turned against everything we’d believed in, everything we had fought for over the last two decades.

The Cap didn’t even glance at me.  Instead, he turned around to look at the screens behind Dr. Hazard.  “We need to minimize human loss.”  His voice was distant, cold…

“I’m doing my best to avoid any unnecessary loss,” the supervillain responded.  “We’re mainly targeting the structural components, setting off alarms whenever possible.  Most people should have time to escape.  And the backup systems will kick in as soon as my bots have constructed them.”

“Good, good,” the Cap nodded.  “And the armed forces outside this compound-“

“Not a problem.  I’ve already dispatched legions out to stop them from storming the building before I’ve sent out the signal.”

I shook my head, abandoned and left alone as the two men discussed their new plan.  Tears weren’t just welling up in my eyes, now – they were tracing their way down my face, over the fabric hood I wore to conceal my identity, dripping down onto my armor panels and then tracing paths down to the floor.

My oldest friend, the one man I relied on as a pillar of morality.  He couldn’t think this way, couldn’t give up.

But he had.

And now, there was no one left.  No one to turn to, no one to save the world.

No.

The only one left… was me.

I couldn’t be the sidekick any more.

For once in my life, for the first – and last – time, I had to be the hero.

Slowly, I started forward, walking across the chamber.  I could hear the Kill-Bots drawing very close, now, and knew that they’d be in the chamber in moments.  And without the Cap’s help, I couldn’t fight them off.  I tried to be surreptitious as i punched the one code I’d hoped to never use into my wrist-mounted control panel on my armor suit.

As I drew in close to the two men, Cap glanced up at me.  “Harry,” he said, his voice filled with all that old emotion, the love I knew he felt for me.  “Come, my friend.  This is the right thing to do.”

“No, Cap.”  My voice was choked with emotion, with tears.  “It’s wrong.  Please, we can’t do this.  It’s not our place.”

“It can be our place.”  Hazard stepped up alongside Cap, reaching out and putting one gloved hand on the superhero’s shoulder.  “Don’t you see, PowerPlug?  We have the chance to help humanity, to do more for our race than we’ve accomplished in the last hundred years!  To save ourselves!”

I shook my head, looking down so they wouldn’t see my eyes.  “No.  I can’t.”

“Then I’m sorry, my old friend.”  The Cap’s voice sounded wistful, but he still held that ring of conviction.  I’d heard that ringing in his voice when he spoke about saving every life, when he spoke about defending the world against villains like Hazard.

This would be the last time I heard that voice.

“I’m sorry too,” I said.

Perhaps something there, in my voice, gave it away.  Hazard was already turning away, but the Cap looked up, saw into my true mind.

Behind his half-face mask, I saw his eyes go wide, his hand come up to reach for me.  I didn’t know what he would have done, whether he would have just grabbed me, tried to stop me, or if he would have delivered the killing electrical blow.

But he was too late.

My finger pushed down on the button on my wrist.

And for just a moment, as my power source melted down and went critical, catalyzing an explosion that would wipe this entire facility – and everything within a quarter mile – off the map, I saw the man’s eyes.

My mentor’s eyes.

They looked almost… peaceful.

To be concluded!