The office was fairly empty; a desk, a trash can, a few nice, comfortable chairs; and a massive, heavily overweight red-headed man sitting behind a desk with a curved row of monitors, mounted on a rack starting on the wall beside him, and ending on the desk; at least eight of them. The man glanced up as Jason entered, and nodded at one of the seats. "Go ahead and sit down, mister Bennet. You present an interesting conundrum."
Jason settled down in the seat, blinking; still needed to get used to the three eyes. "And why is that? Doctor... Terrance?"
"You can call me Sam." He leaned back in his chair, tapping a button on his keyboard a few times. "Normally, a caseworker would be dealing with you right now. We'd get you into training. Equipment. Put you in touch with someone from marketing. There would be an onboarding process where we would feel out your abilities, and put you with a team. For the really high-end metas we'd be prepping backup to watch their back while they go in. For the rest, a team whose abilities complement their own."
He studied Jason for a moment. "Honestly, I'm not sure what to do with you. If Ground is ever activated, you need to already be somewhere Lightning is going to hit, or its pointless. But lets be frank.... your power could be absolutely invaluable behind the stick of an aircraft... or a spacecraft... and Ground will probably never be activated. Honestly, we're going to do a few days worth of testing, to see if this 'feeling' of yours is legitimate, or if you really can only see a couple of seconds out. If its legit, we won't be as worried, for obvious reasons. If testing shows all you've got is a couple of seconds..."
He let out a sigh. "Then we'll have you on-call at one of our important bases, and you'll carry the right gear around with you all the time. Handle local missions if anything crops up. We'll be getting things together to really put you through the grinder for the next couple of weeks, figure out just what you can handle. If you're willing, I'd also like you to get a surgical augmentation... everyone assigned to the highest level of classification, aside from elected officials, gets a set of implants."
He tapped his forehead. "I've got one hundred and eighty tiny beads embedded in my skull that form a protective barrier. So does director Thomes and most of my team. Makes mind-reading impossible unless they get their hands on you physically, none of this 'watch you for a few days and learn you from a distance' nonsense... and I'd say it makes mind control impossible as well, but we've developed countermeasures, so someone else might have as well."
"If you're unwilling, then you're still part of project Ground; we need your power to make it viable. But if you're willing, you'll be read in and learn exactly how it works."
Jason inhaled deeply. "Honestly, being mind-controlled is scary as fuck. If you have something that can stop it, I'm down. Got enough demons in my head without someone on the outside making their own contribution."
"Good enough. I'll get you an appointment. I know you just came back to the states. Do you want to take a few days off, relax, maybe go visit family and friends? Honestly, waiting a few days to start the testing and training for the rest of this would give us more time to set some of this up, so we're good either way."
"...You people are paying me over a couple million dollars a year. I think I'd best earn my keep. You've got my cell number?"
Sam chuckled; and tapped a button on his computer again. Jason's ID suddenly buzzed. "Sure, though I won't need it. Go. Relax. Have some fun. We'll be making you work for it tomorrow."
***
The underground structure was a perfect sphere; heavily armored, with a relatively small top floor, a larger middle floor, and an equally small bottom; and it contained, for the most part, maps. Books. Globes. Statues. Some of them brand new, made within the past few weeks. Others thousands of years old. And in the midst of it, sitting at a chair next to a writing desk, appeared to be a small greek child; perhaps 12, and not particularly large for his age. He was staring at one of the many maps; this one over three thousand years old, a rough map of the earth with black ink smeared across most of its surface, and the title; 'Third Jotun Incursion, final months of Midgard.'
For one brief, shining hour, he'd seen a different future. One where he died; at least, this body did; but humanity survived. Not just survived; but thrived. Not just Hephaestus's grand dream of colonies to let humanity escape and flee into the distant void, but here, on earth. An extremely risky, dangerous future. But a far cry from his own previous plan, to sacrifice all of the earth to break first the Jotun, then the Emperor, and allow those colonies of Hephaestus's a chance.
He'd started to work out the possibilities. Do the research. Figure out what factors could possibly create that result, and how to make sure it came to pass.
And then... they vanished. The cataclysm had changed from the original plan. Now, it would wipe out most of the earth's military, then come to a halt in DC, instead of finishing the job. Perhaps a third of the US military, and most of its leadership, would survive the initial disaster, instead of all being lost. And not just the US; there would be scattered survivors of a variety of militaries.
Before, the only major resistance to the Jotun landing would be the legions of the dead, rising up after the cataclysm, to meet the Jotun landers. Numerous Jotun would be wounded or die; enough to keep the Jotun fleet stuck here until the Emperor inevitably arrived; but earth would have lost from the beginning. Now... They would fulfill their purpose; destroying any major industry and military complexes, killing any dangerous metahumans or threats to space-bound targets; and take even worse casualties.
Something had made a difference. It was difficult to make out; his powers seemed to be weaker, more fuzzy than normal, despite Ragnarok being less than a decade away. But for that brief time, he'd seen armies of robots, bands of titans and other metahumans, enormous flying monsters, fighting the Jotun; and not just devastating them, but actually winning. An expedition being launched, and the Emperor dying, far from earth.
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It all came down to one grim reality. Once again, someone else had developed precognition; and their influence on events was derailing things from his plan. At first, in a good way. Then... in a way that didn't matter.
He rose from the table, and turned to one of the many statues ringing his drawing room, and walked up; laying a hand on the smooth stone face, a near-perfect replica of a teenage girl over two thousand years dead. The Oracle. The true oracle. One who saw the future even better than himself... and had deliberately killed herself, overdosing on the chemicals that induced that euphoric state that she entered to augment her power.
If there was a such thing as a Titan of precognition, it had been her. She hadn't just seen the fall of earth. She'd seen the death of the sun. Of the universe. She'd stared into an endless, eternal void; and become obsessed with looking ever-further, in the hopes that, somewhere, far enough on, it might start to contract. To loop back in on itself. That something, anything, would go on.
If she'd ever seen anything, it had died with her. But she'd assured Apollo that his quest was hopeless. Humanity was doomed.
His 'quest'; one given to himself; had been to save humanity. In the beginning, he'd been finding a way to stop Cronos. Eventually, the Titan would have grown bored, wiped out the earth, and left. But solving that problem only led to another, inevitable fall; even excluding Cronos's little doomsday weapon that, without Apollo's intervention, would've turned the earth into a black hole a few months after his departure.
No.... that led to a much further down the line end. The Emperor, and the Jotun. His work with Hephaestus had led to a solution to save the species, if not the world; help humanity develop enough to get space travel, let them deal with a Jotun incursion so they would understand, and believe, the stakes, and then get some of them offworld. And then use Cronos's going-away present to kill the Emperor when he came to kill what was left after the Jotun had attacked; preferably hurting the Jotun enough that they were still in-system with their King when the black hole formed, healing their wounds, and taking out two threats to the new colonies at once.
And that end was coming soon. So many thousands of years of work, and hope had sprung forth... and then died... so near the end.
Why?
The answer wouldn't be in the ancient scrolls. Whatever it was would either be in the databases Loki had recovered from the Jotun, or it would be in whoever the new precognitive was. He'd try the former. Then seek out the latter.
***
The cafeteria was the strangest Jason had ever been in. Entirely aside from being able to call in orders for anything from steak to crab, there was a buffet; and one much higher quality than he was used to, sure. That was only to be expected; there were likely better ones at some of the casinos in vegas.
There was also, however, a cooler stocked up with beer of at least twelve brands; he studied it for a moment while waiting for his steak to cook; the amount of alcohol he'd had in the past six months was less than one of these bottles; in fact, if he recalled the last time he'd gotten back to the states, his tolerance had been much worse; some girl half his size had drunk him under the table when he was at that rodeo in wyoming.
He passed it up for now, just grabbing a coke; and looking around the room. No familiar faces. Well. Few familiar faces. At one of the tables sat a hero he had seen on TV a few times; Captain Thunder; who could generate soundwaves so intense they would rupture organs at thirty meters; or just create subtle sound effects that would sicken and confuse. He looked... relaxed, but dripping with sweat, wearing a simple white tank-top, and had a cart covered with pieces of armor set beside him; the only part of the purple armor he always wore on TV he still had on were the pants; even the boots were on the cart, leaving a pair of small, tanned bare feet on the cafeteria floor.
Jason thought for a moment... and shrugged, settling down at the same table once he had his steak. "Well then. Captain Thunder. Had a hard day's work?"
The man studied Jason for a moment; the native american man seeming to b e a touch out of it at present, not particularly caring about the new arrival. "Eh. Not really. Went in with a SWAT team in Jersey for some idiot robbing a bank. Don't usually have to go that far, and I hate spending hours in this armor, but.... Hmm. I'd say you know how it is, but I think this is the first time we've met. Just got here?"
Jason extended a hand. "Yep. They'll be testing my powers for the next few days before they decide what to do with me. Classified right now, so I can't say."
Thunder shook his hand, nodding. "Classified? That's odd. Well. If you're gonna ever be in public, somebody from marketing is gonna try to get you to wear a fancy costume, use some cool callsign. They're optional, but I sell about ten million worth of 'Captain Thunder' action figures and accessories a year, so I guess I'd recommend going with em. Just... don't make my mistake and go for heavy armor as a signature thing unless you really have to. Its great for when somebody shoots at you, but nobody's shot at me for years now."
Jason smiled. "I might not be the right one to say that to. Heavy armor would probably have saved me a few trips to the hospital... either by keeping me from getting ahead of my squad-mates by slowing me down, or by not getting as many bits of shrapnel stuck in me."
"Ohhh? A combat vet then? I take it you were in the desert?"
"Yep. My last day on the job, as it were, I ran into this giant monster of a meta... steel skin, spat fire, survived an armor-piercing grenade like it was nothing. Put me in the hospital. Woke up a mutant." He chuckled. "I was actually lucky; a tank shot the bastard and saved my life, or he would have torn me in half."
Thunder studied Jason for a moment, frowning. "That sounds familiar. Ahh, well. Good to have vets coming over here. Thought about a callsign? We're not the airforce, we let people pick their own... though not everybody has one."
Jason shrugged. "Everybody called me Kamikaze when I got out of the hospital. Might just stick with it. People who know me know it, and I've answered to it for years now."
"Ooof. Marketing won't like that. Don't get me wrong, it might still fly, but it's also gonna piss some people off. I'd recommend thinking of something new, but, well. I don't know your power, so I can't make a good recommendation. I was gonna go with something biblical, like the name of an angel of wrath or some such nonsense, but marketing tells me that people with 'Captain' in the name get an extra 27% in sales."
"Captain Kamikaze?"
Thunder stared at him for a few seconds. "...No. Seriously, just, no. All your buddies calling you that is one thing. You're a team. You.... should definitely talk to marketing before you pick a name. If you pick some ridiculous name at the start of your career, its gonna drag you down the rest of it. Imagine if you picked something stupid, like... with the eye, Three-Eyes, or Eyeball, or Cue-ball."
"Captain Eyeball?"
For just a moment, he started to look angry... before he noticed Jason's attempt to restrain his laughter, and shook his head, chuckling. "But seriously, don't. It can cause all sorts of problems."