Jason had never been particularly fond of mushrooms. He'd never actually taken anything other than pot or alcohol of that description; and had spent a ridiculous amount of time deployed in places where alcohol was strongly frowned upon. Seeing Roy sitting across from him, the soothing music playing in the background... this was supposed to be making things as comfortable as possible. He didn't look at the tiny brown lump; simply tossing it into his mouth; grimacing at the texture; and chewing for a few seconds before swallowing. He sighed.

"Alright then. There we go. And now I'm just supposed to what... take a nap? watch a movie? Its hard to believe that you hang out with all of your patients for hours on end when they try this."

Roy chuckled, and checked his notebook for a moment. "Not generally. On the other hand, if you have a reaction, they want to know quickly, and we want to do whatever it takes to make sure it works out well for you. Let me know when you feel different, or if you do. Its always possible that this might not impact your physiology at all; your brain chemistry has changed, so...We're hoping it has the same restorative effects id did on our other patients."

Jason shook his head. "Well now. That's just a great way to put my mind at ease. 'Hey, we have no clue what this is gonna do'. I suppose we can just put on a movie for now then. Do...." He blinked. Roy's face looked.... wrong. In fact, the wall looked wrong. Everything seemed...

***

Arakiel absently kicked the ash beneath his feet to reveal what he'd just tripped on; only to find a skull. More than one; at least five, two normal in size, the rest of varying, smaller, sizes. Five corpses. Not fifty meters from the bunker. Of course. What did he expect? There had been a nuke landing not five miles from here. He took a deep breath; and had another coughing fit. If he weren't wearing a helmet, undoubtedly there would be blood dripping down his chest at this point. Every inhalation was agony, as if he were sucking down acid, or powdered glass. He glanced at the geiger counter. Still clicking like mad, if he hadn't muted it. Ugh. They'd told him the layer of lead they sprayed on the old Kamikaze suit would keep him alive long enough. Seemed they were right. Barely.

The ruins were old. Thousands of years; from what he'd learned, probably Minoan; built on top of a far, far older structure. He reached the target; where he knew the entrance to the bunker was; and what looked like an ordinary stone slab, an outcropping of a temple as old as the pyramids. He sighed; and leveled his rifle; he only had thirty percent charge left, but...

The plasma rifle flash-vaporized a layer of stone each time he pulled the trigger. By the time it reached fifteen percent, there was a visible, gaping hole, and the rock was glowing red-hot. He kicked the stone a few times; on the third kick, a several-hundred pound boulder, once part of a slab, started rolling down the hill... crushing the pile of corpses he'd walked by a few minutes before. And revealing... a staircase, leading down. He was out of batteries. Not that it mattered.

Another deep breath; more bloody, hacking coughs. He started down the stairs, ignoring the beautiful carvings, depictions of animals, of temples; and at the bottom, a door. It was locked, of course; with the ancient, magical equivalent of a combination lock; a pair of handles that needed to be shifted, angled, and pushed just the right way to free the latches; anything else would send the tunnel collapsing atop him. Incredibly durable, and only intended to be opened by one man; a man who had died over ten thousand years ago.

He took hold of the two grips; and after a few moments of focus, set them into just the right spot; the door opening with a hiss of the clean, pure air inside as he stepped in... to a beautifully lit, golden chamber.

In the center, a single golden orb floated, in a beam of blue light, atop a pyramid made of a beautiful silver latticework, softly glowing with that blue light. The walls appeared to be made of gold, and a nice, comfortable chair, built for someone enormous, sat beside it... and contained what appeared to be a 12-year-old child. Wearing some sort of sleek blue body-armor with a white robe over it, including a full face-covering helmet; not that different, aside from the ancient greek aesthetic, to the charcoal grey armor he himself wore. The boy had a silver blade in his hand; but simply dropped it beside him on the chair.

Arakiel didn't even bother to raise his rifle. He knew the man wasn't going to try. "Titanslayer. Apollo. Traitor to Earth. I don't know why you betrayed us. I don't know what the Jotun, or this accursed Emperor, promised you. But you're not getting it. The ships got word. The other blades have already been destroyed. The one you're holding is all that's left."

The figure focused on Arakiel for a moment. His expression was impossible to read through the helmet. "I'm not a traitor. Never was. I'd always planned to die here.... though, I did hope that some fragment might be reborn, until now. In a few hours, whether you kill me or not, that thing..." He nodded at the orb. "Will kill us both. All of the Jotun. And the Emperor, too. He's almost here."

He stopped... looking at the orb. If he shot it with the rifle.... everything would go black. Instantly. "...What is it?"

"A marble, suspended in time. When that shell is broken, the effect ends.... and it turns into a mass of raw uranium ore bigger than our solar system. Collapses into a 'supermassive' black hole. And takes us, the Jotun, and the Emperor, on one last ride into oblivion. Cronos used his power on it, as it was frozen. He tested the effect, at a smaller scale, first. But the whole idea was that if he didn't come here, once every few years, it would wipe us all out. He made sure the ones who posed a threat to him knew about it. An ultimate deterrent."

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Arakiel stepped closer, staring at it. The ambition of it. A horrific, ultimate weapon, crafted by someone who viewed himself as the final, eternal king of earth. "...This.... all of this. So much death. Just a trap to kill the Emperor? Why?"

"I didn't mean for it to work out like this. I thought, maybe, we could beat the Jotun, and get that thing out there, use it on the Emperor, far from here. But.... I miscalculated. Repeatedly. We kept working against each other, messing up the future. I thought we were safe. I'd killed all the Titans, now we could plan a defense without them. No-one left to be controlled who mattered that much. And then you made another one. You and that... Doctor Disaster lunatic."

"And then you killed him, too. He was protected. Shielded. All of the Titans were. They would never have been able to control them."

Apollo sighed. "Yes, they would. I thought.... it could only control one person. The Jotun records showed it could overwhelm any defense, gather insane amounts of intelligence, reading the surface thoughts of every living being on the planet and give them control of any single man for.... just a few days. It was built to use on a King; they hoped, someday, to make it strong enough to work on the Emperor."

"You thought." He stepped closer, raising the rifle to focus on Apollo's head. He could see the grisly result. The armor, while sturdy, wasn't good enough to stop plasma at close range. "You thought it would only work on one man. You killed so many who could've fought back just because of that stupid assumption. It worked on hundreds. Thousands. We don't even know how many. Nukes. Plagues. Mass-death. Released by whole squads of mind-controlled guards and soldiers. And then the Jotun land... and with no Titans to fight them this time."

Apollo popped the helmet off, setting it on the chair beside him. "I was wrong. We worked against each other, and I couldn't see far enough. Maybe if I'd died, or you had, we could have won this. But.... all we've got left is this." He looked... tired. Far too old and broken for such a childish face. He looked at the orb. "I put it in stasis, years ago, with a device Hephaestus built before the rebellion. I changed it, once I knew we couldn't win. When I die, it goes off. Feel free to kill me. Just... wait til the Emperor arrives. Save our colonies."

He stopped. "Oh. Well. No need to wait, any longer." Arakiel could feel... something wrong. He felt weak... as if the life was being pulled from his flesh, as if he were growing decades older in seconds. Apollo reached down and picked up the silver blade, looking back at Arakiel. "Well. This makes the second precognitive to commit suicide. Hopefully your children do better." He settled the blade against his throat. His arm quivering. "I.... don't know if I can. Can you... please?"

Arakiel gave a nod; and raised the gun one last time. A momentary flash. He barely had time to register the impact of a plasma bolt on soft flesh before the world became darkness as that golden orb abruptly expanded to fill the room.

***

Jason jerked up, staring at Roy from the chair. The man was nodding along to the beat, writing in his notepad, mumbling to himself... and smiled. "Ahh, out of it, I see! It was interesting. It worked much faster on you than normal, and you seem to be coming out of it faster, too. Are you feeling any better?"

Jason jerked to his feet, feeling himself. His lungs... were fine. His arms and legs.... no longer sore. Everything was okay. Was that.... was that a dream? Was it a nightmare? Or.... had he just had a vision of the minutes before his death? He looked at Roy for a moment. "You. Roy. Have you ever heard of a... 'Doctor Disaster' before?"

The man blinked. "Oh, yes. Brilliant man. A metahuman, I think, though not sure what kind. Probably able to think of several things at once. Mad as a hatter, though. Had this weird obsession with making hybrids and genetic freaks, cybernetic freaks. His real name isn't Disaster, of course, but I think he actually had it changed, legally, before he fled the country to avoid prosecution. It was amusing, actually... If I recall correctly, Thomes wanted to use the charges to leverage him into working here."

Jason slowly nodded, looking at the floor. Either it was a strange nightmare, and he'd heard that name somewhere before.... or it was a prediction of the future. A horrific wasteland, the aftermath of a failed Jotun war.... one sabotaged by Apollo, who thought he was doing the right thing.

He needed to talk to Thomes. Or to Sam. Or to Apollo. Hell. He needed to talk to all of them. He turned, heading for the door, as Roy stood up. "Uh... are you okay? You shouldn't be walking around so much, you might hurt yourself." He yanked the door open, accidentally warping the hinges a bit. "Screw all of that. We need to talk to the man in charge. Now."

Roy sighed. "Everyone's already going home, or there. Is whatever it is gonna happen right now?"

"....No. Years out. Probably... five or six, at least. But it's bad. End of the world bad."

For his part, Roy was... a bit concerned. Normally, if someone had just taken something, and come out if it ranting about the end of the world, he would chalk it up to paranoia. "...I'll call Sam. Let him know whats going on. Just try to relax, okay?"

***

Dr. Sam Torrance slowly slid out of his car, grimacing at the heat as he leaned against the car, catching his breath. He should move to the other washington. It couldn't possibly be this hot right now. Maybe there would be some good job openings in Seattle?

His phone started ringing; he frowned. It wasn't a number he'd assigned a custom ringtone for, but it hadn't been blocked, either, so it must be... He tapped his earbud. "Go for Dr. T."

"Hey, boss. This is Roy."

Ugh. Roy. How the hell that man had gotten a job as a psychologist, and kept it so long, was a mystery. "What is it? I just got home, so this either needs to be damned important, or you're trying to sell me girl-scout cookies."

"Oh, actually, my daughter... wait. No. I was just talking to the new guy. Uhm. About his powers. And either he's crazy, or mind-altering chemicals can dramatically upscale his powers for a few minutes and he was accidentally seeing things in... another state."

Ahh, yes. He was at least smart enough not to blather classified information over a cell network. "... Is it anything I can do something about right now, or gonna kill us all by tomorrow?"

"No, but he says its urgent."

"Tell him to meet me in my office, first thing in the morning." Ugh. Did these people have no respect for personal time? He'd need to have a good talk with these people about priorities.