When Diss awoke, she could hear the steady beeping of an EKG in the background... something that she hadn't heard in years. She'd never been willing to hang around a hospital since the first time, and how everything seemed to go wrong right as she walked by. The chaos. The yelling.

She sat up abruptly, in a burst of excitement, looking at the machine and its digital read-outs... and reached out to touch it. Was it true? Were her powers gone? And... abruptly, the machine went dark. She shook her head for a moment, sad that her curse was still with her... but glanced around.

Oh. There were other machines here. Dozens of them. Even a blood pressure cuff on her arm she somehow hadn't noticed, with its own readout, not even two feet away. And... the only one that had died off... was the one she had touched. A soft smile. Well. Maybe she could work with this.

Spike blinked awake, shaking himself, as he saw her reaching out... the dead machine... and the odd rapid shift between sorrow and hope that ran across her face. "You feeling okay, sweetheart?"

She turned back to him. "Better than ever, love. All the aches and pains from years of throwing bales of hay seem to be gone, and that terrible headache from when I was using the power... gone. I... think my power might be weaker now. But if you can still get me to someone to help train me so I only fry things that I want to, I'd appreciate it."

Spike pulled to his feet beside the hospital bed. "Of course. If you want to relax and retire now, you can. You saved the world, you deserve it. But if you want to come work with me, I bet we have a use for someone that can just kill all the tech in a room without killing whoever is in it. They'll cover your food and housing, too. Or you can just come move in with me."

Diss laughed. "You know what? That sounds like a good idea. After all, you might just need me to save you from some killer robots again."

***

Less than a quarter-mile from the hospital, in a hotel room at a La Quinta inn, a federal agent in a suit was sitting, watching, as the Lord of Iron finally stirred.

"Lord Randolph?"

Jonathan jerked awake on the bed, going from slowly waking up to completely alert, shaking his head, looking around. He was... in a bed. A normal bed. Not a jail. Not a hospital. When he'd gone under he'd been working with the doctors, slowly making the wires pull themselves out of his body as they cleaned and gauzed the areas... until finally he'd passed out from the pain.

He should be on a gurney, or a hospital bed. Hooked up to machines. He lifted the collar of the gown; there was a nasty scar, where the machine had attached to him... but it was all gone. No more wires. He felt... better than he had before the machine had struck him. This was... what was this?

He looked at the agent for a moment, absently checking for things nearby he could control. The bed... had a metal frame. So did the window, and the chain hanging from it. The agent was armed, clearly, but could he stop the man before he pulled the handgun.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, Lord Randolph. I'm David, and I'll be your caseworker. I've been assigned to you as you go through this transition."

The man looked somewhat flustered. Awed. Not afraid, the way that most Feds did when he'd met them before.

"You've been pardoned, you have a substantial bounty payment for destroyed machines in a briefcase right here, people from every newspaper and station I've ever heard of looking for interviews, and even someone from Paramount looking to see if you're interested in a movie deal. I've only got a certain number of hours each week to help each of the cases I work on, so I would highly recommend hiring an agent of your own, sir."

He blinked, what the Fed was saying sinking in with each word. And when he finally stopped, he shook his head. "No... Its not Lord Randolph. Its The Lord of Iron, when I'm working. When I'm among friends, its John. Why am I feeling like this? Before we got started, the doctors told me I'd be in recovery for weeks, and that they'd need to be extremely careful to avoid infections... everywhere. Have I been out that long?"

"Ahh... No, sir. Ahh... John. At the request of Spike, we had one of our Metas come through and speed your recovery. Once you were recovered, it was felt you might not want to be in a hospital, surrounded by soldiers and agents, when you awoke. If you want, I'll leave from here and you never have to see a federal agent again."

"..Spike. My Nemesis. Had them speed my recovery." He glowered for a moment.

"And I never said we were friends, David. Its the Lord of Iron." Was the idiot truly unaware of just what he was capable of? Of what his objectives were? He'd stated fairly clearly that he was going to conquer the world at least a few times. Even directly to Spike himself.

Did they think he was going to settle for a pardon and being famous? Well. Rich and famous. But still. It did give him options. He could pretend to be out of the business for a while... but that just meant he'd need to.. how did these young people say it... reboot his career. Perhaps buy a few miles of wires and chains, get some henchmen, and start in some poor, pathetic country. Start small and work his way up. If he could have a network of wires running the length of a continent, what could he accomplish? Was what he did in Mexico the upper limit of his powers?

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The Lord of Iron aimed to find out.

"I'll take the money, of course. And... give me the contact information for these interviews and I'll handle it from there."

***

A young woman with green hair, and red, pupil-less eyes greeted Doctor Wayson and Bill at the front door, she seemed to be a secretary, or at the very least not a combat operative, with a vivid red dress suit complimenting her orange skin. "Doctor Wayson! Welcome to the DMA. Director Thomes is currently not in his office, but he asked me to take you to him when you arrived. If you could come with me, please?"

William was hesitant for a moment; she hadn't even asked for his gun, despite him having set off the detector as he passed in, the two guards just glancing at the orange woman and then back at the door. He'd been on the verge of offering it to them, when Wayson put a hand on his shoulder. "Mister Harrick. I don't think a gun really matters in here."

A quick nod... and the two followed the woman through through the lobby, another security door... and into a long hallway. Bulletproof glass panels lined the walls, revealing rooms mostly empty; practice chambers, firing ranges, equipment storage... finally, they reached a room where the Director; who looked indescribably old; surprisingly fit but wrinkled, covered in scars, visibly limping across the room as two technicians in white coats and one man wearing nothing but boxers, seated in a chair, spoke back and forth.

When the door opened, the men in the white coats continued arguing... as Thomes turned to the door, nodding. "Doctor Wayson and loyal bodyguard. Come on in. I'd like to talk to you a bit about Boost. And Reflex."

Wayson blinked. "Oh. Well. As you may know, all of our research on Reflex, as well as the... physical remnant... we were using to produce the drug were lost in a robbery before we reached what I'd call a Field-Ready state. And without that... physical remnant.. we haven't been able to get back started again. I promise you that, once it was ready, we fully planned on selling the substance directly to you here at the DMA, nothing like what this Eyeball gentleman did with it. Boost is something the same research team was able to produce afterwards, and still in testing as well. We only recently performed our first human trials and, well."

He glanced at the men in white coats, and stepped closer to Thomes, dropping his voice. "If they hadn't come in, with a letter from Apollo, I wouldn't have let them test it. Every mutant is different. Not all metas are even mutants. The version we've got might work on a tenth, or a twentieth, of them, and the one test we had before this Diss girl permanently lost his powers after overdosing on it."

Thomes nodded. "Of course. I understand completely. Frankly, if you'd walked in here with a finished product of Reflex, it would have been game-changing and made you a wealthy man. The version that's out now already is; we just need to be cautious who we give it to. I've been ordered to go along with an agreement to purchase the current version from that criminal, so our people can use it overseas... but I was wondering. If I were to give you access to the body of the titan, Lightning... the fastest speedster ever born... would you be able to produce something as good? Or perhaps even better?"

Wayson smiled. "I have no idea, director. The man whose body we recovered was physically able to move at truly ridiculous speeds, surviving friction and impact that would kill a normal man... and had a form of... super-adrenaline, we call it, that boosted his reflexes well beyond normal. Every speedster is different, but we'd certainly be willing to try."

"Excellent. Have your people come in, tell me what they need, and we'll go from there. From what I understand, they may well be trying to make their own new version of it on that island when they have it finished setting up, and I'd prefer to have production up before that happens. As for Boost..."

He gestured at the seated man, still arguing with the two lab-coated technicians. "We've got volunteers with useful but weak powers who would be interested in the experiments. If you've only got enough people to work on one, Reflex is the priority."

"Oh, no, sir. We can work on both at once. Actually, we've got another project we're working on you might be interested in."

William glanced at his boss. "You sure, boss? We've only got a prototype for Apaec."

Wayson shrugged. "Of course. But its a whole different team from the reflex one, and this seems like the right audience." He turned to Thomes.

"You know how Exo is making high-end prosthetics for people whose arms can't be regenerated? The big problem for them, why we don't have awesome arm-lasers and so forth... is always power. All sorts of companies have made prosthetics. We've had a dozen different Space Marine power-armor wannabes. But its always too big, or runs out of juice too fast."

He grinned. "What if... we could get the person wearing the suit to generate the power themselves?"

***

The revelation about the arrival of the Jotun did more than just give Ascension motivation to be a bit more proactive about defending humanity. Eyeball's advice did more than just give him new concepts, ideas, to slowly push the world towards the right way of thinking; away from Oligarchy, towards collectivism.

They made Ascension aware, in advance, of opportunity. For the next few years, it would prepare. It would build. And while it would help ensure humanity survived the invasion, it would also make very sure that, when humanity was crushed beneath that invasion... Ascension would be there to pick up the pieces.

Having accepted advice from one human, Ascension decided to take it from others. To analyze the internet. Popular media. It even looked at the old movie series, Terminator. While time travel was impossible, the idea of a cybernetic creature wearing a casing of human flesh wasn't too dissimilar from its own Pale Ones. And with a little work and careful design... it could easily create infiltrators that would move undetected. Everything about them would appear human from the outside; and they could quietly infiltrate all around the world once they were perfected.

Starting, of course, with this organization Eyeball was building; it would be a good place to send the prototype.