Jon arrived home just in time to interrupt Heff perusing his kitchen. When he objected quite loudly to the large meal Heff had been assembling for himself from Jon’s food, Heff held his hands up sheepishly, and walked outside “to make some calls.” Jon knew that was the diplomatic way of saying that he was going to verify Jon’s freedom, but Jon didn’t have the patience to risk arguing over it. Instead he retreated into his lab to begin poring over what he could use to provide support. Unfortunately that wasn’t a long list. So much of his time and research had been spent augmenting his own biology, he hadn’t had much time or need left over to spend on trinkets or gadgets. As he went through his data, Heff stepped into the room, closing the door conspicuously behind himself.
“Kid after everything that’s happened, is this really the best place for you?”
Jon turned to him resignedly. “She asked me to help her. I thought I might have some gear she could use in here.”
Heff shook his head. “Let me worry about that. The girl has stones bigger than me to be working with you after what you did to her, but we don’t need to put her through that. I may not know her that well, but I saw the look on her face when I gave her my condolences. Let me worry about tech support. Your job is to fuck off, and not make things harder for her.”
Jon had a bitter expression on his face. “I can’t just abandon her after she gave me a chance to redeem myself.”
“Kid you’re never gonna redeem yourself. You’ll only be there to push every button she has until she goes mad from the confusion of it all.”
“I’m sorry, I have to see this through.”
Heff sighed. “I can’t stop you. Ultimately it’s her choice. I’ll be watching you though kid. Just remember that if need be, I could shut you down in an instant. I don’t care how much you mod yourself, I have more power in my pinky than you will ever have. Don’t fuck up because I will end you.”
Jon nodded silently. Really there was no adequate reply to that. Heff stared him down for a moment before stalking away. After a moment, Jon turned back to the data he had been sifting through. If he didn’t already have useful things, he would just have to make them. He began his process of sketching and typing, and soon he had come up with several useful ideas. A new mania entered his eyes as he worked feverishly, worked to burn the ever-present guilt that gnawed at his soul. Somewhere in the past month Amanda had been replaced by Danica in his mind. The pain he had inflicted had not been on Danica so much as it had been on the place Amanda held in his heart. The grief he felt for the loss of Amanda had absorbed the essence of Danica’s space in his soul, and thus madness glinted from his eyes as he worked.
**********************************************************
Heff watched silently from the control center where he monitored the cameras he had installed in Jon’s lab. Unlike most people, Heff had a real appreciation for the scientific work Jon produced. While the loss of the genetic enhancements to his brain certainly stymied Jon’s previous talent, he was still an unequaled genius who Heff had to respect. If he ever gained the level of scientific knowledge Heff possessed, the world might quake beneath the weight of his brilliance. Hell it already had, even without that bit of inspiration. Heff glanced at the schematics for the mind-wipe machine that he had taken from Jon’s lab. The world was a very broad term, but it was important to remember the people that lived on it.
Picking up the paper, he stuck it in the shredder. No one needed this abomination, certainly not the newly sane mad scientist burning the midnight oil on his computer screen. Eyes transfixed on the screen where Jon was displayed, he nearly shredded his own hand when Zed spoke into his ear.
“So how is he handling his freedom?”
Cursing, Heff righted his shredder from where he had knocked it over in his surprise.
“I’d think I would get used to that one of these days.”
Zed chuckled dryly. “Honestly I gave up on that a long time ago. Now I just enjoy it.”
Heff guffawed at that. “Touche brother, touche. As for your question, he hasn’t done anything untoward so far. Mostly just communications gear, nano-assembler, some mild self-defense tools, nothing our girl can’t handle easily.”
Zed nodded quietly. “Has he?...”
“He didn’t jump back on the gene science bandwagon if that’s what you’re gonna ask. It’s a relief, although I’m honestly surprised by some of the things he’s having to invent from scratch. Apparently he was an arrogant motherfucker and only followed one path all these years.”
Zed nodded again. “Well you know what they say about power.”
Heff snorted. “It’s not like we can say much on the power front.”
Zed shrugged. “True enough. The message remains though, even if the messenger is flawed.”
Heff looked back to the screen thoughtfully. “Like you said brother, true enough.”
*************************************************************
A week passed, and Jon met Danica at a cafe in town. They sipped drinks, and discussed the logistics of their future. He equipped her with long-range communications gear to help them stay in touch while in the field. For her part, she received his help gratefully.
“So, what’s the plan?” Danica asked him.
“Well, I’ve been designing gear to help me be useful in the field. I won’t be anywhere near as strong as I was before, but I should be helpful at least. I was thinking of going on patrol the next few nights in order to get used to it, while you investigate the Prophet.”
Danica nodded. “Well be careful. I still need your help with all this.”
Jon shrugged. “All I need is time. This is all a big change for me. Last month I was grieving the loss of my wife. Today I’m trying to adapt to an entirely new physical existence. I feel as if I’ve forgotten her with everything that’s going on.”
Danica looked at him sadly, but said nothing. Perhaps she simply had no answer for him. Still he hated feeling as if she pitied him. How many times had he donned the mask just to escape the pity in people’s eyes? The past month had been a blur of madness; now that he had rediscovered his sanity, it brought with it the pain he had forgotten.
He realized he was staring deeply into her eyes, and turned away awkwardly, clearing his throat. “Anyway, I have a force-field stronger than the one on the enterprise, so you’ve got nothing to worry about with me.”
She nodded silently again with a questioning look in her eyes before speaking. “Alright, as long as you’re safe.”
They parted ways after that, each pursuing their respective tasks. Jon was grateful that in his madness he had still thought to call in his vacation time at work. While they weren’t thrilled by his sudden long-term vacation, he had accrued a truly massive amount of vacation time over the years. Between that and the fact that he had tenure, he wasn’t worried about the prospect of losing his job. With at least another month of vacation time to burn, and no other obligations he was able to devote the next week to field-testing, and refining his new technology. Ultimately he had decided against retaining the Judge persona. He had too much emotional identity wrapped up in who the Judge was, and what he had done. In keeping with the theme, however; he had named his new persona “The Jury.” He hoped that this new identity would help him hold truer to his principles.
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His new shield technology was a marvel of engineering. It had even survived an RPG blast from one of the better-funded criminal organizations he had tracked down during his week on patrol. Though it didn’t mimic many of his old attributes, the safety it provided helped him feel more like his old self. He had also created wrist devices which could harness the energy from his shield, and fire it as blasts of plasma similar to his previous energy control. Though it pricked his pride to feel so derivative of his own designs, the familiarity helped to ease the transition.
By the end of the week, he was tracking down clues on the Prophet in earnest. Unfortunately he was having little luck, stalking through a dark alley looking for an informant; when Danica appeared from behind him.
“Jon.”
He whirled around, bringing his wrist-weapon to bear, and charging it with a mental command through his neural interface before he stopped, blinking.
“Danica?” Sorry, you startled me.”
She chuckled. “Zed says the shadows like to play tricks on people. I swear I wasn’t trying to.”
He shook his head as he lowered his wrist. “Well that would explain why Zed always does that to people. I just thought he had a bad sense of humor.”
“Well there is that, too. Anyway, I’ve found one of the Prophet’s old lairs. It seems like he switches them up a lot, but he left some gear at this one, and I thought you’d like to come along to investigate with me.”
“Sure, count me in.”
With that, she dragged him through a wall into her shadow realm. He always found it to be a strange place. Something about it made his skin tingle, like an itch he couldn’t quite scratch. Though he couldn’t tell how she knew where to stop, she chose a patch of wall near a patrician-looking column formed from the pervasive shadow-stuff. He tried to analyze the architecture of it, but the form seemed to drift slightly, as if it’s existence was predicated on someone trying to hold a thought in their head. As he examined it in more and more detail, the whole edifice almost seemed to become unstable, jumping more quickly between increasingly varied forms. Finally, it erupted in a puff of what could only be described as cotton-candy made of shadows. This quickly dissolved into nothingness while Danica stared at it, and then glanced back at Jon.
“Um, you saw that too right?”
“Yes, I take it that’s not normal?”
“Ya that’s a first for me.”
As they watched, a new column began budding from the floor like the sapling of a plant.
Finally she looked up at him. “Anywho, let’s get going.”
He nodded, and they stepped through the portal she opened for them, exiting into a warehouse.
Jon investigated his surroundings for a moment. “He really seems to like warehouses doesn’t he?”
She nodded. “You’d be surprised how many of them there are in the city right now. Seems like it’s a bad time to be in the warehouse business.”
He shrugged. “Considering how every villain seems to have their own abandoned building, I’m not sure theres a good time to be in the warehouse business.”
She laughed softly, and for a moment he remembered why he had been attracted to her in the first place. He thrust that thought from his head with all the force of his will.
“Let’s see what we can find.” He made a beckoning motion with his hand, as he began stalking silently forward.
The building turned out to be entirely empty of people, and once that fact was verified they got down to the business of analyzing what they could find in the lab space the Prophet had installed.
“This reading doesn’t make any sense.”
Danica looked up from a stack of papers she had been going through.
“Hm?”
“This is the same compound that drove me insane, but…”
“What?”
“This should only function as a mild sedative. It wasn’t even strong enough to knock you out. It shouldn’t have had that effect on me.”
“Well to be fair I was really hopped up on energy drinks before I got abducted that day, so they might have countered the effects on me. I get what you’re saying though.”
Jon had a sneaking suspicion he knew the answer to this riddle, but he was too scared to share it; both with Danica, and with himself.
“Is there anything to indicate where he went next?”
“No, nothing.”
“Who said I went anywhere?” the Prophet spoke from behind them.
They both turned, panicked. Jon opened fire with his wrist-weapons, while danica was distracted forming her defenses. The Prophet laughed as John’s energy blasts bounced harmlessly off the man’s skin. Meanwhile it had only taken Danica a moment to form her weapon and armor. Charging forward, she yelled a battle cry. Somehow, her sword passed harmlessly through the Prophet as if it were made of air. As it passed out of his body, he reached down with an expression of casual cruelty on his face. Grabbing it now as if it were again solid to him, he wrenched the sword downward until it shattered; leaving nothing but shards that slowly evaporated into wisps of smoke.
Danica looked stricken as she realized he had just killed Ahron. In her moment of hesitation he backhanded her into a nearby wall, where her armor absorbed the force of the blow. Jon had been continuing to pump blast after blast into the Prophet, but they had all been as ineffectual as the first. Turning back to Jon, and ignoring the continuing barrage of fire, the Prophet grinned maniacally.
“Soon Jon, soon we will be free. You do not understand yet, but you are the means of our liberation.” The Prophet laughed maniacally over the sounds of laser fire. Suddenly, mid-laugh, he rushed forward, thrusting his hand through Jon’s shield as if it weren’t there. He ripped the centerpiece from Jon’s chest, and all of Jon’s systems went dark. Panicked, Jon pulled a knife from it’s holster, and stabbed it into the Prophet’s side. It was not empowered. It was not electrified, explosive, or laser-empowered. It was a regular knife, and it slid into the Prophet’s side like butter. The man stopped laughing, and began screaming, shoving Jon away so hard he landed in the next room.
With a burst of smoke, the Prophet disappeared, taking Jon’s chestpiece with him. Jon groaned. Wires extruded all around the gaping hole at his center, and the viewscreen inside his helmet was now opaque, rendering him mostly blind. With another groan he pulled the helmet from his head, and sat up. Luckily the fall had not broken anything, but his ruined battle-armor was damage enough.
Danica called out to him from across the building.
“Jon?”
“Over here. I’m ok Danica, just a bit banged up.”
She emerged from behind an empty pallet.
“He killed Ahron. He killed one of my friends, Jon.”
Jon nodded sadly. “I’m sorry.”
“Also he slipped through the shadow passages, the same way I do. I retreated there after he threw me through the wall. When you stabbed him, he emerged there, sprinting for all he was worth. I wasn’t able to get to him before he opened another portal to somewhere else, and got away.”
“I need to reempower myself.”
“What? That’s what you’re thinking about right now?”
“Before, I could at least fight him on even footing. Now I’m worthless. Did you see how casually he overpowered me? I’m nothing like this. Nothing without my powers.”
“That’s not true and you know it. You stabbed him and he bled. You forced him to run away. I’d say you were the most useful person in that fight.”
“And yet he ripped the generator off my chest like it was nothing.”
“The generator?”
“My chestpiece. It housed a specially designed bio-generator. It was based on my old body. It essentially produced power the same way I used to, so that I could run all my systems. It was the only thing I could think of strong enough to maintain my shield without running out of juice.”
Danica’s eye twitched. “And that’s the one thing he took? The one thing he seemed most focused on?”
“Um, well….”
“Because he seemed very convinced that you were going to do something that would destroy the world or set him free, or whatever. An independent, portable power-source capable of Judge-level output sounds like it might power a pretty devastating weapon. Or really anything that psycho can imagine.”
Jon had the good grace to look chagrined. “Well when you put it like that… I mean I had no idea that’s what he would be after. How could I possibly know that?”
Danica sighed. “I know, it’s not really your fault, I’m just frustrated. I just lost a really good friend to all this.”
Instinctively, Jon reached out, and pulled her to him. Her arms wrapped around him, and they shared a brief moment of peace. Danica inhaled deeply, and suddenly stiffened, shoving him away.
“Don...Don’t touch me.”
Jon stared at her silently for a moment, and realized she was hyperventilating.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”
“No I understand, but don’t touch me. Not right now. I’m not ready.”
Jon nodded; unsure how to react.
“Ok. Um I’m sorry.”
She nodded back at him without saying a word. With a visible force of will, she returned her breathing to a more normal pattern.
“I’m sorry too. I’m not in control of… that. Just keep your distance.”
Jon nodded one final time as they gathered themselves to leave. Danica grabbed his arm to pull him through her portal, and he wondered how one form of contact was acceptable, but not the other. Luckily his vast intellect was just barely enough that he kept his mouth shut on the matter.