With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

25th October 2013
08:21 GMT -7

The squad in carbon fibre/ceramic armoured space suits spread out, spray guns at the ready. Behind them, their employer and a young American make their way slowly towards the centre of the room. The older man's armour is the same purple and grey colour as his soldiers' armour, while that worn by the adolescent is blue with the emblem of a stern red face on it.

"Do you like the armour?"

"It's.. okay."

"I'd have thought that you'd be happier to be back here, Jackson Prime."

"No! No, I totally am, I just-." He sighs the long suffering sign of a teenager who finds themselves at odds with the world. "I did some stupid things before they all left, and Arcee's only said a couple of words to me since we got here. What if she's still angry with me?"

"She's not. You know they're all disturbed by my implants."

"Ah, yeah?"

"Right before I spoke to you, I'd had a big talk with Arcee about how she felt-"

Jack suddenly gives Paul his full attention, turning away from the giant alien computer technology. Then immediately he tries to look like he didn't.

"-and as far as I can tell, coming from a species that doesn't reproduce sexually and has known nothing but war for millions of years doesn't actually result in you having particularly good social skills."

"Ah-? 'Millions'?"

"Oh yeah, she's a bit older than you. Apparently there's an Autobot team out there somewhere that have alt-modes based on dinosaurs."

"Found them, sir!"

Paul turns in the direction of the shout, looking over to where his men at arms have discovered a cluster of recumbent scraplets hiding under a peeled-back deck plate. "Good work, chaps! Advit, spray them down, but try not to get too much anywhere else."

The indicated squad leader nods and motions two of his men forwards. He'd been a sergeant in the Indian army until a shrapnel wound taken in Kashmir damaged the nerves in his legs too badly to continue. Now he was walking around on his own legs with nothing worse than a slightly odd feeling when the wires replacing the damaged nerves pulled awkwardly under his skin. In his opinion, the discomfort was well worth it, though he had firmly decided that he wouldn't ever choose the option a couple of the formerly paraplegic soldiers had and have his legs replaced with purely mechanical legs that wouldn't have the same problem.

The weird metal balls with mouths don't even stir as the gas sprayers turn them into glass statues. He waves Raghav and Kiaan forward to pull them out of the way so that they can check behind them. If the damned things act like normal insects they'll be crammed into the crevice as far as they can get. The other squad were already rappelling down the sides of the alien's metal bridge to spray anything lurking on the underside. He'd looked down when they walked across and he hadn't been able to see the bottom.

Their boss watches them rappel down and nods in satisfaction. While he was confident in the plan, it was always nice to see it work in practice as well as theory.

"I didn't know she was millions of years old."

"Does it change anything?"

"I knew she was older than me, I just thought…" He slumps slightly. "I don't know what I thought."

"If it helps, I don't know that she is millions of years old. Thinking about it, I've never heard her specifically mention a time before the war. Slipstream is millions of years old and we get on fine."

He looks the system over and then waves Jack forward. For some reason, the Thirteen designed their great database to be accessed by sliding what would for them be a tiny key into a slot in the floor, which would open the database and cause the keyhole to flip out of the floor to their chest height. The database would then load whatever the key was set to retrieve onto it and then shut down. Of course, if you didn't exactly know what you wanted or if it wasn't something that would mess around with a Prime's spark, things were a little simpler.

In theory.

Jack walks forward, wincing slightly as his eyes pick out the bite marks inflicted by the scraplets he fought off last time he was here. At the time, he thought of getting the data Optimus needed and tricking the scraplets into following the insecticon off the bridge as his proudest moment. He still did, actually, but the fact that he'd never come close to equalling it, and… Probably only got to do it in the first place because he wasn't going inside Unicron, made him feel like it…

It wasn't the proof that he was a part of Team Prime that he thought it was at the time. It wasn't the proof that he could be Arcee's partner that he wanted it to be.

He slides the key into the slot and then backs away as the access point starts glowing. Okay, clear damage there and there, but it looks like it has some sort of auto-repair system. The strange upright section that served as the download point pulled itself upright to a height convenient for an Autobot. Behind it, a metal iris opens in the ground and geometric holograms of brilliant blue and white light spring out of it.

Paul looks around cautiously, making sure that no surviving scraplets have decided to eat this sacred relic now that's it's been reactivated. When none appear, he activates his armour's gravity impeller and jumps, flying-.

He laughs inwardly. Or as Slipstream would put it 'falling with style' in an arc and landing on the crenulation just above the attachment point.

"Coming up?"

Jack checks his surroundings for obstacles and then triggers his own thruster, arcing upwards and managing to land directly on the download point.

"Can you see where you have to plug it in?"

Can he? It's not exactly obvious, and cybertron technology was designed for people a whole lot bigger than-.

"Heh!"

He looks up at Paul. "What?"

"I just realised. Alpha Trion, the transformer who sent all those archive pods to Earth, was chief archivist of Iacon, right?" Jack nods. "And he was Orion Pax's boss. We're below Kaon, on the other side of the planet from Iacon. Bosses don't fetch and carry for themselves. Which means that whenever he needed something from what is basically Primus's own memory banks, he'd have sent Orion. And Orion would have driven half way around the planet, snuck into Kaon because the location of the entrance is supposed to be a secret, dealt with this stupid interface it has instead of a normal console, then snuck out again and driven back halfway around the planet back to Iacon."

Jack frowns. That sounds like something his manager at KO Burger might do. It felt.. weird to think of Optimus Prime being in the same position.

And kinda funny.

"You found it yet?"

Ah-? "Yeah!" He reaches onto his harness and pulls out the first cable. It's big enough that it's awkward to manipulate with one hand, and Shockwave said that was as small as it could be made and still work. Slot it in there, and the second one goes there…

"They're in!"

Paul activates his radio. "We're plugged in. Shockwave?"

The lights behind the access point flicker and spin, going out for a moment before forming a face.

Jack stares at it, then glances down at the autobot symbol on his chest armour.

"Who's that?"

"The Last Autobot. I'd forgotten-."

Paul shakes his head.

"Yes, that would work. Shockwave, can you find out where he is?"

 

21st November 2012
15:02 GMT -5

I watch out of the window of the secure detainment facility's office as a woman is embraced by her tearful family after a fifteen year absence. Parents and sisters, in this case, people who had long since assumed that they'd never see her again. She has a relatively minor superhuman pyromantic ability that resulted in her getting abducted by the dominators when their snatch squads went through the local version of Gotham. She's not being let go yet; unlike most of the people we recovered she isn't being kept for fear that she'll return to a life of crime but rather because she hasn't finished going through 'decontamination' yet. That will involve checking her for implants, mind control effects and genetic alterations, as well as providing her with therapy and…

And working out how to integrate people back into society after a fifteen year gap.

"What do you plan to do with the former prisoners?"

"Depends on what they were in prison for." Commander Scott is looking like his old self, though I've noticed that he's occasionally touching his ring in a way that he wasn't before. "Everyone who's served their sentence is being treated like a civilian. Everyone who was sentenced to more than fifteen years… I think a little leniency is in order, if they get with the program."

I nod.

"And Mister Rice?"

Interceptor snorts. "We should leave him as he is."

Commander Scott doesn't show any particular emotion. I give him a moment to respond, but… Nothing. Alright then.

"Might I ask 'why'?"

"Do you know what the cure rate for schizophrenia is?"

"As far as I know, it doesn't get cured. Sufferers learn to cope with it, usually assisted by counselling and psychoactive drugs."

"Yeah. Because schizophrenia is the result of the human brain not making the right levels of neurotransmitters. It's not something you can fix with injections. You can't even reliably suppress it with drug injections, just reduce the impact. We've managed to properly cure a handful of people using cybernetics-."

"That's great! Can I-? Would you mind giving me a copy of your records before we leave?"

Interceptor frowns. "We had to take their brains out of their skulls and wire them into a pharmacy. It's a functional solution, but it's not exactly something you can apply to a whole population."

"It's still an option, and it's better than nothing."

Commander Scott nods. "We can share medical technology if you don't mind reciprocating."

"Right, you don't have purple healing rays, do you."

I take one of my spares out of subspace and deposit on the meeting table, along with full documentation.

"We're still doing testing prior to mass implementation, but there haven't been any problems so far."

Commander Scott looks at it for a moment. "That's very kind of you. What does it 'heal'?"

"Any organic damage. It won't completely regrow missing parts, but anything short of that will knit back together."

Interceptor's posture relaxes slightly, though she still has a stern expression.

"My point is that we can't cure his schizophrenia. Given how his physiology works, we can't use cybernetics, and give how powerful he is, we can't risk depending on drugs or therapy. It makes more sense to use him as a perfect power suppressor system at the new Slab than it does to try turning him back."

Whaw.

I agree with everything she just said, but completely disagree with her conclusion.

There are magic means to treat mental illnesses, though none of them are reliable either. Given the risk he poses and the crimes he's already committed, it isn't right to risk the lives of everyone on the planet by letting him out. And he is more reliably contained at the moment than the JSI could do with the resources at their disposal.

"Still, I think it's worth the risk. The dominators will have backups of their research, and right now he's the only superhuman that you know it won't effect." I look towards Commander Scott. "You said that his reports said he was getting better. Does he present a threat?"

"He didn't, before he was a prisoner of the Dominion for fifteen years."

"But you're talking about turning a person into an accessory. We had that in my parallel, when someone turned a telepath called Doctor Cizko into an intelligence suppressing machine. It doesn't inspire confidence in people. There's a difference between 'this person is a clear and present danger' and 'this person's brain is a useful paperweight'."

Interceptor shrugs. "Then we don't tell people. It's not like most people bother finding out what our actual rules of engagement are. If we turn up with a new power suppressor, no one's going to think anything of it."

I blink.

"This is what I sound like to other people, isn't it?"

"Yeah mate." John Constantine plops himself down in the chair next to me. "It is."

Interceptor blinks. "How did-?"

"Wizard. Amazing where I can get, especially when people are all looking the other way. And I've been getting all sorts of places. Listening. Learning." He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a smooth black stone. "Know what this is?"

"The Blackrock." Commander Scott generates construct manacles and tries to clamp them around John, only for the construct to decay into static before it reaches him. "Don’t even think about using that."

"Using it? No. Not my style. But it's a dead useful tool. Did you know that it records every single electromagnetic transmission on Earth? Has done ever since Silverstone created it."

John leans forward, resting his chin on his hands.

"Funny how different the version of your chat with the dominators it recorded was compared to the version that got released to the public. You want to explain that, Commander?"

Commander Scott's eyes narrow slightly.

"I don't know what you think you've found out from the tool of a well known supervillain, but if you think it's important then you might as well tell us."

John lifts his head off his hands, and glares at Commander Scott with genuine anger in his eyes.

"You sold them out. The Slab, Basement One Oh One, all those other places I never heard of until I heard you tell them about them. Every JSI-run prison, you handed the lot off to the Dominion."

Interceptor huffs. "We don’t keep the locations of our prisons secret, Wizard. The dominators were in orbit. I'm sure they could work out what was in the buildings with 'JSI PRISON KEEP OUT' written on the side on their own."

"Bloody convenient if they could. Because there was an investigation going on, wasn't there. After a few too many prisoners in for minor offences got their brains mangled by your suppression system."

Commander Scott glares back. "That's enough."

"Which got shut down right afterwards. Investigating the people keeping the world safe at a time like that? Just not done. Plus all the evidence was on the other side of the galaxy. Do any of the ones we got back know, or is Brainwave going to give them a once-over first?"

"No. We handed them over because it was best for Earth."

Interceptor's face falls, and she looks at Commander Scott in horror.