Super Thieves

Andrew

I don't remember when I started breathing again. All of a sudden I could feel the sensation of air being sucked in and pushed out of my lungs. Whether or not I was doing it myself was as much of a mystery as why I couldn't open my eyes or move any of my limbs. It was like being stuck in another dimension, not knowing what is happening to you but at the same time knowing that something is happening. I started counting the seconds after I felt myself beginning to breathe, it took thirteen minutes before I could hear. There was just a soft hum of machinery and a few sounds of things being moved around, but no voices. It's hard to recall what happened. I remember Black Ice, and I remember Heather and Carter, but everything else is a messy blur. My senses shut off again unexpectedly. I was still breathing, at least I think I was, but I couldn't feel it anymore. The sounds of the room slowly became cloudy and faded into the gentle ringing of my ears.

"Andrew?" a distorted voice whispered against my ear. It didn't sound human, in fact it sounded like a robot trying to imitate a person's voice. As the calling continued, the sound established itself as a real voice that seemed to be calling to me from the end of a long cave. Everything echoed but I felt a force pulling my consciousness closer to the voice, it became louder and louder and louder and louder and...light blinded me as I started gasping for air. All of my senses were set on fire, I could see everything but nothing at the same time, and I could feel the pain of a thousand surgeries even though a pouch or morphine was connected to my arm. There was also this terrible ringing in my ears that sounded like a million fire alarms blaring and full volume.

"Easy there, easy," a figure said as they placed a gentle hand on my shoulder and lay me back into the hospital bed.

"Where the hell am I?" I said in between pants. The sensation of breathing again was horribly overwhelming.

"You're safe, you're back with us," Carter's voice said from across the room. My eyes finally focused and I saw Glow Woman kneeling next to my bed, Heather and Carter were slowly making their way to me from across the room.

"What happened?" I groaned, uncomfortably shifting around in the bed. As my body woke up from whatever sedatives it was on a thousand little needles pricked away at my nerves.

"Try and sit still, you'll feel better in a minute," Glow Woman mumbled as she fiddled with some panel next to my bed.

"Black Ice almost killed you," Heather said with what looked like a tear in her eye. Her left arm was bound up in a sling and she looked like she'd been cut by a million little knives. There was a sizable slice running along her right cheek. She was nothing compared to Carter though. He had a black eye and a split lip, and both of his hands were wrapped up as if he was a burn victim. I guess I got it the worst out of the two if I'm in a hospital bed.

"You've been in a medical coma for three days," Carter said just as quietly as Heather, "and for two of those days you were in surgery."

"But what about the pieces?" I asked as I let out another uncomfortable groan. My body had decided to stop having a panic attack, but I could feel the soreness from getting the crap beaten out of me. Both Heather and Carter looked to the floor when I asked that question, as if I had just caught them ripping up the couch or something. They both finally looked up with a sadness in their eyes.

"He has them. All of them," Glow Woman said to me as she bit down on her lip. I felt the entire atmosphere of the room sink into the depths of the Earth.

"Then he's won," I grumbled in response, "there's nothing we can do to stop him."

"Not without declaring an all out war, an option the Founding Five are seriously considering," Glow Woman said sadly.

"It's not quite over yet," Heather chuckled in her usual nonchalant way, as if the fate of the world was resting on us right now, "there are six artifacts. He only has four. And I have a theory that what he's looking for won't work without all six pieces."

"They're giving us a week to recover the last two pieces before Black Ice. Otherwise, they're going to war," Carter followed. He bit his lip and stared at the floor.

"Failure isn't an option. I don't need to remind you what happened the last time superheroes went to war," Glow Woman whispered.

We have three options. Find the last two pieces and find a way to destroy them. Watch superheroes go to war. Black Ice finds the last two pieces and gains unrestricted access to thousands of nuclear weapons. I know that there's only really one option. Finding the remaining pieces is going to be hard enough, and Black Ice could very well know where they are.

For once, the odds aren't in our favor.