The Carrier had dived through sixteen realities, and was now entering the Cosmic Lymphatic System. If the Bleed was the blood, then this realm affectionately known to the Doctor as “The Pus” was a cosmic immuno-receptor. It was also the direct link to the time stream.
For some reason the Carrier wanted to get there.
“Daddy Midnighter?” came a tiny voice through the carrier wide communication systems. Hawksmoor froze. He knew exactly why their 50-mile long home base was diving down through realities.
It was because the eight-year old with the unlimited power of a newly born century was in the driver’s seat.
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“Hard to Port”
“How the hell did she get in there, Jack?” Midnighter asked, his head hung low and an accusing look written in his eyes.
“I don't know, do I? I'm not the one who's supposed to be her Father,” Jack said, pointing his finger at Midnighter and looking down the corridors as the Carrier creaked and sung with pain.
“Who was supposed to be looking after her, Jack?” Midnighter asked again, growing increasingly more agitated.
“Again, how should I know? I'm not the Father of the girl, am I?” Midnighter lashed out at Hawksmoor, who simply melted into the floor.
“Dammit, Jack,” Midnighter said.
“Yeah, I know I wouldn't have got away with that unless you wanted me to do that, so, I'll take comfort in the fact that you don't blame me. Still what good is comfort when there's an 8-year-old fucking child piloting a fifty-mile wide spaceship through hundreds of realities. I guess I'll take my retirement plans now,” Jack spat, pulling himself out of the wall and dropping down behind Midnighter.
“We done?” Jack asked. Midnighter shook his head and began to walk away.
“Find the fucking Doctor, Midnighter. I need that drugged up asshole to try and do something,”
«WHERE'S THE FUCKING DOCTOR?» Hawksmoor yelled into the minds of his team mates, excluding Midnighter, via their shared radio-telepathy.
«I don't know, but do you have to yell so loudly?» came the response from Apollo.
«Where are you, Apollo?» Jack asked, tearing off down the hall once more towards the main pilot deck.
«I'm sat on the bow of the Carrier, Jack, and I'm concentrating very hard, so would you mind shutting up?»
Silence was Apollo's only reply as he leaned forwards, brow knitting together as the golden energy halo above his head began to radiate power. His white hair flowed behind him as he gripped into the Carrier’s bio-metallic skin with his massive fingers, the weight of his strength causing it to creak every time he moved a little bit.
As they dove deeper, Apollo's eyes blazed a furious yellow, firing bursts of energy into the interstitial cosmic zone. Objects the size of buses exploded and rained debris on the outside of the Carrier, or would have if not for the protective aura the Doctor was currently maintaining around a ship so massive it could be considered an actual city.
Apollo nodded in thanks to the Doctor, not that he could see the action, and continued his visual surgery.
As they surfed through the under-currents of time and space, the Midnighter, known for his amazing ability to beat the shit out of anything and everything, was somewhat lost when he couldn't actually lay a hand on reality, or the Carrier.
That frustrated him.
«Jenny, you're in big effing trouble when I get my hands on you,» he spat into the minds of the others, specifically aimed at Jenny as he walked, hands balled into fists at his sides.
Suddenly gripped with a pain washing over his forehead and into his body, Midnighter doubled over. Memories pulled themselves through his mind and across his vision.
Henry Bendix.
The “Secret Stormwatch.”
Apollo.
Jenny.
Gamorra.
God.
It was all pulled from his mind, almost as though he was giving birth to the thoughts rather than thinking them.
The speed of thought was not faster than the speed of his body though, as no sooner had he pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind than the agent that caused this violent recollection had been nullified by his body’s own massively powerful immune response.
Shaking his head, Midnighter wondered what exactly had gone on, eyeing up the walls around him with suspicion. Had something been hiding in there all along?
In the middle of the Nevada Desert, a small Blue Lamp lit itself.
The Beacon had been sent.
As the Carrier dove deeper through the realities and out the side of the “Pus”, its wake caused a second ship floating in the area to rock. Violently!
As the residents of the ship were thrown about, and the internal components wrecked, a number of tubes were ignited with light, signifying the activation of their projects.
Crawling from the wreckage around him, using the large keratin tipped spikes on his chest to facilitate this movement, the captain passed a worried look through the large eye on its chest, to the chief science officer as the cruiser exploded.
“Angie, give me something to work with here.” Hawksmoor held onto a computer terminal that had grown from the centre of the “Engine” Room to prevent himself from being flung onto his side. Meanwhile the Engineer’s hair made from thousands of wires and connective ports had attached her to the Carrier itself as she floated inside a womb of wires, cooing and shushing the frightened ship.
“The Carrier's terrified, Jack. It's never dived this deep before. It doesn't even know what's going to be beyond these layers.” She shot the leader of the Authority a worried look. “And it hurts, Jack. She's really hurting,” Angie said, her voice full of concern and sadness.
“It's hurting? Don't I fucking know it.” Hawksmoor's hands were immersed in the metal of the control panel, his teeth gritted.
“The Carrier's dive is trying to shake it apart. I'm doing everything I can to keep her in one piece at this point, Angie. So I'd appreciate a bit more pep from you!”
“I'm doing all I fucking can, Jack.” Angie's eyes glinted with anger, and then back to concern and pain. A feeling they both felt.
“She's scared.”
“So am I, godammit. I've never tried to hold a city together before. I only travel to them,” Hawksmoor admitted, more than a hint of concern in his voice. Something he instantly regretted.
Angie fired him a smirk and a wink as she shifted her position to get a better look at their engine; a caged baby universe floating and waiting to be guided.
“About time you lived up to that title of “God of Cities”, then?”
Her wingspan was massive. She beat her wings several times a second to try and stay aloft in an area without any natural airflows or currents. The Carrier was scared, and all she could sense around her was the undulating fury of a thousand dimensions and the pulsating mass of time almost coming into flux.
Airflow over the ship became more varied depending on the area she was sensing. The air around the Midnighter felt more stagnant and poisonous, while her air was very clear and pure.
Another beat of the wings…
Gliding down the corridor, she felt herself ache around the joints. As she looked down, her keen eyes focused on the reflective surface below.
Swift was old. Her short hair, now long and grey, her face wrinkled and wizened. A lifetime of adventure and abuse to her body had twisted it. Fingers were no longer straight. Her neckline and body that she once was so proud of, was no longer toned, no longer a body of a superhero. She was an eighty-year-old trying on her wedding dress again, realising it will never fit the way it used to.
Another beat of the wings…
She dove towards the metal flooring to get a better look at herself. Her reflection changed. She was an eight-year-old girl again, long hair in braids, a short dress and grazed knees. Now a shattered jaw and friction burns all over the front of her body, across her bare arms and legs.
She didn't have wings when she was eight.
As the Carrier charged through the universal bulkheads and out of the time stream, its sensors and Angie noticed something moving through the murk of space towards it.
Sensing the fear of the Carrier, Angie began to feel nervous as well.
“Jack, there's something…”
“I know, damn it. I can feel it moving towards us. It's...Massive.”
«Doctor? Apollo? I need your attention. There's something massive coming towards us.»
«What the hell is that?» The Doctor asked through their shared link.
«I don't know, but it's massive and it's pulling all my light away from me.»
Apollo felt his Halo dimming, and his grip on the front of the Carrier loosening.
«It's okay. We're diving through a reality wall again, Apollo. Just hold on.»
The next layer it seemed was made entirely from light. Apollo smiled while he basked and soaked it up, his Halo burning brighter than ever before.
The Carrier turned sharply and began to glide towards a massive flat platform.
«Jesus. It must be a hundred miles thick, and God knows how wide.» Apollo's incredulous statement radiated through the minds of the others.
«Don't get soft up there, Apollo. Keep your eyes open. Something isn't right out there,» came Midnighter’s reply as he charged into the Engine Room of the Carrier.
“I think this is it,” Angie replied, as the Carrier seemed to be relaxing. Hawksmoor too was relaxing, pulling his hands from the terminal’s metal shell and looking towards Midnighter, who'd just arrived from the depths of the ship, looking more paranoid than normal.
“Here?” he said turning from Midnighter to the Engineer.
“Yeah,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders.
The long descending spire of the Carrier’s front crashed into the surface of the platform sending plumes of dust and debris into the air, scratching its way across the surface like a giant gramophone needle until it came to a complete stop.
«I want everyone outside the Bridge. Now! We need to rein our little girl in,» Hawksmoor spat through the team’s frontal lobes.
The Doctor of course, couldn't reply. Phased out of reality, he was on one of the biggest trips of his life. The Shamanic realm of The Doctor's shared consciousness was barely functioning so deep inside the Universal Stack, and he was struggling to keep it together.
Only the previous Doctor could get through.
~Little Doctor. Do you know where you are?~
Looking around, and down to the large platform below, he shook his head.
“Before I got involved in this, the farthest I'd ever been was Finland.”
~This, little Doctor,~ the man said with a smile, slapping his hand on Jeron's shoulder and pointing him towards the platform. ~This is where Centuries are born.~
With a deep gulp and a concerned look on his face he looked to the previous incarnation.
“What do you mean?”
~This is the start of time, as a human mind can conceive it. Every time our world completes a revolution of time, every “Century” time restarts itself, creating a new spiral upwards. Jennifer Sparks, to Jennifer Quantum was the newest addition to the spiral.~
“So where do Centuries go to die?” Jeron asked, as they both stepped over the edge of the Carrier and walked downwards in a spiral towards the platform itself.
~Centuries do not die, Jeron, any more than any other abstract concept does. No, they simply go back to the start.~
Turning quickly to the side, he saw the figure of a woman walking towards them. Plumes of smoke wafted into the air as the strawberry blonde figure approached him slowly.
“Jenny?”
The Bridge of the Carrier
“What a lot of fucking hassle that was.” She turned to the familiar looking people behind her, scratching her head gently, and pinching her lips down over the end of the cigarette. The bridge was dark. The Carrier had turned the lighting off in an effort to not see what was going on within her. Flicking the lighter open, the naked flame lit her face up as the end of the cancer stick ignited.
“I reckon I need a new name as well. Jennifer Quantum sounds a bit gay in the light of day. Plus some new clothes.” She looked down at her newly aged body. From the form of an eight-year-old into the form of a sixteen-year-old was quite a gap.
For one thing she felt more than just platonic affection towards the man behind her in a smart suit and a white shirt. Finding his bare feet to be something of a turn on, which was weird when compared to say, the bare feet of Hawksmoor.
“We're going to need a new team name as well,” Jenny said, turning to the collection of teenagers behind her, all resembling images of people she was very close to before she aged herself. Teenage versions to be precise. This was the birth of a new team that wouldn't just march to her drum. They would make their own damn drums.
“Now,” she said taking a long puff on her cigarette, letting the smoke plume upward in jagged shapes from her open mouth.
“Let’s cause some fucking havoc, yeah?”
To Be Continued...
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