Black in a depth unlike any he’d seen before. Torn and shredded as if it were waiting to be put back together, like a jigsaw puzzle. Both whole and shattered at the same time. The world was a funny place.

Even if it wasn’t his.

Behind him, the cold press of glass held a reflection that sat back-to-back with him. A finely tailored white suit touched its theoretical counterpart, every perfect stitch copied in exact. The devil, as they said, was in the details but he noticed none of this. Moments and facts had begun to blur one into the other, and he found it hard to distinguish between the exact and the mimicked. Time – or the lack thereof – had played fool of his senses. All he knew for certain was that he was here, in this swamp of emptiness with this damnable rotating door spinning into nothing.

The blood on his shirt had faded away, dried into the color of muddied parchment, though it still looked garishly out of place against the pristine white cloth of his suit coat. And that was the only evidence of his existence, whether or not such a thing still continued in this place, this purgatory. The blood was his reminder of where he’d come from, who he’d been, and how he’d died. Or not died, depending on whether here was life, death, or nothing of the sort.

He remembered the flashes of Science City Zero, of his father, and of the path that ultimately led to this damnable place. Secret governmental experimentation on society’s cast-offs and citizens marked as villains in the era of McCarthyism. Damn those who dared to be different, opinionated. Sell them up for livestock in the next human cattle call. See what comes out the other side. And in this case, it had been young Ambrose Chase and his burgeoning ability to warp reality.

Fast-forward a good many years, and the world had moved on, buried the secrets of Science City Zero in the sensationalist rhetoric of celebrity chasing and front page scandals. No one cared about the truth anymore, not when it was easier to waste away in whatever the world was spoon-feeding you. But the truth was out there, not forgotten but obscured, and it was waiting for the right people to come find it. All those years, it had been waiting for Planetary.

Ambrose took a deep breath, leaned his head back against his glass counterpart, closed his eyes, and exhaled. Planetary had been his home, his family, and somewhere along the way, it had become the edifice of his tombstone. At least, when Elijah had been guiding the mission, they had been safe, sheltered from the horrors they were uncovering. But when The Four had shuffled Snow from the playing field, the game had become that much more dangerous, that much wilder. And so, they had come to an operation entitled Planet Fiction, an attempt to extract a weapon from a fictionalized circumstance. There was a bullet, then pain, and then he had stumbled over reality and plummeted down the rabbit hole, chasing after the tizzied hare whilst his friends avenged his seeming death.

That was then; this was now – although now certainly had some elasticity to it.

Climbing to his feet, Ambrose stepped back away from the revolving door, regarding it carefully. Perception told him the door had three panels, each resting equidistant at a one hundred twenty-degree angle, spinning its center axis. The doors moved both clockwise and counter, though the trip to the counter met with heavier resistance as the rubber flappers dragged against a non-existent floor, but there was ultimately no starting point and no destination.

But it was a door. Had he come through this door? Was it intended as his exit? Or did it serve as both? Somehow, none of the questions sat well with him. In a world – (temporary existence?) – where only he and the damnable door shared presence, which was more real – the door or himself? In life, he had been a master of reality, but this seeming lack of realism was maddening to him. He loathed the existential thoughts which plagued his mind, and he longed for their ceasing. How much longer would he be expected to wait?

The door.

Stepping back into the angled cove of the revolving door, Ambrose took a moment to examine his reflection. The ghost figure stared back in a reversed mockery, regarding him with just as much effort. But it was the splotch of decayed red that stood out in the silhouette, the mark of his demise and suffering. Delicately, he traced his fingertips around the ragged circle where the bullet had eaten of his chest.

This was the key. Life and death were fearful symmetry, pushing against one another and looking for a moment to bleed into the other. What if he had helped that process along? What if he had jump-started their epic battle into its forgone, but impossible conclusion? Localized reality would have collapsed around him, assuming a pocket of improbability and/or impossibility, and feeding off his own forced perception of here, of now. Perception begets reality begets unreality, all in a systematic cycle.

The wheel turns because it has forgotten to stop.

And then, Ambrose saw through himself, looking past the notion of what was theoretically there and ignoring the possibility of what could be there. The examination of nothing was still, in itself, an examination of something, and he had spent far too long dwelling on nothingness.

He closed his eyes and felt a set of fingers slide amidst his own. Looking upward, a familiar face smiled down at him. "It’s been a good while, Ambrose. Bet you thought we lost you."

“I had my doubts…” he said in return, the hoarse whisper unrecognizable as his own voice. “After awhile, you start to lose track of how long you’ve been broken. Start to wonder if this is it."

"We came back as soon as we could. It was just a long road," Jakita assured him.

"Glad you did," Ambrose responded, and with that, he turned back to the ceiling.

---

The air was dry and arid, windless and still in the Australian Outback. When they’d last left Ayres Rock, the area had been littered with metallic debris, remnants of an encounter with The Four. Now, the vegetation and desert had reclaimed its sense of balance, and their surroundings were not much more than sand and sparse shrubbery.

Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t have ranked on the Drummer’s most desired places to go, but today was far from normal circumstances. With his arms stretched wide, the scruffy-haired man closed his eyes and paced across the surface of the desert, searching with his mind‘s eye. Information was his game, and under the right conditions, the data flows were like a song, lulling him with a sweet lullaby of systemics and symmetry.

“Gotta hand it to you, old man. You called it like a pro,” the Drummer said, pitching his voice just enough for his pale companion to hear. “The Aboriginal dream-song is filling in the gaps of its half-harmonics. Chord structures are re-emerging, counterpoints and contrary motives pushing toward a intervallic cadence. It won‘t be too long before…”

A rumbling of the earth cut off his words, and the Drummer snapped his eyes open. To his far left, Snow seemed far-less fazed by the sudden changes in environment. Drummer leveled a finger at his boss and said, “How did you know this was coming? Last time we were here, you were just starting to understand computer viruses, and now you’re plotting cyclical returns?”

Elijah dropped his cigarette to the ground and crushed it beneath his foot. “Just lucky on the timing, actually, but the rest of this was inevitable. I told you about my friend, Carlton Marvel. He took the secrets of Dreamtime gating with him when he left this sphere in 1932. I published half the formula in the Planetary Guide of that year, kept the rest to myself. I’ve long theorized that he got lost out there, caught up in the adventure…”

Revelation hit the Drummer and a sly smile spread across his face. “When we came last year to stop The Four from gating in after him, we introduced an analogue into the Dreamtime. We gave him a beacon to find his way back to the here and now.”

“Again, not the original intention, but the more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed a possibility. And if it was going to happen, I wanted to be here to welcome an old friend home.”

“And what about the other friend -- the one that’s already crashing at our pad? When are you going to talk to him?” The Drummer asked and immediately regretted it.

Elijah shot him an icy glare and then turned his glance back toward the ground. “I wasn’t around when Ambrose was taken from us, when those bastards and their fictional monster lured him into a deathtrap. I tried to make things right with his family, and now, I don’t know. There are still amends to be made.”

“Sometimes, I don’t get you man.” The Drummer watched as Snow piqued an eyebrow in his direction and then continued, “One minute, you’re this hard bastard that couldn’t give a toss about anyone, and then, you’re playing martyr and savior to the human race. You’re a damned enigma.”

“Archaeology runs through all of us, Drums.”

The Drummer was about to respond when the sky above Ayres Rock tore asunder. He tilted his head to the right and whispered, “My god, it’s fucking beautiful. The informational spill-cascade, worlds existing upon each other, 196,333 data conduits flowing and intersecting, exchanging yottabytes of knowledge superstrings.” He paused for a moment and blushed. “I’m going to need some alone time when we get home.”

The lightshow played across the sky for another three minutes and then ceased as quickly as it begun. In the wake of it all, a single man stood in the epicenter of Ayres Rock, bent down to one knee. Elijah crossed the barrens to and stood just above the man. Gently, he laid a hand down upon the man’s shoulder. “Take your time, Carlton. Get your feet under you.”

The man followed the sound of Elijah’s voice and turned his head skyward. When he opened his eyes, only the pale white shown back. “My god, Elijah. Why did you call me back? They’re not that far behind me.”

“Who?”

“Your damned secret history. You didn’t really think it ended with The Four, did you? There was history before them, and it’s been running circles around this world for far too long.”

---

Planetary Headquarters

“Jesus, it’s been forever since I’ve worn clean clothes. Probably longer since I’ve worn anything, in the strictest sense of the word. Subjective realities and all that,” Ambrose said, tracing the outlines of his body in the mirror. The white suit hung from his lithe frame like a finely tailored marvel. “How long was I gone, Jackie?”

“Much too long. It took us awhile to get Elijah back on the right track. He was instrumental in bringing you back across the threshold,” Jakita replied, leaning against a rear wall, her right leg crossed over the left at the ankle. “The old man on the mountain was someone Elijah knew from 1943, some kind of mystic or something. The man had been working around the clock for five months before he sent word of your return.”

“Strange how that works.”

“How so?”

Ambrose turned away from the mirror and thought for a moment. “I spent an untold amount of time tucked in a pocket of distorted reality, knitting myself back together. Everything there was a perceptional nightmare, and it took all my doing to decide on a way to break free. And here, I learn that it was halfway thanks to the Planetary Foundation, laying out the breadcrumbs.”

Despite being the strongest woman in the room, Jakita still felt weak at this moment. They had tried for years to turn back the damages of Elijah being taken off the board by the mental blocks, and then Ambrose’s seeming death had pushed back the agenda even further. If she could have gotten Ambrose back without reawakening Elijah, she would have, but it was impossible. And now, it seemed like the four of them were reunited, and with new purpose.

Clearing her throat, Jakita asked, “Have you given any thought to your family? I’m sure that Larissa and Angie would want…”

Ambrose shook his head. “I’m not to that point just yet, Jackie. Dowling and his men may be off the board, but unless I’m mistaken, there’s still some business we left unfinished in England. Still a beastie running around that shouldn’t be. I want a clean slate before I turn the world upside down for my wife and child. They deserve me back fulltime, not just a sneak peak before I have run off to the corners of the globe again.”

Raising her leather clad hands, Jakita placed her steepled fingers beneath her lips and grimaced. “If it’s revenge you’re after, don’t let it keep you from your family. They’ve been making due without you for too long, Ambrose. Take the time for you and yours. Don’t let the past keep you from that.”

“You don’t understand.” Ambrose hung his head low, and she could see the anger playing out across his face. It was unnatural on him. “It’s their fault. Dowling and his damned attempts at bringing something back from a fictional universe. If they hadn’t been dabbling in things they shouldn’t have, then I wouldn’t have lost all these years. I’d have gotten the chance to see my daughter grow up. How can I just let that go?”

“And you think you can make it better by losing more time with them? Angie’s a beautiful girl, you know. At least go to see them. Don’t make this decision without knowing what you’re missing out on.” She hoped her words had some resonance with him, that they reached down to the right places. She wanted her friend back, not the blank darkness that death had left behind. “Please, for me.”

Ambrose scuffled his feet on the floor. “Jacks, it’s not…” He paused there, took a deep breath, and then changed directions, saying, “Tell me about Planetary. Where do I fit into the picture now?”

“Wherever you want. Though, I think there’s someone you should meet. His name is Doctor Axel Brass, and I think there’s something you might be able to do to pay your good fortune forward.” She smiled gently and laid a hand gently upon his shoulder. “He’s a hero in his own right, spent fifty-four years keep the world safe from a trans-dimensional snowflake, if you can believe it. I bet he’d very much like to walk again -- under his own power.”

Ambrose’s attention piqued. “You think I can make this happen?”

“The world’s a strange place full of possibility. And there‘s still so much left for us to find.”

---

To Be Continued...

Next: In Planetary #5: Reunited again, the Planetary field team begins the arduous task of piecing together the remaining portions of the Secret History of the Twentieth Century, but with Carlton Marvel’s return, only one thing is certain -- there are dangerous times coming. Starting with the hunt for a creature born of fiction and science…

---

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