Chapter Thirteen
FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA
It wasn’t so much an island as a navigational hazard.
Nestled in the midst of the Pacific ocean, over one hundred miles from the west coast of the United States, it was small (only six square miles), mostly barren and uninhabited.
At least originally.
Now there was a small building on the island. The building was a modest two-story manor house built into the side of a tall hill and shrouded by a dozen palm trees, rendering it all but invisible from the air. It was the latest in a long series of places that had served as a home and clinic for Annette Rosenberg ever since the Patchwork Man had reappeared in 1954. Her perceived continued internment at Arkham Asylum had been a complex and highly effective ruse which only Archie, NoMan, Adrian Veidt and Dr. Arkham had been privy to.
The island was secure if for no other reason than it was a nondescript speck out in the middle of nowhere, far from civilization and even the shipping lanes. With no airstrip and miles too far for helicopter travel, the only way to access the island was by boat or hydroplane.
Or if you could fly.
NoMan, Red Knight and Mentalon arrived in the middle of the night, having flown through the darkness of a new moon.
Only a few members of the staff--never large to begin with--were still present. The rest had already left to set up the next safe house outside a village in Nepal. Annette was moved every few months, or after anything occurred that might even remotely risk the safe house’s secrecy. Red Knight, NoMan and Mentalon flying there certainly qualified.
Upon arrival, Archie relived the rest of the staff. They left by an experimental submersible craft to join the others in Nepal. If such care was still necessary for Annette after Mentalon’s efforts, Archie would take her there personally.
Archie hadn’t seen Annette in three years--a sacrifice for the sake of her security. When he arrived, she was asleep. Annette could only sleep when sedated, and it was always fitful, her constant tortured expression and pitiful moans evidence of nightmares no one even wanted to imagine. That night, Archie sat across from her bed in an uncomfortable chair and watched over her. She looked even thinner than when he’d last seen her. Not just thinner, but smaller, almost like she was growing more distant, receding further away every moment.
As Mentalon could only maintain his form for a few hours a day, he reverted to Warden and rested in a guest room.
NoMan didn’t need to sleep at all. He stood on the building’s roof, absolutely silent, watching the waves crash on the shore. He pondered this new situation and the day that awaited them. He calculated the probabilities, arrived at the sum, changed a variable and then started anew.
They had told no one of their destination. No one knew this clinic existed. No one could track them.
Or so they believed.
NoMan wondered what Metamorpho had believed. Or The Spirit. NoMan wondered what Daredevil, now mysteriously disappeared, had suspected was possible.
An ocular sensor still functioned in one of the many smashed android bodies that littered the burning ruins of JLA headquarters. NoMan could intermittently receive fuzzy, dreamlike images from it if he let his consciousness drift there. Soldiers under the command of “Captain America” were still picking through the rubble, looking for bodies with a gruesome, eager glee. Hiram and Metamorpho were already secured in body bags, but it wasn’t enough for the “Hero of America.” NoMan could read the impostor’s lips, the same words yelled over and over; “Where is The Joker’? I want The Joker! Find his body!”
The faintest wisp of a grim smile crossed NoMan’s lips. The Joker, Harley and The Amazing Ghost Fighter had successfully retreated to Gotham. He knew they were safe--if anyone on the planet could truly ever be called safe in the current situation.
From a portion of his mind NoMan had previously assumed was obsolete, came nagging concerns for his own mortality. All of NoMan’s other android bodies were gone now, destroyed, and with Stark Industries in the process of being impounded by the government, he could not expect replacements anytime soon.
He remembered the.... discontinuity.... he had experienced once before, after T.H.U.N.D.E.R. was destroyed; the cold without chill, the darkness without shadow. History appeared to be repeating itself.
So be it. NoMan would be ready. NoMan was always ready.
When the first light of dawn began to bend around NoMan’s cloak, the android turned and re-entered the building. There was a great deal to be done.
**********
By one reckoning, Annette Rosenberg’s condition had improved in the last seven years. She no longer attacked people who came near her or screamed for every waking moment, for instance.
This was deceptive, however. The truth was she had drawn even further into herself, spending most of the time staring at a wall while cowering in a corner. Once, Archie’s presence would have calmed her. Not anymore. There was no longer anything there to calm. She looked at the room with blank, dead eyes and seemed to not even notice Archie, much less anyone else.
Warden looked nervously at Archie and NoMan hovering over the woman laying in a fetal position in the far corner of her room. They sat her up and she didn’t resist.
“Just doing a final checkup on her,” Archie said to Warden. “Setting up some monitors. Earning our paychecks.” It was nervous babble. He then looked at Warden. “Last chance to back out.”
“I can help her.” Warden didn’t take his eyes off Annette. She looked almost nothing like the woman he had seen at Winchester’s mansion, either as a shade or on canvas. She was clad in a clean, white hospital gown that reached all the way down to her feet and she huddled within it, legs drawn up to her stomach and arms wrapped around them, her knuckles as white as the cotton cloth they clutched. Her black hair was cut short, to prevent her from compulsively pulling out handfuls of it. Her cheeks were shallow and gaunt; eyes sunken. Warden had once the life in her eyes, and the void that now lurked behind them was chilling. The void and something else. Warden could not put what he saw into words.
NoMan walked over and faced Warden. “She is ready. Are you?”
“I guess,” Warden answered.
“No. This continues only if you are sure.” NoMan said.
“I am.” As he spoke, Warden features and shape blurred and seemed to melt like wax before congealing into the frail, bulbous Mentalon.
NoMan began placing medical monitors on Mentalon; one on the pale flesh over his heart and two to the sides of his bulging head. “We will monitor both you and Dr. Rosenberg’s vital signs,” NoMan said. ”If this process causes some sort of physical distress, we will endeavor to break your telepathic contact. We do not know if we will be able to, however. Having transformed, you now have four hours, fifty-nine minutes, twenty-eight seconds until you revert to your normal state. For safety’s sake, I would advise that you not be in her mind when this occurs. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Remember,” Archie said, breaking in, “if you see something in there you can’t deal with, get the hell out.”
“I will.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
Mentalon stood quietly for a few moments, as if waiting for something else to be said. Nothing was. He walked over to the corner. He looked at Archie, sitting next to Annette on the floor, holding her hand and then back at NoMan, already examining the read-outs from the machine both Mentalon and Annette were hooked up to. NoMan caught Mentalon’s gaze and nodded.
Mentalon took a deep breath and knelt beside Annette. Mentalon’s limbs were thin, with almost no fat padding the joints, making kneeling uncomfortable. Mentalon had no idea how long this was going to take, if he even made contact, so he slid down into a sitting position. Annette did not stir, her red-rimed eyes still staring straight ahead.
Mentalon flexed his long fingers nervously. He reached out gingerly, gently, to Annette’s pale brow. His mind followed suit.
And thus it began.
Chapter 14: “Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory”
“I always respected her for that. I think it was her inborn sense of dignity that was responsible. Pity how she turned out.”