Talyesin's Tales

On the trail of a killer, Squirrelman and Darklight found themselves at the Kane Sanitarium, but they were not alone - other costumed crimefighters were there as well. Ragdoll. Ace. Physique. Blue Jay. Phenom. Dragon. Rapunzel. Superia. Red Bolt. All drawn to the madhouse, having captured the mysteriously escaped inmates. As the clock in the lobby of the hospital struck midnight, the lights went out, and the cells opened...





Laughing.

Giggling. Tittering. Chuckling. Chortling.

Somewhere, in the distance, more my imagination than actually possible, the little-girl's giggle, in all that creepy-ass laughing.

Shrieking.

"That's more than a little unsettling," I hear Ace say.

It's not completely dark of course. Lightning in the skylight overhead casts grey-white light in flickers. The little starbursts that hold on Superia's cape give off a little blue-white glow. Ace pulls out one of his glow-cards, and a ball of light forms, hovering near Darklight's head. Dragon's puffing out little bursts of flame from his mouth, throwing back the shadows for a couple of seconds at a time.

Later on I'll remember that at that moment, as the clock was striking midnight, when the lights first went out, we had moved instinctively back to back, all of us in a defensive circle, facing the mad cackling in the dark.

The clock chimes out its last count. The ring doesn't stop, going on and on, a single note held indefinitely.

"That's gonna get annoying real fast," Dragon rumbles.

"Damn and blast," Darklight mutters.

"Anna?" I look at her.

"Chronomancy," she says, her face screwed up in disgust. "We're stuck here."

"What does that mean?" Phenom starts to ask, and that's when they come.

Dozens of them. Every which direction. All at once, and in waves. Some in hospital greens. Some in straight jackets, the clasps and belts undone. Every last one of them has blank eyes. Every last one of them moving fast, hard, stronger than they should be.

We fight them off. Kicks and punches. Strangleholds and claw-slashes. Flipping and somersaulting and cartwheeling. Red Bolt is a red and yellow blur, everywhere at once. Dragon, Superia, Blue Jay all take to the air, occasionally joined by Phenom. Blasts of concussive force from Ace's cards, sealing off doorways with wreckage and smoke and sudden bursts of light. Ten or a dozen of them fall suddenly asleep at Darklight's feet. Rapunzel's lifting them, throwing them, tying them up with her hair, keeping them off us.

They're just normal folks. Manic depressives and obsessive compulsives and anal retentives, whateverthefuck. No match for eleven trained, experienced crimefighters. In a few minutes they're all out for the count. Red Bold lashes the straight jackets tight on the ones wearing them. Darklight puts the others under, a deep motionless sleep.

"You were saying?" Phenom says.

"Chronomancy," Darklight says again, then closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She goes very, very still for a few seconds. In the distance, screams.

"Anna," I start to interrupt her, but she opens her eyes, looking annoyed, but not at me.

"I believe we're trapped here," she says. "The spell will only end when the trigger event occurs."

"What's the trigger event?" Physique asks.

"I'm not sure. "It usually involves a sacrifice of some kind."

Down the corridor to the East Wing, gunshots. Four of them.

"The guards," I say, looking at Ragdoll. Red Bolt is gone in a blur.

"Sacrifice, like, a death, right?" Phenom asks.

"Or several," Ace says, looking around at all of us.

Red Bolt's back, says, "Thgrdzrdlthrdblmrdrsd."

"Red?"

"Sorry," he slows down. "The guards are dead. All three. Double murder-suicide. Looks like one went nuts, shot his buddy, got shot, shot the other one, killed himself."

"Jesus."

"Yeah. The bad news is their guns are gone."

"Shit," Phenom swears.

"We have to help these people," Superia says.

Dragon says, "Help them? Lady, I'll settle for keeping them from killing us. In case you didn't notice, that last batch were just plain ordinary nutjobs, and they weren't exactly a picnic to deal with. What happens when the big bads get out and about? Help them? That's nuts."

"No," Superia answers sadly. "It's not. But they are."

We look around the room at the people who were, a few minutes ago, trying their damnedest to kill us. None of these folks are criminals. The Kane is a hospital first and a jail second. A maximum security facility, sure, but a hospital all the same.

"Shit," I say to myself. To the others I say, "She's right. There are people here who are just ordinary mentally ill people. Stuck here, like us. It's not their fault. It's not the Kane's fault. It's whoever cast that spell's fault. The real problems are in the basement and sub-basement, where the enhanced and powered and metas are kept."

"There's a sub-basement?" Ace asks.

"Yeah. They don't let the public know about it. It's where they keep the Extreme Sanctions Ward."

"I'm not going to like knowing about this, am I?" Blue Jay asks sourly.

"So what do we do?" Phenom asks, looking at me.

Suddenly I realize they're all looking at me.

"What?" I ask.

"You know this place better than anyone here," Ragdoll says.

"Yeah, you've got more bad guys locked up here than any three of us combined," Phenom adds.

"So what's the plan, boss?" Physique says, a little smile on her face.

"Uh..." They have a point. I've been here more times than I can count, and have memories of my predecessor visiting here even more times than that. "Okay. Darklight, can you break the spell?"

"I don't think so," she answers. "A spell of this magnitude would require a tremendous amount of energy. No one would cast such a spell without ensuring that it couldn't be dispelled from within."

"Can you try?"

"I'll need a quiet place to work," she answers after a second.

"Okay. Try the Director's Office. Through those doors, end of the hall."

She nods and heads off.

"Red, try and find the rest of the staff. Two nurses and an orderly."

"Got it," he says, already gone.

"Ace, you're the techhead -"

"Hey!"

"What? You're the most technically inclined!"

"Oh. Sorry. I thought you said, 'dickhead.'"

There's a moment's pause, and suddenly we're all cracking up, laughing to break the tension. Somehow, our laughing doesn't mix with the maniacal laughing all around us.

"Okay," I say after a minute. Exaggerating my pronunciation, I say, "You are the most technically capable of us all. We need to get the electricity back online so we can keep the doors locked. Generator's in maintenance, West Wing. Blue Jay, can you go with him?"

She nods. They leave.

Red Bolt is back, slows down and says, "Nurses have locked themselves into the staff break room. I figured that was a good place for them to stay. Couldn't find the orderly, but I didn't go downstairs. It sounds... bad, down there."

"It will be bad down there," I say. "Red, I need you and Ragdoll to get all the normals back into their cells and close the doors. If you can, put the bed restraints on them. When Ace gets the power back on, the doors locks will seal shut automatically, so make sure you're outside a cell before you close the door."

"Why me?" Ragdoll asks.

"Because you're the most dextrous, not likely to fumble the restraints. I need to know that the normals up here are going to stay in their cells."

It's not the complete truth. I don't want Ragdoll downstairs. It's not going to be pretty down there. She can take care of herself, has a hundred times or more. She kicks ass and takes names. But I'm suddenly protective. It's the Kane.

"When you're done... If we're not back, go see if Anna or Ace need any help."

She looks pissed off as all hell, but she nods.

"What about us?" Dragon rumbles.

I look at the others and say, "We're going downstairs."

I lead them to the staircases at the end of the East Wing, down through what I always think of as the airlock - two sets of double doors, locked by keypad sequence and facial recognition by the armed guard and orderly usually inside. I call it the airlock because once I was feeling philosophical about it - on one side of the twin doors is the atmosphere of sanity, on the other, the void of madness.

Beyond the unlocked airlock is bedlam, pandemonium, whatever you want to call it. Deprived of victims, the homicidal maniacs of the Kane Sanitarium are preying on themselves, chasing each other around the large central area, the Wreck Room. A pyrokinetic is in the corner, setting a fire. A plant-man is humping a potted fern.

Almost as one, they see us, stop what they're doing, smile.

This attack is different. They know what they're doing. They don't come at us in mindless waves of grasping hands and kicking feet. They're in possession of whatever faculties they had.

Slowly, with a lot more difficulty, we kick their asses. Phenom, Superia, and Dragon all take to the air, kicking and tossing the inmates around. Rapunzel keeps the ones we beat tied up, taking two or three at a time and slamming them into each other. Physique slugs it out with the big bruisers. I'm everywhere, twitching and jumping and kicking and slashing. Spinning and twirling and flipping and punching.

Out of their usual habitat - the streets of Action City I mean - and their usual outfits, I only recognize a handful of them. Lurk and Rumpelstiltskin. Patchwork, sewn back together. The Dollmen, who are always extra eager to rip me apart. Simple Simon. Masker, already wearing someone else's face. Big Bertha.

And my guys, of course. The ones I put in here. Squidface Calamari. Black Crow. Dust Devil and Ram-Man and Jungle King.

And her. Arachnid.

They come at me together, all at once, claws and horns and fangs, feet and fists and tentacles. Punches, slashes, charges, kicks. Together like this, they might actually take me.

Only, I'm not alone.

Rapunzel and Squidface tangle. Dragon and Ram-Man lock horns. Phenom and Dust Devil trade blows. Black Crow flies in the face of Superia. Physique and Jungle King fight for dominance. Arachnid and I are out for blood.

They're out for the count in a few minutes.

The six of us look at the damage, the wreckage. We drag the inmates back to their cells, toss them in, close the doors. We're bruised, bleeding from a dozen little nicks and cuts and scrapes and scratches. Even Phenom. Superia and Physique are the only ones who don't look hurt, but they look tired.

"Where the hell's the damn power?" I ask. "We need to get the generator online."

"What's down here?" Dragon asks.

It's a staircase leading down. No special locks or electric fences, no guards to ask for ID. A big iron door with a giant padlock and chain, unlocked now. A stairwell of stone leading down.

"I'm surprised no one has come up," I kind of wonder.

"What's down there, Squirrelman?" Rapunzel repeats the question.

"The Extreme Sanctions Ward," I say.

"So you said," Physique says. "What is it?"

"It's where they keep the metas and the crazies too far gone to respond to conventional treatment," I say. "It's where the Kane staff conduct... experiments."

"What?" Superia asks, horrified.

"Extreme Sanctions," I say. "The Kane admin petitioned to be given permission to use any means necessary to ... cure... these inmates. Mostly it just makes them more nuts."

"That's monstrous," she says.

"Yeah, well, so are these inmates," I answer. I look her in the eye and say, "Superia... stay here. Keep an eye on this level. Make sure no one wakes up and heads upstairs."

She manages to look grateful, insulted, and upset at disappointing us all at once, but she doesn't object.

"Why does she get to stay?" Dragon asks.

I stare up at him and answer, "Because I said so. You got a problem with that?"

He can rip me to pieces in seconds. He's a foot taller and probably two, three times my weight. His claws can rip through steel plate and solid stone. He bares his fangs.

"Nope," he says.

The sub-basement is worse than I remember. I've only been here once myself, my predecessor twice more. It's a nightmare come to life. Slick stones and iron bars. Thick leather belts and heavy iron manacles. Electric-shock therapy equipment lying smashed and useless in the shock room. An operating theatre.

The inmates are few, thank God. A couple big bastards, all muscle and bone. A fat hairy fuck, eating the orderly. A little guy with knives for fingers. Gator. Dr. Necro. Fearmonger is the worst, nearly gets us all, but Superia shows up suddenly, glowing this yellow-white light, and it shrinks away. It's an hour or more before they're all taken care of.

I close the door on the last one, a freak with purple skin and no face, and the clock upstairs faintly, finally, chimes midnight.

Laughing. Giggling. Tittering. Chuckling. Chortling.

We're in the lobby, all of us, back to back. The clock chimes out its last count. The ring doesn't stop, going on and on, a single note held indefinitely.

"Aw, fuck," someone mutters.

"Head them off! Red, get the guards, go!" I order.

The wave of normals is on us in a couple of seconds, but we're ready for them. It takes us less time, less effort to round them all up, get them back in their cells.

"Fucking time travel," I mutter to no one in particular. "Anna, any luck figuring out how to get us out?"

"I was interrupted last time," she answers. "Ragdoll intervened, but I wasn't able to determine the trigger event."

"Try again," I tell her, and she's off. "Ace, what took so long with the power?"

"Johnny Giggles showed up, looking for April Fool," he tells me. "He had the guards' guns. Nearly handed me my ass."

"Shit," Phenom says.

"Yeah."

"Okay. This time we don't split up more than necessary," I say. "We're all going downstairs this time."

"What about the gennie?" Ace asks.

"Hell. Okay. Ace, take Ragdoll and Blue Jay. You guys stay here. When Johnny shows up, kick his ass."

Ragdoll still looks pissed as all hell, but they stay upstairs. The rest of us head down.

The maximum security ward in the basement is waiting for us. It's a bitch of a fight, mainly because this time the Extreme Sanctions inmates come upstairs to find out what the fuss is about. It's long and hard but it's over eventually. All the cells are shut.

Midnight strikes upstairs.

Laughing. Giggling. Tittering. Chuckling. Chortling.

We're in the lobby, all of us, back to back. The clock chimes out its last count. The ring doesn't stop, going on and on, a single note held indefinitely.

"Aw fuck this," I say.

This time we don't waste time. We take the fight to them. All the normals are out for the count in a couple minutes. We head downstairs, all of us at once. Meet the bad guys on the way up the stairs. It gets messy. Ace gets a nasty slash across the back. Blue Jay gets the wind knocked out of her, sits out the fight gasping for air. Rapunzel gets slammed hard into a wall, is groggy. I nearly have my shoulder ripped out of its socket. Phenom gets a split lip and a black eye, which is saying something.

Gradually though, we pull it off. Close the doors.

Midnight strikes.

Laughing. Giggling. Tittering. Chuckling. Chortling.

We're in the lobby, all of us, back to back. The clock chimes out its last count. The ring doesn't stop, going on and on, a single note held indefinitely.

"This is getting annoying," Superia says.

We let them come to us this time. Wait it out in the lobby. We're still hurt from the last time. It's no good. They come at us in waves, but not everyone is accounted for, and we have to search the whole fucking place to find them. We eventually split up to make the search go faster.

"I was thinking," Ace says as he and I head down a corridor on the fourth floor.

"Good time to start."

"Har har. Seriously. Why us?"

I check a supply closet and say, "You still on about that?"

"What's the only thing we all have in common? We don't patrol the same areas or usually fight the same crooks."

"Okay..."

"It's the League, I'm sure of it," he says, shining his glow-card into an office. "We're the League, and sometime in the future we piss off a major magical player, and they cast this spell to keep us here. To stop us before we form. To alter their present by changing their past."

"You're giving me a headache. You're saying we're the League, the eleven of us?"

"Well, I can't say that it'll just be us, but I think we can say that the eleven of us are the ones who form the team."

"Hmm."

Our little discussion is cut short by running into the fern-humping plant guy and Dust Devil. We take them out. Put all the little crazies back in their beds.

Midnight strikes.

Laughing. Giggling. Tittering. Chuckling. Chortling.

We're in the lobby, all of us, back to back. The clock chimes out its last count. The ring doesn't stop, going on and on, a single note held indefinitely.

"I'm getting a little tired of this!" Phenom yells at the ceiling.

"What's pissing me off is that they're getting healed up with every refresh and we ain't," Dragon rumbles, spitting out fire.

"I have good news and bad news," Darklight says while we wait for the first wave of normals to show.

"Anna?" Physique asks.

"The good news is I know how to get us out of this time loop."

"Darklight, that's great!" Blue Jay grins at her, and then they're on us again.

It's practically unfair this time. We all know each other's moves pretty well by now, start acting together to take them out in threes and fours instead of individually.

"What's the bad news?" I ask when they're all out of the fight.

Darklight takes a deep breath.

"I have to kill us all," she says.