The longer Matt stared, the more it all blurred together – the faces, the photographs, obituary after obituary, a patchwork of words. Presented this way, he thought, death seemed so trivial – an endless sea of details, once so important to someone, now so irrelevant… names and dates and causes…

Dates…

A strange, prickling feeling began climbing its way up the back of Matt’s neck.

“Jane,” he whispered, his eyes glued to the clippings – to the numbers. Numbers never lied. “When did Dawn’s sister die?”

Jane frowned. “Amelia?”

“That’s the one.”

Jane bent down over Matt’s laptop and clicked around in silence until she’d brought up the relevant page. “August 18, 1991.”

Matt fell silent, chewing his finger. “And her son?”

“Like, two weeks later?”

“Hmm.” Something nagged at him. Maybe it was just the lack of sleep, maybe he was imagining things – but he had to know.

“Can we go through?” he asked. He glanced back at Jane. “The dates, can we make a list of all the dates they died on?”

Jane frowned, perplexed, but she shrugged her acquiescence and the pair began making their way back over their notes.

It took about half an hour to go through the names of every one of Dawn’s dead acquaintances and record exactly when it was they’d died – but by the end, Matt knew they were onto something. And that he wasn’t going insane.

“It’s the last ten years,” he muttered, glancing from the whiteboard to the spreadsheet of dates on his laptop, “Ninety percent of them, they were all in the last decade. Look.” Jane peered in as he highlighted the entirety of the spreadsheet, some four-hundred and twenty-four dates, and clicked to convert them to a line graph – a single dot on a timeline for every person who’d died. At around ’63 to ’64, the Year of Chaos, there was a small group of dots, some thirty or so, which wasn’t out of place, but after that, the dots grew sparse, irregular – until the beginning of 1991, where their number exploded.

From there, the line looked like it was swarming with flies.

Jane swore. Matt bit his lip. “What’s going on?” he whispered, “Why the last ten years? Is it something to do with Africa, or-?”

He glanced back at Jane, but Jane wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she was standing, her eyes wide, her hand over her mouth.

“It can’t be,” she whispered. The expression on her face was shocked, horrified, but strangest of all… almost… betrayed?

“What?” Matt asked sharply, “What is it, what can’t be?”

“Captain Dawn’s a superhero,” Jane said quietly.

“Yeah,” Matt acknowledged, “So?”

“So,” she murmured, “Who’d most want revenge on a superhero?” When Matt didn’t answer, she continued. “A supervillain. Someone he’d beaten.”

“Right,” agreed Matt, still impatient, “But we already ruled that out. All the supervillains the Legion fought are dead, you told me yourself.”

“Technically, no,” Jane whispered, lost in thought, “But I didn’t think- it couldn’t possibly-”

“Wait what?” cried Matt, snapping round to look at her, “What do you mean, ‘technically no’?! I thought you knew them all by heart?! I thought you accounted for everyone?!”

“I do know them all,” Jane replied, “And I did account for everyone. There’s only one, Viktor Mentok, who’s still alive.” She shook her head, her face pale. “But it’s impossible. He’s got Scarlett Syndrome, he’s, he’s comatose… he can’t be it.”

Something about that name rang a bell in Matt’s head. He struggled to think. And then, in a flash-

“Ed,” he murmured. Instinctively, his hand’s fell to the left pocket of his jeans where, nestled in between his keys and wallet, lay the tiny, silver disk. The telepathic emulator. He’d kept it on his person, hidden, since the day Ed had died – the second time he’d seen it. Because the first time…

“What?” said Jane, looking back at his frozen expression.

“Ed was working with old Mentok technology,” Matt whispered. His fingers traced the disk’s outline, hidden away in his pocket. “He had accesses to it, he showed me. He was building off it.”

“WHAT?!” yelped Jane, “Why the hell didn’t you say so?!”

“I did tell you,” he whispered, suddenly too anxious to care about the anger in her voice, “The device that would give telepathy to non-psychics? That was it, I told you, I just- I forgot to mention where it came from…”

“Jesus…” Jane whispered. She shook her head slowly, breathing hard. “Matt, Mentok was the last supervillain the Legion ever put away. July 1990 – Captain Dawn was the one who brought him in. He stood trial but then he… Scarlett Syndrome… he fell into a coma not long after Africa. A little… a little over ten years ago.”

Matt’s eyes widened. “Is he still…?”

“Yeah,” Jane finished bitterly, her voice heavy with contempt, “He’s in a coma. He’s still alive.”

A horrible silence filled the room. They looked at each other.

“Jane,” Matt whispered, “This has to be it. Ed was using Mentok’s technology. Mentok is the only person from Captain Dawn’s past who’s still alive! It’s too much of a coincidence, it has to be him, it has to be!” A rush of energy, of revelation, of terrible understanding, raced through him and he spun, his hands held out, both ecstatic and terrified, to Jane.

But still, somehow, Jane hesitated.

“I don’t know,” she said, slowly shaking her head. She made a face. “It just… it doesn’t feel right.”

“Doesn’t feel-!?” Matt couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Jane, he’s the only one left! Ten years ago, he gets all ‘comatose’, at the same time people start dying?! He’s a supervillain, for crying out loud! A supervillain!”

Jane remained unconvinced. “Putting aside the fact that he’s been in a coma for ten years,” she said, then her voice hardened and she pressed on over the top of Matt’s objections, “Putting aside the fact that he’s been under guard that whole time, maximum security, under constant surveillance. Even assuming, for a second, you ignore all that… I just, I just can’t see him doing it.”

Matt blinked, incredulous. “I’m sorry,” he spluttered, “But did I miss something? Some change to the word ‘supervillain’?! He’s The Mindtaker! He’s evil!”

But still Jane shook her head. “Viktor Mentok was never evil,” she said quietly. She looked at him, a curious glimmer in her eyes. “He was part of the Legion, originally. Did you know that?”

Matt hesitated. “No,” he conceded reluctantly, “But that still doesn’t-”

“He lived right here,” she went on, undeterred by Matt’s continued protests, “In Morningstar. Designing the Legion’s armour, their equipment, supporting their abilities. All the while creating invention after invention to better the world. Captain Dawn, Zephyr, the White Queen, all of them – they were his friends.”

“Until he vanished,” countered Matt, who remembered this part of the story, “And turned up a few months later having installed mind-control devices on an entire town.”

“Yes,” Jane agreed calmly, “He did do that. And do you know why?”

“Because he was crazy?”

“No,” said Jane, “Because he wanted to keep them safe.”

She stared at Matt. “Not many people know this. But when Dawn came to confront him, Mentok didn’t fight. He tried to explain. He said that what he was doing was the only way to protect people – that the only way to achieve absolute safety was to remove people’s freedom to harm themselves, to make the wrong choices. He didn’t care about money, or power, or anything like that. It was all because he believed, believed so strongly in the Legion’s goals. Because he couldn’t bear to stand by and watch anyone suffer, not when in his own, warped way, he knew there was something he could do to save them.”

She blinked, staring at the whiteboard, her eyes distant – maybe even a little sad. “That’s why Captain Dawn didn’t kill him. His methods may have been immoral, but he truly believed he was doing the right thing. He was a genius and he believed in the Legion’s cause. His understanding of it had just… evolved. Some say it was the Scarlett Syndrome, his thoughts moving so fast, becoming detached from reality. But no matter what he ended up doing, there was never any doubt about his intentions. He wanted to help. He meant well.”

She turned back to look at Matt. “Which is why this just doesn’t seem like him. Killing hundreds of people? Murdering Dawn’s entire past, deliberately trying to cause him that kind of emotional pain? It’s not just cruel, it’s pointless – what does it achieve, besides hurting one man?”

“One man who put him away for life,” Matt countered.

Jane was resolute. “Dawn argued on Mentok’s behalf against the death penalty,” she said, “Dawn showed him mercy, Dawn brought him in alive – not to mention, Mentok was doggedly, obsessively devoted to the Legion.” She paused, and looked at Matt. “I just can’t see him doing this.”

But Matt wasn’t giving in. “Maybe that’s the genius of it,” he argued, “Maybe the fact that he’s above suspicion is exactly why we should be suspicious.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“But everything else does! He’s a genius, with a reason to hate Captain Dawn, who’s had ten uninterrupted years to work on his specialty of, oh yeah, mind control, and Ed just happened to be investigating his tech when he died!” He shook his head, his hand trembling. “Mentok removed the free will of an entire town, what if he’s planning to do it for the entire world? The clairvoyants, maybe they all saw what was coming and were trying to prevent it and the child, the child with his warning… Jane, it all fits!”

“Except the part where he’s in a coma, in maximum security, under constant guard!”

“You don’t think he could fake that?”

“You don’t think anybody checked? You think you’re the only person who thought, when Viktor Mentok went into a coma, ‘hmm, he’s a genius, maybe he’s faking it?’! Believe it or not, you’re not the only one in the world with half a brain!”

Matt opened his mouth to unleash an angry reply – but he forced himself to swallow it, seeing the frustration on Jane’s face.

“Fine,” he said, “Fine. Either you’re right or I’m right, but either way, this is too much of a coincidence. I’ve got to go check this out.”

“Check what out?” Jane scowled. Matt began shuffling a handful of papers into a pile.

“Mentok. I’m going to go see him. If he’s really in a coma, I doubt he’ll mind if I pay him a visit.”

Jane rubbed her eyes. “Fine,” she muttered, “We can go. If only to shut you up.”

Matt looked at her, his face hard. “I said I,” he said firmly, “Not we. You’re not coming.”

Jane’s lip curled into a murderous scowl. “I swear to God,” she snarled, “If you start with the ‘it’s too dangerous for a girl’ crap, I will dangle you out the window until you remember which of us can fly. I’m as much a part of this as you are.”

“I never said you weren’t,” Matt replied, “You’re not coming to keep me safe, not the other way around.”

Jane glowered. “How does my not being there protect you?” she snapped, “You couldn’t defend yourself against an angry goose.”

“Say Mentok is behind this,” Matt pushed on, doggedly ignoring Jane’s goading, “His speciality is mind control. I can keep him out.”

“You don’t know that,” Jane replied, perhaps angrier than she ought to have been. Matt could tell she resented the implication that she couldn’t resist a psychic attack – especially since they both knew it was true. “His tech might not work like a psychic.”

“You’re right, I don’t know,” said Matt, trying to be placating, “But see, I’m just me. Who cares if I get brain-jacked? Big whoop, what can I do, I’m powerless, he gets nothing. But if he takes control of you? Then he gets you – the one-woman wrecking ball, a living weapon, the most powerful Acolyte in the Academy.”

Jane averted her eyes and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, trying not to look too pleased. “So what the hell am I supposed to do while you’re off chasing supervillains?” she complained, though without less vitriol, “Sit around with my thumb up my butt?”

“No,” replied Matt, “Your job is more important.” He stared at her, his expression mixed. “I need you to talk to Dawn.”

Jane’s heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean?” she asked – but Matt just shook his head. He began to walk slowly, back towards the door.

“Ed learned the truth,” he said, “And someone killed him to stop it getting out. I’m not making the same mistake. I’m going to tell everyone – CNN, NBC, ABC, PBS, Fox, The New York Times, USA Today, the freaking Disney Channel. Everyone I can, anyone who’ll listen. Right now, it’s us versus them, but once everyone knows the truth, it’ll be them versus the world.”

He looked at her. “And you’re going to tell Dawn. You’re going to tell him we know, and you’re going to force him to stop hiding from the truth. There’s no one left to die anymore. You’re going to make him come back out into the open.” He paused. “I don’t know what we’re up against. But I know we need Dawn on our side.”

Jane hesitated. The idea of confronting Captain Dawn, of revealing they’d been investigating his past – of forcing him to share his private pain, or worse still, if he didn’t know, of being the one to inflict that pain upon him… her stomach churned at the thought. But she couldn’t escape the truth. Matt was right. Jane nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat.