The machines beeped their steady rhythm. The prisoner’s chest rose and fell. The drip of his feed, the tube running into his weathered arm, wizened by age. All of it a pulse, a pattern, a ticking metronome, easy to count, easy to follow. The child saw the instant between the beeps, saw the moment when the human looked up and away, his eyes wandering from the room. Timing was everything. The boy stepped through, silent and unseen.

His hand unlocked the door. And then he stepped back, away and gone.

*

Click.

Matt glanced down, his brow furrowed. He could’ve sworn he’d heard a-

And then he saw it. The smallest gap, a fraction of an inch.

The door to Mentok’s cell was open.

“Hello?” he called. He swung his head, glancing either direction down the deserted hallway. There was nobody there. Matt’s heart skipped a beat. His eyes moved back to the door.

“Hello?” he called again. Still no answer. He glanced up and around, looking for a sign, a security camera. Maybe the other guard on the front desk had disagreed with Angus, unlocked the latch remotely. Maybe this was them being cooperative.

Yeah, Matt tried to convince himself, his heart starting to race, maybe that was it.

“Hello…?” he tried a third time. But the silent halls gave no answer.

“Ok,” he whispered to himself. He pushed off the bench, glancing around the bright fluorescent corridors. “Ok.” The door, a thin frame of the same thick glass as the window, hung still, silent, decisively unlatched. It had definitely been locked. He definitely hadn’t opened it. Maybe one of the staff…

Slowly, as if in a dream and against his better judgement, Matt slowly tip-toed forward. His hand clasping gingerly around the latch and he pulled the door gradually open, shoulders tensed, poised to panic at a sudden eruption of blaring alarms.

Nothing. Matt glanced around, straightening up. No alarms, no sirens, no release of hounds. He turned to inspect the open room, wary of anything previously unseen, any signs of impending doom or sudden revelation that it was Mentok himself who’d let him in, spider to fly. But there was nothing. Apart from a slight musty old-man smell, the soft sounds of the life-support and the Mindtaker’s shallow breathing, everything in here was exactly the same as it had seemed from the other side of two inches of plexiglass. Matt stood, frozen a step through the doorway, staring at the comatose genius.

“Hi,” he half-called, half-whispered. No response. “Did you… um… the door?”

The body didn’t move or otherwise give any indication that it had heard him or done anything except lay perfectly still and drink food through a tube for ten years. Matt took a further step forward, head turned sceptically to the side.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he assured the silent Mentok, uncertain if he needed to give that kind of assurance. No answer. “I just, ah… have a few questions. I just want to talk.”

Funnily enough, the man who’d been in a coma for over a decade didn’t say much to that either. Matt straightened up, starting to feel slightly stupid.

“Are you awake?” he asked bluntly. Then when the sleeping figure again gave no response, he rubbed the back of his head. “Well, I mean, of course you’re not going to… Duh. Sorry.”

He paused, gazing down at the sad, lifeless body underneath the white linen sheet. A second passed, then ten. Then thirty. Nothing moved.

Finally Matt sighed, rubbing his eyes. He slumped down into the one plastic armed, fabric‑cushioned hospital chair which was sitting alone and unremarkable by the supervillain’s bedside.

“What am I doing?” he muttered to himself. He glanced over at the silent figure of Mentok, motionless save for the ragged rise and fall of his thin chest beneath the hospital gown. “Yeah, go ahead, laugh it up. Like you’re so smart.”

He leant down, placing his head in his hands. His fingers were cold against his forehead, numbed by the omnipresent air-conditioning.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admitted out loud to no one in particular, “I don’t know what’s going on. Am I going insane? Is that what all this is?”

“Seeing phantom children. Almost getting blown up. God.” Matt sighed, leaning back against the wall. “I don’t know any more man. My friend Ed see,” he said, not knowing why he was explaining. Maybe it was the captive audience. Maybe he just liked having someone who couldn’t judge. “My friend Ed – you’d like him, he’s a genius too – we were at Morningstar together. You know Morningstar, the Legion of Heroes.” He glanced at Mentok, then waved a dismissive hand. “Sure you do. Anyway he-” Matt took a short breath, “-well, a few months back, he jumped off a roof. And see, everyone just assumed he killed himself, but me, well I… I guess I…”

Again, he sighed and shook his head. “I guess I just couldn’t accept that. And then, well, everything’s just snowballed from there. Because if he didn’t kill himself, then someone must’ve killed him, and there must be some reason, and so on and so forth…”

Matt paused. “And now here I am, two stories underground, talking to a vegetable, not sure if I’ve made it halfway down the rabbit hole, or dug a pit and called it a burrow. Suppose either way I’m in deep.”

He glanced at the silent, shut-eyed supervillain. “Right, yeah, sorry, like you care. The famous Mindtaker, evil genius. Sure you’ve got better things to do than listen to me.” The air hissed between Matt’s teeth and his head dropped into his hands. “I don’t know man. I don’t know what I expected to find here. I don’t know if I’m chasing ghosts or dead ends, drawing patterns out of stars. Because you’re right you know, Jane’s right, Wally’s right, it could all just be a coincidence, all just a truckload of nothing. People die all the time – they just do. Lives end without meaning, without justice, without resolution. People kill themselves, people talk crazy, people see things. Maybe that’s the deep dark truth I’ve been fighting so hard to avoid this whole time. I want there to be a conspiracy, because then there’s someone to fight. Then there’s someone to blame.” He leant back and sighed, holding the back of his head, a dry stinging in his eyes. “Then my friend didn’t kill himself over something as stupid as a girl.”

Matt slumped forward again, resting his cheek on his wrists. He gazed over at Mentok, laying still and silent beneath white sheets, on a shifting bed of semi-solid, shining, aquamarine gel – an invention of his own design, Matt had read this morning, designed to prevent bedsores. Used by hospitals worldwide.

“I don’t know,” he muttered, “My friend doesn’t think you’re evil. Seeing you like this, it’s hard to argue. Maybe you are just misunderstood. Maybe I’m just crazy. Clutching. Desperate for excuses. A part of me wonders if I’m doing all this to impress a girl.” He gazed up at the roof. “Sure you know what that’s like.”

He paused for a moment. Ed had known. Ed had-

No. The cold oily melancholy inside him ignited with frustration and Matt leant forward, squinting hard at the crystal window, fists clenched together, teeth gritted, fiercely shaking his head.

“Except I’m not,” he swore fervently, “I swear to God I’m not seeing things, I’m not making this up. Everyone Captain Dawn ever knew is dead, that’s the truth, that’s a-” he swore, “-fact, and putting aside Ed and photos and children and psychics that’s not- that can’t just be nothing. It can’t.”

He shook his head, his mouth set into a hard line. “Something’s going on, I swear it. Whether I’m a mile off on the reason, it just...” Matt stared at the lifeless Mentok and slowly shook his head. “I don’t know. It was all because of this party, see-”

*

“A reunion,” Jane explained, her voice trembling at the look on Dawn’s face – the blankness, the mask, devoid of emotion, that could be hiding fury. That could be hiding despair. “This, this, surprise party, the Academy wanted to throw one for you. So we were looking into it and by accident we found… Captain we found…”

She paused, struggling to keep her voice level. Get it out. Keep going. “Deaths.”

*

“Hundreds of deaths,” Matt explained, “Hundreds. From, from a dozen, a hundred different causes. If I hadn’t researched it myself, I’d have said it was impossible. There’s no pattern. I don’t understand, it doesn’t make sense, but I thought-”

*

“Matt thought it was Viktor Mentok,” Jane stammered, her hands shaking. Captain Dawn still standing there, frozen in place. “I thought he was wrong, but he’s the only one from your past still alive and he thought… well he’s gone to check, just in case, though I don’t see how…”

*

“I don’t see how it could be you,” Matt mumbled. He shook his head. “I mean yeah you worked on mind control, and Ed was looking into your designs, but it’s just… Jane’s right. Seeing you here, like this… you couldn’t have done it. Not this,” he said, “Not a decade of systematic killings. I thought I’d figured it out, thought it made sense.” He paused. “I guess I was wrong.”

*

Jane’s voice trailed off. “But it doesn’t matter,” she said firmly, resolutely shaking her head, “Because even if it’s not him, it’s something, someone trying to hurt you, or, or blackmail you or something.” She looked up at Dawn, pleading. “And we’ve got to do something, so we have and I’m so sorry but we didn’t have a choice, it’s already done, Matt’s already-”

*

“So we’ve gone public,” Matt murmured. He stared at the still, sleeping figure. “Or at least I’ve gone public. Emailed every news station and paper and website I could think of.” He paused, pursing his fingers on his lips. “Figured about the stupidest thing you could do if you know the truth about a conspiracy is to keep it to yourself. So now I guess now we see what happens. Now the whole world starts trying to figure it out. A whole lot more people smarter than me start investigating.”

*

“Now, one way or another,” said Jane, “We’ll get some answers.”

She looked up at Dawn – at his wide-eyed, frozen face – silently begging, pleading for him to understand. The seconds passed like hours as they stood there – so close, yet separated by an endless divide.

And then slowly, slowly, Dawn looked down on her, his blank face split into open horror.

“What have you done?” he whispered.

*

“So that’s about the gist of it,” sighed Matt. He slouched into the hospital chair, leaning into the plastic armrest. It felt cathartic, saying all this aloud, even to a living corpse. “The bit I don’t get is the ten years thing. I mean when I thought it was you, it made sense. Ten years of you in here, ten years of death out there, sort of fits, right? Right.” He chewed his thumb. “And the other thing I don’t get is why. Why do this? I mean as far as I can see, you’re the only one left with any real cause for revenge, and apparently you’re not even the vengeful type… So why bother? Why kill so many people connected to one man?”

He glanced at the coma patient. “Don’t suppose you’ve got any genius ideas?”

The only response was the brainwave monitor’s beep.

“Figures,” sighed Matt. He rose to leave. “Well, thanks for listening. I should probably get out before a guard sees me in here and thinks I’m trying to spring you, gets overzealous with a Taser.” He paused, giving the silent figure one last look. “Anything you want me to tell the Legion?”

It was, of course, a rhetorical question. Matt turned on his heels towards the door – but as he did, the brainwave monitor let out another, sharper beep.

And then another. And then another.

Slowly, Matt turned, his eyes widening, towards the screeching screen, back towards the bed-

As to his shock, amazement and terror, Viktor Mentok began to stir-

As his eyes flicked open and his cracked lips drew apart-

As he whispered-

“Help.”