“How big an explosion?” asked Frisk.

He leant over the desk, one hand on the glass tabletop, the other around his coffee mug. Fifty-six, overweight, balding and in denial about all three of those facts, the station head looked attentive, though hardly excited.

“Big, according to the source,” said Whitebridge. She clicked the silver pen in her hand a few times while Frisk made a face.

“It’s Morningstar,” sighed Dutton, sounding bored. He leant against the wall, not looking up as his fingers tapped away at his phone, his suit as crisp as always. Vanessa didn’t understand why their head of social media was so adamant about his clothes always being neatly pressed – it wasn’t like he ever fronted a camera. “There’s crazy stuff coming out of there all the time. It’s by the by.”

“Source says this looks different,” argued Whitebridge. Frisk looked at her.

“How close is the source?” he asked.

“Ten miles,” she replied, “Visible smoke.” Her boss took a moment to chew his lip. Outside the glass walls of his office, the hum and chatter of the broadcasting station bubbled on, running as it always did, oblivious.

“I don’t know,” he said, after a few seconds, “They’re very anti-press at the moment. We don’t want to push them if it’s not worth it. Reach out to Winters, see what he’s saying. Then get back to me.”

“I already called his landline,” Whitebridge told him, “He’s not answering.”

Frisk’s brow furrowed. “That’s unusual. Man’s never been shy for a statement.”

“I’m telling you,” insisted Vanessa, “Something’s going on.”

“You’re starting to sound like one of those conspiracy nuts,” chided Dutton. He pocketed his cell and glanced up at Frisk. “Did I tell you about the nut-job who emailed through this morning?”

“The one about the Chinese death twins?”

“No,” Dutton chided, “Not that. Some wacko claiming everyone Captain Dawn grew up with is dead. Stupidest thing I’ve heard all week.”

Vanessa frowned, a hand on her hip. “They’re not, are they?”

“No,” snorted Dutton. He rolled his eyes. “I mean, I don’t know off the top of my head, but come on.” He went back to his phone, dismissing Whitebridge with a wave of his hand. “The intern will tell you, I put her on it, I’m sure it’s bull.”

“You mean Abby,” she said irritably.

“Whatever.”

“She’s been here two weeks.”

“Yeah,” Dutton scoffed, “And she’s minimum wage, so-”

The room exploded.

Suddenly everything was sideways. One second Vanessa was standing in the centre of the room talking to her boss, the next she was on the floor against the far wall, coughing, spluttering, ringing in her ears, her hands cut through with shards of glass from Frisk’s broken desk. Frisk… the chief of broadcasting was gone. Pulped, blown to pieces by the explosion that had decimated the office’s outside wall. The wall and everything within three feet of it just gone, disintegrated to a gaping wound torn through concrete and cabling.

And as Vanessa struggled to stand, mind stuck in a dream-like stupor, seventeen floors above the wailing traffic, through the dust and the debris and the bus-sized hole leading out to open air, floated the Black Death.

“Hello,” he said calmly, his hands upturned, “I’d like to send a message.”

Vanessa screamed.

Dutton screamed, reeling against a cabinet and turned to run.

The Black Death flicked his fingers.

And Dutton fell to the floor, his neck slit open.

Vanessa’s screaming stopped – her hand trembled across her mouth, her eyes wide as saucers. Just like Dutton’s. As he lay there. Twitching. Blood pouring into his suit.

“That’s better,” the Black Death said simply. And he smiled at her with a flat, dead smile. He raised his other hand, and Vanessa jerked into the air – choking, writhing, her chipped red nails scrabbling at the invisible force curled around her neck. “Now, where would I go if I wanted as many people as possible to see me?”

*****

It broadcast live on every one of their channels. An override of the entire network, the largest in the country, all one-hundred and sixteen stations. At the start of the transmission, it was just their company, just one unannounced emergency broadcast from central control, but by the end every network in the country had picked it up.

The face of one man, live, in front of a plain blue screen.

“Ladies and gentlemen, children, governments of the world. My name is Klaus Heydrich. You know who I am.”

*

“Easy now,” soothed the doctor, moving her hands over scorched skin. She looked up at Wally. “You can’t be in here,” she ordered.

The redhead looked at her, incredulous. “Try and make me leave.”

They glared at each other. On the stretcher bed between them, Giselle moaned in agony.

“You know what I can do.”

“Will someone shut that damn thing off?!” the doctor roared, glaring at the TV. But Wally’s eyes widened. That voice. He slowly turned, horror spreading over his face. His hand clutched Will’s.

“Oh God,” he whispered.

*

“Reports of my demise, as you can see, are greatly exaggerated. I am alive. Captain Dawn is dead. I killed him ten years ago, assumed his identity and scorched Africa with his remains.”

“How many stations?” murmured the Secretary. The only one who dared speak – everyone else standing deathly quiet around him, watching the same face on a hundred different screens. The entire Pentagon brought to a standstill.

“All of them,” the man beside him whispered. An aide stepped to his side.

“We’ve got the location.”

“Get the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” muttered the Secretary, “Everyone, now.”

“Since then I have acquired more gifts – become more powerful. And I have watched this world, as I have for a lifetime, as it has continued down the path of weakness. Of stagnation. We have been blessed with the knowledge, the power, to shape a better future – and yet we rot in mediocrity, weighed down by inferiority, by the mewling of human scum.”

*

“You have abandoned virtue. You have abandoned the natural order. You fear the superior who should be revered and shackle them with the burden of those who offer nothing. Invalids and imbeciles and incompetents. Their infection has drained our society of purpose, of drive. What should be humanity’s golden age has become a mongrel breeding ground.”

The plant had stopped work. The machines hissed and steamed but no one cared. A hundred blackened workmen stood silently together, every eye fixated on the screen of the tiny television.

“Turn it up,” the man next to Peter Walker whispered. So he did.

The Black Death stared back at them.

“No more.”

*

“My message is simple. Every government on Earth will submit themselves to my rule, immediately. Anyone who resists will be killed. As a show of compliance, submitting sovereigns will start by exterminating all human vermin possessing traits I deem unworthy. A list will be supplied.”

Matt Callaghan shook his head, his hands white on the bench, tremors running through his chest. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t real. Any second now he’d wake up.

But the Black Death just kept on speaking, and the nightmare didn’t end.

*

In front of the camera, as the entire studio watched on with shaking breaths, Klaus Heydrich paused, unblinking, his eyes cold.

“I realise this may be difficult to accept. I realise too that some may not like the idea of ceding their autonomy or may not believe me capable of doing everything I claim. I do not care. Every quarter hour, I will annihilate a major city in a country that has yet to accept my authority, starting with the United States of America and continuing until every living person submits themselves to me. That is my proposition. I will not negotiate. I cannot be stopped. Fight, and die. Surrender and live.”

“Citizens of the world, embrace your new order. In fifteen minutes, I destroy Detroit.”

He raised his fist and clenched it, shattering the camera – the sound of splintering metal and glass causing every person in the room to flinch. The Black Death stood up, brushing dust from his shoulders.

“Now then,” he announced, light and conversational, “Where can I find Mister Leyton Poole?”

*****

It was scorched, and it was buckled. But with its body sunk deep into the ground and its walls thick steel, the Legion’s Armoury stood intact. James Conrad swept aside the rubble over the entrance, and the Acolytes, the Ashes, anyone who was willing, anyone who was left, all followed him inside.