[OLD] The Phoenix Project (#3)

Two

By the time they reached the California coast, Ivy and Victoria had thrown their snow gear in a pile on the floor of the jetchopper. Spencer landed on the deck of the Fortuna, and Ivy slid open the door, grateful for the warmth of the sun.

She knew it had been a bad idea for them to get their hopes up, but she'd really expected they would find Claire at Capricorn. Or at least something that would lead them to her.

The four of them crossed the deck where Supers were training. Tyler spotted them and gave a wave. Victoria half-heartedly returned the gesture, while Ivy looked away. She was still struggling with trusting Tyler. After all, Tyler hadn't trusted them with the fact Ash was her brother. And while Ivy couldn't entirely blame her for that—it was understandable—it made her wonder if Tyler had other secrets.

Dr. Newman was waiting for them in the labs. Spencer gave a brief report of the mission and handed him the piece of metal Ivy had pulled from the robot.

"I'm sorry Claire wasn't there," Dr. Newman said. "Though it is strange that the place was abandoned. I wonder what the robot was being kept there for." He examined the metal.

"Our powers didn't work on it," Ivy said. "My fire and Spencer's ice didn't affect it at all."

"It felt like it was repelling us," Spencer added. "I had less control over my ice the closer it got."

Dr. Newman reached into his pocket and pulled something out: the hunk of metal Ivy had taken from John when they ran into him at Scorpion headquarters. "That confirms the theory our chemists had."

"It's the same thing?" Ivy asked.

Dr. Newman nodded. "It's alterium."

"You mean the stuff they tried to make at Tyche Labs twelve years ago?" Spencer asked.

"The stuff they did make at Tyche Labs. But when they synthesized it, it caused the explosion that killed most people in the area."

"Wait," Victoria piped up. "I thought we weren't sure if they made it or not."

"Claudia mentioned something in that log we found when we went to the labs," Ivy said. "She was pretty sure they were successful."

"Yes, but she wasn't positive," Dr. Newman said. "I wasn't either, until we found this in the information taken from Scorpion." He opened up a laptop sitting on the table next to him. "We're still combing through a lot of the data, but the techs found some journal entries. It looks like they were written by Claudia after she arrived at Scorpion. She details how she met a man named Andrew Hale, the leader of both Zodiac and Scorpion at the time. The organization was much smaller back then.

"After arriving, she was assigned to work with John, the Overseer of Cancer. She spoke with him about the Cladis Point incident. Although none of the surviving scientists worked with alterium—they were all on the Serum-P project—John said he had a few contacts who were also trying to create alterium. They'd done similar experiments and come to the conclusion that the metal couldn't exist in our atmosphere in its pure state. It would cause an explosive reaction."

"Why did serum keep us from dying?" Spencer asked. "And why was the damage so...random?"

Dr. Newman sighed. "I can't say for sure. We still don't know what was in the serum, but it must have also had some kind of unique chemical relationship with alterium. I think they might repel each other in some sort of way, which is why the metal is resistant to your abilities. A Super's presence could have had an effect on the damage the blast from alterium caused."

Ivy reached out to pick up the smaller chunk of alterium. Holding it made her slightly uncomfortable, like her body was trying to push it away. "If it's too unstable to synthesize, how did they get this?" she asked.