The laboratory outside the town of Tyche Point, California had been abandoned for twelve years now.
Everyone knew it was a lab accident that forced the researchers to leave, but the tourist spots in town were happy to fuel the rumors that aliens had been involved. It was good for business, after all.
And it helped that Delta Labs had been built in the middle of a small crater.
But it was the true cause of the accident that drew SCI to the lab twelve years later. After the building was determined to be stable—despite the cracks and crumbling outer walls—Agent David Martin's team was approved to move in and establish a temporary lab. They passed through the graffiti-covered lobby into the sublevels of Delta Labs.
The artifact was exactly where the previous researchers had left it: a chamber at the center of the lowest sublevel. Everything had been excavated except for a tower of dark stone directly beneath the artifact itself.
It was a triangular shard of metal, about five inches tall and two and a half inches across the bottom. The metal itself was a dark bronze that almost verged on black, flecked with pieces of gold that glinted under the chamber's red lights. One side was a perfectly smooth angle, the other a vertical jagged line, and the bottom flat except for a single notch.
Agent Martin's team took new readings of the energy emitted by the artifact and compared them to the old reports salvaged from the lab's computer drives and filing cabinets. While some scientists worked on data analysis in the upper levels, many stayed in the chamber, continuing to take readings day after day.
This morning was no exception. Researchers clad entirely in black—including their SCI-issued lab coats—circled the fragment, armed with a wide array of equipment. The only thing they wore that wasn't dark in color were their white gloves.
Martin watched them from the walkway above, dressed similarly in a completely black suit. He'd been apprehensive about standing up here at first, not convinced he could trust the lab's infrastructure, but nothing had broken since they arrived.
At least, not yet.
Agent Dawson approached, her gaze fixed on the team below, her hand grazing the railing as she walked.
"Did you read the new report?" Martin asked her when she reached him.
She nodded. "We don't have much time, do we?"
The artifact was still giving off energy, generating a field that had enough destructive potential to level the small town a mile away. And neither SCI'S team, nor the Delta team that had worked here twelve years earlier, could figure out how to remove the strange shard of metal from the earth.
"This thing's so unstable, it's a miracle the energy field hasn't collapsed already," Martin said. "That whole town is doomed."
~
Malcolm watched Delta Labs for two days before making his move.
The SCI team that came in nearly a week earlier had only set up basic security measures. Their comm signals weren't even protected. Not from Malcolm's equipment, anyway. They'd clearly intended for this to be a quick operation.
Unfortunately, the artifact they were here for was giving them a hard time.
Malcolm took his time making his way down the hill he'd been observing the lab from. SCI had set up cameras to ensure kids from town didn't come to poke around or add to the graffiti, but Malcolm didn't care if they saw him coming. They'd know he was here soon enough regardless, and there was nothing they could do to stop him.
He'd dealt with SCI before. Enough to know all the key details of their history. The organization's name was an acronym, but the full name was hardly more than a formality at this point, one of the last lingering pieces from their founding in the sixties. They didn't even pronounce the name as an initialism, but rather as the first syllable in the word 'science.'"
Glass littered the parking lot, along with twisted metal frames that used to be vehicles. SCI had parked their shiny black cars wherever they could. Malcolm rested a hand on one of their hoods as he passed and let his hand trail across the hot metal. Burning up, like everything else in this town that saw little reprieve from the heat.
Desert sun cut through holes and cracks in the building's walls, leaving patches of light in the otherwise dark lobby. Malcolm stepped inside and swept his gaze over the room, taking in the colorful spray paint staining the walls. How many kids had snuck in here over the years, drawn in by the mystery and rumors?
He found his way into the sublevels: a staircase on the other side of an empty doorway. The camera hanging overhead was new. One of SCI's. Malcolm looked into it and smiled.
~
"Agent Martin!"
Martin looked up from the file he was reading. "Agent Dawson?"
Dawson hurried down the hall to him, a tablet in hand. "We have a security breach. He's still on the upper sublevels, but he'll be down here in minutes."
"What? How's he getting past the guards?"
"See for yourself." Dawson held out the tablet, revealing panels of security cameras. "Everyone within ten feet of him drops unconscious."
Martin's eyes widened as he took in the live feeds. The intruder—a boy who looked to be in his late teens, or maybe early twenties—stood in the center of a hallway. Guards in black suits lay on the floor around him. The boy looked up and grinned into the camera, as if he knew Martin was watching.
He matched the description of the boy who'd been whispered about for years in the intelligence community: light skin sharply contrasting with hair that was as dark as could be, eyes an unnatural shade of gold, sharp features, notably tall, and he was dressed entirely in black.
"He's real," Martin murmured.
~
Malcolm was almost to the end of another long, blindingly white hallway when someone interesting finally showed up. The door at the end of the hall swung open, and a man stepped forward, aiming a gun at Malcolm.
"One more step and I'll shoot," he warned. The woman behind him also held a gun, though hers was lowered.
Malcolm laughed and gestured to the guards on the floor behind him. "They're not dead, if that's what you're concerned about," he said. "They'll wake up just fine. Well, most of them, anyway."
"You're him, then. The Nightmare Kid." The man's eyes narrowed.
Ugh. Malcolm had never liked that nickname. "Actually, I go by Malcolm now."
The man dropped to the ground.
"Martin!" The woman exclaimed. She dropped to one knee to check his pulse. Her gaze darted to Malcolm. "What did you do to him? Will he wake up?"
"Probably. Can't promise he'll be in a great state of mind." Malcolm took a step forward. "He's in a deep sleep, living his worst nightmares. Every minute that passes out here feels like an hour in there." Another step. He smiled. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to borrow your mind."
The woman's mouth opened to respond, but her eyes were already drifting shut, and then she was on the ground next to Agent Martin.
Malcolm looked down at the agents and braced himself. No nightmares. Just a normal dream. It wouldn't take more than a few seconds to get the information he needed.
"Sweet dreams." He closed his eyes and slipped into darkness.
The confused, dreaming mind was easy to manipulate. Easy to get information from.
Tall grasses surrounded Malcolm, and a full moon hung overhead in a golden sky. Dark shapes swooped by overhead. The agent stood with her head tipped back, taking it in. The blonde hair she'd had in a ponytail fell free past her shoulders.
Malcolm took a few steps toward her. "What's your name?" he asked.
She looked at him and frowned. "Alice Dawson."
"I need you to tell me where it is."
"Where what is?"
Malcolm held out a hand and recreated the artifact SCI was here for: the pyramid fragment. Here in the subconscious mind, he was in complete control. If only it were like that in the other dimension, the world of nightmares he'd transported the other agents' minds to.
"Oh, the Delta artifact," Dawson said. She fiddled with the dark sunglasses hanging from the neck of her shirt. The full moon melted behind her. "It's in a chamber on the lowest sublevel. The lab's old security systems were useless, so we installed our own."
"How do I get into the chamber?" Malcolm asked.
"Code on the door is 8221. And you'll need a fingerprint."
Well, there was no shortage of fingerprints around that Malcolm could use. "And your computers?"
"Passcode to the local database is Messier110. The online servers require a second code, CygnusX-1." Alice looked up at the sky overhead, a dazed expression crossing her face.
"Thank you." Malcolm turned around. "That will be all."
He exited the dream, leaving Dawson to wander alone in her mind until she came to.
There were more guards between Malcolm and the fragment. He latched onto their minds one by one and put them under. It was more of a challenge to force their minds into the Dreamvoid, so he let them drift off into their own natural dreams instead.
He'd need to be fast, he thought as he stepped off the last staircase. It had been some time since he had to keep this many people asleep at once. Once he was out and safe, he'd undoubtedly crash for a while. His record after a particularly tricky job was nearly three days straight of sleep.
His old boss hadn't been happy about that.
The last two guards, the ones in front of the door to the artifact's chamber, went down before they had a chance to raise their weapons. Malcolm grabbed one of their arms and pressed a finger to the scanner by the door. The screen lit up green, and when he punched in the code, the doors slid open with a hiss.
There it was, at the center of the chamber. The pyramid fragment. One of them, anyway. Malcolm circled the hill of stone the chamber had been built around. How long had it taken the founders of Delta Labs to track the energy readings? To excavate enough rock to access the fragment and build their lab around it?
Malcolm climbed onto the base of the stone tower, reached up to grab the fragment, and pulled. Despite his hopes, it refused to budge. "Damn it," he muttered. He leaned forward against the rock. "You really don't want to come out, do you?"
He felt it, that same nagging feeling he'd felt around the other fragment: the sense that he was forgetting something. The sense that there was a connection.
But two teams of scientists twelve years apart couldn't get the thing out of the ground. What was he supposed to do?
"You may be stubborn, but I am too." Malcolm hopped back down to the floor. "I'll get my hands on you eventually."
He was pushing the limits of his power, but he needed a look at the computers before leaving. He tracked down an office on the next floor up and slid into a chair.
There was a lot of valuable information on SCI's server, too much for Malcolm to sort through now. But as he downloaded files onto the USB drive he'd brought, he scanned them for any mention of the other reason he'd come to Tyche Point. What was it Scorpion called their child army? Altered? Yes, that was it.
Malcolm hoped enough of the original Delta Labs files were intact for him to track down the superpowered kids that hadn't been taken. If he could persuade them to work with him, he could finally take down his real enemy.