Editing Back Issue Bin

**** ''RECAP:''  The following could be interpretted as a dream, as an alternate reality, or a timeline yet to be played out...  [[Arthur Redford]] is now by nature an impossibility to continuity.  His past and present selves may make up a variety of stories in time.  

** ''RECAP:''  Brian objects so strenuously at the clearly biased behavior of the judge in Mandy's trial that Brian is held in contempt and removed from the courtroom; Vivian soon comes to bail him out.  However, Mandy is now "alone" with Milos and his offer of assistance.  Defiant, Mandy turns him down.  "I'll give you this one for free," Milos says, and the judge soon changes his mind on Mandy's bail.  The group later discovers that the cases against both Mandy and Thomas Reagan have been dropped.  <br>  With that drama over, everyone tries to get back to what now passes for their normal lives.  As burn-victim Carrie Sellars' condition worsens, though, Arthur asks Mandy to see if she can do something to aid the struggling girl.  In the burn ward at the John Hopkins Medical Center, Mandy's attempts result in disaster and Carrie dies.  Jack, nearby astrally, sees an energy signature leaving the body and, thinking that this is Carrie's soul, forces it back in, to hopefully grant her continued life.  Life she has, but she's now an animalistic creature, ruled by instinct and.  <br>  Carrie tries to escape the hospital, violently, and Mandy and Arthur give chase and try to stop her.  Though Carrie takes Arthur down by stabbing a spear-shaped hand through his gut, Mandy manages to take Carrie out with her fire powers, though she destroys a parked police car in the process.  <br>  Brian, summoned by an earlier phone call from Mandy, arrives on the scene as Arthur's being carried back into the hospital for treatment and, realizing the danger should Carrie awaken, scoops her into his arms and leaps into orbit.  Astral Jack follows with him.  <br>  Mandy uses her powers to contain the blaze around the police car, to the delight of the nearby crowd (one of whom walks off with a car door that Mandy's burned her signature into), and her heroic action is caught on tape.  When the local fire fighters arrive, Mandy makes a very good impression and they agree to take her away from the scene before too many questions are asked.  <br>  Brian and Astral Jack take the feral Carrie far away from the hands of man so they can discuss what to do with her in peace and so that there's less risk of her escaping and harming anyone.  Death's Valley seems the ideal spot and, once there, Brian attempts to use his powers to contact any lingering bit of Carrie's mind still inside her.  He finds none, but does see 283 spectral forms, those of all of the godlike, and realizes that their powers are all, in some way, connected.  

** ''RECAP:''  Brian and Jack stand in Death's Valley, trying to figure out what to do about Carrie - she clearly no longer has a human mind.  Jack theorizes that she's animated only by her godlike energy and is motivated to find a new, living, host for that energy.  The possibilities of this are chilling, but Jack is able to use his powers to keep Carrie in check, so it seems the two have plenty of time to figure out what to do; at least until the Navy scrambles fighter jets.  <br>  Unwilling to be spied on, and worried about military aggression, Brian makes the leap to low earth orbit and one brave/foolish pilot follows him up.  When the pilot's plane shuts down due to the lack of atmosphere, it's only the quick responses of Brian and Jack that save him from a frigid and airless death.  Brian takes pilot and plane safely back to Annapolis, to the cheers and adulations of the Navy, but accidentally leaves Jack and Carrie hanging in a bubble somewhere over the Midwest.  <br>  Mandy sees Brian's triumphant landing on the news and, torqued at being over-shadowed on her own rescue last issue, she breaks her TV.  <br>  16 hours have passed by the time Brian finds Jack again, with Jack spending that time trying to "train" Carrie's animalistic intelligence to no success.  Jack does notice something, though: both Brian and Carrie have been implanted with microscopic tracking chips in their tail bones.  By this time foreign agents have, somehow, managed to pick up on Brian's activity - speculation from Al Quaeda is that the US is launching nukes - so Brian and Jack agree to cut their airial conference short and consult with the rest of the group.  <br>  &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;It's become apparent, at this point, that the NTAC is spying on us pretty much all the time.  We do our best to baffle them, but we're being more careful of what we say over the phone.  We hold a meeting of the core group, Vivian and Matt in the Hopewell Foundation office to discuss what to do about the chips implanted in our spines.  We agree that they should be removed and, as a test, we decide to use the living body of Carrie Sellars to see how well it works.  Matt objects, citing the inhumanity of that action, and though he accidentally insults the others in the group, Brian agrees that he's right.  Jack volunteers to be the guinea pig, instead.  <br>  Genzyme sets up a surgery theater for us within a day and, with the assistance of Brian's ability to link minds and Mandy's microscopic vision, Jack's soon on the operating table.  That's when the world shifts...  

** ''RECAP:''  With poison gas seeping under the door of a shitty apartment, Arthur explains to all and sundry that they're 50 years in the future, and things have gone to shit.  Plans to head home right away are curtailed by Arthur's not knowing how to do that, by Jack's data-self getting "hacked" from an unknown agent (soon revealed to be Jack's future self) and a cadre of soldiers trooping up the stairs.  <br>  Even as Mandy uses air currents to push the gas out of the apartment (and, in the process, gets it all over herself), Brian creates a force field around the group, hoping that it'll be strong enough to keep the soldiers out and buy the gang some time to think.  Unfortunately, the soldiers are armed with Promethium bullets, which cut through Brian's force field and Mandy's armored hide like the proverbial hot knife through butter, and Mandy goes down.  <br>  Until Arthur sacrifices a bit of himself to rewind time and save her. The situation goes from bad to worse when the soldiers activate the contingency Brian heard radio chatter about and the "contingency" turns out to be another godlike, who crashes through the outer wall of the apartment and straight through Brian's fore field.  In a panic, Brian uses his powers to drop the whole group down four stories and into the sewers, the godlike hot on their trail.  At this point, though, Mandy and Arthur are both in a bad state from the gas.  <br>  The godlike turns out to be Maggie Young, kidnapped years before, trained and conditioned, and kept in cryo-sleep.  Arthur attacks with a special knife, going for a kill-shot.  Terrified of her titanic strength, revolted at what the government's done to her and desperate to keep his friends alive, Brian picks up a gun loaded (he thinks) with Promethium bullets and puts one through the center of Maggie's skull. It's only then that an older Alex Young shows up to lead out heroes to safety.  <br>  Back at Jack's Contingency headquarters, Brian is in a broken state and Arthur's not too much better.  Mandy gives Brian motivation enough to get up with a short, fierce speech, but only then do we realize the clip of Promethium bullets is missing, hear the click of a gun and realize that Alex has it pointed straight for Brian's skull.  "Kryptonite, Superman," he says as the issue ends.

** ''RECAP:''  Mandy and Arthur both try to step between Brian and Alex, try to talk the boy down, but with his sister dead and Brian, who Alex thought happily long-gone from this world, present, there's no dissuading him; Alex seems determined to kill Brian Jaffe.  <br>  &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;"I understand now," says a voice from the clear air.  "I think this is what I'm supposed to do."  Alex fires the shot and, though Arthur partially deflects the shot, his special knife is shattered in the process an invisible Vivian takes the hit.  From there, it's chaos.  <br>  Brian operates to save Vivian's life, Mandy melts down some Promethium to build Jack a "cyber-core" and fix Arthur's knife and Arthur goes to have a talk with his son.  The talk doesn't go well, and Alex leaves the compound.  Arthur returns to have a talk with Brian about Maggie's death.  Brian's broken nose later, Arthur says "if it had been anyone else but you pulling that trigger, I would have killed them."  <br>  Meanwhile, Alex has found the government and, in exchange for his own death, he tells them the secret location of Contingency.  With his special hearing, Brian is privy to this conversation and the other side of it holds a very chilling voice indeed.  <br>  In a rush to get ourselves out, we board a train car on a limited track and, though the plan is to have Arthur teleport us to China, when the lights come up again we find ourselves home, only we're all whole; Vivian has no bullet wound, Brian's nose his unharmed and even Jack is back in his body.  It's 4 months after we left.  

** ''RECAP:''  This is Maggie Young's birthday party.  A distinct lack of kids leads to Maggie feeling very alone and isolated, and the adults around her have a pretty tough time relating to her; none of us are good with kids.  Seems like we're in for a slightly awkward, but generally okay, afternoon.  <br>  And then Daniel Young comes home.  He behaves like an ass from the get-go, calls us all "freaks" behind our backs and, while we're outside avoiding an awkward reunion, Brian sees something that prompts him to charge back in.  Arthur beats Brian to the punch (hur hur) and drags Daniel to an isolated car park.  Brian and Julie follow (Julie doing so over Brian's objection), carried by Julie's power.  Much threatening and posturing follow, and in the end Julie tells Arthur to go away and never return to her house.  <br>  Following threats against Daniel Young from Harold and Jack, Mandy takes the kids out, to allow them to avoid the marital strife for a while, while Brian meets with Joelle over lunch to offer her a job as Executive Director of the Hopewell Foundation.  Brian fervently denies being jealous over Joelle's new boyfriend, but perhaps he protests too much. Eventually, after the lunch, Joelle agrees to take the job, but not until the start of the new year.  <br>  Later, and still with a chip on his shoulder, Arthur looks for the Reaper.  He ends up having a midnight altercation with Vernon Marks, who was doing the same.  After that, Arthur departs to tour the world and Marks goes to visit Jack, to talk about a job. Marks insists that he'd like to work for Jack but that he won't break the law in doing so.  

** ''RECAP:''  Mandy, her brother Mikky and several fire fighters lounge around the house, eating and shooting pool.  The game is broken up by the alarm and away they go, with much horse-play and teasing.  Despite their antics, and Mikky's disdain for their lack of seriousness, Mandy works with a professional, skilled crew and they respond in textbook fashion. Unfortunately, the call isn't what they thought it was - instead of a fire, it turned out that the building's roof had collapsed due to water-weight from the day's heavy rain.  The engine company suffers some initial injuries when the front windows explode from the pressure, but Mandy and Mikky both jump into the building to do their job.  <br>  Unfortunately, between the rain and the broken pipes, there's water everywhere in the building and Mandy soon falls temporary victim to her weakness to that substance.  She pushes on regardless, even as Mikky reaches a rescuee on the second floor.  <br>  But her pain alerts Jack, who calls Brian, who hurries over to the site.  Brian notes another victim and cajoles a fireman in the street to radio Mikky, who turns back to the rescue.  At this point, though, the collapse has made the building unstable and the floor gives way under Mandy.  Brian catches her with his power and then extends that power to let the floor take Mikky's weight, so he can safely leave.  <br>  &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;As Brian's lowering Mandy to the ground, however, there's a rumble from within and a terrible noise as the building collapses completely and the boiler explodes.  The issue ends on a cliffhanger.  <br>  Also to note for this issue: Even though this happened on 10/9, we know some of the events of 10/11 already.  Arthur comes back from "walkabout" a scant half-hour before he's due to race an Indy car in Daytona, Florida.  He's lost the tense, half-crazed gleam he usually has in his eye and seems generally much calmer.  The U.S. Gov't also agrees to allow a single representative from the Hopewell Foundation meet with Zaida, coincidentally on the same day as Arthur's race.