Ghost Rider 2099UG #11

Transverse City was built as a ten story transcontinental super highway between Neo-Chicago and Detroit meant to link all of North America. It was approximately 5 miles high/deep and consisted of megatons of material: concrete, metal supports, communication cables, and electric wiring, not to mention the buildings that had grown in the between levels of this "city". It was designed to be the most advanced highway of its time, dreamed of as a center of travel and communication for the entire continent. But that's just what these visions were: a dream.

The Abraxis Alternative, activated by the sinister L-Cypher and mysterious being
known only as Chromeheart, has been initiated. Above the city, the satellite
Elysia, augmented with the Urban Renewal weapon, moments ago, fired a high
intensity energy blast at the unsuspecting city below it. Transverse City is about
to have all its dreams shattered once and for all.

********************************

As with all things, it began as a dull rumble. Like distant thunder, it rolled forward, louder and louder, until the source of the sound appeared in the sky. A beam of violet light enveloped the city, followed by a blue wave of energy. Bright pink light erupted from the ground surrounding the city, then rocketed skyward, encasing Transverse City in a massive static-electric bubble.

Ghost Rider looked up at the spot he had just been standing at. One of the main
roads into Transverse City crumbled behind him, severed straight through the
middle by a giant sheet of energy that had ripped down from the sky and now
tingled with rippling pink sparks in the general shape of a massive wall. Ghost
Rider and the copy of Zero Cochrane inhabiting the body of Vengeance had been flung to the inside of the wall by its initial impact on the roadway.

Ghost Rider brushed off his clothing. Even holographic duds seemed to
accumulate grime as easily as real ones. He wondered, briefly, if it was real grime or simply another subroutine the Ghostworks had netted into him for realism. Ratbiters, he thought, I might have to pay them a little visit now that I'm back in town.

Vengeance's body was no where to be seen.

Scanning his surroundings, Ghost Rider called out, "Did you do that?" He
regarded the barrier for a moment before turning back to where Vengeance had
last been standing. "Better not have scratched my bike," he sneered.

Floating safely a short distance away hovered Ghost Rider's Velociraptor 9000,
it's chrome finish intact. For now, at least. A trickle of dust began to sprinkle onto
the artificial leather seat. The bike's owner looked up to see the jagged cracks in the concrete a good half mile above his head. The dust became pebbles, like hail. Roadside lights began to flicker. The road Ghost Rider himself was standing on lurched as the supports below it began to give way. Glancing up again, GR saw the blurred outlines of man sized boulders begin to rain from the sky. "Shock..."

Kylie stood, staring into the face of hell itself as the roadway began to collapse in on itself before her. Maglevs and bikes began to become crushed under tons and tons of rubble. Rocks and chunks of metal rolled like thunder, slowly approaching her in an onrush of chaos. Men screamed, children cried, and buildings were utterly smashed. In the background shimmered the glowing energy of the force field, projected from somewhere in the sky, that had instantly cut cleanly through miles of concrete roadways. Levels one through ten were in utter panic and disarray. And Kylie stood, motionless, unable to move, like some unseen force was holding her. Preventing her from running. Whether it was outright fear or just awe, it didn't matter. The storm came ever closer and Kylie watched it.

The quiet before the storm. Deep within cyberspace there was a silence. Three
guardians of the net stopped. Warp Angel looked at her two companions. "We're
too late," she whispered.

All at once, their computer generated world rippled around them. Like a massive tidal wave, cyberspace began to disintegrate, ripping apart at the seams. Binary numbers steamed though the tears in reality resembling water falls of data. The numbers turned to rust as they corrupted. A netglider somewhere in the net screamed in pain as his mind is sheared from his body. Explosions ruptured all around them. "Holy shock!" Dr. Neon yelled, attempting to flee. Cortex grabbed his arm.

"Time to bail, doctor!" She punched the barcode on his hand. Dr. Neon felt
himself being pulled back into real time. Cortex reached for the barcode on the
back of her wown hand, but she was an instant too late. In the millisecond before his concsiousness recoiled back into his body, Neon watched in horror as both Cortex and Warp Angel were disintegrated before his very eyes.

Dr. Neon jerked forward, only to feel needles of pain shoot up his back. How long he'd been gliding, he wasn't sure. Leaning back, he looked at the unresponsive body of Kidd Razor, the woman who had been the legendary glider named Cortex. Her heartbeat persisted, but the monitor in front of her revealed no brain activity. Her body was alive, but no consciousnes resided within her head. Her mind had derezzed in cyberspace when it had lost connection with the flesh. For all purposes, Cortex was dead. Neon growled, rising from his seated position. He had only one thought on his mind. Retribution.

Ghost Rider punched the throttle of his bike he'd left in an alley dumpster only a
short distance away, the body of Warbringer strapped liberally behind it. The
Velociraptor roared forward, half bucking the loose body of Warbringer off its
backside. Fortunately, the creature was secured to the bike with it's own loose
wiring, tied to the back in a hodgepodge of tangled strings. The first boulder
crashed only a few feet from Warbringer's head, repulsing the vehicle four feet to the side. Ghost Rider struggled to keep control of the bike as more rocks began to strike at the road in front of them. That road, in turn, began to form massive cracks. It became a race against those cracks, a race that Ghost Rider was steadily losing.

A blue maglev, unoccupied, whirled out of control toward the bike and its riders.
Ghost Rider leaned to the far side, barely missing the car as it collided with the
unstable ground. The explosion scattered bits of fiery debris over the chrome
surface of the 'raptor. Ghost Rider found the right side of the bike screaming
along the pavement, spraying sparks into the already chaotic air. Ghost Rider
pulled himself back proper onto the bike, just to swerve and miss another
boulder. Falling dust and pebbles had reduced visibility to less than six meters.

The beginning of the cracks were now out of sight. The road beneath began to
shift and sway. Another maglev burst into flames, this one had passengers. A
man pulled his children from the burning wreckage. They were crying, but
otherwise unharmed. The man, on the other hand, had only one arm, the other
probably still attached to the steering wheel. Despite his pain, he ushered his
children toward the more sane roadways. A slab of concrete mortally halted all
their attempts.

Ghost Rider, distracted by this grisly sight, turned forward in time to see a
massive slab of his own right in front of him. Rather than smashing directly into
the slab, its angular surface acted as a ramp, vaulting the 'raptor into the air. The bike struggled to adjust its grav-lifts to the sudden lack of roadway, but it was too slow. The ground rushed up and bounced the bike off like another pebble. The lifts kicked back in, launching the Velociraptor into the air once again. Ghost Rider jostled the throttle and got the bike moving again. He passed several more cars and bikes, all in a state of panic and all doomed. People were scrambling out of their totaled vehicles, hoping to fare better on foot. Scattered body parts and splatters of blood were evidence to their success.

Boils of dust rose up from the ground, obscuring faces and details. Ghost Rider
kept on driving. The back of the bike was smoking, probably on fire, too. It didn't
matter. Survival was what mattered, Ghost Rider thought, and nothing else.

And then he passed a figure. A familiar figure, this one stood silently among the
chaos as if expecting it. Or perhaps this person had come to grips with her
demise and was not racing away in futility. Ghost Rider raced past the figure,
then glanced over his shoulder. "K-Kylie!?"

He kicked the bike around and snatched the figure up around the waist. Like a
knight in shining armor, his thoughts briefly flickered. She merely looked into his
expressionless face, then to the road. "Look out!" She screamed. But it was too
late. The road behind them had broken off like a hinge and was sending the
entire slab of road below them downward in one massive chunk. Ghost Rider
slammed the bike into reverse and began backing up the slab. Even so, Ghost
Rider could tell it was pointless. The lift lost connection with the road and drifted
into space. The free fall was strangely enlightening until they realized the ground rushing up to smack them.

He probably couldn't say returning to the land of the living was the most pleasant experience he'd ever had. He probably wouldn't even say it was good to be back at all. That is, if he could say anything at all, which, of course, he couldn't. Looking up, this stranger to himself found a face staring back at him. The face was somehow familiar. It was not familiar in the warm, encouraging way, but familiarity that he had been passed into the hands of the enemy, that he was in deep trouble.

The face smiled. That, too, was nothing close to comforting. The expression
reminded him too much of a snake admiring its prey. But why didn't he trust this
man? After all, what he even been done to him to make him mistrust this
stranger? Nothing he could recall, but then again, he couldn't recall anything.

"Well, it looks like the transplant was a success!" The stranger, dressed in a
white overcoat and rubber gloves, turned out of the line of sight. The gloves were
covered in a mixture of crimson and silver liquid. That man was a doctor, he
concluded.

The other man in the room, a well dressed man with no real features, stepped
forward. He, too, admired like a snake.

"Welcome back, Manuel, you were lucky. Those cretins almost tore you into too
many pieces to glue back together."

"Cretins?" The man looked to the doctor. Talking hurt, but he had questions he
wanted answered. "Where am I? Who am I?"

The doctor simply nodded to the man. "I'm afraid there was too much damage to your mind to repair it completely. You lost all of your memory, we had to feed
basic information into your mind to salvage you."

"Salvage me?"

"Yes, you were... are a loyal officer of Central Security Systems. There was a fire
fight with some thieves. You managed to recover the stolen property, but a
plasma bolt fried your body. We had to use experimental nanotech extracted from the D/MONIX subject: Warewolf to save you." The man with no features looked sympathetic. He then turned his attention back to the doctor. "Thank you, Dr. Serivadka, you're presence is no longer required."

"If Osborn found out that I'd let you in here..." Serivadka warned, stripping the
latex gloves off his shaking hands. He turned his back to the second man and
began washing in the sink.

"Osborn won't find out. I'm not going to tell him. And you certainly aren't."

"You say that as if you know it for a fact, Cypher," Serivadka murmured.

The other man produced a small weapon from the folds of his jacket. He pointed it at the doctor. "I know for a fact that corpses don't talk. And neither will you." The weapon discharged a blaze of energy which struck the doctor in the back of the head. Serivadka's limp body keeled over, head first, into the sink, where it lay motionless, an acrid smoke boiling up from the still running water. Cypher turned off the sink, before facing his companion again. "Now, Manuel," Cypher smiled. "Since I've gone through all the trouble of resurrecting you, I believe it's only fair that you did me a few favors."

Eric Hardcase could only stand helplessly by as his boss, Archemedies Osborn, faced the security lasers that had dropped out of the ceiling of his office. The lasers all fired at the CEO, whose form was atomized instantaneously. Only the stench of burnt flesh permeated Eric's senses as he stared at the place where Osborn had sat calmly, as if expecting his demise. The lasers quickly turned their attention to him.

Whatever state of shock Eric had been in was quickly drowned out by his survival instinct. When the lasers fired again, the Corporate Security officer was already moving, rolling across the floor and behind the desk for some temporary cover. All four lasers shot again, melting through the computer panel and rendering the surrounding components to a liquid metal.

Eric's clothing, a standard CorSec uniform, began to melt into an ebony wave,
flowing down his arms and up his neck, engulfing his face and body until he
became nothing more than a black shadow. Where Eric Hardcase had
disappeared behind the desk, the man labeled by the Newsnets as Vigilance
leapt out, blazing beams of energy from his palms. The nanotech suit Eric wore
quickly fed him tactical data, allowing him to evade the next array of deadly
beams.

The suit was a piece of secret technology, one of many such pieces withheld
from the human race by a series of reserves located across the country as
storehouses. Storehouses for things man was not yet ready to handle. Having
traveled to California, Eric discovered the suit quite by accident in the San Diego
Reserve. It was a wardrobe that saved his life on many occasions, this being
another.

A plush chair located in the far right corner of the room served as Vigilance's next source of cover. He sprinted towards it, diving behind just as the security devices ignited again. A new odor of burning synthetic leather filled the room. Vigilance's head poked up above the chair, his multifaceted eye targeting the nearest threat. A searing bolt of energy ripped from Eric's hand, vaporizing the metal support that connected the weapon to the ceiling. A loud clatter followed the laser plummet to the floor.

Vigilance jumped over the chair, landing on one hand and let loose another blast. His attack fell short of disabling a second laser, but struck close enough to confuse its temperature based targeting sensor. The device whirrled around on its socketed joints, attempting to pinpoint its victim. The other two lasers exploded the chair, sending scraps of cotton and wood flailing acorss the room. Seeing that the room was quickly running out of furniture to hide behind, Vigilance stood, muscles tensed, before the door to the office. His listened as the lasers entered a cool down cycle that would prevent them from overheating. He had seven seconds at best before the weapons powered up and began shooting again.

"Door - Open," he commanded. Nothing. "Door - Open. Security Clearance Alpha Five!"

"Security Clearance codes have been reset," a mechanical device replied. The
security lasers slowly came back online, warming up for another barrage. Three
remaining lasers brought their barrels around to bear on the unlucky hero.

"Awww, slag..."

The door did not melt when Vigilance ducked, but merely reflected the laser bolts back at the window on the opposite side of the room. The plastic burst into flames before morphing into a shapeless blob and dropping with a boiling sizzle down the side of the building. Vigilance raced to his newly formed exit, vaulting himself over the charred remains of the desk and out the hole. Eric noted that this was the second time he'd found himself in a face first freefall down the side of the Oscore building. Like before, a billowing cape ripped itself from Eric's back like a parachute and tore out to either side. The cape pulled upward, yanking Eric out of his nose dive and into a controlled descent. Inside the Oscorp building, Eric could hear other security lasers discharging, followed by screams and smoke rolling out of open windows.

The sky was ablaze with a pink flame. Below him, Eric could see CSS Air
Brigadiers unleashing their fury on hapless citizens and detonating buildings. CSS Streetsweepers and armored troops combed parks and allys, searching for dissidents. In less than five minutes, Transverse City had found itself encased in a cocoon of energy and under strict marshal law.

Eric drifted down, past the slaughters and cries for help, gliding to the dark safety of the lower levels.

Ghost Rider stood up, glancing about. Above them, the sky was clear and blue
beyond the rippling static of the force field. Dust still settled amongst the debris.
Fuel fires still raged, pouring an acrid gas smell into the air. A handful of people
wandered around the wreckage. A century ago, these would have been helpful
citizens who were glad to aid the suffering of these poor people. In 2099, though, these were scavengers, eager to take advantage of the suffering of the helpless by stealing the watches and jewelry off the still breathing bodies.

Kylie exhaled sharply. Her right side was bleeding freely and the white of her
lowest rib was exposed. Ghost Rider regarded her briefly before gathering her in his arms. She moaned softly, but made no more conscious movement. Ghost Rider was damaged, himself. The left side of his body flickered as its solid-gram projectors attempted to restore his out-world appearance. Loose cables and wiring dangled wildly from his limbs, but already they stretched upward to reconnect themselves via microscopic strings of nanites busy at their repair work. If Warbringer was anything like this, he would most likely be operational again, as well. That is, IF he wasn't crushed to rubble underneath one of the boulders.

Mathew Levine ran irritably down the rubble strewn streets of Transverse City.
Less than a few months ago, Mathew had been known as the notorious Kabal, a sinister agent of the Undernet. It had been a guise, a false identity that led him
into the Undernet's confidence and through those black market dealings had
greatly improved his standings in Transverse City, as well as his stock portfolio.
It was through the Undernet he learned of White Heat, a chemical substance
distributed through Max Synergy, but manufactured on behalf of Kidd Enterprises. Anthony Kidd, owner of the chemical corporation, eagerly welcomed Levine and his money.

Since the destruction of D/MONIX some months ago, Mathew had abandoned his Kabal facade and once again basked into the upper levels of Transverse City Social Elite as owner of the Limitless Corporation, a modest company with direct ties to Oscorp. This Levine, a clone as Kabal had been, hastily inspected the wreckage of another of his chief investments: BioTel. The company was on the cutting edge of cyber technology and Mathew quickly invested when he heard rumors of a new data implant that would allow dual existences in both the matrix and real world. While he had never indulged in the technology himself, Levine found the thought of becoming the next Duke Stratosphere somewhat alluring.

BioTel had been ripped in half, demolished by the massive energy dome that now surrounded Transverse City with no visible way in or out. The massive satlinked tower atop the building was now draped lazily over one side, sparking from time to time but overall useless. Levine entered the nearest vid booth and punched in a fake code, crossing his fingers that the random pattern of numbers would be an active account. The booth beeped an affirmative. A direct connection patched through to Osborn's office.

Out of the corner of his eye, Levine saw a squad of CSS troops advancing down
the street. They hadn't appeared to have noticed him... yet.

Levine though frantically over what he would say. Cypher had betrayed them.
He'd try to kill him. He'd successfully taken control of the Limitless Corporation
and much of Transverse City using his CSS minions. However, Levine didn't get
the chance to warn Osborn. The communication line opened up just in time for
Mathew to see Archemedies Osborn, the most powerful man in Transverse City,
vaporized. A security laser retargeted in the background of the scene, having
satisfactorily completed its mission. Levine could see a second laser bolt strike
the desk before the line went dead. A curse was Levine's only response as he
abandoned the vid booth and ran down the street.

It was named Warbringer by its creators. Modeled after one of the greatest
villains of the twentieth century, he was designed to be the United States first
strike against a hostile power. His arms had triple configurations, able to
converge into twin plasma cannons along with razor sharp talons. Normally, his
arsenal included two "non-nukes" placed in bunkers between his shoulder blades. The explosive charge from the bombs could easily destroy an entire city, or more. But those bombs had been devoured by Warbringer's ravaging nanites as a source of matter to reconstruct his battered frame. It was unfortunate that in his battle with the Ghost Rider he had been both unarmed and low on power.
Presently, Warbringer rose to his feet. His entire body had two structures, a
human one for infiltration, and a reptile-like structure for "war mode". His current
state was a hybrid of the two, for his nanotech hadn't yet finished repairing certain aspects of his war-mode.

Ghost Rider, in fact, had saved Warbringers 'life'. While able to withstand heavy
bombardment or nuclear strikes, Warbringer's creators had obviously not thought of a gamma bomb. But here, in Transverse, he was far from any of those damaging gamma rays and surrounded by material which could be converted to his needs. He bent down, using his reptilian teeth to shred a piece of scrap metal from a nearby debris pile. The metal disappeared down the creature's throat to its stomach cavity. There, millions of nanites disassembled the metal and used it to patch his battle wounds.

Warbringer would have grimaced, had his facial features been capable of it.
Instead he simply swallowed another mouth-full of metal and peered around. Fire burned here and there, but there were no signs of life to be seen. He sat down, waiting until he was once again battle-ready, and plotted his gratitude for the Ghost Rider.

[Systems online. Error. Motor Functions Corrupt. Analyzing. . . Unable to re-
establish link. Activating optical relays.]

"Ah, Kenshiro Cochrane. So good to see you again." Vengeance would have
given anything to shake his head, or blink, or something. Unfortunately, he could
not move. His sensors detected several foreign wires invading his body,
permeating his being and draining power from his operating systems. He could
only stare straight ahead at the back of his captor. The man looked over his
shoulder, smiling. "I was hoping to see you one day again. By the way, I like the
change of style. Much more Neanderthal. It suits you." Zero did not recognize the
face of the grinning man. But the voice... the voice of the creature that had
invaded his mind and forced him immeasurable amounts of pain was
unmistakable.

"L-Cypher." Vengeance moaned. At least his vocal systems were intact. As for
the rest of his body, nothing was certain.

"In the flesh, to quote a bad clich�. You must thank Mr. Levine, or Kabal rather,
for his wonderful technology. I would not have been able to escape Thrillsville, or your fury, had it not been for my discovery of his wonderful little company."

"Where are we?"

"Why, Oscorp towers, of course. It was so generous of Mr. Osborn to lend us his
company, and his office where we stand now, as headquarters for my scientific
mission, conveniently located in the very center of Transverse City. The
employees of this corporation were practically volunteering to be a part of my
experiments. Of course, I had guns trained on them at the time, but that is of only minor concern. But after all our wonderful chats, I simply wish Mr. Osborn himself could have presented more of a challenge. He simply... disintegrated. I had the most difficult time cleaning his organic residue off my chair."

"You sick ratbiter!" Vengeance screamed. "You stinking corrupt pusbag! It's no
wonder the Ghostworks locked you up! You're a glitch! You're a shocking son of
a glitch!"

"So emotional." Cypher stepped forward, his eyebrows arched. "Oh, what
wonderful fun we're going to have, Mr. Cochrane. You have no idea the pain you
will discover. It is truly remarkable how much agony the human brain can go
through before it shuts down. You will help me test the exact point at which your
mind breaks."

"One problem," Zero replied, defiantly. "I'm not human. You can't torture me like
you did those innocent people in your Inferno. This body knows no pain."

"On the contrary, Mr. Cochrane. You see," L-Cypher approached Zero and
tapped his adimantium plated skull, "you are human. You may not have realized
it, but when you entered the Vengeance body you entered a human brain. An
officer you killed once on one of your pointless little temper tantrums. You may
thank Mr. Levine for that as well. A human brain without a body. The experiments
I could conduct are endless. Tell me, what did you do with the officer? His
consciousness? Did you destroy it, or is it still in there, trapped within the
recesses of that fleshy brain." L-Cypher leered over Vengeance hungrily. Zero
could find no words to speak. He was simply dumbfounded, his thoughts clouded with memories of fear and pain. "You must have noticed how your thinking processes have been impaired. Slower. More emotional. I know I've experienced it, too, since I've entered the world of flesh. However, sacrifices must be made in the name of science."

"Stop it, Cypher." Another presence stepped into Zero's line of sight. Wearing
only a form fitting blue jumpsuit, the figure strode commandingly up to L-Cypher.
"You don't know how to be a proper host." The man was thickly muscled and tall. While he appeared to have been born African-American, his dark skin had turned a sickly blue. His eyes had no pupils, but were simply mirrors of dark chrome. The man's gaze met Zero's.

"One of your experiments, Cypher?" Vengeance sneered. "I don't see why you
had to make him look like a six foot Smurf."

The dark man's life curled up for an instant, then relaxed itself. "Yes. I see the
resemblance now. Though he is rather... abrasive." L-Cypher stepped back,
seemingly admiring the man, then glanced back to Zero.

"I believe you've already met my associate here. This is the great Chromeheart,"
Cypher licked his lips with pleasure. "You may know him better as your much
more understanding half, Kenshiro Cochrane."

****To Be Continued



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