The long road home
It seemed like he had been fighting his evil counterpart forever. Steven Barton had lost all track of time in the swirling dimensional vortex his insane double had created; he knew only that they continued to fight. For one brief moment, there had been clarity—he’d seen a city and some woman in purple and blue armor—and then back to the sheer white nothingness of the void.
Until one day, in an explosion of pain and color, it ended.
His eyes opened slowly, painfully. The earth beneath him was scorched, ruined rock, the sky above filled with the choking smoke of industry. As his eyes focused, he saw ruined buildings, the smoke coming from somewhere off in the distance. Few, if any, sounds reached his ears, except for a persistent, mechanical clanking…
He forced himself to his feet, dusting himself off. Where was the other him? Hadn’t he survived too? Or had he arrived here elsewhere? Or even earlier? Or not even here at all? Dimensional travel made his head hurt.
How long had he been gone? Days? Months? Years? He’d lost all track of time in that vortex. And there was no guarantee that time in there matched up in any way, shape, or form to time in his own world. There wasn’t even any indication that time here matched up at all.
And what was that damn clanking sound?
Steve looked up and realized what the damn clanking sound had been. A giant mechanical construction of some kind, easily twelve feet tall, a pod on three long, spindly legs. It spoke—or at least he assumed it did—in some kind of gibberish, but whether alien or machine code, he didn’t know. What he did recognize was that it was pointing the barrel of a weapon at him. The barrel glowed briefly… and fired.
Steve was already moving, putting his acrobatic skills to the test, jumping and tumbling over the rubble. He landed hard, off balance as a blast nearly took him apart. But he was not without recourse. He had no weapons, true, but in his hands… everything became a weapon. He waited until just the right time, then threw a small rock. Straight down the gun’s barrel. Something inside jammed and the machine blew up with a spectacular explosion.
He was already moving. Where there was one… there would be more.
five weeks later
It hadn’t taken long after his arrival for Steve to encounter the rebellion. They hadn’t trusted him at first—and why should they have, he was the first free human other than their own any of them had seen in years—but eventually, he had worked his way into their trust and became a valued member in their fight against the Kru’ll. With a little fresh perspective and super-hero know-how, they’d had more successes with his help than they’d had in some time.
The Kru’ll. They had conquered the planet sometime in the early nineteen fifties. What few heroes had existed during that time, Marvel Boy, the 3-D Man, and the like, had died. One of the earliest acts of the war against the Kru’ll had been the public execution of Captain America. Not the real Captain America, of course, but the insane Commie-buster of the 50’s. The real Cap, well, with all the global changes and the enslavement of humanity, he was probably dead. And the heroes of the Age of Marvels had likely never been born, killed in infancy, or worse, born in time to grow up in the slave pits and factories to feed the Kru’ll empire.
“Steven?” Trala purred, looking in his direction. “Are you all right?” Trala was like many of the resistance, a second generation mutate, descended from the original humans who the Kru’ll had experimented upon, fused with animal DNA. Her form spoke as much cat as human and he knew that she desired him.
“Just… lost in thought,” he said. He should have been looking for a way home. But with society nearly destroyed… there likely wasn’t one. And these people… they needed him. What had been a couple dozen survivors, barely eking out an existence in the shadow of alien rule had slowly grown to number over a hundred, thanks to his help in freeing slaves and captives and those imprisoned in labs.
Anya. He missed her every moment that his thoughts weren’t focused on fighting. Every idle moment, every spare breath, and in his dreams at night, he thought about the girl he had left behind. Who had seen him forcibly ripped away. Who might even think he was dead. The longer he fought, the more worried he became that that he was never going to see his home, his family, or his love again.
But he could not give in to that thought. He would find his way back. Or they would find him.
He moved away as Trala tried to embrace him. “I just need to be alone for a while.”
Four weeks after
It had been a mistake, he’d realized. Humans and even mutates looked more or less alike to the Kru’ll, but for one that was truly exceptional, well, they could take notice. Especially when he’d started using the weapon he was most comfortable with—arrows. He’d taken lives, many of them, and told himself that the killings were just. That they were at war, fighting for the survival of humanity. But his notable weapon, notable skill, had made him noticeable.
They’d singled him out for capture during a raid. Taken him prisoner. Taken him to the Kru’ll some of the prisoners they’d freed had called “Doctor Death.”
The Kru’ll were ugly things, tall, powerful bodied creatures with heads like squid. “You will tell us where the others hide.”
“Go to hell, ugly.”
Pain, from the electrodes over his body, lanced through his body.
“Where are they?!”
“I… said.. go.. to hell…!”
A gleaming blade appeared in “Doctor Death”’s hands. Steve felt the cold metal rest against his right shoulder.
“You will not talk?”
“Go. To. Hell.”
His world became a nightmare of pain, even as he heard shouts and violence somewhere in the distance
three weeks after…
With the increase in man-power, especially those freed from the factories and labs, those who understood the technology of this new world had swelled their ranks. The technology they could steal to fight with, to heal themselves, and even to grow more food to sustain themselves.
And even the technology to replace lost limbs.
He flexed metal fingers, feeling the shift and pressure without the true sensation of touch and movement.
How long had it been? He’d stopped counting the days.
But he would fight until the Earth was free. Or die trying.
He had made a promise to go home. One he intended to keep.
But he had also made a promise to these people. One he intended to keep.
Two weeks later…
“Sir, sir!”
“What is it, Rax?” Steve asked the boy, who wouldn’t have been more than fourteen. But still a fighter. Still fighting for this planet’s future.
“We… we were scavenging in the city, and… we found something!”
