Issue #2 by D. Golightly
February 2018
February 2018
"CHAPTER TWO - THE SENTRY"
The depthless of space never really bothered him. His golden aura shut out the cold and his cosmic awareness ensured that he would never get lost among the stars. Even here, beyond the rings of Saturn, an impossible voyage away from Earth, he still felt grounded.
He looked down on the rotating planet with curiosity and his blue cape billowed slightly behind him, moving not because of air current in the vacuum of space, but rather the solar winds. He and Mar-Vell once had an inside joke about Saturn, but that was a long time ago.
The small ship that he had come here to rescue now descended to the surface quietly, and without any more cause for alarm. Through the bridge viewport he could see one of the Kronans, who were incorrectly called “the Stone Men of Saturn,” deftly pilot the craft through the atmospheric storms.
CLOC*, his personal computer assistant that constantly monitored critical events of importance for him, had picked up the Kronans’ distress beacon. Apparently, while making a supply run to one of their colonies on Saturn, debris from the planet’s rings had clogged their engines and they were stranded. The Sentry had rushed through the vastness of space just in time to catch the craft before it smashed into one of Saturn’s moons.
* [Centrally Located Organic Computer]
Their course now righted and their engines cleared, the Kronan tapped his chest and pointed at the Sentry, a signal of appreciation. The hero nodded, and content that his objective was complete, he turned back toward Earth.
The stars streaked around him as he allowed his speed to increase. Housing the power of a million exploding suns, Robert Reynolds was arguably one of the most powerful beings in all of creation. He rarely unleashed the extent of his power for fear that any slight slip would mean destruction or death for those around him. Here, however, in the emptiness of space, he could let go.
His cosmic awareness would keep him from punching through any vessels, moons, or planets on his return trip. Whenever something small like a meteor came too close to his intended vector, he would bend his course several thousand miles in advance to account for it, while keeping Earth firmly in front of him.
Despite his incredible speed, the trip would still take him several hours. Any faster and he would risk tearing portions of the continuum. The Sentry had learned to always be cautious. He hated being away from Earth for this long, but CLOC was monitoring things and if an event arose that needed to be handled while he was still away then the computer knew to alert Reed Richards or the Avengers.
Which reminded him that Reed’s birthday was coming up. He hadn’t gotten his best friend anything yet and briefly considered a side trip to Mars to collect a few Martian artifacts, but realized that was what he had given Reed last year. Mister Fantastic might be the hardest person to get a present for, seeing as how he was one of the few people alive that could say they might vacation in the Negative Zone this summer. What did you get someone who had seen multiple realities and had access to all the rest?
As he rocketed passed Jupiter, his thoughts strayed further. It wasn’t until he corrected his path to avoid striking a comet that he realized something was wrong. He had been careful to keep Earth firmly in front of him, but now it was gone. Thanks to his cosmic awareness, he could sense that he hadn’t changed his course too much or somehow been transported to another sector of the galaxy. Nothing had changed, except that were Earth once spun was now just an inky blackness, as if dead space had swallowed it up.
“CLOC?” he asked, relying on the communicator in his ear to connect him. His golden aura would allow the vibrations of his voice to reach the microphone. “What’s going on?”
“A volcano nearly erupted in Honolulu, but an undersea chamber opened up, so evacuation was unnecessary,” the computer chirped back at him in a metallic voice. “The Unicorn has been apprehended by police after a failed attempt to rob an establishment in New York’s diamond district. The Hatemonger is suspected to be the cause of civil unrest in Istanbul, but reports are unconfirmed and intervention is not yet required. Doctor Doom has announced that—”
“No, CLOC,” the Sentry said. “I don’t need a crisis report. I mean what’s going on with Earth? I can’t see it.”
The computer buzzed as it ran several thousand scans in the span of a heartbeat. “Atmospheric pressure has universally increased by approximately point seven pascals. Light refraction in several major cities within the United States has been altered.”
“Altered? Altered how?”
CLOC buzzed again. “Unknown origin; speculate a contaminate has been introduced to the stratosphere, accounting for both pressure and refraction changes.”
“Someone…has poisoned the planet?”
Sentry pushed himself again, doubling his speed. He hurtled through space, eager to get back and figure out what was happening. Despite the small alterations, CLOC had seemed unaware that anything was amiss. It was possible that whatever or whoever was causing this blackout in space was still in the early stages. Maybe he would catch whatever it was before it accelerated.
The Earth’s moon loomed ahead of him, but his home planet had yet to reappear. At this range it looked like someone had thrown a shroud over the Earth, blanketing it in darkness. He was completely puzzled and didn’t even know how he should proceed.
“CLOC,” he said as he hovered over the moon’s axis. “Connect me to Reed. Maybe he—”
The edges of the “shroud” suddenly peeled back, revealing the star formations that had been hidden behind total darkness, stabbing toward him like tentacles that were hungry for his presence. Shocked, the Sentry jettisoned himself backward, but to little effect. The black blanket slipped off of the planet and he saw that it hadn’t completely covered the world, but rather had acted like a sheet hanging on a window, keeping him blind from what was on the other side.
Razor-thin tendrils wrapped around his wrists and ankles, cutting deep into his golden aura. He screamed, mostly in surprise instead of pain, and thrashed wildly against the new constraints. When a new tendril lashed out and wrapped itself around his arm or leg, he felt a new pang of coldness deep within himself, like someone was walking over his grave.
“CLOC!” he started to shout, but a mask of flattened soot ensnared his head, leaving only his eyes uncovered.
The ocean of clinging darkness hanging from him swept up in front of him, condensing until it started to take a more solid shape. A torso emerged, and then two arms and a head appeared from the turbulent and slick shadow, leaving the lower half to stream over his own body and keep him restrained.
The head leaned in and the oily darkness receded just enough to reveal a face. His face.
“Hello, Bob,” the shadow man said with a sneer.
The Sentry flexed, but the shadows kept him at bay. He tried to respond, but his voice was muffled. In his long career, this wasn’t the first time that the Sentry had been taken by surprise, but it was the first time that he had been captured by someone with such brutal and unwavering power. He was completely immobilized.
“Fight all you like, Bob. In fact, I encourage you. Let’s see if we can’t burn out that serum, shall we? Oh, yes, I know all about your precious serum. Robert Reynolds; the Sentry! Champion of goodness! Savior of whoever needs it!” The shadow man laughed. “It sounds like it was dreamed up by a comic book writer, Bob. Don’t you feel silly putting on that gold spandex and blue cape? Look at how helpless you are now, Bob.”
With a wave of his arm, the shadow man commanded the darkness holding the Sentry to raise him up overhead, and then hurl him straight at the surface of the moon. The Sentry was punched into the gray and rocky terrain, creating a crater several feet deep. A plume of moon dust rose up, covering the area, but when it cleared, the Sentry was still held in place against the moon. He was held so tightly that he couldn’t even struggle any longer. He, the man that could bench press a building, was now unable to even lift his own finger.
Still connected to the Sentry by the lower portion of his own shadowy body, his assailant lowered himself down and tipped himself forward, so that he was parallel with the Sentry’s prone form, only separated by a few feet of space.
“Just looking at you makes me want to throw up. We’re complete opposites, Bob. I came a long way to kill you, and thanks to the Great American, I’m going to do just that.”
He commanded the shadows to lift the Sentry back up again, and he drew even closer. “You’re probably confused. You’re probably thinking, ‘who is this guy wearing my face?’ Well, I’m you, Bob. Just from another dimension, one that’s far superior to this backward place. But as you’ve probably noticed, we aren’t exactly twins.”
He slammed the Sentry back down into the surface, cutting into the moon’s crust even further. He pulled the Sentry back up again as easily as if he were picking up a fallen napkin.
“You’re the goodie-two-shoes, sacrificial lamb,” he said. “And me? I’m what happens when you take away all of that good stuff. All the caring, the love, the happiness. I’m the Void.”
Again the Sentry was driven down into the moon, slamming with enough force to make his skeleton rattle. Since first taking the serum, he had forgotten what real pain felt like. He felt something snap inside of him and wondered if one of his ribs had just cracked.
The Void retrieved him and brought their mirror faces close to one another again. “I made a bargain with someone to come to your dimension,” the Void said. “Once I knew about you, I just had to come here and kill you. Just knowing that my opposite in this dimension was a hero made me ill. I couldn’t stand it. And imagine my surprise when I found out that the people of this world don’t even know you exist!”
The Sentry was feeling dizzy. The continuous assault combined with the crushing might of the tendrils was unlike anything he had felt before. He was barely comprehending what this Void person was saying. He tried to figure out who was really behind this: the General? Or the Impossible Man? Or maybe even Korvac, seeking revenge on him and the other Avengers?
“You see,” the Void continued, “I was told that this dimension was home to our polar opposites, where everyone’s twin had flipped their moral compass for some asinine reason. But you? You’re a complete anomaly. There are no records of you. No evidence that your daringly good deeds are even noticed. But yet here you are. Perfectly poised for me to kill. I would like to say that I’m surprised at how easy you’ve made this, but honestly, ‘easy’ just doesn’t begin to describe it.”
As the Sentry’s head was driven down into the moon once more, his vision started to cloud. He was feeling woozy, if that was the correct term for blurred vision and scattered thinking. He blinked several times to try and clear his head and when he opened them after a moment he was face to face with his own likeness again.
“Seriously, Bob,” the Void said. “You are one pathetic excuse for a hero.”
A single tendril rose up behind the Void, forming itself into a two foot long blade. It wavered slightly as the Void’s lips curled into a sneer. “I haven’t decided what to do with your body yet,” the Void said. “I thought about sending pieces to your loved ones, but they don’t really know who you are anyway, so that wouldn’t make any sense. Hell, Lindy, the woman you think you’re married to, would be so confused that it wouldn’t even be funny!”
The Sentry’s eyes widened at the mention of his wife’s name. Grim determination instantly set back into the forefront of his mind and the fogginess cleared. He didn’t understand anything that this Void person was saying, who for some reason had chosen to steal his likeness, and it didn’t matter. All he knew at the mention of Lindy’s name was that the woman he loved was in danger once again.
The slick and oily shroud wrapped around his head kept his mouth and nose covered, but the Void had wanted him to look him in the eyes while assaulting him. His eyes, uncovered and no longer clouded, began to burn brightly.
“So, tell me, Bob,” the Void said. “What exactly do you…oh, crap…”
The Void raised up a few tendrils just as the power of a million exploding suns was unleashed through the retinas of the Sentry. Golden lances of energy poured out of his eyes, slicing through the tendrils and splashing against the Void, driving him back. The shadows began to recede from the Sentry, finally releasing him. He ripped his arms free and burst out from the darkness, flying up over the Void and continuing to pelt him with is energy vision. The constant barrage served to keep the villain at bay while the Sentry strengthened his aura against the harshness of space.
Shrieking, the Void compacted his form down into a single point, nearly a singularity, and slipped out from under the Sentry’s assault. Spinning around, desperate to try and find the Void again among the blackness of space, the Sentry opened up his senses to search the immediate area.
“Kill you!” the Void blurted out as he reformed directly behind the Sentry and smashed his tendril-covered fists into the back of the Sentry’s head.
The Sentry tumbled down to the moon once more, hitting one of the seas with such force that he ripped a streak in the surface. The Void was on him again, grabbing him by the scruff of the cape, and dragging him through the rocky soil. The Sentry’s face was pressed firmly against the surface as the Void dragged him several miles, leaving a flurry of destruction in their wake.
When they struck a large enough boulder that the Sentry was jarred upward, the Void spun him around and launched him into a chasm. The Sentry was stamped into the cliff face, forced several feet into the rock. The Void hovered in front of the new opening, several of his tendrils at the ready, but a gold and blue blur launched back out, tackling him around the waste.
The Sentry punched them both into the opposing cliff face within the chasm, using the Void’s own body like a battering ram to bluntly tunnel into the moon. He angled them down, diving into the moon itself, seemingly unopposed by either the increase in gravity or the density of the bedrock as they drilled several miles into the moon’s mantle.
When they hit the core, which consisted mostly of compact iron and other metal, the Sentry finally relented. The Void was groggy from the several hundred miles of intense aggression, his shadowy form now tattered. The Sentry piled bits of the core, shaken and broken loose from their entry, directly on top of the weakened Void, and then used his energy vision to melt the metal over top of him.
Encased and in a defeated state, the Sentry leaned down to get a closer look at his enemy. It was uncanny; his face was identical to the Sentry’s, a completely likeness even down to the birthmark on his cheek.
“Who are you really?” the Sentry demanded. “Where did you really come from? Don’t try and give me any more of that nonsense about other realities and me not existing, as if that even makes any sense.”
A small laugh bubbled out of the Void. “You’re fooling yourself, Bob,” the Void replied. “The irony here is that the most clueless person in this reality is you.”
The Sentry drove a fist down into the Void’s jaw. “Who are you?” he shouted.
When the Void just laughed again, the Sentry continued to pound on his exposed face, but to no seeming avail. After several more hits the Void seemed to black out, leaving the Sentry to himself once more.
The silence of space closed in on them. The Sentry was anxious, a feeling that was being fueled by anger and confusion. Believing that the Void being trapped at the moon’s core would be sufficient until he could get a better understanding of the situation, the Sentry flew back up their impromptu tunnel.
He was birthed back onto the moon’s surface again, and Earth gleamed before him like a beacon of hope. The sight of his planet made some of the anxiety ebb away. He had friends there, loved ones that could help get a handle on this situation. He would check on Lindy, and after he made sure that the Void hadn’t already done something to her, he would go to Reed. Reed always knew what to do.
He was about to race toward home when he saw something headed straight toward him, coming from the Earth. With his telescopic vision he saw, much to his relief, the familiar sight of CLOC’s metallic shell: a large metal orb with an electronic eye at the center, and several tentacles streaming out the back, almost like an octopus.
The computer didn’t really have a body, as its programming with integrated with the Watchtower, his headquarters. However, CLOC seemed to like having an actual physical vessel to move around in, and the Sentry enjoyed the company. The Watchtower was a huge place, and having CLOC’s hovering eye beside him was comforting.
“CLOC,” the Sentry said as he flew to intercept his friend. “I’m glad you’re here. I need you to scan the entity I’ve just been fighting. He’s—”
“Not CLOC,” the robotic eye said with a red flash. “COLC.”*
* [Computer to Obliterate Life Completely]
The robot’s iris opened fully and black energy spilled out, engulfing the Sentry. The Sentry cocked his fist back, realizing that this was not his friend, but another robot that looked exactly like it, and how the Void had an ally of his own. But the strange energy, which was somehow familiar, was weakening him. He felt his power being drained away somehow and his aura was beginning to dim.
“As much as it pains to admit it,” the raspy voice of the Void said from behind him, “thanks for the assist, COLC.”
The Sentry, now dangerously weakened from the black energy, was barely able to turn around to see the Void, his shadows in rags, hovering there just a few feet away. The Void looked just as weak as him, but had obviously been strong enough to rip free of the moon’s core. The Void managed a sneer, and then decked the Sentry and knocked him out.
COLC shut his iris and the energy stopped pouring over the Sentry as the robot’s tentacles wrapped around him, ensnaring him. “We were correct in assuming that displaced energy from the Negative Zone would weaken him,” COLC said coldly.
“Yes, I thought it would drain his damned aura away,” the Void replied. “He’s halfway back to being plain old Robert Reynolds now. But I wanted him awake to see his own death coming! No matter. It will be more fun to watch him squirm while I prove to him that he’s out of sync with this reality and that none of these people are even aware of his existence.”
The Void raised a weak tendril to the Sentry’s chest, poking into his golden costume. “Then, when he’s emotionally ruined I’ll carve out his heart. Just imagine the look on his face when I prove to him that Lindy Lee doesn’t even recognize him!”
“The Great American requests that you keep him alive,” COLC stated.
“What?” the Void shouted. “No! We had a deal!”
“I was sent to assist you with instructions on where to take the Sentry,” COLC said. “You are not permitted to kill him at this time. The Great American requires him.”
The Void lashed out, but stopped himself short of striking the Sentry again. He glared at COLC’s lone eye, unblinking. Finally, he said, “Fine. Lead the way. But this is far from over. Rogers’ ridiculous C.O.D.E. doesn’t apply here. How can it when the Robert Reynolds of this dimension is time-displaced?”
COLC turned back toward Earth with the Sentry in tow. “The C.O.D.E. has multiple applications,” the robot said. “You may follow if you wish.”
Grinding his teeth in frustration, but ultimately neutered by the American’s orders, the Void regretfully followed his own traitorous robot back to the waiting planet below.
TO BE CONTINUED!
He looked down on the rotating planet with curiosity and his blue cape billowed slightly behind him, moving not because of air current in the vacuum of space, but rather the solar winds. He and Mar-Vell once had an inside joke about Saturn, but that was a long time ago.
The small ship that he had come here to rescue now descended to the surface quietly, and without any more cause for alarm. Through the bridge viewport he could see one of the Kronans, who were incorrectly called “the Stone Men of Saturn,” deftly pilot the craft through the atmospheric storms.
CLOC*, his personal computer assistant that constantly monitored critical events of importance for him, had picked up the Kronans’ distress beacon. Apparently, while making a supply run to one of their colonies on Saturn, debris from the planet’s rings had clogged their engines and they were stranded. The Sentry had rushed through the vastness of space just in time to catch the craft before it smashed into one of Saturn’s moons.
* [Centrally Located Organic Computer]
Their course now righted and their engines cleared, the Kronan tapped his chest and pointed at the Sentry, a signal of appreciation. The hero nodded, and content that his objective was complete, he turned back toward Earth.
The stars streaked around him as he allowed his speed to increase. Housing the power of a million exploding suns, Robert Reynolds was arguably one of the most powerful beings in all of creation. He rarely unleashed the extent of his power for fear that any slight slip would mean destruction or death for those around him. Here, however, in the emptiness of space, he could let go.
His cosmic awareness would keep him from punching through any vessels, moons, or planets on his return trip. Whenever something small like a meteor came too close to his intended vector, he would bend his course several thousand miles in advance to account for it, while keeping Earth firmly in front of him.
Despite his incredible speed, the trip would still take him several hours. Any faster and he would risk tearing portions of the continuum. The Sentry had learned to always be cautious. He hated being away from Earth for this long, but CLOC was monitoring things and if an event arose that needed to be handled while he was still away then the computer knew to alert Reed Richards or the Avengers.
Which reminded him that Reed’s birthday was coming up. He hadn’t gotten his best friend anything yet and briefly considered a side trip to Mars to collect a few Martian artifacts, but realized that was what he had given Reed last year. Mister Fantastic might be the hardest person to get a present for, seeing as how he was one of the few people alive that could say they might vacation in the Negative Zone this summer. What did you get someone who had seen multiple realities and had access to all the rest?
As he rocketed passed Jupiter, his thoughts strayed further. It wasn’t until he corrected his path to avoid striking a comet that he realized something was wrong. He had been careful to keep Earth firmly in front of him, but now it was gone. Thanks to his cosmic awareness, he could sense that he hadn’t changed his course too much or somehow been transported to another sector of the galaxy. Nothing had changed, except that were Earth once spun was now just an inky blackness, as if dead space had swallowed it up.
“CLOC?” he asked, relying on the communicator in his ear to connect him. His golden aura would allow the vibrations of his voice to reach the microphone. “What’s going on?”
“A volcano nearly erupted in Honolulu, but an undersea chamber opened up, so evacuation was unnecessary,” the computer chirped back at him in a metallic voice. “The Unicorn has been apprehended by police after a failed attempt to rob an establishment in New York’s diamond district. The Hatemonger is suspected to be the cause of civil unrest in Istanbul, but reports are unconfirmed and intervention is not yet required. Doctor Doom has announced that—”
“No, CLOC,” the Sentry said. “I don’t need a crisis report. I mean what’s going on with Earth? I can’t see it.”
The computer buzzed as it ran several thousand scans in the span of a heartbeat. “Atmospheric pressure has universally increased by approximately point seven pascals. Light refraction in several major cities within the United States has been altered.”
“Altered? Altered how?”
CLOC buzzed again. “Unknown origin; speculate a contaminate has been introduced to the stratosphere, accounting for both pressure and refraction changes.”
“Someone…has poisoned the planet?”
Sentry pushed himself again, doubling his speed. He hurtled through space, eager to get back and figure out what was happening. Despite the small alterations, CLOC had seemed unaware that anything was amiss. It was possible that whatever or whoever was causing this blackout in space was still in the early stages. Maybe he would catch whatever it was before it accelerated.
The Earth’s moon loomed ahead of him, but his home planet had yet to reappear. At this range it looked like someone had thrown a shroud over the Earth, blanketing it in darkness. He was completely puzzled and didn’t even know how he should proceed.
“CLOC,” he said as he hovered over the moon’s axis. “Connect me to Reed. Maybe he—”
The edges of the “shroud” suddenly peeled back, revealing the star formations that had been hidden behind total darkness, stabbing toward him like tentacles that were hungry for his presence. Shocked, the Sentry jettisoned himself backward, but to little effect. The black blanket slipped off of the planet and he saw that it hadn’t completely covered the world, but rather had acted like a sheet hanging on a window, keeping him blind from what was on the other side.
Razor-thin tendrils wrapped around his wrists and ankles, cutting deep into his golden aura. He screamed, mostly in surprise instead of pain, and thrashed wildly against the new constraints. When a new tendril lashed out and wrapped itself around his arm or leg, he felt a new pang of coldness deep within himself, like someone was walking over his grave.
“CLOC!” he started to shout, but a mask of flattened soot ensnared his head, leaving only his eyes uncovered.
The ocean of clinging darkness hanging from him swept up in front of him, condensing until it started to take a more solid shape. A torso emerged, and then two arms and a head appeared from the turbulent and slick shadow, leaving the lower half to stream over his own body and keep him restrained.
The head leaned in and the oily darkness receded just enough to reveal a face. His face.
“Hello, Bob,” the shadow man said with a sneer.
The Sentry flexed, but the shadows kept him at bay. He tried to respond, but his voice was muffled. In his long career, this wasn’t the first time that the Sentry had been taken by surprise, but it was the first time that he had been captured by someone with such brutal and unwavering power. He was completely immobilized.
“Fight all you like, Bob. In fact, I encourage you. Let’s see if we can’t burn out that serum, shall we? Oh, yes, I know all about your precious serum. Robert Reynolds; the Sentry! Champion of goodness! Savior of whoever needs it!” The shadow man laughed. “It sounds like it was dreamed up by a comic book writer, Bob. Don’t you feel silly putting on that gold spandex and blue cape? Look at how helpless you are now, Bob.”
With a wave of his arm, the shadow man commanded the darkness holding the Sentry to raise him up overhead, and then hurl him straight at the surface of the moon. The Sentry was punched into the gray and rocky terrain, creating a crater several feet deep. A plume of moon dust rose up, covering the area, but when it cleared, the Sentry was still held in place against the moon. He was held so tightly that he couldn’t even struggle any longer. He, the man that could bench press a building, was now unable to even lift his own finger.
Still connected to the Sentry by the lower portion of his own shadowy body, his assailant lowered himself down and tipped himself forward, so that he was parallel with the Sentry’s prone form, only separated by a few feet of space.
“Just looking at you makes me want to throw up. We’re complete opposites, Bob. I came a long way to kill you, and thanks to the Great American, I’m going to do just that.”
He commanded the shadows to lift the Sentry back up again, and he drew even closer. “You’re probably confused. You’re probably thinking, ‘who is this guy wearing my face?’ Well, I’m you, Bob. Just from another dimension, one that’s far superior to this backward place. But as you’ve probably noticed, we aren’t exactly twins.”
He slammed the Sentry back down into the surface, cutting into the moon’s crust even further. He pulled the Sentry back up again as easily as if he were picking up a fallen napkin.
“You’re the goodie-two-shoes, sacrificial lamb,” he said. “And me? I’m what happens when you take away all of that good stuff. All the caring, the love, the happiness. I’m the Void.”
Again the Sentry was driven down into the moon, slamming with enough force to make his skeleton rattle. Since first taking the serum, he had forgotten what real pain felt like. He felt something snap inside of him and wondered if one of his ribs had just cracked.
The Void retrieved him and brought their mirror faces close to one another again. “I made a bargain with someone to come to your dimension,” the Void said. “Once I knew about you, I just had to come here and kill you. Just knowing that my opposite in this dimension was a hero made me ill. I couldn’t stand it. And imagine my surprise when I found out that the people of this world don’t even know you exist!”
The Sentry was feeling dizzy. The continuous assault combined with the crushing might of the tendrils was unlike anything he had felt before. He was barely comprehending what this Void person was saying. He tried to figure out who was really behind this: the General? Or the Impossible Man? Or maybe even Korvac, seeking revenge on him and the other Avengers?
“You see,” the Void continued, “I was told that this dimension was home to our polar opposites, where everyone’s twin had flipped their moral compass for some asinine reason. But you? You’re a complete anomaly. There are no records of you. No evidence that your daringly good deeds are even noticed. But yet here you are. Perfectly poised for me to kill. I would like to say that I’m surprised at how easy you’ve made this, but honestly, ‘easy’ just doesn’t begin to describe it.”
As the Sentry’s head was driven down into the moon once more, his vision started to cloud. He was feeling woozy, if that was the correct term for blurred vision and scattered thinking. He blinked several times to try and clear his head and when he opened them after a moment he was face to face with his own likeness again.
“Seriously, Bob,” the Void said. “You are one pathetic excuse for a hero.”
A single tendril rose up behind the Void, forming itself into a two foot long blade. It wavered slightly as the Void’s lips curled into a sneer. “I haven’t decided what to do with your body yet,” the Void said. “I thought about sending pieces to your loved ones, but they don’t really know who you are anyway, so that wouldn’t make any sense. Hell, Lindy, the woman you think you’re married to, would be so confused that it wouldn’t even be funny!”
The Sentry’s eyes widened at the mention of his wife’s name. Grim determination instantly set back into the forefront of his mind and the fogginess cleared. He didn’t understand anything that this Void person was saying, who for some reason had chosen to steal his likeness, and it didn’t matter. All he knew at the mention of Lindy’s name was that the woman he loved was in danger once again.
The slick and oily shroud wrapped around his head kept his mouth and nose covered, but the Void had wanted him to look him in the eyes while assaulting him. His eyes, uncovered and no longer clouded, began to burn brightly.
“So, tell me, Bob,” the Void said. “What exactly do you…oh, crap…”
The Void raised up a few tendrils just as the power of a million exploding suns was unleashed through the retinas of the Sentry. Golden lances of energy poured out of his eyes, slicing through the tendrils and splashing against the Void, driving him back. The shadows began to recede from the Sentry, finally releasing him. He ripped his arms free and burst out from the darkness, flying up over the Void and continuing to pelt him with is energy vision. The constant barrage served to keep the villain at bay while the Sentry strengthened his aura against the harshness of space.
Shrieking, the Void compacted his form down into a single point, nearly a singularity, and slipped out from under the Sentry’s assault. Spinning around, desperate to try and find the Void again among the blackness of space, the Sentry opened up his senses to search the immediate area.
“Kill you!” the Void blurted out as he reformed directly behind the Sentry and smashed his tendril-covered fists into the back of the Sentry’s head.
The Sentry tumbled down to the moon once more, hitting one of the seas with such force that he ripped a streak in the surface. The Void was on him again, grabbing him by the scruff of the cape, and dragging him through the rocky soil. The Sentry’s face was pressed firmly against the surface as the Void dragged him several miles, leaving a flurry of destruction in their wake.
When they struck a large enough boulder that the Sentry was jarred upward, the Void spun him around and launched him into a chasm. The Sentry was stamped into the cliff face, forced several feet into the rock. The Void hovered in front of the new opening, several of his tendrils at the ready, but a gold and blue blur launched back out, tackling him around the waste.
The Sentry punched them both into the opposing cliff face within the chasm, using the Void’s own body like a battering ram to bluntly tunnel into the moon. He angled them down, diving into the moon itself, seemingly unopposed by either the increase in gravity or the density of the bedrock as they drilled several miles into the moon’s mantle.
When they hit the core, which consisted mostly of compact iron and other metal, the Sentry finally relented. The Void was groggy from the several hundred miles of intense aggression, his shadowy form now tattered. The Sentry piled bits of the core, shaken and broken loose from their entry, directly on top of the weakened Void, and then used his energy vision to melt the metal over top of him.
Encased and in a defeated state, the Sentry leaned down to get a closer look at his enemy. It was uncanny; his face was identical to the Sentry’s, a completely likeness even down to the birthmark on his cheek.
“Who are you really?” the Sentry demanded. “Where did you really come from? Don’t try and give me any more of that nonsense about other realities and me not existing, as if that even makes any sense.”
A small laugh bubbled out of the Void. “You’re fooling yourself, Bob,” the Void replied. “The irony here is that the most clueless person in this reality is you.”
The Sentry drove a fist down into the Void’s jaw. “Who are you?” he shouted.
When the Void just laughed again, the Sentry continued to pound on his exposed face, but to no seeming avail. After several more hits the Void seemed to black out, leaving the Sentry to himself once more.
The silence of space closed in on them. The Sentry was anxious, a feeling that was being fueled by anger and confusion. Believing that the Void being trapped at the moon’s core would be sufficient until he could get a better understanding of the situation, the Sentry flew back up their impromptu tunnel.
He was birthed back onto the moon’s surface again, and Earth gleamed before him like a beacon of hope. The sight of his planet made some of the anxiety ebb away. He had friends there, loved ones that could help get a handle on this situation. He would check on Lindy, and after he made sure that the Void hadn’t already done something to her, he would go to Reed. Reed always knew what to do.
He was about to race toward home when he saw something headed straight toward him, coming from the Earth. With his telescopic vision he saw, much to his relief, the familiar sight of CLOC’s metallic shell: a large metal orb with an electronic eye at the center, and several tentacles streaming out the back, almost like an octopus.
The computer didn’t really have a body, as its programming with integrated with the Watchtower, his headquarters. However, CLOC seemed to like having an actual physical vessel to move around in, and the Sentry enjoyed the company. The Watchtower was a huge place, and having CLOC’s hovering eye beside him was comforting.
“CLOC,” the Sentry said as he flew to intercept his friend. “I’m glad you’re here. I need you to scan the entity I’ve just been fighting. He’s—”
“Not CLOC,” the robotic eye said with a red flash. “COLC.”*
* [Computer to Obliterate Life Completely]
The robot’s iris opened fully and black energy spilled out, engulfing the Sentry. The Sentry cocked his fist back, realizing that this was not his friend, but another robot that looked exactly like it, and how the Void had an ally of his own. But the strange energy, which was somehow familiar, was weakening him. He felt his power being drained away somehow and his aura was beginning to dim.
“As much as it pains to admit it,” the raspy voice of the Void said from behind him, “thanks for the assist, COLC.”
The Sentry, now dangerously weakened from the black energy, was barely able to turn around to see the Void, his shadows in rags, hovering there just a few feet away. The Void looked just as weak as him, but had obviously been strong enough to rip free of the moon’s core. The Void managed a sneer, and then decked the Sentry and knocked him out.
COLC shut his iris and the energy stopped pouring over the Sentry as the robot’s tentacles wrapped around him, ensnaring him. “We were correct in assuming that displaced energy from the Negative Zone would weaken him,” COLC said coldly.
“Yes, I thought it would drain his damned aura away,” the Void replied. “He’s halfway back to being plain old Robert Reynolds now. But I wanted him awake to see his own death coming! No matter. It will be more fun to watch him squirm while I prove to him that he’s out of sync with this reality and that none of these people are even aware of his existence.”
The Void raised a weak tendril to the Sentry’s chest, poking into his golden costume. “Then, when he’s emotionally ruined I’ll carve out his heart. Just imagine the look on his face when I prove to him that Lindy Lee doesn’t even recognize him!”
“The Great American requests that you keep him alive,” COLC stated.
“What?” the Void shouted. “No! We had a deal!”
“I was sent to assist you with instructions on where to take the Sentry,” COLC said. “You are not permitted to kill him at this time. The Great American requires him.”
The Void lashed out, but stopped himself short of striking the Sentry again. He glared at COLC’s lone eye, unblinking. Finally, he said, “Fine. Lead the way. But this is far from over. Rogers’ ridiculous C.O.D.E. doesn’t apply here. How can it when the Robert Reynolds of this dimension is time-displaced?”
COLC turned back toward Earth with the Sentry in tow. “The C.O.D.E. has multiple applications,” the robot said. “You may follow if you wish.”
Grinding his teeth in frustration, but ultimately neutered by the American’s orders, the Void regretfully followed his own traitorous robot back to the waiting planet below.
TO BE CONTINUED!