Tuesday 13 January 2015

Countdown to Justice, Vol II: Chapter Two

Chapter Two: Throwbacks

Deep in the rainforests of the Congo...
     Racing ahead of his colleagues, Fine rushed over the brow of the forested hill and was faced with a beautiful sight: a sheer cliff divided by a waterfall, surrounded on every side by dense forest. Among all this green, there was a tiny, bare oasis of pure blue. This would make for a good campsite.
     Milton Fine and his team of LexCorp scientists had been on the move for only a day and a half, and already the others were flagging. Fine was holding up - after all, he was no ordinary man - but while Luthor’s ‘best and brightest’ were experts in their fields, they had never been out in the field itself, so to speak. Also, Fine’s nanoprobes were slowly draining them of all of their data; their energy and strength came in as a nice addition to that. An early Christmas bonus for all of Fine’s hard work pretending to be human.
     The doctor sighed and ran further in to the waterfall, snapping a handful of photographs along the way.
     Then the rainforest exploded, and a wall of brown fur came haring towards him.
     Western lowland gorilla. Fine remembered its taxonomical name and chuckled.

(Click for detail)

     The gorilla was getting closer. One of the other scientists screamed. Foolish boy. It was almost upon him now. Fine raised a single hand, and the creature went limp as soon as it made contact. The doctor’s inhuman strength had damaged its skull.
     Fine set his nanoprobes to work repairing the beast. This hadn’t been his reason for coming to the Congo and spending so much of Luthor’s money, but it would make for an interesting side-project.
     Realising that his compatriots would no doubt be shocked at the display of strength, he mentally switched them into hibernation. He would need their minds for processing power, at least until he got his own body back, and that required their individual personalities to be inactive.
     The nanoprobes worked their way inside the gorilla’s central nervous system and got to work, feeding Fine everything from memories to evolutionary data. How did one species of ape evolve into the planet’s dominant species, while others were relegated to glorified national parks?
     But the gorilla had potential. Its brain was small, but underused. The nanoprobes increased its size and its mental capacity...unlocking a power buried deep within, something most humans didn’t even know they had the potential for.
     Fine’s work took three minutes and seventeen seconds, and then he recalled his nanoprobes from the gorilla. He took a few steps back, and waited for the beast to wake up naturally.

(Click for detail)

     A finger twitched. An eyelid fluttered, then opened completely, followed by the other. It lumbered off its stomach and onto its hind legs, and then howled at the sky. For a moment, Fine thought that his work had been in vain, that the beast didn’t recognise its own capacity for greatness, and then the gorilla fixed its iron gaze on him. Its eyes were now filled with emotions that no gorilla could form to be so coherent and...human. Confusion, then anger, then understanding.
     And then, it spoke.

To be continued...

Finally, the continuation of Countdown to Justice! Volume II will predominantly follow Wonder Woman, as well as the animosity between Batman and Superman. I'm not setting a regular upload schedule this time because of uni life, but I'm hoping Vol II won't drag on for too long.

The first three chapters are now available here and on my Flickr, and I hope you enjoy reading it!

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