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Volume 4, 3 October 2004 |
Our heroes - not yet Challengers - were catching their breath in a Long Beach apartment. A helicopter approaches - the bad guys on their way. Brydge, head of whatever secret unit is running this show, bursts through the window. Behind her are a dozen stooges also in "leather ninja" suits. Brydges hollers "You know the drill - alive if possible - dead if necessary!" Bullets fly. Brydge has her own logo, a bridge, on her uniform. The stooges have logos for rooks, keys, and other names. Except most of them aren't needed, because they're getting massacred by the Challengers. Brydge reflects, "This sort of thing has happened before. The last time was nearly fifty years ago... when four pawns slipped their leashes and ran free... causing the masters no end of havoc and dismay..." (They would be this world's original Challengers.) |
".... and now it's happened again. Five troublemakers with no idea they're trained professional killers. Five malcontents with no idea where these gifts of speed, strength, and killer instinct had originated... or why." Holden Crosse, Rydell Starr, Tessa Crowne, Kendra Harte, and Zach Dyamond might not know they're trained killers all psychically linked, but they're cooking with gas. Crosse was a "hotshot fighter jock", so should be able to fly the helicopter hovering outside - if they can reach it. Leaving bodies in their wake, they gain the helicopter, kill the pilot, and zoom off. |
Jessi Brydge calls for cleanup. She recalls the first lesson her masters taught her: "Every pawn is living on borrowed time." Including her.  As always in a Chaykin tale, the television is always on, churning out tripe and thinly-veiled propaganda. This one speaks of the "conspiracy" to blow up Long Beach. At the behest of the world's richest woman, the infotainment machine is blaming our five heroes for the disaster. |
In a mountainside house, the Challs catch their breath - again - and make a few adjustments. They dumped the chopper in Silverlake Reservoir. They dig computer chips out of each other's foreheads. The chips are fried, maybe by whatever caused the Long Beach explosion. And they wonder what's going on. At this point their uniforms lack any logos, another sign that whatever their secret mission was supposed to be, it didn't start right. They all agree that Jessi Brydge looks familiar, and "everything's familiar in a hazy way." Zach suggests, "Don't everybody go off on me at once... but why don't we try hypnosis?" Group hypnosis reveals the Challs all have similiar backgrounds. Anarchic childhoods led to military enlistments and then provocateur roles and name changes. |
 Unremembered are kidnappings, seductions or treatments, computer chip implants, invasive surgeries, endless brutal physical, mental, and emotional therapies, even genetic manipulation that rebuilt them from within - all handled by Jessi Brydge and the Hegemony company. Brydge has been screwing with them for years, trying to make them perfect specimens without their permission. But now they know where to look for answers. Mae Price is the head of Hegemony, the world's richest and most powerful woman. She's a fan of eugenics: improving the species through selective breeding. Racial improvement took a hit with the Nazis, but Hegemony presses on to "sell the hoi polloi our bill of goods through politics, mass media, and the so-called popular culture." |
In Camarillo, our heroes steal a plane and steer for a destroyer floating in "the middle of nowhere." The Challengers land with guns blazing.  |
Blast ahead to Part 4... |