Chapter 5: Event Horizon

By a/k/a Simon
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On her plate was a chicken Caesar salad, a cooling mug of coffee to the right side. He ate a bacon chili cheeseburger with fries and a side of Buffalo wings with a glass of Coke, no ice. The waitress made her check back to see if everything was all right and then went back to inspecting her fingernails at the side of the counter. It was almost five in the morning and the early breakfast crowd would be in soon. But for now, this was the calm before the storm.

“You know, you really should start thinking about what you eat,” Megan advised.

Eddie looked at the plates of food before him. He swallowed down a piece of chicken meat and wiped the stinging hot sauce from the corner of his mouth. “I like the spice,” he said. “It makes me feel warm.”

“I wasn’t talking about the wings,” she said, casually pointing her fork toward his burger. “That pile of grease over there is going to kill you. You’re not fifteen anymore. That much fat and cholesterol will do in a man not much older than you.”

He finished a sip of Coke. “I guess I probably should change my diet.” Then he became more downtrodden. “It’s just that I never had to worry about what I ate before. My metabolism burned everything off.”

“Well, now that you brought it up,” Megan said, using the moment as a segue, “You owe me a story. I told you all the dastardly doings of my family. Now it’s your turn. So give.”


“It all started just over three months ago. A general alert went out through the superpower community. The Enforcers—that team down in Texas—were looking for as many heavy hitters as they could find, preferably people with energy powers. They were even asking the anti-heroes and borderline villains, so we all knew it had to be big. From the little I knew it sounded like the kind of thing I would be well suited for. So I headed down to General City.

“When I got there they told me the details. Forecaster, their resident mystic, had sensed a minor cosmic shift localized to our sector of the galaxy. The thing about Forecaster is she’s a sorceress, but she’s also got precognitive abilities. The cosmic shift she’d sensed was in the near future. Since she can also cast spells forward in time, sealing off chronal tangents, her first reaction was to send a mystic barrier to make sure that whatever caused the shift would be prevented. But her spell was shattered and the shift occurred.

“Investigation revealed that the source of the shift was the disappearance of a star system in the M-12 region of space. The loss of the star caused the gravity of all nearby space to be altered, more or less depending on proximity. M-12 was a good distance from our solar system, so the change to our region was minor, barely noticeable to regular scientists.

“The real problem was that Forecaster sensed another such incident happening sometime in the near future. And this time it was going to be closer to us. This time it would be strong enough to affect the orbits of the planets in our system. It would send Earth into a new Ice Age, one that it might never recover from. Basically, it meant the end of human life on this planet. So, of course, something had to be done.

“Forecaster told us that the source of the problem was a being known as Abyss. Abyss was a sentient black hole that wandered the galaxy, living off of the energy of entire star systems to survive. This wasn’t just some villain we could punch out and put in chains. The only way to stop Abyss was to destroy him. The leadership made that point very clear. Abyss was the only known entity of his…its kind and we needed to make its species extinct. Anyone with ethical issues about taking life under those circumstances was asked to leave before things went any further. We didn’t need someone getting there and having a moral crisis at a crucial moment and maybe costing us the battle.

“Nobody backed down.

“The coalition numbered around sixty, with a command team of ten: Doc Champion (also the overall leader of the mission), Forecaster, Fusion-man, Primax, Redlock, Entropy, Dreadlash, Telemachus, Dragonfly, and Isis. Each member of the command team was in charge of five other heroes, making ten equal squads and organizing the forces for battle.
“I was with Telemachus, who had come to Earth from another universe and was waiting for his father to return from similar pan-reality travel, taking a name from Homer because his own name was unpronounceable in any human language. He was one of the more powerful leaders of the coalition, and his confidence was infectious. Looking back, I’m glad that he was there, a being existing beyond emotions like fear. Because if he hadn’t been there I think I would have realized how scared I really was. Many of the other heroes had been involved in similar large-scale confrontations, the Galactic Annihilation, the Chronal Apocalypse, and so on. But there were also a good number of us, like myself, who were facing something of this magnitude for the first time. And we didn’t know what to expect. But we did know that there were almost always casualties.

“For over two weeks we were packed into modified starships, journeying out to the point where we could intercept Abyss. Some of the heroes were sent ahead, those that could travel at faster speeds or teleport great distances. But mostly that was for scouting purposes. There was no point in engaging Abyss in minor scuffles. It would take our combined effort to stop him...it.
“The first time we saw Abyss we were unprepared. We’d received a distress call from a vessel in the Sishelak Regency. They were being boarded by a collective of bandits calling themselves the Pirates of Titan, even though we were well far away from that particular moon. Some of the leaders, most notably Dreadlash and Entropy, argued against interfering. We all knew how close to Abyss we were and we needed to be focused on last minute preparations. But Doc Champion, Isis, and Fusion-man swayed the voting and it was decided to help out the besieged vessel.

“It proved to be a significant decision.

“The SOS came from a small cruiser belonging to Sirius Dogstar, an intergalactic parole officer and occasional bondsman. He had tracked the fugitive Guin emperor, Rockhopper, to the nearby planet of The Brine and was attempting to bring him in when they were stopped by a tractor beam and their hull cut open.

“Our transport closed in on the Pirates’ ship and we loaded out, flying through space, to attack the exterior and infiltrate their craft. Their group was small, four men and a woman, but they battled hard. Even though they were outnumbered twelve to one they had the home court advantage. The ship was filled with booby traps and secret passageways. Capturing them turned into a violent game of cat and mouse. And it dragged on so long inside the ship that we didn’t notice Abyss entering our vicinity until it was too late.
“Dragonfly had captured the leader, Goldbeard, when he was the first to notice the living black hole appear. They were on the bridge fighting when this mammoth expanse of darkness filled the main viewer. Both of them stopped in their tracks, motionless from the spectacle of the thing. We would all experience that when each of us first laid eyes on Abyss.

“Dragonfly and Goldbeard sent out a red alert to everyone, heroes and villains, that Abyss was approaching. All fighting stopped as we made our way to the bridge to prepare for battle. But it ended up being too late.

“Before anyone could do anything, the power of the sentient black hole devoured all three ships, pulling us into the blackness with no way to stop it.

“Many of us, myself included, expected that to be the end of it. Once the void overwhelmed our ships we figured we would be torn apart, our atoms ripped to shreds and assimilated into the nothingness. But that wasn’t the case. When Abyss consumed us it was similar to being eaten by a large animal. We didn’t die right away. First we ended up in his… digestive track, for lack of a better term.

“Almost immediately we came under attack by what we would end up calling Enzymatic Soldiers. Doc Champion named them this because they functioned like human enzymes, their job to break down complex structures for easier digestion. They were also limitless, constantly being manufactured by the strange living system inside Abyss. Their first attack was also their only attack, because it never ended the entire time we were on the other side of the black hole.

“With danger all around us we quickly struck an accord with the Pirates of Titan and began to assess our options. Outside the hull of the ship the Enzymatic Soldiers were pounding into the metal, weakening it with every blow.

“Inside Abyss was like a miniature solar system. There was a sun and several planets orbiting it. Entropy identified it as the Sadjetti system, although everything about it was smaller than it should be, the digestive warriors having worn down each sphere significantly over the short time since they had been swallowed.

“It was decided that we would set down on the fourth planet, Huricon. Even as a diminished planetoid it was still capable of sustaining life, though barely. We landed the three ships in a triangle, like pioneers circling their wagons to stave off Indians on the warpath.

“Doc Champion’s unit was sent out to assess the power of the Enzymatic Soldiers. As it turns out, they were fairly easy to defeat one at a time, each warrior really only having enough power for one strike. It was the endless number of them that was the problem. So we established fighting shifts, each unit taking a designated period of time as defenders of the triangle while a better plan was prepared.
“For a while we made no progress, the days became drudgery. Just when we thought it couldn’t get worse, it got worse. It turns out Primax was a sleeper agent, sent by Abyss to infiltrate the Enforcers years ago. With the enzymes on her side, she was able to kidnap Doc Champion, leaving us without a leader.

“Mounting a rescue mission was a huge risk, under the circumstances, but it paid off. When we tracked down Champion, we also found another of Abyss’s prisoners, the Dark Celestine. The Dark Celestine was a supervillain the Enforcers had defeated a while back. In any other situation, he would have meant more trouble. But he wanted to be free of Abyss as much as the rest of us. So he joined us, and brought his knowledge of Abyss’s weaknesses along with him.
“Once the rescue squad returned with Doc Champion the war with Abyss entered its final stage. Despite the betrayal of one of our own, and the death’s of several heroes, having Champion back and the Dark Celestine on our team really helped to rally the group. Talk began about the whole ordeal being over soon. I didn’t realize what ‘over’ would mean.

“The Dark Celestine a plan. At the time he had fought the Enforcers he remembered Fusion-man being absent. Back then Fusion-man had been split into two separate people; Fusion-man, his heroic side, and the Fission-man, his dark half. It had been a difficult time for him, having an aspect of himself on a destructive rampage. But, eventually, the two halves were recombined, Fusion-man made whole again. The Dark Celestine’s plan was to reverse that.

“Our final day inside Abyss was the last time I would use my powers. The plan was two-pronged. At the edge of Abyss, Forecaster, the Dark Celestine and Fusion-man gathered the energy heroes. Myself, Meltdown, Hyrdogenie, Entropy, it was decided that our powers were compatible with Fusion-man. Floating at the mouth of the black hole, Fusion-man was ready. Forecaster and the Dark Celestine bombarded him with their opposing magics. It was a combination spell that would pull Fusion-man apart, freeing his dark half for a heroic purpose. And it worked.

“We watched as one body twisted and flailed surrounded by alternating colors of mystic energy. Like blinking he would flash in and out of view. And then, where there was once a single body, suddenly there were two. They pulled away from each other, the magic releasing the positive being and containing the evil half.

“The nod came from Forecaster. We fired our energy beams at the body of the Fission-man, pumping him full of solar, nuclear, and mystic energy. At first he was handling it, welcoming the super-charge of power. But soon it was clear that he was reaching his threshold, his limit was near breaking.

“Abyss could sense what was happening, like bile building in its throat. The miniature universe within it began to shudder. The black hole’s grip on its food grew weaker.

“Doc Champion, and the other heroes of strength combined their power and worked to force one ship out through the darkness. The impending detonation was enough to stop Abyss from keeping them in. Once we saw that the ship had crossed the event horizon, the light of our own universe coming through a tiny opening in the nothing, we shifted our position, rotating near the portal. At Forecater’s signal we pushed ourselves to beyond our limits, draining the last of our powers into the Fission-man, exploding him in the mouth of Abyss.

“I don’t have any memory of what happened after that. When I woke up I was on the coalition ship heading back to Earth. They told me Abyss had been destroyed and that the Dark Celestine disappeared. They also told me my powers seemed to be gone. I was lucky. Meltdown, Hydrogenie, and Entropy were dead.


Megan didn’t know what to say. She’d heard accounts of her husband’s battles before, but never anything on this scale. Two months inside a sentient black hole fighting off it’s digestive powers? It made Mike Glynnis running a porn site from his computer at school seem like nothing in comparison.

“How many casualties were there?” she finally asked.

“All together, eight. The three I mentioned and the five from Primax’s unit that she killed.” He redid the count in his head. “Oh, and Redlock. She died at some point I can’t remember. So nine. Not too bad, considering what we were fighting. But when you turn it into a percentage…with everyone who joined us along the way we were close to a hundred and we lost nine. That’s almost a tenth of our group. A pretty harsh number.”

Eddie took a moment to sort his feelings. “You know, as much as I hate the fact that I lost my powers, I would never want to go through something like that again.”

From across the table Megan took his hand. They were both casualties.

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