Green Lantern Corps. General. 072. Fixed.
Title: Parasite
Fandom: Green Lantern Corps
Characters: John Stewart, Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner, Guardians, J'onn J'onzz
Prompt: 072 - FIXED
Word Count: 4075
Rating: PG
Summary: If Hal, Kyle, and Guy have been possessed by a psychic leech, it's John's job to stop it and them. They just don't seem to want to cooperate.
Author's Notes: Follows Hours, Shade, Fire, and Heart. (Hal/Kyle slash mentioned.)
“An uncharted black hole?” John Stewart, Green Lantern of Sector 2814, partner to one Hal Jordan, stared at the image in front of him in consternation. Not that long ago, a strange planet had appeared in the adjacent sector, prompting investigation. As the Lanterns responsible for the sector had turned up missing, the matter had fallen to Hal. His backup had come in the form of Honor Guard Lantern Guy Gardner and Corps mascot Kyle Rayner, also known as Ion. The planet had vanished just as quickly as it had appeared, which had in theory been the end of the matter, but John had noticed changes in Hal’s behavior afterwards. Kyle, who was free to choose a sector or not as he pleased and stayed on Earth due to his relationship with Hal, hadn’t been acting normal either. John had asked for Guy’s assistance; as a member of the Honor Guard, troubleshooting was his job. Guy had been just as off as Hal and Kyle, though, which put John right back at square one, and now yet another anomaly had appeared out of nowhere. “Here?”
“It is your duty, John Stewart.” He couldn’t tell which Guardian it was, staring down at him out of the sky. They’d done that all the time when he’d first gotten the ring, when he’d first acted as Hal’s backup, but he hadn’t seen it in ages. He was almost tempted to think it was some sort of trick.
“I have the coordinates,” he said instead. There weren’t many people who could pull off a convincing image of a Guardian, and none of them could mimic the energy that went through the Central Battery.
“Hurry,” said the Guardian, and vanished.
As John flew towards the black hole, it occurred to him that another Lantern might possibly be able to pull off faking a Guardian, and that meant a detour back to Earth and the Watchtower. The medbay had a number of neural inhibitors specifically calibrated for human brains; in theory, they were to be used on non-meta human supervillains with a psychic connection to whatever gear they used. That Batman had developed something that could so easily be turned on his own teammates - specifically, on Hal Jordan, just in case he went crazy again, and John had asked - had given him chills at the time, but now he was grateful for Batman’s foresight. Given how weird Guy had acted, John couldn’t help but connect dots. There was a fine line between insight and jumping to conclusions, though, and in theory he was skilled at walking it. In practice, that just meant that he prepared for the worst and was rarely caught off-guard.
To his surprise, Hal joined him before he’d cleared the atmosphere. “You too?” he asked, looking and sounding perfectly normal.
“The Guardians,” John said by way of reply. “They haven’t done that in ages.”
“Tell me about it.” They flew in silence for a while, the stars barely changing. The black hole was on the edge of Sector 2814, almost inside 2815. John had never been in that particular corner of the sector, isolated as it was. There were no inhabited star systems, no trading posts, no planets at all. The only object John knew of was a single red dwarf star, and it wouldn’t have been noteworthy except for its being so very isolated.
That star was gone now, a static black hole in its place. It made no astronomical or mathematical sense; red dwarf stars were generally too stable to collapse into black holes without some kind of outside impetus. “Do you see the convoy?” he asked Hal.
“There.” Hal pointed, and John could see a single ship, redshifted into near-invisibility. The rest of the convoy had retreated to a safe distance, and as John watched, the black hole suddenly shrank and disappeared, collapsing into brilliant light. The ship caught in its event horizon wavered and vanished, along with its companions. “An illusion?” Hal asked, brow furrowed in confusion.
“What the hell was that?” Not only should the red dwarf not have collapsed into a black hole in the first place, it had far too much mass to evaporate in the unlikely event that it did form a gravitational singularity.
“I’ll tell you what that was,” came a new voice. John half-turned to see Guy and got a fist in his face.
Briefly stunned by the impact, John couldn’t react. By the time he managed to regain his equilibrium, Hal and Guy were tearing at each other. Both of them seemed to have forgotten their rings in favor of a completely physical fight. Ignoring that the two of them should have been working together if they were both possessed by some kind of invading alien, John took the opportunity to scan them both. As expected, his ring gave back an error message, and he compensated for it.
“Error,” said the ring again, and still neither of them paid the slightest attention to him. John recalibrated and tried again, and finally managed to confirm the presence of an alien parasite. He’d concentrated on Guy - of the two of them, Guy was the more dangerous - but Hal showed signs of the same possession when John turned the recalibrated scan on him as well.
Protocol demanded that in the case of a Lantern becoming compromised, assistance be called. John was halfway to it when it occurred to him that if this had nothing to do with the anomaly, anyone at all could be infected. Anyone on Earth, in the Corps… he had no idea where it had come from.
A resounding crash, transmitted through the ring, brought his attention back to the fight. Hal had gone limp, floating in space, and Guy had his fist drawn back to deliver a killing blow.
“Stop!” John grabbed his wrist. “You were right. He’s infected.”
Guy gave him a suspicious look. “How can you tell?”
John sent the specifications of the scan - minus the results - into Guy’s ring, and let the other man confirm his readings. “See it there? It’s just barely phase-shifted into this dimension, and it’s wrapped around his brain, reaching into the amygdala.”
“Did you scan me?” Guy asked after a moment.
“You’re fine,” John told him. The ring would detect a lie, but at that precise moment he firmly believed that Guy was in fact fine and would not cause any trouble. That didn’t mean that he wasn’t carrying an alien parasite, and it was a fine distinction between truth and lie, but it was apparently enough to fool the ring, because Guy nodded and wrapped Hal into an impenetrable cocoon.
“Can I have him?” John asked. The neural inhibitors were behind his belt, hidden in the small of his back, and he was fairly sure neither Hal nor Guy had noticed them. The belt itself wasn’t particularly visible; John just felt better having its solidity around his waist. He’d never thought the small band of stiffer material generated into his costume would have a practical use.
“Best to take him back to Oa.” Guy wasn’t wrong, but he couldn’t be allowed to follow protocol.
“What if whatever this was originated on Oa?” John asked, trying to think quickly enough to stay a step ahead. “Better if we can get rid of it now.”
“Right, right.” Guy nodded. “We’ll take him to Phobos. No Martians there. No Justice League. He’ll be safe enough.”
“Exactly.” John started towards the solar system, letting his ring set a course for Mars and its moons. A sudden sharp blow to the back of his head sent him spiraling downwards, and he cursed himself for letting Guy fool him in the split second before thought fuzzed into nothing.
Matters had not improved when John woke, not that he expected them to. Guy had indeed taken him to the Martian moon of Phobos - it was, essentially, a giant floating rock. John could see to both horizons, and they weren’t that far away. He supposed he was lucky to have woken up at all, but the construct Guy had left over the moon’s surface both held in enough air to breathe and made it all but impossible for him to leave, unless he managed to will his ring through the barrier.
The ring itself was just on the other side of the glowing green wall. “Guy, you asshole,” John muttered. Leaving it that close and yet inaccessible was nothing more than a childish gesture of superiority, and Guy should have outgrown those years ago. On the other hand, Guy’s reawakened need for acknowledgement meant that John was alive so he could presumably give it, and not floating in space on the edge of the sector. John gave brief thanks to whatever was listening that the parasite had made the mistake of leaving him alive and well, and set to work getting his ring through the force shield.
Leaving the ring in such close proximity might have been the parasite’s second mistake, but the location of the ring was more or less irrelevant. It could be called, as long as it had not been destroyed, and given enough time, the barrier could be worn down.
To John’s knowledge, no reports of odd behavior - other than the one John himself had made to the Guardians prior to requesting Guy’s help - had been filed. The problem, such as it was, appeared to be confined to Sector 2814, more specifically Earth, and most specifically to the Lanterns investigating the anomalous planet that had appeared out of nowhere and that Hal had for some reason felt the need to smash into dust. Despite his earlier fears that the entire planet or the entire Corps (and it was a tossup as to which was worse, as far as he was concerned) could be infected, John was fairly confident in assuming that the problem was limited to the other three Earth-born Lanterns.
The barrier weakened just enough for him to lay the barest sliver of skin against the curve of the ring, and it slid through with a pop, settling onto his finger. The barrier snapped back into place, shuddering visibly, and John started trying to drill through it. The breach must have set off some kind of mental alarm, though, because within seconds, a pinpoint of green light flared up among the stars. It grew rapidly, finally resolving itself into three figures. Before John had time to do more than blink, Guy hovered outside, flanked by Hal on one side and Kyle on the other. Where their eyes behind the masks should have been a blank white was glowing dark green instead, energy leaking out. The energy barrier around Phobos vanished, but the three men in front of him were an effective deterrent in their own right.
“Hello, Guy.” No time to call for backup, either from the League or from the Corps; in any case, were he to call in from the Corps, Guy and Kyle were the backup and there was no one in the League who could go toe to toe with one Lantern without sustaining serious damage, let alone three. At least, there was no one who wasn’t urgently needed elsewhere at any given moment, or anyone fast enough to get there on time anyway.
“I knew there was something wrong,” Guy said. “Something wasn’t quite right about you. You called in a priority mission to investigate odd behavior, but that isn’t exactly a priority. No, John, you’re playing a deeper game. You were trying to get the rest of us out of the way.”
Altering Guy’s speech patterns meant that the alien had its tendrils deeper in the other man’s brain than John had thought; getting it back out was going to require a lot of work. It did not occur to him that he might lose the fight, or that any of the men facing him might escape.
“You’re the one who’s been affected, Guy.” Not that he expected anything resembling rationality out of any of them, but it gained him at least a few seconds. Behind Guy, Kyle started glowing - a massive energy buildup if John had ever seen one.
“We’re going to help you, John,” Hal said, floating closer. John slid backwards, not putting the moon between himself and the others, but moving away from both Mars and the Earth’s orbit. The asteroid belt was behind him, not that it did much good. There wasn’t enough density for him to use it as a place to hide, but the nearest meters-wide body made a perfectly good distraction when flung directly at Kyle. By the time the dust cleared, John was halfway to the rings of Saturn.
Kyle caught up with him first, but John was already deep within the rings. The ice crystals reflected green, warning him of Kyle’s arrival and the subsequent blast of energy. Water melted and refroze, leaving a clear path in its wake. A distant corner of John’s mind noted that this would probably give Earth-bound astronomers fits, but the rest of it was too busy dodging Kyle’s wild shots. He pulled another moonlet out of its orbit and sent it towards Kyle as well, not sticking around to see the effects.
The nearest actual moon was an ovoid shape, a huge crater on one side reminiscent of the Death Star. John used its mass to slingshot himself directly at the planet, plunging into the bluish upper hemisphere and cutting all but the bare minimum of his ring’s energy output. At this altitude, Saturn’s atmosphere was a dense cloud of frozen crystal, the thick fog leaving no trace of his passing. John drifted, waiting, but it didn’t take long for green light to become visible through the mist. Kyle floated past, eyes shining brightly as he swung his head slowly back and forth. John held his breath, although he knew it would have no effect on anything whatsoever, and when Kyle’s back was turned, he struck.
A split second was all that John had, and he used that second to gather a club of frozen and compressed ammonia, applied with excessive force to the back of Kyle’s skull. The light went out, and John caught his friend. He hadn’t thought to check whether or not any of them had removed the neural inhibitors, but they were still in place behind his belt. John fixed the first to Kyle’s temple, watching him closely in case the alien parasite took the opportunity to rear its ugly head, but his friend remained limp. John carried him to the nearest moon - the one he’d used as a slingshot - and left him on the floor of the crater, at the bottom of its central peak. A bubble of energy would keep Kyle alive until he could come back for him, and the icy moon would keep him hidden.
Hal flew into view just before John cleared the walls of the crater. He too was moving slowly, obviously searching - it wouldn’t take more than a few seconds for his ring to register John’s energy output and zero in on his position. John removed the second neural inhibitor and let go of it, a sniper’s rifle coalescing around the small disc. He ringed the scope and aimed as Hal swung around and started toward him.
There was no sound, no explosion of powder, but the inhibitor streaked forward in its bullet-shaped casing. The construct casing dissolved on impact, the inhibitor sticking to Hal and doing what it was supposed to do. Hal tumbled towards the moon, caught in its gravity, and John intercepted his fall. “I hope you were in there and helping me out, buddy,” he murmured. Hal should have been able to stop that bullet, but if he’d stayed the parasite’s hand, perhaps there was hope that it could be safely removed after all.
In theory, Hal’s ring would keep him alive without an energy bubble, but John laid him beside Kyle anyway. “Wish me luck,” he said softly, and then wished he weren’t talking to himself. Whether or not he stayed in the vicinity of the elliptical moon, Guy would be able to track his energy signature, but John wasn’t going to make it easy for him to find the other two.
Saturn’s largest moon shone a bright orange, and John flared his ring’s energy as he approached it. As expected, Guy appeared bare seconds later. John dove into Titan’s atmosphere, letting the ring compensate for the higher pressure. The farther down he went, the darker it got, clouds thickening into mist. Rain fell in sheets, and he ringed a set of goggles to both keep the liquid away from his eyes and display the terrain. A river cutting through sandy ground and fed by the driving rain ran past a small plateau and he landed near it. Guy’s bright green glow was visible in every spectrum as he dove into the lake and emerged, heavy liquid dripping into the thick air.
“Stewart!” he shouted. John was ready, third neural inhibitor in a construct bullet and rifle materializing around it.
“Wish me luck,” he said again and fired. Guy batted the bullet aside like a toy, and the inhibitor hit the liquid methane. It froze, shattered, and sank in a matter of seconds. “Dammit.” That single word was all he had time for; Guy was swinging at him with a huge glowing fist, and John threw himself to the side. The river carried him toward the lake, and he rose out of it, using his momentum to plant his feet against the plateau and push off. He caught Guy at the waist, both of them hitting the ground with a deafening crash. The soil rippled like water, and Guy just grinned, kicking John towards the sky with both feet. John fended off the construct he knew was behind him with a long pole, the other end pinning Guy down, but Guy sliced through it and flipped lightly upwards.
“No luck for you,” he said, and a bolt of pure energy sparked towards John. The rain broke the light into thousands of sparkling rainbows in every shade of green, and John shielded his eyes. He slid sideways at the last possible moment, and the bolt struck the plateau and arced through it, leaving a smoking hole. The plateau crumbled, falling into the river, and John grabbed the largest chunks and threw them at Guy. The dust clouded his vision for a moment and when it cleared, Guy was gone.
“Above you,” he heard and threw himself to the side again. He sent a hail of arrows flying upwards, hearing at least some of them sizzle as they struck, but there was no sound from Guy. John took off, moving sideways as he rose, searching. Guy came out of what seemed like nowhere and reached for his neck, but while his hands were occupied he couldn’t fight. With one hand trying to pry Guy’s fingers loose, John struggled to ignore the pressure and the rising tide of blackness as he pulled the fourth and final inhibitor from behind his belt with the other. It clicked as it latched into place against Guy’s temple, the other man seeing it too late. Anger twisted his face in the split second before he sagged against John and the pressure on John’s throat vanished.
“Sorry, man.” He rubbed his throat, the ring already starting to repair the damage, and pulled Guy out of the freezing atmosphere. “Let’s go home.”
The Watchtower had never been as welcome a sight; John radioed ahead as it came into view, floating in space with the Earth behind it. Explanations came after isolation; J’onn verified that John was not, in fact, suffering possession, insanity, or any other mind-altering condition and John’s ring verified in turn that J’onn was uncompromised by Hal’s alien parasite. None of the League present in the Watchtower showed signs of infection, but once John uploaded the analysis parameters into the Watchtower computers, they confirmed the presence of the parasite in Hal, Kyle, and Guy.
“Do you know how to get rid of it?” John asked. His report had been belatedly sent to the Guardians only when he received a message inquiring as to why he hadn’t either updated the status of his situation or returned Guy for duties elsewhere, but it had been met with silence.
“I am not entirely sure,” J’onn said. The three Lanterns remained in isolation, although given the parasite’s extradimensional properties, John wasn’t sure that the isolation would do any good.
“You cannot,” came a series of very familiar voices, and John resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. The Guardians were inside the isolation chamber, all but one in a ring around the prone forms of the infected Lanterns. The remaining Guardian hovered in front of John, politely including J’onn in its address; he thought it might be Ganthet, but it was nearly impossible to tell them apart.
“Do you know what it is?” he asked, ignoring for the moment the fact that the Guardians had actually left Oa and traveled all the way to Earth.
“You have been fortunate indeed, John Stewart.” He was almost sure it was Ganthet, now. “Fortunate that the being was disoriented from its long exile and that the chaotic mind of humanity was no easy barrier to overcome.”
“What long exile?” John asked.
“The great civilization of Alethos was humbled when we were first made aware of this being,” Ganthet said. “It was sealed away, it and the planet it had infested.”
“You mean that thing that’s inside Hal is what was on that planet he went to investigate?” John swallowed his next words; if the Guardians had known what it was, why had they sent an investigative team? And if they hadn’t known to begin with, surely they’d had enough information after hearing the reports to put it together. Shouting at the Guardians did no good to anyone, though, and was a quick way to disciplinary action for anyone except Kyle.
“There is no danger now, John Stewart.” Ganthet had been joined by the other Guardians, and they faded simultaneously.
“What the fuck,” John muttered. There was no sign of the parasite, when he checked, but he doubted that the Guardians would tell him or anyone else what it had been or what they’d done with it. In fact, they would probably deny that it had existed at all. He had no doubt that there would be a lot of explaining to be done when his teammates woke, and yet again he was going to be the one doing it. “Thanks a lot.”
At least they’d all survived this time; as Hal said, any landing you could walk away from was a good one. John turned to face the isolation ward and took a deep breath. “Here we go.”
Epilogue:
“So if the Guardians sealed the planet away to keep this psychic leech thing from spreading, how did it get out?” Kyle sat with one heel planted on his chair, arms wrapped around his knee, and looked down at Hal. He’d been the first to wake, and despite John’s attempts to convince him to wait for the others before explaining the past few days, he’d insisted that his questions be answered right now.
“I don’t know.” John had very little information to go on, and the Guardians weren’t much for giving any kind of answers or explanations.
“But it was trying to expand, again,” Kyle pressed.
“The Guardians didn’t say, but probably, yes.” He felt fairly sure it was a reasonable assumption.
“So why didn’t it get any farther than us?” Kyle continued.
“Earthlings are chaotic and disorganized,” John said blandly. Kyle shot him a hard look at that, as if he thought John might be joking. John raised his hands in defense. “It’s gone,” he said. “There’s nothing to worry about now.”
“What else is waiting out there?” Kyle asked softly, reaching down to cover Hal’s hand with his. “What else is there that I can’t protect him from?”
“It wasn’t your fault,” John said, but Kyle didn’t seem to hear. He retreated, giving the other man what privacy he could, but the question Kyle had asked echoed in his mind. What else? He shook his head. There would always be something else, and they would always go to meet it. Always.
FINIS
Nalanzu's Little Damn Table
Fandom: Green Lantern Corps
Characters: John Stewart, Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner, Guardians, J'onn J'onzz
Prompt: 072 - FIXED
Word Count: 4075
Rating: PG
Summary: If Hal, Kyle, and Guy have been possessed by a psychic leech, it's John's job to stop it and them. They just don't seem to want to cooperate.
Author's Notes: Follows Hours, Shade, Fire, and Heart. (Hal/Kyle slash mentioned.)
“An uncharted black hole?” John Stewart, Green Lantern of Sector 2814, partner to one Hal Jordan, stared at the image in front of him in consternation. Not that long ago, a strange planet had appeared in the adjacent sector, prompting investigation. As the Lanterns responsible for the sector had turned up missing, the matter had fallen to Hal. His backup had come in the form of Honor Guard Lantern Guy Gardner and Corps mascot Kyle Rayner, also known as Ion. The planet had vanished just as quickly as it had appeared, which had in theory been the end of the matter, but John had noticed changes in Hal’s behavior afterwards. Kyle, who was free to choose a sector or not as he pleased and stayed on Earth due to his relationship with Hal, hadn’t been acting normal either. John had asked for Guy’s assistance; as a member of the Honor Guard, troubleshooting was his job. Guy had been just as off as Hal and Kyle, though, which put John right back at square one, and now yet another anomaly had appeared out of nowhere. “Here?”
“It is your duty, John Stewart.” He couldn’t tell which Guardian it was, staring down at him out of the sky. They’d done that all the time when he’d first gotten the ring, when he’d first acted as Hal’s backup, but he hadn’t seen it in ages. He was almost tempted to think it was some sort of trick.
“I have the coordinates,” he said instead. There weren’t many people who could pull off a convincing image of a Guardian, and none of them could mimic the energy that went through the Central Battery.
“Hurry,” said the Guardian, and vanished.
As John flew towards the black hole, it occurred to him that another Lantern might possibly be able to pull off faking a Guardian, and that meant a detour back to Earth and the Watchtower. The medbay had a number of neural inhibitors specifically calibrated for human brains; in theory, they were to be used on non-meta human supervillains with a psychic connection to whatever gear they used. That Batman had developed something that could so easily be turned on his own teammates - specifically, on Hal Jordan, just in case he went crazy again, and John had asked - had given him chills at the time, but now he was grateful for Batman’s foresight. Given how weird Guy had acted, John couldn’t help but connect dots. There was a fine line between insight and jumping to conclusions, though, and in theory he was skilled at walking it. In practice, that just meant that he prepared for the worst and was rarely caught off-guard.
To his surprise, Hal joined him before he’d cleared the atmosphere. “You too?” he asked, looking and sounding perfectly normal.
“The Guardians,” John said by way of reply. “They haven’t done that in ages.”
“Tell me about it.” They flew in silence for a while, the stars barely changing. The black hole was on the edge of Sector 2814, almost inside 2815. John had never been in that particular corner of the sector, isolated as it was. There were no inhabited star systems, no trading posts, no planets at all. The only object John knew of was a single red dwarf star, and it wouldn’t have been noteworthy except for its being so very isolated.
That star was gone now, a static black hole in its place. It made no astronomical or mathematical sense; red dwarf stars were generally too stable to collapse into black holes without some kind of outside impetus. “Do you see the convoy?” he asked Hal.
“There.” Hal pointed, and John could see a single ship, redshifted into near-invisibility. The rest of the convoy had retreated to a safe distance, and as John watched, the black hole suddenly shrank and disappeared, collapsing into brilliant light. The ship caught in its event horizon wavered and vanished, along with its companions. “An illusion?” Hal asked, brow furrowed in confusion.
“What the hell was that?” Not only should the red dwarf not have collapsed into a black hole in the first place, it had far too much mass to evaporate in the unlikely event that it did form a gravitational singularity.
“I’ll tell you what that was,” came a new voice. John half-turned to see Guy and got a fist in his face.
Briefly stunned by the impact, John couldn’t react. By the time he managed to regain his equilibrium, Hal and Guy were tearing at each other. Both of them seemed to have forgotten their rings in favor of a completely physical fight. Ignoring that the two of them should have been working together if they were both possessed by some kind of invading alien, John took the opportunity to scan them both. As expected, his ring gave back an error message, and he compensated for it.
“Error,” said the ring again, and still neither of them paid the slightest attention to him. John recalibrated and tried again, and finally managed to confirm the presence of an alien parasite. He’d concentrated on Guy - of the two of them, Guy was the more dangerous - but Hal showed signs of the same possession when John turned the recalibrated scan on him as well.
Protocol demanded that in the case of a Lantern becoming compromised, assistance be called. John was halfway to it when it occurred to him that if this had nothing to do with the anomaly, anyone at all could be infected. Anyone on Earth, in the Corps… he had no idea where it had come from.
A resounding crash, transmitted through the ring, brought his attention back to the fight. Hal had gone limp, floating in space, and Guy had his fist drawn back to deliver a killing blow.
“Stop!” John grabbed his wrist. “You were right. He’s infected.”
Guy gave him a suspicious look. “How can you tell?”
John sent the specifications of the scan - minus the results - into Guy’s ring, and let the other man confirm his readings. “See it there? It’s just barely phase-shifted into this dimension, and it’s wrapped around his brain, reaching into the amygdala.”
“Did you scan me?” Guy asked after a moment.
“You’re fine,” John told him. The ring would detect a lie, but at that precise moment he firmly believed that Guy was in fact fine and would not cause any trouble. That didn’t mean that he wasn’t carrying an alien parasite, and it was a fine distinction between truth and lie, but it was apparently enough to fool the ring, because Guy nodded and wrapped Hal into an impenetrable cocoon.
“Can I have him?” John asked. The neural inhibitors were behind his belt, hidden in the small of his back, and he was fairly sure neither Hal nor Guy had noticed them. The belt itself wasn’t particularly visible; John just felt better having its solidity around his waist. He’d never thought the small band of stiffer material generated into his costume would have a practical use.
“Best to take him back to Oa.” Guy wasn’t wrong, but he couldn’t be allowed to follow protocol.
“What if whatever this was originated on Oa?” John asked, trying to think quickly enough to stay a step ahead. “Better if we can get rid of it now.”
“Right, right.” Guy nodded. “We’ll take him to Phobos. No Martians there. No Justice League. He’ll be safe enough.”
“Exactly.” John started towards the solar system, letting his ring set a course for Mars and its moons. A sudden sharp blow to the back of his head sent him spiraling downwards, and he cursed himself for letting Guy fool him in the split second before thought fuzzed into nothing.
Matters had not improved when John woke, not that he expected them to. Guy had indeed taken him to the Martian moon of Phobos - it was, essentially, a giant floating rock. John could see to both horizons, and they weren’t that far away. He supposed he was lucky to have woken up at all, but the construct Guy had left over the moon’s surface both held in enough air to breathe and made it all but impossible for him to leave, unless he managed to will his ring through the barrier.
The ring itself was just on the other side of the glowing green wall. “Guy, you asshole,” John muttered. Leaving it that close and yet inaccessible was nothing more than a childish gesture of superiority, and Guy should have outgrown those years ago. On the other hand, Guy’s reawakened need for acknowledgement meant that John was alive so he could presumably give it, and not floating in space on the edge of the sector. John gave brief thanks to whatever was listening that the parasite had made the mistake of leaving him alive and well, and set to work getting his ring through the force shield.
Leaving the ring in such close proximity might have been the parasite’s second mistake, but the location of the ring was more or less irrelevant. It could be called, as long as it had not been destroyed, and given enough time, the barrier could be worn down.
To John’s knowledge, no reports of odd behavior - other than the one John himself had made to the Guardians prior to requesting Guy’s help - had been filed. The problem, such as it was, appeared to be confined to Sector 2814, more specifically Earth, and most specifically to the Lanterns investigating the anomalous planet that had appeared out of nowhere and that Hal had for some reason felt the need to smash into dust. Despite his earlier fears that the entire planet or the entire Corps (and it was a tossup as to which was worse, as far as he was concerned) could be infected, John was fairly confident in assuming that the problem was limited to the other three Earth-born Lanterns.
The barrier weakened just enough for him to lay the barest sliver of skin against the curve of the ring, and it slid through with a pop, settling onto his finger. The barrier snapped back into place, shuddering visibly, and John started trying to drill through it. The breach must have set off some kind of mental alarm, though, because within seconds, a pinpoint of green light flared up among the stars. It grew rapidly, finally resolving itself into three figures. Before John had time to do more than blink, Guy hovered outside, flanked by Hal on one side and Kyle on the other. Where their eyes behind the masks should have been a blank white was glowing dark green instead, energy leaking out. The energy barrier around Phobos vanished, but the three men in front of him were an effective deterrent in their own right.
“Hello, Guy.” No time to call for backup, either from the League or from the Corps; in any case, were he to call in from the Corps, Guy and Kyle were the backup and there was no one in the League who could go toe to toe with one Lantern without sustaining serious damage, let alone three. At least, there was no one who wasn’t urgently needed elsewhere at any given moment, or anyone fast enough to get there on time anyway.
“I knew there was something wrong,” Guy said. “Something wasn’t quite right about you. You called in a priority mission to investigate odd behavior, but that isn’t exactly a priority. No, John, you’re playing a deeper game. You were trying to get the rest of us out of the way.”
Altering Guy’s speech patterns meant that the alien had its tendrils deeper in the other man’s brain than John had thought; getting it back out was going to require a lot of work. It did not occur to him that he might lose the fight, or that any of the men facing him might escape.
“You’re the one who’s been affected, Guy.” Not that he expected anything resembling rationality out of any of them, but it gained him at least a few seconds. Behind Guy, Kyle started glowing - a massive energy buildup if John had ever seen one.
“We’re going to help you, John,” Hal said, floating closer. John slid backwards, not putting the moon between himself and the others, but moving away from both Mars and the Earth’s orbit. The asteroid belt was behind him, not that it did much good. There wasn’t enough density for him to use it as a place to hide, but the nearest meters-wide body made a perfectly good distraction when flung directly at Kyle. By the time the dust cleared, John was halfway to the rings of Saturn.
Kyle caught up with him first, but John was already deep within the rings. The ice crystals reflected green, warning him of Kyle’s arrival and the subsequent blast of energy. Water melted and refroze, leaving a clear path in its wake. A distant corner of John’s mind noted that this would probably give Earth-bound astronomers fits, but the rest of it was too busy dodging Kyle’s wild shots. He pulled another moonlet out of its orbit and sent it towards Kyle as well, not sticking around to see the effects.
The nearest actual moon was an ovoid shape, a huge crater on one side reminiscent of the Death Star. John used its mass to slingshot himself directly at the planet, plunging into the bluish upper hemisphere and cutting all but the bare minimum of his ring’s energy output. At this altitude, Saturn’s atmosphere was a dense cloud of frozen crystal, the thick fog leaving no trace of his passing. John drifted, waiting, but it didn’t take long for green light to become visible through the mist. Kyle floated past, eyes shining brightly as he swung his head slowly back and forth. John held his breath, although he knew it would have no effect on anything whatsoever, and when Kyle’s back was turned, he struck.
A split second was all that John had, and he used that second to gather a club of frozen and compressed ammonia, applied with excessive force to the back of Kyle’s skull. The light went out, and John caught his friend. He hadn’t thought to check whether or not any of them had removed the neural inhibitors, but they were still in place behind his belt. John fixed the first to Kyle’s temple, watching him closely in case the alien parasite took the opportunity to rear its ugly head, but his friend remained limp. John carried him to the nearest moon - the one he’d used as a slingshot - and left him on the floor of the crater, at the bottom of its central peak. A bubble of energy would keep Kyle alive until he could come back for him, and the icy moon would keep him hidden.
Hal flew into view just before John cleared the walls of the crater. He too was moving slowly, obviously searching - it wouldn’t take more than a few seconds for his ring to register John’s energy output and zero in on his position. John removed the second neural inhibitor and let go of it, a sniper’s rifle coalescing around the small disc. He ringed the scope and aimed as Hal swung around and started toward him.
There was no sound, no explosion of powder, but the inhibitor streaked forward in its bullet-shaped casing. The construct casing dissolved on impact, the inhibitor sticking to Hal and doing what it was supposed to do. Hal tumbled towards the moon, caught in its gravity, and John intercepted his fall. “I hope you were in there and helping me out, buddy,” he murmured. Hal should have been able to stop that bullet, but if he’d stayed the parasite’s hand, perhaps there was hope that it could be safely removed after all.
In theory, Hal’s ring would keep him alive without an energy bubble, but John laid him beside Kyle anyway. “Wish me luck,” he said softly, and then wished he weren’t talking to himself. Whether or not he stayed in the vicinity of the elliptical moon, Guy would be able to track his energy signature, but John wasn’t going to make it easy for him to find the other two.
Saturn’s largest moon shone a bright orange, and John flared his ring’s energy as he approached it. As expected, Guy appeared bare seconds later. John dove into Titan’s atmosphere, letting the ring compensate for the higher pressure. The farther down he went, the darker it got, clouds thickening into mist. Rain fell in sheets, and he ringed a set of goggles to both keep the liquid away from his eyes and display the terrain. A river cutting through sandy ground and fed by the driving rain ran past a small plateau and he landed near it. Guy’s bright green glow was visible in every spectrum as he dove into the lake and emerged, heavy liquid dripping into the thick air.
“Stewart!” he shouted. John was ready, third neural inhibitor in a construct bullet and rifle materializing around it.
“Wish me luck,” he said again and fired. Guy batted the bullet aside like a toy, and the inhibitor hit the liquid methane. It froze, shattered, and sank in a matter of seconds. “Dammit.” That single word was all he had time for; Guy was swinging at him with a huge glowing fist, and John threw himself to the side. The river carried him toward the lake, and he rose out of it, using his momentum to plant his feet against the plateau and push off. He caught Guy at the waist, both of them hitting the ground with a deafening crash. The soil rippled like water, and Guy just grinned, kicking John towards the sky with both feet. John fended off the construct he knew was behind him with a long pole, the other end pinning Guy down, but Guy sliced through it and flipped lightly upwards.
“No luck for you,” he said, and a bolt of pure energy sparked towards John. The rain broke the light into thousands of sparkling rainbows in every shade of green, and John shielded his eyes. He slid sideways at the last possible moment, and the bolt struck the plateau and arced through it, leaving a smoking hole. The plateau crumbled, falling into the river, and John grabbed the largest chunks and threw them at Guy. The dust clouded his vision for a moment and when it cleared, Guy was gone.
“Above you,” he heard and threw himself to the side again. He sent a hail of arrows flying upwards, hearing at least some of them sizzle as they struck, but there was no sound from Guy. John took off, moving sideways as he rose, searching. Guy came out of what seemed like nowhere and reached for his neck, but while his hands were occupied he couldn’t fight. With one hand trying to pry Guy’s fingers loose, John struggled to ignore the pressure and the rising tide of blackness as he pulled the fourth and final inhibitor from behind his belt with the other. It clicked as it latched into place against Guy’s temple, the other man seeing it too late. Anger twisted his face in the split second before he sagged against John and the pressure on John’s throat vanished.
“Sorry, man.” He rubbed his throat, the ring already starting to repair the damage, and pulled Guy out of the freezing atmosphere. “Let’s go home.”
The Watchtower had never been as welcome a sight; John radioed ahead as it came into view, floating in space with the Earth behind it. Explanations came after isolation; J’onn verified that John was not, in fact, suffering possession, insanity, or any other mind-altering condition and John’s ring verified in turn that J’onn was uncompromised by Hal’s alien parasite. None of the League present in the Watchtower showed signs of infection, but once John uploaded the analysis parameters into the Watchtower computers, they confirmed the presence of the parasite in Hal, Kyle, and Guy.
“Do you know how to get rid of it?” John asked. His report had been belatedly sent to the Guardians only when he received a message inquiring as to why he hadn’t either updated the status of his situation or returned Guy for duties elsewhere, but it had been met with silence.
“I am not entirely sure,” J’onn said. The three Lanterns remained in isolation, although given the parasite’s extradimensional properties, John wasn’t sure that the isolation would do any good.
“You cannot,” came a series of very familiar voices, and John resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. The Guardians were inside the isolation chamber, all but one in a ring around the prone forms of the infected Lanterns. The remaining Guardian hovered in front of John, politely including J’onn in its address; he thought it might be Ganthet, but it was nearly impossible to tell them apart.
“Do you know what it is?” he asked, ignoring for the moment the fact that the Guardians had actually left Oa and traveled all the way to Earth.
“You have been fortunate indeed, John Stewart.” He was almost sure it was Ganthet, now. “Fortunate that the being was disoriented from its long exile and that the chaotic mind of humanity was no easy barrier to overcome.”
“What long exile?” John asked.
“The great civilization of Alethos was humbled when we were first made aware of this being,” Ganthet said. “It was sealed away, it and the planet it had infested.”
“You mean that thing that’s inside Hal is what was on that planet he went to investigate?” John swallowed his next words; if the Guardians had known what it was, why had they sent an investigative team? And if they hadn’t known to begin with, surely they’d had enough information after hearing the reports to put it together. Shouting at the Guardians did no good to anyone, though, and was a quick way to disciplinary action for anyone except Kyle.
“There is no danger now, John Stewart.” Ganthet had been joined by the other Guardians, and they faded simultaneously.
“What the fuck,” John muttered. There was no sign of the parasite, when he checked, but he doubted that the Guardians would tell him or anyone else what it had been or what they’d done with it. In fact, they would probably deny that it had existed at all. He had no doubt that there would be a lot of explaining to be done when his teammates woke, and yet again he was going to be the one doing it. “Thanks a lot.”
At least they’d all survived this time; as Hal said, any landing you could walk away from was a good one. John turned to face the isolation ward and took a deep breath. “Here we go.”
Epilogue:
“So if the Guardians sealed the planet away to keep this psychic leech thing from spreading, how did it get out?” Kyle sat with one heel planted on his chair, arms wrapped around his knee, and looked down at Hal. He’d been the first to wake, and despite John’s attempts to convince him to wait for the others before explaining the past few days, he’d insisted that his questions be answered right now.
“I don’t know.” John had very little information to go on, and the Guardians weren’t much for giving any kind of answers or explanations.
“But it was trying to expand, again,” Kyle pressed.
“The Guardians didn’t say, but probably, yes.” He felt fairly sure it was a reasonable assumption.
“So why didn’t it get any farther than us?” Kyle continued.
“Earthlings are chaotic and disorganized,” John said blandly. Kyle shot him a hard look at that, as if he thought John might be joking. John raised his hands in defense. “It’s gone,” he said. “There’s nothing to worry about now.”
“What else is waiting out there?” Kyle asked softly, reaching down to cover Hal’s hand with his. “What else is there that I can’t protect him from?”
“It wasn’t your fault,” John said, but Kyle didn’t seem to hear. He retreated, giving the other man what privacy he could, but the question Kyle had asked echoed in his mind. What else? He shook his head. There would always be something else, and they would always go to meet it. Always.
FINIS
Nalanzu's Little Damn Table