KILLING TIME

Part III

By Wesley Overhults

The Axis

He could feel the power coursing through every molecule in his body.  He could see particles of temporal energy in the air around him, inside every single molecule that made up the room and everyone in it.  From birth, Jules was taught to fear the energy that made up the Axis.  He was taught that the energy was dangerous, uncontrollable, and never to be tampered with.  He caught a glimpse of the truth though when he stared into that crack.  The power of the Axis could be used to reshape reality as he saw fit.  It was more than that now though.  He didn’t just control the power of the Axis.  He was the Axis.  Every fiber of his being was saturated with its power.  Instead of the energies inside the power battery room destroying him, they had remade him and he was stronger now than any Timebroker in history.

“You believe I am like those of your world,” Jules told the Exiles, looking at them and pitying them because they couldn’t possibly understand the power he possessed.  “You believe I am just another criminal who can be brought to your pathetic idea of justice.  You have no idea what I’ve become, no idea of the power I wield.”

“You can talk all you want about how much better you are than us,” said Sandman.  “The bottom line is that we’re through being cogs in your damn machine.  We’re human beings.”

“You say that as if it’s supposed to mean something to me,” said Jules, smirking at how naive and childish mortals could be.  “You talk about being human as if it’s a lofty achievement.  You are grains of sand with attitude.  You are specks of dust meant to be brushed off and cast upon the wind.  You are nothing.”

The Exiles didn’t enjoy being called nothing and they didn’t feel like wasting more time with debate.  All of them had wanted to get their hands on Jules from the moment he whisked them away from their lives and loved ones to jump through his cosmic hoops.  Now they were going to take out their frustrations on him in the only way they knew how.  They rushed Jules, charging towards him with a combined force that would have been intimidating to beings of their own worlds.  To Jules, they meant nothing.  He raised his glowing hand and literally pulled the rug, or in this case the floor, out from under the Exiles.  All of the time-tossed heroes felt their feet stand on empty air for a split-second before plummeting downward through the hole in the floor.  Voght used her teleportation powers to turn herself and her teammates into vapor, shuttling them out of the hole and towards Jules.  The Exiles rematerialized to surround him and proceeded to strike in unison.  They heard the echo of laughter as Jules disappeared and reappeared away from them.

“You can’t win,” he stated.  “I am the Axis and its power permeates every inch of this place, allowing me to shape it however I see fit.”

The floor in front of the Exiles rose up like a tidal wave and suddenly crashed towards them.  Sandman enlarged his fist and sent it through the wave, punching a hole through it so that it wouldn’t hurt him or his teammates.  He flung a round of sandstone spikes at Jules but the Timebroker teleported away from the attack, bending the flow of time inside the Axis in a way no other Timebroker ever could.  He swept Daredevil aside with a backhand that made the Exile look like a piece of crimson-colored cardboard.  Jules blocked a blast of hellfire from Goblin with a single hand, the blast not harming his hand in the slightest.  Madrox had his clones empty the clips of their guns on Jules but he slowed down time around the bullets to decrease their speed, watching them drop to the floor before they could ever reach him.  This was the best they could send at him?  It was pathetic, truly pathetic.

“It doesn’t matter how hard we have to hit you,” assured Sandman as he charged towards Jules.  “You’re going down.”

Jules waved his hand in an attempt to slow the time around Sandman and grind him to a halt.  He furrowed his brows in frustration when he realized that it wasn’t working.  There was something different about the leader of the Exiles now, something out of place or perhaps out of time.  Jules took too much time pondering it.  A giant spear of sandstone erupted from Sandman’s arm and succeeded in clipping Jules in the shoulder.  The Timebroker dove away at the last second to avoid more damage from the weapon.  A hammer made of sand clocked him in the head and actually managed to daze him.  This was unexpected and he needed to get away to regain the advantage.  Giant hands shot out of the walls and slammed their fists into Sandman at the same time from four different directions.  It was enough for Jules to regain his composure and catch his breath.  The others were still susceptible to his power so he had to focus on them.

Pixie teleported towards Jules with Voght right behind her.  They tried to strike in tandem but Jules sidestepped the attacks and let part of the ceiling surge downward to crush them against the floor.  Goblin blasted the column to shreds but Jules was on him in an instant and kicked him across the room like he was nothing.  That’s what they all were to him: nothing.  He could live a thousand lifetimes and never understand why mortals thought themselves so important.  They were nothing compared to the power he possessed.

“You might be the biggest disappointment out of all of them,” decided Jules as he stalked towards a fallen Pixie.  “I was going to give you everything and all you had to do was kill these people.  Is that really so difficult?”

“You just give the same old lines to everyone,” said Bruiser, tagging Jules in the back with the hardest punch she could throw.  “Like Chase used to say, epic fail.”

“The only one failing is you and your new friends,” retorted Jules as he turned and grabbed her by the throat.  “I was going to give you your family back and this is how you repay me?  Fine then, suffer the same fate as those you’ve aligned yourself with.”

Sandman used a stream of hardened sand to knock Jules away before he had the chance to kill Molly.  Jules grinned maliciously and elongated his arm, punching Bruiser from across the room and knocking her out.

“You may have learned a new trick but that’s not going to save you,” assured Jules in reference to Sandman’s avoidance of his time manipulations.  “The rest of you bleed just like every other mortal.”

The hands that had punched Sandman moved to grab all the other Exiles before clumping all of them together and turning into a bubble of slow time around them.  Jules wanted to watch them writhe in agony, squirming around like the maggots they were.  He wasn’t going to be the only audience to their demise though.  He was going to make Sandman watch and soon the leader of the Exiles would gladly beg for death rather than watch his teammates suffer in unending agony.

“Let them go,” ordered Sandman, realizing that Jules was hurting his friends in an effort to make him suffer as well.

“I can speed up the time in that bubble,” promised Jules.  “I can make them age a thousand years in a matter of seconds.  You may be able to resist my power but they can’t.  So if you intend to keep fighting me then I will make sure your friends die very slow, agonizing deaths.  I promise you that.”

“You’re all talk,” realized Sandman.  “That’s the only thing you’ve ever done ever since the day you screwed up our lives by forcing us to be a part of this.  You talk but when it’s time to shut up and get your hands dirty, you pawn that off to other people.  I think you’re scared to get in a real fight with someone.”

“Maybe you should ask my friend John about that,” suggested Jules.  “Last chance, hero.  Are you going to save them by letting me kill you or are you going to watch them die?  You don’t have a lot of time to decide.”

Somewhere Else

John didn’t know where he was.  He knew where he was a few moments ago but when he and Jules entered the power battery, everything went crazy.  The energy was too much for both of them to handle.  John had felt his body decompose while he was still alive, the particles breaking apart and being devoured by the energy of the Axis.  So where was he now?  He knew that mortals were well-versed in concepts of the afterlife, of a world beyond the land of the living.  That was one of the things he found fascinating about mortals, their faith in and curiosity about a world beyond their realm of comprehension.  Was this where Timebrokers went when they died?

“Are you having fun, old friend?” inquired Jules, materializing in front of John.  “This is my world after all and I would be a poor host if I didn’t make sure my special guest was enjoying himself.”

“What did you do?” asked John.

“Became one with the Axis,” said Jules.  “It seems that you went along for the ride though.  I suppose in reconstructing my body, some of you got thrown into the mix.  You see, you’re inside me right now.  That’s why I said this is my world.”

“You have to stop this,” said John.  “Those Exiles have no part of this.”

“Oh they’ll be quite dead in a few moments so there’s no need to worry,” assured Jules.  “You will join them shortly.”

John was tired of talking.  He was tired of trying to reason with someone who wouldn’t listen to reason.  He was tired of being a Timebroker and walking the path of peace and pacifism.  Somewhere inside him was the savage he used to be and now it was time to descend to that primal space in his mind.  Jules came at him but John hit him with a vicious combination of punches that caught him by surprise.  Not to be outdone, Jules hit John in his rather sizeable gut to double him over and then kicked him in the head to keep him down.  John caught the other Timebroker’s foot as he tried a second kick.  He let a cruel grin grace his lips as he twisted the ankle and heard the bones snap.  Jules howled in pain and went down immediately.  He still controlled the playing field though.  A wall erupted from nothingness to separate them.

“You didn’t think I could actually fight, did you?” said John.

“Doesn’t mean you’ll win,” corrected Jules.  “This is my world and you’re not welcome.”

What looked like a black hole appeared behind John and threatened to suck him into its abyssal clutches.  To make matters worse, a giant fist sprang out of the wall to punch John in the face and send him flying backwards into the waiting jaws of the void.  John clawed at the floor in an effort to find purchase and save himself from going wherever the portal would send him.  Jules calmly walked towards him, intent on savoring the moment for as long as he could.  It was hard for him to believe that he ever cared about the sniveling worm in front of him.  Was he ever that blind?  It seemed too impossible to believe.

“I would grant you mercy out of respect for our friendship but the time for that has long passed,” said Jules.  He stamped down on John’s hand, the heel of his shoe grinding into his former friend’s fingers to loosen their grip.  “Give my regards to Eterna if you happen to run into her wherever you’re going.  If she’s not dead, I intend to remedy that once I’ve dispatched with you and all these other annoyances.”

“Tell her yourself,” said John, switching hands and then using the one closer to Jules to hit the Timebroker in the groin.

Jules bit his lip to hold back the cry of pain and threatened to sink to his knees.  The blow not only disrupted his concentration and closed the portal but it also infuriated him.  He viciously kicked John in the head repeatedly, stomping down on the back of his head as the finale to his brutality.  Jules knelt down to put himself closer to John’s level and reached to pull something out of the floor.  He hefted the baseball bat in his hands, measuring and weighing it by taking a couple practice swings.

“I’m beginning to enjoy doing things the mortal way,” he confessed, taking a brutal swing that hit John across the face as he tried to get back to his feet.  “You know I was always obsessed with their passion for violence.  I think I’m beginning to really understand it now, maybe even enjoy it myself if I could be so bold.”

Jules tried another swing but John blocked it with his arm, clutching the bat and ripping it from Jules’s hand before tossing it aside.  A pair of handcuffs appeared around his wrists, locking them together and preventing him from throwing any proper punches.  Jules decked John in the face with a fist covered with brass knuckles, the pudgy Timebroker unable to get his hands up to defend himself because of the cuffs.

“You’re going to have to hit harder than that,” warned John, spitting a glob of blood into Jules’s eyes to distract him before breaking free of the cuffs.

John caught Jules’s fist as he tried to punch him again.  He hit Jules in the ribs over and over again, bringing the insane Timebroker to his knees.  He grabbed Jules’s head and brought it into a very unwanted meeting with his knee.  Jules fell backwards onto his back and stared at the ceiling of his own consciousness before John’s foot came down on his throat.

“This is my world,” rasped Jules as he tried to get free.  “You can beat the hell out of me and it doesn’t matter.  I’m just a ghost, a figment of my own imagination.”

“You always lacked the ability to see beyond yourself,” said John.  “If I beat you in here then that means that I’m the one in control in the real world.  Case in point…”

The Axis

Jules screamed in pain as energy violently discharged from his open mouth.  Sandman watched the self-styled god thrash as if something was eating him up from the inside.  The bubble of time that held the rest of the Exiles vanished immediately.  Sandman took advantage of the confusion and sent Jules into a wall with a stream of hardened sand.  He turned his attention to the rest of his team, trying to assess if they were badly injured.

“Talk to me,” he ordered.

“We’re good, boss,” assured Daredevil, trying weakly to get back to his feet.  “I told you before that you need to stop being sentimental on us.”

The momentary distraction was all Jules needed to mount a counterattack.  It was true that he couldn’t manipulate Sandman’s body or the time around it but the rest of the Axis was still his to control.  The floor under Sandman erupted like a geyser and sent him into the ceiling.  Daredevil flipped to dodge the stream as it then shot towards him.  In a way, he was glad that Sandman wasn’t around to help him.  He wanted the Timebroker ever since Jules took Nico away from him.  Now it was his turn for retribution.

“Do you really think you can stop me?” asked Jules in between gasps for air.  He could feel John fighting inside his body, clawing and scraping to gain control.  It was vexing but it ultimately wouldn’t deter him.  “I suppose you would think that.  Your kind always has delusions of grandeur, always making itself out to be more important.”

“Give her back!” ordered Daredevil as he hit Jules across the jaw with one of his batons.  “I loved her!”

“You’re a child that knows nothing of love,” retorted Jules, igniting the particles of air around Daredevil to set him on fire.  “You don’t know the pain I’ve been through, the agony I’ve had to endure.  All of you will know my suffering.  All of you will . . .”

Another tremor racked Jules’s body as John once again fought for dominance inside him.  He tried to get himself under control even as temporal energy leapt from his body in wild arcs.  Daredevil managed to put out the fire and hit Jules in the forehead with a d-disc to stun him before leaping on him and pummeling him as hard as he could.  It felt good to punish this man, this thing, for what he had done.  This was justice, wasn’t it?  So many nights, Johnny Gallo asked himself that question as he fought against the scum of the earth.  He beat the drug dealers, pimps, and rapists senseless and then washed their blood off his hands when he returned home.  Matt always told him that what he did wasn’t easy, that working the streets every night would make you crazy.  Yet Johnny had never seen true evil until he met Jules and was forced to be a pawn in the Timebroker’s cruel game.  So beating him senseless was justice, right?  An eye for an eye and all that, right?

“You’re not so high and mighty,” said Daredevil, wrapping his hands around Jules’s throat as he shoved the Timebroker against a wall.

“Neither are you in the grand scheme of things,” retorted Jules before breaking Daredevil’s grasp and kicking him backwards.

He watched the Exiles try to regroup but he knew they were still feeling the effects of the time bubble they were caught in earlier.  He was tired of dealing with them, tired of listening to John and The Council prattle on about how mortals should be allowed to fix their own problems.  With a simple gesture from Jules, all the Exiles felt their bodies come alive with indescribable pain.  Jules was time-shifting their bodies, phasing their skeletons out of synch with their internal organs and putting them in more agony than they had ever experienced before.

“Try that with me,” dared Sandman, coming at Jules and slipping through the walls the Timebroker put up to keep him at bay.  “C’mon, I dare you.”

“I’ve finally figured it out,” said Jules, moving himself to make sure he was outside of Sandman’s range while still torturing the rest of the Exiles.  “Your body, it’s not made out of real sand anymore.  You reformed yourself from sand that came from here.  That’s why I haven’t been able to use my abilities against you like I can with the others.  You don’t know what you’ve become, do you?  You’ve become just like me.”

“I am nothing like you,” stated Sandman.

Somewhere Else

“I was being nice to you earlier.  You know that, right?”

John clawed desperately at the edges of the portal and stood with his legs and his arms outstretched, trying in vain not to get sucked into its endless void.  He had no clue where the black hole would take him but he knew it wasn’t anywhere he wanted to go.  He had managed to gain the upper hand before but that was only a momentary victory.  This realm belonged to Jules and he couldn’t gain the advantage in such an environment.  However, John knew his opponent perhaps almost as well as his opponent knew himself.  If there was one thing Jules loved more than anything else, it was himself.  John decided it was time to appeal to that grandiose ego.

“You were,” he conceded.  “Really, you could’ve finished me off any time you wanted to.  You were always better than me, Jules.”

“I’m glad you’ve come to this realization,” said Jules, leaning in close to savor the impending demise of his friend.  “I wouldn’t want you to have any regrets in your last moments of life.  This is, after all, the end for you, John.  Once you go into that portal, I will be the one fully in control of my body and you will be nothing more than a bad memory rattling around inside my head.”

“Final words?” inquired John hopefully.

“You were my best friend,” admitted Jules.  “I suppose it’s only fair.”

“All that time spent skipping classes made you really stupid,” said John.

He wrapped his legs around Jules and pulled the Timebroker into the vortex, still clutching at its edges with his hands to keep himself from falling in as well.  He turned back and watched Jules tumble helplessly through the portal before extricating himself from it and then closing it.  He realized that with his victory it meant that he was the one in control of everything.  For a moment, John thought about simply pulling himself out of Jules’s body and then leaving it an empty shell.  He couldn’t do that to his friend though.

“I think it’s time to go home,” decided John before leaving in a flash of energy.

The Axis

Jules convulsed in one final fit before the energy came out of him and materialized in the form of John.  John turned his attention to the Exiles and immediately healed them of any wounds they sustained during their fight with Jules.  The power of the Axis was incredible.  It was like nothing he had ever experienced before but it was also intoxicating.  He could remake everything in his own image.  He could reshape everything as he saw fit.  He could undo every catastrophe that had ever befallen any and all realities.  He could find Eterna and show her that he loved her, show her how much she should have loved him.

John looked at the Exiles and realized that though the struggle he now faced was on a grander scale, it was still the same struggle they faced every day.  They had powers and abilities that put them above normal people but that meant they also had to take on above-normal responsibilities to accompany those powers.  They held life and death in the palms of their hands every time they chose to stop someone from doing something bad.  Once again, John realized the key difference between him and Jules.  Jules never knew what it meant to be human.  He never knew what a wonderfully frightening thing it was to be so fragile and resilient a creature as they were.  Like The Council, John believed that mortals should have a say in solving the problems of their worlds.  Remaking reality in his own image just wouldn’t be right.

“Is he dead?” asked Sandman.

“No,” replied John as he moved to the power battery room and opened its door with the appropriate code.  “I think it’s time I put this back where it belongs.”

He closed his eyes and let the excess power flow out of his body and back to where it rightfully belonged.  When his task was done, John stepped out of the room and closed the door, hearing it lock automatically beyond him and nodding satisfactorily.

“Give it back,” ordered Jules though his voice carried no real weight.  He was broken now, a snake without his venom and even without his fangs.  “What did you do to me?  I can’t feel the energy inside me at all.  I’m a mortal now!”

“I’m sorry, old friend, but I won’t be testifying on your behalf this time,” apologized John even as the small security force of Timebrokers entered the room and proceeded to take Jules into their custody.  “You left me no other choice but to remove every ounce of temporal energy from your body.  I wouldn’t worry about your condition for very long.  I suspect this time your punishment will be more severe than exile.”

John saw another group of Timebrokers enter the room as well.  They wore robes of venerable white and they carried themselves with an air of regality that no other Timebroker possessed.  He recognized them instantly as The Council, the five Timebrokers who ruled over the Axis and all who inhabited it.  He gave them a bow of respect as they approached him.

“You have performed admirably on this occasion,” noted Benrus, the head of The Council.  “We felt the temporal fluxes and attempted to intervene but once he absorbed the power of the Axis, we were powerless to do anything.  Our bodies are so tied to the energies of the Axis that he almost killed us were it not for your valor and bravery.  We commend you, John.  You have gone above and beyond your duty as a Timebroker.”

“May I ask what you plan on doing with him?” questioned John, noting Jules as the security force took him away.

“I’m afraid that his case is one of extreme measures,” spoke up another member of The Council.  “My soft heart and old age granted him mercy and I gave the deciding vote to send him to exile.  It seems that now we’ll have to employ a more permanent solution to his meddling.”

“I’m sure I’m interrupting something important but who the hell are you people?” cut in Sandman.

“They are The Council,” answered John.  “This place, what we do, your worlds as you know them, all of it exists because of them.”

“We have taken note of your predicament, mortals of different Earths,” stated Benrus.  “We regret that you were deceived by Jules.  As John may have told you earlier, your Earths are exactly as you left them.  The problem is with you.  All of you were unhinged from time, that much is true.  To correct these flaws, you were tasked with completing missions just like every other team of agents we employ.  Yet your actions in neutralizing Jules and restoring balance to the Axis have realigned those timelines you come from.  For that, we owe you a debt of gratitude as well.”

“So we’re free to go home?” asked Daredevil, the hope blatantly evident in his voice.  “We can seriously just kiss all this goodbye and go back to our normal lives?”

“We offer you a deal,” proposed Benrus.  “You may all return to your own realities for up to a span of twenty-four mortal hours.  When that time is up, or at any point before it, if you wish to remain there then you shall.  However, if you wish to return here and continue your work then you may do that as well.  We wish to again convey our sympathies for the hardships you’ve endured and the friends you’ve lost.”

“And if we decide we want to punch you in the face?” asked Daredevil.  “I mean you basically let your boy there put us through hell without lifting a finger to help us.”

“Just as we prefer to let you sort out the problems of your worlds, we prefer to let people of our society settle their differences with one another,” said Benrus.  “Though we may appear as gods to you, we are not .  We don’t expect you to understand our culture or our reasons but if you choose to display aggression towards us then you will soon discover you made a very poor choice.”

“In other words, don’t screw with them,” summed up Goblin, glaring at Daredevil.  “Seriously, Johnny, shut your mouth for a minute.  What about Kate?  Her soul is still trapped inside Pixie’s body but we can’t put it back in her own body or she’ll die.”

“We will restore her body but that is the most we can do,” said another member of The Council.  “Though our technological prowess is great, we cannot return her soul to her body.  That is something you will have to sort out amongst yourselves.”

“And the people that Jules used against us just now?” asked Sandman.  “What will you do with them?”

“They were never unhinged from time,” clarified the Council member who had spoken earlier about Jules’s exile, adjusting the glasses he wore.  “I checked the records and Jules falsified reports stating that they were unhinged.  We will return them to their proper realities.  As for Mr. Trevor Fitzroy, you will note that he never even arrived at the Axis with the rest of you.”

“I took care of that,” promised John.  “He has his own timeline to play out so I made sure all of you came here but he didn’t.  I wouldn’t have told you to get into that portal if I didn’t have control over it.  I’m not Jules.”

“No, you’re not,” conceded Sandman.  “This all sounds too good to be true.  We’re really just supposed to trust that you have our best interests at heart?”

“We would not still be alive without your help,” reminded Benrus.  “It’s only fair that we honor any and all ends of a bargain we strike with you.  You’ll find that Jules is an exception to the rule where our people are concerned.  Much like your own race, we have our heroes and villains.  Now, will you accept our offer?”

The Exiles and their friends all looked at one another and it was clear that all of them were thinking the same thing.  They really didn’t have a choice in the end.  Since the moment that they were dragged into this insane job, all of them had wanted to go home.  Now they had that chance and they would be crazy not to take it.

“You got a deal,” declared Sandman, extending his hand and shaking it with Benrus.  “After all this crap, I think we all need a vacation.”

NEXT: It’s the supersized 25th issue of Exiles and after everything they have gone through, they experience A Time To Heal.