They knew going in that they only had a short window to get in and out without a massive battle. They didn’t know how short that window was. Nor did they know who would be waiting for them the moment they materialized into the wide corridor outside the entrance to the medical wing.

All of their intel told them that it was the weakest structural point in the entire building thanks to a recent escape attempt by a food-poisoning-suffering Rhino. They had yet to fortify the outside walls.

Thin Man was worried that if they materialized inside the medical wing, an escape would be difficult. It was going to be much easier to break through those doors from the outside and then re-emerge to make a hole to escape from if things got so he couldn’t teleport them out. It appeared all that no longer mattered.

“We’re fucked,” Thin Man said.

roger

JAILBREAK

By Desmond Reddick

Around him, the air was hot with the energy expelled from the various combatants. It was a nightmare cacophony of death raining down on them from the moment they got there. Only now was Thin Man, in a haze of shock, able to take in what was going on around them.

They had teleported to a point 15 feet in front of the large doors to the medical wing. In front of the doors, a dozen green-suited Guardsmen stood shoulder-to-shoulder. Behind them, the new V-Battalion and a small army of white and black clad paratroopers – ULTIMATUM – complete with the Flag Smasher to lead them.

There was a moment – only a second or two – when they just stared at each other. The Liberty Legion stood back to back in a circle and took in the insurmountable odds; the only thing keeping them motivated was their teammate who they believed was behind those doors.

Before any of them could utter their battle cry, the white and black clad Flag Smasher got the jump on them.

“Take them, now!”

It was at that point the corridor exploded into a fury of action.

Red Raven swooped through the crowd of ULTIMATUM agents, taking as many out with her staff as possible, until the Guardsmen zeroed in on her with their repulsor rays.

Challenger may have been a match for Patriot prior to his leg injury, but he was getting his ass handed to him vigorously by the cocky young hero.

Blue Diamond made rather short work of Blonde Phantom and Phantom Bullet by redirecting the impervious speedster into the dematerialized hand of the intangible belle. Their powers shorted each other out and harmlessly knocked them unconscious. He made his way around the Guardsmen trying to make a break for the door.

Thin Man snaked forward through the crowd cutting at the ULTIMATUM soldiers’ Achilles tendons with one hand flaring sharpened fingers and knocking the automatic weapons out of their hands at the same time with his other hand flattened into something the size of a tennis racket.

A repulsor ray hit Thin Man’s back and made him revert to his regular form in the flash of an eye. It was then that he stopped to look around. Patriot was still pounding on Challenger, who valiantly clung to consciousness, and taking great pleasure in it.

Thin Man didn’t have long. He stepped toward the assembled Guardsmen as Red Raven was sent crashing into the wall from a repulsor ray that finally connected with her. As the Guardsmen trained their gauntlets on Thin Man, he stopped, noticing that Blue Diamond did not intend to wrench the doors open.

Blue Diamond stepped between the two Guardsmen in the middle of the pack and held up his hands over their shoulders. He looked at Thin Man, nodded silently, and grabbed the inside shoulders of both Guardsmen. Blue Diamond squeezed.

Thin Man spun around while elongating his arms and grabbed the boots of the two Guardsmen just as Elton’s fingers dug into their armor. He swung and stopped as the Guardsmen flew through the air, the sparks shooting out of their perforated armor now arcing in the high-ceilinged corridor. The two Guardsmen landed a few feet behind Patriot where their armor exploded sending super-heated shockwaves blasting into Patriot’s back.

“Get Val!”

It was the only thing that Blue Diamond said before he threw his body to his left, knocking those Guardsmen back into the wall. He turned to the other five Guardsmen left standing and sprang at them as well.

ZZZZZT!

The interior of the medical facility was silent.

It was so well insulated from the outside that the shrieking metal and explosive concussions of repulsor rays on the walls outside were non-existent. The room was dark and empty other than various beds with large shackles built into the sides of them. On the far side of the room, a cylindrical glass tube filled with liquid housed the battered body of Valentina Heron, the Iron Cross.

She was naked and in very bad shape. There was a long, ragged wound down the center of her chest and what looked to be third degree burns on the left side of her face and neck. Her left arm was burned horribly as well from her fingers up past her elbow. Both of her legs hung crooked and broken.

Thin Man blinked tears from his eyes before leaping at the cylinder.

ZZZZZT!

He held his breath and took care to elongate and wrap his left arm solidly around her legs while cradling her shoulders with his right.

ZZZZZT!

“Help,” Thin Man said quietly. He knelt, dripping, beside the hospital bed in their warehouse.

“Jesus!” Amadeus Cho rushed to Thin Man’s side as he placed her gently down on the bed. “What the hell happened to her? To you?!”

“Oh my God!” Mongoose shouted from the confines of her chair across the warehouse.

“We have to help her,” Thin Man said. He collapsed to the floor, his shredded costume hanging in tendrils to the cold cement beneath him.

“You know I’m not a surgeon, right?” Cho asked.

“I’ll get one. You find the file ‘emergency sanction’ on the computer and start preparing it. I’ll be back soon.”

Thin Man stood, looked over to Mongoose and said: “if she dies, I’ll kill you slow.”

ZZZZZT!

“That’s bullshit, Roger!” Goldfire was getting her face closer than most would dare to the imposing octogenarian.

“Don’t forget yourself, Ameiko,” Roger said throwing his eyes over to Topspin.

The look said ‘get her in control before she does something she’ll regret,’ so Topspin placed his hand lightly in the crook of her arm and pulled her back.

“I never made the order to send a team to the Vault, so clearly I never made the decision to keep you two here. It’s the first I’m hearing of it, actually. And I’m not happy about it either.”

“Sorry for all of the confusion. It’s so hard to keep everyone in the loop these days,” Robert Ralston said as he walked onto the Abyss Bridge of the Vanguard, floating fortress and home to the V-Battalion. Behind him, a thin young blonde man followed closely. Both wore crisp charcoal grey suits with red ties.

“Just what the hell is going on here, Bob?” Fred Davis stood silently beside Roger Aubrey, his commanding officer, until now.

“Why are we all being kept out of the loop?” Goldfire asked. She had calmed down considerably until she saw Ralston.

“Since we’re all asking questions,” Roger began, “who is that?” Aubrey motioned to the man beside Ralston. “Furthermore, why are you not in your robes?”

“Oh, Roger,” Ralston replied. “I’ve never been one for playing dress-up like you and your friends. And I don’t have a hell of a lot of time. I’m a busy man, you see?”

“This,” he continued, “is Thomas Sorenson. Used ta go by the awful nom de plume of Mathemaniac.” He shuddered dramatically. “He’s pretty much my chief advisor right now. Y’see, I like him ‘cuz he’s smarter’n a whip.”

“For example: right now he’s clouding your minds with so much mathematical mumbo jumbo that you probably can’t even hear me say that I am the new head of the V-Battalion, and you are all fired.”

Davis, Aubrey, Topsin and Goldfire, all in various stages of attempting to fight the sheer psionic mathematical assault, jerked as they stood on their feet and slowly collapsed to the floor.

“Nice work, Tom,” Ralston said. “Never liked costumes much.”

ZZZZZT!

Thin Man reappeared in the warehouse with two other men.

“We’re back, Amadeus,” Thin Man said looking over at his partner. “Cardiac, do your best. Amadeus will assist you with anything you need.” He nodded his assent to his young partner once again as he walked over to a large stainless steel trunk.

Cardiac removed his helmet and began to strip down to the black bodysuit underneath. The whole time he was looking over Valentina’s wounds. He walked quickly to the sink and began to wash his hands vigorously.

“I think I can help her, but I’m going to need some…exotic supplies.”

“Amadeus, prep the subspace projector. Cardiac, if it exists somewhere in the world, Amadeus can get you there to get it.”

Thin Man pulled the shredded costume off, tearing the weakened fabric into strips. He pulled an extra costume out of the trunk and slipped into it.

“What are we to do?” Red Wolf spoke for the first time since materializing into the warehouse and looking around.

“We,” Thin Man said flexing his left hand deep into the new glove, “are going to put a team together. We’ve got a few more friends to rescue.”

16 Days Later

“Willkommen!”

Robert Ralston; his assistant, Thomas Sorensen; Professor Power; and Guy Thierrault, the new Flag Smasher, stepped through the threshold into the massive underground research and development base. ‘Decommissioned’ near the end of the Cold War, the base was turned over to interested parties belonging to various clandestine groups, official and unofficial. But, for the past several years, it was one of only two permanent bases for The Five.

With its roots in the Weapon Plus program, The Five had been a major player in world affairs since before the Second World War. No one else on earth, besides the very few given access to the conclave of its five member council, knows who all of the members are, and, indeed, they are never all in the same room.

Four of the five members of the council were currently in the same room.

“This is Advanced Ideas in Fascism!”

If the huge crinkled face representing the worst of mankind could beam with pride, it certainly was at that point. Its small arms spread wide over the activity taking place below its hovering metallic body. The drones, dressed in grey and black with grey cylindrical helmets, buzzed about the warehouse in lock-step.

Ralston’s eyes remained steely. He had a built-in antipathy toward Germans, especially those who wore their fascism on their sleeves. He’d felt that he was in over his head for months now, but he knew that there were necessary evils. And the world had become a very different place in the past six decades. Besides, he was the low man on the totem pole as far as The Five was concerned.

“Very good, M.O.D.O.T.,” Professor Power began, “but we aren’t here for a guided tour. We expect results.”

“I would not be a Mechanical Organism Designed Only for Tyranny if I could not develop a cadre of oppressors so impressive, the people of Amerika will throw themselves at their feet.”

M.O.D.O.T.’s golden seat hovered in a circle and led his colleagues to the far corner of the open room of the base, an area surrounded with large glass vats designed for genetic replication. Long black leather boots climbed to his knee where it crooked into a light brown army officer’s uniform on the parts of his body that were not his massive head, which isn’t saying much. A thick patch of hair gathered at a strip beneath his nose and a red armband wrapped around his spindly left arm.

Ralston looked intently for the swastika on the armband, but he could only see red. His hands clenched into fists, the absence of that symbol of hatred did nothing to calm him down. There certainly were necessary evils in this world, and, when certain measures were in place, Ralston would make his power play and take control of The Five, eradicating the evil pricks he was allied with.

The one he’d take his time destroying was M.O.D.O.T. He was everything he hated about what he was doing. In a sense, he was a mirror to Ralston’s own shame. One that was misshapen and leering; one that spoke as though everything was being screamed through a megaphone in the thickest German accent. Ralston’s mocking reflection of fascism emulated those he nearly died fighting those seven decades ago. The hate that he felt for the mechanized filth was unmatched.

But, for now, he’d play along.

They stopped at the first large genetic replication pod. It was open and the man inside was flexing a prodigious bicep.

“Patriot?” Ralston asked, recognizing what used to be his new recruit.

“Not anymore, boss!” The man who was Patriot pushed himself out of the pod and stood at least a foot taller than he used to. His already toned and bulging muscles now had a much larger presence.

“He was badly hurt in the explosion at the Vault. While healing him in the moments after his injuries, I added a new adrenaline enhancing super serum I have been developing. It had wondrous results. We have taken advantage of his…temper…by having his anger enhance his strength. In a sense, he will be like our own personal Hulk.”

Moving to the area between the next two pods, Ralston looked down at two unfamiliar men in an horrific mirrored burn injury. One’s whole left side of his body was scarred, and the other’s right side of his body was scarred.

“The two Guardsmen who went ‘boom,’” M.O.D.O.T. gestured at them passively. “I do not remember their names, but now they are the Right Winger und Left Winger. Very strong, not as strong as Super-Patriot, but they will hold their own.”

The next pods were all empty, but two others stepped out from the end of the row of mad science apparatuses. Both wore black.

One was a sleek humanoid Ralston thought was a woman, but couldn’t be sure. The flesh was pure white and featureless. Over the white body, it wore a long black trench coat.

“This is Provocateur,” M.O.D.O.T. said. “It is a metamorph. It can transform into any living thing whose DNA it has access to. It has been busy already for months. And this is Riot Act.”

Motioning to the other black-clad character beside him, M.O.D.O.T. nudged Provocateur out of the way and hovered farther away.

Riot Act was clad in a black police crowd control uniform complete with helmet, shield and truncheon.

“Riot Act is a creature I am very proud of. He is a mixture of a mutant named Madrox and some DNA loaned from China that used to belong to Collective Man. He is a one man crowd control unit.”

TUNG!

On cue, Riot Act slammed his truncheon into his shield and immediately materialized into twelve men.

“And believe me,” M.O.D.O.T. said, “there are many more of him ready to come out!”

“This is some nice work, M.O.D.O.T.” Professor Power did a full spin, slowly taking in their new fighting force. “The Elite are going to shock the world with their…’heroics’!”

“We are not done yet! Quinn!”

A small, bald, trollish-looking fellow walked out and picked up a round steel helmet. He turned to run away from the assembled leaders of the Secret Empire, ducking behind a large curtain before putting on his helmet.

“You knew him as ‘Peeper’ in our employ, but after recovering another of our operatives, I was able to use some robotics to do someting very impressive.” M.O.D.O.T. motioned to the grey-clad drone standing at the long rope dangling down on the side of the curtain and he pulled. The curtain fell, revealing a massive red and blue robot with Peeper sitting in a harness atop its head.

“This used to be the man we called Gargantua. After his unfortunate end in Niagara Falls, his body provided an excellent framework to build the hero who, piloted by the unfortunately named Peeper, will be known as Big Brother!”

Ralston looked to Mathemaniac and introduced him to the rest of his colleagues: “My assistant will be the field leader of The Elite. His codename from now on is Smartest Man in the Room, since we’re being so on the nose with our names.”

“The Elite are going to put an end to the bickering between nations,” Guy Thierrault finally said, “uniting all nations under our control.”

He smiled and looked at the assembled members of The Five.

“Now can we please go and kill the fucking Liberty Legion?”

NEXT ISSUE: In case you’re new here, and haven’t read the Liberty Worldwide miniseries, you might want to do that before reading the next issue. Things are falling into place for the second iteration of my Liberty Legion. That all comes to a head in issues 13 and 14. The jailbreak may have happened this issue, but the prison theme continues as the two part “Assault on the Vault” begins next issue! It’s The Elite versus the Liberty Legion, but things are never, ever that straightforward, are they?