At about 10 pm local time, Hyperion (Mark Milton)'s military and N.S.A. handlers meet secretly and in fear as they receive word from Joe Ledger (Doctor Spectrum) that Hyperion is en route to their location, with the knowledge that they have been lying to him for months and using him as a distraction from the covert super-powered activities of Doctor Spectrum in other parts of the world. Based on his battle with Doctor Spectrum, they estimate his power and capabilities at multiples of the amounts they had previously measured. They determine that, should Hyperion want to do so, he could kill a minimum of 2,000 people per hour, escalating depending on the local population density, approximately a million every couple weeks even working alone.
General Casey decides to fall back on an old contingency plan established when Mark was just a baby, and they had first realized that he was nearing invulnerability.
At about 10:37 Hyperion arrives near their location and walks unimpeded through a heavily armed military contingent, ripping open the massive shielding doors of the secure meeting facility.
Doctor Spectrum meanwhile has been taken by the Crystal to the bottom of the ocean and placed in a prismatic cocoon to heal from injuries sustained in his battle with Hyperion. Amphibian finds the cocoon and decides to stay nearby.
At 10:51, Hyperion locates the alien cradle-ship that brought him to Earth and scanned all of the databases the military used to store information related to the Hyperion project.
Between 10:51 and 11:01, General Casey engages a doomsday device (consisting of twenty daisy cutter bombs, approximately equal to the force created when the "Fat Man" plutonium nuclear bomb was detonated above Nagasaki, Japan) and locks himself in a hidden bunker twelve levels underground. Hyperion catches up with him and asks why Casey and the government would manipulate, use, and brainwash him. Casey responds that Mark Milton is not a human, and has no rights, that the U.S. government deemed him to be a weapon, and that his job was solely to ensure that the weapon was aimed at the enemies of the U.S., rather than in the direction of the U.S..
Telling Mark that he will never permit his weapon to fall into enemy hands, Casey detonates the doomsday device, killing himself, N.S.A. handler Bryce, and attempting to destroy Hyperion.
General Notes
Richard Isanove contributes inks to the cover only.
Log in to comment