Fearless: Half. My father was a Texas oil baron whose family lived in Texas for over two hundred years. My mom was a Yankee girl rebelling against her overly strict parents.

Chance: Interesting. Were there other Hispanic mystery men.

Fearless: Not that I know of. But I only had a passing knowledge of most of the others before Doctor Frost gathered us for the Brazil mission.

Chance: About that Brazil mission—

Fearless: Look I know you want all the information you can get on all of us, but the only reason I’m even talking to you is because of my family. I had a wife and four little boys at home.

Chance: It’s been sixty years, Mister Ramirez.

Fearless: I know! You don’t think I don’t know? I left them. That damn Frost asked me for help and I left them. (long pause) I left them.

Chance: We’ll do everything we can to locate your family. As soon as you leave here, we’re get you in touch with them. Okay?

Fearless: I don’t even know if I should trust you, but you leave me little choice. My strength and speed are gone now. There’s nothing I can do to get out of here if I wanted to.

Chance: Your powers are gone?

Fearless: I inherited the strength and speed of my ancestors, all heroes of America’s wars. But that link was broken when I lost sixty years of my life.

Chance: I’m sorry, Mister Ramirez. I really am. We’re here to help you and the others though.

Fearless: Forgive me if it’s hard for me to buy that from a white woman. Even my mother’s family treated us like less than human. My father could buy and sell them, but that didn’t make a difference.

Chance: A lot has changed since 1948. It still is by no means a perfect world, not even close, but dozens of laws guarantee equal rights to all American citizens. Hare crimes are reviled by America as a whole. You will find the world quite different, and I hope for the better.

Fearless: I’ll believe it when I see it.

Chance: I understand your skepticism, and you will get your chance. Pardon the pun.

Fearless: I’ll believe it when I see it.

Chance: (sighs) Now about the Brazil mission—

*****

ACTION Base 7, location undisclosed
May 10, 2008, 10:05 a.m.

The video onscreen showed doctors withdrawing blood from Flag Man’s arm. Johanna Chance stood beside the monitor. A loose circle of dignitaries and military personnel sat at a curved table in front of her. Two joint chiefs, the heads of both the Senate and House intelligence committees, and Secretary Rice were among them. The President was on video phone as well, watching her every move. Hell, she voted for him, even still liked him, but his eyes on her kept the pressure level jacked up high.

“The blood testing was only the first round of genetic verification. Most of these people have medical records, still on file; three have military records in place. All match every piece of information we have on file about them.”

She flipped off the screen, turned to her podium, and held up a manila folder. “You should all have copies of this report in front of you. It is an intelligence analysis done by ACTION in hopes of tracing the sixteen metahumans back through our records. Back in the forties, it was the FBI who kept tabs on all the mystery men. Sixteen of the seventeen come up in the database, some only briefly. One of the reported escapees, Doctor Frost, is the only exception.

General Woodrow Wallace, the Army’s liaison to ACTION, rose from his chair. “How is it nobody remembers these heroes or any of these records? Surely if they had been sitting in federal custody for sixty years someone would remember these people.”

“We’re not quite sure, General. Our theoreticians currently believe that some sort of mass suggestion may have been forced on to the American public around the time of the heroes’ disappearance. They think the mental block may have passed genetically to subsequent generations, making all of us unable to remember these individuals or view any information about these seventeen individuals.”

“Mind control?” the Navy chief said.

“More like a mass hallucination, Admiral. We are investigating the nature and purpose of the suggestion, but as of yet have had no result.”

“Is it one of the metahumans doing this?”

“We don’t think so, Secretary Rice. None of these heroes have shown any telepathic capabilities.” She cued up another video presentation. The screen again showed Flag Man, but he was now out of costume except for his mask. He stood in front of the other metahumans in the very same conference room. The other heroes were similarly attired.

“These people know as little about the situation as we do,” he said to the others. “But they honestly want to help us. We’re trapped in this strange future, and they want nothing more than to figure out how we got here as much as we do. They want to help us to acclimate to this new world. I think a month or two in their care will help us all figure out how to cope with all the strange changes that occurred over the last sixty years.”

Chance paused the footage. “Flag Man gave that speech shortly after we took the metahumans in to custody. The other eleven time travelers defer to him as leader, and even the more independent-minded mystery men are complying.”

She played footage of Lightning Girl, Fire Eater, and Golden Lad as they watched footage from the History Channel. “We have used a lot of television to help the time travelers obtain the knowledge they need of the past sixty years. The three individuals you see here are al particular enthralled with the TV.”

“All well and good, Agent Chance.” General Wallace again stood and he now walked to the front of the room. “But what do we plan to do with them? They are a public menace.”

“We’re going to let them go, just as we said.”

“What? Are you insane?”

The President cleared his throat over the speaker phone. All eyes turned to the video phone to see what he had to say.

“Generals, Admiral, Senator, Congressman, Secretary Rice, I want to make this clear to all of you. Despite everything said in the media about us, this administration does not detain American citizens without just cause. These nine men and three women are all officially senior citizens for gosh sakes, and most of them are heroes of World War II. The media is already having a field day with this fiasco, and we’re going to show them some red blooded American heroes still live!”

The general silently fumed as Chance continued her presentation. “We will be setting up living quarters and jobs for any of the mystery men who request such. Or education for those who want more than what this facility has to offer.”

“What about the furry one, this Blackout?”

“He’s currently decided to stay in the facility, Senator. The time-skip seems to have affected his intelligence levels some how. He now has the mannerisms of an eight-year-old boy. Our scientists are working to restore his intellect, as Basil Brusilov was a renowned physicist before he was transformed in to Blackout during an air raid.”

“And the situation with the Dart?”

“He’ll remain in custody until we can figure out what to charge him with, Secretary Rice. The statutes of limitations have long past on most of his crimes, and his victim is seventy-seven by our records now. Any other questions?”

The panel remained quite. “I thank you all for coming then,” Chance said. “I will continue to update you to our progress over the next few weeks. “

The dignitaries were lead out by the military guards on duty. Chance slumped down in to the nearest chair. She had done everything she could for them. Now it was up to the heroes not to screw this one up.

After all, she didn’t want to be the one to have to take them down.

*****

Subject Names: Flag Man and Rusty

Chance: I apologize for the delay in removing you from police custody.

Flag Man: Not a bother, ma’am.

Chance: May I ask you to state your civilian names for the record. We need it to pull up your medical records.

Flag Man: Certainly. It’s Travis Horne.

Rusty: Russell Crocker.

Chance: Thank you. Now gentlemen. I want you to go in to detail about what happened in Brazil.

Flag Man: It’s a haze really. I remember getting the call from Doctor Frost. He wanted up to go in and break up a Ratzi stronghold. My old foe the Clown was there as was that turncoat Lady Foulplay and several Ratzi scientists. I remember the flight there. I remember the beginning of the fight. Lots of soldiers, more than I thought could have survived the war. Then Atoman was attacked by some kind of Nazi clone. Everything went white. Next thing we know, we’re in the middle of Times Square.

Chance: Atoman, do you think he had something to do with the time jump?

Flag Man: I don’t know. I never much trusted him. All his atomic powers. Even with all the freaks popping up stateside, he still seemed like the most dangerous.

Rusty: I don’t know, Flag Man. He seemed like an okay guy to me.

Flag Man: Anyone with that kind of power is a potential threat to the people and government of the United States and every free nation in the world.

Chance: What can you tell me about Atoman’s history?

Flag Man: I believe he was a scientist in the Manhattan Project. You know the group that finally came up with the A-bomb in ’47, two years too late to prevent the gene bomb fiasco. Anyway, during one of their early tests, he was exposed to some kind of enzyme, a derivative of the atomic fuel. It killed him, only to have him wake up two full days later, atomic-powered.

Rusty: Normally I follow along with Flag Man and what he says, but I have to disagree with him on this one, Ms. Chance. I don’t think Atoman is any kind of threat. He almost single handedly cleaned up the last stragglers of the Pacific war. Not to mention all those Nazis he took out in Brazil.

Chance: Some of the lab boys think he might have, either purposefully or inadvertently, caused your time-skip. They think he may have release something called a tachyon pulse. It’s some kind of sub-atomic thingamajig that doesn’t travel through time the same way the rest of us do. The science boys can explain it more thoroughly if you ask. I can’t really wrap my head around it myself.

Flag Man: His fleeing proves it to me. A true hero would have turned himself in.

Rusty: Or maybe he just likes his freedom! I thought we weren’t prisoners here! You act like you want him locked up forever.

Flag Man: Calm down, chum.

Chance: The government is still deciding what to do with the metahumans who fled the scene. If and when they are found we will deal with them on a case by case basis. Now on to your own histories—

*****

ACTION Base 7, location undisclosed
May 14, 2008, 2:46 p.m.

Ghost Woman’s eyes fluttered open. She lay in a strange bed in a strange room. She thought of all those goofy pulp covers her little brother used to buy as she looked around herself. Science fiction, they called it. This was some kind of science fiction.

A tube ran in to the vein in her right wrist and she found pieces of cold metal stuck to her skin in several places. Her costume was gone, replaced by a flimsy robe that hung open in the back. Even her undergarments were missing. She worried about what kind of sick experiments the future people performed on her in her sleep.

Steady beeps emanated from the machine connected to the things on her chest and abdomen. She began to quickly rip them away from her chalk white skin. At least that had remained the same. She didn’t want to think what would happen if the others found out the truth.

The beeps became a steady drone as she removed the last piece of taped on metal. The door flew open just as she sat upright in the bed.

A pair of individuals in lab coats came in through the door. She stood up and summoned the shadows to her hands. She would blast these future-freaks to the abyss before she let them touch her again.

The men immediately took a step back as her hands glowed with ebon energy.

The one to a right, a Negro man in his early forties, raised his hands in front of him. “Calm down, ma’am. We’re not here to hurt you.”

“You take my clothes, attack me to all your weird cables and devices, and perform some sick experiments on me, and you expect me to believe you?”

“Ghost Woman, we’re doctors,” the black man said. “You’re in the hospital wing of a government facility. You’ve been—”

She gestured towards the other man. “You’re black. You expect me to believe you work side by side with him?”

The white man, a blonde who looked barely out of school, spoke up. “A lot has changed in sixty years. Doctor Barnett is my superior at this center.”

“You must think I’m some kind of idiot,” she said. “Well I won’t fall for your mind games!” She raised her hands ready to strike.

“Ghost Woman, stop!”

Golden Lad flew in to the room and between Ghost Woman and the doctors just as she unleashed a blast of her dark force energy. The shadow bolt knocked Golden Lad back in to the hall where he crashed in to a far wall. The wall crumpled at the impact.

He moaned before he stood upright and dusted the drywall from his costume. “Was that really necessary?”

Ghost Woman’s hand went up to her mouth. Shock and dismay filled her heart at her actions. “I’m so sorry, Golden Lad.”

“Not as sorry as I am,” he said. “But better me than your doctors. I was just coming to see if you’re awake.”

“Doctors?”

“Yeah,” Golden Lad said. “They’ve taken good care of you for the last month.”

“Month?”

Golden Lad nodded. You’ve been out since the whole mess in Times Square. It’s a long story. You can hear about it later.”

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”

“It’s understandable,” Doctor Barnett said. “We understand this must all seem strange to you. We forget that your colleagues have had over a month to adjust to 2008.”

Barnett walked closer to her and gently helped her sit back down. “You’ve been in a coma for the past few weeks. We think you had some kind of—” He looked over to Golden Lad. “Could you excuse us while we discuss medical matters?”

Golden Lad looked to Ghost Woman. “If it’s okay with her.”

Ghost Woman nodded.

Doctor Barnett waited while his colleague took Golden Lad from the room before he continued to speak. “We think you suffered some kind of stroke, a condition that usually would prove fatal in the situation you were in. However, by the time our doctors started working on you, you were already on your way to recovery. We think you shadow energies somehow forced you in to a coma in order to maintain your body functions while it worked to heal you. That’s our working theory anyway.

“But while you were unconscious we performed all the tests we would perform on any patient. One of your blood tests showed something quite abnormal.”

“You suffer from a condition known as sickle cell anemia. It’s a dangerous condition, although treatable. Normally it leads to an early death as well, but your powers seem to hold its effects on you in check. We’re not sure why.

“The thing about it is� well, sickle cell anemia is a trait only seen in African Americans.” He paused and scratched the back of his head. “Negroes, I guess you would have said in your day.” “Well, th-that can’t be right.”

“We checked multiple times. The blood tests came back positive for sickle cell every time. I suppose it’s possible that your powers somehow set you up for this condition, but I don’t think that’s the case.”

Ghost Woman slumped back down to the bed. She willed the glamour away from her skin. The white melted away in to a dark brown.

“You got to promise not to tell. A black hero—well you all know what happened to that Nightraven fella. And in the south, Negroes are even more hated than the Japs.”

Barnett patted her on the knee. His face carried a broad grin which served to only confuse Ghost Woman more. “As I said before a lot has changed in sixty years, ma’am. Nowadays, tens of thousands of African Americans would be overjoyed to learn that a black metahero existed decades before the civil rights movement. But I will respect your wishes. If you want to hide your identity, I won’t be the one to tell. Nor will Doctor Lexington, or any of the rest of our staff.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“I hope that eventually you will change your mind.” Barnett shook his head. “Hell, the thought of you fighting crime in the forties in the south. Well, I think it could help a lot of people. Anyway, it is your choice. Agent Chance will want to know you’re story, but you can tell it to her whenever you are ready. Then we’re get you back in to a much better world than the one you left. And you can take my word for that, ma’am.”

“Enough with this ma’am stuff, doctor. I ain’t my momma. My folks named me Salvation Lincoln, but most everyone just calls me Sally.”

“Well, Sally, you can call me Marcus then.” He offered a hand to shake. Sally looked at it for a moment before she reached out for it. He was a real looker, she thought. A little old for her maybe, but he was a doctor. She straightened up as she knew she had to be giving him the stupidest grin. If all the folks down home were as nice as Marcus Barnett, than the future might just be a great place to live.

*****