After his shift was over, he went down to his base and collapsed into the cot to let his body recover from the ordeal. When he took off his clothes to look at himself, he found several nasty bruises had developed where Ares had hit him. He was lucky to come away relatively uninjured from the fight with a God of war. No doubt if Heqt hadn’t stepped in at that last moment James would have likely been killed. He was also thankful that the spray Francine developed had worked on the God.

He lay like that until it was time for him to take the money from the safe to the drop off location. Counting the money, he frowned as the revenue had dropped significantly from last week. The money dealers probably wouldn’t like that. When he got to the barbershop, he noticed something strange. The street was surprisingly empty of people, and worryingly no one was moving about in the barbershop. Going inside he took a look around and frowned.

No one was inside, though based on the hair on one chair people had been here not too long ago. He also didn’t hear any one inside of the basement below. Going behind the counter, he saw that there was still a shotgun behind the counter that was untouched. Making his way to the back, he went down the stairs to the basement. Opening the door, he came face to face with a horrific scene. Several men had been tied up with their hands behind them and pushed against the wall. Each of them had a large bullet hole in the back of their head.

The exit wounds had blown the faces off of the men, and the stench of splattered brains filled the basement. The blood was still somewhat fresh, so the shooting must have happened not too long ago. Glancing at the desk, he saw all the money had been taken along with the accounting books. Someone must have robbed this place, but it was strange they managed to tie up all these people without any trouble.

Pulling his phone out he was about to call Ioana to let her know about what had happened, when he heard several cars suddenly pull up outside. From the sound of people spilling out of the cars, he instantly knew that they were the police. The sounds of gun’s cocking made it clear that they were charging in armed. Glancing around he spotted a gun located on the table and he assumed that it was likely used to kill these men.

He had been set up, and if he didn’t get out of here he would be arrested. Or more likely he would be shot at because he could hear Corrigan’s voice out there. If he fought his way out that would put him as a wanted man. As the police charged into the barbershop, he quickly looked for another way out. But failing to find one, his gut prodded him to extend his senses through the wall. Five feet away was another basement if only he could be over there.

His gut brought up images of the time that he had teleported with Zatanna. Feeling that he could attempt something similar, he reached out and several tentacles joined him at pulling at the fabric of reality. As the power poured through him he heard the police start to come down the stairs. Space in front of him snapped open and pulled him through. For a brief moment it was as if he became inside out then he fell into the other basement and he puked up the bile in his throat.

Teleporting like that felt a thousand times worse than when he did it with Zatanna, and he found he was almost completely drained of energy even though he had only moved a few feet. He attempted sending a message to Ioana, but his vision started to blur and he collapsed onto the dusty ground.

When he opened his eyes once more, he found himself standing once more in that dream garden from before. The sky looked to be cloudy with dark clouds like a thunderstorm was coming. In front of him was a circular depression in the ground, nine pedestals were surrounding it made from what appeared to be white stone. Though when he looked closer, it looked more like bone.

Next to these pedestals were nine women whose faces were covered by the veils. The veils depicted the nine symbols he had learned from the puzzle box. Looking around he noticed that this place seemed more solid than the dream he had last time. The women appeared to be looking at him, and he got the sense that they wished to speak to him. But for some reason they couldn’t, as if he was not yet ready to hear their words.

Of the nine pedestals only four had something on top of it. On those four were swirling energies which tingled the back of James neck. For some reason they seemed limitless and full of potential. Of them he recognized only one without closer inspection. It was a blaze of fire, and looking into it made him feel like he was once more unleashing the fire within him. The woman whose veil said Intuition stood by that pedestal.

Approaching the others, he found they felt familiar to him. A swirling orb of brown and green reminded him of his repair power and cleaning power. They were just aspects of the same power source clearly. The veil tied to this pedestal was Fidelity. The next pedestal held an orb of blackness that felt incredibly hungry to him. If James was not careful, this thing would devour him whole, and it felt like the power he had used when he had teleported himself. Transcendence was tied to this power which clearly demanded a great deal of energy.

The last pedestal that had an object on it was the one in front of Magnificence. The glowing orb let out a comforting light and reminded him of the feeling he had gotten when he had burped out those souls. Obviously each of these pedestals represented the powers that these beings had granted James. So he had only accessed four of the nine. The other pillars gave him no hint as to what each of them could do.

As he was examining the pedestal, he noticed a blue glow appearing behind him. Turning around he saw a large floating human heart. It looked like a hologram, and he understood it was just a representation of something. Nine tubes were connected to it, and a bright fluid was flowing into the heart. It started beating and above it memories of the times that he used his powers began to play.

When he did use the powers the bright glow in the heart dimmed a little. Yet at the same time his heart seemed to glow brighter after the use. Like it was a muscle as he used it he was getting stronger. The first time he collapsed from exhausting his powers in the memories and the heart dimmed to barely any light. His heart came back with a blaze, and then it showed him teleporting and his heart went dark except for just a spark. He barely had enough power to do what he had just done.

Then the memories faded away and the heart grew larger. The heart began growing dark, until all of the light disappeared. At that point the heart stopped, and something began to grow inside of it until it burst with a massive explosion. The hologram dispersed and James realized at once what the whole point of this experience was to warn him.

These beings granted him access to power and also sent energy to him. As long as he retained a spark of energy, it would grow back stronger. If he used all of his energy, he would die, from what he didn’t know. It felt like he was just seeing a loose representation of what could happen. It was also clear that the reason he collapsed was not from the excess use of energy, but from them knocking him out to save himself from danger over overexerting it.

Contemplating this, he found the woman had stepped away from the pedestals and gathered in front of him. The sky began to clear into a star filled expanse and then they began to sing. Not one word of what they sang he could understand, but each note burrowed it’s way into his mind. The song was unearthly yet it called to him and he found himself feeling like he had heard it before.

The feeling grew and James felt like he was on the verge of remembering when all of the women looked up into the sky. Lifting his head, he saw a massive ball of writhing snakes and tentacles which must have been what Jason Blood had seen. Yet this was massive, the size was so incomprehensible his brain was telling him that it must be closer than it was. Nothing could be that large, yet he knew at once size had no meaning to these beings. 

As they writhed around, it had a strange ethereal beauty to it that forced him to watch the mass. Something was moving underneath them, before he could get a good look at what it could be he felt a hand on his chest. Glancing down he saw it was the woman with the veil for the symbol of Semantics. She was slightly taller than him, and her hand was cool upon his chest. While he couldn’t see her face, he felt that she was smiling at him.

Taking her hand into his own, he saw her hand was pale, and her fingernails were a deep blue coloration. She leaned her head against his and whispered “Awaken.”

James felt his mind liquefy and then flow into a drop that fell back into himself. He awoke with a start and found he was now laying a pile of boxes. His phone was next to him, and he reached for it and felt a jab of pain when he did so. Teleporting had really messed him up, and he didn’t want to have to do that again for a while.

Glancing at the phone, he saw he had been out of it for at least half the day and had received multiple texts and phone calls from Ioana. He called her and she answered right away. “Are you okay James? Where are you?”

“In a basement somewhere. Someone killed the money men at the barbershop.” James said. “Whoever it was attempted to set me up to take the fall. I barely escaped the police.”

“I know. They hit several other of our family's launderers. With my Uncle in the hospital, several of my family are making a move for the head of the family.” Ioana said.

“That’s not good.”

“No it isn’t. It’s good you managed to get away. But you need to be careful, they are conducting a manhunt for a man that vaguely resembles you. They are saying an eyewitness saw this man enter the barbershop moments before they heard gunshots.” Ioana said.

“The men were all lined up and shot in the back of the head. I didn’t see any signs of a struggle, so I don’t know how they got them to go down to the basement without a struggle.” James said.

“Fuck. I think I know what happened. I’ll tell you when you get here.”

“Okay.”

Hanging up, James pushed himself up onto his feet and stumbled up the basement stairs. Thankfully the store upstairs was abandoned, so he was able to sneak up without alerting anyone. Glancing through a plywood sheet, he saw that police were still swarming out in front of the store. Sighing he made his way to the back and slipped out into the alleyway.

He managed to avoid the police in the area and made his way back home. By the time he made it back, it was starting to get dark. Before he wanted to go up to the penthouse, he had wanted to stop off at the base to grab a burner phone. He needed to get into contact with the Oracle to help him figure out who had set him up. As he headed down into the basement he changed into his costume as a force of habit.

Opening the base door, he limped in and stopped when he saw The Question waving at him. Right beside him was the Batman who glowered at James' arrival.