Chapter 83 (1/2)
It was time. Space bent around Dan, reality shattered like glass, and a formless wind howled past his ears as he tore through the Gap. He reappeared on a steel floor, shrouded in darkness. The room smelled like dust and disrepair. The cloying stink of stale oil hovered in the background, ever-present and lingering. He couldn't help it: Dan sneezed. Within seconds of the noise, gears grinded and stirred, metal shifted, something sparked in the distance.
Nothing appeared to happen. Not that Dan could see much past his nose. Fortunately, he had come prepared. With a click, his trusty torch spat light into the room. It was one of those shifting flashlights, Transformer-esque, that doubled as a lamp. He awkwardly pulled on it, and illumination spilled forth. The beams cascaded off particulates in the air, shining like a thousand tiny fireflies. The room was revealed in their soft glow.
The floor was a series of steel panels, no longer the seamless concrete that filled the last section. Each three foot square was separated by grid-like rivers of dust, caked in deep from years of neglect. Several panels had been removed and then sloppily replaced, leaving them dangling over hollow pits. Whatever gadgetry had filled the spaces beneath each sectioned panel were currently drifting through the formless void of t-space.
Dan had left little to chance on this venture. Every single hidden cubby hole had been scoured of its contents. His veil had gone to work, slowly, gradually, shaving away at reality an inch at a time. It was almost painful for Dan to give up that sweet sweet technology, right up until he realized that he couldn't have used it even if he'd saved it. It wasn't any sort of practical utility that drove him, so much as sheer curiosity. A terrible reason, to be sure, but not an uncommon one. He wanted, needed to know what was down here. What was the old man hiding?
Whatever it was, it hadn't been seen in years. The room was vast— moreso even than he had expected. His veil wasn't a ruler; it didn't spit out its distance in meters or feet, so much as feelings. Still, at a rough eyeball, the room easily measured half a football field. It was an airplane hangar with a low ceiling and no runway. It was an industrial warehouse without the crates and the carts and the subtle stench of bureaucracy. The damned thing must stick out well past his front lawn and into the street. How the hell had Captain Quantum managed that?
Dan couldn't decide what was more awe-inspiring, the fact that the old man was capable of building (and hiding) such a massive lair, or that the size had been deemed necessary in the first place. Fortuitously, this thought brought him to the next order of business. He held his little lamp light up, painting the room in light and shadow. A wide table was nestled against the closest wall. It was a hardwood antique, ancient and sturdy. Something gleamed atop it, catching the light despite its heavy coating of dust.
It was a helmet. No, a mask. The kind of headgear meant for obfuscation every bit as much as protection. It seemed a mix of a centurion's helmet and a domino mask, plated gold onto forged steel and patterned with red stripes. A nose guard ran down from the brow, painted black. The helmet just... lingered there, a relic of a bygone age.
Dan didn't recognize it. It wasn't Captain Quantum's, despite the similarities to his armor. There were not nearly enough electronics packed into it, for starters. Quantum had always favored versatility. The few fights he'd participated in that were a matter of public record portrayed the vigilante as an engineering savant, a man whose costume concealed about as many gadgets as Batman's. Vigilante history was a muddy, poorly documented thing, but Dan felt that the characterization was accurate. The number of traps that had once littered his current location certainly felt like compelling evidence in favor.
Dan lifted his flash-lamp a little higher, and sent his veil skittering across the floor. It crept up the wooden table, grasping tendrils of sapphire blue, and sunk into the helmet. Immediately, almost a fifth of his veil drained away. The helmet weighed nearly three stone. The inside was padded with the same soft leather that covered Captain Quantum's breastplate, but it lacked the sophisticated circuits that the former bore. There were no tricks hiding in this object. It was exactly what it appeared to be. A heavy lump of metal.
Dan racked his mind for details on old Texas vigilantes with super-strength. He couldn't imagine a normal human wearing this sort of helm for hours on end. The neck pain alone— oof. No individual immediately came to mind, but the helmet's existence itself was still a clue.
A commission, perhaps? From one vigilante to another? Maybe a personal project, a curiosity? The man was an engineer after all; it was possible that this was just a fun hobby. Or perhaps...
Dan moved forward, deeper into the lair. There were vents down here, spaced every twenty or so feet, spread out on each wall. They were thin and slitted, kept almost closed, but Dan could hear the soft hiss of flowing air. It was cold, too. Colder even than the house above. He was so used to it that he barely noticed, but he could see his breath fogging in the lamp light. Then, past the vents and the traps, more tables. Elaborate. Stylized. Personalized.