The Nova Foundation is getting up and running. It’s amazing how busy we are, for not being really busy. It’s weird to think that just three weeks ago we were flying around the world, fighting robots on oil tankers and fighting angels inside of glaciers, and now we’re having meetings and doing paperwork.

Gerald tells me that we’re already getting some attention. The government still doesn’t know what to make of metahumans, and some foreign governments have actually put us on their watchlists already. It’s OK by me if they take some getting used to the idea—I’d rather they not try to coopt us any time in the near future.

Raptor has been delving into the data that we recovered from Peekskill using the machine empathy that the nanites give him. He found that the data was actually protected by a demonic spirit. The thing spoke to him, told him that “the Cabal” was grateful to us for stopping Yarger, that it was a mistake to ally themselves with him. And as a token of their gratitude, they would let us live. Looks like Christmas comes early this year.

Raptor and I are back home in the States. Seems surreal to think that we missed Thanksgiving because we were fighting angels near the North Pole. Late November in New York seems pretty balmy by comparison. Frostburn stayed in Norway, taking it easy for a while. I’m still feeling wobbly after Razor opened me up, but I’m alive.

Graham is still recovering too, but at least he seems like his old self. Elliott seems to be sticking around, which is fine by me. We could use his help trying to get this thing off the ground.

I had a chance to talk to Gerald. He’s an amazingly smart guy—he had managed to put most of it together even before I told him, and even though some of the new stuff strains the boundaries of what we are used to thinking of as “reality”, he seemed to take it at face value. He said he’s on board, and he’ll be setting up a non-profit foundation as a point of contact for metahumans and the people who need their help. It’ll focus more on large entities (governments) for now, just because we can’t afford to be inundated with calls to get kittens out of trees. We’re calling it the Nova Foundation. He’ll be the head guy and public face. Graham will be the tech guy, maybe with some help from Elliott. Me and Raptor, we’ll do what we do. Of course, I’ll be contributing financially too. I’m hoping that word will get out and like-minded folks will start trickling in. I doubt we’ve seen the last of Yarger.

There’s still a very important piece of business to take care of. I need to go talk to Cole’s family. I’m going to see if I can get Gerald to come with me—he never had the chance to meet Cole, but he’s better with words, and as the director of the Nova Foundation maybe he’ll be able to do right by them.

Well, we did it. We managed to stop Yarger and the angels from opening a portal into Hell. It was largely thanks to Cole, and he paid the ultimate price. Last time we saw him he was buried under tons of ice. A few days ago, he was a kid—a kid with amazing metahuman abilities, but still a kid. He died a hero, and I won’t forget him.

The three angels—Dominion, Melvin, and the guy they got to replace Raptor—were at the end of the tunnel in a huge ice chamber along with Razor (the ninja chick who trashed the loft) and an array of six portals. The portals were active, all pointing at the ceiling. We knew we didn’t have much time before the cruise missiles struck and all Hell was unleashed (maybe literally). We needed to put the angels down so we could figure out how to disable the portals.

I got in a lucky shot and managed to put Razor out of the fight (or at least I thought I did). We were hammering on Melvin, but the tough son of a bitch just wouldn’t stay down—he kept regenerating from whatever we did to him. Meanwhile, Dominion was shooting his energy orb at us and Raptor’s “replacement” was trying to pound Raptor into the ground. Trying to earn his spot on the team, I suppose. Frostburn managed to encase the new angel in ice and keep him out of the fight for a while, and then managed to bury Dominion under a ton of ice after Raptor knocked him down.

It was looking like it was going OK for a while, but we just couldn’t keep up with their healing abilities. Then that ninja bitch (who had been quietly bleeding in a corner) lashed out at me with her laser-whip. I even saw it coming, but couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. She really opened me up, returning the favor for how I sucker-punched her.

It was time for a change in tactics. Cole turned plasma and started melting through the ice columns that held the roof up. I concentrated on holding my guts in, while the other two tried to keep the angels distracted. Cole had melted through two of the columns and the ceiling was getting unstable, huge chunks of ice crashing to the floor.

Frostburn then laid his hands on one of the portals, flash-freezing it. “Smash it!” he called out, right before Melvin dove at him and seriously tore him up. Raptor grabbed him and flew for the exit, where I had been slowly making my way—it was clear that this cavern would not be a good place to be once Cole finished melting through the columns.

Cole melted through a third column and a lot of the ceiling came down right away. Luckily he was in plasma form at the time—he just melted his way out. Then he turned to his solid iron form and smashed the portal that Frostburn had weakened. We had seen these things take a lot of punishment with no effect, but it shattered into a thousand pieces. The rest of the portals went dark, just as another huge chunk of the ceiling came down on Cole. We got the hell out of there, but Cole and the angels weren’t so lucky.

The cruise missiles hit, annihilating Yarger’s force topside. There was no sign of Yarger. The military thinks they got him. I doubt it.

In the public eye, the military saved the day and we were just along for the ride. And honestly, that’s OK with me. We weren’t doing it for praise, we were doing it because it needed to be done. Not like I really thought anyone would believe us anyway—it’s a crazy story, portals to Hell and angels and new gods and all. But I know who the real hero of the day was, and I won’t forget what you did Cole.

This situation keeps getting worse. Graham managed to dig some more intel out of the encrypted file before he was forced to delete it—stuff about large-scale human sacrifice, old scrolls about how stone can block mystical energies. Yarger has also managed to get his hands on two nukes through the black market. We still have no real idea what he’s up to, what or when the endgame will be.

The news about the nukes, of course, has everyone’s attention. Collins told us they’re going to be sending cruise missiles after Yarger’s location because it seems his men are building a communications array, the kind used to guide missiles. Now we’re on the clock, we have to get into the Vault so we have shelter from the cruise missiles. We’re leery of the whole thing because of the sacrifice angle—what if Yarger’s planning on his mercs getting fragged, and their deaths are what he needs for his grand sacrifice?

It bothers me that more than 1,000 men are probably going to die when those cruise missiles hit. I wish there was a way we could prevent it, but Frostburn knows military, and we just don’t have enough street cred with Collins at this point for him to abort the strike just on our say-so.

We beat our heads against the wall in the snowcat heading toward the Vault, and we didn’t come up with any answers. Raptor scouted Yarger’s location, and sure enough it is a comm array—no sign of one of the portals on the mountainside.

Resistance at the Vault was stiffer than expected, probably 60 or 70 mercs. Raptor, Cole and I were definitely holding our own, but Frostburn really dominated the dojo. He created these huge sheets of ice on the ceiling of the tunnel that just came crashing down on the mercs. He KO’ed 20 of them at a time.

The Angel Squad was definitely there, I could smell them. We moved deeper into the Vault itself. We came into a big room that held the seed containers. A large tunnel led off to the northwest—a tunnel that wasn’t on any of the official schematics that Frostburn saw. No sign of recent construction either.

We got word from NATO that the cruise missiles were launched and would strike in 8 minutes 25 seconds. We took off running down the tunnel—it sloped upward very slightly, and it was long, nearly a mile. Probably took us 5 minutes at a dead run. As we neared the end, the others hung back and I scouted ahead.

It was a large room carved from the ice, with ice pillars holding up the roof. The Angel Squad was there: Melvin, Dominion, Razor, and a new angel with black wings. They had a portal array set up, and the portals were active. A large magic symbol glowed green on the floor.

Looks like we found what we came for. If we’re fast and lucky, maybe we can put a crimp in Yarger’s plans enough to save some lives topside.

I said today would be a doozy, and it looks like I was right. We are on Svalbard, racing toward the top of the world to avert World War III. My abilities are doing strange things—hope they don’t fritz out on me when I need them the most.

I had been thinking that Yarger’s plan was somehow metaphysical or mystical in nature. While there may be a mystical component to it, he’s also got the hard-nosed practicality of a businessman: the events he’s put into motion just may set off the next World War, rather than “merely” a mythical Ragnarok.

A fleet of troop transports had launched from Murmansk heading to Svalbard, the location of the Doomsday Vault. From the type and number of the ships, it was estimated that they might hold as many as 10,000 troops. Frostburn’s people would be able to get us to Svalbard, but it would take hours—the fleet would beat us there. Since we had managed to stop the tanker from crashing into the oil rig, NATO resources would be able to respond to the threat instead of looking for survivors of the crash.

As we’re getting into a chopper to take us off the rig, Raptor decides to try out his new wings, see if he can get some recon on the Vault. Turns out he’s shockingly fast when he puts his mind to it. Of course, the Wired Alchemy boys are waiting there. The skinny Goth wizard guy somehow managed to possess Raptor’s body. We had just arrived at an airstrip on the mainland when we see Raptor coming fast—the wizard tried to make him attack us, but Raptor managed to fight off his influence. Our attacks just went right through him as if he were a ghost. My claws, Frostburn’s ice beams, even Raptor’s new energy bolts, nothing could touch him. He says something about how we’re totally unprepared to face someone like him, then whips out this sickly green ribbon of corrupt energy and lashes Cole with it. The kid drops.

The cocky little punk pissed me off—all these Wired Alchemy guys think they own the world. I lunged at him, even knowing I couldn’t touch him, but something weird happened. I felt this burst of energy from behind my ribs, my body felt warm, and my claws actually sliced into the guy. Later, the others told me that my whole body glowed green—like the green force I saw when I first gained my abilities—especially around my claws. Being a ghost and all, he was totally unprepared for something to actually touch him…I messed him up real bad. He was lying there, half submerged in the tarmac, and took a potshot at me. The effort of the blast must have pushed him past his limits, because his eyes rolled back in his head and he slipped under the ground.

I have no idea what this means—I’ve just gotten used to having claws and all, what does it mean to glow green? Am I getting in better touch with my abilities, or am I burning them out?

The three of us got on the plane while Raptor went back to check out the Vault again. Dominion, Melvin, and Razor were still there (Razor is the ninja chick that Frostburn fended off in the loft), with Yarger’s voice on the intercom. Raptor tussled with them but managed to retreat.

Meanwhile, Frostburn is talking to Admiral Collins, the NATO commander in the region. Looks like we’re working for NATO for the duration of the current conflict. Raptor managed to disable five of the troop transports before running into Yarger. He also got some important intel from some of the sailors: there are “only” about 2,000 men on those boats, the rest of the space is taken up with the portal array.

Yarger, as it turns out, is one serious badass. He can grow to at least 40 feet tall, can shoot energy blasts, is immensely strong, and was able to shrug off one of Raptor’s bolts without a scratch. I’m not sure how we’re going to take him down. Unlike most corporate assholes, he might actually live up to his own marketing—first “god” of the new age and all.

The transports beat us to Svalbard, but Raptor was able to convince the civilians to get to safety. The troops are moving the equipment north at a brisk pace; they’re already past the Vault. Yarger is escorting them, but somehow they’re not put off by a 40-foot man walking beside them.

Gerald called and told me that this whole thing was blowing up into an international incident—the transports came from Russia and landed on Norwegian soil. The US is rattling sabers, Russia’s getting pissed, even China’s getting into the mix. If we don’t settle this soon, with a minimum of mess, the whole thing could blow up. He also said that he talked to the Norwegians and got the encrypted data to Graham—Graham says it’s “alive” but he’s making progress. It’s great to have Graham back and to have Gerald on our side.

We’re heading north to intercept, still not sure what we’re going to do once we get there. Collins will be looking for a military solution, but there’s a chance that might be playing into Yarger’s hand. There’s the Wired Alchemy team at the Vault, two thousand enemy troops, and a freakin’ giant with an array of portals into Hell. We’re going to have to work together and play this smart, or the world might come crashing down around us.

From a NATO encrypted broadcast:

Unidentified transport vessels launched from Murmansk en route to Svalbard.

Troop estimates exceed ten thousand.

Cease rescue and support operations at the Skalar oil platform. Redeploy to Longyearbyen, Svalbard at best speed and await further instructions.

At risk target: Doomsday Vault

Lot’s happened since the last time I had a chance to record anything. We did manage to get Raptor back, but it turned out just a bit more complicated than we had hoped.

Frostburn’s people managed to pull some intel out of the encrypted data, just three nuggets: 1) there is something called Project: Ragnarok that has to do with a large network of those portals from Peekskill, 2) there is an oil tanker in the Norwegian Sea that is related to Ragnarok, 3) a memo about arctic combat and survival tactics for infantry.

We spent a few hours chasing our tails looking for Raptor in Jersey and Randall’s Island, but all we found were cold leads. We finally had to scramble to get to the oil tanker – it was apparently heading toward some destination, and we figured it would be a good idea to stop it. Anything Wired Alchemy wants is something we don’t want. I was hoping we’d find Raptor there, but had to admit the odds were against it.

Thanks once again to Frostburn and his people, we had a plane waiting to take us to Greenland and then a chopper to take us to the tanker—which was apparently barreling full-speed at an oil rig in the Norwegian Sea. Huge ecological disaster, loss of hundreds of live, property damage in the hundreds of millions, not a good thing by any sane definition.

The chopper let us down on zip lines, except for Cole…he figured he could just jump down from 100 feet up and trust his iron form to shrug it off. I’m gonna have to watch the kid—he’s got a good heart, no question, but he can be impulsive. As it turns out, the impact was enough to make him woozy. And the six demonic robots on the roof of the bridge didn’t give him a chance to recover. Yes, six robots, reminiscent of the endoskeletons from the “Terminator” movies, but based on a demon skeleton rather than a human one. Their left arms were energy weapons that could hurt Cole even in his plasma form. He’s not used to anything being able to touch him; he’ll have to get over that sense of invulnerability.

It was a tough fight, but we managed to put the robots down. Cole took a serious pounding—he just never really got his legs under him after the bad landing. Frostburn and I managed to handle them, but it took some dirty tricks. Frostburn has a neat trick where he freezes the ground and the bad guys fall on their asses. We headed down to the bridge after that, but all the controls were smashed. We figured we had to head to the engine room and figure something out.

On the way there, we came across what was left of the crew—all dead in a handful of ways, the robots’ energy weapons and other things. We found a room filled with weird Wired Alchemy equipment, smashed to bits. In the center of the room was Raptor. He was unconscious, beat to shit—and missing his wings! Frostburn managed some first aid to stabilize his condition, but we had to press on. Didn’t have too much time left before the collision. We left Cole to watch him and headed into the engine room.

Who should we find waiting there for us but the four-armed demon. He surprised us, jumped down from a catwalk and cold-cocked Frostburn. It was just him and me, and I had a score to settle. This big bastard put Graham in the hospital, and if I let him stop me all those people would die on the rig. I managed to evade him in the pipes and turbines, then got in a lucky shot that opened his guts up. I heard his voice in my head saying “next time, you’re dead,” and then he teleported away in a cloud of brimstone. Add telepathy and teleportation to his abilities—hadn’t been sure if the teleportation was him or the sorcerer, now we know it just might be both.

Over the din of the turbines I heard more of the robots’ energy weapons so I headed back to check on Cole and Raptor. Sure enough, four more of the robots. But Raptor was awake—and even without his wings, he seemed to be doing fine. It was wild to see: he was flying with wings made of energy, firing electric bolts from his hands, and protected by energy runes that showed up on his body when he took a hit. The three of us took the robots down and had a quick reunion. Raptor had been captured and Charles Yarger came to see him talking about Ragnarok.

Yarger basically wants to spark Ragnarok or Armageddon early, be the last man standing, and so become the first god of the new world order. Or something like that. He needs three angels to do it, though, and since Raptor wasn’t cooperative they had to strip him of his “angel” status so they could bestow it upon someone else. They used the Pandora nanites to remove the enhancements, but somehow the nanites bonded with him, became a part of him. Hence the new abilities.

We still don’t know the specifics of Yarger’s plan, still don’t know what the tanker and the oil rig have to do with any of that. Hopefully Frostburn’s tech people have had more time to crack the encryption. But luckily for us, the nanites let Raptor communicate with electronics. He was able to hack the control panel in the engine room, and now the tanker’s under control. So now we have our friend back and we stopped the tanker. And I eviscerated a demon. All in all, not a bad day’s work.

I think tomorrow’s going to be another doozy, though.

So much for safehouses.

Frostburn dropped us at one of the safehouses his government maintains while he went to get the data uploaded and decrypted. We were only there a few hours when Raptor sensed the others close by—as if they had appeared out of thin air. And not just Dominion and Melvin, but the four-armed demon and the tattooed Goth-looking guy from the roof too.

I think the Goth-guy fancies himself some kind of sorcerer—he floated through the wall, insubstantial as a ghost, and fired some kind of green bolts from his hands that knocked the hell out of Cole but didn’t leave a mark on the walls. That, and the demon called him “wizard.” I had assumed that the demon teleported to attack Graham and Raptor on the GWB, but maybe this guy was able to teleport them? Can he really do magic, or does he just have paranormal abilities that he calls magic?

Anyway, these guys blasted clear through the wall and came at us. The Norwegians didn’t stand a chance against them, but I have to hand it to them: they tried. Now they’re all dead. More tallies on the butcher’s bill for Wired Alchemy to answer for.

We were outnumbered and outgunned. Raptor flew out the window, trying to draw them away from us. It kinda worked, except that demon managed to coldcock me again and the Goth guy took Cole out of the picture. When I woke up, they and Raptor were gone, Cole was unconscious, the Norwegians were dead, and the house was on fire from Cole’s plasma form. Not the best showing for the good guys. We barely got a chance to celebrate bloodying their noses in Peekskill.

Now we’re waiting for Frostburn to come back with the intel. I hope his techs have managed to figure out where they’ve taken Raptor, because otherwise our only lead is the Jersey facility.

Before those whackjobs came at us, I did manage to make a couple of calls. I spoke to Elliott briefly. Thank God, Graham made it out of surgery. He’s still in critical condition, though. Elliott said there were government agents at the hospital—they wanted to resuscitate Graham so they could ask him some questions. I’m glad Elliott’s there—he put a stop to it. No one’s ever been able to bulldoze that guy. He was pissed at me for not being able to tell him what’s going on (can’t say I blame him), but the Feds were right there—one of them grabbed the phone away from him. Not sure if I can risk calling him again until my name’s cleared—don’t need to make the situation worse for the Tyson boys than it already is.

The only spot of good news is that I spoke with Gerald, and he’s agreed to help clear my name. I think he might be on board with the Foundation, too. I went through this whole spiel about making a difference, fighting the good fight, all the good the Foundation can do—it even sounded a bit corny to my ears, but Raptor said it had a good ring to it. Turns out, all I needed to do was say “Dassenbrenner”. Gerald was willing to help once he heard that name. He tells me that Dassenbrenner has ties to the Nazis, that Charles Yarger is actually the descendant of one of Hitler’s right hand men. I can’t say I’m surprised—there are those rumors about how the Nazis were seeking sources of occult power. Gerald says that, assuming I am actually not a terrorist, he should be able to clear my name in 48 hours. I’ll be checking in with him a couple times a day until then.

While he’s doing that, and Elliott’s making sure Graham’s OK, we have our own business to take care of. As soon as Frostburn gets back, we have to rescue our friend.

Cole got us in without a hitch. First thing we noticed was that it was cold in there—like arctic cold. No wonder the building was drawing so much power. We scouted around and found some strange devices, two large circles almost parallel to the floor. We assumed they were portals of some sort, and that maybe the cold was needed because some superconductors needed to be cooled or something. Frostburn has a device that can extract data from a computer system. He attached it and let it do its thing, while we poked around and tried not to freeze our asses off.

Of course, things started to go south before the device was finished downloading. One of the portal things started to activate. Cole went into the next room to see if the other portal was doing anything, and apparently got KO’ed by what turned out to be a nanite cloud from Project: Pandora. It didn’t seem like Raptor or I could do anything against it, but Frostburn took it out easily enough. Of course, by the time we were done with that the portal had fired up and honest-to-god demons started stepping through. Six of them! Luckily for us, they turned out to be grunts in the demon army—if they were all as tough as the four-armed one, we would have been done for. But really, they had nothing in common with the four-armed one: two arms instead of four, wings, tusks, more typically demonic rather than his reptilian look. And oh yeah, no southern drawl. We took them out quickly enough—although they seemed to be immune to Frostburn’s cold and the heat of Cole’s plasma form, good ol’ fisticuffs seemed to do the job just fine.

We collected Frostburn’s gadget, hoping we got something useful, and trashed a couple of servers before leaving. As we were doing so, Pandora reformed. She slammed into Frostburn pretty hard, but Cole dispersed her with his plasma form.

We tried not to trip any alarms, but once we were out of there the whole damn place blew up. I guess Wired Alchemy wasn’t kidding about keeping their secrets. There were a ton of security guards around the building, probably just hired help trying to earn a buck—I doubt any of them survived the blast. Have I mentioned that Wired Alchemy is a complete bunch of bastards?

Now we’re off to see what we’ve learned. Hopefully it’ll be good. I also need to check in on Graham and Elliott, and see about getting myself off the terrorist watch list. Yeah, that’s kind of important.

When our new friend woke up, he introduced himself as Frostburn. He’s a Norwegian agent who has also been tracking Wired Alchemy. The Norwegians were first alerted when they noticed strange goings-on at a Wired Alchemy research facility at the North Pole. Frostburn tracked the company to the U.S., learned of Graham’s involvement in India, and the rest, I suppose, is history. He strikes me as being pretty good at what he does—he was able to deduce my role in all this, and we had no idea we were even being watched.

He told us of Project: Warlock, which is housed outside of Peekskill. Since there’s nothing else we can do for Graham until his brother Elliott gets here, we figured we would take a little trip and learn what we could about Project: Warlock. It feels like they have us on the run, so it feels good to do something unexpected and hit them where they’re not expecting it (at least, I hope they’re not expecting it!).

Frostburn says the facility has some crazy security measures (like, it’ll BLOW UP if any alarms are tripped), but luckily he knows someone who can help us get inside. We met up with the new guy at a diner in downtown Peekskill. A young guy, can’t be more than 19 or 20, named Cole. Cole can turn his body into different physical states of iron—liquid, solid, even plasma. Crazy. Kinda makes growing claws and jumping over two-story buildings seem normal by comparison.

We’re waiting for cover of night, then we’ll make our move. Raptor will fly Cole to the roof of the facility while Frostburn and I swim across the pond to the western side of the building. We figure they won’t expect someone to come from the water—especially not swimming, especially not in November.