Busy busy busy...

Lest I be forgotten, I'm just sending out this broadcast to let everyone know I'm still here.  Rumors of Challenger Storm's demise are greatly exaggerated: book #2 ("The Curse of Poseidon") is still in the works and will be well worth the wait.  The Storm serial ("The Valley of Fear") is stalled temporarily but will also return.  I'm hoping that somebody is reading it and enjoying it: it's an experiment that is, so far, without results.  Nobody has told me they hate it yet, but nobody has said they like it either.  There's some likes on Facebook when a new episode is posted, but that's about it.  Not to beat an aviation metaphor into the ground but not only am I flying by the seat of my pants with the serial, I'm also without instruments and my visibility is zero.

I feel guilty about not being able to write much, largely because I spend all day in front of my computer while working.  See, I work at home, in front of my home computer, with all my half-developed writings staring at me and I can't work on them.  My job keeps me way too busy to develop the focus and concentration needed to write coherently, and if I do get a spare minute to myself, it's so short that it's usually just a comment on Facebook or a quick tweet on Twitter, whatever.  Even this posting here is on borrowed time: system issues are keeping me down temporarily, and since I know it won't be for long, here I am with my hat in my hand to beg forgiveness for Don the Slowpoke.

I haven't been completely inactive during my silence however: since my last post a huge chunk of writer's block on a different project has fallen away, and since the project has been gestating so long I've felt it necessary to spend every spare minute I get to write toward completing it.  Nothing official to announce yet, but it's a short story (which is a monumental task to a glacially-paced writer such as myself) that hopefully will be appearing in an anthology next year.  The main characters are not mine, nor is the setting, and at first I found that to be terrifying.  For a long time (too long to contemplate without embarrassment) I found myself struggling with story ideas, plot seeds, and the general task of taking on someone else's baby.  I'd think about it, make some notes, then say a curse word or two and lock it away for a while because it was going nowhere.  Then recently, out of nowhere, I opened a notepad file on my laptop and pounded the keys furiously.  At the end of that session was a full outline of something that I didn't completely hate and that I thought could be workable.  You know what?  I've been having a blast on this thing.  I've been working on it for a few hours every week since then and I guess I'm nearly finished: target word-count is 15,000, and currently I'm at 12,340.  If anything, it may go over the targeted number of words.  That would be a first for me: usually I come out under the word-count I'm shooting for.  How short?  The first draft of "The Isle of Blood" was short by three chapters.  The parts I added (the shootout chapters at the hotel and the framing device with the government agent) are actually among my favorite parts now.  There's serendipity for you (and I'm feeling good now because I got to type "serendipity"... it's one of my favorite words).

So as I wrap up this post and prepare to... er, post it, I want to thank anyone who's stuck by me and has maintained interest in what I'm doing.  It means more to me than you'll ever know, and I'm looking forward to getting back in the game.  I've got a good feeling that if I can pull off the next Storm novel effectively, it'll be the best one yet.

Thanks again, and watch the skies.

CHALLENGER STORM: THE VALLEY OF FEAR- Episode 9

(NOTE: This serial takes place out of order chronologically with the Challenger Storm novels, which are being written with a definite timeline in mind.  "The Valley of Fear" happens after at least book 5 or 6, but this shouldn't hinder the reading experience.  I'm flying by the seat of my pants here, so I make no guarantees in regards to quality or coherence.)

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Episode 9: "Gone Fishing"

Storm kept as still as possible, freezing as soon as he felt the large shape brush his leg beneath the surface.  Across the pool, Fay Durning was treading water as she swam toward the shore.  She was muttering about the fact that they yet again had to swim.

"Fay,” Storm said calmly, "Get out of the water."

"What do you think I'm doing?" Fay shot back over her shoulder.  "I'm getting waterlogged."  The actress reached the shallows.

Suddenly, iron bars shot out of the bottom of the pool's perimeter shallows.  The bars extended seven feet above the pool's surface, and were too close together for anyone to squeeze through.  They were trapped, caged in.

"Oh, come on!  This guy has gone to ridiculously serious lengths to kill you... to kill us!  What did you ever do to him?"

"It's a long story, and it's complicated," Storm replied.  "Right now we need to worry about what's in the pool with us."

"And what is in the pool with- What the hell was that?!" Fay cried out.  She felt it too, the same thing Storm did moments earlier, as something muscular and scaly bumped against her shin.

"Stay calm, and stay there in the shallows, as far to the edge as you can get," Storm told her.   The water was deep and dark, and he peered intently at its surface, waiting to catch a glimpse of what was lurking beneath the surface of the pool...

+++

In a control room situated off the side of his throne room within the castle, the bearded face of Count Zodiac was lit by a pale yellow-green light as he gazed down into a glass view-screen.  Before him was the image of Clifton Storm and Fay Durning as they sought for a way out of the Pisces Pool.

Zodiac grinned: he had expended a lot of time and resources wiring the castle, the valley, and its death-traps with hidden television cameras and microphones in preparation of Storm's ensnarement, and he was not about to let all the planning and designing go to waste.

He removed his hand from the switch it had been resting on- the one that had released the perimeter fence around the pool- and moved it to another one nearby.  His pets were merely curious now... in a moment they would be ravenous.

With his eyes glued to the monitor, Zodiac laid his finger upon the second switch...

+++

As Storm and Fay watched the water around themselves intently, something at the corner of their eyes tugged at their vision.  There had been a muted hiss, loud enough to be barely heard over the noise of the waterfall.  As they looked toward the sound, their vision travelled up the waterfall until they could see the source of the noise: a wide ribbon of deep crimson was being pumped out, running from the rock behind the waterfall.  It mingled with the clear falling water, paling into a pinkish hue as it tumbled into the pool at the bottom of the falls.

“What’s that?” Fay breathed, only half-wanting the answer.  “Oh God, mister, what is that?”

Storm was slowly coming closer to where Fay huddled at the edge of the pool.  “I’m pretty sure it’s blood,” he said evenly.

“Dammit, don’t say that!” Fay shot back.

“Well, you asked.  I’m not going to sugar-coat it.  Probably animal blood.”

“Why…”  Fay was cut off by another bump beneath the water, more harsh this time.

“Don’t move,” Storm told her, close enough to touch her.  His eyes peered at the surface of the water, attempting to bore into its depths.

There was another movement at Fay’s knees.  She gasped.

Storm shot an arm out in a flat-handed strike, cleaving the water like the head of a spear.  He struck something hard and muscular, scaly.  The predator beneath the surface recoiled from the strike, and a flat, finned tail snapped up from the water momentarily.  The webbed fin was over three feet wide at the end, and there were some kind of barbs trailing from it.

Fay shrieked.  She stumbled back, and collided with another sinewy shape that had crept up behind them.  A face burst from the water, sharp-fanged and goggle-eyed and framed with leathery gills.  The fishy countenance lunged at the blonde actress.

Storm’s hands were in motion already, snatching the creature by the bony underside of its jaw.   He pivoted and threw the creature over his shoulder and back, using the momentum of its strike to launch it through the air and past them toward the center of the pool.  The creature’s long, eel-like body was adorned with spiny fins, and it thrashed as it flew through the air before landing with a splash into the blood-churned water.

Fay climbed up onto Storm’s back, her scrambling hands covering his eyes, furiously climbing over his face and trying to find something to hold onto.  One of her elbows found its way around his throat and squeezed as she tried to hang on to him.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God, what was that?” she babbled as she climbed.

“Fish,” he gagged out, “Big fish.  You have to get off of me.”  His eyes were riveted on the pair of spiny fins that broke the water and began to head back toward them.

“Pisces, I guess,” she stammered.  “This guy doesn’t break character, huh?”

“No, not often, so there’s probably going to be only two of them if he’s being true to his astrology.”  Storm peeled Fay off his shoulders and set her shivering form on her feet.

The pair of fish hadn’t struck again yet, but they were undoubtedly circling the pair in preparation.  The scent of blood was driving them to hunt and feed.  “Look, just grab one of those fence bars and try to climb it,” Storm told Fay as he peered at the water.  He reached into one of the pouches of his utility harness: he was still surprised that Count Zodiac hadn't removed his gadgets from him when he had drugged him and thrown him into captivity with the actress.

“What are you doing?” Fay asked him as she began trying to climb the slippery iron bar nearest to her.

“I’m going to set off a concussion grenade in the water, if we can get out of it long enough to avoid the blast.  It should make short work of…”  He stopped speaking, eyes slowly widening.

“What?  What?!” she demanded, slipping back down the bar and into the water again.

He held up an object from the pocket of his harness and turned toward her.  It wasn’t a grenade.

It was a rock.

Before Fay could say anything, one of the monstrous fish leaped out of the water, its dinner-plate sized mouth closed down around Storm’s forearm.  He gritted his teeth in pain as the razor teeth sliced into his flesh, and the force of the creature colliding with him knocked him down into the water.  Fay’s scream muffled in Storm’s ear as he was dragged under.

Beneath the surface, the fish’s teeth held and he swam with Storm’s arm clenched in his jaws.  The beast dragged the adventurer along as he swam.  Storm had sucked a rapid breath into his lungs before the fish struck, but he knew it wouldn’t last.  Around them, the water was turning red, this time from Storm’s own bloody wounds.

As he was being carried along by the predator, Storm could see behind the fish and through the murky water, and could barely glimpse the monstrous face of the second fish trailing them.  It was following the scent of his fresh blood.  There was going to be a feeding frenzy with him as the target unless he could act, and he’d have to act soon.

Reaching around the fish’s head to the other side, his fingers sought the tender flesh of the creature’s gills.  He found the leathery flap that protected them, and he struggled to worm his fingers into the space behind it.
The fish knew he was trying to hurt it, and it dove down deeper into the pool, over twenty feet down.  Behind them, the other fish followed them, slavering for the taste of Storm’s leaking blood.

Storm’s fingers touched the soft gills of the beast that was carrying him down, and he thrust them inside, grabbing a handful of the tender flesh.  He twisted and pulled hard.

The fish released Storm’s arm and struck out in pain and rage at the hand that had grabbed his gills, but Storm had already changed position.  He still gripped the rock that he found in his utility pouch: Storm wrapped his wounded arm around the powerful creature’s neck and drove the rock into the beast’s eye with the other arm.  He twisted it, endeavoring to mangle the vicious fish’s eye-socket as much as possible.  A ribbon of blood, a twin to the bleeding trail from the torn gills, burst from the socket, and with that Storm kicked free, swimming up toward the surface as the pursuing fish closed in upon the wounded creature below.

Storm broke the surface of the water and gasped deeply, but he couldn’t rest yet.  Behind him the water suddenly churned with the fighting of the two water-monsters: one tried to feed on another, who in-turn lashed out violently to protect himself.  The desperate clashing stirred the pool into bloody waves, and Storm stroked through the water toward Fay Durning and the iron fence at the edge.  Reaching the actress, he turned and the pair of them looked toward the violent frenzy in the pool.  Gore began to appear in the water, and Fay buried her face in Storm’s chest to shut out the sight.  He held her tightly.

After several minutes, the fight calmed and eventually ceased.  Both of the strange, monstrous fish lay floating and still upon the surface of the pool.  The creature that grabbed Storm had been partially eaten by his twin, but not before he had delivered mortal wounds to his attacker who ended up bleeding to death.

The pool was quiet now, save for the sound of the waterfall and Fay’s quiet sobbing.  Storm still held her against his chest.  Rage boiled within Storm, and he tried hard to focus away from the anger as his martial arts teachers had instructed him.

“Zodiac!”  he shouted at last, “I know you’re watching this!  We’ve won this round, this little trap of yours.  The game goes on now, according to your rules.  Let us out of this pool… now!”

+++

Within the control room, Zodiac glared at the monitor screen.  Storm, bloodied but triumphant, held the girl in the chest-high water and shouted toward the sky.  He was trapped there in the pool for the moment.  Zodiac could so easily just shoot Storm; end this all with a bullet in the head.  It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.  The pun wasn’t lost on Zodiac, of course: the second of his astrological traps had not succeeded.  The fish of Pisces had failed to bring down their prey and had been maneuvered into killing each other instead.  The trap had been a disaster, but there were others… the stars decreed that the zodiacal game should go on.  There could be no way to stop the wheel of stars from turning, and no way to keep this fate from running its course.

Trembling with rage, unable to ignore the course he had been set upon, Count Zodiac slammed his fist down upon the fence-switch.  The iron bars slid down back into their housings beneath the water’s surface, and on the monitor Clifton Storm and Fay Durning turned away and climbed together from the bloody Pisces Pool.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Still Here

• Artwork for "Curse of Poseidon" nearing completion.
• Progress on "White Hell" hit some snags, hoping to start again soon.
• New chapter of "The Valley of Fear" coming ASAP.
• Rode in an Avro Lancaster bomber last weekend, here's a pic:

See you soon.  Be good to yourselves.

Stuff, Odds, and Ends

It's been a while since I last posted anything here.  There's been some scheduling changes, some things have taken a temporary backseat, while other things have taken the forefront and demanded more time.  That's the way life is, though, and apart from being less productive than I'd like to be, writing-wise, I suppose I can't complain.  I'm still getting adjusted to the move from Florida to Canada and all the red-tape hijinks and cultural-adjustment follies that come with such a move.  Then there's this weird stuff I've been seeing here: it's white and fluffy and falls from the sky, then collects on the ground only to melt and make things icy and slippery.  It's called "snow", I think.  Ever heard of it?

Anyway, since my last posting I've been working on the third Challenger Storm novel ("White Hell"): I'm about 10,000 words in and I've only just begun chapter 4 so I think I'm doing good so far.  Maybe not: my writer friends probably read that word-count and scoffed.  For me, that's pretty good, though.  I've got a good feeling about this one, and shortly after finishing this post I'll be working on the book some more.

"The Valley of Fear" web serial isn't dead, just on a little hold for a while.  I won't leave you (and Storm & friends) hanging for too much longer, but when I'm given the time and opportunity to work on the book I go for it.

The second Storm adventure, "The Curse of Poseidon", is still in production, and once again in the awesomely skilled hands of Michael Kaluta now.  I've seen the rough sketches for the interior illustrations and I'm again blown away: not only does the artwork reflect the action and hardware in this tale, it also occasionally pauses to give a nice glimpse of the quiet moments between the bullets.  I think- no, I know you'll love it.

What else?  Let's see... Oh, I've taken the plunge (again) and I'm on Twitter now (as well as still on Facebook here and here, of course).  If you haven't already stop by to say "hi", though I warn you that the stream-of-consciousness nature of social media often causes me to just talk about or post the most banal stuff in addition to talking about writing.  In other words: I ramble and babble a bit sometimes.  Like I'm doing right now, I guess.

I haven't had my coffee yet today, okay?

Anyway, I'm going to close this post with a new review of "The Isle of Blood" over at the British Fantasy Society.  David Brzeski had some really nice things to say about the book, and I'm glad to see it's being enjoyed "across the pond", too.

Now, about that coffee...

CHALLENGER STORM: THE VALLEY OF FEAR- Episode 8

(NOTE: This serial takes place out of order chronologically with the Challenger Storm novels, which are being written with a definite timeline in mind.  "The Valley of Fear" happens after at least book 5 or 6, but this shouldn't hinder the reading experience.  I'm flying by the seat of my pants here, so I make no guarantees in regards to quality or coherence.)

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Episode 8: "The Same Deep Water as You"

Storm made another circuit of the room, inspecting the walls closer now.  At his legs, the icy water splashed and lapped at the concrete cylinder around them.

The blonde woman watched him as he walked sloshing through the room.  The water was rapidly getting deeper, rising above their knees.  "Well, you're awfully calm about all this," she said with panic creeping slightly into her tone.

"I'm thinking," he snapped tersely.  Then his voice softened.  "You shouldn't be here.  I'm sorry you're in this with me," he said gently.

"No offense, but I am too," she said back.  Then she snapped her fingers.  "You!"

"Huh?"  He looked at her quizzically.

"You!  You're that guy that's in the papers sometimes, the one that helps people and has all those scientists on his payroll... whatsisname?  Conqueror Strom!"  She grinned.

"It's actually Storm," Storm replied, "'Challenger' Storm is what they call me in the news.  But please- please- call me Cliff."

"Okay then, Cliff: how are we going to get out of here?" she asked him.  The water was now nearly at her throat, rising faster than they originally thought it would.

"I'm working on it," Storm said, looking up at the roof high above them.  "Can you swim?"

The blonde scoffed.  "'Can you swim?', he asks me," she shook her head.  "I should say so: I was part of Billy Rose's Aquacade before I went to Hollywood."

It was Storm's turn to recognize her.  He did a double-take, seeing her face again, but really seeing it for the first time.  "You're Fay Durning," he said to the actress.

She smiled for a second, the habitual response overriding her fear for a fleeting moment.  "That's right.  I'd shake your hand but I've begun to tread water now," she said.  Indeed, the water was high enough now that the duo's feet were off the bottom of the room.  The chilly water was rising, and fast.

"I heard a woman screaming out there in the jungle, before Zodiac brought us to his castle," Storm remembered aloud. "That was you, Miss Durning?  Are you okay?"

She laughed.  "You heard that too, huh?  Yeah, that was me... but it wasn't me, it was audio that was recorded for the film we were making with that rat Jimmy Keane.  Zodiac's men took it out into the jungle with them.  They had a loudspeaker mounted on a truck."

Storm rolled his eyes.  "I knew it sounded familiar.  He played us for suckers, trying to lure us with that screaming."

"The movie rags say I'm the 'Queen of Scream', Fay said proudly, despite the situation around her.  "My claim to fame, apparently."

The water had risen to nearly half the height of the chamber by now.  Storm swam down to the bottom of the room, which was now lighted as well, to ensure there was no way out they had missed.  There wasn't.  The cylindrical concrete walls were smooth and unbroken, apart from the nozzles for the jets of water near the floor.

Swimming back to the top, his head broke the surface and as he shook the water from his face, something caught his eye near the top of the room, something he hadn't noticed before when he and Fay were at the bottom of the room.

The protuberances that were jutting slightly out of the walls that they had seen were levers set almost flush with the concrete.  Next to each lever was some kind of symbol carved into the wall.  Now that they were closer to the top, he could almost make them out.

Fay noticed him examining the walls closer.  "What is it?" the actress asked him.

"I don't know, but it might be a way out," Storm replied.  "I'm sure that Count Zodiac has no intentions on actually letting us go.  But he's going to play with us first- his ego is his downfall- and if we play along smartly enough we could just beat him at his game."

The water was now about level with the bottom row of the levers, which were staggered around and up and down the wall near the top of the room.  From the floor the carvings next to each lever had been almost invisible but now that they were almost on the level with the carvings, it was apparent to Storm what they were.

The carvings were zodiacal symbols, and each was on its own door, set flush with the walls of the chamber.

"They're doors," Fay said, and before Storm could stop her she swam to the nearest one, which was Capricorn.  Bracing her feet against the wall, she pulled the lever down.

The door opened smoothly on its hinges, and unleashed a torrent of water into the room.  The rushing liquid hit the actress in the face, knocking her back and into Storm's arms.  The water level rose now, even faster than before, magnified by the water rushing from the open door.

"Well, I won't do that again," Fay said, sputtering water out along with her words, as Storm swam over to the now submerged lever next to the Capricorn hatch.  He dove under and tried to pull the lever up, bracing his feet on the wall and pulling with all his strength.  It was no good.  The door was now in a permanently locked and open position.

The water level was nearing the top of the room.  Fay Durning had now clambered up onto the platform holding the Aquarius statue, which was still pouring water from its urn.  She watched as Storm broke the surface again.  "Sorry," she called out.

"It's alright," he replied.  "Just check with me first before doing something.  There's a method to this, I know it.  Zodiac doesn't do anything like this arbitrarily.  I just need to figure out the pattern here.  I'm sure that if any more wrong doors are opened we'll be in big trouble."  He looked around: all the doors and levers were now submerged, and there was only a few feet of air left at the top of the room.  One door had to be the right way out... but which was it?

Fay was clinging to the top of the Aquarius statue's head now.  "Oh no," she moaned in despair, "I almost drowned once when I was with the Aquacade during a 'Moby Dick'-themed number... it's not fun at all.  This is going to be much worse... and final!"

Storm's head snapped up, a look of sudden astonishment on his face.  "'Moby Dick'!" he shouted, and dove underwater again.

Confused, Fay asked nobody in particular, "What?"

Under the water, Storm stroked down to the doors.  He strained to make out the symbols on them through his water-fogged eyes.  Libra, Cancer, Gemini... he was searching for one particular hatch.

Fay Durning's comment about Melville's novel sparked a memory: the line "when Aquarius, or the Water-bearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and to wind up with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep."  That line echoed the order of the western zodiac's symbols.  Storm and Fay had been locked in the Aquarius room, and Storm supposed that only one of the doors led out of it.  In the horoscope, the sign of Aquarius was followed by that of Pisces.  This could mean that it was the way out.  It was a gambit, a risk Storm was taking.  If the door opened to more water, he and the kidnapped actress were surely done for.

Storm found the Pisces door, its surface carved with the symbol that looked like a capital letter "H" with inwardly-curving sides.  It was one of the lowest doors in the water-filled room.  Above, the water was now inches away from the ceiling, Fay Durning pressed her face to it to breathe whatever air remained for her.  Here goes nothing, Storm thought, and he gripped the door's lever.  He braced, and pulled.

There was a massive slurping sound underwater, and the door opened inward instead of outward like the Capricorn door had.  A massive pump activated somewhere:  the water was sucked into the tunnel beyond the door, pulling Storm and Fay with it.

Lungs bursting from need of oxygen, the two captives found themselves swept at lightning speed through a long, dark, narrow conduit as the water was purged from the cylindrical room.  They could drown here just as well if they didn't get any air soon.  Then, up ahead through the murk a dim circle of light showed...

Suddenly they were out of the tube, out in the open air and falling, water all around them as they were poured out of a tunnel set into a hillside.  The water and the captives fell dozens of feet to splash down in a deep pool below.

Bobbing up to the surface, they gasped air into their lungs.  Fay coughed raggedly: she hadn't been ready for the purge and had sucked in some water with her last gasp of air.

"Warn somebody before you do that!" she yelled at Storm between hacks.

"It's my turn to say 'I'm sorry'," Storm replied.  He was looking around them: they were at the head of the island's valley, in a deep, waterfall-fed pool surrounded by lush jungle.  "I wasn't sure it would work.  Thank God for your 'Moby Dick' experience."

"What are you talking about?" she yelped, still indignant over her near-drowning and their sudden fall through space.

Storm started to tell her about his "eureka" moment, when suddenly something brushed his leg.  Something huge was in the water with them, and it wasn't exactly shy.

TO BE CONTINUED...

An Element of Inspiration

One of these days I'm going to get around to discussing the influences and inspirations behind the creation of Challenger Storm: it's a long post that I've been planning for some time but have never gotten around to writing yet, but it's coming.

In the meantime, I wanted to share something that led to the inspiration behind a couple of characters from the first Challenger Storm novel, The Isle of Blood: J. Gordon Tolliver and his daughter, Katherine.

My Mom used to like going to antique stores when I was a teenager and I used to like going with her sometimes.  She still goes antiquing, but I haven't gone with her in a long time.  On one such antique-shopping expedition, I came across a batch of old photographs.  Old photos fascinate me: I often wonder who are these people?  Where did they live?  What happened during their lives?  I bought a batch of these photos and in among them was this picture (click to enlarge):

I don't know who they were, and the only indicator which might be the year of the photo was the number "42" stamped on the back.  Not sure if that was 1942, batch 42, or the meaning of life (and if you don't get that reference, I don't want to know you).  As soon as I saw the photo, however, I knew somehow, someway, I was going to write a story involving them.

And so they became the inspiration behind White Heron aviation tycoon J Gordon Tolliver and his schoolteacher daughter, Katherine.  Looking back at my fictional world, I like to think this picture of them was taken in the USA after the events on La Isla de Sangre.  The rifts that those events caused in their lives and relationship have hopefully been mended by then.

CHALLENGER STORM: THE VALLEY OF FEAR- Episode 7

(NOTE: This serial takes place out of order chronologically with the Challenger Storm novels, which are being written with a definite timeline in mind.  "The Valley of Fear" happens after at least book 5 or 6, but this shouldn't hinder the reading experience.  I'm flying by the seat of my pants here, so I make no guarantees in regards to quality or coherence.)

+++

Episode 7: "The Gauntlet Begins"

There was only darkness, warm and languid, and he floated in it comfortably.  His mind was only vaguely aware of the feeling.  It seemed infinite and without start or end and unbroken.  There was nothing but the void and the floating.

And then there was a tapping.

The tapping was vague, without a source.  He couldn't tell which of his senses was responding to the tapping: was it a noise or a sensation of touch?  Was it even really there at all?  He was lost, looking for it.

The tapping stopped for a moment, and a voice spoke.  It was soft and feminine.  "Wake up," it said.  "You have to wake up."

It was hard to respond to the sound and the tapping, which was definitely a touch and it began again after the voice had ceased.  His floating comfort, the dark void that surrounded him... it felt like he had returned to the womb with no cares for anything else.  Did anything else exist?  Had it ever existed?  It didn't matter...

The tapping ceased for a moment then began again, more insistent.  And with it, the voice came back.

"Please, wake up," the voice said with more urgency creeping into it.  "Please."

He began to wish the voice and the tapping would go away.  He stirred and fought to stay under, to stay in his warm netherworld.

The woman's voice spoke again.

"Dammit, mister, WAKE UP!"

SLAP!

The open-handed strike across Storm's face broke through the drug's barriers, thrusting him back into consciousness.  He gasped as his eyes snapped open; in reflex, his hand lashed out and grasped the wrist of the hand that had struck him.  He sat up, his eyes glazed and striving to focus on the world around him.

A woman knelt beside him, clad in a clingy green evening dress that showed off her hourglass shape.  She was honey-blonde, with a strong jaw and matching cheekbones that added a regal strength to her beauty.  A pair of wide hazel eyes displayed her shock at Storm's sudden awakening.  The woman's Cupid's-bow lips opened above her slightly cleft chin and she uttered a single sound.

"Ow."

Storm blinked and realized he was gripping her wrist with more force than he should have been.  He released it.  "I'm sorry," he apologized, "I didn't mean to..."

"It's alright," the woman said as she shook her hand a few times.  "I'm sorry for the slap, but I really need you awake here with me.  Something's happening."

Their surroundings began to come into focus for Storm: they were in a circular room, the walls smooth and unbroken concrete.  The dim light that lit them came from a ring of lights high above their heads, nearly forty feet straight up at the top of the cylindrical chamber.  A thick platform stuck out from one side of the room, and there was a statue, a little over life-size, standing upon it.  The statue was of a nude male figure, holding some kind of large jar or urn as if it was pouring something out of it.  There were also some other kind of protuberances jutting out from the surrounding curved walls, but they were too high above to be seen clearly from the floor.  A faint sound accompanied the room: a muted gurgling noise that was coming from behind the walls.

Storm sprang to his feet but wavered dizzily and stumbled.  The woman got up and kept him from falling over.  Leaning against the wall, Storm shook his head and focused, concentrating on slicing through the drug's after-effects that fogged him.

"You were way too sleepy to be just dozing," the woman explained to Storm as he breathed deeply.  "Whatever you were drugged with, they got me with it too.  I just woke up here shortly before you..."

A loud squelch from hidden speakers above them cut her off.

"I see you are both awake now," a voice said.  "I was beginning to fear I'd used too much of the tranquillizer."

"Sorry, Zodiac," Storm said, "I'm still here.  Thanks for the nap, though."

"Well, I'm glad that you're well-rested," the disembodied voice of Count Zodiac replied.  "You'll want to be awake for this.

"As I told you over lunch," Zodiac continued, "you are here because you stole my country- my destiny- from me.  An eye for an eye, my friend.  I'm sure you can understand."

"This is between you and me.  Let the girl go, she's got nothing to do with this."  As he talked, Storm circled the room, looking for any point of exit.  There was none.  He still had his utility harness on, somehow, but he didn't have anything in the pouches at the time capable of blasting through the concrete.  "Why don't you come out in the open and we can settle this."

"The girl is there with you to give you incentive, Storm.  To help raise the stakes."  Zodiac paused before speaking again, and when he did, there was a new tone of menace in his voice.  "We're going to play a little game, you and I.  Beat my game, and I'll let you, your friends, and my other guests go free.  If you lose this island becomes your grave, and the grave of all those whose lives you carry now on your shoulder, even those of the natives on the other side of the island."

"What's he talking about?" the blonde asked Storm.

"Who knows?  He's crazy," he replied.  And dangerous enough to back it all up, he thought to himself.

"To win," Zodiac went on, "you're going to have to get from where you are now- the head of the valley at the north-eastern end of the island- to the goal, which is located at the other end of the valley to the south-west.  Along the way, you're going to have to prove yourself- again and again- in tests that I've built just for you.

"You are currently standing in the first of those tests: the Aquarius Room."

There was a clang somewhere, behind the concrete walls of the cylindrical room, and the muted gurgling changed pitch.

"The time for talk is over," Count Zodiac announced.  "I'd wish you luck, Mr. Storm, but you and I both know I'd be lying to you.  The gauntlet begins... now!"

A torrent of water broke free from the statue's urn, and it poured down into the room.  The blonde yelped as she jumped out of the path of the downpour, only to find jets of water spouting from the walls down near their ankles.

"Oh God, he's gonna drown us," she said.

Storm nodded.  "Yes, I believe he means to do just that."

TO BE CONTINUED...