NEW STORY: THE BLUE BEETLE OF BROCKTON BAY PROLOGUE

Jaime Reyes came to with saltwater filling his lungs and the world spinning in slow, dizzying circles. For a second he thought he was drowning in the Gulf again, then the rain found him, heavy and cold enough to bite through his hoodie. Tempted though he was to stay where he was, blinking against the downpour, common sense insisted he move. So he pushed himself up from the rough surface, realizing that he was on a rooftop overlooking a city, every muscle aching as if he’d just fallen out of the sky.  

He turned slowly, letting the myriad of terrible smells wash past him while his eyes sought the skyline, or what ought to have been a skyline. What lay below and beyond was ruin spread wide enough to shock him: the surrounding buildings lay in pieces, the streets upturned and filled with rising water. 

The city wasn't anywhere he recognized, but that could be chalked up to his ignorance rather than anything else. He needed details, and he needed them fast.

“Khaji-Da?” His voice came out rough and small against the weather. “You online, buddy?”

“Sí.” The scarab answered in his mind, the inflection familiar in the way it always reminded him of his mother’s. “Systems’ functional, but environmental readings are… inconsistent. current location is unknown.”

Jaime frowned. “Unknown as in… we’re not in Palmera, or unknown as in we’re not on Earth?”

“Unknown as in this environment does not correspond to any mapped region in known space. Atmospheric composition is similar to Earth’s, but no satellite data matches known global networks and no Reach communication signals are detected. This planet is unknown.”

He let out a sound that was half a laugh and half a curse and dragged a hand down his face, feeling grit under his nails. “Oh, man. Khaji-Da, what happened? We were just in Palmera minutes ago! How do we go from that to…” He gestured weakly at the ruined city. “…whatever this is?”

“Memory discontinuity detected, so this might be a hostile translocation event. Immediate countermeasures are recommended.”

“Countermeasures? Khaji-Da, we don’t even know where we are yet!” He tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice and failed at it a little; the scarab’s single-mindedness could be vexing at times. “Great… guess it’s one of those days.”

He rubbed his temples, thinking through the litany of odd things that had become ordinary in his life. The weird part was not that he had woken in a ruined city or that he might be in another universe. Although he didn't exactly like being in this situation, he had long since accepted weirdness as a constant in his life. When you lived in a world where Superman could show up at a family barbecue just because and your own super-suit was a hyper-advanced alien artefact that could create any tech imaginable, you learned to roll with things. 

But this… this felt different. 

He shook his head. He was probably overthinking things. After all, he was still in his jeans and hoodie, so the scarab had not been deployed yet. That meant, either he hadn't been in a fight or… his memory had been tampered with, somehow without alerting Khaji-Da.

He sighed. 

“Our location is a secondary objective,” the scarab said. “We should establish planetary dominance. Deployment of anti-personnel weaponry and orbital reconnaissance mode is recommended.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa—no!” Jaime ran his fingers through his soaked hair, exasperation bubbling up faster than he liked. “How about we don’t pick a fight with an entire world, all right?”

“Re-evaluating. Revised objective: threat assessment.”

“Better,” he breathed. 

“Unidentified auditory anomaly detected.”

The scarab’s tone sharpened, but before Jaime could question the change, the wind carried with it a sound—low at first, but soon loud enough to rattle the structural integrity of nearby buildings—to him, and its direction drew his head toward the coast. Squinting into the rain, he was just in time to see a wall of water surge forward and smash into a cluster of buildings as if an invisible hand had swatted them aside.

Behind that wall something massive slid through the water, scaled, and fast for its size, every movement it made carving more destruction into the city below. 

“Khaji-Da…” he whispered. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

“Scanning.” The pause lengthened enough to be noticeable, setting his teeth on edge. Long pauses from the scarab did not usually bode well for him. “Result: unidentified biological entity. Mass: approaching nine tons. Height: approximately thirty feet. Composition: irregular.”

“Irregular?” He already knew he wouldn’t like the answer, but still, he had to ask.

“Its body is composed of concentric layers of tissue, with each successive layer approximately doubling in durability relative to the one exterior to it. Spatial warping and dimensional layering combined with electromagnetic modulation are used to obscure true mass and to redistribute kinetic impact within the creature.”

Jaime tasted salt on his lips and let out another breath he did not know he held. “So a hyperdense hydrokinetic kaiju.”

“Affirmative. Suggestion: initiate preemptive strike. Employ high frequency blade to dismember target and access core located in the central part of its chest.”

Another laughter escaped his lips, though this time it was to stop him from panicking and to keep his body from trembling. “Yeah, no. We do not go around dismembering things unless they are actively trying to kill—” He paused as the kaiju let out another roar, this one so loud it made the building next to his topple completely.

“Okay,” he continued, “maybe this is not a person, and maybe it does count as trying to kill people. Still, we cannot just rush in blind. There could be civilians in the way, or this world’s heroes already engaging it. There could be more to this than it appears.”

“The city is above an aquifer. Based on scans, it will eradicate all life within operational radius if unopposed. Preemptive elimination is statistically optimal.”

His mouth quirked into a grin, but it did not reach his eyes. “Yeah, well, so is my mom’s cooking, but you do not see me eating it before it cools down.”

No answer came, but he felt the scarab’s disapproval through their mental bond. He understood the logic in Khaji-Da’s assessments. He understood why it wanted to solve problems in a way that left nothing to chance. But he had been in the hero business long enough to also understand the cost of acting first and thinking later. 

He was trying to be sensible. He had to be sensible.

“Khaji-Da, are there any metahumans nearby?” he asked.

“Biological and electromagnetic anomalies similar in signature to the creature detected at multiple highlighted locations. Pattern analysis ongoing.”

“Translation: maybe.” He took a deep breath and straightened. Blue light began to ripple over his skin as the scarab’s nanomachines spread, small points of energy collecting into distinct shapes that grew into his familiar suit of armor. 

He took a step closer to the edge of the rooftop, looking at the monster again, at the water and the ruin and the tiny shapes moving around it or in the streets below, and for the first time the fact of his own separation from home hit him with an intensity that had him clenching his fists. He had no idea where he was, or how he’d gotten here, but none of that mattered right now. 

He had a city to save. 

“You ready, partner?”

“Affirmative.”

The pincers overlooking his shoulders reconfigured, a pair of translucent plasma wings snapping open and scattering rain into mist.

“Guess it’s time to do what superheroes do.”

He launched himself into the sky.