Not quite what I was expecting...

Well, I'm over the atrophy now. So that's good. It meant that I could go back to patrolling.

Most of our patrolling goes no where. But this morning was an exception...

I was out with Horizon earlier, and who should we see but Oceana himself. He seemed to be wrapping u some business out in the open with some Oathbreakers.

He spotted us shortly after we spotted him. He bid farewell to his Oathbreaker friends and headed down an alleyway. The Oathbreakers just wandered off.

Horizon made a move toward the alley, but I stopped her briefly.

"Hold up," I said. "You know this is probably a trap, right?"

"I don't care!" she snapped. "I have to go after him!"

"Yeah, same her," I said. "I'd just like to point out that you're completely unarmed. Maybe let the dude with the giant scythe go first?"

"I don't need your protection," she said.

"If you say so," I said. "Ladies first..."

We both went into the alley. Oceana stood a short distance from us with his back turned.

"Brother!" Horizon shouted.

He ignored her, and addressed me instead.

"Good to see you awake, Justin," he said.

"Yeah," I replied bitterly. "Thanks for putting me under, by the way."

"The Oathbreakers only meant to knock you out," he said. "It was the Grotesque that trapped you that way."

"Whatever," I said, drawing my scythe. "Let's settle this already."

Before I could make a move, Horizon stepped in front of me.

"Look at me, damn it!" she snapped.

Oceana looked over his shoulder at her indifferently.

"Stop this!" she demanded. "Come home. Please."

"You know I can't," he said. "I'm not your brother. Not anymore."

"Don't give me that bullshit!" she snapped.

She approached him angrily.

"I know you're still there!" she said, reaching for him.

He turned sharply and smacked her hand away angrily.

"Don't touch me!" he hissed.

She made an attempt to slap him in the face, but he was faster. Before her hand could make contact, he struck her hard enough to send her crashing into the wall, where she slumped down, wounded, but still conscious from the look of it.

"Dude!" I said. "Not cool!"

I charged at him, swinging my scythe, and we began fighting.

"It doesn't have to be this way," Oceana said. "All I want is that watch!"

"You'll have o pry it from my corpse!" I snarled.

A few seconds later, Oceana was caught off guard when a can thrown by Horizon hit him in the head. It couldn't have hurt him, but it distracted him just long enough. I swung my scythe upward, aiming to finish him off. He stepped back enough to avoid getting hit, but my scythe's blade caught his shirt from bellow, tearing through it and exposing his torso to me. We both froze, as I saw what he was hiding beneath it.

Technology. Wires. Flash drives. Microchips. Fragmented motherboards.

All embedded in his flesh.

But the thing that really caught my eye was the Sony PSP, stuck in his chest like some kind f twisted Arc Reactor. A single image flickered on it's cracked screen. The image of a grinning skull, made of solid steel.

"You," I gasped silently. "You're a..."

Towerborn.

I couldn't quite get the word out at the time, out of fear. But that's what he was. A being created by one of the Fears, the Manufactured Newborn. A being whose purpose was to absorb both technology and flesh in order to add to the mass of the twisted amalgamation of living tissue and steel that makes up the Newborn's body.

His eyes narrowed as he glared angrily at me.

"I had hoped to let you live," he told me. "But you've just eliminated that option for me."

Before I could react, several wires shot out of his right sleeve and entangled around me. He lifted me into the air and slammed me against one wall, then the other, then the first one again. He held me there, his cords wrapping around my throat, squeezing the life out of me.

"Stop!" Horizon shouted at him, but he had gone back to ignoring her.

"You said I could pry the watch from your corpse," he said. "Well, I think I'll accept your invitation now."

My vision was started to fade, when a familiar voice pierced the atmosphere.

"BURN!"

I fell to the ground, and the wires holding me fell limp. It took me a moment to process what was going on. Then I realized that the hooded guy was standing between me and Oceana, holding a short, Japanese blade in his right hand, with a reverse grip. The wires that were restraining me had been cut through, and the ends of them were glowing red and smoking.

The two of them stared each other down for a moment, but it didn't last. What came next was a blur of motion and violence, as the hooded guy charged at Oceana, effortlessly dodging through the wires and assaulting Oceana. They fought for a while, with the hooded guy staying close enough to Oceana that the wires couldn't do much against him.

Oceana managed to break away from the fight just long enough to open a rift into what I'm assuming was the Newborn's domain, and dart through, closing it up behind him.

There were a few seconds of silence before hooded guy spoke.

"You should call Terrence," he said. "Tell him to pack what he can and head to your hangout."

"What?" I asked. "Why?"

"You know Oceana's secret now," he said. "He can't afford to let you live. Your hangout is the only safe place for you right now."

So yeah, we're all hiding out now. Maybe spilling the fact that Oceana's a Towerborn to the internet will backfire, but fuck it. Seems like a smart move to me. He want's to keep it a secret? Too bad. IT's out there now. What's he going to do about it?

It's troubling, though. I've always thought Towerborn were mentally dead. Just mindless zombie's steered by the Newborn's will. This is the first I've ever heard of a Towerborn had had a mind of it's own.

And now that I'm typing all this out, something's occurred to me.

Remember a few posts ago, when I was recounting my crazy coma dreams, and Daniel showed me an alternate universe where Daniel was a proxy with a burn scar and I had a badass scythe made out of nunchucks and a sword? Well, in that memory, it was briefly mentioned that the Plague Doctor and the Manufactured Newborn were in cahoots, and had turned the world into a dystopia.

Something similar is happening here.

The Newborn and Doctor are teaming up in this universe too.

That's what Daniel was trying to show me.