PART ONE

                Ray Palmer, the scientist and reserve member of the Justice League known as the Atom, emerged from the teleportation tube in the JLA Watchtower in a quiet room.  He had expected to hear more noise in the moon base, or at least to see fellow reservists recently arrived in the chamber, but the room was empty and silent.  The Atom began to wonder if the emergency signal he had received had been somehow faked.  But if so, why?  An extremely odd shiver ran up and down the Atom’s spine and his skin crawled.

                Suddenly, the Atom could hear footsteps running down one of the corridors.  It sounded like bare feet slapping against the steel flooring of the Watchtower.  A moment later, Wonder Woman burst into the room.  The Atom recognized her instantly, of course, but she was not wearing the Amazonian garb which served as her costume.  She was clad in only a simple sky blue peasant dress, and she was barefoot.  “Diana,” Atom said with a mixture of confusion and concern, “What …”

                Wonder Woman saw him and her eyes, already wild with fear, widened in disbelief.  “Help me!!!” the Amazon princess wailed, her voice trembling.  “Oh, please, help me!!!  They’re right behind me!!!  Right behind!!!”  The Atom held out his hands to her in a ‘stop’ gesture, but Wonder Woman bolted past him, hiding behind one of the control computers in the far corner of the room.

                The Atom followed her, and found her curled into fetal position in the corner, shaking.  “Diana,” he tried again, “what is going on?  What is wrong with you?  Who’s behind you?”  He laid one red-gloved hand on her shoulder reassuringly, but Wonder Woman would not raise her head.  Her long black hair had fallen across her face, hiding it.  She only repeated, over and over, “Help me, help me …”

                The Atom decided it was safe enough to leave her in the transporter room, and ventured out into the corridor himself.  As the room had been when he arrived, the corridor was empty and silent.  It was darker than normal – the Atom could see that some of the wall-mounted lights were out.  The Atom touched the belt buckle of his costume and activated the technology built from a fragment of a white dwarf star that enabled him to control his size and mass.  He shrank down to an inch tall, decreasing his mass as well to enable him to ride the air currents in the hallway.  He glided down the hallway in the opposite direction than Wonder Woman had been running, staying close to the wall and hoping to avoid detection as he retraced her steps.  He needed to assess the situation before he could formulate a plan for defusing it.  Always the scientist, Ray Palmer thought to himself.  Step one, Collect Data.

                When the Atom reached the T intersection at the end of the corridor, he was able to hear some sounds coming from the left.  He continued to glide on the updrafts created by the ventilation system, trying to determine what the sounds were.  They sounded like a low, many-voiced moan, like a group of people speaking slowly but incoherently.  And they seemed to be getting closer as the Atom continued his flight down the corridor.  A green glow began to suffuse the air at the far end of the corridor.  Then shapes began to form in the glow, and the Atom was able to see that they were human shapes.  Leading the way was Kyle Rayner, the Green Lantern.

                Kyle was dead.  At least, he appeared to be dead, with the exception that he was slowly walking down the corridor.  The Green Lantern’s costume was soiled and torn, as if he had recently fought his way out of a deep hole in the ground.  His arms hung limply while his feet shuffled forward, and his head lolled to the left side.  The skin on his hands and face was a putrid bluish-gray, marked with darker discoloration, and broken open on the right side of his neck, exposing split muscle and dirty bones beneath.  His hair was missing in some places, disheveled everywhere else.

                Green Lantern was still wearing his power ring, which was generating more creatures that looked like Kyle and followed him with the same shuffling gait.  They were men and women, all dressed in tattered rags, with lesions on what skin they had and gaping wounds in their bodies.  Their faces wore glazed expressions.  They were green energy constructs, and they were all gurgling and groaning with whatever remnants of vocal cords the ring had created for them. 

                The Atom had landed atop one of the wall-mounted lights as Green Lantern and his zombies approached.  He was unsure as to what exactly had happened.  How had Kyle died, and come to be reanimated?  Or was this a temporary, reversible condition?  Where was the rest of the League?  The Atom supposed it was this walking horror show that Wonder Woman had been fleeing from.  It still didn’t explain why she was wearing a peasant dress, or why one of the most courageous members in the League’s history would be so terrified, but perhaps he would be able to deduce all of that later.  For now, stopping Green Lantern seemed to be the first order of business.

                The Atom leapt up into the air, angling his body so he was soon falling toward Green Lantern’s face.  He started increasing his density, and within a split-second he was an inch tall but weighed over 300 pounds, which came crashing across Kyle Rayner’s jaw in the next second.  The Atom readjusted his density after impact to catch another air current, as Green Lantern crumpled to the floor, unconscious.  Without his willpower fueling the power ring, the mob of green energy zombies evaporated as well.

                The Atom landed on the floor, then grew to his normal height.  “Sorry, Kyle,” he said, “I just had to stop you and didn’t think you were disposed to conversation.  If you’re even able to have one anymore.  But if I can fix whatever was done to you, I will.”  With that the Atom scooped up Green Lantern in his arms and began walking down the hallway to the medical bay.

                The Atom’s arms were itching deep under the skin.  It had started before he had touched Green Lantern, so he ruled that out as a cause.  The more he thought about it the more he believed he could feel the itching spreading, to his ribs and his shoulders.  He made up his mind to ignore it, at least until after he had seen what he could do for Kyle, and located the rest of the League.

                The Atom turned a corner and was greeted by a blast of fire.  He felt the oncoming rush of heat in the air and was able to roll to the side a split second before the flames roared overhead.  Green Lantern’s body spilled out of the Atom’s arms, and he looked up to see a dragon blocking the corridor ahead.

                The creature filled the hallway almost completely.  It had two short but powerful forelegs, and a long neck rose up from its body.  Its head was oddly reptilian and birdlike at the same time, with swept up scalloped ears and two angry red eyes.  Two large folded wings rested on its back.  Its skin was smooth and light green.  The shade of green was one the Atom thought he knew, and the red eyes seemed to be ones he had looked into before, as well.

                “J’Onn?  Is that you?” the Atom asked, thinking of the shape-shifting Martian Manhunter.  The skin tone certainly matched J’Onn J’Onzz’s.  The fire-breathing was a new trick, though.

                The dragon did not answer, but opened its powerful jaws and let loose a deafening roar, which was followed by another column of flames aimed at the Atom.  The Atom dove again, this time straight at the beast blocking the hallway.  The flames blasted over the Atom’s back as he rolled under the dragon’s jaw and shrank again to one inch in height.  The Atom sprinted under the dragon’s belly toward its tail.  The dragon roared angrily and tried to tuck its muzzle underneath its belly, but found itself unable to do so.  The dragon’s body was so large, in fact, it was unable to turn around in the corridor.  Despite the dragon’s loud bellows of protest, once the Atom had reached its tail end, he was free.

                I feel bad for leaving Kyle behind, the Atom thought to himself, but I’ve got to get to the bottom of what’s going on with the League before I can help him.  I feel like I’m being set up, no, I know that I’m being set up, but I suppose there’s nothing I can do other than being careful and seeing this through to the end.

                The Atom reduced his density to become lighter than air and flew along the corridor’s air currents, leaving the dragon behind.  He needed to reach the monitor womb, which hopefully would still have records of the internal surveillance of the Watchtower that could give him some clue as to what had happened to Kyle and J’Onn.  The Atom scratched absentmindedly at his arms as he flew, and some part of his brain registered that large bumps had risen from the flesh covering his triceps.  Soon, however, he was at the entrance to the monitor womb, and sailed in on a spiraling course which slowly brought him up to the observation seat high overhead.

                The Atom regained his normal size and settled into the observation seat, focusing on the nearest monitor and tapping hurriedly on the control panel.  His vision was blurring; he rubbed his eyes but his peripheral vision remained unfocused, so he simply resolved to let it be and concentrate on the task at hand.  He had called up the internal tapes beginning at midnight the night before, and was fast-forwarding through them to glean any clues he could.

                Abruptly the Atom felt sharp talons digging into both his shoulders, and reflexively he shrank to a foot tall to escape the pain.  Standing on the observation seat, he turned and found himself facing the black-cowled form of Batman.  Yet while he recognized the costume, and even the line of Batman’s jaw, this was a different creature altogether.  Its skin was deathly pale, stretched taut across its face as well as the ungloved hands which flexed sharp claws at the Atom.  The creature opened its mouth and revealed cruel, pointed fangs, and uncurled a blood-red tongue with a sinister hiss.  With unbelievable speed the vampire Batman lashed out at the diminutive Atom and caught him in an iron grip.  The Atom was raised towards the thing’s hungry mouth, and he could smell the coppery tang of blood within.

                The Atom shrank once again.  He intended to reduce himself to microscopic level, but found himself frozen at four inches tall, unable to shrink further.  Still the change in size was just enough to allow him to slip out of Batman’s fist.  The Atom began to fall down to the floor, the distance seeming longer due to his relatively small size, and he discovered he was unable to alter his density to glide.  The best he could manage was to brace himself and roll with the impact at the end of the fall.

                The Atom’s body met the floor, and although painful the abrupt stop was not fatal.  I can’t fly, the Atom thought to himself.  So I have to stop that monster from following me or I’m done for.  I don’t have any garlic on me, and I’m fresh out of holy water, so I hope the League understands …  With that thought the Atom used all his strength to pry open a panel of the wall of the monitor womb.  He grabbed handfuls of wiring and began pulling out long lengths of cable.  He could hear the vampire Batman flying on leather wings, slowly descending on him.  Quickly the Atom arranged the cable and wires in the crude shape of a cross just in front of the doorway of the monitor womb.  The Atom leapt outside, and could hear the vampire hissing in pain as it tried to follow but found itself unable to pass near the cross.

                No sooner was the Atom in the corridor again than a heavy weight fell upon him.  The Atom was knocked flat, and pushed the weight off his chest, realizing as he did so that it was the head of a large hammer.  Holding the hammer was John Henry Irons, better known as Steel.  Steel’s normally shining armor was dull and blackened, and his helmet was missing.  His eyelids drooped down and crudely stitched scars crisscrossed his face.  Two bolts stood out from either side of his neck.  With a wordless growl, Steel raised his hammer again and swung it clumsily.  This time the Atom easily dodged the blow, and was soon running fast down the corridor.

                At least he’s slow, the Atom thought to himself, heading to the main meeting room now for no particular reason.  Zombies and dragons and vampires, oh my.  And now Steel as Frankenstein’s monster.  It’s Halloween on the Watchtower and nobody told me.  Who is responsible for this?  Could Circe or Felix Faust have enchanted the entire League, turned them all into monsters?  But Diana seemed fine when I got here – not her normal self, but not monstrous.  Of course, who knows how she is now.  Got to figure this all out and set it right.  Maybe I can contact Oracle, now that the monitor womb is off-limits.

                The Atom reached the meeting room and began calling out, “Oracle?  Oracle are you on line?  I need some help here …”

                From dark shadows in the opposite corner of the room, a figure began to rise.  The Atom stopped as he saw it lumber forward.  It was at least as tall as the room and appeared to be hunched over, making it actually taller still.  First to emerge from the shadows was its barrel chest, which was emblazoned with a red and yellow “S” symbol on a blue field.  But the body shape was far too wrong for the Atom to rejoice at the sight of Superman’s insignia.  The creature’s knees broke into the light next, bent so that the creature appeared to be permanently squatting on its massive haunches.  The thing raised its arms, which were equally powerful and ended in three-pronged talons.  Finally it moved forward enough that it stood fully revealed.  Huge demonic wings capped its backside, and their jagged curves framed the monster’s head.  That head was completely unearthly, resembling at best some kind of octopoid nightmare, with a bulbous crown and writhing tentacles flailing where its mouth should be.  Two impossibly deep and hideously malevolent eyes were set just above the tentacles, and they seemed to burn into the very soul of Ray Palmer as he beheld them.

                Tentatively at first, the Atom began to step backwards, and then with greater speed he rushed from the room, a scream forming on his lips.  The Atom fell out the door, scrambled around the doorframe and pressed his back up against the corridor wall, breathing rapidly and feeling as though his heart were about to burst with terror.

                Felt … like … I was losing … my mind in there, the Atom thought as he slowly began to regain his composure.  Just overwhelming … horror …, he mused, trying to remember exactly what had been so mind-numbingly terrifying about the creature, then realizing that thinking too much on the subject could lead him to lose his senses all over again.

                Can’t go to the meeting room, the Atom mentally listed his options, and can’t go to the monitor womb.  Might be able to make it back to the teleportation room and get earthside, but what then?  Need another option …  The Atom’s thoughts were cancelled by a ruthless pain that wracked his four-inch body.  The Atom pitched forward onto his hands and knees as the itching in his arms and back became fiery agony.  Just as the Atom was convinced he would pass out from the pain, the skin of those parts of his body burst with wet exploding noises.  The Atom looked at his arms and saw that gigantic, hard black hairs had sprouted from them.  He craned his neck around to look at his shoulders and saw that fibrous, insectile wings had emerged.  Slowly he regained his feet and lifted his arms over head, to observe that a smaller pair of slender black segmented arms had pushed through his costume midway down his rib cage, ending in blunt black claws.  With that the Atom realized that his vision was blurred around the edges because his eyes were becoming multi-faceted, giving his peripheral vision a prismatic quality he could not see through.

                “Thiszz,” the Atom said aloud, “iszz not szzoo good.”

PART TWO

                Ray Palmer stopped running as he reached the greenhouse section of the Watchtower.  At four inches tall, the trip had taken him several minutes and most of his energy.  Among the trees and bushes which provided the oxygen needed for the moonbase’s life support, he braced his hands on his knees and gulped lungfuls of air.  He reached up and pulled back the red and blue cowl of his costume, to ease the pressure around his bulging, insectile eyes.  He thought about the layout of the Watchtower, trying to mentally map a course to some safe area.  As routes entered his consideration, his hardening wings twitched as if to carry him into flight.  The Atom was loathe to use the unnatural appendages, feeling disturbed enough by their mere presence on his back.

                A bestial howl echoed through the boughs and boles in the room.  The Atom stood upright and turned in a slow circle to seek out the source of the sound.  Before he had completed the circle, he felt the searing pain of a set of claws raking across his back at high speed.  By relative size difference, the claws felt like massive claymore swords slicing through the Atom’s flesh.  As he lurched away from the attack, he could see a red blur trailing ribbons of golden lightning, multiplied dozens of times in the jewel-like orbs of the Atom’s eyes.

                As the Atom recovered his footing, he was confronted by his attacker.  The Flash jumped out from a stand of tropical foliage and landed in a crouch before the Atom.  The red and yellow costume of the speedster was torn apart at the gloves, and the yellow boots were missing.  Emerging from those tattered areas were bulging, muscular limbs covered in brown fur and ending in huge paws with black claws.  A snarling, hairy snout revealing jagged canine teeth protruded from the Flash’s mask, a deep growl emanating from the back of the werewolf’s throat.  The monster eyed the Atom with yellow eyes las if eyeing a cornered rodent.

                “Wally?” the Atom asked tentatively.  “Iszz there enough of you szztill in there to communicate?  Give me a szzign.”

                The werewolf Flash leapt at the Atom, jaws opened wide and claws splayed.  The Atom rolled to the side as quickly as he could, barely avoiding decapitation by the Flash’s snapping teeth.  As quickly as possible the Atom climbed up a nearby tree, reluctantly utilizing his second set of black, chitinous arms to aid his ascent.  Reaching a long, high limb, the Atom ran along its length, and could hear the Flash climbing up behind him in a frenzied burst of speed.  The Atom turned around to face the oncoming beast.

                The Flash reached the branch, howled torturously, and bolted down the length of the tree limb.  As the scarlet-clad wolf closed within inches of the Atom, the diminutive Leaguer threw himself backwards off the branch, his fly’s wings beating rapidly to keep him aloft.  The Flash reached out with his claws as he jumped off the branch in chase, but could not reach the Atom’s tiny form.  The Flash fell to the ground below, breaking branches with his furry body and yelping in pain.

                The Atom, straining with exertion, continued to rise through the air on his iridescent oval wings.  He reached a ventilation grate for an airshaft and grabbed the slats.  With some effort, he was able to squeeze his body through the space between two slats.  He rested on his hands and knees on the inside surface of the airshaft, his blunt fly feet scraping the metal.

                I’m trapped in a Hall of Horrors, the Atom thought to himself with a mixture of incredulity and grim woe.  Whatever forces are affecting the League, including me, are pretty powerful.  Still think my best bet is to try to make contact with someone … anyone … outside the Watchtower.  Without access to the womb or the meeting room, I think the only option I’ve got left is to see what I can find in Steel’s workshop.

                The Atom scuttled along the length of the airshaft, arriving shortly at a ventilation grate in a corridor near the workshop.  He forced his way out through the slats and dropped to the floor below. 

                “Begone, vermin!” a shrill voice commanded from the end of the corridor.  In kaleidoscopic proliferation, the Atom spied the speaker.  The face belonged to Supergirl, but her mane of blond hair waved wildly around her head, and her costume bore no resemblance to her namesake’s.  Instead she was clothed in a black gown which clung suggestively to her curves.  She waggled her fingers, tipped with black fingernails, in the Atom’s direction, and greenish-purple swirls burst forth and raced toward the four-inch tall hero.

                “A witch?” the Atom said.  “How do you szztop a witch?  I don’t want to shove the kid in an oven, or off a cliff.”  He flew upward to evade the trails of Supergirl’s spell, then buzzed straight toward the transformed heroine’s face.  Supergirl ducked, and as the Atom flew over her head he grabbed two handfuls and two clawfuls of her golden nimbus of hair.  Supergirl flailed her hands at the Atom, unleashing more magic energies, which missed the Atom but turned Supergirl’s hair into a nest of lizards, their tails rooted firmly to her scalp.  Supergirl screamed in revulsion and ran away, and the Atom looped back through the air to the entrance to Steel’s workshop.

                The room was well stocked with tools and half-completed projects, but not disorderly.  The Atom flew toward a workbench on the far side of the room in search of some form of communication device.  Wish I knew where this attack on the JLA was coming from, the Atom thought.  Could be from any number of mystical dimensions, and I don’t even have time to work out a system for checking into all the possibilities, much less actually do the checking. 

                The Atom’s thoughts were interrupted by a sickening squelching sound at the doorway.  He cast a glance in that direction and saw a red mass like a colossal amoeba with flesh-colored pseudopods.  “Can’t szzee the szzunglasszzeszz, but I can only guesszz that’s Plaszztic-Man,” the Atom mused aloud.  He buzzed to the adjacent wall and alighted on top of a fire extinguisher mounted there.  He hoisted the nozzle out of its clip and tucked it under his left pair of arms, then used his right arms to pull the trigger pin and begin spraying the cold CO2 foam.  He coated the blob-like Plastic-Man with the spray, and the amorphous mass stopped in its tracks.  A moment later it seemed to begin to shrink in on itself.

                “Ha, who needszz Szzteve McQueen?” the Atom asked triumphantly.  Then, with dawning realization, the diminutive Leaguer repeated, “Szzzteve McQu … of courszze!”

                The Atom flew in a low circle across the surface of the workshop’s benches, until he identified a device he knew he could make use of.  Grabbing it, he flew toward the door, pulled toward the floor by the weight of the device.  His wings beat furiously to bear him over the unmoving blob blocking the doorway, but once he was in the corridor the Atom descended to the floor and began to beat a hasty footpath toward the teleporters.

                Vampires and werewolfs and witches I can buy being universals, the Atom thought as he ran, maybe even the zombies, but the Blob, heck even Frankenstein’s monster, those are human inventions.  I’ve been so busy running for my life I haven’t been thinking clearly.  I figured some kind of otherworldly occult threat was transforming the League, but it seems to be under the direction of a monster movie aficionado.  But if I can get to the transporter room, back to Earth, I should be able to track down the source.  Assuming there’s no one left in my way, of course.

                The Atom skidded to a halt on his heels as he reached the main concourse, the only space remaining between himself and the teleporter room.  In his path, towering over him, stood the massive, mutated lizard-form of Godzilla, covered in leathery, dark-green scales, and brandishing a golden, cybernetic hook in place of a left claw.

                “Hi, Arthur,” the Atom choked out from his increasingly alien vocal cords.  “From King of the Szzeven Szzeaszz to King of the Monszzterszz, hmm?  Clever.”  The Atom realized that the transformed Aquaman was no more capable of communicating with him than the other Leaguers had been, and he spoke aloud only for his own comfort.  The Godzilla-Aquaman shrieked loudly enough to shake the walls of the Watchtower, and unleashed a bluish-white blast of atomic breath at the Atom.  The Atom jumped aside but could feel the force of the energy attack as it impacted with the floor.

                Resolutely, the Atom began pounding his insectile wings, rising up to the colossal monster’s head.  “Gotta szzay I’m szzorry in advance, Arthur,” he admitted, “but if I turn my back on you trying to get paszzt to the teleporterszz, you might juszzt immolate me with your next breath.  Can’t have that.  Not sure thiszz’ll work, either, but if the monszzter movie ruleszz apply to all of uszz …”  The Atom alighted on the tip of the gigantic reptilian snout, inhaled deeply, and dredged up as much fluid out of his stomach and into his mouth as possible.  With a convulsive jerk of his entire body, the Atom spit a gob of digestive acid into the yellow eye before him.

                The Atom was gliding down toward the floor again even as another piercing, monstrous howl from the Godzilla shook the air.  The blinded monster was unable to attack, long enough for the Atom to reach the teleporter room.  Swiftly the Atom keyed the controls for the transporter to deliver him back to Earth, and entered the tube.

PART THREE

                The Atom clung to the bottommost branch of an ill-tended shrubbery, peering into a dirty basement window.  The window opened on a squalid bedroom, its floor completely hidden beneath unlaundered clothes, discarded fast food bags and wrappers, and various other detritus.  The room contained a bed, chest of drawers, and a desk with a large television on it, and these items of furniture were buried under more untidy piles of magazines, refuse and assorted bric-a-brac: black candles, a gray ceramic skull with a protruding jaw filled with cigarette butts, small action figures of the Mummy and Pumpkinhead.  The walls of the room were plastered with images, such as the movie poster for the original Nightmare on Elm Street, a black-light poster of a green, flaming demon, and pages torn out of magazines like Cinescape and Fangoria.  The Atom had been acclimating to his multi-faceted eyes, so that the proliferation of images was not completely overwhelming, but he knew even with human vision the room would have appeared a disaster area.

                This was the ultimate destination resulting from the Atom’s search.  Using the spectrographic isolator he had liberated from Steel’s workshop, the Atom had identified an unknown form of energy aimed directly at the Watchtower’s lunar coordinates, and traced it backwards to this small house.  Once there, he had further determined that its point of origin was below ground.  Now, however, he could see no sign of life inside the basement bedroom from his vantage point.

                The Atom jumped down from the shrub branch, his wings buzzing involuntarily.  His body was still changing; his legs were becoming more slender and their joints were realigning more like those of a fly.  The hair on his head was almost completely gone, and his face was losing all human semblance, reshaping and darkening into black scales.  Still, he soldiered on, unwavering in his dedication to confront whoever was responsible for attacking the Justice League.

                The Atom crawled to the bottom edge of the window, which was angled outward, and made his way into the dim bedroom.  From the inner side of the windowsill, he could now see into the corner of the room.  A young man sat there, cross-legged, wearing plaid pajama pants and a black t-shirt so old that whatever design had originally adorned the front had crumbled to random clots of color.  His dark hair appeared unwashed, and his eyes were unfocused yet somehow attentive, as if he were dreaming with them open.  On the floor before the young man was a convex dome filled with brilliant prismatic lights, which seemed to have pushed itself up from the floor and through the strata of junk.

                Well, that’s one weird phenomenon, and one arguably twisted mind making use of it, the Atom thought to himself as he cautiously approached the young man and the bubble of energy.  Now I just have to figure out what I’m going to do about it.

                Despite the young man’s trance-like appearance, he spoke as the Atom drew nearer.  “I was worried that you wouldn’t run the whole gauntlet before you took off from the Moon,” the young man slurred, his eyes never losing their glassy, far-off stare.  “I can see everything up there, y’know.  Pretty cool for a while, then it got boring, and I bogused up that emergency signal for you so you could join the fun.  I didn’t want you to miss anything.  And you didn’t.”

                The Atom attempted to voice a reply, but all that came out was a high-pitched buzzing noise.  The young man smiled slightly, and went on, “I get that you came here to stop me, but y’know it’s not gonna happen.  I’m not done playing with this yet,” he promised, his hand moving slowly in the direction of the dome.  “Messing with the JLA was just the beginning.  There’s a lot more I wanna do to make the world more interesting.”

                The Atom rose into the air on his wings, lifting his arms, now only slightly more human than the secondary insect arms beneath them, and making fists.

                “Yeah, I know, I gotta do it over your dead body,” the young man responded lackadaisically.  “Not a prob.”  With that, the young man’s own body began to change.  New appendages began to slowly grow out of his shoulders and hips, and his skin began to darken.  A pair of glistening mandibles began to extend from the corners of his slack smile.  Meanwhile, around the room, gossamer strands of silk began to weave themselves together from thin air.

                All right, the Atom thought to himself with restrained panic, my new friend the horror freak wants to recreate the last scene from The Fly.  I’ve got a couple of seconds before he finishes turning into a spider to figure out how to stop him.  The Atom racked his brain.  He thought back on the readouts from the spectrographic isolator.  The energy connecting the Watchtower to this room had not been a trail or a trace, but a constant, ongoing flow of power.  Apparently the changes wrought on himself and his fellow Leaguers required a constant supply of the energy to persist.  The key must lie in controlling the dome before the metamorphosing arachnid-man.

                Time for a theory, and a way to test it, the Atom thought, as the trails of spiderweb floated ever closer to his location.  And I’ve only got time for one, so it better be good.  He stared at the dazzling lights beneath the convex surface and pondered to himself, That energy, whatever it is, it can’t be natural or native to Earth.  It’s got to be extradimensional, and coincidentally intersecting with our reality.  The kid who lives here seems to be the quintessential slacker, so I doubt he brought it here or really knows anything about it.  He just lucked out and happened to be in the right place at the right time.

                The Atom’s wings pushed him slightly higher into the air, as strands of spiderweb began rising up from the littered floor.  Assume the kid has no natural talent for shaping energy, the Atom’s mind raced.  That would indicate another focus for the energy.  The bubble it’s under?  Possibly – no, probably!  It’s shaped like, and almost certainly acting like, a lens to focus the energy.  Just like the lens I had to originally create to focus the white dwarf radiation!  Well, I know a thing or two about lenses, how they work and how they won’t work.  I pray I’m right about this …

                Under the malevolent gaze of the huge boy/spider hybrid, the Atom zipped between web silks grasping like tentacles.  The diminutive Leaguer reached the top of the chest of drawers, where a lit lava lamp stood, its innards dancing in languid, amorphous patterns.  The Atom grasped the lamp in all four of his hands, and took flight once again, bearing down on the monstrous spider-thing.  The Atom hoisted the lava lamp over his head, and the spider monster lashed out with one claw-tipped appendage to block the lamp.  The Atom threw the lava lamp, not at the spider, but at the dome of lights.  The lamp shattered across the convex surface, spilling its viscous contents.

                The spider monster relaxed its stance with a palpable sense of superiority, its metamorphosis nearly complete.  The Atom buzzed down to the surface of the luminous dome, as the spiderweb inexorably closed in on all sides, now mere inches away.  Alighting on the bubble, the Atom grabbed shards in each of his hands, and began slashing at the dome’s surface.  At the same time, he dragged his feet through the gelatinous puddle of fluid that had filled the lamp before it had exploded.  Within moments the apex of the dome was disfigured, scratched and smeared with goo, and still the Atom continued to assail it with the shards of glass and metal casing, gouging the surface with irregularities in a widening pattern.

                The metamorphosis of the young man into gigantic spider began to reverse itself, the four extra appendages shriveling like vestigial limbs and then disappearing completely.  The arachnid head resumed its human features once again, along with a human voice that wailed in impotent protest.  The coalescing spiderweb melted into nothingness.  Most gratifying of all, the Atom could feel his own form’s return to normalcy, as his wings and extra pair of limbs receded, the black scales faded from his skin, and his body resumed its regular proportions, including his usual six feet of height.

                The Atom pulled his blue cowl back up over his head as he faced the young man in the corner of the room.  The young man was slumped against the wall, the picture of abject defeat, shaking his head forlornly.  “You ruined it,” he accused bitterly.

                “You were pretty intent on ruining a lot more, yourself,” the Atom countered, pleased to hear his own voice sounding strong and clear again.

                “No …” the young man protested weakly, “no … wasn’t gonna ruin nothing … I just wanted to make everything cooler … like … like …”

                “Like in the movies,” the Atom finished for him.

                “Yeah …”

EPILOGUE

                “… mini-tesseract still seems to be containing it just fine,” Steel reported, referring to the gadget he had employed to enclose and remove the scarred lens window on the extradimensional energy-source from Jimmy Shelton’s bedroom.  His voice was broadcasting from a small radio in Ray Palmer’s Ivytown University lab.

                “So that should be the last we hear from that particular reality-warping corner of the cosmos?” Palmer asked.

                “Well, there’s always a chance that lightning could strike twice,” Steel admitted across the radio channel.  “There could be another random intersection somewhere on Earth.  But I’ve run the scenario through the computers, and trust me, it’s a longer shot than anything I’d ever lose sleep over.”

                “How long?”

                “About one-with-enough-zeros-after-it-to-fill-a-phone-book to one,” Steel replied.

                “You don’t say,” Palmer smiled slightly.

                “Sure do.  Batman even checked my math.”

                “Doubtless.”

                “Listen, Atom … thanks.  You really pulled the League’s collective butt out of the fire this time.  We owe you one,” Steel assured him.

                “Comes with the rank, Steel,” Palmer responded.

                “Oooooh, and he’s modest, too?” another voice belted out of the radio speaker.  “Come on, everybody, give it up one time for the Mighty Mite!  Whoo whoo whoo whoo!”

                “Plas, will you get out of here?” Steel growled.  “And stop making that Arsenio face … you know I told you it bugs me when your pasty putty ass tries to pull off black entertainers.”

                “Oh come on, really, Steel,” Plastic-Man retorted, “when’s the last time Arsenio entertained anyone?”

                “I’ll let you guys go so you can work this out,” Palmer cut in.  “I’ve got some work of my own to do, anyway.”

                “Yeah, OK,” Steel acknowledged.  “Never a dull moment for you, huh?”

                “There’s always something out there to figure out another part of,” the man called the Atom assented, turning off the radio connection with the Watchtower.  “That’s what us scientists do.”

THE END