No matter what, in his fourteen years of service with the United States Marine Corps, Gunnery Sergeant James Capitriano had learned to never give up. Marines never left a man behind, never gave up on a mission until it was done, and never revealed anything no matter what the enemy did to them. It didn’t matter if the enemy was the North Vietnamese, like he had fought eleven years ago, or these twisted parodies that called themselves the “Undead”, he would never give up.

	His brothers in arms had felt the same way. Of the ten men who knew the various codes to arm and operate the nuclear arsenal controlled by his base, nine had chosen to die from the torture they had suffered rather than break that sacred trust. He was the last. And by all that he knew, Gunny Capitriano swore those monsters would never have the codes.

	His break came less than an hour after his most recent interrogation. One of the so-called ‘priests’ of this Doom Guard outfit had slithered into his cell, wheezing and wheedling, trying to cajole him into revealing the codes for ‘the sake of his immortal sole’. However, a quick arm bar followed by a choke hold soon incapacitated his tormenter, and he raced out of the cell, leaving the unholy chaplain behind in his own bunk, covered by the blanket.

	The Gunny had been assigned to this base for nearly eight years. He knew every nook and cranny on the official maps, and many that weren’t. He managed to get to a certain hallway without being spotted, then opened a grill, and began to crawl through the ventilation ducts of the underground fortress, cursing himself for being both injured and cliched with the same breath. These ducts wormed through the entire mountain, and exited in scattered places, many far away from the hidden entrance, and were, themselves, hidden.

	Only one question remained... where would he go once he escaped?

***********************************************

	Amber Lawrence looked up at the massive, yet somehow not imposing, ediface. It was a mansion, a home that had stood for more than a hundred years, and it wore every decade like a veil of grace and distinction. Yet these veils hid not the body of a dancer from the Orient, but an institution quite unique to the world of the past year. It was once the family home of a wealthy clan, but now represented hope for those who had nothing. It was a Hostel, now, a hostel dedicated to those who had become something more, or less, than human.

	Indeed, in less than a year, word of the Mendolsson Memorial Hostel for Displaced Metahumans had spread far beyond the environs of Mountainrock and Rock Springs. Some inhabitants, it was said, had arrived from Europe and Asia, while a few even whispered that one or two may even be from the stars, themselves. However, Amber didn’t care about most of the inhabitants, as right now, she was only concerned with one.

	No creak announced the opening of the well-oiled door, but the soft click of her shoes on the marble floor of the entryway alerted the beautiful, redheaded receptionist to her arrival. “Yes, can I help you?” she asked, smiling with the radiance of a hundred watt bulb.

	A pang of jealousy surged through Amber, who had always felt she was rather plain. With sandy blonde hair, and a slender, almost boyish figure, she always felt left behind by her classmates, all the way through her second year of college. It seemd they had always been ‘going steady’, or seeing a boy on a regular basis. She, on the other hand, had been stuck at home, reading, even on Prom Night. However, she fought the sensation back down, and nodded. “I’m looking for someone. My uncle.”

	The receptionist opened the cover to a moderately thick ledger, and flipped a couple of pages. “And who may I ask are you looking for?”

	“Ryan Michaels,” Amber responded.

	Another brilliant smile, one the blonde could not help but notice was entirely unforced. “Oh, yes. He’s in a meeting right now with the other members of the security team. Who may I say is here?”

	“His niece, Amber.”

	“Oh, you’re his niece? Welcome, come here, sit down. I’ll go tell him right away.” She stood, and began to walk around the desk, and towards a hallway to her right.

	“Oh, no,” said Amber. “If he’s in a meeting, I can wait.”

	“Don’t be silly,” chided the receptionist. “Nothing’s more important than family. Besides, it’ll give me a chance to peek in on my boyfriend in that costume of his.” With a wink, she was down the hall, and through a door.

	‘Her boyfriend, eh?’ pondered Amber. She then thought about her own boyfriend... ex-boyfriend, she reminded herself. And she also reminded herself that it was her own decision to break it off, because...

	“Amber!” Her chain of thought broke suddenly as a pair of strong arms lifted her to her feet and enfolded her in a hug. “It’s been a long time, little lady.”

	She grinned, in spite of herself. “I’m not so little anymore, Unca’ Ry,” she complained through her smile.

	Ryan Michaels stepped back, and looked at his niece. “No, you’re not. And unless I miss my guess, you didn’t come all the way from Memphis jus’ ta say ‘hi’ to yer uncle.”

	Before she could speak, a veritable calvacade of brightly attired individuals flowed out of the meeting room, rapidly splitting up into smaller groups as they made their separate ways. She knew about this group, the famous ‘security team’ of the Hostel - also known as the super-hero team, Legion. She recognized the leader, Silverlance, his alabaster skin and red eyes nearly as unmistakable as Darkenwulf, the canine humanoid that walked beside him. Jarhead, the field leader, came out arm in arm with the receptionist, and right behind them came, without a doubt, the largest man she had ever seen in her life. Others registered with her memory, then glanced back at hr uncle. “No, I didn’t.”

	The two waited for a moment to finish their conversation as the team members all filtered off, except for Silverlance. he approached them, and stepped up beside the somewhat shorter, older man. “So you’re Synergy’s niece, eh? It’s good to meet you. So many of our residents don’t have family anymore besides each other, at least family that will claim them. It’s good that Ryan does.”

	Though unnerved at first by his crimson gaze, there was a warmth that seemed to radiate from his demeanor, and Amber shrugged, fighting the urge to blush. “Thank you. Sorry for interrupting your meeting, Mr. er, Silverlance.”

	A casual gesture accompanied Silverlance’s grin. “Ah, it wasn’t too important. The reason the security Detail was formed in the first place has been quiet for a few months, and we were just getting the schedule for the hand-to-hand classes by your Uncle and Jarhead, and the Rights and Responsibilities class with Inspector Avagnarde. Oh, and call me John. John Mendolsson.”

	“Amber. Amber Lawrence.” She offered her hand, and rather than shake it, the tall albino took her hand, and bowed to it, nearly kissing it, his eyes never leaving hers. Her pulse raced a bit, as her mind made the connection between this man, and the name of the Hostel, itself. ‘Not only the leader of Legion, but also a very wealthy and sophisticated individual..’ she pondered.

	“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Amber. Now, if you and your Uncle will excuse me, i have a few things to do in my office. Good day.” At their nods, he backed up one step, then turned and walked back down the hallway, to the door at the end.

	“Wow...” came her first words after Silverlances departure, nearly a full minute later.

	Synergy chuckled. “Leave it to my niece ta fall fer the boss.”

	Amber’s eyes darkened with sadness and memory. “No, I think I can safely say I’m not in any danger of falling for him anytime soon.”

	One eyebrow raised. “I’ll not pry, child. Now, like I said, why’d ya come all the way here from Memphis? I know it wasn’t just to see me.”

	She sighed. “I... I also came to stay here.”

	“What?” Synergy’s jaw dropped. “But what about college? That Jim feller you wrote me about? Even if ya somehow got the stuff an’ turned metahuman, you can’t just give it all up!”

	“Forget Jim. I have,” she stated bluntly, despite the evidence in her eyes to the contrary. 

	He simply nodded. “So... you’re coming to th’ Hostel. To stay.”

	She nodded as well. “And to join the Legion.”

*********************************************

	In the two months since his arrival at the Hostel, Darkenwulf had been responsible for many improvements in the facility. Most of them were minor, and included soundproofing for Mr Galagos’s room, so he could sleep without hearing every single ant’s footsteps outside, and overall improvements on the every day facilities to allow fewer people to do more housework in less time. However, none of the projects he had undertaken quite compared with what was now called the “Testing Room”.

	The Testing Room was a large chamber in the sub-basement of the mansion, measuring roughly thirty feet by fifty feet, and with a ten foot tall ceiling. The lupine alien had once tried to explain what he had done to the walls, but the others could barely comprehend, save for the final details - the walls of the room had two layers. The outer layer, closest to the room’s inhabitants, was a self-regenerating material that needed an occasional coat of a specific compound to maintain thickness, while the inner layer was a ceramic composite only five inches thick, but as tough as five feet of solid titanium steel. The room gained its name when Flamestrike decided she needed to test out her powers, and vaporized a six inch hole in one wall, without serious damage to the inner layer. This was where Amber found herself, along with several members of the Legion, and miscellaneous bits of broken furniture, heavy machinery, and other flotsam and jetsam.

	“Now, there are monitors in here that will relay what happens to the control room,” Silverlance was saying. “Just cut loose, and trash the walls. We just want to see what you can do, so we can best utilize your talents, and support any weaknesses with our own strengths, if need be.”

	Amber nodded. “I’m ready.” The rest left the room, and and closed the door. She had just spent several weeks denying she had super-powers at all, and here she was about to show them off, and use them to their fullest. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes, waited for the signal to begin.

	A small beep came over the intercom, informing her they were in the control room. Opening her eyes, she reached deep inside herself, to the wellspring of power that had become hers in recent weeks, and opened the floodgates.

	Brilliant golden energy cascaded out of her shining form, reaching out with glistening fingers to caress one of the largest pieces of machinery, and liftit off the floor with barely a thought. Solidified energy, a contradiction in the very laws of physics, wafted from her like mist from the morning sea, and coalesced where she willed, in whatever shape she willed. With a mental strength greater than any human arms, she crushed the various mechanical devices, compressing them harder and harder, until the force was so great that the fragments of chipped paint still scattered across the surfaces burst into flame from the heat, and the hulks were irretrievably entwined. A hand of her amber energy then lashed out, slapping the spheroid of steel, smashing it towards the far wall. The projectile imbedded itself deep, though she did not know how deep the outer layer was, and remained there. 

	Feeling that she had perhaps demonstrated sufficient actual power, she decided it was time to try her hand at testing her versatility. Concentrating, she allowed the golden force to surround her, and lift her off the ground. Flying there, tendrils snaked out, each one wrapping around a different remnant of debris. Once several of them had been raised in the air, she set her mind to setting each one doing a different motion. As she did, she began to realize how it was much like moving her own body... rather difficult to move your right and left hands in opposite directions at the same time one’s feet were moving in the same direction.

	However, another beep interrupted her excercise. The Legion members had left the Control Room, and were on their way back down to the Testing Room. She would find out in mere moments if she passed, and had joined Legion, or if she would merely stay at the Hostel as an inhabitant, doing nothing but hiding from her memory of Jim. So she powered down, noting once more that her clothing wasn’t affected by her outbursts of energy.

	Once the door opened, she saw the most amazing thing. A look of awe on the faces of most of the people there. Darkenwulf and Black Tiger were much harder to read, but she thought that they, too were staring at her. Silverlance took a deep breath, and addressed her. “Amber... that was amazing. I think that you will make an incredible addition to the team with your solid-energy constructs. Have you decided what to call yourself?”

	She nodded. “I don’t really need a ‘secret ID’. Uncle Ryan is about the only family I have left right now, and my boyfriend... well, never mind. So, I guess, just call me Amber in or out of whatever costume I wear.”

	“Bossman, over here,” called out the incredibly massive Hauler. He had wrenched the crushed machinery out of the wall, and was examining the damage done. When Silverlance got to the far wall, he saw that the inner layer had been dented more than six inches in, more than it should have been according to Darkenwulf. “I think she’s more powerful than she knows.”

	Any further discussion was interrupted by the intercom, however. “Guys, I thnk you need to get up here right away!” came Rache’s voice from the reception desk.

*********************************************

	Darkenwulf sighed. “The marine was in very bad shape. He was dehydrated and malnourished, driven to the point of clinical exhaistion, and had several broken ribs and other assorted bones, mostly in his hands, all of which were very crudely reset. Some of the injuries were very recent, but some looked to be nearly a month old, and badly healed. He will recover, but I doubt he will ever regain the full use of his left hand, or the feeling in his right foot. All he could say before he passed out was something about a hidden base near here... and the Undead.”

	Jarhead whistled. “Wow, so he was stationed there. This is not good.”

	Silverlance turned. “What makes that hidden base, whatever it is, so much more dangerous than any other base?”

	Jarhead took a deep breath, making a decision, one that could possibly affect a whole lot more than just his standing with the Legion. “Well... that base is one of two that comprise the NORAD facility - the North American Air Defense command. Between those two bases, they control America’s nuclear arsenal.”

	Hauler whistled. “If that’s the case, then why haven’t they used the nukes, yet?”

	“They probably don’t know the codes.” Jarhead turned to Darkenwulf. “DW, you mind if I go in there? I served with him for a year and a half under Chesty Puller, and we both were there at the Cho-Zen Reservoir. I think he’d react a little better if the first face he saw when he woke up was a friendly one.”

	Rachel looked a little odd at that. “Waitaminute, honey, i didn’t know you were that old! You couldn’t have been more than twelve during Korea!”

	He grinned. “Just turned eighteen. And Capitriano, in there, was a corporal in my company. Different platoon, but same company.” He stepped up to the infirmary door and, at Darkenwulf’s nod, entered.

	Silverlance grumbled to himself. Noting their leader’s consternation, Black Tiger and Hauler excused themselves, as did Rachel, leaving the albino alone with the lupine alien. “Darkenwulf... this is a bad situation.”

	“Indeed,” began the dark-furred hero. “If they gain access to the...”

	“More than that,” Silverlance interrupted. “The military obviously would not be able to enter and reclaim that base. First of all, odds are they don’t even know it’s been taken yet. If it is so secret, there’s probably little contact with the outside world except for some sort of constant signal. As long as the Doom Guard kept sending that signal, the military would never know, until missiles started launching themselves, and death rained from the heavens. Second, even if they did know, anything the military would have powerful enough to harm the undead would likely destroy machinery crucial to US national defense, and with the tensions so high between the USSR and America right now, that’s something they can’t afford.”

	“Then we must do it,” proclaimed Darkenwulf.

	“It’s not as easy as that. While our intentions would be the best, we would then be guilty of tresspassing on Federal property, in an installation classified likely Top Secret. There would be numerous, severe repercussions, most of which would involve jail terms of various lengths.” He grew silent, then fixed his mouth into a tight-lipped grimace. “Let me know when the soldier...”

	“Marine, John. Jarhead reminds me constantly that soldiers are Army, but Marines are marines.” Darkenwulf tried to grin as he said this.

	Silverlance grinned himself. “Very well. Let me know when the Marine wakes up. I have some serious phone calls to make, and thinking to do.” He then turned, and walked down the hall, back to the stairs.

*********************************************

	Gunnery Sergeant James Capitriano was running. He knew it was just a dream, but he couldn’t help but run. They were still behind him, and were gaining. He didn’t know who ‘they’ were, because he couldn’t turn his head, but he had to keep running anyway. Soon enough, he ran into a wall. Except that walls don’t normally smell like a grave, or have arms to pick you up with. He saw a face leer at him, that cycled through each and every one of those creatures that had tormented him for the past several months. Unable to take any more, he inhaled to scream...

	... and found himself on a bed, with IV tubes and monitoring equipment. Some kind of hospital. Despite his attempt to avoid everyone, to try to seem okay despite his injuries and exhaustion, someone had found him and taken him to the hospital before he could find the Legion.

	Or had they? On retrospect, he remembered opening a huge, well-made door, and seeing the most gorgeous redhead he had ever seen behind a desk... then losing his balance, and being carried by a black-furred wolf. He tried to tell them what had happened, but the next thing he knew, he was dreaming.

	Carefully, Gunny Capitriano tried to sit up, but found his hands were in casts, and hanging from slings, as were his feet. He turned his head to the left, and there saw an old, familiar face. “Izzat... izzat PFC Ward?”

	Anthony grinned. “It’s me, Just you sit back, you made it to the Hostel.”

	The Gunny squinted. “Since when did you live in a Hostel?”

	Anthony sighed. “Ever since I could do this.” With a thought, his hair grew from a Marine Corps standard ‘high and tight’ haircut down to his wait in less than thirty seconds, then let it shrink back to the shorter haircut in a similar amount of time. “I’m a metahuman. No really effective powers, just the hair, but hey.”

	“Super... hair. Why does it not surprise me.” He tried to move his hand in the sling towards Anthony’s shoulder, and resist the pain the effort of speaking caused in his chest. “Ward, you gotta... you gotta tell ‘em. These freaks wiped nearly everyone else out. I looked in on where all the others were, an’ didn’t see anybody. I think all the other Marines, Soldiers, and Airmen there are dead.”

	“Just sit back and rest, Corporal... err, Gunny. We’ll take care of this, and how.”