Agartha - October 26, 2012

"What the- you're-" Michael Ford stammered, his thoughts racing but failing to explain the sight before him.

"Here to help," Abraham Lincoln finished. Next to Lincoln stood George Washington; behind them, a small cadre of armored Destroyers had just stepped out of the conduit, followed by Andromeda. "Where is Prometheus?" Lincoln growled.

"Whoa, slow down," Ford replied, still reeling from seeing half of Mount Rushmore in the flesh. "What did Prometheus do to you, anyway? You and Andromeda have it out for the guy."

"What he did," Andromeda snarled, "is betray our purpose-our trust. Our good faith." She touched Ford's shoulder, then paused. Her eyes shot to his. "He was in your armor, wasn't he? You've absorbed his power. I can tell."

Ford glanced at the Destroyers, each now eying him with suspicion, even hate. He didn't want to be caught with his loyalties in the wrong place. Not again. "Before we talk about Prometheus, I want to know this conversation doesn't end with my skull in pieces," he said.

She laughed. "Michael Ford, if the other Destroyers and I wished you dead, there would be no conversation. Prometheus chose good stock for his Destroyers. You meant well, I'm sure. You were misled. We were all misled."

"By Prometheus?"

"Who else?" Andromeda let a wry smile creep across her lips. "When he created the first Destroyers, and me as their aide, he told us we would defend humanity from his kind, the Annunaki-progenitors."

Ford was surprised to hear such cynicism in her words. Hadn't he destroyed the progenitors? Wasn't that Prometheus's goal?

"When you absorbed their power, Michael Ford, and called to Tiamat, you brought the Annunaki closer to our home," she said. "It is what the Pathfinder was sent to do, but ultimately rebelled against."

Ford removed his helmet and ran a hand through damp brown hair. Suddenly he was aware of the sweat blanketing his entire body. "If Adams-er, Enlil-was the good guy, then why did he leave me to die at the Washington Memorial?"

"Enlil had great foresight." George Washington spoke now. "He could have defeated me during or even before my presidency, but he knew it wouldn't help his cause. I morphed into one of his biggest human supporters, albeit almost a hundred years later."

"It is likely that Enlil knew you would summon Tiamat," Lincoln said. "And that you were not ready to embrace his ideals. Time being short, he tried to keep Prometheus from you as best he could."

"Damned if stopping an assassination attempt qualifies me for this," Ford murmured.

"Destroyers are hand-picked by Prometheus. Since he chose you, you're qualified," Lincoln said. "But to answer your question, it's hard to say, of course, what really drew the Annunaki to you. Perhaps it was your marksmanship. Perhaps it was a chicken-and-egg scenario where they each perceived trace hints of the other's desire for you, and through a sort of spontaneous combustion you became desirable for no good reason."

Ford slumped. He'd give anything to shirk the stifling Destroyer suit and return to the D.C. suburbs, where alien invasions were neatly confined to fiction and UFO wackjobs. Well, come to think of it...

"There's no turning back now," Washington added. "You're a Destroyer. The one who's contacted Tiamat, no less."

"What we need to know, Michael Ford, is whether you will fight with us," Andromeda said.

"I'm zero-for-two on picking sides in alien invasions. Why should I believe you?"

She smiled again. "Because the first two sides were the aliens."

He thought about it. "I'll join you," Ford answered. "And I can't wait to hear how the nine of us are going to stop an Annunaki army."

"With the help of our half-bretheren." John F. Kennedy stepped around Washington and smiled at Ford. "Do you remember, Mr. Ford, what the Free Drudge called you?"

"'The Liberator,'" he breathed.

"Some Drudge already pledge loyalty toward you," Kennedy grinned.

"The others," Washington began, "Will be greatly persuaded by the fact that you have usurped not just their creator, Prometheus, but their leader, Adams."

Ford wasn't fully convinced. The newly-freed Drudge might be unreceptive to his command-or worse.

"Destroyers, look at this," Andromeda gestured to a live feed of Washington, D.C., routed to her holographic screen via Atlantis. Drudge were assembling in the subway tunnels of the now-deserted city. Free Drudge congregated at the focal point, but Adams's Drudge comprised the bulk of the crowd. They didn't fight; they listened. On top of a burnt out rail car, a drone in bright scarlet overseer armor stoked the crowd with a speech. Based on the number of spikes protruding from his neck and shoulders, he was a well-decorated leader, or maybe even the commander in chief. He was-

"Thex!" Ford exclaimed. "I freed him from a Trust interrogation. We've been allies ever since."

Lincoln clapped Ford on the back. "Let's see how the Drudge greet their Liberator."