What's Gone Before: While working late, the Silhouette apprehends her own boss stealing something from his office, but he promptly falls into a strange coma when captured. Meanwhile, the Man-Fly, while staking out a mysterious meeting of local mobsters, finds Mr. Amazing inexplicably working for the wrong side...

In the shadows coiled among the rafters, the Man-Fly stared at the scene playing out on the warehouse floor below. The sight of the valorous Mr. Amazing standing before assorted racketeers, apparently allied with some as-yet-unseen mobster with delusions of becoming king of the underworld, seemed beyond belief.

Nor was he alone in his bemusement.

"Hey, that's Mr. Amazing!" one of the gunsels muttered. "It's a trap!" Pistols rustled free of pinstripe jackets, flaps of sopping wet overcoats were flung aside and Tommy guns glinted grotesquely in the bald light of the overhead bulbs.

"Gentlemen, please," intoned the man who had summoned them here, still hidden in shadow. "Mr. Amazing comes not as an apprehender, but as an ally. Is that not correct?"

"Right," said Mr. Amazing, standing brazenly before the heavily armed audience, dressed in his silk swashbuckler's shirt and jodhpurs, a mask covering the upper half of his face, a handcrafted scarf around his neck. He struck the kind of pose you would expect, hands on hips, looking proud, indomitable. The only incongruity being, he was striking it for the wrong side.

The Man-Fly pulled silently back from the edge of the catwalk. Obviously Mr. Amazing was pulling a con. Either the man in the shadows was working with him, or he was pulling a number on them all. Either way, the Man-Fly realized it would be unwise to interfere. Not knowing the shot could get them both killed. Beneath his grotesque fly-headed mask, he pursed his lips. There had been a time when a man could operate in the dark corners of society with reasonable alacrity -- now there were so many costumed adventurers, they were stumbling into each other's operations.

Below, Mr. Amazing continued to address the assembled racketeers. "In a few days, the whole city will be ours -- no one can stop us. Not the police, not the government --"

"What about your costumed buddies?" called someone.

"No, not even the Fellowship of the Midnight Sons will be able to resist us. That's why I'm here -- I know when I'm licked. You should, too. You can either join us of your own free will...or be ground under."

"Say, wait a minute," mumbled one of the hoods. "This isn't some kind o' Nazi rat scheme, is it? Y'ain't working for them Jerries, are you?"

"No," purred the voice from the shadows. "This is an entirely Canadian takeover. Well, maybe not entirely," he chuckled, as though enjoying a private joke, "but the Axis powers have no involvement whatsoever. First I will assume control of the underworld...then the city itself."

This sounded intriguing to the masked man up on the catwalk. Whatever was transpiring sounded big, and frankly very ominous. He wondered if there would be some way to get Mr. Amazing alone, to learn what, exactly was going on.

Such considerations became secondary as a far door burst inward and hoods obviously stationed as look-outs came tumbling inside like dirty ten pins.

The Man-Fly cursed under his breath. This was getting ridiculous, he thought.

He recognized the young woman silhouetted by the rain and moonlight, gleaming from head to toe in silver, as the robot lady, Roberta. At her side, a man sheathed entirely in black cloth, save for the white fabric of his arms, was the speedster known as Blacklight. A quick glance at Mr. Amazing's shocked expression informed him this intrusion was not part of the man's plan.

"Well, well," said Blacklight. "I was just coming for 'Red' Duffy, wanted by the police from here to Saskatoon. But it seems we've stumbled onto a regular convention of nogoodniks. I don't suppose you'd be willing to put down your weapons and surrender?"

The answer was a deafening thunder of pistol and machine gun fire that was enough to momentarily quell the fury of the storm raging outside by comparison. Blacklight lived up to his namesake and was instantly a streak of black blurring across the room. Roberta, largely impervious to small arms fire, strode forward determinedly. The Man-Fly leapt over the railing on to a pile of stacked crates, then slid from that to the floor.

Blacklight was too impetuous by far, he thought grimly, while Roberta was too guileless, obviously just following Blacklight's lead. Neither of them had noticed Mr. Amazing, nor realized they were blundering into his operation. Or that their actions were liable to get Mr. Amazing killed, turning the so-called "Spirit of Decency" into a literal spirit. Mr. Amazing was positioned in the centre of the room, making him an easy target for any trigger-happy goon who would easily assume this was all part of a joint attack by the costumed adventurers.

Man-Fly sent one goon to the floor with a karate chop, then leapt into the light, brandishing his dart gun. The sight of him, and his grotesque mask, had the desired effect. One hood, whirling about, ready to fire at anything that moved, froze, his eyes growing wide with horror at the nightmare visage of the Man-Fly exploding unexpectedly from the shadows. A sleeping dart put him out of harm's way.

Blacklight and Roberta seemed to be doing all right, so he turned his attention to the real star of the show -- the mysterious voice in the shadows. Mr. Amazing seemed frozen in mid-stance, uncharacteristically at a loss as to what to do.

The Man-Fly experienced no such confusion. He started past the masked man, flickers of movement in the darkness betraying his quarry trying to escape. Suddenly powerful arms closed about him and he was tackled into some wooden crates.

"Whouff!" he gasped. "What the Hell?" He kneed his assailant, then slipped free of the embrace, ready to deliver a counter blow. He froze, fist pulled back, ready to be released.

His attacker was Mr. Amazing.

The Man-Fly nodded and muttered, "If that's the plan, O.K. Give the word and I'll go down, but frankly, I think your cover's blow -- uh!" His head snapped back and the tendons in his neck screamed in silent agony. He careened off the crates and whirled dizzily as Mr. Amazing made to slug him again. Instinctively, he blocked the blow with his forearm. "Christ! I said I'll take a dive. You don't have to --" He ducked as Mr. Amazing swung again, not pulling his punch in the slightest. Dumbly, the truth began to dawn on him. "You are serious, aren't you?"

"My master must be protected," said Mr. Amazing, coming at him again.

The Man-Fly ducked, and delivered a weak blow to Mr. Amazing's stomach. This was ridiculous, he realized as he spun away, trying to get some breathing room between them. He had a sneaking suspicion they were pretty evenly matched at the best of times, but he was subconsciously reluctant to hurt a man who had saved his life and who, it seemed, was not himself.

Whereas Mr. Amazing seemed out for blood...

The brick building was very old, perhaps dating back to the days when Toronto was simply known as York. It had once been a factory, but subsequent owners had torn out the insides and reconverted it into a three-story office building -- a rather low rent one at that. The first two floors were occupied by various small firms, offering legal advice, insurance, and even printing services. The third floor seemed singularly unpopular, only one of the offices -- albeit, the largest -- appearing to have been rented, and that only in the last few months.

This lack of occupancy was a lie, of course. The entire third floor was leased out, all to the very company whose name was stencilled upon the door to the one office obviously in use: The Trans-Dominion Shipping Company.

To its first and second floor neighbours, the Trans-Dominion Shipping Company was something of a mystery, and a source of idle gossip during slow breaks. What exactly it shipped was not clear, nor how it made its money, since its employees kept curiously odd hours. Whole days would crawl sluggishly past without hide nor hair of anyone going up to or down from the third floor. Then when people did show up, they were as likely to be heard rattling up the fire escape as using the elevator or the inside stairs, as if not wanting to be seen. Some gossips reported that the company seemed to be most active at night. When all the other offices were dark, its lights would be peeking out from the edges of the blackout curtains.

Some speculated that the Trans-Dominion Shipping Company was really a cover for a spy organization, but whether ours or theirs, no one knew.

Were any of its neighbours to have seen inside the company offices, they would have been even more amazed. Once you made it past the small, non-descript receptionist's office placed there in the unlikely event of visitors, the main body of the offices bore little resemblance to environs suited to workaday drudgery. Instead, the large main room had more the appearance of a gentlemen's club. There were couches and plush chairs and a well-stocked bar; a billards table in one corner. Against one wall was a beautiful mohogany bookcase stocked, not just with obligatory classics such as Great Expectations and The Last Man, but more curious tomes such as The Criminologist's Handbook and Exotic Poisons of the Far-East. The latest copies of Maclean's and Saturday Night were laid out on side tables.

The Trans-Dominion Shipping Company was, as its neighbours surmised, a front, but not for anything as prosaic as foreign spies. It served as the meeting place for an eclectic group of adventurers who had come to call themselves the Fellowship of the Midnight Sons.

Dennis Welbeck, dressed elegantly in a smoking jacket and black silk slacks, handed a shot of brandy to Dahlia Messensinger -- the Silhouette -- who was drenched almost literally to the bone and shivering slightly, a Hudson's Bay blanket wrapped around her for warmth. Curled in a big arm chair, she accepted the drink gratefully. Welbeck smoothed his pencil thin mustache with a slight flourish, a gesture he fell back on when thinking, and regarded his lovely companion. He had received her call earlier that evening and had arrived to find her waiting for him on the curb of a downtown street decked out surprisingly -- and he had to acknowledge, rather fetchingly -- in her underwear, soaking wet in the fury of the evening's storm.

Slowly, he turned his attention to their charge. Sprawled across the coffee table was a middle-aged man named, according to Dahlia, Bartholomew Mortimer. He was a middle manager at the Silver and Gold Insurance Company, where Dahlia was currently employed. She had apprehended the man secreting something -- she didn't know what -- from his own office and passing it on to someone else -- she didn't know who. Things took a bizarre turn, though, when Mr. Mortimer attempted to assault her. He was easily defeated by the more skilled Silhouette, and it was then that he promptly fell into a kind of waking coma.

Dennis leaned over the man again and snapped his fingers before his wide-open eyes. Mortimer blinked, but did nothing else. His breathing seemed normal and Dahlia assured him the man had suffered no head trauma, at least not as a result of her doing. It bewildered him.

He straightened and looked at the young woman. "Well, I think we've waited as long as we can. I suppose none of the others received my messages. We could just hand him over to the police, but I think you were right to call me instead. Granted, I had to miss a late meeting of the museum's Board of Directors -- a fascinating exhibit of antiquities was being shipped in-" His eyes started to twinkle at the thought, then he caught the Silhouette's stern gaze, and smiled apologetically. "But this is more vital, of course. And it definitely smacks a little of the extra-ordinary...which is rather more our idiom than that of the local constabulary. At this point, I think our best course is for me to employ my abilities to enter others' dreams and see if I can contact your friend's subconscious."

"Will it work? I mean, it's not clear he's asleep -- it's not clear what he is."

"Well," he admitted, once more brushing his mustache, "that's why I had rather hoped for a consultation with some of the others before endeavoring such an enterprise. But the longer Mr. Mortimer stays this way, I'm sure the worse it is for him, and we're getting no closer to knowing what's going on-"

"Join the club."

Dennis Welbeck and Dahlia turned as the door opened and Blacklight and Roberta entered. In Roberta's arms was the limp form of Mr. Amazing.

"What's happened?" Dennis asked, striding forward.

Roberta's silver, but flawlessly human features, were contorted with worry. "We don't know. We're not sure what's wrong with him. You've got to help us."

Dennis knew that Roberta felt especially close to Mr. Amazing -- he was, essentially, the first person to have befriended her outside of her father/creator. What he didn't understand was the failure to diagnose his affliction. He seemed to recall that Blacklight was a medical student, and therefore more likely to be able to deduce the man's problem than he. "What happened? Did he collapse?"

Blacklight shrugged. "Only after the Man-Fly knocked a pile of crates on him."

"What?" The Silhouette rose.

"The problem with Mr. Amazing," intoned a deep voice from the doorway, "is not with what knocked him out, it's with what will happen when he awakens."

Dennis peered past them to see a man in a trenchcoat and an ugly fly-head mask standing apart from the others, lurking in the twilight between the unlit receptionist's office and the main room. "I didn't see you there, Artie. What happened?"

"Mr. Amazing's changed sides."

"No," interrupted Roberta, sharply. "I do not believe it."

The robot woman started to lay him out on the billards table, but Dennis leaped forward. "For God's sake...put something under him!"

The Silhouette gave him a dirty look, but whipped off her blanket and laid it out over the delicate green felt of the table. Gingerly, Roberta laid her unconscious charge upon the blanket. The Silhouette stood there a moment, hands on the swells of her hips, then looked over at the three men, starting as she realized they were staring at her. She looked down at herself, suddenly remembering she was still in her underwear, then she looked back up.

"Put your eyes back in your heads, for crying out loud. I think I've got a spare costume in the next room." She sauntered off and Dennis Welbeck looked around blankly.

"Uh, someone was saying?"

"I do not believe Mr. Amazing would willingly work for a bad man," opined Roberta, as if daring the others to argue.

"I do not like it anymore than you," said the Man-Fly, "but you were not fighting him."

"Did he seem...odd, by any chance? As if he wasn't entirely there?"

The weird, multi-faceted eyes of the Man-Fly regarded Dennis Welbeck for a moment. "I suppose. A little."

"I'm afraid the problem may be more widespread than you realize, then." Welbeck gestured to the prone figure of Bartholomew Mortimer who, up until this point, had remained unnoticed by the newcomers. "The Silhouette and I were just puzzling over another fellow caught in the act while behaving somewhat out of character. But I'm damned if I know the reason."

"I think we can help you there. Unfortunately, you won't like the answer."

All four whirled toward the voice coming from the far end of the room, by the large windows.

"And who the blazes are you?" demanded Blacklight.

Next: So what's going on? Find out next week...but you probably won't like it any better than our heroes. (And just who the blazes are the newcomers?)

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