<strong>Twenty four hours after the last time Carla Preston was online.</strong><br/><br/>An email popped up on the screen, a series of elaborate scripts setting into motion the 'easter egg' that had been seeded throughout the city's computer infrastructure.<br/><br/><em>If you are reading this, it is because of two things. You're someone with clout and at least enough interest in the attached file to look into stopping the people cited in the documents. Odds are you're a clean cop, reporter or someone with some serious weight in Gotham to do something about it.</em><br/><br/>The rest of the message cuts away as a customized virus hashes the email and attached documents before attempting to back trace the email.<br/><br/><strong>Gotham PD, Cyber-crimes</strong><br/><br/>"We got a partial list of folks Preston sent the email to. The usual suspects. The big mouths of the bunch we'll take care of. Connor we've already got leverage on and most of the rest can meet with 'accidents' before things get too chaotic. We got to the server and mag'ed it before the rest of the list. The press is being fed the story that it was some anarchist group trying to strike a blow for the cause of the week. We got three emails that we can't id. Old ones. Long dormant ones. Odds are their owners are dead and forgotten."<br/><br/><strong>Somewhere between the World of the Living and the Dead.</strong><br/><div class="floatleft">(http://www.bamkapow.com/ul/4625-death.jpg)</div>"This isn't what I expected.. Jan." The late Carla Preston said as she looked around curiously. She had encountered the girl almost five years ago, she was ..weird. Said that Carla was 'ahead of time' and that she hadn't expected to meet her for forty years. Something about a 'once in a century' deal that she had with the universe. They had walked around town, talked with a few very strange folk including a bag lady who had actually bowed to Jan. It had been the first sweet day that Carla had ever experienced since the first time she had shown her true intellect. It was her first semester of college and Jan had walked up and befriended her. A whirlwind romance of sorts, which was strange given that they hadn't even touched much.<br/><br/>She also recalled that at the end of the day, as the next day dawned, Jan died in her arms. It had been her first experience with death, and had driven her to look for ways to fix problems like Jan's defective heart. Now, she understood a lot of what Jan had said that bittersweet day. It was easier to see now that she was dead.<br/><br/>"But you're not quite dead." 'Jan' said with that coy teasing smile that she had given so many times that delightful perfect day. "You're at a crossroads Carla." She poured a cup and offered the heroine it with a gloved hand. She had warned Carla at the beginning when she 'awoke' at this 'boundary land' that she couldn't touch her now. Only at the final moment of life could she touch a person now, only in that one day a century could she touch and know all things mortal and human. "You stand at a rarely crossed by most folk. You get to choose."<br/><br/>"Choose?" Carla felt no pain, and was strangely at peace. She had survived for minutes in the fire before fading into this 'border land'. "What choice do I have?"<br/><br/>"Well," 'Jan' said as she got up and gestured, the sedate cafe they had met that day fading to show the cold metallic room of the morgue where she could make out the mangled remains of her body waiting for the overworked medical examiner to start on her. The hum of stasis fields keeping decay at bay was heard as she sipped her tea. It was disconcerting how fluid reality was. "You have always been.. special. You are an old soul, one that was reborn early. We weren't supposed to have breakfast at that cafe till 2085. You set all sorts of things on their ear when you were born and you just kept on. That kept on after our day together. You meddled in things that were best left alone." 'Jan' pointed to the body that lay between them.<br/><br/>"You're referring to the bio-mass. You mean the Hagen Cultures. It's not even alive. It was a pseudo-life form at best with mimetic abilities." Carla said as she looked over the ruined shell of her body. "It didn't even react to implantation."<br/><br/>"I think we can agree that life isn't as cut and dried as you think." 'Jan' said as she looked at Carla. "You aren't quite dead, that is in part to the the tissue you culled from the Hagen cultures. They are special, adaptive and insidous. You have a choice." 'Jan' pulled off a glove and held out a hand. "Take my hand and move on. We'll meet again in a century or you step into what is about to be born and accept the role you must play."<br/><br/>"What happens if I step into this role?" 'Jan' shrugged at Carla's question. "Or if I don't."<br/><br/>"You live on.. in a manner unlike anything you could conceive." She put the glove down and looked at the body between them. "If you don't... well, this new life form will emerge will you or not. Without you guiding it, it will kill and consume like a rampant virus. Who knows how far it will go without a guiding intellect?" 'Jan met Carla's eyes. "I promise, in the end, we'll be together again Carla..but you've got things left to do. It won't be pretty, it wouldn't be a kind fate you're stepping into but it needs to be done. I promise, in the end you will know peace. Till then, you have much left to do."<br/><br/><br/><br/><strong>Gotham Municipal Morgue.</strong><br/><div class="floatright">(http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/8632/200608-25227-lady-clayface_large.jpg)</div>The field shimmered as the body within started to convulse and change. The white pallor of body darkening as it started to melt and run, tendrils spread out from beneath the stasis field. The biological mass started to probe for more and more biological material to incorporate into itself. It hovered between the hungry beast consuming food and the rampant cancer it could become. Slowly as it fed, the mass retreated back to the lit stasis booth it had been born within. The strange form of life slowly grew and started to become aware as the biological processes of memory started to become assimilated. The chemical processes had changed over the twenty four hours, they were imperfect but the change from one form of life to one similar to that Matt Hagen had evolved into decades earlier. He had the luck to do it slowly and gradually, Carla Preston was growing into it in a much shorter period of time. One born of pain and fury as her last living memory replayed again and again.<br/><br/>Carla, or what remained of the woman who had been Carla Preston, sat up and looked around. She hungered. For more fuel to continue her new biology. For vengeance.<br/><br/>"Reyes..." She growled as she stood, her body taking on a rude approximation of the form she had once held. "Dominica Reyes..." That name replayed in her mind as she moved to the center of the morgue and slid into the drain. Within moments there was no clue of Carla Preston's body or that of the six she had assimilated.