It's a strange world out there. You've been out of it too long and you don't know just how strange it's gotten. 
- — Gloria Spaulding
The Wild Storm #16 is an issue of the series The Wild Storm (Volume 1) with a cover date of October, 2018. It was published on August 15, 2018.
Synopsis for "The Wild Storm - Chapter Sixteen"
In Jacob Marlowe's safehouse, Angie Spica has "found" a copy of the machine telepathy data the wild CAT brought back from the Hightower blacksite, and has used it to change how she interacts with her implanted technology. Unprepared, she wonders if she can use it to access the internet... and her technology responds by logging her onto the internet, visualised as a set off central hubs with individual nodes splitting off them in neat patterns.
Angie is amazed at this scene, but is even more surprised when she is greeted by Jenny Mei Sparks, who immediately imposes herself on Angie's electronic view and introduces herself, saying that she is the person who lives here.
The two introduce themselves - Angie as a woman who built a robot suit into herself and is on the run from IO, and who has been taken in by the tech mogul Jacob Marlowe, but is also stealing from him; and Jenny as a woman who is over a century old, not entirely human, distrusts IO and Skywatch, can live inside communications systems, and carries a lot of electricity.
Jenny decides that she likes Angie, and that if Angie ever needs to escape from Jacob Marlowe, she only needs to call, and Jenny will come and help - her and every friend she can bring. With a lazy wave, Jenny Mei Sparks vanishes - leaving Angie's world a little stranger and a little nicer.
Somewhere west of there, John Lynch parks his car in a driveway. He walks a path through rocky grounds in a red twilight, towards a minimalist two-story house with a hexagonal tower sticking out of it. Seeing the front door ajar, he remembers the danger he faced at his previous stops, so he pulls out his gun and moves carefully through the building.
He finds nothing on the ground floor, moving through a spacious and expertly-cleaned house, before checking in the hexagonal tower. And there, a floating woman with glowing red eyes advises him to put his gun away before she makes him have an accident. John recognises her at once: Gloria Spaulding, the woman he came here to see. He compliments her on her house and warns her that IO may be looking into Project Thunderbook, the program which gave her an alien genetic implant, and that she should be careful for a bit, but that considering the obvious costly nature of her house, the care she has taken to protect herself, and her untroubled status, he thinks she will be fine.
Curious, he asks her if she has had a child since they last saw, like Kwok, like Fairchild. Gloria admits she felt a great compulsion to have a baby, but once she had given birth, her normal detached nature reasserted itself, and she abandoned the child with Gloria's mother.
Gloria's detachment always served her well in her IO role as a black bag operative specialising in retrieving items or data. It served her well in the private sector, where her skills have earned her money, and the trust of "all kinds of interesting and spooky friends". But her Thunderbook implant, in addition to granting her superhuman power, also worked to calm her anxieties, to the point where now she feels... nothing, neither positive emotions or negative.
Gloria says that Lynch needs to leave, as she has to pack up and go into hiding, but in thanks for the warning, she leaves him with one in turn: Marc Slayton's implant can remember where it came from.
As the floor tiles starts to float loose, Lynch runs for the door. He makes it to his car as the house disassembles, and as he drives away, in the rearview mirror, he sees a feminine silhouette against the red moon, dragging the substance of the house into the twilight sky behind it...
In Jacob Marlowe's fortress warehouse, Angie Spica is asking Cole Cash for help, as he knows more about guns than she does. Cole wonders aloud what she would do with such information - whereupon, Angie uses her implants to create an object the same size and shape as a handgun bullet cartridge. Without Cole's training, she can only create prop. With Cole's help, she can safely pull apart bullets and guns, scan them all - and she will never be unarmed again!
Appearing in "The Wild Storm - Chapter Sixteen"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Villains:
- Marc Slayton (Mentioned only)
- IO (Mentioned only)
Other Characters:
- Jacob Marlowe (Mentioned only)
- Roxanne Spaulding (Mentioned only)
Locations:
- Brooklyn
- Jacob Marlowe's safehouse
- Jacob Marlowe's warehouse
- Gloria Spaulding's house
- The Internet
Items:
Vehicles:
Trivia
- The scientific formula on the cover - F = G(m1m2)/r² - is Newton's theory of universal gravitation.
See Also