[ Sunday, June 20, 2004 ]
Book Two: Day-in Day-out
Chapter One: Thursday’s Child
Gabe awakens in a world of gray, where tiny children are piled along the hillside. He goes into a nearby city, Detroit, where a second sun seems frozen among the skyscrapers and discovers the only person who moves in this time-locked moment. She’s the source of the time freeze, which may sustain him while he tries
to figure out his next step. He names the mute girl “Daisy,” after the pattern on her dress and despite the warnings of his doppelgangers. He sets about helping her remove people from the blast radius of a tactical nuclear warhead that is frozen in the moment of its explosion. In Crux, we see Gabrielle detect
the frozen time bubble and dispatch soldiers.
Chapter Two: Friday on My Mind
Years pass. Gabriel helps Daisy remove every person they can carry, teaches her sign language, reads to her, researches diseases, helps her through the onset of puberty. Finds the heroes of this world, frozen in place as they rushed to stop the horror. He imagines how Daisy’s power would have served him in past adventures, such as the time he had to kill the Czar’s family. He knows an ending is approaching. Knows she is in love with him. Gabrielle’s soldiers arrive and those who survive passage through the bubble manage to capture Daisy while Gabriel is away.
Chapter Three: Drive-in Saturday (Panic in Detroit)
One of the doppelgangers tells the story of his own Daisy as they make Daisy take them to Gabriel. Knowing he’s out in the hills, she leads them to the epicenter of the blast. (In between panels, we see the moments leading up to Daisy’s scream that froze
time — the actions of this world’s super heroes attempting to disarm the bomb or stop the terrorists.) Another of the men tells his version of the story while a third wonders if he could recapture his memories of Daisy if he killed the others and fled
through time with her. (Events between panels reach the moment when Daisy stopped time.) Just then, Daisy speaks, enveloping herself and the soldiers in the explosion, setting time free, slingshotting Gabe into the flux with an overcharged leap.
Interlude: Conversation Piece
A standalone tale about an objet d’art in the Museum of Crux: A mask that had belonged to a man who lurked in shadows in Paris of the 19th century. No mere Phantom, he was a dark avenger of the night. Gabriel lost the mask to a cat burglar, regained it, lost it again, then traveled the Flux to take it from her, the cat burglar/actress who had loved the phantom, as she lay dying of old age.
Unknown [5:14 PM]
