Rick Sanchez's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Rick Sanchez had built a portal gun that could reach an unmapped dimension, and it was dying in his hands. The device blinked green, then red, then went dark. His lab filled the shell of an old car front, its stainless steel body cracked open and stuffed with wires. He'd wanted this jump his whole life. No scientist had charted the place he aimed for. But the portal gun needed more power than his whole makeshift rig could give, and every test fizzled before the hole finished opening. "Morty!" Rick shouted. "Get in here." Morty stumbled through the door, sleeves pushed up, hands already black with grease. He was Rick's grandson, and he'd been fixing Rick's messes since he was old enough to hold a wrench. "I already told you," Morty said. "The battery bank can't take it. You keep frying the cells." "Then we stop using batteries." Rick grabbed a cable and yanked it loose. "We need a real source. Something that doesn't blink out halfway through a jump." Morty crossed his arms. "And where do we get that?" Rick pointed at the ceiling. A thick power line ran overhead, feeding the whole block. "Up there. We tap the grid. Direct." "That'll blow out half the town," Morty said. "Probably." Rick was already climbing. They worked for an hour. Morty held the ladder while Rick clamped a stolen coupler onto the main line. Sparks stung his hands. He fed the raw current straight into a capacitor the size of a trash can, then ran the output to the portal gun. The whole car front hummed. Lights across the room surged bright. "Charge it," Rick said. Morty flipped the switch. The capacitor whined. The portal gun's screen jumped from red to a steady, hard green. It had never held green before. "It's charging," Morty whispered. "Rick, it's actually charging." Rick watched the meter climb. Ten percent. Forty. Eighty. The portal gun grew warm, then hot, but it held. At last the screen showed full. A stable power source, locked in. The one thing that had beaten him for months was solved. Then the lights outside went dark. Every window on the block dropped black at once. The hum in the lab turned into a low, angry buzz. "You pulled too much," Morty said. "You blacked out the whole grid." A heavy knock hit the lab door. Not a neighbor's knock. Slow. Deliberate. Rick and Morty froze. The door swung open. A short figure stood in the dark hall, wrapped in a black cape and a pointed cowl, a yellow belt strapped at the waist. Bruce Bones. The man who watched over this district and answered every strange thing that happened in it. "You killed the power to four blocks," Bruce said, voice flat. "Hospitals included." Rick held up the glowing portal gun. It was charged. It was ready. And now the one person he couldn't outrun was standing in his only doorway.