Issue #5: Production Line

Solidream tries to help a Japanese mother and her child from being evicted; The Watcher assists an abused woman by taking over her husband; Hughes visits DeLight who is nearly killed by Fran's android; DeLight comes out of training and assaults the crippled genius; they discuss Solidream's disturbing display of powers; Melody Paine runs in saying she found the Circle of Thorn's Factory; the heroes watch the place until a door opens in the air and the cultists supply team exits; they trap them and find out how they planned to re-enter the Factory; just then the Watcher is magically forced into the body of Harris, the wife-beater he curbed; turns out his wife borrowed a mysticism book and bound the Watcher to her husband using a scarab, which she proceeded ingest so it cannot be taken; reluctantly the Watcher walks around as Harris; they pop into the factory to find a maze of halls and corridors swarming with CoT teenage initiates preparing for their Ascension; the Reborn spirits find them, one called Futility stuns them and before they know it they are transported to a location 3 miles above the sea; they manage to survive - Solidream shapeshifts into a living parachute and Hughes calls his ocean ancestor to form a slide for them, then takes them all home with his waterwalking spell; Mr. Burns appears and offers to tell them the new location of the teleporting Factory if they do a service for him - they must break into the launch site of a digger probe and place a crystal orb in it, so that the Truth's seers can find out what is under the city (the Riot); the launch site is tight with security; they manage to slip through Code Indigo check point in Rebecca Casey's van which has a secret compartment; hardly managing in each in his own way Hughes and DeLight meet in the digger ("oh, fuck off!") and place the orb inside but see that another infiltrator, a ninja, is just leaving; Solidream chases the ninja, which turns invisible and eventually manages to lose him at the subway, at the cost of her camo-suit; they venture again into the Factory disguised as teenagers using Hughe's Myst powers, unable to use their powers for it will break the spell; inside they find a society of teenagers struggling to rate high in the Reborns' eyes; the Reborns are training the teenagers' bodies and minds in a Spartan manner, preparing them to be vessels for a new spirit; the heroes are lost in this maze of human production and are unsure how to proceed.