He's preoccupied again. Manhunter flashed the message.
His mind still reeling from the Stone King's mental assault, Batman struggled to gather his thoughts. I
think I know how he's holding the others captive, but it's going to take your psionic powers to free
them.
The key was electromagnetism. Batman was certain of it He recalled a scientific journal he'd once
scanned, one of the hundreds of items he committed to memory every month.
Volunteers had lain on a gurney, which was rotated at different speeds within a potent electromagnetic
field. A surprising number of them, well over eighty percent, had reported undergoing almost exactly
the same experience: they hallucinated that they'd been abducted by aliens.
Not just any aliens. There were no postexperiment reports of cosmic octopi with dozens of wriggling
tentacles, no little green men with funny ray guns demanding, "Take me to your leader." Every
volunteer claimed to have met with the same race, the ones known as "the grays," small beings with
disproportionately large heads and black, almond-shaped eyes.
And not just ordinary hallucinations, either: the experimentees claimed the experience was real, as
real to them as their everyday lives.
For Batman, the important revelation was that finely tuned EM fields could interact with the subtle
fields produced by electrochemical activity in the brain. If it could be done with ordinary humans, it
could be done with super heroes.
Now, as the Stone King stood transfixed, his mind overwhelmed by the intensity of Peter Glaston's
emotion, his power over Batman and Manhunter decreased.
On my count. Batman thought. Three, two, one... go!
A snarl rose deep in J'onn J'onzz's throat. The anger aroused by that succession of hellish visions
poured out of him. He flexed his arms, bringing all of his fantastic extraterrestrial strength to bear on
the rock that held him.
It gave with a loud crack, and his arms pulled suddenly free.
Batman gestured toward their teammates. I think the Stone King's using electromagnetism to hold
them.
I'll let them know what's going on, J'onn told him. Green Lantern first. He'll be able to will his ring
to alter the EM patterns in his brain.
Manhunter converted his thoughts into a pulse, explanation nested within explanation like a set of
carved Russian dolls. He sent the pulse hurtling directly into Green Lantern's mind.
There was no response.
Again, J'onn sent the thought, shrinking it to the tiniest quantum of information he could manage. Was
that a flicker? A neuron in Lantern's mind firing briefly?
Desperately, he sent the thought a third time, already beginning to feel the strain. Unless it was with
the voluntary cooperation of the recipient, telepathy on this scale could be debilitating to him.
For the briefest of moments, nothing. Then Green Lantern's eyes opened, blinking in the cavern's
flickering light.
J'onn's thought package had told him everything, from the possession of Peter Glaston to the present
situation in the burial chamber. Shrugging off the memory of the agony that had consumed him for so
long, Green Lantern grinned and gave a thumbs-up sign to his relieved rescuers.
Thanks, guys! That creep was really giving me a hard time!
Lantern's eyes narrowed in concentration, and a thin, intense beam of emerald energy lanced from his
ring. Silently, it sliced into the granite that was solidified around the Flash and Wonder Woman. In a
silent puff of thick green smoke, the rock dissipated.
Free now, the duo lay unmoving next to Superman on the chamber floor. The emerald beam briefly
reached out to touch their foreheads, subtly negating the electromagnetic waves that held them in
thrall.