The abandoned radio tower atop the dilapidated St. Jude Hotel was a rusting skeleton against the New York skyline, a relic of an analog age left to rot in a digital world. For Aaron, it was a throne room. He stood amidst the dust and pigeon feathers of the control booth, the broken glass of the windows framing the Empire State Building like a jagged postcard. He checked the pocket watch he had manifested from shadow-matter; the hands were ticking relentlessly toward the zenith.
Eleven fifty-nine.
He adjusted his crimson bowtie and rolled his neck. The static in his mind was a constant companion now, a low-level hum of white noise that surged whenever he drew upon the eldritch energies of the Radio Demon. To combat the rising dissonance, he sank into a relaxed *Wuji* stance, feet shoulder-width apart, knees soft. He breathed in the scent of ozone and old copper, visualizing his *Chi* circulating through the meridians of his shadowed soul, suppressing the chaotic hunger that nipped at his psyche.
"Showtime," he whispered.
As the second hand struck the twelve, Aaron slammed the butt of his microphone staff onto the floorboards.
Instantaneously, the world's audio frequencies belonged to him. In Tokyo, commuters on the subway clutched their ears as their headphones shrieked. In London, the BBC's live broadcast was severed by a sharp, high-pitched whine. In Times Square, the massive screens froze, replaced by a pulsating green waveform that danced to a rhythm only it could hear.
"*Salutations, listeners from the Atlantic to the Pacific and every dreadful little corner in between!*" Aaron's voice boomed globally, transcending language barriers through a psychic translation filter layered within the signal. It carried the warmth of a vacuum tube amplifier and the menace of a growling predator. "*This is The Broadcaster, coming to you live at high noon! Put down your sandwiches and lend me your ears, for I have a little game to play. Let's call it... The Thirty for Thirty!*"
He didn't wait for the panic to set in. He unleashed the divination, a cascade of future-sight that flooded his mind with fragmented images. He grabbed them, sorting the chaotic potentiality of the universe into linear certainty.
"*Number one!*" he announced, his voice crackling with delight. "*In exactly three minutes, the Nasdaq will dip by forty-two points due to a spilled cup of tea in a server room in Jersey. Number two! A Mrs. Higgins in Idaho is about to find her lost cat, Mr. Whiskers, inside the engine block of her neighbor's Chevy. Don't start the car, darling!*"
He rattled them off with the speed of a carnival barker, his voice echoing from car radios, elevators, and smartphones.
"*Number twelve! The heavyweights in Metropolis are going to have a very embarrassing wardrobe malfunction during the parade. Number fifteen! A bank robbery on Fifth Avenue will be foiled by a slipping banana peel—cliché, I know, but fate has a sense of humor!*"
The world listened, paralyzed by the audacity of the intrusion. Intelligence agencies scrambled, tracing the signal to everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. Aaron spun in the dusty booth, his shadow stretching and contorting independently of his body, conducting an invisible orchestra.
"*Number twenty-nine! Tony Stark is currently deciding to have a cheeseburger for lunch instead of the salad Pepper Potts packed for him. Tsk, tsk, Anthony. Think of the cholesterol!*"
He paused for effect, leaning into the phantom microphone. "*And finally, Number thirty. Rain. In the Atacama Desert. At 11:00 PM tonight. Do bring an umbrella.*"
With a snap of his fingers, the connection severed. The feedback loop vanished, leaving billions of people in stunned silence.
Aaron exhaled, the green glow around his antlers—which he kept glamoured most of the time invisibly—fading. The expenditure of such precise divination was taxing. The hunger roared, demanding sustenance, demanding fear. He quickly transitioned into a Tai Chi form, 'Grasping the Sparrow's Tail,' moving with fluid, deliberate grace. The physical discipline forced the metaphysical beast back into its cage. He wasn't just a demon; he was a master of his own frequency.
The rest of the day was a blur of vindication. Aaron didn't stay in the tower. He tested his mobility, melting into the shadows of the ventilation shaft and re-emerging in the dark alley behind a bakery in Queens. He bought a croissant with cash pilfered from a lost wallet he'd 'divined' earlier, eating it while watching a store window TV.
The news was in pandemonium. The Nasdaq had dropped exactly forty-two points. A viral video of a bank robber slipping on a fruit peel was trending globally. Even Stark had tweeted a picture of a half-eaten cheeseburger with the caption: *Who is this guy?*
Aaron chuckled, dusting crumbs from his pinstripes. "Publicity is the lifeblood of the artist."
He spent the afternoon shadow-jumping, a method of travel that felt like stepping through a pool of cold, viscous ink. He moved from the shadows of a Gotham gargoyle, where he briefly sensed the brooding presence of the Bat, to the bright, sun-bleached corners of a Metropolis park. He was testing his range, his ability to interface with the global grid. He was a ghost in the machine, a glitch in reality.
As evening fell, he caught a specific frequency drifting on the encrypted bands of the scientific community. It was faint, obscured by static, but to his ears, it was as loud as a shout.
"*...atmospheric disturbances are off the charts, Jane. It's like an Einstein-Rosen Bridge is trying to form...*"
Aaron's ears perked up. The signal was coming from New Mexico. He cross-referenced it with his knowledge of the timeline. The fusion universe meant timelines were messy, but the arrival of the Asgardian Prince was a fixed point he had been anticipating.
"A storm in the desert," Aaron mused, his eyes flashing with radio dials. "Now that is a broadcast worth interrupting."
He sought the deepest shadow in the alley, a pool of darkness cast by a dumpster. He stepped into it, not emerging in another borough, but pushing his will across the continental divide. The transit was disorienting, a swirl of void and whispers, stretching his essence thin until he coalesced thousands of miles away.
The air was dry and cool. The smell of sagebrush replaced the exhaust fumes of New York. Aaron stepped out of the shadow of a roadside billboard near a place called Puente Antiguo. The night sky here was vast, a canvas of stars uninterrupted by city lights.
He checked his pocket watch. 10:59 PM.
He turned his gaze south, toward the Atacama, tuning his senses. Sure enough, reports were flooding in of a freak downpour in the driest place on Earth. Prophecy number thirty: confirmed.
But Aaron's attention was now fixed on the road ahead. A beat-up Pinzgauer van was parked on the ridge, three figures silhouetted against the starlight, their instruments pointed at the sky. He recognized the frenetic energy of Jane Foster even from this distance.
Aaron smoothed his suit and tapped his cane on the desert floor. The sky above began to swirl, clouds forming in concentric circles that defied meteorological logic. A Bifrost event.
"Excellent," Aaron purred, his voice blending with the rising wind. He melded back into the darkness of a large rock formation, content to be the audience for now. The curtain was rising on Act One of the god-drama, and the Broadcaster had a front-row seat.