Cloak & Dagger – Shades of Gray #1

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The story opens up in the Hollywood Hills of California, as Detective Brandon Ikeda is explaining the situation – about how they’ve tracked down Felicia Beyer, better known as “The Fix”, who used to run a Cartel funded super villain group back in the 1990’s called “The Drug Lords” to this mansion.

Dagger shows up and explains that she’s been called in to take down The Fix and her crew and that the other officers are her back up. She spots, what she thinks is Cloak in the shadows (who does a quick segment of spying on the people in the house by sticking to the shadows) – and she tells him to go away – as we learn that Cloak and Dagger have parted ways, based on Dagger’s request, so that she could be independent.

By the time she gets to The Fix, she finds her dead, her body seemingly drained somehow, and in a color of dark shade, as if she’d been drained by the Darkforce – and Dagger immediately believes that Cloak may have done this to The Fix.

Cloak in the meantime, teleports to Stark Colosseum where he meets with Officer Jagger – his assignment to keep an eye on the fans. Cloak spots someone in the line of people pick pocketing – and teleports, grabs them and places them in the Darkforce Dimension, before teleporting them into a nearby alleyway, and collecting the possessions the thief had stolen, before returning to Officer Jagger – who is surprised that Cloak let the thief go.

Back over with Dagger, she is working out when Detective Brandon Ikeda shows up demanding answers from her; realizing she had recognized something about Dagger knew more than she was saying about the condition of “The Fix’s” body. Dagger shoos him away, and tells him to not just come over like this – because they’re not friends or anything – and closes the door on him as he’s about to say something.

Dagger thinks back to a previous time with her and Ty (Cloak) – and a friend – and how they believed Cloak had accidentally killed their friend named Grey – leaving his body in that same, grey skinned, silent scream of death – and how they did the only thing they thought they could do – they ran away, leaving his body in the alleyway.

The scene shifts to a man inside his home; and it’s dark when a figure, wearing a dark hood appears behind him and siphons his life force – leaving behind a gray carcass, whose facial expression is frozen in a scream of terror. When his body is discovered, Detective Brandon Ikeda texts Dagger, explaining another body has been found and that he could really use her help on this.

The scene shifts to Cloak, in a tunnel, leaving a message for Dagger – explaining that he needs her to call him back – and that she’s been ghosting him for days now. Down the hall from him, Officer Jagger and her partner Tommy are running from a mob of fans, with the person they’re supposed to be protecting just behind Officer Jagger and Tommy. Cloak pulls all three into his cloak and teleports away from the mob of fans chasing them.

Back at Dagger’s apartment, she thinks back on how many times she’d had to use her powers of the Lightforce to feed Ty’s “hunger” that exists because of his connection to the Darkforce, and how he’s able to feed on a person’s life/light force to sedate that hunger; and Dagger begins to blame herself for the numerous deaths, believing it could indeed be Ty, because Dagger had demanded space away from him and now he had no way to feed the darkness in him.

Dagger thinks back to when she’d first met the friend, that she believed Tyrone may have accidentally murdered – the friend named Grey. She’d been on the train with Tyrone when a grey fog wrapped around him and as Dagger leapt into action, the fog dropped and Grey revealed himself. Tyrone explained he met Grey who helped him and kept him in check. She thought back to another time where they’d all been at Coney Island and Grey used his power to allow him to steal hot dogs, because they’d been hungry. He’d borrowed a woman’s camera from her purse to snap some photos before having Tyrone return it to her, and then showed them how to get free rides; and neither Cloak nor Dagger could tell if he was a genius, sociopath, or both. But like them – he had powers – was a runaway – and had no one else.

She tries to piece scattered memories; there’d been a fight, and Tyrone was caught in Grey’s fog, and the next thing she remembered was seeing Grey dead – and then they ran away.

When Dagger returns home to her apartment, she finds Cloak there who is furious that she’s been ghosting him and how the hunger of the Darkforce is real; she fills him with light, all the while yelling at him about his hunger, and how he’d killed Grey so many years ago, and now there’s all these bodies turning up in the same condition; Cloak is appalled that she’d think it’s him and teleports away in anger.

Dagger gets in her car and calls Detective Brandon Ikeda, leaving him a voicemail about how she’s seen this kind of thing before; unaware that at the LAPD, they all appear to be dead, except for Detective Brandon Ikeda, who has none other than Grey, in the same, grey skin, fanged mouth, lingering over him.