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#4
MAR 11 |
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“Pains and Losses”
“I want to know, right fucking now, whose brilliant fucking idea it was to launch an attack beneath the fucking ocean with only a half-assed plan to stop a goddamned megalomaniac who was just days away from turning the world into an interstellar army of fucking Lava Men without calling in the proper authorities or any reasonable fucking backup! And this happening just hours after the same brilliant fucking geniuses had destroyed the docks of Los Angeles without sticking around to give anyone any sort of fucking idea of what happened or why!”
The over-excited speaker was standing before a table on the floating science lab named Hydrobase II, his bowler cap clinging to his slightly-graying red hair by a thread as the bristling mustache on the face of Corporal Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader ‘Dum Dum’ Dugan of S.H.I.E.L.D., long the right-hand man of Nick Fury stretching back as far as the Howling Commandos of WWII. Kept young by an unknown but likely similar process to that of Fury, he had decades of experience as a military man and the overseer of a world overrun by super-humans, the latter of which had begun deteriorating his patience in recent years.
A perfect example of which raised his arm, one still riddled with IV needles and tubes to the hanging medical bags on the rack beside him, and John ‘Jack’ Walker, also known as the USAgent, said, “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth, Dummy-Dums?”
“I am not putting up with your bullshit, Walker!” Dugan roared, his hands clenching on the tabletop. “I want answers and I want them fucking yesterday!”
“Ok, ok…” Jack said, getting to his feet as well, wincing as his body protested. Super-human muscles, durability and rugged good looks being what they were, he still felt like shit after going three rounds with the Master of the World and getting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from Hercules. “I’ll give it to you straight…go fuck yer mother, how do you like that for an answer?”
Dugan’s teeth slammed together like a shotgun blast and he took a step to his left to move around the table to where Walker stood, but was stopped by a gentle hand on his chest from Dr. Walter Newell. “Now, Corporal Dugan, let’s all remember that USAgent is under medical treatment right now…he’s not thinking clearly, as usual…and that this is NOT a military facility. So let’s all be calm, shall we?”
“Americans…can they never just get to the point without all the posturing?” asked Lady Jacqueline Cricton, the superheroine known as Spitfire, said to the large man sitting next to her.
Hercules nodded sagely. “Aye. Complete brutes.”
“Oh, go fuck your step-mother…” USAgent said and then smiled. “Wait, you’ve thought about that, haven’t you?”
“What?!” Hercules said, looking elsewhere. “I have never…”
“Enough nonsense,” James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes said from his seat, where he was rubbing his temples. “Look, Dugan, I think I might have misrepresented things back on the dock. Here’s what happened from my point of view…”
For the next twenty minutes, Rhodey went through everything that had happened since he had first gotten the signal while working on his War Machine armor at the Works facility, including the battle on the docks, the gathering of heroes and the attack on the Master of the World, which resulted in the salvation of Jim Hammond, the original Human Torch, and the capture of the Master of the World, who currently was in Hydrobase II’s sickbay, along with the Torch.
“We had limited information and impossible odds, but we saved the day,” Rhodes finished.
“You know, like Avengers do,” Walker said, smirking. “At least those on the West Coast…”
“Stow the smart talk,” Dugan said, chewing on his bottom lip. After a long moment he sighed. “Fine, all right, you did good, if your story holds up. But what about Hammond? Can he be fixed?”
“We…don’t know,” Rhodes said, spreading his hands. “Whatever the Master did to him, it was in his efforts to make his ‘lava men generator’ work, and that’s still unknown to us. We have been putting him back together based on designs that Henry Pym and the Vision drew up back in the original WCA days, but it’s a crapshoot. Given his age and his powers…I don’t know if we can ever put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”
“How can you say that?!” Spitfire shouted, indignant but somehow forced.
“Fair maiden,” Hercules said in a comforting voice, “he was a true warrior born.”
Spitfire rolled her eyes, miserable. “That’s a wonderful comfort.”
“So…are we done here?” asked one of the two individuals present who had not spoken thus far. Namorita Prentiss sat next to her friend, Elvin Haliday, and had begun to tap her foot impatiently against the floor, making a slight indention in the thick metal floor with her impatience. “I am sort of still responsible for Atlantis with my cousin off-world. Andromeda cannot long be trusted on her own.”
“Nita,” Elvin, her former New Warrior teammate also known as Rage, said softly, “you can’t go. There’s something wrong with you. Kymaera…”
Namorita’s long blonde hair swirled around her head as she speared him with a harsh look. “That is my concern. Stay out of it.”
“Well I, for one won’t be following that rubbish,” Spitfire said, rolling her eyes. “We’re your friends and I, for one, love you, so I will bloodly well not be staying out of anything.”
“Nor will Diane or I,” Walter said sternly, talking to the girl who was like a daughter to him. “Stay or go, I cannot stop you, but I plead with you to stay a little longer while we run more tests.”
Namorita looked at those who had spoken and at the others around the table, gauging their faces. Rhodey looked concerned and Walker was nodding, but his eyes were still locked onto Dugan’s, who was not moving at all. Hercules was staring at her tits and smiling.
“A few days then,” she finally said, patting Elvin softly on the hand and smiling at Jackie and Uncle Walter. “But that’s all I can spare.”
“Well, let’s talk about this group then,” Dugan said, sitting. “Walker, you mentioned the West Coast Avengers, and I can’t help but seeing the irony of our situation and location…though I’m going to ignore what happened to Hydrobase I.” Everyone shot him a sour look, which cheered him up slightly. “Given the recent state of affairs with the main Avengers, I…”
It was then that communicators in both his and USAgent’s pockets went off simultaneously and both reached instinctively to read the screens on their respective devices. Dugan’s face remained impassive but Walker’s drained of blood and he stood up immediately, jerking every IV and sensor attached to his body off in a kind of gruesome display of flying small pieces of skin and blood, and reached back to pull his mask on as he lifted his shield from next to his chair.
“You, Wings, since you’re staying…you up for a quick trip to the coast?”
“Walker…” Dugan began but Namorita, sensing Jack’s despair, simply stood.
“Explain on the way,” she said, stepping to his side and lifting him into the air and out the nearest doorway to the outer deck.
In the silence that followed, all eyes shifted back to Dugan, who sighed. “His ex-fiance’s apartment has been destroyed by Kree.”
The trip was faster than Jack could have hoped, Namorita really kicking it into gear when he laid out the bare bones facts. She came in on a smooth arc outside of the balcony to Julia’s apartment, which had a huge hole in the wall where the sliding glass doors had once been, and two SHIELD agents outside guarding the hole. They raised their weapons at them as they landed but appeared to mainly do it out of routine; someone had likely told them to expect him.
“Easy boys,” Jack said, stepping away from Namorita and looking at them. “What happened here? Where are Julia and Rachel Carpenter?”
They looked at each other quickly and then the one on the left shrugged. “We don’t know, sir; we were sent here with the investigation unit to look for clues. No one’s told us anything other than possible Kree attack, though we were told to expect you at some point.”
“Well, isn’t that helpful. There were no bodies here when you arrived?”
“No sir, not that I saw. Plenty of evidence of a struggle but the only blood was Kree.”
“What about residual energy emissions from her psi-webs? They don’t stick around like Spider-Man’s, so if she was involved in the fight there’d be traces.”
“You’d have to check with the Agent in charge of the forensics, sir.”
Looking past them, Jack said, “Oh, don’t worry I…HEY, ASSHOLE FACE!” His arm shot into motion and Namorita, standing less than three feet from him with eyes that could see at the bottom of the ocean, didn’t even catch the actual motion of his throw. But she watched the results with the SHIELD agents as the shield cut cleanly through the crowd inside the apartment at a diagonal angle and slammed into the doorframe of a doorway at the beginning of the far hallway, half of the shield digging into the wall and hanging there, vibrating softly less than four inches from the face of a young man with shaggy black hair and a goatee wearing the blue and white uniform of a SHIELD agent.
While all eyes were still on the shield hanging out of the wall menacingly, USAgent closed the distance in large but unhurried strides and placed his considerable bulk between the young man and the closed door. “If you open that door or go into that room, I’ll tear your arms off and beat you to death with them. Understand?”
“Well, uh, yeah,” the Agent said, blinking his eyes and then finding some semblance of a backbone. “Sure, I understand the words coming out of your mouth, but they don’t change my orders. My team has to do a complete examination of this apartment and that room is next on the list. Uh…sir?”
Jack’s face darkened under his mask and his eyes seemed to fly out of his mask like daggers. “Skip it. This door hasn’t been opened in six months.”
“Apologies, sir, but you don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“Well…that doesn’t really change things…”
“What part of ‘beat you to death’ was not scary to you?”
“The part where I wasn’t the one who said it to him.”
The new voice brought salutes to the bodies of everyone in the room other than the two Avengers, though Namorita did straighten up at the appearance of Colonel Nick Fury as he walked across from the apartment’s front door toward the USAgent, who didn’t move his gaze. Fury stopped next to the young agent being glared at and said, “It’s all right, Dugan. Move on to the next section of the apartment; I’ll handle the review of this room.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait…Dugan?” USAgent asked, scowling deeper.
“Yes sir, Special Agent Joshua Dugan, Forensics and Cybernetics.”
“He’s not…?” Jack asked Fury.
“Indeed. Dugan’s great-great nephew,” Fury said, moving to light a cigar. “Chip off of the old block, you could say.”
“Great,” Walker said, plucking the lighter from Fury’s hand and throwing it out onto the balcony. “If you’re going to make me go into this room, then you aren’t smoking.”
Anger flashed across Fury’s face for a moment, but he looked at the door and though about what he knew was beyond it and relented, pocketing his cigar. “Fair enough. But if you want to know what I know, you’ll get your ass in there pronto.”
Jack snarled a bit and then looked at Namorita, handing her his shield. “Hold this and wait here. Anyone else tries to come in I want you to hit them with that. Hard.” Namorita smiled in support, nodding. Jack turned, set his shoulders and opened the most painful door of his life, walking into the dark and lonely room beyond.
On Hydrobase II, the meeting had broken up after USAgent’s departure and had migrated to the small sickbay where Diane Newell stood watching a green holographic man working over the spread-open body of Jim Hammond, the original Human Torch. As the others entered, she hugged her husband and said, “PLATO has made some more connections, but to no response as of yet.”
[Rhodey,] the AI known as PLATO said to Rhodes as he stepped in across from him, [I have completed steps 1,005 through 1,487 that we determined upon initial analysis. Current estimates show less than 5,000 more repairs before completion. However, I am distressed that no noticeable changes in energy output or omission have yet occurred.]
“I thought our analysis showed that his internal power source…‘his heart’ for lack of a better term…was intact.”
[Indeed it is, as is the flow-path of his ‘blood’ and other human-replication systems such as endocrine and structural. His nervous and cardiovascular systems were the most severely damaged and that was what we based our estimations upon. However, given these results I calculate less than a 19% chance that our repairs will result in the restoration of function to the Human Torch.]
“You soulless bastard!” Spitfire said, slamming her hands into the table where Hammond’s legs lay. “Quit talking about him like he’s dead! He’s more than just a machine…he has a soul…a spark of life that made him more than a machine. More than you,” she finished, pointing an accusatory finger at the flickering man.
“Spitfire!” Rhodey said loudly, cutting her off to protect his friend. “There is no…”
[It is all right, Rhodey,] PLATO said, holding a hand out to quell his defender. [I am not offended. Lady Crichton, I apologize for my statement, I meant no offense. It is true that I do not possess the element that made your friend your friend, that spark that was so unexpected that made him more than he was designed to be. I am what I am, but because of that I can look at the situation without confusing emotions and say this: whatever it was that made him Jim Hammond and not just a human torch…that may very well be gone and there is nothing that can be repaired mechanically to get it back.]
“Like a doctor can heal a body but if the mind is gone – the soul as it were – then it’s not the doctor’s fault,” Walter said, hugging his wife tighter.
Jacqueline sighed, tears streaming with dignity down her face as she looked at her friend of nearly 70 years and the helplessness of her situation bore down on her. “Please do what you can,” she said, turning and racing from the room in the blink of an eye.
No one moved for a moment and then Dum-Dum stepped up next to PLATO and looked at the youthful, unblemished face of his old friend and placed a hand on his shoulder. “He was my friend too, PLATO, so please do what you can. And if you need anything, you let me know.”
[Of course, Colonel.]
The room was dark and silent as a tomb, which was appropriate since it was, in essence, a memorial. The walls were painted a sky blue color that it had taken Julia more than two months to finally settle on and took Jack and his best friend, Lemar Hoskins, an entire weekend painting, talking about the purpose of the room, baseball games, colleges, girls and the life yet to be led. It was in this room as they finished the painting, drinking beer, that Julia had joined the pair and together they’d asked Lemar to be their son’s Godfather.
He’d said yes, of course.
Three months later Julia miscarried.
The crib he’d worked for hours to assembled still sat against the far wall, the soft padded mattress in the bottom covered by the hand-quilted throw Julia’s mother had made for them, the one stenciled with the name of their son who had never been born. Mobiles hung from the ceiling, stacks of diapers, clothes and other gifts from the baby shower thrown for them by Steve Rogers and Tony Stark personally, a surprisingly emotional evening for evening for old friends and Avengers and family alike, sat under inches of dust in the far corner. A toddler-sized bow and arrow set made by hand by Clint Barton sat leaning against the crib…the tiny size and delicate, almost unbelievably fragile arrows in the hand-stitched quiver made by Jarvis, still caused Jack’s breath to catch in his chest and tears burned in his eyes. The signed picture of Simon Williams as Akron in that terrible movie he’d made was on the dresser, his red eyes seeming to glow in the darkness. The candles from Wanda…the size-changing toys from Hank and Jan…
It was too much and Jack slumped against the wall and then sank slowly to his knees, bare seconds after he and Fury had entered the room. He stayed there for a moment, breathing deeply, refusing to cry in front of Fury but it was a near thing. When the wrenching pain in his chest lessened a little, he took a deep breath and pulled his mask off, needing to feel the cool air on his face, to smell the scent of baby coming from the items in the room. From beneath hooded eyes, Jack said, “We were going to name him Michael…after my brother, you know…who died in the war. Michael Walker…my son.”
“I’m sorry, Jack,” Fury said, running a hand through his hair, uncomfortable in the situation he had pushed. Walker had been on a tear for the last six months and, in Fury’s opinion, he needed to face what lurked in this room…but actually having orchestrated it and now participating in it he felt dirty…as dirty as when he – well, that was a story for another day. Instead he pulled his own composure together and said, “There was no Kree attack.”
Jack was silent for a moment, one hand picking up a tiny shield made for him by the Vision, one painted to look like his old shield but made out of plastic, twirling it on his finger. “I know.”
“What?” Fury asked, actually surprised.
“If it had been the Kree attacking an Avenger, regardless of what was happening out East, there would be an Avengers presence here, probably Tony or Steve at least. And Dugan would have reacted stronger on Hydrobase. This was a setup and you showing up when you did confirmed it.” He gently put the shield back down, smiling at it in a strange, disassociated way, and then stood, all the anger gone from his body. Like this, in this room, John Walker looked small, impotent. In this room his soul was dead.
He took one last look around and then a deep breath with his eyes closed for a moment, and then his shoulders straightened and he pulled his mask back on. “Where are Julia and Rachel? I noted as I walked through the apartment that most of the things they loved the most were missing, almost as if they were taken on purpose, strangely enough. Kind of funny, huh? After escaping a Kree attack and all.”
“You know I can’t tell you,” Fury said, dropping the act and being completely honest. “They’re safe but needed a cover story, so we worked this out. Julia’s one request was that no damage be done to this room and everything in here be packed up and placed into secure S.H.I.E.L.D. storage with access restricted to only the two of you. I agreed and it will be done with all of the care and respect that can possibly be levied, Jack.”
“I believe you,” Jack said. “I’m assuming she had a good reason for agreeing to whatever plan you and Clint have come up with.”
Again Fury was stunned but fought to hide it. “What are you talking about?”
Jack smiled as he pulled his Avengers Communicard from his belt and flipped it to Fury, who caught it and read the received message still glowing from the screen. Everything is fine. I’ll watch out for them. Clint.
“Goddamnit!” Fury said, flicking the card back. “Fucking Barton agreed to keep his mouth shut!”
“And he did,” Jack said, pocketing the card. “I didn’t hear a thing.”
Fury steamed, but in the end he wasn’t really surprised. “Fine, whatever, but you need to leave it, Jack. She doesn’t want to see you and Rachel will be moving in with her grandparents within a few weeks so she’ll be taken care of. Give it a month or so and then you can visit her, but I think you should give her time to settle in.”
“And Julia?”
“She requested you not try to find her, though she let Rachel make her own decision.”
Jack smiled sadly, picking up an envelope of documents from the dresser and waved them at Fury. “Adoption papers…I was going to sign them the night Julia and I got married. We were going to be a family, Fury. In six hours all of that was destroyed. In six hours my entire world died. They were silent for a long moment, neither knowing what to say. Finally, Jack put the papers down, straightened the throw on the crib and turned toward the door. “Tell Julia I’m ok and enjoy her time at Thunderbolts Mountain.”
“For fuck’s sake!” Fury screamed. “How the…?”
“I didn’t…until now,” Jack said, smiling his shit-eating grin over his shoulder. “But Hawk only ever did two things right, and he’s not heading the WCA anymore. Even if you don’t call them Thunderbolts, the only two readily available sites on the West Coast not taken by a group that I’m aware of are the Works or Thunderbolts Mountain, and PLATO would have told me if you’d taken the Works. And Julia wouldn’t go any farther East than that if Rachel was in Denver.”
“Just get out and do some good, Walker. You have enough to worry about if you’re taking on a new West Coast Avengers,” Fury said. “Dugan will help, and don’t give me any shit about it. You want to operate, you work with S.H.I.E.L.D. or I’ll shut you down. Got it?”
“I love shields, Nick, you should know that,” Jack said, opening the door.
“Good…I hope you like Dugans also. I’m sending Josh with you to take a look at the Torch. If Hammond can be fixed, I want to get it done. Anything you need, you let me know.”
Walker scowled but nodded, accepting whatever help he could get on that front. “Fine, but Namorita’s not going to carry the brat. Hope he has his own wings.”
Hydrobase II…later
“So…it’s just you, Spitfire, Stingray, Rage and Hercules?” Quasar was asking a suited-up War Machine, sans helmet, when USAgent and Namorita touched down on the landing pad of Hydrobase II behind him. “That’s not much of a team.”
“What’s this cock-up now?” Jack asked as he and Namorita landed, walking in his returned fury straight at Quasar and locking eyes with the slightly shorter man.
“Oh, good, USAgent. Well…I think I’ll be going now,” Quasar said as his Quantum Bands began to glow. “No offense, Namorita.”
“Used to it,” she said, confused but amused.
“Hold the fuck on,” USAgent said, latching a hand onto Quasar’s shoulder as he began to rise, fortunately before Wendell’s aura fully formed. “What’s going on, Wendell? Seriously.”
Quasar hesitated, uncertain about his next move, but then sighed and quickly recounted his efforts to find some help on Earth for a problem he’d run into. “I can’t get into the New York area due to some sort of reality manipulation that my bands can’t get a handle on, and Asgard is equally cut off.”
“Wait, you can travel to Asgard?” Rhodey asked.
“Well, once I discussed it with Thor I was able to figure out how to get my Quantum Jump to…”
“No one cares!” Spitfire shouted, then added, “Respectfully, of course.”
“Anyway,” Quasar said, “I can’t get through to the team on Infinity Station for some reason, probably Thanos’ doing, and Doctor Strange wasn’t at home, apparently off with the original Defenders doing something in space, which is ironic since that what I wanted.”
“What about the other Defenders? The ones running around with Nighthawk?” Dum-Dum asked as he walked up from the just-landed SHIELD jump-jet with his nephew beside him. Rethinking what he’d said, however, especially in light of the looks the other Avengers gave him, he raised his hands. “Never mind…stupid question.”
“Right, so the last thought I had was to try to find some Avengers with the power I need and Hercules was the first I went looking for—uh, no offense to the rest of you,” Quasar said sheepishly. “But I need power and I need it fast.”
“Why?” asked Dugan.
“Because the Scatter has returned and if we don’t stop them soon an interstellar war is going to break out that could destroy two solar systems.”
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To Be Continued...
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