Against My Will 11

“—EEN LANTERN’S LIGHT!“

The monitor was stuck on green, the whole monitor lit up like that night had been from the windows of the Triskelion. The speaker grille sat there buzzing and rattling, that sound amplified so much even SHIELD systems had issues when it came to replaying it.

“Rewind that.”

His lips flattened at the man across from him, both words close enough to a command that it almost got his blood up. “I was planning to, Pym.”

His thumb flicked the remote, the relevant events rewinding on the monitor as the green on the screen broke apart into rain and flashes and then a hole in the side of his building that an entire crew had spent almost half a million on repairing the last six days.

One-hundred-seventy-six hours of nothing since his number one subject had apparently gotten tired of restraints and liquid feeding. Whatever he’d done, however he’d done it, the kid had pulled off the biggest escape from the Triskelion since the thing was built— a green juggernaut crashing through the oh-so-secured research wing like the walls were made of Pringles.

And the humiliation didn’t stop there, because why would it?

Satellites hard at work over those same seven days; countless passes over five boroughs turning up nothing and nada. Jersey was no different and Long Island was pretty much him hoping for the best.

That hope was just as disappointing as his second marriage and left him with nearly as big of a headache. Not even sharing tips with the NYPD got him anywhere, not that he expected the boys in blue to even bother with the situation in Manhattan still what it was.

It might as well have been pointless.

The biggest runaway posthuman in the continental US since Magneto’s little dust-up in Washington. All Fury had to show for it was fifty-six seconds of tape.

It was almost a joke, not that he was laughing.

And this morning, God help him, he had Hank Pym here for another pass at the same footage he’d spent countless hours on.

The Chief of Science sat there, butt in one of Fury’s leather chairs, and leaned hard on the left armrest. Fury didn’t doubt he was still suffering, ribs still taped after what the Hulk had done to him at size. Just looking at him made it obvious enough; the left side of the doctor’s face an ugly yellow-purple, one eye swollen up to the point the lid barely managed to look open, and his lips purpled and split in two different places.

Fifty-nine feet and eleven inches at full enlargement, and he’d only gotten a solid thirty seconds in before Banner climbed him like a jungle gym and left him lights out the rest of the night.

Rogers had walked out of medical with an arm in a cast to the shoulder and, by Friday, the man looked picture-perfect. Stark had a sprained wrist and a bruised neck last Fury had seen him but the man was already hard at work on a new design for his suit even while getting photographed at a restaurant in Soho by Saturday.

Janet had made it off light, despite getting in deeper and closer to the Hulk than anyone would ever like to have gone. Brave woman. And after making her way out of his ear, the hidden mutant was fine with just a hot shower.

Her husband, though…

The Director blinked slow at the man in question, both the doctor’s eyes firmly on the screen.

Pym looked like he’d been run over by someone who then backed up to be sure of it.

The man had managed a better professional recovery than he had a physical one, at least. With Banner sitting sedated and secure six levels down with a feeding tube, catheter, and guard rotation every sixty minutes, the Enhanced Research Department was all Pym’s again. The paperwork had gone through by minute three of Banner’s transformation, long before Doctor Pym even had bruises to complain about.

“…fifty-six seconds, Pym.” The remote clattered onto Fury’s curved black desk, next to a collection of newspapers raving about the ‘Ultimates’ and their ‘success’. “Not a full minute and the kid goes from barely-there in one of my cells to nowhere at all. I’ve had analysts on this tape for a week, watching the damn thing till all they see is green on the inside of their eyelids when they hit their beds. They tell me what happened, and write all the reports in the world. Which is all fine and dandy but I need you here to tell me what the hell I’m actually looking at.”

“Okay.” Pym shifted with a wince, shoulders digging back into the chair as he kept his attention on the screen for a second go-round. “Okay, play it back.”

Fury pressed play.

The first feed that popped up wasn’t the cell itself.

This stuff had been stitched together by those same analysts into something that captured every relevant angle and only the cameras that actually caught anything, which meant exactly fifty-six seconds of footage and nothing but.

It started with the lab.

A wide angle view stared back at them, aimed square on a pedestal behind layers of glass they thought was impact-resistant and undoubtedly bulletproof. The lantern and ring sat together atop it the same way they’d done for three months, a room full of triple-PhDs still arguing over and over about Cherenkov radiation.

A split second later, the ring lit up to match the lantern; the tiny thing rising up off the pedestal like somebody had put it on puppet-strings. The white-coats noticed immediately, the glow hard to miss of course, and started running for it; their paths taking them right toward pneumatic blast doors that would soon seal several layers deep.

The ring went first, the thing suddenly supersonic through containment glass and gone in the blink of an eye. Immediately after, the lantern tore itself free, the clamps they’d bolted around the base of it entirely pointless, and shot off after the ring as it left behind a much larger exit wound through glass and wall both.

“Wait, wait—wait.” Pym’s hand went up. “Right there.”

Fury paused the playback, the good doctor leaning forward toward the screen with a visible grimace. “He didn’t escape with them.”

The director blinked. “He quite literally did.”

“No. No. You’re not getting me.” The man shook a finger toward the bent clamp and empty pedestal on that screen. “He didn’t escape with them, Nick. They escaped to him. If he could have called them whenever he wanted, I doubt he would have spent all that time in the hands of SHIELD.”

Fury tilted his head. Certainly not by choice.

“That ring, and that… lantern…” The man frowned deeper, eye on the screen. “Something got them going and they found your subject on their own.”

The secret super soldier let his eye slide from the screen to Pym. “So, you’re telling me that superweapon is sapient.”

“It likely possesses some level of operational intelligence.”

“That supposed to be the comforting version, Pym?”

The doctor frowned. “I’m not trying to comfort you.”

“Well, good.” Fury pushed the button again. “Because you are succeeding at that.”

The feed switched as the video continued, rapid passes through different angles and multiple corridors as two green flares flashed at speeds the camera barely captured. The corridor outside the Jade wing and then cell itself showed next, a wheelchair just outside it about to be wheeled down the corridor to a waiting gurney. The kid had his chin down, the late Agent Rollins crouched in front of him with a hand on his jaw.

Three of Rollins’ boys stood loose with their rifles slung at their side, two med-ops in blue off to the side. The ring passed through six inches of reinforced glass at full speed, passing through with no hesitation and settling smoothly on the kid’s middle finger.

“Cute.”

Pym’s mutter almost went unheard as Fury watched the straps suddenly split apart, the subject flexing free as he stood up — ring on the right, lantern suddenly in the left in a sudden green streak.

One of Rollins’ boys barked something, rifle up.

The kid stepped forward, motion surprisingly fast for someone in his condition, and swung that lantern like it was a tire iron. By the time it came down, there wasn’t much left of the operator’s head above the jaw; the mess splattering the glass all over.

Pym’s eyebrows went up at the distinct flare of green around the kid. “Physical augmentation?”

Fury clicked his tongue. “Ring seems to do that for him.”

“He’s a hundred and twenty pounds.”

“Hundred and ten, last weigh-in.”

Pym didn’t have anything to say to that correction, not as Rollins raised his own sidearm and the kid threw his arm back out.

A block came out of it — green, rectangular, and flat-faced — the thing so smooth as to look unreal. Despite its looks, it didn’t do Rollins any favors as it passed through the man and kept on going and going; several walls caved in and torn open before the object simply dematerialized.

“Back.”

Fury rewound it, eyebrow raised. “You’ve seen the casualty report.”

“I’m not looking at your agent.”

“That green box had what was left of him liquefied, Pym.”

“That’s…” The doctor frowned, shaking his head. “That’s not really important for my point. Look at the box, Nick.”

Fury did just that, eye on the sharp-cornered rectangle with no seams he could make out and no texture he could trace. “…looks like the platonic idea of a box, Pym.”

“Exacly.” The doctor nodded. “So either he’s a complete idiot or that thing doesn’t need much instruction from him at all.”

“Are those meant to be mutually exclusive?”

Pym gave him a look from that non-swollen eye. “Keep going.”

Fury raised the remote and skipped forward, Pym already having watched this once and Fury not needing to watch the entire thing for the hundredth time. Six nights running the tape at his own desk had burned it into his memory by now, a glass of something dark at his elbow to make it go by faster.

The next stretch was stitched together camera by camera, none of them holding longer than a solid two seconds at most. The kid would go up and hit the ceiling hard enough to scatter through tile, metal and other materials, only to come back down through another room like a drunk wrecking ball.

Gunfire met a flat green wall right before an operator came in close with a rifle butt.

A split second later, something formed up in front of the kid’s fist.

The good doctor requested another turn back.

Then again.

By the third go-round, Fury had half a mind to throw the remote at him and have the bruised man work it himself.

Thankfully, Pym got the hint.

At the very least, he got enough.

“He’s pushing too much and his corrections are just too big and too late. The ones he tries to correct for at least.” Pym’s hand went out as if mimicking the kid’s own flight pattern. “All the thrust in the world, and no idea how to even work it. Same as everything else, nothing comes proportional. All of this is accidental.”

The camera trailed after his wake and all that was left in it, motion trackers showing split-seconds of soldiers and staff burst to pieces as the glowing green menace tore through them like a manic bullet. “Proportional or not, those men are dead.”

“Well, that’s not…” Pym let a breath out through the nose. “You ever see him use that ring before this? Anybody? Once?”

“Past the crash landing in the Barrens?” Fury raised an eyebrow. “Not a once.”

“Training?”

“Claimed he never had any.”

“And SHIELD’s greatest agent believed him?”

“After this showing?” Said greatest agent chewed on that one for a too-long second. “More than I did last week.”

Pym’s nod came slow. “Right.”

The counter ticked forward, Fury inching the button until they finally made it past the halfway point of the footage. 00:29.

The main access corridor snapped in on the screen, the ops level brighter than most others as the Winter Soldier reserve section waited. Seven took a knee in that too-wide hallway, seven more behind them upright and readied. Every single one of those brave boys — race and creed aside — had a neck like a fire hydrant and arms built to wrestle a bear; all of them together costing good-ol’ Uncle Sam as much as a whole squadron of F-35s, and that was just from the serum and suits alone.

The Index 3 plasma rifles held high and aimed at the skinny little figure holding a lantern was an entire price point on SHIELD’s accounts.

Without warning, blue-white burned down that corridor.

Green held itself strong in the middle of it, plasma fighting against plates the kid formed like a wall that had yet to know gravity.

Fury ran the footage forward again, exterior cameras now the focus as the Rocketman squadron went after the subject in record time. For being barely more than a few months out of production, they were quick to mobilize — those soldiers eager to see action as they roared out on a column of thruster flame.

“Look at that.” Pym’s finger went up.

“You say that a lot.”
“First complex construct.” The man didn’t even bother to address the director’s comment as he kept pointing. “Just look at it.”

“I’m looking at a hand, Pym.”

“It has fingers.”

“Hands tend to have those.”

“Alright…” The good doctor went for the remote and rewound it back again; the sight of that clunky green hand squeezing through Rocketman plating with no trouble. “All familiar shapes we’ve seen him use; box, wall, whatever that was in the break room. Now this.”

Fury leaned in to stare at the hand, blocky shapes and squared knuckles making up the entirety of the thing. Still, just a hand. “I’m not getting it.”

“The less he has to think about, the cleaner it comes out, Director.”

“Right.” Fury nodded. “Meaning what, Pym?”

“It means that this isn’t some onboard system in that ring, not some library of stored configurations because if it was, I mean…” The doctor shrugged his shoulders and immediately regretted it if the look on his face was any indication. “I mean, why would it make something like that? Why would it even have that stored?”

Fury’s single eye narrowed. “He’s making them.”

“More than that…” Pym fast-forwarded to the giant green blast the width of a delivery truck that took forty feet off the Triskelion roof and shook the footage on-screen. “He doesn’t have any calibration on this whatsoever. It’s all him. No top, no bottom, no middle, because as we can see from everything he did — it’s all variable on his focus.”

The finger went to where the Rocketman wasn’t anymore. “He can punch through walls, splatter bodies or completely disintegrate meta-material grade alloy.”

“Rocketman’s just as dead either way.”

“And if he lets something off as big as he really can, as big as that 9 on the index you were telling me about?” Pym shook his head. “That’s a whole city wiped clean off the map.”

“I know. The kid’s the most powerful threat we’ve seen so far.”

“The kid?” The bruised doctor almost laughed. “No, that ring is. That’s your Subject Jade. You’re looking at an idiot with his finger literally as the trigger.”

“An idiot.” Fury let his eye drop, a sigh escaping him. “Bad news about idiots, doctor. They can only get smarter.”

Pym seemed to chew on that, the man turning that remote over and over in one hand. “The thing that’s getting to me, though…”

“And that is?”

“Enough in that ring to dwarf Thor, right? That’s an Index 9 just running around out there.” Pym settled back into expensive leather. “Question is, what the hell is that idiot doing right now?”