32 Chapter 32 (1/2)
”You know, Alien would have ended a lot faster if we'd been in it,” I said softly as we walked through a dark hallway with creepy crying sounds behind us as water dripped around us.
”Well, yeah,” Creel shrugged. ”Wait, can you turn into one of those things?”
”What, Xenomorphs?” I asked.
”Is that what they're called?” Creel asked.
Before I could answer we came out into a large room filled with bookshelves, desks, and lab equipment. There was a massive cage in the center, one as big as a house and made of some strange metal that had tons of scratches on the surface. There were chains hanging from the top of the cage, blood on the floor within. The door hadn't been torn open but left open.
The place had been torn apart. Blood soaked the floor and walls, making me swallow a bit when I started salivating at the scent. Despite being human now, I was still feeling some of the primal pull being Wildmutt in a room full of prey and fellow Alpha predators. Why didn't Ben ever deal with that sort of thing? I pulled back and focused on where the blood was coming from. Namely, the bodies.
I walked up to a soldier that was lying across one of the broken tables, his torso opened up and emptied of organs. He was one of many that had been torn apart and devoured, soldiers and scientists alike.
”Looks like we missed the party,” Creel said easily. ”Think that thing is still hungry?”
I shuddered, looking over at him. ”How are you dealing with this?”
”I've seen worse,” Creel looked over to give me a dark smile. ”Seriously, where did it go-”
A noise came from among the bookshelves. I spun around, aiming my rifle.
”Don't shoot!” A woman came out of the aisle, holding her hands up. Tears were pouring down her cheeks. ”Please! We need to get out of here!”
I stared at her, trying to decide if I should shoot her with an ICER or not. ”You're HYDRA.”
”I,” she stared between us, still crying. ”Y-Yes. Please, I surrender, just please help me get out of here! T-They've gone crazy!”
”Can't blame them,” Creel said, striding forward. ”What was in the cage?”
She hiccuped when she tried to respond. ”I, um, I'm just a biologist-”
”I'm pretty sure eating people is a part of biology,” Creel picked up a random arm covered in desert camo gear and waved it at the woman, who stared at him in horror. ”Talk. Where is it, what is it?”
”It, uh,” she hesitantly walked towards me, rather then Creel, who tossed aside the bloody arm he was holding. ”It doesn't have an official name, but we call it the 'Wendigo', after a Native American legend with similarities to it.”
God fucking damn it, Marvel.
Unable to see my frustration through my helmet, she walked up to a computer and reached for the keyboard. I waved at it before she could do something, bringing up the files on Wendigo. She gave me a startled look, then returned to the files, still nervous. ”We, um, we put a tracker in it. The others were going to unleash it to try to, um, to try and kill you. When we tried to stop them, they locked us in here, and I...” she rubbed at her face, choking back a sob. ”I hid. Here, here its... oh god.”
”The monster is still in the room,” I said, looking around the room. Raising my rifle, I stared around, turning on one of my vision modes. Based on the Backscatter eyes Fitz-Simmons had studied, it gave me an X-Ray vision of the room. With everything in that weird blue light that the vision gave me, I spun around, looking everywhere. It was a little disorientating.
I looked at the back of the room, thinking. Okay, where does no one ever look? ...Oh right.
I craned my head up. Creel and the woman did the same.
The snarling figure hanging on the ceiling above stared back at me, looking eerie in my X-Ray vision.
”Clever girl,” Creel said softly.
The creature leaped towards me, and I reflexively fired my rifle.
Psheaw!
A repulsor blast erupted from my rifle, hitting the Wendigo in the chest as it dropped towards me and the woman. It was knocked off balance, slamming into the cage instead. It rolled to its feet and faced us, rising up to stand and face us. To a height way bigger than I'd expected.
”I thought this thing was eleven feet tall?” Creel said, raising his hands up. ”That's a lot bigger than eleven.
”It grows as it eats!” the woman screamed.
”Of course it does,” I looked at the Omnitrix, which was still red, then back at the monster.
The monster was dripping with blood from spikes stabbed across it's back and front, each one with a chain hanging from it that corresponded with the chains in the cage below it. It pulled one out of where its left nipple should have been, letting out a sound as its blood poured across its front. The spike was at least a foot long. The Wendigo tossed that spike aside as his wound quickly healed, and reached for a spike on its shoulder, tugging at it, but not pulling it out as he let out sounds. It took me a moment to realize he was laughing as he caused himself pain.
”Great, it's a freaky masochist,” I growled.
”I had an ex like that,” Creel replied.
”Oh god!” the woman shrieked, turning and running.
I swear, the Wendigo smiled at the sight of the woman sprinting for the exit. Its teeth flashing, it leaped off the cage, blood still dripping from its claws and around the spikes in its flesh. I shot it in the chest, diverting it in mid-air. When it landed, it rolled.
”WEN-DIGO!” It cried, rushing after the screaming woman with sadistic glee. It smashed through a desk, trying to run past me.
I snapped a hand up, catoms flowing, and ran forward while activating my jumpjets. The catoms formed into my tower shield in mid-flight, and I slammed into the Wendigo shield first, sending it to crash into some bookshelves.
”Run!” I told the woman as wood and papers flew everywhere, pieces of glass shattering along with them.
”WEN-DIGO!” the monster snarled, rising to glare at me.
”Looks like he wants an ass-whopping,” Creel said, standing next to me.
”Hell, I'm ready to oblige,” I growled, raising my rifle in one hand and my shield in the other. ”Come on asshole, let's go!”
Wendigo rushed us with a cackling laugh as my rifle roared and Creel stepped forward with raised fists.
Isabelle Hartley/Warrior
”What's your name?” Isabelle asked one of the former prisoners, a young girl with red hair and brown eyes who hadn't been given clothes. She was kneeling next to her inside the girl's cage, trying to be gentle with her.
”K-Katie,” the girl said. ”Katie Whitley.”
”Katie,” Isabelle smiled, putting a hand on the girl's shoulder. ”Listen. You're safe. I'm not with HYDRA.”
”Y-You're SHIELD?” The girl asked. When Isabelle nodded, the girl retreated inwards. ”They said they were SHIELD too. They said they'd give me money, that I wouldn't have to work as... as a hooker,” Katie began to cry. ”I didn't... they did things to me. Said I could be like Captain America.”
Isabelle barely kept herself from cursing.
From the first moment she'd discovered her own crewmates were HYDRA, she had hated the organization. But this? Taking people off the streets, promising them a new life, then tearing them apart? The worst was some of the prisoners who had been... abused, in all connotations of the word, but soldiers and scientists. Needlessly torn into to see where the experiments went wrong. It was cruel, beyond cruel.
”Well, I'm not HYDRA, and really, SHIELD has become something new,” Isabelle gently squeezed the girls shoulder. ”That's why I'm here. We're taking the fight to HYDRA. And we're going to stop them all. Kill them when we can”
Katie looked up at Isabelle, tears still running down her cheeks.
Isabelle nodded at the girl, rising to her feet and looking her over.
Katie was healthy. Extremely healthy, with the muscles of a person who'd worked out their entire life. If they'd been trying to make her into Captain America...
Isabelle turned around, whispering. ”X, can you give me the files on Katie Whitley?”
”Of course,” X said. ”Coming your way.”
Isabelle raised her hand, watching as catoms rose up from her gauntlet in the form of a computer screen, the screen glowing as soon as it was formed. Isabelle tapped on the new file, and stared at the screen, looking back at Katie.
The present Katie was striking, with dark brown hairs, a button nose, and a slightly large chin along with a powerful build.
The past Katie in the file was skinny, with a face torn open from sores and portions of her skull and teeth exposed, a cleft lip, and limbs of different lengths.
Isabelle stepped out of Katie's cage and looked around. Among the prisoners, there were three types that she could see.
The first made her itch to stab a HYDRA soldier in the face for all the horrors those monsters did. Those were the people Dial hadn't been able to change. Some were still in their cages, unable to move because of various body parts removed or added. Some had limbs haphazardly replaced with animal limbs, while others now had robotic pieces of varying technological eras in their bodies. When Isabelle walked up to them, they shied away from her, staring with fear that made her heart clench.
The second group was normal in every way. They seemed to be the happiest, crying with joy as they hugged others. Isabelle flipped through the files and found the image of one, an older man with thinning gray hair. He'd once been covered in green skin, with muscles so grossly large he couldn't move. Now he was hugging one of the people in the first group, tears in his eyes as the person he was hugging, a young girl with a left arm made of some plastic substance, cried with him.
The third group was intermingled with the others but was also very obvious in the differences. They were people with powers. Some had incredible physiques like Katie did, looking like Olympic athletes. Others, on the other hand, were able to change their bodies into various materials. Not like Creel, only a single one each, but they could do it. And that was only the obvious examples
Hartley sighed, looking around and rubbing her forehead. ”Hill isn't going to like this.”
She looked over at where the animals were contained. A large rhino looked back at her with bleary looking eyes. A dog barked happily, fur the color of steel. In the back, she could see a monkey leaping around its cage at incredible speeds.