I nearly shat myself when Captain America burst in.
Let me tell you, there's something about 250 pounds of fury, muscle and the American Way bursting through 4 inches of shatterproof glass, that makes me want to lose control of my bowels.
It's not like it is in the comics that the government gives to little kids. When Cap busts into your labbase, it's the freaking scariest thing you ever saw. I mean, let's see how you'd handle it.
Firstly, it''s dark inside the lab. With all of the power consumption in the typical AIM lab, we apparently need to conserve all the power we can get. (Which is total bullshit. What's a couple KwH compared to the experiment's 1.5 gigawatts? I really don't know why they can't add lights in.) Anyway, it's darker than the Punisher in there. That doesn't really help with the experiments, but it's as if AIM wants to break the techs' spirits (which they probably do). Oppressed workers are less likely to snap and call SHIELD, right? That is, if they were to let us have contact with the outside world. The closest we get is an old DVD player. And let me tell you, there are only so many times that you can watch Rounders.
Secondly, do you know what's it like inside the typical AIM Hazmat suit? Those yellow ones you see on the news- they reserve those for the supervisors. The ones techs like me have are essentially human-shaped garbage bags. If you're lucky, you get a face mask. If you're really lucky, you get a breathing mask to go with it. As you can probably guess, lab safety at AIM is not a priority. In fact, there's pretty much nothing less important to AIM, except for maybe truth and justice.
I can't tell you how many times I've seen simple chemical spills that would have been nothing in a real lab claim limbs, eyes, lives even. A while back, my coworker John Friedman got toasted by-get this- a car battery. Really the height of technology you expect from a premiere organization with billions in resources like AIM, huh? Anyway, your mask gets fogged a ton, but you can't take it off, because you'll fry your eyes. So you stumble about, praying that you don't fuck things up badly enough to explode. Sometimes I wonder what the hell AIM thinks it's doing. Actually, fuck that- I wonder that all the time.
Thirdly, in every AIM lab I've ever been in, there's this hum. I don't know if it comes from the generators or the masking tech or the experiments themselves or what. But it's there, and it's annoying. Not in that snap-and-kill-your-coworkers kind of crazy (, but we get plenty of that, too). Instead, it's that Kafka kind of crazy, the kind that sets your teeth on edge and makes sure that you only get 3 hours of sleep a night, until you collapse face first in your experiment out of sheer frustration. That kind of hum. Think it can't be that annoying? Here, try this. Go get a vibrator, or borrow your girlfriend's. Then tape it to your jaw- and see how long you can stand it. Now realize that some of the AIM techs do that to run interference on the hum, and tell me it's not bad.
Now all of these things are major stresses. But the worst thing about getting raided by Captain America and SHIELD?
That would be Captain America. I don't care what they say in the papers- that guy's a born killer, at least when it comes to guys like us. Muggers? They're pretty safe. Bank Robbers? Traction at most. Even supervillains are alright. But if you work for AIM or HYDRA or the Red Skull, you are fucked. Completely and utterly fucked. Bend-over-and-kiss-your-ass-goodbye fucked. Enjoy 3 feet of vibranium through your skull.
Don't think I blame him. After all, they don't give you the Super-Soldier formula so that you can make nice with the terrorists, do they?
(By the way, no way he's the same guy from the 40's. He might be a super-soldier, but he is - was - still human. "Yeah, I was frozen in an iceberg for 50 years!" "But Cap, why didn't your cells rupture?" "The super-soldier serum!" "But Cap-" "Shut up!")
And at least he won't go out of your way to kill you. Unlike those fuckers from SHIELD. They get one buddy killed by an AIM-designed weapon, and suddenly, every shmuck in the lab was the triggerman. I've heard they don't even take prisoners, but I'm pretty sure that's disinformation. They do like killing us, though.
So, quick recap: Dark, noisy, dangerous room. Fogged goggles. Then Captain America bursts through that glass, and it all goes to hell.
"Run! It's Captai-AARGH!" was all the supervisor said before catching a flying shield to the throat. I will say one thing against those yellow suits- they make you a real sweet target.
Screams and the stench of cordite and scorched flesh fill the air as SHIELD shots rip apart beakers of chemicals. That can't be good. A burning coworker-I think it's Dave- runs past me yelling his head off, and I almost laugh at the insanity of it all. And my brain, traitor that it is, decides to have a flashback at the worst possible time.
It was just after I had been inducted into AIM, and they were doing security training. Not safety, mind you. They don't give a fuck about you- just about the project as a whole. So anyway, we'd been through a couple weeks of training, and they were talking about SHIELD- more specifically, what to do when they attacked you.
"The most important thing to do when being attacked by SHIELD is not to be."
Duhh, I thought.
"If you don't, you have a few options. The first is to run. You might get killed, but your best odds are here."
Better than surrendering?
"If you can't run, fight. Your odds are much worse, but you might survive."
Who wouldn't surrender by that point?
"Under no circumstances surrender. If you are captured, we will have no choice but to terminate you and your immediate family."
Well, there's the kicker. Shit. (Which by this point in the SHIELD raid I'd lost.)
So anyway, back in the present...
Fuck that. how about choice #4? Going limp, I fell to the floor. Who would suspect a grown man of playing dead? It might just work.
So here I am, chemical waste on the outside of my suit, human on the inside, lying prone on the floor, listening to the sounds of screaming and burning and gunfire and that awful CLANG-CRUNCH sound that Captain America's shield makes- waiting for the fighting to move away enough for me to at least try getting away. And to top it off, that buzzing I was telling you about is much louder in direct contact with the floor. Like a fucking swarm of bees in my skull. And as I lie here in the killing and the dying, I have but one thing to wonder...
What the hell am I doing here?