Red America: Western Front

Chapter Four: Crimson Spear

Clint Barton put his feet up on the desk in front of him, enjoying the tremor of disgust that rippled across the face of the officer in front of him in the process, and casually started inspecting the sniper rifle in front of him. It was of a different, heavier calibre to the usual Red Army model, with increased muffling on the barrel, a longer-range sight, and a lightweight plastic grip, rather than the heavier wooden stock that was usually used on weapons like this. Scratched into the handle with the point of a scrupulously sharpened and re-sharpened combat knife was a brief message of ownership, along with a small skull and crossbones motif. Turning the rifle over and over in his hands, examining every tiny nick and chip taken out of the weapon over his five fragmented years of service in this particular role, he tried not to pay any attention to the man who had pulled him out of hibernation this time. The idiot was starting to get on his nerves – and worse, was totally unaware that he was doing so, garbling away about things which were of no consequence whatsoever, which Clint considered the height of bad manners. He briefly considered cutting out the guy's tongue and shoving it down his throat in order to get him to shut up, but then decided that he didn't particularly want to go back into storage so soon after he'd been thawed out in the first place (it was tough enough adjusting when there were lengthy periods between going into and coming out of his icebox, after all) and that there might well be some small nugget of information hidden away somewhere in the middle of the guy's verbal diarrhoea.

Clint doubted that sincerely, but he supposed he had better persevere anyway. Flexing the gloved fingers on his right hand and scratching at his cheek briefly with the other, he lifted his feet off the table, set them flat on the floor, and then leant forward in his chair, doing his best to look interested. He was well-aware that he was no indispensable hero of the Revolution, like the late Omega Red, and that he could just as easily be replaced in his role as Crimson Commando by another rank-and-file soldier, so he supposed he had better try to stave off that prospect for at least another day. "Not that I don't appreciate the background knowledge," he began, with the appropriate mix of deference and curiosity, "but what exactly are my orders, sir?"

Captain Cortez smiled, taking off his officer's cap and laying it on the desk in front of him with one hand. Then he reached into the inside pocket of his greatcoat and drew out a thin white envelope that was marked with an "Eyes only" motif, before he handed it to Clint with a clipped gesture. "Here," he replied. "This should explain everything." Intrigued, Clint opened it, tossing aside the empty paper as soon as he could, and scanned the letter inside. His eyes widened as he finished, almost unwilling to believe that his orders were genuine. Stunned, he handed the letter back to Captain Cortez without saying a word. Cortez smirked then, evidently amused that Clint's bull-headed bravado had been strangled into silence, and set about igniting one corner of the letter with a quick burst of flame from a lighter. When it was thoroughly alight, he threw it into a nearby steel waste-paper bin and watched it burn itself out. "Happy?" he said when it was nothing more than embers, enjoying the fact that Clint was quite obviously the opposite. When Clint failed to reply, he frowned, his face twisting with barely-controlled annoyance, and stabbed at the desk's surface with two fingertips. "I asked you a question, Crimson Commando. Are you happy?"

"Yes," Clint said at last. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Go ahead," Cortez replied, folding his arms across his chest. "Speak your mind."

"I don't understand why this person is the target, sir," Clint said. "From what I hear, Commissar-Colonel Braddock is one of our best officers."

Cortez's smile chilled even Clint to the bone. "She is. But let us just say that there are some in the Red Army who are dissatisfied with her intrusions into their personal business, and wish for her interference to be… ended."

"But… the Kremlin can't have authorised this," Clint persisted. "It wouldn't make any sense."

"Don't concern yourself with that," Cortez said in a clipped tone. "You're just here to pull the trigger, nothing more." He produced a small sheet of paper, which was folded in three places and marked with a multitude of official symbols, and placed it flat on the desk. Tapping it with one finger, he continued "This is an itinerary of Commissar-Colonel Braddock's planned movements over the next fortnight. Familiarise yourself with it, and decide for yourself what your best opportunity for success will be. Oh, and one more thing, Crimson Commando…" Cortez paused then, rummaging through another pocket before throwing a small device which was attached to an elastic band onto the table. "You may want to wear that – it's a portable psychic dampening field which will render you invisible to her telepathic abilities. It's not foolproof, of course, but it's better than nothing." He stepped back, saluted, and said "Long live the Revolution," before he turned on one heel, placed his cap on his head, and marched out of the room.

"Long live the Revolution," Clint whispered, still unsure if he really believed what he had just heard. He picked up his rifle again, beginning to turn it over in his hands once more, running over the faded cracks and kill-marks as if the familiar motion could somehow erase the confusion he felt over what he had just been told to do.

Kitty blinked herself blearily awake as the first faltering rays of daylight began to trickle through the blacked-out windows of the room she had slept in. Tony Stark's safe-house had proven to be exactly that – no Soviet patrols had even noticed anything suspicious about the ramshackle old apartment building. The fact that it was so very ordinary made it an ideal hide-out, at least for a night or two. She sat up, rubbed at her face and back with both hands, and then leaned over and kissed Madrox delicately on the mouth, startling him into full consciousness.

"Hey, sleepyhead," she said, stroking his cheek. "Good morning."

Madrox grunted something almost inaudible about it being a good morning right up until the instant she had woken him up, and then touched Kitty's face lightly with his fingertips, stroking her boyishly-cut hair as if he was afraid she might go intangible on him at any moment. He stayed in that position for a second or two, before slipping his arms around her and drawing her closer to him. "I love you, Kitty," he whispered into her ear, all his grouchy sentiments abruptly forgotten. Kitty drew back, amazed, her breath almost physically catching in her throat. Madrox had never been one for so openly expressing his emotions; usually they were well and truly hidden behind a thick screen of goofy, juvenile humour, so she was doubly surprised to hear him say something in that candid a fashion.

"I… I love you too, Jamie," she said in return – because, in truth, she knew that she did love him, despite all his faults (and her better judgement, she supposed), "with all my heart."

"You mean that?" Madrox replied, his eyebrows raised, as if he couldn't believe what he had just heard.

"I mean it." Kitty touched Madrox's face then, gently tracing the line of his jaw with two fingertips, feeling the roughness of two days' growth of stubble beneath them, before she kissed him again. "How could I not? I'm a really bad liar."

Suddenly, there came a polite cough from off to Kitty's right, causing both Kitty and Madrox to almost jump out of their skins. The two of them turned to face the owner of the voice, who was leaning casually against the wooden doorframe. "I hate to interrupt," Tony Stark began, smiling wryly, "but shouldn't we get moving again?" Kitty nodded hurriedly, feeling a hot blush flooding up from her neckline towards her cheeks. She stood, running her hands through her hair and checking that all her gear was still where she had left it the night before. Then she picked up her rifle and racked the slide, punching a round into the chamber with the reassuring sound of metal on polished metal.

"Sure," she said. "Why not?"

She and Madrox followed Stark downstairs to the main room on the ground floor, where Cecilia, Hank, Danny, and Tabby were waiting, along with the girl Tony had introduced as Jubilation – who wasn't doing anything else but standing sulkily off to one side with her arms folded, and a scowl almost nailed to her face. Doesn't exactly live up to her name, Kitty thought, feeling amused despite herself.

"Nice of you two to finally join us," Danny chuckled, cradling his machine gun against his left shoulder. "Finally got tired of fucking each other's brains out, huh?"

"Laugh it up all you like, Danny-boy," Madrox shot back, "but at least my girlfriend doesn't need to be coated with gun oil every night."

"Not unless I ask nicely, anyway," Kitty added, winking at Danny and blowing him a kiss. Then she cleared her throat, frowned, and continued "Okay, guys, time to get serious. We've got our target – good to see you, Mr Stark – but we still have to get out of this town in one piece. The Ivans are going to be looking for Tony here even harder than they were before, so we're going to need to be even more incognito coming out than we were going in. That means absolutely no firefights unless we have no other choice. Logan told me that himself."

"Anyone ever tell you you're no fun, Kitty?" Cecilia chuckled. "The Ivans are always spoiling for a fight – can't we oblige them just the once?"

Kitty shook her head. "No. If we have another option, we have to take it: Tony's too important to them for us to risk letting him get captured," Pausing, she reached into her pocket for a cigarette, putting it into the corner of her mouth before flicking her lighter on and making the end glow orange in the low light. "Besides, I haven't had a good smoke for hours. I don't want to have to give that up just so you can go in blasting everything in sight."

"Is that right?" Cecilia shook her head in disappointment. "You know, those things'll kill ya."

"Yeah, but I can give these up a lot more easily than I can get over a bullet in the face," Kitty retorted, blowing a thin stream of smoke into the air. "Given the choice, I know which one I'd pick… so let's do what Logan suggested, okay?"

"Then perhaps we should start now," Hank said suddenly, gesturing out of the window with a nod. He beckoned the rest of the squad over to the window and pointed off towards his right. Kitty craned her neck to see what he had seen, and her eyes widened. Marching along the street towards the derelict building were hundreds of Soviet soldiers, complete with motorised support made up of armoured halftracks, jeeps and tanks. They were still far enough away that the sounds of their movements were virtually silent, but she knew that Hank's eyes were sharper than anybody else in her team, apart from perhaps Danny, and he would be able to pick out greater detail. She swallowed her fear, took a deep breath, and tugged her shirt down a little to try and slow her suddenly-pounding heartbeat. She had only seen this kind of build-up once before; her move to New York had begun with this kind of show of force by the Russkies, and their idea of "urban pacification" had apparently been to flatten the neighbourhood and kill virtually everyone within it. Kitty felt her gorge rise at the memory of the giant metal man who had smashed a hole in her rebel cell's headquarters and turned virtually everyone inside it into red paste. If that was going to happen here, she wanted to be as far away from it as possible.

"We need to get into the sewers," she said hurriedly, "and we need to do it quickly. Everybody grab hold of me." Booming sounds of artillery fire started echoing out towards the team, and Kitty knew that the neighbourhood was effectively doomed. Pieces of plaster started to rain from the ceiling as the vibrations got closer and closer. Looking over at her two new charges, Kitty noticed that both Stark and Jubilation seemed confused as to what was going on – while the rest of the squad had a hold of any part of Kitty's body that would enable them to hang on, the two of them were still standing apart, glancing towards the sounds of the approaching Red Army. "Just do it! We don't have time for this!" she snapped. Reluctantly, Jubilation and Stark took hold of Kitty, Stark picking her left hand and Jubilation her right, and so Kitty took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and dropped them all through the floor as quickly as she could.

I should just rent a tunnel out down here, she thought acidly, as the stench of the sewer spilt into her nostrils like an expanding puddle of toxic waste. She opened her eyes and took a look down the tunnel, seeing the same drab, colourless walls that she had left behind the day before. She grimaced, and then spat into the filth at her feet. "Looks like your safe-house isn't so safe any more," she said, raising an eyebrow at Stark as she did so. "Come on. We'd better get moving before they start sending people down here, too." She turned on one heel and started padding down the tunnel, sending ripples through the filmy, viscous water around her boots.

"How can you be so sure they'll do that?" Stark asked, breathing hard as he struggled to keep up with the squad's brisk pace. "Why would they send soldiers into the sewers?"

"They know rebels have strongholds down here, so they'll send detachments of troops into the sewers to clean them out. I've seen it happen before," Kitty said simply. "Trust me on this one; you don't want to be here when they do arrive." A thought struck her then, a rare nugget of amusement presenting itself as it did so. "You ever hear of a guy called Omega Red?"

"Here it comes…" Hank chuckled.

"Sure," Stark replied, shrugging. "Everybody's heard of Omega Red."

"Well, Madrox and I saw him in the sewers in New York. He was there to kill everything he could find, and he almost killed us, too." She glanced over at Madrox. "But we showed him, didn't we, honey?"

"Oh, yeah. Absolutely," Madrox chuckled, before aiming his gaze straight at Jubilation. "You ever wonder why you never see that guy on the news any more, kid? It's because he's dead. We killed him, Kitty and me."

Jubilation's eyes bulged. "You're shittin' me," she said, stunned.

"Oh, I'm afraid they're not," Cecilia chuckled. "Every new person they meet, they can't go five minutes before they start up with the 'we killed Omega fucking Red' crap. It's like they can't let go of their fifteen minutes of fame…"

"I'd like to see you match that, Cece," Kitty retorted, with a grin. Suddenly, booming sounds came from the north-east end of the tunnel, which were almost certainly demolition charges being set off, and Kitty felt her jaw tightening involuntarily. "You see what I was talking about?" she said. "We need to go. Now." She nodded towards the source of the booms. "Or those Russkie bastards will catch us and put a bullet in the back of our heads – just being down here right now is asking for trouble…"

Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock twisted her face into a thoughtful smile as the razor-sharp scalpel in her right hand sketched thin, curving lines of bright red blood into the well-toned belly of the virtually-naked, screaming woman lying strapped to a table in front of her. Interrogation was a lost art, she had decided, and so she was keen to try to resurrect it with as much practice and skill as she could muster; of course, if she had to fall back on her telepathic powers, so be it, but she wanted to try this method first. Across the room, secured to the wall by steel manacles and begging for Elisabeth to stop turning his wife's skin into a scarlet canvas was the woman's husband, Dr. Reed Richards. Elisabeth knew Richards was a confidant of Tony Stark – as scientists, they had often had cause to cross paths in many different contexts – and she also knew that Richards' Achilles' heel was his wife Sue. She turned back towards Dr. Richards, set the dripping scalpel down on the tray beside her and folded her arms, kicking one leg over the other while she regarded the American with a mixture of curiosity and scorn.

"So, Dr. Richards, do you feel ready to talk to me yet?" she sneered lasciviously. "Where is Tony Stark?"

Dr. Richards' tear-streaked face wilted like a dead flower, and he looked down at the floor, shaking his head and sobbing. "I can't… don't make me tell you that –"

Elisabeth shrugged and picked up her scalpel – and then proceeded to forcibly drive its point right down into the centre of Susan Richards' stomach, making the woman's screams echo even more loudly through the small interrogation room. "Oh, I think you can, Dr. Richards," she said in a liquid-nitrogen tone, yanking the meticulously-sharpened blade out in one swift, careless motion and making Susan howl in agony once again. "Do not try my patience much further, scum, or I can guarantee your lovely wife will pay the price for your intransigence." She raised her bare left hand to her lips and traced her tongue along the ends of her fingers, savouring the metallic iron tang of the other woman's blood as if it were a fine wine. "On the other hand," she continued, "if you speak now, I can guarantee surgery and medical treatment for her: Soviet science is good enough to ensure that she lives. It's your choice, of course, but I warn you not to underestimate me."

"For God's sake, Reed, don't do it," Susan moaned, spitting blood and drool down her ruined chin. "For God's sake –"

Elisabeth turned swiftly on one heel and leaned down to look her prisoner in her bloodshot eyes, letting the scalpel rest on the lacerated skin of her captive's chest and giving the bloodied woman a thin smile. "Nobility is a quality to be commended, but in this instance, I assure you it will get you precisely nowhere, Mrs Richards. I can guarantee that both you and your husband will not leave here until I get my answer – so I suggest you let Reed give me what I want. Is that really so hard?"

"Go to hell, you Russkie bitch," Susan Richards spat, before she was racked by a coughing fit, flecking her cheeks with more bright speckles of her own blood in the process. "Reed, don't tell her anything."

Reed Richards shook his head. "I'm sorry, Susan. I'm so sorry," he whispered, sounding as broken as if he had been lifted up and brought down across Elisabeth's knee. "You want to know where Tony Stark is? I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

Elisabeth pulled one side of her mouth up in satisfaction. Evidently using torture did have its place in extracting information after all… "Good," she said, laying the scalpel down into the sterilised kidney bowl on the table next to her chair. "Start talking. I'll tell you when you can stop." She sat back in her chair, folded her arms, and listened as Dr. Richards reeled off a list of Tony Stark's main hideouts and recreational venues throughout the city, adding a good number of new names to the already-extensive list of rebel staging posts. Elisabeth listened further as Dr. Richards told her about Tony Stark's secret plans to outfit the rebels in San Francisco with a technological advantage far outstripping the equipment with which they already had to operate. She made a mental note to suggest the "man of iron" idea to her own scientists, thinking that superhuman soldiers (like those that Dr. Pym would soon be creating) backed up by men clad in what amounted to walking tanks would be an unstoppable force – and with no obvious immovable objects on the rebel side, their annoying resistance would soon be crushed forever. Elisabeth found it hard to suppress a wide smile at that notion; soon this part of the United States would be stomped into the dirt beneath her bootheel, and annoying dinosaurs like General Victor Von Doom would be forced to acknowledge her achievement. She listened as Dr. Richards spilled his guts over everything and anything related to Tony Stark, and then she clicked her fingers. Immediately, Lieutenant Wagner and two other soldiers entered the interrogation chamber and began to move Susan Richards from her manacles to a stretcher. She tried feebly to resist, but she had lost so much blood already that it was a futile gesture. Dr. Richards, meanwhile, sat and looked at his hands, and Elisabeth could feel the sour self-hatred that was oozing off his frontal lobes. She reached out and laid a gloved hand on his shoulder, offering him a disarming smile. "She'll be fine now, Reed. You've done well." She nodded to one of the soldiers, who pulled Dr. Richards up by his collar and started to drag him out of the room. "Take care of them," she said in a clipped tone. Lieutenant Wagner saluted and ushered his two charges into the corridor, Reed Richards stumbling vacantly alongside the soldiers as they carried his wife away on a wheeled gurney.

Make sure they are well looked-after, Elisabeth sent to Lieutenant Wagner as a post-script to her order. I do not want them harmed any further.

Yes, sir, came back Lieutenant Wagner's thoughts. Where should I send them after they have been to the infirmary?

Take Dr Richards to the labs, and take Mrs Richards to be recycled, Elisabeth said. We can get useful labour out of both of them yet.

Yes, sir, Lieutenant Wagner said again, and then Elisabeth cut the connection with a single thought, leaving her alone in the room once more, the bloodstains on the floor and on the walls all that was left of her information-gathering session. She sat back in her chair for a second and then got to her feet, her meticulously-shined boots ringing on the tiled floor as she turned on her heel and left the chamber behind her. As she walked, she searched for and found a group of soldiers telepathically, and then ordered them to form a clean-up detail; she knew that General Von Doom had a dedication to cleanliness that often bordered on the obsessive, and she wanted to avoid being hauled in front of him purely for forgetting to clean a few specks of dirt off a wall. She marched down the corridor, her fists clenched and her gait perfectly balanced, and then found her way to the elevator that would take her back up to ground level. She tapped the button that would take her to her destination, and leaned back against the side wall, exhaling loudly as she did so and pulling her hair out of its bonds for a moment or two, shaking its long blonde tresses free and letting them fall about her shoulders in waves of bright sunlight. It felt good to unfetter herself like this from time to time, before she was inevitably forced to adhere to military dress code again, so Elisabeth always liked to take advantage of any quieter moments she managed to find. As the elevator hissed to a stop, she tied her hair back into a ponytail and walked out into the corridor. To her left she saw the glass door of Dr Pym's laboratory, which had biohazard symbols and neat Russian script emblazoned across it. She sauntered towards the keypad set into the wall, tapping her authorisation code into it with nimble fingers and making the door whisper open. Dr Pym glanced up from his workbench then, and Betsy felt the delicious taste of his unbidden fear wafting off his mind's outer edges.

"Hello, Dr Pym," she said. "How are my test subjects today?"

"See for yourself," Dr Pym said sourly, nodding towards two black vinyl body-bags which were each neatly stencilled with their occupants' names, ranks and serial numbers. "I lost two of the test subjects in the first hour: their bodies were just eaten away by the enzymes of the combined serum. It's as if they were healing too fast, almost like they had cancerous tissue in every part of their bodies at once."

"And the other three? What happened to them?" Elisabeth asked, and Dr Pym pointed towards a couple of beds that were precisely lined up against the far wall of the laboratory. One was occupied by a bloated mass of a man, his face and body expanded to almost three times their natural size, unpleasant black warts and purple bruises peppering his jaundiced flesh, and the other was filled by a scrawny, skeletal thing that might once have been a human being, but was now just a sack of skin stretched over a pile of snapped bones. Both of them had breathing masks fastened to their faces as they wheezed and drooled bloody phlegm, viscous yellow tears carving crusted furrows down their cheeks, and both of them had heart rates that were far below what they ought to have been, according to the monitors that they were hooked up to.

"These two are dead already," Dr Pym said sadly. "All I can do is make them comfortable until the inevitable happens. Apparently the combination of the two components needs to be absolutely perfect, or nothing will work."

Elisabeth cocked an eyebrow. "There are only two men here, Doctor. Where is the last soldier I sent you?" As if on cue, a door hissed open in one of the side walls, and a young woman in a Red Army uniform stepped out, flexing her knuckles and grinning broadly. Her long brown hair was hanging loose around her shoulders and her body was quite clearly sleekly muscled underneath the uniform. Her green eyes flashed with something that Elisabeth would have identified as hunger, but the young woman didn't seem to be that ill-fed. Dr Pym's sad expression changed to one of pure, unadulterated satisfaction then, and Elisabeth had to give him credit for keeping her waiting this long. Theatricality was not something Henry Pym had ever been known for, so this was a pleasant surprise.

The young woman clicked her heels together smartly and gave Elisabeth a crisp, parade-ground standard salute, at which Dr Pym smiled with undisguised pride. "Colonel, may I introduce Corporal Jennifer Walters," he said. "She was the only subject to take the new Version 2B of the combined serum, and she seems to have adapted perfectly to it." He smiled again, and then reached out for one of his beakers before crushing it with one hand, the shattered fragments jamming themselves into his flesh and spilling his blood onto his workbench. He gasped in pain, but before Elisabeth could demand what he thought he was doing, she saw that his hand was knitting itself back together, chunks of shattered glass clattering to the ground as his hand closed up. "I tested the serum on one of my assistants, with the same results," he said, grinning, and Elisabeth was sure she saw flecks of neon green in his previously completely brown irises. "Then I tested it on myself. Everything turned out the same way. We can begin mass-production at your discretion."

Elisabeth laughed. Today was looking better all the time…