4. Acceptable Risk
. . .
"Loki, I got your suspect ID. Not the footage from the morgue, yet. Daisy's on it, trying to make contact with anyone over there that'll swipe a copy for us, but it's definitely not on any internet-connected servers in Winnipeg's government banks. Got the whole series of The Wire off a local network, though. They have priorities." Phil Coulson swapped the phone to his other ear so he could wrangle the high-tech and extremely secure database he was using in the depths of the Playground, wishing vaguely Fitz was back from vacation. The goddamn thing's touch-controls were fighting his artificial hand for some dumbass reason he couldn't figure out. "Hang on, verifying that you're secure for this." Easy test. Essentially an echo tone that could actually interact properly with Loki's magic. That had been another fun afternoon with Fitz, getting that trick to work reliably.
"I find it concerning that I've had to pull off the trail and essentially turn this car into a SCIF just to take a phone call, Coulson. What in merry hell did we step into this time?"
"Is Strange still there?"
"Yes. Are you going to make me tell him to get out of the car? Don't mistake me, I'll be delighted to do so, but he's already giving me a look. Also there's the bit where I'd have to modify the security spell to let him out without disrupting the work, but that's merely generic annoyance."
Coulson reread his file output, making the judgment call. If Talbot didn't like it, Talbot could kiss a monkey's butt. Strange wasn't a security problem. "We got a hit on the DNA and ran a background on the name we got out of the Winnipeg PD. They match each other. First scan of the guy's background didn't come up with anything interesting, though. So I decided to do a deeper search this morning through the secure archives we share with multiple agencies."
"You're doing the thing where you're building for dramatic effect. Stop it."
"Your guy's name is Stanley Carter. We've got him on file. He's not ex-SHIELD, though apparently we scouted him at one point. He was a high profile cop in New York for a while until he got poached by the Canadian government where then they bounced him around a bunch of their security teams for a while. Then I've got an incomplete, redacted document that says he was part of something called Department K. I made some calls to a few people that owe me favors before texting you. At which point it got kinda weird."
A heavy, long-suffering sigh filled the line, which never failed to give Coulson a little smile. "Do I even want to know today's definition of weird?"
"It's gonna go to maybe giving you a direction to head in after you finish beating up the woods out your way. Your guy knew your edible deceased, and I've got a list of dudes you probably want to try to jingle or dig up. Have I got your attention yet?"
"Entirely."
. . .
Earlier, by phone -
"I'm not going to ask how you got this number, Phil, and you're not going to say my name the way I just said yours. I'm not going to ask how Nick's doing, or what you guys are up to these days. I've got ten minutes I can give you, then I have to change phone lines if I'm going to keep talking. Tell me what this is about so I can decide if I'm going to do that for you."
"Stanley Carter. Brent Jackson. Maybe others. Maybe. You tell me."
"Motherfuck."
"We're off to a good start."
"Hang on. I'm going to line up another burner. If not two. You realize this erases what I owe for that night in 1997, right?"
"Ledger's clear once you tell me what you've got." Phil grabbed a pencil. Odds were good he'd have to destroy his notes later, and also make sure Loki bleached the data copy he would get, but meanwhile he had no doubt the nameless oldtimer was going to drop some stuff he needed to double-check. "I promise."
"From you, that actually means something. I'm going off the top of my head here. If you want to be patient, I'll get more detailed in a few once I pull some docs. Department K was Canada's attempt to do some really stupid shit along the lines of Hydra's own Nazi eugenics bullshit and take another crack at Erskine's 'Rebirth Project.' Only they decided they were going to try and reboot the offshoot mutagenic experiments. Hinky stuff. Stuff closer to how Hydra made the Maximoff twins, and some of your new kids today."
Coulson leaned back in his office chair, hard enough to make the wheels squeak. "They were tweaking Inhuman/Kree DNA?"
"Trying to trigger mutations of some kind, dunno about alien DNA. They tried it the first time almost a century ago, a whole weapons program under an X-designation, but it didn't catch. Don't know why. They put millions into it. Tried it again with the department just a couple decades or so back. Was Thorton's baby. Andre Thorton. He shared management with a guy named Stryker that time, an American that was a real hard nut. Stryker got moved with full honors off of active duty because, and this is how I heard it, he was into guns, Jesus, and holy hell. A real 'God loves, man kills,' type. If he were still active, Phil, your Inhuman kids would be having a real rough time of it right now, and I know it's already not exactly the kicks. Thorton loved the guy. Real bros."
"So how do my names come into this?"
"Brent was a high level security cog in K, grandfathered on via being there for the end of Thorton's original weapons program, if I'm remembering right. I'll check again. Carter… I got a file, and I know the name obviously, but he's mostly just a guy. Security stringer under Jackson's watch. How's this coming to you, Phil? I might be able to string it together for you a little better."
Coulson gave his contact a shortened version of Loki's brief.
"Jesus, Phil." Phil heard the connection crackle. "Okay. Is this a clean line to contact you back?"
"That it is."
"Okay. Give me twenty minutes. I'm going to pull some files and see what I can clean up for you."
"The Carter connection in particular, if you've got anything."
"Roger that. Go have a glass of something hard for me while I do this." The contact rang off.
. . .
Twenty minutes later, sharp -
"I made a few calls, too. You're not going to like this."
"Tell me."
. . .
The man on the phone:
Department K sounds like it's out of a bad spy novel, the sort of obliquely plain project name that tells anyone that hears it that, A, they probably don't want to know anything more about it, and B, the name was picked by a complete wanker.
Professor Andre Thorton was exactly that kind of wanker, Phil. Thorton was one of those bald, prissy bastards with wire-frame specs and fifteen copies of the same white shirt, and three different lab coats ironed fresh on the daily. At the time he kicks off Department K, he's stopped aging. He might be fifty. He might be eighty. Nothing supernatural or mad science about it, he's just gone smooth and bony the way these kinds of men do. The sort of man who seemed to born in one of those lab coats, a lab coat incarnate, the science wonk so disconnected from the art of living like a human that when he bothers to look you in the face, you know he's mentally recombining your DNA into something he deems better. The man that travels the world for his research, and likes none of it enough to let it change him instead.
We all know a dick like that. He just made it a career.
The only person he ever looked at with anything like emotion was William Stryker, the 'gracefully retired' American general that comes on in 1982 to transform Thorton's mostly dead weapons project into something new. A project rebirth of their own, if you like. Now, Stryker puts all his time into the Department once he settles in, and why not? His wife left him and his kid is dead. Some sort of genetic disease. No one knows the full story. He kept some of the kid's hair in a vial. He gave some of it to Thorton, that's part of how we know they were friends. Nobody knows what Thorton did with it. Probably don't want to know. It's not in anything we've recovered.
Thorton's original weapons project was based around recombinant mutagenic DNA, the goal being, naturally, a new super soldier that could be controlled and engineered with new traits, things we've still never seen the likes of, Phil. Guys with metal skeletons, shooting laser beams out of their eyes. Things like that. The Avengers would shit. Only, it never quite worked the way Thorton wanted. The weapons program was defunded over years as people got a whiff of how Thorton worked and how his subjects - all above board, of course, all the appropriate waivers signed, oh naturally, acceptable risks, all very legal - had a tendency to die in ways that meant their bodies kept getting 'lost' or pre-cremated before going home.
It's familiar stuff. You know the drill, Phil. We're not that clean, either.
But Thorton didn't give up back then. He draws up the documents for K, gets his crew together, gets a pittance of money from the military and some off the books sources that we think gave him a whole lot more, and they mostly shut the fuck up for a while and ran computer simulations on DNA. Well, so far as the books said. We know that's not what was actually happening. Stryker came on board ostensibly to be Thorton's balancing act. He was a lot more cautious about what could be done with the end results. The whole yin-yang thing, the closest we get to a smart idea in all this.
Then Thorton got squirrelly and the whole thing got shut down again about two years ago. Here's where it starts to get good, and by good, I mean nauseating if you can read between the lines. Sending you the files, Phil. Bear in mind all the dates are redacted, but I can tell you the last one coincides with the shut-down period. The rest are within a probably eight year timeframe before it. Tagging the interesting ones. Hanging up. Beep when I can contact again. I'll try to clear up the questions, but I've got a lot of them myself.
. . .
Log 4849:
Three (3) total failures, batch 29.
* Dormant recombinant caused DNA error cascade, producing fatal viral load.
* Exposure to [REDACTED] prompted unexpected response. Full cardiac arrest resulting in brain death.
* Alteration of protein caused DNA error cascade, producing fatal viral load.
Full loss of batch 29, logged and noted. Disposal of biological material completed at 0905 this morning, supervised and signed by W. Stryker and S. Carter, signatures copied on second page of this document.
Personal notes:
I don't know what they did to try to re-engineer [REDACTED] genetic sample, but it's certainly of no use to me. Discarding it in favor of a return to standard GTCA manipulation. Stryker agrees, but then I expected that. His project to maintain oversight and control continues to outpace my work, which would frustrate me except that it is easier to force technology than it is the meat. A sentinel program, meant to put any genies I unleash back into the bottle.
I admire his faith in me. I have yet to even earn a puff of smoke. Meanwhile, third contact has given me materials suggesting again extraterrestrial influence on our species at several points in history. I can no longer entirely dismiss this. Nor, apparently, can I harness it. His security team doesn't like me. It doesn't matter.
I will be taking a two week break. I wish to visit Socotra for inspiration.
-T
. . .
Undated audio file, 32 seconds:
[high pitched screaming, ends suddenly]
. . .
Log 5091:
One (1) failure.
* EMS alkylation, insertion point mutation. Projections suggest potential cancer, no useful result.
Subject disposed of as per protocol, non-harmful waste.
Personal notes:
Genetic movement of this nature is too small and precise to produce interesting results. Subject was conscious and emotional for procedure, but did not induce any secondary alteration. Attached are their vitals, note the cardiogram. Stress perhaps a catalytic, but not powerful enough in this situation to trigger anything useful. Will do further research, but marking this to forward to Killebrewe. Maybe that ghoul can do something with it.
I'm going to Asia for a while. New Guinea I must center myself within the world, so I may understand better how to disassemble it.
-T
. . .
[Four corrupted video files, each one fifteen seconds long. Only one contains two black and white seconds of viable footage, but no sound. The camera is in an out of reach high corner of a small hospital-style room. The video shows there is an empty gurney with a nest of sheets. There are unidentified stains on the sheets. Someone runs past the door outside, and the door rattles. Something flies up and smears the camera lens, thick and viscous. There is nothing else visible on the recording.]
. . .
Fingers scroll through a series of daily reports. They are mundane, except for the fact that Phil can tell people are dying in every iteration of Thorton's experiments, and he continued to write about it in the same dry, dull log of events better suited for small electronics repair. He pauses at one, an incident report attached to it. It tells him, plainly, this:
Incident file 307 - Security officer S. Carter breaches protocol during an engagement with subject ###-###, enters a lab with a procedure in progress. Officer Jackson withdraws Carter within guidelines. Carter held for six days for observation, given counseling regarding his observations, then released back to active duty.
Incident followup, unknown date: Carter continues to pass rigid testing.
. . .
Undated audio file, one unidentified voice, gender unknown, 5h, 23 min, sample transcript:
"Please make it stop."
"Please make it stop."
"Please make it stop."
"Please make it stop."
"Please make it stop."
"Please make it stop."
"Please make it stop."
"Please make it stop."
[Audio continues to repeat]
. . .
Log 5173:
Five (5) failures.
* All five exposed to ionized mutagens. DNA base pairs suffered total breakage. Acute cellular degradation. No salvage.
Personal notes:
Another incident in the lab. Objection has been noted, and Carter is being escorted off-site. This is the second, I believe. How unfortunate our process failed to stop him. Regardless, quite a time to remember his misplaced faith. Stryker and Jackson will reorganize security protocols in the wake of the issue. This could have been avoided if we'd kept the delicate out of the lab.
Regardless. Cannot replicate Banner incident. Cannot replicate Blonsky incident. Cannot replicate anything.
I grow frustrated. Headaches are increasing in frequency. I suppose I should schedule an appointment.
-T
. . .
Undated audio file, voice identified as Andre Thorton, 3 sec:
"I can't seem to stop the bloody shaking!"
. . .
Log Final:
Personal notes:
Thorton has closed down the project with no explanation and declares himself on sabbatical. He won't even explain anything to me. I hadn't seen him in days when he did it, and he called me by phone to do it. Wondering if he had a breakthrough and wants to keep it to himself. Or if he's sensing the other problem I'm dealing with.
Security breaches have increased while I start the process of the shut-down. Someone's fucking around, thinking I won't see them. I want to think it's Carter, but his alibi is solid. Might be personal dislike on my part. He's still passing our tests, staying in view. I've got at least four other released security personnel who have been off their baseline since we've cut ties. Most of them suspect the continued surveillance we've been doing to them. Signing a document doesn't guarantee they'll keep their silence. And meanwhile, Carter went and found God over it.
Maybe he'll just pray in a corner and leave us alone.
I called my ex-wife. She hung up on me. I have a good pension, and Thorton has left me the finances to unravel. I'll be fine. The rest will survive. Ensuring the disposal units are cleaned first, of course. We don't need evidence left behind. No one understands what we tried to do.
- Stryker.
. . .
Phil let the monitor go sleep-mode dim while his mind tried to absorb it all, staring up at the ceiling while he waited for the secure line to reconnect him to the contact. When he heard the telltale click, he didn't wait for acknowledgment. "Was the biological 'waste' found?"
"No, Stryker did his job, clean and professional. That's the only clue we have that they were disposing of people the way they were. We don't even have all the documents, as you saw. If we did, we'd be able to shut this shit down any time one of these guys pop up. We did nail that Killebrewe guy a couple years back, at least. Ex military guy. Was building himself a nice little workshop crew. They didn't get anywhere either, but not for lack of trying." A sigh came over the line, hard and heavy. "I heard they were culling desperate cancer patients. Christ."
"And this guy Carter got a conscience at some point in there, after he saw something he wasn't supposed to." Coulson frowned, putting a guess together. "Catholic?"
"Anglican. Why?"
Coulson thudded his head against the back of the chair, realizing he'd had a moment of idiot. "Nothing. I think I got swerved by a bad movie."
"Okay. So here's the important shit. Thorton's dead, maybe it was Parkinson's. He was old enough. He died in Calgary last year. I don't have more information handy because he went down civilian. Maybe your guys can dig it up."
Phil made a mental note to put Daisy on that, too. Send whatever she got along to the guys. "And Stryker?"
"He's stayed retired. I've got a handful of other names, other cogs that were onsite at the time. I can send 'em along, you can run the checks. I'm busy." The undertone was clear.
"You gave me what you could. I appreciate that."
"We're square. Good luck, Phil. Say hi to Nick for me." The contact hung up.
. . .
"What was that bit about a bad movie?"
"Crappy film called The Order about sin-eaters. Had Heath Ledger in it. I saw it in a theater and I kinda regret it."
A minor scuffle filled the line as Strange abruptly yanked the phone out of Loki's hand. "Sin-eating is one of those odd little bits of Christian folklore that tend to jump denominations and show up in odd places. Anglican Christianity might be aware of it, yes. A number of villages in England knew of them - and also Appalachia even until recently, oddly enough. A protestant quirk." He sounded thoughtful enough that Coulson was suddenly glad he'd mentioned it.
Loki audibly snapped the phone back. "Regardless of that detail, I assume you've already got something useful on Thorton's death, or you wouldn't have called yet."
"Getting the full death report on the professor is being a hassle, yeah. I'll have it within the hour. Meanwhile, can either of you guys think of a reason why they sterilized the entire autopsy lab when they were done with him?"
Another rustle on the end of the line. "Was he embalmed or cremated?" Strange sounded like he was in the middle of jogging or something.
"Cremated. I'll send it over when I've got it." Coulson listened to the sounds continue, slightly in awe. It was like listening to kids fighting. "You guys okay?"
"We would be fine if the man would stop ripping my phone out of my godsdamned hand as if he were the one in charge." There was an unintelligible mutter. "I don't care that you have medical superiority here, Strange. Let me get this finished and then you can ramble at me all you care to." Another rustle. "Get out of the car and finish running that trail, do me a favor before I make you eat this phone."
Coulson waited for the sound of the door slamming. "So, you're having fun."
"Don't." The single word sounded loaded with menace. "What about the other names?"
"We're tracking a few, but I'll send the annotated list over to you. Any of that help?"
"It's a lot of pieces but we'll string it together eventually, surely." Loki still sounded annoyed. "I can't shake the feeling this is not what I expected. It's one of my worse hunches."
Coulson shrugged, knowing Loki couldn't hear the motion. He'd at least pick up the tone. "Well, it's still necessary. And weird. But mostly necessary. Even if it just turns out you're running cleanup on a workplace grudge, that workplace needs to be understood better so we can keep shutting things like Department K down before they get any worse." The events of South Africa were still fresh in his mind. He had no doubts it was the same for Loki. "I want a day where we're not uncovering more trash like that."
"I expect it'll be a while. And there's always some damn fool who think it'll be different for him, so he forges on ahead and makes the exact same mistakes all over again."
Coulson sighed. "Any good ghost stories in the woods?"
"No." Phil heard the knock on the car window through the phone line. "Oh Gods, he's making faces at me. I suppose I should find out why. Anything else?"
"Nah. I'll just send you what I have. Good luck out there."
Loki muttered something unpleasant by way of farewell and abruptly hung up on him, leaving Coulson with a growing grin on his face.
. . .
"I finally found something." Strange spread the map across the hood of the car, gloved hands smoothing over the folds. Between the cracks of his fingers, Loki could see the glimmer trail shimmer strongly. It underlined the human's point. "Small cluster of faded life - or more like strong emanations of death, really, about three miles in." He looked up at Loki when he finished shutting the door. "Obviously I think it's a gravesite. Not quite a mass one, but certainly a disposal location."
"For our Mr. Carter's use?"
"I'd assume, considering, but can't know for sure yet. You've got Coulson's documents downloading to your phone, you can undoubtedly verify when we find them." Strange turned and looked at the woods, then squinted up at the afternoon sky. "You up for a walk?"
Loki shrugged, his hands spreading in surrender. "I'm up for getting this entire situation over with. If that requires a brief walk through non-demon-infested woods, so be it."
"You really didn't enjoy last fall's little adventure, did you?"
"Please shut up about the topic."
"You brought it up this time. I don't think I want to let it go. I only ever heard the faintest bit about it, and I was actually there at the end."
"There were reasons for it. It isn't up for discussion." Loki marched towards the fringes of the woods, rustling in his suit pocket to find the keys to the rental and click the automated button lock. When the car chirped, he froze and looked annoyed with himself.
"Realized you could have just snapped your fingers?" Strange smiled at him, all happy malice. "It's sort of like becoming bilingual, isn't it? You've been going native."
"How many traces of death did you sense at that site?"
Strange saw the obvious bait, went for it anyway for the drama of it all. "Five, I think. Maybe six."
"What's one more?"