We storm the fancy hotel with ease. After all, none of these people actually have any high tech weaponry and Erik can manipulate metal. Maybe Trask has some robots ferreted away somewhere but I doubt they'll hold up to any of Stark's creations. Fighting robots is a been there done that for me. Plus the metal dude is on my team so it's hard to consider them a concern.
"Are you sure about this?" Erik asks me as we stalk down the hall to where Trask is having his meeting.
"Positive," I tell him, rolling my shoulders back as the two guards outside the conference room notice us. This time I take care of them and leave them in crumpled heaps on the floor before kicking the double doors open. "Oh my god, it's Tyrion Lanister," I state with a chuckle spotting the man in command of the room, ordering that the mutant not be killed.
I assume Raven is the one being tasered on the table. Erik redirects the barbs into the neck of the man that originally shot them. Everyone else is struggling to figure out what's going on and I roll my eyes and send current through the few closer to me, making sure Trask notices.
"Now, if I don't know you, get the fuck out or I'll escort you myself," I threaten casually, lightning bolts flickering through my fingers and causing the ends of my hair to lightly float. "Not you, Trask," I add with a snap, pointing at the man as Charles speaks to Raven.
"I think we need to have a chat. And if I don't like what you have to say, I don't think you'll ever speak again afterward," I state coldly, moving in on the man.
"Who are you?" He asks, trying to hide his fear as he backs towards the doors.
"What are you doing?" Hank asks me frantically as I pass him, stalking towards Trask slowly, gathering fear and allowing the man time to formulate a plan.
"Taking care of our problem."
"Logan," he states, drawing the attention of the burly man, he's focused on the guy getting the life tased out of him though. "Erik!" His shout turns into a yell that manages to distract me in time to see Erik fire a gun. I freeze time in an instant catching Trask pulling a gun off of one of the guards at the door. Good, the way this plan is headed, he'll need it.
"I told you not to draw blood!" I yell at Erik, unfreezing him.
"You told me to cause a scene," he corrects.
"Well now if I kill Trask, they'll have the ammunition to arm the sentinels and whatever DNA they find manage to pull up. A dead body leaves a lot of it Erik!" I yell at him.
"Then we can't kill Trask right now."
"No...no we can't," I mutter. I bite my lip and run through plan b. Hopefully Trask is worse at his job than Hydra but better at shooting that gun he just picked up. "I'm going to infiltrate his main lab, that one Charles mentioned on the plane."
"I'll break you out?"
"Maybe, hopefully I won't need you but I don't want to underestimate him. You need to cause a scene now. Make it big and get people scared. Draw out Hank and Logan, they're less press friendly. If you do kill Raven—and I don't think you should, make sure you take care of her body. I can't account for an entire body but I can certainly fuck up some dirtied samples."
"The world will be ready to take up arms after this, are you sure that's what you want?"
"Yes, no civilian casualties though. That will only work against us in the end," I say nodding to myself as the plan comes together.
"What will you do?" He asks.
"I'm going to get captured by Trask. My DNA and everything about me doesn't take well to lab work. It destroys machines, burns hard drives. We could never figure out why or how but Trask will take samples off of me and then destroy his entire lab along with the samples he gets from Raven. He'll have to rush the order for sentinels the president is going to put through after this and things will slip through the cracks, we'll be able to hack into them."
"You're certain?"
"Humans are repetitive."
"How are you going to get out?"
"I'll figure something out," I say with a shrug. His eyes narrow and he grabs onto my arm before I can turn away.
"I'll come get you, you'll be in no shape to get out on your own," Erik says firmly.
"They won't know anything about me and what little they do will be wrong. Trask will think I'm dead, Erik. He's going to shoot me himself," I continue and his eyes just bulge out of their sockets. Right, I didn't tell him about the whole dying is my favorite hobby. "I died at the pentagon, sent enough current through me to stop my heart, hence the ability to stop time between heart beats and zap people. I'll be able to get out. Even if they do a full autopsy. For their sake I hope they don't because last time that happened apparently I eliminated an entire base. I will be fine, Erik."
"Get on the train with the sentinels as they ship out. I'll get you from there and we can tamper with the sentinels then too," he says. "Thirty six hours I presume."
"Thirty two hours," I correct. "Cause a scene," I tell him with a smirk, turning away towards Trask.
"Oh, I will," he says with a chuckle, eyeing Hank who's posed in the middle of taking him down.
I unfreeze time and set my sights back on Traske. He's armed now, still just as afraid though.
"I heard, you've gotten creative in your experimentation. Now, I'm going to get incredibly creative with how I kill you," I tell him as we enter the hallway, I've got to make sure Charles doesn't interfere. Hopefully they'll be distracted enough.
"I don't want to shoot you," Traske admits and I chuckle because he's probably never had to get his hands dirty before. My anger at Erik for messing up the plan dissipates. I'll be able to haunt this man and drive him crazy like a ghost, what a golden opportunity.
"And I suppose you didn't want to torture hundreds of innocent people just because they were evolved either," I say mockingly continuing to press him back. I start drawing up the current through my body just to add panic back into his actions.
The longer this goes on the higher the chances that I will have back up. He will lose his window to experiment if he doesn't act soon. Guess I'll just have to make him. I lunge towards him and he shoots me in the chest.
"Not enough, sweetheart, I'm hard to kill," I tell him with a snarl. Two more shots that barely hit me as I tackle him and one more right through the heart. That does the trick and I feel the stillness rushing in. Yeah, I can't wait to haunt him.
XxX
Sometimes it takes a while. Severed limbs take the longest, drowning can get up there, messy brain injuries too. When my head was cut off, that resulted in a whole endeavor that was very r rated. Since nothing about me can really be quantified and relayed to others besides word of mouth, I don't have a reliable description of what goes on in my body while I'm dead.
What I have learned is that it's best not to interfere. The longer I'm dead, the more my body fights back. An innocent enough autopsy once ended with the destruction of an entire base. Supposedly I went full feral zombie, eliminated everyone that didn't get out fast enough. I didn't even have the capacity to actually think.
That's the worst case scenario though. Five days before my dead body starts getting ideas—literally. Heart failure and similar deaths usually mean I'm back within five to ten minutes, being peppered with bullets usually means closer to sixteen hours depending on where and how many times I was shot. Since Trask failed to shoot me in the head, it's a slower "wake up" than usual but a faster recovery. Not a bad thing because it gives me time to get my thoughts in order before anyone has a chance to catch me breathing. But it's probably been closer to eighteen hours since Paris. Plenty of time for them to transport me to wherever and gather their first samples before any new abilities set in or I start to "wake up."
First things first, stay calm. There's cold below me, like metal, normal treatment for a dead body. Something wet on my arm, could be blood or any number of things. The room is relatively quiet. The ring of a telephone breaks through the silence right as I'm about to start trying out my motor functions again. Someone rushes into the room and hurries to answer. I keep my breathing shallow and hope they don't notice my pulse slowly increasing.
"Yeah, I'm retrieving another sample now," a male voice says lazily, there's a muffled response from the other line. "I don't know, but Traske is furious. He lost almost three months worth of data."
"We were running the samples on the new subject and everything just crashed. Fried hard drives, everything went down," he continues. "If it wasn't dead, I'd assume it was the mutant. He's there? Alright, thanks. If he asks, tell him I'm getting the new samples now, thanks, bye."
A few seconds later I'm fighting my instincts to open my eyes when a shadow falls over me. He grabs my arm and I feel a cold pressure on my forearm but nothing pierce. Right, I was shot. Smaller wounds like that usually mean impenetrable skin the next time around. Time to move soon. I crack my eyes open a little bit and get a layout of the room and a vague position of the guy in it with me.
One guy, I could easily take him out, tie him up and give me some time before anyone notices I'm not dead anymore. I've got impenetrable skin right now so it isn't like they could do too much to me if they come looking for me, guns blazing. He picks up a scalpel and I shut my eyes as his shadow returns.
I'm glad he's noticed the impenetrable skin but has he not noticed the lack of postmortem changes? Granted I'm naturally as pale as the moon but everyone knows rigor mortis. If I was really dead, he would not be able to move my arm. To be fair, I might be showing signs of algor mortis. Whenever I get the impenetrable skin I'm less susceptible to the temperature changes. Steve always said I was freezing.
"That's weird," the guy murmurs aloud. I could just wait for him to leave and slip away then. He's taking a look at some notes near a microscope now. I don't see any security cameras in here. That doesn't comfort me though. The only reason a place like this wouldn't have cameras in the labs is if they were doing something illegal that they didn't want on camera. Probably a few right outside though.
He starts to dial a number on the phone before he changes his mind and heads straight for the door. I get up as soon as he's gone. Stretching out as I do so, I walk over to where he had been taking notes and smile seeing the gibberish he was left with.
I'm not sure how it happens but the only way to pass on more than just my name and certain life details is by word of mouth. Doctor's notes get rewritten, scribbled out. The information burns through hard drives, machines break. You can hear my heart through a stethoscope but hooking me up to an ECG will just break it. Coulson suggested it was something we just weren't allowed to know. Thor had agreed and said something noble about Valhalla.
I jump onto his computer and search for anything involving the sentinels but nothing comes up after a basic search and I don't want to get caught here. Noting down a few names from the guy's email so I can start hunting down his facilities I draw up vague coordinates and what sort of numbers I'm looking at. These facilities must be giant considering all the correspondences about various mutations. There's even information about what they call "prospects" like Raven, Hank, and even Charles. Anger bubbles through me but I shake it off.
Instead I turn my focus back onto what I have to work with because I can't help any of them here. After the sentinels are dealt with though? Well, it's been a couple years since I arranged a prison break but I doubt I've lost my touch. There's a lab coat someone left behind and of course the sheet my body had been covered with but the clothes Charles gave me were nowhere to be found. Meeting Erik in nothing but a lab coat that doesn't close isn't on my list of things to do.
I analyze the room again, this time looking for alternative exits to the door. There's a vent that looks promising and the ceiling itself could be a last resort. Before committing to a very Clint Barton move, I check the hallway for any visible cameras. Nothing. It's too good to be true. I slip on the lab coat, grab the clipboard with the no longer legible notes on myself, hug the coat closed and venture out, keeping an eye out for security cameras.
Their placement is rather amateur. Then again, if this facility is only for manufacturing purposes and not live experiments then security might not be an issue. The hypothesis grows stronger as I notice the other "labs" are much more spacious than the one they had me stored in. The space reflects the larger more mechanical projects, and for a company like Trask, there wasn't too many of them.
I snuck into a vent as I came across more traffic and security cameras. Someone was bound to notice I was barely clothed. After crawling through vents for much longer than I wish, I dropped down lightly into a dark office. Some quick investigating shows that the office belongs to John Smith, distribution manager. The extra pair of pants in a cabinet also ensures that he's a tool but maybe I'm just quick to judge. They're way too big around the waist but at least they're pants...and being held up by a headphone chord. I'm a fashion innovator. I just wish I had something to make into a top.
It was the right office that I chose though. The guy's computer had the basic schematics of the sentinels as well as all of their shipping information. As I predicted, the president wanted them in production and even had the set up for a public demonstration. The bad news is that they are less advanced than I had hoped. Each sentinel has its own set up, they're not connected to a so-called home base that can be hacked. I had been counting on them sharing a hive mind. Mechanical engineer isn't on my resume.
My nerves spike when I realize the shipping containers containing the sentinels are about to be sent out within two hours. I need to get moving. It would be really nice if I had a shirt. Or shoes. At least I don't have to worry about stepping on something and cutting my foot open this time around.
I'm about to leave when I get a great idea. John Smith doesn't have anything about the live experiments on his computer. He does have records detailing Trask's involvement with the United States military and a bunch of anti-mutant literature. Almost all of it is based on prejudice and only three cases detailing any cause for worry. It will be easy to spin as some rich man's method of compensating. I upload everything to the internet, coded so that I can access it as soon as the time is right. If everything goes to plan, the US government will have to enforce pro-enhanced legislation or lose their jobs and income seeing as the next stage after tomorrow is bankrupting companies like Trask.
I delete everything on John Smith's hard drive because why not and then start making my way to an exit. Finding the loading dock is my next priority. Hopefully Erik will have a trick up his sleeve in regards to fucking with the sentinels. I end up following a familiar face. The man with the taser in Paris was speaking to someone on a chunky phone, speaking of a testing facility far off before confirming that the sentinels were just about to leave for DC.
He had led me to a window. Outside was the shipping yard, a train being loaded up as he spoke. Very evil villain framing, complete with ominous lighting. I'm kind of impressed. I duck out of sight when he turns around but I catch his name on his uniform and my face drops. Strucker. It caught me by surprise and I blinked in shock. Stryker. Just a blip. He's not the same guy but I can almost feel the saw cutting through my neck.
I'm not thinking. I'm not thinking and that's clear as I step out and disarm the man. I pull his gun and shoot out the window then throw him out of it. Following him and rolling as I hit the ground I glare at him, common sense breaking through the rage. It's not the same guy.
I didn't get to kill Strucker in my universe. I should kill him here—but it's not the same guy. He lay sprawled out on the ground, his head scraped up and arm somewhat broken. There are plenty of commonalities between the Stryker fellow and Wolfgang Von Strucker. Hell, maybe he'll grow up a little and go become a nazi. Either way, I owe Strucker a trip to Hades, not this guy although I'm sure he deserves it. If our paths cross again, I know it's meant to be.
I leave him alive and run off into the shadows as shouts rang out behind me.