Initiative 2030
Chapter 33
"Turns out there's THREE women dressing as the Goblin Queens."
"What?" Henry Peter Gyrich blinked.
Daken was reporting in to his official supervisor, the Defenders team having returned to Washington DC from their Texas mission. The others scattered to take up their daily lives, leaving Daken to do the reporting in,
'My teammates are horribly innocent,' Daken mused. 'Do they really think I wouldn't lie to the bosses for my own benefit?'
"Three?" Gyrich prompted him.
"Yeah," Daken nodded, "Carlie Cooper, Lily Hollister and Sarah Stacey. It looks like they connected over what the Goblin's had done to them."
"And they just... switched out the uniform?" Gyrich clarified.
"Correct," Daken agreed, "Sarah had inherited Goblin powers from her father, while both Lily and Carlie were exposed to the Goblin Serum."
"And they all want revenge," Gyrich mused. "Makes sense." He gave Daken a sharp look, "So how, exactly, did they escape you?"
"They had placed explosive devices in several former Oscorp buildings and then detonated them as we were fighting," Daken scowled as he explained, "we had to break off the fight to go rescue the civilians."
Gyrich blinked. The murderous mutant had actually stopped to save people?
"It would be bad PR if we let them die," Daken added.
Gyrich sighed. Clearly he had not changed his spots...
"We passed the information to the police. Now that we're tracking all three's accounts and such, we should be able to find them," Daken concluded.
"Well, Alchemax was happy with the help we provided, so things seem to have turned out well enough," Gyrich conceded. "Good work."
Daken rose, walking to the door. "Thanks," he casually waved.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Later that day, President Valeria Richards was going over reports, along with meeting a few of her 'inner circle.' "Ezekiel, any luck tracking the teleporting the Avengers use?" she asked.
"It's not teleporting," Zeke Stane noted, the handsome man sitting back. He added, "I've been studying the footage from Dreamland."
"You've cracked it?" Camilla Black asked curiously.
"As damaging as the Dreamland raid was, the facility had state of the art sensors," Zeke said. He continued, "After studying the data, I determined that they appear to be using some form of stable dimensional gate."
"Can we track it?" Valeria asked.
Zeke subsided a bit. "It actually has a lower energy footprint vs normal teleporting," he admitted. "It's a bitch to track."
"Keep working on it," Valeria sighed. She looked at Camilla, "What's going on with the Moonstone situation?"
"No sightings, no electronic traces, even her known bank accounts haven't been touched," Camilla admitted.
"Seriously?" Gyrich asked.
"She's gone to ground." Camilla sighed. "We ARE looking to see if she has any off-shore money hidden away, but that's slow going."
Val waited to see if anyone else would say anything, then sighed. "A contact with the X-Men passed some information on," she calmly noted. In fact her 'contact' was Daken, but she wasn't going to reveal that,
"What? Who?" Camilla demanded.
Val ignored that, "Apparently Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, was there."
"I thought he was dead," Gyrich blinked.
"No one seems to stay dead in this business," Zeke noted dryly.
"Point," Gyrich conceded.
Kristoff looked intrigued, "I understand Barnes is an excellent shot. Do you think HE was the sniper that shot Phoebe?"
"I think we'll have to look into him as a possible suspect," Camilla sighed, "in addition to the Scourge leads."
"Any luck in the Scourge of the Underworld investigation?" Val asked, following up on that.
"No new strikes on Gov't targets, but they're active," Camilla admitted.
"We've captured two agents. Both were victims of crime looking for revenge," Gyrich noted. He continued, "They are refusing to name their associates."
"Other than Castle, of course," Val said dryly.
"No luck finding him either," Gyrich complained. "He just seems to vanish."
"We actually have a theory on that," Camilla offered.
"Oh?" Zeke asked.
"We know Castle was a friend of Nick Fury, and when they were in the military they did some missions together," Camilla said. "Sometime after SHIELD formed, Nick recruited Castle for a mission or possibly missions."
"Huh," Zeke muttered.
"We think in return for Frank's help, Nick set it up so Frank was basically invisible to SHIELD sensors," Camilla finished.
"Shit," Gyrich cursed softly.
"And considering how many of our allies use SHIELD based systems, it's probably in their networks too," Camilla added.
Val asked curiously, "Can we fix it?"
Camilla shrugged, "We... possibly could fix the coding, though I'd have to bring in experts. But it's probably spread into all the systems connected to SHIELD, so..."
"So, no, then," Val sighed.
"We'll look into it," Zeke offered, looking curious about the problem. "Maybe we could get Machinesmith involved...," he muttered.
"Go to it, then," Val smiled.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Barbara Munroe leaped and rolled as bullet's whizzed by her. 'What the hell?' the young woman thought.
The heroine known as 'Miss America' had been coming home from a mission with The Defenders. She had opened her apartment door, sensed something was off...
"You're as good as they say you are," a voice noted from inside.
"... Red Guardian?" Barbara recognized the man's voice.
There was a surprised grunt.
"Is your team, the Supreme Soviet around, too?" Barbara asked conversationally.
"No," Red Guardian replied, "this is personal."
Barbara took that as her cue to charge in, ducking behind the sofa to avoid bullets. She spotted the bigger man, tackling him as she slapped the gun out of his hand.
"As fast as ever," the bear sized man grinned, then burst into laughter.
"Damn it, breaking into my apartment and SHOOTING at me is not how you say hello in America," Barbara complained.
"Have you seen an American action film?" Red Guardian asked.
"Okay, point," Barbara admitted. "What are you doing here, Alexei?"
The big man got up, dressed in a snug red and black uniform, with a white star on his chest. He pulled back his cowl, the redhead smiling cheerfully. Alexei Shostakov the Second was the latest Red Guardian, the patriotic hero of Russia.
"I can't just say hello?" Alexei grinned.
"It's not exactly in character," Barbara noted mildly.
"Ha!" Alexei laughed. "I need a drink," he sighed.
Barbara knew she wasn't going to get anything out of him until he drank, so she got a bottle of beer from the fridge.
"American beer?" Alexei noted disdainfully.
Barbara just gave him a LOOK.
"Heh," Alexei took a drink, then sighed quietly. "You knoe the Red Room, yes?"
Barbara eyed him warily, "The Russian version of the Weapon Project that made our Caprain America. Wolverine too."
"Da." Alexei agreed, "They've made a new Black Widow. And as a test they've targeted YOU."
"Ah fuck..."
To be continued...
Notes: Following up on several older chapters.
