Author's Notes: Happy D and TheImmortalWeapon, I thank you for your support. Danny's been forced on the sidelines on this one, so we're following the action. Don't worry, we'll get back to him. ;D
Disclaimer: Ultimate Spider-Man is not mine. Nor are any of its characters. That's Marvel's job. Any Original Characters and art you note, however, are all me. No. I'm not making money. Don't rub it in.
Chapter 27 - Chess
Kevin dashed down a low, wide corridor in Collier's laboratory. Every step he took felt weighted. And every click his boots made against the metallic floor resonated in his ears with intensity. His heart thumped, his limbs burned with the current of his power, yet he wouldn't let the rush distract him. Eyes alert, he scanned the passing walls—ignoring completely the two heroes he had been forced to drag along.
'Oh, they got to be here somewhere!' the blonde thought with a scowl. 'Does Collier have a special ward for them? Are they separated? Or even conscious? What if it's too late? What if they're—' The thought ran cold as Kevin rounded a sharp corner. No. They weren't dead. He was going to save them from that fate.
"Hey, Sparks"—came Spider-Man's obnoxious voice from the ceiling —"is there any way you can hack into a map of this place or something?"
"Just because I can generate electricity doesn't mean I'm an able hacker," Kevin retorted over his broad shoulder. "And stop calling me 'Sparks'!"
"What would you like me to call you then? Overload? For what you did to the security system? Or maybe—"
Kevin whirled towards the web-slinger, glaring. "Do you know how to take anything seriously?"
"Do you know how to take things less seriously?" Spider-Man gave a light snort then swung to the ground beside Kevin, who he tilted his chin up to meet. "I think we should call you 'Stick'…I'm sure you get the reference."
"Hey, Mister and Misses Bicker, there's a screen here with information you may want to look at," Power Man interjected.
"What kind of information?" Kevin countered. He broke eye contact with the red and blue hero easily then approached Power Man a ways down the corridor. Said screen sat flush against the wall at his shoulder height. It wasn't big and its background was black, but the bright text across its scrolling spreadsheet still read clear.
"Are these…feeding times?" Kevin didn't feel like he had asked such a question. It seemed too surreal.
"What does she think this is? A zoo?" For once, the mutant agreed completely with Spider-Man's indignation.
"The names aren't in alphabetical order," Power Man mused while stepping forward. He, too, sounded near growling in anger. "It's numerical…kind of."
"But numbers are repeated," added Peter blandly.
"No. Look closer."
Kevin pointed at a line, knowing just what Power Man meant. "The number thirteen is used here, but hyphenated with different letters than this one"—his finger slid down several lines—"and this one."
Spider-Man huffed as the mutant's finger found the third line. "Okay. So what's the difference between 'Thirteen-Car-S', 'Thirteen-Ex2-RH', and 'Thirteen-Ex5-AE'? None of them make any sense!"
"There's a note beside 'Thirteen-Car-S'," Power Man added. He gestured to a small line of additional text in another column, with font smaller than the rest. Kevin squinted with concentration to read it, except Spider-Man blocked his vantage point by jumping between the screen and the tall blonde.
"L—Luke," the web-slinger practically croaked, breathless.
"Yeah."
"It says the name 'Sam', but…"
"Well, 'noted childish remarks' and 'frustrating stubbornness' sounds like our Sam, doesn't it?"
"This is dated two days ago."
"Guess…he hasn't eaten since then."
"Good; you found your teammate?" Kevin received two definite vibes—neither of which were positive. He held in a sigh and a retort when they faced him and instead kept an impassive expression. "What room is he in? Maybe Collier kept the whole group together."
And if she didn't, Heaven help the whole damn lab.
"Room S-407'…Wherever that is." Power Man sighed.
"Oh, we're near it!" Spider-Man didn't linger; he shot web fluid at the ceiling and headed down the hallway all within an eye's blink. When he reached a fork, he swung right, leaving the others to chase him.
"How do you know?" asked Power Man once he and Kevin caught up.
Spider-Man kept swinging, saying, "The walls. Numbers are stenciled above the doors. They started with 'E' when we entered; now they're 'S'."
"Perhaps they're wards," Kevin added. "'E' is for east and 'S' is for south."
"Exactly."
"So the numbers are getting larger, I take it."
"They were in the three hundreds last hall and now—ha, see? Am I good? Or am I good?"
Kevin halted sharply when Spider-Man landed before him. Not fast enough, though. Their bodies collided into a jumbled mess from their momentum and the two skidded, face down, until they reached room 'S-407'. The strong scent of urine stung the back of Kevin's throat at the closed threshold. It jerked him upwards with a repulsed sneer and Spider-Man fell sideways as the mutant stepped backwards.
"Jeeze, Sparks, way to stop," the web-slinger snarled.
"I told you not to—"
Power Man stepped passed them. "How about you two stop bickering for once?" he asked, strained, while posing his arms. "We have a door to open."
Still silence filled the air. Apprehension. Expectation. Kevin waited under their weight as Power Man pulled his fist back, preparing for a strike.
"It's not polite to barge into a lady's sanctuary," a smooth, feminine voice cried over the PA system. It froze Power Man, who glanced up, as if he could see the woman through the security camera that Kevin doubt worked.
"Hey, I thought you fried the system," Peter directed towards Kevin.
Kevin, in return, sneered, silent.
"He fried part of it," the voice continued. It was disgusting how haughty and patronizing it sounded. "Of course, a woman is always prepared."
"Eh, I don't know how well back-up servers fit in a purse." Always with the quips. Kevin rolled his eyes as Spider-Man chuckled then nodded towards a more serious Power Man.
"Yeah, well"—Power Man poised himself again—"a voice isn't going to stop us from saving our friends, Collier."
A sigh crackled over the line. "Typical men. Think they can take whatever they want. But I admit; you're right. That's why I'm sending a friend your way."
"Friend?" Spider-Man barely uttered the word before his lithe body seized.
He hesitated a second then side-flipped as a blur of black passed him. The pressure of his feet met Kevin's back, but the blonde had no time for retaliation. Familiar eyes met his and their master charged. Kevin teleported away from the door, growling at the opponent that barricaded them from their goal with six strong arms.
"Caulfield, you're still working for this woman?" Kevin seethed with crackling, heated fists.
Flint didn't reply. Or twitch. He stood like a zombie soldier, which was far from natural. The constant anger that lit the yellow and gray in his deep-set eyes was dead. They were simply lifeless—like his rigid pose, his listless mouth, the very air around him.
"What have you done to him, Collier?" Kevin's tone was caustic, more so than he cared for.
And Collier had the audacity to giggle. "Considering the amount of time you wasted arguing with one another in my Enderlin establishment, I thought you would be amused with this change, Kevin."
"You have no means to make such an assumption," spat Kevin like he was speaking to the lowest life form on Earth. The hot current through him increased, and he pushed aside mass uneasiness from Flint's staggered walk as the six-armed mutant slowly approached. "This isn't right…"
"Not right?" Spider-Man scoffed from somewhere unseen. "Isn't this the guy whose sister you threatened to kill?"
"Oh, you really are clueless," the blonde hissed while bracing for Flint's inevitable charge.
"What? You mean to say that was your joking face? I really can't tell with you."
"Mister Caulfield"—Collier spoke over Spider-Man, and, God, her overly sweet voice crept into the mutant's bones like bubbling acid—"if you would be so kind? I can't have these three trashing my favorite room."
Like an obedient dog, Flint darted forward with the might of a rampaging bull. His powerful fists swung left then right, attempting to corral Kevin and Spider-Man. But Kevin teleported behind Flint and used a charged roundhouse kick against his solid side.
"I've been trying to figure it out for months!" the blonde bellowed as Flint convulsed slightly with the electric shock then whirled with one line of arms outstretched. "For all you've gone through, I never would have thought you would join Collier!" Dipping low, Kevin narrowly missed another barrage of punches and Power Man stepped in by sidelining the dark-haired mutant with extreme prejudice. "Is this really worth any kind of money she's paying you?"
Flint's head raised a fraction from the floor Power Man had driven him to. "No…mon…ey."
That's all he managed before a renewed surge of energy coursed through him. The mutant punched the floor like a six-armed jackhammer. Its force sent Power Man flying backwards and landed Flint on his feet. In that instant Spider-Man swooped down from the ceiling, shooting globs of web fluid at their opponent's impassive face. Flint ripped those off easily, but was soon met with a red boot to the face, which slammed him into the wall so hard that it dented.
Frowning lightly, Kevin recharged his body between the SHIELD agents. "Oh, come on, Flint!" he cried, bitter in his confusion. "If not for money then why would you…? I don't understand."
Silent, Flint slipped from the crater cradling his rock-solid form as if to create more tension in the air. Then, he tore his soiled shit off like it was a tissue, revealing numerous scars and burns across his toned muscles. The shirt fluttered to the floor by his boot and part of its material was burnt at the back, melted. Kevin could swear he saw light sparks glistened behind Flint, near his thick neck. And when his gaze met the blondes, Kevin noticed a slight change. The fiery glint in his eyes—while not as strong as before—returned.
"Flint," his tone was softer; he was painfully aware of that, "we're a lot alike. I came to realize this when we worked at Collier's—base. You were there to support your sister. Like me. She was pregnant, wasn't she?"
The glint roared, yet Flint's face remained impassive, his form unmoving, even as Power Man and Spider-Man slowly crept to his sides.
"You were hiding it from your drunk excuse for a father. And while you hated Ricky more than anything…I know you felt strongly for that child. When I heard you were missing, I honestly thought you had taken her and run. I thought—you wanted to start over…But you were with Collier the whole time, right?"
He knew the obvious answer. Still, the yellow fire that flared in Flint's eyes cemented all facts.
"Ashlee came back to town. Not pregnant. That bitch took her baby, and I can't fathom how you can stand by her still. You aren't a pawn in her chess game—none of us are!"
"Enough!" There was a satisfying ring of annoyance in Collier's high pitch tone. Why it took so long for her to interfere, Kevin couldn't say. But a hasty rustle sounded over the line before she continued, "He's every bit my pawn now. His transformation is no longer half-baked, so he has no choice but to obey!"
"Transformation?" Spider-Man echoed, light yet full of distrust.
"Mister Caulfield"—Collier's voice dropped deathly low—"kill them all."
Flint didn't hesitate. Again, he charged blindly. His arms whipped blindly from one opponent to another. Spider-Man's foot was caught in mid-air and Flint swung him like baseball bat into Power Man. As those two violently slid down the hall, Kevin charged his fists and landed a punch on Flint's side. He hardly moved. In seconds, the blonde's fist was captured, his body was lifted from the ground, and searing pain jolted through his torso when punch after punch met their mark. Then he, too, joined the SHIELD agents on the floor.
Something caught Kevin's eye when he breathlessly picked his upper-body up. A glimpse of black along Flint's exposed spine. It was a thick line—perhaps the width of an average cell phone—that ran from beneath his wild hair into the middle of his back. Small wires protruded from the line, all of which slid beneath his skin like a parasite's invasive grasp.
"Dude, I think there's a bug on his back." Thank you, Captain Obvious. Spider-Man stood before Kevin and without delay swung towards Flint. He shot more web fluid, except they remained strands. When they connected with the unknown device, a bright surge of electricity ran through them. Flint screamed in an agony that resonated through the hall. Its grim force is what pushed Kevin up.
"Spider-Man, wait!" Kevin cried, unable to contain any mortification. He immediately teleported to Spider-Man's side then severed the web lines with a hyper-heated slice of his hand.
As Flint sunk to his knees, Spider-Man faced Kevin with an unpleasant vibe. "What are you doing, Sparks? We need to ground him!"
"You were killing him," the blonde shot back just as heated. Did that seem funny? Because Spider-Man snorted sardonically.
"That's rich, coming from you. I wasn't going to kill him, I was just—"
"Actually, you were." Collier. "You see that little beauty? It took a long time for me to perfect the cerebral fusion. It's very delicate. Many of my patients died during early trials…as was covered in the local news. They were still imperfect, even when I sent them into Enderlin for recovery. It seemed good enough, given the leverage I held over them. But seeing how many failures they brought, I thought it best the procedure was completed."
Kevin couldn't say when his electric surge began, but the moment Collier's patronizing voice drifted into a light giggle, a new level of heat rose from his chest. In place of a mildly discomforting prickle emerged a painful scourge of biting fire. It surrounded him like a cocoon and crackled dangerously.
"Hey, Sparks, we're on your side this time!" Spider-Man was somewhere unseen, like everyone else. All Kevin noticed was flickers of white and blue across his vision and a deep ache in his heart.
"You get so easily riled up over the people in your town, Kevin," Collier added, somewhat distant. "I can't say I understand."
"You're right, you don't." The blonde spoke, but he couldn't feel the vibrations in his throat. Like he no longer belonged to his body. "How could you? You didn't have to endure years of fearing your own mother. Or try to keep peace between people who wouldn't listen. You didn't have to scrounge fields for chump change just to make a mortgage payment. Or watch the only adult to accept you slowly succumb to sickness. No, you"—here, his whole form shook; this he felt—"you, added to that. You tormented my home, my family. You've killed so many of us, and there's no way I'm letting you get away with it!"
"Is that so…?"
It couldn't be controlled, the bolts of electricity that danced through the hall. They bounced from ceiling to floor and overloaded one light after another. Pure hate fueled this power. Kevin wished for nothing more than for Collier to stand before him, so he could strike her down. Slowly. No, she didn't deserve to live. When he found her—and he would—she would have nowhere to hide…
"Kevin"—Alarm filled Spider-Man's voice—"do you think you can drop some Gigawatts? We're still—ah, shit."
A new scent met Kevin's nose, poignant and sulfur-like. Reality came crashing back with breath-stealing force, and he realized a gray mist had begun to form around him. 'It figures she was stalling,' Kevin thought with a scowl.
One quick glance towards Flint confirmed the six-armed man was down for the count. For now. So, the blonde's sharp eyes peered down the hall, where Ashlee eased forward with billows of smoke seeping from her parted lips. Every bit of her moved with the rigidness of her brother, and Kevin sighed inwardly at her dead expression. Ashlee deserved better than this.
"We know a weakness now, at least," Spider-Man said. He sounded close, but Kevin didn't face him.
"That won't matter if she keeps herself surrounded in ash clouds," added Kevin numbly.
"True…Guess I'll distract her then."
"Oh?" Now Kevin faced the hero that clung to the wall beside him.
"I can fight long distance. You and Power Man must get into that room." Without waiting for protest or confirmation, the web-slinger swung into action like a high-flying monkey. Guess that settled that.
Kevin twisted behind him and ran towards the door. Power Man, though, was reluctant to meet him.
"Get Sam, Luke!" Spider-Man cried as his web strands wrapped Ashlee around the waist and pulled her to the side.
After a moment of hesitation Power Man nodded then joined Kevin at room 'S-407'. They exchanged a brief glance, hardly acknowledging, before the powerhouse drew a powerful fist back. The following pause lasted half a second. Then Power Man's fist shot forward. Shockwaves rippled from the impact as the metallic door folded into itself. A second punch rendered it useless, and it hit the ground with a loud creak.
Kevin instantly dashed into the dim-lit room beyond. It was tainted with the scent of urine and something that left a tangy aftertaste in his throat. But he practically scrambled over the contorted door in his haste, a glimmer of relief and hope blooming in his chest. He landed near the room's center…and froze. What he saw severed the new emotions at the root.
"Th—these are…" Power Man started, low.
"Humans," Kevin finished in a whisper.
Two hundred of them, easy. They were strapped to metal slabs—young, old, male, and female. All were dressed in simple one or two piece suits. Side by side their tables lined the circular room, and each level above them used the same layout. Like a human bookshelf. Worst still, Kevin didn't recognize a one of them beneath the grim florescent lights.
"The—these people aren't from Enderlin." Somehow, the blonde managed to keep his voice even. "Why would she…?"
"Incoming!"
Kevin teleported by instinct. He appeared a long way to the side, far enough that he saw Spider-Man crashing into Power Man's chest. The powerhouse caught his teammate, setting him down gently, and then focused his gaze on the harsh light pouring in from the doorway. What had thrown—
"Ke…vin?"
Kevin tensed when foreign softness brushed his arm like a ghostly whisper. He whirled in disregard to all else, generating a charge of defense around his limbs. Left. Right. Then, he glanced down. He was greeted with a grim smile from a male prisoner lying on a metal table—a very familiar prisoner with kind dark eyes and years of experienced wrinkles across his fair features.
No. Kevin's chest clenched so tight it kept air from entering. No. It couldn't be.
"K," the prisoner added, his thin lips weakly curving upwards behind his white beard. "Y—you're…alive."
The blonde felt like crying, but the shock barely allowed him to whisper, "P—Papa?"
"Ugh, look at the mess you've made," Collier's clear voice snapped Kevin from his reverie like a harsh slap.
He drew a very shaky breath that matched the erratic beating of his heart then twisted his head towards the door. Flanking Ashlee was now the Indian, Nirav. His tall form stood like a shadow against the harsh light, with more listlessness than his companion, and Collier's voice over the PA system seemed to darken his already grim expression.
"Well," the woman said, breathy, "looks like we'll have to do this the hard way."