So it goes with saying that only things I own with any connection to MARVEL I bought on Ebay or Etsy. MARVEL COMICS & MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE are their own creatures and I have nothing to do with either of them aside from the fact I enjoy reading or watching them, and am grateful for the ability to play in their world. I claim nothing, and I receive nothing for this, expect the pleasure of putting something out into the world.
You can also find this story on ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN under the same title and pen name along with a place to post suggestions.
Don't forget to check out the Photobucket album listed on my profile page too. (My apologies. I didn't realize FF removed the links. I have corrected the problem in what way I can, so for those who like the visual additions, feel free to check them out.)
DAY THREE
CHAPTER SEVENTY NINE
THURSDAY, MAY 3RD 2012
1325 HOURS
MURILLO RESIDENCE
EVANSTON ILLINOIS, USA
DUNCAN
I woke up, which I probably would have been happy about if what woke me wasn't a foot pressing down on my chest as its owner was wrestled to the dirt and having his throat cut by another man, one who once he was finished killing his victim turned his glowing blue eyes and knife on me next.
Stuart Hattrick, A STRIKE agent that I think was trained by Jack Rollins. Bastard managed to fillet my arm a little before I took his knife and put it in his stomach a few times, the hand guard catching on the last stab, and making me change my tactic and crush his windpipe with a punch.
I didn't bother tying the flap of skin back up or even acknowledging the mess that was my hand until after I was out of immediate harm. I had bigger concerns, like the opposing forces of STRIKE versus MI-6 and a bunch of brainwashed mercs, oh and the fact that half of my vision was agonizing static.
I thought I was dead for sure. I should be dead. Somehow though I survived whatever her 'magick' did to me, which still fucking hurts, it feels like what I've heard lightning victims feel, like the moisture has been taken out of my tissue. That I'm still alive might have just been luck, or maybe it was never enough to kill me anyways I don't know.
But she beat my face in, and that should have killed me too because I know she hit me hard enough to cause a concussion before I passed out.
Most importantly though, my life definitely should have ended once the camera feed ended. Even if Sitwell wasn't looking at the feed right at that second, these things have a built failsafe of fatal voltage that burns out your brain and the circuitry. HYDRA doesn't let its dogs live off their leashes.
That kind of death was okay, I decided. Sure I didn't want to die, but if anyone had the right to take my life I guess she did, both for what I did to her in a 'God's' control and a cult's. Hell, she managed to free me from both of them for a second there at the end right before she knocked me out. I was grateful for that. Now I owe her for that.
The fact that she probably won't appreciate me reappearing in her life didn't change my mind. It won't be easy, but I'll explain everything to her after I rescue her, and boy do I got a lot to explain. That Asgardian bastard has been pulling my strings ever since he assigned me to be her guard. I wasn't even me when I gave her my name.
It took me 47 minutes to collect an escape vehicle, and 35 minutes of those were spent trying to find shelter to clean myself up. A veterinarian clinic called Cross Pointe or something, I wasn't really paying attention to the name, just the right angle to shoot out the door lock.
I scared the hell out of the vet tech in the back, a blonde girl not much more than twenty who was feeding the dogs. I felt bad about that, and the fact I didn't have time to talk her down. I was as gentle as you can be when executing a sleeper hold, and laid her carefully on one of the examinations tables for the next shift to find.
After that the next thing I broke open was the supply cabinet. I tore open a box of Deracoxib, a supposedly beef flavored painkiller meant for dogs who had surgery, to take some of the edge off until I had a chance to get something better. I also took the first aid kit off the wall before I did the same for every purse, leaving everything behind except for a collection of cash and a single set of car keys. last on the list was a quick and very teeth grinding surgery that involved emptying a tube of superglue into the hole in my hand and wrapping it in tape. There isn't a lot you can do with a wound like that, then after 12 minutes I had wheels and pavement beneath me.
It took me about 3 and quarter hours to reach Murillo's. Maria Murillo. A mother of two, a boy and a girl and the adopted mother of her niece Angelica. 'Rojas', the name Maria's sister went by, ran a immigrant smuggling ring that I had 'strong' connections with. When complications during delivery ended up killing her I named the baby Angelica, and brought her to Maria myself.
Going to a civilian in Evanston, Illinois wasn't the greatest decision of my life, but my S.H.I.E.L.D connections weren't an option and back then, when I put her niece in her hands she was wearing her nurse's scrubs.
I don't remember getting there, my focus and general consciousness drifting after the initial discovery regarding powerlines. I almost put the damn car around a fire hydrant when I passed under the first one, and the electrical field made my eyepiece buzz. A discovery that repeated itself when I got to close to a cellphone tower.
It was a problem that was unavoidable though as I continued driving, taking detours only around the biggest cities due to my lack of time.
When I reached Evanston I chewed through another three of those disgusting things just to reach her house and even then I can only recall half the trip to her driveway clearly.
I remember waking up perfectly though. Her children were apparently curious about me, so her husband turned on the TV to draw their interest away, and before they could usher her kids toward it, I woke up and almost hit my 'attacker' who was really just a curious nine year old boy that was just standing too close.
Apparently her and her husband found me unconscious and had to carry me out of 'my' car into their apartment. Maria had the sense to say I was a one of her sister's old boyfriends, and had a drinking problem.
I apologized for the inconvenience and scaring her boy, and then I pushed the money into her hands and apologized again with a side of begging as I explained with as little detail as possible what was happening to me. I needed narcotics, morphine, vicodin, the strongest painkillers she could get her hands on at such short notice, and then I passed out again, only vaguely praising the cold towel someone put on my head.
When I woke up again my skull still felt like it was pulsing, but the sensation was more wrapped in wool then a molten ice pick, and there was an upside down smile of prickly string on my forearm where she stitched my knife wound up. The fact I 'slept' through that, and the presence of a Ninja Turtles band-aid on my inner arm suggests she gave me my first dose of whatever she bought with a needle.
She also cleaned up my face, I could feel the difference on my skin even without seeing a mirror. I could feel the curiosity in her gaze too when she looked at me. I knew from my ride here that some of the metal housing for that implant was peeking out in the cuts around my eye socket. She was curious about how that side of my face was so injured but my 'eyeball' was 'fine'. She didn't feel right asking though, and I wasn't gonna tell.
She did give me some oversized sunglasses to hide that and the bruises that were sure to come soon. Oh, and her son made me a PB and J is an apology.
That should have amused me, but I couldn't 'not' see the last kid I ran into, the one I pinned to the floor and tranqed after I shot her dad and her dog.
I gave Angelica's forehead a kiss, before telling Maria to leave the credit cards behind and gave her instructions on how to reach Felix. He was one of her sister's old men and could help her hide until all this was over, then to start packing only enough for a few days drive.
After that was done I did the same. Her husband wasn't my size but some of his older cotton T shirts replaced my blood stained one, she found an old hoodie that would fit too, but I would have to find new pants somewhere else. She also gave me her family's first aid kit. With that I got back in the car, that sandwich and a carton of milk waiting for me in the passenger seat.
I made it a half hour before I washed down part of a Norco with that milk just to make it out of the city. I'm already mourning my liver.
THURSDAY, MAY 3RD 2012
1329 HOURS
TRISKELION
PRIVATE OFFICE
ALEXANDER PIERCE SR.
The static shrinks off into oblivion, leaving the logo of Shield in its place on my screen, again. I've been checking the feed myself, not that I need to because Sitwell has strict orders to contact me if the static clears, and I have other people watching for the same thing too now.
I never should have listened to my daughter when she asked, I should have just done it anyway. He may have been adopted, but she always loved him like a real brother, and my niece loved him like a real uncle. So when she heard about the train wreck, and I told her what we could and were going to do, she accepted that decision, but she asked me not to but in the failsafe. She said just to let him think it was in there, there was no way he would know any different, and it would be enough to keep him in line.
Her birthday was a week away at the time, so I let myself be swayed and said yes. Garrett assured me that the one they were putting in him was top of the line and made out the strongest and most durable materials they had. Nothing short of maybe Captain America's shield should have been able to break it. It turns out Garret didn't make it Asgardian proof.
The reason I keep checking though is that it's still recording anything at all. The eye runs on thermoelectricity, but by now, even if he wandered off and died somewhere his body would have cooled to the point that the implant would have no more power. It's still running because he is still warm which means he is still alive.
Councilman Malick, I mean councilman Boothe is gonna be unhappy about the fact that I let my emotions cause this problem. Nobody likes loose ends, especially when those loose ends have valuable and potentially dangerous information. Not that I'm too worried, there's a reason the lie about the failsafe in his head always worked up until now. He values his life too much, he cared more about that then trying to 'do the right thing' and expose us. I'm sure he still does care about that too. He isn't planning on outing us, he is most likely planning on just outrunning us and dying of old age.
Unfortunately that can't be allowed. The technology in his head isn't supposed to exist, it's one of HYDRA's secrets and has given us quite the edge on things. That's not something we want to reveal to our competition, it will raise too many questions, and create competition.
Rumlow and his team were able to confirm that he went down, but in the fighting that followed with the affected men they weren't able to confirm what happened to him afterwards, just that his body wasn't among the dead. He might still be with the Asgardians, and that's not acceptable. If he is with Loki then that creates an exposure risk for HYDRA, I don't see that 'prince' being above outing us to S.H.I.E.L.D. In fighting as an old but effective tactic to weaken any enemy, and if he knows about her then he has probably has a personal reason to do that too instead of just a tactical one.
I had such high hopes for that boy. The implant was one thing, a convenient collar to a problem I saw growing. But it wasn't the only modification I had planned. Garrett's other side project on the drawing board, the CENTIPEDE serum sounds promising, but with Alex's opinion on HYDRA, enhancing his strength to super-soldier level was unwise.
Whitehall has been improving his Faustus machine though, ever since I released him from that cell following Peggy Carter's retirement. He is confident that soon they will find a way past the visual disconnect between a camera lense and a retina. Then even a digital eye won't be an obstacle for the brainwashing anymore.
After that the failsafe bomb in the implant won't even be necessary because all that will be needed to keep those soldiers in line as the typing of a few sentences.
It looks like I'll have to sacrifice those plans for the time being, and the thirty years of work I put into honing that boy the old fashioned way. These modern enhancements are nice, but they still don't replace the need for training and skill.
That's why I started with an orphan. No father, and a mother who gave birth to him in prison. Even if she wasn't an addict who was on death row for her part in a robbery that went wrong, she had no siblings or family that wanted to take on her problems. A child with no strings that I could mold from the ground up, and if necessary cut down with minimal attachment.
Sure he has become close to his 'sister' but their not actually siblings, and eventually she will get over it. She understands the cause is important. It's just a pity I have to start over again, I'll have to start with a ten year old this time if their going to be old enough by the time I'm forced to retire. I was looking forward to doing that willingly some day. I had some nice plans involving a small island in Malta, but it looks like that's going to have to wait.
NOTES FOR THE READERS:
Back before Powers Boothe was cast is Gideon Malick he was just an unnamed Member of the World Council, so I gave him a name because I didn't know he would be returning. However because this is a world of spies, its easy fix, his name in the Council is just an alias, my Councilman Boothe is Gideon Malick.