February, 2001
Maverick Solutions Offices, Harlem
Aleksei went off to make his call, after moving the crate into the Bunker. Meanwhile, Mrs. Watanabe and I went back to going over applicants. There were several that were promising, but most of them were in the non-combatant category.
Still, that was pretty useful where we were at the moment. I'd be doing interviews later on throughout the week, and I had high hopes for pretty much all of them. Of course, we had to settle the current issue, so I also called up Dad, and asked him to pretty please put in a word at Crane, Poole & Schmidt. With the amount of money we had to throw around now, even without the multi-ton crate of Nazi Gold sitting in the basement.
Leave it to fucking HYDRA to manage to find a way to make me feel a level of stress that even approached being back in Madison Square Garden with Killgrave, just by dropping off a crate with some shiny golden bars. Allfather Above, I fucking hate the New York Nazis. Every time I closed my eyes, I could almost hear something. A steady, droning, hum that my mind told me was coming from the Bunker, but I was pretty sure I was imagining.
I had no fucking idea how legal or illegal it was to just possess those bars, and it was driving me up the fucking wall. It felt almost like a constant pressure was bearing down on my shoulders, making me want to grind my teeth as a jolt of ice ran up and down my spine. I wasn't sure if any of this was actually real, or if it was just my nerves getting to me as I sat alone in my office. One of my hands tightly gripped the tiny hammer medallion around my neck, and I inhaled and exhaled deeply, trying to focus on the cool metal.
The hellish, purgatorial stupor was broken by the sound of thunder above. The thunder was real, and so was the rain that started to come down shortly after. I shivered as I got up to close my window before the wind could mess up my papers, which was the last thing I wanted now. Still, the drum of the rain, and the rumbling of thunder was a lot more comforting than the constant, empty, nothing that had filled my office before.
And then, there was a knock on my office door, and Aleksei stuck his head in. "I have called the guy I know Boss! He says he will be here within hour!"
I smiled weakly, and nodded. "Thanks Aleksei. Wait… I… um, you never said… who exactly the 'guy' you called about dealing with the box of stress in the basement?"
Aleksei just chuckled. "He is guy who has big experience with HYDRA-types. Don't worry, he is professional sort of guy."
"Well… alright, I… I'll trust you on this one. I'm… not sure what to do… just, sort of getting this dropped on my lap basically…" I rubbed at my forehead and sighed heavily. "Just… been a lot happening in a really short time."
But, then I perked up a bit. "But hey, tomorrow we're picking up that flying van from Big Al's, if it's still there!"
"Da! I cannot wait! Perhaps we can stop at diner afterwords." Aleksei grinned conspiratorially and leaned in. "One of the waitresses there was very pretty."
Oh. Ohhhhh… Are we getting that early? My smile warmed at that, most of my stress and anxiety dragged away by the simple conversation. "Sure! I'll just need to call in to the FAA if we want to try taking the thing in the air. Might be fun if it's not too much hassle."
The next hour passed with a lot less stress. Herman had done some scans on the crate and gold, and it didn't seem like it had been tampered with in any potentially dangerous way on the outset… though it might still be cursed, or possessed by vengeful spirits. I… should probably stop by Greenwich Village at some point after the guy Aleksei called finishes up. I'd never really interacted with the Masters of the Mystic Arts, but Doctor Strange literally advertised himself as 'Doctor Stephen Strange, M.D., Sorcerer Supreme, Master of the Mystic Arts' and actually did consultations if he had time. We miiight be in need of an exorcism of some kind.
My reverie was interrupted by the doorbell ringing, and I rushed to open it. It seemed that Aleksei's 'Guy' had arrived… and he wasn't what I was expecting. My first impression of the man who was standing outside my door, wearing a long black overcoat and a tweed suit with a waistcoat along with a proper fedora. He… reminded me of much earlier memories from my previous world of Michael Gough's performance as Alfred Pennyworth. Unassuming and grandfatherly, with small round glasses. The oddest thing about him was the fact that his right hand… seemed to be some kind of bronzy prosthetics, which was holding onto a large black carpet bag.
"Greetings. I assume you are Miss Anderson?" He asked, with a very light Polish accent.
I nodded. "That's me. I'm guessing you're…?"
"Zachary Brandt. I am a professional… Rat-Catcher, the term is. You know it, I assume from your expression." Oh. Oh. I blinked, and stepped aside to let Mr. Brandt past, eyes slightly wide as I watched him place his coat and hat on the stand next to the door. I had been… slightly expecting a fence, or someone who dealt in tech and artifacts of a valuable but more unsavory nature. Some kind of auction rep. This was very different.
Anyone familiar with the inner workings of the Marvel Mercenary world that I'd dived into knew who the Rat-Catchers were. In my original world, 'Nazi Hunting' was mostly a thing of the past, with what few of the infamous war criminals that remained unaccounted for being nearly 100 and pretty much just huddling in remote villas waiting to die. Not the case here, between HYDRA and Hatemonger and clone bodies and time travelers and who-only-knew what else, there were probably somehow more Nazis in the world now than there were in the 40s. They were, well, rather like human rats, an infestation. And as a result there was a burgeoning industry dedicated to getting rid of them whenever they were spotted, gnawing away at the foundations of society. Usually, it was a way for dirty mercs to make a quick buck and feel good about themselves doing it.
Zachary Brandt wasn't like that. Normal Hydra-hunting mercs were a different breed from the Rat-Catchers, Brandt was an old-school Nazi Hunter. Only people who were involved with the OSS and ODESSA dared use that name in this context, people who had been in the game since day one. These were the Real Deals. The people who had been hunting down Nazi holdouts everywhere from Germany to Argentina to Antarctica, the Hollow Earth, and Space ever since the end of World War II. A living fucking legend. People who could scare hardened HYDRA agents just with their presence in the area. He might have even killed the Red Skull once... not that it ever stuck, unfortunately.
"Where are you keeping the evidence?" Brandt asked, giving me a smile. I gestured for him to follow me to one of the back storage closets, and pulled a hidden switch near the back, revealing a keypad that I typed a sequence of numbers into, opening the staircase to the Bunker. At the moment, the underground complex of rooms was mostly empty, save for Herman's workshop, and the Armory, which had Aleksei's suit in it. The crate was in a side room that had once held… server racks I was pretty sure? SHIELD had cleared out pretty much all of their actually valuable equipment, and valuable to SHIELD meant data.
The crate was sitting there… menacingly, just radiating a feeling of what I could only describe as pure, undilute evil. It was a more common feeling in Marvel than I'd like to admit. Despite that, Brandt just smiled that tranquil smile, before removing his jacket, placing it on one of the empty racks and then setting the carpet bag next to the crate, before rolling up his sleeves. It turned out that I was correct that he had a prosthetic, which was disarmingly classic looking in it's design. Very Da Vinci in it's aesthetics, it looked artisanal, a relic from a more dignified age. I also winced as I saw what I had also slightly expected on his other arm when he knelt down to remove the lid of the crate. "You know, when Aleksei called me, I did a little research. And I am glad of what I found."
As Brandt spoke, his arm unfolded into dozens of smaller, long and spidery limbs that began to pick up both some of the gold bars, and a number of implements that I couldn't recognize. Some were obviously sensors and scanners, others seemed much more… arcane, like the set of jewelers glasses that had lenses patterned with symbols that glowed with an internal light which definitely wasn't from any sort of electronics. "Your… Uncle? I believe, Mister Hammond, burned down the gates and walls of Dachu personally. My wife and I were freed that day. He has my eternal gratitude."
I just nodded, at a loss for words. Being starstruck about superheroes was one thing… but as a technical Mercenary, meeting a Rat-Catcher was… well, it was something I hadn't ever really expected.
With my silence, Brandt continued, not stopping in his work for a moment. "I must say, you are following in his footsteps well. Dealing with the monsters that lurk in this world. I am assuming though, that putting a missile through that Purple Man's head was not the option you would have liked to reach for first?"
I nodded, mostly just watching the examination process. "I… yeah. I was panicking, and I just… in that second…"
Brandt nodded. "Some advice from an old professional, and I have been doing this since well before you were born. In the line of work you have taken, there will be times when you must act. When you must kill. When there will be no other option. And, in my experience… well." He flipped down several more lenses, even as one of the segments of his arm glowed red-hot and sliced out the stamped emblem from one of the bars. "You will not be able to find a third option. We cannot all be Captain America. Do not lose sleep over the monsters you must put down. While they may not be judged on this Earth, they will certainly be judged after it."
He placed the emblem inside a contraption that looked like a hexagonal steel framework surrounding a sphere that was half crystal, half bronze, and linked to the frame with several struts and a tangle of fine wires. The sphere itself was split in the middle and hinged open, and it was into this that he placed the symbol, before closing it, and tapping it with a small key. The gold liquified almost instantly… and I could see coils of red-black smoke curling out from below the surface.
"Very interesting."
Brandt saw me staring at the unnatural way that the gold was reacting.
"As expected really. This, I'm afraid, is a tainted asset... the gold is cursed. 'Reward' or not, it is hardly surprising that the Enemy would take this as an opportunity to dispose of what is otherwise a useless asset to them. I suspect that this particular set of bars was produced from gold... extracted through the camps. The gold made from pilfered war-spoils is really no more tainted by it than from any other conquest of history, and even the material drawn from demonic pacts simply demands its' hellish patron be dealt with one way or another... but the Extracted gold... I'm afraid the sheer suffering that went into its' creation leaves a taint that never really comes out."
That was… horrifying. I just watched as he placed the device into a much more solid-looking bronzy sphere, it's surface covered by interlinked golden hexagons, each of which had a symbol engraved below it.
"On the bright side, that kind of stain... it makes it easy to track. Each unique combination of horrors impressed into the spiritual form of the spoils makes for a unique spiritual fingerprint... and a messy one at that. It is akin to following a trail left by a car leaking oil, and it should be simple enough to trace this back to whatever warren it was left to fester in for the past decades. Of course, with that in mind, I don't doubt that the Enemy are well aware of that warren's imminent demise. The cell that sent this to you is either gone already, or did something to make their masters very angry with them."
He pulled himself to his feet, a shimmering gold haze coming over his eyes as he stared off into the middle distance.
"Still though, removing an asset from the Enemy's hands, even if it is one they are prepared to dispose of, is never a worthless task. Tell me, Ms. Anderson, would you like to perform a public service today? I believe I have a fire to start under a house in Queens."
February, 2001
(Former) HYDRA Safehouse "THULE-1c", Queens
Even from across the street, I could still feel the heat of the roaring fire that had consumed the old house almost supernaturally quickly.
Or... maybe actually supernaturally quickly.
The Fire Department had been called, but were mostly there to keep the blaze from spreading, that house was already way too far gone. Though Brandt had assured everyone that they would not. The sword that he had used to set the entire place ablaze was perfectly directed, according to him. The white flames were pretty at the very least.
Magic still freaked me the Hel out.
He had been right about the cell being gone, admittedly. Probably gone for a while... and for once I couldn't blame them. That house had felt... evil. Apparently, dark things were attracted to the kind of spiritual rot that cursed objects like the gold pallet left when sitting in a place for a long time.
Shadow men, revenants, unseelie fey, insect spirits, sometimes even actual demons would take having an object like that in your home as an open invitation to set up shop. And once they did, they'd wreck all sorts of hell on the local area. Nightmares, bad luck, famine- in this case everyone's yards drying up and getting overgrown with weeds no matter how hard they tried to keep them- misfortune- this neighborhood basically felt like a tiny slice of Cleveland that got transposed into the middle of Queens- and all sorts of other awful stuff. The Hydra cell that had once been here could have been tasked with nothing more than gardening and selling lemonade for a quarter, and their base would have still driven down property values in the entire neighborhood just by existing.
It meant that we'd pretty much had to leave all the leftover Hydra gadgets where we found them. Which was... almost a shame, some of that stuff looked pretty cool. But I wasn't risking a haunting because I picked up one of Hydra's old death rays. If even Hydra wasn't willing to take that stuff with them when they left, it was probably also cursed just like the gold.
Fortunately, Soulfire cleaned all ills.
All of this only redoubled my concerns about getting that pallet out of my damn office as fast as possible. Evil spirits didn't even pay rent!
"Wait, but what am I going to do with that crate, if it turned a chunk of Queens into Cleveland, the hell is it going to do to my office!?" I asked.
Brandt just smiled warmly, like an old librarian who was just asked the exact question he was waiting for.
"Don't worry, Ms. Anderson. It takes more than a decade for that kind of rot to settle into a building just by contact alone. What's more, While most aren't exactly as storied as that pallet, there are plenty of cursed or spiritually tainted objects in New York. It is really inevitable with any large city sadly. Nonetheless, it means that there are a great many services within the city dedicated to the handling of the paranormal. Ones that have much more time to see to problems like this than the Sorcerer Supreme."
An explosion shook the neighborhood as the Soulfire hit something within the old Hydra base, and a spectacular, firework-like explosion rocketed out of the old house with a sound like a distressed owl, ripping the flaming wooden structure apart and allowing the fire to billow out of the concrete pit below.
"Ah, there we go, that should probably be the last of the major spirits dispelled... there should be little need to oversee things here any further... Right, your gold problem. As it happens, I happen to have the contact information of a particularly scrupulous business. Unlike some of their competitors, I happen to know for a fact that they don't believe that 'disposal' is a byword for 'dumping it in the Hudson'. Here, I happen to have a card of theirs on-hand."
He offered his hand to me, and a small slot opened just above his wrist, which a standard white business card slid out of with a noise like a printer.
I took the card, read it, and immediately groaned as I recognized what it was for.
Ghostbusters LLC
Professional Paranormal Investigation and Elimination Service
14 North Moore Street, Tribeca
(216) 245-2368
I just stared at the card, trying to make sense out of it. I kept staring, even as I got back into the armored car for the drive back to the office. It was exactly what it seemed, it even had the cute logo.
It was silly, but... they were actually professionals, honestly I was way less surprised than I probably should have been.
With a heavy sigh, I pulled out my Nokia, and started to punch in the number on the card. After all… Who you gonna call?
A/N: Yes, it does in fact turn out that Marvel did a Ghostbusters comic. We just sort of happened upon it and it was too perfect.
