Revamped!

[I'm not gonna lie, this is my favourite arc so far and it's nine parts long]. [2020: Finally. I have made it to the second arc that got more work, but I'm proud of it. Like African Storms, this has also been extended. It's now ten parts!]

Copyright - Avengers Assemble: Science Bros


Chapter 48: Symbiosis Part One

Stark Towers - 10:24 AM

Early in the morning, Angela, Xavier, and Daniel all sit around the kitchen's island eating breakfast and reading over missions and debriefing transcripts. They compare notes right until Emily walks in since she can't hear any of this due to it all being classified information. Emily doesn't care, though. Even if she did hear it all, it wouldn't be interesting to her. She prances into the kitchen, still wearing her pajamas. Emily approaches Daniel, puts an arm around him, and kisses him on the cheek. Angela and Xavier watch her as she goes to make herself a coffee.

"Em, did you get any sleep?" Angela asks her.

"Yeah, you look awful," Xavier adds.

Emily turns around from her espresso machine and gives Angela and Xavier the most irritated look ever. She just woke up and didn't shower or do her light makeup yet so yes, she looks dead. Still, she's a beautiful woman who just needs some caffeine to wake up and look alive.

"With all due respect to your ranks, Agent Rogers times two, I got at least four hours," Emily tells them. "I spent most of the night reading an article about some research facility in the Antarctic. They didn't release their findings but it's been inactive for weeks and their only investor went missing - Sergei Sorokin."

At the sound of that name, Angela, Xavier, and Daniel all tense before their faces express their frustration. Emily notices their reactions and for some odd reason, that excites her. This could be some classified information they're willing to share with her.

"Who is he?" She asks them.

"He kidnapped Merida's parents a while back for reasons that we still don't know about," Daniel tells her. "They wouldn't even tell her."

"Oh, well, should we go check it out?" Emily questions.

"'We?' No, I'll go check it out. You go take a nap."

Emily rolls her eyes. "I just finished my suit and I'm the one who found this. It's not fair. Come on, let's do this. We'll even make a bet out of this - whoever wins gets the satisfaction of having the other recognize their scientific superiority."

"I'm already scientifically superior."

"Okay, three Ph.D.'s and a Masters in medicine, my singular Ph.D. and business degree will bet on it."

Daniel sighs. "Alright, fine. Let's set it up. Who's on whose team?"

They look at Angela and Xavier who have already run out of sight. Emily and Daniel glance at each other, not having heard either of them leave. The two of them don't want to be a part of this.

-o-

SHIELD Headquarters - 11:42 AM

Merida adjusts her bow as Daniel and Emily stand nearby, waiting for an answer. They already explained the reason for the mission which bored Merida because they kept using the words scientifically superior which felt like an attack on her. She only became interested when they mentioned that they will be splitting into teams and she got her team.

"I'm in," Merida states.

"Really?" Emily says surprised. Since Angela and Xavier bailed for whatever reason, Emily thought Merida would leave as well.

"With him, not you," Merida tells her.

Emily narrows her eyes at Merida as Daniel cheers and rubs it in her face. A part of Emily had a feeling that Merida might pick her for sisterhood reasons but a sisterhood would be the reason she would pick Daniel over her.

She leaves Daniel and Merida as they start discussing a plan. How rude.

Emily walks down the hallways of SHIELD and stops when she sees the last person she could ask to join her team. She sighs, still debating with herself again on whether she should go through with this. Seeing no other options after the others bailed, she continues walking towards her last friend.

"James!" Emily exclaims, sounding as positive as she could be. "How are you, my great friend? I was trying to look for you earlier but couldn't find you. You know, you were my first choice."

"After Angela, Xavier, and Merida," James replies.

Emily's gleeful expression just got slapped off her face. Instead of apologizing, she gives James a look.

"Seriously?" She questions. "Is that going to be a thing because -"

Emily cuts herself off when she sees James begin to laugh. She doesn't understand why since she just blew his ego, but joins in awkwardly. He playfully throws an arm over her shoulders and rocks her from side-to-side like a ship at sea.

"You're my dearest and best friend, Emily Stark," James tells her, "and you have been for a very long time. We're both very much alike, you and I - rich, good-looking, and fun at parties."

He's definitely on her team and they're going to win this.

-o-

Sorokin's Lab - Antarctica - 7:39 AM

Emily and James arrive and stand in the laboratory's outdoor forum which in Antarctica means a room of snow and frost. The two of them look around. Despite the harsh chill, the building itself is in incredibly good shape.

"This is pretty nice for an abandoned place," James points out. "Merida did say Sorokin was rich."

Emily suddenly looks at the ground and reads her scans with a shocking disgust. "I think I know why it's abandoned…"

Emily uses a fan in the hands of her suit and blows some snow away. Underneath the thick layer of snow isnt't what they expected to see. They see all the dead people - assumed scientists due to the lab coats - with inverted bodies. All their organs are spewed out as if they just exploded out of the body from the inside. Their features are barely recognizable.

It's abandoned because everyone here died.

Emily scans all organs - or what's left of them to be present so they're not organ donors.

"Oh my god…" James mutters, quickly kicking some of the snow back in place not to look at the morbid sight he's currently stepping on.

"The nature of these wounds suggests that something burst out from the inside, but why make something like that?" Emily says.

-o-

Merida and Daniel arrive at a different sector of the laboratory, on the other side from where Emily and James are. They enter one of the experiment rooms and notices that out of all the stations they already passed, this is the only one with the lights still on. That was the reason they entered this room and not the others. Looking around, they see papers and notice that it's titled: "Subcategory - The Hulk" but everything underneath the title is redacted.

Daniel backs away without another thought. Anything involving his Hulk is territory he never wants to trek. MojoWorld was bad enough. Merida's eyes linger those sheets for longer before looking over her shoulder to face Daniel and look at what else this room has to offer.

"And what do we have here?" Merida questions, pulling out an oxygen mask from a storage container. She wonders why there is one in here and places it on the counter. "Some scientists tampering around with gamma radiation? What copycats. Can't you scientists say anything original?"

Daniel still hasn't said anything. Merida spins on her heel and continues to look around. She sees a flashing light catch her eyes. Merida takes a step closer and the flashing lights stop. Merida backs away as a laboratory refrigerator nearby Daniel opens. He slowly approaches it to take a look at its contents. Daniel holds his gloved hand out to pick it up, refrigeration mist hitting his face.

"Warning! Oxygen is now contaminated!"

It suddenly hits Daniel that the mist from the refrigerator is the contamination and he's already inhaled it. He quickly turns around and whips the oxygen mask Merida took out earlier onto her face. Merida struggles, wanting to give it to him instead since it was already too late to give him the mask. Daniel and Merida's hooded snowsuits were SHIELD-certified snow gear that was crafted to survive the coldest temperatures, not unknown radioactive diseases. With an expected strength from Daniel, he shoves her outside the lab and she hits the floor. The moment Merida gets up, she finds herself slamming her fists on a door that's sealed shut.

"Daniel!" Merida screams.

"Get out of here!" Daniel yells at her.

Merida looks at how dark Daniel's face has become and it's unsettling. She backs away and nods before turning around and running.

"Stark, James!" Merida yells into her earpiece. "I need your location, stat!"

-o-

From where they are, Emily and James hear a mix of static and Merida screaming over their coms before deciding to go inside. Before they could trek across the bodies, Merida bursts out. She immediately closes the door behind her and pants heavily as Emily and James wonder what the hell happened and where the hell is Daniel.

"Daniel inhaled a monster!" Merida exclaims.

Merida quickly ducks as Emily flies over her head, breaking through the closed doors to get Daniel. Her suit could protect her from the contaminated oxygen. Knowing that the cold air will freeze away the pathogens, Merida removes the oxygen mask from her head and gives it to James.

"Get in there and find whatever you can on this place," Merida orders him. "I'll get our quinjet and we're getting the hell out of here."

James attaches a particle disc to the mask so it shrinks when he does. As he flies inside, Merida turns to run and she unexpectedly trips, arrows falling out of her quiver, and into the snow. She reaches into the snow to pick up an arrow and sees her hand gripping on a human wrist.

Merida immediately throws it to the side and that's when she sees that she's lying on top of multiple human corpses and a sheet of snow. Her body is shaking as she looks at all the exploded bodies with their organs outside their bodies. Merida gags, quickly jumping to her feet. She then makes the connection to the experiment that contaminated the air and Daniel getting infected.

What if this were to happen to him? All because he gave her the oxygen mask.

James: Our lovely friend, Sergei, who by the looks of this entry and exit log isn't missing because he left here hours before we showed up. Stark, send an urgent mission message to Angela and Xavier. Tell them to track down Sergei. They should know how. Stark, do you copy?!

There's no immediate answer.