Revamped!

[I'm feeling so blessed for having a long weekend].


Chapter 78: Escaping SHIELD Island Part Five

SHIELD Island - 1 Hour and 39 Minutes Till Detonation

Nobody on the beach moves. Their eyes are fixated on Iqadi who lies dead on the beach after being shot by her husband, Imanu. Nobody could process what he did. The man who didn't even want to hold a gun, who didn't want to find his wife dead, was the one who used the gun to shoot his wife.

The gun used rests at Imanu's feet where nobody dares to pick it up because the sand circling Iqadi becomes darker shades of red the longer she lies there, getting closer to reaching the weapon. Within their ears, they hear the others yelling for a response to all this which they're not sure how to handle considering that the issue in their hands is too much for them.

"Quiet!" Merida yells in her earpiece to the others.

"What have you done?" Apollo asks Imanu.

Imanu doesn't respond mostly because he isn't sure. The others gave him shade about not holding a gun and leaving him back at SHIELD, and now he came and the first person he shot dead was his wife. He's shaken as well. No matter how many times he repeats that, it'll never sit.

Once it's silent in their ears, Angela takes a few steps closer to Iqadi with Merida behind her, Apollo behind Merida, and Imanu not moving at all from where he stands. Angela kneels in the bloodstained sand. Her hand shakes as it hovers above Iqadi's neck to check for a pulse although she knows there won't be one. Tears form in her eyes as her fingers land on Iqadi's neck, but to her surprise, the spot where her fingers land starts to pixelate.

This surprises Angela and the others who stand on the beach with her. Angela hesitantly pinches the pixels on the skin which begin to spread all over Iqadi's body. She slowly pulls off that layer and it turns out to be a SHIELD-certified holographic mask covering an inmate who was pretending to be Iqadi.

Angela takes a deep breath of relief. She turns to the others and the tears fall out of her eyes. Apollo and Merida sigh gratefully as they turn to Imanu who has fallen to his knees in gratitude, tears of joy falling from his eyes.

"How did you know?" Angela asks.

"Marital hunch," Imanu responds.

-o-

1 hour and 32 minutes till Detonation

The others relax after watching all that chaos unfold from the security feeds, knowing that the dead Iqadi wasn't even Iqadi. After doing various tests on the Iqadi that was with them, they could safely and confidently say that their Iqadi is the real one. The real passing moment was when Iqadi watched Imanu shoot her duplicate and she fell on her knees, screaming bloody murder at them for bringing Imanu and giving him a gun.

"Let us wait until we're off the wretched island to say our proper hellos," Iqadi says.

Everyone nods, still trying to understand how Imanu knew to shoot the Iqadi that was with them. Even Iqadi doesn't know but she doesn't feel at ease with it. She takes a breath and wipes the sweat from her forehead, swiping back the locks of hair that stick to her face.

"Are you okay?" Daniel asks her.

"I'm exhausted and watched my husband shoot someone who looked like me," Iqadi replies, "so maybe not fine."

"Any idea how long you've been here for?" James asks.

"Not a clue," Iqadi says. "I was unconscious for who knows how long and then in battle only to be unconscious again."

Nobody further asks Iqadi about what happened to her on the island. Not only is it a waste of time but she seems fixated on the security feed where she sees the others and Imanu on the beach with the dead inmate who impersonated her. Her stomach is clenched and she doesn't feel like moving.

"Emily, how much longer till we're trapped here forever?" Xavier asks her.

Emily glances at the timer in the corner of her retina display, the fluorescent numbers glowing as they tick down.

"About an hour and a half," she responds.

"Call the jet over to the others on the beach." Xavier looks at Iqadi. "Can our quinjet dock onto yours?"

Iqadi nods. Emily already knows what she has to do without Xavier needing to order it. She connects to the quinjet and activates its autopilot system to head over to where Iqadi's jet is.

"Stay where you are, we'll go to you," Xavier says to the other half of his team.

-o-

1 Hour and 11 Minutes Till Detonation

As the others stand on the beach, they feel the breeze pick up but it wasn't the wind. It was the sound of the quinjet on autopilot, landing on top of Iqadi's jet, docking on top. That's when the other half of the team meets up with the ones on the beach. Everyone is at ease, looking at the real Iqadi again.

Iqadi runs over to her husband first and immediately wraps him in the tightest hug. His hand bends up to hold her tangled hair as she rests her head in the crook of his neck. Imanu trembles since he just shot someone who was disguised as his wife and now has his real wife in his arms. She consoles him in their dialect as the others look at each other in gratitude that they found Iqadi.

"We still have a lot of time left over, still an hour," Daniel says.

"That's strange," James replies.

"It's also strange that out of the entire island, we only had a battle with one inmate each," Merida points out.

"That's not strange but suspicious," Angela says.

"That is also what made this mission kind of boring," Apollo states.

They ignore Apollo's point and just focus on what they were getting at earlier.

"I couldn't spot any of the other inmates on the island," Xavier says. "All the agents were killed and placed in their main station."

"The inmates couldn't have gone anywhere since our jet and Iqadi's are still here," Daniel says. Then his face drops. "And now we're here with both of them."

"Maybe that was their plan," Emily mutters.

At the sound of trees rustling and being knocked over, the team looks back towards the forest. Slowly, but all at once, a congregation of various inmates in their standardized light-blue SHIELD prison jumpsuits form on the island form at the forest's border. The standard human ones, of course, they're not bringing the hybrids with them on the way out.

Angela reloads the gun Imanu used earlier and tosses it at him so he could have some form of self-defence. Imanu lets it land in the sand before he goes to pick it up. There's no way he wants to use that again. Iqadi puts herself in front of her husband anyways, one hand being held back towards him. The team form a line of their own with Iqadi in the centre and Apollo and Daniel on the ends for strategic reasons. The armed ones make sure they have a grip on their weapons as they scan the crowd of villains to see the medley of inmates they're up against.

"We just wanted a jet to escape so we annihilated the SHIELD agents here and made a device that would force an approaching plane down to use for our escape," an inmate tells them. "We expected the next shipping jet but we got lucky. Seems like we now have two."

"So escape already!" Apollo screams at them. "I don't care! Considering that you got caught in the first place and have a horrible plan now shows that your escape would only result in an inevitable return here if the island doesn't blow."

All his friends and even the inmates turn to look at him strangely, not expecting what Apollo just said. Apollo, however, saw no problem with what he said.

"He's got a point," James mutters. "Why haven't you assholes escaped yet?"

"We were about to when we pulled in the first jet," an inmate explains. "Then, we saw that it was Her Highness of Wakanda in the jet. That's when we knew that Project: New Generation would be coming to rescue her. We didn't factor in Stark, the Asgardian or Wakanda's Prince Consort but the more the merrier."

"Have fun when the island blows," another inmate adds.

"The island won't blow," Emily states.

"Having us here is both to your advantage and disadvantage," Angela says to the inmates. "Sure, your plan worked but only up to here."

"Stark, any chance you can speed up the clock?" Xavier asks.

Merida laughs a little. "Are you kidding?" She loads her bow with a fresh arrow and holds it high. "Time flies when you're in battle."

At once, all the inmates come running forwards from all directions. Project: New Generation starts attacking. They're outnumbered in quantity but not quality since they have strength, teamwork, aerial, and meteorological skills to their advantage.

As Daniel turns into his Hulk, Iqadi holds up her arms and her eyes turn opaquely white to summon a giant windstorm to push all the inmates to the ground. Pausing during the heavy wind buildup, Apollo drops his axe in shock as he watches Iqadi, specifically at her eyes. He's suddenly thrown with a flashback of - Sigyn raises her arms in the air and rests The Serpent Crown on her golden blonde hair. She opens her eyes and they're opaquely white. Her menacing maniac-like laugh echoes, almost blocking out the scream he can't originate. Apollo feels shivers roll up and down his spine the longer that flashback plays in his mind.

"No!" Apollo exclaims.

He runs over and bodychecks Iqadi to the ground. His teammates look over in confusion as the inmates laugh.

Apollo holds Iqadi down on her chest cavity, burying her down in a few inches of sand. Iqadi's hands are gripping his wrist which is close to crushing her ribcage in hopes to get him off her. Apollo holds his axe above her and Iqadi gasps as she sees the sunlight reflect off the sharp edge of the axe and his eyes turn a shade darker than the clouds.

"Apollo -?!" Iqadi chokes out.

Apollo watches as Iqadi's eyes turn back to brown and that's when he realizes that nothing's wrong. He lowers his axe and throws it at an inmate instead. Apollo gets up and looks at Iqadi for a second longer before continuing to battle as if nothing happened. Iqadi sits up a bit as James flies over. He grows back to his normal size before pulling Iqadi back up onto her feet.

"What was that about?" Iqadi asks. "Is he alright?"

"We'll explain later," James replies. He realized Iqadi didn't know Apollo doesn't remember much or anything. "You're still able to fight, right?"

Iqadi grits her teeth and makes the hands of her Panther suit into claws. "I'm getting off this damned island!"