Frostbloom
Chapter 1
Homelander heard an alarm going off on one of the lower levels under Vought Tower but thought nothing of it, preferring to continue channel-surfing on his wall of TV sets, until a few minutes later when his cell phone rang. The display read "Maureen" and that was how he knew it was an emergency. She would never contact him of her own free will. "What is it, Maureen?"
"Sir—sir—" Her voice was nothing but a gasping sound, and the klaxon he'd heard in his penthouse was ear-splitting over the phone.
"Spit it out," he barked. "What's the problem?"
"An accident…in one of the labs…Subbasement B—"
"And I care why?"
"Ms. Barrett was inside the lab when the accident occurred."
A shaft of fear pierced him, which he did his best to deny to himself. "Is she alive?"
"We don't know, sir. We haven't been able to access the lab yet. One of the lab assistants had enough time to set off the alarm and the doors lock automatically. They will not unlock until the biohazard has been neutralized, and the counter's still showing red."
"On my way." He tossed the phone aside and debated tunneling through the ground and going through the side of the building to reach her, obey the clawing need to get to Ashley, but decided against it. The elevator ride seemed to take hours before the doors opened on chaos.
The alarm instantly set up a throbbing in his temples to match its own beat, and the emergency lighting painted the walls blood-red. When he stepped out of the elevator and looked left, he saw a large group of people gathered in the corridor outside what must be the lab where the accident had occurred. Without thinking, he moved at his highest speed, appearing next to them in a fraction of a second. In short bursts, he was as fast as A-Train, but the other man could sustain his speed longer.
"Maureen, status report," he said.
"Yes, sir. From the security footage, a lab assistant ran into a cart and knocked multiple vials of unknown substances to the floor. At least eight vials were broken. We don't know whether the biohazard is biological or chemical at this point, as everyone involved in the project was in the lab when the accident occurred. The biohazard took effect in twelve seconds. Everyone fell to the floor and started seizing. The seizures had different durations for different people. Ms. Barrett seized for two minutes and twenty-one seconds before falling unconscious. Dr. Harriman, the project lead, seized for five minutes and eight seconds. The shortest seizure in the lab was one of the lab assistants, who seized for thirteen seconds. There are no sensors in the lab to tell us who's alive and who's dead."
He looked through the wall. Bodies lay all over the floor, lab coats on everyone except Ashley. She was face-down, wearing a leopard-print blazer he remembered from the days when she was Madelyn's executive assistant, and one of her feet was bare, a high-heeled shoe with a red sole lying several inches away. Looking closely at her, he thought he saw the movement of her breathing, and some of the tightness left his chest.
"If you'll shut off the fucking alarm, I can listen for their heartbeats." Homelander could do that anyway, screen out the screech of the klaxon despite how sensitive his hearing was, but no harm in letting people think he had some limits to what he could do. That was another reason he kept some of his talents under wraps. Billy Butcher must have guessed how he and Teddy escaped the blast that destroyed Madelyn's home, but he didn't seem to have said anything about it yet.
"Yes, sir. Of course, sir." Maureen grabbed one of the security people and conveyed instructions, and he ran for the control room. In a few moments the alarm cut off, although the red lighting still strobed over the walls.
"Thank you, Maureen." Now that he didn't have to screen out that cacophony, he detected heartbeats and breath sounds within the lab. "I'm hearing four heartbeats. There's nothing distinctive about Ashley's, so I can't tell if any of them are her. One of the heartbeats does have a slight murmur." The fact of seeing Ashley breathing was something he kept to himself.
"So five dead, then. Shit. Shit!" She rubbed a hand over her face.
It was the first time he'd ever heard her swear. "What were they working on?" asked Homelander.
"No clue. It was very hush-hush. The only people who could tell you for sure are inside that lab."
"That's not helpful."
"I'm sorry, sir." He noted with interest that Maureen wasn't nearly as frightened of him as he remembered her being at the last meeting they'd attended together. Maybe she was laser-focused on the crisis. "The counter indicated the biohazard should be neutralized in eight minutes. Once it is, we send in a hazmat crew to clean up what's left of the biohazard, then a medical team to handle the casualties, and then we should be able to go in ourselves."
"No way to speed it up?"
"No, sir. Did you want to see the security footage of the incident?"
"Yes, I would. Good thinking, Maureen," he added as an afterthought and was surprised when she smiled. She must have been more upset than he thought.
Maureen preceded him to the control room, where three security technicians displayed varying signs of fear and panic. He ignored it—he didn't give a shit about their incipient PTSD. "Please show Homelander the footage of the incident from Lab B5."
"Yes, ma'am," said one of the techies, a dark-haired man in his late twenties with glasses and an expression of anxiety that Homelander thought wouldn't change much in normal circumstances. He jabbed at some keys and a picture appeared on the screen before him.
The footage had no sound. Homelander watched the lab assistants and other scientists bustle around the lab and fought back a surge of loathing. People just like that had been the ones who tortured him for fifteen years under the guise of experimenting. Since when was boiling a child alive considered an experiment? Exploding a nuke on top of a child's head? He dismissed this line of thought as self-indulgent and unproductive and focused on the images. A cart sat near a desk at the lower right-hand corner of the screen. He pointed at it. "Is that the cart one of these idiots ran into?"
Maureen nodded. "Ms. Barrett's about to come into the room."
Sure enough, she did, sweeping in with the confidence born of being Vought's CEO, something which she never pulled off with him. He'd known her for years as Madelyn's assistant, so her display of confidence was always a little shaky in front of him, and it amused him to reduce her to a state of quivering fear. Ashley wore the leopard-print blazer over a white blouse with a low neckline and a tight black pencil skirt. Dangling gold earrings in some Celtic design completed her ensemble. She walked over to a tall, thin man with salt-and-pepper hair and a hangdog face and they shook hands. "That's Dr. Harriman, the project lead," Maureen told him.
Homelander nodded. Harriman introduced her to two other people, another man and a woman. "Who are they?"
"The man is Dr. James McKenna. If I remember right—I haven't had a chance to review his personnel file—he's a virologist. The woman is Dr. Bertha Rennie. I think she does work with recombinant DNA, but I'd need to check her file as well."
Ordinarily Homelander would have shouted at her to go do that, but that was when one of the lab assistants, hurrying for some unknown reason, ran into the lab cart and sent at least a dozen vials flying, to smash on the floor. Ashley's eyes opened wide in horror and Harriman stepped between her and the contaminants on the floor for no sensible reason other than chivalry, or so Homelander thought. Who knew Ashley could awaken protective instincts in a man who didn't need her to run a company for him? The lab assistant took several steps away from the mess of glass and liquid. Everyone was frozen except for another lab assistant, who lunged toward the wall and hit a large red button. Half the lab entrance was visible to Homelander behind where Ashley stood, and a steel security shutter slammed down over it. The alarm wasn't audible on the video, but the emergency red lighting began strobing.
Ashley grabbed the sleeve of Harriman's lab coat and started to scream at him, most likely trying to be heard over the alarm, but the chemicals or whatever they were had combined to create something else, something toxic, and everyone in the lab collapsed. Harriman seized so hard his back arched until it looked like a special effects shot from a movie about demonic possession. His mouth was open in a scream but his eyes were squeezed closed. Ashley had fallen near him and her convulsions were less violent and theatrical, looking like she'd jammed a knife into a plugged-in toaster. The security footage gave him a different angle, showing a thin trail of blood running over her cheek from her mouth. "Why is she bleeding?"
"We think she bit the inside of her cheek, or maybe her tongue. None of the others are bleeding, so we don't think it's the biohazard." Maureen pointed at the lab assistant who'd hit the alarm. "This is the first person to stop seizing. He was farthest from the site of contamination, so maybe that has something to do with it."
"Do you know his name yet?"
"No, but they all have their badges on. Regulations. Once we get in, we can identify them. In the meantime, I've assigned my secretary to research this project and get any and all information regarding the purpose and the staff assigned to it. He's to report to me immediately when he has new information."
"I thought you said this whole project was hush-hush."
"There's still information about what kind of research—biological, chemical, etcetera—has been assigned to the lab, probably a project name, and the individual security badges that have been cleared for access to the lab. We should also be able to figure out if this was a project that required animal or human subjects. If we can't get information head-on, we have to be oblique."
She went up a couple of notches in his estimation and he returned to watching the tape. Inside part of him was gibbering with fear, screaming at him to go get Ashley, but through an effort of will he ignored it. Maureen brought his attention to two of the lab assistants, who stopped convulsing at the same time. "They both took forty-five seconds to stop seizing, the second-shortest time. McKenna is next at one minute seventeen seconds. The lab assistant who knocked over the chemicals is next at one minute fifty seconds, then Ms. Barrett, then Rennie at three minutes forty-four seconds, then Dr. Harriman, then the last lab assistant at five minutes and fifty-eight seconds. Total time from initial exposure to cessation of seizures was six minutes ten seconds."
"It might be nice if we knew that it matters."
"We collect as much information as we can right now. We don't know what might be important later."
One of the techies said, "The Lab B5 counter is green now, Ms. Lasko. The medtech team is going in."
"Switch to current feed," Maureen told him. He did, and the freeze-frame of the fallen bodies inside the lab was replaced by a bustling team of people in hazmat suits going through and checking for survivors before lifting people onto gurneys. Homelander saw that Ashley was the first one on a gurney, followed by Dr. Harriman, Bertha Rennie, and one of the lab assistants. As the gurneys were rolled out, other members of the team remained to place the dead inside body bags for autopsy and later disposal.
Maureen let out a heartfelt sigh when Ashley was placed on the gurney. Homelander looked at her with curiosity. "Are you two friends?"
Her eyes were guarded and icy. "She's been kind to me. That's a rare quality at Vought."
Homelander shrugged. "Where are they taking her? And the others."
"Decontamination, then to the on-site clinic where we can examine them and treat them if needed." Her cell phone played "Casey Jones" by the Grateful Dead before she answered. "It's my secretary Gerald."
"Put it on speaker," said Homelander.
"Ms. Lasko, I've got a list of the security badges currently authorized for entry to Lab B5, but I'm having trouble tracking down more information about the project. I do have a name, though. Project Mirror."
"Well, that means fuck all, Maureen."
"We'll have more later," she told him. "Who had access to the lab, Gerald?"
"Ms. Barrett, as CEO, had access to everything. Other authorized personnel are Dr. Alan Harriman, Dr. Bertha Rennie, Dr. James McKenna, Leonard Cordero, Jane Hong, Joel Roth, Brendan Caine, and Shane Miller."
"That's nine," Homelander told her. "Everybody in the lab's accounted for."
She nodded. "Thanks, Gerald. Keep working on the particulars for the project. I'm sure Ms. Barrett can give us details when she regains consciousness, but I'd like to have a better idea what we're dealing with before that." Her assumption that Ashley would regain consciousness comforted Homelander.
"How long before they take Ashley to the on-site clinic?"
Maureen shrugged. "Decontamination should take between thirty and forty-five minutes because we don't know what the agents involved in the incident are. They'll take her to the clinic then." Something in her unbent enough to say, "She'll be fine, sir. She's tough."
"I've never seen that." The woman just looked at him until he became uncomfortable. "I'm going to the clinic now. Keep me updated on whatever you find out."
"Yes, sir."
When Homelander got to the clinic, he gave the doctors a quick briefing on what had happened before settling down in a chair to wait for Ashley. A number of disturbing thoughts ran through his mind. What was she doing in the damn lab in the first place? What was Project Mirror? What had the accident created that caused over half the people in the room to die? And why hadn't everyone died?
He was still thinking when the medical team brought in the survivors of Lab B5 and installed them in a dormitory-style room with beds in the open, separated from each other only by curtains. As soon as he could, he cornered the doctor examining Ashley. "How is she?"
The doctor, whose name was Clay, said, "Vitals are a little weak but within the normal range. The only thing that worries me is her temperature. She's running at about 102 degrees now, but I'm not seeing any reason why she should. None of the other patients are manifesting a high temperature. In fact, Dr. Harriman's temperature is 93 degrees, but Dr. Rennie and the lab assistant aren't displaying any unusual vitals. We have no idea when any of them are going to wake up, though."
"I'd prefer for Ms. Barrett to have a private room, rather than be out here." Homelander had no desire to sit next to her bed with everyone watching him, cataloguing his every expression and movement.
"It's easier for the staff to have all the patients here in case anything happens," said Dr. Clay.
He fixed the doctor with the expression that always got him his way. "I said, I'd prefer for Ms. Barrett to have a private room. Her comfort is what matters to me, not the staff's convenience."
The sharp eucalyptus-chemical scent of fear came off Dr. Clay in waves as he tried to keep his expression neutral and professional. "I'm sure that can be arranged, sir."
Homelander rewarded the doctor with a smile. "Excellent! The sooner the better."
It took a few minutes for the move to be arranged, and soon he found himself sitting next to Ashley's bed, monitoring her heart and breathing and blood pressure with his hearing, screening out the annoying beeping of the machines they had attached to her. He thought she looked the same as she had when they'd had a brief meeting about his numbers that morning, except for the pale blue hospital gown she now wore. Had they burned her clothes or were they just studying them? But he thought he noticed something different in her scent. He tried to zero in on it and could only decide that it must be left over from the decontamination, sort of a muddy gold resiny scent with hints of metal. It bothered him, but at least the fear had left him, the idea that she would die and leave him alone, with no one he could trust around him except A-Train and the Deep, neither of whom was as close to him as she was.
He reached out and put a gloved hand on her face. "It's me, Ashley. Homelander. You were in a lab accident but it's over now. You're fine."
Although he hadn't spoken to her in hopes that she would wake up, he heard her heartbeat change and a sigh escape her before her eyes opened. "Ashley? Ashley? How do you feel?"
Her back arched and for a terrifying moment he thought she was about to start seizing again, but when she settled back onto the bed he recognized it as a stretch and chewed himself out mentally for being so panicky. "How do you feel?" he asked again.
Ashley raised a hand and rubbed her eyes. "Weird. I ache all over, kind of like I have the flu."
"Was Project Mirror working with flu viruses?" One of the doctors—the one who'd died, he thought—had been a virologist.
"Where did you hear about Project Mirror?" She finally opened her eyes and tried to sit up in bed, but her expression froze in amazement and she didn't complete the move. "Damn, they got you here on the double, didn't they? Were you in the shower and they dragged you out?"
His brow furrowed. "What? What are you talking about?"
The burst of movement seemed to have exhausted her, and she sank back down into the hospital bed, her eyes closing. "They could have at least given you a towel to wrap around yourself. I know you're comfortable with being naked, but it's not appropriate for the workplace."
"What? Ashley, do you think I'm naked?" He looked down at himself in confusion. He still wore his ordinary costume. Was she hallucinating? Should he call Dr. Clay and tell him about this?
But all she said before she went back to sleep was, "Lawsuits. Put some clothes on."