The Tyrant Skies: a Marvel: Untold Novel, page 13
part #6 of Marvel Untold Series
Chen had entered the cell. “I have such news!” she said to someone.
Her joy could not cut through the vertigo, but it gave Doom the impetus he needed. He crossed the threshold.
Exhausted, filthy, worn bodies filled the cell. A few stood, shoulders slumped with weariness. Many had already collapsed and lay in fetal curls or death-like sprawls, plunging into leaden sleep. A gray uniformity covered everyone, the gray of grime, weakness, rags, and misery. Yet Doom saw her at once, and everyone else in the cell vanished from his awareness.
Valeria. Years older, as he was. Haggard, malnourished, eyes sunken and cheekbones pushing at taut, parchment-brittle skin. But Valeria, still instantly recognizable. Those eyes, sharp and green, the eyes that, a lifetime ago, had looked at Victor with love. The eyes that had looked at Doom with fear and judgment.
Valeria alive. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, terrified that a blink, a whisper, the twitch of a finger would dispel the illusion, and Valeria would be gone, returned to the death into which he had cast her, and cast her, and cast her.
She didn’t move, either. She seemed as stricken as he felt. She had not seen him without his armor and his mask since before Victor had left Latveria to go and study in America. Victor had never returned. Doom had come in his place. But she knew him. He, too, was a creature of gray, his face covered by disgusting rags, yet she knew him.
“Victor?” she said, as if uncertain what being would answer.
When had he last heard that name? Who had last dared to address him like that?
Valeria? The last time he had seen her?
“You called me,” Doom said, hoarse.
“And you came.” So much in her voice, too much for him to parse. Gratitude, anxiety, fear, hope, and emotions so large and ill-defined that neither he nor she could give them a name.
She took half a step toward him, then stopped. He stayed where he was, still half-convinced she would disappear, or he would wake, if he moved.
“I was surprised,” said Doom. “I did not think I would hear your voice again. You made it clear, the last time we spoke, that I would not.”
“The past is not erased.” Valeria’s tone grew stronger. “I fled for a reason.”
Unspoken: That has not changed.
“But when you found yourself here, you turned to me,” said Doom. The past existed, yes. So did the present. That counted for something, surely.
Valeria nodded. “I know that there are some principles that you held, and still do.” She seemed to be speaking from the depths of a profound sorrow, mourning the loss of a loved one and tormented by the trace of his ghost. “I know that the Red Skull is as monstrous for you as he is for me.”
“He is.” Now Doom did step forward. “I will crush him.” Reality became strong around him as he made his vow. “I will crush him, and I will free you.”
“You’ll do more,” said Valeria.
Doom blinked. If anyone else had spoken to him that way, he would have destroyed them. Here, now, with half his self missing, and Valeria before him, he said nothing.
“You’ll free all these people,” Valeria continued. “Something that I have never denied about you, Victor, is that you are not just a ruler. You are a leader. You may be a prisoner like the rest of us, but I believe you. You will crush the Red Skull. I don’t know how, but you will. We need your strength. Everyone here needs you.”
She did not need to tell him that. Of course they needed him. The world needed him.
He would show her how truly she spoke.
Fifteen
And now that Doom had found Valeria, and found her alive, the pieces of his vengeance came together. He spent an hour in silent planning, warding off any interactions with a look. When the other prisoners in the cell had realized that he was the one Valeria had promised would come, they tried to speak to him, to touch him to see that he was solid flesh, and to seek comfort. He had none to give. Valeria had said he would lead them, and she was right. He would give them leadership, and that meant issuing commands he expected to be obeyed.
His first, as he stood in the corner, still as a funerary statue and twice as grim, was that he not be disturbed. Valeria withdrew to a few steps away from him, and she discouraged the more persistent from interrupting his thoughts. He put together all he had observed of the layout of the mines, the dispositions of the guards, and the realities of the people he would lead out of the underworld.
The prisoners vastly outnumbered the guards, but they were weak and unarmed. Doom would get them weapons, once he started taking down the guards, but he was sure that few, if any at all, of the refugees would know how to use them. He had to assume a complete lack of training in the ragged army under his command.
Could they do the bare minimum that must be done? He thought they would. Desperation would drive them. He would drive them. Once they were in motion, the momentum of those numbers could prove telling.
He could not underestimate the guards, though. He could not let them realize that a rebellion had begun. If they counterattacked in force, they would slaughter the prisoners. Create a bottleneck in the tunnels, lay down a steady barrage of fire, and watch the bodies drop. A simple matter. An end of the matter.
The key, then, was to take the guards out without the word spreading. He also had to act quickly, before word of what was going to happen also reached the guards’ ears. News of his presence would not reach outside this cell until the next shift, but then it would rush through the tunnels, spread in whispers, a subterranean fire waiting to burst out into the open. If, though, the prisoners knew that this was the day they would escape, then they would be more careful about what they said and when. At least long enough for the escape to begin.
So, the break-out had to be during the next shift. Any later, he risked the guards hearing about the man Valeria had called for, and once they heard, so would the Red Skull. Doom pictured his exultation in knowing that he had Doom doubly enslaved. And he imagined the horrors that would flow from that moment on him and on Latveria.
The next shift, then. Doom was ready. He had no need for delay. He had seen all he required in the days before finding Valeria. He had formed his plan, and he had no doubt as to its success.
He was Doom, and what he willed must be.
During the work in the mines, the opportunity to strike would come. The guards were spread out then, feeling no threat from prisoners in chains. They wandered down the tunnels, looking for weakness to punish. The only concentration of force would be at the entrance to the mines.
In Doom’s mind, that barrier had already been breached.
Morning came, or what passed for morning. In the absence of sun, in the perpetual, amber-lit gloom of the mines, the brutal call to labor took the place of dawn. Doom walked past the guards at the doorway from the holding cells, and made them a silent promise that this was the last time they would watch their charges file out, shoulders hunched with fatigue and the weight of the shackles around their wrists and ankles.
Doom eyed the faces of the guards. He saw the same hate and contempt that had always been there. He also saw the boredom that found its occasional release in cruelty. Good. He wanted them bored, not suspicious. If they had noticed that one of them had gone missing, they still did not think it possible that a prisoner had done away with them.
Doom had spoken to the people in his cell before the morning. He had told them what must happen and when, and what they must do. For all but Valeria, they had nothing to do initially except to pass on, as best they could, the announcement that freedom would come today, and for the injunction to be ready. This was the first gamble, but Doom had confidence that the secret would be hidden from the guards long enough for him to act.
A few hours into the shift, the moment arrived. Doom worked beside Valeria. When the guard in their section of the tunnel wandered away to glower at slaves elsewhere, Doom turned to Valeria. He dropped to a crouch and stretched his arms out, wrists on the ground. Valeria hacked at his chains with her pickaxe. The sound of metal against metal blended with the din of so much metal against stone, and no guards came to investigate. As Doom had surmised, they could not imagine the possibility of slaves freeing themselves. After a few strikes, Valeria broke through the link close to his left wrist. Doom wrapped the length of chain around his right arm, then sat so Valeria could tackle the chain between his legs. This one she broke close to both ankles.
Freed, Doom leapt to his feet and grabbed his pickaxe. With a few rapid, ferocious blows, he shattered Valeria’s shackles. She then moved on to the next prisoner. While the line of refugees in the tunnel worked to free each other, Doom sprinted down its length. He turned right at the first intersection, following the route he had seen the guard take. At the next junction, he saw the man, baton out, beating a prisoner even older than the one Doom had helped the day before.
Doom charged. He shook his right arm, loosening the coil of the chain. It hung below his wrist, a whip of iron. The guard turned at the sound of running. His eyes widened in alarm, and his mouth gaped in surprise. He froze in uncertainty. Prisoners did not attack guards. The event simply could not happen. If he had had the training to deal with that eventuality, his belief system blocked his reaction. He did not call for help, and his reflexes were much too slow.
Doom snapped the chain out. He slammed it into the left side of the guard’s head with the impact of a locomotive. The guard went down, a sack of lead. Doom snatched the guard’s earpiece from his right ear and put it in his own, then picked up the baton.
Up and down the tunnel, the prisoners started the process of freeing themselves. They looked at Doom with awe, and that awe spurred them on to do as they had been told to do.
Doom listened to the conversations on the guard network. More boredom, unnecessary chatter and racist jokes cluttering up the channel, interspersed with the phrase code white again and again, clearly indicating nothing amiss.
An irritated voice, barking with seniority, broke in, loud. “Brock, sign in. What’s your status?” The voice was much clearer than the others, and speaking directly to the owner of the earpiece.
Doom tapped the communicator. “Code white,” he said.
A grunt from the superior. “Don’t be late next time.” Then a short burst of static. The officer had broken off communication. No need to answer.
Valeria and the prisoners from the first tunnel had arrived now and were speeding up the freeing of the others.
Doom turned off the communicator’s transmitter. “Follow me,” he said to the prisoners. “We move through the tunnels until every chain is broken. I will take care of the guards. Take their weapons and earpieces.” He explained the code that should be used if they heard a challenge.
He searched the pockets of the fallen man’s uniform and found his pass card. He held it up. “Take these, too. We will have cause to use them before this day is done.” He handed the card to Valeria. No pockets in the tunics, and he needed both hands free to take down the enemy. “Stay close,” he told her.
She nodded, and that simple gesture of agreement thrilled his heart more than logic allowed. He needed her close by for the pragmatic, tactical reasons of the break-out.
Except that he wanted her close for other reasons. Her presence made the years of her absence even more painful. He did not want to return to them.
Stay close, he had said.
And she had nodded. Yes.
Then, frothing and rabid, the memory of her murder sank its teeth into his heart.
He shook the memory away. He clamped down on the emotions roiling in his chest. He had no time for them now. They would only hamper him.
Doom picked up the electric baton in favor of the pickaxe and headed back down the tunnel to another intersection.
The chatter of the guards guided him as he hunted. He knew the layout of the mines well. Over the course of his imprisonment, he had committed every passage to memory. The night before, he had planned his route through the mines, and now he adapted it to what he heard through the earpiece. He knew where the guards were, and what they thought.
He became the angel of death, a scythe passing silently through the mines. He took the guards one at a time, and not one stood a chance. Most tried to fight. A few had some knowledge of combat, and that knowledge bought them an extra second before the electric baton stabbed their throat, or the chain whip shattered their skull. None of them had the chance to sound the alarm. Doom made certain of that.
A scythe, and also a wind. Doom moved quickly, ridding the tunnels of the foe so quickly that the commanding officer, no doubt reclining in bored luxury at the entrance to the mine, registered only irritation that the code white responses were coming in more slowly and with greater irregularity. In his wake the train of the liberated grew longer and longer. The people carried weapons, but he had not commanded them to fight yet. They would only get in his way. For now, only he was the hand of vengeance in the mines, and he embraced the role.
You do not see what is happening, Red Skull. You do not see what is coming. But it is coming. Perhaps you feel it in your dreams.
Tireless, feeling stronger than he had since he had split himself in two, Doom scoured the mines. In less than two hours, he had freed the prisoners, more than a thousand of them, and had the mines, though the guards at the exit did not know yet, under his control.
The fiction of code white relayed back to the headquarters outside still held. It couldn’t much longer. Even officers the most dulled by boredom would, sooner or later, pay just that little bit more attention to what they heard on the communications network, notice that things sounded a little different, and grow curious.
Doom had to ensure such curiosity came too late.
They saved the region of the gallery as the last to be liberated. He brought his army of refugees to the inner exit from the gallery and called a halt a dozen yards down the tunnel from where the prisoners and their carts emerged.
“Free them as they reach you,” he instructed. “But go no closer. You must not be seen by the spectators.” Then he indicated the twenty nearest prisoners, including Valeria. “Come with me,” he said. He checked to see that they were all armed.
Doom had not only committed the layout of the tunnels in the mines to memory. He had also noted the locations of access doors used by the guards. There was one in the left-hand wall just outside the gallery exit. Doom brought his group there, then paused while Valeria swiped the panel beneath the handle with the pass card. The door beeped, and Doom wrenched it open.
On the other side, stairs led up. Doom climbed two flights and reached a landing from which a hall stretched in two directions, as he had expected.
“We are going to the spectator bleachers of the gallery,” Doom said. “I will go this way. Five of you come with me.” He pointed left. “The rest of you go the other way. We will attack simultaneously.”
“Attack,” someone repeated nervously.
Doom controlled his temper. He had expected this. “I command you to do simply this: prevent anyone from leaving, and from getting a warning out. How you do that is up to you. But if you fail me, you fail everyone.”
“We understand,” Valeria said. She gave him a look that promised that they did.
Doom nodded. “Then show them your wrath,” he said. “And take their pass cards.”
The prisoners left him, faces set and grim. Yes, he thought. He did not know how far they would go, but they would, at the very least, do what had to be done.
Doom watched them go, then marched down his own path, Chen and four others hurrying to keep up with his pace. The corridor led to another flight of stairs, and these went up to the staff entry to the gallery. “I will do what is necessary,” he said to the small group. “You will bind our prisoners.”
“With what?” Chen asked.
Doom’s lip curled under his mask of rags. “They will be well-dressed. It does not take much cloth to immobilize someone. Use their clothes if there is nothing else.”
Then he burst through the doors, shock baton at the ready. He entered the viewing space in the middle of the rear wall. The first thing he did was jab it into the intercom next to the doorway, shorting out the communications from this side of the gallery to the outside world. The spectators, who had been watching the last of the slaves passing through the gallery, whipped around in surprise, then stilled in shock. There were about twenty of them, and a similar number in the seats on the other side. The audience, Doom thought, had been growing, and becoming more assiduous in attendance.
The door to the other seating area burst open as the spectators there, noticing something amiss among their fellows across the way, had begun to rise to their feet. Satisfied with the timing of the attacks, Doom focused his attention on the people below him.
“You can’t be here,” a man said, his face turning purple with outrage. The fact that he might be in danger hadn’t registered yet. He was someone who had never even been challenged in his life, so perfectly had his wealth shielded him from even the smallest inconvenience. He could not conceive of a threat directed at him, not until the threat became reality.
As was about to happen.
“Yet here I am,” said Doom. He strode down the tiers toward the spectators closest to the main exit from the viewing space. The other prisoners waited by the staff doors, blocking that escape.
Not that anyone showed signs of trying to leave yet. The bubble of their privilege still blocked the concept of danger.
“Someone call a guard,” another billionaire called out, so used to delegation that it did not even occur to him to take that action himself. That he sat closest to the exit didn’t seem to occur to him, either.
