Dark Avengers: The Patriot List, page 6
part #2 of Marvel Untold Series
“Surrender,” said Ares. “You have fought honorably and well. Osborn may be lenient if you come in willingly and answer the questions he will no doubt have for you.”
The man looked up at him, along the plane of the metal stairs, dark eyes watery with anger. “There is a H.A.M.M.E.R. outpost in my country. I have witnessed their kindness with my own eyes.”
“Then stop resisting and die. Or fight harder and win. The choice is yours.”
“Do you not wonder why we fight at all?”
Ares shrugged. “No. But I rejoice that someone does.” He stepped out onto the fire escape, the metal platform groaning under his greater-than-human weight, and bent forwards to pry the human’s sword from his feebly protesting grip.
He held the weapon in his left hand, and through the power of his touch he knew it.
Here was an edge that could cut through any armor and open the flesh of a god, a blade that could withstand the blow of one of Hephaestus’ axes without shattering. His understanding did not extend to who had made it, or when, or to what good or evil end, only the perfect manner in which these things manifested in the weapon’s function.
He gave the blade a trial whirl, frowning as he sensed a resistance in spite of the eager hum that the super-sharp edge dealt to the air as it moved.
“No one may wield that sword while I live,” said the mortal. “And no one who would willingly follow the Iron Patriot or turn S.H.I.E.L.D.’s peacekeeping armies into an occupying force to subjugate half the world, could ever be deemed worthy of holding it.”
“I am the God of War,” said Ares, gripping the weapon tightly and glaring down at the vanquished mortal who thought to judge him. “I am the master of all weapons.”
“No!” The human lifted just enough of his upper body from the stairs for Ares to push him back down under his boot.
Ares let go of his axe.
It dropped to the metal platform with a clang.
Mortal warriors had a tendency to grow attached to their weapons, cherishing them, passing them down as heirlooms and investing them with the properties of relics. A precious few warranted such esteem, but the majority were just things, instruments for the administration of death, and there were enough of those in the world to be cavalier in their treatment.
Even a weapon of Olympus could be readily replaced.
Hephaestus could always be compelled to fashion him another.
With his right hand free he took the human’s sword two-handed. Immediately, he sensed its protest. It shuddered like an unbroken horse in his grip as though attempting to break away. He gritted his teeth, grip tightening until rock would crack and steel deform. The sword, however, continued to defy him. He growled, bending every ounce of his godly will towards its subjugation. Still, it resisted him.
“Stop!” he heard the mortal yell. “Release it, Ares, please. I will surrender!”
Ares roared in agony, as though the weapon in his grip were being melted down and the golden metal running down his forearms. He let out a howl of defiance, refusing to admit defeat to a sword.
Even as it exploded in his hands.
•••
The blue lights of first responder vehicles twinkled through the blacked-out neighborhood like a single candle captured in a piece of stained glass. The plaintive wail of sirens drifted across the moonscape stillness of the rubble, challenged only, and occasionally, by the airhorns and loudhailers of the patrol boats on the East River, and by the faintly tragic whup-whup-whup sound of search and rescue helicopters. None of them, as yet, were hovering quite low enough to notice the rubble of the collapsed apartment building shifting, the ground rising, an eighty-ton slab of unbroken concrete sliding to one side in a cataract of dislodged debris as Ares reared up out of the demolished building and roared.
His vest had been incinerated off his back in the explosion, but he was otherwise unharmed. It would take more than a mystic blast and being buried under an apartment block to stop the God of War. In the time he had spent buried, the sword slash he had taken across the chest and his bloody lip had already healed.
It was his pride that still suffered.
The sounds of his rage and his shame rebounded back to him, redoubled, from the Gothically vigilant tower buildings that bordered the devastated apartment.
“Get away, did he?”
Venom was crouching on a heap of masonry wreckage, what the gangrel beast appeared to assume was a safe distance away, almost invisible in the darkness except for where flickering blue lights caught his shiny, extraterrestrial skin at exactly the right angle. There was no way of knowing how long he had been there.
But Venom was not a patient creature.
“For now,” said Ares. “Did you witness any mortals fleeing this place?”
“Some.” Venom licked his lips. “But no guys with swords. He’s probably buried here with everyone else.” He gave a growling sigh. “Such a waste.”
“He is alive.”
Ares knew it. If the man had survived Ares, then he had survived this.
“What of the objective?” he said.
“Bullseye took the woman’s computer and set fire to the building, which seemed to make him very happy. He and Daken are taking it back now. Vicki ordered us all back to Avengers Tower without making too much of a scene…” The alien monster looked over the wreckage, silver eyes unblinking, enormously amused, it seemed, by the hundred-foot diameter wasteland centered on Ares’ ground zero. “So there’s that.”
“Ms Hand is an accountant,” said Ares, treating the word with the disgust it was due. “She is a politician.” The deputy director reminded him somewhat of Zeus, his father. Such awesome power in her hands, such craven unwillingness to see it used. “Nor do I desire or need Osborn’s approval.” Powdered rock and concrete ran from his shoulders like grains of sand as he heaved himself up out of the rubble and onto his feet. His axe came free next, gray dust drizzling from its enormous blade. Venom wisely withdrew himself to an even safer distance. “He has no hold over me.”
His grip on his weapon grew tighter until it shook.
He commended his foe on his trickery, but he swore then that he would break that man over his knee and see his sword bent to his will or sundered outright by his hand. And if it cost him the Earth, and Olympus, and the esteem of men and gods, to do it then he would still not let that stop him.
He had been made to look like a fool.
And honor demanded retribution.
Chapter Eight
Small Boys in Capes
Karla’s usual routine, after going up against something as powerful as the Sentry, was to drink three bottles of wine, take a hot shower, and then fall into bed. She was barely halfway into bottle number two when her door buzzed and she opened it to find Victoria Hand, an armed escort of H.A.M.M.E.R. agents in purple combat armor, and orders to an emergency debrief to which she was technically already late. She threw the deputy director a weary salute, downing as much of the bottle as she could before Victoria was able to pull it out of her hand. With just a little exertion of her moonstone powers, she changed out of the comfortable dressing gown and slippers that she’d retired in and into the ridiculously revealing outfit that Carol Danvers had left for her as Ms Marvel.
Thanks, Danvers, she thought, as Deputy Hand and her soldiers frog-marched her to the nearest elevator. Positive female role model, my ass.
The Avengers briefing room was in the upper stories of the main building, not far from where Dr Sofen kept her “office”. Large windows, numerous flatscreens, and suspended holographics lent the space an airy feel, and a lightness that was not at all welcome at that time of the morning or on sleep-sore eyes. After Bullseye’s gag with the Cyclops footage, the screensavers on the large monitors had been password-protected, the consoles reduced to sleekly reflective surfaces, the holo-projectors casting out unseparated mists of dewy white light. Inside that ring of black screens and ghost projections, like a space bug under a H.A.M.M.E.R. exobiology team’s lens, was an oval-shaped table.
Touchscreen interfaces had been incorporated into the metallic edge trim, but most of the table’s smarter features had been locked on account of the fact that most of its current users were, developmentally at least, small boys in capes.
Everyone else was already here.
Going clockwise around the table from the entrance, the first person sitting there was Venom. The symbiote skin had peeled back from Gargan’s head to look like a run-of-the-mill black spider-suit, revealing a gaunt, hangdog face with strung-out eyes and massively dilated pupils. Bullseye was sitting beside him, slouched back in his chair with drooping eyelids but with a smug grin on his face as though he had just killed somebody’s grandmother. He reeked of smoke. Karla wasn’t sure why, but, by the severe frown on Victoria’s face as the deputy director entered behind her and caught his eye, she had a feeling she was about to find out.
The size of the active Avenger roster increased or decreased regularly as new members joined and others died, got kicked out, or left. Noh-Varr, you poor sap. Only an alien, she thought, dropped in clueless from deepest, darkest Hala, could have lived alongside this group for months before realizing that maybe, just maybe, they weren’t quite the heroes that Norman Osborn had sold them as.
There were sixteen chairs around the briefing table currently, and with plenty of wasted air between Bullseye and the next hero along.
Daken was looking improbably well groomed and sleek, as always, eased into his chair’s cushioned back with one ankle crossed over the opposite thigh and a tiny, steaming cup of espresso coffee on the table beside him. Moving swiftly on, because considering Daken was like spending time staring into the eyes of an inexplicably beautiful snake, the next around was Ares. He was wearing a black crew-necked T-shirt that appeared to have been picked up at a gas station where the clothing lines just didn’t go beyond XXL. The cotton stretched towards transparency over the Olympian’s enormously muscled arms and chest.
Around from the God of War, coming back towards Karla, was the Sentry.
He spoke to no one, looked at no one, existing inside his own shimmering halo as though the last few hours had not occurred, or had occurred to someone else. Which might actually have been somewhere close to the truth. He gave Karla a nervous smile as she and her escort approached the table, while she ignored him as coolly as she could after one and a half bottles of white wine, and took the seat beside Bullseye.
He leered at her from behind his Hawkeye mask.
There was a reason that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen seven am from this angle: there was some seriously Through the Looking Glass energy going on right here.
While Karla got herself seated and her H.A.M.M.E.R. escort took up discreet positions around the room, Victoria circled the table distributing plastic folders. No one who got one bothered to look at it. The closest anyone came was Daken, whose empty smile wavered just for a moment as the deputy director walked by and knocked his espresso. But then, Victoria was the only one here who had ever bought into Norman’s “hardcore team for hardcore problems” and “for the greater good of the American people” spiel.
It would be sweet if it wasn’t so sad. She didn’t even have the excuse of being from outer space.
“I’d prefer a breakfast,” said Karla, as her folder slapped the table beside her.
“The caterers start at eight fifteen,” Victoria replied, without missing a step.
“We’re in the middle of Manhattan.” Karla pointed at the Sentry. “And he can fly at the speed of light. He could be back here with bagels before Norman even gets here.”
Bullseye idly raised a hand. “I’ll take a bagel.” Beside him, Venom looked positively ill, and Bullseye turned his raised hand to pat him companionably on the back. “It was that second security guy, Mac. Always stop at one. Especially on top of pizza.”
Venom slumped over the table with his face in his hands and groaned.
“That’s enough,” said Victoria, coming to the end of her circuit and pausing to draw a strand of red-dyed hair behind her glasses. “None of this is funny. The director is ready to see heads roll. I’m sure you all know why.”
“Actually, I don’t,” said Karla.
“We’re here,” said Daken, with an aesthete’s weary sigh, “because Lester screwed up.”
Bullseye leant angrily over the table, stabbing an accusing finger towards Daken. “It was ET here who tripped the alarm, and I don’t particularly remember anyone telling me that that building had such heavy-duty security.” He turned towards Ares. “I don’t seem to recall wrecking an apartment block and killing the power to half of the East Side either. Good work, by the way. I heard you killed a house with a car.”
Ares didn’t answer.
He looked like Vesuvius, just before it exploded.
Daken smiled at Karla. “I’ve got your fifty, by the way.”
Victoria crossed her arms and looked from one to the other. “Are you telling me that the two of you placed a bet on whether or not Hawkeye would fail in neutralizing what Director Osborn has classified as a critical national security threat?”
“Of course not,” said Karla. “That would be unprofessional and absurd. Not to mention unpatriotic.”
Daken stifled a laugh.
“We bet on how long it would take him to fail.”
“And it wasn’t just the two of us.” Sipping casually on his espresso, Daken gestured with his head towards the agents guarding the briefing room. “They look so innocent, don’t they, in those helmets? But they have names and everything, you know.”
Before Victoria could go any further into that, Karla asked, “So, what is this national security thing I’m only hearing about now?”
“Ask Lester,” Venom drawled, lifting his face from his hands. “He’s the only one who saw what was on the computer.”
The look on Bullseye’s visible face was pure innocence. “And you think I’d look? After I gave Normie my solemn word?” He waved a hand dismissively. “But I suppose I might have glanced across something. Purely by accident, of course. Maybe if you’d just let me use the USB rather than showing off, I wouldn’t have had to.”
“Speak,” Mount Ares grumbled. “I, too, would know what this night’s work was for.”
Bullseye shrugged, as though thinking about it. Daken, Gargan, perhaps even Karla, too, if it had been her, might have been tempted to sit on whatever classified material they’d recovered to use later for their own purposes. But Bullseye was just the kind of performative egotist who’d happily fritter away a hypothetical future advantage for five minutes as the center of attention now. He was, to put it mildly, a showoff. “It was just some security footage from Avengers Tower.”
“What was on it?” Karla asked.
Another shrug from Bullseye. “There must’ve been thousands of hours. I have a life.”
“All this action for, what, a day or two of video?” said Daken.
“There is a lot of heedless talk that passes in this building,” said Ares.
Daken grinned, set down his espresso cup, and leant towards the Olympian. “Go on, Ares. Quote Pathé. I can tell you want to.”
The God of War ground his teeth, pointedly avoiding looking at their Wolverine, and went on. “We have many enemies. None are mighty enough to challenge us, but we are exposed, we have a public face and a known position. We can be undermined or embarrassed, and there is much that is discussed here that we might consider trivial but which Hydra, or Fury’s loyalists, or even the X-Men would find valuable.”
“If you’re talking about blackmail, just say blackmail,” said Daken.
“I am talking about blackmail,” said Ares.
“Blackmail on whom?” said Daken.
“Who wants it back so bad?” said Bullseye.
“Osborn,” Venom hissed, his forehead still resting on the table.
“Hundred bucks says it’s a sex tape,” said Karla.
Bullseye cackled.
Victoria, who had been following the conversation with the stunned expression of a substitute teacher for a remedial class, suddenly blanched. “This is wildly inappropriate speculation.”
“Well, I find Norman’s hair wildly inappropriate,” said Bullseye. “Let the Bulletin print that. Oh yeah, someone burnt their offices down.” He crossed his arms behind his head and reclined his chair back. “You’re welcome.”
“Is a little professionalism too much to ask for, Hawkeye?” said Victoria.
“Says the woman who still hasn’t produced my bagel.”
“I’m the second highest ranking military officer in the world. I’m not the maid.”
“Speaking of things which aren’t here…” Daken made a theatrical check of the time on his phone’s display. “It’s seven fifteen. Norman does know that being fashionably late has always been a joke, right?”
Victoria turned from Bullseye, her face shifting hue from frustration to exasperation. “God dammit, Wolverine. You’d actually interrupt a lecture on data security by showing off an unsecured personal device? How many times have you been reminded that you can’t bring a phone in here?”
“I don’t want to be a pedant, but I think what you mean to say is may not. Cannot expresses inability. May not implies the absence of permission.”
Victoria’s hand went straight for the concealed-carry holster in her suit jacket. For a woman in her position, Karla imagined, it paid to skip the handful of steps between polite first warning and deadly force. “Set the device on the table, face down, and slide it towards me.”
Daken stared at her for an uncomfortable span of time, his smile fixed on his face.
