“Interesting.” Lykos approached Natasha. “And yet Nekra and Mandrill said that you seemed very…chummy with the archer.”
The Russian’s expression did not waver. “He was under orders to kill me. I had to either turn him or neutralize him. I opted for the former.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Jessica watched Clint’s face. If you didn’t know him well, you might think he hadn’t reacted at all to Natasha’s betrayal. But Jessica knew him well.
Lykos stepped even closer to Natasha, and Jessica noticed he seemed utterly unaffected by her state of undress. “So you mean to tell me that you have no loyalty to anyone besides yourself?”
“That’s right. Free me and I’ll fight for you.” There was utter conviction in Natasha’s voice. For once, Jessica was convinced the woman was telling the truth.
Lykos sighed. “I do wish I could take you up on your offer. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to risk our mission’s safety on an unknown quantity with no particular fondness for our people or our cause.” Lykos rubbed his temples again.
He looks tired, thought Jessica.
“Lykos!” A new mutate had entered the room, this one clearly related to a gorilla. Badly injured, the mutate leaned against the door for support. “A group of us are being forced down into an old section of the mines. They want us to see how much damage there is, but one of the mole mutates is certain the whole section is about to collapse. You have to come help.”
“Of course.” Lykos gripped the gorilla mutate by the shoulder. “Tell me exactly where they are.”
“Lykos, you can’t!” Brainchild scurried after the taller man like an agitated terrier. “I haven’t had time to prepare more serum! And what can you do when you get there? You’re too weak to shift!”
“Then give me another injection to tide me over, Brainchild.”
“We’ll have to make more,” Brainchild explained as he prepared a hypodermic with a luminous green fluid.
“Hang on a sec,” said Steve. “Are you saying that there’s some kind of forced-labor camp in the Vibranium mines?”
“Ah, what innocence. As if there’s no blood on your hands.”
“Are you saying—S.H.I.E.L.D. would never authorize that kind of a program!”
Lykos smiled without humor as Brainchild injected the hypodermic into his upper arm. “Any government that authorizes the Weapon X program is capable of anything.”
Steve frowned. “What’s the Weapon X program got to do with this?”
A muscle in Lykos’s jaw jumped. “What’s your level of security clearance, Captain? Seven? Eight? Higher? You know very well what S.H.I.E.L.D. does behind closed doors.”
“You’re right, Lykos. I should know. Which means that if any of what you’re telling me is true, then it is wrong and illegal and I’ll bet my life that it’s a rogue operation.”
“You may be willing to bet your life,” said Lykos, “but I’m not willing to bet the lives of any more Savage Landers.”
“But that’s just what you’re doing!” Jessica had never heard Steve sound so heated. “What do you think S.H.I.E.L.D. will do if you marshal a force of mutates to attack its outpost?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Captain America,” said Brainchild, throwing away the sharps from the hypodermic. “Maybe they’ll be too busy attacking the new Mutate Avengers to bother with us.”
“Oh, hell, you’re going to try to turn me into a giant spider, aren’t you?”
“Be quiet,” Lykos told Peter. “Brainchild, I did not sign off on that.” Lykos closed his eyes, and a vein pulsed in his forehead.
Whatever had been in that shot, Jessica thought, it was taking effect.
“Your genetics background would be helpful, but not necessary,” said Brainchild. “We have the technology to mutate them, and the manpower. Although I must say, I am a bit disappointed, given all the trouble we went to, breaking you out and bringing you over.”
“We’re not going to sink to their level,” said Lykos. He opened his eyes, revealing the changed color of his irises, the altered shape of his pupils. He’s shifting, thought Jessica, and she felt her heartbeat increase.
“Besides,” Lykos continued, “if any word of this leaks out, there’s not enough Vibranium in the world to assure our safety.” Gripping the counter with white knuckles, he turned to the other mutates gathered behind him. “Iron Man and Captain America are valuable players. We’re better off washing our hands of the whole business.” He paused, face contorting in pain.
“Look at his skin,” said Luke.
“Barbaros.” Lykos’s voice was a rasp now.
The four-armed mutate stepped forward. “Yes, doctor?”
“I trust you to perform a clean kill and disposal.”
It was over. Jessica glanced up at her friends, trying to think of a way to fight back. If this were a movie, they’d release us and take us outside first, and we’d have a chance. But it wasn’t a movie.
Barbaros stepped forward with straight razors in two of his four hands.
“I can do clean,” he said. “I just need a bucket for the blood.”
“What do you think, Steve?” said Tony. “Heard enough?”
“More than enough.”
“All right, then…assemble!”
Peter looked as confused as Jessica felt. “Um…Tony? We’re all here.”
“Not you,” said Tony, with no trace of his usual cheerful lechery. Brainchild gave a startled shout as, on the table below, the Iron Man helmet powered up, emitting a blindingly bright beam of light from its eyes.
S I X T E E N
“VOICE command authenticated,” the Iron Man helmet said in a bland, robotic voice. The red chest armor rotated on the table next to it, then locked into position under the helmet. “Good evening, Mister Stark.”
“Not yet,” said Tony, “but it’s looking up. Initiate battle mode.”
“Battle mode initiated.”
“Oh, sweet Christmas, yes!” shouted Luke. Peter hollered his approval as Lykos and Brainchild shouted orders at the other mutates. The Iron Man armor’s shoulder pieces assembled themselves, red-and-gold metal sections whirring and clicking and sliding together as if by magic. It only took a matter of seconds for the suit to reconfigure itself, and then the top half was hovering in midair, a repulsor ray holding the mutates to the right of it at bay, while it aimed a high-powered laser at the mutates on the left.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” said Luke.
“Any chance we can get out of these restraints?” Clint didn’t like trusting so many potential threats to one defense.
“Keep your panties on. I’m working on it,” said Tony. “Combat orientation, multiple targets. Attack sequence 8, 17, 12, 12, 59 to disarm control panel, unlock access code Pirate Jenny.”
There was a blast of light and heat. Brainchild flinched away as the control panel exploded. Clint slammed to the ground, released from his magnetic shackles, and his teammates fell beside him. Natasha landed partially on top of him, and Clint shoved her aside to grapple with the blue-furred Lupo. Rolling to avoid a powerful swipe of the werewolf’s sharp claws, Clint sprang up and delivered a roundhouse kick to Lupo’s kidney.
Turning, Clint saw Jessica aiming electric venom blasts at the cringing Amphibius. Natasha slammed the heel of her right hand into Whiteout’s jaw, knocking off the woman’s white-cowled hat. Without missing a beat, Natasha whirled, grabbed Vertigo by one hand and flipped the blue-skinned blonde onto her back. Steve and Luke were facing off against two mutates that looked like Neanderthals with scales, while Tony slammed his fist into Lykos’s stomach. The only team member not doing so well was Peter, who was taking a series of punches from Barbaros’s four fists.
“What are you waiting for, Lykos?” Cringing under the table, Brainchild’s voice rose to a comical screech. “Change!”
“The serum…it’s not enough,” said Lykos, clutching his stomach and grimacing as his muscles knotted and twisted, creating odd bulges and
angles. He lurched toward the open window. “Sorry, Barbaros, but I cannot allow myself to be captured.”
Barbaros looked stunned, and he paused with his fist pulled back to punch Peter again. “But, Karl, I thought the Weapon X experiments had—”
Peter’s scissor kick to his jaw cut off the rest of his sentence, and Barbaros crumpled to the floor.
“Vertigo, you dizzy blonde,” snarled Lupo, still clutching his midsection. “Stop trying to wrestle the redhead. Concentrate! Use your power!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Clint saw the blue-skinned blonde’s eyes begin to whirl like some kind of psychedelic light show. Almost instantly, he felt his head grow light, and the room began to spin.
“Tony,” said Steve, “you have to end this.”
“All right,” said Tony. “Everyone, look out. Code Jekyll Cobra Six.”
The Iron Man suit blasted a hole in the one remaining wall of the citadel’s laboratory, and then fired again, scattering Amphibius and Barbaros and the other mutates into the surrounding jungle.
And just like that, the Avengers were free. Clint raked his hands through his hair, shaking off the bits of dust and debris from the blast. He heard a shrill cry and glanced up at the sky, where two pteranadons were circling. Their bony, sharply crested heads and enormous batlike wings made for a surreal picture against the rising sun. Clint didn’t think either of the hungry flying reptiles was Lykos, although he couldn’t tell for sure.
“Hoo-aaaah,” shouted Luke. “That was righteous. You remember that movie where that Lord of the Rings guy goes into a Russian bathhouse and fights two armed guys in his birthday suit?”
“Eastern Promises,” said Natasha, smiling.
“Well, that guy’s got nothing on us.”
Steve grinned at Tony. “Stark, you crazy son of a gun, you did it!”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think we’ve got much time to celebrate,” said Tony. “Armor, reassemble.” The bottom half of the Iron Man suit came hurtling toward Tony. The top half, which had been hovering in midair, flew apart and attached itself to Tony’s torso.
Clint found Jessica dressed and pulling on her left boot. “You all right?”
“Yeah. Thanks for trying to cover for me in there. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you before.” She looked down, and her dark hair swung forward, concealing her face. “It sounds like you figured out most of it on your own, though.”
“How long have you been working for Fury?”
“Since he left. I can’t say any more about it.”
“Not even to me?”
Clint turned. He had been so engrossed in his conversation with Jessica, he hadn’t noticed that Captain America had joined them. Steve had found his costume but not his mask, and the rising sun gilded his fair hair.
Jessica took a deep breath. “Not even to you. I’m sorry, Cap.”
“Not as sorry as I am. You can’t be a part of this team and keep those kind of secrets.” Captain America sounded disappointed rather than angry, but Clint thought she might have preferred his anger.
“Listen, Cap,” she said. All the others had drawn closer to hear this exchange. “What Clint said in there was all true—except it wasn’t Clint who had the experimental surgery from Hydra. It was me. I’ve been working undercover for Director Fury.”
Tony narrowed his eyes. “So your powers have returned? That’s what Natasha kept saying. Of course, we didn’t believe her, because you claimed she was a double agent. Seems you two have more in common than we realized.”
Steve turned to Clint. “I’m assuming you knew about this.”
“He didn’t know! He guessed. Or Natasha guessed and he started to believe her.”
Luke folded his arms over his chest. “So the idea is you’re working for Fury and not Hydra. I don’t suppose you have proof of this?”
Jessica shook her head. “Not until Fury contacts me.”
“Until then, you’re on probation,” said Steve. “I’d tell you to just go home, but that’s not an option considering where we are and what’s going on.”
“I understand, sir. In your place, I’d probably do the same thing.”
“I say let her walk home,” said Luke. “Lady, you need to decide which side you’re on.”
Jessica put her hands on her hips. “I shouldn’t have to choose between the Avengers and Nick Fury. We all work for Fury.”
“With,” Tony corrected her. “We work with Fury.” Tony tapped his finger against his chin. “And it’s a relationship that works best when based on a healthy amount of mutual distrust. Armor? Relaunch file-unlock combination for Lykos, Karl. I want to see what S.H.I.E.L.D.’s keeping squirreled away in there. Add Nekra and Mandrill into the mix, while you’re at it.”
“But I’ve already exhausted all the standard algorithms,” said the helmet, with a trace of a whine in its robotic voice.
“So go a little crazy.”
“Define crazy,” replied the helmet.
“Oh, I don’t know. Randomly permute the variables using an adaptive genetic factor. Try gray coding the thing to prevent premature convergence. Implement Strassen’s algorithm for matrix multiplication while using a linear-time Find-Max-Subarray crossing procedure.”
The helmet began to talk softly to itself. “Yes, yes, that could work…no, that’s not even logical…wait, I see, if the quadrants intersect…” Then it broke off and began to hum tunelessly as it calculated.
“Now, we need to figure out a chain of command,” said Steve. “Anyone have any problem following my orders?” He looked at Tony.
“Depends on the orders.”
“Well, first off, we have to try to recapture Lykos and the other escaped convicts. It sounds as though they’re involved in some kind of conflict situation over by the Vibranium mines, so I suggest we bring the fight to them instead of waiting for them to attack us here.”
“And there I have to disagree,” said Tony. “I think it’s time for us to pay a visit to our local S.H.I.E.L.D. outpost.”
Steve looked surprised. “Are you honestly going to take Lykos’s word for anything?”
“You don’t think it’s a bit suspicious that Lykos’s Raft files are locked up tighter than Maid Marian’s chastity belt?”
“What I think is that S.H.I.E.L.D. is a peacekeeping force,” said Steve. “They don’t make business deals with foreign powers, they don’t get involved with international mining operations, and—above all—they don’t experiment on prisoners. Besides, the Savage Land is an internationally recognized world ecological heritage site. It’s off-limits to all countries.”
Tony placed his helmet on his head, visor up. “I’m glad you cleared that up, Steve. But since S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t sign my paychecks, I’m inclined to verify my own blind assumptions.”
“He does have a point, Cap,” said Clint. “It’s pretty damn peculiar that the S.H.I.E.L.D. base went radio silent. Either they’re under attack, or there’s some kind of emergency situation there…”
“Or,” said Natasha, “they’re up to something that they don’t want to advertise to the rest of your organization. I say, check out the S.H.I.E.L.D. base first.”
“You don’t get a say in this,” said Clint.
Natasha looked surprised. “Is this about what happened in there? I thought you, of all people, would figure out what I was trying to do.”
Clint picked up his recurve and quiver. “Sounded to me like you were trying to save your ass.”
Natasha didn’t flinch. “And yet you seem to have no trouble giving Jessica the benefit of the doubt.”
“I’m not giving her the benefit of anything. Fury is going to call at some point, and either he’ll verify her story or we’ll know that she was lying. There’s no way anyone can ever know when you’re telling the truth.”
Jessica looked as though he had slapped her. “Excuse me, but why did you defend me in there if you thought I might be working for Hydra?”
Jesus. This was the reason Clint did
n’t like mixing work and emotions. “It’s not black and white, Jess. Whatever you may have done, I don’t want to see you getting badly hurt—or killed.”
Jessica rounded on him. “So you still think I might be working for Hydra?”
Steve stepped between them. “Look, we don’t have time to sort through all of this right now.”
“All right, then,” said Tony. “I say we divide into two groups. Who’s coming with me to check out the S.H.I.E.L.D. outpost?”
“I will,” said Natasha, instantly going over to his side.
“I’m coming, too,” said Jessica, shooting Clint a look. Well, that makes my decision easy, thought Clint. “I’ll go with Steve to the mines,” he said, picking up his quiver and bow. “Who else is coming?”
“If there’s slave labor going on, I want to know about it,” said Luke.
“I guess I’d better tag along to take care of you.” Peter fell into step beside the bigger man.
“Good. There’s a small lake by the base of Mount Eternity. We can rendezvous there,” Steve told Tony.
They headed off in opposite directions. The New Avengers may have just won their first small victory back at the citadel, Clint thought, but they sure didn’t feel like a team.
S E V E N T E E N
THE best thing about setting off on a mission with only guys, thought Clint, was that men didn’t feel the need to fill the silence with talk. You could just lose yourself in walking and hacking at vines and thinking about how few arrows you had left in your quiver. You could worry about the ways some of the branches shook, testifying to the weight of some unseen creature hunkered down there. You could notice the unsettling fact that you hadn’t run into any more terror birds or dinosaurs or mutates, even though they were most certainly out there—watching you, deciding whether you were worth the trouble of killing. With all this weighing on your mind, you didn’t have to go digging around in your unconscious or trying to talk about your emotions.
“So,” said Peter, “what’s the deal with you and Natasha?”
Clint looked at him, then away. “Not a damn thing.”