Marvel Novels--Captain America

by Stefan Petrucha

  It wasn’t over, then. Far from it.

  He bent over even farther, but not because of the discomfort. He bent so they wouldn’t see him smile.

  23

  BUT IF I SACRIFICE MYSELF, I DO IT IN SECRET. WHO WOULD KNOW? WHO WOULD CARE?

  WHAT was the word?

  Freighted. That was it. That was how Jakob Waller felt about his life. Freighted. Even his own thoughts had grown too freighted, too familiar to interest him much.

  He was alone in Vienna’s Weltliche Schatzkammer Museum, in an elegant office. At work long after closing, he placed rare artifacts from the Holy Roman Empire beneath the magnifier one by one, scanning for signs of damage or decay—wishing he could do the same for himself.

  They’d offered him the day off, but he refused. He’d hoped that spending time with things much older than he was might shake the gloom that had descended on him on the occasion of his 73rd birthday. As of yet, it had not.

  The day wasn’t a disappointment. It was more a verification of something he’d felt for a while: not that he’d outlived his usefulness, but that he’d outlived his desire to be useful.

  Waller wasn’t sad or lonely. His health was good and his mind sharp, or at least as sharp as it had ever been. He didn’t lack social skills or compassion. It was just that now that he was old enough to really see how it would all inevitably end, he had no desire to make an effort anymore.

  Friends and co-workers brought him a lovely Sachertorte, his favorite. They covered it with candles and sang to him with genuine affection. They were good people, kind and intelligent, but none knew him nearly as long or as well as those who were now long gone.

  Going through the collection proved equally hollow. Once, each piece had enthralled him, rousing passion and dedication. Tonight, his long experience worked against him, blinding him to each artifact’s glory, revealing the inconvenient truths his heart could no longer deny.

  Instead of a unicorn relic, he saw a misidentified narwhal horn. Instead of the Holy Grail, he saw an agate bowl dated to Late Antiquity.

  He knew too much about them. Or perhaps he knew too little.

  Much as he longed for the magic of lies, their danger had grown too apparent, especially in the case of the piece he’d saved for last: the Holy Spear, Longinus. Europe’s most real demon had seen the magic in it, all right. The vile Adolf Hitler once brought it back with him to Berlin, believing the so-called Spear of Destiny would secure his Eternal Reich.

  Once, Waller thought it was harmless to believe in the spear’s mystic properties, but Voltaire said it best: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

  He turned over the lance in his hands. Its crude, pointed, flat metal head was strapped to the central pole that had a sheet of inscribed silver and gold wrapped around the center. Even General Patton had it studied before returning it to the museum. Some blamed his death in a car accident a few months later on the Spear’s power.

  Today, all Jakob saw was a piece fashioned in the 7th century for ceremonial use. Another lie disguised as meaning. Another absurdity that aided and abetted atrocity.

  About to place it beneath the magnifier, he was still holding it when the tremors began. At first he thought his steady hands were finally failing him, shaking like those of a stereotypical old man. But it wasn’t his hands—it was the spear, shivering so violently he had to let go.

  It clattered to the desk. Its vibrations sent it skittering across the surface, rattling his carefully stacked papers and organized colored pens.

  Jakob wondered if what he was seeing was real, or if he was having a stroke and his body was telling him a final lie before death. But it felt as real as anything he’d experienced.

  In a burst of golden light, the flattened blade and staff were shed as if parts of a vulgar costume, garish lipstick on the Mona Lisa.

  What remained was perfect: a long, solid rod, narrow as an abstract line.

  As Jakob gasped, it rose into the air, knocking the magnifier aside. Weightless, it spun like a compass needle seeking magnetic north. When it settled, it was pointing at him, directly at his chest, as if he’d been chosen by it. He felt that old thrill again—the idea that not only was there magic in the world, but that he might be part of it.

  As the perfect thing drove itself into and through Jakob Waller, all the experiences, expectations, and explanations that had rendered his life so dull and gray shattered as quickly and easily as his chest. He saw his elegant office before him, heard the wall behind him crack as the rod passed through it. Then nothing.

  Smiling, Jakob Waller died just as he’d been born: believing that he and the world were completely new.

  * * *

  THE BIG EMPTY’S modular command center was as white and sterile as the rest of the base. To Kade, it felt soothing, clean, but it also made any variation look like dirt. As a result, he found himself staring at Fury’s unshaven chin. The stubble wrankled him nearly as much as the cowboy’s habitual bravado.

  “I feel like I’m in a freaking habitrail,” Fury said, rapping his knuckles against the featureless wall. “Guess I shouldn’t complain. At least we got a table in here, so I can see most of your kissers up close and personal.” He looked at the gathered group, then two faces appearing on the built-in wall monitors. “Weird seeing you up there when you’re just 50 yards away, Cap, but at least you’ve got your own monitor. Congrats.”

  Playing along, Rogers gave him a salute. “Thank you, sir.”

  “What about me?” Stark piped in. “Don’t I have my own monitor?”

  “Yeah, I just don’t feel like congratulating one of the world’s richest men on that. I do wanna thank you for showing your virtual mug all the way from sunny Silicon Valley.”

  Kade didn’t get it. Did they have to whistle in the dark, to pretend? Didn’t they realize how difficult it made it for him, for anyone with half a brain, to trust them?

  “Let’s get down to it. In about two hours, when the court’s, uh, instrument arrives, Schmidt will legally be placed under his jurisdiction and summarily executed.” Looking at Kade, he added, “Frankly, I’d as soon say they’re going to whack him.”

  Kade wondered if the remark was intended to make him feel guilty. If so, how? They were the ones caught up in appearances. It didn’t make any difference to him what they called it, as long as Schmidt was dead and the pestilence inside him eradicated.

  Fury finally muted his glib tone when he arrived at the meeting’s purpose. “Once the Skull’s cremated, Steve Rogers will be placed in the cryo-chamber. That makes this meeting our last official chance for any of our best and brightest to pull a rabbit out of a hat or wake me up and tell me I’ve been dreaming before we actually go through with this. Have we got anything? Anything at all? Doctors, let’s start with you.”

  Kade said nothing. He’d let Dr. N’Tomo report for them. She was competent enough, and they appreciated her manner. More important, she could only discuss what she knew, and Kade had yet to decide whether he should share his most recent discovery.

  She cleared her throat. “First, I’d like to ask if Mr. Stark’s presence indicates he’s made any progress.”

  “It’s Tony, totally Tony. I guess the question means your report isn’t good, so I’m sorry to say no. If creating cures by computer sim were all that easy, we’d have eliminated lots of diseases by now. So far I’m limited to crunching algorithms to speed the calculations. Every microsecond I squeeze out could be the one that gives us a winner, but nothing’s screaming Bingo yet. I’m only here as a sounding board, or maybe a charming cheer squad. So…yay. Go team.”

  Fury gestured toward Nia. “What have you got?”

  Her face grew dour. “The samples from the Skull have revealed that his symptoms are being caused by a very slight variation on the virus. The variation itself is no surprise. Viruses constantly mutate—usually into less harmful forms. So far, though, the simulations show that this variation is even more contagious
and more resistant to cure.” She took a moment before continuing. “We also now know it’s keyed to specific cellular modifications caused by the Super-Soldier formula.”

  Fury raised an eyebrow. “Does that mean it can’t infect the rest of us?”

  “No,” she said. “Not at all. We know from its structure that we’re all susceptible. The same key can work on more than one lock. In this case, the key that opens up a Super-Soldier cell can also unlock an average human cell.”

  Kade wasn’t surprised when Fury pushed for more. “I was shot down when I asked this the first time, but we’re here to brainstorm, so I’ll try again—could this thing have been created to target Cap? We’ve seen stranger.”

  More tired than he realized, Kade could not hold his tongue. “Finding a villain may make for a more comfortable story, Colonel, but it isn’t in any way necessary to explain what’s happened.”

  They all turned toward him, expecting him to continue, but he forced himself to say nothing further. Drained, rattled by what he now knew, he feared he might say too much, or be misinterpreted. Besides, what tired him most had been trying to explain.

  N’Tomo continued for him. “It may seem like an intelligence is behind it, but this is more about luck. When a million random lock picks try to open the same lock, it’s only the one that succeeds that gets to reproduce. Naturally, just as an active virus in my body is more likely to be specific to my immune system, an active virus in the Skull’s clonedbody is more likely to be specific to Super-Soldier DNA.”

  Fury bristled. “I’m still not buying the part about—”

  A frantic Stark interrupted. His eyes had zeroed in on an unseen point beyond his camera. “Whoa! You got that, Nick?”

  Before Fury could answer, yet another monitor—this one built into the tabletop—lit with tracking information.

  “Getting it from the Helicarrier now. There’s a bogie headed our way—fast. Point of origin is Vienna.”

  Rogers tensed. “Another Sleeper?”

  Stark shrugged. “I’d say that’s a bet. This one’s big, too. Well, not very big at all, really. It’s pretty small, maybe five feet long, and crazy thin—but when I say big, I mean powerful.”

  Kade felt sick. Another attack. Of course. Another inexorable force pressing them all closer to the brink. He hid his shaking hands beneath the table.

  Fury hit the alert button, which was actually red and labeled alert. “The energy readings we’re getting are off the scale.”

  Stark smirked. “Speak for yourself. With all the big stuff like the Cosmic Cube, Galactus, and Mjolnir always going ‘off the scales,’ I finally decided to tweak the scales: I built a high-power database with the energy signatures of all the cosmic stuff we’ve encountered, and right now…” His gaze darted about as he spoke, the tops of his hands occasionally visible as he made off-screen adjustments. “The nearest comparison I’m getting is to…”

  Stark twisted his head, parted his lips…and said nothing.

  Now even Kade was curious.

  Fury slammed the table. “To what, Stark? What?”

  “Sorry. Couldn’t believe it. It’s not as strong, but it’s reading like a freaking Infinity Gem.”

  The collected agents snapped to their feet. Fury cupped his ear. “Get on the horn—we need the biggest guns we can get, fast. I don’t care if it is the Hulk. Yeah, I realize we’re in the most isolated place in the country, but the sooner they start moving, the sooner they’ll get here!”

  Kade felt paralyzed. All he could do was sit and add their growing dread to his own.

  N’Tomo, meanwhile, looked to Captain America on the monitor. “Infinity Gems?”

  Rogers exhaled, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was saying himself. “Six primordial artifacts. Some think they once formed a single being that grew bored of its existence and shattered itself into pieces, creating the Multiverse.”

  She raised both eyebrows. “The Multiverse? You mean reality?”

  “That’s the story. All sorts of galactic entities fought over them for eons, believing that once they were brought together, they could be used to control…everything. When a maniac named Thanos succeeded, it took practically every powered being there is to defeat him.”

  Her brow knitted. “I may be naive regarding cosmic forces, but if these gems are truly all-powerful, how could this Thanos possibly have been defeated?”

  Fury’s hands went palms up. “Save it for later. This thing’s coming hard and fast. Tony, anything on that new scale of yours that tells us how to stop it?”

  Stark’s face went from self-satisfied to somber. “Uh…no.” The sirens grew louder. “And it’s breached your outer perimeter.”

  “I can see that!” Fury snapped back. “Stop talking, put on the damn armor, and get your iron butt over here.”

  “Been donning my fighting togs while we talk. On my way. Steve, it’ll reach you into about two seconds.”

  “Which direction?”

  “Six o’clock. And it’ll hit right about…”

  Before Stark finished, Rogers grabbed his shield and turned counter-clockwise.

  A small, perfectly round hole appeared in the quarantine chamber. Apparently it hadn’t even entered from above—it’d burrowed through the ground, emerging directly in the cavern.

  Kade gasped along with everyone else. Looking almost like a line on a high-school geometry test, the thin rod slammed into the shield. The resulting sound when it made contact with the curved Vibranium surface was somewhere between a thunder crack and a wrecking ball hitting a steel girder.

  Rogers was hurled back. The rod careened to the side, slowed, then spun and came at Rogers again. Stark vanished from his screen. The collected agents scrambled for their stations. Fury drew his sidearm and stormed toward the exit.

  Realizing the fool was headed for the isolation area, Kade jumped to his feet to stop Fury. It was like trying to block a charging bull.

  “No! You can’t go near him without a suit!”

  “Stay outta my way!”

  Fury swatted him aside. Kade’s feet left the ground, and he hit the floor hard.

  “Wait!” As he called out, he felt a sharp pain in his chest, as if one of his ribs had been broken.

  But Fury was already gone.

  Idiot! The only thing that could save Rogers now was if one of those cosmic beings arrived and altered the very flow of time.

  He felt N’Tomo kneel beside him. She looked him over, then tried to help him get up. “Are you all right?”

  Kade didn’t particularly want to stand. It was pointless. Should he tell her, or let her go on with false hope, the way she’d wanted him to treat the Skull? “They don’t understand. They’re children playing with the fuse on an atomic bomb.”

  “They’re trying to stop an atomic bomb.”

  She was looking at the screen, watching as Rogers deflected the rod again and again, and Kade realized she wouldn’t understand, either. Each time the rod came closer; each time he succeeded in blocking it. Kade knew it was as much luck as skill keeping Rogers alive, but not Dr. N’Tomo. She would never lose faith in Rogers’ ability to triumph despite the odds.

  But Kade wasn’t sure which side to root for. While N’Tomo had prepared the report for this meeting, he’d been busy comparing the virus they found in the Skull to Rogers’ original scan. Their hero, the great Captain America, had been host to both strains all along. They were so similar, it was hard to spot the variation without the new sample. There were only a few examples of the active variant—perhaps it had mutated into the form recently—but Kade had no doubt it’d been replicating.

  It was only a matter of time before Captain Rogers was symptomatic—and as contagious as the Skull. Unless he was placed in suspension immediately, he’d be dead in a week. Even then, given the projections based on the variant strain, Kade no longer believed a cure was possible.

  The steely clangs from the monitor grew more insistent. If the swift placement of the shield
wavered by a fraction of an inch and that rod got through, Rogers’ death would be quick and merciful.

  It would be so much better for humanity if, just once, Captain America missed.

  Under the circumstances, Kade didn’t imagine anyone would object to having the body incinerated.

  24

  WHAT WOULD BE LEFT TO FRET MY QUESTIONS, TO JUDGE ME GOOD OR ILL?

  AS FURY ran toward the containment area, a flexible mask rose from his collar, covering his nose and mouth. Intended for gas attacks, it had been a standard part of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s field suits for years.

  Not as fancy or secure as the membranes Cap and the doctors wore, it required its own air supply. That would last about fifteen minutes, if he remembered right. There wasn’t time to explain all that to Kade, but he probably would have argued about it anyway.

  After all, it wouldn’t protect Fury from anything that got on his skin.

  A dozen agents in full hazmat gear already surrounded the exterior of Rogers’ chamber. A series of dark pinpoint holes marred the walls’ white perfection. Following another horrific slamming noise, the rod shot out again, leaving another hole. It sailed above the modular structures until it nearly disappeared in the semi-darkness.

  Recognizing a clear line of fire, nine of the agents discharged their handheld weapons. The misses echoed as they lodged in basalt walls. When the rod slowed to turn back, a few actually hit, sparking off the insanely narrow surface with no effect.

  How can you fight a freaking line?

  There might be a way. As a precaution, Fury’d had their most high-power portable weapon, the proton disruptor, brought down from the Helicarrier. The agents who hadn’t fired at the rod were struggling to set it up. Fury raced over to help mount the body on the pivoting tripod. Together, they connected the long power cable and lowered the small operator’s seat. In the seconds that took, the rod passed in and out of Cap’s chamber twice more, each strike accompanied by that terrible droning as Steve blocked it with his shield.

  Fury hopped into the seat. “I’ll take this shot myself.”