Better to die fighting for freedom than to be a prisoner all the days of your life.
–Bob Marley

ASSAULT ON THE VAULT

Part II

By Desmond Reddick

The Vault

“Bruce! What the hell are you doing?!”

Colonel Jim Hammond, the original Human Torch, was frozen in his tracks. His former colleagues of seven decades—some of the only humans who he could truly identify with—were revealed to be leading a small strike force to break other colleagues out of The Vault.

For the amount of earth-shakingly powerful men and women housed at the facility, there had been remarkably few break-ins since the increase of funding to hire and arm more Guardsmen, and none since ULTIMATUM had an emergency response detachment assigned to the prison.

It was a confusing world, Hammond conceded, but it seemed as though things were moving very fast these days. And Colonel Hammond was unsure as to how much blame was to be placed on the Liberty Legion. It was why he brought his own, newly-formed team to The Vault to find out for himself. He had not expected to be present for, and responding to, a full scale breach and breakout. Let alone one that involved The Vision and Jack Frost, two heroes of World War II who had not been seen in ages. Hammond remembered something about Captain America mentioning Jack Frost being killed in battle.

“Take out anyone that joins the battle. No deaths,” Thin Man calmly ordered, ignoring the Human Torch.

“Let’s go, Legion!” Blue Diamond shouted, leaping from the platform outside his cell.

With that, the Liberty Legion leapt into action.

Jack Frost put his arms straight in front of him and willed the air to swirl in icy coldness. He pushed it at Human Torch’s assembled team forcing them backwards to save themselves from the unbearable chill. It was too late before Hammond knew that the coldness was aimed directly at him, the intense icy air seeping into his system and freezing him to the core.

The only escapee from Jack Frost’s frigid wrath was Living Lightning, who was able to transform into his electrical form, but the moment he launched himself forward at Jack Frost to save his teammates, Thin Man opened a subspace portal, sucking the lightning-quick hero away from the fracas. The portal opened up in the palm of Bandit’s insulated left glove. The enforced pocket trapped the hero in his lightning form, literally in the palm of his enemy’s hand.

Blue Diamond ran straight for the ULTIMATUM squad, their bullets bouncing off of his hardened skin. He had yet to regain the ability to shift into diamond form, but he was still impervious to most conventional assault. He crushed gun barrels between his hands, the weapons exploding in their wielders’ faces. He swung fists, knocking out anyone whose head he came into contact with. With the right motivation, Elton Morrow was a nigh-unstoppable fighting machine; what better motivation than freedom?

Red Raven batted away repulsor blasts with her battle staff, sending many of the ricochets back into the armored men who fired them in the first place. She was at home fighting in the skies, though the black smoke and closed quarters made things more difficult.Anything was better for her than a jail cell.

Challenger thought little of freedom. The relief of being released from his cell changed the moment he saw him. The man who went by his old friend’s codename: Patriot. Though he looked a little bigger in the days since Challenger was imprisoned, the same leering face looked up at him, beckoning him to fight. Challenger wasn’t one to disappoint.

“It’s felt like ages, old man,” Super-Patriot said. “There’s no explosion big enough that’s going to interrupt us this time.”

Challenger sprung forward with a heavy kick aimed at his muscled enemy’s throat. The kick would have killed a normal man twice over, but Challenger knew how powerful Patriot was. Was being the key word.

Super-Patriot grabbed Challenger’s leg mid-kick with his right hand, yanked him forward and drove his left elbow into Challenger’s stomach. The elder hero hit the ground in a crumpled heap clutching at his abdomen.

“Last time you were saved by the explosion,” Super-Patriot said smirking down at Challenger, “and this time I’m even stronger, old man.”

Batal saw the trouble Challenger was in and charged to help him.

Thin Man looked to Bandit, far away from the centre of the battle, and spoke through the subspace radio frequency: “We need an exit!”

“I’m working on it!” Bandit continued to pour over the electrical box in order to find the defense system’s sweet spot.

Super-Patriot reached down to the injured hero below him, grabbed him by the top of his head with one hand and by the shoulder with the other. He quickly jerked the head to the right while holding onto the shoulder tightly.

The sound it made could be heard even above the blasts and booms and scrapes that the battle produced. It was a high tension POP! that echoed through the high-ceilinged room.

Batal was the first to react, already bounding towards the hulking mass of muscle. He screamed in rage and aggression.

“Christ, the raghead,” Super-Patriot said. He dropped Challenger, drew his fist back and pummeled Batal hard enough to send him flying into the cement wall thirty feet away.

“No! Goddammit, get us out of here!” Thin Man saw it all falling apart as he did only days ago when he left his team to rescue Valentina. He couldn’t allow it to happen again.

Thin Man shuddered in rage, tears building in his eyes. It’s happening again! The thought echoed in his head. All he could think of was the smoke and the popping noise and crushing guilt.

Grace, Valentina, incarceration, now Challenger; it was his entire fault. This is what comes when one makes it their mission to kick against the pricks. The cuts were getting unbearable.

“Buh-Bandit! Get us out!” Thin Man managed to eke the words through his constricted voice box.

Bandit stopped, stared at the electrical box for a moment and then punched it with a hand glowing in electrical power. The electrical form of Living Lightning, contained in the insulated palm pouch of his glove was sent screaming through the wires, circuits and breakers of the facility.

The prison went black. Lit only by the light creeping through the hole in the ceiling, a foreboding murk put a stall to the fighting.

Closing his eyes, Thin Man opened access to his subspace teleportation technology.

“Shit!” Thin Man screamed into the open cell block. “The shield controls must be somewhere else. They’re still up!”

At that, the smoke that had pressed against the ceiling and poured out of the hole into the air began to collect about the members of the Liberty Legion, alive and dead.

Their bodies went cold, and, though they breathed in, no oxygen entered their lungs. Neither did the smoke.

The cloud of smoke pulled away and dissipated.

The cold of their transportation portal was relieved only slightly as the team materialized in the frigid storage warehouse they only just began to use as their new headquarters.

The team was silent as they stood around Challenger’s broken body.

Amadeus Cho stood from his desk and Grace looked on from the chair she was bound to. There was a palpable feeling of sadness in the room. It hung in the air, funereal. Time passed glacially. Not even the oldest, wisest and inhuman of the assembled heroes—Aarkus and Jack Frost—could find the words to express what had happened, though the clarity of the event couldn’t have been more defined.

They lost.

“Valentina?” Blue Diamond asked incredulously.

It broke the silence, offering hope in a dismal rut.

“Yes,” she said, “it’s me.”

Stepping from the shadow into the light, she was sleek and thin in human form. Though bright reflective steel, humming with an almost invisible blue aura covered the entirety of the left side of her body from her head to her hip. Both legs were reinforced with the material, as well as her right arm. Across her breasts the Iron Cross symbol was emblazoned, set into her skin, made of the same blue-hued metal. Only the frontispiece of the iron cross symbol was inlaid with obsidian black steel that reflected the fluorescent light of the warehouse.

Blue Diamond stepped forward and hugged her tightly, but gently.

Beside Iron Cross stood Elias Wirtham, Cardiac, clad only in a black bodysuit. Thin Man approached him and shook his hand.

“It appears I picked the right man for the job,” he said clutching the surgeon’s large hand in his own. His broken spirits were somewhat staved off by this good news.

“I have to admit,” Elias said, “that without your subspace projector and the right materials, it would have been hopeless.”

“It looks like you made do,” Thin Man said looking at the new improved Iron Cross, “is that Vibranium?”

“Let’s just say that we won’t be welcome in Wakanda for a while.”

The two men laughed; Thin Man laughed harder. It wasn’t that funny. He just needed a release that wasn’t self-directed.

Iron Cross greeted her teammates old and new as she made her way through the sombre crowd toward her friend and mentor’s corpse. Kneeling, she cradled his head and slowly, gently removed his mask. A tear rolled from her right eye, her only remaining eye.

“What do we do now?” Batal asked, again breaking the silence.

“We regroup,” Thin Man began. “We train together, like Bill would have wanted, and then we come up with a plan.”

“Then,” Valentina added, “we find whoever did this and eradicate them.”

Undisclosed Location, United States

“To another success!” Professor Power raised a glass of scotch that came from a fifty thousand dollar bottle. Though his palette was nowhere near sophisticated enough to tell the difference between it and a bottle of Glenlivet, it’s the principle of spending more on a bottle of liquor than most in the country make in a year that excited him.

Robert Ralston, failing to hide the miserable look on his face, took a heavy gulp of the dark brown whisky without toasting.

Guy Thierrault, dressed in an expensive suit and not his Flag Smasher costume, toasted with an uneasy grin and swallowed the entirety of the glass in one gulp, wincing as it burned his throat on the way down.

“A measured success, anyway,” the fifth member, and leader of The Five said as he strolled past MODOT.

“But, sir, one of the Liberty Legion is dead and the rest of them are being eaten alive by the press. We’ve managed to inadvertently turn the original Human Torch and his new team against them as well. Yes, they escaped, but we won’t be the only ones looking for them,” Power reasoned.

“True. MODOT, your enhanced operatives performed well. Professor Power, make sure you keep us informed on your modifications to Provocateur and Riot Act. Ralston, the same goes with the V-Battalion. In the wake of my attack, that’s when you will make your move.”

“I’m struggling, Guy, to find your importance to my plan,” the imposing leader stood in front of ULTIMATUM’s leader, looking plainly at him. His red-skinned face showing no expression. The pale purple of the top of his head, from his cheekbones up, contrasted heavily with the crimson of the lower half of his face. The yellow fin protruded proudly from his head, making him an odd, but menacing looking fellow.

“Muh-muh-my men wuh-will perform better next time, sir. I guarantee it!”

“That’s the thing, Guy; their performance has nothing to do with you, does it?”

“Meaning that it’s not my fault they were easily overtaken?” The hope in Guy’s voice peeked through the impending doom he felt.

“No. Meaning that Flag Smasher is just an idea, a man in a costume. I can appoint another, more motivated man to wear the costume. You, Guy Thierrault, are fired.”

And with that, Ralston gasped and Professor Power and MODOT smiled as their leader produced a handgun.

“My only regret will be the stain on the floor.”

Their leader punctuated his sentence by squeezing the trigger.

A gunshot barked in the air, the concussive sound filling the small meeting room. Guy Thierrault’s body crumbled to the floor, blood pooling by the hole in his face on the already red carpet. Their leader lightly tossed the pistol onto the former Flag Smasher’s corpse and turned to address the three living members of The Five:

“Enough of our preparations are in place. Begin: endgame.”

NEXT ISSUE: This is it! Liberty Legion 2.0! I’ve worked long and hard to get here, so I hope you guys are digging it. Challenger’s dead, Ralston’s over his head and Iron Cross is back baby! What happens next? And just who is our mysterious leader of The Five? Even with the original Human Torch—the first Marvel—on the scene with his own team of patriotic heroes, no one will be prepared. Join us next issue as Endgame begins!