Thunderbolts

The footage of a nuclear explosion in the Arizona desert flashed on the computer monitor. The old man with short, silver hair rubbed his chin as he watched. Justin Hammer, seemingly unfazed by the destruction he witnessed.

[Because of them, Project: A-Next has just been terminated. Fifteen years of experimentation flushed down the crapper.]

He was on an Internet call with several other individuals from all over the planet. His voice, just like all the other voices, came through filters to hide their true identities.

“They don’t have everything. We still have the initial test subjects. Perhaps it’s time we activated them.”

[Are you nuts? They’re nowhere near ready. Not to mention that our first attempts may end up proving to be too unstable.]

“We have no choice in the matter,” said Hammer. “At first, Zemo’s Thunderbolt plot was amusing to witness. Causing more havoc, forcing the heroes and villains into even more ludicrous slap-fights in spandex. But now…Zemo’s changed. And not for the better.

“Helmut Zemo is a wild card, gentlemen. And we have to find a way to eliminate him, permanently. He knows about us.”

[Zemo doesn’t know shit. How could he have found out?] [Someone obviously talked.] [Who’d be stupid enough to talk about us, let alone to someone like Zemo?]

“We’ve made many enemies over the years,” said Hammer. “Let’s not forget that Nathaniel Richards is still out there. And the recent events with Captain America and Weapon Plus have shown that we have a lot of problems coming around the bend. We need to be ready, and one of the best ways to do that is to get rid of Zemo before he strikes at us again.”

[What would you propose? Hell, what would anyone propose? Stormfront-1 has disappeared from the map. Wherever Zemo’s hiding, he’s doing a damn good job of it. If you want to take down Zemo, you’re going to need something better than this.]

“I know. That’s where our good friends with multiple limbs come in. We need Hydra to provide a distraction.”

[What makes you think you can control them?]

“Nothing, actually. They’re simply a means to an end.”

Hammer stood from his desk and, with his hands clasped behind his back, stared out of his office window overlooking New York City. “Baron Zemo has just declared war on Control. And we’re going to respond in kind.”

DARK KNIGHTS

Part IV: Into The Black

By Dino Pollard

Somewhere in Central America

The masked assassin known as Bullseye hefted the sniper rifle, staring through the scope. He hunched down behind the building’s ledge, even though he knew there was no need to worry about being seen.

“This feels unnatural,” he said. “You’re making this too easy, babe.”

“Zemo wants to leave nothing to chance, that’s why my illusions are keeping us hidden,” said Lady Mastermind. “And for the last time, stop calling me babe.”

“Whatever you say, toots.”

“Bullseye, you are dangerously close to spending your downtime living in a vision of your own, personal hell.”

The assassin smiled. “Oh baby, talk dirty to me.”

“Go fuck yourself, how’s that?”

“Feisty, I like that in a woman.”

Regan Wyngarde rolled her eyes. She leaned against the building’s rooftop entrance, looking down at the crowd. “Do you have the General in your sights?”

“Yeah, just about.”

“So what are you waiting for? Take the shot.”

Bullseye turned his head from the rifle, looking over his shoulder at his teammate. “What’s the rush?”

“The rush is that General Almodovar only comes out of that fortress he calls home once in a blue moon. If we don’t kill him now, we lessen our impact.”

“I don’t even know why Zemo is wasting his time with this…” muttered Bullseye, looking through the scope again.

“Just take the fucking shot already.”

“Shhh… You’ve gotta savor the kill.”

Bullseye positioned the crosshairs over the head of General Almodovar. A fat, old man dressed in his military uniform. A dictator who had run this country for several years, instated in his current position by the CIA. And with this bullet, it would kick-start a civil war.

He slowly squeezed the trigger. With an explosion of gunpowder, the bullet flew from the rifle like a rocket. It sliced through the air before reaching Almodovar’s face, bursting through the bone and burrowing through his brain before exiting the back, a trail of blood, skull, and brain matter in its wake.

“Game, set and match,” said Bullseye, disassembling the rifle. He grinned at Lady Mastermind. “Now, how about we toss back a few mojitos? I’m buying.”

“No thank you,” she said, her back to Bullseye as she entered the stairwell. In her hand, she generated an illusion that she held several hundred dollar bills. “As you can see, money is literally no object for me.”

“Cunt…”

A tall man with blond hair and blue eyes, wearing a long, black coat walked through a park in suburban Indiana. He sat down on a bench and shortly, another man came to sit by him, also dressed in a coat as well as a wide-brimmed hat that cast a dark shadow over his face.

“Glad you could make it,” said the man in the hat. “By the way, nice disguise.”

“The moonstones are able to alter my appearance,” said the blond man, his voice tinged with a German accent.

“The Hulkbuster base?”

“Vaporized.”

“What did they find?”

“It was being used as a housing for something called Project: A-Next. According to the files Ebersol downloaded, Control has been attempting to breed the next generation of Avengers. It’s a project that’s been in development almost as long as the Avengers themselves.”

“It’s a project that has also yielded some test subjects.”

“We found mention of that in the files. But no mention of who these test subjects were, where they could be located, or even if they are still alive,” said Zemo. “So perhaps you can shed some light on that aspect of the experiment?”

“You won’t find anything in those files, that phase was handled by a separate department. This is how Control operates, they take these projects and split them into several different factions, most of the time these factions aren’t even aware they’re just one piece of the puzzle. That, for example, was the case with Weapon X and Weapon Plus.”

“Then what can you tell me about that other phase?”

“It goes back five, maybe ten years ago. They were ready to test these genetic supplements. Many children were randomly selected to be their test subjects. During medical check-ups, around a dozen children were injected with this genetic material, believed to be simple inoculations, and were monitored carefully. Of those twelve, only three survived.”

“Do you know their names? Who they are, where we can find them?”

“No.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” asked Zemo.

“You’re right to doubt me, Baron. But you have to believe that I’m trying to help you.”

“You worked with Control, why have you now turned against them?”

“At first, I gave the information on Control to a young reporter, simply for sporting reasons. But after a recent experience, I’ve decided Control must be stopped. Their interests may conflict with my own.”

“And what experience would that be?”

The man looked at Zemo, glowing red eyes the only thing visible in the shadow that concealed his face. “Let’s just call it a rebirth.”

“And what shall I do?”

“You’ve been making waves, Baron. You and your Thunderbolts. Control is going to wage a war against you, they will throw everything they have at you. So you have to be ready with an army of your own and you have to begin dismantling them now. You need to be far more aggressive than you have been.”

“I’ve already begun,” said Zemo.

“Then I shall leave you to your machinations.”

“I have one question.”

“Yes?”

“What is your name?” asked Zemo.

“It’s not important, but if you want to call me something, Mr. E shall suffice.”

“Mystery? Very clever.”

“I thought so, too. Good day, Helmut.”

Mr. E stood from the bench and walked into the crowd, seemingly vanishing within. Once he was gone, golden energies swirled around the thirteenth Baron Zemo, causing him to vanish.

Castle Zemo

Donnie Gill stood in the lab of P. Norbert Ebersol, fidgeting. “You’ve gotta have something for me.”

“I already told you, I’m not getting you any smack,” said Ebersol. “That shit will fuck you up and the last thing I need is someone who’s supposed to be watching my back going into withdrawal during a mission.”

“What else do you have?” asked Donnie. “MGH? I’ll take that. Coke? I just need something to take the edge off.”

“MGH isn’t much better. With our luck, you’ll turn into some giant ice monster during a gig.”

“C’mon, you’ve gotta have something.”

Ebersol sighed. He opened one of the drawers on his work bench and fished through it, taking out a mouthpiece of some sort. He tossed it to Blizzard. “There, now get out of here.”

Donnie examined it in his hand. “What the hell is this?”

“It’s called neuroin, something I’ve been developing on the side,” said Ebersol. “Fucks with your brain electricity. Should make you feel like you’re soaring without too many negative side effects.”

“Zemo know about this?”

“The shit Zemo doesn’t know I could just about squeeze into my dearly departed mother’s fat ass, and I’d like to keep it that way,” said Ebersol. “There’s no reason for the Baron to learn about my extracurricular activities, and if you want more of that shit, you’ll keep your mouth shut as well. Comprende?”

“Yeah, I got it,” said Donnie. He held the dispenser up to the light, staring at it. “Now I know why they call you the Fixer.”

“Just get the fuck outta here before I change my mind.”

“This is too much,” said Melissa. “A nuclear explosion? This isn’t what we signed up for.”

“We knew the deal,” said Abe. “We knew what we were doing when we signed up with Zemo. And now, it looks like we’re paying the price.”

“What’s the cost going to be?” asked Melissa. “Our souls?”

“I don’t know.”

“We can’t play Zemo’s game, we joined him again because we thought he changed, that he was going to make this world a better place.”

“Maybe this is how we do that,” said Abe. “Maybe the Avengers and the Fantastic Four have got it all wrong. Maybe we do have to play dirty. I mean, if a cop guns down a criminal, no one bats an eye, right? But if a hero kills a madman, then all of a sudden there’s a huge fuss about it? What if the heroes had killed Doom or Magneto? Or hell, what about the Red Skull? If Cap killed him years ago, all this shit wouldn’t have happened.”

Melissa wrapped her arms around herself, not sure how to respond to Abe’s statement. She had learned a lot about being a hero from Hawkeye. But she found she couldn’t argue with Abe’s logic. Mostly because some of those sentiments matched her own.

Dr. Chen Lu, the Radioactive Man, sat cross-legged on the roof of Castle Zemo. His eyes were shut and his hands rested on his knees. He looked to be in a deep sleep, yet his posture was firm.

“What are you doing?”

Chen sighed. “What do you want, Strucker?”

Andreas Von Strucker, the Swordsman, stood at the spiral staircase leading back into the castle. He took a seat on the ledge, one foot propped up and his arm resting on his knee. The purple mask that concealed his face was absent, as were the weapons of his namesake.

“What. Are. You. Doing?” he asked again.

“Meditating,” said Chen. “On the loss of life in Arizona.”

“This is war, my friend,” said Andreas. “In war, there are casualties.”

“A nuclear explosion is crossing a line.”

“And yet you did it nonetheless, what does that say?”

Chen remained silent.

“You could have stood up to Ebersol, but you didn’t. What would he have done to you?”

Chen rose from his lotus position. “That isn’t the point.”

“Of course it is,” said Andreas. “Do not delude yourself, my friend. Whether you like it or not, you are a villain. No amount of meditation will erase your past, Dr. Chen.”

Clint Barton stood on a rooftop overlooking the Hudson Bay. He was dressed in street clothes, his bow and arrows nowhere to be seen. He wondered for the umpteenth time what he was doing here. Why was he playing Zemo’s game?

“Good evening, Mr. Barton.”

Clint turned at the sound of the voice and saw a bald man with a scarred face and a monocle approaching him. “Strucker.”

The former Nazi had one hand in the pocket of his black, pin-stripe suit His other hand, the infamous Satan Claw, with the moonlight glinting off its crimson metal. “I must confess some surprise to your request.”

“We had a deal, last I checked,” said Clint. “Together, we take out Zemo. Right?”

“How do I know this isn’t a trap?”

“I just came to talk, Strucker. Look—” he raised his arms. “—I’m unarmed.”

“I’m not.”

The voice came and Clint witnessed a silent hovercraft in the shape of a giant V rise up the side of the building. The man on it was dressed in a red, white and blue costume and he held a rapier in his hand.

“Watkins,” said Clint. “The hell is going on here?”

“Very interesting, Mr. Barton, that you should come to me offering to defeat Zemo after two of his Thunderbolts liberated you from V-Battalion custody,” said Strucker.

“So you two are working together, huh?” asked Clint. “I thought you had dignity, Watkins.”

“If I’ve lost it on account of working with Strucker, then what does that say about you?” asked Citizen V.

“This was a set-up right from the start, wasn’t it?” asked Clint.

“There’s been no change in any of our goals, Barton,” said Strucker. “Just now, we have the V-Battalion on our side as well. And with your help, we can take down Zemo once and for all.”

“Fine,” said Clint. “But we do it my way.”

NEXT: Masters and Slaves

 

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