WALKABOUTS

Part IV: Siege

By Clayton Tooley

Jack turned toward the door, looking at it and reaching for the handle…but his hand paused a few inches from it as a voice in the back of his head, the one he swore from time to time sounded like his Ma said, No, Johnny. Don’t you dare! He sighed, dropping his hand and turning, looking back at what he knew for certain was not his sister rising up on the bed, half beaten to death but still smiling at him, and his stomach turned then dropped, bile rising in the back of his throat. The voice in his head was now his Pa. It don’t matter if it hurts, son. It’s what’s right. Now get to it.

“Ok,” he said, reaching behind his head and pulling his mask onto his face, settling it over his nose and ears. He double-clicked the radio in his earpiece to signal Major Bludd that there was a problem, and settled himself. “There’s something I have to say: I know. I don’t know what you are, or who you are, or why you’re doing this…but I know. And what you need to understand is this: it’s over. You’ve tried to use my last living relative against me, who I have to accept is no longer living, and you failed. I’ll process that later, about an hour or so after I stomp you to death. I’ve killed a dozen people and got over it, so one more won’t be so hard, especially under these circumstances. But you’re finished.”

The being posing as Katie Walker made no response, nothing protesting his statements or confirming them, only staring at him and smiling that same useless smile.

USAgent’s shield appeared on his arm and he crouched into a fighting stance. “Say something or I’m going to take your head off!”

A blink and then the most cruel and hate-filled smile Jack had ever seen spread across the face of his ‘sister’ and she laughed a voice that was much too mean and much too deep. Casting the cover aside, she dropped her legs to the floor and stood, unconcerned with all of the reasons in Dr. Foster’s reports about how impossible a move like that should be, and walked half the distance to him and stopped, her eyes sparkling in the overhead lights and, for just a second, her face returned to that of his sister, no malice or evil apparent.

Then ‘she’ laughed.

“You’re smarter than the Master believes,” ‘Katie’ said, holding her chest. “Well, Masters, I suppose, since both think you’re a goddamned retard. But you aren’t, are you? No, you just put on a façade that lets you be a fool and be underestimated by your foes. That’s either clever or just more dumb fucking luck on your part but, unfortunately for you, I have been programmed to be a genius. I’ve been based upon some of the greatest minds of human history: kings, presidents, scientists, military geniuses…all of what they are make me what I am.”

“How very Serpentor of you,” Jack said, increasing the size of the shield on his arm. “Yo Joe!”

“You mock, how clever,” ‘Katie’ said, her face losing its mirth. “Ok, you’re boring me.”

The being posing as his sister raised its hands and began shaking from side to side like a hula dancer…and from its body began falling…bones.

Katie’s bones.

Even without being told Jack knew what they were. He’d seen enough corpses and autopsies and the like in his military and super-hero career to tell the difference between male and female bones, but, more than that, he just knew that those had to be his sister’s bones. They plopped to the floor in a shower of snap-crackle-and-pops, ricocheting off of each other and scattering across the floor like a bag of dropped rice. Her skull, minus its lower jaw, skittered and stopped between his feet, her empty and dead eye-sockets staring at him accusingly.

He screamed a scream of half-rage and half-horror.

The being before him didn’t seem to care, having swelled like a balloon and towered over him, smiling. “Oh, that was just the hard stuff. Here’s the rest.”

From the creature’s mouth, nose, eyes, ears, crotch and anus shot streams of blood, hot and fast and splattering all over the floors, walls and ceiling of the small recovery room, including all over Jack, blood and other soft tissues and organs he knew had once been in his sister. It was in his eyes and nose and mouth and he gagged, crying and coughing and gasping for air as his rage built into a thing unto itself and his eyes, blood pooling on his cheeks, locked onto the true form of the being in front of him.

“Ah, so nice to finally be free of all of that garbage,” the creature who had been his sister a moment ago said as he stood on two thick and bulbous legs, his expansive stomach hanging over his waist and arms as large as his legs stretched back behind a hugely fat and molten head with blank eyes that seemed to bore into him.  His skin was yellow and dead. “And since you’re about to die, my creator, Arnim Zola, and his Master, the Red Skull, want you to know who is killing you.”

“You’re Doughboy,” Jack said, surprised yet not so.

“Indeed,” Doughboy said, smiling a grotesque smile with too many too large teeth. “Now die.”

A fist spiraled out of the fluid, heavy-set form before him and slammed into USAgent’s shield and body, lifting him off of his feet and through the heavily-reinforced wall of the room and into the medical facility beyond.

An indicator on the HUD display that was the left eye of the Watchdog Elite known as Redeye lit up. “Ah…the creature has been exposed. That is ahead of schedule. Where is the machine and Moonhunter?”

“Their vehicle just entered the garage. I have teams readying their positions now.”

“Good. Attack at once. And inform whoever finds it to eliminate the machine as swiftly as possible; it is far too dangerous. I expect you to keep the identified primary targets alive…but slaughter the rest.”

He slid until he hit the wall on the other end of the infirmary and for a long moment USAgent lay there, stunned. He still had Katie’s blood in his eyes and mouth and nose and just for a second he thought about just laying there forever. He was so tired. But in his next breath, he tasted her blood again and the fury in his heart burst like a balloon, flooding him and he was on his feet in an instant and he threw his shield as hard as he could.

It sliced the creature before them in half, two solid blobs of gunk hitting the floor with a splat. But then they pulled together and reformed into the smiling monster Doughboy, who laughed as he picked up the shield. “So, what was it exactly that we missed? The bitch killing herself did some damage to the synapses but it has been several days so I thought whatever small percentage of her brain we didn’t get wasn’t important.”

Jack dissolved the shield in Doughboy’s hands and reformed it on his own arm. “Every bit of her was important, you son of a bitch. How did you steal so much of her?”

“I’m not here for talky-talky, Agent.” Doughboy exploded forward and only Jack’s enhanced reaction time and flexibility got him out of the way as Doughboy smashed into the wall. USAgent struck out at him and landed several punches and kicks but to no avail. Doughboy morphed his face out of what had previously been his back and his head suddenly shot out and cracked USAgent in the face, knocking him back. Doughboy swung at him then, and Jack could only deflect two punches before a third flung him across the room again.

As he struggled to his knees, he heard Free Spirit’s voice. “Jack, smash!”

He looked up, dazed, and saw Cathy come bursting out of Dr. Foster’s office with a large bottle in her hands. She rolled once under a swing from Doughboy and with both hands plunged the bottle into his squishy chest before leaping up and kicking away using Doughboy’s face as a springboard. Not really knowing what was going on, Jack flung his shield into Doughboy’s chest, shattering the bottle.

A cloud of powder burst forth from the broken bottle and adhered to Doughboy and sank into his skin. He at first seemed only slightly  bothered by this as he took a step forward but then he stopped, a look of shock on his face as he tried to take another step and couldn’t. His skin seemed to change and darken and a moment later he was frozen solid like a statue.

Dr. Foster came out of her office and walked around Doughboy. “Well, that worked a little better than I expected.”

“What did you do?” Jack asked as he got up. “What was that crap?”

“A resin I designed for hard-drying castings. I knew a little bit about some Doughboy samples Cap and Thunderstrike recovered from Skull House a while back, and I thought it might slow down his morphogenic properties, but I didn’t expect this type of reaction. And I thought Doughboy wasn’t able to speak?”

“Things change, I guess,” Jack said. “How long will that last?

“Impossible to say…but I think this is a one and done solution. If he overcomes it he’ll have developed antibodies to combat it, like we would to a virus.”

“Then we need to get him to a containment cell by then.” USAgent pulled his communicard out to call Major Bludd when the room suddenly shook and alarms started going off. “What the hell?”

Gunfire could be heard in the distance and all of their heads turned toward footsteps running toward the doorway. It opened to allow in a heavily armed four man squad of Watchdog soldiers, who came in firing.

Free Spirit dove to the side behind some medical equipment and covered her head even as Jack pulled Foster down and covered them with his shield. He pushed the doctor behind Doughboy’s massive form and leapt into the air, flipping before crashing down onto the first soldier, crushing him to the floor even as he smashed a second into a wall with his shield. Free Spirit came up over the equipment and planted both feet into the chest of a third man, riding him to the floor and punching him repeatedly. Jack finished the fourth man with a roundhouse kick that sent him back into the hallway outside the infirmary.

“Of course it’d be these fuckers…” A cracking sound broke Jack’s rant and he turned and saw multiple bullet holes in the skin of Doughboy and from those cracks liquid was oozing. “Son of a –!” He turned and grabbed Free Spirit. “You have to get to the others. Moonhunter, Peggy and Fabian will need your help. Regroup with Machine Man and find somewhere safe to keep your heads down until SHIELD gets here. I’m sure Bludd has activated our emergency beacon so Julia and the others should be here soon. I’ll handle Doughboy and find you soon.”

“How’re you going to handle him?” Cathy asked.

USAgent didn’t have an answer as he shoved her toward the door. “Foster, go with Cathy.”

“I am not leaving Bonita, Agent,” Foster said as she backed toward the farthest examination room, the one where Firebird lay unconscious, her eyes never leaving Doughboy’s shaking form.

“Then lock the door and think happy thoughts,” Jack said as he set himself between her and Doughboy and waited, wondering how he would beat this monstrosity.

Zach and Machine Man had just arrived back into the hallways outside the lower garage when the lights suddenly dimmed and an alarm rang out into the hallway. Their communicators started buzzing and Major Bludd’s voice called out. “Intruders alert! Watchdogs are inside the base! Emergency Stations!” A loud ‘BZZZPTT’ cut through the system and the line went dead.

[We must find the others,] Machine Man said, pushing the back of Moonhunter’s chair faster. [I will take you to Fabian, he is closest, and then proceed with stopping these Watchdogs.]

“I’ll be fine, Machine Man, go help. I can get myself…” He stopped talking as his communicard buzzed again and he looked into the lithe device and saw the face of Rachel Carpenter looking back at him. “Rachel?”

“Hey, finally!” she said, her voice low. “I came here looking for my mom and changing out of my workout clothes now I can’t get out of gym. No one else is answering either.”

“Rachel, you’re here? Now?” Moonhunter said in a loud voice. “Look, there’s a bit of an attack going on now. You need to –”

“AHHH!” Rachel screamed over the card, her attention turning away suddenly. “Something just hit the door hard! And I hear voices. Oh no, the door just dented. Help!” she screamed then static washed over her card.

Moonhunter turned to Machine Man and said, “Go! You have to help her. I’ll be fine, go!”

Machine Man hesitated for a second then nodded and launched into the air and rocketed back the way they came, toward the stairs that would take him to the gymnasium level.

Moonhunter gripped the wheels of his chair and began propelling himself down the hallway as quickly as possible. He hoped Fabian had somewhere safe they could hide while this went down, or at least some big guns to make it an even fight.

Peggy Carter worked her board frantically, trying to find a way to get through the interference and contact the rest of their team and SHIELD. She thought the initial burst had gotten through, at least in the local general area of New York City, but there was no way to know. She had just come up with a different idea when a sound behind her kicked in old instincts and she pushed herself away from the console and rolled across the floor just seconds before her console erupted into a ball of fire and shrapnel blew all over the room.

She lifted her head from under her arms and saw a group of four Watchdog soldiers standing in the doorway of the communication room with guns aimed at her. “This one isn’t on the list, sir,” a smaller man in back said to the large man in front.

“Why would she be?” the leader asked, smirking. “She’s old, useless and dead.” He raised his gun to fire when high-pitched, rapid fire shots from a blaster rang out behind him, striking two of his men and dropping them, causing the leader and the one who’d spoken before to dive for cover.

From beyond the doors a single figure came diving into the room and rolled to a position behind a cabinet, surveying the room even as he spoke. “Ms. Carter is none of those things, my judgmental friend,” Major Jason Bludd said, adjusting the setting on his SHIELD sidearm. “And she most certainly is not alone.” He leaned out from cover and fired a heavy beam at the table the other Watchdog was hiding behind, carving through the table and plowing the smaller man into the wall behind him. His body armor steamed from the shot but appeared to have prevented him from death, if not unconsciousness.

But firing that shot had left Bludd exposed and the Watchdog drove him from cover with a flurry of shots that tore through the cabinet and wall alike. Bludd managed to avoid the bulk of the shots but couldn’t get to new cover fast enough before the last bullet from the Watchdog’s magazine hit him in the thigh, tripping him to the floor in pain, his blaster spinning away.

The Watchdog got to his feet and walked slowly toward his downed enemy, popping the clip from his gun as he did. He wore a smile of sinister glee as he pulled a new clip and inserted it into the weapon, jacking a new shell into the chamber. “You SHIELD guys think you’re so funny. I think it’s going to be a hoot to watch you die.”

“Perhaps it would be,” Bludd said through clenched teeth. “But I think it’s hilarious you took your eyes off of Peggy.”

The Watchdog froze for a second then spun back around only to find a strong arm blocked his gun hand even as what he recognized as a taser was pointed at his face and fired. The metallic prongs sank into his cheek and nose and volts of electricity rocketed into his body through his head, causing a scream of unimaginable pain to come from his lips before his mind shut down and he collapsed, his eyes open and watering as he convulsed.

“Good shot,” Bludd said as Peggy knelt next to him and pulled a tunicate from the medical kit on the wall near where he lay. “Never seen someone tasered in the face.”

“Everything else was armored,” Peggy said as she tied off his leg above his wound and quickly taped gauze over both the entry and exit wounds. “Missed the bone and went clean through. You’re a lucky man, Jason.” She pulled a needle of local anesthesia and injected him above the wound. “Can’t use a full dose or you won’t be able to walk, so that’ll have to do.” She grabbed his weapon and gave it to him before she took the Watchdog leader’s gun and then helped Bludd stand. “Where to?” she asked.

“My office was overrun quickly but what I saw on the screens showed they were trying to keep the attack a secret, coming at us from underground entrances or the roof. Disguised patrols are keeping watch on the street-level entrances so we can’t just make a run for it. Fabian’s probably in his lab and last I knew Jack was in the infirmary. We should pick one and try to regroup until we get some backup.”

“If Jack’s in the infirmary we should head for Fabian,” Peggy said. “He’ll need our help more than Jack, and his equipment can be used to call for help. I’m sure he’s already working on that.”

“Let’s go then,” Bludd said, one arm around her shoulders, limping into the darkness.

Fabian Stankowicz was frustrated. Whatever was causing the interference of their comm signals had intensified and he had not been able to re-route around it. It had shut down not only external but also internal comms and he couldn’t reach anyone. He’d been so focused on restoring those systems that he had forgotten to take care of the more immediate needs…i.e. locking the door to his laboratory. It wasn’t until he heard the voice that he realized his problem.

He turned his eyes from his board and looked into a grouping of Watchdogs led by someone who was familiar from USAgent’s prior reports. The Elite known as Spike smiled cruelly and said, “Fabian Stankowicz…come with me if you want to live.”

“…what…?” Fabian asked, truly stunned.

 “You have been chosen,” Spike said. “Don’t ask me why.”

“I…I decline,” Fabian said, his right hand slowly trailing across his controls.

“Noted,” Spike said as he raised his arm and with a burst of condensed air his fist rocketed across the room and into the panel, causing an inner explosion and shorted out all of the systems. “Now cut the shit, Fat Man. We’re on a schedule.”

“Too bad, so sad,” said a voice behind them as a figure was suddenly amongst the Watchdogs and attacking them. Two went down quickly, unprepared for the assault, and the other two managed to block a couple attacks but the blows came too fast and too strong, crumpling their defenses and soon only the colorful figure of Free Spirit stood over the bodies, her hands clenched and her cloth mask hanging from her face as she took in Spike. “Who the fuck’re you supposed to be? Captain Hook minus the hook?”

“Heh,” Spike said as he extended his arm and caught the returning hand, flexing the fingers and smiling. “Cute. But you aren’t on the list, whore.”

He moved almost faster than Cathy could see but at the last moment she ducked to the side, feeling the wind from his punch pass over her shoulder. She planted her hands and kicked up with her knees, one catching him in the stomach the other in the jaw, diverting his momentum to the side where he crashed into the wall. He rebounded quickly though, and caught her coming back to her feet and landed a vicious blow across her face, propelling her into the laboratory.

Free Spirit slid to a stop on her hands and knees and took a breath, her vision turning red as pain lit up her face. She dropped then, as if more severely injured, drawing Spike to rush her in his cockiness, and lashed back with both feet, clipping him under the jaw and snapping him upright, his teeth clacking together and almost biting off half his tongue. She rose then from her crouch and landed a series of blows to his midsection and face before sweeping his legs and then kicking down, smashing him in the chest and bouncing him off the floor.

She waited to see if he moved before stepping over him toward Fabian. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yes, I–I think so,” Fabian said as he began throwing items into a backpack. “Just give me a mo– Look out!!”

Spike had risen up behind Cathy and brought both hands down, smashing her shoulders below her neck and dropping her to her knees. She grunted, not knocked out by the blow but stunned, and he raised his hands to hit her again when a voice behind him stopped him. “Let her go!”

A low-moving form barreled into him and they both fell past Cathy’s kneeling form, and Fabian watched as Zack Moonhunter tumbled from his wheelchair onto the floor, grimacing as his still damaged back and legs bounced painfully across the floor. Spike splattered onto his face and cried out in pain as blood began pouring from his still-human nose, and he rose onto his knees in a blind rage, beyond pissed at the continued resistance he faced. “I’m going to gut you all!”

“Eat me,” Free Spirit said as she leapt at him, landing a full-on high-heeled kick to his face, smashing in the metallic cheek and completely bursting his nose, following it up with a palm-strike to the area between his eyes and a knee to his chin, before she balled up both fists and smashed them down on his shoulders. From where he stood Fabian could hear something snap, be it clavicles or support struts he didn’t know, but the look of pure pain on Spike’s half-human face displayed his agony. With one final punch, from a fist raised as far back as her body allowed and swung with all the force of her caged rage, Free Spirit finally put the cyborg down for the count, dropping his unconscious form to the floor where he did not rise again.

Fabian moved past her to Moonhunter, helping him sit up and checking him for injuries, of which there fortunately weren’t any. “Zack, where’s Machine Man?”

“He went to save Rachel,” Zack said shakily, his body in agony. “She came here looking for Julia and got trapped in the gym.”

“Well, the lab is compromised so we should keep moving,” Free Spirit said as she moved toward them. She had almost made it to them when a blast of energy suddenly surrounded her and she screamed before crumpling to the ground at their feet. Behind them stood a larger force of Watchdogs and a cyborg in front they were not familiar with, who lowered his right arm that ended in the port of an energy cannon.

“I don’t think so,” the man said as his gun arm began glowing again.

Rachel Carpenter stood with her back against the far wall of the gymnasium with tears leaking down her face. She wasn’t certain what was going on or how it would all work out, but she knew she was in trouble and had no idea where her mother was, or Jack, or anyone. She didn’t know if Moonhunter would make it before the door was breached or even what he would be able to do even if he made it, and she suddenly felt every bit as afraid as a girl of 14 should in her situation.

The pounding on the door finally stopped as the seam between them split open enough for two metallic hands to reach into the gap and begin pulling the door apart. A face of mostly metal peered into the growing gap and locked onto her form and a cruel smile formed. “Oh, isn’t this a surprise. The spider’s child…boy that’ll upset some people. Come here, girl…I promise not to hurt you.”

[No!] a voice shouted beyond the door and the Watchdog Elite known as Redeye turned at the sudden sound and was caught unawares by the sprinting form of Machine Man, who stomped over the other four human Watchdogs and plowed into Redeye, driving him away from the doorway and farther down the hallway. [You will not harm the girl!]

Coils of metal arms and legs erupted from the two and wrapped around each other as both loosed eyebeams of varying degrees at each other, hoping to catch the other unawares. Whether planned or not, the modifications made to Redeye to make him an Elite mirrored the abilities of Machine Man very closely and for a moment they were locked into a stalemate.

But then Machine Man’s analysis was complete and if he could have smiled he would have. [You are still part human,] he said as he planted his feet, halting their momentum and raised the bundled mess that was his arms around Redeye’s body above his head. [Time to fly, fleshy!] Activating his flight ability to its fullest capacity, Machine Man blasted them both into and through the ceiling above his head, smashing through floor after floor of reinforced concrete and steel until they made it to the surface and arced off into a nearby construction site, where they crash-landed and lay still.

Rachel made her way through the smashed doorway and ran quickly down the hallway the way Machine Man had come, away from the sounds of his fight with that metal monster. She rounded a corner and saw a hole in the floor halfway down the hall, one of the underground entrances or exits from the base that were supposed to be used only in emergencies, such as this. Only it apparently had been discovered by these Watchdog guys and there were three of them standing around the entrance, one of whom happened to be looking her way when she’d ran up.

“Well, what do we have here?” he asked, smiling evilly. He approached her quickly and grabbed her by the hair, dragging her back toward the others and then forcing her to her knees. “What do you say, guys? If there’s grass on the field…”

The others laughed and turned toward them, but then were distracted by sounds of fighting from below them, which started suddenly and ended even faster, with only a few stray gunshots and some grunts of pain. “Conners!” the man holding Rachel’s hair said, leaning over the hole. “What’s going on down…”

He didn’t get the chance to say anything before a face leapt up to meet him, scaring him so badly he stumbled back and lost his hold on Rachel as he fell back onto his ass. The face turned out to be a man in a dirty costume of yellow and brown, who landed heavily and quickly backhanded the other two Watchdogs, resulting in them bouncing off the walls with amazing force, knocking both into unconsciousness.

Dennis Dunphy, also known as the hero Demolition Man, quickly looked at the crying Rachel Carpenter before turning brilliant blue eyes onto the man crawling away from him, trying desperately to find his fallen sidearm. “Grass on the field, huh?” D-Man asked, his voice so deep it practically shook the hallway. “You’ve played your last ballgame, slugger,” he said as he reached toward the Watchdog, who began screaming but not for very long.

Outside the underground headquarters, Julia Carpenter, the hero known as Arachne, arced down out of the sky and landed on the building across the way, her eyes taking in the building where she ‘worked’. All her instincts told her to rush inside and help her friends, but she wanted to get a lay of the land first since all she had to operate on was a sudden signal to her communicard that had been garbled but seemed to indicate they were under attack. She pulled out the device and scrolled through the embedded displays, not seeing anything to explain the alarm but then she suddenly found something worse…

Twenty minutes ago Rachel had activated the elevator to the underground base.

“Rachel!” Arachne hissed as she rose onto her feet and launched herself into the air, easily clearing the street between buildings and landing on the roof. She’d expected resistance but found none, and quickly determined why when she found six unconscious bodies on the roof, only three of which still wore Watchdog uniforms, the other three in their underwear. “What the…?” she asked before her panic for Rachel overcame her curiosity and she turned toward the hidden entrance on the roof.

She came face to face with a single Watchdog standing in front of the open doorway, his hands behind his back and a black trench coat and fedora accentuating his purple and orange uniform. Though she hadn’t been expecting Watchdogs Julia was not terribly surprised either. “Step aside or go down hard. I don’t have time for you,” she said, crouching.

“I see what you’ve done to my men,” the man said in a low, hissing voice. “It’s why I came.”

“I don’t care,” Arachne said, mentally forming psi-webs around the man’s feet and hands, binding him to the roof. “You can stay here and check on them. I’m going inside.”

She began walking forward when he smiled and his chest suddenly…changed. Her instincts took over and they were the only thing that saved her life. She leapt up and back and just narrowly missed the hail of bullets that suddenly poured from the twin Gatling guns that dropped down from a hidden compartment in his chest, bullets tearing into the rooftop and air above, around and below her as she frantically twisted and moved to avoid them, pushing her enhanced eyesight, flexibility and senses to their limits to avoid the bullets.

She was not totally successful. She landed without her characteristic grace and sagged to her knees and then onto her side, blood on her uniform.

The Watchdog Elite known as Bulletproof, freed from her webs, walked over to her, the empty chambers on his weapons spinning hungrily as he pulled spare cartridges from pouches in his coat and began reloading them as he sang in his raspy, horrible voice, “The itsy-bitsy spider crawled up the water spout…”