Phillip Costas screamed.

It was becoming something of a habit, and one he couldn’t wait to shake. But for the moment, he simply screamed. Loud and long. His voice turned to crystals of ice as it left his lips, and the ice shattered and clumped like a tiny avalanche, rolling down the black, cold substance that held him petrified.

Costas had awoken from the pain, to find himself thus bound. He could move nothing save his head. His arms and legs might as well have been removed for all that he could feel them. The cold was bone-deep and so utterly numbing as to be painful, for all that he knew it wasn’t real. So, he screamed. Again and again. His voice echoed from the other black lumps of nightmare ice that dotted the empty waste.

SILENCE.

Costas choked on his cry, and looked up. Eyes like twin devil-stars stared down at him from the empty void of the sky. A name blazed across his stuttering thoughts like a comet. “K-Kolomaq,” he hissed.

ACCEPT YOUR FATE. BE SILENT.

“Go to hell,” Costas rasped, baring broken and bloody teeth. His mouth felt as if it were full of razors and his throat was scraped raw. “You hear me?”

I HEAR. BUT DO YOU?

Costas hung silently, listening. The ghostly echo of long-faded cries drifted among the black ice. How many souls had the devil-thing taken in its existence? Millions? He spat blood, and it froze and shattered on the ground. “I figured as much.”

AMUSING. YOU WILL BE SILENT, SOON ENOUGH. JUST LIKE ALL OF THE OTHERS.

“Yeah? Then why are you here? Why are you watching me?” Costas said, glaring up at the eyes. They twitched, as if whatever face they might have been attached to twisted in consternation. Costas laughed.

“Yeah. Yeah, I hear all right.” He threw back his head and began to cackle, and then, to howl.

Across the void, something returned his cry.

BLACKWOOD

By Josh Reynolds

“That’s odd.” The man in the dark blue cowl and robe examined the body writhing inside the containment cell. “You’re sure he’s unconscious?”

“Yeah. I’m sure,” Grasp said, flexing his newly repaired gauntlet. The gray-armored Seeker grunted. “Better than new.”

“We aim to please,” the cowled man said. “Only, I could swear he’s smiling…”

“Muscle spasm,” Chain, the second of the Seekers said. Wearing blue armor, he cut a slimmer figure than Grasp. A crimson chain dangled from his hands and he twirled it idly. “We whammied, slammied and ka-blammied this guy. The Hulk would have—”

“He’s not the Hulk.” The cowled man turned, eyes narrowed. “Not even close.”

“Smaller, for one thing.” Grasp crossed his arms. “Got our money, Number Seventy-Six?”

“Already deposited, Grasp.” Number Seventy-Six looked up at the mercenary. “I need you three to remain here until the transport unit arrives.”

“How long?” Grasp said, looking at the man in the cell. Phillip Costas lay on the metal floor, his body bulging and squirming like a paper bag full of earthworms.

“Twenty-four hours.”

“Crap.” Chain pushed away from the wall. “Don’t you have grunts for guard duty?”

“Yes. And how long do you think they’ll last if he gets out?” Number Seventy-Six snapped. “No more setbacks. Not now.”

“Yeah. Fine,” Grasp said, moving between them. “We’ll stay. But after the transport gets here, we’re gone. I’m not babysitting that thing any longer than we have to.”

“I didn’t peg you for the squeamish type,” Number Seventy-Six said.

Grasp didn’t reply. Instead, he stared at the huddled form in the cell and thought of great teeth chomping down on his armor, tearing through it like tissue paper.

“What do you want with this freak anyway?” Chain said.

“None of your concern.”

“The hell it isn’t,” Grasp snapped. “If we’re going to guard this thing, I need to know what he’s—it’s—capable of!”

“I should have thought that would be obvious,” Number Seventy-Six said. “It’s a walking engine of destruction on par with any Gamma-level threat you care to name.”

“So that’s it? You want your own Hulk?” Chain said.

“Hardly. No, we want something else. Something more—ah—interesting.” Number Seventy-Six clasped his hands behind his back. “Project Blackwood was designed to procure a self-propelled, self-replicating mobile weapon of mass destruction. We’ve tried it before, with werewolves—”

“Werewolves?” Chain said, chuckling. “Oh you have got to be—”

“Joking? No. Homo lupus proved to be of limited effectiveness, however. Too easily killed and too random. We shouldn’t have to check a lunar calendar to use our weapons effectively. But this thing here…” Number Seventy-Six gestured to the cell, like a lecturer in a college class. “The Wendigo is a unique biological anomaly, and highly infectious under the right circumstances.”

“Cannibalism,” Grasp grunted. Number Seventy-Six looked at him.

“You read the file after all. Yes. Cannibalism. Easy enough to replicate, given modern cloning technology and neural inhibitors. We can create an army of clone-cannibals and infect them with the curse of the Wendigo…thus creating a indestructible, voracious force that can wipe a small country off the map in a matter of days. And the installation of the Warren Clone-Helix will ensure a peaceful and eventual degradation of each clone’s physiology, causing them to self-destruct after the appropriate amount of time.”

“I thought you said there was only one of these things at a time?” Chain said, looking at Grasp.

“Well, there are plenty of individuals out there with the proper skill-set to help us in this matter,” Number Seventy-Six said. “A re-working of the curse to moderate it to some extent will be necessary in order to fully exploit its potential benefits. But that’s all in the future.” He leaned close to the cage. “For now, we simply need to ensure that our prize does not slip through our fingers again…”

Light pierced the darkness surrounding Rebecca Sarazin. Boards and timbers were stripped away by eager fingers and she looked up blearily. “Henry?” she gasped, trying to see through the blood in her eyes.

“No. Was that his name?”

Rough hands grabbed her, eliciting a grunt of pain, and she was yanked from her almost-tomb with brutal ease. Sarazin was hurled to the ground, her battered body screaming with pain.

Smoke boiled out of the remains of the lodge, and fire greedily devoured the cracked and splintered timbers. She could smell the bodies of her menfolk cooking in that blaze and she wanted to weep.

Instead, she looked up at the wild, ugly things standing around her in a circle. “Wiindigoog,” she spat. Her people knew these creatures of old…the inbred, primitive descendants of the first white men to travel here. The first white men to find themselves lured into the white wastes by the Great Beasts. They were little better than beasts themselves now.

“Not quite,” a fat man said, squatting in front of her. He bared big teeth and examined her. “I am Lecoq. And you are—?”

“No friend of yours, cannibal,” she spat, digging her fingers into the snow. If she could just—

“No-no-no,” someone growled. Hands gripped her wrists as a weight fell on her. Blackened teeth snapped together inches from her ear. “No magic, witch.”

“Easy, Defago,” Lecoq said, raising a pudgy hand. “We need her in one piece, non?”

“No,” Defago grunted. Nonetheless, he subsided.

“What do you want of me?” Rebecca said.

“I smell magic on you,” Lecoq said. He reached out and gently played with a lock of her hair. “What are you?”

“I don’t—”

“No tricks,” Lecoq said, yanking painfully on her hair. “Tell me, or I’ll feed you to Defago, bit by bit.” Defago chuckled and clicked his teeth together. Rebecca looked at the man-brute, then at Lecoq.

“I speak to the spirits. I direct their eyes to Earth,” she said.

Lecoq laughed and clapped his hands. “I knew it!” He glared at her. “You sought to take our god from us, woman. Apparently, he was too much for you—”

“It wasn’t Kolomaq,” Rebecca said quickly.

Lecoq’s laughter faded. “Eh?”

“We were attacked,” she continued. “Men. In armor.”

“Armor?” Lecoq rocked back on his heels. “Alpha Flight?”

“No,” Rebecca said. “Someone else.” She remembered the way they had shrugged off her brothers’ bullets, their armor gleaming as they destroyed the lodge, timber by timber. “They took him. The Wendigo. Kolomaq. Whatever he has become.”

“Hnh.” Lecoq stood, frowning. “Well, well, well. This is a predicament.”

“Can we? Now?” Defago hissed. The other children of the snows grunted and slobbered, cold-burnt fists pounding the ground in eagerness.

Lecoq waved a hand. “Not yet.” He turned to look at Rebecca, his brutal features twisted into a cunning expression. “How badly do you want to live, woman?”

“I cannot believe we’re on guard detail. It’s like we’re still in the military or something,” Sonic said, green armor gleaming beneath the lights of the detention block. “I haven’t been out of this armor in twenty-four hours and I think the air circulator is on the fritz. I need my hot shower and three squares!”

“When this…thing gets transferred, we’ll all get showers,” Chain said, making loops in the air with his namesake. “Until then, try and control your whine-reflex, would you?”

“Whine-reflex. Clever.” Sonic looked at the cell, and the thing within. “What I want to know is why anyone would want a second-rate Hulk like this one?”

“Better than no Hulk at all.”

“Maybe.” Sonic trailed his fingers down the crackling barrier of the cell. “Hard to believe that this guy used to be some sort of hotshot mercenary.”

“We all used to be somebody. This guy just got a raw deal,” Chain said.

“Raw deal. Right. Hey!” Sonic said, slapping the barrier and causing fat sparks to jump. “Hey! Wakey-wakey!”

“What are you doing?” Chain said, straightening.

“Trying to get some entertainment value out of this slob. Hey!”

The crimson chain snapped out, bouncing off of the side of Sonic’s helmet. He whirled, clapping a hand to his head. “Hey!”

“Stop it,” Chain said. “The last thing we need is that guy going—”

Fists like snow-covered boulders struck the energy field. Sonic jerked forward, surprised.

“Off,” Chain finished, lamely.

“WEN-DI-GO!” the Wendigo shrieked, battering at the energy field. Fat sparks burst from the field, showering both of the Seekers.

“Christ! Is that thing going to hold?” Sonic said, backing away.

“It better.”

Both men turned as Grasp entered the block. Their gray-armored leader absent-mindedly rubbed at his arm as he watched the Wendigo froth in its cage. “If it doesn’t, kill it,” Grasp said.

“What about our contract?” Chain said.

“We’ve already been paid,” Grasp said. “If it gets out, kill it.”

“The Empire won’t like that,” Chain said. “I think our friend with the numeral for a name is putting a lot of eggs into this furry basket.”

“I don’t care,” Grasp said. “If it—”

The lights flickered, suddenly. Then, with a hiss, went out.

THEY COME.

“Who comes?” Costas said. Still trapped in a sheath of ice, he didn’t bother trying to move. “Invite some buddies over?”

CEASE PRATTLING COSTAS-THING.

Costas glared up at the indistinct entity looming over him like a mountainous shadow. The cold had driven the fear out of him, and he grinned through ragged lips. “Is it getting to you? That howling?” He spat a chunk of frozen blood. “I’m no magic guy, but I’ve been around the block a time or two. Seen some things—”

SILENCE! Something as frigid as the first Arctic wind tore across his exposed face, simultaneously cutting and chilling him. Costas’ head rang with the force of the blow, but compared to those from earlier, it was a weak thing.

The wind seared his teeth through his gaping cheek and the wound pulled wide as he smiled. “The Wendigo’s got my body now, doesn’t he? And you’re feeling weak. Why is that, I wonder?” he said. “How many of us can share this body before it bursts like a soap bubble, Kolomaq? How long can you maintain your grip on the meat of my soul with the Wendigo pulling on the other end?”

YOU KNOW NOTHING. MY CHILDREN COME, AND OUR FREEDOM COMES WITH THEM, COSTAS-THING.

“Whose freedom, bunky? Mine? Yours? His?”

There was no answer forthcoming from the entity that loomed over him. Great carmine eyes seemed to stare outward, at vistas barred to Costas.

Kolomaq was scared, he knew that much. Not in the way that a man like Costas understood fear, but it was something roughly approximate. A sort of cosmic frustration. How many times had the thing above him tried to claw its way into reality, only to be denied at the threshold?

“It doesn’t matter, I suppose. You or the cannibal, either way I’m damned and done!” Blood ran down his flayed face, and Costas began to laugh. “Fight it out by all means!”

Five minutes earlier.

Rebecca Sarazin fell onto all fours in the snow, helped along by a brutal shove from Defago. The brute grunted and threw an arm out. “There.”

“You’re sure?” Lecoq said. Before them was a chunk of ridgeline that resembled every other chunk of ridgeline in the Canadian wilderness. Scrub trees and tough fibrous plants clung to the rock with tenacity. The Children of the Snows crouched in the forest below, muttering and grumbling, clutching rifles and other, less advanced weapons. One woman was wrapped in log chains, the links heavy with makeshift blades. A man checked the cylinder of an antique revolver, the ivory bear teeth embedded in his wooden mask gleaming in the fading daylight.

“Followed the stink of oil and ionized air,” Defago said. He bared his teeth. “Smells like Box.”

“Box?” Lecoq said.

“A member of Alpha Flight, I believe,” Rebecca said, clambering to her feet.

“Ah,” Lecoq said. “He is there, then, witch?”

“He is here,” she said.

“Then find him for us…and maybe we won’t split your lovely bones for the marrow!”

Rebecca raised her arms, letting the spirits curl around her. She felt a hand grip the back of her neck. “And no tricks, or Defago will wring your neck,” Lecoq murmured.

Rebecca grimaced in pain as the brute’s grip tightened. “No tricks,” she said. The spirits of the air and wind coiled curiously at her prodding, shying away from the tainted essence of the Children of the Snows. With a gesture, she sent them hurtling forward in a wave. There was a sound like a hundred-thousand televisions exploding and the cliff crackled and wavered, becoming something else entirely as magic met technology.

Alarms began to blare throughout the facility as the spirits surged through every nook and cranny, hunting for their prey. Relays and conduits exploded and monitor screens went dark as the entire base suffered a power surge the likes of which its antiquated systems could not process.

Number Seventy-Six barked a stream of orders as he charged down the corridor, robes flapping. Members of his security detail peeled off, lunging to obey.

“Where’s Grasp?” he shouted as he entered a checkpoint. The masked guard gestured.

“He and the others are in the cell block-”

The wall of the cell block exploded outward as the armored figure of Sonic hurtled past the startled servants of the Secret Empire. The green armored mercenary hit the far wall of the corridor and fell heavily to the ground. His armor was covered in a web of minute micro-fractures, and as he pulled himself to his feet, servos whined in protest.

“Report!” Number Seventy-Six snarled.

“Bit busy at the moment, bossman!” Sonic said.

A low growl suddenly rippled through the claustrophobic corridor, causing every man’s bowels to inadvertently clench.

“Oh no,” Number Seventy-Six said, turning slowly, so that he could stare up into crazed crimson eyes of the newly-freed Wendigo.

“WEN-DI-GO!”