Interdimensional Jetlag
The multiverse is a concept about which we know frighteningly little.
-Doctor Stephen Strange
Should old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot
In the days of auld lang syne?
-‘Auld Lang Syne’, attributed to Robert Burns and older unnamed sources
Owie.
-Alice Abernathy, ‘Alice, it’s Raining!’
***
Alexander Roland Isaacs forced a smile as his name twin Alexander Pierce strode into his office, several thousand feet below the streets of Raccoon City and in the deepest, most secret part of the Hive. He was flanked by two goons, one wearing the SHIELD uniform, and the other… with a distinctive metal arm. Isaacs swallowed nervously. “Ah, Pierce, welcome to my oh-so-humble abode,” he said, making a sly joke at the luxury of his subterranean apartment/control complex. “I trust you have found your tour of the facility to be, ah, entertaining and informative?”
Pierce nodded curtly. “Yeah, hell of a place you got here, doc, gotta hand it to you. You’re a real credit to HYDRA.” Isaacs allowed himself a small smile, before the next statement practically kicked him in the teeth. “Not gonna lie, Isaacs, this ain’t exactly what you’d call a social call. A little birdie told me you intend to release the T-virus globally. Care to tell me about that?”
“Ah.” Isaac’s eyes flitted over to the cryogenic sarcophagus that held one Alicia Marcus. It wasn’t too hard to guess the source of the leak. “Well, I know HYDRA has a number of irons in the fire with regards to world domination, I figured one more couldn’t hurt.”
Pierce chuckled. “Yeah, and don’t get me wrong, doc, I applaud the initiative, I really do, it’s just… the collateral damage is just a bit much, even for HYDRA’s taste. I mean, what, you’re projected to wipe something like 99% of the human race? What the hell’s left to rule over?”
“I will admit that it is rather extreme, but the entire point is to ensure there is zero resistance afterwards — no goody-two-shoes ‘resistance’ to question our supreme might.” He kept distractedly looking at the Winter Soldier, who had come into the room seemingly unarmed — although for that man, that would pose no obstacle for assassination. Already, his cold eyes had flitted around the room, scanning for improvised weaponry, and Isaacs’ predictive combat software gave chillingly high odds against Isaacs’ chances of beating him in a straight-up fight.
“That would get the job done, wouldn’t it?” Pierce admitted. “But… let’s not go that far, okay? Not unless things get, ah, drastic.” Pierce personally was concerned with Fury’s so-called Avengers Initiative. He’d been prattling on about it for years, but just recently the one-eyed bastard had went and recruited Tony Stark, the goddamn Iron Man himself. Oh Stane, you stupid dead bastard, if only you hadn’t gotten greedy… perhaps, given a few years and Tony maturing he could have been groomed for induction into HYDRA itself. Stane and the grubby little Ten Rings cell in Afghanistan had obliterated those plans.
Isaacs allowed himself to relax a fraction. So this was merely meant to be a rebuke, not… retirement. “I submit to your wisdom,” he said, bowing his head in supplication.
Pierce turned to the Winter Soldier. “Can you believe the way these English people talk sometimes?” he said, smirking. “You do good work, doc, just make sure you keep HYDRA informed of these big-picture plans of yours from now on, alright? Like… Project Alice.” Pierce’s face lost all its humor. “Care to tell us about that one?”
Ah. Isaacs should have known; after all, HYDRA had been chasing after the glory of the Super Soldier program since Steve Rogers had disappeared beneath the waves all those years ago. “Well, as you are probably aware, the T-virus was tailored specifically for the daughter of my late partner James Marcus. In recent years, several of my researchers came to the conclusion that if Alicia’s DNA were altered in just the right places, the T-virus could do so much more than counteract her progeria — it could give her unprecedented speed, strength, even regenerative abilities. We’ve incorporated said changes into the line of her clones that we utilize for… various purposes, but we have yet to actually take the final step and induce infection into a clone.”
Pierce nodded. “We’ll take one. Juice her up, fully activated.”
Isaacs felt his stomach curdle. “We haven’t yet fully explored the consequences, Pierce — the changes projected to occur in her brain, the potential for psychic ability —”
“Don’t care,” Pierce said, cutting him off. “If it gets to be too much of an issue, we’ll just put her down. Besides, if our friends from the Red Room have taught us anything, it’s that powerful women can easily be leashed.”
Isaacs was extremely dubious about that. Well… so long as the subject was well away from him, good fucking luck. “I suppose so… actually, I have the perfect subject in mind.” He again glanced towards Alicia’s sarcophagus, thinking of her little pet project, the clone she’d requested to manage security at Looking Glass House. He’d been leery of it, how secretive she’d been, but couldn’t do much of anything about it without any evidence of outright hostility against Umbrella. The clone was supposed to go ‘live’ tonight, just after the localized shard of the Red Queen would be disconnecting from the network to go into maintenance. “Red Queen, prep Alice Abernathy for transport to SHIELD custody for her induction into Project Alice.”
The Red Queen’s emitters flared to life, creating the ghostly image of the little girl of Alicia Marcus’s youth between the two men. “Affirmative.” She once more blinked out of existence afterwards.
“Cute kid,” Pierce said. “Stark’s got an AI just like it.”
Isaacs’ lip curled into a sneer. “Good for him.”
Pierce turned to leave, then stopped and turned around for one last parting shot. “Oh, and we’ll be taking Umbrella Prime.”
Isaacs’ eyebrows shot up in astonishment. “Excuse me?” he said, incredulous.
“Yeah,” Pierce nodded. “We’ve been looking for a new home for the Winter Soldier program, and figure it’d be easier to move from one place in Siberia to another. Plus, the various cityscapes and cloning facilities will make for good training fodder.”
“You can’t have it,” Isaacs said, sounding petulant. “Do you know how valuable —”
“Don’t tell me, doc, tell him,” Pierce said, gesturing to the Winter Soldier, who was now full-on glaring at Isaacs.
Isaacs felt the last of his bluster flee him. “…Fine. Take the damn thing. Now get the hell out of my city.”
Pierce grinned. “Gladly, doc, gladly.”
***
Alice jerked awake in the seat of the private jet as it touched down. “Da fuck?” she muttered. She knew she was supposed to wait until it finished taxiing before unbuckling her seatbelt, but she leapt from her chair nonetheless and ran for the bathroom, noting that she was the only passenger aboard.
In the bathroom, she gazed into the mirror. “My name is Alice… and I remember… I remember…” She struggled to remember.
Oh, she did remember a great deal… the zombie apocalypse, the neat-o superpowers she had (for a while…) a very significant amount of tragedy and heartbreak and loss… and true love? And she’d come back in time to prevent it all… somehow…
“Oh this is BULLSHIT!” Alice shouted, thrusting her fist into the mirror, breaking it. Something was fucking with her mind! She had enough left over to know that much. It felt like some old cartoon bit, where some hapless schmuck (in her mind’s eye, it was Tom of Tom and Jerry acting the bit out) repeatedly tried to grab a slippery bar of soap only for it to squirt helplessly out of his grasp, comically flying up into the air farther and farther as more and more attempts to grab it were made.
She looked at the broken mirror, looked down at her hand, and realized that it wasn’t actually covered in the dozens of cuts that one would get from punching through glass. “Okay, I guess I have superpowers again,” she said to herself. “Small consolation prize for the great big gaping holes in my memory.”
Alice took a deep breath. She could worry about her fucked up memory later. The plane had finished taxiing and it sounded like the door had opened. Time to go see what new bullshit the new universe had in store for her.
A black limousine was parked on the tarmac a short ways away, and a dude with a receding hairline, black suit, and black sunglasses was standing by it, waiting for her. “Alice Abernathy?” he greeted.
Alice glanced around. Everything seemed fine. No zombie apocalypse was apparent. The grass was green where the tarmac ended. “I guess so,” she said, descending the stairs and approaching. “You ever walk from one room to the next and forget what you’re doing?”
“Oh, I hate when that happens,” the dude commiserated.
“Yeah, well, I just lost huge portions of my life,” Alice said. “Is there a zombie apocalypse going on, by any chance?”
That seemed to catch the dude off guard, and he took a moment to answer. “No, not that I’m aware of. I was told that you would be a little disoriented after your flight, something about a medical procedure…”
“Yeah, that was probably 100% bullshit,” Alice said. “What’s your name? And what am I supposed to be doing?”
The dude removed his sunglasses. “Oh, where are my manners? I’m Agent Phil Coulson, your SHIELD liaison,” he said, reaching out his hand.
Alice shook it. “Alice Abernathy,” she greeted, giving him a friendly smile, which Coulson returned. SHIELD… something about that name seemed familiar to Alice…
“I know this is all rather last minute, but your new assignment begins today,” Coulson said. “You’re meant to be monitoring a person of interest, in the guise of being their assistant,” Coulson said. “Normally, this would fall to another one of our agents — one with experience in infiltration and close quarters combat — but at the last minute word on high said to utilize you specifically.” He shrugged — That’s life, the shrug said. “Do you have any experience in those fields?”
“Yeah, I’m hot shit at martial arts — check this out.” She leapt into the air and did a sick spinning kick move. “Pretty nice, huh?”
“Yeah, it was,” Coulson agreed, impressed.
“Infiltration… I guess I’m a decent bullshitter, but I’ll be the first to admit I’m a bit low in the grace department,” Alice said, honestly evaluating herself. “I can be a bit of a bull in a china shop, if you know what I mean.”
Coulson nodded. “Any other skills or abilities that might come in handy?” he asked.
Alice thought of her superpowers, and realized if her strength and endurance were back, then so was… “Oh! And I can also kill people with my mind!” Alice added.
Coulson didn’t seem to know how to respond to that, so instead he opened the door of the limousine and gestured inside. “If you would?” he asked.
“Sure thing, buddy.” Alice slid in and saw there was a minibar. She immediately went for a can of Coke and chugged it. “Aw hell yiss,” she murmured. She went for a second can, chugged that one too, and just pulled them all out to rest on the seat next to her for convenience.
Coulson went around to the other side and got in, prompting the driver to start driving the limo. “Here is a dossier of your target,” he said, handing her a thick folder.
Alice read the name on the folder and her eyebrows went up in surprise. “Tony Stark, huh? Just like what’s-his-face in the comics, I guess,” she said aloud.
“I wouldn’t know, I don’t follow comics,” Coulson said. (And if you asked him about his Captain America comics, he’d get defensive and say they were collectibles. NERRRRD!)
Alice quickly skimmed through the info, figuring she could double dip later if need be. “Let’s see… supergenius son to supergenius rich daddy, parents died in car accident — bummer! — after which he lived a lifestyle of excess and debauchery, until, oh shit, captured and tortured by terrorists — another bummer. And then…” Alice looked up to Coulson. “…He became Iron Man? Are you fucking around with me?”
“No, ma’am,” Coulson said. “He even announced it on TV. Didn’t you see it?”
“I was in another universe at the time,” Alice said darkly. She considered the possibility that this Coulson was a nut who really was just fucking around with her… but she had been told that one timeline differed from the next, hadn’t she? (If only she could remember who the fuck had told her that!) Maybe… maybe the one small, insignificant change from the last universe to this one was that… comic book shit was real?! Hell, most of her own life was so goddamn unreal it may as well have been made up. So sure, why not?! Her soul now resided in a Marvel comic book! She suddenly remembered SHIELD was supposed to have been run by someone named Nick Fury. “Hey, does your boss look like David Hasselhoff by any chance?” Alice asked.
Coulson blinked as he mentally compared his bald, black, one-eyed boss to the Baywatch star. “…No, not really.” Silence reigned for a few moments, as Alice contemplated her new life and Coulson contemplated Abernathy’s sanity. “So, what’s life like in this other universe?” he finally asked, tone light. “I’m guessing there’s a zombie apocalypse?”
“Yeah,” Alice said absentmindedly, skimming the last of the dossier. “It’s a lot less fun than the movies make it out to be.”
Coulson narrowed his eyes. “What movies have you been watching? It never seemed fun in any of the ones I’ve seen.”
“Precisely.” Alice closed the dossier and faced him fully. “So… what’s the gameplan?”
“We’ve inserted your identity into Stark Industries in the legal department,” Coulson said. “Stark is turning his company over to his longtime assistant, Virginia Potts, and you’re going to notarize the paperwork —”
“I’m a notary?!” Alice said, elated. “Do I get one of those cool stamp things?”
“Yes, but you have to return it afterwards,” Coulson said. “It’s policy.”
“…You’re worse than the guy who shot Bambi’s mom,” Alice grumbled. Coulson looked genuinely pained at the accusation.
***
After hashing everything out and skimming through the dossier a few more times, Alice was let out in front of a glam-ass modern mansion on the edge of a seaside cliff. “Nice place,” she said to herself as she rang the doorbell. The door opened, and Alice’s jaw dropped open in shock. “Gwyneth freaking Paltrow?! What?!”