Chapter 30
It wasn’t easy to comprehend that surprise, that everyone just stood there, frozen in place, as they stared at that glass coffin they found inside the ship.
At the body that was lying inside it motionlessly.
In everyone’s eyes, there was trepidation, surprise, and confusion.
Those feelings remained even after they moved that glass coffin from inside the ship and placed it in the middle of the room, making the body inside even clearer in the sharp lighting of the room.
Fury broke that heavy silence as he turned towards Maria, who just entered the room, a tight, confused look on her face.
“Did you make sure he is still there?” Fury asked her carefully, not sure if he even wanted to know the answer.
“Yes, he is there.” Maria sighed with a wave of her hand. “And he didn’t leave the hospital from the moment he was moved there.”
“Then who is the hell is that?” Fury muttered in frustration, his eyes returning to the body, glaring at him like he personally offended him.
“Or rather, what is that?” Maria corrected as she pointed at the body. “Until we know if that thing is human or not.”
“Did you call the biology experts to get here?”
“Yes, they are all on their way here.”
Fury eyed the glass coffin for a few minutes before asking. “Do you think this glass thing contains some kind of gases to keep that body intact?”
“We will find that out soon,” Maria answered, nodding towards the new team of experts that entered the room, and made their way toward the glass coffin, to start their work immediately.
“I have bad news about the S.T.R.I.K.E team,” Maria murmured, turning towards Fury, her face became even tighter.
“Great, what now?” Fury sighed, pressing his fingers against his throbbing temples.
“They found the enemy’s hideout, but something attacked them.” Maria reported grimly, “Only Rumlow and one of his teammates survived, but they are in very bad shape.”
“Well, dammit.” Fury closed his eyes with a shake of his head, as another perfectly good agent’s life was wasted yet again. “What about the hideout?”
“Four special forces teams are surrounding it now. Quinjets are getting ready to throw an electromagnetic net over it.”
“I hope that actually works,” Fury muttered, feeling uneasy and not very hopeful.
“It worked on that.” Maria gestured towards the ship, with a shrug.
“Sir, that glass container is filled with a special gas, that keeps the cells of the body inside it in a coma.” One of the experts approached them, reporting what they figured out. “We can deal with it, we just need your orders, sir.”
“Get on with it.” Fury nodded to him.
The experts started to release the gas from inside the glass coffin, carefully and with precision. Fury kept watching them a little dazedly, as he asked Maria. “Why did he bring that-that thing with him?”
“The answer will depend on the results of the examination.” Maria exhaled nervously, already knowing she would hate those results.
“The question is why? Why did he bring it with him? why him of all people?” Fury shook his head, feeling like he would go insane from the amount of answered questions inside his head.
Maria couldn’t offer any answer, so she remained silent. They both watched the experts work on the body the moment they released it from inside its container, taking samples from its skin, and fluids, while others took the fingerprints.
An agent entered the room, made his way to Fury, and whispered in his ear. “Sir, they stormed into the hideout.”
“Did you find him?” Fury turned to him with furrowed brows.
The agent shook his head. “The place was completely empty. Our entrance triggered a security device, that destroyed all the machines inside.”
“Why didn’t you use the isolating net?!” Fury snapped in frustration.
“We did, sir. but it seems like the machines inside are programmed to self-destruct the moment it stopped working by an outside force.”
“Then how the hell the security device worked, then?!”
The agent looked at him, lost and confused, he was getting flustered, not knowing how to answer his question.
“Whatever. You stormed the place. You didn’t find him. everything destroyed. That’s the jest of it.” Fury waved his hand towards the agent in frustration, his face tight with anger.
“I am sorry, sir. we thought-“
“Whatever. Now go back to work and keep me posted.”
The agent left dejectedly, while Maria turned to Fury. “You were harsh on him. The agents did their work properly, but our enemy isn’t easy.”
“That’s what’s frustrating me,” Fury muttered with a bitter look on his face, feeling like he seriously couldn’t figure this situation out and everything kept getting complicated. “The fact that we can’t do anything with the need for the Avengers is frustrating. It just means if they fall, we all fall with them, and that’s alarming.”
Maria, again, couldn’t find something to say to that, so she remained silent, Fury’s words ringing inside her mind alarmingly loud. Planting worry and doubt inside her.
If the Avengers fall at some point, could they survive their absence?
After thirty minutes and a very long heated conversation between the experts, their leader approached Fury and Maria, a frustrated, confused look on his face.
“Sir, we don’t know how is that possible, but all the results are positive by 100%.” The leader reported in a very confused, very grim voice.
“What?! that’s impossible!” Maria exclaimed indignantly.
“Then who is he?! And who is the other?! Which one is which?!” Fury shouted in frustration, marching towards the body that lay innocently on the examination table his brow furrowed as he stared down at it. Feeling his frustration and confusion increase tenfold.
That’s because, that body that lays before him, according to examinations and analysis, was the body of one of the leaders of the Avengers, who supposedly, still lays motionlessly in a hospital room right now.
The body of Steve Rogers.
***
Dawn was starting to color the sky by the time Tony stopped his car in front of the Avengers Safehouse which was no longer safe.
He got out of the car, a frown itched on his face since the moment he got out of the hospital on his own. He took a look around, half expecting a fireball to hit him in the face as a greeting, but sadly nothing happened. He really would rather have a fireball instead of what he was about to face.
He took a deep breath, then marched towards the front door with purpose and knocked hard at the door, momentarily forgetting the existence of doorbells, he just needed to let his frustrations on something, and the poor door was his new punching bag right now.
For a few seconds, no one answered, and everything seemed still and uncomfortable, like the calmness before a storm, before the door was swung open, revealing a very disheveled, very beaten up, very frantic Charlie.
“No! no, no no!” Charlie exclaimed frantically when she saw him, that wasn’t the reaction he was hoping for. “Why did you come here?! He’ll kill us all!”
Before Tony could even try to reply to that, a hand shot out from behind Charlie, grabbing her neck harshly, making her let out a pained scream, merged with Tony’s protesting shout, as that hand pulled Charlie inside with harsh force, before the face of its owner appeared before Tony’s face.
“Get in,” he growled, and Tony immediately knew it was the man who called him. The reason for all this. The one who put his family in their current paralyzed state.
He got inside the house, his eyes studying the man’s face, taking advantage of the fact that he finally saw their enemy’s face. He wasn’t thrilled.
He had a harsh, sharp face. He was handsome in a way a mountain is handsome, all sharp, stone-cold features. He had dark hair that was cut in a military haircut. The only abnormal thing about him was his weird, yellow eyes. Tony had never seen eyes so yellow before, it was almost demonic in a way. It sent shivers down Tony’s spine.
He was tall. Maybe 6’4 feet tall, which was terrifying since he towered over them all right now. His build was lean, like a runner’s body.
All in all, he had the face and the build of someone who could trample him, Charlie, and the children with no hesitation.
“Are you done memorizing my face?” The man raised an eyebrow at him, a harsh glint in his eyes. “I suppose you are about to ask for my name too? Have a nice chat over a cup of coffee?”
“I don’t care about your name. Evil, deranged bastards don’t deserve to know their names. Where are the children? Where’s Raven? What did you do to them?” Tony asked instead, glaring at him. glancing towards Charlie who was on the floor rubbing her hands on her abused neck with a pained look on her face.
“They’re fine.” he closed the door hard behind Tony, before adding ominously. “As long as you follow orders.”
“You already know that I have no choice,” Tony growled, clenching his fists, wanting nothing more than to punch that man’s face.
“We all don’t have a choice, genius man.” the man snorted, eyeing Tony with mocking eyes.
“Where are they?” Tony asked again, more insistently now.
The man rolled his eyes, then gestured to a side room in the corridor in front of them. “There.”
Tony ran towards that room, pulling open the door with no hesitation.
Only to find all the mutant children stuffed in that room with Raven, sprawled over the floor all over each other, Raven was on her side hugging Jean Grey to her chest, the other kids all huddled around Raven, unmoving and scaringly too still. They all had first-degree burns speckled on their bodies.
“You-you really did release your fireballs on them!” Tony swirled around with wide, enraged eyes, his fists shaking from the power of his rage. “You did that to those poor children! You paralyzed them! you paralyzed helpless, innocent kids, that did nothing to you! what kind of monster does that?!”
“Don’t care too much about that.” The man shrugged, not caring about Tony’s rage or words. “I have the antidote. You will have it after you finish what I want.”
“You fucking monster!” Tony yelled, his anger and frustration taking over him.
“It’s an insult to monsters if he is compared to them,” Charlie muttered in pain and bitterness, looking like she really did spend the worst hours of her life.
“Shut up, whore.” The man turned sharply towards Charlie, throwing at her what looked like a small disk, when it hit her, it made her let out a loud, pained scream as her body shook sharply, before collapsing on the floor, unconscious.
“No! Charlie!” Tony exclaimed in panic as he rushed towards her, but the man stopped him with a harsh look.
“Don’t move.” He growled warningly.
“What did you do to her?!”
“She’ll live.” He gave him a pointed look. “That also applies to the mutants inside the room, if you did what you are told.”
He leaned towards Tony, getting right to his face making Tony flinch back from the cruelty that shined in his eyes.
“I believe you knew better than to bring your suit or tell anyone that you are here, right?” He growled, tilting his head to the side as he eyed Tony. “Because, If I felt the slightest sign of betrayal on your part, I would just have to activate the bombs.”
“Bombs?” Tony swallowed as he felt a sinking feeling in his heart.
“Yes. Bombs. Each one inside that small room, now has a very tiny bomb, the size of a grain of rice, in each mutant’s arm. It’s small, but strong enough to turn them all into human remains, by one press of this trigger.” He made his point by raising a small black ball in the palm of his hand. “All I need to do is one press and Kaboom! No more students for Xavier’s school and he will need a new sister.”
Tony felt like the world was turning upside down from underneath him. everything was black around him. everything was so cruel and harsh.
He was stuck in a very tiny corner with no escape.
“You fucking-“ Tony growled with a choked-off voice, unable to believe that he was standing alone in front of that monster.
“Enough! We will not waste any more time exchanging insults! You’ll do what I want now!” The man snapped, making Tony flinch again against his will.
“What? What more do you want?!” Tony snapped back, his nerves doing a number on him. “You destroyed everyone! You keep taking everything from us! What do want?!
“To go back!” Tony’s mouth snapped shut, as the man grabbed him by the labels, forcing him to meet his cruel, desperate harsh eyes.
“I want to go back to my time!”