Variant Strain

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Peter prowled at first. It wasn't the word he would have chosen, but it was the first that came to mind as he paced the area around the ruin of Sandoval's Deli. The street light directly across from the deli had burnt out, but there were enough lights from homes and from other lights up and down the street that with Peter's vision enhancements, the whole street seemed almost as brightly lit as day. The colors were washed out... he wondered if he was just using the low light, or if he were seeing into the ultraviolet end of the spectrum. Warm things weren't standing out any brighter that he could tell, so it probably wasn't infra-red. Maybe.

He caught the scent readily enough and prowled after it, the route it took was straightforward. Whoever had driven it had wanted the most direct route out of Forest Hills and out of Queens. He started at a light jog. The neighborhood was quiet and no one really went out much at this hour. Before long he found himself running down the island between Queens Boulevard and the Westbound 25. Businesses and buildings passed by him in an almost indistinguishable blur. A lot of places were still lit up, but the majority were already closed. He was a fast moving shadow going from one pool of light to the next, hardly standing still long enough for anyone to catch more than glimpse.

Even then, what would they have said? Someone had just run past their car going sixty miles an hour. Peter had passed them as easily as if they'd been standing still. He didn't feel winded.

He felt exhilarated. His breath came in slow and easy. No hitches in his side. No shortness of breath. There was a mild and pleasant burn as his arms and legs pistoned, but there was no fatigue, no exhaustion. None of the weariness that he'd always associated with physical activity.

It felt... amazing. He felt so alive. The wind clawed at his face and he welcomed it.

The scent was getting buried under the polluted New York air. He was amazed that it had even managed to linger, faint as it was on the Freeway for almost a day and a half. There was the possibility that what he was following was some other sense. Something that wasn't quite scent, but it wasn't anything his own brain could interpret directly, so scent could have been the analogue for some other sense. Some other ability to sense Hydra.

Well, there would be time enough to think about that later. Running needed doing.

It didn't matter to him as he ran on. His body light and strong and so damn fast.

He was grinning as he ran and every so often he'd leap forward just for the sheer joy. Just to feel his body take to the air, perfectly under his control in broad, long leaps that covered dozens of yards at a time. He almost felt like he could fly when he did those leaps, a gentle heat radiating out from his chest as he did so.

He could faintly make out the red haze around him at each leap. He'd called upon it for a few fractions of a second at each leap and every time he could feel it consuming some more of his biomass. He could do leaps without the warmth in his chest, without the red haze, but those produced respectable broad jumps of twenty to thirty feet horizontally in a bound. That was impressive for a scrawny kid who could barely manage four feet during PE a few weeks ago, but with the haze lightening his body, he could clear three or four times that distance. He hadn't really tried for what he could manage on a horizontal leap, but he guessed the distances would be comparable.

He'd barely slowed as the scent trail led him onto the Queensboro Bridge. The footpath on the lower side of the bridge was fortunately unoccupied as he ran, but it had been narrower than the sidewalks. Trusting to his sense of balance and the precision of his body's movements in a way that would have been impossible for him before he skidded to a halt finally at the off-ramp onto 1st Avenue on Manhattan Island.

There were more cars and people. He'd had to slow down anyway. It was more populated here. It would be easier to get spotted. He would need to be a bit more careful.

He'd fished his phone out of his pants and noted with amusement that it had taken him a total of fifteen minutes to get from Forest Hills to Manhattan. That was faster than by car. He wasn't even sweating, he grinned to himself.

He was... well, he wasn't catching his breath cause he'd never actually lost it. He stood quietly on the street corner. The city was no less a complex canvas of living scents and sounds. He almost wished he'd brought MJ with him. She probably would've loved the run across the bridge.

He frowned at himself and shook his head. You can't be missing her already, you sap. Focus!

Even without MJ there, he now understood how to keep himself from being swamped. He kept the scent he was trailing sharply in the forefront of his attention. The trail still stood out clear and strong, but now that he was here by himself, something else stood out.

Without MJ distracting him he found them. Lingering in the background of Manhattan's sea of humanity.

He sniffed harder, turning his head this way and that as he tried to find what exactly he was picking up on, but it made no sense.

Peter ran a ways north up First Avenue, til he found a relatively quiet and unpopulated stretch of road next to a three story building that had a closed bakery on the ground floor and no lights burning in any of the higher floors. He leaped. He had better control now and knew to regulate his the quick bursts of lightening haze. He flipped forward at the top of his leap and landed lightly on the roof.

He closed his eyes and took another deep breath.

That still made no sense. He leaped again, getting on top of the six story building next to the one he'd been on and stopped to take another breath.

Still the same.

Aside from the trail of corpse-stench that he'd been following, There were more. Dozens... perhaps even hundreds of trails of carrion reek. A faint tang of tainted air lingering in almost every direction. He opened his eyes and stared out into the city. That made no sense. They'd chased down all of Ed Whelan's victims hadn't they? Or had they?

He had to wonder to himself how the Thunderbolts had even traced down all of those poor infectees. The little girl hadn't shown any symptoms yet. Maybe they'd had trackers, but there was no way they could have searched the entire city. Certainly not that last night... so they must've had something pointing the way out to them. Something that told them where Ed Whelan had been.

He stopped at that thought. Well, they had been following Ed Whelan. What if... what if they'd loosed the trackers at every stop the man had made as he'd run. That would explain why there'd been so many body bags.

But now another thought came to Peter. The bodies were going to be taken for disposal. That's the trail he'd been following... but they were covering everything up. They didn't want witnesses or lose ends. He didn't think they would-- no. He didn't want to believe these people would just outright kill anyone Whelan had come into contact with. So.. logic. Some of those people had been taken prisoner. And some of those people Ed had infected? Had gotten away.

Peter pushed the heel of his hand into his forehead. How many was that? How much of Manhattan was about to spontaneously transform into things like the Drago? Or into Smerdyakovs like Cletus and Donna had been? How many other forms could they turn into? Were there worse ones?

Did the Thunderbolts even know what had happened? Did they realize they'd missed so many?

Hell... they didn't have to miss that many. All it took was for one infectee to get away and that could be enough of a start, especially if it were an aggressive predatory sort.

Peter wondered if there were any others who'd ended up like him? Enhanced. Maybe monstrous and inhuman... but with their own minds and sanity intact?

You think you're sane? Cletus' voice mocked. You've been talking to yourself non-stop since you turned, boy.

A chill ran down his spine at that thought, but he forced it down. Forced the fear and uncertainty away. He had things to do now. Things that had taken on a greater urgency.

He worked it out in his head and the timeline seemed to fit.

Whelan had somehow been infected in whatever Gentek facility he'd worked at... some sort of long-term coma ward. He'd then proceeded to run through Manhattan and spread the Hydra all over the place. He'd used rats to help him spread the Hydra. Maybe as a distraction, maybe even without realizing it, but either way, people had became infected. Gentek Security had managed to pick up Whelan's trail, but Cletus had picked up on all the people that Whelan had infected. They'd called in the Thunderbolts... probably a local posting that was maintained regularly in Manhattan. Maybe even to monitor the coma ward that Whelan worked out of.

The Thunderbolts had come down hard on the infected... but some had slipped through the cracks. They hadn't been as thorough as they thought they'd been.

Peter had to know. He was sure there had been some who'd been taken in as prisoner by the Thunderbolts. Witnesses. More people who might be able to tell him what had actually happened that night. Those people would probably be where the corpses had been taken to.

Most definitely goin' there once they're done with the poor bastards, his voice drawled. He turned away from that morbid thought.

He also had to make sure they actually knew what they were dealing with. Could the trackers even communicate how spread the infection had been? Peter hadn't really seen any signs of it, but perhaps some of the victims were still asymptomatic. Then again, how quickly did the Hydra infection progress, anyway?

Peter estimated he'd gone from human to inhumanly strong carnivorous monster in under an hour while he'd slept.

Unless y'are Ed Whelan. Cletus' voice interjected thinly. And all this mess is your fault.

Peter shook his head and leaped off the building he was on, a few feet before making contact with the ground, he let the warmth spread for a brief momentary burst of weightlessness to allow him to land lightly, his feet already running from the moment they made contact with the pavement. He locked on to the scent once more and ran.

So... find the prisoners. See if anything could be done for them. Then make sure the Thunderbolts knew what they were dealing with.

Oh... and don't get caught. He still had his uncle's funeral in the morning.

He still had a few hours til daybreak.

No pressure.

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