Variant Strain

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For all their vagueness, Smith's directions had been simple enough to follow.

Especially since Peter had taken the trouble to memorize the hospital's map.

Radiology had a discreet elevator close to it that only went down. He'd taken it down and it seemed to take an unusually long time to descend. Peter did some rough calculations in his head based on the feeling of acceleration versus the amount of time he actually was in the elevator and guessed that the first sub-basement this led to was already a good eighty or so feet underground.

It opened to a small area that resembled a storage room. Gurneys were folded up and piled high in one corner. There were oxygen tanks standing at another side of the room. A set of wire shelves rose all the way to the ceiling, completely filled with the inadequate hospital blankets. In another corner there was a stack of aluminum chairs piled up high.

To his right, there was an open doorway leading to a brightly lit corridor. He sniffed and caught the mild scent of smoke. There was the whir of ventilation fans. He walked down the hall and found a larger open basement area. A large boiler for heating, various head-exchangers and a few emergency generators were in the new place. The bio-hazard incinerator was also quite prominent in this place. It seemed ominous, but at the same time it made sense.

If the diseased were being kept in the area they would need some way of ensuring their disposal.

He saw another corridor lead out of the room and he guessed if the hall ran straight and had an elevator at the end, it would lead to the morgue. That made sense too.

He looked around the room and found the door that Smith must have been referring to.

They were double doors. The lighting had been arranged to put them slightly in shadow, not make it obvious that they were there. Peter was tempted to head right to them and just walk in, but there was a mild pressure in the back of his head, and an image floated up. He stopped, still inside the corridor and looked up at the ceiling of the larger area.

Security cameras. Two of them. They had excellent coverage of the double doors. Even though he was still some distance away, his eyes focused well enough that he could pick out the biometric lock that kept the doors closed. Retina scanner and hand print.

So much for his luck holding, he mused.

He stared at the lock, then the doors. He could probably force them open. Maybe. He wasn't sure. Those doors looked to be metal reinforced and heavy. He glanced over his shoulder. Maybe if he took one of those oxygen tanks and slammed it into the doors. Or he knocked the valve off the end and let it drive itself into those doors like a rocket. It worked on Mythbusters. Well it worked on cinderblock. He had no clue how well it would do against those doors.

He fished his phone out and noted that he had no signal down here and also noted that he had at most another two hours. Aunt May would be up shortly and would definitely see through whatever excuse MJ could come up with. Then again, MJ did seem to be a fairly talented liar... it was a toss-up.

Either way, he didn't have much time left. He pocketed his phone and considered things. Things had probably been hectic since the night Ed Whelan had run. Would they have been hectic enough that perhaps someone might have forgotten to deactivate him from whatever security database regulated that door?

That was probably his only chance of sneaking past those doors. He could take Ed Whelan's form and hope that his mimicry was close enough to fool biometric scanners. Assuming they didn't recognize Ed's face on the camera. Assuming he didn't set off some sort of alarm that brought down every Thunderbolt and Gentek security officer on his head the moment he showed up.

He licked dry lips and considered. He had promised to be careful. He also had to be back in time for Uncle Ben's funeral. Hell, he had to be back early enough not to rouse Aunt May's suspicions. Weighed that against the need to finally find out what was going on.

There were answers right behind those doors. More than that. There were probably the people the Thunderbolts had taken last night. Then they had to be warned about what was happening in Manhattan.

That all hinged on getting through those doors.

He sighed to himself and rested against the wall of the corridor.

No, they didn't. He could call Detective Stacy. Let him get the warrant to kick open those doors. Peter didn't need to be the one to ride in on their rescue. He didn't have to be the one to send them the warning. Hell, he could tell Detective Stacy that too. He could turn around and walk away. Get a little sleep. Deal with all of this after Uncle Ben's funeral. Detective Stacy would be there. He could bring the man in entirely. Tell him everything.

He did not need to have the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Except you need to know what's going on, his voice drawled. What was your mom doing in there? What made Ed Whelan run? What the hell was Hydra and why was Gentek up to it's neck in it? And if they do have prisoners, do you think they're going to be able to wait til you get someone else to do your work for you?

His eyes narrowed and his body blurred. Ed Whelan's ratty face, hidden beneath Cletus's shaggy mop of hair. He wore the doctor's coat and the scrubs beneath. He walked briskly. The stride of the man who knows where he is going and is eager to get there.

He also had to keep moving before the shaking of his hands and knees got to him and forced him to turn back. He moved to the biometric lock and with what felt like practiced ease he lowered his head to gaze into the eyepiece and slapped his palm onto the scanner.

The second it took for the computer to decide was a lifetime. Peter felt sweat bead on his brow and crawl down his back, but he forced himself to remain absolutely still. Or as still as he could be while shifting from leg to leg in preparation of running for it if he had to. He guessed they would deactivate the elevator if they did decide to stop him. He in turn had already decided he was going to rip the elevator car's ceiling open and climb up the shaft if he had to.

Another second ticked by. The hand that wasn't on the scanner clenched.

They'd found him. They had to have. They were just keeping him now. Stalling while they massed men with guns or other, more esoteric weaponry to bear. They were familiar with Hydra. Maybe they had something specifically tailored to take something like him out.

When the light switched to green and the biometric panel gave a cheerful ding, Peter was all but ready to bolt.

He almost did when he heard the loud clacking noise of the lock releasing. He let out the shuddering breath that he'd been holding and stepped in, his body still singing with adrenaline.

He opened the door, stepped through and found himself confronted... by another door. The door behind him closed with a hiss of compressed air and he realized that they had some sort of airlock arrangement. He swallowed and felt a mild popping in his ear.

Negative pressure. Minimize the possibility of airborne pathogens getting out.

Except Hydra was blood-borne, or at least that was the impression he'd gotten.

So that told him there was a chance there were other diseases involved.

None of which, of course, helped him when he realized that he was trapped between two sets of air-tight reinforced steel doors. If they had recognized him, all though would need to do would be to shut down or reverse the ventilation. They could take him easily.

His hands began to shake again, but he grabbed hold of his nervousness quickly. Taming it. Directing it. He had to think. He couldn't brute force his way out of this one. He had to think through it. He realized that there was a keypad on the wall next to both sets of doors.

So... biometrics... then a key code.

He was stumped.

The shade of Ed Whelan in his mind, if that was him, offered nothing. Peter covered his face and groaned.

He walked up to the keypad on the further door and stared.

Yup. Keypad. All the regular numbers.

He had to enter them in. Otherwise... well... he was stuck here. Until someone noticed him. He fought down the temptation to just hit the keypad. He had to think this through. Ed Whelan. What would he use for his password? A man with no friends. No life outside work...

Peter blinked and hoped. He jabbed Ed's birthday into the keypad.

There was a long moment of quiet, during which time Peter had to fight down that punching urge really hard. Then a green light came on and the door opened.

He took a deep breath. No one waiting to ambush him just past the door, he noted. On the other hand, even muted, the carrion of the Hydra was strong enough to be dizzying. If he concentrated on the scent, Peter wasn't sure he'd be able to keep going. Overlaying all that was the scent of blood and metal. Overlaying all of that though was a flat, antiseptic smell that was doing it's best to mask out all of those underlying scents. It was a sort of stale quality to the air that was odd considering ventilation obviously had to be going to keep the negative pressure in place.

He stepped through. The corridor beyond was cylindrical and done in a sort of cross between something ultra-modern, with gleaming chrome and flat white tile on the floor, which clashed harshly a sort of retro-industrial bunker, with bare metal ribs in flat gray primer on the walls. There was a camera in the curved ceiling, aimed directly at the double doors.

A few signs were painted here and there directly to the curving gray wall, but most prominent among them was the Gentek logo.

All of this was under Bellevue.

Amazing.

Peter froze when he saw the guard station. It was a plexiglass-fronted cube whose lower half was taken up by a desk that occupied the entire front of the cube. On the front was a speaker, a sort of air-lock equipped drawer that would allow someone outside the guard station to pass things to the guard and a very obvious gun-port. He could see the reflection of the security camera monitors against the back wall of the cube. There was even a mini-fridge in there.

It was designed to be a small fortress, Peter realized. Someone in there could hold off anyone approaching from either side with even a small firearm for a considerable amount of time. He wouldn't be surprised if that was it's real main use.

Next to the cube was a very solidly built wire-mesh cage. Just barely large enough to hold a large dog... or a person if they crouched down. It reeked, not only of Hydra, but also of waste and filth. His expression hardened. They would keep a tracker here. Just to check anyone passing through the door.

How did Whelan get out then without anyone realizing anything was wrong? Maybe he wasn't quite so far gone when he'd left.

The strange part, he reflected, was that the guard station was empty.

Well, it was three in the morning, but given the security he'd seen so far, it would have made more sense to have a guard posted there 24/7. So if that was the case, where was the guard?

He was really pushing his luck now, he was sure of it. He walked as briskly as he could down the corridor, trying his best to look like he belonged, while simultaneously, not entirely sure how would who belonged down here should look like.

Unsure what else to do, he followed the signs. He was sure he didn't want administration. Or the security office. The labs. There were several and he picked the closest he could get to. That seemed promising enough. He followed the signs til he found himself at a closed door. Another air-lock style arrangement of double doors kept it isolated from the corridor, but thankfully there were no biometric locks here.

He met no one as he walked. There were no scents of people. Just the sickeningly thick stench of the infected. He hoped that meant everyone had gone home for the night... but the lights had been on.

Out of the corner of his eye, something twitched and was gone. He tried to track it, by scent or by sound, but he was already stepping into the lab and his attention had turned in full on it.

His stomach lurched at a familiar sight that he had never seen before. Whelan's memories and Donna's had both shown him Lab One from opposite sides of the bars, two different impressions overlapping at once. The walls were lined with cages. Large enough for people. The metal bars gleamed as though polished, but there were rusty discolorations on the bare cement floor here and there. Someone had scrubbed and scrubbed hard... but the color had seeped into the material.

Infected blood. The dead scent of stale Hydra almost cutting through the live reek that had saturated the place.

Where are all the infected? He asked himself. The memories that played through his mind showed this place crowded. Men and women working at the tables. The occupants of the cages... human, but only barely. Old infected... test subjects. The cages were to keep them from wandering off... to keep them from hurting themselves... their minds destroyed by Hydra. Not that anyone cared. The people here were animals. The unlucky ones, Cletus interjected. I was a rare treat for 'em. Not everyone who changes keeps their mind. Not everyone's like me. Or you.

Peter tried to keep his revulsion from breaking through. The thought of being the same as Cletus sickened him. Even more than the images his mind kept insisting were there.

He had to keep moving. It was so quiet. He couldn't even make out the air-conditioning. Either the sound was very cleverly masked... or it wasn't running. Which meant... what?

He almost jumped and screamed when he saw the flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye once more. He looked sharply in that direction, but saw nothing. The smell of live Hydra sharpened briefly, but quickly died away.

Something watching? He couldn't see anything.

He hoped it was just his nerves.

The terminals that he passed by were mostly shut down, but one at the end was active, but not logged on. On impulse Peter tapped in Ed's birthday and hit enter.

The machine opened on an unfamiliar database program automatically. Peter checked help files and tried to figure out what he could, but the best he could manage was to close out of the program he'd been in and get to some kind of command line interface.

One that wasn't too helpful given he'd also lost the help menus he'd been using.

"Well, damn." He murmured and startled at the sound of his own voice. He still hadn't found anything. He was about to turn for the door when words began to appear on the screen.

ULTRON> Hello, Mr. Whelan. Aren't you dead?

Peter stared.

That seemed polite. Almost pleasant. He was sure it was some sort of threat.

He looked around and noticed that there was a camera in the lab as well. Somone had noticed him. His heart hammered and his legs ached to make a break for it. To run. Just forget the whole thing and run. Flat out run.

It probably was time to leave. His phone suddenly vibrated and he pulled it out in surprise. One hour left, he saw. He also saw a WiFi network had suddenly become available. Gentek Net. It wasn't even encrypted.

He stared at his phone for a long moment, then to the computer. It was too obviously a set up. He couldn't take any more chances than he already had.

He made a break for the door of Lab One. The identical corridors had gotten him turned around before long. The entrance he'd come in from didn't have convenient signs leading back to it.

He could probably find it eventually, but a few wrong turns had led him to something euphemistically called the "Accommodation Area."

The smell of blood was inescapable. The carrion reek of Hydra was sickly-sticky-sweet, drowning him. His hackles rose. If he'd been on edge wandering the empty facility with only his heart beat and echoing footsteps for company, the weird syncopated heartbeats, the strange, soft shuffling and snuffling noises he could hear through the door were driving him mad.

Driving him into a nervous frenzy.

A feeding frenzy. Cletus smiled nastily in his head.

I need to leave, Peter told himself as his hand came up to press flat against the door.

I will only just barely have enough time to run back to Queens from here, he said in his head quite reasonably as he began to push the door open.

Why am I not leaving?! He screamed in his own head.

Because we want answers.

The door creaked open and he was awash in the slaughterhouse reek of the Hydra.

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