Variant Strain

Peter stepped into the hallway, glancing in both directions to note it was all the same type of anonymous cement-grey walls, acoustic ceiling tiles and ceramic tile flooring.

He reached into himself and tried to get in touch with the rest. His cellphone had somehow been lost in the tussle in the Foyer. He could only get vague impressions of his former mental roommates. Just an impression of motion. Of running. They were sitll moving. Still escaping.

But now he couldn't get through to them.

He really would have to handle this on his own.

Annoyingly, losing the cellphone had also meant that he'd lost internet access. He doubted he could've gotten a signal down here, but it might have been useful.

There were rumbling mechanical noises all around. Machinery, rhythmic and implacable. Heavily industrial. A factory churning something out. Not a clean, new mechanism. Something in dubious repair. High-pitched squealing as unlubricated parts scraped against one another. The heavy stamp-stamp-stamp of some kind of press pounding out forms.

The scents were overlain with the fresh blood-copper tang of the Dorrek hive's Hydra strain, but there were other scents lingering as well. Human bodies. Older. Unwashed. Sweat and actual blood. Infected. All around.

Stranger scents. Some fit in with the sound of machinery. Oil and grease. Hot metal and setting plastics. Welding flux and copper solder. A stronger thread than that however was the bitter ozone tainted scent of the Osborn strain of Hydra. Whatever it was coming from it was heavily in evidence in this area.

The scents spoke to him more deeply now. He hadn't had to truly sort through those sense impressions on his own before, but now... despite the seeming 'newness' of the Dorrek Hydra scent, it was also... older. Less... refined? It seemed fresher for being so close to its pure form.

The Osborn strain, as he thought of it, with the underlying scent of electricity and danger... that was the Russian variants. The product of their super-soldier program, Oruzhiye Plyus, Weapon Plus.

The specific variants had been, for lack of a better word, bred, into the resultant forms. Specific viral strains that rebuilt the body in specific ways were the Russians own contribution to Hydra's development. Each one mockingly named for the unfortunate Russian test subject that had survived the first perfected form of the viral strains.

The Pym variant had smelled of dust and age and overdried jerky, not simply for their age. The scent of the Dorrek's strain was an older one... but the staleness to the Pym scents had been for their stagnation. The variants were culled down. Only the simplest, most generic form of the virus was allowed to be used. There was none of the rampant, perhaps, even malignant, variety that the Russians had fostered.

He shook his head to clear it. Woolgathering again. He really needed to stop doing that.

Especially when he was in the middle of exploring dangerous underground laboratories populated by who knew what.

He looked around once more as he reached a door at the end of the corridor.

Especially now that he didn't have anyone to tell him to focus when his attention wandered.

The door opened with a rush of heated air that washed over Peter. He stepped through into a stifling heat and onto a metal walkway overlooking a factory floor one level down.

Machinery was everywhere, but working them... anonymous gray uniforms all around. They looked human. But they were all infected. Their fingers were longer and more delicate, obvious even from a distance, but the clear sign were the eyes. They glowed red from edge to edge and were surrounded by a haze of Pym Particle red expanding out in a fan on either side of the face from the bridge of the nose, looking like a strange crimson butterfly had spread its wings across their features.

Peter noted Becks at each corner of the room. A sort of standard design. Bulbuous, oversized head wreathed in a red haze. These Becks, however, didn't have Jessica's waffles and cream scent... they were soaked in the blood-scent of the Dorrek. Coordinators.

Running the factory below.

Peter narrowed his eyes focusing closer on what was being produced. Knowledge rose up. Manufacturing equipment. Makes, models. Metal stampers. Electronics. The flat metal being curled into familiar wing shapes.

A sweep of his gaze towards the end of the production line confirmed it.

Hundreds of inactive Oscorp drones were stacked against the wall, ten drones high. The scents told him they were just inactive outer shells and mechanical components. None of the biologicals. The skin, head and spine of a Vulture would need to be installed into the drone to make it work.

He suspected... knew? Those were being produced elsewhere.

He needed to get further and the route lay through the warehouse.

The factory was running full-tilt. No one had noticed him. Despite the wreckage not too far from this room. No alerts. No alarms.

He took another deep breath.

No real need for one, since everything was connected through the Dorrek's will. He couldn't afford to be caught. He was fairly confident of his odds of punching his way through the Worker strains below and dealing with the Becks, but they would slow him down. Possibly even enough to bring something in that he would have trouble with.

So, he decided that he wouldn't deal with them.

He walked along the walkway and consciously began to shift himself internally. The Rhino he'd just consumed, strange and crimson skinned juggernaut that it was, had been of the Dorrek strains. A purer, early Russian model, not the later grey skinned ones that arose later through breeding. Peter's metaphorical scent shifted and he could hear the whispering in his mind grow louder. A soaring, piercing aria with words the in Chitauri he could almost just make out were he to turn his full attention towards it.

He walked past an unresponsive Beck, then down the ladder it had been stationed near.

It was the same trick he'd used in Jessica's hive beneath the remains of the Gentek building. He now seemed to be one of them, or of a viral strain sufficiently anti-thetical to theirs that they couldn't detect him as an intrudger. They could still see him to an extent, but his presence didn't trigger any alarms.

He made his way to the factory floor, the noise loud enough to be near defeaning. He suspected the Workers were likely deaf. Their actions had a mechanical precision to them. Just enough skill and coordination to perform one necessary move perfectly, then hand off to the next Worker in the chain. Overseer Becks in case anything unexpected happened, but each Worker was little more than a biological cog in a vast machine... one that produced drone chasis.

Peter wondered at the mechanical husks for the Oscorp drones. On one hand, perhaps they were useful beyond the obvious scouting applications. Were they going to be sold to militaries? Perhaps one way to spread the Hydra infection elsewhere. But there would've been simpler ways to do that if it were simply a matter of shipping them out filled with infected material.

He considered it and realized that the still-living biological material that would have been sealed in the drone, properly programmed, could be a literal bomb. There was a lower limit to the mass that could serve as a seed for a link back into the mass space. Even physically separated, potentially Peter knew he could send mass through any such linked material above a certain weight. He suspected this would be the case here.

With biomass coming through the mass divide, these drones effectively had an unlimited range. As long as the Vulture material lived, the Pym Particles and their mass shifting abilities would keep the device flying. Once it reached its destination, it would only need a mild adjustment to the biomass within to start sending more mass through, cracking the casing, and allowing the former Vulture form to infect anything near it to create a new hive.

Peter felt chilled. Where Jessica had simply planned to rush into Manhattan and the rest of New York City with a mass of infected because she couldn't receive information back from her infected. A flood of flesh intended to overwhelm all defenses... but vulnerable all the same to being trapped in one spot, pinned down, and destroyed in detail.

The Dorrek could send and receive through its infected. It could best Jessica in terms of coordination. That had never been meant to be a Veranke's strength. Only in innovation and creation. This Hive... this Dorrek... could produce pinpoint infections. Their troops and strains sent to where they needed to be, all directed by the full mental capacities of a Hive in full flower.

He swallowed nervously as he considered the situation further. Manhattan had been intended not just as a viral laboratory. It was meant as a terrifying threat. Was it even really intended to succeed getting even as far as it had?

No... it worked both ways. If the infection had spread past Manhattan, then it would only have been a matter of time before the infection got everywhere. If it were containted, it would still serve as a catalyst to frighten everyone.

An infected Manhattan would have been the perfect reason for everyone else to want... no... DEMAND Oscorp's drones and other products since the peculiar Oscorp infection allowed it to pass by Jessica's strain unimpeded. The drones would be deployed everywhere. Ostensibly they would detect infection and track down the infected.

No one would realize that they were inviting the infection past their own defenses.

Peter admited that theoretially, they could simply be using Hydra infected workers as cheap labor, but why else have the work being done in secret beneath the Osborn Mansion rather than an actual factory site?

The theory seemed and felt sound. He walked past the stacked drones and ran a hand over the smooth black metal. The only issue with the theory was that it would have needed a massive amount of vultures to flay, behead and stuff into the drones.

Except... the Dorrek had control of the Hydra infection. It could dictate the results of the infection. Perhaps creating Vultures in bulk was trivial?

The scents of Hydra and now actual blood grew stronger as he approached his destination. The door at the far end of the factory floor where the empty drone chasis were wheeled into by the Workers.

He pushed the door open and stepped through into an abbatoir.

It was the only way to describe it. There was a red haze of Pym Particles lingering in the air. The floor was almost an inch deep in blood and random viscera. Workers moved through the room, overseen by Becks at the corners, as butchery happened.

One corner of the room was dominated by an immense mound of red and rust meat. A small Hive. Perhaps something like what a Mobile Hive would look like outside of a vehicle. On one side human-sized pustules would swell and burst, torn open by Workers to reveal something like a Vulture inside.

The proportions were different from what Peter recognized. The chest was even deeper, even more heavily muscled. The legs were spindly, tiny things. Almost non-existent. Their feet were hand shaped and lacked the massive talons that he was familiar with from that breed of infected. The gliding membrane stretched between the fingers and under the armpit to the hips were furred and the edges had some feathery seeming material.

The Vulture, on being freed of its pustulent caul would struggle briefly, until the Woker would impale it onto a hook that dangled from a chain on the ceiling. The chain was part of a belt that would deliver the weakly struggling and gutted creature to the next Worker who would then skin it alive, making precise cuts using a blade grown out of its pinky finger. Down the sternum first, then slip the blade between skin and muscle across the torso, long cuts along the shoulders and down the arms to free the wing-skin, until all the skin above the waist was dangling heavily from the Vulture's neck. Blood dripped out of the cuts and spattered the Worker and floor alike, but the movements were all very efficient and business-like.

The belt would move again, delivering the flayed Vulture to the next station where a heavier built Workers would hold the pathetic thing steady as another of their number slit its throat and cut the spine out its flesh.

The rest of the flayed body was dumped into a cart which would then be wheeled back to the maw of the Hive for reuse. The head, spine and skin would then be passed via a different cart to another worker who would perform a series of swift practiced motions to plug the head into several tubes before wrapping the spine around the head and stuffing the whole into a glass case, allowing the flayed skin to trail out of the case.

Those would then be passed to another Worker who would install it into the drone chasis, stuffing the skin into the interior spaces of the drone's wings. Another tube topped up some sort of internal reservoir with crimson Pym Particle fluid.

Then the now active drone would be sealed up and set aside onto another pallet to be piled up.

All done as efficiently as you please. Butchery on an industrial scale.

Peter clamped down on his jaw, forcing himself not to throw up. He'd never been so thankful for full control over his body as he was now.

He could see a new Vulture produced every few minutes. Just enough to keep up with the disassembly line.

It was particularly disconcerting watching the Vultures. Each one was identical to the one before. The same strong, even features. Handsome and cherubic. Each one had the same blue eyes and faint blonde fuzz of hair on its head and body. The same expression of horror at being stabbed with the hook. The same movements of struggle as they were flayed.

Peter swallowed thickly. The Vultures were being manufactured from a template, he realized. Halfway up the Hive was a face and torso. Below the slender hips it was buried in the Hive's biomass. Its shoulders were pulled back, but Peter could see the wings half-submerged in the tendrils of red and rust material of the Hive. It had the same face as every Vulture produced, but unlike the rest of them, this one had a full head of golden hair, incongruously long, lustrous and clean. The hair, highlighting the angelic features, but its expression was simply one of dull, numb horror. The blue eyes were glazed over, staring unseeing at the lines of butchery. It's scent was the older Hydra scent. In contrast, the Hive produced duplicates reeked of the Oscorp strain's ozone.

Peter had to wonder how long one could keep watching something with its own face being perpetually butchered before it had ceased to care.

Peter breathed. The template was a necessity. The poor suffering Vulture that was being used as the basis for the decapitated heads in the drones.

Almost before he'd considered it, the flesh on his arm had begun reknitting itself. A blade at the end of a whip arm driven through the Vulture's throat would end its suffering. As his flesh began to change, so too did his scent and he could already feel the attention of the Becks turning onto him. His fist clenched hard as he forced himself to stop. To consider what would happen.

He had to think because no one else was handing him the answers anymore.

He had to stop everything.

Not just a singlular attrocity being done to an infected that was already too traumatized to care. Nor to its duplicates.

The Dorrek and this entire... enterprise that was preparing to infect the world had to be stopped.

He felt conflicted about that. He had always been hesistant to kill. Sometimes even to his detriment. He didn't regret that.

Now he had to wonder why he suddenly felt so eager. Certainly it would end the angelic Vulture's suffering, but in the grand scheme of things... the impulse felt odd.

Eager to kill... admittedly for a good reason. Yet... a kill that would only make the rest of his mission more difficult.

He considered it and realized that those whispers in the back of his mind were undeniably speaking to him.

He felt his attention drift to them answering his concerns about how he would have to fight through the facility if he started with just this one kill. Cho mak dokos lan dera.

Telling him to simply subvert the local biomass. Sto dan.

Claim it for his own and send it through the facility, wreaking havok.

Claiming everything for his own as was his due. Lok na.

Assume his own rightful place as Dorrek. As God-Emperor, then... simply. ..

Keep.

Going.

He slapped himself.

There wouldn't be any of that, he told himself sharply.

He walked on. He spared the Vultures in their agony and the one template one last look over his shoulder. He promised they wouldn't suffer for much longer.

He stepped through another door and into another hallway.

The scents of unwashed bodies were stronger here. Closing the door behind him muted the scents of blood. Every few feet were metal doors. There were signs on each door in Russian. There were coded phrases in cyrillic characters with numbers at each door.

The Russians had 'given' their entire Hydra research operation to the Americans when their government had shut everything down, Peter recalled. Now he knew where their results had been kept.

The contaiment section.

He was close now.

Each door had a small shutter that could be opened to allow someone outside to look in.

Giving in to a curious impulse, Peter had approached one door and looked inside.

Inside was a man... an infectee... restrained into a kneeling position. He knelt on top of a small raised platform that was just large enough for him. All around him the floor and halfway up the walls were a seething, roiling mass of Pym Particles.

Just opening the shutter was enough for the copper-tainted Hydra scent to sweep over Peter, nearly overpowering everything else. The pheromonal communication embedded in the material practically screaming desperation. Tightly wound control, but fraying at the edges. Preserved for... how long now? Decades?

He could see pipes inside the room, vibrating was a pump worked through them. He could see a continuous current draining the ankle deep mess of glowing red Pym Particle fluid into the pipes, but the level didn't seem to lower.

The manacles had been at his ankles and wrists long enough for those areas to be heavily calloused and scarred. He was in a rotting standard issue gray jumpsuit and had brown hair. At first Peter couldn't see anything unusual about the man. All the limbs in proper proportions, no strange bulges or odd lumps beneath the clothes.

On hearing the noise of the shutter being pulled open, the man looked up and Peter could see what made him unusual. Where his eyes and forehead should have been was a single immense glowing red cavity that dominated the upper half of the man's ruined face.

The circular cavity contiuously spewed the glowing red Pym Particle fluid, gushing to fill the floor even as pipes struggled to keep up with the supply. As his head lifted, the flow of fluid, with its disturbing resemblance to glowing blood arced across the room, falling just short of the shutter, but splattering all over the inner wall and door.

There wasn't enough left of its face to show much of an expression. What there might have been was obscured by the continuous flow of glowing red fluid that spewed out of its face.

Peter winced and closed the shutter hurriedly.

This infected was a ready source of Pym Particle material... also being put to use back in the Drone factory.

He moved on. After a few more doors, he passed one that was covered by a layer of frost so thick Peter couldn't even make out the shutter. More mechanical noises... he suspected if that were an infected, the temperature was something being put to use somewhere.

He moved to the next door and peeked in once more.

There was nothing alive in the next room. There was a warped skeleton inside. The features of the skull were somewhat bestial. A bit feline, but oddly flattened. The limbs were disproportionately long for the body. The toes had extra joints. There were still scraps of hairy, leathery skin on the body. There was a bowl on the floor with it.

It clearly hadn't been touched in years. Peter suspected that after everything had been moved here from Russia, no one really came down to check on the 'specimens' and they'd been left to fend for themselves.

Or to the tender care of the Dorrek.

He considered that as he walked.

The ones that might have had their uses were kept alive. The others? Not so much.

There would be another set of stairs at the end of the hall. He knew what he was looking for would be at the bottom of those stairs.

The whispering grew louder still.

Time was running out. The calculations were aligning into their own perfection.

Then it would end.

He had chosen this.

He would have no regrets.