Marvel Novels--Captain America

by Stefan Petrucha

  The word eternal was especially ironic. The Nazis believed there were three German reichs, or empires. The first, the Holy Roman Empire, lasted nearly a thousand years. The second, the monarchy that began with Germany’s unification, survived forty-seven.

  The third, the one Hitler proclaimed eternal, lasted only twelve.

  No point in explaining that to a recording, though.

  A ticking and a silvery glint of sunlight against metal told him the energy beams were realigning, aiming his way. The four red lines burned across the terrain, heating the sand they hit into a brittle, glass-like shell. The attack was so utterly telegraphed, he jumped easily out of the way.

  Landing closer to the cube, he rose and took several more steps before it fired again.

  He raised his shield to block, hoping to get a better sense of what he was up against. As the energy cascaded along the curved surface, he felt pressure and heat—but it wasn’t hot enough to burn him through the shield, let alone harm the Vibranium. If Stark was right, and time had left it damaged, maybe its weapons were losing their charge.

  With the next blast, though, the intensity increased a thousand-fold, hurling him off his feet.

  He landed hard. The beams had been blocked by the shield, but his forearm vibrated, as if it had been exposed to a powerful electric current. The still-crackling shield too hot to hold, he was forced to let go. Wobbling against the ground, it hissed, louder and softer, depending on its angle to the sand.

  The assault paused as the beams somehow met in midair. He moved. The cube unleashed a single, focused blast. This one didn’t simply melt sand into glass—it gouged a two-foot hole where he’d been standing.

  The ruby needles of the rays came at him, again crisscrossing the air, erasing any escape route. Hitting left and right, they advanced too quickly for him to dodge by moving backwards.

  With only one direction left, he leapt forward. Unsure if he’d been fast enough, he arced his body to fit through the narrowing space between the beams. Ahead, he saw the sleek, square shape and its spherical hollow. From behind, he felt a stinging at his heel and caught a whiff of something burning.

  When he landed, his heel stung, but not enough to slow him. The cube’s swivel-mounts made the beam weapons perfect for covering a wide area at long or medium range—but now that he was nearer, he didn’t see how they could fire at all without hitting the cube itself. Diving closer still, he scouted the spherical hollow for any other weakness he might exploit.

  By the time he realized he’d done exactly what the cube—or rather, its designers—expected him to do, it was too late. With a terrible grinding, metal bands slapped out from the hollow’s curve and tried to snare his arms and legs. He might have gotten out of their reach were it not for the firing beams blocking his retreat.

  All he could manage was an odd dance, flailing his arms and legs this way and that to avoid the slapping bands. Before he could detect any pattern to their movements, one snagged the ankle above his wounded foot. Its edge curled around to meet itself, forming an unyielding brace. It twisted one way, then the other, trying to pull him off balance.

  S.H.I.E.L.D. was watching from the Helicarrier. They had to be planning something by now. Rogers called into the comm, but the only response was digital static. The cube was scrambling communications, he realized.

  He kept moving, but soon the slapping bands caught his left wrist, then his right. Struggling against them proved fruitless. The thing had been built to restrain him—of course his strength had been taken into account. Once he was firmly secured, the bands pulled back, centering him in the spherical hollow. The deadly beams withdrew. The cube clicked and whirred, this time exactly the same way the sphere had. The sounds repeated in an almost musical fashion.

  Much as he trusted Fury, Cap wasn’t about to stand by and wait to see what happened next.

  It was designed to kill him. Figuring out how might be key to avoiding that fate. The usual methods were easy to imagine. The cube could contract, crushing him—or expand, ripping him apart. It might explode, or give off a heat blast similar to the sphere.

  Given all the trouble Hitler gone through to build and hide these Sleepers, all that seemed too simple.

  A grate opened above him, releasing a dry, white powder that tumbled over his body. His first thought was anthrax, but a tiny amount of that would do the job, and this powder kept coming.

  Baking soda?

  It didn’t make sense. What was it up to? He scoured his memory of all it’d said, hoping to find some clue in the phrasing.

  …prepare to meet your doom.

  …at last your weakness will be revealed for all the world to see!

  …you will fall as quickly and assuredly as any who seek to oppose the Eternal Reich!

  Eternal. Right.

  The Sleepers he’d originally faced were intended to destroy the world. They were built for use in the event that Germany lost. But if Tony was right, these had been created earlier, before the defeat at Operation Barbarossa, when a Nazi victory was considered the only possibility. The bravado behind the recordings, the need to target civilians in public, the desire for the entire world to see—it all pointed to a different purpose: propaganda.

  Hitler didn’t just want him dead—he wanted proof.

  More than that, he would have wanted a way to display Captain America as a trophy.

  As the whirring continued, the four short weapons barrels retreated from their outer mounts, reappearing on the inner corners where they could only aim at one thing: him. When he saw the reddish sparkle at their tips, Cap thought his long career might actually be over. But as they had been earlier, the beams that hit his pinned form were thin and weak, splashing along the anti-ballistic surface of his uniform almost like water. They were warm, heating his skin, but too slowly to cause blisters. Unseen fans began to churn, moving the air evenly around him and spreading the heat as if he were in a convection oven.

  That was it. The cube was becoming an oven. The plan was clear now. It was going to bake him, dry his body without causing too much damage, then parade his mummified corpse across the world. The baking soda was intended to absorb additional moisture. But the suit membrane kept the powder from absorbing his sweat, leaving it to gather along his body. It began to boil.

  An image of Kade flashed in his mind, disappointed that the temperature would not be hot enough to destroy the virus.

  The warm sensation spreading over him tipped toward a dull, increasing pain. His body wanted to writhe, but he used the adrenaline for another try at the restraints. Every inch of his enhanced muscles grew taut. He pulled all four limbs at once with strength that had, in extreme circumstances, bent steel.

  No good.

  A different sort of grinding joined the whirs and clicks. Like topsy-turvy window shades, transparent walls rose from the bottom of the cube’s frame. The higher the walls got, the more impossible they seemed. The space from which the walls emerged wasn’t nearly large enough to contain their height. The glass-like substance must be some sort of liquid that solidified on exposure to air.

  The purpose was no mystery: encasing him with the heat would aid the mummification process—and make for a better display.

  Worsening pain made it harder to think. The constant agony had become every bit as intense as the brief scalding that had forced him to drop the hot shield.

  The shield was still out in the sand, reminding him he had one trick left to play. His wrists were immobile, but his fingers could reach the activation pad in his palm. That would send the shield flying toward him. If it landed between his body and the beams, it might deflect them back against the cube.

  But the magnetic return was designed with the assumption he’d be mobile enough to catch the returning disc. Its aerodynamics were so expertly fashioned, it could rip through any number of obstacles to reach the glove. With his limbs turned outward, one of those obstacles would be his arm.

  Time was running out. If he waited until th
e cube was fully sealed, the shield might shatter one of the clear walls, but if they were at all flexible, the shield would bounce off. On the other hand, if he waited until the wall had almost sealed, the disc could keep it from closing.

  Waiting for the right moment wasn’t easy. The steady heat had made his skin a bristling mass of agony. He gnashed his teeth, surprised by how hot they felt against his tongue. Shaking, he tried to judge the speed of the shield against the rising of the wall, imagining the path and the angle.

  It could work. It could.

  As long as he didn’t pass out…as long as he pressed the pad right about…

  …now.

  The shield flipped into the air, generating a small sand cloud. It ate the arid, empty distance between itself and the cube. As it neared, he worried it was traveling too low, that it would slam uselessly against the base of the cube.

  But it didn’t. It hit just right, wedging itself between the rising wall and the cube’s frame.

  It worked, but only partly.

  While it prevented the wall from sealing, it hadn’t reached the beams. If he’d delayed the inevitable at all, it was only by moments. The heat continued unabated. He’d played his last trick. Knowing S.H.I.E.L.D. was watching from the Helicarrier, he wondered whether Nia was among the observers. But even so, he felt alone.

  Fury, where are you?

  The answer came a second later. A thick blast, as black as the sand was white, slammed the exposed edge of the shield. Like a blade of grass tearing hrough a solid oak in a hurricane, the disc snapped upwards with such speed and force, it pried off the top of the cube.

  What was left of the Sleeper exploded. Rogers couldn’t be sure what caused it—a second shot from the Helicarrier, or some self-destruct mechanism sent him, along with the pieces of his former cage, flying high. The concussive wave that pressed his back was hotter and sharper than what he’d experienced inside the cube—but even through the strained membrane, the air ahead felt like a cold breeze.

  The loose slats, still wrapped around his wrists and ankles, made landing more awkward than it had to be, but he wasn’t any less relieved.

  He rose to his knees and took a few long, cooling breaths. Ten yards away, the ground was scorched. The larger pieces in the debris field were still smoking. He stood, stretched, and checked his comm.

  “Nick, you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “It was hot in there. What took you so long?”

  “Once it retracted those beams, it didn’t seem to have any offensive capacities, but we still couldn’t take a shot without risking you. Your shield gave us something to hit. We aimed at the star, and the rest is history.”

  “Good to know.”

  “By the way, while you were playing shake and bake, my idea about replicating the Sleeper’s bio sensors worked out. At first all we detected was you—the Sleepers’ range seems pretty limited, which explains why they didn’t go after the Skull, too—but when we increased their range by running it through the microwave antennae array, we got a blip. We found the Skull. Turns out Schmidt’s got himself an actual castle in Roscoe, New York.”

  “So, good news?”

  “I wish. Agent Velez in Signals has been on a roll, so I had her review any satellite data from that location during the last few months. Up until three days ago, at least thirty people occupied that space. Following some thermal activity inconsistent with the weather, every bio-form aside from the Skull was gone. Some atmospheric anomalies above the site yielded trace chemicals consistent with human ash.”

  “He incinerated his followers.” Steve felt a twinge of pity for the dead before acknowledging the implications. “He must have done it to prevent the spread. So, the virus he has is an active strain?”

  “That’s one explanation, probably the best. Still, knowing the high regard the Skull has for human life, they could’ve burnt his breakfast strudel. Kade’s having kittens, though, convinced the end of the world is nigh. Hell, he could be right. But we can chitchat about it once we reach our base. It’s only four miles out. I’ll send the drone to pick you up. Enjoy the free air while you can. There’ll be a biohazard suit on board in case the membrane’s ruptured.”

  Rogers looked out at the flat, lifeless expanse and blue sky. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll walk.”

  20

  WANTING TO PRESERVE THAT BEAUTY CAN’T BE POINTLESS.

  THE BASALT cavern, previously used for storing old records, had been hastily repurposed. For obvious reasons, the Level 4 isolation area was the first of the new modular constructs placed there by the S.H.I.E.L.D. engineering crews. Other modules contained various workspaces for command and support, but this one—the largest and most expensive—held three quarantine chambers, each fairly roomy. Rogers’ chamber even sported a window, though all it showed was a black stone wall.

  But his mind didn’t dwell on his surroundings. He was focused on the Red Skull and Jacobs’ report. Returned to active duty since Paris, the wounded agent was part of the reconnaissance team in New York. As he spoke, his image—one of nine on the built-in floor-to-ceiling monitors—expanded to fill most of the screen. Aside from several stitched cuts and a slight paleness, he seemed to have recovered well.

  “Without actual confirmation of an active pathogen, the CDC won’t publicly declare it a hot zone, but we’re treating it that way—expanding the perimeter around the Skull’s castle up to two miles past the property boundaries, and evacuating homes and businesses. It’s on about one thousand wooded acres. Access was easily sealed, but he’s dug in tighter than the Latverian embassy. We know from satellite infrared that he’s the only bio-form, but an EMF source is messing with our electronic surveillance equipment. Autonomous drones record a gray haze. We even tried getting an LMD closer via the sewers, with the same result. Honestly, I have no idea what other defenses he’s got set up in there.”

  Jacobs’ image shrank, while Fury’s expanded. “Aside from Dr. Kade’s suggestion that we drop a thermal bomb in the middle of New York state just to be on the safe side, are we all agreed we need boots on the ground to make an extraction?” He waited until the sundry faces nodded. “Okay. And speaking of everyone’s favorite epidemiologist, Kade, you want to give us your surprising conclusion on who you, Dr. N’Tomo, and the CDC think should be wearing those boots?”

  Kade’s expanded image was striking, highlighting both his facial scars and an increasing weariness. He rubbed his eyes. “If logic seems surprising, Colonel, how do you judge the norm? Assuming the virus is active, it’s only common sense to minimize the possibility of an outbreak. We can do that by sending someone who already carries it: Captain Rogers. If the Skull’s virus is a different strain, it does put Rogers at added risk. On the other hand, whatever’s keeping it inert in him could do the same for a variation. That’s not something I can say about anyone else on the planet. And the fact that the membrane held indicates it would reduce his potential exposure.”

  Fury’s face returned. “For someone in quarantine, he sure as hell gets around a lot. Which brings us to the Schrodinger’s elephant in the room. If Schmidt is symptomatic, what do we do with him? Given that EMF, there won’t be any communication, so it’ll be Cap’s call.”

  Kade spoke up again. “Captain Rogers, I want to remind you of our earlier conversation. It’s a matter of history that you’d sooner die than risk innocent lives. When it comes down to it, will you value the Skull’s life more than the lives of those a pandemic would rob?”

  Steve blanched. “You may be confident about the outcomes, but to me only God knows the future. However educated our guesses are, all we’ve really got to go on is the moment—and in the moment, it would still be murder. I’m not going to go in and just kill him.”

  Kade rubbed his eyes again. “We’re quibbling over semantics. Dr. N’Tomo, would you kindly summarize the document I forwarded to you?”

  Nia’s image widened. Looking uncomfortable, she cleared her thro
at. “About two hours ago, the International Court convened and sentenced Johann Schmidt, in absentia, to death. Captain Steve Rogers has been authorized to act as an official instrument of the court. As such, he is hereby given the explicit directive to carry out this sentence as quickly and as mercifully as possible.”

  * * *

  SECONDS after Zola withdrew the syringe from Schmidt’s arm, the details of the dim room grew more visible, the colors more vivid. He felt as strong as ever. Zola stepped back, but his sensors remained trained on the Skull.

  “Watching for side effects?”

  “This amount of adrenaline would induce a heart attack in a normal man. But your body is…”

  “Not normal. Ja, I know.”

  Schmidt fully intended to lose the coming battle, but only in the same sense the Sleepers had “lost.” Hindered by the bulky hazmat suits they’d no doubt be forced to wear, even S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best agents stood little chance against him. He would have to let them capture and isolate him. Still, if he gave up too easily, they might suspect his plan. Some sort of fight was necessary.

  Perhaps he’d try to infect a few.

  Hoping he’d be imprisoned near the dormant weapons was a gamble—but wherever S.H.I.E.L.D. brought him, he’d be in a better position to locate them. And then, who knows? If S.H.I.E.L.D. did have a cure, perhaps he’d allow them give it to him. Then he could use the Sleepers to destroy his hated foe anyway.

  “How do you feel?”

  The left side of his lips twitched into a half-smile. “As if I could live forever.”

  Zola’s avatar mimicked the expression. “The effects of epinephrine normally last about twenty minutes, but this is my own formulation. Certain additives form a casing that will steadily release the drug over time. The full effect should last three hours. After that, I’m afraid your metabolism will crash precipitously. It is highly advisable that your encounter with S.H.I.E.L.D. be resolved by then.”

  Rolling down his sleeve, Schmidt nodded. A sudden darkness over his shoulder drew his attention to the monitors. The news feeds had gone dead.