He’d dealt with dozens of patients on their deathbeds. Even with their personalities destroyed by illness, part of their minds remained razor sharp. Confusing the messenger with the message—attacking medical staff and those who cared for them—they would come up with the most amazing, desperate schemes to escape the inevitable.
Evil genius though he may be, the Skull was no different. Still, when Schmidt’s jaw dropped in surprise, Kade felt a sense of accomplishment.
“You didn’t think I’d give you a chance to turn it on me, did you?”
“Very well.” Keeping his eyes on the doctor, the Skull removed the hypodermic from the drawer, inserted the needle, and pressed the plunger. “I have never cared for this body, anyway.”
28
MAYBE, IN TIME, I’LL SEE SOMETHING BETTER, EVEN MORE WORTH THE RISK.
“UND jetzt wird die welt sehen Kapitän Amerika sterben durch die hand der Führer!”
Steve Rogers stood 10 yards from the motionless hulk, ready for whatever it might do next. Ridiculous as it would be to answer a recording, he suppressed an urge to bang his shield and shout, “Well, what are you waiting for? I’m right here!”
Instead he waited. Anything he said might set it off. He hoped they could use the time to clear as much of the base as possible.
“Fury, how’s the evacuation going? I’ve got a feeling all hell’s about to break loose.”
“The hover-flier crash took down half our cameras. I’m still in the command center, with a ringside seat on you and the Sleeper, but I can’t see the bunkers for visual confirmation. Reports show we’re at 95 percent, still waiting on some stragglers.”
“The Skull? Kade was trying to check on him.”
“One of those blind spots. The agent assigned isn’t responding to my hails.”
He pivoted toward the containment facility. “That’s not good. I’m not sure who to worry about, Kade or the Skull, but I’d better check it out.”
As if sensing his motion, the recorded voice rang out again, stopping him in his tracks: “Und jetzt wird die welt sehen Kapitän Amerika sterben durch die hand der Führer!”
“Not sure I should turn my back, either. What do you think it’s doing?”
“The energy readings have leveled out, same as when the rod was dormant. It doesn’t seem to be configuring itself. Your guess is as good as mine.”
Rogers wished he could guess. Robotics often stole their design from nature. The Sleepers he’d first tangled with resembled a bat, a human, and finally a skull. But individually, these were abstract shapes—and collectively, they resembled nothing more than a cube filled in by a sphere and supported on a set of triangles.
“If not me, maybe it’s waiting for something else, some other signal. But what?”
The answer came in the form of a high-pitched, electronic squeal. It shuddered through the air so loudly Rogers couldn’t tell where it originated—but it definitely wasn’t coming from the Sleepers.
He barely heard Fury’s warning: “Steve! Six o’clock!”
A figure vaulted toward him. Its too-familiar brawn was ravaged by disease, its crimson skin so soaked in sweat it glistened. As it drew closer, the squealing grew louder.
The Skull. He was the source, signaling the Sleepers.
Rogers went into a defensive stance, but the Skull wasn’t interested in another round of hand-to-hand. Grabbing the rim of the raised shield, he leapt over Cap, kicked back into his head, and raced like a madman for the Sleepers. Like the eye of a waking giant, the sphere opened at his approach, revealing an intricate array of controls.
“A battle suit,” Fury shouted. “It’s some kind of battle suit.”
“Yeah, I got that,” Rogers called back, shaking off the blow.
As Schmidt threw himself headfirst into the opening, Cap flung the shield and charged after it. It was halfway there by the time the Skull flopped into position and punched one of the controls. Narrow to begin with, the opening closed just enough to block the speeding projectile, then it sealed completely.
The Skull wasted no time in putting the Sleepers’ weapons to use. The cube and sphere rose atop a bed of unfolding triangles, energy beams firing from the cube’s four corners. They strafed the ground ahead of Rogers, pockmarking the basalt with fiery red flashes. Apparently no longer delayed by the decisions of its crude programming, the weapons moved with extraordinary speed.
Rogers skittered to a halt. Nowhere to hide, he leapt forward and up, directly beneath the still-returning shield. Catching it mid-air, he used it to block the deadly rays.
All four guns focused on the shield’s center star, hitting so powerfully that he was thrown back into a roll as he landed.
He’d ducked and dodged those beams often enough during their first encounter. This time, though, the Skull was somehow able to second-guess his evasive efforts. In a lightning display of the combat acrobatics that had been his most reliable offense and defense for decades, Cap avoided three of the rays. The fourth hit him square in the arm, below the right shoulder. It sliced through his uniform and the thin membrane beneath, searing flesh and muscle.
“Yeargh!”
Growling in pain, his right arm suddenly useless, Rogers headed for the only cover available: a meager basalt outcropping less than half his height. As he tumbled behind its jagged contours, Hitler’s voice rang out once more:
“Und jetzt wird die welt sehen…-skrk-”
The recording was cut off—replaced by living, but far more strident, tones: “Halt die Klappe! It’s my turn now.”
Fitting that the man once groomed as the Führer’s right hand would be the one to finally silence him. But this was no time to dwell on the irony. The searing agony in Rogers’ shoulder was subsiding, but it was still more than enough to keep him on the defensive. Stooped behind the columns, he watched and waited—but not for long.
The terrible metallic sound he’d first heard at the Seine echoed off the cavern walls. Tendrils formed by the countless triangles stretched toward his cover. Coordinated with the movement of the arms, the four beams fired again.
Seared, the basalt crackled and snapped, losing inches by the moment. Then, like the speeding teeth of a massive chainsaw, the triangles hit, chewing away at what was left of the stone and sending hot flecks in all directions. Most pinged off Cap’s shield, but a few struck his uniform. Despite the heat-resistant material, thin trails of smoke rose where they touched.
In seconds, he’d be completely exposed. He tried to flex his right arm. Moving it was anguish, but at least the bone and muscle were intact. Still, he doubted it would bear much pressure. He’d have to rely on his left for even simple moves. That meant shifting the shield to his wounded arm.
Rogers wasn’t perfectly ambidextrous like Hawkeye. He favored his right. Still, he’d had to use either arm often enough. He only wished it wasn’t at this particular moment, against someone like the Skull—and with so much at stake.
The diminishing basalt cover was glowing a brittle red from the heat. Any move he made would have to be fast. Clenching his teeth, he forced the shield’s straps over the damaged limb. The initial pain was as sharp as it had been when the ray first hit, but it didn’t last as long. The swelling wound made the fit excruciatingly snug, but at least he’d be able to move now.
And just in time.
He dove from behind the crumbling basalt, avoiding the focused attack—but making himself an easier target. The beams reconfigured. The slicing triangles dogged him. He leapt to avoid the next blast, then bent over backwards as the razor-sharp edges carved the air he’d occupied a moment before.
In the past, when the arrogant Skull thought he had Rogers at his mercy, he’d linger in the heady illusion of impending success. As a matter of routine, Schmidt would toy with him—giving him space to breathe, to counter, and ultimately to prevail. Not this time. Whether he’d learned from past mistakes, or the nearness of his own death made Schmidt feel a need for expedience, he wasn’t bandying a
bout.
He was going in for the kill.
And he was using an incredibly powerful weapon to do it.
Ignoring his throbbing arm, Rogers kept his focus on eluding the constant onslaught. He needed time, even a few seconds, to plan some sort of counter.
“Fury? I could use some help, here. Tony?”
A vague digital crackle filled his ear, intelligible words few and far between.
“… can’t… Kade… enter…”
The comm went dead.
Stone outcroppings few and far between, the closest cover was either the containment facility or the bunkers. The bunkers, full of people, were out of the question, so he made for the facility. The tentacles, already too close for comfort, picked up speed as they followed. There were fewer complete misses as the energy blasts nicked and notched his uniform. Some hit close enough to raise welts on his skin.
Rogers was at the entrance when his eyes caught a dull sparkle from a dark-red pool near the white foundation. His eyes shot toward the source: the missing agent’s body, curled up as if hastily hidden. It must be the Skull’s work. Dr. Kade was likely in similar straits. Unable to tell whether the agent was dead, Rogers instinctly slowed for a closer look.
He never got it. The ground at his back erupted, hurling him forward. It was all he could do to avoid the tearing metal edges of the snaking tendril that came at him next.
Trying to steer the battle away from the bleeding form, Rogers clambered to the roof. There, he spun to briefly face the approaching behemoth. The beams kept firing, making his arm throb as they hit his shield. The tendril, though, had receded. With a rapid series of clicks, the triangles coiled like a cobra, preparing themselves for a massive strike.
Veteran of a thousand battles, he used the half-instant to study the Sleeper collective. The control area in the sphere had to have some sort of monitoring capability, but he didn’t see any.
“Skull, what’s the point? You’re dying anyway!”
“The point? The point is for you to die first!”
The tendril shot at him. Diving down the rear of the building, he felt an edge glance the back of his head. It didn’t particularly hurt, but he thought he might be bleeding.
There was no time to check. Before he could land in the small space between the isolation chamber and its view of the cavern wall, he heard the corridor walls and support beams splinter. Carving a massive hole through the building’s side, the dull-gray tendril exploded at him in a flurry of tattered white construction material.
Falling the remaining distance, he landed on his back. The tendril passed inches above him, hundreds of sharp edges tearing at the star on his chest.
If the Skull got that close again, Cap doubted he’d survive.
The tendril hit the cavern wall. It lodged there for only a moment—but in that moment, Rogers acted. He slapped his shield against it, using it to bound up along the triangles and grab hold of the column. The tops of the natural hexagons made for easy climbing. This time, though, the tendril didn’t bother coiling back for the next attack. It stretched up after him, sparking against the iron-rich rock.
He tried to head left, where the larger outcroppings might provide better cover, but the beams forced him higher. Again, the Skull somehow guessed what he was up to and used his weapons to steer him to the right.
Focused on staying alive, Rogers hadn’t noticed how far he’d traveled. The bunkers were practically below him. The roof of the nearest, once a smooth white, already looked like the surface of the moon. When a red beam glanced his shield and ricocheted below, it left a thick, burning scar on the building, revealing insulation and power cables.
Chunks of broken basalt tumbled around him, slamming the damaged roof. Even if the debris didn’t kill anyone inside, breaching the bunkers would expose them to the virus the Skull carried.
How far to the surface? He looked up. In the darkness, it was impossible to tell.
“At least let’s take this outside, so the others won’t be hurt.”
In response, the Sleeper’s main body, rolling along the sphere in its center, moved nearer the bunkers.
“And give up the wonderful advantage that your self-sacrificing efforts afford me? Nein.”
Though the Skull was doubtless willing to sacrifice lives to achieve victory, his movement toward the bunkers was only a distraction. The beams still fired at Cap; the tendril still shot upwards.
This time, Rogers did have a plan.
The rays ate away at his handholds, inching toward his gloved fingers. When the tendril came toward him, he didn’t try to dodge. Jumping, he pulled the shield free from his injured arm, brought his knees to his chest, slid the shield beneath his feet, and landed on the wildly clacking surface. Standing on the shield, he rode along the tendril’s length with a sound like a giant’s nails scraping a blackboard.
When the scarlet beams veered toward him, he angled to increase his speed, making them miss. As he hoped, they hit the triangles instead, interrupting the connections between them. Damaged, the length of the tendril at his back clattered to the ground. For several long moments, the Sleeper ate itself. Finally, it turned its beams away, letting him ride what remained of the arm unhindered.
It had taken so long for the rays to stop, Rogers realized the Skull must have had to override the controls. The targeting was still essentially automated. A weakness, then. But how to exploit it?
Below, only a few of the fallen triangles were seriously impaired. Most were already reassembling, stretching to rejoin the blunted arm.
Before it could come after him again, he hit the ground and raced away from the bunkers, toward the larger outcroppings. A few yards from the columnar walls, he felt a hard pinch at his back. The next instant, scores of triangles hit. Rather than shred him, they lifted him, slamming him hard into the cavern wall and piercing the stone to form a tight cage that held him in place. Limbs dangling, Rogers barely managed to hold onto his shield with the two fingers of his wounded arm.
As the tentacle kept him pinned, the main body of cube and sphere shunted to his side, as if for a better look. Had the Skull given in to a sadistic urge to see him die up close?
No. It wasn’t that. As the triangles pushed deeper into the rock, the edges of the cage cutting him, he felt a sudden warmth along the exposed portions of his body.
The sphere was heating.
“What are you doing?”
“As I mentioned earlier, killing you.”
He struggled against the triangles, but they only pressed harder, digging deeper into the rock. Hairline fissures formed in the rough surface of the weakened stone.
The heat intensified. “True, I could just have the blades rend you, giving you a very quick version of a death by a thousand cuts, but I promised to incinerate you.”
Cap’s face pressed sideways into the cool basalt. The rising temperature felt like noonday sun against his cheek. It reminded him not so much of lying on a beach as being staked to desert sand.
“Promised? Who?”
“Your Dr. Kade. His desire to have you burned was the reason he released me.”
The revelation sent a wild shiver of rage through Cap’s body. That maniac. He thought this was the best way to stop the virus? The triangles compensated for his frustrated movements, pushing so hard that the fissures in the stone lengthened.
“Usually I don’t feel particularly bound by my word, but it’s such a pleasure in this case.”
“A thermal blast in the confines of this cavern will kill everyone in the bunkers!”
“Yes, exactly. A pleasure. You could learn something from Dr. Kade. He has no qualms with killing to achieve his goals.”
The sphere went from warm to hot, making him squirm. The triangles pushed. The fissures deepened. “At least he believes he’s saving the world.”
“Tsk. I have always fought to save the world. From weakness, from incompetence, from the whining rule of sheep. That is how…ach!”
The Skul
l’s startled grunt took Rogers’ attention away from his pain and back to the Sleeper. A small gap had formed between the sphere and the cube. The sphere was disengaging. From the Skull’s reaction, it wasn’t something he’d expected.
It had to be some sort of automated safety precaution to prevent the thermal blast from damaging the other components. If Rogers could keep it from completing that directive, it might throw a wrench into the robot’s weird mechanisms, at least delay the explosion.
But how? His shield was stronger than whatever the Sleepers were made from, but bleeding, aching, and burning, he could barely move. Even if he did manage to wedge the shield against the sphere on one side of the hollow cube, he’d need something else to block the sphere from the other side to keep them from separating.
The sickly smell of burning hair filled his nostrils. The heat was singeing his eyebrows.
Head pinned, blue eyes dancing from point to point, he searched his shrinking world for something to use as that second wedge. The stone was too brittle. Part of the Sleeper? The few broken triangles were too far away. Even if he freed himself, the sphere would be loose by the time he reached them.
And then, as the pain that tormented the rest of his body equaled that of his injured arm, he realized what he could use.
Himself.
Using the magnets would draw the shield to the side of his glove, but he’d need it in his hand to throw it. His wounded limb trembling from the heat, he pulled at the rim of the dangling shield with his fingers, inching it into his gloved palm. Once he had it, he stilled himself, gathering his reserves—but only for a moment, lest the distracted Skull notice. Then, with the same strength he used to barrel through concrete, he tensed every muscle. When the triangles responded, burrowing even deeper into his flesh and the stone, he screamed.
He screamed so long and so loud that the Red Skull chuckled.
With an ear pressed tightly to the basalt, he heard it crack. He screamed again. It was partly a genuine release, partly a way to focus his adrenaline, and partly a way to conceal the sound of the breaking column.
Marvel Novels--Captain America Page 20
