"The Cartel has at least twelve known metahumans. Two speedsters are obviously what you're focused on, Arakiel; though Terminal will be meeting us there, so we shouldn't worry about them. We don't plan on being there long enough to deal with any others." Silver looked at the trio. "But. The locals would be more than happy should we handle them on their behalf. Most of them aren't much more dangerous than a man with a gun, but there are at least two with superhuman durability. Imperious, you've got those. I'm assuming you're ready for an armored target?"

The angel shrugged, and hefted the flail. "That's why you've got a backup flying brick on the team, right? For when Excalibur is out of action?"

He chuckled. "Cascade, crowd control. This is on the edge of town, so we should have much we have to deal with, but for any unarmed locals, nonlethal suppression. If they start shooting at us and aren't wearing uniforms, the locals have... encouraged... us to make sure they don't survive."

The woman; wearing, oddly enough, a sleek pink outfit this time; Arakiel wondered if she swapped colors for each outing; nodded. "Bounties again?"

"Every single known cartel member has a bounty on their head, and they will pay out, dead or alive. They don't want the local cops getting caught in the crossfire, or tipping off the cartel, so won't be informing them until after we've arrived; so don't bother trying to capture."

Arakiel shook his head, glancing out the window at the rough, sandy terrain passing by below. The aircraft was different, but this felt familiar; flying through the desert at night with a group of fellow soldiers to strike some random target. It was odd, to be the source of the intel for the strike. He hadn't really had a chance to see Cascade or Terminal in action yet. Would this be the day? Or would the enemy not even arrive until after they were gone?

"And what about Disaster?"

Silver chuckled. "The boss wants him back home to chat, but that particular aspect, you're on point. Carrot and stick approach; we want to offer him a job, we're willing to arrest him. But unless he tries to kill one of us, he's to be considered a noncombatant; we don't know what he's doing for the Cartel out here, whether he's willing, kidnapped; he might be making horrible weapons of mass destruction, or he might be locked in a cell. Or some blend of the two."

As the aircraft slowed down, drawing closer, a thermal image popped up on the wall; showing a warehouse with a variety of heat sources inside; most of them what looked to be equipment, at least two people inside, and two more outside. "... Hell. Just four people, one of them probably Disaster? I think we might be overkill."

Silver studied it... and nodded. "Maybe. But. I'm also reading thousands of EM sources that could be drones, or mines. I'm thinking we EMP the place first, then you lead the way. You can spot traps before they trigger, right?"

Arakiel chuckled. "Of course. Though, it does need to be something I can see."

The aircraft settled into place overhead; and shook for a moment. "EMP launched. Everybody go."

Even as the door slid open, Arakiel could see the two guards vanish off of the display; two uniform, humanoid blobs replaced by smears of warm concrete; as he hopped out into the air; triggering the jets to let him gently glide to the ground outside the warehouse door; he could make out the two former Cartel guards, now splattered across the ground, hopefully by Terminal. And... hear a strange, shrieking sound. He got a burst on comms; a digitized voice, as he could see Silver, Imperious, and Cascade, all landing behind him on the sand.

"This is Terminal. Engaged with two speedsters. Not as fast as me, but competent. Gonna be dealing with them for a few, currently chasing them westward."

Arakiel nodded, and patted the Anti-Speedster countermeasure at his hip. If either of them popped loose and came back, he'd get to surprise them. But... he blinked. "Back up, back up! We've got hostiles!" He raised the plasma rifle, and pulled the trigger moments before... a shrieking giant spider leapt from the darkness, only to explode in a shower of orange-red light and chitinous bits. It wasn't showing up on IR, and the night vision wasn't picking it up til moments before it would have struck; he backed off a few steps, firing quick, snap shots; each exploding spider sending superheated bits of its own flesh onto its companions. He was taking out a couple of them with each shot, but there must have been dozens, or more. It became a touch easier as Imperious suddenly lit up the warehouse and its surroundings with a powerful aura of light; revealing hundreds of spiders ranging from a foot across to four feet across, swarming out of an open fence gate, all apparently berserk.

He focused on the ones directly at the entrance for the next few seconds, trying to keep the swarm contained; but undoubtedly some had already escaped, he needed to keep an eye out around...

Everything was about to look... strange. Indistinct. He could see the world was about to go somewhat astray, but not why... and then... everything hurt. Arakiel shuddered as he was lifted off the ground, helpless, his limbs stretched out... and the Spiders all did the same, just floating in midair, shrieking.

Cascade stepped past him... and the pressure vanished. He fell to the ground, as she stood in front of him; tiny pink figure, examining one of the spiders closely as the others twitched and shifted angrily. ".... These things are dying. I can kill them, but... they need 'blood' pressure to move their limbs, and they're losing it."

Arakiel stretched for a moment. Had she just picked him up by the blood in his body? All of the fluids? "Ahh... security system of some sort. Released when we took out the guards, probably. Probably set to kill anything nearby, then die off before they could threaten the rest of the Cartel's operations. Unless they're gonna die right now, finish them off, please. We need to get in there, there might be even more fun surprises in store."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Cascade nodded, clenching her fist; and the shrieking stopped. All of the spiders suddenly crushed together into a single, twitching ball. "Close the fence back for me? Obviously these things have been altered, I'd hate for them to somehow recover from this and bite us in the ass."

Imperious chuckled, looking at the giant mass of exoskeleton crushed against the warehouse wall, and shut the fence; casually twisting the door latch so that it couldn't come back open. "Got it. You know what, I'm not gonna complain about not getting any kills on those. In fact, if there's any more spiders inside, you feel free, Cass."

Arakiel studied the twitching dead mass, and then the warehouse door; it had a keypad for entry, but... it wasn't actually locked. He raised his rifle; about to ask Imperious to open the door while he covered her... but he could see inside. There were no threats. Nothing would happen to him when he opened it.

Feeling strange about diverting from old habits, he just opened the door... and stepped inside, with Cascade and Imperious right behind him. He heart a momentary crackle of static. "This is Silver, I'll stay on overwatch in the chopper. Keep me updated."

As he looked over the inside of the warehouse, Arakiel could see hundreds of machines. Fabricators. Tanks full of unknown liquids. A giant vat full of strange, red orbs. Most of them still had lights on; the warehouse must have been shielded from the EMP. Which meant... there could still be threats.

He snapped his rifle up in response to a hiss, before a giant three-headed monster reared its heads... but... no. It just watched him... and then curled back in on itself in its cage, two heads down, while a third stayed glued to him, watching. It... was a komodo dragon? Or something similar. But... with three heads. And too big. Cascade stared at it as the trio approached the cage.

"This thing..... it's too big for its heart. The blood isn't pumping right. So there's a machine in there pushing it... but too hard. Someone tried to solve gigantism by slapping a blood pump onto it. It's..... not working." She glanced back at the doorway. "Those spiders. I think they all had something on them to regulate pressure as well."

Arakiel glanced down at her. "Regulate pressure?"

She pointed at the dragon. "Bigger animals need bigger hearts to pump blood and fluids around. If one gets too big, its heart can't handle the work, pumps constantly, suffers strain, and dies; or for some species, the extremities start to die off when they don't get blood to them, and it dies."

Arakiel saw the man approaching, and raised his rifle; to point at a disheveled man in a flowery bathrobe, wearing a pair of strange silver-blue goggles, who had his hands raised in the air; though one hand was covered by a heavy metal gauntlet. "Ahh! Precisely. I've been simultaneously trying to genetically engineer more durable, capable circulatory systems, as well as mechanical aids to allow larger creatures to prosper. I must confess that, were I to find a way, I'd likely create a Godzilla-like creature purely for the awe such a thing would inspire."

Arakiel slowly shook his head, as Cascade kept studying the multiheaded lizard in fascination. "Doctor Disaster, I presume."

The man bowed. "Yes, of course. Tis I! Now.... judging by the stunning, angelic beauty beside you.." He smiled at Imperious. "You must be the Silver Swords. I'm not familiar with this new armor... Are you Excalibur, with a change-up? Or Silver?"

"Neither. Just started, name's Arakiel. We're here to extradite you back to the US; though really, we'd like to offer you a job."

Disaster frowned. "Arakiel. Fallen angel. Watcher. Light armored suit, uses a rifle, thrusters.... Hmm. Super-reflexes and some form of ESP?"

He chuckled. "True enough. Good assessment. So what's the answer? Are we taking you back in cuffs, or are we talking job offer? We'd prefer to be out of here before your Cartel friends show up, but we wouldn't mind killing them if we have to."

Almost perfectly timed, he heard a burst of static. "Speedster one confirmed dead in the pacific. Speedster two headed back to shore, still evading." He heard it from both his internal helmet speaker... as well as from one on a console not ten feet away. Disaster glanced at it, and sighed. "Well now. On the one hand, I'm sure they deserved it. But still. You waste an overabundance of your life on something its hard not to be upset when it dies."

Arakiel nodded. "That's actually what we wanted to talk to you about. You have some means of creating a metahuman? Or copying powers from one to another?"

"No. Not reliably, at least. I've had a handful of viable results, only one at full effectiveness, over a hundred fatalities..." He glanced back at a door leading further into the warehouse, then leaned in closer, almost whispering.. "And thousands who they wanted me to inject, but I knew it would just kill them, so I gave them saline instead. I would appreciate if the Cartel didn't learn that. They didn't care if the odds were less than 1%, they wanted me to try anyway, and if they lost a thousand of their men to gain ten metahumans, they'd call it a victory."

Arakiel glanced at the same door, then back to Disaster. "Are we not alone in here?"

"Just a girl. Prostitute named Candy." He blinked. "Ahh, no. The Cartel will know she was brought here. When she goes home, they'll torture her for information. Kill her. Can we bring her as well? I don't suppose the budget includes enough to get her setup somewhere far north of the border; perhaps in Wyoming or Colorado? The Cartel doesn't operate up there for obvious reasons."

"...Yes. Our budget covers that." He studied the man. In the timeline where he and Apollo died together, the man had somehow created a Titan after lightning died, only for Apollo to kill both him and the new Titan. "Anything special about the ones that worked?"

Disaster walked over to a standing freezer a few feet away, and slid it open; revealing long racks of color-coded syringes, as the cold air fogged up the vicinity. "Every one of these is a genetic sample from a metahuman the Cartel either worked with, or managed to sneak a sample of, mixed with a viral payload that could, conceivably, alter a subject's DNA to more closely resemble it. The one that was a success? Two half-siblings, cousins with the same father, whose father had a low-grade speed mutation he wasn't even aware of. I copied the natural speed one had developed, and gave it to their... sister-cousin. I could reliably do the same to an identical twin, and maybe, just maybe, to a sibling, parent, or child; but only if genetics worked out in just the right way. And even then, only if its the right power."

He pulled out a yellow-labeled syringe. "The gentleman this DNA belongs to can turn his skin to metal, and absorb metal that hits him. Not just bulletproof; he even gets stronger when you shoot him, for a while. If he had a twin brother, it would turn whatever part I injected into a lump of dead metal, and he'd end up dead with flakes of iron cutting through his arteries til he bled to death. It did happen to one of his cousins, exactly like that; I gave it a chance of success of five percent. The Cartel considered that good odds"

He set the syringe back. "The only ones that actually worked; that could even possibly actually work with a chance of success better than a lottery ticket; must involve making the subject able to heal faster. Anything else, and they'll tear themselves apart. So if that's what your government wants from me... I'll gladly give them all of my data. But prepare to be disappointed."

Another burst of static. "This is Silver. We've got incoming. Not sure if its local police or cartel, but I'd appreciate some backup just in case."