Sam, Rhodey, and I landed on the grounds in front of the prison complex. As we walked into the courtyard the Omnitrix beeped red, timing out and putting me back in human form. I grabbed my Model 3 rifle off my back, hefting it and making sure it was still in ICER mode.
The place was littered with bullets, blood, and soldiers. I felt disturbed at how quickly I'd gotten used to scenes like it.
Team B walked up to join us. Bobbi and Hartley had removed their helmets and were standing side by side near the main entrance, while Bucky chose to keep his own helmet on, his head swiveling as he kept an eye out. Creel was in pale white form, looking as though he was made of cotton. His spider silk form, Darwin bark specifically. He glanced up at us from where he was sitting, giving me a nod that I returned.
"What've we got?" Sam asked as soon as we were gathered.
"The whole upper complex is a front," Bobbi answered. "Full of guards, but anyone in charge is most likely down below."
"Want us to interrogate the guards left alive?" Bucky asked.
Sam thought about that. "...Do it. Creel, Hartley, Dial, you three go in. The rest of us will stay out here. Uh," Sam rubbed the back of his head. "Hey Dial? I've watched horror movies too. There's no chance our comms will suddenly shut off, will they? You know, static and then we can't talk to each other."
Everyone turned to look at me. I blinked. "Our comms are Quantum. We can talk to each from across the universe, and there are more firewalls on our gear than the entirety of the world, all of it backed up by Upgrade and Jury Rigg tech. Seriously, if HYDRA had anything locked up down there that could get past all that, they'd already rule the world."
They gave me a blank look. I don't think it was because they didn't understand, more likely they wanted to make sure I wasn't claiming my ship was unsinkable.
"No, we won't have a cliché comm cutoff," I said with a sigh.
"One day you need to show me whatever you guys are talking about," Bucky said with a sigh.
"Okay, move out," Sam said.
As I turned to leave, Rhodey tapped me on my shoulder. "Be careful, okay? We don't know what's in there."
"Well, if they have anything genetically wrong with them..." I tapped the Omnitrix.
Rhodey shook his head. "Don't make assumptions. Stay on your guard, and watch out for those two."
I looked over at Creel and Hartley, one a giant man now the same color as titanium, the other a woman in advanced plate armor with a broadsword. "I think they'll be fine," I said sarcastically.
The War Machine's faceplate lifted up to show me Rhodey's face. He smirked. "Yeah well, we all know you're the Hulk on our team, so..."
I chuckled, walking away to join Creel and Hartley while Bucky, Bobbi, Rhodey, and Sam went to start their interrogation. I wished, for a moment, I had an alien that could help with that. Something with telepathy or whatever.
I choose to focus on what I could do and raised my gun towards the one door leading in or out of the place. "Ready?"
Creel reared a foot back and launched it forwards, giving the door in hard enough to send it flying, revealing the narrow concrete hallway beyond. "Ready."
Hartley and I shared a look as Creel went inside with the confidence of a man who can turn into metal.
"You heard the man," Hartley said, her helmet snapping over her head. "We're ready."
I grunted in agreement and we followed the Absorbing Man underground. Going down the hall, we were suddenly enveloped in darkness, the red strobe of an emergency light barely illuminating things.
"You know, for all the jokes about horror movies, I really expected this place to have better lighting," Hartley mused as we walked through the hallway.
"Activate thermals," I answered.
"Yep," Hartley said.
"Should have got one of those helmets," Creel muttered.
We came to an elevator with only one button. I hit the button, but nothing happened. Sharing a look, Creel grabbed the doors and shoved them open, revealing the dark shaft beyond. He leaped in, falling down for a few seconds. Soon, a loud boom noise came from the bottom, along with the sounds of metal ripping and tearing.
"All good!" Creel yelled up the shaft. "Only about two hundred feet!"
"Only, huh?" Hartley said. She leaped down, the lights on her armor glowing to illuminate her way. Once she was at the bottom, I jumped as well. My HUD let me see the bottom. I activated the jumpjets before I hit the elevator Creel had destroyed, slowing to a stop to land through the hole he'd created and on the inside. Creel and Hartley stood outside the elevator, Hartley with her Model 3 out, Carl in his steel form.
I stepped out as well and looked around the dark hallways. From the elevator, they went left, right, and forwards.
"So, which way should we go?" Creel asked.
"Split up?" Hartley suggested.
"Not a chance," I put my gun on my back and reached for the Omnitrix. "I won't be able to talk in this form, but I can sense whatever's down here. Follow my lead."
I pressed down and felt my armor disappear in an instant, replaced by orange fur. My eyes sank away and I went down on all fours, fingers changing into claws that I clenched, slicing the concrete beneath me and held back the urge to roar as I completed my transformation into Wildmutt.
"Huh," Hartley said in a fascinated tone. "He's a dog."
I growled a bit, then took a whiff of the air.
Hm. The left hallway smelt like death and decay most strongly. The right one smelled like steel and oil.
But the one straight ahead smelled of people, of electricity, flesh, and food.
I turned to Creel and Hartley and barked as quietly as I could, walking towards the middle hallway. They followed me as I prowled forward, sniffing at the air.
While the hallways were no longer dark thanks to my enhanced senses, things now seemed like they were on fire to my vision. I followed the hallway, taking a deep whiff of the air. I salivated at the scent of fresh meat, unable to help myself. While I was still me, Wildmutt still felt hunger as something altogether more primal than I did.
My claws scrabbled on the ground as I walked, Hartley and Creel behind me. We went for a long while, the scent getting stronger. Soon, we came to a vault door. It went wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor, and looked as thick as they come.
"Well that's foreboding," Hartley noted. "What the hell do you think they have locked down there?"
Creel stepped forward and put a hand to the steel. "Let's find out." His hand changed temperature in my senses to match that of the vault doors, then sank inside. He'd demonstrated this before, the ability to phase through the material he'd changed into. He rummaged around inside the vault's internal mechanisms for a bit. I growled in irritation as my enhanced hearing picked up the sounds of his metal fingers scratching and moving against the inside of the door, tiny screeching noises filling the air.
"Easy boy," Hartley scratched me at the nape of my neck, and I growled with reluctant pleasure at the feeling of her fingers running through my fur, even with the armor covering them. "Almost done, big guy?"
"Yep," Creel moved his hand out of the door and moved to the lever, twisting the large wheel in the center of the door, twisting it. After a bit, the door slid open.
I felt myself salivate at the new scents that followed. Pain, fresh blood, and fear, the scents of prey, along with loud whines of animals.
The door swung open, and the three of us walked into the place beyond
Cages. Cages all around us, arranged in rows, five high. They were as big as prison cells, with stairs and catwalks leading up to the top.
We walked up to one of them and looked inside.
A mass of flesh rested in the corner of the cage, about as big as my human self, with multiple human arms, legs, and eyes poking out of flesh, all different sizes. The eyes focused on us, and I growled in disgust. What the hell had HYDRA done?
"God," Creel looked in another cage, Hartley and I moving over to it with him. It was a dog, but not like any dog I'd ever seen. Later, Hartley and Creel would tell me its skin was the shiny color of metal. The cages metal, to be exact. To me, it was more like it was extremely hot. It moaned at us, clearly in pain from the metal, concrete, and plastic spikes poking from its body. He, based on the scent it was male, was connected to an IV that went up to a tube in the roof, the substance inside smelling like a slurry paste of food.
"It's like... me?" Creel said, horrified.
"Someone is going to pay for all this," Hartley growled.
A sudden sound drew me attention. I snapped my head towards it, growling.
A cage had been opened. Running footsteps ran from us, then another set of them came towards us.
I barked, getting Hartley and Creel to turn as the creature released from the cage came around the corner. My barking set off others in the large warehouse, but I focused on the creature coming towards us.
It came to a stop around the corner and stared at us, eyes enraged.
It could have been a tiger, once, the catlike portions and the orange fur with black stripes screamed it. Now it was mutated, front legs overly long, portions of its skull exposed, muscles grossly large. I roared at it, and got a horrific scream in response. Then the poor animal began to grow even more grotesque, as it's body began to heat up. Hartley later told me that it had also changed color from orange to a far more unsettling shade.
"Aw, crap," Hartley whispered as it changed it's fur to a familiar shade of green. "It's gamma-enhanced!"
The tiger screamed, leaping towards me.
I roared back, my anger and disgust towards HYDRA focusing on the animal before me, and I leaped for it as well.
The two of us clashed in mid-air, landing on the floor. It's claws went for my throat, but I ducked my head down and bit into its shoulder, hot blood filling my mouth. The tiger screamed, pushing me back and clawing my face, leaving four lines of white hot pain across it. I roared in rage, digging my claws into the tiger.
We rolled on the ground, slashing and biting each other. His right paw aimed tried to swipe at me again, smashing a crater into the ground when I dodged. I roared and scratched at his chest, warm blood pouring over my front and back legs. He bit into my shoulder, teeth scratching at the Omnitrix, and slicing into me. We rolled into a pillar and shattered it under our strength. Creel ran towards us, trying to help me.
More sounds filled the air as cages were opened up all over the place. Something leaped over from another aisle and crashed into Creel, something that had once been human, but was now covered fur, scales, and whose arms had been replaced by cybernetic ones.
"Goddammit!" Creel yelled, shifting into his polished vibranium form before bringing his legs up and kicking upwards, launching the creature back. The creature tried to attack again, only for an ICER round to slam into it's head. The creature screamed but stayed standing.
Hartley stepped forward, her Model 3 lifted high, and fired another ICER into the creature, hitting it twice more when it refused to go down. It finally fell.
I was still fighting the gamma tiger. The thing was stronger than me, but in a weird way. It was like it was getting both weaker and stronger at random. One second I was fighting a weaker opponent, pushing it to the floor with a triumphant roar, the next it was picking me up and slamming me into a concrete wall. I roared in it's face, ducking my head under a blow and uppercutting it with my claws. The gamma tiger went flying up, landing on top of the cages. I ran towards the cages and leaped up, clawing my way to the top. The gamma tiger rolled to its feet and screamed at me. I responded with a roar, snarling as we came closer and closer to each other. The tiger was healing, but slowly, the scent of it's leaking blood giving me enough that I knew I could beat it.
And god I wanted to. I could feel the blood of the tiger soaked into my claws, my own wounds throbbing. The smell of it incensed me. There was this feeling of primal rage inside me, an anger I could barely contain. I roared, letting my anger be known, proclaiming my dominance.
For a tense moment, a Wildmutt and a Gamma Tiger face each other on top of cages filled with roaring and screaming monsters. The tiger finally lost it's patience and rushed me, it's heat signature blazing in my sense. I jumped out of the way, grabbing one of the pipes that was on the ceiling and twirling around it to go back at the tiger, clawing it in the face hard enough to send it down to where Hartley and Creel were fighting. Several dogs that had been mutated into more hideous gamma creatures were attacking Creel, who tossed them aside for Hartley to take down with as many upgraded ICER bullets as she could, needing three at times for each one. One of the released dogs simply lay on the ground, it's eye staring out from a face that had been severely mutated, legs coming from a mass of flesh as it released muffled whines of pain.
One of the dogs, something that must have once been a husky but was now a disgusting mismatch of gamma enhanced muscles, spikes, and exposed bone, rushed me. I swiped a paw out, smacking the animal into the ground, spinning around to face the gamma tiger and running for it. Another dog was smacked aside, then I leaped up as the tiger did. We smashed into each other and I held it down on the concrete as the creature roared in my face, it's legs scratching at me and the floor. I bashed it in the face, cracking the concrete under its body. We rolled over once more before I smashed it back to the floor. I looked around for a moment, before deciding to cut my loses.
As best as I could, I spoke to the Omnitrix, snarling at it.
"Understood," my voice came from the Omnitrix, with more of a monotone tinge to it. "Repairing genetic damage."
A green beam slammed into the tiger I was holding down. It screamed, it's voice high pitched. As the Omnitrix did its work, the scream began to change, lowering and rising in pitch until it became the roar of a healthy tiger, the orange and black animal still struggling with me, but no longer with superhuman strength, its fur and skin returned to normal.
I threw the tiger aside, where Hartley shot it with an ICER, sending it to blissful sleep, then snarled at the Omnitrix again.
"Repairing genetic damage," my voice said.
A green beam slammed into the dogs, then the human, then some of the beings in the cages. I struggled to stay up as my energy was drained, trying to keep the beam going. The screaming dogs began to calm, Creel holding one up for Hartley to knock out.
I gasped, snarling in exhaustion. But I wasn't finished. I-I had to keep going. I snarled at the Omnitrix. More beams flew out, heading deeper into the area, flashes of light going along with it. More and more, leaving me stumbling in exhaustion, the sounds of people shouting in excitement, crying, dogs, cats, and other animals roaring and barking. My furred form fell to the floor, and I struggled to rise up again.
"Warning, energy reserves depleted. Cycling to recharge mode."
The Omnitrix symbol on my shoulder changed to red, and I fell to the floor in my human form again, my cheek pressing to the cool floor. The last thing I saw was Hartley and Creel rushing towards me as a dog excitedly barked in a cage nearby, freely changing it's form to steel and back.
"Well that won't end well," I muttered before passing out.
------
I woke up to feel someone shaking my shoulder. When I opened my eyes, Hartley was smiling.
"Hey, kid. How you feeling?"
A groan slipped from lips, and I raised a hand to my head. "Exhausted. I wanted to wait until this was over before I cured anyone."
"It was a good call," Hartley answered, putting an arm under my shoulder to help me up. "Everyone stopped attacking us. You cured almost everyone."
"Almost?" I looked around.
Creel was letting people out of cages. They were naked, since HYDRA apparently didn't care about the modesty of its 'failed' experiments.
Others, however, hadn't gotten off lucky. People with arms that had been replaced with those of animals, ranging from bears to stumpy gator claws, a woman with legs made from some sort of steampunk machinery, a man whose lips had been sewn together. Whatever had been done to them, it wasn't genetic. They looked at those who were cured with a strange combination of jealousy and happiness.
"X," I said pulling away from Hartley to stumble over to a computer moniter I could see at the very back of the room, sitting innocuously on a desk. "I'm going to link you to the nearest computer. Any signs of escape?"
"Nothing so far, sir," X said. "I'm having satellites check the area for any suspicious activity as well. Whoever is in there hasn't left."
"G-Good," I struggled into the chair in front of the computer and raised my hand up. Catoms in my gauntlet shifted as I put my hand on the computer under the desk. They entered the computer, and the monitor began to flash with files.
"Why couldn't we hack this before?" Hartley asked, walking up to join me.
"X's tech is awesome," I admitted. "But it's not magical, not really. He can hack something as long as it's every been connected to the internet, or interacted with a device that has done the same, barring whatever Sterns is doing to protect HYDRA. Nothing in this facility was ever linked up... until now."
"Correct sir. I'm logged in. Accessing files..."
"Dial?" Director Hill messaged me, sounding confused. "We just got a data drop from X. Is this from the facility you're in?"
"Yep," I replied. "We're going to need those reinforments. We have former prisoners in need of rescue. Well, and normal prisoners too I guess," I said, remembering the guards. "Falcon, you reading?"
"Yeah, we got you. We're heading in too," Sam said. "One of the prisoners told us they have something deeper in, a monster they wanted to be able to fight the Hulk, but apparently they couldn't control it. If that's true, you'll need the backup."
"Something that could fight the Hulk?" Creel walked up, looking at the prisoners. "And should we wait until people can come to help these guys?"
I looked at the prisoners, who were staring at us. A girl, couldn't be more than five years younger than me, was crying on the floor, clutching her legs as a man hugged her with similar tears in his own eyes. None of them approached us. I didn't know why, but maybe they just weren't sure what was happening.
"I'll stay," Hartley said. "If there is something past here that can fight the Hulk, then you two are our best bet."
"That's true," Creel patted me on the back, turning into his raw vibranium form so that he was now glowing blue. He looked around at the people, who stared back at us. His fist clenched. "...We need to make them pay."
"We will," I got up and we started walking away. "We'll see you soon, Warrior."
"Take care, fellas," Hartley walked over to the people, speaking to them in soothing tones.
Creel and I went into a hallway that led to the back. "X, what is this thing? Their counter to the Hulk?"
"Unknown," I blinked as files flew up into my HUD, X flashing through them. "There is no name in the database for the being in question. However, some of it's characteristics and capabilities have been named. It's eleven feet tall, covered in pale white fur with a grey underbelly. It's resistant to most forms of attack, but can also heal from damage, and it prefers... It prefers to eat flesh. Human flesh."
"What in the hell?" Creel growled.
In the meantime, I feeling myself pale. No way. No way HYDRA had gotten their hands on that thing, let alone for any amount of time.
"Hey," I looked over at Creel, who seemed worried. "You okay? That watch is still red."
"Hm?" I looked at the Omnitrix. "Yeah, I'm fine. It just took a lot of energy to cure all those people and animals. Until then," I grabbed my Model 3 off my back and mentally changed the ammo, a bright blue glow coming from it. "I'm good."
We came to another vault door.
"Enough of this," Creel said, pissed. Switching to his refined vibranium form, Creel reared back to punch it open, not going for subtle anymore. His first punch left a massive dent. The next two made the whole tunnel shake. The last sent the door flying inward.
We stepped inside me with my rifle up, Creel still in processed vibranium form, and found two bodies on the floor. I kneeled down next to one, looking it over. Big portions of the body had been torn away like something had eaten them. Bits of cloth from a lab coat told me he wasn't a prisoner, rather that he worked there. I held back my gag reflex at the horrendous sight of his skull wrapped in bits of meat, scratches from teeth etched into him.
"That thing is out there," I said, looking at Creel.
"Apparently it hates HYDRA as much as we do," Creel said grimly.
I looked at the Omnitrix, grunting at the still red light, then rose up to my feet. "Sam, reinforcements come in?"
"Army has vehicles to bring everyone in," Sam confirmed. "Although you could have told us Creel broke the elevator. That's going to make things tough."
Creel grunted in acknowledgment but said nothing.
"We'll be down soon. Be careful."
Right on cue, something could be heard down the hallway. I raised my gun as Creel moved in front of me. Nothing else happened. We shared a look, then moved forward.
------
Author's Note: So in canon, some facilities were destroyed by HYDRA as part of their attempts to hide/fight back. The Graveyard is based around that. So yeah, its kind of a horror show in there. I didn't go to in depth, since this is still a superhero story at heart, but HYDRA really did horrific things to people.
As for the Omnitrix curing people and animals, it's a power it's shown before, and the Paradox Omnitrix, the one Dial has, can do the same. But in the show, we see that doing it on a large scale depletes the Omnitrix. It varies, but considering the fact there are multiple people and animals with varying afflictions, I thought it made sense for the poor watch to be a little tuckered out.
So, yeah... not much else to say. Next Chapter, Creel and Dial vs '?'.
