Nervously the young woman, her brunette hair tied into a messy ponytail contrasting with the sleek black business suit she was wearing got out of the car and headed for the visitor entrance. The car-park was buzzing with activity as workers hurriedly filled trucks with large crates while security staff watched over the affair making sure that nothing went wrong. Entering the building the woman vanished, lost in the bowels of the Legacy building seemingly unaware that she had left the rear passenger window of her car open. If anyone had been watching they still wouldn’t have noticed the tiny fibre optic cable snaking out of the car but since nobody was the first steps of the Thunderbolt infiltration of the complex went unnoticed.
GoodJamags: Well, it’s not really since that, since they wouldn’t have noticed anyway.
“She’s inside.” Diana told Abe as he pulled on the last piece of armor. “Tracking camera ion beams and mapping fields of vision.” she added creating a holographic map that displayed the cameras turning and highlighting the areas surveyed in red. “Tapeing a section of test footage for overlap.”
Camera… ion beams?
GoodJamags: Sure, doesn’t your camera have those?
“Did you run the simulations for the shot?” Abe asked.
“Affirmative Iridium.” Diana replied, “Sending tactical data to you’re visor now.” A second later Abe’s visor lit up with lines and vectors that would lead his chosen projectile to its target, in this case a section of Diana’s cyber-neural system to the video wire on the nearest camera. Stepping out of the car Abe aimed the dart rifle that he had purchased from a hunting store and pulled the trigger. He waited for a long ten seconds before Diana gave him the all clear and stepped out of the car herself. “I’m into the video network and plotting the fastest and safest route to the lab. By the looks of it security does rounds every ten minutes so as soon as we get in we have a limited window to get the data we need and get out without being seen.”
There had to be an easier way to do that.
GoodJamags: But the technobabble!
“And that’s just the easy part.” Abe grunted. “Melissa is getting the worst of this mission.”
GoodJamags: She’s been getting the worst of every mission.
Melissa sat in the waiting room and watched the busty receptionist typing in her details, or at least the details of Melody Stern, the new acoustic technician. Thanks to some ‘black hat’ action from Diana, ‘Melody’ had been transferred to the Lusk facility as well as getting the back pay she was owed for five months working at Legacy. By the time anyone would figure out the Thunderbolts would be long gone and Legacy would have more then a few thieves to deal with.
I love that the only description we get of the receptionist is “busty.”
GoodJamags: I’m imagining a featureless plastic dummy.
To be fair, we are in third-person limited. Maybe that’s all Melissa noticed.
“Miss Stern, Dr. Coleridge will see you now.” the receptionist called. Melissa got to her feet and nodded before walking into the office opposite where she had been sitting. The room she found herself in looked too much like the interrogation centre in the Raft and the man sitting in the chair, Coleridge, looked too much like a hardened thug for her to feel comfortable. “So Miss Stern is it.” Coleridge sneered looking at Melissa with hungry eyes, “Good record and even better results, we’d be lucky for you to stay here.” he grunted. “Just a few questions, you know the drill.”
GoodJamags: “I need the audience to know this character is evil.”
“Hm, should I have him say or do something evil?
GoodJamags: “Nah, I’ll just have him say something completely mundane, but while sneering.
“Yes.” Melissa replied trying to sound like she knew exactly what was going on.
“Do you class yourself as homophobic?” Coleridge asked.
“No.” Melissa answered. Over the next two minutes she was asked if she was racist, ageist and a secular zealot, all of which she answered no.
I don’t think there are very many people who self-identify as bigots.
“One last question.” Coleridge asked, “The most important one of all. Where do you stand on the mutant question?”
“Mutant Question?” Melissa asked feigning ignorance. “Do we do business with mutants?”
“Good one.” Coleridge sneered, “Do we do business with mutants Miss Stern?”
*Alarms blare*
Oh, great. You gonna help with this?
GoodJamags: No, not really. Have fun with the Agents!
I hate you.
“No.” Melissa answered. She could read Coleridge’s tone of voice and facial expressions when the word mutant came up without using her powers. She had wondered where she had heard the name Legacy before and she had an inkling as the meeting progressed, she only hopped her concerns were simple paranoia.
GoodJamags: Do… do her powers give her some special insight that tone of voice and facial expressions don’t?
Abe and Diana crouched behind a stack of crates about to be moved and watched as a pair of guards walked past. “Window begins now.” Diana whispered as they slipped out and headed for the door. “Displaying time on HUD.” she added as Abe opened the door and led the way along the corridor. Diana had highlighted the trail for them to take on his HUD with a glowing green line. After breaching the perimeter and evading two patrols whilst crossing the warehouse floor the two minutes light jog to the lab should be easy going. As predicted the trip was uneventful with no guards appearing and the camera programmed to ignore the invaders, reaching the lab’s door it took Diana twenty seconds to crack the digital lock and another ten to mimic the last hand scan the palm reader had encountered. After what seemed like an age the door whooshed open and the two Thunderbolts scuttled inside, their window still displaying over seven minutes of action.
OK, this scene is actually sort of all right so far, but it does have that problem where having a plan described and then executed without complication feels like seeing the same scene twice.
“Jack into the network.” Abe ordered as Diana slipped under a work station. “I’ll cover you and check the sample Melissa stole from Sanders to see if we have a match with anything under the microscopes. Diana stuck her head over the top and nodded before re-submerging back into an ocean of exposed wires in an attempt to access the computer’s hard-drive. Abe walked over and poured a few drops of the vaccine onto the mass spectrometer to compare with the flasks of liquid out on the lab surfaces. “Oh Crap.” he whispered.
GoodJamags: So despite the extent to which I don’t computers, it seems to me that you shouldn’t have to dig through exposed wires to reach the hard drive.
And I’m not particularly familiar with mass spectrometry, but it seems like something that should be a little more complicated and time consuming than “walk up to the machine and put the things in it.”
“What is it?” Diana asked.
“The vaccine is an isomer for a toxin from the Legacy Virus, the one used to terminate mutant genes. I should have known that the concept that the vaccine was based on sounded familiar.”
“Is the virus still around?” Diana asked, her voice showing signs of worry as she watched the progress bar for her complete system downloads count up towards one-hundred.”
“No it’s extinct but it looks like the scientists here have created a pseudo strain that mimics the same effect. If it got out it could quite quickly become a threat to mutant populations.”
Oh, also
*Insert obligatory COVID joke here*
“So is it dangerous or not?”
“To us probably not but I’d rather destroy it before it’s released.” Abe announced, “We can denature the samples with heat.”
GoodJamags: Wait. Wait a minute. Whatever other science fails are happening here, it’s a vaccine that resembles the Legacy Virus. You know what that means it probably is?
I’ll pretend I don’t so you can finish-
GoodJamags: A CURE FOR THE LEGACY VIRUS!
“Then you may want to head for the processing centre annexed to this lab. From what I can see from data stored on the network they generated twenty kilos of the stuff in a day.” Diana replied, “We’ve got to be quick our window is getting narrower.”
Wait. Wait. Stop. Hold on. Wasn’t there only one vial of this stuff? I thought that was the whole point of the last two chapters.
GoodJamags: Yeah, if they have twenty kilos of it in this facility, then who cares whether the Sinister Six steal some single sample?
On an unrelated note, I hate you.
GoodJamags: I do my best.
“I can see.” Abe answered, “But we have to stop this before it starts up. I just hope Melissa is doing okay, who knows what these creeps have hidden away in here.”
GoodJamags: Yeah, actually, there’s another point. Did we ever learn what the point of her half of the plan is?
Well there’s nothing to jack off to in this half.
Melissa followed Coleridge down the hall towards the acoustic science lab, covertly shooting glances at the doors off to the side and preying that Abe and Diana were not suddenly going to come barrelling around the corner with half a dozen security agents on their tail. As they reached a large circular room, Coleridge stopped as a small lean faced man came to intercept him flanked by two security agents there hands resting on the pistols holstered on their belts.
It’s, um, convenient that they have an acoustic science lab in this immunological research facility, by the way.
“Dr. Lackstone what is it?” Coleridge asked the man.
“An alarm sounded in processing. Somebody brought a mutant into the room.” Lackstone explained.
GoodJamags: Wait, are you going to try to convince us that Diana is a mutant even though she’s clearly an alien robot?
“A test subject perhaps.” Coleridge suggested.
“All subjects are accounted for sir.” one of the guards announced, “Johansson and I checked them personally.” he added a cruel smile spreading across his face.
Unless Abe is a mutant here for some reason?
“We mobilised a squad to check it out.” Lackstone added.
“Good bring me that unclean basted so we can continue operations unhindered, the more power sets we experiment on the more effective Project Seraph will be.” Coleridge bellowed.
Took him a while to find his mustache, but now that he has, he’ll be twirling it much more effectively.
“Test subjects?” Melissa asked
“We have full field testing facilities here. We can show you if you want?” Lackstone wheezed displaying his yellow rat like teeth. “Johansson show our friend the test subjects, she had been cleared for it right?” he asked Coleridge.
“Yup, we asked her if she was homophobic and she said no, so we’re pretty sure it’s OK to show her our highly illegal bioweapons research.”
“Yes Miss Stern will be working on the sonic deterrent we’re working on although if Seraph succeeds in the outside world like it did in the lab then that and all other work will be pointless.”
GoodJamags: Should we make a joke about…?
Too easy.
“Come with me Miss Stern.” Johansson growled before grabbing Melissa’s arm and pulling her away from the centre of the room. As they entered the corridor he opened a door and threw her inside before closing it behind him. Rising her hands in a defensive position Melissa watched as he loomed over her before being stuck with a fist, the blow knocking her to the floor as Johansson put his foot on her chest pining her to the floor. “You filthy bitch, I know what you do here and I’m giving you a warning, get out of here before the hammer comes down, I’ve read you’re file and frankly you’re better then this. Do you really want to be associated with the genocide that’s about to happen?”
“You’re better than this, hence the name-calling on my part.”
Melissa shook her head before staring up into the man’s eyes; she recognized the sparkle and smiled. “Erik what are you doing here?”
GoodJamags: Hm… *typetty type* Not finding anything for this name.
“Who the hell do you know my name Miss Stern?” the guard bellowed pulling out a firearm and pointing it at her. “Are you the contact SHIELD promised to send me as back-up?”
Wouldn’t there be some kind of code phrase or something for this?
“No.” Melissa replied reaching up and removing her ID mask. “But I’m on you’re side.” Erik looked down and smiled before stepping off her chest and helping her up. “Well if it isn’t SHIELD’s most wanted.” he said giving Melissa a hug. “Never thought I’d see you working for a collaboration of crap like Legacy.”
GoodJamags: Oh, hang on, maybe this is Erik Josten. Some description or elaboration would have helped. That’s Atlas, one of the founding Thunderbolts. He gets big.
And I have no clue why anyone would send him on an infiltration mission. His powers are the opposite of helpful for that and he’s kinda not the brightest bulb.
“I don’t Abe and I were following a lead after we had a showdown with the Sinister Syndicate over the theft of an experimental vaccine.” Melissa told him. “He and an associate are down in the lab looking for any information on whether Legacy hired the Syndicate to steal the chemical and bring it to them.”
This plot hurts my brain. The inexplicable genetics lab in the ass end of Colorado somehow created the same vaccine as this big company, except the company’s vaccine is not a vaccine and is instead an actual virus they’re trying to spread, so why would an unaffiliated group create an identical formula and why would the company not want it to be on the market? Competition would drive prices down and spread it faster, which is what they’re trying to do. And the first scene of this arc still said it was a flu vaccine, and vaccine or not, the Legacy Virus is not a flu.
“Abe’s in the lab.” Erik stated, “Does he have his armor?”
“A prototype and that’s it.” Melissa answered, “Why?” Erik frowned and cocked his weapon before turning to her, “Because security is heading in that direction.”
GoodJamags: Inexplicably.
Abe watched as Diana manipulated the room’s climate controls. Already feeling the heat build causing the vials of chemicals to curdle and explode into geysers of froth. As the first machine stalled alarms began to sound, warning the occupants of the building that there was a chance of an industrial accident. Abe hoped that Melissa would take the cue that something bad was about to happen and leave before it was too late. As he scanned the room a grating mechanical noise begun to sound over the beeping alarm and a section of floor retracted to reveal an ascending lift in the centre of the room. Abe peered at the passenger before ducking behind a console as hails of gun-fire erupted from the new arrival. Abe had seen something like this before, it was a mechanical exoskeleton equipped with military firepower, but the real tell of the suit’s owner was the smiley face plastered over the helmet. The examples he had seen had been used by an anti-mutant group called the Right.
“OK, Mike, I’m gonna need you to go into the room full of sensitive equipment and chemicals we’re trying to protect, and fire indiscriminately at anything that moves.”
GoodJamags: Wait a minute, are we ripping-
“Diana we have to leave.” he bellowed as the Right Exoskeleton strode forward still firing the Gattling gun it was clutching.
GoodJamags: -Yes! We are! This is ripped from the same Red vs. Blue scene that The Shadow Warriors stole from that one time! The badfics are all connected!
Diana looked at the approaching enemy and shot a terrified glance over at Abe before darting out of cover and sliding under a conveyor belt, the exoskeleton turning and opening fire on her giving Abe enough time to move to the next console. “Melissa if you can here me get out of here.” he mumbled before priming his suit’s grenade launcher and targeting the Right Exoskeleton’s leg joints. Popping up from behind the console he fired, the shot slamming through the suit’s leg joints and sending it toppling, the stored munitions igniting and causing the room to glow a hellish red as the temperature of the vials reached critical levels. Rushing over to where Diana was hiding Abe looked down and saw her looking down at her feet.
Wait a minute, is there a person in this exoskeleton? Or are we doing another fight scene with empty clothes?
“I’m sorry.” she whispered, “I heard stories about that.” she pointed at the exoskeleton. “About how they burnt hundreds due to religious zeal and intolerance.”
GoodJamags: You “heard stories?” When? You’re from space.
“There not so tough.” Abe snorted, “The Scorpion hit harder then that.” he added with a devilish smile. One that quickly evaporated as the lift opened up again and a second Right Exoskeleton emerged.
GoodJamags: So where’s the first one now?
Don’t-
GoodJamags: Does this make one of them the Left Exoskeleton?
Stop-
GoodJamags: I guess there’s only one Left anyway-
Please shut up-
GoodJamags: With those guns, I guess you could say they got the Right to bear arms-
Moving right along.
Melissa darted down the hallways and stairwells, not bothering to hide her powers anymore. Not that anybody tried to stop her or Erik; they were too busy running for their own lives as alarms sounded. Only the truly zealous would stay and they would be sent to stop Abe and Diana from escaping. Reaching the lab door she felt sonic energy build up inside her and blast open the door, the steel sheet flying across the room and impacting against the wall. Racing through she found a second barrier, this one boiling hot and pushed on it with her powers, the force causing it to fall outwards and a jet of flame to shoot out scorching her clothes. Abe and Diana were in one of the corners trading fire with a suit of armor, a smiley face pasted on the front mocking them as it smashed through computer consoles and melting assembly lines.
Nice job preventing the research from being destroyed, guys.
“Get them out of here.” Erik snarled. “I’ll deal with Mr. Happy.” Melissa nodded and watched as Erik expanded until he was forty foot tall. Darting forward, sonic energy shielding her from the heat Melissa grabbed Abe and Diana and expanded a bubble around them as the Right Exoskeleton turned and opened fire on Atlas until he simply reached out and crushed it. Smashing through the clearing Melissa looked down and saw the former Thunderbolt grow even larger and simply step out of the building, smoke poring out the holes they had made before simply exploding.
GoodJamags: Did… did that help something?
“So much for stealth.” Abe mused, “Not that I mind but where the hell did Erik come from?”
I’m wondering that myself.
“He was doing an op for SHIELD.” Melissa replied, “If it wasn’t for him then I would never have reached you in time.” she added steering the bubble down towards the ground, landing next to the wreckage of the team’s Ford Taurus. “What happened?” she asked as Erik shrunk down so that he could stand next to them without them having to crane their necks up too much.
GoodJamags: In time for what? They were winning.
“The vaccine was being turned into a biological weapon by Legacy. My guess is that they hired Sanders to complete the initial metamorphosis and then went into mass production.” Abe explained. “Diana overloaded the production lines so it all went up in smoke so hopefully it will never be used on anybody.”
But then-
GoodJamags: Don’t try to make sense of this plan.
“Well that’s my job done.” Erik muttered, “SHIELD offered me amnesty if I investigated a claim by a former employee that Legacy was refining something nasty. If you want I can vouch for you now that it’s over.”
“Oh no.” Diana moaned.
“Oh that’s not good.” Melissa announced.
GoodJamags: Wow, rude.
“We didn’t get all of it.” Diana said, “The trucks, they put some of the finished product in a bio-bomb for delivery at a school in Westchester.”
Wait, then they aren’t disguising it as a vaccine? What the fuck is this plan?
“They mentioned a field test.” Melissa announced, “If that bomb goes off there will be a war between humans and mutants.”
As is usually caused by isolated terrorist bombings by fringe extremist groups.
GoodJamags: To be fair, this is the Marvel Universe.
Oh, yeah, no, that sentence would’ve been sarcasm anywhere else, but I meant it.
“Not if we can stop it.” Abe growled, “Now let’s catch those trucks before they get out of range.”
Coleridge stumbled out of the remains of the Legacy Pharmaceuticals building his phone already on and the number dialling. “Hello Ms. Dale I am in need of your assistance once again. We are willing to offer triple the amount if you help get our cargo to its destination. Yes thank you. Goodbye.”
What makes you think it’s in danger? And how did you survive?
Coughing he turned to Lackstone as the diminutive man wiggled out of the wreckage. “The Right will prevail, with those idiots from the Syndicate backing us up then the sabotors don’t stand a chance. Get on the phone with Wren and tell him to create a second lot of the phase one product. We need to move quickly before we loose the advantage of surprise.”
“What of the mutant terrorists that attacked the facility?” Lackstone asked.
“They will go after the trucks.” Coleridge sneered, “And when they do they will fall at the hands of the Right.”
Should I even ask how they intend to-
GoodJamags: No.
Thunderbolts #8
It’s a race against time and the Sinister Syndicate as the Thunderbolts attempt to catch the Right before they can detonate their bio-weapon at a certain mutant school. What will it take for the Thunderbolts to succeed? Find out in the finale of Something Sinister.
It will probably take very little because these villains are hideously incompetent and their plan makes no sense. But that does close out the chapter. It was short, but I’m typing this paragraph one hour and some change before it’s supposed to go live, so screw it.
*SLAM!*
Library of the Damned 
So apparently the security guards who are “watching over” the entire parking lot don’t give a rat’s ass about a mysterious unauthorized dude stepping out of a car with a rifle.
If you’ve produced an “ocean” of exposed wires just to access a single desktop computer’s hard drive, you have done something terribly wrong and the computer will likely never be quite the same again.
Not even in it, just on it. Because mass spectrometers are technically members of the barbecue grill family.
There are certain bacteria, like anthrax and botulinium, that are dangerous not because of themselves but because of toxins they produce when they break down. However, those are bacteria and not viruses, and to my knowledge there are no viruses with this mode of activity. Additionally, isomers tend to differ radically in properties, so an isomer of a protein in the Legacy Virus could be used for something entirely unrelated or even as a vaccine against the Legacy Virus. In fact, given how vaccines work, if this place was actively culturing live, fully functional Legacy Virus they could still be working on a vaccine against it.
What the fuck kind of climate controls can make a room hot enough to boil water, and how are they still able to be in the room while that’s happening?
Damn, quasi-scooped.
Gosh. Wow. How creative.
Aren’t they still inside?
Then again, that has also been literally most of the 21st century so far.
And weren’t there mutants being held hostage in this building that Melissa knew about just before she blew it up?
Actually for that matter how did the entire building blow up? There was a vaccine production line in a single room. Sometimes drug and biochemical reactions are conducted at elevated pressures, but the pressure vessels are fairly small. This sounds more like there was a whole petroleum plant or something in there.
So, I read that as the building collapsing because Erik went giant while still inside it, but rereading, I’m not so sure of that.
Rereading, I’m no longer particularly sure of anything.
No no, just the smoke exploded, but only after it left the building.
“I don’t Abe and I were following a lead after we had a showdown with the Sinister Syndicate over the theft of an experimental vaccine.”
Oh, I were, were I?
Do you even Abe, bro?
That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
If a supposed vaccine explodes in a warm room, what the fuck would have happened when it was injected into a living person with a normal body temperature?
Melissa: Sorry, fresh out of teleportation.
She didn’t purposely use those powers, it just kind of happened.