Steve Rogers, best known as the star-spangled hero Captain America, was surrounded. Surrounded by those he’d usually call friends, yes; but this was a moot point, considering they all wanted to kill him…
“Be honest, old ally,” declared Thor, Asgardian God of Thunder, as he raised his enchanted uru hammer Mjolnir in readiness for the fatal blow. “Did thee suspect thy death would be delivered by a comrade’s willing hand?”
“Hands plural,” corrected Janet van Dyne, the winsome Wasp, as she hovered upon gossamer wings and extended a slender finger, preparing to execute a lethal, bioelectrical sting. She smiled prettily, those wings pulsing with a hypnotic thrum.
“Gauntlets,” intoned the unmistakable voice of the crimson-and-gold armored sentinel Iron Man, a circular repulsor disc glowing brightly in the center of his open palm.
“Arrows, actually,” said Hawkeye, nocking a shaft in his bow and taking aim. “One arrow. No tricks, no gimmicks. Just a good old-fashioned steel-tipped arrowhead right through that inscrutable noggin.”
“Or maybe a single punch, augmented with a cosmic energy charge, clouting your brain out through the back of your mulish skull,” Ms. Marvel snarled, balling a fist. “Or—”
A red-gloved hand was raised, stilling the tumult of voices. Cap gazed at each looming face in turn – the faces of his fellow Avengers – and grimaced.
“Please,” he said, with strained politeness. “Not meaning to be rude, but do you think we could get on with this? I have to be somewhere by five o’clock…”
The five murderous heroes stilled abruptly – and literally. They froze, in mid-movement, a head inclined here and a jaw locked there, like a snapshot in time. Not a flinch, not a sound save, perhaps, for the all-but-indistinct whirring of machinery, low and steady as a mechanical heartbeat. A dead giveaway, that.
There was panic throughout the subway station, civilians scurrying for cover amid squeals and yells as this costumed fracas developed in their midst. Children were weeping and more than one voice was raised in a call for the authorities; ironic, considering the Avengers were more often than not the highest authority available whenever the city or the world was menaced by some super-powered threat. But who was courageous enough to stand firm when the heroes themselves turned upon one another, as if in some mindless Civil War…?
A pair of icy blue eyes narrowed in the slits of a distinctive mask.
Stand firm? Well, what else? Captain America didn’t know the meaning of the word surrender.
Cap gazed evenly at each aggressor in turn once more, those blue eyes as cold as steel. He was tall and broad through the shoulder and chest, athletically lean but also possessed of a body honed to physical perfection and corded with wiry muscle, all sheathed in a gleaming bodysuit of red, white and blue. A decorated man in so many ways, proud to wear the stars and stripes of his nation’s flag; a man whose sole purpose was to represent his people, not his country, not the government, but the people of the United States, the common men, women and children. He was America’s hero, America’s champion, as well as the whole world and, when necessary, even beyond. When it came to defending the weak against tyranny, Steve Rogers wasn’t restricted by political or territorial borders. A man of the people was simply that, no more, no less.
Cap glanced away from his assailants now and stared off into the middle distance, not at anything specific but at the unseen enemy he knew was lurking out there, as enemies so often did. “How about it, Samuel?” he asked, evenly. “You want to finish this?”
There was a moment’s pause, but then – with a sudden flurry of activity – the five surrounding antagonists instantly fell away, their heads jacking backwards on retractable necks and splitting in twain, their chests erupting in star-shaped clefts and their limbs coiling and snapping and stiffening into extendable steel tentacles that commenced thrashing at the air in frenzy. Hot oil spat as that earlier mechanical beat intensified, now accompanied by clockwork chatter. More tendrilous entrails slithered free from those newly-ruptured chest fissures and sundered throats, dripping dark lubricant like blood. Thinner wires followed, lashing back and forth like thousands of spider legs, as the motorized drone escalated still further to a high-pitched banshee whine.
Highly advanced robotic engineering, elaborately fashioned to resemble the familiar intimacies of the human body… at least up until the moment that the inhuman components were revealed.
It was monstrous.
But Captain America didn’t flinch.
“Finish this?” a disembodied voice hissed, seemingly from all directions at once. “Oh yes, old friend, an entirely reasonable request. And the Machinesmith would be delighted to oblige…”
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#1
MAY 11 |
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“Man Out Of Time, Man Out Of Body”
The attack had occurred some thirty minutes earlier, approximately midday, at the intersection of Nostrand Avenue and Eastern Parkway. A girl of no more than six years old had drawn Steve Rogers’ attention to a supposed supervillain incident taking place below ground, and he’d investigated without a flicker of suspicion.
But wasn’t that Captain America all over? Trusting to a fault. In mitigation, he didn’t possess Wolverine’s enhanced sensory instincts, or Daredevil’s ability to tell lie from truth, or Spider-Man’s uncanny sixth sense for danger that bordered on mystical precognition...but, even so... For all his many admirable qualities, he could be so damn gullible at times…
Obviously, with hindsight, the cute little six-year-old had been a robot. And, equally obviously, it was child’s play indeed for a man like Samuel Saxon – not that man was the appropriate term, not any more – to hack into New York’s citywide security camera network and track Cap’s movements, allowing him to launch his assault at any juncture that most suited him, which in this instance was the Nostrand subway station. It was all a game to Saxon; he enjoyed the chase and, when he’d played his hand, he’d been looking forward to toying with his enemy like a cat with a mouse, hence the elaborate charade with these robotic doppelgangers.
But Steve wasn’t a man for games; as well as being gullible he was a certifiable party-pooper. Honestly, these villains, if it was fun they wanted then they needed to pick their adversaries more shrewdly. After all, there was a reason why Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery was always fit to bursting…
Heading down into the subway, Cap had been attacked from all sides – the bludgeon of Thor’s hammer and Iron Man’s energy rays, a flurry of Hawkeye’s exploding arrows and needling stings from a miniature Wasp, and the pummel of Ms. Marvel’s energy-infused fists.
Except none of it was authentic.
Cap had realized that almost immediately – he was gullible, yes, but not stupid – not least because these Avengers weren’t the Avengers, not any more. And, besides, a blow from the true Mjolnir or a real Carol Danvers punch would have taken his head clean off his shoulders, regardless of how deftly he utilized his shield to protect himself. Of course, it went without saying that his friends wouldn’t have wanted him dead anyway, as these assailants apparently did, but in Cap’s world it was prudent not to rule out mind-control until he could be sure he was facing replicants.
Steve hadn’t determined his foes’ true origins straightaway, but cool analysis of these ‘Avengers’ and their movements had led him to suspect they were mechanical rather than organic, and there was something in their quarrelsome speech patterns that triggered a grim recognition: Saxon.
He’d been inactive for a long while but suddenly the Machinesmith had returned with a vengeance…
“An interesting motif,” Captain America said, eyeing the thrash and flail of Saxon’s tentacled robots. “John Carpenter influence, yes? The Thing?”
The mechanoids began to moan and shriek in response, clustering together and threading their tendrils with an oily slither. They spat and clicked and hummed, merging into one throbbing mass. It was more than unsettling; it was nightmarish. Cap’s analogy was spot-on.
“See, now, that’s what vexes me about you,” Machinesmith’s incorporeal voice snarled irritably, emanating now from the point where half of Thor’s shattered face was busily fusing with Ms. Marvel’s ample chest, punctuated by the miniature wriggle of the Wasp’s shapely hindquarters as she was slowly absorbed into the synthetic pseudo-flesh of the whole. “Movie references? Cultural insight? You’re a fraud, Rogers. It’s all about the façade.”
“Excuse me?”
“O Captain, my Captain…you are a liar. A living myth rather than living legend. What’s behind all the mindless rhetoric peddled by the infatuated media? A man, nothing more!”
A steel tendril, similar in basic design to one of Doctor Otto Octavius’ tentacles, whipped out at high speed from what had once been the false Iron Man’s collared throat. Cap anticipated the trajectory of the strike and moved with it, exhibiting surprising grace for a man of his size and stature; he shifted his weight and pivoted, arching his back and bringing up the wide, circular disc of his shield to deflect the oncoming blow. The shield, fashioned from a unique blend of Vibranium from Wakanda and another experimental metal alloy, was faultlessly weighted and designed with both offensive and defensive capabilities for close-to-mid-range combat, as well as protection. It was Captain America’s signature weapon, his symbol, and it had saved his life more times than he could possibly calculate...such as now.
“I’ve never pretended to be anything other than a man, Saxon,” Cap retorted, rolling away from another flurry of searching tendrils. “A man who does the best he can and, in that respect, no different from hundreds of thousands of other men and women, every single day.”
“Lies!” Machinesmith screamed. “They see you as something more, so unquestioning in their faith. A man out of time, they call you. The soldier, the World War II veteran in everything other than body, an anachronistic anomaly in the modern world…but that’s not true!”
Machinesmith’s composite beast of metal and wires and oil and engineering surged forward, slithering and lashing about and constantly changing form as more facets of its horrendous body splintered and re-fused into ever more lurid approximations of amalgamated humanity. Two more tentacles whipped out, one slamming against Cap’s shield as the other curled between his legs and immediately tightened about his knees, intending to snap his limbs like kindling. Cap leapt and slid free at the last possible moment, hurling his shield away in mid-coil. The shield impacted squarely in the center of the advancing robot, causing it to stagger; gaining a second’s respite, Cap danced clear of his enemy’s reach and readied himself for the next salvo, gathering his rebounding shield cleanly with an outstretched hand.
“The myth, Captain, is designed to conciliate a disaffected people,” Saxon’s voice persisted. “The twenty-first century is a time of angst; anxiety over climate change, economic depression, terrorism, environmental disasters, the depletion of fossil fuels…this is the information age and the majority of that information tells the world to be scared, to be terrified for themselves and for their children and the broken world they’ll be inheriting.”
“But then there’s you: the perfect throwback to a bygone era, a time when America was strong, respected; when news footage could be controlled and rationed to portray every international incident in a positive light. A world where the Pearl Harbor attack provoked sorrow but also inspired strength and patriotism rather than encouraging fear and inflaming racial and religious prejudice, the legacy of the 9/11 atrocities. A time when America recognized its enemies and was united against them, not divided as it has been since Vietnam. You represent that world, Captain, you and your newsreels and the media bombardment of wartime imagery and the nostalgia and the innocence.”
More tendrils attacked but this time they were a diversion; as Captain America steadied himself to meet this new assault, and to determine a weak point in Machinesmith’s composition so he could exploit it, the asphalt and marble beneath his feet suddenly erupted in a fragmented fountain. Coiled steel stalks exploded upwards like the sinewy trunks of fairytale beanstalks, slamming into Cap from beneath and carrying him high into the air, towards the arched ceiling of the station concourse. The air was filled with renewed screams from those onlookers still crowded at the perimeter of the battle and by the relentless spit of hot oil and accompanying mechanical whine.
“But I see through you!” Machinesmith roared, delighting in battering his helpless enemy against the plaster and aluminum beams overhead. “Because we’re so alike, you and I. Me, the remnants of human consciousness and intellect – a human soul – surviving in a synthetic cadaver, the essence of the God in the machine; and you, enduring the passing of generations with your augmented body frozen in suspended animation. But whilst we are eternal, immortal, we are not men out of time. I will not be an antiquated relic a century from now, for I will adapt; and you, reawakened now from your enforced slumber for a decade, you are no mere historical artifact. How can you be? You, a dedicated and stoical man existing now in an age of technological advancement – you are no Neanderthal idiot.
“Did you read that recent editorial that did the rounds in all the magazines and newspapers? Now that journalist was an idiot, claiming that you were obsolete, an irrelevance, and questioning your worth to the nation and its people because – in his facile words – you didn’t claim an interest in NASCAR or social networking websites or rap music. The preposterousness of it, as if any of that could ever matter anyway, but, more so, that someone would proclaim their own ignorance so loudly. You, Captain America, a representative and active agent of SHIELD, the most advanced law enforcement operation on the planet; you, a friend of Hank Pym, Tony Stark, Henry McCoy, Reed Richards and T’Challa; you, a man who prides himself on understanding precisely what the country’s citizens need and who would single-mindedly research every social, political and scientific avenue in pursuit of that goal…you are no anachronism.
“But there’s the lie, Captain. There’s the betrayal. You let the world believe in that displaced icon the media perpetuate. You let these talentless hacks write their mindless drivel without recourse. You allow this misrepresentation of a man who – and again, I quote – doesn’t listen to music any more current than Glenn Miller. Who wouldn’t sit and eat popcorn whilst watching a lurid horror movie. Who calls women ma’am and who disapproves of cussing and who still believes in freedom and justice and the American way…but you know as well as I do that such symbolism is opium for the masses and that you’re every bit as much a modern man as any of your peers.
“You don’t tell me that you don’t pretend to be something other than what you are!”
If Steve was listening to what Machinesmith was screaming at him, at least on some subconscious level, he didn’t let it distract him from the task at hand; being slammed repeatedly into unyielding stone, plaster and aluminum was diverting enough, after all. Fortunately his trusted shield was tucked in between his upper body and the ceiling, absorbing each impact with the scarcest measure of transmitted vibration, and that gave him the opportunity to scan his immediate area for something he could use. When he glimpsed a wide banding of fluorescent strip lighting close by his eyes narrowed in icy determination. For his next move, timing was everything…
Machinesmith’s horror-bot was juggled its captive like a star-spangled tenpin skittle, thrusting him back towards the ceiling with a shriek of pure malice – but in that moment Captain America tucked and twisted, pulling himself free of his enemy’s coiled tendrils just enough to sweep out an arm and slice through the body of the nearby strip lighting with the perfectly curved edge of his shield. Glass shattered and stark white light flared and there was a corrosive snap of electrical discharge.
Cap shifted and stretched, gritting his teeth against the agony coursing along his spine as he strained against his bonds. He leaned towards the now-exposed electric cabling, raking his shield back along the length of the light canal as one of Machinesmith’s tentacles reared to recapture him...just as Cap had hoped for. Abruptly reversing his momentum, he slammed his shoulder into the searching tendril and planted it squarely into the fizzing heart of the naked fuse array, reconnecting the immediate circuit.
The thrashing robot below didn’t scream as thousands of volts of electricity suddenly channeled along its quivering tentacle – it was, after all, a construct that didn’t feel pain – but the effect of the powerful charge was spectacular nonetheless. The mechanoid stiffened, quieted and then its core detonated in an explosion of hot metal and sizzling lubricant, a nova of flashing intestinal wires. Cap felt the looped coils loosen about his chest, waist and legs and instantly kicked free, dropping back to the station platform with a grunt.
He whirled, ready to face another onslaught, but the immediate threat was curbed: Machinesmith’s nightmare amalgam was breaking down before his eyes, melted from the inside out and belching nothing more menacing than sparks and clouds of acrid black smoke. This battle, then, was won, and just as well as Cap, so recently recovered from major injuries sustained during an attack on the Avengers mansion, wasn’t in any fit state to continue fighting after the battering he’d just received. Nonetheless he stood tall and alert, anticipating that Machinesmith wouldn’t accept defeat with grace…
“This is just the beginning, you know,” a small, sweet voice said.
Captain America turned and glared down upon the same six-year-old girl who’d lured him down into the subway. She still appeared human in every way, save for one difference: her eyes were now glowing with a hot amber pulse, like a flickering ember.
“I envy you, you see,” Machinesmith hissed in the robot girl’s voice. “The two of us, eternal, but whereas you can still be a man, Rogers, I cannot. No matter how deftly I craft new bodies to house my lingering sentience, I will never again be human. Because of that…yes, I envy. And I hate. And I shall destroy you. Not today, it seems, but soon, if only to prove that you’re not as immortal as everyone thinks. You can die, Captain America...and I’ll be the one to prove it…”
The girl shivered then and was still, her head falling and the light in her eyes burning out. Even though she wasn’t alive it was still a thing of sadness.
And Steve Rogers’ soul trembled, the uncanny sense of someone walking over his grave.
Within a year, Captain America will be dead.
A prophecy, imparted to his fellow Avengers by way of the time-traveling menace known as Immortus. Machinesmith’s proclamation was either cruelly ironic, or else it was a far more pertinent threat. Steve didn’t know how it was portended he perish; could Machinesmith be responsible…?
And, thinking on his enemy’s words…was Saxon right? Did Cap deliberately mislead the general public by choosing not to counter that popular misconception so often attributed to him? A man out of time in the physical sense, yes, but culturally he had adapted. There was little in this modern world that remained a mystery to him, and he was nowhere near as out of touch as misplaced romantic nostalgia – or bitter journalistic resentment – liked to suggest. Was it wrong that men and women thought of him so fondly not because of who and what he was but because their personal perceptions of him brought comfort, and inspired memories of, in their minds and hearts, a better America from another time? Was it even unpatriotic to admit that?
Captain America grimaced, surveying the damage to his immediate vicinity and carefully studying the faces of the crowd that had begun to return to the scene now that the conflict was apparently done. There was shock and fear, but also hope and the sense of triumph along with expressions of relief, optimism, faith, affection. Did it matter how they saw him so long as the decorated man before them was deemed an inspiration?
Immortal, no; whether he died within the year or whether the future could be changed, the man wasn’t eternal. But immortalized? Yes…Captain America, the icon, was a symbol, an ideal. One that Steve Rogers pledged to uphold every day that was allotted to him.
“Yes, you’ll be back, Samuel,” he murmured, “you and all the others. But never forget this: you’ll always find Captain America waiting…”
Elsewhere in the world…
In Delvadia, a small South American nation of cruelty and ruin, a woman runs for her life as night falls, knowing that danger lurks in every shadow. If she can reach America she can disappear. But there is scuttling in the darkness, the skittering of spiders, and she can already taste the touch of their poison…
In Seattle, a man lies dying, choking on his own blood. The instrument of his death protrudes from his throat: a curved span of polished wood, beautifully handcrafted and utterly deadly with its razor-encrusted edges. A boomerang. And a gloved hand, reaching out to reclaim it, whilst the other hand grips a top-secret document marked Epsilon…
In California, in a private and secluded airstrip just outside Sacramento, a tall thin man in an iron mask finally emerges from a darkened jet, having waited close to an hour for the sun to set and for the coolness of dusk to fall. The man has no entourage and neither does the woman who has arranged to meet him here, but mutual respect means there is no hazard or acrimony, and this is just the latest meeting of many as the woman’s sinister plans unfolds…
And in the sultry depths of the Florida Everglades, something truly terrible stirs…
…something, like all these other events, that will come to plague Steve Rogers, Captain America, in the year to come. The last year, perhaps, of his life…
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To Be Continued...
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