“You’ll never believe what this crackpot is up to.”
Abner Jenkins spoke in a quiet, hushed tone as he cautiously looked around the general vicinity to make sure no one overheard him. His newly acquired position within Hammer Industries was a delicate one to say the least. If the wrong person caught him in the southwest stairwell talking to James Rhodes his life would be instantly placed in danger.
“Try me,” Rhodes replied via the cell phone connection. “Kragoff is a fruitcake.”
“He found a way to augment the effects of cosmic ray exposure in his pet apes. * I fixed the glitch he was having and now he’s about ready to start mass-producing a simian army. The guy’s gone over the edge, and Hammer is totally in the dark. He’s under the impression that the Red Ghost is developing a process to grant superpowers to human test subjects.”
* (As revealed last ish – D)
Abe thought he heard something in the upper levels of the stairwell and stuck his head over the edge to look up. He heard a door slam shut but there weren’t any footsteps coming his way. He let out a held breath and returned the cell phone to his ear. He had been there for less than a day, and already he was spooked. Being in a building controlled by the infamous Justin Hammer wouldn’t be good for his health in the long run.
“Obviously you’re going to have to shut him down,” Rhodes replied.
“Hammer or Kragoff?”
“Kragoff. You haven’t had enough time to spy on Hammer yet and learn what it was that the Wizard transmitted to him. This might actually be beneficial. Stop Kragoff and get on Hammer’s good side; earn his trust.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do that?” Abe demanded in a low, raspy voice. “It’s not like I can armor up while I’m here. And wasn’t Mainframe supposed to hack Hammer’s systems and find that info out? I thought I was here just to keep an eye on the guy.”
“Use your imagination for Kragoff. The guy’s notorious for being a loose cannon. I’m sure he’s left himself vulnerable somehow.” There was a pause and Abe thought he heard someone say something to Rhodes in the background. “I have to go. Mainframe got something out of Hammer’s systems but I had to cut contact before he could tell me what.”
“Where are you? What’s more important than this right now?”
There was another pause while Rhodes listened to someone speaking on his side of the phone connection. “I’m at a court hearing and the judge is threatening me with contempt if I don’t hang up. Happy was arrested for murder today. Contact me when you can.”
There was an audible click as Rhodes ended the call and Abe was left in the stairwell staring at his own phone. He was more confused than ever and apparently things were steadily going from bad to worse. There was no time to lull over the matter, however. He pocketed the phone and began to march down the stairs to the lower levels where the Red Ghost’s lab was, trying to form a plan along the way.
He had an idea of what to do, but if it didn’t pan out then he knew he might as well paint a target on his chest and call it a day. If he was caught he was sure that Hammer would have Blacklash fulfill the promise he made when hiring him, and Abe was a big fan of breathing.
“First day on the job,” Abe muttered as he pushed open a door and exited the stairwell. “Hope Hammer offers a nice life insurance policy.”
MARVEL REBORN PRESENTS
Gorilla Warfare
Part Two of Two
Written by D. Golightly
Rhodes clapped his cell phone shut, hanging up on Abe and ending the call. The judge game him an irritated look but motioned for the state attorney to continue with his argument. The courtroom was filled with a few dozen people, all of whom were waiting for their turn to stand before the judge and be given either a bail amount or remanded to the state’s custody.
Happy stood beside the lawyer that Rumiko had appointed, looking worried. He hadn’t been given an orange jumpsuit yet, but his hands and feet were already shackled to keep him from running. Normally a hearing like this would have been at least a week away, but Rumiko Fujikawa had pulled some strings to speed things up. Plus, having a staff of thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyers to make the right calls didn’t hurt either.
Rhodes was still shocked over what Happy had told him. Happy had been sobbing in Rhodes’ office, saying that Pepper had been shot and that he had been the one to pull the trigger. * Happy remembered doing it but he had no idea why, and oddly enough, he couldn’t remember when he had shot her, only that he had.
* (Last ish again – D)
The whole affair stunk to high heaven, but Rhodes had told Happy to cooperate with the authorities and turn himself in. If he was innocent then it would be stupid to hide this from the police and it would only made him look more guilty.
Rumiko sat beside Rhodes, staring intently at the judge. She looked calm, but Rhodes knew that she was anxious and worried. He didn’t blame her.
“Who were you talking to?” she asked after she leaned over.
“Uh…just trying to track down a lead on this whole Daedalus thing. I’ve got a guy inside Hammer’s operation. I think he’s involved.”
Rumiko nodded. Rhodes doubted that she would normally accept an answer as vague as that, but she was obviously preoccupied with other things. He made a mental note to revise his cover story and be more careful in the future when lying to her. He couldn’t afford to underestimate her, regardless of his opinions.
He did a mental double-take. Opinions? What opinions? His only concern for Rumiko was a professional one…wasn’t it?
“Your honor,” a young, well-groomed man wearing an impeccable suit, Happy’s lawyer, said, “I’d like to reiterate the fact that my client is not a flight risk. He doesn’t even possess a passport, and he turned himself in. Surely that should—”
“Your honor,” the opposing lawyer said, cutting him off. “The state isn’t interested in bargaining with a murder suspect of such a high profile.”
“It’s that profile that makes it ridiculous to assume that my client would run. Where would he hide after the media storm that is already brewing?”
“We request remand, your honor,” the state attorney responded, ignoring the comment. “Considering the friends Mr. Hogan has within Stark/Fujikawa, as shown by the expensive lawyers on their payroll, funds obviously aren’t a concern meaning that flight isn’t only possible, it’s inevitable.”
“Your honor,” Happy’s youthful lawyer began to argue, but a wave of the judge’s hand cut him off.
“I’m inclined to agree, counselor,” the judge said. “Given that Mr. Hogan has been fronted a team of attorneys through simple friendship, there isn’t much to stop Ms. Fujikawa from lending extradition as well. Bail is denied.” The judge finished off his sentence by slamming his gavel down hard, causing Happy to jump.
A pair of bailiffs came to take Happy away, gripping both of his forearms to guide him. He took a few feeble steps in the shackles and tossed a look over his shoulder at Rhodes. Desperation was evident in his gaze, and Rhodes wished he could have jumped over the wooden divider and shoved the guards away.
He knew someone had set Happy up, he just didn’t know how, why, or more importantly, who.
“Where have you been?”
Abe punched in the code to shut the security door to the Red Ghost’s lab and stalked across the room, doing his best to ignore the wailing apes. “Smoke break,” he replied, answering Kragoff’s question. “Had to get away from all the yelling in here. How can you concentrate with all this noise?”
“You get used to it.” The Red Ghost returned his attention back to the console that Abe had programmed a new base line code into only hours ago. “The interface seems to be assimilated now.”
Abe nodded. He sat down at another workstation in the lab, again marveling at the amount of sophistication. As a master engineer he had experience working with some of the most state of the art equipment in the world, only to now be impressed with systems he had never even heard of. Justin Hammer, a rival of the late Tony Stark, had apparently assumed that money was no object when he set up Kragoff’s research.
Amongst the tables were several gizmos that Abe had no idea what they were for. Some seemed to be used for taking tissue samples, others for injecting various agents, and still others looked like they were straight out of a science fiction television show. The most prominent of these was a handheld, circular device that had beveled edges and very few angled sides.
“I hope you realize what a generous gift it is that I’ve given you,” Kragoff continued.
“What’s that?”
“A place in the new world order. Once the power of my simian army is realized, there will be no stopping me. Think, Abner…once the cosmic power inside each of my beauties has matured, they will each possess wondrous abilities that would rival the strongest of heroes. Strength, speed, endurance. Nothing could stop them and they would be loyal to only me.”
Abe shifted in his seat uncomfortably at the thought of Ivan Kragoff being in command of an unstoppable army. “And where do I fit in?”
A small smile curled at the edges of the Red Ghost’s thin mouth. “At my side, of course,” he replied. “You’ve proven your worth in such a short time.”
“I’m still getting up to speed on what it is you’re doing here,” Abe commented. “You’re sure that Hammer has no clue about all this?”
The Red ghost smiled. “Naturally. That industrialist only knows what he wants to. He makes assumptions and tends to ignore everything else, regardless of the façade he perpetuates. He has no reason to doubt my intentions and firmly believes that I’m developing technology to give his lackeys incredible powers that would rival even the original Avengers. He’s a fool.”
“Cosmic radiation is dangerous stuff. How did you even find a way of exposure?”
“You may have solved my initial problem, but don’t think you’ve yet earned my trust. The secret of that exposure is something Hammer provided, but I’ll not reveal it yet.”
“So you don’t trust me…but you still want me to help you take over the world.”
“What is trust?” the Red Ghost asked as he moved to the next cage, checking the vital statistics of the ape held within. “I could care less how you feel about me as long as you do what you’re told. Once the Super Ape Army is amassed there will be nothing that can stop me, let alone your issues of human trust. My only question for you is motivation.”
“Pardon?”
“As I well know, there is no reason to agree to Hammer’s terms unless he has some kind of leverage against you,” the Red Ghost explained. “Thus I know the reason you came here – because of him. But now I’m having you betray that trust and work for me against him. Why would you agree to that?”
Abe thought to himself that he had to be careful here. He needed Kragoff to be distracted so he wouldn’t notice what he was doing at the console, and the longer this conversation went on, the better. “First off, don’t make assumptions. I’m here for money, plain and simple. Hammer doesn’t have jack on me.”
“Or that’s what he would have you believe. Trust me, Abner. Hammer does not make deals that he cannot exploit later. If he didn’t have something to hold against you when you first approached him, he soon will. And even if you don’t believe that, why turn against him at my request?”
“Hey, if you’re talking about making an army strong enough to knock down anybody that gets in their way, there’s more profit in it for me to help you.”
“So greed is your only motivator,” Kragoff said. Abe nodded again and shrugged slightly. “Your lies are clearly visible, but none of my concern as long you aid me. The unique programs you mentioned…”
“Working on them now.” Abe continued to type quietly. He kept his head down and worked quickly, hoping that he could upload a certain string of code fast enough before Ivan would notice.
Kragoff had successfully implanted devices that would amplify the effects of the cosmic ray treatments that the apes had undergone. The implants released a steady stream of control particles into the apes’ bloodstreams, helping to adjust the genetic mutations caused by the radiation. Even though the apes has already been exposed to whatever Kragoff and Hammer had done to them, their powers still hadn’t fully matured. The inherent problem was that the beasts’ brains were rejecting the implants, until Abe had coded them correctly to interface with their cortexes. It was a general code, something he had created all those years ago when he had first donned his original Beetle armor.
The code would work, but not as efficiently as it would if it were unique for each user. So, Abe was now hard at work creating a specific string of code for each ape, making the chances of them stroking out much lower.
Or at least that’s what the Red Ghost thought.
Abe looked over the code on his screen one last time before hitting the ‘enter’ key. “All done,” he called over the top of his monitor. “I’m uploading the final sequence directly into Kong’s brain…now.”
“Excellent,” Kragoff replied as he moved in front of the beast’s cage. After a moment of watching the statistics monitors, he nodded approvingly and stepped over to the next cage. Abe held his breath.
Nothing happened.
He looked back and forth between the screen and Kong, wondering if he had slipped up somehow. He was sure of his coding, sure that he had uploaded something directly to all of the apes’ brains that the Red Ghost would kill him if he found out. But nothing had happened. The apes all continued to casually scream and Kragoff continued to move between the cages. What had he done wrong?
After another long heartbeat, the apes all stopped making noise. There was no chance that it was a coincidence since all of them had been noticeably been silenced at the exact same time. Abe looked around his workstation to see Kragoff looking through the cages with a worried look on his face. A small bead of sweat glistened off of his brow as he ran from one ape to the next.
“What happened?” Kragoff demanded with a raised voice. “What did you do?”
“Looks like the program I uploaded is resetting their brain functions,” Abe replied as he stood. “It’s okay; they’ll be fine. It’s just…taking a second for them to reboot.”
Abe took in a deep, satisfying breath and let it out slowly. He knew that he apes wouldn’t be making any noise now, and they certainly wouldn’t be okay. They were all now paralyzed from the program he had uploaded, which was a never-ending number generator that was throwing off their synapses. Their brains were slowly filling up with infinitely long randomly generated number sequences, the process of which was confusing their neurons. They wouldn’t die, but they wouldn’t be helping the Red Ghost to conquer the world either.
Abe chided himself for never learning to be patient. He had worked himself up and doubted his skill for nothing. Melissa had always told him that he was like a little kid when it came to waiting.
“They are not fine,” the Red Ghost said coldly. The wrinkles on his old face were beginning to contort into a deathly frown. He shot a look at Abe and said, “You’re killing them!”
He stood quickly and took a few steps back. He suddenly remembered that he hadn’t thought out how to get away once he had uploaded the code sequence. In retrospect maybe he should have waited, but he knew that if the apes were allowed to reach maturation, the Red Ghost would never be able to be stopped.
“Undo whatever you just did to them!”
“No can do, Ivan,” Abe responded. “Their brains are all shutting down. No Super Ape Army today, pal. What kind of a name is that for an army anyway?”
“You imbecile!” The Red Ghost cleared off a counter filled with instruments in one fell swoop of his arm, scattering them across the laboratory floor. He muttered something in what Abe thought could have been Russian, and regardless of the language Abe got the message: he was pissed.
“Why?” Kragoff asked as he took several more steps closer to Abe. “Why would you help me…only to betray me?”
“Guess I just couldn’t trust you.”
The Red Ghost screamed, his anger bubbling over into his throat and through his lips. He charged Abe and as he did so his form oddly began to become translucent. The ceiling lights behind him were now visible through his body, amazingly. Abe backpedaled in shock, and just before the Red Ghost completely turned invisible he saw his gloved hands coming straight for his throat.
Abe swung wildly with his right fist, connecting with what he hoped was Kragoff’s head but felt more like his shoulder. An invisible hand graced his throat as he jerked back, stumbling over a chair and tumbling to the ground. He would give just about anything at the moment to have even one of his gauntlets, charged with a repulsor blast. As it was he was armor-less, powerless, and at the mercy of a madman that could alter his own molecular structure at will.
He rolled onto his feet and jumped up, running around the workstation. Since he couldn’t see the Red Ghost he was going to have to guess where he was. He was at a serious disadvantage now but if he could somehow make it to the exit he had a chance at getting away clean.
“The righteous power of control could have been yours!” Kragoff screamed. His voice bounced off of the lab walls, doing little to help Abe pinpoint his position. “I should have known better than to place faith in someone provided by that fool Hammer.”
Abe stumbled back against one of the long tables that were spread throughout the room. He reached behind him, hoping to grab something, anything, that might be of use to him. He felt something smooth and his fingers wrapped around it, ready to pull it in front of him when he could figure out his next move. He looked to the trapped apes, all of whom stared off blankly into space as their minds filled up with endless, useless equations. He thought Kragoff might try to do something to free them, but as it was they were probably considered to be dead weight to the madman.
“Your faith wasn’t misplaced,” Abe said, “but your ego was. Do you really think I would let a nutcase like you get that much power?” He doubted that Kragoff was even paying attention to him, but he needed to get him talking again. It was the only way he could hope to discern his location. “Your best friends aren’t even evolved! What makes you think you’ve got what it takes to rule the world?”
“Shut up!”
Abe heard a shuffle of feet on the floor directly to his right and he swung the object in his hand around. He gripped it tightly by the handle and pointed it in the general direction of the noise, seeing for the first time what it was. There were several instruments strewn about the lab, and he had no clue as to what any of them did. The item he had palmed, a smooth device with a handle and rounded front side with beveled edges, looked oddly familiar. He pointed it like a gun and fingered the trigger on the underside of the casing, hoping that whatever the device did would be enough to stop the Red Ghost in his tracks.
A white electrical discharge seared out from the device, blanketing a wide area of the lab. Several arcs of lightning danced out and struck random tables and chairs in the laboratory, but one central beam, much thicker than the other stray blasts, latched onto something in midair. The smell of burnt flesh quickly invaded Abe’s nose and he turned away, nearly vomiting from the stench.
Kragoff screamed. Abe turned back just enough to see the mad scientist shimmer back into view where he was caught by the white lightning streaming from the device Abe held. The Red Ghost convulsed uncontrollably until Abe released the trigger, and then fell to the floor. Smoke gently rose off of his body, rising to the ceiling where it fed into the air vents. Abe looked the smooth weapon over in his hand and then looked back at the unconscious Red Ghost, and smirked.
“Guess you were right about those trust issues,” Abe said as he stepped over the Red Ghost and walked toward the exit.”
Justin Hammer stood in his office with his back to the door, staring out into the evening through the thin windows behind his desk. He had removed his suit jacket and hung it over his chair, and loosened his tie somewhat. He looked like a man who had just completed a long day at the office, and even though his age might add to the effect, he was no where near as tired as he looked.
The last few rays of streaming sunshine fell behind the horizon and night fell, leaving the only type of illumination in Hammer’s office to be artificial. A lamp on his desk with a green cover gave himself enough light to work at his desk, but the rest of the office remained dark. He preferred it that way. He found a certain solace in the darkness, a quiet unearthly companionship that he doubted most would understand.
The large doors to his office opened and a man stepped through, whose eyes couldn’t quite adjust to the dramatic difference in darkness. “You wanted to see me?” the man asked.
“Yes, Abner. Come in.”
Abe shut the doors behind him and entered the office. He stepped up to just a few feet away from the desk, where the lamp there placed a soft glow over the front of his body. Hammer turned to look at Abe, placing his hands behind his back much like how he had that morning after agreeing to hire the former villain.
“I thought we should discuss what happened today,” Hammer finally said.
“Oh. Well, Kragoff was only pretending to—”
Hammer cut Abe off with a wave of his hand. “Yes, yes. I’m well aware of his betrayal. He was only using my resources to further his own interests.”
“You knew?”
“Of course. Did you think that I wouldn’t be aware of what happens in my own building? Or that I would actually trust a reckless loner like Kragoff? I knew he was lying to me the moment I set up his operation. I monitored his progress and granted him leave to continue.”
“So…if you knew about what he was up to, why didn’t you stop him?” Abe inquired.
“Oh, had he succeeded in raising his army I would have taken control immediately. As it was he wasn’t much of a threat and I had little to lose in letting him continue with his work. In fact, I stood only to gain if he learned how to augment the effects of cosmic radiation. Knowledge like that, I’m sure you can appreciate, is priceless.”
“Then if you’re all knowing, why am I here? If you could have afforded to wait on Kragoff to solve his own problems why send me down? Hell, why even tell me all this?”
Hammer opened one of the drawers in his desk and withdrew the smooth device with beveled edges that Abe had used to take down the Red Ghost. He held it like he knew how to use it, which startled Abe, although he didn’t let it on. Instead he watched Hammer open the back compartment and pull something out, something that thrummed with a certain energy that Abe could feel press against his skin slightly. Just looking at the thing made him want to take a step back. Whatever the thing from inside the device was, it was powerful.
“I sent you to Kragoff as a test,” Hammer said. He balanced the object, a glowing cube, in his palm and stared at it as he spoke. “If you deduced what he was up to and joined him, I would have had you killed before the day was over. However, even in the face of all that opportunity, you remained loyal to me. I will not forget that, Abner.”
Abe swallowed. He hadn’t realized how close he had come to being on Hammer’s bad side. The billionaire was even more manipulative than he remembered from his time spent as the Beetle.
“Now that I know you can be trusted,” Hammer continued, “I’d like to offer you an opportunity of my own. Take Kragoff’s place.”
“And do what? I don’t know anything about monkeys.”
“The means does not matter, only the end. It was the result of Kragoff’s work I was after, not what he used to achieve it.” He held the box-like item out for Abe to see. “Do you know what this is?”
Abe shook his head.
“It’s called a cosmic cube. I acquired it through some…unconventional means, but it is the genuine article. The instrument you used to soundly defeat Ivan Kragoff was how he channeled cosmic radiation into his pets. The cube is the true course of power that Kragoff initially studied. I now wish for you to learn what you can about the cube.”
He reached out to touch the cosmic cube, but quickly pulled his fingers back when he came within a few inches. He squinted and saw what looked like millions of stars floating inside the tiny prism and was in awe of the possibilities. The engineer in him was intrigued, but the mindful part of his brain that kept him from walking into traffic without looking told him to beware.
Still, he was accomplishing what he had set out to do, and what Rhodes had instructed him to discern. He was in Justin Hammer’s good graces and with luck he would start getting some answers.
“Okay,” Abe said after a quiet moment. “I’m in.”
“Excellent,” Hammer replied with a smile.
While Hammer’s voice hadn’t actually changed, Abe still thought he heard the faintest whispers of a forked tongue as the billionaire spoke. His brain told him to run, but he knew he couldn’t. He was already in too deep to turn back now, even if he didn’t want to accept Hammer’s offer.
He was forced to admit to himself that he was curious, and a part of the life he left behind, the criminal life, felt alive once again.
NEXT ISSUE: Two issues with no armor? That’s going to have to change right away. Abe sets out to help Rhodes find out who framed Happy for the murder of Pepper Potts, and what they turn up will have them stunned. It’s a done-in-one tale that involves some classic Iron Man foes!