-He's gone deep into the sewer.
-I see, okay. Then we'll continue later, we all need a break, -I suppressed a yawn and looked around at our wrinkled team, -You should come back too. We're just waiting for you.
-No," Rand's voice had steel in it. I'll keep looking, I've got plenty of energy left.
-This is foolish, Fist. You don't go into the beast's lair alone.
-I'm not alone," Rand grinned lopsidedly now, running his Qi through his body, "I'm strong enough to find the beast and escape.
It was clear I wasn't going to be able to change Danny's mind. It wasn't a problem, though; I was more than confident that he'd be sensible enough not to get into a hopeless fight.
-Keep your phone handy-.
-Yes, yes, Mummy. -Yes, yes, Mummy. Don't forget, Shawn, I'm more experienced and stronger than you.
-I've kicked your old man's arse a couple of times, I can do it again.
-That encounter doesn't count, apprentice," there was a splash on the other end of the wire, which meant Rand had just gone back into the sewer, "Okay, I'm back in. I'll send messages every half hour with a route description. I'll mark the walls, too.
-Got it. Don't shit your pants in there.
-Yeah, don't worry, it's part of the plan. Or did you think I was gonna mark the walls with crayons?
-Danny's back in the canal," I grinned, pulling the phone away from my ear and turned to the rest of the team, exhausted and tired.
-I'm going to go see him.
Without even giving Pete a chance to object, he simply leapt off the roof, jumping down, back to where we'd just come from.
I sat down on the ground tiredly, feeling weak and tired all over.
-He's an active guy," Matt said, stroking his broken leg and leaning back against the vent, writhing in pain, "but I'll pass. It's one thing to fight gangsters and protect citizens from lawlessness, but it's another to become a comic book hero fighting dinosaurs in the middle of the city.
-Don't be a douchebag. Compared to this thing, all of Kingpin's mercenaries will be just regular NPCs to you now.
-Murdock grinned evilly as he watched the change in my face, "I see you remember.
-Shit, there's the Brotherhood too...
-Yes, yes, Mr Sullivan. Or did you think the adventure was over?
Swinging away from a laughing Daredevil. I probably shouldn't have double-dosed him on morphine.
Leaning on the tentacle, I rise to my feet, looking longingly at the two severed limbs now lying nearby. I shouldn't have left Otto's creation there, for whoever thought of digging through the rubble of the damn place.
I could have called George and told him about the underground lab, but ... The CIA and S.H.I.E.L.D. would probably be all over this place before he got here.
"Oh, I'm so lazy. But I'd better send a message. Maybe he'll get here before they do."
A quick flick of the fingers and the coordinates of the warehouse, along with a brief description, are sent to Captain Stacy.
-It's been a while since I've worked with the old man. When this is over, we should get together for some spicy food.
-What are you talking about? If you're talking about food, I like sweets, although I don't look it. And if you're talking about women, I've got a spicy thing.
-Hot, Matt, they say hot," I suppressed a tired sigh and lifted myself to my feet, grabbing my friend under his side and lifting us off the ground with my tentacles, "let's go home.
***
Several days passed in complete disarray. We took turns scouring the sewers, creating a veritable map of the entire local underground.
We found corpses, hundreds of corpses, whether left here on purpose or just killed by natural causes... Though how natural those causes were, I found it hard to answer.
A filthy, rotten place, without a single source of light. Gloomy shadows, stinking with the stench of the city, showing its true nature. Everything here was drenched in poison and rot. Filled with despair, flowing down the pipes from the "shining hail on the hill".
But that was not the worst of it. All the horror of our time, all the evil that hides behind beautiful words and masks..... It was waiting for us further down, at the bottom, where the light never shines. Where there are no happy smiles and new deaths are just part of the routine.
An old sewer that has settled and gone underground, a real podulei, where its laws rule and you never meet a normal person.
Homeless, drug addicts, invalids, simple labourers, forced out of their homes by their wives. They sat there, hiding from contemptuous stares, dispersed by the police and honest taxpayers who didn't want to see their yesterday's neighbours like this.... As they might become. A pitiful reminder of what the great, free and beautiful America does to those who lost and gave up.
They lived here. Whole communities, veritable enclaves of the forgotten and abandoned. Feral and subdued, feeding on carrion and the scum that they themselves were slowly turning into.
There were corpses lying on every corner, but no one paid any attention to them until they started to stink.... And here it was cold enough for them to "decorate the facades" of local beauties for weeks.
Cheap whores who'd seen too much, lost brokers, office clerks tired of their unenviable fate. All were washed away by the New York currents, sinking to the bottom, where the abandoned awaited with open arms, gladly accepting new bodies into their family.
So many ruined lives, adding up to a veritable mountain of bones, full of shrunken masks, faces and bottomless eyes asking: "Why? Why?".
Each hike became harder and harder. As we waded further and further, through the dead bodies we were occasionally bringing to the surface, through the streams of sewage shit pouring down on our heads, we lost bits of ourselves, realising what this city was really capable of. What it hides behind its magnificent screen of brightly coloured signage.
Peter was the first to break. My dearest friend, my best, I won't use that word. He couldn't look at these people anymore. Or their bodies? At some point, we couldn't tell them apart, the faces were so similar. Doomed, broken, given up hope for a better life. He said what each of us had been thinking, but hadn't dared to say out loud yet.
-We can't go on like this," he tore the mask off his face and inhaled the fresh air of the city, which, compared to the underground sewers, seemed like the purest mountain stream, "we have to do something. We can't keep going down there looking for a needle in a haystack. It's pointless. Yesterday we pulled out a woman's body, and today some grandfather was lying in the same place. It won't stop.
-What do you suggest? Just let the thing stay there? Live and breathe? Half these people will die in the next six months, given the monster's appetite.
-Don't exaggerate," Rand put his hands out in front of him and pulled Parker and I apart, sending us into different corners, "It's the tiredness and anger in you that speaks. We're all experiencing it...
-That's right," Murdoch stepped forward, still limping slightly, even after being healed with Qi from the Fist, staggering with pathos from under half-closed eyelids, "but Spider's right about the needle. We should stop doing pointless work and come up with another plan.
-Sacrifice more heroes?
-Reach out to the bobbies?
-Lure the lizard to us.
Apparently, the blind rogue had already thought of everything before he entered the conversation, so now he just smiled patronisingly, showing everyone his great intellect.
-Peter, you said you could create a serum, right?
-Yes, I'm absolutely sure of it," Parker waved his arms and interrupted our indignation and scepticism, "I know what you're going to say. But this is one hundred per cent the result of Dr Connors' work. I've been digging through his notes, and-
-Pete, old chap? What's wrong?
I just-- Yes... I mean. Dr Connors.
-A spider?
By now, the others have noticed that there's something unusual going on with our mate.
Yeah, I-- I'm sorry," Pete sat down on the ground and clutched his head, obviously thinking frantically, "I've been looking so hard all these days for a cure and clues in the serum that I've lost sight of the main thing. Curt Connors, he was working on a drug based on the lizard genes.... Developing a regenerative effect, trying to get his arm back.
-So. You think he had something to do with all this?
-I let it slip. But the doctor hasn't been in the lab for days, not since--
-When we discovered the monster. Do you think it ate him? What? You both thought it did.
I realised I'd said too much myself, but my tongue was quicker than my mind.
-No, for better or worse, but-- I think the Lizard is Dr Connors.
-No fucking way.
-Does that complicate things?
-Does it? We've got the name of the man who fell victim to the Goblin's experiments, but what does it matter?
-But... It's Dr Connors. Are we just gonna kill him? It's not right," Peter stepped into the centre of our spontaneously formed circle, "Are we not even going to try to save him?
I understood my friend's emotions, but I also understood the danger of the lizard, especially if it could build a lair deep in the sewers. The damn dinosaur would be very dangerous and while most people don't care about all the scum hiding in there, they don't deserve to be fodder for a humanoid dinosaur.
-If you have an antidote for his," I interrupt the incipient argument, immediately setting the most important condition, "ailment..... I'll help you catch and cure the mutant, but if you don't... Pete, you do realise how dangerous he is, don't you?
-Shawn. Я... All right," Parker hung his head and clenched his fists furiously, probably in his head deciding to act on his own, "give me a couple of days. Just a couple of days and I'll prepare a drug that will make Dr Connors look normal again.
We shrugged our shoulders in agreement, nodding in turn. Neither of us believed we'd succeed in such a short time, though I admit that, probably in my heart of hearts, I hoped Pete could do it.
No one wished Kurt Connors any harm, but if he could single-handedly slaughter the lab staff, all the guards, and the Goblin himself on top of that, without even breaking a sweat....
I dread to think what he might do once he's fully adapted.
-Two days, Spider. Anyway, then we'll have to make a decoy. Some pheromone shit, so the lizard will come out of its deepest hole for sure.
-Okay, I agree. Oh, my Jewish friend is lying. I could tell by the sound of his voice that he'd do it his way. And even though our faces were hidden by masks, the moment Parker's eyes crossed mine and mine, I could clearly feel his face crease in understanding.
"He knows that I know that I know that he knows.... Hehe."
-That's settled then. We'll call in a couple of days, but in the meantime, we should all rest.
-Some rest, some work. The Brotherhood is still in town, as are Kingpin's mercenaries.
-Goblin's dead, you think Magneto's gonna stay in town long? -Yeah. He's already made a mess of things.
-Maybe not himself, but his men will. The worst and the most active.
-Oh, the shit's coming down in bunches.
-You don't say. Grumbling like two old men, Rand and Murdoch walked off into the sunset, obviously intending to talk more about their own, Ninja's, or other matters that did not concern our ears. Peter and I were about to leave, too, when my dear friend decided to give me the last of the bad news.
-The four of us couldn't hold Dr Connors off, so.... We could use some help.
-No. What do we need it for? We're having a brutal sausage party. Where the boys fight evil together! No pussy or any of that untermenschen stuff!
-Yeah. -It'll be easier to stop the lizard without hurting him, and anyway... I thought you and Gwen made up, didn't you?
-NO! I mean, yes, we have, but you don't need to call her. We're just starting to get on better terms. Besides, I've already-- I didn't know how best to say it out loud.
I know what your problem is, so you don't have to be a prom virgin," the friendly, not-at-all-neighbourly neighbour began to mock me, "meow, meow, Sean. Look at that neckline, Shawn. Shove it under my tail, Shaun.
-You're such an arsehole.
-You're not the only one who messes with your mates.
-Then you're not gonna let up.
-Yes, dilute our friendly male company or I'll call myself and invite both of them, -waving his arms to the sides, the red-blue bastard mockingly tilted his head to his shoulder, -choose which version of Spanish shame you prefer.
-Boys don't do that. It's not comradely at all, - without noticing it, I in a flurry of emotion, though more played, tore my hat off my head, waving it away from Peter. And in my speech I began to trace Irish words and accent, which is inherent in many of my relatives migrants, - this is not a kosher conversation at all, old chap. The girls can't help us, no offence to Felicia and Gwen, but they're way behind us in terms of experience and strength. We can easily manage without them.
Something was wrong. My mouth closed, but... Too late, I realised that the game had gone too far and yours truly was getting bogged down. I had lost. Victimised by the betrayal of my best friend. Humiliated. Broken. willing to bail myself out to any force that will spare me the shame and filthy blackmail.
-You're talking, you're bursting," Spider pulled out his mobile phone and theatrically played the recording of our conversation, then with a satisfied look he put the phone in a special pocket on his belt, carefully covered it and stroked it for the last time, "Oh, what a nice feeling. No wonder so many go into villainy. All right, Rorschach. You don't have to call your dates, but!
With an admonishing thumbs-up, Peter turned his back to me, posing in the sunlight against the city backdrop.
-You're going to help me. Do all my work for me. From now on you'll be called Mr Helper and you'll be my assistant. Tomorrow we'll make you another costume, something more colourful and flashy.
-Monster.
-Now, now, Rorschach. I'm just a friendly neighbour," Pete looked over his shoulder and shook his head slowly, enjoying his victory. But then abruptly cut short all the fun, hanging his head and literally whispering. So quietly, sincerely, and fearfully.... For the first few seconds I thought I was imagining it, but then the information reached my brain," You're going to help me... Mr Deputy? Will you help me save Dr Connors?
Like I could have answered any other way. My best mate asking me for help, which didn't happen very often.
-Of course, old chap.
***
-Is this information accurate?
The big man was sitting against the panoramic glass, flipping through a folder of reports, his one eye frowning harder and harder. The cigarette, which had been set aside for a few minutes of reading, had long since worn down to the filter as its owner plunged headlong into his work. With each page he read, he became more and more surprised, giving out one emotion after another.
-Absolutely, sir. He'll be here tomorrow.
-Great, that's just great. I'll read the medical report later, give you a general outline.
-His vitals are normal. Brain function is excellent, the envy of many. Muscles haven't atrophied and all the organs are fine... I'll admit, not every athlete can boast that kind of health.
-Ph, you bet, - muttering part of the sentence under his nose, the one-eyed man reached for a cigarette, but when he found a burnt tobacco cigarette he swore unhappily, -I need to do everything in the best way. Organise the interior and other pleasures peculiar to his time ...
-Psychologists and analysts have already done the lay-out. They offer a solution too.
-That's good. Intelligent people often have the same opinions. I won't limit you on the details, but if there's a major reshuffle... -Yes, sir.
-Of course, sir. May I?
-Go ahead. Nick Fury leaned back in his chair, swaying and allowing himself a moment of rest and idleness. Away from the eyes of his subordinates, away from the hustle and bustle of work, just rocking back in his chair as long as no one could see.
-My old bones sense that some shit is coming.
The old operative's eyes came across a flying American flag. The star-spangled symbol was flying proudly over one of the Shch.I.T.A. offices, attracting the eye.
-We'll have to order him a new suit.....
***
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