Chapter 12: Filling the Vault
The HYDRA facility had been abandoned for three months when Justin's Ghost Network finally located it.
Eastern Europe. Former Soviet military base. Officially decommissioned decades ago, but HYDRA had been using the underground levels for experiments that made Justin sick when he read the reports.
Enhanced individuals. Forced mutations. Unstable serums. Most of the subjects had died. The survivors were being left to rot as HYDRA moved operations elsewhere.
Justin stood in the ARES Division briefing room, looking at twelve faces he'd personally recruited. Frank Morrison. Five freed Widows. Six enhanced individuals who'd joined voluntarily, looking for purpose and protection.
"We're going in to extract survivors," Justin said. "Intelligence suggests twelve people still alive. All of them enhanced. All of them dying."
"What's the mission objective?" Frank asked.
"Save everyone we can. Offer them choices—join us, resources to disappear, or support to rebuild civilian lives. No one gets forced. No one gets left if we can help it."
One of the Widows—Katya—raised her hand. "If they're dying from their enhancements, what can we do?"
Justin hesitated. This was where it got complicated. "I have... abilities. Methods for removing unstable powers if the subjects consent. It's a last resort, but it's an option."
He didn't elaborate. The team knew he had secrets—the impossible materials, the insights that bordered on precognition. They'd learned to trust results without demanding explanations.
"We leave in six hours," Justin said. "Pack for hostile environment. AEGIS will be providing real-time intelligence, but assume compromised communications and be ready for resistance."
The facility was worse than the intelligence suggested.
They breached through an emergency access tunnel, finding corridors lined with cells that still held bodies. People who'd died weeks ago, left to decompose while HYDRA scientists fled. Justin felt his stomach turn, rage building behind his ribs.
"Sweep and clear," Frank ordered. "Non-lethal unless absolutely necessary. These people are victims, not enemies."
They found the survivors in a sub-level medical bay.
Twelve people in various states of decay. Some were conscious, whimpering in pain. Others had passed out from exhaustion or agony. All of them were enhanced—Justin's supernatural sense screamed it the moment he entered the room.
And all of them were dying.
"Get them stabilized," Justin ordered. "Trauma kits, IV fluids, whatever they need. We're getting everyone out."
But three died during extraction.
Justin watched one man's heart simply give out, his body unable to sustain the electrical powers that crackled across his skin. A woman with bone protrusions that had pierced her own organs died choking on blood. A teenage boy whose telepathy had burned out his brain stem died without ever regaining consciousness.
Justin closed each set of eyes personally, memorizing their faces. "I'm sorry," he thought. "I'm so sorry I wasn't faster."
Two more died in the transport back to the safe house Justin had established. Their enhancements were too far gone, their bodies too damaged to recover. The ARES medics did everything possible, but medicine had limits.
Seven survived the initial extraction. Justin gathered them in the safe house's common room—converted warehouse, secure and comfortable—and explained their options.
"You're free," he said. "No conditions. No obligations. I can provide resources to disappear—new identities, funding, protection. Or you can join my organization if you want purpose. Or you can walk away right now and I'll never contact you again. The choice is yours."
Five chose to join. Skilled individuals with powers they'd learned to control despite HYDRA's torture. Two chose civilian life—Justin gave them fake IDs, bank accounts, and contact information for emergencies.
And one—a young woman named Eliza—asked for something different.
She found Justin in his temporary office late that night, her hands trembling.
"I heard rumors," Eliza said. Her voice was rough from screaming. "That you can take things away. Powers that don't belong."
Justin looked up from his laptop. The girl—she couldn't be more than twenty-five—had burn scars covering half her face. Her enhanced pyrokinesis was literally burning her from the inside out. His Scientific Intuition analyzed her cellular structure and confirmed what he'd feared: without intervention, she had maybe three months before her organs failed.
"I can," Justin said carefully. "But you need to understand—"
"I don't want to understand. I want it gone." Tears streamed down her face, evaporating before they could fall. "I can feel it inside me, burning, always burning. I can't sleep. Can't touch anyone. Can't live. Please—I just want to be normal again."
Justin's chest tightened. "If I remove it, you'll never get it back. The power will be gone permanently."
"Good."
"Eliza—"
"Please!" She collapsed to her knees, hands pressed to the floor. Small flames flickered around her fingers. "I'm dying anyway. At least let me die human."
Justin closed his laptop slowly. He'd known this moment was coming—the first time he'd actually use his vault's extraction ability. He'd prepared himself mentally, rehearsed the justifications.
But nothing prepared him for the reality of a young woman begging for release from power that was killing her.
"Okay," he said quietly. "I'll do it."
The extraction took ten minutes that felt like hours.
Justin sat across from Eliza, their hands clasped together. He reached out with his supernatural sense—the same sense that detected enhanced individuals—and found the source of her pyrokinesis. It pulsed in her chest like a second heart, burning bright and wrong.
He pulled.
The power resisted. It had been part of her for months, integrated into her biology, and it didn't want to leave. Justin gritted his teeth and pulled harder, drawing on the vault's hunger, feeling it reach through him like an extension of his will.
Eliza screamed.
Her body convulsed. Fire erupted from her skin, flames licking across her arms and face. Justin held on despite the heat, despite the smell of burning flesh—his or hers, he couldn't tell. The power fought him, clinging to its host, refusing to be separated.
Then, all at once, it tore free.
Justin felt it rush into him, hot and wild and dangerous. The sensation was overwhelming—like swallowing lightning, like inhaling molten glass. The power thrashed in his grip, fighting for release, but the vault's geometry surrounded it, contained it, forced it down onto one of the fifteen pedestals in that mental space.
The fire went out.
Eliza collapsed, sobbing. Justin caught her before she hit the floor, his arms shaking.
"It's gone," she whispered. "It's gone. I can't feel it anymore."
She was right. Justin's supernatural sense confirmed it—she was baseline human now. Exhausted. Scarred. But no longer burning from the inside.
She wept in his arms for five minutes, her tears falling on his shirt without evaporating. Normal tears. Human tears.
When she finally pulled back, her eyes were red but clear. "Thank you. I don't—I can't—thank you."
"You're welcome," Justin managed. His hands were trembling. The void marks on his arms had darkened, spreading another inch higher. "Rest now. We'll talk about your future when you're stronger."
She nodded and left, supported by one of the Widows who'd been waiting outside.
Justin sat alone in the office, staring at his hands. He could feel the pyrokinesis in his vault now, a presence in the back of his mind. Unstable. Dangerous. Too wild to use personally, but contained safely until he decided what to do with it.
His first stored power.
He'd taken it from someone who'd begged him to. Someone who'd chosen this freely, gratefully.
So why did he feel like a thief?
Jacob Reiner came to him three weeks later.
The man was in his forties, built like a tank, with the haunted eyes of someone who'd seen too much. Former Weapon X subject. They'd given him a regeneration factor—not as strong as Wolverine's, but significant—and then used him as a test subject for every form of torture they could imagine.
His body kept healing. His mind kept breaking. And now, ironically, the healing factor was killing him.
"It's accelerating my cellular division," Jacob explained. His voice was surprisingly soft for such a large man. "Every time I heal, my cells age. I'm regenerating toward death instead of away from it. The doctors say I have maybe six months before my organs fail from accelerated aging."
Justin's Scientific Intuition confirmed it. Jacob's regeneration was powerful but uncontrolled—it healed damage by producing new cells at an impossible rate, but those cells had shortened telomeres, genetic clock running down faster than nature intended.
"I heard about Eliza," Jacob continued. "Heard you took her fire away. Saved her life by making her normal."
"I can do the same for you," Justin said. "But it's permanent. You'll lose the healing factor forever."
Jacob smiled. It was almost peaceful. "I've been alive through torture that should have killed me a hundred times. I think I'd like to try being mortal again."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
The extraction was different this time. Where Eliza's power had fought, Jacob's power seemed almost relieved. It flowed out of him smoothly, settling into the vault's second pedestal with quiet dignity. A stronger power than the pyrokinesis. More stable. More useful.
When it was done, Jacob sat back and touched his arm experimentally. Made a small cut with his knife. The blood welled up and stayed there. Didn't heal in seconds.
"Huh," he said. "That's going to take getting used to."
"You can stay with the organization if you want," Justin offered. "You're trained. Capable. Even without powers, you're valuable."
Jacob considered. "What do you need?"
"People I can trust. People who understand what it means to choose this life instead of having it forced on them."
"Then I'll stay." Jacob extended his hand. "Thank you for giving me back my mortality."
They shook hands. Jacob left. And Justin sat alone with his vault, feeling two powers resting on their pedestals.
Pyrokinesis—too unstable for personal use. And regeneration—strong, stable, exactly what he needed to survive the violence he knew was coming.
He activated the regeneration factor.
The sensation was immediate. Warmth spreading through his body, settling into his cells. Justin felt the minor aches from recent transmutation work fade away. A cut on his hand from earlier closed in seconds, leaving unblemished skin.
He was harder to kill now. More durable. Better prepared for the fights ahead.
But the void marks on his arms had darkened further, spreading past his elbows now. The corruption was accelerating with each power he used, each extraction he performed. His Scientific Intuition calculated fifteen months until critical levels. Maybe less.
Justin stared at his reflection in the darkened window. Two powers in his vault. One active in his body. The geometric marks glowing faintly beneath his skin.
"How much of my humanity am I trading for the power to save it?" he wondered.
But he already knew the answer: as much as necessary. Every piece of himself he burned away in void corruption, every ethical line he carefully walked, every person's suffering he allowed because the alternative was worse—
It was all payment. Down payment on a future where billions lived instead of died.
He just hoped, when the bill came due, there'd be enough of Justin Hammer left inside Justin Hammer's body to remember why he'd made these choices.
Outside, New York hummed with life. Millions of people going about their days, unaware that a man with void-touched powers was slowly sacrificing his soul to keep them safe.
The vault waited. Thirteen empty pedestals, hungry for more.
And Justin had three years to fill them before the real war began.
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