Or there is
"This shouldn't have happened..." the doctor whispered into his beard, his eyes glued to the remains of Eve's defective brothers and sisters. "It shouldn't have ended like this, they shouldn't have been born at all."
He was as if trying to justify himself to himself. After all, the scientist perfectly understands that he is largely responsible for all this. If he hadn't stirred up this mess, there would be no Eve; if he hadn't fled from the project, hiding Eve, there would be no others. But he is wrong about one thing: this is not the end yet, not even close...
Something changed; I felt it before I saw it with my own eyes or comprehended it with my mind. My Viltrumite essence, soul, or whatever is responsible for supernatural abilities in us, sensed a powerful something that had appeared before me and begun to influence the surrounding world. Not just influence, but literally subordinate everything to itself. My first instinctive urge was: destroy the threat! The second, when I restrained the first: get far away from it. Neither of them came from my personality or, even less so, my mind. It was pure instinct, the quintessence of my race's existence, hidden in the genes. We are like territorial predators, instinctively pouncing on any competitor who comes to challenge our power and authority. But fortunately, I have a mind to dictate to my instincts their place, and to make decisions myself.
Eve did it after all—overcame her creators' mental block and unleashed her full power. That is exactly what I felt.
Under the enraptured gazes of the doc and me, the girl soared above the ground—this time she didn't need jet streams, she directly controlled her body, making it levitate—and flew up to the remains of "Number Two".
Stretching her hand over the deceased, she began to mutter something about feeling everything and controlling all matter—thinking out loud, it seems—and being able to reverse everything. In addition to levitation, there were several other external effects of the power awakening: I don't know if there was any necessity in this, but several tiny, obscure objects appeared around her and began to move in elliptical orbits. Electrons? Like in the planetary model of the atom, which Eve took as her symbol... but electrons are not corpuscles and... they are not pink... Ah, to hell with it, better not to think about it. Besides, not only these new "electron-satellites", but even the air around her somehow turned pink after unleashing her full power... the girl loves pink, what can you say.
Finally, she moved from words to deeds, and we, mesmerized, could watch as the kids, seemingly having already left this world, return back. They rise in a pink glow from the green slime into which their bodies had turned a few seconds earlier. Well yes, not very pretty, their own fault that after death they turned not into noble ash, but into a foul-smelling sludge.
In literally a couple of seconds, Eve revived her deceased relatives, and not just reversed everything, but also corrected the flaws. There was no more red skin, no creepy humps, no distorted faces, not even bald patches—ordinary children, thousands of whom study in my school. Only "Number Two" remained unchanged, but he initially had no external manifestations of mutilation, except for the unclosing mouth.
Among other things, she also created new clothes for the children, quite normal, everyday ones, instead of the identical shorts melted by their toxic remains.
"What?" "Number Two", soon he'll need a new name, stared in shock at his hands, looked around, seeing the other resurrected ones, turned to Eve, still hovering in the air. "You brought us back and... fixed us?"
But she didn't answer. The electrons suddenly smeared along their orbits in pink waves of uncertainty, the air cleared of the pink filter, and Eve herself, closing her eyes, fell into my arms... well, actually she was falling to the ground, but I didn't miss the chance to use my super-speed to catch her.
"Happy rebirth," I chuckled to the kids, and then, unable to resist, added. "Risen from the slime."
But the surprises didn't end with the resurrection of the dead—this fragile girl, sleeping in my arms, truly holds a great power, who would have thought. After all, while I was playing gentleman and humorist, thinking the worst was over, a hunt had already opened on me myself.
I didn't even immediately realize what happened. Just a flash of heat on my skin, a click somewhere in my neck, and the sound came from inside my skull, not through my ears, and I, stunned, am carried somewhere to the side.
I was careless, got too carried away with the performance staged by Eve, and blinked at the appearance of new opponents. However, I'm not Spider-Man to sense any threat in advance, nor a Kryptonian with super hearing to discern the suspiciously quiet clapping of the rotors of a helicopter hovering high in the sky in the cacophony of noises.
And a bullet, alas, outruns the sound of a gunshot. A treacherous projectile, twenty millimeters no less, and with an reinforced armor-piercing core, dive-bombed right into my neck at a dangerous angle. I don't know if the sadist sniper deliberately chose such a place, but my cervical vertebrae appreciated his choice fully. In any other scenario, even with a direct hit to the head—except for the eyes—I wouldn't have taken any damage at all, but the neck... is a very anatomically fragile place.
The effect, by sensation, is comparable to an athlete getting hit in the base of the neck with a baseball. Extremely unpleasant and, with a certain amount of bad luck, traumatic, but still not fatal.
I was more stunned than injured. I regained control over the situation even before I reached the wall—I just stopped my forced flight by creating a reverse driving force—looked up, to where the present flew from.
There, a pot-bellied helicopter hovered high in the sky. From the open side door, the muzzle of a monstrously huge multi-barreled cannon looked in my direction—you don't go after an elephant with that, you go after tanks.
The next bullet I caught not with my neck, but with my palm. And ostentatiously squeezed the weighty slug, looking at the shooter: I know you're looking, you bitch!
For a moment it even seemed to me that I heard a frightened: "fucked up." But this, of course, couldn't be, I don't have heightened hearing.
Speaking of baseball, I suddenly remembered my father's lessons on how we threw a ball * in the stratosphere, and I didn't deny myself the pleasure of applying the skills I acquired then. Besides, I was fond of baseball in my time.
Passing Eve into the doctor's arms, I swung heartily, recalling my high school coach's instructions, and delivered the strongest pitch of my career.
"Strike," I chuckled grimly, looking at the smoking rotor of the machine.
Wagging its tail, but not going into an uncontrolled fall, the helicopter began to descend from the heavens, but even before the machine reached the ground, out jumped... um, space marines. Not real ones, of course, but these guys in full armor, of a very futuristic look and with jetpacks on their backs, evoked associations precisely about space and a landing force.
And heading the space marines was an incredibly smug bald black man in a brown business suit, equipped with that very mega-cannon—now that's a real Killcannon—from which I had just been shot. But the crappiest thing in this situation was that the symbols on the marines' armor clearly spoke of their involvement with the US government.
(Erickson and his soldiers, just before they started shooting, taken from Rex Splode's origin)
It seems the situation has gotten a little out of control.
This black man is obviously Eve's "owner". He organized all this: released the kids, telling them they were no longer needed, told them that Eve was alive, thereby provoking this terrorist attack; and now, having waited for a convenient moment, he showed up himself to profit from the results of his treachery. And the fact that he dragged all this weaponry with him, which he immediately used against me, says that the bastard watched everything happening in the mall and assessed my strength and speed. He decided to take me out of the game right away.
And I, of course, can slaughter everyone here in the blink of an eye, but a bloodbath on the first day won't reflect too well on my future career. And the fact that they opened fire first will hardly serve as an excuse. Moreover, the situation just went from a "robbery or terrorist attack in a small supermarket" to a "big mess involving big shots from the government". And judging by how brazenly the latter act, they are not afraid of publicity.
The military landed in the empty courtyard of the shopping center and immediately aimed their guns at me and the doc hiding behind my back with the unconscious Eve in his arms.
"Elias Brandyworth," the black man drawled with satisfaction. "You old prick. I knew, I knew—you were hiding something! The girl was alive all this time."
"Erickson..."
"Get in the chopper," the black man interrupted the doc. "I don't need any unnecessary attention here."
"Unnecessary attention?" Eve, having woken up, suddenly spoke up. "You flew in on a fucking helicopter and dropped space marines in the center of the city!"
"It was a figure of speech," Erickson brushed it off. "I couldn't give a shit about any attention. Get in the chopper, now!"
"Hmm..." I drew his attention, ostentatiously rolling up my sleeves. "Haven't you forgotten something?"
"Kid," he finally deigned to look straight at me. "You're tough, I admit. But what happened—that was just a warning shot. This baby can dish out hundreds of times more! She was built to kill people like you."
He lovingly stroked the barrel of his cannon, which had been pointing at me all this time.
"You're not taking Eve, or the doc, or anyone. Get out, and you'll stay alive." Understanding that I was shaking the air in vain, I replied.
There is no peaceful solution here.
"Hahaha!" the black man confirmed my thoughts. "You're cocky, boy. I like you. You have talent and character. You don't need to conflict with the US government, kid. You can achieve much more if you work for us. Money, influence, any toys, whatever you desire will be yours."
Well, then there is no other way, I'll have to kill government agents. You couldn't come up with a better superhero debut than taking down a couple of high-ranking bigwigs from the Global Defense Agency! Everything is strictly according to plan: "sit quietly and don't stick your neck out until you hit eighteen!"
But what else can I do? The Deus ex machina doesn't seem to be in a hurry to save me from a hopeless situation... although...
"Please, Erickson," Elias stepped forward. "Let the girl go. She is a human being, she has rights and her own life!"
Whoa, that's even dumber than what I said. Even to me, seeing this man for the first time, it's obvious that appealing to humanity and morality here is useless. And Brandyworth worked with him. Saw him in action. It's enough to look at what he did to Eve's sisters and brothers.
But he's buying me a little time and distracting attention to himself. He even stood between me and this Erickson, so it would be handier for me to secretly take the phone out of my pocket...
"She's a weapon!" the black man immediately confirmed my thoughts. "My weapon! And it took years of my life to get her back after your betrayal."
"Fine!" Eve suddenly shouted. "I surrender! I'm the one you need, right? Do whatever you want with me, just let Dr. Brandyworth and the others go."
"Let him go?" the black man grimaced. "That's ridiculous. Child, the good doctor's treason is the reason the new season of this deadly show began! All this happened because of his moronic coming-out as a hero!"
"You hate me for what I've done?" Brandyworth immediately caught onto the overly emotional ending of the phrase. "If you want, kill me, I don't have long left anyway, but don't take this child's life, like you did with her mother."
"Haha, you think we killed her mother? It's a pity I can't show you," he even wiped away an imaginary tear of regret with his finger. "Where do you think we got all the other kids?! Ordered them by mail?!"
"No..." Elias gasped. "It can't be... Sarah, all this time she..."
"Bore freaks for us, yes!" Erickson sneered evilly, enjoying that he could exact moral revenge on Brandyworth. "Unfortunately, from a half-dead corpse, we got just as half-dead kids... besides, you left us nothing."
"You are a monster!" the doctor drawled in shock, from whom the core seemed to have been pulled out.
"But none of that matters, because now we have her, which means we no longer need you or your beggar girlfriend!" the jerk continued to revel in others' suffering. "And what are you grinning at?"
He suddenly addressed me.
"I'm glad you're such a jerk and have already talked yourself into a life sentence..."
"Yeah," a new voice rang out from above. "Quite a classic narcissistic villainous confession, couldn't have been better."
Note:
* The ball was adamantium, okay? And therefore didn't wear down against the air and didn't evaporate upon hitting, God forgive me, a mountain peak. Or at least it was made in the local Amazonia as a gift to Omni-Man, in the hope that he would someday drop by for bread and salt.
And a little author's rambling about this whole strange situation with the psychos in the agency:
This guy—Erickson—really worked for the Global Defense Agency, and if Cecil's actions seemed cruel to you, then Erickson managed to shock even Stedman. In the original story, Eve broke the mental block only after Erickson killed Brandyworth and her mother right in front of her (there they flew with him to the Pentagon, where they saw with their own eyes what was left of her). At the same time, she not only didn't kill Erickson himself, but didn't even resurrect her parents, only wiped Stephen's memory of herself (plus, kind of cleaned up the camera recordings with her face)... and flew away, without even destroying the corpses or hiding the consequences of the pogrom in the lab. It is very strange that this worked and Erickson did not conduct a thorough investigation of the incident and did not find Eve again, after waking up in the lab with two fresh corpses in the company of his scientist, who also forgot everything. Subsequently, Erickson showed up in Rex's origin—he was the one who investigated Rex's murder of the second crazy black man in this story, who was coincidentally the former head of the entire agency—where he didn't even pay attention to Eve who was also there, and in the Brit series—he is such a brutal, old, and absolutely invulnerable guy. Actually, it was precisely through him that Brit initially worked for the government. Erickson tried to capture Brit in order to start studying him, and in the end, it was Brit who killed him when Erickson showed up at his secret lair with guns and tanks (what was he hoping for anyway, he knew that Brit was completely invulnerable?!) Later, Cecil recognized Erickson's actions as immoral, saying that they had been watching him and it was high time to kick his ass out—but, as always, for some reason they didn't kick him out until everything was revealed. Brit was hired back by the government, and a new bald black man was appointed in Erickson's place... who again started doing bullshit, with cloning Brit, kidnapping him and his child, and other fucked up shit (perhaps these events will be briefly highlighted in the fanfic)... three out of three, motherfucker. Conclusion: in the Invincible universe, you shouldn't put black men in high-ranking government positions, they will definitely lose their minds from power and start doing crazy shit. I suspect the author doesn't like the black Fury in Marvel, but three times in a row the same thing... is overkill.
Yes, I also messed up a little in the last chapter. That black man the policeman was talking to in the comic—that wasn't Black Samson, but some other hero (one of the corporate contractors; for some reason, I remember the black characters in this comic poorly), but I won't change anything now.
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