Spider-Senses went off, both Felix and Hobie's. The Lead Scientist Adam was coming to his senses. Gwen's manual brain fuck was fading.
Thwip!
"Alright, let's go, go, go!"
Webbing Felix and Adam and reeling him in, Hobie practically forced the two out of the vault. The vault closed behind them and…
"Ah."
Adam was back to where he was before. Standing before the vault, standing there and blinking, confused somewhat. He shook his head, dazed. "Apologies," the lead scientist murmured. "I, ah, showed you the vault. Yes."
Spider-Sense again. Another danger. This time, Felix could smell it. The odour in the air. A very specific order made to make people fall asleep. Felix snapped over to the rest of the laboratory.
'Sleep gas…!'
"Sleep gas…!" Hobie murmured, also sensing it. "Shit, Felix! Cover your mouth and nose!"
As for Adam…
"Now, next up…next up…"
His words weren't coming together. The sleep gas already hit him. He stumbled, grumbled, and then fell to his knees. Felix…Felix decided to pretend. He decided to fall over and close his eyes. Sleep gas? Please. Like that actually affected him.
'I have a part to play though. Now then, who is responsible for this…'
"Well, well, well…"
The respiratory beats of a gas mask approached from the complete other side of this lab. On a platform that was raised above, letting the man in the gas mask stay safe from an altitude level. Hobie kept standing with shaky legs.
"That's the best in the market, supposed to knock out a whole city block. Made in secret by the Taliban. I killed them and got a good bounty and good formula yet you…" The man in the gas mask laughed. "You're resisting."
That voice was mangled up by the gas mask. It was familiar to Felix, however. Who was it? Someone on the island, someone that—
Thwip!
Hobie dashed forward. Ziing! The perpetrator activated a grapple gun and reeled himself to the open vault. He fled. Hobie Brown chased.
They were battling. Exchanging blows. Felix kept his eyes closed. Just barely, he felt the cling of flesh against metal. 'Must be armour…but who—?'
Simple logic. There were only a handful of men on the island capable of infiltrating this place and getting access to this kind of sleep gas. Among those men was Felix and Hobie. If what the prepreator said regarding the formula of the sleep gas was the truth, then he must have been a mercenary.
"Killmonger…" Felix muttered as he rose to his feet. Everybody else was asleep. Meanwhile, Killmong and Hobie were ducking it out. "It won't be easy, Hobie, not when there's a nightclub."
It was night and there were hundreds to hide behind. For an experienced mercenary who was probably stealing something important, it was a dream come true. Felix went over to the raised platform on the other side in a single leap.
"He stole the nuclear plutonium…" Felix clicked his tongue. There was a monitor beeping a warning sign. "And all the data for M'Baku too. He didn't just steal it, he erased it."
Meaning, Adam and Ororo would have to start from square one. Killmonger, an excellent thief and a master hacker. Not too shabby. Although he sincerely doubted this was for M'Baku's sake. He was still sealed and with Adam's big brain, it wouldn't take long to recuperate their conclusions.
'No.'
It was now or never. Either M'Baku escaped from the clutches of the Kenyan government or he would never escape again. All the scientists were asleep. The nightclub was partying like crazy. The vault doors were open.
Hands behind him, Felix casually hopped from platform to platform until he reached M'Baku's sealed chamber. Kept in a circular room with Vibranium-enhanced glass, even if he got out of his bindings, it would be impossible for his fists to break through.
M'Baku's eyes were closed. Killmonger wasn't responsible for this, the scientist dosed him with a special sleeping gas.
Thwip!
Felix got the tablet, which was already signed in to a verified scientist, and opened up the sealed observation room. Felix walked in, hands behind him. On the tablet, there were many options on what to introduce to the observation room. From gas in the room itself to the liquid running through M'Baku's wrists.
Felix decided to give him a bit of adrenaline to wake him up.
Almost immediately, the Super Soldier woke up, eyes narrowing in on him. M'Baku was cuffed in Vibranium right now, thick metal that only let his head move about. Everything else was sealed tight.
"Who are—" M'Baku squinted. "Oh. It's you. The white man."
His Wakandan accent was very thick. Felix smiled politely. "My name is Felix Faeth. I can disable the device in your heart."
"In exchange for?"
"Nothing. Leave this place."
"...why?"
"Because I can't stand to see people suffer needlessly." Felix reached out and touched the left leg of the behemoth of a male specimen. "You have one night only though. I assume they have a tracker in that heart device of yours. In all this chaos, I can hack the systems and fool them for one day but not a day longer."
M'Baku was quiet. He wanted to leave, he did, but…
"I'm a giant. Do I look like I can pull off a stealth operation?"
"Don't worry, I know a guy. Hobie Brown."
"One of Ororo's lackies—?"
"Just tell him what you need. He'll help. Trust me."
"None of this means anything if you don't get me out."
Tap, tap, tap. The tablet turned red when it asked for authorization. "Hm."
"That's right," M'Baku said. "You need the fingerprints of the lead scientist or—"
From his pocket, he got a certain strip of tape and pressed it down. He didn't have Adam but he did have Moira.
ACCESS GRANTED. PROJECT M OPENED.
Click.
M'Baku went wide-eyed.
Click, click, click!
All four locks on his limbs started coming off. They retreated back to the four corners of the chamber. M'Baku exhaled as he felt his feet touch the ground. Thank goodness he was wearing boxers too.
"Thank you." M'Baku let out three heavy breaths. "But what about the heart device?"
"I'm the smartest guy around, or everyone tells me," Felix said. "So…this might hurt. Just a bit."
Felix lifted a hand until a finger touched where his heart should have been. He was bare-chested with huge pecs. His muscles were dense and pumped with a serum that could even compete with the original Captain America.
Bzzt!
Alas, Felix Faeth was an Omega Threat. He was a human specimen far above M'Baku. With his black lightning, he electrocuted him, the heart device, and knocked M'Baku out.
Bam!
He fell. Smoke trailed from the pec that Felix poked. Felix stared down at him.
"You good?"
M'Baku groaned, half-conscious. Felix used about forty-percent power and focused in toward his heart. He was pretty knowledgeable about the human body so he was able to find a direct route easily.
'And I was able to do it without you…Symbiote.'
The Symbiote, at long last, stirred inside him. A small whimper that showed that it was afraid.
'Symbiote…I'm warning you. Don't you ever do that again. Don't get in my way. If it wasn't for you, I would have still had the damn Sheathe and Gwen wouldn't have disappeared.'
'W-we apologize! We do!'
'You do—and you owe me. You owe me an explanation and you owe me your power. Otherwise…leave.'
'Please. Please! BELIEVE US.'
'You understand you're only inside my brain because I let you. You saw what I did to that Vibranium shell. You've been inside my brain. I've run the calculations. In the time it would take you to kill me or shut down my brain, I could already kill you ten times over. Do you understand?'
'Yessss…yes…)':
"Hm?"
His Spider-Sense went off again, except this time, it was different. Far different. It was telling him to walk out of here and go down. So he did. It was like his legs were moving on their own. It was like a voice was guiding him even though there was no voice.
Lower, lower, lower.
The platforms went up and down and yet he was only going down. Down, down, down until…
"Woah."
Felix found a red ruby secured by lasers in a glass dome. Around it were unconscious scientists, courtesy of Killmonger's sleep gas, and docile tablets. Thwip! Felix yanked a table and started checking.
NAME: RED RUBY OF THE ORORO FAMILY.
ORIGIN:?
HISTORY: Ayesha of Balobedu is the earliest known matrilineal ancestor of Ororo Munroe. She lived from at least 10,000 BC, so she could have been one of the earliest owners of the ruby. According to other sources, she was even older and actually was already alive during the Age of Atlantis before its fall, so it is also possible what she was the first owner of the ruby and was the one who passed it to her descendants.
Research on this ruby has made no headway. Princess Ororo claims it holds a strong connection to the Wakandan god Bast.
"The Wakandan god, Bast? Here on an island in Kenya?"
Felix stared at the ruby. 'Symbiote?'
'I…do not hear anything. Why are we going toward it?'
'I don't know.'
He struck the glass, breaking it, and seized the ruby. He stared down at the scarlet glare. It fit perfectly within his palm and reflected a face that was his own and yet…
Flickered into something darker.
***
Hobie wasn't back yet. Probably chasing Killmonger all over the island. Certainly, they were ways away from the nightclub. Felix considered chasing if not for the rising sun. He had to get back or else the Defenders would grow suspicious.
"You're back."
Crap.
It wasn't all of the Defenders, luckily, only one Defender. The Defend—Captain Samantha Wilson. Felix felt like a kid that got caught eating a cookie. Arms crossed, tall and poised, she looked pretty pissed.
"Leaving in the middle of the night for what? Our job is to protect and we can't—"
Gwen's mind fuckery lasted the shortest with her. Made sense, she had willpower like no other and biology that the whole world sought for. That didn't mean she couldn't be stopped. 'Can't let her get a speech going—!'
Felix strode up to her and put his finger to her lip. Since they were both nude—nude island, duh, Felix couldn't go out wearing scientist clothing—the touch was electric. He silenced the captain with just that. Few in history could claim to have accomplished a feat of such calibre.
"L-look, the princess has…well…" His voice went into a low whisper. "She really likes me. Especially in her room."
Ah. Samantha understood. She understood immediately and closed her eyes.
"You could have still told me."
He took a step back, pretending to be the sheepish nerd he sort-of already was. "The princess sent somebody and was like, 'Don't tell anyone' and I couldn't really deny it. This whole deal hinges on her. She's taking on eighty-percent of the financial burden here. She's taking a huge gamble on me."
"I understand." Samantha sighed, arms still under her bust. His eyes flicked. Dammit. She didn't notice because her gaze wandered. "What about M'Baku?"
"Oh, the super big guy?"
"Any information on him?"
Oh, nice! It seemed M'Baku was really making her concerned.
"The princess isn't too interested in his body for some reason. You want my opinion?"
"By all means."
"They're definitely experimenting on him. Did you see those holes on his wrist?"
"I did." Samantha nodded, lips pursed. "But he's dangerous."
"He's also a person," Felix countered. "They could be committing war crimes here, Samantha. I, well, I don't know how much evidence you need but is it possible to send SHIELD people here?"
Samantha shook her head. "No, not possible. Not here. Princess Ororo's family are one of the founders of the World Security Council. They have veto power."
"Are you kidding me?" Now this Felix did not know. "Veto power? W-what, so they can just call off any operation?"
"Veto power in practice is how it is explained to me by Peggy. Technically, we could do an investigation but it will never happen because each Security Council member has certain things that are deemed off-limits. The Security Council members collude with each other, back each other, and vote for these things."
"So it's not in law but in practice…"
"Precisely. A silent agreement and it's only for one thing alone. One and one only. For Ororo, she chose this island. For, say, King T'Challa, it is the treasury of his Vibranium hoard. Everybody has that one thing and that one thing has been silently and mutually agreed to be beneficial."
"One thing only…"
So that was how things worked…
"Get some sleep," Samantha said, turning around. "I'm sure it's been a long time for you."
That night, he couldn't. Felix fell asleep much faster than normal and all he saw were gleaming yellow eyes and a voice calling him.
"Spider…Man…"
"Spider…MAN…"
"Spider-Man!"