Post by thefangedrose on Jul 11, 2023 13:43:13 GMT -8
Civil War 2
Chapter 1
“The Beast and The Doctor”
Midtown, Manhattan
April 11th 2023
10:57 PM
…..Beep…..
…..Beep….
…..Beep….
The steady slow rhythmic cadence of a heart monitor echoed softly in a nearly empty room. What had once been an office building in midtown New York had been converted to an empty storage unit.
In the far side of the room furthest from a shining metal elevator sat a 40 square foot area which had been completely hermetically sealed with medical grade plastic. Three people could be seen through the thick plastic, all dressed in some type of scrubs who seemed to be washing up.
Across the room closest to one of the now darkened, tinted windows sat a hospital grade bed surrounded by monitors that were all hooked up to a single person lying on top. The person was male and large in stature with long dirty blonde hair. He was naked from the waist up and covered from the waist down in a thick hospital blanket. His upper torso was completely wrapped in thick white gauze with the faintest hint of blood stains bleeding through.
The steady beeping of the heart monitor was broken by a loud sound from across the room.
DING
Seconds later the doors of the elevator pulled back revealing a towering figure walking beside a tiny blonde woman. The figure was ebony skinned wearing a loose fitting shirt and jeans, his hair was made up into a wealth of dreadlocks that hung down his back.
Trey’Von Johnson.
Also known as The Titan, Atlas.
“No fuck ups, do you hear me?” The woman growled softly, obviously trying to keep quiet.
“We know what we are being paid for, Ya Heard?” Trey answered equally as softly. “My boys know what the deal is Baby Girl….”
“Do not call me that.” The blonde snapped. “I am paying damn good money Trey. You and your Titans had better be up for this, I am risking everything here.”
“Jasmine. Okay?” Trey answered reassuringly.. “Your brother? He’s safe here. The Doctor and nurses are friends. We've been working with them for years when shit pops off on the street. They know the score.”
The woman looked over across the room at the bed lying 10 feet from here, her eyes haunted by the reality of the situation she was in.
Of course she had no idea how bad this would get.
“But, Yo….” Trey added bringing her attention back to him. “The funeral? The insistence on an empty casket? I get it, Ya Heard? No one could know it was empty….but yo girls? Yo guys? Not even them?”
Jasmine’s eyes hardened.
“No! Not even them god dammit.” She growled. “I will not make them accessories if the truth comes out. They would want to help….all of them would. And it would make all of them just as guilty of forging public records, bribery and harboring a fugitive.”
“And uh…” Trey licked his lips and glanced back and forth between Jasmine and the bed. “..His uh…wife?”
“What fucking wife?” Jasmine answered tartly. “Do you think they could have a normal life now Trey? A regular bonnie and clyde love story? You think my brother would want that for her and their kids?”
Jasmine looked down and a hand came up to slowly wipe away a tear that slipped down her cheek.
“No…He would want her to have a normal life. A chance at real happiness. She was the love of his life and her living the kind of life he has to live now would break who she is down to it’s very foundations.”
“But…”
Jasmine reached up and took the big Titan by the jaw.
“No fucking buts Trey.” She told him firmly. “Dean died that day, period. They can never know what we have done here. Ever. This is my cross to bear and by accepting that money? It became yours too.”
Trey stared down into those eyes and for a brief moment, the tiniest of seconds he understood what the Collective saw in her. The raw sheer force of will.
Like him, she would carry the world for them.
“....Understood.”
“...Good.” Jasmine took a deep steadying breath. “Dead drops at the castle. Do not use this address or names. Blood pressures and heart rates, nothing more. Anything else, you send it by armed carrier to my name only.”
Finally the flap on the sealed area opened and a middle aged man stepped out. He had changed out of the blood covered scrubs into a simple suit. Jasmine looked from him back at Trey.
“Go and tell the others.” She ordered and the big man gave the faintest nod. “...And no fucks up Atlas.”
The heels of her calf high boots clicked off the tile floor as she approached the doctor and Trey entered the elevator to head back down and fill in the other Titans. The man took a deep breath, glanced over at the bed and then back to Jasmine.
“It was a little touch and go there for awhile Ma’am.”
“I’m listening.”
“....We removed a total of 3 bullets from his torso and had to close up nearly a dozen that ripped through the left arm….one through the neck. That one was sheer luck and it missed the arteries but he’ll never sound the same because of the damage to the trachea.”
Jasmine’s face paled at the amount of damage and she looked back at her brother.
“...How…”
“Did he live through it?” The doctor finished and shrugged. “I have no idea. We lost him on the table a half a dozen times. Every time we lost him he just….came back. No intervention needed from us. He’s got someone looking out for him upstairs.”
Jasmine took her lip between her teeth at that and continued to stare at the bed through narrowed eyes.
“It’ll be obvious to anyone who looks at him, even with reconstruction done that he was shot ... .the arm alone would give it away. But….we did all we could. The rest is up to him.”
“.....Thank you.”
The doctor looked as if he wanted to say more but shook his head, turned and headed back the way he had come where he joined with the two women, each of them carrying a square locked case and together the three of them walked to the elevator and left.
Jasmine walked to the bed and stood behind it with her back to the darkened window revealing the night sky beyond and the storm which had been brewing most of the day. She stared down at the sleeping figure on the bed as outside lightning flashed revealing a figure behind her in the reflection.
A figure in a long coat and pair of sunglasses with an upside down cross on the lens.
**
Midtown, Manhattan
April 30th 2023
9:07 PM
….Beep….
….Beep….
….Beep….
DING!
The elevator doors pulled back revealing an ebony skinned figure in a pair of sweatpants and tank top. Unlike Trey, this one kept his hair in a short norse style ponytail of dreads and had a small beard.
Trey himself stood near the wall by the bed with his arms crossed over his chest. When the elevator called out he looked up only to look back out the window when he saw Crius.
Crius crossed the room to Trey and held out a small box.
“Came today.”
Trey looked sharply down at the box as things were not supposed to come to this building but recognized Jasmine’s address.
“Girl can’t even follow her own damn rules.” Trey muttered to himself with a chuckle and pulled back the brown wrapping.
“You know Cronos won’t come up here right?”
Trey laughed to himself and continued to open the package until he found a small square box inside and pushed it up revealing an empty space beneath ... .empty except a small silver locket.
“That fool is still convinced it’s haunted?”
Crius let out a barking laugh and nods.
“He swears he can hear something whispering to the big cat whenever he’s alone in here.” Crius answered. “How is he?”
“Same as always. Steady pulse and heart rate. Temperature normal.”
“Still aint woken up?”
“Nope.” Trey answered and held up the locket showing it had been altered into a bracelet. “That’s why she sent this, note says. It’s supposed to be his good luck charm.”
Trey moved across the short distance separating him and the bed. He took one of Dean’s hands and lifted his arm placing the bracelet on it. After setting the arm back down gently he slapped Crius on the chest with the back of his hand.
“Come on.” He told his friend. “Let’s go and tell Cronos it’s his turn.”
Crius grinned and the two of them moved to the elevator. Once it arrived they stepped inside and were gone.
They were gone only a few moments when the lights on one side of the room began to flicker off and on. It was subtle at first, only one and then again….and then rapidly. Then as quickly as it began it would stop…only to start again, this time closer to the bed.
“Mein Liebe….” A voice whispered barely audible in the room.
Little by little, as if someone was walking across the room toward the bed the lights continued to flicker strangely until they finally began to flicker and flash above where Dean laid. As they did the monitor began to change. The beeps became more rapid as the heart rate jumped from 85 to 99 and then to 120 and the blood pressure jumped from 70/90 to 95/130.
“Mein Welpe….” The voice whispered.
And in the flashing of the lights a figure just barely appeared in the reflection. A blonde woman was standing at his bedside, hands folded over her lap and her eyes focused down on him.
“...Danielle….” A coarse muffled voice whispered in a voice thick with pain.
**
Midtown, Manhattan
May 2th 2023
6:37 AM
The exterior of the building looked like any other. People of all shapes and sizes passed by without so much as a second look inside at the two large men who sat on the abandoned service desk just watching.
It had been over a month and no one had so much as knocked to ask for directions…until today. Through the crowd came a young man of perhaps twenty with short brown hair and dressed in a simple pair of jeans and a strange symbolized t-shirt.
As soon as the two hulking figures on the desk saw him walking to the doors they both pushed themselves off the desk and started across the lobby. The two met at the doors where they became a physical barrier preventing the young man from entering.
“Can we help you?” Crius barked.
“Yeah…”
The young man looked past the pair at a figure that seemed to have materialized out of thin air in a dark corner of the lobby and walked out into the fluorescent light. A middle aged man with brown semi curly feathered hair that hung down to his shoulders. He walked with the aid of a white oak hand carved cane and a severe limp.
The young man at the door looked up at the two men and smiled a wide disarming smile.
“This might sound weird but I was walking by and well…”
“Spit it the fuck out boy.” The more well dressed of the two barked.
“I saw you guys through the window and I thought you looked like these guys that show up on TV every now and then. The Hit Squad.”
Oh, that changed the tone of both Hyperion and Crius who now both looked at each other and grinned.
“You know us huh?”
“So it is you?!”
“Yup. In the flesh boy.” Hyperion answered with another grin.
The young man once again looked beyond the pair to see the door leading to the stairs close softly. He then looked sharply at the two men and gave them the cheesiest thumbs up.
“I thought so!”
Then turned and began to walk into the crowd on the street.
“Don’t you want an autograph?!” Crius called out.
“Nope.” The young man shouted back with a chuckle.
The two men shared a confused look, both shrugged, closed the door and went back to the desk to sit and watch. Behind them however on the monitors sitting on the desk itself it showed the strange limping man with the cane walking across the room upstairs toward the bed.
Inside the room the man limped his way to the comatose figure on the bed. As he did the lights above and around him began to flicker and the faintest hints of a whispered woman’s voice could be heard.
A voice he seemed to be listening to intently.
When he reached the bed he leaned the cane on the side of it and looked down at the still figure lying before him. After only a moment he leaned down and whispered into his ear.
Whatever he said caused the figure to sit bolt up, blood seeking through the now thin dressings on his chest and abdomen as the stitches ripped. Cold vacant eyes snapped open and his head turned to give his ear to the figure.
“I thought that would get the attention of whatever was left of you in there.” The man said softly.
A weak growl echoed from the chest of the bandaged man who stared straight ahead.
“You know what will happen if he isn’t stopped now. You know the wreckage he can bring.”
The man lying on the bed slowly moved his eyes to look him in the eyes and in them as a single question.
How?
How do you know?
“As the only surviving host…we are still connected.” He answered the unspoken question. “...And she came to me to warn me.”
The two sat for a moment before the cold empty eyes just went vacant and he collapsed back to the bed. The man standing beside the bed took the cane in his hand and reached down with the other to press the nurse button.
He then turned and slowly made his way across the room to stand just around the corner from the elevator. No sooner had he pressed his back to the wall than the doors opened and the two hulking men from the lobby rushed into the room.
“It’s about fucking time he woke up!” Hyperion’s voice said excitedly.
In their haste they missed him completely and once they passed he limped into the elevator and simply waited until the doors closed, watching the lights above the bed flickering as the two men stood confused to find Dean just lying there as they left him.
“Protect him.” The man with the cane whispered as the doors closed. “I will need him.”
