Max Dillon was no stranger to pain. But even for him, being torn from a battlefield mid-strike and waking up in a foreign, humming room was disorienting.
He groaned, coughing out blood and ozone, still crackling faintly with residual energy. He recognized the sensation immediately, he'd been teleported.
"What the…?" Max clutched his ribs, sparks flickering across his fingertips.
The room around him was vast and dim, its edges swallowed by shadows.
Electric grids spidered through the walls like metallic veins, humming with power that dwarfed even the New York city grid.
Whatever this place was, it was built for someone like him… or against him.
That's when he saw him.
A red-suited man, leaning casually against a wall, arms folded, swords glinting at his sides.
Deadpool.
"Who are you? Why save me?" Max growled, forcing himself to stand, his body trembling with effort.
Sparks danced violently around his form again, his adrenaline trying to jumpstart his power. "Where did you take me?!"
Deadpool quickly raised both hands. "Whoa there, Sparky! Let's not go full Tesla coil on me, okay? Look, I didn't save you. I delivered you. I'm just the UPS guy here, except instead of packages, I drop off unstable electric dudes with anger issues."
Max narrowed his eyes. "So you're working for someone."
"Ding ding ding! We have a winner!" Deadpool tapped the side of his mask.
"Like I told your little telekinetic buddy back there, I go where the money goes. And the folks paying me? Loaded. Scary fashion sense, but hey, who am I to judge?"
Before Max could respond, the steel door behind Deadpool hissed open.
Figures stepped inside, four of them. Clad in thick, black suits with insulated padding and visors that distorted their faces into mechanical blanks.
But Max noticed the insignia on their chests right away.
A skeletal octopus, its tendrils stretching in all directions. Even through the haze of pain, a chill crept down his spine.
"Deadpool." One of them said in a low, processed voice. "Well done. Your payment awaits."
Deadpool gave a lazy two-finger salute. "Pleasure doing business with evil corporate overlords as always." He turned to Max with a wink. "You'll be fine. Probably. I mean, they didn't even bring a lobotomy kit, so it's not that bad, right?"
The door sealed behind him with a hiss, and the room felt colder.
Max turned back to the remaining figures.
His voice came out hoarse. "Who are you? Why pull me out now? I was winning."
The leader stepped forward, the lights reflecting off his mask.
"You'll understand in time, you have value. That's why we retrieved you. You're going to be part of something much bigger than yourself. But for now..."
He gestured, and the others stepped forward. Max tried to fight, but his legs buckled. His strength was still too far gone. Sparks flickered, but his power betrayed him.
They didn't even flinch. Their suits were fully insulated.
He was powerless.
They dragged him down a corridor lined with glowing panels and bio-scanners, eventually arriving at a massive chamber that looked like something out of a sci-fi nightmare: a biochemical lab filled with technicians in white hazmat suits and a jungle of machines some humming, some pulsing, others just... waiting.
A vial was handed to the masked leader.
A green fluid shimmered inside like liquid emeralds.
"Drink." He ordered, holding it out to Max. "It will ease the pain."
"What the hell is this?" Max hesitated.
"A regenerative cocktail." The figure replied. "Tailored to your DNA. We know what's broken inside you, and we know how to fix it. Or… would you rather crawl back to Dr Soren and let him finish what he started?"
Silence.
Max looked at the masked faces around him. No empathy. Just interest.
He took the vial and drank.
The liquid burned as it went down, but with it came relief. His torn muscles began to realign. Cracked bones fused slowly back into place. He could feel the hum of his own body reconnecting to the ambient electricity like wires slotting back into a socket.
For a moment, he felt… whole.
Then came the dizziness.
His vision swam. His knees buckled. The room twisted sideways.
"Wha—what… did you…?"
The last thing he saw was the masked man tilting his head, almost amused.
Then the darkness took him.
The leader looked down at Max's unconscious form and turned to one of the technicians.
"Begin the reprogramming. Reinforce obedience."
The blackout in New York had left the city gasping in the dark.
Traffic lights failed. Elevators trapped people in high-rises. Hospitals scrambled to activate emergency generators. For a moment, panic rippled through the city.
But thanks to the city's emergency response teams and key departments switching to backup power just in time, disaster was averted. Barely.
What no one fully understood, however, was what caused the power surge, because the real battle had happened off the grid, far from cameras and news crews.
And now, the only ones with even a vague understanding of the threat were scrambling to piece it together.
Soren sat on the edge of a med-bed, his arm healed from the earlier clash. His mind wasn't on the pain, though, it was on Electro.
And who had taken him.
The door to the hospital room slid open.
"Mr Soren" Came a calm but concerned voice. "You okay? Did you take care of Electro?"
Phil Coulson. Sharp suit, sharp mind. Always a step ahead of the rest of SHIELD's field agents.
Soren stood up immediately. "No. He got away. Someone pulled him out at the last second."
"Pulled him out? What, he has allies now?" Coulson's brow furrowed.
Soren shook his head. "Not exactly. This wasn't some street-level thug operation. Whoever intervened… had teleportation tech. Precise, fast. And they knew exactly what they were doing."
"That's troubling." Coulson muttered, already mentally compiling names.
"We'll get agents digging into any sightings. If Electro has backers, that opens up a whole new set of problems."
"I don't think it's just backers. This felt… planned. Like someone's been watching him."
Coulson nodded grimly. "Then we'll start with what we do know. But there's another issue." He pulled out a small SHIELD tablet and flipped it around to show Soren a schematic.
"We've analyzed the power data. Electro's consumption rate is rising exponentially. He's evolving… fast."
"I noticed." Soren muttered. "He absorbed half the city grid and didn't breakdown."
Coulson hesitated, then added. "There's a theory one of our science teams proposed. Controversial, but... interesting."
"I'm listening."
"Let him absorb more."
"What?" Soren blinked.
"Let him overcharge. Feed him more energy than he can handle. Everything has a limit, even walking batteries. If we force him to take in energy beyond his threshold, he might implode."
Soren crossed his arms, deep in thought. "It's not a bad idea. But risky. If we miscalculate, we're just feeding him more power."
Max went from B-rank to B+ in one day. Next time, it could be worse.
"Exactly." Coulson replied. "It's a gamble. But we don't have many cards left to play."
Soren's eyes narrowed. That's when a spark of inspiration hit.
The Ark Reactor.
Tony Stark's compact energy core, the clean-energy miracle of the modern world. His original version could power a city block. But the second generation, the one based on the mysterious element his father had left behind…
That might just be powerful enough to force-feed Electro into a meltdown.
"Phil." Soren said abruptly, turning toward the exit, "I need to go."
Coulson blinked. "Where?"
"To see Stark. If I'm right, his tech might give us the key to stopping Electro for good."
Without waiting for a reply, Soren stormed out of the room, leaving Coulson blinking in confusion behind him.
The lobby of Stark Tower buzzed with activity as usual, businessmen, scientists, engineers moving through the space like gears in a well-oiled machine.
Soren marched in, ignoring the receptionist's protests, and headed straight for the executive elevator.
He was intercepted by a familiar face just as the doors opened.
"Mr Macaluso?" Pepper Potts stood poised in a sleek grey suit, tablet in hand. "Are you looking for Tony? Because he's~"
"I need to see him." Soren cut in urgently. "It's about the Ark Reactor. And something worse than the blackout."
꧁𓊈𒆜༺⚜༻𒆜𓊉꧂
Dare you peek into my other tales? The opening three chapters of select stories are free to all.
PhantomDream