Gamma radiation occupied a very specific band of the electromagnetic spectrum—extremely high-frequency waves with well-documented physical constants. Daisy had been deep in research on magnetism and the weak force recently, and most of the relevant values were already memorized. The algorithm came together easily.
The logic was straightforward: input the standard gamma constants, run source identification against a pre-loaded baseline of known fixed installations, filter out everything stationary, and flag the mobile remainder.
American civilians weren't going to be wandering around the Eastern Seaboard carrying radioactive material for fun. Whatever was left after the exclusions ran should be two targets.
She finished, handed the laptop to Gates. As a fellow intelligence man, he didn't bother with excuses—he passed it straight to his technical team for verification, and only nodded after the algorithm had actually been uploaded to the satellite network. Fifteen minutes later the verification came back clean. The algorithm went live against the satellite feed.
Twenty-nine candidate signatures on the initial sweep. Filters ran. Down to eight. She tightened the exclusion parameters. Two remained—same coordinates.
"Pennsylvania. Can you pull imagery?"
None of the generals were comfortable managing satellite systems directly. Two technicians were called in. After adjustment, the picture resolved.
The first figure had a cranium that had roughly doubled in size—the forehead extending upward some thirty centimeters beyond the browline, the skull almost grotesquely enlarged. Green-tinged skin. That was Sterns.
Beside him, moving with the deliberate economy of a soldier who'd spent his career calibrating violence: Blonsky. Still carrying the burn scarring. Still alert. The military was calling him Abomination now.
Both subjects were alert. As a veteran, Blonsky knew U.S. weapon systems well—he'd clearly been running a counter-surveillance pattern. The camera window was narrow.
Daisy settled back. Fury and Stryker had gone equally quiet.
Gates moved without hesitation. Abomination was manageable, but Sterns was a direct threat to the existing power structure—if he couldn't be controlled, he had to die. "Confirm position and fire."
The weight shifted to the Army Chief of Staff. The instruction had been deliberately vague—confirm position first to avoid collateral damage. Killing one or two could be covered up; hundreds or thousands could not. He wasn't going to slow things down with questions. His staff materialized—eight aides, some on comms to local installations, some coordinating launch authorization, some running blast-radius calculations—and two technical officers who'd had a relaxed morning found themselves moving considerably faster than they had any recent experience doing.
Stryker went out to manage his people, returned alone, and took his seat.
Five minutes later, two ground-strike missiles launched toward Pennsylvania.
On screen, Sterns suddenly tensed. A semi-transparent energy shield enveloped him, a viscous greenish substance secreted through the expanded cranium. Blonsky threw his head back, roared at the sky, and braced his arms over his head.
Neither of them moved to cover the other. The shield didn't extend to Blonsky. Blonsky didn't step in front of Sterns.
They ran opposite directions. The missiles were tracking—those few steps on the ground made no difference.
Two simultaneous impact signatures on the display. Smoke columns.
"Send two more."
When the smoke cleared, Sterns was badly damaged—the skull had fractured in several places, brain matter and pus leaking from the cracks. Daisy looked at it for a moment and decided to look at the other side of the screen.
Blonsky had taken the worse structural hit—three-quarters of his bone carapace had been blasted away—but his regenerative cycle was already running, and his actual tissue damage was comparatively light. After a brief hesitation, he abandoned Sterns—his life-saving benefactor—without another thought, and ran south toward Maryland at full speed.
Sterns, saturated in fluids and barely keeping upright, stumbled west.
"Ground elements forward. S.H.I.E.L.D. and Weapon X assets to assist in containment."
Pre-agreed. Nobody objected.
The Delta Force unit formed up. Fury and Daisy collected their sidearms.
Those were, to put it plainly, the entirety of their intended battlefield contributions.
Ajax and Lady Deathstrike had spent an unspecified amount of time standing in a hallway with nothing to drink, nowhere to sit, and a steadily compressing reserve of patience. They were not in a measured frame of mind. The checkpoint situation had resolved the question of whether their nature was going to remain politely unacknowledged, so there was no longer any reason to pretend.
Ajax came through with an alloy axe, the handle rotating at his wrist in short controlled arcs that blurred the blade. The speed was well past human standard. Lady Deathstrike extended her adamantium claws and made a few slow passes through the air, testing the edge.
The Delta commander looked at both of them.
"Freaks," he said.