[Time: One day after Starfire launched for the Sun]
The wind screamed across a white desert, dragging clouds of ice across jagged formations of frozen earth. Buried beneath the surface was a facility long forgotten by the world.
But inside the walls of the deep chamber, there was no wind. No natural light or sound. Just the slow hum of decaying machinery, the hiss of old hydraulics, and the labored breath of something not quite human.
In the center of a reinforced chamber, surrounded by rusted equipment and cracked screens, lay a figure in a suspended state. Wires pierced into his spine. Metal tubing ran from his arms into the machines. His face, what remained of it, was mostly gone. One eye glowed red behind a skeletal steel frame. His voice, when it came, sounded more static than speech.
A cloaked figure stepped out of the shadows. The signature shimmer of tech phasing shimmered over his body. He was wearing a grey suit, and his face was hidden behind a grey mask.
The infamous infiltrator... Ghost. [Earth 1610 version]
"Starfire has launched," Ghost said. "Stark is off-world."
The figure in the chair shifted slightly, metal grinding softly beneath his skin.
"Good... Begin extraction. I want the arc reactor."
Ghost tilted his head. "Security's tight. Stark's system uses live retinal scans and adaptive passcodes. Any wrong step and the whole base locks down. So far, all our drones, hacking, and infiltration attempts have failed. Could fry half my tech on the way in."
The voice from the chair rasped like broken code. "You've done worse for less."
The cyborg continued, slower now. "That arc reactor... The limitless energy. With it, I can abandon this... shell."
He raised one arm. The fingers trembled. The flesh around the metal frame had all but decayed. His body had lasted too long, barely kept alive by patchwork upgrades and a will to survive.
"I will rebuild. Perfected. No more dying piece by piece. I'll become the perfect cybernetic human in existence. I'll beat time itself. And when I am whole... You get what I promised."
Ghost said nothing, but his gaze lingered. Behind the mask, pain pulsed through his nerves. His body had begun deteriorating months ago. Something in the failed phasing tech he had used. His organs were failing. His mind was crumbling with each passing moment. The very thing that made him a ghost was killing him.
"I'll get it," Ghost said. "But if I bring you that reactor... You fix me. No delays."
The half-man nodded, cables twitching from the back of his skull. "I don't need you broken. I need you invisible."
Ghost activated his stealth field. The air shimmered around him and then fell silent. Only his footsteps remained, then even those faded.
The cyborg leaned back, the chair groaning beneath him.
"In the end... Stark won't save the future. He'll build the key to mine."
[Starfire Base – Midnight]
The wind outside howled across the desert. Inside, the base was quiet. Too quiet.
Ghost was already in and had hacked through the system. It was difficult and took him 3 hours to crack it, but he found his target.
He crouched low in a dark corner of the upper hall. His upgraded suit shimmered with soft pulses of blue light, cloaking him in near-invisibility. A small scanner pulsed on his wrist, mapping out power flows, sensors, and motion triggers. He moved like a shadow, slipping past every trap and camera thanks to his intangibility and invisibility.
"Too easy," he whispered.
His eyes locked on the reactor vault marker glowing on his HUD.
Every step brought him closer to the center of the base, where Tony Stark's arc reactor was stored. He moved into a side hallway. The scanner blinked green. No threats.
He reached a tall metal door, labeled STORAGE – TECH SECTOR 3. And there was a small warning: StarkTech doesn't play fair
Ghost smirked under his mask and phased inside.
Rows of equipment lined the walls. Containers of spare parts. Energy cells. Diagnostic tools. At the back, under a set of lights, sat a tall cylinder locked in a security cage.
It was exactly where it was supposed to be.
He walked forward slowly, scanning it. No signs of active traps. But he missed one detail. The floor plate beneath him glowed faintly. Then clicked.
Behind him, the door slammed shut. The lights overhead flickered. A dull hum filled the room. His scanner flashed red.
"Containment field activated," a voice said from hidden speakers.
Ghost turned, but it was too late. The suit began to flicker, and his stealth faded. His legs went heavy. His suit was shutting down. He reached for his emergency phaser, but it shorted out in his hand. Sparks flew. The HUD inside his mask died.
"No," he growled. "No, no, no!"
The walls of the fake storage room lit up with hidden emitters. It wasn't a storage unit.
It was a containment cell.
And standing on the other side of the transparent door, arms crossed, was Yelena. Next to her stood Natasha. Behind them were the Widows and security bots.
"You picked the wrong night," Natasha said.
Yelena tilted her head. "You should've read the fine print. StarkTech doesn't play fair."
Ghost pounded a fist against the glass.
He didn't say a word.
He just stared at them.
Natasha leaned in closer. "We knew you were coming the moment you stepped inside the outer gate. Tony built detectors that read quantum signatures. Your suit burns just a little too bright."
Yelena added, "And instead of stopping you, we let you in. So we could trap you. Smart, right?"
His suit continued to shut down piece by piece.
Yelena walked to Ghost and looked at him with pity, "You know what we do with thieves? Well, you will." She clenched her fist. The nanites swarmed down her arm, forming a gauntlet etched with glowing lines. A holographic screen flared to life above her wrist.
She entered a sequence.
From beneath the floor, panels slid open with mechanical clicks. Multiple tentacles surged upward: flexible, seamless, forged from adamantium-bound nanites. They whipped toward Ghost and latched onto his limbs, torso, and spine with precision.
Ghost struggled. He activated his backup power source and tried to phase, flickered, tried to twist free, but the tentacles held. The adaptive nanites countered every frequency and phased signature his suit pushed out. Plus, the adamantium was capable of absorbing foreign energy. All in all, there was no way for him to escape.
He reached for his hidden explosives. A light fizzle. That was all. No boom. The tentacles had already severed power flow to his storage nodes.
The floor hissed as more tendrils slithered around him, pulsing with blue light. His systems were being scanned, mapped, and stripped down line by line. Warnings flashed across the dying HUD in his visor. His backup escape routes, hidden AI injectors, self-destruct killswitches... All offline. One by one.
He gritted his teeth and activated the failsafe: Hypersphere.
A ripple of distortion started at his gauntlet, flickering in and out of sight. It was his last trick. A fold-pocket into the fifth dimension, designed to hide anything.
But Yelena was already moving.
Her eyes narrowed. Two of the tentacles snapped back, reshaped into plasma blades, and struck with blinding speed.
The gauntlet arm came off first. Then the other.
Ghost screamed, a raw, choked sound. Blood sprayed everywhere like a freaking geyser.
His legs followed next.
Sliced clean, the blades reformed into clamps and pinned what was left of his body to the floor.
Yelena turned her hand slightly. The tentacles pulsed with green light as they released targeted bursts of bio-nanites, sealing off the bleeding, stabilizing his vitals just enough to keep him alive. And then put the chopped arms and legs in separate containment boxes.
Ghost gasped, head twitching, blood pooling beneath him.
His mask cracked along the jawline. One eye barely opened. He looked at Yelena, then Natasha, then at the blurred lights above him.
"You shouldn't have come here," Natasha said, voice flat.
Yelena knelt beside him, her voice quieter now.
"How dare you try to steal something that my man worked so hard for? He worked day and night, ignoring his own health, just to make this world a better place. And you motherfucker... I'm gonna take my time, killing you."
Ghost lay motionless, disarmed, dismembered, and defeated.
"Strip his suit. Shift him to the interrogation chamber. Time to find out the bastard behind this freak," Natasha said. She then turned back to the Widows. "Suit up and spread out. Code: Omega Lockdown. You see or feel anything weird, no matter how small it is. Report me."
Her hand reached into her jacket's pocket. Her fingers touched the small vial. The Aegis Serum. It was time for an upgrade and then... HUNT.
[Don't forget to 'favorite' the chapter.]
If you like my work, you can support me on>: www.patr eon.com/XcaliburXc
[Read 17 advance chapters]