[INTERROGATION CHAMBER – STARFIRE BASE, SUBLEVEL 4]
The chamber was bright.
Ghost hung from an energy rig suspended above the floor. His limbs still severed, his body a grotesque fusion of man and failed machine. Stripped of his suit, he looked like something torn out of a failed experiment: scorched flesh webbed with circuitry, broken bones half-healed around implants, skin fused to alloy like wax to wire.
His chest pulsed with blue light from the mini arc reactor that Yelena had grafted into his chest cavity to replace his suit's power source. It was the only thing keeping him alive.
Yelena stood behind a transparent energy shield, hands clasped behind her back.
A holographic screen hovered nearby, projecting constant vitals and energy readouts across the wall. Ghost's core flickered irregularly. His body was degrading by the minute.
"Vitals are holding," Hermes informed. "Pain levels... extreme. Neural surges are unstable."
Yelena stepped through the energy shield. It shimmered around her, then vanished as she passed. Her eyes were locked on the ruined man hanging before her. She stopped just a few feet from Ghost. He hung there, barely breathing, his body twitching in slow, painful pulses.
"You really fucked up," she said, voice even. "But you already know that."
Ghost lifted his head slightly. His face was mottled with burns and stretch marks from where the phasing tech had fused into his nerves. His eye flickered like a dying signal light.
"You can't stop it," he rasped. "Even if you kill me, he'll find someone else."
Yelena leaned closer, ignoring the stench of scorched bio-mechanical rot.
"I'll ask once," she said.
Her voice was calm. Cold.
"Give me everything: where your boss is, what he wants, who else is working with him, and what tech you've been using. Every last piece of it."
She turned and walked to a table built into the wall. A small tray extended from it with a mechanical sound. She reached into her jacket, pulled out a small blue vial, and placed it gently on the tray.
"This is the Bio-Nanites," she said. "It'll repair you. Nerves, organs, bones. It'll burn away the phasing damage and fix your DNA. No powers. No suit. Just a clean start. Human again. Alive."
She let the words sit for a second, then looked over her shoulder at him.
Yelena reached into the other side of her jacket. She took out a second vial. This one was black. The fluid inside swirled like smoke trapped in water.
She held it up, turning it so the light caught it.
"This one doesn't heal. It rips you apart, neuron by neuron. But at the same time will heal you and repeat the process again and again."
She placed it beside the nanite vial and walked back toward him. She stopped just before him and looked him in the eye.
"You get to choose. Give me what I want and walk out of here whole. Or refuse, and I find out anyway. Slowly."
She stepped back, folded her arms, and waited.
"Tick tock," she said. "Let's hear it."
Ghost let out a slow, ragged breath. His one working eye locked onto Yelena.
"You expect me to believe you'll let me live?" he said, his voice broken and dry. "You hate me. You butchered me. You think I don't know how this ends?"
Yelena said nothing. Just stared.
He laughed, a bitter, metallic sound. "I give you what you want, and you kill me anyway. That's how this works."
His head tilted forward, blood dripping from his chin. "But… if you can really fix me... if you can undo what the phasing did… if you can stop the decay... I'll tell you everything."
A pause. Then: "I want to live without pain, even if it's for a moment. I'm done rotting."
Yelena looked at him for a long moment.
Then she stepped over to the tray, picked up the blue vial, and walked back toward him. The light in the room caught her eyes just right... They looked hard, cold, calculating. "You lie to me," she said, holding up the vial, "and I'll make sure your new body stays alive through every second of what comes next."
She stabbed the injector into his chest and pushed the plunger.
The bio-nanites hissed as they entered his bloodstream. Instantly, the blue core in his chest glowed brighter. His body jerked. Muscles twitched. Nerves flared. Skin began to knit together. Bone crackled as it began to realign and grow.
Ghost gasped. His breathing sharpened.
Yelena grabbed the reactor and ripped it out of his chest.
"GAAHHHH!!" Ghost screamed in pain.
Blood gushed out, but the wound was already healing.
[Ten minutes passed.]
The energy rig hissed, then slowly lowered Ghost to the floor. His body convulsed one last time, then settled.
The transformation was complete.
No more torn muscle, no exposed tech, no stench of rot. His limbs had regrown. His skin was whole. The scarring was no more, the cybernetic remnants were eaten by the nanites. He looked… human. Breathing. Alive.
He stared at his hands in disbelief, ran trembling fingers across his chest, then his face. His voice came out as a whisper:
He fell to his knees.
Yelena stood a few feet away, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
"That's enough," she said flatly. "You got your miracle. Now talk."
Ghost looked up at her. The mask was gone. His face was lean, drawn from pain and time, but whole.
"I'll give you everything," he said.
He took a shaky breath and started.
"The facility... It's buried in the Arctic shelf, near the old Alpha Station ruins. Deep underground. No satellites ever see it because it doesn't broadcast, and it's in the blind zone. You have to know exactly where to look."
He paused, then continued.
"It's run by someone you won't believe. His name is Howard Stark."
Yelena frowned. "Howard Stark? What the fuck are you talking about? You wanna die?"
Ghost shook his head. "Not him. Not your Howard. His father."
Yelena narrowed her eyes.
"Howard Stark... Senior. Anthony Edward Stark's grandfather."
"You gotta be kidding me," Yelena mumbled. Everyone who was hearing this conversation from the control room was surprised.
Ghost continued. "He faked his death decades ago. He was the founder of a classified program called Project Tomorrow. It was supposed to be the next leap in human evolution, hybrids of man and machine. Living weapons. Thinking machines. Arsenal Units."
Yelena's eyes widened. She'd heard whispers of the name Arsenal before when she was still a Widow. Rumors. Wiped files. The Red Room, back then, tried to find the info on the original project and planned to use it to enhance the Widows, but failed.
"He was brilliant. Terrifying. He wanted to crack the limits of biology, defy aging, illness, even death itself. Thought time was the enemy. So he built the prototype and used himself as the baseline. But there was a failure. A massive explosion at the primary facility. Everyone thought he died."
"But he didn't," she said.
"No," Ghost replied. "He lived. Trapped in the prototype exo-armor he created. It was never meant to be permanent, just a casing for evolution. But after the blast, it fused to him, and there's no way to remove it without killing him. He's been alive in there ever since, barely holding on. Decades."
"And now," Yelena said, putting it together, "the power source is failing."
Ghost nodded. "That armor runs on ancient fuel tech. It's unstable and dying. The only thing powerful enough to sustain him indefinitely is Stark's arc reactor. He's desperate. His body is decaying inside that armor. Every moment is pain. But his mind? He's still the same brilliant man with the obsession of conquering time."
Yelena stared at him for a long moment.
"Why didn't he just come out? Ask Tony for help?"
"He hates Tony and Howard," Ghost said. "He thinks they are weak. He calls Tony a deluded idealist. He wants the future built on his vision, not his grandson's compassion. Why help others by giving away the future when you can control everything and everyone and live like an apex being forever?"
Yelena's voice was flat. "What about you? Are there others working with him? What technology does he have?"
Ghost looked down. "He promised to cure me. Said if I helped him get the reactor, he'd fix the decay from the phasing tech. Said he'd build me a new body. I didn't think I had a choice. And there's no one left but the two of us. Mandarin was working with us, but they fell in a single night. We turned to Madame Hydra, but Hydra fell the same way, and she was killed. Then we roped in Hammer. We were working with him for a time, but he was also killed. Then came Ross promised him the supply of a newly discovered metal in exchange for a new Arsenal Unit, but he also disappeared. Not to mention, our effort to get the Symbiote also failed."
Yelena stepped forward.
"Cloning technology?" She asked. She doesn't care about the dead. What caught her attention was the mention of building a new body.
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