"Experiments," the girl finally stammers out.
"Chloe!" the geezer yells.
She looks up at me, eyes filled with tears, panic in her voice, the realization that in an instant, she could be dead.
"What kind?"
"To make some kind of serum, to develop new heroes."
I raise an eyebrow. "Super soldiers?"
She quickly shakes her head. "Stronger. Like the Avengers."
More enhanced individuals.
I already have a few who work for me. I never ask where they came from or how they got their powers. People's pasts are their own business, I only care about the future and the loyalty they have to me. But was a place like this making them? And if so, how long? Goliath is at least in his thirties. I always assumed it was Hydra again.
Guess I'm wrong.
"Where are they?"
"What?" the geezer replies, finally lowering his weapon.
"The heroes you made."
"Dead. They all failed," he says, tossing the gun onto a counter.
"Why did you want those things?" I question, gesturing to the case.
He stares at me for a second, probably deciding what's best here, before his eyes glance over to the splattered mess on his wall, then back to me. He tips his glasses up, pinching the bridge of his nose. With a sigh, he replies, "In the past, we came close to success when working with alien biology."
"You've used other alien tech?"
"Not us. We found research from other teams. A few of their subjects lived for a short time, and during that time were incredibly successful."
I lick my teeth and purse my lips in thought. "Well, unfortunately, the Crimson Queen will be discontinuing services with you all."
All eyes shift to me in confusion. I feel sweat forming on the girl's shoulder. I think she knows what's coming. I glance over to her. Something about her oddly reminds me of Sierra, she's not even blonde, so I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it's the deer-in-headlights look she's giving me.
"What do you mean?" the geezer asks.
I have no desire to answer questions or explain my reasoning, because frankly, I don't have to. I reach into my coat. Along the interior lining are several throwing knives. Pulling one out, I throw it at him, it pierces right through his head, leaving a clean hole before landing in the wall.
"Oh god," the girl yells. Before I even register it, she surprises me, doubling over and hurling on the ground. I barely manage to dodge, and not very successfully, considering there's now some on my boots.
"Oh seriously! Gross, kid!"
Through my peripheral, I see the bubble boy making a run for a back door in his lab. I sprint, tossing myself right through the glass wall, rolling across the table and sending countless chemicals flying across the floor. He's desperately trying to get the door open, but whether it's his panic or something else, he just can't. I come up behind him.
"Let me help you."
Grabbing his head, I bash it repeatedly into the door until, inside the bubble suit, there's nothing but a red mess of disgust. I throw him to the center of the metal room, where the suit pops like a water balloon.
The girl is cowering under her desk beside the pile of disgust she's made, her hands clenched tight over her mouth. I take a deep breath, collect the case from the lab table, and slip it into my backpack. In the corner of the lab, I spot something strange—a small fridge, almost, with two vials inside. When I open it, I find it's not a fridge at all—it's hot. The vials are labeled: one dark red, A-27; the other almost pitch black, E-84. Both have warning labels telling me not to open them and to store them at temperatures of at least 600 degrees Fahrenheit.
"Hey, little girl! Get over here!" I yell. Something tells me not to touch these, but I'm not leaving them here, that's for sure. She shakily makes her way over, stumbling at every step like she's just learning to walk.
"What are these?"
She shrugs immediately, trembling. "I don't know. That was Thomas's job, I just know to make sure they stay at that temperature if he leaves. But I only worked with the data, other then that."
I assume Thomas was my little human water balloon on the floor over there. "Pack these up so I can take them."
She nods and hurries to grab something from a storage compartment, pulling out a large black cooler-looking thing.
"This will only keep them at the right temperature for about twelve hours," she says, using a pair of forceps to remove the vials and place them into the container before shutting it quickly.
"Alrighty then, you can leave now. Tell whoever you work for what I said, and let them know that if I catch wind they're doing shit like this again—" I point to the splattered mess of a wall and floor. "—that will be them. Got it?"
She nods before sprinting for the elevator. I pick up the weird black heater and follow suit. I find her furiously pressing the button, but the light just keeps flashing red.
"Shit," she murmurs as I come up behind her. She sprints across the room to the other large metal door, violently yanking on it with all her weight.
"Shit!" she yells again, kicking the door, only to end up hurting her foot and hopping around on one leg while holding the other, wincing in pain.
"What?"
"The building's gone into lockdown! We aren't getting out—we're going to die down here!" she yammers, crying even harder before collapsing to the floor.
I roll my eyes, placing the box and backpack off to the side before prying the elevator doors open. Looking up the tunnel, though, it's been sealed off.
"That door lead out?" I question.
"It has another exit, but it's locked too," she sobs, curling herself into a ball on the floor.
Maybe it's locked for her, but not for me. I walk over and start pounding on the door, but from my first hit I realize it's even thicker than the walls in that damn Hydra facility. I grab at the seam and try to pry it open.
"Don't bother," she says. "This place was designed to hold enhanced individuals, and make sure they die down here before they get out."
"It's fine. It may take a little bit, but I'll get through."
She shakes her head, fingers buried in her tightly tied-back hair. "In lockdown mode, the air supply gets cut off. We have maybe an hour of air if we're lucky."
I stop punching. Her words sink in. I think back to times I've been trapped in places like this. It usually takes me three hours to break through walls that thick, my hand, wrist, or arm always breaks, and I have to wait for it to heal. Even switching back and forth, it would take me that long. And I have no idea what's even behind this door—it could just be another elevator or more locked rooms.
I guess I'm going to get the answer to my question: can I really die?
Hydra suffocated me before, not a good way to go, mind you. But once air was readministered, I came back. As far as I know, I don't come back without it.
Shit.
I'm going to die.
In Russia.
Underground.
With a sniveling mess of a woman, and three corpses.