The Ultimates: Against All Enemies (14 page)

Steve caught the Chitauri before it had gotten to the third-floor landing by vaulting up from the second floor and driving the alien down under his weight. "All, Jesus, man! Okay!" the Chitauri said. Its voice was muffled from Steve's forearm mashing its face into the iron stairs.

"They must send you to acting school," Steve said. He turned the Chitauri over and pinned it on its back. It looked like a kid, maybe nineteen years old, Puerto Rican if the T-shirt of the Virgin Mary was anything to go by. Leaning in close and putting his full weight on the Chitauri's collarbones, Steve growled, "Who'd you kill to take this form? What was his name? Did he have a family?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, man," the Chitauri said. "You want my name? It's Eddie Guzman. You a cop? Arrest me, then, fine, okay, but let me get up." Some of the tension went out of its body.

"One chance," Steve said, not because he was uncertain but because he wanted to learn something about this adversary. When you could look your enemy in the eye before you killed him, you could learn something about the next time you would have to fight.

"One chance what?" the Chitauri said.

"Live or die," Steve said. "Which floor were you headed for?" Something changed around its eyes. "Third floor," it said, and spat in Steve's face. He blinked reflexively—not even the super-soldier serum could eliminate that response—but the Chitauri's saliva was already in his eyes, and they burned like they were going to melt out of his head. The Chitauri twisted out from under him. Steve took a blind swing at it, and connected, but he could barely see, and he felt the fire escape tremble as the Chitauri jumped. Swiping at his eyes, he saw as if through a hundred feet of water. The alien was on the ground and running.

Steve was about to jump after it, but with its head start... wait. He looked up, at the cat's cradle of phone and cable lines strung from a line of telephone poles to the buildings on both sides. Good thing they haven't gotten around to putting all of them underground yet, he thought, as the geometry did itself in his head. Steve jumped up and caught the cable-TV line going into the fourth-floor apartment, jerking it out of the wall box and swinging down and across the courtyard like Tarzan. The pain in his eyes wasn't going away, but through their watering he could see the Chitauri had already gotten to a high brick wall that divided the courtyard from a basketball court on the other side. In the three or four seconds it took Steve to cover the length of the courtyard, the Chitauri had already gotten its hands on top of the wall. Steve hit the Chitauri square in the back with both feet, feeling its spine crack in the split second before his momentum crushed it into the brick wall. Letting go of the cable, Steve got the Chitauri in a chokehold and broke its neck as they fell together into a tangle of morning glory and some kind of bamboo that lined most of the courtyard's interior. The Chitauri was dead before they hit the ground, but Steve made sure, holding its face pressed into the soft earth while his vision slowly cleared and the pain in his eye sockets lessened to a minor irritation. When the Chitauri hadn't moved for a full minute, Steve picked it up in a fireman's carry and walked back across the courtyard. He threw it over the wall into the breezeway and vaulted over after it.

"Dammit, Captain Rogers," Admiral Garza said, "you almost hit me with that thing."

"Sorry, Admiral," Steve said. He pinched his eyes shut for a second, then blinked away the last of the Chitauri's saliva. He was starting to feel normal again. "I didn't want to say too much out loud in case that little fracas drew some attention."

He looked around as he said it, and noticed Kyle, Garza's driver, standing sentinel at the head of the breezeway. On the concrete between them, the Chitauri was already starting to lose the cohesion of its human shape. "God Almighty, but they're hideous," Admiral Garza said. "What the hell happened to your eyes?"

Steve looked up from the body of the dead Chitauri. Ignoring Garza's question, he said, "Admiral Garza. Let me take this to General Fury. He'll do the right thing, sir, once he can really see what's happening."

"Are you sure of that, Captain?" Garza responded. "Seems to me that General Fury's had more than enough chances."

"Sir. You've said it, I've said it, General Fury has said it. Uniforms have to stick together. Request permission to inform General Fury and mobilize a SHIELD team to perform recovery." Admiral Garza stowed the sensor and scratched at the back of his neck. "Reluctantly granted. But under no circumstances will you tell Fury about this sensor, and only if it is unavoidable will you inform him that I was present when this happened. Understood?"

"Understood, sir."

"I'll be in touch, Captain. I've got a feeling this whole situation's about to come to a head." With that, Admiral Garza walked back down the breezeway, Kyle falling in step with him as they turned the corner out of sight.

When Nick Fury heard that Steve had killed a disguised Chitauri in Janet Pym's backyard, his first thought was
God, I hope it wasn't just a burglar
. The way Steve had been acting lately, it wasn't impossible that he could have gone off half-cocked. Between his worry about that and Thor's tendency to see Loki everywhere, Nick was starting to get jumpy himself. Pretty soon he'd be seeing Viet Cong lying in wait for him at the grocery store.

But he got his ass to the Upper West Side so he could manage the recovery team, and he let Janet know that she probably shouldn't go home until all the loose ends related to this particular incident had been cleared up.

"Fine," she said archly. "The way you want reports every five minutes, I'll never be able to go home again anyway."

"You're welcome to return to the private sector, Miz Pym," Fury said, and hung up. He was going to have to do something about her and Cap, who shouldn't have had to be told about why you didn't fraternize with comrades. That was a conversation he wasn't looking forward to having. I would be a much happier man, Fury reflected, if the members of my team did not have emotions. Maybe Janet and Bruce can build that into the next generation of super-soldiers.

Janet called him back thirty seconds later. "Don't ever call me Pym again," she said, and hungup on him. Fury chuckled to himself about that all the way to the scene. By the time he got there, NYPD had showed up to see why a big van and a bunch of people in bio-hazard suits were cluttering up the sidewalk. Fury gave them the old national-security spiel, and they took it with their usual lack of grace, and then he found Steve down at the end of a narrow walkway between two apartment buildings. The recovery team had already bagged and removed the body, and was now sterilizing the area. A SHIELD

field medic was washing Steve's eyes out with saline solution.

"You okay there, soldier?" Fury asked.

Steve wiped away the solution that had run down his cheeks. "Just about, sir. The Chitauri spat in my eyes. Stung some for a while."

"Doc, take Captain Rogers and run a full workup on him," Fury said. "Head to toe. We need to make sure all he's got is red eyes."

"I'm fine, General," Steve protested.

"You look fine and you sound fine," Fury agreed. "But we're both going to leave it up to the docs to decide whether you are fine. Can we agree on that?"

Steve didn't look happy about it, but he started to walk back toward the street with the medic. "And call your girlfriend," Fury said as he passed.

"She's not my girlfriend," Steve said.

"Oh no?"

Steve turned to face Nick. "General," he said. "With all due respect, I would like to keep my private life private."

Nick looked him in the eye for a long moment, and then said, "I think the doctors can wait a minute. Let's you and I have a talk."

He walked Steve to the van, then stuck his head in and told the two techs prepping the dead Chitauri for the drive to walk around the block. When they were gone, Fury climbed into the back of the van and motioned for Steve to shut the doors behind them.

"All right," he said. "I hate pep talks, so this isn't going to be one. You want to say something to me about Tony's inventions, or Beltway bullshit, or anything else, now's the time. I'm sick and goddamn tired of having to wonder what's going on in your head all the time. You're not suited to keeping secrets, Cap. Don't ever play poker for money."

Steve was looking down at the floor while Nick delivered his short speech, and he kept looking at the floor long enough that Nick almost started talking again. But then Steve said, "General, I don't like feeling as if we're not doing everything we could."

"You don't think we are?"

"No, sir. I don't."

"You think we should have gone ahead and developed Tony's tech, and just used it ourselves?" Another long pause, during which Nick could actually see Steve wrestling with something that he wanted to say but couldn't quite bring himself to. Then Captain America looked Nick in the eye and said, "I'm having a hard time with that, yeah."

"Remember last week, when you told me there were some things people didn't want to know?

Boogeymen under the bed, I think you said. Well, this is what you were talking about. Then you told me that in America, we don't keep people scared. And so what do you do? You go on TV and stand there while people talk about terrorist attacks." Fury paused to consider exactly what he was going to say next.

"I've given you a lot of rope, Cap, but the last thing in the world—literally—we need right now is dissent inside the team."

Steve nodded. "Yes, sir," he said, but he wasn't looking Nick in the eye anymore, and Nick could see him trying not to say something again.

"And we don't need secrets, either," Nick said. "So why don't you just tell me whatever it is that's on your mind, and we'll get it all out in the open and see where we stand?" Red-eyed and obviously miserable, Steve looked up at Nick again and said, "I can't do that, sir." Nick held the look for a long time. Then he stood up, or at least as much as he could inside the van, and put a hand on the door latch. "Then you and I are going to have a problem down the road, Captain." Pushing the door open, he said, "I think it's time for you to go to the doctor." 21

Status Report

Assimilated assets in place report that publicized screening technology manufactured by is being installed at the following locations:

Military facilities

and other national political offices in Federal, state, and county government buildings Airports served by commercial passenger carriers In the majority of cases, new screeners replace existing screeners, lessening added inconvenience to human populations. appears less willing to provide a popular face as political cover for a possibly unpopular security initiative; reconsideration of asset investment in cultural production has produced the conclusion that such investment is unwise and unlikely to yield desired rewards. Assets will monitor progress of security installations and continue to provide information regarding future installations. Progress of the human ordering project is partially keyed to locations at which this technology is in place. Comprehensive intelligence in this regard, driven by assimilated -assets in place, is deemed critical to mission success. Concern exists over scientific advances made by involving control and management of large numbers of arthropods, order . Proposals to retard development of Pym's project are under consideration.

Mission Report

Operation located at and near residence of achieved planned goals. Sequential loss of assets in place is deemed likely to yield desired results with respect to actions of and other members of the . Mission timeline:

-.001944 solar year: Assessment of security and surveillance obstacles surrounding .

-.010837 solar year: Formulation of mission parameters and selection of necessary assets.

-.004107 solar year: Intentional loss of first asset due to interception by .

-.000342 solar year: Observation and surveillance of 's interactions with .

-.000185 solar year: Arrival of and at residence of .

-.000183 solar year: Mobilization of second asset.

-.000171 solar year: Intentional loss of second assel.

Operation required exact timing and placement of assets; success suggests that assets are reaching optimal functionality. Timetable for human ordering project is adjusted accordingly. Adjustment is also deemed prudent due to possibility that the technology will compromise operations critical to human ordering project.

22

That night, after the medicos finally determined he wasn't a threat to the survival of the human race, Steve called Bucky. He hadn't seen his old buddy since Bucky had gotten out of the hospital, and even though Bucky was home, he clearly didn't have much time left on this Earth. There were no friends like old friends, and Steve wasn't going to let his friendship with Bucky lapse now. It turned out that Bucky was having a nephew of his over for dinner, but he was anxious to see Steve. "Hey, if there's enough for four, there's enough for five," he said. "Come on over."

So Steve did, and found when he got there that in addition to Bucky's nephew Grant and his wife Sharon, there was a fifth guest: an immense Newfoundland dog named Hobbes. Steve had never been much of a dog person, growing up in a small apartment and then shipping off into the Army, and he'd never even seen a Newfoundland before. Hobbes was some dog. Clumsy, overbearing, but so friendly at the same time that you had a hard time holding it against him when he knocked over your drink or drooled on your pants. Something about having a dog around also cleared away the hovering sense of doom about Bucky's cancer. Bucky looked awful; he'd never been a big man, and now he looked so wispy that Steve could have done wrist curls with him even before the super-soldier program came along. Dinner was simple but hearty, just like Bucky had always liked it: meat loaf, mashed potatoes, green beans. Sitting there with his best friend, ex-girlfriend, and a young married couple with a happily rambunctious dog, Steve longed for a life he was never going to have. And on the heels of that longing, he renewed his commitment to protecting those people who could have hearth and home and family. And dog, he added as Hobbes thumped his muzzle against Steve's elbow.