00035. Setting up the plan of attack.
"And why do we need to rescue the little murder machine?"
Ezekiel looked at Hill and said, "Because that isn't her choice. The group who made her are trying to make the perfect weapon. Plus she is technically Logan's daughter, that reason is good enough to help her out."
Logan spoke up finally and growled out, "How were they able to clone me?"
"Leftover material from when you were part of the Weapon-x program. Even though the government shut down the program, the main scientist and Stryker decided to start again with a new project. I still haven't figured out who is backing them, but hopefully when we raid the facility we will find out."
Coulson spoke next and asked, "It seems like you already have some info on them. How come you haven't gained access to their servers yet? Is their security that good?"
"The facility is not connected to any outside network as far as I could tell. The only reason I have any info at all, is because of this attack. I was able to dig a few things up, including where the facility is located."
Steve spoke up next and asked, "So what is your plan?"
Ezekiel laughed before he said, "I don't really have one. I have some ideas but I have never attempted to raid a heavily guarded facility before. So I was hoping someone with more experience could help out."
Fury looked at Peggy and Steve for a moment, Peggy glanced back at Fury before she nodded slightly. Fury turned to look at Ezekiel and said, "We first need any intelligence you have on the base."
The screen changed to a satellite picture of the outside of the base, it only showed the small portion that was not underground. Ezekiel pointed at it and said, "That is all I have, besides the location. I have searched through everything I could, that base does not exist anywhere digitally. I was only able to find the base because I followed the vehicles they used with my satellite network."
Fury let out a sigh as he said, "That is very little to go on. We really need to get some intel on the inside of that base, layout, number of hostiles, hostages, if there are any special targets we need to be aware of."
"I had an idea on how to get all of that, but Tao or one of the other sorcerer's will have to help us."
Tao looked at Ezekiel and asked, "You want to scout the place from the mirror dimension?"
Ezekiel smiled, as Fury looked at Tao in surprise as he asked, "Would that work?"
Tao nodded her head as she said, "Scouting the whole base from the mirror dimension would be easy. We could even pull people into the mirror dimension and neutralize them there when we attack. I would suggest asking Master Kaecilius and Mordo to help you."
Fury nodded his head as he looked back at Ezekiel and asked, "What other ideas do you have?"
"I would suggest that we connect one of my compact flash drives to their internal network as soon as possible. I can take over their whole system from there and we will have all the info we need. Amount of personnel, shifts, guard patrols and anything else we would need to form a plan of attack."
Hank spoke up next and asked, "Wouldn't that alert them? I am sure they have to have pretty complex cyber security in place."
Ezekiel smiled as he said, "I doubt that will be an issue, once the compact flash drive is inserted into the computer. The computer detecting what the drive is will run the program and not notice anything wrong. Even if they have all the computer's external ports disconnected, it will still work. Since no one disables the physical connection, only the software driver for them."
Fury thought about it for a little while before he said, "Fine, let's get your drive connected and scout the base out." He turned to Steve and asked, "Feel like stretching your legs and putting your skills to work Captain?"
Steve smiled as he said, "I could use the exercise."
Fury turned to Ezekiel and asked, "How long will it take you to make the device?"
"I already have a few of them built and ready to use." Ezekiel looked at Tao and asked, "I will dispel myself to send Ezekiel the information, can you please go to him, he will need to send a new clone over."
Tao nodded her head and as she stood up, she started to form a portal. Before the portal fully opened Ezekiel turned into a smoke cloud and disappeared.
Fury looked at Coulson and said, "Can you go grab Master Kaecilius and Mordo?"
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Steve was looking around the area as he clenched and unclenched his fists. Next to him Kaecilius was also trying hard to control his emotions, but Steve could tell his breathing had sped up. They were currently in the mirror dimension scouting the base Ezekiel had found. After installing Ezekiel's drive into one of the ports in the server room, they left him there as they went to check out the rest of the base. The base was in the middle of nowhere and a three hour drive through back roads in the mountains from the closest paved road. The outside of the base was hidden in a cliff face, and almost no one would realize it was there even if they looked for it. Most of it was normal on the first floor hidden behind the cliff face door, mostly rooms for the staff to use, a small armory, break room, gym, kitchen, dining hall, barracks, offices, restrooms, stuff you would expect for most military bases. The second and first floor was only connected with a single set of extra wide stairs that had a ramp on one side. The second floor was more of the same as the first except for more guards, a security room, a bigger armory, and a very secure vault type door. Behind that door was a freight elevator that went thirty stories underground.
It was the only stop and technically the third floor, which split into three directions. They went to the left first and found operating rooms, offices, restrooms and a secure vault type door. Behind that door was living quarters for what looked like the scientist staff, it also held the central server, and the power plant for the base. After leaving Ezekiel in the server room, Kaecilius and Steve went to the right side hallway. The hall went straight for a little while before it turned right and they ran into another secure vault type door.
Past that door was what could only be described as a prison block, row after row of prison cells. Only three cells were currently in use, one had the girl they were here to help. In another one was a woman who looked like she could be the older sister of the young girl. In the last cell was a sealed container that looked to be filled with metal. Past all of the cells, was a gym/dojo area with a woman in it who was currently doing weight training. They left that area and moved to the last hallway that went straight from the elevator.
It went down the hallway which took a right turn and had another secure vault type door. Going inside they found a big open area that had highly advanced equipment and over a hundred big tubes filled with half grown bodies of the girl they were planning to rescue. They had slowly examined the room before they came to the other side of it where another vault door was. Going through that they found a hallway with more operation rooms which were temperature controlled. These rooms each had a body strapped down to the table and each body was in different stages of being dissected. All of the people on the tables looked like mutants, most were adults, or teens and a few were even children. While Kaecilius and Steve were shocked and outraged at what they had found, it was the next vault door they went through that caused both of them to feel anger.
It was the morgue for the facility and it was massive, it had to be bigger than three football fields in length and wider than two of them combined. Steve couldn’t even see the back wall of the room in the dim lights of the room. Row after row of racks that went to the ceiling stretched from where they were standing, the first few racks they could see were completely filled with bodies and as they walked they just found more full racks. They walked through over three quarters of the room before they found a rack that wasn’t full. But it didn’t improve their mood any, the tag on the side of the rack read 22,001-23,000.
Kaecilius finally spoke, his voice had an edge to it as he asked, “What kind of monsters could do this?” not really expecting an answer to his question.
Steve had a frown as he said, “This place reminds me of the camps.”
Kaecilius glanced at Steve as he asked, “What camps?”
Steve let out a sigh before he said, “The ones the nazi’s made. I helped to free a few of them during the war. This place reminds me of them. The disregard for human life, the operating rooms used for experimenting on people. The nazi’s didn’t make a massive morgue though, they had used ovens or mass graves.”
Kaecilius nodded his head before he said, “I forgot you are older than you look.”
Steve turned around as he said, “Let's get out of here and go grab Ezekiel, I have seen more than enough of this place.”
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It was less than six hours later that everyone was back in the meeting room to go over the findings from Steve, Kaecilius and Ezekiel’s scouting trip. Kaecilius had joined in on this meeting along with Mordo, Xavier and his group had joined in again remotely. Steve and Kaecilius had been quiet since they came back and had said nothing along with Ezekiel.
Fury was the first to speak once the other group joined them and asked, “So what did you find?”
“A den of monsters.”
Fury looked at Kaecilius before he could ask what he meant, Ezekiel spoke up and said, “I couldn’t have said it better. The sooner we attack them, the better.”
The screen changed as plans for the base layout came up, before it started to fill up with dots. Almost all of them were red, only three dots were green and they were in the bottom of the base in the right hallway cell block. Some of the dots were moving around, others were stationary.
Ezekiel looked at Fury and said, “That is everyone currently in the base.” He looked at the monitor and said to Logan, “Stryker is currently not in the base and neither is the lead researcher. But everyone else that matters is there.”
Logan didn’t respond but Magneto asked, “What did you find there?”
The screen changed and it showed a video feed of the morgue, it was kinda hard to make out but the camera zoomed in to show some of the bodies on one of the racks. Ezekiel spoke after a few moments and said, “We found a den of monsters. Almost twenty three thousand people dissected and saved in a morgue to be used for tissue samples for cloning or experiments.”
“They killed almost twenty three thousand people?”
Ezekiel looked at Peggy and shook his head as he said, “They only kept the people with mutations. The other people they incinerated.”
Steve’s voice was low as he asked, “How many more people did they kill?”
The screen changed and showed a database of names, the list scrolled to the bottom quickly and the last entry was coded, ‘Case File: #134,563 Cessily Kincaid’. Above that name were two other entries, ‘Case File: #134,562 Jill Kincaid’ and ‘Case File: #134,561 Mark Kincaid’. As everyone looked at the list they noticed a pattern, it would almost always have more than one entry with the same last name.
Ezekiel let out a sigh as he said, “When they found a target, they would also grab any close family to the target. Any they found without the x-gene were killed outright. The others were injected with a special drug to force the gene to activate, then they were killed and dissected. Those were the lucky ones, the people who had powers that weren’t considered dangerous were dissected while they were still alive. Over one hundred and thirty thousand people were killed by them.”
Magneto spoke up, his voice barely held in check as he asked, “When do we attack them?”
Ezekiel glanced at Magneto before he looked to Fury and said, “Stryker is currently out with a capture team bringing back a new specimen, the lead Dr. Martin Sutter is currently meeting with the project's backers and should be back in a few days. I would suggest that we wait for both of them to come back and then attack.”
Fury thought for a few moments before he asked, “Who are the project backers?”
“People we are already targeting.”
Steve clenched his fist as he let out, “Hydra.”
Xavier and the others didn’t hear Steve, but did hear Ezekiel as he replied, “Exactly.”
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Jacob laughed as he asked, “You can’t be serious?”
Richard shook his head and said, “No we both quit. We are going to move in with Ben and May after we sell our condo in the city, while we look for a house in this neighborhood.”
“But you had the perfect jobs?! You said it was your dream job, working on cutting edge science with your wife.”
Richard put his arm around Jacob’s shoulder as he said, “It was, but we pretty much missed the first three years of Peter’s life. Me and Mary talked over our vacation and decided we didn’t want to miss anymore of Peter's life. Once we sell our condo, we will have more than enough money to buy a house around here and set up a decent lab for us in the basement. We could then work from home on projects while we also spend a lot more time with Peter.”
Jacob shook his head but then smiled and said, “I used to think you were the smartest guy I ever met. Then you go and do something like this and prove it.”
They both laughed before Jacob said, “You know, if you want a place to work from. Ben and I have the lower basement of the garage. We could clear out half of it and have it remodeled for you to use as your new lab. It would be a lot more space then a house basement and you would save money for more equipment for your lab.”
Richard was a little shocked as he looked at Jacob, before he asked, “You would do that for us?”
“Of course I would, you are family.”