Marvel Mayhem - Chapter Sixteen (w/ Commentary Notes from the Author, Sean Livingston)

Chapter Sixteen: Evolution

            John Saccheri was simply not made for prison cells, particularly those within the facility on Ryker’s Island. His wide, stocky build crowded the enclosed space, hence why the guards did not bother to put him in with a prison mate. He enjoyed the solitude though, left to do nothing else but read a copy of The Island of Doctor Moreau he checked out from the prison library. It was a favorite novel of his growing up. The gruesome experiments Dr. Moreau done had fascinated Saccheri to no end and, despite the story’s nature of being pure science fiction, inspired him to conduct his own experimentation and research on the wonderful horrors of the world.

(Factual Note: The Island of Doctor Moreau was first published in 1896 and written by H.G. Wells, the author of The Time Machine. Wells described the novel as "an exercise in youth blasphemy." It dealt with a number of philosophical themes, including pain and cruelty, moral responsibility, human identity, and human interference with nature - all of which fit in with the characteristics of the "John Saccheri" character and the core theme of next year's Marvel Evolution.)

            He sorely missed his Man Cave of Horrors, which had long since been neutralized by S.H.I.E.L.D. since they discovered it. There were so many horrors within his menagerie that he had yet to tap into, including Karter (a.k.a. “Mystery 29”). But, if he had continued management of it all, he would have certainly given it a new addition with the woman he encountered that night – the one with the glowing eyes that masqueraded as Natasha Romanoff.

            Halfway through the eleventh chapter of Doctor Moreau, in which the main character “Prendick” is just about to encounter the “Ape Man,” Saccheri heard panicked screams right outside his cell door. He looked away from his book and to the steel cell door that obscured whatever view he could have had of the commotion happening. The screams came from the guards; they were the only ones in the facility scouting the halls. Whatever was attacking them had them terrified; their screams were like little children, much to Saccheri’s amusement.

            Gunshots rang and there was a sound of bones snapping and flesh being torn apart, which made his mouth water. Reminds me of fried chicken, he thought of the resonance that would have sickened a weakly-constituted human being.

            The graphic, violent noises came to a sudden end and all that remained was silence for a brief period. Soon thereafter was the vicious pounding of metal – the steel door to Saccheri’s prison cell. A few imprints of human fists managed to come through the metal structure before the whole thing popped off its hinges and landed to the floor with a loud, hollowed boom. Saccheri observed with great fascination as a woman with long hair as dark as her tight, leather-clad outfit and quite the impressive build stomped her way inside. Her eyes glowed bright red, staring directly towards Saccheri.

            “I know I should ask who and – most importantly – what you are, but I’m more grateful of such a horrific prison break.” He noted how her bare forearms were soaked in the blood of the men she eradicated. Her cleavage-heavy attire raged his hormones more than the inexplicable nature of the empowering aura she carried. “Oh, how I would love to add you as a showcase to my Man Cave…if I still had one, that is.”

            “Don’t worry, John.” The woman told him in an eerie, echoed voice. “You’ve got a newer, bigger one waiting for you – and if you find me worthy as an addition, wait until you see the two new ones I’ve brought there.”

            Saccheri grinned with sinister glee.

(Pop Culture Note: Much of the "John Saccheri" character was inspired by Henry van Statten, a Doctor Who character from the 2005 episode "Dalek." Statten, much like Saccheri, was the arrogant and selfish CEO of his own company and a collector/exploiter of alien technology.)

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            “The fire is just getting more intense in Hell’s Kitchen as this gruesome alien lifeform continues its onslaught through the New York area! So far, the military and task forces haven’t been able to bring this thing down! And now, an update in the chaos comes with the arrival of the new vigilant menace that goes by the name ‘Spider-Man’! No doubt this ‘wall-crawler’ will only make matters worse than they already are! When has this masked migrant ever done any good for this ci—”

            Natalie muted the television set before her ears bled any further from that voice. The news broadcast was courtesy of DBN (“Daily Bugle News”). The newscaster was the infamous J. Jonah Jameson, who would make a name for himself as being the biggest and harshest critic of Spider-Man.

(Marvel Note: The versions of The Daily Bugle and J. Jonah Jameson featured in this and the previous chapter are based on those featured in the Ultimate Spider-Man series featured on Disney XD. It is yet unknown whether or not Marvel's cinematic universe will use the same versions for the upcoming Spider-Man installment in 2017.)

            “New guy’s going to wind up getting himself killed.” Banner, who watched along with Natalie, observed.

            She smirked over his observation. “He’s living out his destiny.”

            Banner shot her a dumbfounded glance. “He’s destined to die fighting that thing?”

            “He’s destined to become an Avenger like you and Tony.”

            Her foresight left Bruce speechless.

(Marvel Note: In the comics, Spider-Man joined the New Avengers, a team whose members also included Iron Man, Captain America, Luke Cage, and Wolverine. They were originally formed due to a mass break-out at the super villain prison, The Raft. The team then became a splinter group of Avengers that chose not to comply with federal superhuman registration, an action that led to the events of Civil War.)

            They both heard feet clamping to the floor behind them, moving their attention away from the television set and to where they heard the clamor. There stood Mindy with Genevieve clinging to her right arm. Genevieve changed out of the black silk pajamas they had seen her wearing at Liberty Base and into a silk purple blouse, black pants, and black slippers. Natalie recognized it as the exact color scheme Sean Thomas was known to wear most often, only it had a more feminine style on Genevieve.

            “Ohhh, man.” She moaned while letting go of Mindy and collapsing to the nearby couch. “So that’s what molecular teleportation feels like from a human perspective.” Her left hand went to her sweat-drenched forehead. “I think my whole stomach’s about to jump outta my throat this time.”

            Ignoring Genevieve’s complaints, Mindy focused on other matters. “Where’s Tony?”

            “Prepping the Quinjet.” Banner confirmed. “Is everyone at the base suited up?”

            Mindy despairingly sighed. “Yeah, but we’ve got a huge problem – Sean and Chrissy are missing.”

            “Oh, no!” Natalie cried. “Where’ve they disappeared to?”

            “I don’t know, but I can be damn sure Yve Ette has something to do with it.” Mindy presumed through gritted teeth and clenched fists.

            Bruce glimpsed back at the television set and realized how the newscast switched gears, centering on a prison break now. “Hey, check it out,” he told the three women in the room, directing their focus to the set as he turned the sound back on.

            “In just minutes prior to the current alien attack over Hell’s Kitchen, a reported prison break occurred on Ryker’s Island. At least two dozen prison guards were killed in the incident, their bodies described as being ‘mutilated’ and ‘mauled’ by something akin to a wild animal. The only escapee in the break is John Saccheri, the C.E.O. of Sacch Corporation, who was recently apprehended by S.H.I.E.L.D. for the illicit manufacturing of the alien tech left from the Chitauri invasion two years ago.”

(Marvel Note: In the Marvel Universe, Ryker's Island is a prison located in the New York City harbor that housed super-villains prior to construction of the Vault and other prisons for superhumans. It was recently featured in Marvel's cinematic universe on the Netflix series Marvel's Daredevil, shown as the place of incarceration for Wilson "Kingpin" Fisk. Its name is a play on the real-life Rikers Island that exists in the East River between Queens and the mainland Bronx.)

            The report could not have come at a more appropriate time. It was just the clue Mindy needed to put two and two together. “Yve Ette is definitely behind Chrissy and Sean’s kidnapping. Remember how Chrissy was one of Saccheri’s ‘displays’ in his private museum? Well, what if Yve Ette broke him out to continue whatever research or experimentation he was conducting on Chrissy?”

            “Sounds about right.” Genevieve said. “But why does he want poor Sean?”

            Mindy shrugged. “That part I can’t figure out.”

            They heard footsteps come from the top flight of stairs leading down to their section of the upper levels, looking up to see Tony. “Quinjet’s all set for takeoff,” he informed.

            Genevieve shot up from the couch, apparently regaining her composure. “I’m going with.”

            “Like hell, you aren’t!” Mindy promptly rejected her enlistment.

            “Don’t you dare bench me, Mindy!” Genevieve retorted. “I am capable of helping all of you in this!”

            “We agreed before we left the base that you’re unfit to battle – that’s why I brought you here.” Mindy stated. “You’re still barely able to maintain yourself in mortal form. It’s for your own safety to remain here in the tower.”

            Genevieve scoffed. “And the base wasn’t a safe place for me?”

            Natalie raised her hand to be recognized as if she were a student participating in a classroom discussion. “A-Actually…that was my suggestion…or I should say a ‘joint agreement’ between Sean and me. We need someone to keep an eye on Walter upstairs in the lab.”

            In reaction to the information just given, Genevieve gave a disturbed stare to Natalie. “Walter’s here?”

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            Darkness. Endless darkness.

            That was what Sean Livingston awakened to after minutes of unconsciousness – enough minutes to transport him off Liberty Island and to somewhere else entirely. There was dampness in addition to the darkness. The putrid scent of rotten fish scoured the air, which clued Livingston on the likelihood that he was taken someplace close to the docks. But which docks, he did not know.

            All of the sudden, a single light switched on overhead. He now realized that he had been stripped, rendered to nothing else but his black compression shorts and muscle shirt. To his immediate horror, he discovered that he was strapped to an inclined examination table with over a dozen syringes stuck deep into his arms and legs. It was agony just to twitch a finger. The needles went far deep past his skin, reaching into his bone marrow.

            Who could’ve done this to him?

            Just a few feet from his right was an unconscious Chrissy, also stripped down to her grey gym shorts and bra and strapped to a table with the same type of syringes in her arms and legs. They were connected directly to Sean’s through multiple translucent tubes. Whoever left them in this state intended to perform some type of crude transfusion, though the question remained as to what was to be transfused between them.

            “Good. You’re awake.”

            Livingston heard a familiar voice speak from within the darkness outside the overhead light’s boundaries. He blindly searched for the speaker until he made himself known by stepping into the light.

            “Saccheri.” Sean whispered the name of their abductor like poison to his tongue.

            The insane businessman was dressed in the business attire he wore during the junkyard raid nights ago; although Livingston preferred to see him in the standard orange jumpsuit from Ryker’s.

            “Damn you! What’re you up to now?”

            “Finishing what I started at my old Man Cave of Horrors.” Saccheri disclosed before gesturing to the dark atmosphere around. “This will be my new renovation. And you and your dear grandmother are my first main attractions.”

            Livingston spat at the floor. “That’s what I think of your ‘new renovation,’ Saccheri! We’re not gonna be part of your freak show! Especially not her!” He slightly motioned his head to Chrissy.

            Saccheri cackled at the young man’s defiance, as well as his naivety. “You really don’t know your grandmother as well as you think, do you?”

            “And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

            Saccheri moved to Chrissy and stood by her inert form on the inclined examination table. His hands hovered close over her body, near to the point of groping. Livingston watched his offensive gestures with fire in his eyes. He wanted to leap right off the table and strangle him to death, but the straps and syringes kept him virtually paralyzed.

            “She is a wonder, isn’t she?” Saccheri uttered. “A living relic from a forgotten time – like a female Captain America. I’m not all that surprised she survived the same frozen state he woke up from…considering what she is.”

            “Stop with the riddles, jackass. Tell me what you know that I don’t.”

            Saccheri grinned at the young agent, stepping away from Chrissy and standing between her and Livingston. “Your dear grandmother is an alien science project that the government has been keeping tabs on since 1914.”

            Livingston laughed. “You’re really bat-shit insane, Saccheri.”

            Paying no mind to his commentary, Saccheri continued: “In 1914, a pod that was mistaken for a meteorite fell to Earth. In the pod was an amniotic sac with a rapidly developing fetus. The fetus grew into the form of a healthy newborn girl, which would turn out to be your grandmother, Chrissy Livingston. Ever since her ‘awakening,’ they allowed her to believe she was an orphan taken into a family that were agents in secret. Her military career was not by her hard work but by design, as it had given the government purpose to continue watching her.

(Narrative Note: These details are the first to be disclosed in regards to the subplot focusing on Chrissy and the other versions of her that exist in the World of Disney universe, each one capable of unique supernatural abilities that they evolve into in age. The alien pod is a major clue in the main story that will be told in sixth installment, The Wonderful World of Disney, in 2018.)

            The true reason she kept herself cryogenically frozen was the truth she discovered about her body: it is prone to being structurally broken down molecule-by-molecule, due to the nature of her alien DNA. The government wanted her alive, as they believed she would evolve into something inhuman as she got older. Me and my science team, we discovered the notes that her so-called ‘allies’ from the S.S.R. kept, thanks to some undercover Hydra agents my benefactor supplied. They realized that she could never actually evolve unless her DNA was combined with a compatible source – which we now have, thanks to you, her grandson.”

(Narrative Note: Another clue is that Chrissy and her copies share a link with Sean Thomas and his alternates, as we've seen in World of Disney 3's Chrissy Ryder - the Star Tours engineer - and her "condition" that perceptively crosses her identity with an alternate of Sean's also named "Ryder.")

            Livingston could feel his muscles aching more from his body tensing up. Saccheri’s story sounded credible, specifically at the mentioning of the Strategic Scientific Reserve, the war agency that perpetually became S.H.I.E.L.D.

            “Your mother and sister, of course, were other candidates.” Saccheri indicated. “But your mother’s DNA got all jacked up with whatever turned her into a freak, and your sister…well…let’s just say she was at the wrong place at the right time.”

            Sean heard the sound of wheels squeaking just behind him. He could not see what it was or who it was carting it in, but he did spot some lab coats moving into the area – Saccheri’s team of scientists.

            “What do you intend to do, Saccheri?” He asked of his captor. “What? Do you think you’re gonna just break up our molecules and churn them up like butter in whatever machine you got back there?”

            Saccheri chuckled in amusement. “What an imagination you have, Agent Livingston. It’s not far from fact though. We are going to fuse you and your grandmother and create a new life form that will evolve the way that the government wished she had. Only you will be the vessel for the fusion process.” He pointed to the translucent tubes between Sean and Chrissy. “We will break your grandmother’s body down from the inside, transferring every single molecule from her into you.”

            The description of the process mortified Sean, especially once he realized what it meant for Chrissy. “That…That will kill her, Saccheri!”

            The businessman gave a dispassionate shrug. “Look on the bright side, Agent…perhaps the form you’ll take after the fusion will be of her, and you can both live out your existence together in one body.” He then turned to his team and said, “Begin the transfusion.”

            “NO!” Sean cried, but it was too late.

            He heard the loud, humming machine near him switch on, deafening his pleas to Saccheri. He felt the needles in his bones reverberate, eliciting indescribable amounts of pain over every inch of him. Through blurred vision, he could see a dark fluid leaving Chrissy’s body out past the connecting tubes and into him. In seconds, she shriveled up like a prune – a balloon deflated from the helium it had been robbed of. And soon nothing was left but the bra and shorts she once adorned.

            Meanwhile, Sean’s body violently convulsed in receiving the molecules of his grandmother that his own fused with instantly. The procedure metamorphosing him, Livingston’s natural physical features dispersed and gave way for new ones. And Saccheri witnessed all of it with sickening delight.

(Narrative Note: This scene sets up one of the central plots of next year's Marvel Evolution, centering on Agent Sean's own "evolution" brought on by this crude experiment. We'll see just how far it goes in the final chapter.)

            The evolution had begun.

(UP NEXT: The Battle of Hell's Kitchen!)