Death Is Legion - The Lab

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

Wade and Logan go after Kyle, hoping their healing factors will be able to save them.



The entrance to the lab was dead and still. A few lights flickered on standby units and emergency systems, but the entire place had a stale, dormant reek to it. The main bulkheads had been closed, trapping the rest of the lab behind a heavy anti-contamination protocol. Kyle had gone this way - his footprints in the dust led to a remotely controlled access point where they had obviously forced him to enter the lab. Without the passcodes and a terminal, that was not an option for them.

"Just fuckin' perfect," Logan growled as they came up to the sealed door. They didn't have time for this shit. Something was seriously off about this place and the more they saw the more he was convinced they needed to get in and out as quickly as possible. He clawed the heavy steel reinforced doors, leaving nothing but scratches in the dulled metal. "You wouldn't happen to know how to get past these safety measures, would ya, Wade?"

"Seems kind of funny," Wade said, holstering his gun and pulling one of his larger knives from his belt as he knelt next to the door. "Me using the shit they taught me to break into their lab." He ran the fingers of one hand along the wall, finding a thin seam. Inserting the tip of his knife, he tested it to see if there was any give and wrinkled his nose as he dislodged a tiny clump of dust. With a quiet grunt of satisfaction, he pried the panel away from the wall bit by bit. "A little help - they didn't make these to come apart easy."

"Way I look at it, any time you're offered a chance to stick it to 'em, it only makes everythin' sweeter." He knelt beside Wade and helped to carefully pry the panel off. "One down. How many more to go?" Watching him work, Logan could sorta figure out how to go about it on his own, but as in a hurry as they were, he didn't want to chance messing something up.

"One more, right above this one. Should give me access to the wires I need," Wade said, setting the panel aside. "Dunno how many more doors there are, though." He tried to think about the labs he'd been in, the basic security systems they'd all had in common. "At least three, maybe more depending on what they were doing here." Working together, they got the second panel off quickly and Wade set about pulling wires out so he could look at them without disconnecting them. "I used to hate this crap," he said. "Always liked being able to shoot stuff and ask question later."

"Couldn't agree with you more. Always easier to eliminate the enemy first then deal with the cleanup when you were in the clear." Logan stepped back and eyed the sprawl of wires pulled from the door's innards with suspicion. He was good enough with technology, but he still preferred to be let loose on a target that required a minimum of fuss or extracurriculars. "As isolated as this place is, probably had some pretty serious shit goin' on. Fact it's semi-operational is the thing outta place."

"That's what I thought," Wade said, isolating a couple wires before using his knife to cut them and strip the ends of their protective plastic covering. "This is nothing like hotwiring a car," he said. "Kinda worried about what's gonna wind up being behind these doors once we get 'em open." Wade tapped the copper wires together, eyes narrowed. He got a spark and a buzz but the door didn't open. Frowning, he pulled a third wire free, stripped the end, and tapped it against one of the others. That saw the door shifting slightly, so he twisted the ends together, cursing at the electrical shock that shot up his arm, and the door slid open. "Here we go."

"Best case, we get sterile white counters and nothin' else. Worst case, we get some fucked up versions of us as the welcomin' committee," Logan said. A quick glance showed them an empty stretch of corridor that lead to another set of doors. He moved cautiously toward the other set of doors and glanced at the darkened terminals to either side that looked powered off though there was a low, nearly inaudible hum coming from somewhere. The air smelled stale like it'd been recycled too many times, and something else lingered. Logan couldn't name what it was. It just smelled unnatural.

"Pretty sure the world couldn't handle another me," Wade said, eyes on the tracks Kyle'd left in the dust when he'd come through. His nostrils flared, the feeling of something being very wrong redoubling even as he made his way to the wall beside the door. "C'mon, I can get this one done faster. Christ, my skin's fucking crawling."

"Don't think too many people would be happy with another me either." They made short work of the wall panels this time around, and that crawling sensation was now starting in on Logan too as the second door slid up. Closed elevator doors greeted them instead of another set of doors "Fuck, what the hell were they doin' here?" He scratched at his arm absently before he stalked over and jabbed the down button. "No goddamn stairs, typical," Logan growled.

"Hang on a sec," Wade said, pulling several more wires out of the wall when there was no convenient ding and the doors pointedly didn't open. He got himself zapped a couple more times fiddling with the wiring, but he finally got the doors open and pushed himself to his feet. That was when he looked down at his hand and noticed that the tiny electrical burns he'd gotten weren't actually going away. They were, in fact, just a little bit bigger than they'd been. He frowned but ignored it as they stepped inside. "Should work from in here, since the lights are on," he commented, hitting the down button with a knuckle before rubbing at his side. It'd begun itching worse than the rest of him.

The elevator started to descend more smoothly than made Logan comfortable. "Somebody's been doin' some up keep," he muttered. Locked down tight from the outside and yet things still worked, electricity still ran. What mistakes had WeaponX locked away? The itching from earlier had spread until he felt like he needed to claw out of his own skin sooner rather than later. This place was seriously fucking with them. "How far down you think this thing's gonna take us?"

"Nowhere I ever wanted to go back to," Wade muttered, frowning at his fingertips as small blisters began to bubble up around the burns he'd gotten. "Lower levels were where they did all the testing - at least in the facilities I was at. Genetic stuff, augmenting powers, experimenting to see what interacted with what and how. Farther down you went, the worse things got. Easier to lock everything down if you're far enough under ground." The elevator stopped moving and the doors slid silently open.

Another stretch of empty hallway greeted them and looked the same as the others one they'd come through. Logan grunted and stepped off the elevator cautiously. The odd smell to the air only got stronger the closer they moved to the last quarantine door. The itching feeling was only getting worse. He rubbed at his hand, feeling slickness when there shouldn't be. He looked down and saw small oozing, lesions opening and closing rapidly. Other spots, pink and hot to the touch, would rise briefly then disappear. Something was putting his healing factor to work. "Great, it's biological. Always wanted to find the upper limits of my healin' factor."

"Yeah," Wade said, holding his hand out so Logan could see what the electrical burns had morphed into. He paused, his throat burning, and then half-groaned in protest as something shifted in his chest, pressure building before suddenly releasing. After coughing, Wade turned his head to the side and spat bloody pus onto the dust-covered floor. "So let's make this even faster."

The wounds on his hands made getting the final door open difficult, particularly handling the small wires, but he managed because they didn't have another choice. Once open, they found themselves in another corridor - the main difference being that now they could hear people speaking. Motioning to the place where the corridor angled into a sharp corner, Wade unholstered his guns and began creeping forward.