The Ultimates: Against All Enemies (16 page)

I got one ex-team member in intensive care with four holes in him, who is probably only alive because when he grew, his body put itself back together on the way from Lilliputian to Brobdingnagian. I got a commanding officer who is in the situation of having an ex-team member in intensive care because that team member knowingly put himself in danger to prove his worth to the members of his former team. In other words, Doctor Henry Pym is stuck full of tubes because I kicked him out of the Ultimates, Nick thought. And between Bucky and whatever he's doing that involves SKR and someone in Washington he won't tell me about, Steve is about at the end of his rope. And there are Chitauri everywhere, apparently, and Pym's ants look like they're doing a lot better finding them than this fancy tech that somehow was leaked by someone within SHIELD who might or might not occasionally wear a suit with an American-flag theme.

The only thing that had gone right was the fact that Pym had gotten the dog before the Chitauri cop had gotten him. Also Nick was thanking his lucky stars that at least they'd gotten Pym to shrink back to normal size before civilian response teams arrived. The Monte Carlo that Pym had apparently stolen in Skokie, Illinois, now looked like it had been carrying a car bomb, but thanks to the street-sweeping schedule there were no other damaged cars... although there were going to be some fence and stoop repairs billed to SHIELD through one of Tony's shell contracting companies. One problem at a time, Nick told himself

"Captain Rogers," he said when he saw Steve hang up his phone. "What's the word on Bucky?" Steve's face was grim. "They say he's still in some trouble, General. He's weak enough from the cancer that they can't treat the heart condition as aggressively as they'd like to, or that's what I understand from the medicalese I keep hearing."

"He's getting the best care he can get," Nick said, which was true. Cardiac care in New York City was about as good as it could be, and Nick had pulled SHIELD strings to get a couple of top-flight military cardiac specialists on Bucky's case.

"General Fury," Steve said. "I waited at least five minutes to call an ambulance because I was taking care of the Chitauri that shot Doctor Pym. If that lag made a difference, I won't be able to live with myself"

"You were saving Pym's life," Nick said, and could hear the answer even before Steve's mouth formed the words.

"That's not a good trade."

"Captain Rogers," Nick said. "I can't order you to stop being so damn self-righteous, or so damn stubborn. But I can suggest it. And I can order you, for the second time today, to take your Chitauri-chewed self to a doctor and get stitched up and checked out. You can't do Bucky any good, and you can't do Pym any good, but you can do the team and this country some good by staying in fighting trim. Now. Go to the doctor. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars." Nick lit a cigar. Steve gazed at Bucky's house.

"Captain Rogers," Nick said. "Go."

Steve went, climbing into a waiting SHIELD limo. The recovery team inside Bucky's house had just finished removing the alien and sterilizing the dining room. Their van pulled away after taking down the SHIELD scene perimeter... which left Nick alone to deal with the NYPD investigator, Glenn Owens, who had displayed what even Nick had to credit as superhuman patience while the SHIELD processing had taken place.

"General," Owens said when the white van had pulled around the corner. "I don't know why I'm the only guy here. You want to clue me in to the game?"

Nick gnawed on his cigar and grinned. '"Fraid I can't tell you a thing about why your bosses do what they do," he said. "I have a hard enough time with mine."

"See, the thing is, there should be brass, media relations, union suits, the works," Owens said. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you had something to do with the situation, is all I'm saying."

"Detective, I had a conversation with a man in a similar position to yours out in Illinois a few days ago." Fury's cigar was already going out. He puffed it back to life. "He thought I could do this, and I could do that. The truth is, I go through every day hoping for cooperation from people just like you. I don't get it, my job is that much harder; but there's no good reason for you to give it to me, since I can't give you a good reason."

Owens shrugged. "Have it your way. So tell me again where the body of Patrolman Victor Elizondo is?"

"Patrolman Elizondo's remains are under examination at a federal laboratory for security reasons," Nick said.

"Is that what you're going to say at a press conference?"

"Nope," Nick said. "Because if this gets to the press conference stage, I will already know that I can't hope for any cooperation from you. At a press conference, all you get from Nick Fury is no comment. I can no-comment for an hour straight."

"Understand my position here, General. I catch a case of a cop down, I show up, and there's no team in place, there's no media, there's no nothing. Tomorrow morning I'm going to have to brief the patrolmen's union. What do I tell them? Elizondo had four kids and a wife. What do I tell them?" Suddenly Nick was tired of the game. "You want to know the truth, Owens?" Owens didn't say anything.

"Do you?" Nick asked again. "If you want the plain truth, I will tell you. Do you want it?" After a pause, Owens said, "Yeah, I do."

"Okay. At some point, probably in the last month or so, Victor Elizondo was killed by a race of aliens who can assume the shapes of humans. After they killed him, one of them ate him and took his form. That alien probably went and did regular cop work, came home to his kids, went to bed with his wife, until he got an order from his higher-ups. That order was to track and take out a member of my team." Nick left out the question of Pym's status with respect to the Ultimates; no point in muddying the waters. "Then tonight, he shot my guy four times, and then Captain America killed him. That's the plain truth, as plain as I can make it. I don't care if you believe it or not. And I don't care if you're recording it, because everywhere I go I am shadowed by people whose job it is to make sure that nothing I say or do is recorded by people who should not record it. Now, Detective Owens. Are you glad you have the truth?" Owens stood for a long time looking up and down the street, taking in the exploded car, the crumpled wrought-iron fences, the broken concrete and masonry on various stoops and stairs. He looked at Bucky's house, dark and empty. He looked at the spot where Patrolman Victor EHzondo had died at the hands of Captain America. "General Fury," he said. "I would like it very much if you could keep me updated as this case progresses. Patrolman Elizondo's family and colleagues deserve a full accounting of the events surrounding his murder."

"Can do, Detective Owens," Nick said, and toasted the detective with his cigar as Owens went back to his car and drove away.

24

She knew she shouldn't do it, but she couldn't not do it, so Janet found herself standing outside the door of Hank's hospital room at Mount Sinai. And she was 110 percent sure she shouldn't have done it when the first person she saw coming up the hallway toward her was Steve. When he caught sight of her, he stiffened a little, but his voice stayed level. "Have you heard how he's doing?"

"I haven't been in, and there's no doctors around that I can see," she said. "But this isn't intensive care, so I guess that's good."

"Yeah," he said, looking around. "I was downstairs looking in on Bucky, and thought I'd... you know."

"Softie," she said. Something changed in his face, and she was sorry she'd done it. "Come on, Steve," she said. "You know I'm just kidding."

"It's not a kidding kind of situation," he said.

"I think that's really up to me, isn't it?" she said. "I mean, since I'm still married to him and all." He took that in for a beat and then said, "Okay. I guess we should talk later." Janet let him get halfway to the bank of elevators before she said, "Steve. Wait a minute." Steve didn't turn around, but he stopped walking. When she caught up to him, she said, "Maybe we could both use a drink or something away from all of this. How does that sound?"

In the elevator, he was quiet until just before they reached the ground floor. Then he said, "There is no away from all this. You know that. What did you really mean?"

"I meant not here," Janet said. The doors opened and they walked through the maze of hallways and out the emergency room doors. It was a warm night, and they crossed Fifth Avenue to walk on the park side. Steve suggested a walk through the park, but Janet, envisioning him taking off to collar a couple of muggers, wanted to stay on the street. So they ran the gauntlet of hot-dog stands and T-shirt hawkers, cheesy portrait cartoonists and tourists dazed from Museum Mile. Janet wished any of the museums were open, but it was after midnight. Instead she decided on ice cream. Steve didn't want any, so she walked into the first place she saw, got a huge cup of pralines and cream, and savored it while they kept south. When they passed the great granite pile of the Met, it occurred to her that if she was going to go home, she'd need to turn right pretty soon unless she wanted to walk all the way around the park or take a cab.

"Hey, Captain America," she said, not caring if he got the wrong impression, "walk me past Belvedere Castle on my way home."

"Yes, ma'am," Steve said, which entitled her to get furious at him for calling her ma'am, and for a little while things were light and easy and okay again.

Then, about the time they were actually passing Belvedere Castle, she screwed it all up again. "I wonder if he's really changed," she said, after a silence had passed between her and Steve.

"You're kidding," Steve said.

"I'm not," she said. "People do change."

"Janet, I'm an old-fashioned guy. I come from a time when nobody would have cared if Pym changed because everyone would have accepted what he did. And even I know he's not going to change. He attacked you with a horde of ants, for Pete's sake."

"And how many lives did he save by finding out about that dog, Steve?"

"What does that have to do with what he did to you?" Steve was trying not to shout, but the way he rounded on her—plus the fact that he stood a foot taller than she did and outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds—made people stop and look.

"It has to do," she said icily, "with the fact that as much as you want to reduce him to a cartoon, he's an actual human being. He does good things and bad things, and I made a choice a long time ago to acknowledge that if I wanted him around, I'd have to take both. Now, the other thing is that I never said I was going back to him. I never said I was not going to divorce him. I never even said I wanted him back on the team. I just wondered if he had really changed."

Janet started walking again. After a beat, she saw out of the corner of her eye that Steve was coming along. "Well, do you?" he asked.

"Do I what?"

"Want him back on the team."

"No, I don't," she said. "But I think it's a little smug of everyone else to have made that decision without even considering what I wanted. What if I thought that Hank would be useful to the team even if every time I looked at him I wanted him to die? Hey, he does great things in the lab. You big men got so caught up in protecting the little woman that you decided to shoot a really promising research initiative in the foot. And you know what? I've had it with being protected."

She stomped off again, and again she watched Steve come after her. This time he came up next to her and put a hand on her shoulder. Instantaneously Janet swore to herself that if he tried to pull on her or spin her around, she was going to sting him until he couldn't see straight, but all he did was pace her with a hand resting lightly on her shoulder. "Take your hand off me," she said anyway. Steve did, and because he did, Janet stopped. "In the end, it doesn't matter what I feel for him or don't feel for him," she said. "What matters is the Chitauri, and it drives me frankly batshit that some ridiculous leftover chivalry has you and Nick cutting someone out of the team who could make a difference. They want to kill us, Steve, and if they can't kill us, they want to reduce us to zombies. Do you really want to moralize about spousal abuse when the stakes are that high?"

They were across the park, waiting for the light to change at 81st Street and Central Park West because Steve would never jaywalk. The Museum of Natural History—another great granite pile—loomed just to the south. Janet wanted to go in there, too, but now it was one o'clock in the morning and she was close to home, and it was time just to have a glass of wine and go to bed before she got up and had to bathe in Bruce Banner's self-pity for another day while looking for a way to create the latest generation of augmented soldiers like Steve Rogers.

What a job, she thought. Imagine the ad:
Challenging work environment, chance to make a real
difference
.

While she was woolgathering, Steve had been looking up at the buildings surrounding the park. "Please don't start telling me about how different it is now," Janet said.

"I wasn't going to," he said. "Although there sure wasn't anything like that one." He pointed at the new Time Warner building on Columbus Circle.

Janet sighed. "What were you going to say, then?"

The light changed. Steve was quiet as they crossed, but as soon as they got to the sidewalk, he started talking. "When we beat the Chitauri, it's not going to be because some manic-depressive wife-beater with a Buck Rogers helmet on sics ants on them," he said. "It's going to be because human beings—American human beings—prove one more time that they're smarter and tougher and more willing to fight for what's right than interstellar shape-shifting geckos."

"He really gets to you, doesn't he?" Janet asked.

Steve stopped in mid-soliloquy. "Who? Pym?"

She laughed. "You can't even say his first name. Yes, I mean Hank. The fact that he exists drives you crazy."

"No.
Hank
is just loony tunes. A guy like that isn't worth going crazy over, since he's already there. What drives me crazy is that you, who aren't and should know better, are playing right into his games."