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INTERLUDE

A medical technician furiously worked with a doctor as they hovered over a table in the Vault’s infirmary, passing utensils to each other. Pausing just before inserting a scalpel into the subject lying under them, the tech said, “Are you sure this guy is even alive?”

“He’s got a pulse,” the doctor said. “He smells like barbeque but he’s alive. Sort of.”

The tech shook her head as she passed a requested scalpel. The subject’s skin was totally blackened from being burned to a crisp by a fellow inmate, but miraculously had shown signs of life after being declared dead nearly three weeks ago. It was one of the most bizarre things to ever happen in the presence of the Vault’s elite medical staff, but given their surroundings they didn’t question it too much.

“Should we even be doing this doctor? Should we alert the warden first?”

“We’ll tell him after I save this man’s life,” the doctor shot back. “Ever since the rebuild he’s been too preoccupied to even step foot in here. We’re understaffed as it is; I don’t need him trying to order me around while I’m working. Hell, we don’t even have Guardsmen stationed here unless we call for them.”

“It’s just…well, I heard that this guy was a—”

“I don’t believe in that crap, Sue. All I see is a man struggling to breath. I’ll admit it’s odd that this man was declared deceased and moved to the morgue, and now’s his vitals are shooting up the scale, but we live in a world wear you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a guy in a cape. I stopped worrying about ghosts and goblins when I was in elementary school.”

The purified and stale atmosphere of the infirmary tickled at the doctor’s nose as he worked. He hated the feeling the sterilized environment gave him. It was ironic, given his profession. But he supposed it could be worse - he could be the one lying near dead under his knife. The subject’s mouth was totally sealed shut from the lips melting together. He wanted to insert the breathing tube directly into the patient’s lung and then get out of there.

The scalpel pierced the charred skin, eliciting a soft crinkling as he pressed down. A dark liquid slowly oozed out of the wound where blood should have been, causing the doctor to shudder involuntarily.

“It’s almost like an outside factor resuscitated him.”

“Ready to insert the tube, doctor,” the female tech stated.

The doctor pulled in a deep breath, thankful that his mask filtered out some of the stench. He picked up the plastic tubing after checking the connection to the air pump, making sure it would do its job. He wiggled a finger into the cut he had opened and jabbed the tube inside quickly.

He fished the tube around inside. “I’m in,” was all he managed to say before all hell broke loose.

A blackened arm shot off the table and grabbed the doctor by the throat, choking him. The doctor tried to scream but his words became clogged in his esophagus. A few specks of saliva dripped out of his mouth as the charred hand squeezed ever tighter. The medical technician screamed for help after she unleashed a high-pitched squeal, but neither were able to save the doctor’s life. With a small popping sound, the undead creature snapped the doctor’s trachea a moment before he broke his neck.

The blackened form of Deacon Frost sat up on the exam table just as he dropped the doctor’s corpse to the floor. His eyes opened with a snap as he eyed the tube sticking out of his chest. His lips parted with a tear, as the fused skin broke apart.

“What the fuck is this?” he demanded of no one in particular. Deacon ripped the tube out of himself, causing more black fluid to spurt out of the wound. “And they call me a monster…”

“Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod…” the technician muttered as she backed up against a wall.

Deacon swung his legs off the table and set them on the cold and sterile floor. Without pause he hopped off and crouched next to the fallen doctor, opened his jaw an impossible length, and sunk enlarged fangs into the doctor’s gnarled neck.

The technician was frozen with terror. She had seen strange things on the news, but never something like this, and never from so close a proximity. Her back was pressed against the wall beside the door, and even though it was mere inches from her the exit might as well have been a hundred miles away.

The doctor’s blood spilled onto the spotless white floor, lazily flowing into the cracks between the tiles. Deacon slurped away noisily at the crimson liquid, savoring the sweet taste of the nectar as only a true vampire could. He had lain dormant for weeks, deprived of its nourishment, but now that he had risen the thirst demanded to be satisfied.

Deacon dropped his meal’s head back to the floor, letting the skull bounce off the tiles. The vessel was as dry as he could make it, no longer able to provide him with what he needed.

“Ah…” he said as he stood. “Much better than that stock blood I was being fed. You never know how much you appreciate the good stuff until it’s gone. Feeling that warm… hello, who are you, sweetheart?”

Deacon stared at the woman doing her best to meld with the sterile wall. Her bottom lip quivered slightly while the rest of her body had suddenly become unresponsive to her brain’s commands. The charred vampire wiped his blackened lips with the back of his hand, mixing flakes of dead skin with the blood still dripping from his mouth.

“Nothing to say? That’s fine. We don’t need to talk. But…” Deacon looked down to the doctor’s corpse before returning his gaze to the terrified medical tech, his pearly teeth forming a sinister smile. “I think I have something else in mind for you, sweetheart. Considering the undead mind fuck I just went through that brought me back, it can only mean one thing.” *

* (You might be able to piece it together if you’ve been reading Josh Reynolds excellent Avengers West Coast series! – D)

There was a blur of motion and before Sue could scream one last cry of total horror and astonishment, Deacon was on top of her. Just as his fangs sliced into her warm flesh he reached over to the doorway and pressed a button that sealed the room off completely. She sunk into his grasp, powerless to overcome the feeling of euphoria that his deadly kiss brought about, ignorant of the fact that the operating room was now on lock down.

Her last thought before she felt the cold touch of death grace her soul was why had no one come to help her?

END OF INTERLUDE

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A soft humming constantly interfered with the thoughts running through Jim Rhodes’ mind. Every time a conscious thought formed within his psyche the buzzing white noise bashed it back down. He fought it at first, but soon gave up from the sheer domination that was the impression left on him.

His senses were dulled and time passed unaccounted. He was aware of his actions but unable to control them; an observer in his own body. He was forced to listen to the ramblings of a madman that had assumed the identity of the warden, and now he had been commanded to go down to the fourth sublevel. It was the first time he had been there, and if he were able to muster a strong reaction, he would have been shocked.

He had been taken passed a hallway filled with isolation cells, and then another one with chambers housing inmates in single room cells. Their accommodations looked severely lacking; the kind that should a lawyer catch wind of them there would be a class action lawsuit filed within the hour. The residents of the cells were familiar to Rhodes from his time spent working with Tony Stark, and he knew how deadly most of them could be. He also noticed that he hadn’t seen any of their names on inmate lists. What surprised him the most was the lack of Guardsmen where so many prisoners were being kept.

At the end of the corridor he was led through a door and into a dark room with no ambient light anywhere. His perceptions were still his own, but there was nothing he could make out in the pitch black darkness. He tried to wonder about what was happening, but again the buzzing in the back of his brain shoved those thoughts aside before they could really form.

“Well,” a voice he recognized as the warden’s said over a loudspeaker above him. “Here we are. Time to commence with the formalities and have a little fun! First I’ll just switch off your neuro-inducer…”

The buzzing suddenly stopped, causing Rhodes to jerk forward slightly. The blanket of static lifted off of his mind, allowing him to regain his faculties and form coherent thoughts. He let out a held breath and quickly stood up as straight as he could, preparing for whatever came at him from the darkness. Now that he was able to control the functions of his armor, he scanned through his HUD and switched on his weapons.

“Ah, yes,” the voice continued. “Go ahead and turn on all your systems. You’re going to need them, I assure you. Hehe…”

Rhodes hesitated. The armor was still new to him, and it occurred to him that the false warden had been the one that supplied it. It hadn’t been commissioned by Stark Solutions, although its design was similar enough that he had no trouble navigating the HUD software.

The crackle of the warden’s voice came back over the loudspeaker in answer to Rhodes hesitation. “Oh, don’t worry. I promise the armor isn’t booby trapped. Well, I suppose that’s sort of a lie. But in any event the systems won’t fry your brain if you go along with our game here. So…switch on your systems and take a look around.”

He weighed his options and found there to be virtually none. Selecting the visual interface on his HUD, Rhodes swapped out the standard feed on his visor, which showed him nothing but pitch blackness all around, for a low-level night vision setting. Shades of green quickly replaced the shadows, forming into objects that seemed strange and out of place.

What could only be described as a complex maze covered the entire expanse of the huge room he was standing at the edge of. Mammoth objects of various sizes that had been painted various colors, most of which resembled a circus theme, were placed haphazardly between and over the raised walls that formed the maze. He stood before the maze’s entrance, over which was a grotesque picture of a clown holding a sign that sent a chill up his spine. While the odd sight of the room in general bothered him, it was what the sign read that made his stomach turn over.

“Welcome to Murderworld!”

“I don’t understand,” Rhodes mumbled. “What…what’s going on? I thought—”

“I’m an assassin,” the voice cut in. “But not some crude knife throwing, poison pill slipping, unimaginative cretin. I have style. I have flair. It seems you made quite a few enemies, Mr. Rhodes, while you were working with those Avenger wannabes dubbed Force Works years ago.

“I’ve been contracted to exterminate you, and I must say, this is the most engaging place to build one of my little theme parks. Typically I lure my mark to come to me, but given that you’re basically locked in a prison yourself for weeks at a time, I didn’t have much choice if I wanted to make my deadline. After I killed the real Miguel Jones and took his place, I discovered all his little secrets that he had been hiding from the Commission. He was not exactly spending the taxpayers’ money wisely.”

Rhodes continued to scan the room, trying to find a way out of the situation. He was still unsure of what his armor was capable of, or for that matter, what might happen if he did try to escape. “Why are you telling me this?” Rhodes asked, stalling for more time.

“Unlike my uncouth counterparts, I like to give my opponents a fighting chance. Where’s the fun in simply killing you outright? Where’s the contest? The will and passion for survival? I’ve provided you with the means to defend and free yourself. All you have to do is make it through the maze.”

“That’s it?” Rhodes commented in disbelief. “I just have to get from one end of the room to the other? What makes you think I’ll do that?”

“Well, for one thing I could detonate the explosives in your helmet if you don’t. Second, I believe this will be of some persuasion.”

The floodlights in the ceiling suddenly burst on, temporarily blinding Rhodes thanks to the enhanced night vision in his visor. After the moment passed and he was able to refocus his eyes, Rhodes saw the horrifying sight of two dozen people suspended from the ceiling on the other side of the room. The armor they all wore was similar to his own, marking them as his fellow security personnel.

“Get through the maze and the Guardsmen will live. Fail, and you all die. Simple enough, right? Well, aside from my assortment of toys spread throughout the maze you’ll also have to deal with the occasional habitué of the Vault. Oh, and did I forget to mention there’s a clock? Better get moving!”

In the lower right corner of his HUD, a green clock presented itself and began counting down to zero. Rhodes swore, realizing he had been trapped. The lunatic hiding behind a control panel was seemingly holding all the cards, which meant that he was left holding the metaphorical bag.

As Rhodes sprinted off into the beginnings of the maze, the madman called Arcade grinned while he straightened his bow tie. He was secure in the fact that his mark would be destroyed soon, if not by the playful monuments and puzzles spread throughout his Murderworld, then by the half dozen inmates he had set lose within the maze with instructions to continue the Brawl with whomever they encountered.

“Let the games begin,” Arcade said.

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Letters From Prison