[BLACKOUT]
The Vigilante - Isaac Fontaine[/BLACKOUT]
Suffer the little Children (continued…
[BLACKOUT]The Death of Isaac Fontaine[/BLACKOUT]
The Vigilante known as Isaac Fontaine walks the halls of the Tartarus facility with a mission of far greater importance than he could have possibly known. Usually he carries in his pack a variety of weapons and tools to help him out of any difficult situation. Today he has but one weapon in his pack, and he’s oblivious to both how powerful it is and how to efficiently use it.
Some time ago – A non-descript secure location in the core of Tartarus Island Facility
Music fills the sterile looking room, Jimmy Carroll plays it as much to put himself at ease as he does for the girl. It’s one of the CDs from a 3 disc compilation - The Best of the Rat Pack - his father gave him as a graduation present some years ago. Jimmy wasn’t looking forward to this day. He knew it was wrong of him to feel this way; she was supposed to be a product, a project. But ultimately she was still a little girl, regardless of her potential power. Today’s experiment wasn’t going to involve just the pair of them in the room together either; Patton would be entertaining several high-ups including the mysterious Director of S.T.R.I.K.E. That was his title and all he was referred to as around the young scientist. Apparently the Director’s name was above his pay-grade, “There’d be a time when it would be revealed.” He would be told “…but if you want to last around S.T.R.I.K.E you’ll know what questions to forget about asking until it’s time for those answers to reveal themselves.”
That answer didn’t really satisfy Jimmy Carroll, and not just because it went against his inquisitive nature as a scientist… None of the people who would be present seemed to concern themselves with the earlier tests of what Carroll saw as having truly remarkable and relevant results, but they were here today for the durability tests. It didn’t really have anything to do with any kind of practical use that he could see. OK, they view this girl as a weapon… but if she is a weapon, then these tests have very little to do with her use. She’s not a club. Durability has very little practical use. It was like people turning up en masse to see the destructive powers of an AK-47 and then just bashing the gun with a brick for 15 minutes.
From what Carroll had heard about this Director he believed that his reasons for being present during these specific tests were far more personal and sadistic than Patton or anyone else was letting on.
The climax of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” crooned out of the speakers as the girl, Project Omega, was led into the room. Jimmy had hoped to go and get her himself, but not today. Today Patton did everything by the book, cold and callous and to the letter of the General Protocol as he could remember. Carroll had to be grateful that Patton had forgot about the CD; music generally was seen as contraband as it had the potential to “rile up” the inmates. “Remember, this is a prison.” The Chief Warden would repeat whenever he felt like putting him in his place. “We cut you a lot of slack, but things could be VERY different around here.” He would throw his weight around often. He ran on fear. Carroll would throw a few “Yes, sir” and “No, sir”s around at appropriate times with an expression of compliance and they’d do this little dance about once or twice a week.
Carroll didn’t know it but Patton was feeling heat from Director Anderson at that very music, which he would weasel around to claim that the music made the project more pliable. But Carroll wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that to be the case.
“I’m sorry, Megan.” Carroll whispered to her, saying the secret name for her that he had.
“I’m sorry for everything.” He said as he attached the wires to her.
Two minutes later her skin would feel on fire as large doses of electricity shot through the young girl’s skin whilst the music pumped loudly through the sterile room as her mind’s only distraction from the searing pain.
“If I can MAAAAAKE it there, I’ll make it anywhere, it’s up to YOU NEW YORK, NEW YOOORK!”
Now - The Hallways of the Tartarus Island Prison Facility
Isaac jogged softly, bouncing the young girl more than he wanted to, whilst straining his ears to try and hear any possible incoming resistance to their freedom. The problem with this is that while he was running quietly enough to hear others approach, his own running would no doubt make their whereabouts known as well.
More to the point it didn’t help matters when the incoming resistance was walking quietly, as Patton and Kowalksi were – with assault weapons loaded with tranquiliser rounds at the ready.
“FREEZE! Get down on the ground with your palms out!”
“Idiot.” Isaac thought to himself, ducking behind a supporting beam and burying himself deeply into the wall. “Pretty clear this prison guard hasn’t got too much experience in a combat situation… So much for the element of surprise.”
Patton voiced much the same opinion loudly whilst Isaac opened a door and darted inside, hoping Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum would be too busy arguing with each other to see him.
It would have worked too in most rooms of the facility, but not in this one and not at this time.
The office of Jimmy Carroll, and it was still regular hours, so the brass band in accompanying the golden tonsils of one Dean Martin leaked into the hall, sounding an alarm of the Vigilante’s attempted escape.
Immediately on entering the room he felt the small girl in his backpack tense up, Isaac saw a man in a white coat running towards him with his hands out and figured that was what had scared the girl. “Easy problem to solve.” Isaac thought to himself, resolving the situation with a moving right cross sending the scientist to the floor in a crumpled heap.
“My head keeps spinning, I go to sleep and keep grinning, If this is just the beginning, my life’s gonna be beau-ti-ful.”
Isaac kept running across the room looking desperately for cover but the pursuing pair had entered the room behind him and fired a tranquiliser which just missed his arm by inches. Isaac wheeled to see where the shot came from just in time to see the culprit’s head explode sending bloody pulp across walls, the other stunned threat’s clothes and Isaac himself.
“Like the fella once said, Ain’t that a kick in the head?”
Isaac’s mind raced as he tried to piece together what exactly happened, he knew the tide had swung and that he was now in control, but he had little idea how. The first possible explanation that sprung into his head wriggled free from his mouth as he let it out through the voice modulator with little conviction.
[BLACKOUT]“Gunny..?”[/BLACKOUT]
Gathering himself after the initial shock, Isaac took control of the situation.
[BLACKOUT]“I think you’d better get down on the ground with your palms out…”[/BLACKOUT]
“You idiot!” Patton spat “We’ve got men all through this facility, you honestly think you have a hope in hell of getting out of here! I hope you took a good hard look at the sunset earlier tonight, because it’s the last daylight you’ll ever see!”
[BLACKOUT]“Are you kidding me? You’ve gotta be running out of metahumans by now, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t take them all out just before. Whoever your boss is he just sent you two idiots in here as a last resort. Pitiful.”[/BLACKOUT]
Patton bit his lip and closed his eyes tightly as he continued to hug the ground.
[BLACKOUT]“Oh God, it’s you isn’t it! Ahhh ha ha ha! This was your big plan? You and your idiot friend were going to succeed Rambo-style where the fruitless attrition of a full metahuman onslaught failed? Oh man…”[/BLACKOUT]
[BLACKOUT]“Still, I suppose it was fairly close… Until Gunny came out and blew your man here’s head-off. Not that that’s something I generally approve of… Where is he anywa…?”[/BLACKOUT]
Isaac turned left and right looking for his friend and saw no trace, what he did see however chilled him to his very core. Looking over his shoulder he saw the girl in his backpack looking menacingly at the man on the ground with her hands outstretched in his direction, with a seething hatred he’d never before seen in a small child. He turned back to the man just in time to catch the horror in full, unlike the last time.
“I’ve sunshine enough to spread…”
Isaac thought he saw a bright light shining through the man’s eyes onto the floor, he’d frozen and was now shuddering slightly, then he heard a loud bang echo throughout the cold room before the man’s head explode showering all in the vicinity with a pulpy mess for a second time. Isaac stared with wide eyes and shook slightly himself.
“There! Another of those explosions, he’s in there!” he heard from the hall as the metahumans had recovered and given chase again.
“It’s like the fella said…”
Isaac stood frozen trying to take in everything that had happened in the last 5 seconds.
[BLACKOUT]“God… How the hell are we going to get out of here..?”[/BLACKOUT] slapping a gloved hand over his face.
“Tell me quick – “
Isaac watched as the hand came away from his face before he had a chance to pull it away himself. “What the hell is happening now..?” he watched as his hand disintegrated in front of his eyes. Breaking down and drifting away like grains of sand in the wind. Followed by his forearms, as whatever was happening to his hands wasn’t ready to stop yet.
“- Ain’t love like a kick in the head?”
Isaac stood stunned at what was happening, so this was how it would end. As he dissipated in the bright artificial light of the room where such harm had come to the little girl who was with him, he thought his last thoughts in this lifetime. Surprisingly, perhaps somewhat egotistically, they weren’t of Renee and Tony and who would tell them what happened if there was no trace of a corpse. Nor were they of fear. Not even a flash of terror. Unsurprisingly there was no thought of the pain.
No.
Only two words were on his mind. Two words that passed his lips as the last of him disintegrated into nothingness.
[BLACKOUT]“Too soon.”[/BLACKOUT]
“Tell me quick, oh ain’t love a kick?”
“Tell me QUICK, ain’t love a KICK… in the HEEEEEEEAD?”
