I followed the woman from high in the sky, my powers letting me track her through buildings, through traffic, through any obstacle. There was very little that the woman could do to lose me, but there's also just nothing Maya Hansen could do to see me either.
Really… my powers made this surveillance trivial.
The doctor was a busy body, going from clothing stores to supermarkets, to a park even. There seemed to be no end to errands that took the woman to places full of people. It was so very deliberate that if I wasn't sure there was no way she could see me up here I would believe she was trying to keep from being caught alone by anyone.
Though, with the actions we believed AIM to be involved in there was a lot for the woman to be paranoid about.
So I waited and waited. And… you'll never guess… I waited.
Eventually, the doctor went to her apartment; a high-riser place with actual security and with a way barring roof access for most people. A simple camera guarded the door to the roof level on the fire escape. There wasn't anything that would stop me from landing on the roof and then proceeding into the building with super speed.
The only problem had been the door to her apartment. That was tricky. I couldn't vibrate till my density shifted to let me through, as I wasn't that fast… and I'm not sure if that was something I could do. I couldn't just break open the door as it would alert everyone in the building, especially security. Something that AIM no doubt had their fingers on if they were smart about their lead researchers.
What I did instead was wait.
Again.
The stunning life of a superhero. Robots, gods, invasions, corporate espionage, interuniversal travel. All things I've experienced, every single one of them seemed to have involved more waiting than it did any type of action. It was frankly the most boring aspect of investigating. At least when I was reporting, I could go to a press event and ask questions. Even when waiting around with nothing to do I'd have something or someone to observe.
Back before my powers had kicked in, I hadn't been good at waiting around, it itched and crackled against my skin. It made me jumpy. With my power this was somewhat better, I could hear more, see more. I didn't have to leave a building to watch the stars above me. Light pollution mattered very little when your vision could out scope the globe. So I was rarely bored. Only I needed to pay attention when Maya arrived on her floor. So that was pretty much out as a distraction, in fact so was being distracted in general.
What I could do with my great array of visual powers was see everything that went on in the apartment. I searched through the fridge, peered into her lightning fixtures, and made sure to glance under the furniture and inside it too. It seemed that while Hansen was worried that AIM would track her, AIM weren't concerned enough to bug her apartment at all.
Strange, but it still left me with nothing to do for a while at that but… wait.
Thankfully, it didn't take too long for the doctor to arrive.
As she sauntered up the hall I walked very casually away from her, listening to the quiet click of her door opening. Like a lot of people, Maya was the type to fully open a door before she entered the apartment. Not only did this let me speed past her as if an errant gust of wind, it was also something that merely having a dog in your house taught you not to.
If not trained properly, dogs would blast their way down the street.
By the time she was in the area of her apartment that could be described as a living room, I'd already been sitting down with my right foot laying on my left knee. It was only when she turned on the lights that I finally spoke up.
"Hello there."
"Jesus!" Hansen spun around and fired a stun gun at me within a second. There was a decent range on the thing, covering more than about two meters. It cut into my shirt easily, but my super strong skin didn't break. So I just sat there with a knowing grin on my face as the doctor attempted to pump me full of electrical current.
"Sorry, this is my first time being stunned. Don't know the protocol. Do I crumble to the ground twitching or as still as a statue?"
After a second the woman realized the stun gun was having no effect on me.
"Who are you? What do you want?"
Briefly, I wondered if this woman paid no attention to the world news or even the local news? I had just been part of a team that saved the world from alien invaders. Hell, I was over in Germany with Captain America and Iron Man just a bit before that. You'd have to be very distracted to have never seen a picture of me at this stage.
I had my own paparazzi!
"Doyle, Patrick Doyle," I said instead of voicing any annoyance. "What do I want? World Peace… but I'll settle with everything you can tell me about AIMs plans with the Vice President, their connection with the Mandarin, and if they had anything to do with the hostages taken from the Avenger's Compound."
"You're that Lugh guy?" She blinked, her voice quivering. "Managed to lift a SHIELD Helicarrier by yourself? Shit… you make my work seem… mortal. Aiden was pissed. I thought you were dead from the bank job."
That last comment was concerning? Did people think I was dead? I needed to fix that soon. At least call Ben to let him know I was all right. The public themselves could wait, figuring out whatever was going on here was more important.
Strangely in spite of Hansen's racing heart, she giggled slightly and traveled closer to me rather back towards the door. We were now sitting opposites from each other and while Hansen couldn't bring herself to meet me in the eye, her heart was slowing down.
"Ok!" She exclaimed, looking around the room as if there was a curtain to be pulled and Ashton Kusher would scream 'you've been 'punk'd'. "Ok, let's do this then. You recording this?"
"I've got one on hand," Tape Recorders had been replaced by digital voice recorders back in my home reality somewhere about the 2010s. At least they'd finally killed them off by then. Here the same thing happened much earlier, the only tape recorders still around were display pieces.
"I'm not sure what the plans are with the Vice President. I know he's in with Killian's plan, but the extent and the involvement in those plans I don't know. I just work in the lab, Killian wouldn't let me in on his grand plans if I asked."
"But you've personally prepped those 'suicide bombers'?" I asked as neutrally as one could. "It's a genetic element and not a device, so I can only presume it's something done to them. And in AIM that means you."
Truthfully, while Sterns hadn't been able to confirm this himself, my own experience having been around these people when they did explode told me enough. There was no sign of any device inside their bodies, they simply grew hotter til they exploded.
At my question, Hensen notably swallowed and she licked her lips. In a better interviewer, they'd probably start with softer questions, and work their way up to this level when they tricked their interviewee into being comfortable. I knew that Ben had told me it was the simplest interview style, one that got the best results. People were just more open when they thought you were friends adjacent.
Only I couldn't afford to do things the right way, Louise was missing. AIM was blowing up banks, movie theaters, and random ass towns. I couldn't afford to play soft ball right now.
"Yeah, that's my work," She replied eventually, her voice thick with emotion. "Not what it was made to do. A failure of a my life's work being used as a terrorist weapon. Extremis. That's my legacy now… terror and death."
I leaned forward slightly, deciding to not rush this.
"What was the original plan for the Extremis? If it wasn't to cause explosions."
"It was meant to be a great equalizer, Captain America squared," The Doctor exclaimed, "I've seen pictures of what Steve Rogers was like before the Super Soldier Serum. People were always talking about the military aspects, the soldiers we could create. But me, I looked at the skinny malnourished Steve Rogers and looked to the peak of human ability that came from the project. And I said to myself, we could bring that to everyone. Physical disability could be over."
"Are the results comparable to the Super Soldier Serum? At my level of strength, the difference between Steve and a normal person isn't too noticeable."
That question came from a desire to get a better idea of the general strengths of the Extremis-enhanced people. At that statement though, Hansen blinked as if I'd talked about pink elephants.
"It's even better than what Rogers is projected to be," She revealed. "We're not just talking about the peak here. They're beyond that, they can leap literal stories, breathe fire and resist extremely high temperatures. Put them in a volcano and the heat won't kill them, though the fumes will. Resistance to cold as well, we dropped a group in the arctic once. The low temperatures actually temporarily stabilize them. But again, I just wanted to put everyone on the same level. No disadvantages!"
I wondered if this was the same drive that originally drove Erskine. A passion to help people, a purely noble goal corrupted by the fascist minds that funded the project. HYDRA and AIM were suspiciously similar in terms of goals and methods so far. Started out as a science development company or division. But eventually upgraded themselves into using terror attacking, conducting human experimentaiton. Super Soldiers. Tied to high-level government officials of their respective nations.
Probably said something about a lack of oversight more than anything else, the worst scum tend to go where they're not going to be watched.
"Sounds like you're a bit peeved about how AIM's been using your work?"
"... who says peeved anymore?" She replied almost confusedly before continuing on; "Of course I'm mad. They're literally burning my life's work. I'm not even allowed to work on stabilizing it anymore. It's insane. Killian has to be stopped."
Huh.
"They're not letting you stabilize it?" There was no way I wasn't going to have her go into more detail with this one. "So the current brand of them out there are just… unfinished products?"
"I've got one success story and Killian needs constant monitoring. If he starts getting angry then he starts heating up. He starts heating up too much, sure he could act as a human lightsaber for a bit but eventually he'd just explode. Most of the Extremis enhancement can be monitored and treated, their regenerative factors are boosted too so that helps their bodies deal with the heat. But complete stabilization is impossible so far."
"There's only so far you can go in terms of heat, was there a measure ta scale it all back?"
"It's not a machine, we can't just dial in the output. Heat is an inherent product to the treatment, I wouldn't be able to affect it without removing the regenerative features or the strength features. It wouldn't even correct body irregularities."
Part of me was annoyed that I couldn't even talk about the technical aspect of how this Extremis worked. But unlike my time studying physics before the Brainiac Incident I'd not had the time to even look into any work done making super soldiers. So I didn't even know the questions to ask her.
Still, there was a lot of information about how the Extremis soldiers worked. Not all that useful to me, as I already out matched AIM's entire armed forces so badly that they probably should just give up.
"Let's move on quickly, did AIM-"
"Yes, I'm not sure of the how's here, Killian's tightlipped about some new partner helping him out," She said rapidly explaining to me this question. "Somehow he's taken the entire room with the bottles and the staff there into AIM HQ."
"... They're actually in the New York HQ?"
That was rather stupid of them. Stark was currently looking into world wide energy readings for places that could house them, keeping them on such a on the books location was so dumb that I was suspecious. This smelled like a trap.
"Yeah," Hansen confirmed acidly. "And so is his new secret partner."
Definitely a trap.
One which I had no choice in springing. They just had the right hostages to have so I was forced to act, forced to stay involved. Despite my confidence in my invincibility, this wasn't something shared with Louise, the scientists, or even the bottled Kandorians. I couldn't afford to be reckless with other people's lives.
"You got any idea who this new partner is?"
I had a few guesses, but the first while obvious didn't make any sense with the scale of the operation here. How would a run-of-the-mill terrorist get their hands on a teleporter?
The idea that this wasn't the real Mandarin popped up in my head. I recalled the animated Mandarin being green and having some sort of technologically based magic rings. So this version may have the latter, which could explain the teleportation of the Bottle Room. But… something about that theory felt wrong. He didn't have that vibe or language to him that implied magical rings. Which said to me that this mightn't be the real one.
I was missing a key detail here… or Killian was more insane than I thought. Unfortunately, those weren't even mutually exclusive options.
"It could be the Mandarin, I'm not exactly sure. Killian kept details of their interactions scarce. Other than allowing for the Mandarin to take credit for the initial… accidents-"
"Whoa, you're saying this started out with accidental deaths and graduated into manufactured chaos?"
"That's a weird way to say it, but sure. Other than that part, I couldn't even tell what we were getting out of the relationship. It's certainly not test subjects, we're still using our own men. Killian would never let the Extremis Enhancement get out of his direct control."
Interesting, interesting. Felt a bit bad for the man, being so obsessed with such an obviously bad super soldier project as this Extremis. Personally, after the first six explosions, I'd have abandoned it. Though I suppose, being one of these Extremis Enhanced people meant the research is vital to his continued life.
"Do you know the security of the building all that well?" I asked her, forming a plan in the back of my mind. I could walk through their security, but that wouldn't put the hostages in the best place. I needed a multi-pronged approach here, something that relied on their plans around me.
Author's Note: Hello, it's me again. Back from the depths of my lazy mind to deliver another update to this story. There's going to be a lot of action soon don't you worry my friends.
Interviews aren't really Pat's strength in the story so far. He's a lump. Too straightlaced and to abrasive really. He's been very lucky that Pat's been talking to folks that want to disclose. Otherwise, he'd never get anything from anyone.