Hydra

Cut off a head and two more grow back.

We can’t we kill Hydra? As a Kree, I know that our own renegades began to use Hydra to hide its own experiments in augmenting humans after the Supreme Intelligence ordered them not to. It should be noted the Supreme Intelligence can’t be all that bright because it instilled in its creators-became-slaves a dogma of racial superiority founded on biologic supremacy and then told it that the little almost Kree they boosted into sentience with a little illegal boost to do all those experiments forbidden on actual Kree were now forbidden to experiment on.

Sure, they created the Inhumans by accident and created an actual rival to the Kree, but that just proved the potential of humanity to unlock even greater powers to bring back and add to the Kree racial perfection to drive us to even better heights as jackboot wearing galactic overlords. Honestly, biomedical ethics and racial superiority driven conquest don’t coexist peacefully.

So we found the Nazi’s. They were like little baby Kree. They too created a fake history, although in our defense, current Kree are force indoctrinated in the incubator by the Supreme Intelligence we foolishly created to “serve” us for reasons that he conveniently forgot to include in our history indoctrination. The fake history gave them a racially based superiority and destiny to rule all the other lesser races. Of course since godhood would eventually be their racial destiny, shouldn’t they help speed the process along? Genetic enhancement was the next step. Sure, you can’t do it out in the open, the process is pretty gruesome, but Hydra meshed with the Nazi’s so deeply that it is impossible at this point to tell where one ends and the other begins.

The Nazi’s own experiments were mere butchery. Their ideology was fake, and like the communists, when they mistook ideology for science, what followed was tragedy or comedy depending on how sadistic you are.

But they could run black projects like nobody’s business. In that darkness Hydra thrived. Hydra gave humanities most ruthless minds access to the fundamental principles that drove Kree bio-sciences not because we wanted them to succeed, but to create a haystack to hide our actual needles in. Our successful human experimentation into augmented humanity spawned wonders and horrors in those shadows. Hydra managed to do well enough out of the scraps we fed them to create Red Skull and that twisted post human had the shadow of Kree greatness in him, even as his less pure twin Captain America did. Oddly, the less gifted one proved more stable and successful, but the twisted one grasped more than we ever intended to share with Hydra.

Red Skull had a Kree mind in an almost Kree body, and given the needs of WWII turned to weapon development and at a time when producing workable headlights for motor cars was a stretch for humanity, and the very crudest of radars was only now becoming workable, produced energy weapons that were centuries ahead of where humanity is now, let alone in 1940.

Hydra got more from our life sciences than we intended to give them. They got more from our energy state systems than a pre chip technology should have been able to use, and worst of all, we shared our mind educational technology with them for the purpose of educating and indoctrinating the created super soldiers of our projects.

We gave Hydra fire, and they didn’t use it for cooking food.

Hydra scientists discovered that you could use the same technology that Kree’s Supreme Intelligence used to educate its clone warriors to brute force instill loyalty to Hydra into an already existing mind. They could get maybe 1% of the technologies full effect, so we “knew” it was safe to share with humanity, 1% isn’t enough to educate a blank mind adult bodied clone into a functional soldier in a technological society. It is enough to brutalize an unwilling mind into becoming slavishly loyal to Hydra.

Hydra takes root in extremist ideological groups focused on supremacy, and this little bit of stolen fire Hydra uses to burn the world. They find the best and brightest, the driven and the skilled who are not yet tied to existing powers, and they TAKE them.

It is an odd meritocracy, where nothing matters but your ability, because your character, your ambitions, your morality or politics do not matter at all. Once Hydra gets a hold of you, and puts you through their indoctrination, every potential you ever had you will now devote to their service because it is written in the core of your being and everything you will eventually become will have that woven into it.

Hydra is less of a conspiracy, and more of a virus. A plague we unleashed upon humanity because we needed to hide our genetic tampering. Since we still want genetic super soldiers, and since all the punishment for violating the laws of several gods and most nations will fall upon Hydra, we only keep enough fingers in their little pot to pick out particularly juicy bits of tech or genetic combinations that succeed better than our beloved Supreme Intelligence predictions say they ought to.

Kree science is thousands of years ahead of humanity, and centuries ahead of every other race, but the Supreme Intelligence deliberate stunting of our education has made our so called science of the last few millennia little more than fine tuning technologies that were mature five millennia before. While not admitting he made a mistake, the Supreme Intelligence has permitted the Hydra abomination to continue because somewhere in the endless and unnecessary suffering a few bits of actual ground breaking research and development accidentally happens. For those gems, we tolerate a wasteland of sadism by an organization that is like a living mockery of what we let ourselves become.

Why can’t you kill Hydra?

It is a poisoned tree that brings forth fruit stolen from the gods, and offers them freely to anyone who is willing to pay the trivial price of innocent blood to water that most twisted of trees.

Oddly enough, such gifts as super-soldiers of literally unbreakable loyalty, cures for incurable diseases, regrowth of limbs, restoration even of Alzheimer's or other neuro degenerative disorders, cloning and reprogramming dead family members or lovers, and the ever popular ‘brainwash the man/woman who rejected me into being my love slave’ has corrupted more leaders of nations, industries, and great men (and more rarely women) of learning than you would think.

Every black ops group in the world has a use for Hydra. As often as their public organizations are at war with Hydra, the leaders of most shadow organizations in government and crime keep contact with Hydra for assistance against their internal foes. Case in point, Hydra techs made and programmed the Stepford Cuckoos for the Hellfire Club.

Hydra has weaknesses, though, the same as its strengths. It is cellular, so while you will never bring it all down, it also sucks at being able to tell what is going on in other branches. For a society built upon corruption and infiltration, it is surprisingly weak against it. Hydra agents undergo conditioning that makes their loyalty utterly unbreakable. For this reason, they have an institutional arrogance blinding them to anyone infiltrating them.

Kree mental conditioning is the full meal deal, the one hundred percent of the one percent Hydra uses. I was put into Hydra as a sleeper because I was already locked down under a far superior seal. Their conditioning could not work on me. Agents like the Black Widow, Natasha Romanov or Winter Soldier already received conditioning from Hydra technology in the Red Room, so the training already integrated in their personality will aid them in resisting Hydra’s own.

Then there is magic. Kree don’t admit it exists, and when people wave it in our face and warp half a battlecruiser into hell and leave the back half to explode in space wondering where the other half of its engine shielding went, we get upset. Hydra leadership dabble in it, but they can’t bring themselves to admit their own conditioning fails against it. Magic works by other rules, and if you have any, the conditioning breaks down.

Then there are minds that are simply too powerful for the conditioning to effect. Emma Frost is an example. Doctor Doom, even without his magic, is a will I would not bet could bend to any conditioning, even if he wanted to. Kingpin, his ego is actually second to his will in making him dangerous. Reed Richards because his mind is too vast, Frank Castle the Punisher because he has the emotional range of a bullet already fired. This tiny little planet that advanced races think is so far beneath them spits out monsters from a hundred wombs every single day.

Hydra simply ignores them. Hydra is supreme, all others are inferior, therefore they do not need to take precautions. Other people need to take precautions about Hydra!

I tried talking with my gym crew about how to find Hydra cells to infiltrate, but had to write that off as a bad idea when Magik suggested opening a Grindr profile with an add specifying

“Ten inch blue steel superhuman, uncut, looking for a mind control daddy with a jackboot fetish for non consensual world domination play.”

For the record, I do not know if Hydra surfs the gay pickup sites, but if it does, that is not the way I want to make covert entry (god, did I just even think that?) into Hydra.

What I do know is they watch biotech startups and patents like other people watch the stock market and porn. Once you know what the stumbling blocks for human enhancement are, you know where to look for Hydra.

It was Marge who helped me. Yes, school teacher Marge, whose family got killed by Hydra agents. She had the mind to become a top scientist, but feared anything she did would simply be taken by Hydra, or government organizations no better, by force if not by legal means.

It turns out that the biggest concern for tech-organic interfacing, getting workable technological implants inside the human body, or tech-organic control interfaces for cybernetic limbs and replacement organs, are immunological.

Given our nations unmatched ability to get soldiers to lose eyes, arms, legs, and important internal bits in the wars fought because without them you can’t justify producing tens of thousands of hundred thousand dollar bombs to drop on mud huts. As a result, a lot of people have devoted their lives and their genius to finding ways to give hope and health back to these wounded warriors.

There was a biotech firm called Invictus Life, named for the Invictus Games founded by Prince Harry of England after his second tour in Afghanistan to celebrate the athletic achievement of the warriors who came back less than whole from their wars.

Invictus Life had been working on ways to get cybernetics to work with existing muscle and nerve to control mechanical limbs, and even sense organs. Much of that work had been immunological, gene tailored augmetic parts whose chemical surface matched the markers of the recipients own flesh so their immune system would not attack the interface as “foreign” and reject it.

As a medical breakthough, it had huge potential, but limited utility. We maim thousands of soldiers every year, and shuffle them off our books as fast as we can because if we admitted how much caring for them cost, getting authorization for the next wave of deployments from Congress could cause budget problems.

For Hydra on the other hand, it dropped the barrier on cyberware implants. Workable smartlinks to connect your eye to your gun, wired reflexes to make your reaction time as fast as a superhuman, enhanced muscle fibers for increased strength, implanted weapons from claws to one shot lasers, implanted recording and communication devices for spies, and of course, the all important cranial bombs for controlling distant assets.

Hydra had the tech, but its success rate was low, and rarely long term. The cost when your failure rate was nearly total was prohibitive. The cost when you were able to succeed even a third of the time? A bargain.

Superhumans off the shelf. Take existing Hydra troops and physically augment them to be the equal of low end superheroes. Elite Hydra agents and top commanders so augmented would be able to compete with mid-level heroes.

Anna Kendrick, the leader of Research Team Five, the one with the published paper on phenotype specific glycoprotein amalgam coatings, had posted on their Instagram that they had survived a kidnapping attempt right off the street.

Four men in a van tried to grab her off the street, and only a strange woman in a red and gold costume physically tipping over the van and pulling her out saved her.

Hydra had tried grabbing her direct, probably for reprogramming to send in to either take the tech slowly, or develop it to thier desired end in the existing lab. They would try something else, and do it before the process got to patent and government and other watchdogs like SHIELD were aware it needed defending.

They would be moving. I would have to be ahead of them. The process was simple. I had to find the weak link, the one that sold their information to Hydra. That person would be the one I needed to replace. Once I took their place, gods I hope it was a he. The idea of putting my density and forward heavy body on high heels terrified me. How do women with big boobs do it? Tentacles are higher up and farther out, even more unstable. Got to think those and heels, plus a density twice that of human, not a good mix with heels. I really hope the traitor was a he. Once I took their place, I would simply wait until Hydra reached out and blackmailed me into giving them the security information so they could storm the place, looting the information and the scientists they needed.

Science is driven by caffiene and tasty baked goods. I staked out the Starbucks on the closest approaches. I admit day one and two I was creeping people out, and pushing too hard. I had a mind flayer’s instincts, but they were ambush predators not spies.

Finally Echo took me out on a date to the second coffee shop and I found out the difference between a scalpel and a battle axe.

She let me into her mind as she sifted the minds around me. I was digging in looking for information about betraying the lab. Even non telepaths will react to intrusion. They don’t know what it is, but they will feel disturbed or frightened. Good prey instincts, your average human. A little atrophied by too much safety, but you can see why so many of them train up well.

Echo made me look like a cheap thug. She simply brushed a thought about the kidnapping, and the thought, “I hope what I said didn’t cause that.”

In every mind, the casual thought brought a quick review of their own impression of information security. Most dismissed the thought out of hand, either they had no sins to admit, or they didn’t give a shit one way or the other. Scientists can be focused to the point of indifference to anything outside their area of interest in about the same way as capitalists, professional athletes, and soldiers can.

Then there was Ronald Sung. Echo grazed that thought across his mind and he lit up like a Christmas tree. My tentacles could taste the fear sweat even as my eyes picked up the increased thermal output. He was sweating his bag off at the thought of his college’s kidnapping.

“No no no no no no. They just wanted to know if there was anything she didn’t publish. They never said they were going to DO anything to her. The little bitch/slut/whore! High and mighty Miss Perfect Anna Kendrick. Two months work on a hunch and suddenly her projects get all the funding and my research of the last six years is shelved so I can contribute to something with potential. Six fucking years. She deserves it. Fuck, fuck, fuck. What if the boss finds out, what if the police find out? Should I run? Should I play it cool? Oh fuck, oh fuck. ITS ALL HER FAULT. FUCK IT, I HOPE THEY COME BACK AND FINISH IT.”

His thoughts were almost hammering the air with their intensity. Echo smiled and the stole my banana bread. Well, she earned it. She has a lot less power than I do, but that is a bit like saying the olympic fencer can only run me through six times before I finish drawing my two handed sword. Her power will improve naturally over time, my mastery on the other hand I am having to build through the practice skills formed by neural imprinting never actually prepared me for.

I followed Ronald out to his car. Mind Flayers are ambush predators. SHIELD agents are ambush predators, and Kree don’t like traitors. Ronald was fucked.

“Ronald, what is your favorite park?” I asked him as he opened his car door, then unlocked the passenger door for me as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Ronald thought about the local parks, and there was one that he remembered going to with his grandmother when she was in town and wanted to go visit the flower garden there. He complained about it at the time, but strolling the gardens with her had made him feel strangely at peace.

Ronald smiled. Good. He deserved to smile before the end.

“Lets go there Rondald. You should walk among the flowers at least once more.”

I picked up my cell phone and texted Magik. “Hey, I really loved that thing you did for me in the hotel room during the convention. Fancy another threesome? <3 “

You do not send telepathic messages into a building owned by the White Queen asking for body disposal if you do not expect to have a long talk with your therapist about premeditated murder. You do not put in writing that you are about to kill someone, can you help me dispose of the body.

Last time Magik and I were in a hotel room doing something with another man, I had killed him, and she fed his body to her demons in Limbo. Literal demons in an actual other dimension. I mean, as a SHIELD agent I am mortified such a way of disposing of evidence exists. As a Mind Flayer, well I only really want the brain, and police can be so tiresome.

My inner Kree simply remembers fifty lifetimes of front line Kree infantry service digging holes in planets as varied as the flowers in the garden we were going to. Any way of disposign of bodies that did not cause him to dig another hole filled his inner infantry heart with joy.

Ronald and I went for a walk in the gardens. I used my Mind Flayers masking ability to make others simply want to wander in directions that took them farther away from me. I let him remember all the good things in his life, all the happy memories.

Then I murdered him.

I did more than murder him, because that wouldn’t serve my needs. I came up behind him and wrapped my tentacles around his head, and with my mouth, that double circle of grinding teeth, trepanned his skull, removing a disk of skull from under my sucking mouths.

Then I flayed his mind. I didn’t just consume the physical brain, I consumed his memories, his personality. On some level, the conscience in me wondered if I was eating his soul. I would pray if Kree had the potential to believe anything was more worthy of themselves to worship.

Ronald Sung was not a terrible person. Yes he sold out his coworker out of jealousy, and really did fantasize about what Hydra would do to her when they got her. He even had a promise of her use (yes, he included having her as his lover as the price of selling out the lab to Hydra) in his traitors price, so I didn’t mind killing him. But I was murdering him, taking everything he was everything he could ever be, and eating it. Making him no more than a data file for me to read, a set of habits and patterns to mimic. Given my holographic tech I could become him physically, but right now, I could step into his job and do it better than he could (he half assed everything), and carry out a discussion with his family and friends without any of them noting the difference.

It is times like this I have to admit, I am a monster. I serve humanity, but I am not one of them. If they saw what I did for them, I have a feeling I would die by fire, but they do not need to know.

“Wow, I can see you give serious head Lovecraft!” A little Russian accented voice laughed sardonically as she gave a golf clap and walked over.

As I pulled out and stood up, Magik brushed my tentacles away, and conjured a ball of white fire above the hole and laughed, scraping her finger inside.

“So clean, on Halloween, you are totally doing my pumpkin for me. I hate the feeling of the little pumpkin guts on my fingers.” Magik said, and if Pitor Rasputin (Colossus) could see his baby sister Illya Rasputin, aka Magik, right now making pumpkin jokes over the hollowed out skull of a man I murdered, he would probably put a steel fist though my heart.

She looked around, then asked. “Any other bodies I should know about, or just this dude?”

I looked for the shock or horror upon her teen aged face, and found only honest interest.

“You aren’t horrified I ate his brain?” I asked, my mind quietly reading her surface thoughts for concealed horror.

She kicked him. “What did pumpkin head here do to get final chilled by you?” She asked.

“Betrayed his coworker to be taken by Hydra and enslaved. He included the chance to rape her as part of his price for selling out.” I admitted.

She went through his pockets and piled out everything she found into a neat pile on the ground, then blew a kiss to the body. A white disk appeared underneath, and about six arms reached out to tuck the body’s limbs in, then pulled it through. A small imp stuck his head up and snapped a cheerful salute to Magik, she gave a casual wave in return, then closed the portal behind him.

Magik turned to me and smiled. “Fuck him. Look, if it will make you feel better, I promise I will kill you myself if you start murdering innocent people, or turning dark overlord and enslaving people. In return, you will do all of my pumpkins at Halloween. I love carving, but their guts seriously creep me out.”

She gave me a quick hug, punched me firmly in the chest, and waved casually over her head as she walked behind a tree that was less than 4” wide and never came out the other side.

Magik’s name isn’t just a name. She was a mutant, but there were powers woven into her that did not belong to or in this world. I don’t know, and don’t want to know what sort of life experience made her so casual with death and brain sucking, but she wasn’t acting. This wasn’t a deeply traumatic memory. This was Tuesday.

I reached down and picked up Ronald Sung’s ID, phone, and keys. I think since Ronald pays for access to his condo’s gym facilities, I should put them to work. I didn’t have anything else to do before bedtime, since Ronald already took care of dinner, and I had a long day of work ahead of me tomorrow.

Hydra would reach out for their tool again soon. I had to be the most shiny, useful looking tool, to make sure they never had reason to seek some other entry point. Even Ronald shouldn’t die for nothing.