“Oh, I care deeply, my dear boy. I believe there’s something very different about you, something—extra.”
Creed hated feeling like every word of this conversation was hazardous to his family’s health. Any misstep could cost them everything. Truth be told, Creed was feeling the effects of blood loss. Even with the adrenaline coursing through him, he felt strangely anxious and weak at the same time.
“Did you know nothing we did to you would rouse you from your unconscious state?” Williams kept talking though it was clear to everyone in the room how one-sided this conversation was going to be.
Creed remained silent.
“I think you’ve been holding out on me, my dear Creed, since that day of your Retribution Match. When Gavil here stabbed you and beat the weapon into your side, you shouldn’t have been able to come back to win the match having suffered as you did. Then today,” he waved a gloved hand at Creed as though he were on display.
“Just look at you! Yet your breathing is steady and your voice is calm. There is not one quiver of pain, no muscle spasms, nothing. You have a gift too, don’t you Creed?”
Creed’s anger was palpable.
“Well, first we’ll go retrieve the serum, then we can have a reunion of sorts back at the Facility where I know several of my scientists will be anxious to test your limits of pain tolerance,” Williams smiled widely, exposing the bloody gums where teeth should have been.
“Gavil, take him back to the St. Paul home and retrieve the serum—take four of these, too,” he said motioning to the mutant metasoldiers as though they were things and not living beings.
Gavil nodded once, and called, “Oscar, Gideon, Canon, Darius—collect the traitor and load up.”
The soldiers obeyed without question by carelessly slicing Creed’s binds and dragging him to the SUV waiting outside.
When they were alone, Williams called Gavil closer. “Take this,” he handed Gavil the detonator. “How convenient of Margo to make it so easy to remove all evidence of the Infinite work done in that backwoods laboratory. Once the serum is retrieved, level the lab.”
With a nod, Gavil turned and followed the bloody trail left by his brother to the waiting car.
Creed didn’t have a plan.
He kept willing his brain to think, but the physical damage his body had endured over the last forty minutes was causing him to have bouts of near blackouts. It was taking all his concentration to keep his pain sensors turned off.
Feeling like a lamb being led to slaughter, he was half dragged by the rabid dogs into Paulie’s lab.
“Where’s the serum?” Gavil barked into Creed’s ear. Creed wasn’t faking when his eyes rolled back into his head. No amount of yelling was going to stir him from this blackout episode. Furious with Creed, and impatient with the whole freaking task, he turned to the two soldiers not holding his brother and ordered them to search the lab.
Equipment crashed, drawers were ripped out and dumped. File cabinets were up-ended, the contents of built in cabinets were thrown to the formerly pristine floor.
Excited by the anarchy, the two soldiers whose job it was to hold Creed, dropped him and joined in the destruction of glass beakers, vials and costly medical equipment that made the coolest shattering sounds when thrown against the cement walls.
Moments later, Creed began crawling, slowly at first, then with more determination and resolve. He knew where he was going.
The partially obscured refrigerated cabinet at the back of the lab looked very unassuming from the outside, but in it laid the two vials of the Infinite serum Evan created using his own blood. He prayed as he crawled, willing his body to move with speed it was incapable of in its state of abuse.
The contents of the room were flying overhead and crashing—arbitrarily punctuated with primal screams of destructive joy from the rabid dogs.
Creed nearly cried with relief when he reached the cabinet unnoticed by the destruction-happy mutant soldiers. With his broken hand, he reached out and carefully punched the security code using his swollen, sausage-thick pinkie finger, unlocking the cabinet.
Cold air blasted his face when he opened the door. There, among containers of other substances of unknown origins and uses were the two precious, clear vials Creed was looking for. On their sides were simple white labels with Evan’s neat script that read, “Infinite” and the telltale ∞ symbol.
“What have you found, Creed?” It wasn’t Gavil’s voice, but one of the other rabid dogs who finally noticed Creed clutching the bottles protectively to his chest with his swollen hands as he leaned against the wall next to the refrigerated cabinet—the door still hanging ajar.
Creed said nothing. He just waited.
“Gavil, I think Creed found what we’re looking for,” the meta hollered over the sounds of breaking glass. The sounds stopped. Boots crunched menacingly closer until Creed saw the haunted eyes of his brother.