CHAPTER 55

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400+ stones to go.

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With Trask out of commission, I made my way through the steam and looked for a good place to deposit him that I could keep an eye on while also helping Steve and co take care of the nuisance outside.

I stuffed the man into what resembled a locker and immediately went outside. 

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't want to fight in public like this since I would soon be a public figure but given that the people we were facing weren't any type of government agents, I would be able to act unimpeded and I could always count of Fury to ghost me out any interested party's servers. 

I had already told Fury before we begun the operation today so he no doubt had his eyes on this location as we speak. 

"Bucky talk to me!" I rang Bucky as I made my way outside. 

"No new developments. But Steve and I are under heavy suppression fires so I suggest you wrap up with whatever you are doing and help us take out the snipers first!" Bucky exclaimed. 

I activated my x-ray vision and located Bucky's position and also the snipers that were limiting their movements. 

I formed a blue ball in my hand and shot it to two snipers as it divided mid air and shot out hails of ice spikes killing the two snipers and other enemies in the vicinity. 

That seemed to catch their attention as the rest immediately focus their fire on me. Immediately I sensed something wrong as the ones who targeted me exchanged their guns and this time what they shot were lasers. 

I was not a fool to tank what I didn't know what it was made of, so I dodged. I got my bearings immediately and sent out a whip of flames that wrapped three more people, with just a thought the whip's color changed from bright yellow to dark red and I drew the rope and watched as it cut through the heads of my targets. 

Without wasting time I jumped from my position, not wanting to stay in one place lest I was besieged by those lasers that I still didn't know what they did. 

I called out to Steve as I jumped and a second later his shield was flying in my position which I caught mid-air and twisted my body to throw it at a nearby sniper. It ricocheted off the sniper and made its way back to me but I kicked it changing its trajectory as it sailed it way back to Steve. 

"I still don't understand that thing." I muttered as I focus on another section of enemy homes. 

The moment they knew they had caught my attention, they started fire haphazardly to disrupt my approach but this time instead of sending whips of flames I sent out ice spears at a little distance, a few inches away from their feet. I almost chuckled as they we immediately relaxed that I missed as they attacked with more ferocity but screams started flowing from their mouths due to this long spikes that grew from the ground and pierced their bodies while they weren't paying attention. 

I ignored them as those ice would kill them in seconds to a minute as it froze anywhere it pierced down to the bones. These were what I had been training for up to a month now – how to use my attacks in different forms. Ice as always was easier to manipulate from a distance but fire was still tricky but I finally managed to get the gist of it. 

I turned to the last sniper located atop a mast some feet away from me but that didn't deter me as I shot out the lasers from my eyes. The lasers I shot out was fast that the snipers didn't have time to react at the abnormality of what my beams did – they curved. 

While I wasn't yet closer to ripping off Darkseid™ with the omnidirectional Omega beams, I was able to make mine curved the moment I picked up haw to manipulate energy from a distance. It was what I used to control my ice spikes and flames from a distance and make them change their attack patterns. It was a pretty nifty thing I learned. 

With Steve and Bucky super soldiering their way through the others, we were able to make quick work of the enemies we faced. 

I went back to pick up Trask as I kept my eyes on him throughout the fight, never letting my visuals stray more than 5 seconds away for his position. 

"We got him, now what?" Bucky asked as I sighed. 

The plan was to rattled them and trail whoever spooked back to their hideouts but I didn't account for the fact that their whole entourage would be nearby and the whole place would dissolve in chaos so quickly. 

The whole fight took over thirty minutes and if we had followed the original plan, Trask would have surely gotten away since there was no way my x-ray vision covered such large distances so I had to scrap the whole plan and act on the fly. 

'So much for a week of planning.'

"Let's just take him back." I sighed as I said and walked out of the venue with the still knocked out Trask. 

"You sure he's gonna spill whatever we want him to?" Bucky asked. 

"I have ways of making him talk." I simply said while Bucky nodded while Cap just shook his head and followed us to out getaway ride. 

I drove us to another hideout I procured since I figured out former suite would be compromised if any hiccups were to happen during the ex-stealth mission we just completed. 

Trask wasn't the only thing we got from the conference as Steve snagged a few of their weapons so I could know what they did and why they only used it on me. 

The place we went to was a few miles way firm the boisterous Moscow city since the place would no doubt be crawling with different Russian agencies both the legal and obscure ones so we had to get out. 

I strapped Trask to a chair while I took the guns for testing. 

While I did know a few thing about mechanics, it would take hours if not day to fully understand the internal working of the gun and that was time we had. Right now, people associated with Trask would know that he had been kidnapped during the chaos and they would be on a move in whatever agenda they had so I needed to figure this thing out to know what they did before the hot trail went cold. 

Coming to that conclusion, I decided to test the gun the only way I knew how – to use it on myself. 

Sometimes I get the feeling that my sense of danger and self-preservation is not as high as I imagined it would be after all the shit I've been through. 

I held the gun while Steve and Bucky watched me with my senses spread out to glean anything I could from this instantaneous testing. 

"Are you sure you want to be doing that? Because that thing looks a hell of a lot like an HYDRA weapon." Bucky said while looking at me with concern. 

"I don't want to do this but I doubt whatever it does would take me down in one shot." I said trying to assuage whatever worry they had. 

"That isn't a valid reason to test the weapon on yourself either." Bucky countered. 

"True, but it's not like we have much of a choice." I said as I pointed the gun to my other hand. I was not stupid enough to point at my chest. 

I took a deep breath as I counted, "one, two, three!" and shot it. 

"Fuck!" I groaned and almost fell to the floor while Bucky and Steve immediately came to my side. 

"What's wrong?" Steve asked me as they helped me stand back up. 

"The fuck is that!" Was what came out of my mouth as soon as I composed myself as the effect wore off. 

"What happened to you?" Steve asked me again. 

"Told you it was a bad idea quack. Hey at least you didn't blow away your hands." Bucky said with a shrug as he saw that I wasn't hurt in anyway. 

"I don't know exactly what it does but it felt as if I was electrocuted." I said as I tried to remember the feeling. It wasn't like normal electricity at all. 

"But electricity don't have that kind of extreme effect on you, I seen you get shocked by things a lot worse than that beam and you shrug it off so whatever that thing was it definitely wasn't electricity." 

Bucky didn't believe it and to be honest neither did I. I shrugged off lightening strikes from Storm and this thing definitely wasn't up on a danger scale of a billion volts. 

"What if it wasn't electricity?" We both looked at Steve as he said that. "What if was something like a repellant or an allergy? It would explain why it affected him so much like that."

I thought about what Steve just said and couldn't help but find a little proof to what he just proposed. It didn't explain the entire niche about the gun but it at least gave me something to start with. 

"So what? The guns are like spoiled eggs that makes you sick every time you inhale them? That's… concerning."

Bucky gave his two cents as we all pondered on it before a light bulb lit up in my head. 

"What if it's not just my antithesis but that of all other mutants as well?" I told them what I thought and it didn't even take a second before their eyes widened in realization. 

"An anti-mutant gun. This is definitely what governments would invest in… and HYDRA. But if that's is true then he isn't doing anything bad is he?" Bucky asked in confusion. 

"I mean, if we are objectively speaking then it isn't wrong for the government to develop anti-mutant weaponry since mutants are hard to stop from committing crimes nowadays. I mean look at Magneto, that guy could walk in and out of any government facility without anyone having the power to stop him so it stands to reason that they would want to create a deterrence against them."

I agreed with what Bucky said, even Steve did, but.. 

"Unfortunately, that's not what the SENTINEL project is about. How about we ask the man himself." I walked to where Trask was strapped to a chair as he started waking up. 

He took a moment to get himself a sliver of recognition before he started squirming in his chair. 

"Untie me you vile thing!" He screamed as he saw us. 

"Wow, it's like…" Even Steve was taken aback by it. 

"… HYDRA all over again." Bucky to his credit didn't even have the slightest change in his expression. 

"Let's cut to chase shall we? Tell us all you know about the SENTINEL project you are working on. After all it is your brainchild isn't it?"

Trask looked at me with a look of scorn and if someone could see my mental state then there would know that just that look was a critical hit to me. 

'Damn you! You budget Peter Dinklage lookalike.'

"You think I'll ever cower to the likes of you?" Trask said even looking smug as he said that. 

"No, I don't expect you to."

He didn't expect that as looked at me wondering what I would do. I brought a chair and sat in front of him and looked at him before speaking. 

"Larry, Tanya… they are mutants aren't they?" His eyes widened. 

"W-what… h-how?" This time he had an expression of fear on his face. 

"Hey don't you think you are going far?" Steve called out to me in disgruntlement. 

"H-how do you know that? Who told you that?" This time he was screaming at me. 

From what I knew from the comics, Trask was disillusioned because of the powers of the mutant race that made him want create something to fight against them should they stand against mutants someday. His hate for mutants was misplaced because if his fear but before his death he tried helping the X-Men to fight against the Master Mold of the Sentinels. But living in this world taught me that mistakes were to be judged without impartiality. 

So even if he was lied to or deceived, he was still at fault for what would happened if the Sentinels were released and brought destruction and death to the mutant race. 

"What are you talking about Draul? Who is Larry and Tanya?" Steve asked me as he saw how Trask was fidgeting as those names were mentioned. 

My thoughts before was just to dive into his head and fish out any information I want before I killed him but I figured it wouldn't cost me anything to see if I could change his opinions of the mutants so that was the reason why I tried this. 

"Bolivar Trask, what is your view on the mutant kind?"