Six Black Hawk helicopters hovered over the containment zone, soldiers in black tactical gear rappelling down on fast ropes. Below them, a dozen military Humvees had established a perimeter, blocking every street and alley. Mounted gunners manned their weapons with the kind of alertness that said anyone making trouble would be turned into a fine red mist.
ROAR.
A Hunter slammed into an infantry fighting vehicle, flipping the armored transport like a toy car. Soldiers scattered in panic.
What the hell is that thing?
M4s and M2 machine guns hammered into the creature's hide, but it barely seemed to notice. The bullets were mosquito bites—annoying, nothing more.
What the soldiers couldn't see was the regeneration. Every wound they inflicted closed within seconds, especially after the Hunter grabbed a fleeing private and... fed. Biomass in, damage repaired. Simple mathematics that heavily favored the monster.
The military had arrived too late. The Blacklight infected had already spread to nearby houses. Fortunately, vampires valued their privacy—the research center was in the suburbs specifically to avoid attention. Limited population density meant limited spread.
But this was the Marvel universe. Humans here weren't entirely human.
Setting aside mutants, most people on Earth carried trace amounts of Inhuman DNA—a gift from Kree experiments millennia ago. Most never awakened those genes. But the Blacklight virus was very good at mining host genetics for useful traits.
Regular Hunters were bad enough. Hunters with Inhuman abilities? That was nightmare fuel.
At the Triskelion, Nick Fury watched the chaos with an expression carved from stone.
The situation still wasn't under control, even with military reinforcements. The good news: these monsters weren't Hulk-level threats. Tank shells and concentrated fire could bring them down, as long as you didn't give them time to regenerate.
The bad news: everything else.
A knock at his door.
"Sir, we've confirmed it." Maria Hill stepped inside, tablet in hand. "The Hematology Research Center—it's vampire territory."
"You're certain?"
Fury's expression darkened. He'd assumed this was one of Luke's secret facilities. Finding out it belonged to the vampire nation changed the calculus entirely.
Maybe Luke hadn't been trying to dump a mess in SHIELD's lap. Maybe the vampires had been researching something and it went wrong. Maybe Luke had caused whatever went wrong.
Fury didn't trust coincidences. He especially didn't trust mysterious strangers who appeared out of nowhere with impossible intelligence.
"Confirmed," Hill repeated.
"Understood. Dismissed."
After she left, Fury turned back to the monitors. He was already considering every possible connection between Luke and the vampire nation. Alliance? Conflict? Mutual enemy?
Assume the worst, he reminded himself. That's how you stay alive.
Luke, Riven, and Skadi spent half the night on a nearby rooftop, watching the military operation unfold.
The soldiers were competent but inexperienced with this kind of threat. A proper black ops team—the kind that existed in games like Overwatch, units that fought to the last man without retreating—would have cleared this zone in ten minutes.
The regular military took over thirty.
Not bad, all things considered. But not great either.
When the shooting finally stopped, Luke watched cleanup crews begin their work. Infected corpses were loaded into refrigerated trucks. Decontamination teams sprayed everything in sight.
And then the convoy started moving.
"Follow them," Luke said quietly.
They trailed the military vehicles through the night, maintaining enough distance to avoid detection. The convoy eventually turned off onto an unmarked road, winding through increasingly remote terrain until they reached a facility that definitely didn't appear on any public maps.
High walls. Guard towers. Multiple security checkpoints. The kind of base that probably didn't officially exist—the sort of place where even the President might not know the details.
Luke studied the perimeter, mind racing.
The military had the virus samples. They were going to study them. Try to weaponize them. And if the Blacklight virus got loose in a controlled research environment with actual resources behind it...
Manhattan in Prototype had been contained through sheer luck and overwhelming force. A government-backed research program wouldn't make the same mistakes. They'd be careful. They'd take precautions.
And they'd create something far worse than a few rampaging Hunters.
"We're going in," Luke decided. "Plant explosives. Destroy everything."
Riven nodded without hesitation. Skadi's expression didn't change—she'd follow the Doctor anywhere.
"I'll trigger the alarm before detonation," Luke added. "Give people a chance to evacuate. What they do with that chance is on them."
Infiltrating the base was surprisingly straightforward when you had two superhuman companions.
Security measures that would have stopped any normal intruder—motion sensors, patrol patterns, surveillance cameras—meant nothing to people who could move faster than the eye could track. Riven and Skadi ghosted through the facility like they were walking through their own home.
The internal security was another matter.
ID cards. Fingerprint scanners. Retinal recognition. And—Luke blinked at this one—oral cavity scanning.
"What happens if someone gets a cavity filled?" he muttered. "Does the system just lock them out forever?"
Bureaucratic absurdity aside, they needed access codes they didn't have. Time for the direct approach.
They grabbed a base officer in a quiet corridor. The man was military through and through—refused to talk, prepared to die for his country, all the usual patriotic nonsense.
Then Luke pointed his gun at the officer's companion.
"Your friend here. Brother? Fellow soldier?" Luke kept his voice casual. "Either way, you talk or he dies. Simple."
The officer's resolve crumbled instantly.
"You're a monster," he spat.
"Probably." Luke shrugged. "Now talk."
The research lab was exactly what Luke had feared.
Through reinforced glass, he could see scientists in triple-layer hazmat suits conducting autopsies on infected tissue. Each suit had its own oxygen supply. Entry and exit required full decontamination cycles. Every possible precaution had been taken.
It wouldn't be enough. It was never enough with the Blacklight virus.
Luke started unpacking his arsenal.
White phosphorus grenades. Napalm canisters. Thermite charges. Every C4 block he had in storage. His inventory read like a war crimes checklist, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
The researchers inside couldn't communicate with the outside world—standard protocol for contamination-risk facilities. They had no idea what was being stacked against their walls.
Luke positioned the charges carefully, ensuring maximum coverage. He wasn't going inside that lab. Sparda demon or not, he had no intention of finding out whether the Blacklight virus could infect his new biology.
Some questions were better left unanswered.