Better Safe Than Sorry
Bullseye leant back in the boss’ big leather-upholstered chair with his feet up on the briefing table. A large soda balanced precariously on the armrest, ice cubes clunking against one another like tiny icebergs as he fidgeted about in the seat. The blinds over the massive windows were down. The flicker-glow of the vast flatscreen TV at the far end of the table illuminated the darkened room like an old-fashioned theatre. Bullseye’s lips moved silently to the images on the screen. TV was his guilty pleasure, but he preferred to watch it with the sound turned down. Screenwriters were lame in general, and Bullseye’s own invented dialogue was better.
Picking up an ice cube with the suction of his straw, he aimed his improvised pea shooter lazily down the table, and then blew.
The ice cube flew eighteen feet and struck the up-channel control on the TV remote before skitting off along the table and onto the floor.
Bullseye, he thought, with a bored smile, as the channel flicked seamlessly over to C-SPAN.
They were covering the Chicago riots.
Rolling footage showed demonstrators in jeans and T-shirts, teenagers mostly, fleeing through the streets. Look close enough over the heads of the terrified crowds, and you could just about make out the white plume of Ares’ helmet. The God of War had blocked the protestors’ route to the courthouse with an upturned school bus. He was standing on it. It appeared to be on fire. Bullseye dunked his straw back into the soda and took a slurp. Damn, but he had a sudden craving for nachos. In another shot, Moonstone defended the steps of the Harold Washington Library from being stormed by mutant protestors. Or violently blocked a few hundred frantic kids from getting off a street that had Ares in it. Depending on your point of view. In a split-screen, Norman spoke soundlessly to camera. The banner text said, “Iron Patriot condemns mutant terror.” The Sentry was behind him, looking heroic as only the Sentry could, blue cloak fluttering out like Old Glory, while his golden aura, as if by happy accident rather than cynical calculation, lent a bright, early morning halo to Norman’s star-spangled armor.
“What a jerk,” he muttered.
Someone behind him noisily cleared their throat.
Bullseye leant back in his chair, far enough to make the tilting hinges creak, and looked back, upside down, over the headrest.
Two stockily built H.A.M.M.E.R. agents in full body armor and helmets, bulky assault rifles held crossed over their chests, stood guard at the door. Supposedly, they were there for his protection, but in reality they were there to stop Bullseye wandering off and getting into trouble. None of them – except Ares perhaps, Bullseye wasn’t sure what his deal was – were exactly free agents these days. It was Avengers Tower, Thunderbolt Mountain, or the Raft, and, given the options, being the hero really wasn’t so bad. To Norman’s credit, he had to know that two minimum-wage goons weren’t going to keep Bullseye from doing whatever Bullseye wanted to do. That was why there were ten more in the corridor and an electronic bracelet around his ankle.
Like almost everything Norman did, it was for show, and Bullseye played along.
It was either that or admit to himself that he wasn’t ever going to try to escape. He wasn’t scared, not really, not even of the Sentry, but there was nowhere on Earth he could go where Norman couldn’t get to him and he knew it.
“Don’t worry about hurting his feelings,” he said, turning slightly to smile towards the camera that Norman had broadcasting a continuous live feed to his office computer, and throwing it a wave. “He is a jerk.” Straightening his chair again, he sucked up another ice cube and launched it towards the remote control.
The channel flicked back.
Bullseye fidgeted into his chair back and sighed at the TV.
“Oh, Ross. When are you gonna grow a sack and stab that girl in the eye?”
Bullseye wasn’t against a little hard work. It depended on the work. He could watch Ares do his thing all week. But Bullseye wasn’t one for rules of engagement and policing protests. If Norman wasn’t even going to let him kill any of them, or do it with proper style, then he might as well have kept the real Hawkeye on his payroll.
He stirred the straw around his cup, then raised the half-empty soda up over his head.
“I’m out of ice over here.”
“So?” said one of the guards, his thick, black-eye purple body armor making him unwisely brave.
“So, my soda’s gonna get warm.”
From the corridor outside, through the briefing room’s mammoth security doors, he heard what sounded like the ping of the elevator. New guards coming on shift. It was probably too much to hope that the burgers he’d ordered out on Norman’s tab hadn’t been intercepted at the front desk. He laughed to himself at the thought of Norman discovering the unexpected $39.95 spend on his credit card bill come the end of the month.
Slowly, like a leaky tap, the laughter dried up.
God, he needed a life.
The boredom must have shown on his face, because the two visored guards turned to one another and shared a look.
Inside the building, above a certain level, the secret identity of Osborn’s Avengers was the most open of open secrets. Victoria was the only member of Norman’s inner circle who diligently referred to everyone by their codenames and even remotely tried to keep it all under wraps. Norman himself, Bullseye sometimes thought, didn’t seem to care less. As if he was teasing the world with the truth, wanting them to know it, and daring them to care. If Clint Barton ever stepped out of line with the help, then a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent would’ve happily told him to get lost. But nobody was going to try that with Bullseye. Not if they didn’t want to be carrying pieces of themselves home in a cardboard box when they clocked off.
“I’ll go to the machine,” said the one on the right.
He lowered his rifle, holding it one-handed while he swiped his ID card. The access control went bleep, and shunted out a keypad for him to punch in a code. He did. The door irised open, and then ground shut behind him as he stepped through.
The guard on the left backed right up to the wall and raised his gun, aiming at the back of Bullseye’s chair.
Bullseye could almost close his eyes and be right back in Thunderbolt Mountain.
Happy days.
From the corridor outside, he heard an electrical snap, like a shorting fuse, and then a thump that sounded like nothing but a heavily armored body hitting the floor.
Leftie swung his aim towards the door and backed towards the briefing table. “Ted?” he called out. “Ted?”
Bullseye crossed his arms behind the back of his head and leant back, returning his attention to the TV and chewing on his cardboard straw like a hick on a corn stem.
Ted? Seriously?
There was another bleep sound and the doors started to iris open again, shuddering along as though reluctant about going through the rigmarole all over again so soon. In the reflection in the TV’s corner trim, Bullseye watched as a quartet of H.A.M.M.E.R. agents entered the briefing room, leading with their assault rifles as though responding to a disturbance and dispatched to secure the room.
Leftie lowered his gun.
“What’s–” he managed to open with, before one of the newcomers tranqed him.
The guard dropped his rifle with a clatter, grunting behind his visor as arcs of electricity crawled over his ceramic breastplate, easing him through a jerk and a spasm towards the floor. A second agent prodded him with his toe. He didn’t move.
“Find the cameras,” ordered a third. “Re-route the live feeds, and–” He stopped as Bullseye swiveled around in his chair. “H-Hawkeye. Sir.” The others all pulled up short. One of them made a shaky salute as though he wasn’t sure whether he was meant to or not. They looked tense, inasmuch as you could through that much armor. But Bullseye always knew when someone was sweating. “We didn’t… we weren’t expecting…”
Bullseye raised his eyebrow, biting down on his straw to tilt the far end upwards.
“We were just…” the agent began, then yanked up his weapon. “Ahh, dammit.”
Four military-grade assault rifles swung towards Bullseye, who grinned.
Finally.
Some entertainment.
He spat out the straw, propelling it towards the leader’s throat with perfect aim, and with just the right amount of directed force to punch through the flexible under-armor between helmet and gorget and go straight through his esophagus and trachea. The agent folded to the ground, choking, pawing at the innocuous little cardboard pipe sticking out of his neck.
At the exact same time, the other three opened fire.
Kicking off with one foot, he spun the chair around.
The armored frame, hidden beneath the plush upholstery and expensive memory foam padding, took the brunt of the kinetic impacts, while embedded energy dampeners, essentially high-tech shock-absorbers, soaked up and flared off the electrical charge.
Bullseye’s grin widened, his cheeks aching with the charge radiating off Norman’s chair. The director was a paranoid fool, and Bullseye loved him for it.
With the agents still unloading tranquilizer bolts into the back of the chair, Bullseye was already pushing out of the seat and rolling across the table. Three quarters of the way down, he scooped up the TV remote and, in one smooth motion, flipped it over and slapped it into his open palm. Four AA batteries popped out. He fanned them between his fingers, like a stage magician performing a card trick, and launched them back across the room.
There were two thunks, barely audible over the electrical hail of gunfire, two cries, and two agents crumpled with AA-sized eye-holes in their visors.
One left.
The remaining agent swore, operating a ratchet mechanism down the side of his gun stock to switch from tranquilizer to solid shot, and then toggling to fully automatic.
Bullseye brandished the remote control. “Oh, you’d better believe I wanna play.”
The agent screamed as he backed away towards the still-open door, hosing Bullseye and everything within a yard to either side. Bullseye laughed as gunfire ricocheted off the briefing table and chewed up the chairs, batting bullets out of the air with the remote control until the agent was out the door and fleeing down the corridor.
He lifted the mangled nub of plastic and frowned back towards the TV, disappointed, but not entirely surprised, that nobody in the show had been bloodily murdered yet.
Man, TV sucked.
With a heavy sigh, he tossed the useless remote aside and went back to his seat. It was entirely unscathed, albeit a little warm from the amount of electrical charge it had taken in. Reaching under the seat, he unpacked his compound bow from its carry-case, the work of a moment when he put his mind to it, and wrapped his fingers around the Oscorp logo on the grip. Bow in hand, he marched out into the corridor.
A dozen H.A.M.M.E.R. agents lay stunned in the hallway. A couple more were crouched by the open door of the elevator, seemingly taking the pulse of one of them.
It was possible, likely even, that the insurgent agent had already escaped by the service stairs, perhaps even heading up rather than the more obvious down for an aerial extraction from the roof.
He stuck his tongue between his front teeth and sucked in a breath.
What was it that Victoria had been harping on about just that morning?
Oh yeah.
He nocked an armor-piercing arrow to his bowstring from the automatic quiver on the riser and took aim at the furthest of the still-conscious figures.
Better safe than sorry.