The Marvel Knights Group presents: Silver Sable's Wild Pack #2

“We are gathered to honor the memory of a heroic and patriotic woman…”

Dark clouds slowly moved over the cemetery in an eerie and gothic semblance of people’s emotions. The rain was held at bay by some unseen force, but the air felt slightly damp and heavy, physically personifying what the people felt through their mourning. Their silver armbands all shimmered in the dying day’s light, signifying how a nation had rallied together.

The priest, a tall and wiry man with thick glasses, rattled off his practiced eulogy before several hundred people that had come to pay their last respects to the fallen Silver Sable. Murdered, the recognizable mercenary that had helped put the small nation of Symkaria on the map had been brought to her home estate the day before. Her father, Ernst Sablinova, stood still on the far end of the cemetery, watching silently with a concerned look on his face.

He never dreamed that he would outlive his daughter, but circumstances with a dash of fate had squelched the honorable notion.

“I don’t see why we even have to be here,” a man said as he approached Ernst. Even though the rain had yet to fall and the summer weather made heavy clothing uncomfortable, the man was dressed in a heavy trenchcoat with a wide-brimmed hat. “It’s not like she was your real daughter.”

“You don’t have to be here, Gaunt” Ernst shot back without removing his eyes from the lowering coffin. “She was my daughter, even if she was just a clone. Besides, with the large amount of media attention her death has received I had to be present. To do otherwise would look suspicious.”

“Yes, well…I wouldn’t be here if the information I have for you could have waited. At least, I assume you would want to know the identity of her killer right away?”

Ernst finally pulled his eyes away from the funeral. The man called Gaunt tilted his head back just enough to reveal his marred face from beneath the brim of his hat. His skin looked almost as dried as the corpses’ buried six feet under them. Yellow teeth smiled at Ernst, the enamel having been worn down years ago. One section of his head had been completely replaced by some type of cybernetics, reaching down to his right eye that was now actually a telescoping lense. Even though Ernst had worked closely with this disgusting man for the last several years he would never get used to his appearance.

“What have you discovered?” Ernst asked eagerly.

“As you know,” Gaunt began to explain, “our cloning process is not yet perfected. Even when you approached me years ago to try and resuscitate your real daughter, killed in the line of duty, I told you that there would be problems.”

“Yes, yes,” Ernst interjected. “The clones’ conditioning eventually wears down and they go rogue. I presume that was what happened to my dau…to this young woman,” he said, gesturing toward the casket across the landscape.

“This particular Sable was on a mission in New York City when we monitored a breakdown in her metabolism. She began to suffer from cloning degeneration, and the information we encoded in her mind began to misguide her. She was irrational and uncontrollable. We ordered the Wild Pack detail accompanying her to bring her in…but I’m afraid things got out of hand.”

Ernst lowered his brow and ground his teeth together. “Even though she wasn’t my real daughter, Gaunt, I still have no tolerance for this type of reckless slaughter. Who was it?”

“Edward Brock.”

“Venom?” Ernst exclaimed, trying his best to keep his voice lowered as to not attract attention from the other mourners. “That psychopath hadn’t been cleared yet for field status! When we recruited him in San Francisco he was almost more of a liability than an asset. I should have had him put down.”

“If I recall,” Gaunt interrupted, “at the time you felt a more, shall we say devote, Wild Pack was needed. The carelessness of the operation that cost your daughter her life years ago would never happen again under your guidance, which I believe is why you recruited me to bring her back to life. So to speak.”

“Yes, yes. I needn’t relive the past. The ceremony is almost done and I’ll be expected to play the grieving father. You should leave before someone notices you…unless there is something else?”

“There is.” Gaunt tilted the hat back over his face, as if he was almost worried about the look that he would receive from his benefactor. “There’s been a malfunction in the lab. One of the clones has broken free, killing a guard in the process.”

“Useless moron!” Ernst said through clenched teeth. “Find her immediately before the media picks up on it!”

“I was just awaiting your order to dispatch the Pack. She’s underdeveloped, only having gone through a little more than half of the maturation process. She’s roughly eighteen years of age as opposed to the desired thirty. Her programming is incomplete and she should provide little resistance once apprehended.”

“Don’t screw this up, Gaunt,” Ernst warned as he turned back toward the funeral, which was now almost over. “I’m under legal pressure from the Foreigner’s coup. I have no qualms about unleashing Venom on you if necessary.”

Silver Sable’s father, a man of conviction, left the patchwork man called Gaunt behind as he returned to the hundreds of countrymen that had come to pay their respects. The last rays of sunshine fell behind a curtain of clouds, no longer illuminating the teary eyes of those that had come to pay respect to their national hero. Ernst mimicked their expressions as best he could, but found his mind wondering to the possibilities of his revealed scandal. If this young rogue clone was discovered by anyone but the Wild Pack, it could spell disaster for everything he had worked for.

It had been two days since she had escaped.

The nights had not been kind to her. The young woman that had escaped the confines of some type of installation had barely slept since fleeing. She was tired, worn, and most importantly, hungry.

The landscape of Symkaria was sparsely populated. For all the attention that had been brought to the small country over the years it was still largely farmland. Some industry had moved in and thanks to outsourcing jobs were steadily on the rise, but it would be at least another decade before the economy really felt the effects. She had almost encountered a group of people alongside the ride, but for some reason thought it would be better to remain hidden for the time being, at least until she could gain her bearings.

What had been done to her? Who was she? These and many other questions were constantly in her mind, strengthened at night by the recurring dreams she suffered from. When she was able to find slumber, her sleeping hours were filled with visions of another life. Her experiences in those dreams seemed oddly familiar, but it was more like she was living out someone else’s adventures. Names and faces had been etched into her psyche, but she couldn’t understand why.

She knew that she couldn’t hide forever. She needed help. She didn’t know who she could trust, but as she saw a town appear miles down the road, she realized that without aid, especially food, she might as well give up and die like an animal.

The sign near the side of the road said it was only five miles into a town called Strudguard. Determined, she walked toward a place where she was unsure of what awaited her: salvation or damnation.

“Get your feet off the console, idiot. You’ll scrap the whole CPU if you get sand in the damn thing.”

The Sandman leaned back in his chair, looking back at the man who had spoken to him so abruptly. “Keep it down, Paladin,” William Baker, the former supervillain known as the Sandman, said. “I’ve got complete control over my molecular structure, remember? Now buzz off before I sandblast your face off for being such an asshole.”

Paladin ripped the goggles off of his head, along with the headdress of his body armor. He stood in the doorway to their war room, which was situated in the subbasement of Silver Sable International. A vast computer network, the best that money could buy, ran along the one wall and was used to gather vital information for their assignments. A holographic display in the center of the room doubled as a conference table, and in the back of the room there were rows of lockers that housed some of their gear. The entire level was dedicated to their operation, but this room was the most important for their efforts, which was why Paladin hated it when the Sandman was on monitor duty.

“You’re just a walking day the beach, aren’t ya, Baker…” Paladin muttered as he entered the room and tossed his headgear onto the holographic display. “The old man is coming back soon, so pull it together. He’ll want something solid on this rogue clone or he’ll withhold our paychecks.”

“He can save his money,” a low and scratchy voice said from the back of the room. Paladin turned to see Venom perched atop the lockers, his tongue lazily hanging out of his ever-present toothy grin. “We are not interested in riches. We are satisfied with tasting the blood of our prey.”

“Watch it, ugly,” Paladin said as he pointed at the symbiote. “You’re one of the reasons we’re in such deep shit with the old man. If you weren’t so damn bloodthirsty we might have avoided this whole thing. You couldn’t have just brought the clone back in quietly, could ya? No, no...you just had to eat you some brains. Christ.”

Venom simply licked his long and slender teeth with his drooling tongue, reliving the experience. Paladin swore again before smacking the Sandman’s feet off of the console and sitting down to type in several commands. Even though whatever cloned Silver Sable Ernst and Gaunt stuck them with was technically in charge of their field efforts, Paladin was in actuality in charge of the Wild Pack. He had respected the real Silver Sable, the original, before she died. To think that her father was so arrogant as to actually let the world think she hadn’t been brutally murdered years ago was a disgrace to her memory, but as long as the money kept being poured into his Swiss bank account he could bite his tongue.

He was a soldier, but he was a mercenary, too. Money makes the world go ‘round after all.

“Relax, soldier boy,” the Sandman said mockingly. “It’s been two days. If she’s still in the country then the grid hasn’t had a single hit—”

A screen suddenly flashed to life, displaying a map of the northern countryside. A grid overlapped the map, breaking it down into sections, one of which began to blink. Paladin tapped some more keys, enlarging the area quickly. “That a fact,” he said as he called up a video capture screen.

The black and white footage from a security camera showed the young woman they had been charged with tracking down. She was a dead ringer for Silver Sable, only many years younger. There was no mistaking her signature hair as well as the silver-clad outfit she had taken from the lab. They watched her kick in the door of a warehouse and enter almost timidly, as if she were confused by her own actions.

“I’ll be damned,” the Sandman said as he leaned in to get a better look at the screen. “Is that—”

“Our storage facility in Strudguard,” Paladin replied. “Gaunt said that all the clones were programmed with a failsafe destination in case something went wrong on assignment. She’s probably seriously out of it, unaware of what she’s doing. She must be operating on whatever protocols had been copied into her synapses. I doubt she even knows why she headed for that building.”

“Our prey is in the open,” Venom said as he leapt off of the lockers. “Every second we waste is another moment that I cannot taste the softness of her skin.”

“What is it we store there exactly?” the Sandman asked as he stood, ignoring the vulgar remarks of his teammate.

Paladin stood up as well, rushing to pick up his goggles. He headed for the lockers, tossing one open and retrieving several unique handguns, which he quickly holstered. “Weapons,” he answered. “Call for shocktroops and have them meet us on the roof. Move your asses, Wild Pack. We have a target that needs eliminated.”

Where was she? Why had she come here? The young woman couldn’t answer those questions. Upon entering the outskirts of the town, she had taken certain turns that led her to this warehouse. She couldn’t explain why, it just seemed to feel right.

Reaching the far wall, she felt along the interior until she found a large switch. Flipping it activated hanging lights in sequence, at first only illuminating the center of the bare floor. As the rows of lights turned on one after another, she saw that there were actually columns of hundreds of stainless steel crates piled in sequence all over the warehouse.

Turning back to the wall-mounted switch, she saw a touchpad beside it. Without thinking, her fingers danced over the keys, something specifically knowing what to press. The small screen came to life, scrolling information from top to bottom in green text. How did she do that?

“Retinal scan operational,” a robotic voice said from a speaker at the top of the touchpad.

The woman flinched as a green light suddenly shone into her one eye, scanning over her pupil. The procedure was completed before she could resist, as the light shut back off and the screen displayed a crude image of her eye. Several sections of the image were highlighted by the computer before it verified her identity.

“Scan complete,” the computer chirped. “Utilities now made available. Identity confirmed as Silver Sable.”

A section of the wall slid back to allow a thin keyboard to extend out. Another screen appeared above the keyboard, with a blinking prompt beckoning her to input information. Silver Sable…was that who she was? Faint whispers of memory slowly crept back into her mind as she tossed the name around in her head. There was a sense of familiarity to it all, but she was still confused.

Her hands began to click away on the keyboard, typing in commands that she didn’t really understand. After a few lines of code were entered, she stabbed the Enter key with her index finger. Several diagrams appeared on the screen, turning from red to green one by one.

Behind her, the soft sound of a metallic latch being released rang out several times. She whirled around, wondering what she had just done. The crates began to open, revealing their contents: rifles, ammunition, chain guns, grenades, knives, swords, laser rifles, shockwave emitters, landmines…the inventory seemed endless, but what scared her the most was that she recognized each and every last item.

Cautiously, she walked over to the nearest column of stainless steel containers, peering over to look at the contents. A pair of bowie knives stared back at her, curved at the top with thumb grips in the base of the handles. She picked them up, balancing their weight in her hands. The weapons felt right somehow, as if they had been molded to her hands.

Spinning around, she slashed her way through a series of movements. The kata felt appropriate as she extended the blades out and whipped them around in a specific manner. After completing the aerobic display, she spun the knives on her thumbs before holding them back up for her to stare at. The memory of killing a guard shortly after her awakening flashed in her mind. Was she a soldier? How else would she know these types of things? Obviously whoever this building belonged to…was it hers?...was some kind of expert in dishing out death.

Another series of chirps emitted from the wall-mounted workstation behind her, catching her attention. Running over, she saw several video feeds of the roof, which was occupied by a dozen people, most of whom had weapons at the ready. Three in particular stood out: a man garbed in purple and black body armor, another dressed in a pair of slacks and a horizontally striped shirt, and a beastly looking black creature with large teeth and a swiveling tongue.

“Take her down quickly, boys,” the man in the purple said on the screen. He seemed to be the leader. “Alive if possible. The old man wants to plug her back into the tank if we can. ‘Course…things happen, ya know?”

“We will guarantee her entrapment,” the snarling black creature responded. “We cannot promise she will still have a pulse.”

She took several steps back from the wall. Who were these people and why were they after her? They must be from the complex she had escaped from, come to return her like the man in purple had said. There was no way in hell she was going to let that happen. She was a living human being, not some fanatical experiment.

She gripped the knives in her hands, remembering the cache of weapons made available to her. She only had a few moments before they worked their way down and found her. Racing back to the opened columns, she started planning a welcoming committee for her would-be captors.

A thin strand of dirt moved along the side of the hallway, sliding in a straight line. At the end of the corridor, the strand paused, raising its tip and angling it around the corner like an antenna. The dirt…no sand, gritty in its appearance, slouched back down as it began to pile up upon itself. Eventually the grains of matter began to form a humanoid figure, a tall man with broad shoulders called the Sandman.

“Stairwell’s clear,” he said over his shoulder.

A contingent of soldiers quickly moved down the hallway to catch up to their point man. Garbed in white body armor and hoisting slender rifles that had been custom built for their team, the shocktroops of the Wild Pack fell into formation.

“Paladin,” the Sandman continued, “this is stupid. It’s one girl, alone, mentally unstable, and probably ready to piss herself from being scared to hell and back. We don’t need to be here for this. There’s lots of other garbage I could be doing right now.”

“We’ve got our orders,” their field leader said as he stalked down the hallway alongside the shocktroops. He leveled his signature handgun, ready for anything that might blow up the stairs. “Plus, we’re getting paid for this, don’t forget. Time to earn you money, sandbox.”

Irritated, the Sandman reverted his flesh back into the gritty substance he was known for, turning to recon the stairwell. He hated Paladin, but he liked having a group like Silver Sable International in his corner more. He had problems with the law in a few different countries, but running with the Wild Pack allowed him an extremely long leash to jump around on, with an owner that had one hell of a bite.

KA-DOOM!

An explosion rocked the stairwell, with Sandman taking most of the blast. Unprepared, his body was dispersed from the shockwave and sent scattering all over the shocktroops.

“Defensive positions!” Paladin called out to the troops. “That bitch must have found the stockpile! Frontline formation! Get—Venom! Stop!”

“We are not prone to cowering like children,” the symbiote said as he leapt passed the entire contingent. “We will deal with this little girl!”

“Damned freak,” Paladin muttered as he stormed off after his teammate.

Venom hopped onto the railing in the stairwell and shot a wad of webbing up to the ceiling. Stepping off of the railing he fell straight down, landing easily on his feet by yanking down on the webline, using it as a jump cable. He fell into a crouch, his tongue lapping at the air. At the base of the stairwell he could smell her…but she was gone.

The creature stabbed his fingers into the door that led into the main warehouse, slicing a row of slender holes into its thick, metal frame. The alien symbiote that covered Venom extended several black tendrils through the door, ripping it into half with its impressive strength.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are…” Venom chided. “We would like to play, little girl. Come play with us!”

Venom slowly stepped into the main warehouse, at first unable to see from the total darkness. The symbiote adjusted the eyes of its “costume” to compensate, but not fast enough. He felt the first bullet strike his right shoulder, quickly followed by a second and then a third and forth, peppering his chest. The bullets fell to the floor after being crushed against Venom’s chest, doing no more damage than wadded up balls of paper.

“Tsk, tsk,” Venom said as his gaze swept the warehouse looking for the sniper. “We cannot be hurt like that, girlie. We can smell your fear. You are wise to be afraid of us. Hide all you want, but we will find you.”

“Who’s hiding?”

Venom spun around to catch a glimpse of his target, a silver-haired woman with a slim, athletic form. He felt the edge of her knife scrape across his face, the serrated teeth near the hilt chomping into his cheek. The knife in her other hand cut back across his face before he could react, cutting into his blood red tongue. He stepped back, more from surprise than from being injured, and wiped his black clawed hand over his elongated mouth.

“Cute toys,” he said. “And apparently you have help. Found someone to snipe at us? Mmm… Nice of you to bring us desert after our meal.”

“More like an auto-rifle,” she replied as she charged the black goliath. “But if you want a gift, then here you go!”

She rolled under his slashing arm and slapped the side of his torso. Pouncing back up she spun around and did a series of back flips to put more distance between them. Her own athleticism surprised her, but she moved quickly and naturally, allowing her instincts, as foreign as they were, to take over.

Venom began to chase her like a wild animal, but he suddenly stumbled and fell over. He hunched down, feeling a stabbing pain in his side where the woman had tapped him. He hadn’t noticed because she had moved so fast, but right where she had grazed him was some type of silver disc.

“Sonic emitter,” she called out from across the warehouse. “It sends concentrated sound waves directly into your internal organs. I’m sure you’ll pass out in a second from the pain of having your insides vibrated. Plus, something tells me you aren’t too fond of loud noises.”

She couldn’t help but smile as Venom fell over, screaming in pain. Her memories were starting to come back once she saw the creature tear the door apart. The weapons she had grabbed from the cache were working so far, but she couldn’t lollygag for long. There would be others making their way down the stairwell once they found and disabled the mines she had planted there.

A shot rang out and she dove behind a stack of the crates. Clenching her forearm, she pulled her hand back to see a few specks of blood on her silver glove. The bullet had just grazed her, but it hurt like hell. Venom’s reinforcements were apparently already there.

“That was just a warning shot,” Paladin called out. His handguns were leveled at the containers the woman had sought cover behind. “I have my guys surrounding the place, so you might as well just give up, sweetheart.”

“Where the hell is she?” Sandman demanded as he slithered up behind Paladin. With more effort than he cared to admit, he had reformed his body and was ready to dish out from retribution. “I want that bitch to myself.”

“Easy, sandbox,” Paladin muttered over his shoulder, never taking his eyes off of the containers. “Go get that thing off of Venom and then cover the west exit.”

Grumbling as he quickly slithered on top of mounds of sand that had once been his legs, the Sandman ripped the device off of Venom without remorse. The creature screamed, shoving Sandman away and preparing to launch himself wherever he saw a foe.

The woman cupped a couple of grenades on her hands, preparing to toss them into the ceiling as a distraction. Maybe with a little luck she would be able to bulldoze her way through the guards the man in the purple armor had claimed were surrounding her. She recognized the men that were after her now, but she still didn’t know enough about them to trust them, especially since they apparently wanted her dead. The images that had been downloaded into her psyche seemed somehow incomplete, like there were chunks that she knew should be there, but just weren’t.

“We will use her intestines to floss out the rest of her entrails from our teeth!” Venom threatened. He took a few steps forward, but the Sandman blocked his path. “Get out of our way! We will force our way if we have to.”

“Stand down,” Paladin said as he holstered his weapons. His head tilted to the side as he tapped a button on his helmet. He muttered something the rest of them couldn’t quite hear before nodding in response to whatever was said to him on the comlink. “Yes, sir,” he finished. “Okay, boys. Time to get down to business.”

Grabbing some type of remote control from his belt, Paladin hit a series of switches. She saw the red lights in the mounted cameras along the wall turn off.

“About damn time,” Sandman said. The woman found herself wondering the same thing. Should she take advantage of the distraction?

“I’ve just sent the troopers back to the LT,” Paladin said. “Our contact finally gave the collection order. Hey!” he yelled, directing his voice at the containers. “Little lady! You can come out from there now. I’ve got an offer to make you.”

If she was confused before, she was definitely baffled now. First a bullet, now an offer? Choosing to at least get more information before blowing the hell out of an impromptu escape route, she relaxed her grip on the explosives and perked up her ears. “I’m listening,” she said.

“What are you doing?” Venom demanded to know. “We should be eviscerating her, not making a date!”

“Shut it,” Paladin ordered as he turned his attention back to their target. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’re not really important to us right now. Lady, you’re just a pawn in a chess game, and while we were here under the guise of a strike team, this has just become a rescue operation.”

What was he talking about? Nothing was making sense. Just who were these guys and who were they working for?

“I’m probably not making a lot of sense right now,” Paladin continued, “but you’re going to have to trust me for a minute and hear me out. You woke up a couple days ago, unsure of what who you were and what was going on. If you want the truth, I can help you with that. All I’m asking in return is for you to come with us. We’re not going to hurt you.”

“What kind of assurance is that?” she demanded. “First you try and blow my head off, and now you expect me to just walk on over with my wrists held out? I don’t think so, asshole.”

“Fair enough,” Paladin responded. “Our employer…our real employer, that is…would like a word with you. He wants your help in bringing down the dirtbag who put you in this position.”

Paladin placed the remote on the floor and kicked it across the room. The device slid to a stop just a few feet from where she was crouched, almost begging her to pick it up. “What’s this?” she asked.

“Grab it and press the red button,” he answered. “If you want to know where you came from and who you are, just press that button. You’ll get all your answer, I swear. We’re going to pull out now. When you’re ready, we’ll be waiting outside by the chopper.”

Venom snarled until the Sandman stuffed his mouth full of his gritty pseudo-flesh. He dragged the alien villain along as he followed Paladin out of the warehouse. The door shut behind them calmly, leaving the woman all to herself in the darkened space.

She couldn’t believe it. Had they really just left? Did she trust them enough to actually believe what they said? She stared at the dropped device, desperate to pick it up. Ever since her eyes had opened she had this dead space inside of her that just couldn’t be filled. There was a possibility that the man in the purple body armor had been telling the truth, but it could just as easily be a clever trap. The thing might detonate by pressing the button on it.

Her memories were a hodgepodge at best, and it was driving her crazy. She needed to take the risk. After all, what kind of a life would she be missing out on? Cautiously, she picked up the device and pressed the red button as instructed. The small screen on it flashed to life, displaying an attractive, dark-haired man dressed in a fine tailored suit.

“Ah,” the man said over the speaker. “Finally. Hello, my dear. I’m sure you are very confused at this turn of events, but I assure you that everything will be alright.”

“Why should I believe you? What the hell is happening?”

“All will be answered shortly.” The man smiled, somehow soothing her aggression. He looked familiar, but why? “I have many names and identities throughout the world, but have always remained a foreigner. Simply put, you and I have much to discuss.”