Barring any unforeseen complications, the sedatives Jack had taken would keep him asleep for at least eight hours, making this window the critical key to executing the plan.
Though the scheme struck Russell as almost dangerously straightforward, he messaged Dr.
Wilson to proceed as planned.
He simply had no better alternatives at the moment.
If Wilson’s plan failed, Russell’s fallback option would be to put his faith in the Dionysus Factor.
Time trickled by.
A little over an hour after Russell sent his reply, Wilson sent another update.
The message was brief, consisting of only a few words, but its significance was monumental:
“Request approved.
Arrival in four hours.”
Reading the message, Russell exhaled a soft sigh.
He hadn’t expected Wilson’s plan to actually succeed, nor had he anticipated such a swift response from Hydra HQ.
“Villainous organization or not, their efficiency is pretty impressive,” he mused.
With his sole restraint on the verge of being removed, Russell felt his mood lighten considerably.
Not long after sending the text, Wilson sent an assistant to escort Russell to the laboratory.
Along with Russell, Alan and Hathaway were brought in as well.
Neither Alan nor Hathaway knew why Wilson had summoned them, but the moment Russell spotted three coffin-like cryogenic stasis pods inside the lab, he guessed the doctor’s intent.
To put on a convincing show, Wilson needed to put them into the stasis pods before Hydra HQ’s representative arrived, creating a undeniable fact of cryogenic sleep.
“Get in,” Wilson said in a flat, indifferent voice, looking no different from how he usually conducted routine checkups.
Once all three had laid down inside the pods, Wilson decisively activated the cryogenic freezing function, sealing them in ice.
As the freezing process took hold, Russell’s consciousness slowly slipped away, cutting him off from the outside world.
***
Wilson.
But the doctor looked entirely different from the composed scientist Russell remembered.
He was pale, trembling, and completely beside himself with panic.
Stripped of his professional demeanor, Wilson looked like a terrified child, shaking Russell’s shoulders violently in a frantic bid to rouse him.
“Don’t panic.
Calm down.
What happened?”
Upon waking, Russell immediately reached for his neck.
The damned collar was gone!
Confirming this, Russell almost shouted in relief.
“Jack mutated!
Jack turned into an Abomination!” Wilson practically shrieked, his voice choked with terror and his face bloodless.
Wilson’s words left Russell baffled for a moment.
*What does he mean, Jack turned into an Abomination?*
“Calm down and take it slow,” Russell coaxed.
“I’m here.
There’s nothing to worry about.”
Under Russell’s soothing tone, Wilson finally managed to piece the story together.
It turned out that while Russell and the others were being placed into the pods, Jack hadn’t fallen asleep from the sedative as expected.
Without anyone noticing, Jack had snuck into Wilson’s primary lab and stolen both the newly developed Generation-3 Abomination Serum and the final sample of pure Abomination blood from the cold vault.
After retrieving the samples, Jack slunk back to his room and forcibly injected both into his own body in a crude, brute-force manner.
Having done zero genetic matching or preparation, his body suffered an immediate violent rejection, knocking him unconscious on the spot.
Later, after the officer from Hydra HQ personally unlocked the collars from Russell and the others, he abruptly requested to check on Security Chief Jack.
When Wilson led the officer to Jack’s room, they walked in on Jack mid-mutation.
What followed was a horrific bloodbath as the mutated monster went on a rampaging spree of destruction across the base.
Listening to Wilson’s description, Russell’s immediate reaction was sheer disbelief at how chaotic the world had become.
Unplanned as this turn of events was, Russell decided to go see the mutated Jack for himself—if only to see what kind of creature could reduce Wilson to such absolute terror.
When Russell actually laid eyes on the mutated Jack, he finally understood why the scientist was frightened out of his mind.
Over ten feet tall, with a torso thick as an elephant’s, massive bone spurs jutting from his joints, and his entire hide covered in gross tumors and oozing, sickly green fluid.
At first glance, Russell almost thought he was looking at an Abomination in a state of rotting, cancerous decay.
It was hideous—revolting beyond words.
The original Abomination was already abstractly ugly, but the mutated Jack was a dozen times more nauseating.
Though the base’s Hydra soldiers were trying desperately to hold the line, their weapons couldn’t deal the slightest bit of damage to the mutated horror.
Even high-caliber anti-materiel sniper rifles loaded with armor-piercing rounds proved useless.
The heavy rounds struck his hide like stones dropped into a swamp, swallowed up and vanishing without a trace.
The base’s forces had already suffered heavy casualties.
The remaining soldiers weren’t so much trying to stop Jack as they were fleeing in blind panic.
Among the desperate crowd, Russell caught sight of a somewhat familiar bald head.
The bald man wore a crisp, tailored suit and fine, wire-rimmed gold glasses, looking every bit like a high-flying Wall Street executive.
After searching his memory for a few seconds, Russell finally placed the name: Jasper Sitwell.
The unlucky guy from *Captain America: The Winter Soldier* who got kicked off a roof by Black Widow before spilling the details about Zola’s Algorithm.
*So it’s him…
Should I bother saving him?*
Jasper Sitwell was a recognizable face in the MCU, but this wasn’t a movie, and events in this world wouldn’t necessarily align with the screen.
While Russell was still weighing whether to save the unfortunate agent, Alan had already completed his transformation, practically vibrating with eager excitement for a fight.