Technomancer in MCU #49.2 (Patreon)

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Chapter 49.2

Technomancer in MCU

–Daisy Johnson–

Patiently listening to all the advice Ed was giving her, she couldn’t help but think that he was preparing for his death and was handing over his inheritance to her. She didn’t even know what to think of that.

Looking over all the data that was being displayed on the access tablet, she was sure of just one thing. Just that she was nowhere near ready to accept responsibility at that level. What did Ed even see in her? What did Alfred see in her that he had been secretly training her for this position for years at this point?

No matter what, she was being given a position of authority that most in the universe would die for, she was not going to fail his trust.

“That is all. Just take these as what they are and the rest? Well, you are the leader now, it's up to you what you want to do. Go get 'em, kiddo.” Ed said to me calmly even though I couldn’t help but think that it was meant more as final parting words rather than just friendly advice.

I chuckled at his last sentence, “Ha! Then my first order of business as the new leader is sentencing you to mandatory hospital lockdown and I won’t be taking no for an answer. Understood?” He nodded at my faux serious ordering voice even though it must have looked so comical with tears running down my face with the occasional sniffing in between sentences. “Good. And second of all, you are not that much older than me. And lastly, I am going to have Dr.Cho be your supervisor as she conducts every test there is to conduct on you and give me reliable test results on your condition and you are going to cooperate with her, alright?” He nodded once again with a smile. “I am not hearing a yes, mam?” she faux admonished him. “Yes, mam,” he said in between chuckles.

I nodded at the answer, ignoring his chuckling, “I'll leave now. I have a lot of work to do. My previous boss just dumped his position on me without any warning and on top of the increased responsibility that is surely going to give me grey hairs before my 20s, I didn’t even get a pay raise. Isn’t he the worst?”

“He sounds like a piece of work,” he said. She nodded at that imperiously and left the room. As soon as she closed the door behind her, she started sobbing.

It was heartbreaking watching Ed perform his seemingly final actions before his inevitable death. She couldn’t even imagine what it must be to go through all of that without having their best friend by their side. What was Alfred thinking, leaving Ed all alone at this critical time? Not to mention the most important phase of their plans for a unified humanity was to be carried out right now and his departure left the plans in a lurch.

She then stood up from the floor, wiped her tears, and took a deep breath, determined to complete the planned H.Y.D.R.A. removal plans.

But first of all, she had to do one thing. She had to find out just who this Eric was.

The captain of the superclass carrier was an enigma to most of the organisation’s higher-ups. You would think that the captaincy of the strongest weapon of the organisation would be someone everybody knew about but that wasn’t the case. All the responsibilities of the superclass carrier were being carried out by the vice-captain, Jake Diggle.

Now, Jake, she knew. He was this huge 6’5 tall behemoth made of pure muscle who looked like he ate humans for breakfast but was just a total sweetie on the inside. He was widely known as the face of the superclass carrier and up until now, everybody including her thought that there was no captain and the position was unofficially occupied by Ed but apparently, they were all wrong.

She opened his file and was asked for her credentials but even after being given her top-level credentials now, she was given a warning about the data she was about to read. Acknowledging the risks, she opened the page only to be greeted by a pretty shallow file.

It was barely 3 pages in total. She expected Ed or Alfred of all people to conduct and record a pretty exhaustive report on someone who was going to pilot their flagship ship.

But as she kept on reading through the file, she understood why the file was so sparse on details and why Eric Diggle was kept so hidden from even the members of the organisation.

He was the half-brother of Jake Diggle, the vice-captain of the superclass carrier. Together, they were recruited by Commander Castle from his military contacts. Both of them, top of their class. Accrued multiple prestigious awards from their respective organisations but were both tossed out of their jobs by the higher-ups in their harebrained schemes.

That alone would not have warranted such high positioning in the organisation. It was what was written on the second page that was concerning to her. Both of the brothers had nuclear-related powers.

Eric’s powerset in particular was extremely devastating in its application. It was said in the file that the Ancient One was personally present for his terrigenesis process and had insisted on performing his procedure in the mirror dimension. Apparently, she had foreseen the terrible disaster that would have befallen them if Eric’s transformation was not contained. See, he was one of the only SS-class combatants that Humanity had access to, even in his sealed state. His powerset was simple yet extremely destructive in its usage. It was the violent expulsion of gamma radiation from every pore of his body.

The Ancient One theorised that Eric was connected to a dimension of pure gamma radiation and due to his body, unlike Bruce Banner’s, not having a physical blueprint for its use, just expelled gamma radiation out of his body.

Now, that alone would not have been cause for concern, they had plenty of expertise when it came to cleaning up nuclear radiation but Eric’s powers came with another facet to them. The more he used his powers, the more the gamma dimension he was connected to, would bleed into our universe.

The Ancient One placed multiple high-level seals on his soul to prevent him from overusing his powers but over controlled testing of his powers, they found that the more he uses them the more he threatens the very fabric of reality by letting the gamma energy dimension into their universe.

The wise choice would be to kill him and be done with it but according to Ed, Eric might just be the person they would need to tip the scales in their direction. According to his notes, just by being in his vicinity, Bruce Banner and any other Gamma-empowered individuals would find their power levels being propelled far beyond the norm and all of this could be done without compromising their mental faculties, resulting in a much-needed boost to their side.

Jake Diggle, on the other hand, was someone who underwent terrigenous much later and still got a powerset that was connected to his brother’s. This supports the theory that Inhumans from the same lineage will have similar powers which could lead to clan-like communities forming within the Inhumans. He had the ability to absorb, shunt, and even recall the collected energy.

His file, on the other hand, was much more intensive. Along with his previous military training, Jake was unstoppable in hand-to-hand combat. His powers allowed him to absorb kinetic energy from incoming blows and reflect them or he could choose to rob them of their kinetic energy by shunting that energy to his theorised personal dimension.

The catch was that he couldn’t exactly use that energy to empower himself or anything. The only way he could give out that energy was in the form it was given to him. So, if he absorbed sunlight for a few hours and chose to expel that later on, it would still come out as sunlight.

Another glaring limitation he had was he could only absorb energy his body could withstand. Granted, his enhanced body could withstand a lot of force and if they choose to do so, they could try introducing the Gamma gene into his body to see if he could become a Hulk. If successful, together with Eric, they would be near invincible but all further testing on this was halted by Ed for some reason.

She might have to look into that because the opportunity to have a Hulk on the combatant list would be a huge morale boost not to mention the pure physical prowess they would exhibit.

Satisfied by the information, she moved on to her next task.

“Commander Castle? Commander Castle, if you are listening to this, you are to report to the captain’s deck ASAP. This is an order from your superior. If any agent sees Commander Castle, please escort him to the captain’s deck. You will get the official assignment on your holodecks soon. Any and all outbound flights from the Asterisk are banned by the captain’s orders.” As she spoke, she closed down all the hangars and shut down every single teleportation pad inside the base. Then she gave the official orders to bring in Commander Castle to all the agents inside the base.

Granted, most of them would piss their pants off the second Commander Castle cast his glare on them but she hoped that doing an official announcement would encourage him to come to the cabin on his own.

And sure enough, in less than 10 minutes, he barged into the captain’s deck while she was sitting on a hard light desk with a soothing tea prepared for both of them.

The tea leaves were imported from Kamar Taj who still refused to share the location of their tea plantation. It must be some mystic secret or something for them to guard it so zealously. They were more free when they shared dangerous mystic knowledge than they were when it came to their secret tea-making ceremony.

Uncaring of his outburst on the outside even though she flinched internally when she saw his expression, she gestured for him to take a seat, “Please be seated. We have some important things to talk about over tea. The tea is from the Ancient One’s personal collection and I hope to talk some things over while tempers calm down as I have heard that this tea has that effect on people.”

The only outward reaction Frank gave was the narrowing of his eyes and the slight pressure his powers exerted on his surroundings.

She could feel his powers interacting with her own powers. His powers were unique in the sense that they didn’t just suppress the powers of any enhanced person, they communicated with the powerset somehow and convinced itself to shut down, essentially sabotaging itself.

It was infinitely more dangerous than just a field of power nullification. He could actually, given more time, convince the power to just delete itself. That just depowers any enhancement permanently.

He silently seated himself and took a sip from the tea and gave a sigh of contentment, “So, what do you want to talk about, Boss?” she winced internally at that word.

“How did–”

“Oh, please I’d recognise that badge anywhere. Ed gave it to you didn’t he, that bastard? Who gave him the right to just up and give up his position and try to leave us all?” he said frustratedly.

She nodded and said, “That is one of the things we will be discussing today.”

The tea leaves must have done their magic since he just nodded silently while sipping his tea without any outbursts.

She must have the location of that tea plantation if it was this useful in meetings.

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Word Count - 2017