68 A Stark Interest -66
The trip towards the island continued in an eerie silence as none of the people knew what to think about the situation. After all, this island seemed like some ancient city that might have sunk yet appeared again.
"Hey, I don't think the collars work anymore?" The young guy suddenly said, breaking the quiet. Jake was about to touch his own collar when his hand got slapped. "Don't be an idiot; even if they can't blow your head off, they can still shoot us."
The others all seemed to agree, so Jake felt that complaining would just get him cursed at again. "Then why did you bring it up in the first place?" He hissed, making his own retort into a question. Hoping they wouldn't ignore him again.
Rolling his eyes at Jake, the young guy started to explain himself. "Well first off, the boat died, the blinking on the collars also stopped. All the ships out there keep a certain distance away. Clearly, they must know something like this place has some kind of messed up magnetic field or something."
Jake listened but didn't understand what the guy was talking about. "So what does that mean?" he couldn't help himself but ask, which earned him scuffs and eye-rolls by the others.
"It means that if we play our cards right, we might be able to escape, but that depends on just how dangerous this island is." The old man explained and looked towards their female companion.
"Well, someone is living here, so we should be able to stay around for a bit, but it's risky. This book is filled with warnings about how we will die if we touch anything." She said after catching the old man's look.
Jake didn't like this one bit. He was just a normal guy. Sure, he did some stupid stuff. But he didn't sign up for mysterious islands, and who knows what.
…
The next morning, Jake struggled to row the boat on his own. He was tired enough from having to drag the dead bodies of the other three onto the boat under the watchful eye of that female demon back on the island.
It had been a mistake not to listen to her warnings. They shouldn't be here; this island was cursed, and now he might be cursed as well. As soon as they reached the island, the three others split up tasks.
Being the lone outsider he hadn't had much of a choice in the matter and had just stayed by the boat with the young guy, trying to strike up a conversation. None of them had bothered, not even telling their names.
Apparently, the others wanted to stay around until deep in the night and then take the boat out, sneaking past the blockade and out to the other ships, hoping that they would be willing to help them in exchange for information.
That was a plan he could support. Pretty much anyone would be better than someone strapping bombs to their necks. However, whatever gods watched over this island clearly had other plans.
While the woman, whatever her name was. They had gone to ask those questions they had to ask; after all, they did need that information to trade for their freedom. The old man had good to explore.
He was the first to die. They hadn't seen how it happened, only that when it was time to meet, he was a no-show. The others decided that they should go look for him, that had been yet another massive mistake.
[Flashback]
They had found the old man very much dead. I just slumped over at the foot of an old wooden fence. Now, those three were clearly as thick as thieves, and the young guy had rushed off looking for the mysterious woman, yelling about how she had to have killed him.
The woman cursed at this and rushed after him. Jake didn't have much of a choice and followed behind them, another mistake, for sure.
The guy was unlucky enough to find his target, and both Jake and the woman watched as the man screamed and threw himself at the lady, then just slumped over, dead. "You shouldn't be here." Was all the mysterious woman said.
Jake's last living companion started screaming and turned to run. Trying to take a shortcut by jumping over a fence, only to also slump over after doing so, once again dead.
Jake was pretty much done with the place by then, wanting to get the fuck off the place, hell even that ship filled with bomb-collar guys was better than this. However, he was also too scared to move, given how dark it had gotten.
"You shouldn't be here." The lady's voice reminded him of her presence.
Panicking and completely lost for what was happening, he just said whatever was on his mind. "What the fuck is happening? Who are you? What did you do?"
"Take your friends and leave this place." Was the answer he got as the lady turned around and just left.
Jake, without answers or much choice, could also do as asked, drag the others onto the boat, and get out of there. Which took until the next morning since he didn't dare move around in the dark. After all, he now understood why they had been told not to touch anything.
[Flashback end]
Huffing and puffing, Jake rowed the boat back towards the ship he believed they had come from, being careful along the way. Making sure neither the boat nor the oars touched any of the sunken city beneath them.
Reaching the ship, he was greeted with nothing but the barrels of dozens of guns pointed his way and someone shouting. "Do you have the answers?"
"Yeah! Got them right here!" he screamed back up, both afraid to be shot and desperate to get back onto the ship and away from this cursed place. Thankfully he did have the answers, the woman had helpfully written them down in the book, something he had read under the moonlight doing the freezing night.
"Alright, D-6642 come back aboard for debriefing." Came the reply, which nearly sent him into tears of joy.
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[SITE-009]
Sitting in his stylish office, Alex was on the phone dealing with some of the annoying situations he found himself troubled by currently. "yes Mister Xu, I shall have the location of a few of my own sites sent over to you, that should help you narrow down the possible locations after all there is no chance of the GuestHouse being near those sites."
Revealing the location of Foundation SITEs wasn't something Alex wanted to do, but he needed a favor from Wenwu and didn't want him to mistakenly attack one of his own facilities while hunting down the Shield one.
"Just don't expect a friendly reception if you decide to stop by. The person in charge of the facilities might even activate the on-site nuclear device, so do be advised." Alex gave a friendly reminder to the ancient warlord before hanging up.
"Inform O5-2 that the support he has requested is now available to him." He called out to his guards who then went to execute his order.
The containment of SCP-900 had been somewhat successful, he had gotten the reward to the system considered it contained. He honestly wasn't even surprised that the reward seemed to reach the Keter level for an Euclid-level object.
No, this object had very much earned the reclassification due to how damn hard it was to contain it. With the Foundation still being but a shell of its former self and without all the government contacts from the original universe, things hadn't gone easy here.
The sudden appearance of an island in the Pacific had caused a massive stir. Everyone had been curious about it. The Foundation hadn't been able to blockade the area fast enough, and information had spread to the surrounding nations.
Who all wanted to investigate, not to mention SHIELD also wanted in on the action. O5-2 and the fleet he seemed to have under his command had made a blockade to keep others away, which had caused an even greater stir.
Thankfully, Xu had caused massive losses to SHIELD over there, which meant that they didn't have the ability to do much right now, giving Alex and the rest of the Foundation time to act.
And by act, that meant spending billions to bribe corrupt governments around the world and calling in favors left and right to ensure the integrity of the containment wasn't breached.
The Chaos Insurgency had even made its first appearance as he had committed a few more terrorist attacks around the world to keep the powers out there too busy to pay too much attention.
Sure the reward from the system was very well worth the trouble, mostly because O5-2 was dealing with most of it for him. Suddenly it wasn't so bad having that guy around. Even if there were still plenty of trouble for himself to deal with.
For one, SCP-3008, the infinite Ikea, had given him a ton of trouble. That company really wasn't happy to sell a store like that. Not to mention the damn investigations done by other forces before he forcefully deployed The Chaos Insurgency once again.
Really the ability to cause some chaos and then use the Foundation to clean up the mess was amazingly useful. Having the head of the CIA be an undercover Foundation agent really did help take over certain investigations.
The only problem stopping him from acting as he wanted within the USA was SHIELD at this point. Which still meant he had a massive headache whenever he wanted to do anything. Which meant getting more people in SHIELD was quickly becoming a priority.
'Guess I should just have bought the entirety of Ikea way back before 3008 spawned in, would have been cheaper than this rush job.' Alex mused to himself as he moved on to the next item on today's busy schedule.
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[Home of Tony Stark]
"Sir, I know you are busy, but I'm reporting a code 10/10 on WHIH." The voice of J.A.R.V.I.S sounded and interrupted Tony, who was busy working on his new and improved quinjet.
"Never mind my work, pull up WHIH down here so I can watch and work." Tony quickly responded to such an important code.
A Holographic TV then appeared in Tony's line of sight. Showing an absolutely stunning blond beauty with long naturally curly hair and bright blue eyes. To Tony's trained eyes he could easily see that this chick was all natural.
The news anchor, who, in Tony's opinion, was merely a 6/10, took up half the screen and introduced the woman and the segment. "Tonight we have here at WHIH an exclusive interview with Alexandra Ricci, the younger sister of the late Alexander Ricci, and let me begin by asking if beauty is in your family? I mean, your brother was a total hotty, and you, well, wow, you are gorgeous."
Tony was unable to take his eyes off the woman, Alexandra, who giggled lightly at the compliment. This just caused her assets to draw attention to that all-too-revealing black dress she was wearing.
"Please, my brother was many things, though I'm sure he didn't wish to be remembered for being, as you said, a hotty."
Alexandra leaned forward slightly, capturing the audience's attention even more if that was possible. "But to answer your question, I think our family does have a certain... charm. Anyway, let's not dwell on appearances. Alexander's work, his legacy, that's what truly matters." Her tone shifted, becoming more serious, yet her eyes sparkled with a blend of sadness and determination.
The anchor clearly wasn't ready to go to the serious business so quickly and started another line of questioning. "Before we talk about your late brother, I have a question about you, or your name, really. I mean, it's impossible to notice the similarity between your name and your brothers?"
Personally, Tony would rather hear about her three sizes or her number than about her name. Yet, he sadly didn't have reality-bending powers. "It's an old, old family tradition, going all the way back before last names became commonplace. Apparently, the name was taken out of respect for Alexander the Great."
Tony has to admit that he didn't know the Ricci family traced its family history back quite so far. But then again, it might only have been a few dozen generations for those semi-immortal people.
The rest of the interview didn't grab Tony's attention, only that perfect 10/10 piece of blond meat did. "J.A.R.V.I.S. Have we got an age on this one?"
"Negative, sir, got nothing that isn't clearly fake about her, it's well done, but false." J.A.R.V.I.S responded back while pulling up another holographic screen that showed off all kinds of official documents.
Tony, for one, didn't care too much about that. "Look out for chances to meet her; put that as a high-priority task." He said while internally thinking. 'Damn Ricci, why didn't you show off your sister to me the last time?'
A/N
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