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Even today she can still smell the smoke.
“Mac?” She had lost her glasses escaping Courtney, so she had to squint. Everything was so bright, so loud, so fiery.
“Heather!” He turned to face her.
The thick black cloud that billowed from her husband’s suit. The searing heat that emitted from the cybernetic electronics. The bright orange flames illuminating the room causing a strong glow against Mac’s bruised face.
“Mac!” She took a step forward.
“No…don’t come in here! Get…”
BAM!
Mac glows like a torch the fire eating away through the suit. Licking his flesh, biting through mussels, charring down the bones. Leaving nothing in its wake. Just a deep dark hole where her heart used to be.
They’re idiots all of them.
Sasquatch for singing up for this.
Madison and Rodger for coming up with this stupid idea.
Aurora for encouraging it.
Judd and Jean-Paul standing in the corner laughing about what a terrible idea this is.
Idiots.
“Rodger what in the blue blazes are you doing here?” She snaps like a mother whose children are getting up to something unruly.
“Oh, Heather, do not worry.” Aurora puts an uncomforting hand on her leader’s shoulder. “Monsieur Box, has come up with a way to get a new body for cher Walter.”
Heather tosses Aurora’s hand off of her as her mind tries to make sense of that sentence. “But Walter’s body was destroyed when Walter had killed the monster that had possessed him. That’s why his soul is inside Box. Aurora, what the devil are you talking about?”
Judd interjected explaining that the combined minds of Rodger, Walter, and Madison had come up with a way to restore Walter to his human form.
“They seem to have been working on it for quite some time.”
“What? And nobody thought it might be worthwhile to tell me about this?”
As Heather continued to rant at the group around her, her eyes noticed that someone was missing.
“Where the heck is Shaman! If you didn’t tell me about this…I’d have thought you’d be at least be sure to have him on it!”
“Dr. Twoyoungmen knows what we’re doing Mrs. Hudson.” Rodger explained, far too calmly for Heather’s liking. “It’s just that he’s feeling poorly right now and…”
Idiots.
“I want this operation stopped and I want it stopped now.”
“Too late.” Walter cried. “We’ve already hooked our target.”
Heather tried desperately to stop them. Begging Walter to let go, begging Rodger to shut the machine down.
No one would listen to her. Not Walter, not Rodger, not Madison, not the twins (but what else was new). The only person who gave into her pleas was Judd who agreed to go fetch Michael.
Michael walked in as Madison was going on about how they found a suitable host for Walter. Regardless it was too late. Walter’s soul flew out of the Box suit into the yellow swirling vortex.
“Box have you stabilized the warp!” Michael yelled.
“No time, Doctor Twoyoungmen. Something happened on the other end of the line. I don’t know what…but our catch stopped fighting just for a moment.”
The void shifted from bright yellow to dark red as something clawed its way out of the portal. Rodger and Aurora leered towards it. Eager to see their respective goals accomplished.
“Mr. Langkowsi…”
“Walter…?”
“ARRRAGH!”
A green fist lurched forward and smashed itself against Box’s suit, shattering the arm off.
“No!” Rodger cried. “It’s the Hulk!”
Death never seemed to stop following Heather Hudson.
First her beloved husband.
Next one of her teammates.
Now it had come for her friend’s family.
Heather had followed the screaming cries of the infant, as the rest of her loyal team followed in her footstep. Puck racing beside her, Madison racing underneath a soaring Aurora, Snowbird shifting out of her beast form as she raced beside them. Her feet lifting off the ground as if she were flying towards her son.
Pestilence stood in the middle of the cave; his face twisted into a gloating smile as if he had already won.
Well they weren’t going to let him.
“Take him, Flight!” Heather shouted.
The Alphans made a run towards Pestilence as Heather charged up her suit.
They may have been too late to save Doug Thompson, but they could save Narya’s baby.
They were Alpha Flight, Canada’s premiere superhero team.
They could do anything.
It was a disaster.
Pestilence first made his attack on Aurora.
Aging her up to a feeble elderly woman on the brink of death. Madison caught her before she could hit the ground and shatter one of her fragile bones.
Puck summersaulted towards Pestilence, only to freeze in terror as Heather fired a blast. She could’ve taken his head off if he hadn’t gotten out of the way.
“Harm me woman, and you risk harming the child who I have possessed!” Pestilence laughed as a baby formed in his arms.
“My son!” Narya cried out.
“Help me save him, Snowbird!” Heather tried desperately to direct the plasma blasts elsewhere.
“But…the child binds me to humanity! Even as my husband did! If he should die, I would be free to join the Gods in paradise!”
Heather gritted her teeth.
They had been on a wild goose chase to find this child for God knows how long. Now Narya was more than willing to give him up. Sacrifice an innocent life for godhood.
“Snowbird!” Heather cried out. “He’s a baby! Your baby!”
The blond child rolled around on the floor, cooing, and cawing. His head rocking towards his mother.
Heather saw something in Narya’s face soften. A mix of love and horror showered over her face as she raced towards her son.
“The babe—calling to me with such love, such longing, such need in his voice!” She wrapped him up in her arms. Her arms covering his naked flesh with the tenderness of a mother bird and her chick. “How could I have ever thought to disown the flesh of my own flesh!”
Narya’s happiness was cut short. As the child began to glow transforming into the ghostly shape of Pestilence.
He looked up to the now hairy snowbird with such glee in his eyes.
“Slay me!”
Without hesitation Judd raced towards the two of them, only for Snowbird to block him with one of her large arms. Puck hit her elbow head on and was knocked across the room.
Heather stared at the people around her. The unconscious twins, the groaning Puck, the helpless Madison. There was no one to stop Snowbird as she lunged towards Pestilence, rage in her eyes, claws outstretched ready to slash through him and release his power upon the world.
“Shaman, help me!” Heather turned to the last member of her team. “If you could wrestle control of Snowbird-Sasquatch away from Pestilence…”
Michael bit his lip and shook his head in refusal. “Having been proven wrong once, I can’t predict with any accuracy the consequence of such action and therefore can not act. I am sorry.”
Heather’s mouth dropped open.
Michael, the one person on her team that she thought that she could count on, couldn’t…wouldn’t help her.
“Then there is one on who will lift a finger to stop you!” Pestilence cackled as he shifted into the baby.
Snowbird posed ready to strike…
VREET!
It was almost second nature. Heather powering up the suit, the plasma blast jetting out of her hands, slamming into Snowbird. Her body slamming onto the ground.
Never to get up again.
Rodger was gone.
His body mutated into the monster of Omega, his mind smothered by the power of Lionel Jefferies, Madison’s sinister younger brother.
Even with the purple mass under the control of Kara Kilgrave there was nothing they could do.
As Lionel said it was “Impossible! Nothing remains of his mind to restore.”
“You murdered him!” Heather screamed. “Dear heaven, now what do we do?”
They had come to the New Life Clinic seeking Lionel’s aid. Hoping they could restore the cruel Rodger to the lovable Rodger, but now he was gone.
Gone forever.
And Heather couldn’t help but think it was her fault.
The group debated what could be done with Lionel. They didn’t have anywhere to detain him, and Kara couldn’t be expected to keep control over him forever.
“Perhaps some sort of special cell could be built?” Heather suggested.
“You’re dreaming Vindicator.” Madison huffed. “That’s what Omega’s counting on. That we’ll be too moral to do what need to be done.”
Madison stared at Lionel with a dark look in his brown eyes. His face twisted in revulsion at the monster before him. It was an expression Heather had never seen on anyone before.
“What are you suggesting, Mr. Jefferies?”
“Since I ain’t willing to be my brother’s keeper. I will be his destroyer.”
Before anyone could stop him, Madison slammed himself into the Box Armor. The front of the suit quickly spouting a round glowing cylinder.
“Mr. Jefferies, wait!”
Before Heather could stop him, Madison fired.
VREESKHROW!
A burst of some filled the room and when it cleared Omega was gone.
Lionel Jefferies and Rodger Bochs along with it.
“I guess we better clean up the lab.” Someone muttered.
“And Alpha had better…locate my sister, Aurora, who has been missing…since the battle…commenced.”
Jean-Paul’s complaints were interrupted by loud coughs as he kneeled over. Clutching his staggering body as he slammed down to the floor.
“Northstar!” Heather raced towards him. “What’s wrong?”
Jean-Paul went on about how he was ill. Dying, apparently. This had been going on for months. He had encouraged Alpha Flight seek out Scramble so the mutant doctor could heal him.
“Now that hope has been shattered.”
Heather’s body seized with anger.
‘You’ve been sick…dying…for months and you didn’t think to tell anyone!’ She wanted to scream.
However before she could get the words out of her mouth, Jean-Paul’s blue eyes rolled back in his head. His body seized falling onto the floor. She grabbed him before his head could hit the ground.
“Puck! Sasquatch!” She shouted at what was left of her team. “Search New Life! Find Aurora! Tell her we got to get her brother to a doctor!”
Heather lifted Jean-Paul into her arms and raced towards the nearest exit.
She wasn’t going to lose a member of her team.
Not again.
The team watched as Northstar’s body rose up into the air.
Not with his usual delicate grace of his usual takeoffs, but rather as if his body was being lifted into the air by an invisible force. Wrapped in a warm shorn of light.
He was going home.
“It’s gone now—snuffed out like a candle.” The recently reincarnated Sasquatch lifted her head to the sky as if trying to seek out any signs of their former teammate.
“I hope our speedster finds the happiness that’s always eluded him among his own people.”
“I think he will Box…” Heather muttered. “Somehow, I think he will.”
Heather, Madison, and Wanda boarded the plane.
Heather let Madison take the rang as she glanced out the window.
Mac, Michael, Marrina, Narya, Jeanne-Marie, Jean-Paul, Rodger, even Judd.
They were all gone.
Every last one of them.
The Alpha Flight her husband had spent all those years forming. The only member who remained was Sasquatch, and even she was different now.
The rest of the team, Purple Girl, Box, Manikin, they were all strangers to her.
Heather gazed out at the rising sun of the tundra, her mind crawling with thoughts.
‘To get here we’ve had to suffer the deaths of some members and the loss of others. I’ve presided over all that misery.’
Heather’s heart pounded, she felt like it would explode. Her chest filling with every doubt, worry, and second guess.
She stared at the group who now looked to her as their leader. The person who would guide them through their next adventures. The woman who would lead them through good times and bad.
With all the suffering they had endured, there was surely more to come.
Heather squinted her eyes shut. Trying to smoother her tears and hide her pain from her fellow Alphans. They couldn’t see her like this. If they knew how terrified their leader was, how could they ever trust her.
“Heaven help me.”