Appearing in 1st story
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Villains:
- Bent Franklin (First Appearance)
- Slitter
- Dr. Wun (First Appearance)
Other Characters:
Locations:
Items:
Vehicles:
Synopsis for 1st story
The issue begins with a strange man in a mask (black full face mask with one white Spider-Man like eye) jumping out of a stealth plane amid a group of hammer head sharks with rocket packs strapped to them. He knocks one of them down and ties it up in a tree while spouting strange sayings and what sounds like twisted nursery rhymes. On the ground he is attacked by machinery enhanced monkeys with weapons growing out of their heads.
The man pulls out a knife and makes quick work of the monkeys. Before he can relax, a giant cybernetically enhanced platypus attacks him. He drops some grenades in the creature's mouth and it explodes. It's remains land on top of him. He radios in to someone and says he's trapped under the creature's simulated liver. It is unclear if this was some kind of mission or perhaps a training exercise.
At the Ferguson house, Donald and Beatrice are cuddled on the couch talking. Donald tells her that he doesn't know what's going on. He thought he saw Brit die. Then he thought he was frozen in ice. But the thing on ice wasn't Brit. Beatrice wonders if that wasn't him then how does he know Brit isn't dead. Donald replies that it is because Brit's sister (he still doesn't know her name) is so sure that he is convinced. Beatrice tells him that it will work out and heads upstairs to bed.
Once she leaves, Brit sneaks in behind Donald and startles him. Donald demands to know where he's been. They head out to Donald's garage so they don't disturb his wife and Brit tells Donald what he can remember.
It was a year ago when he quit but had agreed to one last assignment as a favor to Cecil. The helicopter he was flying in was attacked by cybernetically enhanced flying piranhas. The piranhas chew through to the fuel tank and blow up the helicopter, sending Brit falling into the water below. Grenades suddenly drop into the water next to Brit and blow him out of the water onto dry land.
He's greeted by the man that was fighting cyber animals earlier in the issue. The man introduces himself as Bent Franklin. Brit immediately attacks and punches Bent in the stomach. Bent responds by throwing some kind of octopus like creature onto Brit's face. Bent activates something on his wrist and coils come popping out of the ground and wrap around Brit, trapping him. Brit asks who Bent is working for but Bent just pulls out some kind of brain gun and shoots Brit with it.
Brit wakes up trapped in the White Room speaking gibberish. Slitter comes walking in accompanied by a Dr. Wun. Slitter explains that Brit is experiencing cognitive dissonance as a result of the brain gun. If he doesn't concentrate and enunciate carefully he'll just babel nonsense. Brit carefully speaks and tells Slitter that he'll pay. Slitter tells Brit that his request to resign is denied and he's reassigning him to Dr. Wun's research station. He tells Brit that he killed Dr. Wun's son.
Slitter tells Brit that he has some paperwork for him to sign. Brit spits at him. The spit hangs in the White Room air and Dr. Wun collects it as his first sample. Slitter explains what is on the paperwork. It says Brit's most recent assignment was a success. Afterward, he reconsidered quitting the agency and asked for a three month leave of absence for bereavement which Slitter granted. After three months, the initial harvesting and testing should be complete and they can continue with phase 2.
Slitter has also prepared a letter to be sent to Jessica. It says Brit won't be home for a few months and hints at a separation due to the emotional loss of his ex-wife. Brit doesn't know why Slitter is bothering with all of this paperwork, but Slitter wants an official paper trail to contain the situation.
Brit tells him that he will make sure this doesn't work. It's only a matter of time before he figures out a way to get out of there. Slitter holds up a picture of Jessica and tells Brit that they are taking him. It's up to him whether or not they take his wife and son as well. Slitter tells him that he'd like to run tests on Brittany, Jr. as well anyway. Brit struggles for a moment but can't get free. He gives up and tells Slitter he'll do whatever he wants as long as they leave his family alone.
Back to the present, Jessica still thinks Brit is dead. She's talking with some people who seem to be friends as they console her while she waits for her parents to get there. But they end up slipping drugs into her tea that cause her to fall asleep. Some kind of clean up type crew comes into the house. The leader says to be quick but be quiet so they don't wake the baby.
At the Pentagon, Slitter seems to be explaining the situation to someone. He says that given enough time and the resources available, replicating Brit should have been easy. The neural mapping was easy but the powers that made them want to duplicate him so bad was the same thing giving them problems. Brit was too invulnerable. The viral cocktails they gave him to be able to obtain tissue samples ended up degrading every sample.
They were able to generate two batches of Brits. The first was a complete horrorshow. The second was more promising. Socially, they were able to mimic Brit almost perfectly. With a little work they were compliant worker bees. But they were all born infected. The viral cocktail would burn them up. They aged rapidly until they hit their physical sixties. Then the aging stops but the invulnerability begins degrading and they end up basically blowing up.
The person he's talking to speaks and says Slitter basically got exploding senior citizens for all the money he's spent on the project. Slitter admits that they don't even have that much. Brit ended up disappearing en route to a facility in Arizona and they don't know where he is. They've used up all their samples so until they can recover Brit they have been making copies of the copies.
Now we see that Slitter is talking to Brit's sister. He tells her that she destroyed his last best sample on ice so he has her there as a contingency plan. She calls him an idiot and wonders how he's going to explain all of this to Cecil. Slitter angrily tells her that she as much of a jerk as Brit but she'll make a perfect replacement. In fact, she is better in many ways. She's younger and has super strength. She's not as invulnerable as Brit but is good enough. Unfortunately for her, they can't get semen to use to make babies so she'll just have to birth them. And once he's succeeded he'll have an army and it won't matter what Cecil thinks.
She tells him that when she gets free she's going to beat him to death. At this point we see that she is wrapped up in the same coils that trapped Brit and Bent Franklin is standing over her with the brain gun.