Zoom, Academy for Superheroes: Part 3

Radioactive

        "All systems go, the sun hasn't died. Deep in my bones, straight from inside. I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones, enough to make my systems blow. Welcome to the new age, welcome to the new age, I'm radioactive, radioactive."
-Imagine Dragons

*****

        Confusion, anger, betrayal, panic, sadness, dozens of feelings came rushing to her as she stood, frozen by said feelings. Meanwhile, Jack was feeling nothing, though his new instincts told him that Marsha was nothing but his first victim.
        He began to walk slowly towards her, a cold, evil, nothing like him, look in his eyes. But Marsha remained still and silent, her eyes flickering as new emotions set in. It wasn't until he was standing only a mere foot away from her that she realized she was in real trouble.
        "Jack..." She began, not sure of what her next words would be, but she had to say something. She was shocked, to say the least, when he paused, and his face twisted into an expression that appeared somewhat amused, almost like the Jack Shepherd she knew, but not quite.
        "Marsha."
        She inhaled sharply, and lowered her eyebrows, wondering what kind of emotions he could feel and what kind of thoughts he had now that he'd been lethally dosed with the radiation. He wasn't the same, obviously, but perhaps he had the same memories. He chuckled dryly.
        "Confused? This is going to be fun, knowing you, you'll probably be stupid enough to hang around and get yourself killed without me even having to try too hard."
        "You, you remember-" She managed to say with a shaking voice.
        "I remember everything, yeah. Which is why it's going to be so much fun. See, I really cared for you. For the whole team, and for a few other people here and there in this place. It's going to be enjoyable for me when I destroy them."
        At that moment, they heard a group of people come around the corner. Marsha whipped around to see Laraby and Grant, with about four military officials looking cautiously from Jack to herself.
        "Holloway, we have to ask you to leave the room." Laraby ordered harshly. But Marsha knew exactly what that meant, and she wouldn't stand for it.
        "You can't kill him. She said, turned back toward Jack, feeling uncomfortable that her back was towards him.
        Jack raised an eyebrow and gave another empty chuckle, he also knew that they couldn't kill him.
        "Leave that matter in our hands-" One of the military officials began before Marsha interrupted.
        "You can't kill him. You know exactly how powerful he is, he's the most powerful one on the team. You can't just take down someone with superhuman abilities with a military team. Especially one who's evil and who's only goal right now is to kill anyone and everyone here!"
        "Marsha, I think it's best if you just-" This time it was Dr Grant who tried to reason with her.
        "And has it ever occurred to you that he's no longer the Jack Shepherd he used to be, but that doesn't mean we can't get him back. We're in a facility who's main focus is research, it shouldn't be hard to find a way to reverse the evil without needing a vortex. You can't just kill him, he's part of the team."
        Marsha argued back and forth with Laraby and Grant, they seemed to have forgotten all about Jack who was still behind Marsha. He cleared his throat and shifted his wait, drawing all attention back to himself.
        "You're all even stupider than I thought. All this time you could have been dealing with the situation. It was amusing at first, but now I'm just getting really agitated." He took a step towards Marsha, making her flinch a little.
        "You really don't want to see someone who's evil agitated. Now Marsha, you've seen me agitated millions of times, if I remember correctly, you can get me more agitated than anyone else can, but trust me, you don't want me to get mad right now."
        There was a long pause, even Laraby had nothing to say, but Marsha was thinking. "What is it that you want?" She asked him, hoping to find out more what this evil has done to him. He sighed in thought.
        "I'm impressed, that was the most intelligible thing you've said this whole time. What do I want? I want something very simple."
        The military officials urged Marsha to join them at a safe distance, but she remained where she was.
        "I want the run this place. I want nobody to put up a fight as I take everything over and we essentially live however I want us to. Anyone who gets in my way, I'll gladly kill."

*****

        "There's a simple solution, we just have to destroy him." Laraby argued during a meeting with Marsha, Grant, Summer and Dylan later that day after the chaos.
        After Jack and Marsha's official first meeting since the gamma 13 incident, Jack took off the opposite way, leaving the military officials to attempt to chase after him while Laraby, Grant and Marsha worried about where Jack may be and what kind of trouble he may be getting into.
        It had been a couple hours and nobody could track him down, Laraby and the others had been in this meeting for about an hour.
        "It doesn't make any sense to kill him! It's illogical, it's unethical, it just wouldn't work!" Marsha argued back, clearly the two were at odds.
        Summer and Dylan had returned earlier that day and were utterly shocked when informed of the situation.
        "She's right, we could attempt to kill him, but I don't think you understand how powerful he is. Especially now that he has all the gamma 13 in his system, I thought gamma 13 was used to enhance our powers?" Dylan argued.
        "It is, we can't possibly fathom how strong, how fast, how powerful, and how evil he is right now. He can't feel, he can remember how he felt about people before, but he can't feel anymore." Summer said. She was right, Jack not being able to feel might be the biggest problem.
        At that moment, there was an enormous crash from the other room, the 5 of them in the meeting felt the ground shake and heard screaming from behind the door.
        Summer, Dylan, and Marsha were in the doorway within milliseconds and scanned the room. It was hard to understand what was going on, it all just looked like pure chaos.
        It became clear that Jack had entered the room, and was violently trying to destroy anyone in his path. The people in the room were screaming, and panicking. Nobody had been killed yet, which was a blessing in it's own right, but that didn't mean that people wouldn't be killed soon.
        They spotted a team of military officials at the opposite door, they had a multitude of devices with them. Each of them were armed, one was manning some sort of gun that would shoot a net similar to the one used during the battle with Concussion, and one man was holding a set of handcuffs. You might wonder what good handcuffs would be on a superhero, but these weren't any ordinary restraints.
        They were made of a particular substance that prevented anyone who was touching them from being able to use their powers. They had been developed in one of the labs at Area 52 about half a year ago.
        Still, it wasn't likely that they would be able to use them on Jack, that would require getting close enough to him in order to even get them on.
        From behind them, the three superheroes heard Laraby's radio go off. It was one of the military officials from across the room, "We have a plan." they said.
        "Well, go ahead." Laraby ordered.
        "It's not that simple, we're going to need some help. It will only work if someone can distract him long enough for one of us to get these restraints on him."
        Laraby looked at the other superheroes. Marsha knew that Summer and Dylan were about to volunteer, so she spoke before they could put their lives in extreme danger.
        "You two need to help protect the people in the room, they need someone to look up to right now. I'll distract him."
        She knew that Summer and Dylan wouldn't go down without a fight, but she wouldn't have them get themselves killed. They argued for a while, but realized that action needed to be taken, sooner rather than later, so Summer and Dylan went off to protect the people.