What a fucking epsidoe last night. Chadvincible was holding on for dear life. Though that scene was pretty fucking gruseome I won't lie.
This chapter has the first iteration of me taking names of the Marvel Wiki who I really hadn't heard about until writing this (except for Sinister), and placing them in my story. I'll continue to research the more I use them. Also if you couldn't tell, our MC is a bit stronger at first then Invincible due to the experiments on him for the past sixteen years. Still not Omni-Man/Thragg/Conquest level, but he's up there.
The sound of muffled voices was the first thing I heard when I regained consciousness. The voices weren't familiar, so I assumed it was some type of doctor seeing to my wounds. That was until I processed what they were saying.
"...electrical trial #17. Subject-V was subjected to 400 million volts. The subject lasted thirty minutes before passing out," a man's voice said in a distinctly cultured British accent.
"Subject-V's healing factor has yet to kick in, and his heart has been stopped for over two minutes now. Subject-V is considered deceased," another voice responded, this one female.
Ok… just what the hell was going on? Who the hell is Subject-V?
I waited a moment for the two to leave the room before finally opening my eyes, revealing I was in some sort of lab.
The surface my body was sprawled upon was cold through the thin fabric of my hospital gown. I tried to move, but it appeared I was strapped down to the table in some kind of metal apparatus.
Still, I was able to move my head and take in more of my surroundings.
The room I was in was sparse, with four metal walls and a metal door. One of the walls had a wide glass window set into it, though I couldn't see through it.
I began trying to look around for this 'Subject' they kept mentioning, but found I was the only one left in the room.
A niggling feeling formed in my gut, one I hoped wasn't true.
Gazing back down at my restrained body, I finally noticed a wristband adorning my left arm, a wristband I could somehow make out the tiny text on.
'Subject-V,' in small black thread, was stitched into the leather band, confirming my suspicions.
That begged the question, just what the fuck had I gotten myself into?
Did I somehow survive the fire? As soon as the thought came, it left me. It was impossible to survive not only the third-degree burns that had littered my body, but also the amount of smoke I had inhaled, not to mention ten tons of brick and mortar collapsing on top of me.
They had also mentioned Subject-V being shocked with 400 million volts of electricity, which was impossible for anyone to survive unless they were some kind of superhuman…
'Superhuman… no… it's not possible.'
Did I have some kind of superpowers? Surely those only existed in the movies and shows I had watched.
I gazed down as best I could at my body with renewed interest, noticing the changes for the first time. For one, I was definitely more muscular, a six-pack visible even through my loose hospital gown.
My pecs, biceps, and forearms all had clear definition as well, not bulky like a bodybuilder, but lean and well-toned.
My skin was a bit paler, but if I really was some kind of lab experiment with superpowers, I doubted my captors let me stroll around in the sunlight.
What the fuck happened to me?
On a whim, I tried putting more strength into my struggling, clenching my fist and jerking my forearm as hard as I could toward the metal bindings holding me in place.
My arm tore through the restraints, ripping the metal cleanly in two with almost no effort.
I stared at my now-free left arm in awe, not believing what I had just done. Before I could move any further, the door opened to reveal several armed guards holding carbine rifles more futuristic than anything I had ever seen.
There were at least ten of them, all armed to the teeth and wearing full-body armor that showed no skin.
Following close behind were a man and a woman, both dressed in lab coats. The woman's face was blank, though there was a hint of intrigue in her eyes. The man simply stared at me appraisingly, like I was some kind of prized mule.
"Ah… Subject-V. It appears you've been holding out on us," the man said. It was the same voice I had heard earlier, the one with the British accent.
As he moved closer, his guards tensed, their attention fixed on my left arm, now free of its restraints.
I stared at the man cautiously. This dude was creepy as fuck, and why the hell did he have a suit of clubs marked on his forehead? Was that some kind of bizarre fashion statement in whatever strange-ass world I'd ended up in?
The doctor eyed my left arm with interest, black eyes flicking to the metal restraints I had torn apart before returning to my face.
"That metal was the closest thing to adamantium I could acquire, and you still broke through it as if it were nothing," the doctor mused.
Adamantium? There was no way he was talking about—
"Then again, I didn't realize our subject possessed super-strength on top of his durability. I'm sure our contacts will be very pleased with this development," the doctor continued, completely unfazed by the earth-shattering revelation he had just dropped.
There is no way I'm in some kind of Marvel universe.
God, I hope it's not some crazy comic-book bullshit and just the MCU.
Inwardly, I scoffed at my own thought process. Sure, being in a universe where a gigantic purple maniac with a ballsack chin was hell-bent on wiping out half of all life sounded like the better option.
Then again, with the number of world-ending threats in the comics, the big purple guy might actually be a cakewalk.
"Perhaps I'll reach out to my contacts and acquire some proper restraints. We can't have you escaping now, can we?" the doctor asked with a grin, one that made me shiver involuntarily.
God, this man was a psycho. There was no emotion behind those eyes.
A quick wave of his hand had two of the Doctor's armed guards approach with their guns at the ready. The closer they got, the more detail I could make out in their weapons and armor.
It was like I could study every little detail and process it in milliseconds, assessing strengths, weaknesses, and how best to take it apart and put it back together.
I had always been smarter than average in my past life, yet it was nothing compared to the way my brain was working now.
It was like a supercomputer.
Being led through the hallways of my prison was odd, to say the least, especially when I felt like I could easily break out of the shackles strapped to my wrists in a nanosecond and rip the arms off the two guards holding my shoulders with ease.
There were no other occupants or subjects, it seemed, and every wall was made from the same polished metal as the experiment room, each fitted with a glass two-way mirror.
Each room I passed felt like watching time progress. One was a nursery, grey walls and a metal crib that didn't even have a mattress.
Next was a small bedroom with a metal cot, a small bookshelf, and a single toy.
The third room was bereft of toys, instead filled with books.
Finally, we reached the fourth room, where the guards stopped and the door opened to reveal only a cot, not even any reading material.
A plate of grey sludge sat on a metal table that jutted out from the wall next to the bed, with a plastic cup of water beside it. There was a metal toilet in the corner and a single light bulb fixed into the ceiling.
One of the guards jabbed me in the back with the butt of his gun. "Move it, freak."
I didn't even feel it. My body didn't budge.
Just how strong was I?
The sludge that passed for dinner tasted disgusting, and the light in my room shut off an hour later, leaving the sparsely furnished cell in darkness.
That night, as I lay awake, I wondered just what the hell I had gotten myself into.
Had I died? Surely this wasn't some kind of hell. It felt too real.
I had done a good deed in the end, I had saved countless lives. Shouldn't that have counted for something?
Why had God seen fit to turn me into a lab rat instead of letting me find peace in the afterlife?
My thoughts drifted as I finally succumbed to sleep, yet my dreams were anything but peaceful.
This body's memories bombarded me all at once. I lived through every torturous second of this boy's life.
I remembered his toddler years on what had to be another planet. A tall, bulky man with salt-and-pepper hair and bright blue eyes who loved to explain his science experiments as if his small child could understand.
His mother, who despite being cold at first, eventually warmed to him. She was extremely muscular, with grey hair tied into a long braid with a, was that a knife at the end?
Wait… where had I seen this woman before?
His first year of life was amazing. His parents became less distant and more loving. Tobias and Thula, no last names. His name was still Edward, which was… a relief.
Thula… where had I heard that name before?
It was around his sixth month of memories that I finally figured it out, when I overheard his parents speaking of their homeworld, Viltrum.
Viltrum.
Fucking Viltrum.
I'm a fucking Viltrumite.
After that, I absorbed the memories with a hunger, all the way up until that final night, when whoever was hunting his parents finally found them, and he was sent away in a spaceship to Earth.
Holy shit… was I the Viltrumite version of Superman? Did that mean Viltrum was destroyed? What had happened to the rest of my people?
After those memories, however, came sixteen years that could only be described as pure torture.
From the moment that creepy doctor found my pod in that field, all the way to his most recent memory, being subjected to 400 million volts of electricity for thirty minutes straight.
It seemed this body had actually died, and I had somehow taken its place.
The previous inhabitant of this body had been through hell, to put it simply—subjected to every kind of experiment imaginable.
Poisonous gas. Extreme temperatures. Having an entire building dropped on him at seven years old. Being placed inside a nuclear reactor at nine.
Each time, my body had healed completely, only to grow stronger with every test.
Just what kind of madman had he been under the care of?
Apparently, his name was Doctor Stasis… which sounded familiar, though I couldn't quite place where I'd heard it.
The doctor had been trying to use my blood to create his own army of super-soldiers to defeat his master. Yet no matter what he did, he couldn't pierce my skin.
It made sense, considering Viltrumites were absurdly durable. Hell, Omni-Man took the full force of that orbital laser in Season 1 and walked away with nothing more than a nosebleed.
That begged the question, why hadn't this kid escaped when he had the chance? Surely the previous inhabitant of this body knew he could take these people on.
That was answered when I realized that, before I had awakened, this body had only ever been extremely durable, with no signs of any other powers.
That all changed when I died and woke up in this body, one that now had full access to its Viltrumite abilities.
From these memories, I already knew this place like the back of my hand.
Come morning, we out this bitch.
AN:
The typical cliche our character is a genius trope will be used heavily in this story. While not on the level of Reed Richards or Tony Stark, our characters IQ was around 130 in his old world. This combined with his newly aquired Vilrumite brain able to process things much faster and retain information much easier makes him pretty smart.