B-Team: Plague

Criminal Activity

When Lithium warns Warp about a mysterious killer that seems to be targeting Century agents who once worked for Schurk Industries, he, Pagan and Mercy are thrust into a hunt for the disease-causing supervillain Plague. Can they stop him before he kills again?

Warp's day is interrupted when he receives a message from Lithium, Centurion of The Century Group containing a time and an address. He's directed to a fairly unimpressive apartment building opposite the intercity bridge between Bathala City and Salanas, where Lithium is waiting for him looking a little worse for wear. She directs him to the kitchen where he finds the skeleton of a man once known as Agent Copper; an electrokinetic who Frank had known back in his Schurk Industries days.   Having taken in the scene, Lithium informs Frank that Copper was the fourth such agent that's been found in this state and that, despite his state, he was only at work three days ago. She warns him that this pattern suggest that they too may be in danger, and tells him to keep his eyes open before leaving him to the scene. Frank, not really an investigator himself, decides to call for some help. He makes his way down to the street and makes a call to Emily Ackley, his fellow B-team member. He asks for her help in investigating the crime scene and she accepts, having only been gardening at the time, and as he hangs up he notices a single rat that had been watching him scurry into a nearby storm drain.   Once Emma arrives, Frank escorts her upstairs and the pair take another look around the apartment. They notice the scorch marks across the kitchen that may imply that Copper put up a fight, and Emma determines that the corpse has not merely been stripped of flesh, but it's more like the body had been rapidly biodegraded, leading to her believing that some sort of temporal anomaly is at play. On their way out of the apartment, the pair spot a broken piece of glass on the floor covered in some sort of liquid residue and marked with the letters "SC", which Frank places into one of Emma's ziplock bags.   While this is all happening, Cornelius Walker is leaving Vigilant Tower, having picked up his allowance of blood packs for the day, when he notices the NHS Blood and Transplant van flying off at a dangerous speed. The van smashes sidelong into another car before accelerating up the road towards Bay Street and the intercity bridge. Mercy quickly springs into action, making sure that the driver of the car is in safe hands before flying off at speed to catch up with the van. He lands on the bonnet and, upon seeing that the driver is barely conscious, looking notably unwell, he punches through the windshield and attempts to steer them away from traffic. He manages to avoid several cars, but inevitably the van tips over and Mercy is forced to dismount as it crashes onto the bridge, causing a significant amount of damage.   Frank and Emma rush downstairs to see the carnage. The van hit a tanker truck on its way which is now dangling off the side of the bridge, another car flew off entirely and the van itself had hit a support beam for the bridge which was now bending. In the time it took them to get down, Mercy had dived after the car and saved a family of four, leaving them in Emma's care as she tried unsuccessfully to perform some healing magic on the unconscious mother, calling an ambulance when that proved ineffectual.   The team then went to work helping the people on the bridge. Frank moved to dislodge the van from the support beam while Emma cast a spell to keep it from collapsing. They were successful, but a number of blood packs had spilled out onto the road and Mercy was momentarily transfixed. Frank, noticing a weak pipe collapsing above them, called to his vampire companion to help a nearby couple, but got no response. At the last moment he dove over the pair and Emma was able to throw her magical shield onto him, saving him from the brunt of the blow and leaving him only mildly injured, though at this point he starts to notice a pounding headache and fever.   Mercy eventually comes back to his senses and realises that the blood on the bridge smells tainted. He shakes it off, and is able to fly over to the cab of the tanker just as it drops to the river below. Using what strength he can muster, he slows the cab's descent so that the windshield doesn't smash in the face of the unconscious driver. He's then able to wrench the door open and pull the man out before he descends below the surface.   While bringing the driver over to the street, Mercy is accosted by Michelle Van Quinn, the same Bathala Beacon reporter that just that week did a hit piece on Harmony. He immediately dismisses her and returns to the bridge, but Michelle is not so easily deterred.   The three heroes converge on the driver of the Blood and Transplant van, pulling him out of the driver seat and trying to speak with him. The man is clearly delirious, only repeating that he needs to deliver the blood over an over again. Mercy drops him off at the quickly erected triage centre on the nearby street and informs the medic in charge about the man's condition before being distracted by the same reporter as before. Unfortunately, with the emergency situation mostly taken care of, he sees no harm in speaking with her and quickly puts his foot in his mouth, leaving her with titbits like that he wouldn't rob a cradle "again."   While Emma tries to save Mercy from his sudden attack of foot-in-mouth disease, Frank, realising he's been performing all these actions in his civilian guise, raids the transfusion van for anything that he might be able to use to disguise his identity. Failing to find any facemasks, he opts in stead to wrap his head in bandages and escape as quickly as possible, hoping to make his way to the Century Group's medics for his rapidly worsening medical condition.   While Frank drives away to have some tests done, Emma and Mercy are left discussing their next move when they notice the van driver from before, hobbling on a broken leg to get back to his van. Mercy intercepts him and the man is lucid enough that he's able to tell the pair that the person forcing him to take the bloods is not one to be messed with as he has "rats all over the city." His eyes being drawn to one such specimen watching the three of them from the other side of the street.   Mercy is easily able to catch the rat and hands it off to Emma, her spell work able to patch the gap between her language and the vermin's. Lorenzo the rat, as he calls himself, is rather hostile to the two heroes as they try to extract information from him, but after being threatened by Mercy and offered sanctuary by Emma, the rat spills that his boss is calling himself Plague, and isn't someone to take lightly. As if to punctuate that point, Lorenzo is suddenly wracked with pain as his body begins to bubble up, filling with countless massive tumours as he expires. The two heroes quickly realise the seriousness of what's happening and that they need to check out the blood transfusion laboratory that the units came from and that they'd need all hands on deck.   Frank meanwhile has been laid up in bed in his warehouse base, having given several samples at the Century medical unit before heading back. He's woken by a phone call and a raspy voice on the other end of the line that says, "You and I both know, Frank, an informant is only as valuable as the information they have on you," before hanging up. He's not sure what it means, but by the time Emma and Mercy show up, he's been forced to retreat into the bathroom for what is soon revealed to be a Typhoid infection. Using some of her magic, Emma is able to heal him of the most significant symptoms while Mercy waits outside, unable to enter without a direct invitation.   With Frank now in better condition, the trio make their way towards the NHS blood preparation lab about an hour and a half outside the city, while Mercy is handed a copy of the previous day's newspaper, where he learns a valuable lesson about freedom of the press. The drive is fairly uneventful aside from a quick collision with a deer, and when at the lab, the three of them notice that for some reason there's a contingent of armed guards, but they decide not to pursue the issue further, electing to head inside where they meet a familiar face.   Charlie the freelance henchman is overjoyed to see the members of his favourite superhero team and welcomes them all to the lab. It doesn't take long however for Mercy to decide that Charlie needs to go, and threatens him to leave immediately. Charlie begins to leave, but as he does, grabs a marker pen and asks for Mercy to be the final signature on his homemade B-Team t-shirt. Mercy agrees and signs, but this gives Charlie enough time to sound the alarm, bringing the entire population of the lab down upon them. Mercy quickly knocks out the wannabe villain before preparing for combat.   The trio make fairly quick work of the guards and lab employees who, Emma deduces, are being controlled via the diseases that they are harbouring, though that doesn't stop Mercy from taking a bite out of one of them and contracting a quick-burning variant of Ebola. Nevertheless, once he's magically cured and vomits up the tainted blood, they are able to look through the CCTV footage of the lab and Frank is able to recognise Plague as the colleague he once knew as Agent Arsenic. Regardless, the heroes quickly find themselves without a heading and begin to head back to town, Emma making a point to alert Blue of their progress and to stay alert as she thinks something is about to go down.   And go down it does, as Frank receives another phone call when they're about twenty minutes outside of the city and the sun is setting. He pulls over and places it on loudspeaker. The voice on the other end of the line commiserates over the injustice he feels was foisted upon him when the Century Group gave some agents a second chance but not others. He also mentions how annoying it is that Lithium was warning the agents about his murders, but that "she won't be a problem soon."   Frank puts his foot down and Emma gets on the phone to Blue, saying that Lithium may be in danger and that they've been unable to contact her. The Vigil leader says that he can't spare anyone to help at the moment as patients who've received transfusions of tainted blood are starting to get up and attack people. He offers to get Century to send her address and asks the team to go check on her, to which they agree.   On arriving at Lithium's apartment, Frank knocks on the door and a frantic Centurion demands they identify themselves. Upon doing so, Lithium begins to fire through the door, shouting that no Schurk agent was going to take her back to them. Clearly delirious, the team decide that she needs to be calmed down and they storm the apartment, Frank taking a plasma bolt for his trouble. Mercy quickly rushes her and is able to hold her still despite her rapidly increasing temperature, allowing Emma to wrap her up in mystical bindings as she appears to rapidly calm back down. Emma's then able to deduce that while she was under the effects of Plague's pathogens, in burning as hot as she did, Lithium effectively burned them away, allowing her to think clearly again.   Frank quickly tells Lithium that the person they're after is the once-agent Arsenic and how they need to track him down. She is able to make a few calls as the Century Group had been tracking him down for a while, and she's able to give them the address of a shack in the middle of nowhere, a safe house of his, that he might be hiding out. The heroes head out as Lithium takes a moment to recover, thanking them for their help and commending Warp on his work thus far.   On their way out, Warp receives another phone call where Plague expresses his disappointment that they were able to save Lithium, pointing out how much easier it is to kill people when they have pets since they rarely think twice when a beloved pet licks them. Frank isn't sure why he's being told this at first, and the three of them head out to confront the villain.   On arriving to the address, the heroes do indeed find a fairly unimpressive shack surrounded by overgrown grasses. They make their approach, taking a few bites from opportunistic tics before kicking in the door and being brought face-to-face with Plague himself. The villain explodes into a tirade of how he and Warp are no different and that it wasn't fair that he would get a second chance while he got denied. The heroes have no time for his reasons though, and fairly quickly the shack explodes outwards as Plague summons his swarms of mosquitoes and rats to fight.   He flies up into the air and begins to throw diseases at the heroes while Emma throws heals and magic bolts, Warp empties his utility belt, and Mercy gets up close and personal for a one-on-one brawl, being infected with HIV for his trouble. Plague soon realises that his control of disease vectors might also extend to the vampire and he tries to take over Mercy's mind, the hero just about being able to resist as the battle goes on. After a few moments however, Warp is able to knock him out with a shotput made of concrete and the villain falls limp in Mercy's arms, having been held in place at the time.   By the time Plague begins to come around, a detachment of Century agents had been dispatched and had secured him, stopping him from using his powers for the time being. He's being loaded into a van when he grabs Warp's attention again, claiming that he still had one more surprise in store for the hero, and that he wasn't lying about pets being the key to some of his assassinations.   Warp immediately understands what the villain is implying and speeds off in his car back to the city, leaving his two allies to make their own ways back. When he makes it back to his secret warehouse base, he's devastated to see that his beloved Maine Coon; Sliver, is acting aggressive and fearful towards him. He can only think to take the cat to the Century medical centre where one of the doctors informs him that the cat has rabies and the merciful course of action is to have her put down.   That evening, Warp arrives at the Century internment centre, a holding space for supercriminals awaiting trial, and makes his way to Plague's cell. The villain is in much the same state that they last saw him in but with a self-satisfied grin plastered over his face. Warp opens the cell seal and pins him against the wall as Plague mocks him, calling him a coward and telling him to just kill him, thereby proving that they're no different after all.   Frank looks into the bloodshot eyes of the murderer before him and tells him that he's right. They're not so different. But the important difference between them is that Frank knows what love is. He loved his cat, and knew what it was like to be loved back. Something that Plague has never known. He drops the villain, leaving him to his fate as he spits bile and insults at the hero, watching as Warp walks away, wounded but far from defeated.