Black Panther by Ira Madison

Author:Ira Madison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2024-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Season 1, Episode 8

The Crucible

Geoffrey Thorne

A featureless glow took up his entire field of vision but T’Challa knew two things: he was awake again and he was staring at a ceiling. That ceiling was the top of a cell he was now the sole occupant of.

“A hundred and forty-seven seconds,” said a deep, unfamiliar voice. “Better than predicted.”

T’Challa sat up and surveyed. The cell was … a cell. A bed, a sink, a shower, and a toilet; a cell. Standard design aside from the materials of which it was made.

Some semi-conductive metal-polymer alloy, he surmised. Allowing for circuits and wiring to be employed while dampening any ambient energy signature to nearly zero. Wakanda had experimented with such materials in his grandfather’s time.

“The pacifier usually blanks a nervous system for a quarter of an hour, minimum,” said the voice. “You’re enhanced.”

T’Challa twisted in the direction the voice had come from, but there was nothing but another opaque wall.

“I am the Black Panther,” he said. “What do you mean, ‘enhanced?’”

“Thank you for confirming my second hypothesis,” said the voice. “The list of non-white enhanced individuals is depressingly short, but you are near the top. They couldn’t have taken Brashear easily and never held him at all from what I’ve been able to tell. Moses Magnum has been M.I.A. since the 1980s. The Avenger known as Rage has disappeared as well. They’ve already got me, therefore you could only have been you. QED.”

T’Challa let silence fall between them, allowing his head to fully clear. He found the voice’s calm, almost professorial cadence annoying and he needed his temper in check at the moment. He paced the room, touching the various surfaces, checking for seams, flaws.

“You won’t find any gaps,” said the voice after a moment. “The cells are hardcast in sets of two, then assembled like toy blocks here.”

T’Challa confirmed the voice’s statement with his fingertips. “Who are you?”

“I’m your pod-mate,” said the voice. “Next cell over.”

“That tells me where you are,” said T’Challa. He’d determined the direction from which the voice came and faced it. “I asked who you are.”

“Eliot Franklin,” said the voice. “Doctor. Six PhDs. Physics, engineering, electronics, architecture, chemistry, and microbiology.”

“Thunderball,” said T’Challa, dryly. “Of the so-called Wrecking Crew.”

“I’m flattered you know me,” said Franklin. He did not sound flattered. He almost sounded … bored.

“The Avengers keep comprehensive files,” said T’Challa. “How can you see me?”

“There’s a keypad by the door.”

Indeed, there was. It was adorned with several easily deciphered pictograms. T’Challa’s finger slid lightly over the one that was just a simple lined square and suddenly he was looking into a mirror of his cell. Standing where his own reflection should be was a large brown man watching him, a placid expression on his face. He looked to be in his early forties, extremely fit if the muscles micro flexing under his jumpsuit were any indication. He did not smile or grimace, only watched T’Challa, who watched him. He had a hard face, this man, one that revealed nothing and which nothing, it seemed, could easily affect.

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