Sabretooth : Mary Shelley Overdrive #3

Issue Date: 
October 2002
Story Title: 
Mary Shelley Overdrive - part 3
Staff: 

Dean Jolley (Writer), Greg Scott (Artist), JD Mettler (Colourist), Dave Sharp (Letterer), Mike Reicht (Assistant Editor), Mike Marts (Editor), Joe Quesada (Editor-in-chief), Bill Jemas (President)

Brief Description: 

Sabretooth storms the lab complex in search of answers and vengeance for his lover Bonnie, who has been accidentally infected with a deadly plague. He slaughters whole units of soldiers before being beaten in combat by Cyril and captured. But in reality he’s just been stalling them, waiting for the charges he set earlier to explode. When they do finally set off Sabretooth escapes. Cyril is angry, but Kalashnikov doesn’t care; he has Bonnie’s position, and his soldiers are about to set charges to kill her...

Full Summary: 

On the outskirts of New York city, in a brothel where Bonnie Hale is hiding out, the phone rings, and she answers it. It is Victor Creed, aka Sabretooth. She asks where he is; he says he’s in Central Park. Then he asks how she’s feeling; if she ate something...she doesn’t know anything, apart from that she’s physically fine, and asks him whether he’s found out what’s going on and why those men want to kill her. He tells her to stay where she is and keep safe. All she wants to do is run away with him; and he’s surprised that she actually wants to be with him. All he wants is to keep her safe with him, and he hangs up. In Central Park a man waiting to use the phone tells him to hurry up; then he sees Sabretooth’s face. Victor kills the man and stuffs him in a litter bin by the phone. At the brothel Bonnie tries call return; but Ruth tell her she’s had it blocked on all the lines at her place.
Sabretooth is sniffing out the laboratory complex, thinking up a plan. Inside Piotr and Aleksander are talking about him. They think he was maybe in the special forces, and that now he’s a professional assassin, and what with his mutant powers and everything. But they’re pretty sure he can’t get in the place, with the motion detectors, infrared, pressure plates. They’re wrong. The front doors explode inwards, knocking them to the floor, unconscious. Sabretooth storms in, grabbing one of their guns and blasting them with bullets. He drops the gun and brings out two meaty looking axes. As he hacks away at one soldier after another (even beheading one of them) Kalashnikov thinks he wont get to him; but Cyril knows he will, so loads his gun to take on Sabretooth himself.
Another team enters the fray, thinking the first team have easily beaten Creed; until they find the man himself, standing over a pile of dead, severed corpses. “So, who’s next?” Sabretooth asks.
At Ruth’s brothel Bonnie is on the phone to her parents, calling them just to say hi. Her Mum thinks she sounds not so good; wonders if she’s having work trouble, and if that Bedford, a work colleague, is hitting on her. Bonnie says things are fine, and that she misses them, and asks how her Dad’s back is. He says he did it in while gardening, but he went to the doctors and got a good adjustment on it. Her Dad tells Bonnie that he saw her friend Jessica at the pharmacy the other day, and was asked to remind Bonnie about the five year reunion. Bonnie says she got the letter. Bev, her mother, teases that Jason Fleming will be there. Bev knows he’s not her type, but tells her daughter she’d like grandkids one day. Bonnie tells her Mum she might have met the right guy already. Bev says Mrs. Robins at the flower shop misses her; that nobody could do arrangements like her. “I love you too, Mum. I love both of you...I’ll try and come home soon, okay? Bye.”
Sabretooth has killed the second unit, and is stalking along the corridors of the lab complex, axes in both hands, when Cyril appears and kicks him in the neck. Sabretooth fights back, but Cyril kicks and snaps one of his opponents axes. Cyril continues to pummel him, even getting in a painful kick to Creed’s groin. Cyril gets him in a neck hold, totally at his mercy. Cyril tells Sabretooth that he’s more powerful than the others; they thought all they’d need was muscle memory and residual instincts, and they picked their own cute little Russian names for their new Spetsnaz bodies. But Cyril studied all his life; went down to the dojo after leaving the lab every day, then took his abilities into the field. Kalashnikov enters with a gun, telling Cyril not to kill him. He figures that he killed some of them and survived, so he needs to be studied. Cyril thinks he has a point, so pins Sabretooth to the wall to keep him here. Sabretooth, however, taunts his captors by telling them exactly what he knows of their plans; that they were a bunch of old scientists who put themselves into young Russian Special Forces bodies. Kalashnikov is impressed by his knowledge. Sabretooth tells him their experiments make sense; that they can control distribution, answer to nobody, be their own enforcers. He laughs, saying it must be fun to feel like young stud-bulls again, and makes a joke about how long since Kalashnikov could “get it up.” This pisses off Kalashnikov, who tells Sabretooth that he’s not going to vivisect him and record data concerning his healing factor like he originally planned; but inject him with a dose of nerve gas instead, which will kill him in three seconds. Sabretooth thinks that they must have an antidote for the virus Bonnie contracted. He thinks it might even be in this lab with them; in that locker over there. Kalashnikov gets angry, as he’s telling him how he’s going to kill him and he’s not even listening. But Sabretooth grins, telling Kalashnikov “Why do you think no outside alarms tripped when I blew the first charge? I was in the building for half an hour before I knocked on your door.” He slowly and agonisingly pulls out one of the pins trapping him against the wall as virtually the whole lab complex explodes. In the aftermath Sabretooth is gone and the cabinet with the antidote in is smashed. But they aren’t bothered he’s gone, as they’ve found where Bonnie is hiding. Bonnie tells Ruth that she has a headache as a soldier reports in, saying he has the target acquired, and he’ll begin setting the charges.

Characters Involved: 

Sabretooth

Bonnie Hale

Ruth

Man in park

Aleksander

Piotr

Kalashnikov

Cyril

Bev(Bonnie’s Mum); voice only

Bonnie’s Dad; voice only

Story Notes: 
Issue Information: 
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