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"The Hercules Virus": Midnighter is on a orbital space station fighting and killing it's crew who were turned into mutated monsters. In a flashback, Midnighter was recruited by Jennifer Norton, a American black ops agent, into containing an extraterrestrial virus - dubbed as the "Hercules Virus"

Quote1 You should have paid more attention to what they say about me. The rumors...? All true. I am the baddest of the bad on this planet and several others you've never been to. Every once in a while I have to prove that to stupid people like yourself. Quote2
Midnighter

Midnighter #9 is an issue of the series Midnighter (Volume 1) with a cover date of September, 2007.

Synopsis for "The Hercules Virus"

Midnighter is on a orbital space station fighting and killing it's crew who were turned into mutated monsters. In a flashback, Midnighter was recruited by Jennifer Norton, a American black ops agent, into containing an extraterrestrial virus - dubbed as the "Hercules Virus" - that was brought from a soil sample recovered from Mars and onto the space station Nautilus, which was a top-secret laboratory designed to study virulent organisms safely from Earth. Midnighter states the reasons for him to go to the Nautilus is to retrieve the virus and be possibly used as a biological weapon, which he explicitly imply of refusing the task; however, Norton tells him that he will do it otherwise as the Nautilus had sustained internal damages and will reenter Earth, impacting Boston, and releasing the virus that will wipe out humankind.

In the present, Midnighter fights numerous mutated creatures - and oddly ghost-like children - and realizing that there is something more to what is going on, and that he is being set up. He eventually finds a lone scientists who is locked behind a sealed laboratory and demands answers from her. It is reveal that the station was housing abducted U.S. citizens to be use as guinea pigs for the Hercules Virus, which is in reality a created bio-weapon that empowers human beings, and that the mutated humans escaped and damaged the station's teleporter. Thus Midnighter was specifically chosen for his access to door technology and his nanite healing power, which the scientist will inject him a sample of the virus so his body would assimilate and defeat it thereby providing the government with a natural organic antidote. Given to what had happened, the scientist couldn't go through in seeing the virus to be use as a weapon after seeing her boyfriend was among the infected and accept Midnighter to do whatever he do with it. Midnighter then query the scientist about the virus's transmission which he learns is only transmitted by injection and then whether anything on board would contaminate the Earth, in which she answers no as nothing can survive normal environments. He finally ask her about the children he had saw, she respond that they were part of being as disposable weapons. This discovery disgusted him and briskly asking her about the ethics involve in this, which she replies she and her people were "unconventional warfare scientists" as this is part of their task. Midnighter then impale her eye with the needle containing the Hercules Virus before finally killing her when she mutated. He then leaves Nautilus via shift-door to meet Apollo and request his help.

Midnighter arrives at Norton's hidden bunker in a desert where Norton sends her androids to apprehend him, believing that he has Hercules in his bloodstream. He effortlessly destroys the androids and reconfirms to Norton that he doesn't has Hercules. Norton then points out that if he even kills her, there are always be places like Nautilus. But Midnighter states to Norton that he doesn't plan to kill her. Norton then ask him that he is also willingly to let Nautilus fall out of the sky and kill millions of people, which he replies "not exactly." He has Apollo to literally throw Nautilus and onto Norton's bunker, killing her before Midnighter has the chance to leave and see the sight of the destruction.

Appearing in "The Hercules Virus"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

Antagonists:

  • Jennifer Norton (Single appearance)

Other Characters:

  • None

Locations:

Items:

  • None

Vehicles:

  • None




See Also

Recommended Reading

Links and References

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