James Bond's vision darkened, his body becoming weak. The world became a 1960s B-Movie, and he was the camera. He was bleeding out, the marble floor of the lab being coated with the red wine of his body known as blood, and his dark green shirt being stained crimson and the liquid trickling down his cargo pants. Soon, he was going to die, but he figured it was going to be sooner as Carlos Venestaz, a South American Aerospace engineer and CEO of Astro, had a 9mm pistol aimed directly at the secret agent's head.
"What are you going to do?" Bond asked. "Kill me?"
Carlos let out a venomous laugh, one that mimicked numerous men that Bond had fought before. He grinned madly, "No, Mr. Bond. I think I'll find it better if you suffer!" He stomped on 007's ribs, the agent in question hearing one or two snap. He screamed in agony. "For you see, there is nothing you can do." He laughed once more.
The CEO of Astro Corp. waved his hands, "Look around you Mr. Bond! My private military, 'The Phantom Regiment', is surrounding us! Even if you were to get up and push me around a little, you'd be shot down faster than you can blink."
As much as he hated to admit it, the madman from Chile was right. Even if he had the strength to get up, he would be swatted down by the pure power of those guns. The more he looked at the soldiers, however, the more they seemed out of place. For starters, a large amount of them had the expression of combat experience for many months maybe even years, while the others merely looked like men the agent tangled with on a regular basis. The other thing that made 007 wonder about the soldiers was how easily he was caught; for most encounters it took at least a few minutes at the very least for most of his adversaries to notice his existence in the base, but for Venestaz, it took mere seconds. He decided to voice his question,
"So Venestaz, how does one acquire such," he began searching for the word, "mentally trained soldiers for such a low price?"
Venestaz nodded, "Now THAT is an interesting story. Hopefully you'll lie down and let me tell it."
James glared daggers as the South American began his story. "You see, some time ago, I used to be a university professor. One day, I told my colleagues about an idea for an invention and I needed their input, but more importantly, their financial backing. This invention was to be a teleporter, a machine that can take you anywhere you want without wasting any gas or oil. It was revolutionary! Armies and countries would do anything to get their hands on the device!"
Carlos sighed, "But they scoffed at my idea, thought it was the silliest thing that they had ever heard!"
"I would hope so." Bond commented. "The idea of a device that can teleport you to places in an instant is just ridiculous."
Pretending to ignore the agent's comment, he continued. "So I left the teaching business and built a cooperation ground up. In mere years I became the CEO of the now proud and powerful Astro!
"Even after all of those years I didn't forget the scorn I received, and I most definitely didn't forget my design to change the world. I pulled a large sum of our money out of the stocks so I could work on my 'pet project.' It took months of hardship, you know; most days I went without lunch or dinner, being too absorbed in my own work for such breaks. When the teleporter was finally done, I couldn't help but to start the tests right away!
"I picked the brightest of my R&D team to be my guinea pigs. I picked two of them and sent them to rather short distances; one to right outside of the building, and the other to the nearby coffee shop to purchase my daily mocha. They both returned, not a single scratch on them, no extra limbs, no nothing. It was confirmed that the teleporter worked, or at least over short distances.
"That's when I decided to test it under severe stress. I was the test subject this time, and in case anything went awry, I would use the return device I had crafted; it's more efficient than the actual teleporter due to it being linked to an 'anchor' while the device itself has no such thing. The destination I picked was somewhere in Bolivia, a nearby country; I typed in the coordinates and stood in the teleporter."
Venestaz stopped his speech and took in a breath. "But that was when everything went wrong. The teleporter began to flash different colors, and I thought that it was going to explode, taking it's creator down with it; fate seemed to have a different agenda then her cousin, death. Instead, everything went black soon after the flashing.
"When I had come to, I was surrounded by a group of people forming a small circle around me. They began to bombard me with questions on how I got there, and where I came from. I answered the best I could while I surveyed my surroundings. All of the men surrounding me and I were trapped; we were locked behind a jail cell of some kind, and the return device refused to work. They had told me that the wardens of the place put up a electro magnetic field around the cells, disallowing any electronics in the 'prison'. I had asked them who they were and what they were doing in a place like this. They simply answered that as of now, we were locked in a United States Air Force Base in the state of New Hampshire; they also had the pleasantry to tell me that they were called Genome Soldiers, men of enhanced sight, sound, and mind.
"After being told of the horrible testing they had endured by their own government, I had enough and told them that I was going to get them out! By the looks in these men's eyes I could tell they were longing for battle again; to be free of this puny government and put in a higher seat of power none could ever imagine but me! Then I got to thinking; if I was to rescue these poor soldiers from captivity, I could build a private army to wipe out those who oppose me! I can use the teleporter to go to different seats of power to take out each political leader and party one by one. When every last country is cleansed by their previous leaders' filth, me and my army would rise above them and control the world's affairs with an iron fist!
"Before I engaged my plan, I made the soldiers in my cell and in all the cells around it to swear allegiance to me, and only then would I help them. They eagerly did as I ordered and we began our assault home!"
James let out a small yawn. One of those "Genome" Soldiers raised his FAMAS, most likely in alert. He began to glide his finger to the trigger, but Carlos, surprisingly, raised his pistol at the man. "Oh no you don't; you shoot, I shoot. He was merely tired. Let our poor captive yawn. He'll be asleep soon enough."
The soldier obeyed, but not after murmuring something under his breath. With that crisis adverted, Venestaz began telling of another. "In a matter of moments we knocked out the guard making his rounds around the compound, secured the keys and his weapon, and began to free the rest of the soon to be soldiers of fortune."
He lowered his head, "Sadly, we lost some of our comrades in the following firefight. Yet, their sacrifice was not in vain as we secured four extraordinary soldiers. Each one of them was horribly experimented on longer than all of the soldiers in the compound; though in compensation, they had gained supernatural powers that allowed them to pull off great feats; they had called themselves the "ExPats" a simple but great name, as they picked it after their country betrayed them. After one last grueling battle, we safely escaped the compound. Before the soldiers of the base came and gunned us down, the return device finally worked, and we were home safe.
"However, once we reached the lab, the soldiers began to bombard me with questions, wondering if we went forward in time or if I was a time traveler of sorts. I assured them that I was not, but they began to reveal compelling evidence; that it was 2010 when they were in that accursed patriot trap, and now my calender read 2013. I had asked them what the President of the United States was at the time, and they told me the man's name was James Johnson last they'd heard, though he tragically passed away a year prior, the office being run by the former Vice President. I found that odd, as the last time I had heard of the US, the president's name was entirely different.
"That got me thinking; what if I had just traveled to a new reality, one where these soldiers once fought? I was quick to dismiss it at first, but the evidence of it was staggering. In mere moments I came to except the fact that I traveled to an alternate universe, but when that fact slithered into my brain, I became ecstatic. I had just discovered a new universe all on my own! I shared my discovery with my newly acquired army which I have called 'The Phantom Regiment.' I thought it was fitting, as they are now are ghosts of their former selves, now wanting to haunt those who wronged them in the past. The soldiers were all baffled by this, but as I started to explain, they understood."
"So they bought all of this science fiction crap?" Bond asked, not even convinced of the teleporter's power.
"Of course they did." Venestaz answered coolly, "After all, every ounce of it is the truth."
He paused for a second, as if trying to regain his train of thought. After a quick moment of silence, he continued his tale, "For the next few weeks, I began entering obscure coordinates, each one taking me to bizarre universes but none of any seeming value or importance, at least none that I could discern within a few hours. At that moment in time, we were running drastically low on funds as I spent most of them on weapons, rations, and most importantly, new soldiers. We couldn't begin our assault on the world at that moment of time, for if we did, we would surely run out of resources in mere weeks, ending our campaign right when it was born.
"So I entered a last pair of coordinates I could think of, and when I, along with a few soldiers for protection, let the teleporter take us to our destination, it was as if Lady Luck smiled at us from a distance. As we explored this strange, new world, we began seeing things only kings and queens dream of: gems! Gems and precious minerals as far as the eye could see! The world was a very literal gold mine, and we surveyed as it's miners. We grabbed a few hundred gems for safe keeping and returned home, thankful that fate had once again saved us.
"With that out of the way, we entered more coordinates into the teleporter, starting the next phase; we needed financial backers, for anybody in our respective universes would obviously refuse to help us. We would use the gems we acquired as our bargaining chip as they can obviously regain the money they gave us.
"The fist pair brought us right where we needed to go. Arriving near an office, we struck a deal with the man in charge of the organization after we verified our story; as long as we supplied them with a cut of the profits, they would hand us greenbacks."
"That's it?" Bond asked.
"No." Carlos answered simply, "If we so desired they would also hand us their own special forces, making my army even more powerful. I told them that if I so required, I would ask for them."
"Well Mr. Bond, I did enjoy our time together, but I must go. After all, I have some gems to harvest." With that, Venestaz, along with his army of soldiers, marched over to the teleporter, and all disappearing with a flash and a bang.
James' vision was darkening even more rapidly; in a short time he'd pass out from blood loss, most likely die given the circumstances. He was using all of his willpower just to try and stay conscious, but he knew it would all be in vain. Before his flirtation with consciousness ended, he would've sworn he saw a strange blast of color, and then blackness.