Walter Reed National Military Medical Center – Bethesda, Maryland
The air smelled of antiseptic and quiet despair. In a private room, Colonel John Garrett stared at the ceiling, his body broken. An IED in Afghanistan had left his spine shattered, his legs useless. He was a warhorse put out to pasture, his career, his purpose, over.
A visitor entered. No uniform, just an impeccably tailored suit. The man's presence was calm, unnervingly so.
"Colonel Garrett," the man said. "My name is Sam Jackson. I've read your file. Your service record is exceptional."
Garrett let out a bitter, hollow laugh. "Was. It was exceptional. Now I'm a museum piece. What do you want, Mr. Jackson? A donation? My story's not very inspirational these days."
"On the contrary," Sam replied, pulling a single, sleek medical capsule from his pocket. "I'm not here for a donation. I'm here with a job offer. And a signing bonus."
He placed the capsule on the bedside table. "This is the Genesis Serum. It will do what your doctors cannot. It will rebuild your spine. It will restore your legs. It will make you stronger, faster, and more resilient than you have ever been."
Garrett's eyes, which had been dull with resignation, sharpened with a mix of fury and desperate hope. "Get out. I don't know what kind of sick joke this is, but get the hell out of my room."
"This is no joke, Colonel." Sam's voice was flat, factual. "I am assembling a unique force. Men and women who have been discarded by the system they swore to protect. I am offering you a chance to serve again, with a new body and a new purpose. A purpose beyond politics and borders."
He leaned forward slightly. "The choice is yours. You can remain here, a monument to failure. Or you can take this, stand up, and become the first soldier in a new kind of war. You have one hour to decide."
Sam left without another word. An hour later, Colonel John Garrett, his body humming with a vitality he'd forgotten was possible, walked out of Walter Reed. He left no paperwork, no record. He was a ghost.
---
The "Reclamation" and The "Sanctuary"
Garrett was the prototype. Sam's recruitment was a silent, surgical process. He targeted the best of the broken: a Marine Raider who lost her eyes and an arm; an Air Force Pararescueman with severe burns; a Delta Force operator with a traumatic brain injury. They were offered a choice in their darkest moment, and they all chose to walk again, to fight again.
Their rehabilitation and training occurred in a place AetherLink had designated "The Sanctuary"—a decommissioned Atlas Biotech geological survey outpost on Ilha da Fênix (Phoenix Island), a remote, volcanic island off the Brazilian coast purchased through a dizzying array of blind trusts. To any satellite or audit, it was a dormant facility.
Here, the "Reclaimed," as Garrett called them, learned the limits of their new bodies. They were stronger, faster, and healed from wounds in minutes. They were the perfect soldiers, and they owed everything to Sam.
Their missions were not assaults. They were erasures. AetherLink, with its god-like access to global data, would identify targets: a secret A.I.M. lab experimenting on mutants in Sokovia, a Roxxon black site holding an Inhuman, a clandestine military prison for "anomalous individuals."
The Wraiths, as they began to call themselves, would move in. There were no explosions, no frantic firefights. They moved with silent, overwhelming precision, disabling security, neutralizing personnel with non-lethal efficiency, and extracting the test subjects. To the world, it looked like internal accidents, data wipes, or mysterious disappearances. They left no traces, only confused and empty facilities.
The rescued mutants and enhanced individuals, broken and terrified, were brought to the Sanctuary. Sam or a trusted medic would administer a tailored Genesis Serum. It stabilized their powers, healed the damage from experimentation, and optimized their biology, just as it had for the soldiers.
A young woman who could phase through matter(Not Kitty), her system previously wracked with energy feedback, found she could now control it perfectly. A boy whose skin could generate rock-like armor, once cracked and bleeding, now had control over a seamless, durable shell.
They were given the same choice as the soldiers. Leave with a new identity and a clean bill of health, or stay and train. To a person, they stayed. They had been victims of the world's darkness. Sam had not just saved them; he had given them the power to ensure it never happened again. Their loyalty was not bought; it was forged in salvation.
---
Hydra Safe House – Washington D.C.
Alexander Pierce reviewed a series of disturbing reports. Jasper Sitwell stood before him, looking perplexed.
"The A.I.M. facility in Sokovia went dark," Sitwell reported. "Complete systems failure. All personnel found unconscious with no memory of the event. Their primary test subjects, two high-value mutants, are gone. No signs of forced entry. No weapon signatures. It's the same pattern as the Roxxon site in Colombia and the Defense Intelligence agency black site in Taiwan. It's a ghost."
Pierce scowled. "A ghost that is systematically dismantling our rival's research and acquisition programs. This is not a rival corporation. This is… something else. A new player."
"Our analysts suggest it could be a splinter cell of S.H.I.E.L.D., one even Fury doesn't know about. Or a foreign power with technology we can't detect."
"Perhaps," Pierce mused, his mind racing through possibilities. The thought that it was Sam Jackson never occurred to him. Why would a public-facing CEO, however brilliant, be involved in such shadow warfare? Jackson was building a public empire. This was the work of a specter. "Increase security at all our primary facilities. And I want our own intelligence network focused on this. Find this ghost. If we cannot stop it, perhaps we can recruit it."
---
Ilha da Fênix – The Sanctuary
Sam stood with Kyle on a cliffside, looking down at the training grounds below. A squad of Wraiths moved through an obstacle course. A soldier scaled a sheer wall in seconds, while the rock-skinned mutant created a moving shield for his team, and the phasing girl scouted ahead by walking directly through a concrete barrier.
"It's an army," Kyle said, her voice soft.
"It's a solution," Sam corrected her. "While Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. play their games of spies and lies, and the Avengers wait for the next world-ending event to react to, we are actively cutting out the cancer. We are building a force that exists outside their paradigm. They don't see us because they don't know what to look for."
"And when they finally do?" Kyle asked.
Sam's gaze was unwavering. "By the time they realize what we are, it will be too late. They will be looking for an enemy to fight. They won't be prepared for a force that simply… removes problems from the board." He turned, the master of a silent war, his army of ghosts growing stronger by the day, completely unseen by the enemies they were already systematically dismantling.