Brute Force (1990 series) #3

Randall Pierce is being held at the FBI's regional headquarters in Manhattan. He tries to convince Agent O'Donnell and his colleagues that Adam Frost and Multicorp are behind Heavy Metal and the tanker attacks, but the FBI remains skeptical.

At 3:02 a.m., Brute Force arrives unannounced at the home of Charles Sutton in New York. Pierce had told them to seek out Sutton — a member of the Fresh Air Group's executive committee — if anything happened to him, and given them a message to pass along. The visit is chaotic: Wreckless wrecks the living room, Lionheart fixates on the fish tank, Soar and Wreckless fight over food. After Surfstreak identifies himself and explains Pierce's arrest, Sutton agrees to honor Pierce's directive and help the team. However, as a committee member he cannot act alone — he needs the executive committee's approval. His first suggestion: clean up the mess they made.

The committee meets the following morning at Sutton's upstate property. Jack Hudden is strongly opposed to using bio-enhanced animals and refuses to let Brute Force accompany the group on their planned visit to the facility of Marc De Mal in Northern Carolina. Sutton, Hudden, and colleague Joanne Newcomb travel there without them.

De Mal welcomes his guests and leads them through his indoor jungle — a sprawling mass of mutant plant life engineered to not merely survive in polluted air, but to thrive on it. Over dinner, he reveals his true purpose: he has built a rocket loaded with concentrated pollutants intended to blanket Earth's atmosphere, rendering the planet inhospitable to normal life while ushering in a new era dominated by his engineered species. He sees Sutton and Newcomb as his "Adam and Eve" for this new world. When Sutton confronts him — "we're here to expose you!" — De Mal calls his guards and takes them captive, telling them his scientists need more test subjects.

Unknown to Hudden, Brute Force had followed Sutton to Northern Carolina independently. At the facility perimeter, Soar goes to scout and Surfstreak searches for a way inside. Perimeter alarms alert De Mal's guards to their presence. The team fights its way in and is confronted by the full horror of De Mal's animal experiments — including his masterpiece, the Toxic Waste Terror, a massive multi-headed creature grown from toxins, which overwhelms the team with sheer ferocity.

As the battle continues, De Mal's rocket countdown begins. Soar breaks free from the fight and crashes through the facility roof to reach De Mal and the captives. Sutton urges him to forget about them and stop De Mal. Surfstreak, in a desperate move using clean water and temperature shock from his propulsion system, kills the Toxic Waste Terror — an outcome he did not intend. He is devastated by what he has done.

The rocket detonates against the compound rather than reaching the atmosphere, destroying the facility. De Mal, standing at the countdown timer, welcomes the explosion as his destiny. Sutton observes that the inferno will hopefully consume all the pollutants stored on site. Surfstreak remains shaken — but not all of his teammates share his distress.