Deathlok (Earth-199999)

Deathlok, born Michael Peterson on August 28, 1979, is an American man from Los Angeles. In 2013, desperate and out of a job, he became involved in Project Centipede, granting him potent but dangerous superpowers. After escaping Centipede's grasp for some time, he was recaptured and modified with cybernetic enhancements known as Project Deathlok, his namesake. With help from the remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Coulson's team, Peterson escaped the grasp of Centipede and Hydra, and is now a free man. He is the father of Ace Peterson.

Biography

Project Centipede

By September 2013, Peterson had gotten injured at his job at a factory, and his wife had subsequently left him. Desperate for a way to put his life back together, he signed on with the mysterious Project Centipede, which operated a secret laboratory in an apartment building in Los Angeles. One day, while out with his son, Peterson witnessed the Centipede lab spontaneously explode, and put his powers to use to enter it and rescue Debbie, the woman who had signed him on to Centipede in the first place. The explosion had been caused by another subject: the Extremis in the Centipede serum had caused him to combust. To the public, Peterson's actions looked to be purely altruistic, and he gained a reputation as the "Hooded Hero." He was approached in a café by a woman named Skye, who offered to protect him from the inevitable government organizations that would soon be bearing down on him such as S.H.I.E.L.D. He feigned ignorance, but she offered him to meet her in her van-office around the corner if he was ever interested.

The effects of Centipede and his compounding stress had significant negative effects on Peterson's mental and emotional state. He went to his former workplace and violently assaulted his employer, which gave him more airtime on the news. Peterson believed himself a superhero punishing the "bad guy" for his wrongdoing. He visited Debbie in the hospital, who chastised him for jeopardizing the project with his actions and publicity. Peterson wanted to go public with the project, but she furiously told him to make himself scarce or risk being targeted. Peterson took Skye up on her offer, making his way with Ace to her van near the café. By this point Skye had actually allied with S.H.I.E.L.D., but Michael saw agent Melinda May there and threw her down, insisting that he was saving Skye from S.H.I.E.L.D. He told Skye to drive to the train station and wipe his presence from the internet and governmental files. Skye secretly submitted her location data to S.H.I.E.L.D., allowing agents Phil Coulson and Grant Ward to arrive at the station. S.H.I.E.L.D. had deduced that the Extremis in Peterson's system was liable to explode in a matter of hours, posing a massive threat to himself and those around him. Coulson attempted to peaceably apprehend Peterson, but he stormed off with Skye and his son in tow. Skye briefly caused a distraction to allow the police to take the boy, but Peterson continued to drag her off. An unidentified third party, ostensibly a police officer, shot Peterson in the arm, knocking off of a high ledge. Coulson confronted Peterson and talked him down long enough for Ward to remotely inject him with a curative agent that S.H.I.E.L.D. had apparently finished in the nick of time. Peterson remained in stable condition and made a full recovery.

S.H.I.E.L.D. recruitment and return to Centipede

Peterson retained his powers, without the danger of Extremis. S.H.I.E.L.D. doctors determined that removing the serum injector from his arm would prove fatal, and so it remained. Like other Centipede soldiers, Peterson required an abnormally large diet, and using his powers would leave him especially drained. S.H.I.E.L.D. realized the potential of his abilities, and began training him to be a special operative. Near the end of the year, he was assigned to a mission alongside Phil Coulson's team to at last deal with Centipede. Peterson reunited with Skye, who had surprisingly joined the team (and, seemingly, left Rising Tide). S.H.I.E.L.D. followed a Centipede trail to an abandoned factory in Oakland, where Peterson and a group of agents touched down stealthily. They were ambushed by three super soldiers, and Coulson fired on one with the same gun that cured Peterson, but the man simply got up and kept fighting. Peterson managed to fight off two of them, getting stabbed in the gut in the process, and leaving one helpless on the ground. Coulson tried to get some answers from him, but he suddenly died as a result of a quietly explosive "fail-safe" in his eye. The team were dumbfounded at Centipede's remarkable resources and wondered how they could possibly manage all of this.

Coulson talked to Peterson about the fact that he hadn't visited his son since joining S.H.I.E.L.D. Peterson said that his son's enduring picture of him was what he did at the train station, and he couldn't bear to show his face to him again. Coulson encouraged him to think about his son before making the choice to go any further in his S.H.I.E.L.D. career. Taking this to heart, Peterson called his son Ace, who told him that he was with a "friend:" Raina. Raina offered Peterson to trade him Ace for Coulson, but to present the deal to S.H.I.E.L.D. as trading himself for his son. Peterson did as he was told, leading to a rendezvous at an abandoned bridge where he and Coulson met with Raina backed by Centipede super-soldiers, while the rest of Coulson's team observed from afar, unable to listen in due to Raina forbidding technology. Peterson revealed the truth of the exchange, and Coulson forgave him, realizing he had no other choice. Raina handed Ace over, and Michael ran back to the S.H.I.E.L.D. van with him in tow. As Centipede knocked Coulson out and took him away, Michael handed Ace to Skye and ran after them, getting caught in an abrupt, large explosion. He was presumed dead, but in fact awoke in Centipede custody with severe burns and missing his right leg below the knee. Digital instructions began appearing before his eyes: he'd been installed with a "fail-safe" in his eye that would force him to carry out Centipede's will under the threat of instant death. Peterson apparently answered directly to the Clairvoyant, and he was stored in a hyperbaric chamber in a mansion in rural Italy. There, Centipede associate and mining magnate Ian Quinn had a device delivered from Cybertek worth ten million dollars: an advanced cybernetic leg known as Project Deathlok. Quinn attempted to order Peterson around, but Peterson only obeyed the Clairvoyant. Peterson informed Cybertek that they would not be paid, as they had failed to keep S.H.I.E.L.D. out of the situation. They violently objected, and Peterson killed them all. When Phil Coulson's team arrived soon after, the Clairvoyant told him not to engage. Peterson left the area unseen, and continued following orders in the hopes of seeing his son once more.

Deathlok was ordered to feign an attack on John Garrett and Antoine Triplett at a S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse, leaving quickly after facing resistance. He later received an arm-mounted rocket launcher to increase his offensive capabilities. S.H.I.E.L.D. set their sights on narrowing down the identity of the Clairvoyant, and one proposed candidate was Thomas Nash, a supposed psychic who had been catatonic for four years following a car accident. Agents Melinda May and Felix Blake were assigned to investigate Nash at a nursing home, and Deathlok was sent there to intercept them and make it look like he was protecting Nash. He attacked and horribly injured Blake and fired a rocket at May, but she dodged out of the way, and Deathlok left, his job done. Blake had fired tracking rounds at Deathlok, which later allowed S.H.I.E.L.D. to trail him to an abandoned racing facility in Pensacola, Florida, and a large group of agents convened on the building. Deathlok was able to escape unharmed, but the agents found Nash and killed him, believing him to be the Clairvoyant. In truth, Nash was a helpless plant placed by the true Clairvoyant as a means of throwing S.H.I.E.L.D. off of his trail. Even the killing itself had been carried out by Grant Ward on the Clairvoyant's wishes.

Fall of the Clairvoyant

Not long after, the shadowy organization known as Hydra revealed itself as the presence behind Centipede, and John Garrett was found to be the Clairvoyant: his vast knowledge was not due to any mental abilities, but due to a high security clearance within S.H.I.E.L.D. Garrett had Deathlok trail Grant Ward to keep an eye on him and make sure everything went smoothly. Ward had been assigned to get Skye to unlock a hard drive she'd made with critical S.H.I.E.L.D. data on it without blowing his S.H.I.E.L.D. cover—unbeknownst to him, he already had, and Skye was playing him for time. Everything soon came out into the open and the police got involved, and Deathlok intervened to take Ward and Skye to the Bus that Ward had stolen. With all presumptions cast aside, Ward tried to properly interrogate Skye, but she was remained obstinate in refusing to give him anything. On Garrett's orders, Deathlok took things a step further. He activated a powerful electric device on Ward's chest, telling Skye that he would die in moments if she didn't cooperate. Against her better judgment, she complied, and Ward was spared. Soon after, as the Bus sat on the runway, the Hydra agents were accosted by Maria Hill in another plane, who told them to stand down. They naturally refused, but this was in fact a cover to allow Phil Coulson to infiltrate the plane before it took off. Coulson found Skye and they narrowly escaped through the cargo hold on Lola as Deathlok gave chase.

Ian Quinn planned on selling the Deathlok technology in the form of an army of super soldiers to the U.S. military, withholding the information that it was from Hydra. Garrett had Deathlok violently kill an infamous drug lord in Colombia, garnering international news and demonstrating the technology's power. Soon, the situation between Garrett and what remained of S.H.I.E.L.D. came to a head at a Cybertek manufacturing facility. By this point, Mike's son Ace was being held captive by Cybertek as part of their "incentives program," which coerced people into working for them by kidnapping their loved ones. Phil Coulson and former S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury confronted Garrett, and Garrett attempted to use Deathlok as backup. But Skye gained access to the incentives program, hacked into the "failsafe" system, and had Ace send Mike a message to his eye that told him he was safe. With his son's wellbeing assured, Peterson turned on Garrett, blasting him with a rocket and grievously injuring him—some time later, Garrett would quietly recover, but Coulson would vaporize him with a S.H.I.E.L.D. contraband weapon. Skye was told to take Garrett into custody, but he assured her that his life would be devoted to atoning for what Hydra had made him do, and that she could surely hack into his system and keep tabs on him at any time. As Ace was taken in once again by his aunt, Mike Peterson went off on his own to live a new life.