Back to Gatefold
Issue #2 by D. Golightly
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“PLAY TIME”
KRA-KOOM!
Another explosion rocked the landscape, shaking not only the ground, but the massive mounds of rubble and debris scattered about. A bearded man who had no idea who he was, where he was, or why he was being attacked, ducked under a slab of concrete that had been propped up against a miraculously still-standing wall.
“If I ever see that little HERB again…” he mumbled.
He gripped a sleek rifle tightly in his hands, imagining that should the little floating eyeball of a robot ever pop up in front of him again, he would simply blast it and walk away. He felt for the sidearm on his hip, which was clinging to the strange material of his black bodysuit. He assumed that both weapons were loaded and ready for action since they had both come from an armory a dozen levels below ground level.
He leaned around the side of the supporting wall and looked at where the elevator had opened up, depositing him into this hell. Any hope he had of riding it back down to safety was gone by the time the smoke had cleared. No sooner had he came to the surface than the elevator had been shelled. By whom, he wasn’t quite sure.
What he did know was that these militant people were gunning for him. Agent Zero. The Failsafe. Whatever that meant.
The facility he had woken up in had been damaged heavily by the shelling on the surface, and possibly a raid from inside. These people had apparently been at this for awhile and looking around at what used to be a city, he wondered for just how long. Entire city blocks that obviously used to be functional, and possibly even beautiful, were now nothing more than charred remains. As far as he could see it looked like a war torn metropolis.
Rampant gunfire surrounded him, and not just nearby. Off in the distance of this hellish city he could hear stray battles being fought all over. He couldn’t remember ever experiencing anything like it before.
Of course, he couldn’t really remember anything.
Aside from a few bursts of images in his mind’s eye, he knew absolutely nothing about his own past. He very well could have contributed to this war zone in a past life; he couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that he was awake and someone was trying to kill him.
He’d think about asking them politely if he survived the shelling.
KRA-KOOM!
The blasts were beginning to move further to the South. He couldn’t make out a moon or a sun overhead, although the overcastting twilight suggested that it was either dusk or dawn. Thick smog enveloped the city as far as he could see, hanging over him like a wet blanket smeared with grease.
He scratched his beard, wondering what he should do. Deciding that the best course of action was to get away from the provoked individuals up on the hill that were firing what had to be shells as large as his head, he turned West and hugged the hollowed out building for cover.
Jagged pieces of glass were strewn about, with one piece still in tact that bore the name of the establishment. “Johnson’s Shoe Repair” hadn’t faired any better than the rest of the city. He could see clearly through the walls up onto the hill where a pair of men wearing body armor stood watching the destruction they had wrought.
They were armed. One turned to look back down the opposite side of the hill to yell something. There must be more out of sight. The bearded man had no inclination of getting caught. It obviously wouldn’t be conducive to his survival, and he doubted those men had the answers he sought. As far as he was concerned they could continue to think that he had been inside the elevator when it was destroyed.
“Hey!” a soft and frail voice said behind him. “Who are you? Don’t you know that the Marauders are hunting tonight?”
He fell into a crouch instinctively and somersaulted forward, bringing his rifle up to eye level as he spun. The muzzle of his rifle pointed directly at a thin girl with ragged clothing, the sight of which took him off guard. He blinked, unsure of what to say.
Shocked from his aggressive reaction, the waif ducked down and slipped through the overturned wall. Her body faded in the light and easily passed through the solid wall, this time shocking the bearded man.
“What?” he said.
“Are you with them?” he heard her ask from the other side of the wall. “Are you a Marauder?”
“What’s a Marauder?”
A ghostly hand appeared through the wall, popping out and pointing up the hill. “Them,” she said.
“No, I am definitely not with them. Who are you…and how did you do that? Are you a ghost?”
The malnourished girl stepped back through the wall, amazingly without any sign of effort. It was like stepping between two rooms to her. Her body faded fully back into a solid form and she crouched down in front of the bearded man.
“I’m not a ghost,” she said, “but there might be some lurking around. A lot of people have died here. It’s like a graveyard without the incumbency of ceremony. My name’s Kitty.”
“I’m called…” His voice trailed off as he wandered just how exactly he should refer to himself. “Zero. My name is Zero.”
Kitty scrunched her face up. “Weird name.”
“Says the girl named Kitty.”
Random gunfire cut through the open area in front of where the elevator had come up. Both Zero and Kitty hunched down on instinct, peering through the holes punched into the wall to get a better look at what was going on. The two gunmen from atop the hill had left their mortar behind and had descended to their level.
“Quite wasting ammunition!” the first said. “It’s not like we get a new shipment every day.”
“Shut your face, Malone. I know I saw something come out of those doors when they opened.”
“You’re paranoid, Knoll. Petrakis has you wound up.”
“Maybe I’m just smart. You know what he did to the last guy that didn’t follow orders.”
“Yeah,” Malone said. “Mutants, man. Fucked up. I hate working with them enough. Being bossed around by one that can liquefy your insides with a wave of his hand is scary shit.”
“I know. That’s why I’m not paranoid, I’m just cautious. Petrakis told us to watch this area and kill anyone that wasn’t with us.”
Kitty nudged Zero’s elbow, drawing his attention to the other side of the decimated building that they hid behind. She pointed with her chin, indicating that they should quietly sneak away. Zero nodded and turned to follow.
They made it half way before someone saw them.
“Hey!” another Marauder shouted from the hill above them. They had come to a spot in the wall that revealed their position from a certain angle, and whoever the pair on the ground had been with was now at the mortar. “Guys! Over there!”
Malone and Knoll both whirled toward the shell of a building, assault rifles at the ready. Zero ducked down just as the gunfire started again, but this time it was directly aimed at him. Chunks of brick exploded around him as the already worn wall took another beating.
Zero’s head pounded, and for a split second, he was somewhere else.
A woman with red hair, the same one that had been naked in a field with him sparring, handed him a weapon. She pointed at a grouping of targets a hundred feet away and told him to fire. He squeezed off a shot at each one, hitting off of the targets dead center.
“C’mon!” Kitty screamed as she shook him back into the present. “We have to get out of here!”
Zero shook his head. Had that been another memory resurfacing? He didn’t have time to debate with his inner conscious. Kitty was right; they needed to start running. But to where? They were boxed in with the two on the ground and at least one above them.
Taking careful aim, Zero discharged his rifle through the hole in the wall that the man on the hill had seen. One shot struck him directly in the head, sending his body tumbling back down over his side of the hill.
He angled the weapon through the hole to point where Malone and Knoll were standing and fired again, this time several short bursts at their feet. The pair scrambled, diving out of the way when they realized their prey was fighting back. Zero laid down cover fire on instinct, keeping the two soldiers pinned.
Oddly, he felt no aggression while fighting back. He had assumed that when put into a fight for his life, that he would involve emotion. Hate. Anger. Something. Instead there was nothing. Even killing the man on the hill had been nothing to him. It felt, somehow, a part of him. As if he were bred for war.
“Let’s go already!” Kitty said as she grabbed his arm and pulled.
Her body turned incorporeal again and light seemingly passed right through her. His arm felt strange, as if a cold breeze had washed over him without the wind. Then, to his horror, his own body began to become see-through. He felt lighter and the cold spread to the rest of his body.
“Follow me, and don’t let go!” Kitty said as she turned to the hill they were wedged against.
Zero grabbed the hand she slid into his, clasping it tightly. They ducked into the hillside, plowing through the molecules that composed it. The sight was plunging headfirst into solid matter was distorting, as if someone had thrown a thick blanket over his head but the blanket was too small to cover all of his senses.
The hillside surrounded him, muffling what he would consider vision. He tried to speak, and while his mouth moved, no sound came out. He realized that with solid matter completely encapsulating him, there was no air for the sound waves to travel on.
As suddenly as the assault on his senses had begun, it finished. They popped out of the other side of the hill, thirty feet from where they had been, completely unharmed. Kitty let go of his hand and he instantly reverted to his full physical form.
“What the hell was that?” he asked, panting.
“I’m a mutant. It’s what I do. But, listen! We need to go before they come around. They won’t stop searching. I know a place we can hide.”
“Why not just hide inside the hill? Or keep intangible for longer and just walk right on by them?”
Kitty frowned. “It’s like flexing a muscle. I can’t do it forever. C’mon. This way.”
Agent Zero tightened his grip on the rifle he was carrying, looked around at the war torn landscape, and followed the waif. She obviously knew where they were headed and was familiar with the territory. They ducked down what remained of an alley and hopped over a pile of refuse to another street. She looked cautious but moved with determination.
“So, the Marauders?” Zero asked.
“Killers trying to hunt down the Resistance.”
“Of course. And you’re in the Resistance?”
“I was just rescued by them, yeah. Natasha found me a few weeks ago, hiding in the sewers. She saved my life. See, I’m a mutant. The Marauders are under orders to kill anyone in the Resistance, but mutants take special precedent.”
Zero nodded as he followed her down another alley. “You’re a mutant. That’s how you can move through things?”
“Yeah. It comes in handy when you’re running for your life. The Marauders hunt down mutants so we don’t use our powers against them. Unless you want to enlist and join them.”
“So they have mutants in the Marauders?” Zero asked.
“They’re led by one. Petrakis. He goes by another name, though. He calls himself Avalanche. See all this?” Kitty motioned toward the general city and the crumbling buildings that composed it. “He did that.”
“One guy did all this?”
“Petrakis’ mutant ability can smash entire city blocks if he wants. But if he did that then there wouldn’t be anything left to rule over. The Marauders are the unofficial police force here.”
The pair walked in silence for a while as Zero let the information sink in. It was hard to imagine how just one man could basically shake an entire city into the current state it was in. It seemed to be too much power for one man. Petrakis, this Avalanche, must have been quite an imposing figure to have gathered a following and held an entire city under his palm.
Was that why he was here? HERB, the annoying little floating robot eyeball, had implied that he had a specific purpose. He had awoken in the lab for a reason. Were the Marauders trying to break in, find him, and kill him? Did they know who he was?
He thought about the images that had popped up in his head. Training. He had been trained to kill.
Was he supposed to kill Petrakis?
“We’re here,” Kitty said.
Zero followed her, ducking underneath a slab of wood that hung over a doorway. They entered a building near the center of a block, being careful to step over or around the debris. Inside there wasn’t much to look at other than piles of garbage, overturned furniture, and stacks of bricks.
He looked closer at the bricks and noticed that the inside of the building had a second wall built against the first. This second layer, pressed tightly against the original wall, was in much better shape then the outside of the building.
“They reinforced the place from the inside only so it wouldn’t draw attention from the outside,” Kitty explained. “Avalanche can shake this place all he wants, but I doubt he could knock it over without some effort. Even if he did, he would only close up the entrance and seal his goons out.”
Kitty lifted up a slab of tile from the floor, revealing a hole with a ladder. They slipped into the hole and placed the tile back over them, leaving it appear as if they had never come through.
The hole dropped them down into a dark tunnel that was lit, barely, but hanging flood lights. The lights seemed to barely hold a charge, but they still provided enough light for them to get through the dank tunnel without tripping.
“Listen, Zero,” Kitty said. “They don’t know I’m bringing you. Radio communiqué is only reserved for emergency situations.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t be here.”
“No, you can’t go out there by yourself. The Marauders will just hunt you down again. The Resistance can help you. Like they helped me. Just…no sudden moves, okay?”
“Kitty,” Zero said. “Before we meet up with the others, what exactly does the Resistance, you know…resist?”
Kitty stopped dead in her tracks. She paused, slowly turned to face him, and raised an eyebrow. “Are you serious?” she said in disbelief.
“Well, I figured it was the Marauders—”
“No. No, no, no. The Marauders are just the muscle. The brain is what we fight against. We go against everything he stands for, everything he does, and everything he attempts.”
“Who?”
Kitty stared at him, dumbfounded. “You have to be kidding me.”
“Kidding about what?” Zero replied. “Who does the Resistance fight against?”
“Apocalypse.”
Zero matched her stare for an instant before images once again pelted his mind. He stumbled back as scenes of rampant destruction, utter chaos, and fiery abominations ran through his vision. Millions were being killed. People of every creed, race, and belief were tortured and murdered because of the word of one man. The man at the center of every single image.
His fiendish smile made Zero feel sick. His thick skin and blue armor looked impervious. His hands, so huge and powerful, each gripped a skull and shattered them with ease.
“Zero!”
He shook his head, finally ridding himself of the horrible images. These were different than the others, different from what he perceived as memories before. These weren’t things he had experienced. They were more like things he was aware of happening all around him. He looked at Kitty, who was huddled beside him on the wet ground. Somehow he had gone from standing to lying down during the altercation.
“Zero, what just happened?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I…I don’t know.”
“Shadowcat!” a new voice said, startling them.
“Shit,” Kitty whispered. “Get up, and don’t say anything. Let me do the talking.”
Zero stood back up with Kitty in front of him. A pair of lights flipped on at the end of the tunnel, basking them in blinding light. Three figures stood in front of the light, their silhouettes overshadowing them. The center figure, obviously a woman from the shape, took a few steps toward them.
“Shadowcat, who is this? Is he a Marauder?”
“No! Natasha, he’s running from the Marauders.” Kitty positioned herself between Zero and the new arrival. “I saw him come to the surface after Avalanche’s goons bombarded a specific complex. They were after him.”
The woman, Natasha, stepped closer. “He came up to the surface? From underground?”
“Yes,” Kitty said. “I brought him here because—”
Natasha waved her hand to silence the waif. She stepped closer, placing a hand on Zero’s face. She felt the rough beard and made a face, pulling her hand back. For a brief instant, as he hand moved away, it blocked the light in Zero’s eyes long enough for him to see her dazzling red hair.
“It looks like you were woken up much later than you should have been, Failsafe,” Natasha said. “We have a lot of work to do.”
TO BE CONTINUED...
KRA-KOOM!
Another explosion rocked the landscape, shaking not only the ground, but the massive mounds of rubble and debris scattered about. A bearded man who had no idea who he was, where he was, or why he was being attacked, ducked under a slab of concrete that had been propped up against a miraculously still-standing wall.
“If I ever see that little HERB again…” he mumbled.
He gripped a sleek rifle tightly in his hands, imagining that should the little floating eyeball of a robot ever pop up in front of him again, he would simply blast it and walk away. He felt for the sidearm on his hip, which was clinging to the strange material of his black bodysuit. He assumed that both weapons were loaded and ready for action since they had both come from an armory a dozen levels below ground level.
He leaned around the side of the supporting wall and looked at where the elevator had opened up, depositing him into this hell. Any hope he had of riding it back down to safety was gone by the time the smoke had cleared. No sooner had he came to the surface than the elevator had been shelled. By whom, he wasn’t quite sure.
What he did know was that these militant people were gunning for him. Agent Zero. The Failsafe. Whatever that meant.
The facility he had woken up in had been damaged heavily by the shelling on the surface, and possibly a raid from inside. These people had apparently been at this for awhile and looking around at what used to be a city, he wondered for just how long. Entire city blocks that obviously used to be functional, and possibly even beautiful, were now nothing more than charred remains. As far as he could see it looked like a war torn metropolis.
Rampant gunfire surrounded him, and not just nearby. Off in the distance of this hellish city he could hear stray battles being fought all over. He couldn’t remember ever experiencing anything like it before.
Of course, he couldn’t really remember anything.
Aside from a few bursts of images in his mind’s eye, he knew absolutely nothing about his own past. He very well could have contributed to this war zone in a past life; he couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that he was awake and someone was trying to kill him.
He’d think about asking them politely if he survived the shelling.
KRA-KOOM!
The blasts were beginning to move further to the South. He couldn’t make out a moon or a sun overhead, although the overcastting twilight suggested that it was either dusk or dawn. Thick smog enveloped the city as far as he could see, hanging over him like a wet blanket smeared with grease.
He scratched his beard, wondering what he should do. Deciding that the best course of action was to get away from the provoked individuals up on the hill that were firing what had to be shells as large as his head, he turned West and hugged the hollowed out building for cover.
Jagged pieces of glass were strewn about, with one piece still in tact that bore the name of the establishment. “Johnson’s Shoe Repair” hadn’t faired any better than the rest of the city. He could see clearly through the walls up onto the hill where a pair of men wearing body armor stood watching the destruction they had wrought.
They were armed. One turned to look back down the opposite side of the hill to yell something. There must be more out of sight. The bearded man had no inclination of getting caught. It obviously wouldn’t be conducive to his survival, and he doubted those men had the answers he sought. As far as he was concerned they could continue to think that he had been inside the elevator when it was destroyed.
“Hey!” a soft and frail voice said behind him. “Who are you? Don’t you know that the Marauders are hunting tonight?”
He fell into a crouch instinctively and somersaulted forward, bringing his rifle up to eye level as he spun. The muzzle of his rifle pointed directly at a thin girl with ragged clothing, the sight of which took him off guard. He blinked, unsure of what to say.
Shocked from his aggressive reaction, the waif ducked down and slipped through the overturned wall. Her body faded in the light and easily passed through the solid wall, this time shocking the bearded man.
“What?” he said.
“Are you with them?” he heard her ask from the other side of the wall. “Are you a Marauder?”
“What’s a Marauder?”
A ghostly hand appeared through the wall, popping out and pointing up the hill. “Them,” she said.
“No, I am definitely not with them. Who are you…and how did you do that? Are you a ghost?”
The malnourished girl stepped back through the wall, amazingly without any sign of effort. It was like stepping between two rooms to her. Her body faded fully back into a solid form and she crouched down in front of the bearded man.
“I’m not a ghost,” she said, “but there might be some lurking around. A lot of people have died here. It’s like a graveyard without the incumbency of ceremony. My name’s Kitty.”
“I’m called…” His voice trailed off as he wandered just how exactly he should refer to himself. “Zero. My name is Zero.”
Kitty scrunched her face up. “Weird name.”
“Says the girl named Kitty.”
Random gunfire cut through the open area in front of where the elevator had come up. Both Zero and Kitty hunched down on instinct, peering through the holes punched into the wall to get a better look at what was going on. The two gunmen from atop the hill had left their mortar behind and had descended to their level.
“Quite wasting ammunition!” the first said. “It’s not like we get a new shipment every day.”
“Shut your face, Malone. I know I saw something come out of those doors when they opened.”
“You’re paranoid, Knoll. Petrakis has you wound up.”
“Maybe I’m just smart. You know what he did to the last guy that didn’t follow orders.”
“Yeah,” Malone said. “Mutants, man. Fucked up. I hate working with them enough. Being bossed around by one that can liquefy your insides with a wave of his hand is scary shit.”
“I know. That’s why I’m not paranoid, I’m just cautious. Petrakis told us to watch this area and kill anyone that wasn’t with us.”
Kitty nudged Zero’s elbow, drawing his attention to the other side of the decimated building that they hid behind. She pointed with her chin, indicating that they should quietly sneak away. Zero nodded and turned to follow.
They made it half way before someone saw them.
“Hey!” another Marauder shouted from the hill above them. They had come to a spot in the wall that revealed their position from a certain angle, and whoever the pair on the ground had been with was now at the mortar. “Guys! Over there!”
Malone and Knoll both whirled toward the shell of a building, assault rifles at the ready. Zero ducked down just as the gunfire started again, but this time it was directly aimed at him. Chunks of brick exploded around him as the already worn wall took another beating.
Zero’s head pounded, and for a split second, he was somewhere else.
A woman with red hair, the same one that had been naked in a field with him sparring, handed him a weapon. She pointed at a grouping of targets a hundred feet away and told him to fire. He squeezed off a shot at each one, hitting off of the targets dead center.
“C’mon!” Kitty screamed as she shook him back into the present. “We have to get out of here!”
Zero shook his head. Had that been another memory resurfacing? He didn’t have time to debate with his inner conscious. Kitty was right; they needed to start running. But to where? They were boxed in with the two on the ground and at least one above them.
Taking careful aim, Zero discharged his rifle through the hole in the wall that the man on the hill had seen. One shot struck him directly in the head, sending his body tumbling back down over his side of the hill.
He angled the weapon through the hole to point where Malone and Knoll were standing and fired again, this time several short bursts at their feet. The pair scrambled, diving out of the way when they realized their prey was fighting back. Zero laid down cover fire on instinct, keeping the two soldiers pinned.
Oddly, he felt no aggression while fighting back. He had assumed that when put into a fight for his life, that he would involve emotion. Hate. Anger. Something. Instead there was nothing. Even killing the man on the hill had been nothing to him. It felt, somehow, a part of him. As if he were bred for war.
“Let’s go already!” Kitty said as she grabbed his arm and pulled.
Her body turned incorporeal again and light seemingly passed right through her. His arm felt strange, as if a cold breeze had washed over him without the wind. Then, to his horror, his own body began to become see-through. He felt lighter and the cold spread to the rest of his body.
“Follow me, and don’t let go!” Kitty said as she turned to the hill they were wedged against.
Zero grabbed the hand she slid into his, clasping it tightly. They ducked into the hillside, plowing through the molecules that composed it. The sight was plunging headfirst into solid matter was distorting, as if someone had thrown a thick blanket over his head but the blanket was too small to cover all of his senses.
The hillside surrounded him, muffling what he would consider vision. He tried to speak, and while his mouth moved, no sound came out. He realized that with solid matter completely encapsulating him, there was no air for the sound waves to travel on.
As suddenly as the assault on his senses had begun, it finished. They popped out of the other side of the hill, thirty feet from where they had been, completely unharmed. Kitty let go of his hand and he instantly reverted to his full physical form.
“What the hell was that?” he asked, panting.
“I’m a mutant. It’s what I do. But, listen! We need to go before they come around. They won’t stop searching. I know a place we can hide.”
“Why not just hide inside the hill? Or keep intangible for longer and just walk right on by them?”
Kitty frowned. “It’s like flexing a muscle. I can’t do it forever. C’mon. This way.”
Agent Zero tightened his grip on the rifle he was carrying, looked around at the war torn landscape, and followed the waif. She obviously knew where they were headed and was familiar with the territory. They ducked down what remained of an alley and hopped over a pile of refuse to another street. She looked cautious but moved with determination.
“So, the Marauders?” Zero asked.
“Killers trying to hunt down the Resistance.”
“Of course. And you’re in the Resistance?”
“I was just rescued by them, yeah. Natasha found me a few weeks ago, hiding in the sewers. She saved my life. See, I’m a mutant. The Marauders are under orders to kill anyone in the Resistance, but mutants take special precedent.”
Zero nodded as he followed her down another alley. “You’re a mutant. That’s how you can move through things?”
“Yeah. It comes in handy when you’re running for your life. The Marauders hunt down mutants so we don’t use our powers against them. Unless you want to enlist and join them.”
“So they have mutants in the Marauders?” Zero asked.
“They’re led by one. Petrakis. He goes by another name, though. He calls himself Avalanche. See all this?” Kitty motioned toward the general city and the crumbling buildings that composed it. “He did that.”
“One guy did all this?”
“Petrakis’ mutant ability can smash entire city blocks if he wants. But if he did that then there wouldn’t be anything left to rule over. The Marauders are the unofficial police force here.”
The pair walked in silence for a while as Zero let the information sink in. It was hard to imagine how just one man could basically shake an entire city into the current state it was in. It seemed to be too much power for one man. Petrakis, this Avalanche, must have been quite an imposing figure to have gathered a following and held an entire city under his palm.
Was that why he was here? HERB, the annoying little floating robot eyeball, had implied that he had a specific purpose. He had awoken in the lab for a reason. Were the Marauders trying to break in, find him, and kill him? Did they know who he was?
He thought about the images that had popped up in his head. Training. He had been trained to kill.
Was he supposed to kill Petrakis?
“We’re here,” Kitty said.
Zero followed her, ducking underneath a slab of wood that hung over a doorway. They entered a building near the center of a block, being careful to step over or around the debris. Inside there wasn’t much to look at other than piles of garbage, overturned furniture, and stacks of bricks.
He looked closer at the bricks and noticed that the inside of the building had a second wall built against the first. This second layer, pressed tightly against the original wall, was in much better shape then the outside of the building.
“They reinforced the place from the inside only so it wouldn’t draw attention from the outside,” Kitty explained. “Avalanche can shake this place all he wants, but I doubt he could knock it over without some effort. Even if he did, he would only close up the entrance and seal his goons out.”
Kitty lifted up a slab of tile from the floor, revealing a hole with a ladder. They slipped into the hole and placed the tile back over them, leaving it appear as if they had never come through.
The hole dropped them down into a dark tunnel that was lit, barely, but hanging flood lights. The lights seemed to barely hold a charge, but they still provided enough light for them to get through the dank tunnel without tripping.
“Listen, Zero,” Kitty said. “They don’t know I’m bringing you. Radio communiqué is only reserved for emergency situations.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t be here.”
“No, you can’t go out there by yourself. The Marauders will just hunt you down again. The Resistance can help you. Like they helped me. Just…no sudden moves, okay?”
“Kitty,” Zero said. “Before we meet up with the others, what exactly does the Resistance, you know…resist?”
Kitty stopped dead in her tracks. She paused, slowly turned to face him, and raised an eyebrow. “Are you serious?” she said in disbelief.
“Well, I figured it was the Marauders—”
“No. No, no, no. The Marauders are just the muscle. The brain is what we fight against. We go against everything he stands for, everything he does, and everything he attempts.”
“Who?”
Kitty stared at him, dumbfounded. “You have to be kidding me.”
“Kidding about what?” Zero replied. “Who does the Resistance fight against?”
“Apocalypse.”
Zero matched her stare for an instant before images once again pelted his mind. He stumbled back as scenes of rampant destruction, utter chaos, and fiery abominations ran through his vision. Millions were being killed. People of every creed, race, and belief were tortured and murdered because of the word of one man. The man at the center of every single image.
His fiendish smile made Zero feel sick. His thick skin and blue armor looked impervious. His hands, so huge and powerful, each gripped a skull and shattered them with ease.
“Zero!”
He shook his head, finally ridding himself of the horrible images. These were different than the others, different from what he perceived as memories before. These weren’t things he had experienced. They were more like things he was aware of happening all around him. He looked at Kitty, who was huddled beside him on the wet ground. Somehow he had gone from standing to lying down during the altercation.
“Zero, what just happened?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I…I don’t know.”
“Shadowcat!” a new voice said, startling them.
“Shit,” Kitty whispered. “Get up, and don’t say anything. Let me do the talking.”
Zero stood back up with Kitty in front of him. A pair of lights flipped on at the end of the tunnel, basking them in blinding light. Three figures stood in front of the light, their silhouettes overshadowing them. The center figure, obviously a woman from the shape, took a few steps toward them.
“Shadowcat, who is this? Is he a Marauder?”
“No! Natasha, he’s running from the Marauders.” Kitty positioned herself between Zero and the new arrival. “I saw him come to the surface after Avalanche’s goons bombarded a specific complex. They were after him.”
The woman, Natasha, stepped closer. “He came up to the surface? From underground?”
“Yes,” Kitty said. “I brought him here because—”
Natasha waved her hand to silence the waif. She stepped closer, placing a hand on Zero’s face. She felt the rough beard and made a face, pulling her hand back. For a brief instant, as he hand moved away, it blocked the light in Zero’s eyes long enough for him to see her dazzling red hair.
“It looks like you were woken up much later than you should have been, Failsafe,” Natasha said. “We have a lot of work to do.”
TO BE CONTINUED...