[NOW: An Abandoned Laboratory Outside of Middleton, New York...]
Charles Xavier closed his eyes and screamed in agony.
"Charles!" Hank McCoy yelled, rushing to his side. "What happened?" he questioned Makah Greycrow.
"I didn't see anything!" Makah responded. "He just opened his eyes and screamed!"
"Did you shift at all? Try to stay still, Charles, the damage-"
"No," Charles barked out in a guttural, hoarse cry. "Not my back. My mind... fear... pain... death... my God, the horror... they blame me! They're cursing my name!"
"Who is, Charles? Who is cursing your name?"
"The ones Leftwich put away. The ones at Mercy Haven. They're dying."
"The Alley? Charles, what about the guards?"
"There are no guards," Charles said, a tear rolling down the side of his face, "Leftwich only gives the prisoners the minimum to survive, and abandons them with no hope of escape. Automatic supply deliveries come through every two months, but they get processed by machine. And now the inmates are being massacred."
[NOW: The Mansion...]
"Scott!" Jean cried out. "It's Hank! He's alive!"
Scott looked up from the computer terminal he had been staring at for the past hour, planning an infiltration to rescue Charles. "What? How?"
"He left the jet before we took off! That's why you couldn't reach him! And he has Charles!"
"Thank God!" Scott said, smiling. He stepped over to Jean and his smile disappeared. "What's wrong?"
Jean's eyes were saucers in her sockets. The scenes in her mind were relayed from Hank, who had them in his mind because of Charles, who had gotten them from the source. But even three times removed from the source, Jean couldn't suppress the horror of the imagery.
"We need to go to Mercy Haven. Scott, they're being slaughtered."
Scott had heard of Mercy Haven, but even after confirmation of its existence, it had always seemed like an urban legend to him. It was an asylum of sorts for subjects who were cataclysmically altered by the Weapon X trials, unable to return to normal society. He had, as a child, imagined it as a house of horrors filled with inhuman monsters, but in retrospect, it seemed silly to imagine them as anything other than unfortunate souls. "Send out the call. We leave in five minutes."
[NOW: Avalon...]
"We're on our way," Ororo said, closing her phone.
"Where?" Mortimer said, stepping out from behind one of Avalon's countless columns.
"I don't answer to you, Mortimer," she said, stepping around him.
"Yes, but you answer to the Master, and I wonder if he knows about the little trips you and the others have been going on?"
"I give Erik a full briefing on all activities that we embark upon in the Brotherhood's name."
"I don't doubt it," Mortimer said, sneering, "but tell me, when you and Nightcrawler, and Sunfire, and Colossus go out, are you always acting in the Brotherhood's name?"
"If Erik has a question for me, he knows he is free to ask it himself!" Ororo said, slamming Mortimer up against the wall. "In the meantime, you'd do well to remember that I am Magneto's field leader, and my word carries much more weight with him than yours does, Toad! You don't want to know what happens to a toad when it gets struck by lightning."
"I can't imagine anyone would," Mortimer said. "But toads have a tendency to survive lousy weather, and thrive in its aftermath."
Ororo released him, letting him drop to the ground. "And they also have a tendency to get stepped on when they get underfoot. You'd do well to remember that, too." She strode away, towards the residential halls.
"Oh, I will, wind witch," Mortimer said, "I most certainly will."
Charles Xavier closed his eyes and screamed in agony.
"Charles!" Hank McCoy yelled, rushing to his side. "What happened?" he questioned Makah Greycrow.
"I didn't see anything!" Makah responded. "He just opened his eyes and screamed!"
"Did you shift at all? Try to stay still, Charles, the damage-"
"No," Charles barked out in a guttural, hoarse cry. "Not my back. My mind... fear... pain... death... my God, the horror... they blame me! They're cursing my name!"
"Who is, Charles? Who is cursing your name?"
"The ones Leftwich put away. The ones at Mercy Haven. They're dying."
"The Alley? Charles, what about the guards?"
"There are no guards," Charles said, a tear rolling down the side of his face, "Leftwich only gives the prisoners the minimum to survive, and abandons them with no hope of escape. Automatic supply deliveries come through every two months, but they get processed by machine. And now the inmates are being massacred."
[NOW: The Mansion...]
"Scott!" Jean cried out. "It's Hank! He's alive!"
Scott looked up from the computer terminal he had been staring at for the past hour, planning an infiltration to rescue Charles. "What? How?"
"He left the jet before we took off! That's why you couldn't reach him! And he has Charles!"
"Thank God!" Scott said, smiling. He stepped over to Jean and his smile disappeared. "What's wrong?"
Jean's eyes were saucers in her sockets. The scenes in her mind were relayed from Hank, who had them in his mind because of Charles, who had gotten them from the source. But even three times removed from the source, Jean couldn't suppress the horror of the imagery.
"We need to go to Mercy Haven. Scott, they're being slaughtered."
Scott had heard of Mercy Haven, but even after confirmation of its existence, it had always seemed like an urban legend to him. It was an asylum of sorts for subjects who were cataclysmically altered by the Weapon X trials, unable to return to normal society. He had, as a child, imagined it as a house of horrors filled with inhuman monsters, but in retrospect, it seemed silly to imagine them as anything other than unfortunate souls. "Send out the call. We leave in five minutes."
[NOW: Avalon...]
"We're on our way," Ororo said, closing her phone.
"Where?" Mortimer said, stepping out from behind one of Avalon's countless columns.
"I don't answer to you, Mortimer," she said, stepping around him.
"Yes, but you answer to the Master, and I wonder if he knows about the little trips you and the others have been going on?"
"I give Erik a full briefing on all activities that we embark upon in the Brotherhood's name."
"I don't doubt it," Mortimer said, sneering, "but tell me, when you and Nightcrawler, and Sunfire, and Colossus go out, are you always acting in the Brotherhood's name?"
"If Erik has a question for me, he knows he is free to ask it himself!" Ororo said, slamming Mortimer up against the wall. "In the meantime, you'd do well to remember that I am Magneto's field leader, and my word carries much more weight with him than yours does, Toad! You don't want to know what happens to a toad when it gets struck by lightning."
"I can't imagine anyone would," Mortimer said. "But toads have a tendency to survive lousy weather, and thrive in its aftermath."
Ororo released him, letting him drop to the ground. "And they also have a tendency to get stepped on when they get underfoot. You'd do well to remember that, too." She strode away, towards the residential halls.
"Oh, I will, wind witch," Mortimer said, "I most certainly will."
“The Morlock Massacre”
[NOW: The Alley...]
Peter sat huddled against the bars of the outflow drain, shivering. Just beyond, the river seemed so wide, so vast, so powerful in comparison to the meager trickle that passed through the outflow. He didn't know what river it was, his parents had never bothered to tell him. He didn't know much about anything beyond the grate, as he had never ventured out of the Alley; almost no one did, and those that did leave never came back. Like Silk. He liked Silk, she was beautiful like an angel and was never mean to him, even though he was a freak.
There was a sharp sound, a boom he could only imagine as what his parents referred to as gun-fire, although there hadn't been gun-fires down in the Alley since the Weapon X men left for good. He looked back at the darkness and heard a shrill scream. Was that his momma? She had yelled for Peter to run, to go someplace safe and hide, before turning to go out and face the bad guys. There had been so many screams, though. Dozens. It felt like hundreds, even though he knew there weren't even that many people in the Alley. There were no repeats, though. Once a person screamed, they stopped before they could scream again.
His momma had taught him about bad guys, like the Weapon X men who locked the Morlocks away from the outside world, and the Weapon X men who kept them locked up with their guns, and bad guys in outside world history like Adolf Hitler and Richard Nixon. She had taught him that bad guys were mean to people like the Morlocks, people who were different, people who didn't fit in. These were really bad guys, though, because they weren't just being mean, like the other kids were mean when they called him a human baby. They were killing people, and Peter was helpless to do anything, because his friends were right, he really was just a powerless human baby, with a stupid human baby name. Nothing to make him special, like his pop's electricity or his momma's telekinesis.
Something caught his eye and he looked down at the meek current of the outflow. A piece of paper, it seemed, cut to an odd shape. It rode the tiny ripples, slowly swirling as it tumbled, and Peter caught a color on it. Blue, like what Silk used to call Robin's Egg, like the sky he sometimes saw through the bars of the air grate. Then he saw the other colors, and his tears, blocked for this entire ordeal by some unknown force, finally escaped. It was Silk. She had come back, somehow, and the bad guys had killed her. Her face was screaming from the paper, only it wasn't paper, this was really her head. Someone had cut off her head while she was flat. Peter tried to grab it, but it slipped between his fingers. tumbling over itself in the water. He let out a tiny dismayed whine and scrambled to grab it again. His fingers caught it, and began to pull it back when it slipped again, like a noodle from one of the noodle cups the Weapon X men delivered, and splashed through the grate. Peter lunged, slamming his left shoulder into the bars as he made a last desperate grasp, but he missed, and Silk's screaming face splashed into the river below, disappearing in the rapid current.
Peter sat for a long while, his shoulder mashed against the bars, his arm hanging futilely out into the world, weeping for the girl who had been nicer to him than anyone else in the whole Alley ever had.
"I got one, 'Ro," a gruff voice said, and Peter lurched back, scrambling on his hands and feet in a panicked crab walk.
"Don't be scared," a deep, smooth voice said. It was a heavenly, feminine sound, like how an angel would sound, Peter imagined.
He looked out and saw people staring at him. One of them was closer than the rest, and he looked like he could be a bad guy. He had long metal claws that glinted in the dim moonlight, and he was hairy, hairier than anyone he had ever seen. Except maybe Mole.
The hairy scary man slid his claws along the bars of the grate and sliced through them as if they were paper. With three quick motions, he had cut a hole large enough for someone to fit through.
"Peter," the beautiful voice said, and he blinked. "See if you can get the rest of these bars out of our way."
His head snapped up at hearing his name, but when he heard her request, he tried to shake his head. He managed to mutter "I can't," when the moonlight was eclipsed by a tremendous shadow. The largest man he had ever seen, bigger even than Sunder, filled the entrance of the tunnel, and gripped the bars. His skin glinted like the hairy scary man's claws, and Peter realized this man was made of metal. These were people like his parents, people with powers. People like the bad men.
"Don't kill me!" Peter cried out, and began to weep, his face hot with shame at his own cowardice.
"Your name is Peter?" the metal man said. "That is my name too. Peter, like the Saint." He tugged gently, and the bars gave way like tin foil. "I swear, my friends and I will not hurt you."
The beautiful voice spoke again. "Don't be afraid," it said, and a beautiful black woman appeared from the outside world. She was one of the most beautiful people Peter had ever seen, and he could do nothing but stare at her. She held out a hand in a regal gesture, and Peter's fear began to dissipate. "You're safe now," the beautiful woman cooed, "we're here to help you. We're the X-Men."
Peter's bladder immediately let loose as fear crashed back in like a wave. The Weapon X men were back, probably to help the bad guys that were killing his parents somewhere behind him. He screamed and thrashed backwards, scrambling to run, his brain now operating on animal instinct. Behind him, the X-Men all grabbed their ears and winced.
He ran quickly, turning corner after corner, glancing fearfully behind him only once. In that one moment, he saw a creature with coal black skin leap from the tunnel and land on the wall, where it clung like a bug. He did not look back again.
Reaching a junction in the tunnel, he turned and ran back a few steps, and then dove into a narrow waste pipe. He wriggled through the pipe, shoulders pressed against the pipe wall. It was a long trip, and he gagged a few times, but every time he got scared or hesitant, he made himself remember that these X-Men were right behind him.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
"Did you see him, Kurt?" Ororo said.
"Ja," Kurt replied, "but by the time I teleported to where I saw him, he had vanished!"
"Did we figure out what he did to the comms when he screamed?" Jean asked.
"T'wasn't sonic, I can tell you that much," Sean said.
"He must be a child of two inmates," Scott said, "with some extra-normal ability as a result of the combination, maybe some sort of tech disruption."
"Inmates?" Shiro asked. "Inmates are guilty of crimes. These people did nothing other than fail Weapon X's usefulness test."
"We'll have time to get into that later," Scott responded.
"You knew about this... this prison," Ororo asked, "and did nothing?"
"I was told that previous subjects who were cataclysmically altered were removed to an off-site facility for further testing," Scott explained, "but I had no idea what level of barbarism was going on here. The important thing is saving lives right now. You can hit me with the scapegoat stick later."
There was a bright flash up ahead in the darkness of the tunnel.
"Code names only from this point out," Scott said. "Shadowcat, I want a recon before we engage."
"Roger that," Kitty said, disappearing through the tunnel wall.
"Iceman, do you have what you need to work with?"
"You bet, Cyclops. Let me at them!"
"Not yet," Scott said. "Plan of attack first. We need intel. Marvel Girl, link us up."
The team drew in a collective gasp as they all became suddenly aware of each other's viewpoints. Almost instantly, Kitty's voice came through like a beacon. {Hostiles! Eight! No, ten! Killing!}
{We need to hit quick,} Scott instructed the team instantly, {Wolverine, tip of the spear, threat analysis and engagement! Iceman, containment! Colossus, defend the inmates! Nightcrawler, I need strategic insertion on the other side, now!}
Kurt grabbed Scott's arm and teleported. Piotr reared back his arm and smashed the tunnel wall, creating a gaping hole into the adjacent tunnel. From the chaos on the other side, the X-Men saw costumed people standing over several bodies on the floor.
Logan extended his claws and leapt into the fray, with the rest of the X-Men charging in behind him.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Peter emerged from the end of the pipe in a trough, and clambered over the edge into the common bathroom, covered in waste. Backing away from the trough, he scrambled backwards until he felt the wall on his back.
He gulped in ragged breaths, and leaned to his left, throwing up. He heaved a second time, then a third, and when there was nothing left in his stomach to throw up, he settled back against the wall.
His head lolled to the right, and he had to suppress a fresh scream as he found himself staring into the eyes of one the other kids, Sprout. He was dead, of this Peter was certain. A jagged scorch mark stretched from the bark covering his chest to the right side of his neck, and a thin tendril of smoke was still rising from the center of the mark as well as his mouth.
"Sprout," Peter whispered, "are you alive?" He felt like a complete fool, but understood somewhere deep inside that a situation like this would make anyone feel foolish. Sprout made no reply.
Peter crawled over the body of the child and leaned out, looking around the corner. He saw a massive man, almost as big as the metal man who shared his name, pick up two kids with his massive hands and smash their bodies together. The sickening crunch of their bodies slamming together was not drowned out by the distance or the garbled screams of the victims.
"No," Peter said to himself, "not just victims. You knew them. That was Chill and Tantrum. Even if they were mean to you sometimes, they were still just kids."
Peter heard a familiar voice bellow, and he looked around the corner to see his pop, firing bolts of electricity at the enormous man who smashed his friends.
"Motherfucker!" his pop cried, and Peter got a good idea of why they called him Berzerker. "They were just children! Like my son!" Peter drew in a deep breath to cry out to him, let him know that he was still alive, but he suddenly stopped. It would be a bad idea to distract him while he was trying to fight off these attackers. Peter watched as he poured electricity and rage forth into the behemoth, marveling at the image. He had never seen his father release so much power at once. It was magnificent and terrible all at once.
Another attacker, this one a skinny man who looked what Sprout would call Asian, whatever that was, snuck up behind Berzerker and pointed, and suddenly, his pop's lightning began to sputter. Showers of sparks erupted from his hands, like when the older lights sometimes exploded during a storm, and suddenly there was nothing but his pop, staring at his hands with shock.
One of the bad men turned and threw something that looked like a card, which struck Berzerker in the chest. Energy began to creep along Berzerker's skin, making it look like he was glowing from within. He looked down the tunnel and caught sight of his son peeking out. A smile, thought by Peter to be impossible in such dire circumstances, made its way to his pop's lips.
"I love you," he mouthed, and exploded.
Peter closed his eyes and spun around, the image of his father's dying moments forever emblazoned on his mind. He knew that screaming now would only help them find him, but in his mind he howled like a wounded animal.
He saw Glitter, one of Annalee's kids, run past him, and he shrunk back. A blinding light ripped down the hallway, and Glitter's back was pierced by a harpoon of energy. She dropped to her knees, the light of the harpoon reflecting off her faceted skin onto the walls of the tunnel, and then dropped to her belly less than ten feet from where Peter was hiding as the harpoon dissipated. Peter watched as she gasped once, twice, and then a third breath hitched in her chest and slowly hissed out, the last she would ever take.
After a few seconds, Peter darted across the tunnel to another secluded area, his heart pounding in his chest. He sat, his back to the wall, trying to get his breathing under control. Around him, the sounds of battle, for he knew now that's what was going on, a full fledged battle, raged like thunder. He peeked his head around the corner and ducked back in quickly when the man who had thrown the light harpoon turned to look.
The door just to his left led into the medical center, but it had been locked ever since the Weapon X men left. He grabbed the handle and jiggled it frantically, yanking hard. "Please," he whined, "please, I have to get in!" He pushed at it, and then tugged again, panicking as he heard what his brain knew could only be the footsteps of the man who was about to kill him. "I have to get in," he cried, now pressing his full weight against it while turning the handle fruitlessly, "I need to get in, please! Open!"
A small beep sounded out, and the door clicked open, swinging in so suddenly that he spilled off his feet into the darkened interior with a muffled thump. Flecks of shit from the pipe splattered off his skin, decorating the tile floor as he scrambled to get back to his hands and knees, scuttering along the floor towards the cabinets in back. The door clicked shut again and he looked back at it. "Lock!" he hissed instinctively, and he heard another beep, followed by the whir of a bar being slid into place inside the door. He hopped up onto the counter and climbed into the overhead cabinet, tucking his knees against his chest and sliding the door shut. A tiny line of light streamed in through the edge of the cabinet door, painting a stark "one" down his face.
A shadow fell across the floor as the harpoon man stepped in front of the window in the medical center's door. He turned the handle, jiggled it, and then looked down at his hand, sniffing the scum that was on it. He grimaced, and Peter felt a moment of triumph. "Good, you asshole," he thought to himself, and immediately heard the voice of his mother scolding him for language in his memory. "Good. I hope you choke on it," he thought. "I crawled through a mile of that stuff to get away, so you can choke on it." The harpoon man reached behind him and unlimbered a long metal harpoon, which began to glow with the same brilliant light that had been reflected off Glitter as she lay dying.
Peter, having never been taught what God was, having never been taught even the concept of religion, and having no experience or reason to believe such a plan would work, began to pray.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Jean's brow furrowed in concentration as she scanned the room quickly. {Almost... there!} she thought, and suddenly the X-Men were filled with a vague awareness of the names and capabilities of the attackers. {I pulled this from the front of their minds easily enough, but they're shielded from deeper intrusion.}
Scott blasted the back of one of the attackers ({Prism,} he realized, thanks to Jean's psychic download) and was amazed to see his own beam split into a multi-colored burst of light and strike the walls, causing a shower of debris to rain down all around.
"Marauders," Prism shouted, "we have bogies!" He turned and focused the room's light into a beam of his own at Scott, who disappeared in a burst of smoke as Kurt yanked him from harm's way.
Piotr strode into the room and saw Blockbuster grab one of the Morlocks by the shoulders, rear his head back, and headbutt him. The Morlock instantly went limp, his skull caved in, and the Marauder simply dropped his body like discarded trash, a sick smile painted across his face.
"You!" Piotr said, grabbing him by the arm and trying to turn him. Blockbuster didn't budge, instead throwing a backhand to Piotr's face. A loud clang reverberated throughout the tunnel as Piotr spun with the impact.
"I don't get bullied by anyone," he said, shoving Piotr backward. The armored Russian staggered, having been caught off balance by the Marauder's brute strength. Blockbuster pressed the attack, shoving him again while he tried to get his balance. "My strength has been amped up a thousand times, and my skin can take a blast from a .50 Cal round at point blank range. I don't think you have what it takes to scratch me, Tin-man."
Piotr looked back and shifted his feet to avoid stepping on one of the wounded Morlocks, and Blockbuster drove his fists into his chest, sending him sprawling to the floor. He looked up in time to see Blockbuster kick the Morlock in the chest, killing her, her lifeless body sliding through the muck.
Instantly, Piotr felt anger boiling up within him. Blockbuster reared back his hand and drove it towards Piotr's head. Piotr turned into the punch, allowing the fist to strike him square in the face. The sound of the bones in Blockbuster's hand shattering were not muted by the layers of super-durable flesh that were nonetheless split by the impact. Blockbuster's eyes went wide in shock, and he pulled his hand defensively back to his chest. The fingers splayed wider than normally possible from the ruined wad of flesh and splintered bone that served as the remains of his hand. He held it up briefly in front of him, examining it with horrified shock.
Piotr seized the broken hand and squeezed. "Your strength is less than nothing when compared to mine, Marauder. You should consider yourself fortunate that I am a man of peace, or I would peel your skin from you like an orange while you begged for the mercy you are incapable of showing these poor souls!" He squeezed the hand harder, not even flinching as Blockbuster attempted to pummel him with his remaining hand. Piotr swung him in a rapid arc, slamming him into the wall of the tunnel with a thunderous boom. He crushed Blockbuster's hand harder, making the German man scream in agony as he turned him towards the end of the tunnel. "As it stands, I will only take your hand as a lesson!" He clenched, further grinding Blockbuster's remaining bones to powder. He brought his knee up to his own chest and kicked his foot out into Blockbuster's shoulder, driving the man back in a pinwheel, blood spraying from the ragged stump at the end of his right arm. Piotr cast the remains of the Marauder's hand aside, disgusted, without a glance, and turned back to the battle.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Peter watched as the harpoon man stuck his light harpoon in the door mechanism, melting it almost instantly. The handle clanged to the hard tile floor, rattling for a moment before coming to a rest as the door swung open slowly. The walls of the lab were illuminated by the glowing harpoon, which began to pulse.
"Come out, child," the harpoon man said softly, "there is no escape. If you come out now, I promise you your death will be painless and quick. I do not get pleasure from hurting children. But others on my team do, and if they have to come looking for you, they will not be as merciful as I am."
Peter suppressed a whimper. He didn't know if the man meant what he said about not hurting him, but he had never heard someone admit they were going to kill him, and he was terrified of that, painless or otherwise. The harpoon man must have heard something from him, because he suddenly stopped looking around and fixed his gaze squarely on the cabinet in which Peter was hiding. The harpoon man smiled and took a step forward, but stopped when the door behind him opened again.
"Hey, Darth Nanook," the hairy scary man quipped, "Pick on someone yer own size."
The harpoon man swung his pulsing light stick at the hairy scary man, who ducked and lunged forward. The blades on his hands glinted in the ever increasing strobe of the harpoon man's weapon, making a sharp hissing sound as they sliced through the air next to their target.
The crescendo of the glowing weapon's strobe effect caused the harpoon man to throw it at his opponent, who dodged it. It struck the wall, exploding it outward. He drew another from his scabbard and began to charge it once again.
"You'd better connect with one of those soon, you're running out of ammo," the hairy scary man said.
"I have enough to finish you," the harpoon man replied. He swung the shaft, and the hairy scary man blocked it with the backs of his claws, causing showers of sparks to fly into the air. He swiped the claws and severed the glowing harpoon into four pieces. They hit the ground at the harpoon man's feet and detonated, showering the room in ceramic shrapnel as the tiles exploded. Both men spun away from the explosion, coming to ready positions seconds later, the harpoon man charging another weapon.
"Better men than you have tried, Bub," the hairy scary man replied, slicing at him again. The harpoon man swung the harpoon and spun, stabbing the sharp end into the hairy scary man's chest with a flourish.
"And better men then you have died," the harpoon man said. The hairy scary man dropped to his knees, a rapidly expanding glow emanating from his chest. He gritted his teeth as the harpoon disappeared, and suddenly, the glow began to dissipate. "Impossible!" the harpoon man cried out.
The hairy scary man looked up out of the corner of his eye and grinned. He sprung to his feet, driving one set of claws deep into the harpoon man's gut, followed by the other a few seconds later. He whispered something that Peter couldn't hear into the harpoon man's ear, and then let him drop to the ground, clutching his stomach in a vain attempt to contain his tattered innards. The hairy scary man turned towards the cabinet and sniffed. "I won't hurt you, kid. Neither will he, not anymore. Stay out of sight. We're the good guys. After we deal with the bad guys, we'll come find you and get you out of here."
Without another word, the hairy scary man dipped down to the harpoon man, stole one of his spears, and left.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Sean crashed to the ground, holding the sides of his head. He had used his sonic powers countless times to incapacitate his opponents by destabilizing their equilibrium, but he had never experienced that sensation himself until the young woman with the green hair that he now knew as Vertigo had pointed at him. It was as he expected; not pleasant. Every time he tried to draw in a breath to scream, he felt like the undigested remains of his lunch were dancing on the back of his throat, and he gagged.
"Iceman," he gurgled, fighting the sensation, "watch out!"
Beside him, Bobby held up his hand and a wall of ice grew from the dank water on the floor of the tunnel. Three shuriken sliced neatly through it, creating an explosion of ice fragments that flew out and impacted the tunnel walls.
"We need to get the survivors out of here!" Scott yelled.
"I will lead them to the surface," Ororo said, "Without easy access to the open atmosphere, my powers will not be effective in here!"
"Marvel Girl, go with her. Use your telekinesis thing to shield as many as possible," Scott said.
Jean winced as she picked up the dark thought in Scott's unconscious mind. The taste of betrayal was still in his mouth, like the bitter remnants of rotten fruit.
Jean sent a message to the Morlocks, communicating their intent and requesting them to follow her, and Storm escorted several of them into a side tunnel.
Scalphunter pointed at them, and Arclight began towards the tunnel as if to follow. Shiro engulfed himself in flames and fired a burst of plasma at the water in front of her, flash-boiling it into a billowing cloud of steam. Arclight covered her face and screamed.
Ororo guided the small group towards the tunnel from which the X-Men had first entered, with Jean subliminally calming them with telepathic suggestions. As she rounded the corner, a lean, muscular woman was standing against the wall, her hand pressed against the right side of her gore-streaked face.
"Callisto!" one of the Morlocks cried out, rushing to her side, but Callisto turned to face them with her left hand producing a large knife when she saw the X-Men with her people.
"Who the hell are these people, Jo?"
"I am Storm," Ororo said, "this is Marvel Girl. We're the X-Men. We're here to help."
"They're fighting the bastards that did this," Jo said, her face singed and blistered. She turned back to Ororo. "Callisto is our leader."
"How did you know this was happening?" Callisto said, her one good eye flicking back and forth between the X-Men.
"Charles Xavier sent us," Jean said.
Jean barely registered the attack telepathically before Callisto was lunging forward with the knife, and was only able to deflect the blade enough to keep it from killing her, instead feeling fire from within as the blade sliced a stripe across her left side.
"Callisto!" Jo cried out. "They're helping us!"
"Charles Xavier is from Weapon X! They're the bastards that locked you away and left you to die in here!"
Ororo swung her cape in a whirl, wrapping it around Callisto's wrist, and yanked, wrenching her arm and causing the wounded Morlock leader to release the knife.
"We mean you no harm, but we will defend ourselves from attack," Ororo said.
Callisto dropped her right hand, exposing the ruined orb of her slashed right eye. "Princess, you don't have what it takes to stand up to me." She circled slowly.
"We are not here to fight!" Ororo said. "Weapon X did not send us. We are an independent peacekeeping group."
"Callisto," another Morlock said, "please, they aren't the ones killing us! Let them help!"
"They can't help us, not against these bastards," Callisto spat, "because Weapon X are the ones that made us- and them- what we are today!" She lunged at Ororo, swinging for her ribcage.
Ororo twisted, absorbing the blow, and brought her arm down around Callisto's. She grabbed her wrist and torqued the arm backward, but Callisto turned with the move, showing her back to Ororo and pushing off the wall with her feet, sending them flying across the tunnel.
"I'm trained to fight down and dirty in the trenches, princess," she said, rolling on her shoulder and coming up on her feet. "I don't have fancy powers to protect me, because Leftwich didn't show up with his magic rock until after my trial."
"You were one of the original subjects?" Jean asked, gripping her side tight. She couldn't concentrate enough to use her powers, not with this gaping wound in her side, but she was not going to run. "You were Weapon X?"
"I got news for you, Red," Callisto said, circling again, "everyone down here in this hell hole was Weapon X at one time or another, including the ones murdering my people!" She feigned low, and when Ororo leapt up, Callisto rose, grabbing her by the hips and slammed her into the tunnel wall. She grabbed two handfuls of Ororo's hair and pulled, slamming the X-Man's head into the wall.
Ororo screamed and headbutted Callisto in her damaged socket, tearing out two swathes of her own hair to do so. Callisto bellowed in pain and dropped to the ground, then scrambled back up, her hand back over her eye, which had started bleeding again.
Ororo regarded Callisto's stance and took an appropriate defensive posture. She could tell that the Morlock was badly injured, but still dangerous. "We are not the ones you should fear. We came to stop this slaughter, not exacerbate it. You are hurt, and it is not my wish to hurt you further."
Callisto's responded not with words, but a vicious roundhouse kick. Ororo easily dodged the attack, planting a firm fist into Callisto's solar plexus, knocking the wind out of her. As she staggered backwards, Ororo took advantage of her opponent's exhaustion and spun, kicking her in the leg, and sweeping her to the ground.
"I could kill you," Ororo said, grabbing Callisto by the back of her hair and rearing her fist back. "But I came here to stop bloodshed, not spill more of it. Yield."
Callisto gasped, staring at Ororo, and nodded.
"Good," Ororo said, releasing her opponent. "Then get your people out of here. We have cut a hole in the access way to-"
"This is our home," Callisto said, "I'm not abandoning it. You get them out."
"Callisto," Jean said, still clasping her side, "these people will kill you."
"I know that better than anyone," she said, "I used to be one of them."
Ororo appraised the woman briefly. "Marvel Girl, get them to the surface. Callisto and I will make sure to cover your exit."
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Peter crept out of the cabinet and stepped over the body of the harpoon man. His blood pooled out around his body like a reverse spotlight, looking black in the low light that seeped in from the hallway.
"Turn on the lights," Peter said to himself, and suddenly, the overhead lights flickered to life. He looked around, frightened momentarily, but a slow comprehension began to form in his mind. He did that, somehow, just like he had somehow unlocked and then re-locked the door to the infirmary just by saying it. In the back of his mind, a small glowing ember was suddenly growing, building into a full fledged fire, until it erupted into a brilliant blaze of perfect understanding.
He wasn't a powerless human baby. He was a true Morlock.
He looked around the room and saw numerous pieces of medical equipment. "Turn on," he said, and a screen that had once upon a time monitored the vital signs of a patient snapped to life and displayed numbers and lines. "Turn off," he said, smiling as the device went dead. "Turn on," he said, and the audio recorder began playing back a garbled recording. "Stop," he said, and there was a click. "Rewind," he said, and the recorder obeyed. He laughed a quick laugh and then he stopped. His mind wasn't just sending out commands, it was receiving stuff too. Understanding. He began to see exactly how the devices in the room operated, to know the inner workings of everything mechanical around him.
His eyes came upon a defibrillator, and then a cabinet containing several vials of medicine.
And somehow, Peter understood what to do next.
[NOW: Olympus Mons, The Martian Surface...]
A large explosion of in rushing air scattered a great deal of the dust from the summit of Olympus Mons as a rift opened up in the thin Martian atmosphere. It winked shut almost instantly, but not before disgorging a single passenger. He pressed his boot solemnly onto the remaining soil, creating a print that was unique to the entire surface of the planet.
He stood, surveying the landscape with a mixture of awe and confidence. He watched for a few seconds, taking in the majestic view of the planetscape around him. Interestingly enough, the size of the landmark upon which he stood was so tremendous in relation to the planet that he couldn't discern a sense of height; the edges of the mountain were lost to the curvature of the horizon.
He held out his left hand, and the soil beneath him began to rumble. A circular column of martian rock, three meters in height and a meter thick, assembled itself from the loose fragments and dust particles of the surrounding area. As it grew in size, pieces of the rock began to fall back down, as if the mass was being chiseled away as quickly as it was being built. From the solid shaft of stone there began to emerge a distinct shape, that of a man standing tall, his right hand held palm up to the heavens, his gaze fixed upon the stars.
After a short span of time, the stone figure took its final shape, its features well defined as if by the hand of a master sculptor.
"Piotr would be proud," Mikhail said, smiling.
At the thought of his brother, Mikhail looked towards the Earth, visible as nothing but a pale blue dot in the Martian skies.
"Perhaps I will bring him with me."
[NOW: The Alley...]
"X-Men!" Scott shouted, "press the advantage!"
Kurt spun, teleported behind Scalphunter, and kicked him in the back of the head with the momentum he had built. The Marauder was knocked forward, tripping on a muck-hidden piece of rubble, and crashed to the ground. Kurt reappeared above him and drove his feet into the prone man's back. When Prism drew a bead on the acrobat, Kurt disappeared in a burst of smoke and flame.
Prism then aimed at Kitty, who charged at him, allowing his beam of light to pass harmlessly through her as she tunneled in mid stride. She tackled him, tunneling again, carrying him through the tunnel wall and dropping him in the adjoining tunnel before leaping through the far wall.
Scott blasted Vertigo in the back with a beam of energy and knocked the Marauder off balance, allowing Sean to catch his bearings for a moment. He pounced, grabbing her by the shoulder, whistling in her ear, a shrill piercing sound, and Vertigo screamed as her eardrum was punctured.
Scalphunter picked himself up and grabbed a weapon from his utility suit, firing it at the leader of the X-Men. A thick stream of foam expanded out, splattering against Scott's body and instantly hardening as it enveloped his head.
Arclight, her face scalded by the flash vapor, turned her gaze towards Shiro as he hovered above the damp surface of the tunnel floor. She clapped, shockwaves of force blooming out from the impact point between her hands. The waves struck the tunnel wall, which shattered into fragments.
Sean screamed, sending put a pulsed shockwave that powdered the fragments before they could strike Shiro. Arclight turned to face Sean, building up energy as she poised with her hands back, as Sean drew in a deep breath. They released their shockwaves simultaneously, Sean's piercing wail alternating with Arclight's deep bass boom. The waves met and created a sharp report that stunned everyone in the immediate vicinity.
Shiro pointed at Arclight again, but pulled his arms back defensively when he saw a metallic projectile slice past his hand. He instinctively increased his flame output, coating himself in a shimmering blaze of flames, and felt another projectile clip his arm. Riptide spun, casting his weapons out as he whipped his body in a tight spiral, burying shuriken in the concrete walls with their incredible speed. Shiro's temperature rose to the point where the projectiles melted before they could reach him, but he still felt the impact of molten metal blobs striking his uniform. He would have some pretty serious burns to tend to when he returned to Avalon, that was certain.
Arclight shook her head and saw that the X-Man who had challenged her shockwave was still on his knees. She smiled and went to clap again, but grimaced as her hands clanked against a large metal hand rather than each other.
"Not so fast," Piotr said, grabbing her by the wrists and pulling her arms apart. He forced them together again, slowly, and grabbed them with one hand, reaching out with the other and ripping a piece of pipe off the wall. He twisted it around her wrists, binding her tight.
Suddenly, Piotr felt a strange sensation in his body, a rattle that began to work itself into a full tremor. Arclight smiled as she twiddled her fingers like a wave against her other hand. The tiny vibrations were overwhelming him and the protective sigils that helped counter any vibrations his metallic form may resonate with. He turned back to flesh, and Blockbuster pounced, tackling him from the side.
"Colossus!" Kitty screamed, rushing at Blockbuster. She grabbed the Marauder from behind by the belt and tunneled him downward. Piotr crawled through the muck, holding his side. He suspected that two of his ribs were broken, maybe a third. After a few moments, Kitty reemerged swiftly from the ground, continued tunneling upwards, and passed through the ceiling in less than a half-second.
Piotr recovered, shifting back to his steel form, and crawled over to Scott, who was lying on the ground clawing at the foam around his head. He grabbed two sides of it and pulled, ripping the cocoon open like an overripe melon. Scott gasped deeply as he struggled to regain his composure.
Prism rounded the corner from where Kitty had left him and fired a beam of light at Scott, but it was deflected by a block of ice.
Suddenly, the water that seemed to cover the entirety of the tunnel floor solidified into ice, fusing everybody in place. Bobby stood in the epicenter of the battle, his hands down, raw fury etched on his features. "Enough!" Bobby screamed. Stalagmites of ice speared out into the tunnel interiors, creating a maze of icy bars crisscrossing the combat area.
"Agreed," Scrambler said, tapping Bobby on the shoulder. Bobby spun and raised his hands, but nothing happened. Scrambler kicked him in the balls, dropping him to the ground, and punched him in the jaw.
"Fuck," Scrambler said, "I think I broke my hand!" He held up his uninjured hand and pointed at Shiro. "I got one good one left, though!"
A thrown knife suddenly pierced the palm of his hand, and he screamed in pain.
"Sung, you always were soft," Callisto said.
Ororo stepped past her and looked at Scott. "Cyclops, give me a skylight!"
Scott looked straight up from his place on the floor and unleashed a massive beam, disintegrating the surrounding tunnel structure above them and revealing a turbulent sky. A lightning bolt immediately leapt forth, twisting its way through the air, and turned dramatically in front of Ororo, striking Prism in the chest. He screamed as his crystalline form became smoky, millions of microscopic fractures spreading through his interior. Tiny fingers of electricity blossomed out of him, dancing across the walls of the tunnel, striking Vertigo and Scalphunter.
Scalphunter dropped to the ground, agonized. He surveyed the battleground around him, and did not like what he saw. Vertigo was unconscious, possibly dead. Scrambler was wounded, and next to useless in a fight. Prism's body was a spider-web of cracks, but he was moaning and shifting, so he was still alive. Blockbuster was nowhere to be seen, and was possibly losing a lot of blood. Arclight was struggling to get free of the impromptu bindings the big metal guy had wrapped her in. Harpoon was nowhere to be seen, and Gambit and Sabretooth had each bolted off on their own pretty much the minute this whole operation had started. Only Riptide was still operating at full capacity, and he'd be out of blades soon.
"Arclight," he said, "we're pulling back. We need cover."
Arclight nodded, and again began to tap her fingers rapidly on the metal that Piotr had wrapped around her hands. It vibrated more violently with each successive tap until it cracked, sending a jagged piece of metal into her cheek. "Damnit!" she screamed, putting her hand to her cheek, drawing out the sliver. She quickly shook it off, spread her arms, and brought her hands together. The shockwave rocked everyone off their feet and shattered many of Bobby's ice obstacles.
"Marauders, fall back!" Scalphunter yelled, and got to his feet, grabbing Vertigo and moving towards the far end of the tunnel. He stopped and looked down at Prism, but his form was still, the cracks in his form made larger by Arclight's shockwave. "You'll be avenged, brother," he said, hefting Vertigo and making for the exit.
Blockbuster stood leaning against the wall, the ragged stump where his hand used to be clutched beneath his left arm. "Fading fast, Scalphunter."
"We're on the move, Blockbuster," Scalphunter replied. "Take Vertigo, get back to the transport. Arclight! Riptide! Scrambler! We're leaving!" He placed a hand on his radio transmitter and depressed the button. "Gambit, Sabretooth, Harpoon, if you copy, initiate retreat. Our work here is done!"
Arclight, visibly fatigued by the combat, spread wide her arms again, and brought them together in one final thunderous crash. The walls of the tunnel began to shake, and the section of tunnel that Cyclops had ventilated collapsed. Chain reactions began to rattle the entire structure.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Peter stepped out of the med lab carrying the new weapon he had created, using muscles he didn't know he had to carry the weighty contraption, a look of grim determination on his face. The harpoon man and his bad guy buddies had killed his family, his friends, maybe even everyone he knew. He didn't know who these X-Men were, but the hairy scary guy said they were trying to stop them. From the sounds he was hearing, Peter didn't think they were doing a very good job. He wanted to find the card throwing man who killed his father and give him the justice he deserved.
He stepped out of the tunnel, and fate was listening. The card throwing man was kneeling in the middle of the tunnel, holding the body of one of the children that his friends had murdered.
"Hey!" he yelled, and the card throwing man turned quickly. Peter hesitated for just an instant when he saw the card throwing man's eyes. Although they were black as Tar's skin, and had red, evil pupils, it was clear to Peter that the man was crying.
"Wait, don't!" the card man cried out, but Peter would wait no longer. He pulled the trigger on the improvised weapon, which used the defibrillator's electrical paddles to create an electric field that magnetized and then hurled the syringes he had found in the medicine cabinet.
Still charged by the paddles, the needles discharged when they stuck into the card throwing man, and exploded, dousing him with chemicals. He screamed as his body convulsed with the electrical jolt, and fell silent as the chemicals knocked him out.
Peter stepped over to the card throwing man, clumsily loading up a second cartridge of needles containing something called potassium chloride, when he saw who the card throwing man had been holding.
"Sprout?" Peter said, kneeling next to him.
"Hey, Pete," Sprout said weakly, "neat gun."
"What happened?" Peter asked, gently cradling his head, "I thought you were dead!"
"This guy saved my life," he said, "why'd you shoot him?"
"He killed my pop," Pete said, tears choking him up.
"He said they lied to him. To get him to do stuff. He tried to help..." Sprout fell silent, his eyes staring off in the distance. He was dead.
Peter cried as he held the head of the young Morlock. In the distance, he saw a few Morlocks stagger past the juncture of a tunnel towards the empty storage tunnel, led by a woman who was one of the X-Men. He figured he should tell them about the card throwing man, who lay unconscious on the floor of the tunnel, but all he could think of was telling them that he was a real Morlock, and that he belonged with them. He sprinted toward them.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Riptide, acting as the rear guard for the Marauders, backed away, firing his shuriken at Shiro as fast as he could manage. He knew his supply was nearly exhausted, and began swiping chunks of rubble from the ground to keep the barrage up, but everything he threw at the flaming X-Man was melting before it could do more than plop against his uniform.
Scrambler, hiding in the shadows, his hands clutched defensively to his chest, spit out a gob of blood and pointed at Shiro.
As Riptide continued to pelt him with blades and debris, Shiro's flames suddenly sputtered, and the blades that hadn't yet reached him passed through, slicing neatly into his chest.
"Shiro!" Ororo screamed, watching as her ally fell to the ground. Riptide turned towards her and blew her a kiss. Before he could even turn, a lightning bolt thundered through the opening in the ceiling, thicker than a man's arm and brighter than the sun, and struck Riptide square in the chest.
"X-Men, grab the survivors and run!" Scott yelled, vaporizing a chunk of rubble as it fell towards him. He saw Ororo cross the tunnel for Shiro's body, and then suddenly there was a calamitous rumble, and she seemed to disappear. "Storm!" he yelled, but the tunnel was becoming too unstable.
With a sudden boom as if on cue, the tunnel began to collapse.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Jean staggered against the wall as she held her side. She knew the entryway they had created should be right around the next turn, but she could barely keep on her feet, especially with the entire structure collapsing. She rounded the corner and saw a flat expanse of brick and mortar, and her hopes sank.
"Shit!" she said, and turned back. She could barely think, but time was crucial now. "Everybody against the wall! I'm going to try to shield you!"
At that moment, there was a loud ripping sound, as a hole appeared in mid-air. The air in the tunnel rushed through, creating an explosive decompression, which stopped as suddenly as it started when a large man stepped through the hole and into the tunnel. Jean had just enough time to remark to herself "hey, this guy looks just like Piotr," before she fell unconscious.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Scott reached the mouth of the tunnel and looked up suddenly, as if he had heard an individual sound in the explosive cacophony of the tunnel's collapse, but in truth, it was an absence of sound that drew his attention. That soft, soothing hum of his psychic connection with Jean was abruptly severed.
"JEAN!" he screamed, and the tunnel gave way.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Peter stepped around the corner, expecting to see his people standing there in the storage annex, but what he saw amazed him. He saw a rippling window, like a hole torn in the wall, leading to a place the likes of which Peter had only seen in a book. It had a lovely golden warmth to it that he could feel even from dozens of feet away, with a vast hill covered in golden wheat. He saw his people, the Morlocks, walking into this hill, and a large man that looked a lot like the metal man that shared his name carrying the X-Man-Woman with red hair. Without looking back, he stepped into the window, which promptly snapped shut.
And for the second time that day, Peter had a thought that went against his non-religious upbringing; he was seeing the dead being escorted to their eternal rest by the angel of death.
Within seconds, the tunnel snapped shut as well, burying everyone still inside.
[To Be Continued...]
Peter sat huddled against the bars of the outflow drain, shivering. Just beyond, the river seemed so wide, so vast, so powerful in comparison to the meager trickle that passed through the outflow. He didn't know what river it was, his parents had never bothered to tell him. He didn't know much about anything beyond the grate, as he had never ventured out of the Alley; almost no one did, and those that did leave never came back. Like Silk. He liked Silk, she was beautiful like an angel and was never mean to him, even though he was a freak.
There was a sharp sound, a boom he could only imagine as what his parents referred to as gun-fire, although there hadn't been gun-fires down in the Alley since the Weapon X men left for good. He looked back at the darkness and heard a shrill scream. Was that his momma? She had yelled for Peter to run, to go someplace safe and hide, before turning to go out and face the bad guys. There had been so many screams, though. Dozens. It felt like hundreds, even though he knew there weren't even that many people in the Alley. There were no repeats, though. Once a person screamed, they stopped before they could scream again.
His momma had taught him about bad guys, like the Weapon X men who locked the Morlocks away from the outside world, and the Weapon X men who kept them locked up with their guns, and bad guys in outside world history like Adolf Hitler and Richard Nixon. She had taught him that bad guys were mean to people like the Morlocks, people who were different, people who didn't fit in. These were really bad guys, though, because they weren't just being mean, like the other kids were mean when they called him a human baby. They were killing people, and Peter was helpless to do anything, because his friends were right, he really was just a powerless human baby, with a stupid human baby name. Nothing to make him special, like his pop's electricity or his momma's telekinesis.
Something caught his eye and he looked down at the meek current of the outflow. A piece of paper, it seemed, cut to an odd shape. It rode the tiny ripples, slowly swirling as it tumbled, and Peter caught a color on it. Blue, like what Silk used to call Robin's Egg, like the sky he sometimes saw through the bars of the air grate. Then he saw the other colors, and his tears, blocked for this entire ordeal by some unknown force, finally escaped. It was Silk. She had come back, somehow, and the bad guys had killed her. Her face was screaming from the paper, only it wasn't paper, this was really her head. Someone had cut off her head while she was flat. Peter tried to grab it, but it slipped between his fingers. tumbling over itself in the water. He let out a tiny dismayed whine and scrambled to grab it again. His fingers caught it, and began to pull it back when it slipped again, like a noodle from one of the noodle cups the Weapon X men delivered, and splashed through the grate. Peter lunged, slamming his left shoulder into the bars as he made a last desperate grasp, but he missed, and Silk's screaming face splashed into the river below, disappearing in the rapid current.
Peter sat for a long while, his shoulder mashed against the bars, his arm hanging futilely out into the world, weeping for the girl who had been nicer to him than anyone else in the whole Alley ever had.
"I got one, 'Ro," a gruff voice said, and Peter lurched back, scrambling on his hands and feet in a panicked crab walk.
"Don't be scared," a deep, smooth voice said. It was a heavenly, feminine sound, like how an angel would sound, Peter imagined.
He looked out and saw people staring at him. One of them was closer than the rest, and he looked like he could be a bad guy. He had long metal claws that glinted in the dim moonlight, and he was hairy, hairier than anyone he had ever seen. Except maybe Mole.
The hairy scary man slid his claws along the bars of the grate and sliced through them as if they were paper. With three quick motions, he had cut a hole large enough for someone to fit through.
"Peter," the beautiful voice said, and he blinked. "See if you can get the rest of these bars out of our way."
His head snapped up at hearing his name, but when he heard her request, he tried to shake his head. He managed to mutter "I can't," when the moonlight was eclipsed by a tremendous shadow. The largest man he had ever seen, bigger even than Sunder, filled the entrance of the tunnel, and gripped the bars. His skin glinted like the hairy scary man's claws, and Peter realized this man was made of metal. These were people like his parents, people with powers. People like the bad men.
"Don't kill me!" Peter cried out, and began to weep, his face hot with shame at his own cowardice.
"Your name is Peter?" the metal man said. "That is my name too. Peter, like the Saint." He tugged gently, and the bars gave way like tin foil. "I swear, my friends and I will not hurt you."
The beautiful voice spoke again. "Don't be afraid," it said, and a beautiful black woman appeared from the outside world. She was one of the most beautiful people Peter had ever seen, and he could do nothing but stare at her. She held out a hand in a regal gesture, and Peter's fear began to dissipate. "You're safe now," the beautiful woman cooed, "we're here to help you. We're the X-Men."
Peter's bladder immediately let loose as fear crashed back in like a wave. The Weapon X men were back, probably to help the bad guys that were killing his parents somewhere behind him. He screamed and thrashed backwards, scrambling to run, his brain now operating on animal instinct. Behind him, the X-Men all grabbed their ears and winced.
He ran quickly, turning corner after corner, glancing fearfully behind him only once. In that one moment, he saw a creature with coal black skin leap from the tunnel and land on the wall, where it clung like a bug. He did not look back again.
Reaching a junction in the tunnel, he turned and ran back a few steps, and then dove into a narrow waste pipe. He wriggled through the pipe, shoulders pressed against the pipe wall. It was a long trip, and he gagged a few times, but every time he got scared or hesitant, he made himself remember that these X-Men were right behind him.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
"Did you see him, Kurt?" Ororo said.
"Ja," Kurt replied, "but by the time I teleported to where I saw him, he had vanished!"
"Did we figure out what he did to the comms when he screamed?" Jean asked.
"T'wasn't sonic, I can tell you that much," Sean said.
"He must be a child of two inmates," Scott said, "with some extra-normal ability as a result of the combination, maybe some sort of tech disruption."
"Inmates?" Shiro asked. "Inmates are guilty of crimes. These people did nothing other than fail Weapon X's usefulness test."
"We'll have time to get into that later," Scott responded.
"You knew about this... this prison," Ororo asked, "and did nothing?"
"I was told that previous subjects who were cataclysmically altered were removed to an off-site facility for further testing," Scott explained, "but I had no idea what level of barbarism was going on here. The important thing is saving lives right now. You can hit me with the scapegoat stick later."
There was a bright flash up ahead in the darkness of the tunnel.
"Code names only from this point out," Scott said. "Shadowcat, I want a recon before we engage."
"Roger that," Kitty said, disappearing through the tunnel wall.
"Iceman, do you have what you need to work with?"
"You bet, Cyclops. Let me at them!"
"Not yet," Scott said. "Plan of attack first. We need intel. Marvel Girl, link us up."
The team drew in a collective gasp as they all became suddenly aware of each other's viewpoints. Almost instantly, Kitty's voice came through like a beacon. {Hostiles! Eight! No, ten! Killing!}
{We need to hit quick,} Scott instructed the team instantly, {Wolverine, tip of the spear, threat analysis and engagement! Iceman, containment! Colossus, defend the inmates! Nightcrawler, I need strategic insertion on the other side, now!}
Kurt grabbed Scott's arm and teleported. Piotr reared back his arm and smashed the tunnel wall, creating a gaping hole into the adjacent tunnel. From the chaos on the other side, the X-Men saw costumed people standing over several bodies on the floor.
Logan extended his claws and leapt into the fray, with the rest of the X-Men charging in behind him.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Peter emerged from the end of the pipe in a trough, and clambered over the edge into the common bathroom, covered in waste. Backing away from the trough, he scrambled backwards until he felt the wall on his back.
He gulped in ragged breaths, and leaned to his left, throwing up. He heaved a second time, then a third, and when there was nothing left in his stomach to throw up, he settled back against the wall.
His head lolled to the right, and he had to suppress a fresh scream as he found himself staring into the eyes of one the other kids, Sprout. He was dead, of this Peter was certain. A jagged scorch mark stretched from the bark covering his chest to the right side of his neck, and a thin tendril of smoke was still rising from the center of the mark as well as his mouth.
"Sprout," Peter whispered, "are you alive?" He felt like a complete fool, but understood somewhere deep inside that a situation like this would make anyone feel foolish. Sprout made no reply.
Peter crawled over the body of the child and leaned out, looking around the corner. He saw a massive man, almost as big as the metal man who shared his name, pick up two kids with his massive hands and smash their bodies together. The sickening crunch of their bodies slamming together was not drowned out by the distance or the garbled screams of the victims.
"No," Peter said to himself, "not just victims. You knew them. That was Chill and Tantrum. Even if they were mean to you sometimes, they were still just kids."
Peter heard a familiar voice bellow, and he looked around the corner to see his pop, firing bolts of electricity at the enormous man who smashed his friends.
"Motherfucker!" his pop cried, and Peter got a good idea of why they called him Berzerker. "They were just children! Like my son!" Peter drew in a deep breath to cry out to him, let him know that he was still alive, but he suddenly stopped. It would be a bad idea to distract him while he was trying to fight off these attackers. Peter watched as he poured electricity and rage forth into the behemoth, marveling at the image. He had never seen his father release so much power at once. It was magnificent and terrible all at once.
Another attacker, this one a skinny man who looked what Sprout would call Asian, whatever that was, snuck up behind Berzerker and pointed, and suddenly, his pop's lightning began to sputter. Showers of sparks erupted from his hands, like when the older lights sometimes exploded during a storm, and suddenly there was nothing but his pop, staring at his hands with shock.
One of the bad men turned and threw something that looked like a card, which struck Berzerker in the chest. Energy began to creep along Berzerker's skin, making it look like he was glowing from within. He looked down the tunnel and caught sight of his son peeking out. A smile, thought by Peter to be impossible in such dire circumstances, made its way to his pop's lips.
"I love you," he mouthed, and exploded.
Peter closed his eyes and spun around, the image of his father's dying moments forever emblazoned on his mind. He knew that screaming now would only help them find him, but in his mind he howled like a wounded animal.
He saw Glitter, one of Annalee's kids, run past him, and he shrunk back. A blinding light ripped down the hallway, and Glitter's back was pierced by a harpoon of energy. She dropped to her knees, the light of the harpoon reflecting off her faceted skin onto the walls of the tunnel, and then dropped to her belly less than ten feet from where Peter was hiding as the harpoon dissipated. Peter watched as she gasped once, twice, and then a third breath hitched in her chest and slowly hissed out, the last she would ever take.
After a few seconds, Peter darted across the tunnel to another secluded area, his heart pounding in his chest. He sat, his back to the wall, trying to get his breathing under control. Around him, the sounds of battle, for he knew now that's what was going on, a full fledged battle, raged like thunder. He peeked his head around the corner and ducked back in quickly when the man who had thrown the light harpoon turned to look.
The door just to his left led into the medical center, but it had been locked ever since the Weapon X men left. He grabbed the handle and jiggled it frantically, yanking hard. "Please," he whined, "please, I have to get in!" He pushed at it, and then tugged again, panicking as he heard what his brain knew could only be the footsteps of the man who was about to kill him. "I have to get in," he cried, now pressing his full weight against it while turning the handle fruitlessly, "I need to get in, please! Open!"
A small beep sounded out, and the door clicked open, swinging in so suddenly that he spilled off his feet into the darkened interior with a muffled thump. Flecks of shit from the pipe splattered off his skin, decorating the tile floor as he scrambled to get back to his hands and knees, scuttering along the floor towards the cabinets in back. The door clicked shut again and he looked back at it. "Lock!" he hissed instinctively, and he heard another beep, followed by the whir of a bar being slid into place inside the door. He hopped up onto the counter and climbed into the overhead cabinet, tucking his knees against his chest and sliding the door shut. A tiny line of light streamed in through the edge of the cabinet door, painting a stark "one" down his face.
A shadow fell across the floor as the harpoon man stepped in front of the window in the medical center's door. He turned the handle, jiggled it, and then looked down at his hand, sniffing the scum that was on it. He grimaced, and Peter felt a moment of triumph. "Good, you asshole," he thought to himself, and immediately heard the voice of his mother scolding him for language in his memory. "Good. I hope you choke on it," he thought. "I crawled through a mile of that stuff to get away, so you can choke on it." The harpoon man reached behind him and unlimbered a long metal harpoon, which began to glow with the same brilliant light that had been reflected off Glitter as she lay dying.
Peter, having never been taught what God was, having never been taught even the concept of religion, and having no experience or reason to believe such a plan would work, began to pray.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Jean's brow furrowed in concentration as she scanned the room quickly. {Almost... there!} she thought, and suddenly the X-Men were filled with a vague awareness of the names and capabilities of the attackers. {I pulled this from the front of their minds easily enough, but they're shielded from deeper intrusion.}
Scott blasted the back of one of the attackers ({Prism,} he realized, thanks to Jean's psychic download) and was amazed to see his own beam split into a multi-colored burst of light and strike the walls, causing a shower of debris to rain down all around.
"Marauders," Prism shouted, "we have bogies!" He turned and focused the room's light into a beam of his own at Scott, who disappeared in a burst of smoke as Kurt yanked him from harm's way.
Piotr strode into the room and saw Blockbuster grab one of the Morlocks by the shoulders, rear his head back, and headbutt him. The Morlock instantly went limp, his skull caved in, and the Marauder simply dropped his body like discarded trash, a sick smile painted across his face.
"You!" Piotr said, grabbing him by the arm and trying to turn him. Blockbuster didn't budge, instead throwing a backhand to Piotr's face. A loud clang reverberated throughout the tunnel as Piotr spun with the impact.
"I don't get bullied by anyone," he said, shoving Piotr backward. The armored Russian staggered, having been caught off balance by the Marauder's brute strength. Blockbuster pressed the attack, shoving him again while he tried to get his balance. "My strength has been amped up a thousand times, and my skin can take a blast from a .50 Cal round at point blank range. I don't think you have what it takes to scratch me, Tin-man."
Piotr looked back and shifted his feet to avoid stepping on one of the wounded Morlocks, and Blockbuster drove his fists into his chest, sending him sprawling to the floor. He looked up in time to see Blockbuster kick the Morlock in the chest, killing her, her lifeless body sliding through the muck.
Instantly, Piotr felt anger boiling up within him. Blockbuster reared back his hand and drove it towards Piotr's head. Piotr turned into the punch, allowing the fist to strike him square in the face. The sound of the bones in Blockbuster's hand shattering were not muted by the layers of super-durable flesh that were nonetheless split by the impact. Blockbuster's eyes went wide in shock, and he pulled his hand defensively back to his chest. The fingers splayed wider than normally possible from the ruined wad of flesh and splintered bone that served as the remains of his hand. He held it up briefly in front of him, examining it with horrified shock.
Piotr seized the broken hand and squeezed. "Your strength is less than nothing when compared to mine, Marauder. You should consider yourself fortunate that I am a man of peace, or I would peel your skin from you like an orange while you begged for the mercy you are incapable of showing these poor souls!" He squeezed the hand harder, not even flinching as Blockbuster attempted to pummel him with his remaining hand. Piotr swung him in a rapid arc, slamming him into the wall of the tunnel with a thunderous boom. He crushed Blockbuster's hand harder, making the German man scream in agony as he turned him towards the end of the tunnel. "As it stands, I will only take your hand as a lesson!" He clenched, further grinding Blockbuster's remaining bones to powder. He brought his knee up to his own chest and kicked his foot out into Blockbuster's shoulder, driving the man back in a pinwheel, blood spraying from the ragged stump at the end of his right arm. Piotr cast the remains of the Marauder's hand aside, disgusted, without a glance, and turned back to the battle.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Peter watched as the harpoon man stuck his light harpoon in the door mechanism, melting it almost instantly. The handle clanged to the hard tile floor, rattling for a moment before coming to a rest as the door swung open slowly. The walls of the lab were illuminated by the glowing harpoon, which began to pulse.
"Come out, child," the harpoon man said softly, "there is no escape. If you come out now, I promise you your death will be painless and quick. I do not get pleasure from hurting children. But others on my team do, and if they have to come looking for you, they will not be as merciful as I am."
Peter suppressed a whimper. He didn't know if the man meant what he said about not hurting him, but he had never heard someone admit they were going to kill him, and he was terrified of that, painless or otherwise. The harpoon man must have heard something from him, because he suddenly stopped looking around and fixed his gaze squarely on the cabinet in which Peter was hiding. The harpoon man smiled and took a step forward, but stopped when the door behind him opened again.
"Hey, Darth Nanook," the hairy scary man quipped, "Pick on someone yer own size."
The harpoon man swung his pulsing light stick at the hairy scary man, who ducked and lunged forward. The blades on his hands glinted in the ever increasing strobe of the harpoon man's weapon, making a sharp hissing sound as they sliced through the air next to their target.
The crescendo of the glowing weapon's strobe effect caused the harpoon man to throw it at his opponent, who dodged it. It struck the wall, exploding it outward. He drew another from his scabbard and began to charge it once again.
"You'd better connect with one of those soon, you're running out of ammo," the hairy scary man said.
"I have enough to finish you," the harpoon man replied. He swung the shaft, and the hairy scary man blocked it with the backs of his claws, causing showers of sparks to fly into the air. He swiped the claws and severed the glowing harpoon into four pieces. They hit the ground at the harpoon man's feet and detonated, showering the room in ceramic shrapnel as the tiles exploded. Both men spun away from the explosion, coming to ready positions seconds later, the harpoon man charging another weapon.
"Better men than you have tried, Bub," the hairy scary man replied, slicing at him again. The harpoon man swung the harpoon and spun, stabbing the sharp end into the hairy scary man's chest with a flourish.
"And better men then you have died," the harpoon man said. The hairy scary man dropped to his knees, a rapidly expanding glow emanating from his chest. He gritted his teeth as the harpoon disappeared, and suddenly, the glow began to dissipate. "Impossible!" the harpoon man cried out.
The hairy scary man looked up out of the corner of his eye and grinned. He sprung to his feet, driving one set of claws deep into the harpoon man's gut, followed by the other a few seconds later. He whispered something that Peter couldn't hear into the harpoon man's ear, and then let him drop to the ground, clutching his stomach in a vain attempt to contain his tattered innards. The hairy scary man turned towards the cabinet and sniffed. "I won't hurt you, kid. Neither will he, not anymore. Stay out of sight. We're the good guys. After we deal with the bad guys, we'll come find you and get you out of here."
Without another word, the hairy scary man dipped down to the harpoon man, stole one of his spears, and left.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Sean crashed to the ground, holding the sides of his head. He had used his sonic powers countless times to incapacitate his opponents by destabilizing their equilibrium, but he had never experienced that sensation himself until the young woman with the green hair that he now knew as Vertigo had pointed at him. It was as he expected; not pleasant. Every time he tried to draw in a breath to scream, he felt like the undigested remains of his lunch were dancing on the back of his throat, and he gagged.
"Iceman," he gurgled, fighting the sensation, "watch out!"
Beside him, Bobby held up his hand and a wall of ice grew from the dank water on the floor of the tunnel. Three shuriken sliced neatly through it, creating an explosion of ice fragments that flew out and impacted the tunnel walls.
"We need to get the survivors out of here!" Scott yelled.
"I will lead them to the surface," Ororo said, "Without easy access to the open atmosphere, my powers will not be effective in here!"
"Marvel Girl, go with her. Use your telekinesis thing to shield as many as possible," Scott said.
Jean winced as she picked up the dark thought in Scott's unconscious mind. The taste of betrayal was still in his mouth, like the bitter remnants of rotten fruit.
Jean sent a message to the Morlocks, communicating their intent and requesting them to follow her, and Storm escorted several of them into a side tunnel.
Scalphunter pointed at them, and Arclight began towards the tunnel as if to follow. Shiro engulfed himself in flames and fired a burst of plasma at the water in front of her, flash-boiling it into a billowing cloud of steam. Arclight covered her face and screamed.
Ororo guided the small group towards the tunnel from which the X-Men had first entered, with Jean subliminally calming them with telepathic suggestions. As she rounded the corner, a lean, muscular woman was standing against the wall, her hand pressed against the right side of her gore-streaked face.
"Callisto!" one of the Morlocks cried out, rushing to her side, but Callisto turned to face them with her left hand producing a large knife when she saw the X-Men with her people.
"Who the hell are these people, Jo?"
"I am Storm," Ororo said, "this is Marvel Girl. We're the X-Men. We're here to help."
"They're fighting the bastards that did this," Jo said, her face singed and blistered. She turned back to Ororo. "Callisto is our leader."
"How did you know this was happening?" Callisto said, her one good eye flicking back and forth between the X-Men.
"Charles Xavier sent us," Jean said.
Jean barely registered the attack telepathically before Callisto was lunging forward with the knife, and was only able to deflect the blade enough to keep it from killing her, instead feeling fire from within as the blade sliced a stripe across her left side.
"Callisto!" Jo cried out. "They're helping us!"
"Charles Xavier is from Weapon X! They're the bastards that locked you away and left you to die in here!"
Ororo swung her cape in a whirl, wrapping it around Callisto's wrist, and yanked, wrenching her arm and causing the wounded Morlock leader to release the knife.
"We mean you no harm, but we will defend ourselves from attack," Ororo said.
Callisto dropped her right hand, exposing the ruined orb of her slashed right eye. "Princess, you don't have what it takes to stand up to me." She circled slowly.
"We are not here to fight!" Ororo said. "Weapon X did not send us. We are an independent peacekeeping group."
"Callisto," another Morlock said, "please, they aren't the ones killing us! Let them help!"
"They can't help us, not against these bastards," Callisto spat, "because Weapon X are the ones that made us- and them- what we are today!" She lunged at Ororo, swinging for her ribcage.
Ororo twisted, absorbing the blow, and brought her arm down around Callisto's. She grabbed her wrist and torqued the arm backward, but Callisto turned with the move, showing her back to Ororo and pushing off the wall with her feet, sending them flying across the tunnel.
"I'm trained to fight down and dirty in the trenches, princess," she said, rolling on her shoulder and coming up on her feet. "I don't have fancy powers to protect me, because Leftwich didn't show up with his magic rock until after my trial."
"You were one of the original subjects?" Jean asked, gripping her side tight. She couldn't concentrate enough to use her powers, not with this gaping wound in her side, but she was not going to run. "You were Weapon X?"
"I got news for you, Red," Callisto said, circling again, "everyone down here in this hell hole was Weapon X at one time or another, including the ones murdering my people!" She feigned low, and when Ororo leapt up, Callisto rose, grabbing her by the hips and slammed her into the tunnel wall. She grabbed two handfuls of Ororo's hair and pulled, slamming the X-Man's head into the wall.
Ororo screamed and headbutted Callisto in her damaged socket, tearing out two swathes of her own hair to do so. Callisto bellowed in pain and dropped to the ground, then scrambled back up, her hand back over her eye, which had started bleeding again.
Ororo regarded Callisto's stance and took an appropriate defensive posture. She could tell that the Morlock was badly injured, but still dangerous. "We are not the ones you should fear. We came to stop this slaughter, not exacerbate it. You are hurt, and it is not my wish to hurt you further."
Callisto's responded not with words, but a vicious roundhouse kick. Ororo easily dodged the attack, planting a firm fist into Callisto's solar plexus, knocking the wind out of her. As she staggered backwards, Ororo took advantage of her opponent's exhaustion and spun, kicking her in the leg, and sweeping her to the ground.
"I could kill you," Ororo said, grabbing Callisto by the back of her hair and rearing her fist back. "But I came here to stop bloodshed, not spill more of it. Yield."
Callisto gasped, staring at Ororo, and nodded.
"Good," Ororo said, releasing her opponent. "Then get your people out of here. We have cut a hole in the access way to-"
"This is our home," Callisto said, "I'm not abandoning it. You get them out."
"Callisto," Jean said, still clasping her side, "these people will kill you."
"I know that better than anyone," she said, "I used to be one of them."
Ororo appraised the woman briefly. "Marvel Girl, get them to the surface. Callisto and I will make sure to cover your exit."
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Peter crept out of the cabinet and stepped over the body of the harpoon man. His blood pooled out around his body like a reverse spotlight, looking black in the low light that seeped in from the hallway.
"Turn on the lights," Peter said to himself, and suddenly, the overhead lights flickered to life. He looked around, frightened momentarily, but a slow comprehension began to form in his mind. He did that, somehow, just like he had somehow unlocked and then re-locked the door to the infirmary just by saying it. In the back of his mind, a small glowing ember was suddenly growing, building into a full fledged fire, until it erupted into a brilliant blaze of perfect understanding.
He wasn't a powerless human baby. He was a true Morlock.
He looked around the room and saw numerous pieces of medical equipment. "Turn on," he said, and a screen that had once upon a time monitored the vital signs of a patient snapped to life and displayed numbers and lines. "Turn off," he said, smiling as the device went dead. "Turn on," he said, and the audio recorder began playing back a garbled recording. "Stop," he said, and there was a click. "Rewind," he said, and the recorder obeyed. He laughed a quick laugh and then he stopped. His mind wasn't just sending out commands, it was receiving stuff too. Understanding. He began to see exactly how the devices in the room operated, to know the inner workings of everything mechanical around him.
His eyes came upon a defibrillator, and then a cabinet containing several vials of medicine.
And somehow, Peter understood what to do next.
[NOW: Olympus Mons, The Martian Surface...]
A large explosion of in rushing air scattered a great deal of the dust from the summit of Olympus Mons as a rift opened up in the thin Martian atmosphere. It winked shut almost instantly, but not before disgorging a single passenger. He pressed his boot solemnly onto the remaining soil, creating a print that was unique to the entire surface of the planet.
He stood, surveying the landscape with a mixture of awe and confidence. He watched for a few seconds, taking in the majestic view of the planetscape around him. Interestingly enough, the size of the landmark upon which he stood was so tremendous in relation to the planet that he couldn't discern a sense of height; the edges of the mountain were lost to the curvature of the horizon.
He held out his left hand, and the soil beneath him began to rumble. A circular column of martian rock, three meters in height and a meter thick, assembled itself from the loose fragments and dust particles of the surrounding area. As it grew in size, pieces of the rock began to fall back down, as if the mass was being chiseled away as quickly as it was being built. From the solid shaft of stone there began to emerge a distinct shape, that of a man standing tall, his right hand held palm up to the heavens, his gaze fixed upon the stars.
After a short span of time, the stone figure took its final shape, its features well defined as if by the hand of a master sculptor.
"Piotr would be proud," Mikhail said, smiling.
At the thought of his brother, Mikhail looked towards the Earth, visible as nothing but a pale blue dot in the Martian skies.
"Perhaps I will bring him with me."
[NOW: The Alley...]
"X-Men!" Scott shouted, "press the advantage!"
Kurt spun, teleported behind Scalphunter, and kicked him in the back of the head with the momentum he had built. The Marauder was knocked forward, tripping on a muck-hidden piece of rubble, and crashed to the ground. Kurt reappeared above him and drove his feet into the prone man's back. When Prism drew a bead on the acrobat, Kurt disappeared in a burst of smoke and flame.
Prism then aimed at Kitty, who charged at him, allowing his beam of light to pass harmlessly through her as she tunneled in mid stride. She tackled him, tunneling again, carrying him through the tunnel wall and dropping him in the adjoining tunnel before leaping through the far wall.
Scott blasted Vertigo in the back with a beam of energy and knocked the Marauder off balance, allowing Sean to catch his bearings for a moment. He pounced, grabbing her by the shoulder, whistling in her ear, a shrill piercing sound, and Vertigo screamed as her eardrum was punctured.
Scalphunter picked himself up and grabbed a weapon from his utility suit, firing it at the leader of the X-Men. A thick stream of foam expanded out, splattering against Scott's body and instantly hardening as it enveloped his head.
Arclight, her face scalded by the flash vapor, turned her gaze towards Shiro as he hovered above the damp surface of the tunnel floor. She clapped, shockwaves of force blooming out from the impact point between her hands. The waves struck the tunnel wall, which shattered into fragments.
Sean screamed, sending put a pulsed shockwave that powdered the fragments before they could strike Shiro. Arclight turned to face Sean, building up energy as she poised with her hands back, as Sean drew in a deep breath. They released their shockwaves simultaneously, Sean's piercing wail alternating with Arclight's deep bass boom. The waves met and created a sharp report that stunned everyone in the immediate vicinity.
Shiro pointed at Arclight again, but pulled his arms back defensively when he saw a metallic projectile slice past his hand. He instinctively increased his flame output, coating himself in a shimmering blaze of flames, and felt another projectile clip his arm. Riptide spun, casting his weapons out as he whipped his body in a tight spiral, burying shuriken in the concrete walls with their incredible speed. Shiro's temperature rose to the point where the projectiles melted before they could reach him, but he still felt the impact of molten metal blobs striking his uniform. He would have some pretty serious burns to tend to when he returned to Avalon, that was certain.
Arclight shook her head and saw that the X-Man who had challenged her shockwave was still on his knees. She smiled and went to clap again, but grimaced as her hands clanked against a large metal hand rather than each other.
"Not so fast," Piotr said, grabbing her by the wrists and pulling her arms apart. He forced them together again, slowly, and grabbed them with one hand, reaching out with the other and ripping a piece of pipe off the wall. He twisted it around her wrists, binding her tight.
Suddenly, Piotr felt a strange sensation in his body, a rattle that began to work itself into a full tremor. Arclight smiled as she twiddled her fingers like a wave against her other hand. The tiny vibrations were overwhelming him and the protective sigils that helped counter any vibrations his metallic form may resonate with. He turned back to flesh, and Blockbuster pounced, tackling him from the side.
"Colossus!" Kitty screamed, rushing at Blockbuster. She grabbed the Marauder from behind by the belt and tunneled him downward. Piotr crawled through the muck, holding his side. He suspected that two of his ribs were broken, maybe a third. After a few moments, Kitty reemerged swiftly from the ground, continued tunneling upwards, and passed through the ceiling in less than a half-second.
Piotr recovered, shifting back to his steel form, and crawled over to Scott, who was lying on the ground clawing at the foam around his head. He grabbed two sides of it and pulled, ripping the cocoon open like an overripe melon. Scott gasped deeply as he struggled to regain his composure.
Prism rounded the corner from where Kitty had left him and fired a beam of light at Scott, but it was deflected by a block of ice.
Suddenly, the water that seemed to cover the entirety of the tunnel floor solidified into ice, fusing everybody in place. Bobby stood in the epicenter of the battle, his hands down, raw fury etched on his features. "Enough!" Bobby screamed. Stalagmites of ice speared out into the tunnel interiors, creating a maze of icy bars crisscrossing the combat area.
"Agreed," Scrambler said, tapping Bobby on the shoulder. Bobby spun and raised his hands, but nothing happened. Scrambler kicked him in the balls, dropping him to the ground, and punched him in the jaw.
"Fuck," Scrambler said, "I think I broke my hand!" He held up his uninjured hand and pointed at Shiro. "I got one good one left, though!"
A thrown knife suddenly pierced the palm of his hand, and he screamed in pain.
"Sung, you always were soft," Callisto said.
Ororo stepped past her and looked at Scott. "Cyclops, give me a skylight!"
Scott looked straight up from his place on the floor and unleashed a massive beam, disintegrating the surrounding tunnel structure above them and revealing a turbulent sky. A lightning bolt immediately leapt forth, twisting its way through the air, and turned dramatically in front of Ororo, striking Prism in the chest. He screamed as his crystalline form became smoky, millions of microscopic fractures spreading through his interior. Tiny fingers of electricity blossomed out of him, dancing across the walls of the tunnel, striking Vertigo and Scalphunter.
Scalphunter dropped to the ground, agonized. He surveyed the battleground around him, and did not like what he saw. Vertigo was unconscious, possibly dead. Scrambler was wounded, and next to useless in a fight. Prism's body was a spider-web of cracks, but he was moaning and shifting, so he was still alive. Blockbuster was nowhere to be seen, and was possibly losing a lot of blood. Arclight was struggling to get free of the impromptu bindings the big metal guy had wrapped her in. Harpoon was nowhere to be seen, and Gambit and Sabretooth had each bolted off on their own pretty much the minute this whole operation had started. Only Riptide was still operating at full capacity, and he'd be out of blades soon.
"Arclight," he said, "we're pulling back. We need cover."
Arclight nodded, and again began to tap her fingers rapidly on the metal that Piotr had wrapped around her hands. It vibrated more violently with each successive tap until it cracked, sending a jagged piece of metal into her cheek. "Damnit!" she screamed, putting her hand to her cheek, drawing out the sliver. She quickly shook it off, spread her arms, and brought her hands together. The shockwave rocked everyone off their feet and shattered many of Bobby's ice obstacles.
"Marauders, fall back!" Scalphunter yelled, and got to his feet, grabbing Vertigo and moving towards the far end of the tunnel. He stopped and looked down at Prism, but his form was still, the cracks in his form made larger by Arclight's shockwave. "You'll be avenged, brother," he said, hefting Vertigo and making for the exit.
Blockbuster stood leaning against the wall, the ragged stump where his hand used to be clutched beneath his left arm. "Fading fast, Scalphunter."
"We're on the move, Blockbuster," Scalphunter replied. "Take Vertigo, get back to the transport. Arclight! Riptide! Scrambler! We're leaving!" He placed a hand on his radio transmitter and depressed the button. "Gambit, Sabretooth, Harpoon, if you copy, initiate retreat. Our work here is done!"
Arclight, visibly fatigued by the combat, spread wide her arms again, and brought them together in one final thunderous crash. The walls of the tunnel began to shake, and the section of tunnel that Cyclops had ventilated collapsed. Chain reactions began to rattle the entire structure.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Peter stepped out of the med lab carrying the new weapon he had created, using muscles he didn't know he had to carry the weighty contraption, a look of grim determination on his face. The harpoon man and his bad guy buddies had killed his family, his friends, maybe even everyone he knew. He didn't know who these X-Men were, but the hairy scary guy said they were trying to stop them. From the sounds he was hearing, Peter didn't think they were doing a very good job. He wanted to find the card throwing man who killed his father and give him the justice he deserved.
He stepped out of the tunnel, and fate was listening. The card throwing man was kneeling in the middle of the tunnel, holding the body of one of the children that his friends had murdered.
"Hey!" he yelled, and the card throwing man turned quickly. Peter hesitated for just an instant when he saw the card throwing man's eyes. Although they were black as Tar's skin, and had red, evil pupils, it was clear to Peter that the man was crying.
"Wait, don't!" the card man cried out, but Peter would wait no longer. He pulled the trigger on the improvised weapon, which used the defibrillator's electrical paddles to create an electric field that magnetized and then hurled the syringes he had found in the medicine cabinet.
Still charged by the paddles, the needles discharged when they stuck into the card throwing man, and exploded, dousing him with chemicals. He screamed as his body convulsed with the electrical jolt, and fell silent as the chemicals knocked him out.
Peter stepped over to the card throwing man, clumsily loading up a second cartridge of needles containing something called potassium chloride, when he saw who the card throwing man had been holding.
"Sprout?" Peter said, kneeling next to him.
"Hey, Pete," Sprout said weakly, "neat gun."
"What happened?" Peter asked, gently cradling his head, "I thought you were dead!"
"This guy saved my life," he said, "why'd you shoot him?"
"He killed my pop," Pete said, tears choking him up.
"He said they lied to him. To get him to do stuff. He tried to help..." Sprout fell silent, his eyes staring off in the distance. He was dead.
Peter cried as he held the head of the young Morlock. In the distance, he saw a few Morlocks stagger past the juncture of a tunnel towards the empty storage tunnel, led by a woman who was one of the X-Men. He figured he should tell them about the card throwing man, who lay unconscious on the floor of the tunnel, but all he could think of was telling them that he was a real Morlock, and that he belonged with them. He sprinted toward them.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Riptide, acting as the rear guard for the Marauders, backed away, firing his shuriken at Shiro as fast as he could manage. He knew his supply was nearly exhausted, and began swiping chunks of rubble from the ground to keep the barrage up, but everything he threw at the flaming X-Man was melting before it could do more than plop against his uniform.
Scrambler, hiding in the shadows, his hands clutched defensively to his chest, spit out a gob of blood and pointed at Shiro.
As Riptide continued to pelt him with blades and debris, Shiro's flames suddenly sputtered, and the blades that hadn't yet reached him passed through, slicing neatly into his chest.
"Shiro!" Ororo screamed, watching as her ally fell to the ground. Riptide turned towards her and blew her a kiss. Before he could even turn, a lightning bolt thundered through the opening in the ceiling, thicker than a man's arm and brighter than the sun, and struck Riptide square in the chest.
"X-Men, grab the survivors and run!" Scott yelled, vaporizing a chunk of rubble as it fell towards him. He saw Ororo cross the tunnel for Shiro's body, and then suddenly there was a calamitous rumble, and she seemed to disappear. "Storm!" he yelled, but the tunnel was becoming too unstable.
With a sudden boom as if on cue, the tunnel began to collapse.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Jean staggered against the wall as she held her side. She knew the entryway they had created should be right around the next turn, but she could barely keep on her feet, especially with the entire structure collapsing. She rounded the corner and saw a flat expanse of brick and mortar, and her hopes sank.
"Shit!" she said, and turned back. She could barely think, but time was crucial now. "Everybody against the wall! I'm going to try to shield you!"
At that moment, there was a loud ripping sound, as a hole appeared in mid-air. The air in the tunnel rushed through, creating an explosive decompression, which stopped as suddenly as it started when a large man stepped through the hole and into the tunnel. Jean had just enough time to remark to herself "hey, this guy looks just like Piotr," before she fell unconscious.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Scott reached the mouth of the tunnel and looked up suddenly, as if he had heard an individual sound in the explosive cacophony of the tunnel's collapse, but in truth, it was an absence of sound that drew his attention. That soft, soothing hum of his psychic connection with Jean was abruptly severed.
"JEAN!" he screamed, and the tunnel gave way.
[NOW: Elsewhere in the Alley...]
Peter stepped around the corner, expecting to see his people standing there in the storage annex, but what he saw amazed him. He saw a rippling window, like a hole torn in the wall, leading to a place the likes of which Peter had only seen in a book. It had a lovely golden warmth to it that he could feel even from dozens of feet away, with a vast hill covered in golden wheat. He saw his people, the Morlocks, walking into this hill, and a large man that looked a lot like the metal man that shared his name carrying the X-Man-Woman with red hair. Without looking back, he stepped into the window, which promptly snapped shut.
And for the second time that day, Peter had a thought that went against his non-religious upbringing; he was seeing the dead being escorted to their eternal rest by the angel of death.
Within seconds, the tunnel snapped shut as well, burying everyone still inside.
[To Be Continued...]