Issue #10 by D. Golightly
May 2018 Daken
Cypher
Xorn
Morph
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"DOUBLE CROSS"A C.O.D.E. CONFIDENTIAL TIE-IN!
The Archive
A government repository of all mutant files Operating headquarters of the Mutant Response Team Now under the purview of the X-Factor Sanction Enforcement It was impossible, yet there it was. It shouldn’t be happening. The notification on his smartphone wasn’t going to change, no matter how long he stared at it. And there was no chance of ignoring it, either. This was no glitch or phantom tone screwing up his connection. This was real. And yet, how could it be? A knock on his door pulled Daken out of his contemplation. They had each been given quarters there at the Archive, but outside of their scheduled briefings rarely did anyone else on the team, or from the XSE for that matter, actually seek him out in his room. He wasn’t the most personable, which was exactly what he wanted. Havok had placed him here to keep him under close observation; that much was obvious. He wasn’t here to make friends. He pulled open the door to see Cypher standing on the other side, his right hand holding an open book that he looked to be scanning, despite the fact that he had sought out Daken. The assassin didn’t know if he cared enough to consider it rude. “What is it?” Daken asked after waiting a long moment in silence. Finally, Cypher pulled his attention away from the book. On the spine it read, The Power of Habit, by Charles M. Duhigg. “Sorry,” the Mutant Response Team’s field leader replied. “There’s just so much to catch up on since I came back to life. Sometimes I can’t pry myself away from the language on the page. Since coming back, my omnilinguialism has been amped up to 11, so it’s like I—” “Did you want something?” Daken spat He knew enough about Cypher’s abilities to know that his mannerisms, body language, and general tone were coming across loud and clear. Even if the blonde man did seem naïve, his mutant powers would ensure that he would get the message: leave me alone. Cypher’s mouth hung open, mid-syllable for a second before he said. “Right. Yes. Briefing in 15 minutes. Shard has gone back to the XSE, but Morph has a line on Professor Power. We have a 12-hour window coming up that if we want to—” “Fine,” Daken said, and he shut his door. He turned back to his smartphone, hoping that the notification was gone, a figment of his imagination, but no. There it was. Someone had breached the security in his bunker, his private shelter, that no one was supposed to know about. The original owner of the building was dead, there was no paper trail linking the location to a new owner, and he had never taken anyone there, nor had he spoken of it aloud. He hadn’t even bothered to install security cameras because he was so sure of its invisibility, and therefore couldn’t check any live feeds to see who the intruder was. There was a chance, however slim, that someone had stumbled on it by accident, but he doubted it. He grabbed his gear: a KA-BAR skeleton neck boot knife, a Sig Sauer P239 sub-compact pistol with shoulder holster and extra magazine, two flashbangs, and an M1014 semi-automatic shotgun with shoulder strap. He didn’t need any of it to kill an intruder, but he didn’t want to just bring claws to a gunfight if he could avoid it. He had been trained to take all possible advantages. He slid out of his room, went down the hall, passed the sole conference room, and exited the Archive. If he moved quickly he could be at his bunker inside of an hour, which was hopefully fast enough to catch the intruder in the act. He had a feeling that whoever it was wouldn’t be there just to poke around and leave, though. They would be lying in wait for him. “He’s not coming,” Xorn said. Beneath her helmet, Lorna Summers, a refugee from another dimension, sighed heavily. She had come here at the behest of Havok and Beast, and while the field work they were doing was important, right now she felt like she was being contained. She almost wanted to burst free from the Archive and rocket into the stratosphere to enjoy the soft currents of the Earth’s electromagnetic pull. After all, it was Havok that had placed her here, just like he had recruited all of them, and he wasn’t here anymore. Havok had yanked Cypher out from federal custody. He had drafted Morph away from running Xavier’s personal operations. He had reached some kind of work release for Daken. And she was here so they could keep an eye on her. But Havok wasn’t in charge anymore. The XSE was. She had no loyalty to them. None of them did. So why were they still here? What was the purpose of the Mutant Response Team now? As if he had read her mind, Cypher stood up. “We have a job to do,” he said. “If Daken comes late to the game I’ll catch him up. Right now we need to focus and move quickly. Morph?” He gestured toward the shape-changing mutant, who despite himself, seemed dead serious. Shard had mentioned something about a history that Morph shared with Professor Power. Maybe there was some kind of trauma there. He flipped on the whiteboard and motioned to the layout of a compound on the screen. Morph said. “We only have a 12-hour window of opportunity as Power makes his financial transfer. I’ve been tracking what I suspected were his accounts for the last two years, but whenever he funnels money into a project the funds have been rerouted into oblivion. I wasn’t able to figure it out, until I got access to his systems in Russia.” The Russian operation had been particularly harsh on Xorn, but she didn’t want to admit that to her team. She mentally scoffed – her team. This was about as much her team as it was any of theirs, but again, with Havok gone, it now felt more like a bunch of kids playing while their parents were away. Morph droned on about tracking cryptocurrency and how just a half hour ago he had run a trace on a suspected transfer that was being rerouted through various pieces of a blockchain network. The digital currency was being bounced around the world at a rate of several thousand servers per minute, and would take 12 hours for the transfer to complete. It was supposed to be untraceable, but Morph had cracked it using the data he had been collecting for years. Given his nature, it was easy to forget that he was actually a respected computer and forensic scientist. They knew the money was headed to somewhere in Canada, but they didn’t have a precise location yet. That wouldn’t come until almost the very end of the transfer, and if they wanted to stop the cash from being used for more of Power’s projects, they had to get to the location quickly, before the transfer completed. There was also the sidelong chance that they might even catch Power wherever the money landed. It was a slim chance, but slim was better than none. “Our chopper is getting prepped on the roof now,” Morph said as he clicked off his presentation. “The transfer started about two hours ago and it will take us roughly four hours to get into Canada. That only gives us six hours to get as close to where we think the money is headed and to shut the operation down. I’ll be following the money via satellite while we fly. On the outside chance that Power is there, he’ll take priority over chasing the money.” Xorn looked from Morph to Cypher and then back again. “So, what…it’s just the three of us? Last time Power took us down cold and we had to wait for Daken to show up. He’s not even here to know where we’re headed. We can’t count on him this time.” Cypher stood up. “The XSE isn’t giving us additional resources for this mission,” he said. “They feel that our priority should be—” “Hold on,” Xorn said as she raised a hand to silence Cypher. “You’re telling me that the XSE comes in here, takes over, kicks out Havok, and now basically hangs us out to dry? They’re setting us up for failure.” “Maybe that’s what they want,” Morph said. “While planning this op with Shard, I got a good look at their plans for the Mutant Response Team. They have no official agenda slated for us, only monitoring.” Xorn shook her head in disgust. “This is insane,” she said. “I feel like we’re prisoners. Worse than that, prisoners with targets. Like they’re just going to throw us in the work yard and point us toward whoever is big and doesn’t like to play nice.” “Actually,” Morph said, “that’s exactly what I got out of my skimming of Shard’s files. They want to keep us under thumb, but not sanction any missions. Professor Power is…well, kind of a bonus for them.” “How do you mean?” Cypher asked. “Think about it,” Morph replied. “We’re under the XSE’s watch, but not being given official orders. We have an opportunity to take out a terrorist with mutant ties who is operating across borders. The XSE says we can go ahead, but not in an official capacity because there’s no paperwork on this, and they aren’t providing additional resources. If we succeed they can take credit. If we fail, we’re just another cell that’s gone rogue and they don’t have to deal with us anymore.” “Seems like Havok might have been protecting us from a lot,” Xorn said. “Seems that way,” Morph said. Cypher took in a deep breath and let is out slowly. Finally, he said, “We’ll have plenty of time to talk about how we’re going to handle this while we’re in the air. We’ll decide what we’re doing once we get back from Canada.” Xorn watched Cypher step out of the briefing room. She didn’t need his omnilinquilism to know that he was conflicted about how all of this was playing out. Someone was definitely inside. Daken had reached his bunker within forty-five minutes of leaving the Archive, but he hadn’t gone directly into the building. He had set up a block away on another rooftop, watching and waiting. Every few minutes he would change position and get one building closer, keeping an eye on the only entrance and exit. When he had first set up his safe house as a way to go to ground if Havok put too tight of a noose around his neck, he had made sure to seal off most of the building. When he had moved into position to just across the street, the sun was starting to set and he finally saw a shadow move through one of the windows. Not only had someone gotten inside, but they were still there. It had been a couple of hours since his alert had first gone off, which meant that whoever it was had to be lying in wait for him. Random looters would have picked the place clean and taken off by now. This was purposeful. They had to know who he was. They might even know about the team, Havok’s offer, and what his real priorities were. That meant there was no use avoiding a straight-up confrontation. Daken slid down the fire escape, trotted across the street, input his code to unseal the one and only door, and entered the building, sealing it behind him. He readied his shotgun, bringing it level with his chest. “Come out!” he called out. “No use in delaying this!” Total silence, and then…a scoff. Footsteps. He glanced at the wooden stairs that led to the loft and saw the silhouette of someone approaching. They paused halfway down, still concealed by the shadows, and said, “No, there isn’t any use, is there?” Daken was shaken, although he held his shotgun steady. That voice. What was going on here? He might have preferred to just blow the guy away and figure this out after the dust settled, but that voice. “I wondered if my safe house was in the same place as yours,” he said. “The entry code was the same, too. Truly remarkable, don’t you think?” “Who the hell are you?” “A scientist. A researcher. A pathological futurist. From what I’ve gathered from looking through your files here,” he said as he stepped down a few more steps to reveal his face, “I’m everything you’re not.” Daken’s eyes went wide. He couldn’t help his response to seeing the man’s face. His features, his skin tone…it was like looking in a mirror. The hair was different; more subdued. Instead of the tactical vest and dark clothing that Daken normally wore, this other person wore a pressed three-piece suit of charcoal grey. He looked refined. And then just as quickly, his instincts kicked in. This was a trap. Some kind of trick. It had to be. He was vulnerable. He was now a cornered animal and he needed to break out, kill the threat, and retreat to a safe place. The other Daken raised his palms in defense. “Now, now,” he said. “I’m sure that your survival instincts just kicked into high gear. No need to do anything rash. I came as both a curiosity and a confirmation. It would seem that Department H has you doing their dirty work, just as they do me.” “What are you talking about? What are you? Some kind of shape-changer?” He briefly considered that Morph was playing some macabre prank on him, but disregarded it. The smell was wrong. “An LMD?” “Ha! A Life Model Decoy? Yes, that would be interesting, wouldn’t it? It would mean that your government was involved. But no, I’m flesh and blood. This is no simulation, Daken. I am you. You are me. But we are opposing forces.” Daken blinked. “Explain.” “I was brought to this dimension by someone who has largescale plans to conquer it.* My own research for Department H, mainly focused on weaponizing dimensional polarity, hit a kink as soon as that someone bridged our worlds.” * [For details on that, check out the C.O.D.E. Confidential event series!] “Who?” The other Daken waved a hand and finished walking down the steps, now level with Daken. “It doesn’t matter. He’ll reveal himself soon enough, I’m sure. These megalomaniacs always do, don’t they? His story doesn’t carry weight with ours. But, I do think that we could reserve the situation. Send me home. Send most of us home.” “You’ve broken into my bunker, told me virtually nothing about what the hell is going on, and now you’re asking me for favors? You’re insane.” The other Daken sighed and smirked. He crossed his arms behind his back as he began to pace, something he looked like he did often when thinking aloud. “In observing your world, I believe that my research on dimensional polarity is more vital than ever. Different dimensions have different causalities. Different life experience builds different philosophies, and so on. Your world seems to be a near mirror image of mine, except that morality can be more fluid here.” “Fluid,” Daken repeated. “Precisely. For example, you are a killer. It’s what you’ve always been told that you were. What you always believed yourself to be. In looking through your files, I see that Department H guided you in this moral polarity. They instilled in your, and then reinforced, a bloodlust. I was surprised to see that your specific target was none other than—” “Get to the point.” The other Daken cleared his throat. “Yes. Well. My point is that I believe you are a product of Department H’s meddling, just like myself. Only on my world, Department H pushed me toward academia, and not assassination. I am one of the most revered minds on my world, and the foremost expert on dimensional polarity. Together we can right this travesty. We can return to my world, together, and become a true force to be reckoned with. “My mind…your militaristic nature…we would be unstoppable. There would be no end to the problems we would solve. We could topple dictators, collapse the work of that insufferable Richards, and finally bring peace to the world. “There are solutions to my world’s problems. I can solve them and you can defeat the tyranny that stands in our way!” Daken finally lowered his shotgun. “So, you’re saying that you’re from another world, one where people are what, backwards from this one?” “Precisely! My world is riddled with opportunists like Stark and his Revengers, or muffled by the Spider’s worldwide web of crime. We can stop them, make the world right again!” Daken stepped closer to his newfound counterpart. “We’d be partners…brothers?” “Yes!” *snikt!* The other Daken’s eyes went wide and a drop of blood rolled over his bottom lip. He looked down to see a set of bone claws stabbing into his abdomen. He looked back up to see Daken with a menacing look on his face. “Why are you surprised?” Daken said. “If you’re the good guy on your world, what did you think that made me?” The other Daken began choking on his own blood as the claws were extracted. He fell to his knees, barely able to breath in anymore. He fingered the new holes in his stomach, as if he were trying to stitch himself back together or repair the damage. He realized how futile it was just as the last once of life evaporated from his body, and he slumped over, dead. Daken slipped his shotgun over his shoulder, grabbed the foot of his doppleganger, and dragged him to the back of the bunker. There was an incinerator there, although the body was too large for it. It was meant for breaking down scrap. He pulled out his boot knife and went to get a tarp. He had work to do. NEXT ISSUE: Ooooooh, Caaaaaanadaaaa! We’re heading to the Great White North to collect on Professor Power. But what will the team find once they’re at the surprise destination? |