Back to Gatefold#8 by D. Golightly
August 2017 |
"Power - Part Two of Two"
Sokolov Pharmaceutical Compliance Center
Shell company owned by TransGenics, LLC
Six kilometers inside Glazov, Russia border
“This is all a little silly, don’t you think?” Professor Power asked.
Stark fluorescent lighting from the fixtures hanging in the lab’s ceiling were dim against the golden sheen of the Professor’s armor. He was completely encased, except for his face, in thick metal that looked strong enough to make him superhuman. The power had been restored to the facility after Xorn’s electromagnetic pulse had knocked it down, not that it had mattered.* Power’s augmented mutant soldiers had been lying in wait for them.
With Morph catapulted who knew how far away and possibly killed, and Daken missing in action, that left two members of the Mutant Response Team – Cypher and Xorn – plus two members of the XSE** - Abigail Brand and Shard – to fall quickly at the hands of five incredibly overpowered mutant subjects. They had been taken by surprise, but the truth was that even if they had been better prepared that their opposition was so powerful that it may not have made a difference.
* [Last ish]
** [X-Factor Sanction Enforcement]
Three of the Professor’s troops – Devon, Calli, and Mark – stood between him and the captured mutants. The two males wore matching orange bodysuits and Calli wore one that was a pale shade of green. Devon and Calli stood half a step behind Mark, who was barely four feet tall and a shadow of the other two model specimens, a factor that had cast him beneath their notice most of the time despite the fact they were treated as equals.
To make up for this, Mark typically took point, trying to usurp control whenever he could, which usually came off as arrogance. Currently, he was just a hair closer to the captured infiltrators because he had opted to hold them at bay with a suppressive field of radiation that seemed to have a gravitational effect. In short, the prisoners were immobilized.
“Several of you derail my shipment of material, and then you come straight to my Russian facility!” Power continued. “Could you have been more obvious in your ploy? We tracked the XSE commissioned helicopter that brought you here. We only had to lie in wait for less than an hour!”
“If by material,” Xorn said, “you mean genetically altered mutants, then yes, we derailed your shipment.”
“How did you know we were coming?” Brand, head of the XSE and currently working alongside the Mutant Response Team, inquired. She briefly looked at Shard, also on loan from the XSE for this particular mission.
Professor Power noticed the glance and exchanged one of his own. “Worried about a leak in your precious organization?” he asked, and then sneered. “I might let you stew with that notion, but no. There are no secrets in Russia, my dear.”
“Let us go,” Cypher ordered. He impressed his will into the words, trying to control the conversation and the intent along with it. He had recently learned that his mutant ability had changed so that he not only understood all points of communication, but he could control them as well. He could disseminate communication and influence the raw empathic tone. “Stand down. Release us. Now.”
Power laughed. “I think not. Mister Kilgore…silence that one.”
Mark said, “Gladly,” and squinted.
Cypher felt a painful power surge as the portion of Mark’s field that surrounded him darkened, and he found that he could no longer move any of his muscles, including those he needed to speak. Despite the pain, he was still confused. Why hadn’t his mutant power worked the way it had on the Brood?*
* [XF #4]
Power stepped a little closer to Cypher and leaned down. “Your powers are linguistic in nature, correct?” he asked. “I assume your ridiculous commands were an attempt to, what, alter my neural pathways? Yes. Fairly likely. Now you’re probably thinking how I might be able to deduce such a thing. Obviously, Sokolov is no common pharmaceutical testing center.”
He motioned to the laboratory behind him, in which half a dozen men and women in white lab coats worked at various terminals. Empty stainless steel containers with glass fronts, identical to the ones that had seen housing mutant subjects not even a week ago, lined the back wall. Cables, thick and thin, ran between machines that had no obvious function.
“The genetic research my TransGenics company has been doing is focused entirely on the mutant genome,” Power stated. “Specifically, how to isolate genetic markers, replicate them, and make them more…shall we say, potent?”
“It’s inhumane,” Shard said.
“Really?” Power feigned confusion. “I don’t see them complaining.”
“The data we’ve already collected indicates that there’s no way the mutants you’ve experimented on have survived,” Xorn quickly said. “You’re breaking a dozen laws, not counting the moral and ethical statutes.”
At this, Devon and Calli traded a brief glance, but didn’t comment. Mark held his ground.
“My current five subjects will testify to the fact that I’ve resolved my earlier stumbles,” Power explained. “Sacrifices were made in the name of science, yes. But now my team has perfected the process to not only harness mutant powers, but augment them and duplicate them in other mutants!”
“But why?” Brand asked. “Why in the hell would you want to do something like that?”
“Why would I want my own private army of super-mutants?” Power countered. “Ha! Surely you’re joking. After my previous failures through the Secret Empire and the White house itself, why take risks with further subterfuge? Brunt force is the only true tactic left to me. I’m too old to start over with clandestine operations. This armor is keeping me alive long enough to fulfill my destiny. My champions have already proven their effectiveness…but, I’m always looking for more talent.”
He smiled and cupped Brand’s chin in his hand, forcing her to look up into his crisp eyes. “Now,” he said, “Who should we dissect first?”
# # # # # # # # # #
He had wanted to shoot each of them in the head.
However, despite the high velocity rounds he had loaded into his rifle, Daken knew that trying to put a bullet into the orange- and green-suited, radiation-throwing mutants would be fruitless. He knew this because he had tried it already. Xorn had said that these guys were throwing off millions of rads, and he believed her, since he had watched three of his shots melt in midair when trying to punch through their radiation fields.*
* [XF #5 – why aren’t you caught up on this stuff?]
So, when he had watched his comrades in arms (however temporary they may be) get taken down like amateurs from his tree line perch, he had opted to put his sniper rifle down. It wouldn’t do anything other than piss them off, and there was no way he could charge to the rescue, not with five of the freaks out there.
No, he would have to handle this more subtly.
He waited until dusk turned to total darkness. The others – Cypher, who he had gained respect for, Xorn, and the two XSE feds – had been taken inside over an hour ago. Morph was hopefully dead, although Daken knew that he would have no such luck. Despite the fact that Daken had watched him take some type of concussive force straight in the chest at point blank range, he knew that the shapeshifter was crafty, skilled, and malleable. It was far more likely that he was stuck a few miles away, his body liquefied on impact. He would be reforming for at least another day.
He knew this because he had been handed a fairly thick dossier on the shifter prior to accepting Havok’s offer to join the team. He had one on all of them, except for Xorn, but he would uncover her secrets before long. It was part of his assignment. That, and waiting for the call he had literally been born to receive. They thought he was engaged in some sort of rehabilitation program to cut years off of his sentencing from the targets he had taken out in Madripor. It was all just another cover.
But that didn’t matter right now. What mattered was getting his incompetent team out of harm’s way so that his real mission could continue.
Two of the enemy, a man and a woman, were standing sentry outside the building. The woman, wearing green, he had heard been called Karen. The man, wearing orange, had been referred to as Aaron. He could smell them from where he hid. They both reeked of hormones. Whatever Power had done to them it was messing with their physiology to the extreme.
He had recognized Anthony Power immediately. Despite the new golden armor, he seemed like the same old power-hungry fool that his dossier had claimed him to be. It would be an added prize to his handler if Daken could take him out as well.
While he was sure that Power’s goons had some sort of training, it seemed to be nothing more than boot camp level. They could obviously handle themselves, but they relied far too much on their mutant abilities. They were physically vulnerable.
Karen was on the far side of the complex, near the loading dock. She stood almost perfectly centered between the two garage doors meant to take incoming shipments, like the one they had foiled.
Aaron radiated arrogance. He couldn’t suppress half a smirk as he watched over the vacant lawn surrounding the facility, no doubt because of his capturing the other team members. Daken had learned that arrogance like that, especially when you were on watch, could be as good as signing a death warrant.
The powerful mutant never saw Daken approach from behind, and he barely felt the tip of a sharp, bone claw piercing the back of his neck. With trained precision worthy of a surgeon, Daken clapped his hand around Aaron’s mouth and quickly slid one of his claws directly between the cervical spine and the base of his skull. He was sure he even brushed against Aaron’s mastoid process.
Despite all of the power that the Professor had given him, Aaron slumped to the ground, dead before gravity even claimed him.
Daken pressed himself against the wall, out of Karen’s field of vision, but not for long. He heard her slowly walking toward his position, no doubt curious as to the slight thump Aaron’s body had made. He retracted his claw and took in a deep breath, and then exhaled slowly.
As Daken pushed out enough pheromones to give an elephant pause, he heard Karen’s steps falter. It wasn’t an ability he liked to be vocal about, as it gave him an edge in certain situations. Now, thanks to lacing the air with hormones, Karen would be off her guard and a much easier target.
“Aaron?” Karen said gently as she rounded the edge of the building.
Daken stepped out and could see the fog in Karen’s eyes. She was high on his scent and instinctively, as well as subconsciously, didn’t immediately see him as a threat. He could have gutted her or shot her with his sidearm, but ever since Madripor he had become adamant about not killing women or children. His handler didn’t like it, but what was he going to do about it?
Instead he took advantage of the situation. Tactically, he should have put her down for the count, but he found that taking an unorthodox approach sometimes yielded better results. Even though he was a hardened killer, his lips were surprisingly soft.
Her eyes went wide when he swept in for the kiss, but she quickly melted into his embrace. With even more pheromones now permeating her body through the fluid exchange, she was more like a puppy than an Omega-level mutant.
Daken slid his hand onto the small of her back and she pressed into his body, gently moaning. His hand traced up her spine, reaching all the way up under her hair and against her neck. His other hand cupped her cheek and he was now in the perfect anatomical position to sharply and savagely twist her neck, severing the spinal cord.
But he didn’t. He wouldn’t. It didn’t matter if she was a killer, a criminal, or even a psychopath. He didn’t kill women. Not anymore.
Pinching a cluster of nerves near the acromion and clavicle, she winced in jolting pain. She pushed back and he spun her into a sleeper hold. Her confusion and surprise made her gasp for breath that wasn’t coming, and within a few seconds she slid down to the ground, unconscious. She would remain that way for at least an hour unless someone revived her.
Daken slid into the complex easily enough; it seemed that in anticipating their arrival, Power had sent the standard security home. The guard station that Morph had been flung from was still empty and there were no other standard guards in sight. One of the garage doors slid up with just a small rumbling and he was in.
Working his way carefully through the building, he assumed that Power had them all collected in one place. It wouldn’t make any sense to split them up unless he was going to interrogate them in his version of Prisoner’s Dilemma. Since he had known they were coming, however, such a tactic seemed irrelevant. In fact, Power seemed to know way more than was possible about their operations. Given that Russia wasn’t known for keeping its secrets, it seemed peculiar that he would have anticipated the very night of their attempted infiltration.
After the loading dock there was a long corridor that ran through the middle of the facility. The only room that had light seeping through from beneath the closed door was at the far end, a straight shot from the dock ramp. He crept up, sniffing along the way. His keen senses, another component of his necessary conditioning should he ever get that one specific phone call, were tracking what he assumed: everyone was being kept together and they were all being held in that room.
Just barging in wouldn’t do any good; Power’s people were practically gods on earth. The other three were in there, along with several others new to his senses. He had no way of knowing if there were more augmented mutants with them. Simply kicking in the door wasn’t going to work.
He glanced back toward the garage and quickly formed a strategy. He didn’t need to make an actual frontal assault provided that they thought he was making one. Most of his missions involved some sort of feint, and this would be no different.
Stalking back into the garage, he went to the miniature forklift that was used to unload pallets from delivery trucks. It barely weighed 500 pounds, and he doubted that the engine could get up past five or six miles per hour, but it would serve his purposes. Slipping the gear into neutral, he pushed the forklift off the dock and into the corridor, and then flipped the ignition switch. The forklift was fueled by a propane tank strapped to the back of the control chair, acting as a nice, huge target.
Daken smiled. Whatever might happen, this would be one hell of a show.
# # # # # # # # # #
“I admit, I’m the most curious about how your powers operate,” Power said as he glared down at Cypher, who was strapped to a lab table. Power nodded to one of his scientists, who had slipped out of his lab coat and into a fresh pair of scrubs, complete with mask and gloves. “Are we ready?”
Cypher struggled against the bonds, but to no success. The suppressive field maintained by Devon, who stood smugly just off to one side, was enough to keep him in place even without the bonds. He had forced as much will into his doublespeak as possible, but his mutant powers were likewise being dampened. Whatever additional abilities Power had replicated into his soldiers, they were enough to counter the entire team’s scope of practice.
Just as the scientist raised a scalpel and nodded that he was ready to begin, something forced its way into the door that led from the lab into the main corridor. Wood splintered as the doorway was forced apart by some type of vehicle pushing through. Two huge metal prongs, about waist high, punctured the heavy door and bent it in half. The vehicle’s motor was whirring, obviously having difficulty trying to overpower the obstacle.
“What in—?” Calli started to say, but settled for blasting the forklift over with a concentrated burst of red radiation instead of an explanation. She had been standing directly in front of it and as soon as it fell on its side she could see clearly down the long hallway, all the way to the garage. Her eyes went wide and she started to scream a warning, but her voice was lost in a sudden explosion.
Daken had fired a single shot down the corridor from his sidearm, striking the propane tank on the back of the forklift. A vortex of flame filled the corridor and washed over Calli, who took the brunt of the blast. She was knocked back, singed by the explosion but relatively unharmed thanks to her radiation aura absorbing most of the heat.
Mark ground his teeth and took a step toward the door, intending to take out Daken and whoever else the tricky mutant might have with him, but a warning from Power stopped him cold.
“Maintain your position!” Power commanded. “Extend your suppressive field to this one on the table. Devon! Assess Ms. Caufield. If she is able, take her and kill the intruders. If she is too weak, leave her.”
Calli shot a glance at Power, irritated. “I’m fine! It was that feral one, the one with the claws. How the hell did he get by Karen and Aaron?”
“They’re probably dead,” Devon said as soon as Mark shifted his field to cover Cypher. “Forget them. We don’t need them to kill this freak.”
“He’s mine!” Calli said as she launched herself into the corridor.
She levitated herself and rocketed down toward the garage, but Daken was already gone. She looked left and right, but there was simply no sign of him. Aggravated and embarrassed, she unleashed a torrent of radiation across the garage, charring several stacks of pallets and even igniting an oil stain on the concrete floor.
Devon flew up behind her and smacked her shoulder, yelling, “Knock it off! He has to be here somewhere. Just use your eyes. He’s one person and we’re us.”
No sooner had Devon finished his sentence than Daken had leapt down from the girders overhead, which lined the ceiling and provided support from the garage section of the building. Without so much as whispering a single syllable he popped out his six claws, three on each arm, and jammed them straight down into Devon’s torso on either side of his head.
Gravity ripped both of them back down onto the cold concrete and Daken shifted his weight one way so that he rolled onto his back and quickly sprung up again, twisting to face the stunned Calli. Devon had slammed down hard, his own descent nowhere near as controlled, smacking his head off of the floor. Blood pooled around his upper body, seeping from his shoulders where Daken had stabbed him.
Calli screamed and smashed her fists together, sending a searing beam of concentrated radiation directly at Daken. Her went low and to the side, avoiding her strike and flanked her position by moving behind a few unmarked crates. She blasted them apart, sending splinters of wood and what looked like slabs of metal from whatever the crates had contained all over the garage.
Daken retracted his claws, which were smoking from penetrating Devon’s superheated body. They would heal in short order, thanks to his healing factor. Seeing Power’s mutants in action against Xorn and again here tonight, he knew how dangerous it would be to openly engage them, hence forcing them to come to him with the forklift stunt.
Three of them were down. Rage had overtaken Calli and she was blasting away his cover piece by piece, sending shrapnel scattering around the garage. Hand-to-hand was out of the question; he would be roasted alive as soon as he stepped into the open.
He waited for the next crate to be blasted off of the pile and then he swung around the side of the stack, opposite where he knew her attention to be due to where her blast had struck. He raised had drawn his sidearm, took half a second to aim, and put one in her left knee.
The bullet tore through her patella and shattered the rest of her knee, and she dropped down hard. She screamed and her eyes blazed white. He saw that she was getting ready to release an even stronger bout of radiation, so he shot her again in the right shoulder.
Now with horrible pain rifling both sides of her body, she couldn’t concentrate enough to keep her powers up. She rolled back and forth on her back like an overturned turtle, shrieking in pain with every movement, but unable to right herself.
Early on in his training Daken had been taught to take the path of least resistance, meaning to leave the crazy action sequences to the crazies in Hollywood. No need to pop the claws and put yourself at risk when a bullet will accomplish your goals for you. It wasn’t sleek and sexy, but ultimately it didn’t matter. Now all but one of Power’s mutants were down and he was still standing.
He left her there, bleeding and swearing, rushing back down the corridor with his weapon drawn and at the ready. The last one, Mark, was still inside as well as Power. Unfortunately, he had used up most of his tricks. He thought about exiting the facility and trying to find an alternate way into the room now that he knew where it was, perhaps a window or ventilation shaft, but his latest enemy was the clock. Now that Power knew he was inside he didn’t have time to do anything other than come at them as hard as he could. Every second that passed was another one that left his teammates in danger.
The time for a cautious approach was over. Daken ran at full steam down the corridor and leapt just as his feet crossed the threshold. He somersaulted over knocked down and still burning forklift, drawing his weapon as soon as he landed in a crouch. He swept right to left, ready to pull the trigger at any potential threats.
Surprisingly, there were none. Mark was unconscious on the floor and Power was gone. A few of the scientists were huddled in the far corner of the room, desperate to keep away from the mutants, except for one.
A balding man in his forties, this brave scientist seemed poised to take on the whole lot of them. He stood over the knocked out Mark and close to the others. Daken briefly considered shooting him, but then he realized that his teammates, Cypher, Xorn, Shard, and Abigail Brand, were all back on their feet and seemed fine.
“Nice of you to show up,” the scientist said. “Finally. Sheesh, were you certainly took your sweet time.”
With his nostrils flaring, Daken responded, “Morph.”
The scientist bowed, and as he did so, the bones and muscles beneath his façade twisted and cracked, reshaping themselves into what was a normal appearance for him. The chalk-white face of the mutant shapeshifter smiled at Daken as he stood back up from his dramatic bow, and with a sweep of his arm, gestured to the room at large, his apparent audience.
“The one and only!” Morph said.
“How did you get back to the facility?” Cypher asked. He was still groggy from Mark’s suppression field.
“Oh, that chick’s concussive blast threw me for a loop,” Morph replied. “I probably made it about a mile away before I regained consciousness in midair. I just shifted into an albatross and flew back.”
Brand was rubbing her neck. “An albatross?” she inquired.
“Hey, I got style, you know?”
“Power left as soon as you blew the door,” Shard said, turning to face Daken. “I assume you took out his personal guard?”
Daken nodded. “If we move now we can try and close in on Power before he gets too far away.”
Xorn’s eyes flashed briefly as she surveyed the area. “I can see his ion trail, which is already fading. He left in some kind of jump jet. We’ll never catch him.”
Shard kicked Mark in the ribs. “Fantastic! So, we got nothing! We got captured and nearly killed…for nothing!”
Cypher took a few steps toward forward and half turned back to face the whole group. “I wouldn’t say nothing,” he said, as he pointed a thumb at the cowering group of scientists in the corner.
# # # # # # # # # #
The Archive
A government repository of all mutant files
Operating headquarters of the Mutant Response Team
“—total bullshit!”
Standing only a few feet from a closed conference room door, Cypher had just rounded the corner of the confining hallways within the Archive repository, catching the tale end of a conversation. While the team was still attempting to cool down from being taken down so easily by Professor Power’s group, with his escape adding salt to the wound, over the last two days since leaving Russia he had assumed that the adrenaline had finally dissipated. Morph had argued with everyone over minor irritations, twice.
This sounded different, though. His mutant power allowed him to pick up on the inflections in speech. This was more than just general annoyance brimming to the surface – there was real emotion and intent behind the words.
The door opened, slapping against the wall with enough force to bounce it back halfway closed again. Havok stomped through, nearly knocking into Cypher. He paused and took in a sharp breath, and his eyes flitted back and forth. His attention was split between storming off and Cypher, as if he was unsure if he should say something.
Through Havok’s nonverbal cues (slouched shoulders, twitching eyelids, and deep breathing), Cypher was picking up direct hostility and disappointment. Whatever the conversation Havok had just stormed out off had been about, it hadn’t ended in his favor.
“You okay?” Cypher asked.
“Fine,” was the abrupt answer, which was obviously a lie. Cypher didn’t need a mutant omnilinguistic ability to know that much. Apparently realizing this, Havok took a deep breath and continued. “I mean, no. I’m not. Look, Doug…whatever she tells you, know that you’re going to have a choice.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? A choice over what?”
“Over your independence.”
Cypher ruffled his brow in concern. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”
Havok sighed. “Remember the conversation we had when I first found you in SHIELD custody? I told you that I wanted to help you and that together we could figure out the circumstances of your resurrection.”*
* [X Unlimited #50]
Cypher nodded for Havok to continue.
“When I brought you into the Mutant Response Team it was so that I could keep you close and fulfill that promise. Having a mutant that had been brought back by the Resurrection Wave on the squad was a big part of my argument for keeping things under the purview of the X-Men. We needed the freedom necessary to do things our way. I pulled all of my federal strings to get the team formed. Now, due to how things played out with Power in Russia, all of those strings have been cut.”
“The XSE.”
“That’s correct. I’m being pushed out, Doug. The Mutant Response Team will now no longer be acting under the X-Men’s guidance. If you want to stay on the team, you’re going to have to play by the XSE’s rules.”
As if on cue, Abigail Brand stepped into the doorway that Havok had forced open. Her emerald hair drew Cypher’s eyes practically against his will. She crossed her arms and stared at Havok, ignoring Cypher completely.
“You don’t have to act like a child, Alex,” she said. “And don’t pretend like this is the worst thing to ever happen either. The XSE isn’t some kind of authoritative bureaucracy. We do a lot of good in the world. If you would just calm down you would understand that.”
“Would I?” Havok shot back. “Don’t get me wrong, Abigail. I respect the XSE and what you do. But you are not what Xavier had in mind when he preached equality for mutants. The XSE is one step away from becoming a mutant military.”
She scoffed. “And what do you think the X-Men are? You’re all walking weapons, Alex! Without government oversight you’re—”
“A family.”
Havok pivoted on one foot and stomped around the same corner that Cypher had rounded. Brand stared after him from behind her emerald sunglasses before finally looking at Cypher to acknowledge his presence.
“So, Mister Ramsey,” she said, “I guess he’s right: you have a choice to make. You’re either with the XSE or you’re out.”
Next issue: The secret agent life of Morph!
Shell company owned by TransGenics, LLC
Six kilometers inside Glazov, Russia border
“This is all a little silly, don’t you think?” Professor Power asked.
Stark fluorescent lighting from the fixtures hanging in the lab’s ceiling were dim against the golden sheen of the Professor’s armor. He was completely encased, except for his face, in thick metal that looked strong enough to make him superhuman. The power had been restored to the facility after Xorn’s electromagnetic pulse had knocked it down, not that it had mattered.* Power’s augmented mutant soldiers had been lying in wait for them.
With Morph catapulted who knew how far away and possibly killed, and Daken missing in action, that left two members of the Mutant Response Team – Cypher and Xorn – plus two members of the XSE** - Abigail Brand and Shard – to fall quickly at the hands of five incredibly overpowered mutant subjects. They had been taken by surprise, but the truth was that even if they had been better prepared that their opposition was so powerful that it may not have made a difference.
* [Last ish]
** [X-Factor Sanction Enforcement]
Three of the Professor’s troops – Devon, Calli, and Mark – stood between him and the captured mutants. The two males wore matching orange bodysuits and Calli wore one that was a pale shade of green. Devon and Calli stood half a step behind Mark, who was barely four feet tall and a shadow of the other two model specimens, a factor that had cast him beneath their notice most of the time despite the fact they were treated as equals.
To make up for this, Mark typically took point, trying to usurp control whenever he could, which usually came off as arrogance. Currently, he was just a hair closer to the captured infiltrators because he had opted to hold them at bay with a suppressive field of radiation that seemed to have a gravitational effect. In short, the prisoners were immobilized.
“Several of you derail my shipment of material, and then you come straight to my Russian facility!” Power continued. “Could you have been more obvious in your ploy? We tracked the XSE commissioned helicopter that brought you here. We only had to lie in wait for less than an hour!”
“If by material,” Xorn said, “you mean genetically altered mutants, then yes, we derailed your shipment.”
“How did you know we were coming?” Brand, head of the XSE and currently working alongside the Mutant Response Team, inquired. She briefly looked at Shard, also on loan from the XSE for this particular mission.
Professor Power noticed the glance and exchanged one of his own. “Worried about a leak in your precious organization?” he asked, and then sneered. “I might let you stew with that notion, but no. There are no secrets in Russia, my dear.”
“Let us go,” Cypher ordered. He impressed his will into the words, trying to control the conversation and the intent along with it. He had recently learned that his mutant ability had changed so that he not only understood all points of communication, but he could control them as well. He could disseminate communication and influence the raw empathic tone. “Stand down. Release us. Now.”
Power laughed. “I think not. Mister Kilgore…silence that one.”
Mark said, “Gladly,” and squinted.
Cypher felt a painful power surge as the portion of Mark’s field that surrounded him darkened, and he found that he could no longer move any of his muscles, including those he needed to speak. Despite the pain, he was still confused. Why hadn’t his mutant power worked the way it had on the Brood?*
* [XF #4]
Power stepped a little closer to Cypher and leaned down. “Your powers are linguistic in nature, correct?” he asked. “I assume your ridiculous commands were an attempt to, what, alter my neural pathways? Yes. Fairly likely. Now you’re probably thinking how I might be able to deduce such a thing. Obviously, Sokolov is no common pharmaceutical testing center.”
He motioned to the laboratory behind him, in which half a dozen men and women in white lab coats worked at various terminals. Empty stainless steel containers with glass fronts, identical to the ones that had seen housing mutant subjects not even a week ago, lined the back wall. Cables, thick and thin, ran between machines that had no obvious function.
“The genetic research my TransGenics company has been doing is focused entirely on the mutant genome,” Power stated. “Specifically, how to isolate genetic markers, replicate them, and make them more…shall we say, potent?”
“It’s inhumane,” Shard said.
“Really?” Power feigned confusion. “I don’t see them complaining.”
“The data we’ve already collected indicates that there’s no way the mutants you’ve experimented on have survived,” Xorn quickly said. “You’re breaking a dozen laws, not counting the moral and ethical statutes.”
At this, Devon and Calli traded a brief glance, but didn’t comment. Mark held his ground.
“My current five subjects will testify to the fact that I’ve resolved my earlier stumbles,” Power explained. “Sacrifices were made in the name of science, yes. But now my team has perfected the process to not only harness mutant powers, but augment them and duplicate them in other mutants!”
“But why?” Brand asked. “Why in the hell would you want to do something like that?”
“Why would I want my own private army of super-mutants?” Power countered. “Ha! Surely you’re joking. After my previous failures through the Secret Empire and the White house itself, why take risks with further subterfuge? Brunt force is the only true tactic left to me. I’m too old to start over with clandestine operations. This armor is keeping me alive long enough to fulfill my destiny. My champions have already proven their effectiveness…but, I’m always looking for more talent.”
He smiled and cupped Brand’s chin in his hand, forcing her to look up into his crisp eyes. “Now,” he said, “Who should we dissect first?”
# # # # # # # # # #
He had wanted to shoot each of them in the head.
However, despite the high velocity rounds he had loaded into his rifle, Daken knew that trying to put a bullet into the orange- and green-suited, radiation-throwing mutants would be fruitless. He knew this because he had tried it already. Xorn had said that these guys were throwing off millions of rads, and he believed her, since he had watched three of his shots melt in midair when trying to punch through their radiation fields.*
* [XF #5 – why aren’t you caught up on this stuff?]
So, when he had watched his comrades in arms (however temporary they may be) get taken down like amateurs from his tree line perch, he had opted to put his sniper rifle down. It wouldn’t do anything other than piss them off, and there was no way he could charge to the rescue, not with five of the freaks out there.
No, he would have to handle this more subtly.
He waited until dusk turned to total darkness. The others – Cypher, who he had gained respect for, Xorn, and the two XSE feds – had been taken inside over an hour ago. Morph was hopefully dead, although Daken knew that he would have no such luck. Despite the fact that Daken had watched him take some type of concussive force straight in the chest at point blank range, he knew that the shapeshifter was crafty, skilled, and malleable. It was far more likely that he was stuck a few miles away, his body liquefied on impact. He would be reforming for at least another day.
He knew this because he had been handed a fairly thick dossier on the shifter prior to accepting Havok’s offer to join the team. He had one on all of them, except for Xorn, but he would uncover her secrets before long. It was part of his assignment. That, and waiting for the call he had literally been born to receive. They thought he was engaged in some sort of rehabilitation program to cut years off of his sentencing from the targets he had taken out in Madripor. It was all just another cover.
But that didn’t matter right now. What mattered was getting his incompetent team out of harm’s way so that his real mission could continue.
Two of the enemy, a man and a woman, were standing sentry outside the building. The woman, wearing green, he had heard been called Karen. The man, wearing orange, had been referred to as Aaron. He could smell them from where he hid. They both reeked of hormones. Whatever Power had done to them it was messing with their physiology to the extreme.
He had recognized Anthony Power immediately. Despite the new golden armor, he seemed like the same old power-hungry fool that his dossier had claimed him to be. It would be an added prize to his handler if Daken could take him out as well.
While he was sure that Power’s goons had some sort of training, it seemed to be nothing more than boot camp level. They could obviously handle themselves, but they relied far too much on their mutant abilities. They were physically vulnerable.
Karen was on the far side of the complex, near the loading dock. She stood almost perfectly centered between the two garage doors meant to take incoming shipments, like the one they had foiled.
Aaron radiated arrogance. He couldn’t suppress half a smirk as he watched over the vacant lawn surrounding the facility, no doubt because of his capturing the other team members. Daken had learned that arrogance like that, especially when you were on watch, could be as good as signing a death warrant.
The powerful mutant never saw Daken approach from behind, and he barely felt the tip of a sharp, bone claw piercing the back of his neck. With trained precision worthy of a surgeon, Daken clapped his hand around Aaron’s mouth and quickly slid one of his claws directly between the cervical spine and the base of his skull. He was sure he even brushed against Aaron’s mastoid process.
Despite all of the power that the Professor had given him, Aaron slumped to the ground, dead before gravity even claimed him.
Daken pressed himself against the wall, out of Karen’s field of vision, but not for long. He heard her slowly walking toward his position, no doubt curious as to the slight thump Aaron’s body had made. He retracted his claw and took in a deep breath, and then exhaled slowly.
As Daken pushed out enough pheromones to give an elephant pause, he heard Karen’s steps falter. It wasn’t an ability he liked to be vocal about, as it gave him an edge in certain situations. Now, thanks to lacing the air with hormones, Karen would be off her guard and a much easier target.
“Aaron?” Karen said gently as she rounded the edge of the building.
Daken stepped out and could see the fog in Karen’s eyes. She was high on his scent and instinctively, as well as subconsciously, didn’t immediately see him as a threat. He could have gutted her or shot her with his sidearm, but ever since Madripor he had become adamant about not killing women or children. His handler didn’t like it, but what was he going to do about it?
Instead he took advantage of the situation. Tactically, he should have put her down for the count, but he found that taking an unorthodox approach sometimes yielded better results. Even though he was a hardened killer, his lips were surprisingly soft.
Her eyes went wide when he swept in for the kiss, but she quickly melted into his embrace. With even more pheromones now permeating her body through the fluid exchange, she was more like a puppy than an Omega-level mutant.
Daken slid his hand onto the small of her back and she pressed into his body, gently moaning. His hand traced up her spine, reaching all the way up under her hair and against her neck. His other hand cupped her cheek and he was now in the perfect anatomical position to sharply and savagely twist her neck, severing the spinal cord.
But he didn’t. He wouldn’t. It didn’t matter if she was a killer, a criminal, or even a psychopath. He didn’t kill women. Not anymore.
Pinching a cluster of nerves near the acromion and clavicle, she winced in jolting pain. She pushed back and he spun her into a sleeper hold. Her confusion and surprise made her gasp for breath that wasn’t coming, and within a few seconds she slid down to the ground, unconscious. She would remain that way for at least an hour unless someone revived her.
Daken slid into the complex easily enough; it seemed that in anticipating their arrival, Power had sent the standard security home. The guard station that Morph had been flung from was still empty and there were no other standard guards in sight. One of the garage doors slid up with just a small rumbling and he was in.
Working his way carefully through the building, he assumed that Power had them all collected in one place. It wouldn’t make any sense to split them up unless he was going to interrogate them in his version of Prisoner’s Dilemma. Since he had known they were coming, however, such a tactic seemed irrelevant. In fact, Power seemed to know way more than was possible about their operations. Given that Russia wasn’t known for keeping its secrets, it seemed peculiar that he would have anticipated the very night of their attempted infiltration.
After the loading dock there was a long corridor that ran through the middle of the facility. The only room that had light seeping through from beneath the closed door was at the far end, a straight shot from the dock ramp. He crept up, sniffing along the way. His keen senses, another component of his necessary conditioning should he ever get that one specific phone call, were tracking what he assumed: everyone was being kept together and they were all being held in that room.
Just barging in wouldn’t do any good; Power’s people were practically gods on earth. The other three were in there, along with several others new to his senses. He had no way of knowing if there were more augmented mutants with them. Simply kicking in the door wasn’t going to work.
He glanced back toward the garage and quickly formed a strategy. He didn’t need to make an actual frontal assault provided that they thought he was making one. Most of his missions involved some sort of feint, and this would be no different.
Stalking back into the garage, he went to the miniature forklift that was used to unload pallets from delivery trucks. It barely weighed 500 pounds, and he doubted that the engine could get up past five or six miles per hour, but it would serve his purposes. Slipping the gear into neutral, he pushed the forklift off the dock and into the corridor, and then flipped the ignition switch. The forklift was fueled by a propane tank strapped to the back of the control chair, acting as a nice, huge target.
Daken smiled. Whatever might happen, this would be one hell of a show.
# # # # # # # # # #
“I admit, I’m the most curious about how your powers operate,” Power said as he glared down at Cypher, who was strapped to a lab table. Power nodded to one of his scientists, who had slipped out of his lab coat and into a fresh pair of scrubs, complete with mask and gloves. “Are we ready?”
Cypher struggled against the bonds, but to no success. The suppressive field maintained by Devon, who stood smugly just off to one side, was enough to keep him in place even without the bonds. He had forced as much will into his doublespeak as possible, but his mutant powers were likewise being dampened. Whatever additional abilities Power had replicated into his soldiers, they were enough to counter the entire team’s scope of practice.
Just as the scientist raised a scalpel and nodded that he was ready to begin, something forced its way into the door that led from the lab into the main corridor. Wood splintered as the doorway was forced apart by some type of vehicle pushing through. Two huge metal prongs, about waist high, punctured the heavy door and bent it in half. The vehicle’s motor was whirring, obviously having difficulty trying to overpower the obstacle.
“What in—?” Calli started to say, but settled for blasting the forklift over with a concentrated burst of red radiation instead of an explanation. She had been standing directly in front of it and as soon as it fell on its side she could see clearly down the long hallway, all the way to the garage. Her eyes went wide and she started to scream a warning, but her voice was lost in a sudden explosion.
Daken had fired a single shot down the corridor from his sidearm, striking the propane tank on the back of the forklift. A vortex of flame filled the corridor and washed over Calli, who took the brunt of the blast. She was knocked back, singed by the explosion but relatively unharmed thanks to her radiation aura absorbing most of the heat.
Mark ground his teeth and took a step toward the door, intending to take out Daken and whoever else the tricky mutant might have with him, but a warning from Power stopped him cold.
“Maintain your position!” Power commanded. “Extend your suppressive field to this one on the table. Devon! Assess Ms. Caufield. If she is able, take her and kill the intruders. If she is too weak, leave her.”
Calli shot a glance at Power, irritated. “I’m fine! It was that feral one, the one with the claws. How the hell did he get by Karen and Aaron?”
“They’re probably dead,” Devon said as soon as Mark shifted his field to cover Cypher. “Forget them. We don’t need them to kill this freak.”
“He’s mine!” Calli said as she launched herself into the corridor.
She levitated herself and rocketed down toward the garage, but Daken was already gone. She looked left and right, but there was simply no sign of him. Aggravated and embarrassed, she unleashed a torrent of radiation across the garage, charring several stacks of pallets and even igniting an oil stain on the concrete floor.
Devon flew up behind her and smacked her shoulder, yelling, “Knock it off! He has to be here somewhere. Just use your eyes. He’s one person and we’re us.”
No sooner had Devon finished his sentence than Daken had leapt down from the girders overhead, which lined the ceiling and provided support from the garage section of the building. Without so much as whispering a single syllable he popped out his six claws, three on each arm, and jammed them straight down into Devon’s torso on either side of his head.
Gravity ripped both of them back down onto the cold concrete and Daken shifted his weight one way so that he rolled onto his back and quickly sprung up again, twisting to face the stunned Calli. Devon had slammed down hard, his own descent nowhere near as controlled, smacking his head off of the floor. Blood pooled around his upper body, seeping from his shoulders where Daken had stabbed him.
Calli screamed and smashed her fists together, sending a searing beam of concentrated radiation directly at Daken. Her went low and to the side, avoiding her strike and flanked her position by moving behind a few unmarked crates. She blasted them apart, sending splinters of wood and what looked like slabs of metal from whatever the crates had contained all over the garage.
Daken retracted his claws, which were smoking from penetrating Devon’s superheated body. They would heal in short order, thanks to his healing factor. Seeing Power’s mutants in action against Xorn and again here tonight, he knew how dangerous it would be to openly engage them, hence forcing them to come to him with the forklift stunt.
Three of them were down. Rage had overtaken Calli and she was blasting away his cover piece by piece, sending shrapnel scattering around the garage. Hand-to-hand was out of the question; he would be roasted alive as soon as he stepped into the open.
He waited for the next crate to be blasted off of the pile and then he swung around the side of the stack, opposite where he knew her attention to be due to where her blast had struck. He raised had drawn his sidearm, took half a second to aim, and put one in her left knee.
The bullet tore through her patella and shattered the rest of her knee, and she dropped down hard. She screamed and her eyes blazed white. He saw that she was getting ready to release an even stronger bout of radiation, so he shot her again in the right shoulder.
Now with horrible pain rifling both sides of her body, she couldn’t concentrate enough to keep her powers up. She rolled back and forth on her back like an overturned turtle, shrieking in pain with every movement, but unable to right herself.
Early on in his training Daken had been taught to take the path of least resistance, meaning to leave the crazy action sequences to the crazies in Hollywood. No need to pop the claws and put yourself at risk when a bullet will accomplish your goals for you. It wasn’t sleek and sexy, but ultimately it didn’t matter. Now all but one of Power’s mutants were down and he was still standing.
He left her there, bleeding and swearing, rushing back down the corridor with his weapon drawn and at the ready. The last one, Mark, was still inside as well as Power. Unfortunately, he had used up most of his tricks. He thought about exiting the facility and trying to find an alternate way into the room now that he knew where it was, perhaps a window or ventilation shaft, but his latest enemy was the clock. Now that Power knew he was inside he didn’t have time to do anything other than come at them as hard as he could. Every second that passed was another one that left his teammates in danger.
The time for a cautious approach was over. Daken ran at full steam down the corridor and leapt just as his feet crossed the threshold. He somersaulted over knocked down and still burning forklift, drawing his weapon as soon as he landed in a crouch. He swept right to left, ready to pull the trigger at any potential threats.
Surprisingly, there were none. Mark was unconscious on the floor and Power was gone. A few of the scientists were huddled in the far corner of the room, desperate to keep away from the mutants, except for one.
A balding man in his forties, this brave scientist seemed poised to take on the whole lot of them. He stood over the knocked out Mark and close to the others. Daken briefly considered shooting him, but then he realized that his teammates, Cypher, Xorn, Shard, and Abigail Brand, were all back on their feet and seemed fine.
“Nice of you to show up,” the scientist said. “Finally. Sheesh, were you certainly took your sweet time.”
With his nostrils flaring, Daken responded, “Morph.”
The scientist bowed, and as he did so, the bones and muscles beneath his façade twisted and cracked, reshaping themselves into what was a normal appearance for him. The chalk-white face of the mutant shapeshifter smiled at Daken as he stood back up from his dramatic bow, and with a sweep of his arm, gestured to the room at large, his apparent audience.
“The one and only!” Morph said.
“How did you get back to the facility?” Cypher asked. He was still groggy from Mark’s suppression field.
“Oh, that chick’s concussive blast threw me for a loop,” Morph replied. “I probably made it about a mile away before I regained consciousness in midair. I just shifted into an albatross and flew back.”
Brand was rubbing her neck. “An albatross?” she inquired.
“Hey, I got style, you know?”
“Power left as soon as you blew the door,” Shard said, turning to face Daken. “I assume you took out his personal guard?”
Daken nodded. “If we move now we can try and close in on Power before he gets too far away.”
Xorn’s eyes flashed briefly as she surveyed the area. “I can see his ion trail, which is already fading. He left in some kind of jump jet. We’ll never catch him.”
Shard kicked Mark in the ribs. “Fantastic! So, we got nothing! We got captured and nearly killed…for nothing!”
Cypher took a few steps toward forward and half turned back to face the whole group. “I wouldn’t say nothing,” he said, as he pointed a thumb at the cowering group of scientists in the corner.
# # # # # # # # # #
The Archive
A government repository of all mutant files
Operating headquarters of the Mutant Response Team
“—total bullshit!”
Standing only a few feet from a closed conference room door, Cypher had just rounded the corner of the confining hallways within the Archive repository, catching the tale end of a conversation. While the team was still attempting to cool down from being taken down so easily by Professor Power’s group, with his escape adding salt to the wound, over the last two days since leaving Russia he had assumed that the adrenaline had finally dissipated. Morph had argued with everyone over minor irritations, twice.
This sounded different, though. His mutant power allowed him to pick up on the inflections in speech. This was more than just general annoyance brimming to the surface – there was real emotion and intent behind the words.
The door opened, slapping against the wall with enough force to bounce it back halfway closed again. Havok stomped through, nearly knocking into Cypher. He paused and took in a sharp breath, and his eyes flitted back and forth. His attention was split between storming off and Cypher, as if he was unsure if he should say something.
Through Havok’s nonverbal cues (slouched shoulders, twitching eyelids, and deep breathing), Cypher was picking up direct hostility and disappointment. Whatever the conversation Havok had just stormed out off had been about, it hadn’t ended in his favor.
“You okay?” Cypher asked.
“Fine,” was the abrupt answer, which was obviously a lie. Cypher didn’t need a mutant omnilinguistic ability to know that much. Apparently realizing this, Havok took a deep breath and continued. “I mean, no. I’m not. Look, Doug…whatever she tells you, know that you’re going to have a choice.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? A choice over what?”
“Over your independence.”
Cypher ruffled his brow in concern. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”
Havok sighed. “Remember the conversation we had when I first found you in SHIELD custody? I told you that I wanted to help you and that together we could figure out the circumstances of your resurrection.”*
* [X Unlimited #50]
Cypher nodded for Havok to continue.
“When I brought you into the Mutant Response Team it was so that I could keep you close and fulfill that promise. Having a mutant that had been brought back by the Resurrection Wave on the squad was a big part of my argument for keeping things under the purview of the X-Men. We needed the freedom necessary to do things our way. I pulled all of my federal strings to get the team formed. Now, due to how things played out with Power in Russia, all of those strings have been cut.”
“The XSE.”
“That’s correct. I’m being pushed out, Doug. The Mutant Response Team will now no longer be acting under the X-Men’s guidance. If you want to stay on the team, you’re going to have to play by the XSE’s rules.”
As if on cue, Abigail Brand stepped into the doorway that Havok had forced open. Her emerald hair drew Cypher’s eyes practically against his will. She crossed her arms and stared at Havok, ignoring Cypher completely.
“You don’t have to act like a child, Alex,” she said. “And don’t pretend like this is the worst thing to ever happen either. The XSE isn’t some kind of authoritative bureaucracy. We do a lot of good in the world. If you would just calm down you would understand that.”
“Would I?” Havok shot back. “Don’t get me wrong, Abigail. I respect the XSE and what you do. But you are not what Xavier had in mind when he preached equality for mutants. The XSE is one step away from becoming a mutant military.”
She scoffed. “And what do you think the X-Men are? You’re all walking weapons, Alex! Without government oversight you’re—”
“A family.”
Havok pivoted on one foot and stomped around the same corner that Cypher had rounded. Brand stared after him from behind her emerald sunglasses before finally looking at Cypher to acknowledge his presence.
“So, Mister Ramsey,” she said, “I guess he’s right: you have a choice to make. You’re either with the XSE or you’re out.”
Next issue: The secret agent life of Morph!