Back to Gatefold#9 by D. Golightly
November 2017 |
"The Secret Agent Life of Morph"
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
“Professor Power is bad news bears,” Morph said.
Shard looked up from the laptop she had been furiously typing on in an effort to complete her report to the XSE powers-that-be. She, along with fellow XSE agent Abigail Brand, had set up shop in the Archive’s only conference room, using it as a remote office. Now that Havok had been usurped,* she had a lot more paperwork to file with her bosses as she helped manage the Mutant Response Team.
* [Okay, maybe “usurped” is too strong a word, but read the last issue for more details!]
“That’s the understatement of the year,” Shard replied. She sharply flicked her head to one side to flip her blonde hair away from her eyes, and her gaze bore into the shapechanging mutant. “The scientists we freed in Russia—”
“We freed?”
Shard huffed. “Okay…you freed in Russia…have been giving us some solid intelligence on Power’s plans. He was building a private mutant army that could give the Avengers a serious run for their money.”
“Tony Stark doesn’t run for his money,” Morph quipped. “He swims in it like Scrooge McDuck.”
Shard rolled her eyes and focused back on her laptop. “Was there a point to you coming in here and bothering me?” she asked.
“I want to know what our next steps are with Power. The bad guy got away and we need to stop him.”
Without looking up, Shard said, “Interpol is looking for him, along with about a dozen other alphabet agencies around the world. We’re tracking his movements.”
“And?”
She hesitated. “He’ll turn up eventually.”
“Not good enough. We need to be more proactive about this.”
She slammed her laptop shut. “Sweet mother of… Morph, I know. I’m well aware of how dangerous this man is. I’ve read the files. I saw him up front in Russia. The best policing forces on the planet have been given a heads-up on this guy. But, by all means, you’re the expert, right? Why don’t you tell me what the European Commission, Interpol, and the Department of Homeland Security can’t. Go ahead. Dazzle me with your in-depth knowledge of readiness levels, threat decomposition, and capability management.”
Shard shook her head, grabbed her laptop, and stepped toward the door that was blocked by Morph, who remained silent. “Exactly. You’re the class clown around here. Smartass remarks and uninformed demands make you about as useful as a comments section. Now, unless you have some kind of secret plan to capture Power that you want to let me in on, get out of my way and leave me the hell alone.”
He held up a USB drive no larger than his thumb and waved it under her nose. “Here you go,” he said casually.
Her face twisted and after a moment pregnant with awkward confusion, she picked the drive out of his grasp. “What’s this?” she asked.
“My secret plan to capture Power.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the door jam. “I combed my network as soon as we got back onto U.S. soil and put together a three-scenario analysis of his next probable movements, based on prior acts, known associates, traced resources, and personal experience.”
“…is this a joke?”
“No, but this is,” he countered. “An aardvark and a stripper walk into a bar—”
She waved him silent. “Personal experience? You have history with Power?”
Morph smiled and said, “Open your laptop back up and we’ll talk.”
# # # # # # # # # #
Muir Island
Off the coast of Scottland
Seven years ago
“Target is in sight.”
“Do not engage. We still don’t fully understand what Project Primacy is.”
“It’s now or never.
“Do not engage, Morph!”
“Sorry, Professor,” the shapeshifting mutant replied. “I can’t let these people die. Give Rogue a kiss for me.”
Morph tapped his earwig to disconnect from his call with none other than Professor Charles Xavier. They had been through several lengthy debates about this particular mission already, and he couldn’t afford to waste more time in conversation. He knew that the Professor would chew him out later, but he would deal with that when it came. For now, he had a job to do.
It surprised him that he even had to discuss anything with the world’s foremost telepath via electronic communication at all. You would think that they could have a pleasant conversation all in Morph’s head, but either the distance or some kind of telepathic interference kept them limited to radio frequencies. Given the target, a little psychic scrambling made sense. Which was okay by Morph, because it meant he could hang up when it pleased him.
As opposed to his natural chalk-white and mannequin-like features, or his stylized X-Men uniform, Morph had currently altered his appearance to look more like a common businessman touring the legendary clock tower. He sported a charcoal suit with vest, a gold fob, and cropped hair. His mutant abilities would allow him to instantly change his appearance on a whim, and having done so several times on his way into the island, he was sure that no one could have visually tracked him.
Only yesterday he had been in Baghdad, tracking down the source of rumors concerning a mutant of mass destruction, which for some reason had been dubbed “Project Primacy.” Whispers had circulated through the intelligence communities that an unknown mutant had been recruited and/or brainwashed by an anti-mutant militant cell, and then aimed at the U.K.
Xavier had tracked the walking mutant weapon using Cerebro and then dispatched Morph to track him or her down. Since the X-Men were preoccupied with another Magneto fiasco, Morph was on his own.
He had arrived on the island via the ferry that served to bring supplies and transport employees back to the main land. Dozens of people went up and down the boarding plank, allowing him to mix in perfectly as just another business man come to do his bureaucratic work.
Stepping off the plank, he had spotted Moira MacTaggert herself, casually strolling through the area like she was meeting someone for coffee.
Which she was. It just wouldn’t be who she assumed it was.
The Professor had wanted to bring Moira in on the operation, but there was a large problem with that: she would try and talk them out of it, or worse yet, she would be legally obligated to do the same. Moira had won a Nobel Prize for her work in genetic mutation and was therefore one of the world’s leading specialists on mutant research. When Xavier had discovered that the mutant of mass destruction had been tracked to Muir Island, the location of Moira’s mutant research center, it made sense to use her as an asset.
The problem, however, as Morph pointed out, was what if Moira wanted to keep the mutant for research purposes? Hell, she might have even been one of the people responsible for bringing the mutant to Muir Island in the first place. Per Cerebro’s readings, this mutant’s power levels were in the top one percent of Omega levels. A person that powerful simply could not be detained willingly if they didn’t want to be.
Xavier’s orders were to connect with Moira, learn what he could, and then reach a peaceful solution. Which conflicted with Morph’s Baghdad intelligence. Morph’s self-prescribed mission, conversely, was to use Moira to gain access, and take out the weaponized mutant before people were killed in a mutant terrorist attack.
It was a fundamental argument he and Xavier always debated. Should the X-Men broker peace with hostile mutants, or take them out of the picture? Were terrorist mutants enabling humanity’s fears?
All he knew was that if he didn’t get to the bottom of this situation, people stood a high chance of dying.
Moira paused at the entrance to one of the sub-buildings, which Morph knew housed most of the servers and communications equipment, and checked her watch. Oops. Morph was running a little late. He passed by her without causing her to even glance at him, behind a support column and when he popped back into Moira’s field of view again he was an entirely different person.
She turned, spotting him, and waved, saying, “Nick! Nick Fury, you dusty old soldier!”
Morph, as the aged and eyepatch-wearing Director of SHIELD, smiled. He half-raised his hand to wave back, mimicking the legend’s body language perfectly. He had studied archive footage of Fury relentlessly to get the mannerisms down.
He briefly hugged Moira and smirked, pouring out charm. “Thanks for coming, Moira. I appreciate it.”
“I’ll admit, I was surprised to receive your call. So, what does SHIELD want these days? More Avengers protocols?”
“No, I’m here on a more personal note, I’m afraid. Can we go inside to talk?”
“So, when you said you wanted to meet up for coffee, you actually wanted to have coffee?” Moira asked as she led them into the main building, swiping her badge to grant them access. “I thought that was spy talk for drilling a suspect for intelligence.”
Morph bumped into a passing tech and his hand slipped into his lab coat for the briefest of moments. “Pardon me,” he said as he palmed the man’s identification, then turned back to Moira and said, “Among other things.”
They went directly to her office, where she sealed the door and turned on an audio scrambler to keep the conversation secret. Anyone trying to listen in via the vibrations on the window would get nothing but static.
“What’s up?” she asked. She had a look of genuine curiosity mixed with a bit of concern on her face.
“Moira,” he said cautiously. “I wanted to come here in person so as not to risk any security breach. We’ve known each other for a little while, thanks to Charles, of course. I think there’s a certain amount of trust between us.”
“Of course,” she responded with a nod.
“Have you been working with any live subjects?”
Moira’s mouth hung open. After a pause, wherein Morph said nothing, her look of confusion turned to one of anger. “Nick, that’s against the NATO—”
“I know, I know,” he said with a wave of his hand. “But I have to ask. Your work is important here and my intelligence has picked up a few…shall we call them, anomalies in some of your reports that your people have been filing with SHIELD.”
“I’m insulted that you came all this way to ask me this,” she said, standing up. “I thought we had gotten passed this, Director Fury. So much for your so-called trust in what we do here. I think you should leave.”
She stomped toward her office door, but Morph half-rose from his chair and caught her by the elbow. “Moira, I’m sorry, I truly am, but you can understand the position I’m in here. My people are getting reports that don’t look kosher, and instead of bringing SHIELD agents barreling in here to disrupt your work, I thought an off the books visit would clear this matter up more…quietly. I’m not here to insult you. I swear.”
She fumed for a moment, but just as quickly she cooled. “Fine. What do you need to see?”
“Your main research areas and anywhere you’re doing testing.”
“Fine,” she said again, with a crisp and sharp yank on the door.
She led him through the facility where a dozen or so researcher and scientists under her care were busy doing their meticulous work concerning the mutant genome. State of the art lab equipment lined the inside of what she called the clean room, which could only entered after putting on smocks, booties, and going through an ventilated room to blow off any stray contaminants.
Once inside, she gestured to the work stations. “See?” she said. “No live subjects. That’s not the kind of science we do here, Nick. We don’t cut open mutants like they’re lab animals. We only use biologicals donated to our foundation, and even then, they are severely checked prior to acceptance.”
“Would you mind pulling in your department heads?” he asked. “I have a few questions for them, too.”
“Are you serious, Nick? They’re spread all over the island. It will take an hour just to pull them into one room.”
He gave her his best Nick Fury smile. “’Fraid so, Moira. I’ll wait here. I know it’s inconvenient, but the sooner we put this to rest, the sooner you can get back to work and SHIELD can continue giving you the freedom you need to do your work.”
She huffed, but ultimately understood and left the clean room to begin summoning her department heads. Which gave Morph the freedom he needed to move about the facility. Getting past the security checkpoints would have been the hardest part, but with Moira escorting him, it had been a breeze.
Now that he was on the inside, he could get a better fix on the problem at hand, which was locating this dangerously powerful mutant.
Once Moira was out of sight, Morph slipped behind a support column. When he emerged from the other side, he had changed his appearance yet again to mimic that of the research tech that he had bumped into earlier. He hadn’t even broken stride when changing, and he clipped the stolen identification onto his lab coat.
He walked to a terminal, tapped a few keys to acquaint himself with the system, and then plugged in a USB drive that would hack a pathway into the root for him. Within moments he had granted himself superuser status and was picking through the security protocols like a kid on Halloween who was searching for the best candy in the pile. He had originally written the program as a gag on one of his MIT friends, but now it had become a vital tool in his work as Xavier’s personal spy.
It didn’t take him long to access what he thought would be his two most important tools: security feeds and arrival logs. He skimmed through the arriving transport vessels, both the ferries and the helicopter landings, looking for anything out of the ordinary. He didn’t expect to find anything there and was just doing his due diligence, but a glance at the morning’s records quickly changed that opinion.
Arriving just an hour before him was none other than Anthony Power, the former advisor to the President of the United States, who was currently on Interpol’s watch list. While he hadn’t been indicted yet, there were quite a lot of rumors floating around Washington that he soon would be. There was a conspiracy underway that several heroes with close ties to the X-Men had warned Xavier about.
Anthony Power had been the entire subject of a recent briefing, as a matter of fact. Seeing him pop up on Muir Island now couldn’t have been a coincidence. This was a strong lead for Morph to follow up on.
Pulling up the footage of his arrival on the island, Morph saw Power step off of the ferry and onto solid ground, flanked by men in black suits. He tracked Power’s movements via rewound footage until he entered a conference room, which was apparently a blackout spot. It was frustrating, but to be expected given the sensitive nature of Moira’s work here. Visiting dignitaries and other politicians didn’t like their conversations to be recorded.
Morph closed out his session, yanked the USB drive out of the terminal, and exited the room. He quickly paced down the hallway until he saw the conference room in question, which stood out all the more because of the two men in black suits standing guard outside.
Walking as if he belonged there, he briskly walked right up to the closed conference room door and pressed on it. The guards must have been bored from standing still for so long, because Morph managed to get the door open a full inch before one of them stopped him.
“Excuse me, sir,” one of them said as he placed a hand on Morph’s chest. “Closed meeting.”
“Yes, I know!” Morph said in irritation. “I’m late for it! Why do you think you’ve been standing here for so long? They’re waiting for me inside!”
One guard looked at the other with a raised eyebrow. “Can I see some ID?”
Morph made a show of his exasperation, patting his pockets several times until he pulled his stolen identification off of his lab coat. “Here!” he said, all but thrusting the badge into the guard’s face. “Can I go in now?”
“Just a second.” The guard swiped the badge through some kind of scanner that had a magnetic strip reader built into it. The screen cycled for a moment, and then a picture of Morph’s borrowed face appeared on the screen. “Okay, you’re clear. Sorry about that, sir.”
“Yes, yes,” Morph shot back, and then he entered the room.
Inside Anthony Power sat at the head of the conference table. A look of surprise crossed his face, and then confusion. “Can we help you?” he asked, although from him it sounded more like an accusation.
Morph quickly took in the room. Sitting beside Power at the conference table was another lab technician. The rest of the room was vacant, aside from the standard office décor. The both stared at him expectantly.
“Ms. MacTaggert asked me to come in,” Morph said. He stepped over to a counter where ice water and coffee waited, and poured himself some of the water. He had learned long ago that acting casual in a tense situation could often force acceptance. People naturally didn’t like to challenge other people that seemed to know more than they did. He sipped and turned, saying, “I’m supposed to get caught up. Can you bring me up to speed?”
“Bullshit,” Power blurted out.
Power apparently wasn’t one of those people.
“Excuse me?” Morph asked. Playing dumb or innocent often compelled people into getting on board as well. “Look, I’m not trying to take away your thunder. All I know if I’m working on some beta material, and she says I need to come in and help however I can. So, can you tell me what it is I can help with?”
“Anderson, you’re not on beta material,” the technician said. He glanced at Power. “He’s not even cleared for this type of research. Sir, you may want to ask one of your men to step in here. Something’s not right. I know Anderson, and he’s a son of a bitch, but he’s also one of the lowest ranking techs here. There is no way that he was asked to join Project Primacy.”
Project Primacy. If there was any doubt in Morph’s mind about Power’s involvement in whatever was going on with the mutant of mass destruction, it was gone now.
He could play this one of two ways: first, he could talk his way out of it and get them to exchange his confidence for an invitation to join the Project; or second, he could start busting heads. With the guards less than a dozen feet away, it really seemed like he needed to talk his way out of this one. Thankfully, Morph loved to talk.
As soon as he opened his mouth to counter, however, Power stood up and shouted for the men outside.
So much for diplomacy.
The door flung open to reveal the two men in black suits, who had both drawn weapons, but had yet to raise them. Morph shifted his weight, hopped toward the door, and kicked it shut again. As soon as the door slammed shut he pivoted toward Power and the tech, ripped a gun out of his inside pocket, and shot the technician in the gut. It was just a dart that would incapacitate him for several hours, but Power had no way of knowing that. All he saw was a crazy man with a gun pointed at his face.
The door banged twice from the guards pounding on it with their full weight. Morph braced himself for them to breach, and then just as the third pound was about to hit, he pulled the door back open again. The two guards stumbled over each other and were laid out on the floor. Morph shot them both in back, drilling their muscle tissue with two darts each.
He pulled them in and flung the door shut again as Power was backing away to the farthest corner of the conference room. Once the room was secure again, Morph pointed the weapon at Power and stalked toward him.
“Tell me about Project Primacy,” Morph demanded.
“Who are you?” Power shouted as he slowly raised his hands. He bumped into a potted plant on the floor, knocking it over.
Morph fired a dart into the floor between Power’s feet. “Primacy! Now!”
Power quivered slightly. “We’re importing genetic tissue for…research purposes.”
“Something tells me it’s not legitimately obtained. MacTaggert doesn’t do business that way, believe me I know, and I trust her a lot more than I trust you. Is the tissue you’re bringing in inert?”
“Inert?” Power looked momentarily befuddled. “Yes. Yes! Of course.”
“You’re lying.” Morph cocked the weapon for effect.
“Fine! Alright! I had a specimen brought in yesterday from Baghdad.” Power glanced to the unconscious tech, who he suspected was dead, on the floor. “Grady there was taking care of the paperwork for me. MacTaggert won’t deal with live subjects. This research was under her radar.”
“What are you working on?”
“The ultimate weapon.” Something crashed against the door again, and they could hear men shouting outside. Power sneered. “And you’re out of time, whoever you are.”
“Call them off.”
“You’re detaining someone who had lunch with the President yesterday. They won’t back down and there’s no other way out. You might as well turn that thing on yourself and save my men the trouble.”
A fight or flight instinct was beginning to creep into Morph’s head. Power was right; the next wave wouldn’t go down as easily and he had been stupid enough to back himself into a corner. So, he did the only thing he could.
He dropped his weapon on the floor between them and shapeshifted into Anthony Power a fraction of a second before the door burst open again.
The guards were completely dumbfounded. They saw the downed guards first and then trained their weapons on the two Powers. The real Power stared at him in awe, shocked at the sudden realization that he was in the room with a mutant, or from his perspective, someone with an incredible power of his own that he could control on a whim.
“Shoot this impostor!” Morph shouted in a perfect impression of Power’s voice. He motioned to the gun he had dropped. “He killed Grady!”
“What?” the real Power exclaimed. “I’m the real Anthony Power! Shoot him!”
“Ridiculous! Shoot him!”
The guards kept their weapons trained on both men, apparently too confused to do much of anything. Morph had used this tactic multiple times before, and knew just how to work the confusion to his advantage.
Morph raised his hands and took a step closer to the fresh guards. “Look,” he said, “I cut your paychecks, don’t I? Don’t you think I know an imposter when I see one? This man is armed, so stop wasting your time staring at us like imbeciles and SHOOT HIM!”
Of course, he knew that they weren’t going to open fire. That would be insane. However, the loud speech allowed him to step close enough to one of the new guards that he could grab his extended arm, pull him into an armbar, and flatten him on the ground in a split second.
With another quick turn and a strike to the temple, the other guard was laid out, too. Power, the real one, to his credit also didn’t waste any time. He scooped up the gun that Morph had dropped and pulled the trigger, firing three darts in Morph’s direction. They all missed, but Morph knew it was time to go.
He raced out into the hallway and ducked around a corner. As soon as he saw that the corridor was empty he immediately shifted into another tech that he had spotted in one of the research areas that he and Moira had walked through earlier. He casually walked the rest of the walk down the hall, not even glancing over his shoulder at the commotion breaking out behind him.
He had taken an active enough role. With someone like Power involved, a man suspected of operating unsanctioned operations at the highest level of government, it was time to get serious. Morph slipped into a lab and logged onto the nearest terminal, accessing his superuser status once again. He located all of the recent files that any technician with the last name of Grady had been working on, and then bulk emailed them to the real Nick Fury.
In his message, he simply wrote, “A present from Chuck. Look closely at Anthony Power and anything having to do with Project Primacy.” He signed it with an X, and then vanished deeper into the facility.
Later that night he managed to slip by the guards and get onto a departing ferry. All hell had broken loose barely an hour after he had emailed SHIELD. Agents had descended on the island and while Power had not been arrested, they had detained him, as well as Moira, until they had uncovered the live mutant that Power had smuggled into the facility.
Moira had been cleared once the SHIELD agents had finished going through Grady’s correspondence with Power. The mutant of mass destruction, however, a little girl named Isabelle, thought she was there to be given a cure for her powers. Apparently any plant she touched instantly died and she was terrified of herself. She stayed on at Muir Island, but to get help instead of becoming Power’s lab rat.
Due to his political connections, Power was never actually indicted. But he was on SHIELD’s radar now, and eventually it would lead to his uncovering his involvement in a secret empire that could have rocked the entire planet’s geopolitical landscape.
# # # # # # # # # #
“Project Primacy,” Shard said, as if tasting the words. “That was Power’s first attempt at manipulating mutants for his own gain?”
“I’m pretty sure, yeah,” Morph said. “I think that all of that stuff in Russia was the culmination of Project Primacy. Power has always had an interest in building a better weapon, one that is smart, but can still be controlled by him. Mutants are the most powerful weapons on Earth, and he’s hell-bent on controlling them, as well as messing with our DNA for his own personal gain.”
“Does Fury know that you casually impersonate him?” Shard asked.
Morph shrugged as he leaned in to look over her shoulder at the laptop screen. “What he doesn’t know won’t put me in jail,” he replied.
“Right.” She clicked through a few explorer windows, bringing up a spreadsheet that had been loaded onto the thumb drive. “So, what am I looking at here?”
“This is how we’re going to nail that bastard,” Morph said. “Pull everyone in. We need to move fast.”
Next issue: We’re bringing the fight to the enemy! Professor Power has been amassing his forces and will make his move soon, unless the team gets to him first. Plus, Daken’s past begins to catch up with him.
A government repository of all mutant files
Operating headquarters of the Mutant Response Team
Now under the purview of the X-Factor Sanction Enforcement
“Professor Power is bad news bears,” Morph said.
Shard looked up from the laptop she had been furiously typing on in an effort to complete her report to the XSE powers-that-be. She, along with fellow XSE agent Abigail Brand, had set up shop in the Archive’s only conference room, using it as a remote office. Now that Havok had been usurped,* she had a lot more paperwork to file with her bosses as she helped manage the Mutant Response Team.
* [Okay, maybe “usurped” is too strong a word, but read the last issue for more details!]
“That’s the understatement of the year,” Shard replied. She sharply flicked her head to one side to flip her blonde hair away from her eyes, and her gaze bore into the shapechanging mutant. “The scientists we freed in Russia—”
“We freed?”
Shard huffed. “Okay…you freed in Russia…have been giving us some solid intelligence on Power’s plans. He was building a private mutant army that could give the Avengers a serious run for their money.”
“Tony Stark doesn’t run for his money,” Morph quipped. “He swims in it like Scrooge McDuck.”
Shard rolled her eyes and focused back on her laptop. “Was there a point to you coming in here and bothering me?” she asked.
“I want to know what our next steps are with Power. The bad guy got away and we need to stop him.”
Without looking up, Shard said, “Interpol is looking for him, along with about a dozen other alphabet agencies around the world. We’re tracking his movements.”
“And?”
She hesitated. “He’ll turn up eventually.”
“Not good enough. We need to be more proactive about this.”
She slammed her laptop shut. “Sweet mother of… Morph, I know. I’m well aware of how dangerous this man is. I’ve read the files. I saw him up front in Russia. The best policing forces on the planet have been given a heads-up on this guy. But, by all means, you’re the expert, right? Why don’t you tell me what the European Commission, Interpol, and the Department of Homeland Security can’t. Go ahead. Dazzle me with your in-depth knowledge of readiness levels, threat decomposition, and capability management.”
Shard shook her head, grabbed her laptop, and stepped toward the door that was blocked by Morph, who remained silent. “Exactly. You’re the class clown around here. Smartass remarks and uninformed demands make you about as useful as a comments section. Now, unless you have some kind of secret plan to capture Power that you want to let me in on, get out of my way and leave me the hell alone.”
He held up a USB drive no larger than his thumb and waved it under her nose. “Here you go,” he said casually.
Her face twisted and after a moment pregnant with awkward confusion, she picked the drive out of his grasp. “What’s this?” she asked.
“My secret plan to capture Power.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the door jam. “I combed my network as soon as we got back onto U.S. soil and put together a three-scenario analysis of his next probable movements, based on prior acts, known associates, traced resources, and personal experience.”
“…is this a joke?”
“No, but this is,” he countered. “An aardvark and a stripper walk into a bar—”
She waved him silent. “Personal experience? You have history with Power?”
Morph smiled and said, “Open your laptop back up and we’ll talk.”
# # # # # # # # # #
Muir Island
Off the coast of Scottland
Seven years ago
“Target is in sight.”
“Do not engage. We still don’t fully understand what Project Primacy is.”
“It’s now or never.
“Do not engage, Morph!”
“Sorry, Professor,” the shapeshifting mutant replied. “I can’t let these people die. Give Rogue a kiss for me.”
Morph tapped his earwig to disconnect from his call with none other than Professor Charles Xavier. They had been through several lengthy debates about this particular mission already, and he couldn’t afford to waste more time in conversation. He knew that the Professor would chew him out later, but he would deal with that when it came. For now, he had a job to do.
It surprised him that he even had to discuss anything with the world’s foremost telepath via electronic communication at all. You would think that they could have a pleasant conversation all in Morph’s head, but either the distance or some kind of telepathic interference kept them limited to radio frequencies. Given the target, a little psychic scrambling made sense. Which was okay by Morph, because it meant he could hang up when it pleased him.
As opposed to his natural chalk-white and mannequin-like features, or his stylized X-Men uniform, Morph had currently altered his appearance to look more like a common businessman touring the legendary clock tower. He sported a charcoal suit with vest, a gold fob, and cropped hair. His mutant abilities would allow him to instantly change his appearance on a whim, and having done so several times on his way into the island, he was sure that no one could have visually tracked him.
Only yesterday he had been in Baghdad, tracking down the source of rumors concerning a mutant of mass destruction, which for some reason had been dubbed “Project Primacy.” Whispers had circulated through the intelligence communities that an unknown mutant had been recruited and/or brainwashed by an anti-mutant militant cell, and then aimed at the U.K.
Xavier had tracked the walking mutant weapon using Cerebro and then dispatched Morph to track him or her down. Since the X-Men were preoccupied with another Magneto fiasco, Morph was on his own.
He had arrived on the island via the ferry that served to bring supplies and transport employees back to the main land. Dozens of people went up and down the boarding plank, allowing him to mix in perfectly as just another business man come to do his bureaucratic work.
Stepping off the plank, he had spotted Moira MacTaggert herself, casually strolling through the area like she was meeting someone for coffee.
Which she was. It just wouldn’t be who she assumed it was.
The Professor had wanted to bring Moira in on the operation, but there was a large problem with that: she would try and talk them out of it, or worse yet, she would be legally obligated to do the same. Moira had won a Nobel Prize for her work in genetic mutation and was therefore one of the world’s leading specialists on mutant research. When Xavier had discovered that the mutant of mass destruction had been tracked to Muir Island, the location of Moira’s mutant research center, it made sense to use her as an asset.
The problem, however, as Morph pointed out, was what if Moira wanted to keep the mutant for research purposes? Hell, she might have even been one of the people responsible for bringing the mutant to Muir Island in the first place. Per Cerebro’s readings, this mutant’s power levels were in the top one percent of Omega levels. A person that powerful simply could not be detained willingly if they didn’t want to be.
Xavier’s orders were to connect with Moira, learn what he could, and then reach a peaceful solution. Which conflicted with Morph’s Baghdad intelligence. Morph’s self-prescribed mission, conversely, was to use Moira to gain access, and take out the weaponized mutant before people were killed in a mutant terrorist attack.
It was a fundamental argument he and Xavier always debated. Should the X-Men broker peace with hostile mutants, or take them out of the picture? Were terrorist mutants enabling humanity’s fears?
All he knew was that if he didn’t get to the bottom of this situation, people stood a high chance of dying.
Moira paused at the entrance to one of the sub-buildings, which Morph knew housed most of the servers and communications equipment, and checked her watch. Oops. Morph was running a little late. He passed by her without causing her to even glance at him, behind a support column and when he popped back into Moira’s field of view again he was an entirely different person.
She turned, spotting him, and waved, saying, “Nick! Nick Fury, you dusty old soldier!”
Morph, as the aged and eyepatch-wearing Director of SHIELD, smiled. He half-raised his hand to wave back, mimicking the legend’s body language perfectly. He had studied archive footage of Fury relentlessly to get the mannerisms down.
He briefly hugged Moira and smirked, pouring out charm. “Thanks for coming, Moira. I appreciate it.”
“I’ll admit, I was surprised to receive your call. So, what does SHIELD want these days? More Avengers protocols?”
“No, I’m here on a more personal note, I’m afraid. Can we go inside to talk?”
“So, when you said you wanted to meet up for coffee, you actually wanted to have coffee?” Moira asked as she led them into the main building, swiping her badge to grant them access. “I thought that was spy talk for drilling a suspect for intelligence.”
Morph bumped into a passing tech and his hand slipped into his lab coat for the briefest of moments. “Pardon me,” he said as he palmed the man’s identification, then turned back to Moira and said, “Among other things.”
They went directly to her office, where she sealed the door and turned on an audio scrambler to keep the conversation secret. Anyone trying to listen in via the vibrations on the window would get nothing but static.
“What’s up?” she asked. She had a look of genuine curiosity mixed with a bit of concern on her face.
“Moira,” he said cautiously. “I wanted to come here in person so as not to risk any security breach. We’ve known each other for a little while, thanks to Charles, of course. I think there’s a certain amount of trust between us.”
“Of course,” she responded with a nod.
“Have you been working with any live subjects?”
Moira’s mouth hung open. After a pause, wherein Morph said nothing, her look of confusion turned to one of anger. “Nick, that’s against the NATO—”
“I know, I know,” he said with a wave of his hand. “But I have to ask. Your work is important here and my intelligence has picked up a few…shall we call them, anomalies in some of your reports that your people have been filing with SHIELD.”
“I’m insulted that you came all this way to ask me this,” she said, standing up. “I thought we had gotten passed this, Director Fury. So much for your so-called trust in what we do here. I think you should leave.”
She stomped toward her office door, but Morph half-rose from his chair and caught her by the elbow. “Moira, I’m sorry, I truly am, but you can understand the position I’m in here. My people are getting reports that don’t look kosher, and instead of bringing SHIELD agents barreling in here to disrupt your work, I thought an off the books visit would clear this matter up more…quietly. I’m not here to insult you. I swear.”
She fumed for a moment, but just as quickly she cooled. “Fine. What do you need to see?”
“Your main research areas and anywhere you’re doing testing.”
“Fine,” she said again, with a crisp and sharp yank on the door.
She led him through the facility where a dozen or so researcher and scientists under her care were busy doing their meticulous work concerning the mutant genome. State of the art lab equipment lined the inside of what she called the clean room, which could only entered after putting on smocks, booties, and going through an ventilated room to blow off any stray contaminants.
Once inside, she gestured to the work stations. “See?” she said. “No live subjects. That’s not the kind of science we do here, Nick. We don’t cut open mutants like they’re lab animals. We only use biologicals donated to our foundation, and even then, they are severely checked prior to acceptance.”
“Would you mind pulling in your department heads?” he asked. “I have a few questions for them, too.”
“Are you serious, Nick? They’re spread all over the island. It will take an hour just to pull them into one room.”
He gave her his best Nick Fury smile. “’Fraid so, Moira. I’ll wait here. I know it’s inconvenient, but the sooner we put this to rest, the sooner you can get back to work and SHIELD can continue giving you the freedom you need to do your work.”
She huffed, but ultimately understood and left the clean room to begin summoning her department heads. Which gave Morph the freedom he needed to move about the facility. Getting past the security checkpoints would have been the hardest part, but with Moira escorting him, it had been a breeze.
Now that he was on the inside, he could get a better fix on the problem at hand, which was locating this dangerously powerful mutant.
Once Moira was out of sight, Morph slipped behind a support column. When he emerged from the other side, he had changed his appearance yet again to mimic that of the research tech that he had bumped into earlier. He hadn’t even broken stride when changing, and he clipped the stolen identification onto his lab coat.
He walked to a terminal, tapped a few keys to acquaint himself with the system, and then plugged in a USB drive that would hack a pathway into the root for him. Within moments he had granted himself superuser status and was picking through the security protocols like a kid on Halloween who was searching for the best candy in the pile. He had originally written the program as a gag on one of his MIT friends, but now it had become a vital tool in his work as Xavier’s personal spy.
It didn’t take him long to access what he thought would be his two most important tools: security feeds and arrival logs. He skimmed through the arriving transport vessels, both the ferries and the helicopter landings, looking for anything out of the ordinary. He didn’t expect to find anything there and was just doing his due diligence, but a glance at the morning’s records quickly changed that opinion.
Arriving just an hour before him was none other than Anthony Power, the former advisor to the President of the United States, who was currently on Interpol’s watch list. While he hadn’t been indicted yet, there were quite a lot of rumors floating around Washington that he soon would be. There was a conspiracy underway that several heroes with close ties to the X-Men had warned Xavier about.
Anthony Power had been the entire subject of a recent briefing, as a matter of fact. Seeing him pop up on Muir Island now couldn’t have been a coincidence. This was a strong lead for Morph to follow up on.
Pulling up the footage of his arrival on the island, Morph saw Power step off of the ferry and onto solid ground, flanked by men in black suits. He tracked Power’s movements via rewound footage until he entered a conference room, which was apparently a blackout spot. It was frustrating, but to be expected given the sensitive nature of Moira’s work here. Visiting dignitaries and other politicians didn’t like their conversations to be recorded.
Morph closed out his session, yanked the USB drive out of the terminal, and exited the room. He quickly paced down the hallway until he saw the conference room in question, which stood out all the more because of the two men in black suits standing guard outside.
Walking as if he belonged there, he briskly walked right up to the closed conference room door and pressed on it. The guards must have been bored from standing still for so long, because Morph managed to get the door open a full inch before one of them stopped him.
“Excuse me, sir,” one of them said as he placed a hand on Morph’s chest. “Closed meeting.”
“Yes, I know!” Morph said in irritation. “I’m late for it! Why do you think you’ve been standing here for so long? They’re waiting for me inside!”
One guard looked at the other with a raised eyebrow. “Can I see some ID?”
Morph made a show of his exasperation, patting his pockets several times until he pulled his stolen identification off of his lab coat. “Here!” he said, all but thrusting the badge into the guard’s face. “Can I go in now?”
“Just a second.” The guard swiped the badge through some kind of scanner that had a magnetic strip reader built into it. The screen cycled for a moment, and then a picture of Morph’s borrowed face appeared on the screen. “Okay, you’re clear. Sorry about that, sir.”
“Yes, yes,” Morph shot back, and then he entered the room.
Inside Anthony Power sat at the head of the conference table. A look of surprise crossed his face, and then confusion. “Can we help you?” he asked, although from him it sounded more like an accusation.
Morph quickly took in the room. Sitting beside Power at the conference table was another lab technician. The rest of the room was vacant, aside from the standard office décor. The both stared at him expectantly.
“Ms. MacTaggert asked me to come in,” Morph said. He stepped over to a counter where ice water and coffee waited, and poured himself some of the water. He had learned long ago that acting casual in a tense situation could often force acceptance. People naturally didn’t like to challenge other people that seemed to know more than they did. He sipped and turned, saying, “I’m supposed to get caught up. Can you bring me up to speed?”
“Bullshit,” Power blurted out.
Power apparently wasn’t one of those people.
“Excuse me?” Morph asked. Playing dumb or innocent often compelled people into getting on board as well. “Look, I’m not trying to take away your thunder. All I know if I’m working on some beta material, and she says I need to come in and help however I can. So, can you tell me what it is I can help with?”
“Anderson, you’re not on beta material,” the technician said. He glanced at Power. “He’s not even cleared for this type of research. Sir, you may want to ask one of your men to step in here. Something’s not right. I know Anderson, and he’s a son of a bitch, but he’s also one of the lowest ranking techs here. There is no way that he was asked to join Project Primacy.”
Project Primacy. If there was any doubt in Morph’s mind about Power’s involvement in whatever was going on with the mutant of mass destruction, it was gone now.
He could play this one of two ways: first, he could talk his way out of it and get them to exchange his confidence for an invitation to join the Project; or second, he could start busting heads. With the guards less than a dozen feet away, it really seemed like he needed to talk his way out of this one. Thankfully, Morph loved to talk.
As soon as he opened his mouth to counter, however, Power stood up and shouted for the men outside.
So much for diplomacy.
The door flung open to reveal the two men in black suits, who had both drawn weapons, but had yet to raise them. Morph shifted his weight, hopped toward the door, and kicked it shut again. As soon as the door slammed shut he pivoted toward Power and the tech, ripped a gun out of his inside pocket, and shot the technician in the gut. It was just a dart that would incapacitate him for several hours, but Power had no way of knowing that. All he saw was a crazy man with a gun pointed at his face.
The door banged twice from the guards pounding on it with their full weight. Morph braced himself for them to breach, and then just as the third pound was about to hit, he pulled the door back open again. The two guards stumbled over each other and were laid out on the floor. Morph shot them both in back, drilling their muscle tissue with two darts each.
He pulled them in and flung the door shut again as Power was backing away to the farthest corner of the conference room. Once the room was secure again, Morph pointed the weapon at Power and stalked toward him.
“Tell me about Project Primacy,” Morph demanded.
“Who are you?” Power shouted as he slowly raised his hands. He bumped into a potted plant on the floor, knocking it over.
Morph fired a dart into the floor between Power’s feet. “Primacy! Now!”
Power quivered slightly. “We’re importing genetic tissue for…research purposes.”
“Something tells me it’s not legitimately obtained. MacTaggert doesn’t do business that way, believe me I know, and I trust her a lot more than I trust you. Is the tissue you’re bringing in inert?”
“Inert?” Power looked momentarily befuddled. “Yes. Yes! Of course.”
“You’re lying.” Morph cocked the weapon for effect.
“Fine! Alright! I had a specimen brought in yesterday from Baghdad.” Power glanced to the unconscious tech, who he suspected was dead, on the floor. “Grady there was taking care of the paperwork for me. MacTaggert won’t deal with live subjects. This research was under her radar.”
“What are you working on?”
“The ultimate weapon.” Something crashed against the door again, and they could hear men shouting outside. Power sneered. “And you’re out of time, whoever you are.”
“Call them off.”
“You’re detaining someone who had lunch with the President yesterday. They won’t back down and there’s no other way out. You might as well turn that thing on yourself and save my men the trouble.”
A fight or flight instinct was beginning to creep into Morph’s head. Power was right; the next wave wouldn’t go down as easily and he had been stupid enough to back himself into a corner. So, he did the only thing he could.
He dropped his weapon on the floor between them and shapeshifted into Anthony Power a fraction of a second before the door burst open again.
The guards were completely dumbfounded. They saw the downed guards first and then trained their weapons on the two Powers. The real Power stared at him in awe, shocked at the sudden realization that he was in the room with a mutant, or from his perspective, someone with an incredible power of his own that he could control on a whim.
“Shoot this impostor!” Morph shouted in a perfect impression of Power’s voice. He motioned to the gun he had dropped. “He killed Grady!”
“What?” the real Power exclaimed. “I’m the real Anthony Power! Shoot him!”
“Ridiculous! Shoot him!”
The guards kept their weapons trained on both men, apparently too confused to do much of anything. Morph had used this tactic multiple times before, and knew just how to work the confusion to his advantage.
Morph raised his hands and took a step closer to the fresh guards. “Look,” he said, “I cut your paychecks, don’t I? Don’t you think I know an imposter when I see one? This man is armed, so stop wasting your time staring at us like imbeciles and SHOOT HIM!”
Of course, he knew that they weren’t going to open fire. That would be insane. However, the loud speech allowed him to step close enough to one of the new guards that he could grab his extended arm, pull him into an armbar, and flatten him on the ground in a split second.
With another quick turn and a strike to the temple, the other guard was laid out, too. Power, the real one, to his credit also didn’t waste any time. He scooped up the gun that Morph had dropped and pulled the trigger, firing three darts in Morph’s direction. They all missed, but Morph knew it was time to go.
He raced out into the hallway and ducked around a corner. As soon as he saw that the corridor was empty he immediately shifted into another tech that he had spotted in one of the research areas that he and Moira had walked through earlier. He casually walked the rest of the walk down the hall, not even glancing over his shoulder at the commotion breaking out behind him.
He had taken an active enough role. With someone like Power involved, a man suspected of operating unsanctioned operations at the highest level of government, it was time to get serious. Morph slipped into a lab and logged onto the nearest terminal, accessing his superuser status once again. He located all of the recent files that any technician with the last name of Grady had been working on, and then bulk emailed them to the real Nick Fury.
In his message, he simply wrote, “A present from Chuck. Look closely at Anthony Power and anything having to do with Project Primacy.” He signed it with an X, and then vanished deeper into the facility.
Later that night he managed to slip by the guards and get onto a departing ferry. All hell had broken loose barely an hour after he had emailed SHIELD. Agents had descended on the island and while Power had not been arrested, they had detained him, as well as Moira, until they had uncovered the live mutant that Power had smuggled into the facility.
Moira had been cleared once the SHIELD agents had finished going through Grady’s correspondence with Power. The mutant of mass destruction, however, a little girl named Isabelle, thought she was there to be given a cure for her powers. Apparently any plant she touched instantly died and she was terrified of herself. She stayed on at Muir Island, but to get help instead of becoming Power’s lab rat.
Due to his political connections, Power was never actually indicted. But he was on SHIELD’s radar now, and eventually it would lead to his uncovering his involvement in a secret empire that could have rocked the entire planet’s geopolitical landscape.
# # # # # # # # # #
“Project Primacy,” Shard said, as if tasting the words. “That was Power’s first attempt at manipulating mutants for his own gain?”
“I’m pretty sure, yeah,” Morph said. “I think that all of that stuff in Russia was the culmination of Project Primacy. Power has always had an interest in building a better weapon, one that is smart, but can still be controlled by him. Mutants are the most powerful weapons on Earth, and he’s hell-bent on controlling them, as well as messing with our DNA for his own personal gain.”
“Does Fury know that you casually impersonate him?” Shard asked.
Morph shrugged as he leaned in to look over her shoulder at the laptop screen. “What he doesn’t know won’t put me in jail,” he replied.
“Right.” She clicked through a few explorer windows, bringing up a spreadsheet that had been loaded onto the thumb drive. “So, what am I looking at here?”
“This is how we’re going to nail that bastard,” Morph said. “Pull everyone in. We need to move fast.”
Next issue: We’re bringing the fight to the enemy! Professor Power has been amassing his forces and will make his move soon, unless the team gets to him first. Plus, Daken’s past begins to catch up with him.