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#18
OCT 11 |
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“Daycare's In” Part Three
Cable walked through the cemetery and found exactly who he was looking for. “I figured that you would be here.”
Sanctity was looking down at the graves of her father and brother. “It’s strange thinking of them as dead when I know I could travel back to when they were alive. But then you’d come for me, wouldn’t you?”
“Things happen the way they do for a reason. After all my attempts to change things I’ve come to realize that,” Cable said as he kept a safe distance from her. He had no idea what sort of state Tanya was in and close proximity might set her off.
“Is that why you abandoned me?”
“No,” Cable said as tenderly as a soldier could. “We thought you were dead, Tanya. You have to believe me.”
Sanctity looked up and gave Nathan a small smile. “I do believe you. You’re too righteous to have left me, that much I know. I just fault you for shitty investigative work. Did you ever think to check?”
“No. I won’t lie…confronting Apocalypse took the priority. We really thought you were gone along with the rest of the Askani.”
“We survived, Askani’son, and trust me…our world was filled with many more threats besides Apocalypse.”
Cable felt some guilt at that point. He loved The Askani and to have left them behind pained his heart. “I’m sorry, I can’t take back what happened, but we can start something new here.”
Sanctity laughed. “Askani’son, I never believed you to be naïve. Do you really think I’ve come back to hold hands with you?”
“Then why have you come back?” Cable asked as he folded his arms across his chest. He was ready to pounce if Sanctity tried anything.
“I’ve seen the future that you and your X-Men are trying to create. You succeed and succeed quite beautifully; humans and mutants dancing off into the sunset and all that.”
Cable saw the disgust on Tanya’s face and was able to follow her line of thinking. “Why would you want to stop that, Tanya? Aren’t you tired of war after war?”
For a moment there was a crack in Sanctity’s steel expression. “More than you’ll ever know, Nathan, but it’s all I know and I’ll be damned if you get to enjoy peace while I suffer!”
“You can have peace too! Join us and you’ll have it,” Nathan pleaded.
A tear trickled down Sanctity’s cheek. “People like me don’t know peace, and neither will anyone else. I’m already making sure of that.”
It was Cable’s turn to look disgusted. “What have you done, Tanya?”
“A little bit of this, a little bit of that. All it takes is a few nudges here and there to redirect the course of time.”
Cable’s eye erupted with telekinetic energy. “I was wrong to reach out to you. You’re as mad as you ever were!”
“Like you, I’m a person out of time. Three lifetimes have passed for me since I last saw you, so don’t think you’ll win easily. It wouldn’t be a smart conflict for you to engage in, especially hurt as you are?”
Considering Sanctity’s words, Cable powered down. “Tanya, I have given you chance after chance. You truly are your father’s daughter.”
“A Trask to the end,” Sanctity agreed.
“This isn’t over, Tanya. You’ll be stopped, and know you’ve exhausted my mercy.”
“I never wanted it in the first place.”
Cable walked away and left Sanctity with her broken family.
Frost Genetics
Christian Frost walked casually into his office, flicked on the light and hung up his brown trench coat. Two men were behind his desk. One sat in his chair and the other stood behind him. Frost was completely unaffected by their presence. “You’re earlier than I expected.”
The Dark Beast gave his signature toothy grin. “Men early for business are taken more seriously. Their desire is not doubted.”
“So it would seem. You brought company, so don’t you think introductions are in order?”
“Of course, how rude of me, where are my manners? This strapping young man is one of my personal creations, Agent X.”
The scientifically produced mutant gave Christian a curt nod but remained silent so Frost paid it no regard. “You were vague in what you wanted when you scheduled this meeting. Perhaps now you could be a bit more detailed?”
Dark Beast gave a mock frown. “No small talk? All you Frosts are so straight to business.”
“I would prefer not to discuss Emma.”
“Who said I was talking about her?”
Christian’s facial response was a mixture of suspicion and shock, but before he could make any statement about the comment Dark Beast continued. “My research is about to take a new turn. My higher-ups have assigned me a new project.”
“Don’t be coy…you mean Cassandra Nova. The X.S.E. have made her existence quite public.” Frost wanted to cut through the layers and get right to the crux of what the Dark Beast wanted. Eli had allowed this meeting out of pure curiosity, but Frost didn’t think anything good could come from dealing with Weapon X. At the moment, they were a toxic entity.
“I find the media to be exceedingly tedious so I would not know how public my dear Director Nova is. Be that as it may, she has commissioned me to begin work on a new project, but I am lacking essential materials.”
Frost looked up at the golden clock above the window sill. “Then I suggest you get to it because my patience is wearing thin very quickly.”
“Nutrient baths. I’m nearly out of the materials to make them. It is quite the dilemma in trying to clone, splice and the like.”
Frost Genetics did indeed have an abundance of those materials but they had only recently come upon the surplus thanks to the Crafter. How had the Dark Beast known to come to him? Coincidence didn’t seem likely.
“Eli came to you first, didn’t he?” Frost asked as he moved closer to his desk. “How much did he promise you?”
“Nothing…he wanted to leave the negotiations to you. Had to admit that left me a bit annoyed. I figured if you were anything like Em I’d be working out a deal for hours.”
“Emma has always had a talent for that kind of thing. I prefer brevity. How much do you want?”
The Dark Beast lightly, almost comically, bounced his head back and forth as if considering what he was about to say. “Four million dollars worth.”
“What the hell are you trying to build?! An army?!”
“Something of a sort, but that’s really not your concern, my brief friend.”
“It is if your actions interfere with mine. I’ll need more than money to complete this transaction.”
The Dark Beast laughed. “So there is a bit of Emma in you after all. Hereditary traits are hard to deny in ourselves. You should embrace yours like your sisters have.”
“What are you offering?”
“I might be willing to provide you with a plethora of fascinating genetic samples. And, to sweeten the deal, I’ll let you in on an experiment to see exactly what it is I’m doing.”
“Details. Then I’ll make a decision.”
“I intend to clone a certain dead X-Man and make a few…‘improvements’…to him. The first version wasn’t up to par.”
Agent X rolled his eyes at the back and forth between the two men. He didn’t even know why he had been brought along. McCoy seemed more than capable of handling this shrimp on his own. It was already bad enough he had been left out of the X-Men assaults.
“Haven’t you and your people pissed off the X-Men enough?” Christian asked as he looked at an undeterred Dark Beast. “I am curious though…which X-Man?”
“A former student of your sister’s: Everett Thomas.”
Christian was silent for a moment as he considered the proposal. Seeing what was done to the clone would let him get a clue as to what Weapon X was up to. “You have yourself a deal. Give me a few days to talk with my associates and we’ll work on the particulars.”
“Good, good…we’ll be in touch,” the Dark Beast said as he rose out of Christian’s seat. “You may want to have someone vacuum up the fur; I’ve been shedding quite a bit as of late.”
“I’ll see to it. One more thing before you go, though.”
“Yes?”
“I strongly suggest you stay away from my sisters.”
India
The bar was seated in one of the poorest neighborhoods in all of New Delhi. It sat on the edge of a tent city and the building itself looked like one strong monsoon would be the end of it, but that appearance was purposeful because the real club was seated underneath the dilapidated building. Criminals wanted to gather in a place where they seemed the least likely to be and while poverty was a source of crime; it wasn’t thought they would gather so close to an abject version of it. Seven members of X-Force had come to it because they knew better.
Mortis covered the lower half of her face with her hand as they moved through the tent city and towards the run down bar’s entrance. The smell of feces and urine was overwhelming. “I imagine pig farms smell better than this dump!”
Copycat rolled her eyes. “Well, not all of us could grow up with a silver spoon in our mouth.”
“And even fewer could grow up in a litter box,” Mortis snapped back.
“Ladies, keep your focus on the mission. We are about to be dealing with some very dangerous people and things have the potential to get ugly,” Pipeline reminded. He was the leader of this mission and he had to admit that he was nervous as hell. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have the leadership experience because he had been in charge of the Press Gang, but as of late he had been content to follow Havok’s lead, even when the bastard seemed off his rocker so it was a new experience to actually be back at the command helm. Part of him wondered if he was ready to step back into that role.
Monet put a hand on her boyfriend’s shoulder and said, “When don’t things have the potential to get ugly?”
Getting close to the entrance of the bar, Shatterstar said to Caliban, “How many mutants do you sense in there, my friend?”
The Morlock sniffed in the air like a bloodhound. “Five. The pig face and four children.”
“Just a walking little Cerebro, huh?” Madrox smiled as he patted Caliban on the shoulder. “So, how we going in, boss? Guns blazing or we playing this cool?”
“Cool. I’d rather negotiate with the Pig first, if we can. We have enough power between the seven of us to bring this place down if it comes to that,” Pipeline said hoping what he was saying was true. There was a fair amount of firepower between them but they really only had a marginal idea what was waiting for them. He doubted that they were going to be the only guests that the Pig had.
“I would prefer to stay out here until I’m actually needed. That cesspool makes my skin crawl. I’ll have to exfoliate for a week to get rid of all that filth in the atmosphere,” Mortis said. Poverty was such a little, horrid disease to her and those afflicted by it only had themselves to blame. The rich and powerful had attained their status through their own force of will. Some cried out corruption and deception, but those who did only wish they had been smart enough to think of it first; being in this awful place made Lois grateful that her father had been one of those people.
“We all go in together. I want this to be as much a show of force as it is a negotiation,” Pipeline said as he knocked on the door three times to gain entrance; he didn’t see Mortis rolling her eyes behind him. A forth knock was nearly commenced when an old Indian man with cloud-white hair opened up.
The old man looked at the collection of seven mutants and judged by their black, military-esque garb that they were here on business. If they were some sort of law enforcement they would have just come in guns blazing. As the door man to the Pig’s club, it was his duty to assess anyone coming in and to apply appropriate security measures. Judging by the severe lack of weapons on these seven’s persons, he figured them to be super-humans.
“All weapons and technology are to be deposited with me,” the old man said with a thick accent as two large bouncers came up behind him, “and you will also wear these nullification wristbands to eliminate any potential superhuman attributes. I hope that these measures aren’t going to prove to be an inconvenience.”
“Not at all,” Pipeline said as he deposited a belt of gas grenades and a couple of cell phones into the large box that the old man had presented them with. “Mortis stay outside with M and ‘Star.”
Lois looked like she was about to faint from relief. “Thank you for having more sense than Havok.”
M gripped Cormic’s shoulder. “Be careful in there.”
Madrox dropped a number of handguns into the box and said, “Please be careful with these boys, they just got shined this morning.”
Copycat reached down to her ankles and placed three throwing knives into the box. Reaching behind her, she dropped in a couple of energy pistols. She ran a finger along the old man’s face and purred. “I hope I’ll be getting those back.”
The old bouncer blushed and laughed. “Of course…our guests, as long as they’re civil, have all items returned to them.”
Caliban, having no weapons to give up, was the first one to have a nullification device placed around his wrist. The mutant energy signals he had felt instantly vanished from his mind but he had remembered about where he last felt them. He was as true a tracker without his mutant abilities as he was with them, as life among the Morlocks required one to rely on far more than just their mutant abilities. The Marauders had driven that lesson home loud and clear.
“Couldn’t you have picked a more fashionable color?” Madrox asked as the lime green wristband was placed on him. “I mean, I know black goes with everything but–”
The harsh stare he was getting from the two 6’7 bouncers made him stop his sentence. With no powers, pissing those guys off would probably end up with him having a bust spleen. He went to Monet’s side before stepping in the door and asked, “Do you think we’ll be able to beat the shit out of them later on?”
“I feel like we should, just on principle,” Monet said. She could feel the old man and the two bouncers undressing her with their eyes. If the time was right she would use her telepathy to make them all fall madly in love with the next hideous woman they saw. It was the first time she had thought about using her telepathy in such a manner since Libya and it wasn’t a thought she had to force upon herself. That meant she was getting over Havok’s manipulation and she was glad for it.
Telepathy was as much a part of her whole package as any of her other abilities, but Havok had made her loathe it. Legion was a monster, that she couldn’t argue, but to turn him into a living weapon like that made her stomach turn and, in some ways, it reminded her of how her brother had reduced her to mere food. No one deserved to be ground down into some singular purpose and that’s what Havok had made her do with Legion. There was a part of her that couldn’t help but to think about where she would be if Emma had approached her like Havok approached Legion. Would she still be trapped in the form of Penance? Being forced to be a weapon for Generation X’s purposes?
“—are you listening to me?” Pipeline said as he wrapped a hand around Monet’s waist that startled her. “Don’t go daydreaming on me.”
Monet shook her head. “I’m sorry…I was just—never mind. What were you saying?”
“We all need to keep a good look at our surroundings. This is all a bit too easy for my tastes and I have a feeling once we try to get the Nanny’s location out of the Pig things are going to get heavy for us real fast.”
Caliban looked at Pipeline with big, innocent yellow eyes. “How will friend Shatterstar know when to help?”
Cormic smiled and pulled back his black vest for just a second and they all saw a tiny red flash come from within it. “They didn’t swipe everything off of me.”
“And I’ll be in touch,” Monet said as she created a psi-web between all of them. They may be blocking your powers, but the building isn’t insulated against my telepathy.
Pipeline nodded. “Ok people, let’s go pay our friend here a visit.”
The old man stepped back from the door along with the bouncers and said, “Please enjoy the bar. There are quite a few good drinks available. My employer wants his company to indulge in as much in pleasure as they do in business.”
“We’ll think about it,” Pipeline said as he led the others into the club.
The old man smiled with barely any teeth at the remaining members of X-Force as he slammed the door shut. Mortis shifted uncomfortably on her feet and said, “This is not the place for heels. They barely have any flat ground.”
Monet flipped her hair back. “Tell me about it. I doubt they’ve ever seen a sidewalk in this abominable place.”
Lois laughed. “At least someone agrees with me about how atrocious this place is.”
Shatterstar looked at the two women with venom in his eyes but said nothing. Their type of arrogance was impossible to penetrate and his brain power would be better spent on other matters. As they continued to complain, he was devising possible attack strategies in his head, because as far as he was concerned they were going to have to have fight the Pig and whoever else was in there.
The Mansion
Cable stared out the window until he heard a knock on the door. With a slight nudge of his telekinesis he opened it and said, “Took you long enough.”
“Had to get Blink to send me over here and she was busy. I heard about Sanctity. So I guess you couldn’t get through to her?”
“No,” Cable said as he sat down at his desk. “And I knew she wouldn’t be able to. That woman is a complete lunatic and can’t be reasoned with. We need to put a bullet in her head and get it over with.”
Domino imagined herself sniping the woman from a rooftop. “Not gonna happen. You know that’s not how these guys play.”
“Which is exactly why I called you in here. We need to have people out there willing to do the dirty, tough things to keep this progress we’ve made on track.”
“So you want me to go back on the field?”
Cable shook his head. “No, you’ve earned your place on Xavier’s team and I want you to stay there. I’m talking about an entirely new team with no connection to any of Xavier’s people. They’ll operate in the dark, receive their orders from us and do the things the X-Men can’t publically do.”
“You have anyone in mind?” Domino asked. New mercs were always popping onto the scene and the two of them still had enough connections to that world order to make some moves happen.
Cable floated a manila folder from across his desk and into Domino’s hands. “That’s who I have in mind. Think you can get to them?”
She flipped through the various profiles and stopped at the last one. “You want him involved? He’s too unstable for something like this I think.”
“King will be all right. He’s only unstable because he’s never really had a focus and we’re going to give him that,” Cable said. He could see the skepticism on Domino’s face, but he knew her well enough to know she would trust him. They had been put in far more compromising positions and she had always relied on his word.
“Ok. I’ll see what I can do, Boss.”
The Horus Helicarrier
(Over Libyan airspace)
Brent Jackson slid the pictures across the table to his commander, Director G.W. Bridge. “These are the latest picture of the A.I.M. killer’s victims. None of it is pretty and, judging by what I saw initially, none of them died quick.”
Bridge flipped through the horrific pictures and said, “How many does that make now?”
Jackson rubbed two fingers through his blonde goatee. “Depends on what you mean. You talking about the total body count period or just the total number of high ranking officials?”
“High ranking; I could give a rat’s ass about flunkies getting knocked off,” Bridge said.
“Gregory Rhineheart and Amelia Heinle make twelve,” Brent said as he lit a cigarette and started to puff away. “I don’t mind this guy icing terrorists for us, but you know what’s gonna happen if this keeps up?”
Bridge gritted his teeth. “An A.I.M. power struggle that’ll very likely spill onto the streets; it’d be like the Mexican cartels but with high science. I do NOT want this on my plate right now and I doubt Fury does either. Whoever this A.I.M. killer is has to be stopped.
“Just say the word, boss,” Brent said. His heartbeat picked up in anticipation of what was in front of him. “You know we’re ready.”
Bridge seemed to be considering it for a moment. His features were never exactly soft, but the angles of his face seemed even harder than normal. “I was wanting to keep you as a trump card, but I think you’re right. You and your boys are ready, so assemble your team, Agent Jackson. You have my full authorization to hunt down this killer and bring him to me. I want him brought back alive…is that clear?”
Jackson held his fingers making an OK sign. “No problem, boss. You know we can make it happen.”
“You better. And could you please come up with a better codename for your squad.”
Jackson laughed. “C’mon, boss…the Jackson Five is classic and you know it!”
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To Be Continued...
Next: In X-Force #19: Pipeline and the gang meet with the Pig, but what does he want in exchange for giving up information about the Nanny? And who does Domino approach for her and Cable’s new team?
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