The Return

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The Return Page 18

by Unknown Author


  The ceiling that, at the moment, was approaching fast.

  “P-platform,” Doug said, breathlessly. “Stop. Stop! Stop!”

  The flying platform stopped, with only inches separating the top of Doug’s head from the massive array of computational equpment above him.

  “Um, thanks?” Doug let out a ragged sigh of relief Far in front of him was a broad, gently curving purple wall. He slowly turned his head, peering over his shoulder, and was so startled he almost tumbled off the platform.

  “Cripes!”

  It took a moment for Doug to understand what was before him. His first instinct had been that it was an enormous, expressionless face staring right at him. Which was, while impossible, no less terrifying.

  Gradually, though, he realized what he was seeing. It was like one of those optical illusions, where one looks at the inside of a plaster cast made of a human face. Seen from just the right angle, the inside of a face cast looks like the outside of a face, not concave but convex. It had something to do with the way the human brain processed the visual imagery, or played with expectations, or closure, or something like that. Whatever the case, it meant that a face in reverse looked just like the face itself, and vice versa.

  Which meant, of course, that the Master Mold wasn’t staring at him. Its expressionless gaze was still directed out over the Ecuadorian jungle at the volcano of Tungurahua. What Doug was seeing was the hollow interior of that foreboding, emotionless visage.

  And above him, a massive bulk of gray cylinders connected by snaking conduits and cables, was the Master Mold’s sleeping brain.

  “Time to wake up.”

  Doug reached into his satchel, and pulled out his portable computer. He squatted down and, opening the LCD, laid the computer on his knees. With a familiarly reassuring chiming noise, the computer woke up from suspend.

  “Okay, darlin’,” he said, patting the computer’s case affectionately, “time to go to work.”

  Balancing the computer on his knees, Doug reached into his satchel and pulled out a coil of cabling. One end was a standard connector, while the other was a kind of oversize alligator clip, with long, sharp, serrated “teeth.”

  “Platform. Elevate six inches and stop.”

  With a quiet hum, the platform raised up. Doug plugged the cable’s connector into his computer.

  “Okay, now where is ... ?” Doug squinted up at the conduits and cabling of the operator core, now just within arm’s reach. The light was dim, so he pulled a small flashlight from his satchel, and played its beam across the snarl of massive electronics. “Ah, there it is.”

  Keeping careful hold of the computer, he straightened and, with the cable in hand, reached out and clamped its alligator clip end onto a particular conduit overhead. The long serrated teeth of the clip bit deep into the conduit, and when Doug pulled his hand away the cable held firmly in place.

  “Now, Mr. Master Mold.” Doug smiled, fingers flying over the computer’s keyboard. “Let’s talk shall we?”

  Elsewhere in the factory, things were not going so well.

  At some point along the way, Hank and Rogue had switched partners, he taking on the spider Sentinel, she taking on the snake. Then Rogue had managed to wrap the snake in knots, and force fed the Sentinel its own guns.

  Then Hank had managed to trip the spider up, getting it tangled in its own legs, careering into a wall at speed, knocking out its own sensory mechanism.

  Which seemed, for a moment, like a good start.

  But then the two X-Men had discovered, to their dismay, that the spider and snake did not represent the apex of the Sentinel evolutionary ladder, but were at least one or two rungs down.

  Higher on the Sentinel food chain was—

  “A giant gorilla?” Rogue said in disbelief “Ya gotta be kiddin’ me ...”

  “Oh my stars and garters.” Hank gaped, eyes wide.

  It was taller than a typical Sentinel model, perhaps one hundred thirty to one hundred fifty feet tall, but its habit of walking on its knuckles made it seem deceptively short. Its forearms were massive and lengthened, while its legs were short but powerful. It was topped by the familiar Sentinel headpiece, but there was something strange about the lower half of the expressionless Sentinel face.

  “Uh, Hank... ?” Rogue began, but before she could finish her thought, the lower half of the gorilla Sentinel’s face swung open, jaw distending, revealing a row of laser cannons. These roared to life, spitting out thick beams of pure energy, lancing toward the two X-Men.

  Hank danced out of the way just in time, the leading edge of one of the laser blasts singeing the side of his face, his right sleeve smoldering. Rogue had the ability to move faster, but her reflexes were not as highly attuned as Hank’s, and so she was caught by a direct hit, the blast impacting on her chest and knocking her backward off her feet. If not for her near-invulnerability, she’d have been incinerated on the spot. As it was, the breath was knocked from her, and she fell with a thud to the hard concrete floor, stars dancing in her eyes.

  “Ouch.”

  Hank rushed to her side, and helped her to her feet while the gorilla Sentinel recharged its mouth lasers.

  “I believe, Rogue, that we have met the top predator of the Sentinel world. One can scarcely imagine anything preying on that.”

  Just then, a kind of distorted, electronic roar sounded from somewhere in the factory, followed by a deafening thud, then another, then another. Footsteps, and approaching fast.

  “I wish you hadn’t of said that, Hank,” Rogue said, shaking her head wearily.

  Another Sentinel lurched into view, equally as big as the gorilla. But where the gorilla Sentinel had long arms and short legs, this one had tiny, almost vestigial arms, but massive, powerful legs. The torso extended into a kind of tail, which the Sentinel used to maintain balance, and its oversize headpiece was segmented, the lower half swinging open to reveal a set of wicked pin-cerlike grabbing mechanisms.

  Hank looked at it, wide-eyed with amazement. “It’s ... it’s ...”

  “It’s a blamed dinosaur, Hank.” Rogue let out a ragged sigh.

  “Could it be some kind of convergent evolution?” Hank absently pulled his glasses from his pocket, and setting them on his nose peered up at the approaching Sentinel in wonderment. “Morphologically it’s ... well, it’s a T. rex. Which is not impossible, however implausible. But how would ... ?”

  “I think you’ll have to puzzle it out later,” Rogue said, and grabbing hold of Hank’s arm lifted him up into the air just as the massive pincer jaws of the dinosaur Sentinel smashed into the space they’d just vacated. “Looks like Rex here is hungry.”

  “Just remarkable.”

  For a moment, it looked like the gorilla and the dinosaur might turn on each other instead, but whatever strange evolutionary paths their command protocols had taken, apparently the imperative to eradicate mutants still took precedence.

  Carrying Hank under her arm like a football, Rogue zipped from one side of the cavernous space to the other, managing to keep ahead of the laser blasts from the gorilla Sentinel and the massive jaws of the dinosaur ... but just barely.

  “I don’t know about you, Hank but I’m bushed. Don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep this up.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that,” said a voice behind them.

  They turned, and saw Doug standing atop a flying platform, floating in midair.

  “T. rex and Kong, huh?” Doug nodded approvingly. “Cool.”

  The dinosaur roared, and the gorilla swung around, bringing its mouth cannons to bear.

  “Doug, look out!” Hank shouted.

  Dougjust smiled, and raised his hand.

  “Stop,” he said simply, and the Sentinels ground to a halt, frozen like statues.

  “Um, Doug?” Hank said uneasily. “Am I to take it that you’ve established communication with the Master Mold?”

  Doug smiled more broadly. He reached into his satchel and pulled out a
cellular phone.

  “You could say we’ve established communication.”

  Rogue zipped over and landed gracefully on the flying platform. She released her hold on Hank who straightened his shirt, fussily.

  “Doug, you’re my hero,” she said with a grin. “I’d kiss ya . . . if, you know, it wouldn’t mean suckin’ the life outta you and stealin’ your powers and memories. Those blamed Sentinels dang near had my number.”

  “Aw.” Doug shuffled his feet, blushing. “It wasn’t anything, really.”

  “So have you convinced the Master Mold to activate all the decommissioned Sentinels?” Hank asked eagerly.

  “Well,” Doug answered, prevaricating, “we may have run into a teensy-weensy problem ...”

  37

  Scott and the others weren’t dead yet, but it wasn’t from lack of trying.

  “I’ve got an idea, Kurt, why not try to teleport us into a vat of molten iron next time? That might be quicker.”

  “I’ll forgive that comment, Herr Summers, because I know you are trying to make a small joke, and I can’t hold your complete lack of a sense of humor against you.”

  “Tovarisches,” Peter grunted, as an Exemplar pounded into his organic steel frame with a force that could have shattered mountains. “Perhaps now ... is not. .. the best time.”

  Kurt sighed dramatically. “You should be grateful we brought Peter along, Scott.” He leapt six feet in the air, just narrowly missing the latest sweeping attack by the superspeedster Exemplar, a yellow-clad blur of movement almost too fast to see. “After all, he’s the only one of us more humor-impaired than you.”

  Scott, to Kurt’s surprise, managed a small grin, and fired an optic blast at the Exemplar wearing the dark cloak, who maddeningly went invisible and intangible

  just as the beam reached him, phasing back into visible corporeality only after it passed harmlessly through.

  The fourth member of the Exemplar quartet whose amusements their sudden teleportation into the alien city had interrupted was a short distance away, watching the combat with a detached expression. On his forehead was some sort of red gem, though whether it was decorative or served a purpose—a weapon, perhaps?— Scott couldn’t say, since the ruby, as Scott thought of him, had yet to make a move.

  “This is getting us nowhere,” Kurt said, lunging to one side, catching a glancing blow as the yellow-clad speedster zipped by again. “We need to think of a new plan.”

  Scott fired an optic blast at the ruby Exemplar, who promptly disappeared. For an instant, he assumed that this was another phantom, another able to phase invisible and intangible, but in the blink of an eye the ruby reappeared on the far side of the pool, in the same posture and pose.

  A teleporter, Scott realized. That gave him an idea. “Kurt, you up to teleporting, yet?”

  Rebounding off the wall, wrapping his prehensile tail around one of the outstretched stone tentacles of the giant inhuman statue and swinging to the far side, Kurt scratched his head thoughtfully. “I think so. Why?” “The shield’s bound to be back up,” Scott answered, not chancing a glance at the remote on his belt, “but you should be able to scout out a path for us through the city. Feel like giving it a shot?”

  Kurt, hanging head down, just out of the speedster’s reach, crossed his legs, as casually as if he were perched

  on a park bench, and shrugged. “Why not, Mein Freund. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Bamf.

  Scott glanced over, and saw that as soon as Kurt had ’ported, the ruby Exemplar had likewise disappeared. If the ruby was a teleporter, as Scott surmised, then Kurt’s little scouting mission would serve a dual purpose. He’d be able to scout out a path for them, possibly even finding the prisoners themselves, but he’d also be leading the ruby teleporter on a merry chase.

  Of course, Scott thought with a slight smile, it might have been better if I’d actually told Kurt that part of the plan.

  Scott almost felt as if he’d made a joke. Well, if so, Kurt would only have himself to blame.

  “Verdammt, Scott!”

  Kurt leapt into the air, lashing out with a kick that connected with the yellow blur of the speedster. Then, just as the ruby-wearing Exemplar teleported above him, ready to grab hold of Kurt with a telekinetic fist, Kurt ’ported away.

  And somehow our four-to-three odds, Kurt thought, have turned into two-to-one odds against me alone. I do hope Peter and Scott appreciate this gift I’ve given them.

  Kurt had not been bom yesterday. He’d seen Scott glance at the ruby Exemplar across the pool, and had seen the ruby teleport a short distance moments before. So when Scott had asked Kurt to scout ahead, he’d had a fairly good idea that a secondary objective would be to lure one of their foes away, for a brief while at least, on a wild-goose chase.

  What Scott had failed to take into consideration, and Kurt had been too overconfident to consider, was that the yellow-clad speedster had clearly taken some sort of personal dislike to the furry blue elf, and that in addition to the ruby teleporting after him when Kurt bamfed away, the speedster would likewise come and hunt him down. And so now, while trying to find a path through the city, or better yet locate the prisoners they sought themselves, Kurt was forced to contend with, not one, but two Exemplars out for his blood.

  To which he could only repeat, “Verdammt, Scott!”

  In the years since he’d left the family farm in Siberia, Peter Rasputin had traded blows with aliens, gods, and monsters, with giant robots, cyborgs, and Mandroids, with heroes, villains, and friends. And none of them, to the best of his recollection, had hurt quite so much as this thrice-damned Exemplar.

  Hairless, like all the servants of the Kh’thon, this one wore skin-tight vestments of silver and blue, with a stylized thunderbolt emblazoned on the chest. Much shorter than Peter, he was only an inch or so taller than Scott, but easily twice as wide, thickly muscled with a disproportionately large upper body. His massive arms, like pistons, swung back and forth, his large fists like jackhammers pounding into Peter again and again and again.

  Not that Peter wasn’t giving as good as he got. For every blow that the thunderbolt Exemplar struck, Peter responded with one of his own. Their battle carried them from one end of the long reflecting pool to the other and back again.

  By the white wolf, but he’s a tough one.

  Even in his armored form, the punishment Peter’s body was taking had begun to take its toll. Still, he was grateful, knowing that had he been on the receiving end of even one of the thunderbolt’s blows while in his flesh-and-blood form his body would likely hive been liquidized.

  Peter was reminded of the last time he’d gone toe-to-toe with an opponent as strong and as tough as this one. It had been on the moon, years before, facing off against Gladiator, the leader of the alien Imperial Guard. It did not escape Peter’s notice that, on that occasion it had been the other combatant who had been the victor, not Peter.

  Ofcourse, a buildingfell on me, so it was hardly a fair fight.

  Peter hoped that, assuming he could keep from being buried under falling masonry this time, he might come out the winner.

  But he wasn’t willing to place any bets on his chances just yet.

  Scott, meanwhile, was finding out just how frustrating it could be to fight an opponent one could neither see nor touch.

  “Kitty could learn a thing or two from you, friend,” Scott said, firing another optic blast, only to see it pass through empty air as the phantom disappeared, then reappeared a few feet away.

  He considered trying the same shotgun approach that Hank had suggested he use against the Capo of the Judgment’s Watch Cohort in Manhattan, but a brief attempt proved fruitless, as the phantom simply went intangible and breezed through the randomly placed blasts.

  “Arrant of the Lightning Factor Cohort is no friend to you, degenerate,” the phantom said, his voice high and reedy, “but I’ll happily teach you and yours a lesson in subjugation.”

  With that the phant
om surged forward, his dark cloak flapping behind him, moving directly toward Scott.

  Scott had spent too much time training Kitty in the Danger Room to underestimate the destructive capabilities of someone able to pass through solid matter. If this phantom was able to bring other objects along with him, he could very well phase Scott halfway through solid rock and then leave him there. And Scott knew from experience that any object, or person, that suddenly returned to solidity inside another object fared none too well.

  Of course, if the phantom’s powers worked anything like Kitty’s, he would have to lay hands on Scott before taking him anywhere. Which mean that Scott’s optic blasts would be of much less use in this instance than plain old hand-to-hand combat.

  Which was fine with Scott. It had been a while since he got a workout.

  Sure enough, as the phantom got closer, he grabbed for Scott, hands outstretched. Scott, falling back on years of martial arts training, blocked the grab, ducking down and under the phantom’s arms and stepping to one side. Scott lashed out, hoping to land a punch to the phantom’s side, but at the last instant the phantom went invisible and intangible.

  Scott danced away, and an instant later the phantom returned to visible corporeality, and came by for another pass.

  This time Scott tried a different approach, meeting the phantom head-on, shoulder forward, hoping to plow into the phantom’s midriff and knock the air from him.

  The phantom, taking a defensive posture, went intangible just as Scott barreled through the space he’d previously occupied.

  Scott’s momentum carried him forward a few yards, and when he spun around, he saw the phantom holding his ground, eyeing him wearily. From the crisp outline of his shadow, Scott could tell the phantom was solid, and Scott assumed that he was planning his next move.

  Bamf.

  Kurt teleported in immediately behind the phantom, and before the Exemplar could react, clodded him across the back of the head with a two-handed blow. The phantom, rendered senseless, fell to the ground.

 

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