X-Men and the Avengers: Lost and Found

by Greg Cox

  Without mentioning it to Masters, he immediately sent an urgent e-mail to Alicia Masters, checking on her perfidious uncle’s alleged alibi while keeping the line open to the Puppet Master himself. Thank heaven for the miracles of multi-tasking, he thought.

  Looking very much like a sinister ventriloquist’s dummy, Masters appeared somewhat mollified by Iron Man’s attempts to keep an open mind. “Living marionettes, you say?” he said, stroking his hairless chin. “Very intriguing.” Iron Man hoped Masters was not taking notes for his next criminal enterprise. “I’m afraid, though, that I can’t think of any, er, former colleagues who might be responsible for the young lady’s abduction. My own puppets, as you know, were constructed from radioactive clay found only on Wundagore Mountain. The clay had many unusual properties, but autonomous locomotion was not one of them.” He glanced down at whatever he working on, just out of the frame of the transmission, and Iron Man would have given a month’s profits at Stark Solutions to see what exactly the Puppet Master was fashioning now.

  Not another of his little mind-controlling toys, he prayed, and especially not a miniature Iron Man.

  “Now then,” said Masters, “if you don’t mind, I have to get back to my work.”

  “Fine,” Iron Man said gruffly, deciding it couldn’t hurt to put the fear of God into the man. He’d known a lot of criminals who had claimed to turn over a new leaf, like the Thunderbolts, and precious few who really had. “Just remember, Masters, if you’re hiding anything, the Fantastic Four isn’t the only super-team that’s ready to throw you back behind bars if necessary. We’ll be in touch—you can count on it,”

  “Your faith and trust touch my heart,” the Puppet Master replied sarcastically, cutting off the transmission on that rather adversarial note. Iron Man wasn’t too con-cemed about getting on the twisted toymaker’s bad side; as an Avenger, he’d made too many dire enemies to worry about one more.

  I can deal with Masters if I have to, he thought confidently.

  Unfortunately, his exchange with the Puppet Master hadn’t brought them any closer to finding Wanda.

  “No luck,” he reported to Cap and the Vision. ‘ ‘The only super-criminal puppeteers I could think of are either behind bars or appear to have alibis.” He wouldn’t know for sure until Alicia replied to his e-mail, but in his gut he suspected Masters was telling the truth. Why tell a lie that could be so easily checked on? Masters’s niece was trustworthy, Iron Man knew, even if her uncle was not.

  Cap shrugged his broad shoulders, undiscouraged by Iron Man’s lack of positive results. “We’ll find her, one way or another.” Iron Man admired Cap’s unflagging optimism and faith; the old soldier never gave up, no matter the odds against him. “Besides, the Scarlet Witch I know is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. If there’s a way to get word to us, or even to escape on her own, Wanda will find it.”

  That’s true enough, Iron Man admitted. He recalled that Cap had personally trained Wanda and her brother when they had first joined the Avengers, right after the original team—Thor, Giant-Man, the Wasp, and Iron Man—had broken up. He glanced over at the Vision, hoping that Cap’s words would bring renewed hope to the synthezoid as well. The Vision floated a few feet above the floor, methodically searching the deserted gallery with his glittering plastic eyes. Iron Man found himself wishing he could offer some sort of consolation to the Witch’s former husband. But how did you ease the feelings of an

  artificial being who rarely admitted having any?

  Maybe the best thing I can do is follow Cap’s example and just refuse to abandon hope.

  Rapidly running out of leads and deductive leaps, Iron Man decided to fall back on the high-tech approach that usually worked for him. Activating his short-range sensors, he scanned the gallery all along the electromagnetic spectrum, searching for any anomalous readings. A beam from his chest projection unit swept the empty chamber; if there were any charged particles, unusual radiation, or unstable molecules in the vicinity, the beam would record their presence and transmit the data to the optical display in his helmet. At first, all he could detect was the solar-based bio-electricity that powered the Vision, but, after fine-tuning his instruments to compensate for the synthezoid’s presence, he was surprised to register something quite unexpected.

  “Well, I’ll be,” he murmured aloud.

  “What is it?” Captain America waited expectantly, clearly confident in Iron Man’s ability to provide a scientific solution to this mystery. “Have you got something?”

  The Vision waited stoically behind Cap, descending to a few inches above the floor. Whatever thoughts might have been passing through his cybernetic brain remained his alone.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Iron Man said, checking and recalibrating his sensors just to be sure, “but I’m picking up persistent traces of radiation. Not enough to endanger anyone, but pervasive enough to have been left behind by something very recently.”

  His mind instantly raced through the various exhibits he had glimpsed throughout the folk art museum: hand-carved weathervanes, decorative quilts, rustic needlework and water colors. He couldn’t think of a location less likely to be trafficking in radioactive materials. But there the evidence was, as clear as the illuminated read-outs before his eyes.

  “What kind of radiation?” Cap asked. It occurred to Iron Man that his fellow hero had actually attended the original atomic blast at Los Alamos, another piece of history in which Captain America had personally taken part. “Anything special?”

  “You bet,” Iron Man answered tersely. Every sensor confirmed the same ominous truth. “It’s gamma radiation.”

  The very force that created the rampaging, half-ton monster known as the incredible Hulk.

  The headquarters of the 6th Precinct was a two-story’ building on West 10th Street, only a few city blocks away from the park where Rogue had achieved such a dubious form of TV stardom. If any vital evidence had been left behind by her struggle with the mysteriously energetic tee-shirts, it would have been taken here.

  Night had descended on 10th Street, bringing with it a highly unusual visitor. Casing the police station from across the street, standing under the awning of a small antique store, the Beast shook his head and sighed philosophically.

  This would be ever so much easier, he thought, if I was still with the Avengers. Then he could have just waltzed right in, flashed his genuine Avengers I.D. card, and received the full cooperation of the N.Y.P.D., including unrestricted access to the evidence. As an X-Man searching for another X-Man, however, he could hardly expect the same sort of VIP treatment. Alas, our status as outlaws and renegades is the cross which all we merry mutants must bear....

  A palm-sized holographic image inducer, designed years ago by Tony Stark, allowed the otherwise eyecatching anthropoid to loiter inconspicuously upon the sidewalk; to anyone walking by, the Beast looked like merely another ordinary human—specifically, a studious-looking white male with trim brown hair, a tan trenchcoat, and slightly oversized hands. In fact, Hank McCoy had looked much the same when he was younger, before he metamorphosed into a more hirsute form of Beast. He had deliberately patterned the illusion to resemble his earlier self, for old time’s sake. Just to play it safe, though, he kept a safe distance from the overhead street lamps. The antique store behind him, like most of the shops on this unprepossessing sidestreet, had been closed for hours.

  A stately black limousine cruised past, steered by a serious-looking young man wearing opaque red glasses. The Beast nodded to Cyclops before the car turned onto Hudson Street, signaling to his fellow X-Men that he was ready to make his move. Buckling the belt of the rundown trenchcoat, he stepped out of the shadow of the awning and crossed the moonlit street towards the entrance to the precinct house. He had to force himself to walk normally, as any other human would, rather than bound along as he preferred. •

  Easy does it, he thought. We’re not invading Asteroid M here, just doing a little low-key reconnoitering.

>   The sound of youthful laughter, coming from the bars and outdoor cafes on Hudson, provoked a pang of nostalgia. He and Bobby Drake, better known as Iceman, had spent many fun-filled nights in the Village during their collegiate years, hanging out at Coffee-a-Go-Go and listening, with their girlfriends, Vera and Zelda, to the slightly incomprehensible, Beat-styled verses of Bernard the Poet. _

  Frankly, the Beast concluded, that sounds like an eminently more appealing prospect than the mission on which I am presently engaged.

  A solitary flagpole rose from the roof of the squat police station, which was flanked on both sides by much taller brownstones. The Beast passed through a pair of glass doors emblazoned with the badge-shaped insignia of New York’s Finest and was immediately greeted by a large painted sign that read all visitors proceed to desk. Rather than doing so right away, he lingered in the entrance vestibule to inspect a directory posted on the wall. His eyes scanned the list of departments housed within the station house: Community Policing, Crime Prevention, Domestic Violence, Youth Officer, Auxiliary Police, Bomb Squad, Detective Squad, and something provocatively called a Rip Unit. Nothing about Aggressive Attire or Missing Mutants, which made his task all the more problematic.

  Let’s see—if I were evidence from a paranormal episode, where would I be?

  Perhaps the Bomb Squad was the place to start; the rambunctious Rogue had certainly left a big enough crater in Washington Square Park. Unfortunately, by the time Hank, Scott, and Ororo had arrived on the scene, the hole had already been trampled on and about by too many curious citizens, rendering whatever evidence the X-Men might have found there hopelessly suspect. Hank could only hope that the local constabulary had preserved their evidence in a significantly more pristine condition,

  as

  ‘ ‘Can I help you?’ ’ a deep voice challenged, an intimidating tone belying the cordiality of its query.

  The Beast looked up to see an imposing-looking officer watching him with a less-than-friendly expression on his face. The Beast was impressed by the officer’s formidable physique . . . why, his fists looked like they were nearly half as capacious as the Beast’s own gorilla-sized mitts. The undercover X-Man hoped his current disguise looked innocuous enough.

  “Why, yes!” he improvised. “Is this where I go to get an exemption from jury duty? They’ve sent me a summons for next month, but you wouldn’t believe how inexpressibly impossible that is. I’m much too busy, what with deadlines and sales conferences looming on the horizon, not to mention debugging all the software and getting ready for the end-of-the-millennium crunch. ...”

  As he rambled on, the Beast scoped out the lobby beyond, spotting a pair of stairwells located behind a metal barricade bearing a sign that read stop, police personnel only.

  That’s surely where I want to go, he concluded. And with all deliberate speed.

  The officer held up a hand to cut the Beast off. “You want the city courthouse, down by Wall Street. But they’re closed for the weekend. You’ll have to report there in person, during ordinary' business hours, Monday through Friday.”

  “Thank you, officer,” the Beast replied, even as he continued to take note of goings-on at the precinct house. “I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.”

  For late Saturday night, the station seemed strikingly calm and underpopulated; then again, he recalled, this had always been a relatively crime-free neighborhood, as much as any part of Manhattan was. Aside from a couple of German teenagers trying to report a stolen knapsack, all he saw were cops going in and out of the building. He glanced at an old-fashioned analog clock mounted on the wall above a convenient pay phone. It was 11:25 P.M. Almost time for the graveyard shift to come on.

  Hmm. That gives me an idea.

  Leaving the building, the Beast returned to the shadows across the street, then scanned one of the departing police officers with the “Record” function of the image inducer, storing the parameters of that particular officer’s appearance in the device’s memory. Then he sat back and waited.

  Sure enough, a little after 11:30, there was suddenly a lot more activity around the entrance, with several exiting cops meeting their nocturnal replacements on the way out. The turnover between shifts was obviously well underway; the Beast realized he would never have a better opportunity to slip into the station unnoticed.

  But first, he thought, a little protective coloration.

  Changing the setting on the image inducer, the blue-furred mutant shifted in appearance to a reasonable facsimile of an officer in blue. Hank McCoy’s youthful face morphed into the prerecorded visage of the officer he had just observed leaving, right down to the last mole and freckle.

  You know, he reflected, considering the furry exterior hidden beneath the holographic disguise, this brings all new mean ing to the faintly archaic vernacular appellation of “fuzz.”

  Striding forward with the assumed confidence of one who truly belonged there, he joined the stream of fresh officers pouring into the station house. No one challenged him as he walked past the admissions desk and beyond the metal barricade erected to discourage further passage by civilians.

  Upstairs or down? he wondered, trying hard not to look at all lost. Glancing around, he saw a large bulletin board labeled Crime Prevention Center. Black-and-white crime photos shared the board with maps and charts and clipboards, only a few feet away from what, quite mysteriously, appeared to be a Canadian Mountie uniform on display. If only the elusive evidence would just call out to him ... !

  ‘ ‘Hey, O'Donnell,’ ’ an unfamiliar voice addressed him, “I thought you left already.”

  It took the Beast a second or two to realize the cop was speaking to him.

  “Forgot something,” he muttered gruffly, hoping that his interrogator, approaching the disguised X-Man in a matching blue uniform, had not taken note of his momentary hesitation. “Cough drops,” he elaborated, throwing in a raspy hack for the sake of verisimilitude.

  Will my rather underdeveloped acting abilities be enough to carry the day? he fretted. Talk about an impersonation devoutly to be wished....

  “Yeah,” the other cop said with a shrug. He looked like he’d been on the force for years. The nametag beneath his badge identified him as FORRESTER. “Your voice sounds a little weird. Hoarse, kind of.”

  The Beast issued a silent prayer of thanksgiving to Melpomene, patron muse of thespians, and started to step away. Unfortunately, the friendly officer seemed to be in no hurry to terminate the conversation. He loitered only a few steps away from the Beast; this cop and O’Donnell were obviously the best of buds.

  “You know what really works for sore throats?” Forester said. “Vitamin C. You just have a coupla glasses of O.J. before you turn in tonight and you’ll be amazed how much better your throat’ll feel in the morning. There’s gotta be some orange juice in the fridge back home, assuming Brenda’s done her shopping this week.”

  Who in the name of domestic partnership is Brenda? the Beast wondered. My wife? My girlfriend? My mother? It dawned on the beleaguered X-Man that he didn’t even know the first name of the man he was impersonating. He was reluctant to open his mouth for fear of blowing his cover through some innocent error. However does Mystique manage to pull off stunts like these with such aplomb? he thought, gaining a grudging new respect for the malevolent mutant mistress of disguise.

  “Thanks for the tip,” he coughed, holding his fist before his mouth. “Well, see you.”

  Upstairs it is, he decided, stepping decisively toward the beckoning stairwell. Anything was preferable to this torturous charade. “Hey,” his newfound buddy called out, “you want a ride to the PATH train?”

  Who says NY cops aren’t helpful to a fault? the Beast thought, groaning inwardly. Was there no way to escape this oversolicitous officer without calling attention to himself? For all I know, he’s my partner of twenty years.

  “No thanks,” he rasped. “I’ve got to make some calls.”

  “At this time of night? Li
ke to who?” For the first time, the cop eyed him suspiciously. The Beast fingered the controls of his image inducer, just in case the jig was up and he needed to discard his disguise. What was the legal penalty for impersonating an officer anyway? “You ain’t cheating on Brenda, are you?”

  Heaven forbid, the Beast thought, looking past his chatty associate at the lobby beyond. The crowd of police officers was already thinning out as the transition between shifts neared completion; the longer he lingered here, the more he risked exposure.

  “No way,” he promised. “I just want to order some movie tickets before they’re sold out.”

  “Oh yeah?” Forrester said, looking much more curious than the Beast would have liked. The way his luck was going, the other cop would likely turn out to be a film buff. “What flick?”

  “Um, Spider-Man: The Motion Picturehe improvised, vaguely remembering a “coming soon” ad he’d seen in a magazine somewhere. Wonder if that wascaliy wall-crawler will see any slice of the proceeds from the box office? Probably not; the courts had long ago ruled that costumed adventurers were public figures and thus fair game for the media. If anyone ever films an X-Men movie, they’ll no doubt pitch it as a horror flick. “Beware the bloodthirsty Beast! ’ ’

  “Oh, right,” the cop agreed. “I heard that was good.” The Beast expected him to launch into a lengthy discourse on the relative artistic pros and cons of the latest summer blockbusters, but, mercifully, the conversation began to show signs of winding down. The loquacious lawman peered down at his wristwatch. “Geez, look at the time. I gotta hit the road. See you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, you, too,” the Beast replied, breathing a sigh of relief. It looked like he was actually going to get away with this extraordinarily stressful exercise in infiltration.

  Then another voice rang out across the lobby, sounding both surprised and aggrieved. “What in the world? That’s me!”

  The Beast looked up to see the real Officer O’Donnell staring at him, wide-eyed, from the other side of the metal barricade.