First Team

by Robbie MacNiven

  “Victor, you’ll resume a light training regime for the time being,” Cyclops said. “The remainder of your extended leave is terminated. I’ll ensure that your mother has the best living quarters until your father is located and your family can be safely reunited.”

  “Thanks,” Vic said, his voice riven with sarcasm. He knew that the “best” rooms in the Institute were still grim, claustrophobic cells, but right now there wasn’t an alternative. At least he could be sure Martha was safe here. He stood up and faced Rockslide.

  “I wouldn’t have anyone else out there looking,” he told him, placing a hand on his broad, stony chest. “I know you’ll find him, Rocky.”

  “I won’t let you down, lizard boy,” Santo grunted. Vic cast another brief glance at Cyclops, lowering his hand.

  “Permission to go back to my room, principal?”

  “Granted,” Cyclops said. “We’ll speak again soon, Victor.”

  •••

  Vic returned to his dorm as soon as he left the principal’s office. For a while he seethed, but his mood quickly gave way to the same cold acceptance he’d experienced watching his home be consumed by fire. He lay in the semi-dark on his bed, arms behind his head, staring up at the blank concrete ceiling. The only light crept in from under the corridor window shutters, the constant dull illumination of the emergency panels running the length of the dorms preferable to the harsh glow of his own room’s bulbs.

  His thoughts wandered, but they never strayed far from his father. He was genuinely glad Santo had been assigned to find his dad, and he hadn’t been lying when he said he wouldn’t have wanted anyone else out there. But that didn’t mean he’d changed his mind about leaving. He’d made no promises.

  At some point he dozed off. Tiredness had crept up on him since he’d made it back to the school. His dreams were dark and troubled, their exact shape and form remaining illusive until a knocking sound startled him awake.

  He bolted upright, senses immediately on edge. It took him a moment to remember where he was. The knock came again at his door. He relaxed fractionally.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Alisa,” said a muffled voice. Vic frowned. Something was worrying indeed when Cipher used her real name rather than her adopted alias.

  “What do you want, Ci?” he called out.

  “Gray and I heard you were back this morning,” Cipher replied. “We went looking for you at the infirmary, but we couldn’t find you.”

  “Did you see my mom?” Vic asked. “Is she OK?”

  “She’s fine. She remembered us from the last time she visited you.”

  Vic remained silent. He knew he should go back and check on Martha himself, but a selfish part of him wanted to stay locked in his room, away from the questions and the pitying looks he was sure his classmates had saved up for him. His mind ran through possibilities, looking for a way out in every sense.

  “Can I come in?” Ci asked.

  “No.”

  “Can you at least open the door?”

  “No, Ci. I don’t want to talk to anyone. And don’t even think about going invisible and phasing in here!”

  There was another pause before Cipher spoke again. “We’re worried about you, Vic. Not just me and Graymalkin, but a lot of the others too. We’re all sorry about what happened to your father. And your home.”

  “Nobody needs to be sorry,” Vic said, trying not to snap. He really didn’t want to be having this conversation right now. “Rocky’s going to get him back. Everything will be OK.”

  “Just, whenever you need to talk... we’re all here, Vic.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Vic said, rummaging in his bedside drawer until he found his old iPod and headphones. Anything else Cipher said was lost amidst the roar of some max volume Dreadhaven.

  He stayed like that until evening with his songs on shuffle, stewing in his own anger and helplessness. He couldn’t stay. He knew he wouldn’t have a minute’s peace if he did. He’d be checking the communicator constantly. He had no idea how Cyclops expected him to focus on lessons or training. All he could think about was his father, and the Purifiers. Where they might be holding him, what they might be doing with him. The visceral memories of the past few days were still fresh and intimate – the stink of the robes and the claustrophobia of the stolen mask, the smell of burning rubber in the prison truck, Xodus’s great and terrible voice, the raw aura of hatred that pulsed from behind that beatific golden grotesque. He remembered the horrid crunch as he’d been flung forward during the crash, the moment of dislocation and pained confusion. His hand wandered up to his scalp, probing beneath the ridge of his carapace. Still tender.

  He hunted around in his drawers for old food, not wanting to risk a trip to the canteen. He found a packet of still-sealed graham crackers under his bed, but that was as good as it got. Sucks. He ate a dozen, seeking distraction in his stack of vintage comics. He didn’t want to turn on the TV. He was afraid of what he might see on it.

  Eventually he glanced up at the clock. Decision time. Really, it was no decision at all. He cast the crackers aside and stood up, dusting off the crumbs. Then he picked his rucksack up from beside his bed and moved over to his clothing drawers.

  Clean clothes, it seemed, were at a premium. Perhaps he’d give it a few more hours and steal down to the laundry rooms once everyone was asleep. He was sure he could avoid any late-nighters if he went chameleon. No matter. He was about to break far bigger rules anyway.

  He stuffed a few items of casual clothing – a Crimson Fives T-shirt, a Chicago Cubs vest, a pair of tracksuit bottoms – into the bag as a starter and unzipped the utilities pocket. In went his wallet, the charger for the X-communicator, and his Institute dorm fob. He rummaged around in his torn Cry Havoc hoodie until he found the toy dino he’d rescued from the treehouse. He looked at it again for a minute. A lucky charm, or the cursed item that had brought all this down upon him? There was only one way to find out. He slipped the toy into the pocket and zipped it back up. A glance over at his bed made him hesitate before closing the main zipper too.

  The Purifier robes lay across the end of the bed, the silver grotesque half stuffed beneath them, leering out at him in the half-dark. He’d still had them with him right up to his return to the Institute. When he’d dragged them off, his immediate instinct had been to toss them in the trash. They repulsed him. Even thinking about how he’d been forced to wear them made him shiver. But something had stopped him. A part of him – the dramatic part, he acknowledged – wanted to do something more than just chuck them out. Burning them felt right. Yet, there were other options. A set of Purifier gear, even grubby and torn, could come in handy. There was a certain degree of justice to that possibility. He forced himself to go over and fold the robes tightly, wrapping them around the mask before packing them away in his bag.

  A thunk disturbed him. What the heck was that? He half turned towards the door and realized that it was standing ajar. He froze.

  Nothing moved. The door remained open, the faintest sliver of light from the corridor spilling into the darkened room. He was absolutely certain he’d locked it, and now it was open. A deep sense of unease crept over him.

  There was someone in the room with him.

  He turned back around, whiplash fast, his claws out. What loomed out at him from the shadows was even more terrifying than he’d dared imagine. A gaunt, skull-like visage, pallid gray flesh, and pale, dead eyes. Vic threw himself back with a strangled cry, accidentally slamming the door shut and snuffing out all but the faintest sliver of light still spilling in from under the window shutters.

  The apparition raised one bony hand and spoke. “Be not afraid.”

  “Oh my God,” was all Victor could pant. He felt as though his heart was going to rupture in his chest, and his hands had instinctively locked onto the floor where he’d fallen. “Oh my actual God, Graymalkin. I th
ought we agreed you were going to stop doing this?”

  “By ‘this’ I assume you mean visiting your room in the hours of darkness uninvited?” Graymalkin said, lowering his hand.

  “I mean materializing behind me in the dark like some sort of blood-hungry vampire,” Vic snapped, his fight-or-flight instincts still fizzing. “I could’ve killed you! No, you could’ve killed me!”

  Graymalkin cast his eyes to the ground in shame, and Vic felt that usual rush of regret he experienced whenever he spoke angrily to him. He paused to unstick his palms from the floor and stood up, dusting himself down.

  “Look, don’t worry about it,” he said, trying not to sound awkward. “I just didn’t want to see anyone tonight, OK?”

  “I am aware,” Graymalkin said in his stilted voice, looking back up at Vic. “But I decided to disregard your wishes.”

  Vic sighed and slumped down in his beanbag, resisting the urge to flick on the lights as he did so. Graymalkin’s peculiar mutant powers were triggered by the absence of illumination. They’d first manifested when his father, demented with rage, had attempted to bury him alive. Entombed in dirt, Graymalkin should have suffered one of the most hideous deaths imaginable, but the utter darkness had instead caused his powers to manifest. He’d survived in a semi-catatonic state for over two hundred years, until a group of mutant hunters had unearthed him. Unfortunately for them, they’d done so in the dead of night, when Jonas Graymalkin’s powers were at their height.

  “If you’ve come to be a shoulder for me to cry on, I’m afraid I’m past that point,” Vic said. “If you’ve come to stop me, well, you shouldn’t waste your time. I’m getting out of here. Tonight.”

  “This is as Cipher predicted,” Graymalkin said. “May I sit down?”

  “Go ahead,” Vic grunted, making a point of not looking at his friend. Gray perched stiffly on the edge of Santo’s old concrete slab, his posture upright. He’d have cut a terrifying figure to anyone who didn’t know him, a white-eyed ghoul shrouded in the room’s shadows. The weak light from the corridor made his features seem even more gaunt than usual.

  “I regret that your visit home did not go as planned,” he said, clasping his hands in his lap. Vic gave out a bitter laugh.

  “Didn’t go as planned is an understatement, Gray. My home was burnt down, my neighbors threatened, my parents beaten up and my dad kidnapped. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I said I needed a break from exams.”

  “And yet, that is what happened,” Graymalkin stated. “These are the circumstances we must confront. I have come to dissuade you from doing anything rash.”

  Vic slumped deeper into the beanbag. “I’ve had enough lectures today, OK? Just go back to your dorm, Gray. I’ll be gone in the morning.”

  “That is precisely why I cannot return to my dormitory,” Graymalkin said. “To find you gone is… not something I am used to.”

  It took a moment for Vic to realize exactly what he meant. When they’d first met each other, Graymalkin hadn’t long been free of the dirt grave his father had buried him in hundreds of years earlier. The young man had struggled to even speak, let alone interact with his fellow students. One day, tentatively, he had admitted to Cipher while she was phased and invisible that he struggled to sleep at night. The dorm rooms were too subterranean, too claustrophobic. They reminded him of the horror of his burial. His first roommate had moved out, unable to cope with Gray’s night terrors.

  For about six months Vic and Ci had taken turns staying with Gray. Vic had sat by his bed, headphones on and a book open, struggling to keep his eyes open. Sometimes he’d dozed off, but he didn’t remain asleep for long once Gray’s terrors woke him. At first the sheer force of the nightmares had been a horrifying thing to behold. Graymalkin would start from his bed slicked in sweat and howling, often bolting for the door before reality began to reassert itself. Vic had been advised by Gray himself to grab him, sometimes hug him, to try and speak slow and calm. They’d quickly learned that it was wise to leave the bedside lamp on – trying to stop Gray in the pitch black was not only impossible, it was dangerous.

  It had been tough on Vic. His initial grades had been poor, and he’d struggled to attend class while trying to catch up on lost sleep. Eventually Ms Pryde discovered what was going on and made Gray see the school’s therapist. To their credit, Summer and Frost hadn’t demanded that Vic and Cipher stop helping Gray, understanding that he wasn’t comfortable reaching out to anyone but them. Class timetables had been rearranged, and grades had improved notably. Cyclops had given them all a stern talking-to in his office, speaking in high ideals about how the Institute was more than just a school, that it was a family and it should be relied upon as such.

  The terrors had slowly lessened over time, helped by the fact that Gray had been formally diagnosed with PTSD. He’d developed a routine to keep things in check. He’d learned his triggers and how best to avoid them. Miss Frost had permitted him to keep his dorm door open at night, and he knew he could reach Vic and Ci at any time using his communicator. Vic had no doubt that he still woke at night shuddering, his mind haunted by the memory of cloying, damp soil and the shovel’s scrape, but he seemed to have made his peace with it. Graymalkin was a survivor, in every sense of the word.

  “I’m not leaving you and Ci because I want to,” Vic told him, trying not to sound too defensive. “I’m leaving because I have to. I’m doing this for my dad.”

  Gray seemed to think about that before speaking. “I have been wondering if I would do the same as you. If my parents were threatened, would I risk my own life to bring them out of harm’s way?”

  Vic frowned slightly. “How could anyone expect you to? Your father tried to murder you for being who you are, and your mother didn’t try to stop him. Damned if I would risk my life for them after that.”

  “You say that as though it is an easy decision,” Gray pointed out.

  “Because it is?”

  “Then it is clear you do not understand what it means to have a father who both hates and loves you. Do you imagine, perhaps, that a father’s cruelty is a simple tale of morality? My father wishes for my death, so of course I must hate him? The same man who showed me how to sow seeds in the spring and harvest them in the fall? Who taught me my letters with his open Bible, and walked beside the horse with his hand upon the bridle as I learned to ride? The man who beat me when I refused to go to church one day, and would lock me away without any food for days at a time just to spite my mother? The same man who stood alone in the doorway of our homestead and guarded us from the frontier raids during one long winter? Such things are never simple. Surviving such an upbringing is never simple. Yes, I often think I hate my father. It is a strange thing to consider that he is long dead. Often in my nightmares, he is not. But would I save him if he were in danger? Did he not save me at times, even though he hated me? It is not simple.”

  Vic shook his head, feeling almost ashamed.

  “I’m sorry, Gray,” he said. “You’re right. I can’t understand what you went through. I can’t make judgments about someone who had to overcome so much while he was still so young, not when my own upbringing was… well, it was a lot easier. Easier than everyone’s, it seems.”

  “That is not something to be ashamed of,” Gray said. “Be happy for it. Do not think I fail to value your opinions. I am better because of them. Our upbringing could not have been more divergent. That offers an opportunity for perspective, for both of us.”

  “Is that why you’re here?” Vic asked. “To give me some perspective?”

  “We are worried about you,” Graymalkin admitted unabashedly, his expression earnest in the darkness. “It would be remiss of us not to see you, whether you desire it or not.”

  “We,” Vic said, echoing the word Graymalkin had just spoken. He paused before continuing. “My door was locked from the inside,” he said. “And while you’re strong a
nd fast in the dark, Gray, that doesn’t mean you can pick locks or phase through walls. But we both know someone who can.”

  Graymalkin said nothing, an awkward expression creeping over his face as he realized the mistake he’d made. Vic gave him an exasperated look and cast about the room.

  “Come on, Ci,” he said loudly. “Drop the invisibility trick.”

  “Fine,” said a voice right next to him, making him jump. Cipher materialized beside the TV, arms crossed, her expression defensive. “Took you long enough to work it out,” she said.

  “Maybe I’m just too trusting towards my friends,” Vic responded, glaring at her. “I told you I didn’t want to speak to either of you, yet here you both are, invading my privacy.”

  “I believe Cipher termed it ‘an intervention,’” Graymalkin said, looking innocently at his partner-in-crime. Cipher planted her hands on her hips, unbowed before Vic’s anger.

  “You can’t stop talking to us,” she told him. “Not after what happened to you and your family. Did you really think we wouldn’t guess you’d be leaving tonight? Did you think the principal wouldn’t suspect it too?”

  “Cyclops won’t stop me,” Vic said. “And neither will you.”

  “Do you even have a plan for getting out of the Institute?” Cipher pressed. “You know all the corridors and all the entrances and elevator shafts are being monitored continuously? You’ll barely make it past the dorms.”

  “Won’t I?” Vic demanded, raising a hand and letting it color-shift into near-invisibility.

  “That’s cute,” Cipher said, raising her own hand and, in a mirror image, causing it to vanish into invisibility. “But don’t tell me you’re planning on sneaking out of here stark naked and not carrying anything?”

  “My X-suit can shift too,” Vic said defensively.