First Team

by Robbie MacNiven

  It seemed not. The entrance was as simple as the rest in the stairwell, the sign above it the only clue as to what lay beyond. Esson Electrical. Like the rest of the names he’d passed, it didn’t exactly scream “sinister, arms-dealing billionaire.” Vic glanced up the next flight, wondering if he’d missed the suits carrying on in silence, but there was no sign of them. They had to have gone through this door.

  That meant Vic was going through too.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The sound of a hymn service spilled out onto the street from the church, filling the early evening with songs of praise. Rockslide listened for a while, crouched in the alley running along the side of the building. It felt incongruous, almost peaceful, far removed from the reality of what he knew was about to occur.

  It had taken a week, and he’d had to call in several favors with the Hellions on top of the intel he had received from the Institute, but at last he’d found a good lead. Intercepted phone traffic suggested that a hostage was being held at a small church in western Newark. The identity remained a secret, but apparently, they were going to be put to use in tonight’s sermon.

  It was the best Santo had to go on. He’d attempted to track several Purifier leads in New York, but covert work wasn’t exactly his forte, and he’d been forced to act faster after the Institute had contacted him to tell him that Victor had disappeared. It didn’t surprise him. He’d hoped taking on the case personally would be enough to convince the kid to stay in school, but he knew what Vic was like when he got restless. He’d offered to switch his search from the father to the son, but Cyclops had refused – find Dan Borkowski and Vic would have no more reason to stay on the run.

  He shifted his bulk, stretching out his arms and feeling the rock grind and scrape. He’d been in place for almost a full day, not wanting to break his cover and risk being detected. Mutants weren’t exactly welcome around New York at the moment. He realized that the hostage the Purifiers were holding could well be another mutant or sympathizer they’d kidnapped over the past few months, but even if it wasn’t Dan, they might know where more prisoners were being held.

  The singing came to a stop, the final, long chord of the accompanying organ ringing away into silence. Santo shifted towards the church wall, crouching down and planting one large hand in the dirt. This was one of what the Purifiers called their “recruitment sermons.” Similar services had started popping up across New England, steadily, and in the mid-Atlantic states too. At first glance they looked liked nothing more threatening than an unannounced guest lecturer in a random parish, but their true purpose was far more sinister. They were attempting to radicalize the faithful. The Purifier poison was spreading, its tendrils reaching out from soaring inner-city cathedrals to small, whitewashed-timber community churches like this one, drip-feeding people anti-mutant sentiment. Well, tonight’s lesson in hatred was about to be rudely interrupted.

  Santo heard a voice address the congregation within. It was time. He closed his eyes and delved deep into the earth with his consciousness, letting both body and mind commune with the bedrock below. The soil under his hand shuddered and shifted, slowly at first but with growing speed and purpose. Santo grasped the rocky roots he felt there with his mind, urging it on, stirring it up for the first time in eons. It would lie buried no more.

  There was a low, grumbling crack. The tremors in the dirt spread. The lids of the trash cans lining the alleyway started to rattle, one clattering to the ground. The nearest streetlamp flickered. In the distance, a dog barked in a frenzy.

  Santo heard the voice within the church falter. A crack began to run up one of the stained-glass windows. Teeth gritted and body shuddering, he let out a bellow of effort and surged upwards, the motion accompanied by an ear-splitting crash as the ground heaved before him. A pillar of jagged rock, caked in mud, slammed upwards like a spear tip punching through the earth’s shield. The timber wall directly in front of Santo splintered and burst apart as the ground came slamming upwards with a cracking sound like the sundering of the world.

  Splinters and shards of stone rained down on Santo as he relaxed, panting. With a spreading motion, he cracked the pillar of rock now set before him, sending an avalanche of split stone and dust cascading down the alleyway on either side. He advanced through the midst of it, untroubled by the torrent of grit, stepping right through the hole his geokinetic powers had torn in the church’s flank and into the building.

  A hundred faces turned towards him. The congregation sat in their pews, seemingly frozen in shock at the sudden invasion. To Santo’s right was a simple altar table and pulpit, the latter occupied by a tall figure in black robes and a golden grotesque. Xodus himself.

  “Hope you don’t mind me rocking up at your sermon, prophet,” Santo said, cracking his stony knuckles loudly. Without waiting for a response, he charged the pulpit.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “They were late again,” DeFray complained, his expression sour. “Like, over an hour late.”

  His two accomplices nodded, looking equally unimpressed. They’d been summoned into their employer’s office before clocking out and ordered to report on the handover. Mr Esson had been twitchy like that for weeks now, ever since the new contracts had come in.

  “I don’t give a damn if they kept you waiting all night,” he responded angrily, leaning over his desk and glaring at the three men. “Did they take the goods?”

  “Oh, they took them all right,” Rylan said. “They were delighted. More toys for their little crusade.”

  “Good,” Esson responded brusquely. “That’s all that matters. I’ll get on to the corporation and let them know the latest shipment’s gone without a hitch.”

  “And what about us?” Dail, the last of the trio, demanded. “I don’t know about you two, but I ain’t dealing with those freaks any more. They’re crazies, every last one. They’re gonna turn the goods on us one of these days, I swear.”

  “You’ll do whatever I tell you to do, numbskull,” Esson barked, snatching a hefty brown envelope from his desk and flinging it at Dail, who caught it neatly. “Now take your pay and get the hell out! I’ll phone you the next time the corporation sends another job through.”

  The three men in suits left the office. Esson slumped down in his chair, staring after them for a moment before snatching up the phone and dialing up the corp’s number. As he did so, he thought he caught a half-glimpse of movement in the corner of his eye, in front of his filing cabinets. He looked around sharply.

  Nothing stirred. He was about to rise and check that the files were still locked away when a voice spoke over the phone, startling him.

  “You have reached the secure line. Please state your business and personal identification number.”

  Esson cleared his throat hurriedly and answered.

  “Esson Electrical, five-eight-five-two-seven,” he said. “Just tell him the latest shipment has been delivered.” He hung up without waiting for a response and looked back at the cabinets.

  There had been something... off about them. He’d thought his eyes were playing tricks on him – it was as if the metal boxes had been somehow distorted and misshapen. He stood up from behind his desk and approached them, shifting off to one side to get a different angle.

  The cabinets were still cabinets. Nothing unusual. He avoided the urge to reach out and touch one. The stress of this job really was getting to him. Just keep thinking about the money, he told himself. The contracts he’d signed would make him a millionaire in a few short years. That made jumping at a few shadows all right, didn’t it? A little longer and he’d cash in and be enjoying martinis on the beach somewhere in the Caribbean. Hired goons in suits and horrible, threat-laden phone calls would be a thing of the past.

  He pulled his jacket off the coatrack, picked a folder up from his desk, and opened the office door. Before stepping out he glanced back one more time, though he wasn’t r
eally sure why. His office lay empty before him. The desk was undisturbed. The blinds behind it remained drawn. The ledgers on the shelves hadn’t moved. The clock on the wall continued to tick away. Nothing else stirred. Shaking his head, Esson turned off the light and closed the door.

  •••

  There was the sound of the lock turning, and footsteps quickly receding into silence. All that remained was the soft, regular ticking of the office clock. The space sat still and quiet, disturbed only by the occasional distant sound of traffic in the street below.

  The blinds behind the office desk abruptly grew a set of eyes. Vic relaxed, daring to breathe again. He’d been sure the guy had caught sight of him when he’d been standing right in front of the filing cabinets, but the phone call had given him an opportunity to shift behind the desk. Going chameleon was one thing, but doing it in a confined office space with, at one point, four other people was asking for trouble. Thankfully they all seemed too angry and stressed to notice their unwelcome visitor.

  Dropping his color-shift, Vic leant over the desk, careful not to touch anything. He didn’t want to risk tripping any alarms, not that Esson Electrical looked like the money-laundering criminal lair that would be packing extra security. Their floor in the shared block appeared to consist of five or six half-empty offices, most of which were being vacuumed by evening cleaning staff. Had it not been for the strained, shady nature of the conversation between the suited spooks and the man he took to be Mr Esson, Vic would have very much doubted he was following the right lead.

  He was in now though, and he might not get another opportunity like it. He had to make it count. He considered the cabinets, the desk drawers, and the small safe sitting in the corner of the room. Picking locks had never been his thing. He could try scanning with his communicator, but he wasn’t sure what that would do. On an impulse he picked up the phone and hit the dial back button. As he’d expected, an automated voice answered him.

  “You have reached the secure line. Please state your business and personal identification number.”

  “Esson Electrical, five-eight-five-two-seven,” Vic said, hoping the line didn’t use vocal as well as coded recognition. There was no response. He grimaced. What if it had already ID’d him? What if unauthorized use tripped an alarm somewhere? What if –

  “You have one new message – from – Sublime Corporation,” blipped the awkward, automatic voice. Vic didn’t have time to feel relieved.

  “Next time I want a proper report, Mr Esson,” said a new voice, slick and nauseating. “You can expect new assignments presently, and I expect them to be done by the book. If not, I may have to reassess our business arrangements.”

  There was the crackle of a phone receiver being put down, followed by the return of the automated tone in Vic’s ear.

  “End of messages. To ring through to head office, please press 1. To hear the message again, please press 2. To delete the message, please press 3.”

  Vic put the phone down, hard. There was something deeply unsettling about that voice, something wicked and sick. It was like having a demon whispering in his ear, verbal barbs drizzled with honey.

  The last thing Vic wanted was to meet whoever that voice belonged to, but he feared that was exactly what he was going to have to do. The important thing was that now he had a name, something that meant a bit more than Esson Electrical.

  Sublime Corporation.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Prophet Xodus’s only response to the oncoming Rockslide avalanche was to spread his arms wide. In that messianic pose, he received Santo’s fist to his stomach. The impact of the mutant’s charge shattered the pulpit into a blizzard of splinters and sent both him and Xodus crashing backwards into the wall behind. Dust cascaded from the rafters and every window in the church shattered, raining shards of multi-hued glass down onto the congregation.

  Santo arrested his rush by planting his other fist into the wall, almost punching right through it. He snatched up Xodus by the front of his robes and slammed him up against the woodwork.

  “Where is Daniel Borkowski?” Santo snarled. The golden mask didn’t reply. Grunting, he grasped it and tore it from the figure’s face.

  The man he had punched was unconscious, and blood ran from his lips – the impact had likely left him with more than a few internal injuries. He was big and shaven-headed, with tattoos of flames snaking up his broad neck from under his robes. He looked young though, probably his early twenties. Still holding the limp body by his robes, Santo rounded on the congregation behind him.

  The rows of churchgoers had gone. The onlooking faithful had reached beneath their pews and pulled on beatific golden masks, identical to the one Santo had taken to be Xodus. The parish had transformed almost instantly into a Purifier gathering.

  “The lizard’s father is not here,” droned a hundred speakers, each one a recording of Xodus’s voice issuing from the array of unmoving golden lips. “Seek and ye shall find, sinner.”

  Santo now doubted very much the man still in his grip was Xodus. This had all been a mistake.

  The door to the vestry burst open. Figures rushed out in full Purifier garb. These were different, though – their grotesques were black and their robes a pristine white. And unlike the so-called parishioners, they were armed.

  Santo was outnumbered, but he wouldn’t turn back now. He’d faced odds like these before, and Vic was counting on him. He flung the Purifier in his grip directly into the first of the oncoming cultists, tossing them both back into those behind, before slamming his fists into the floor. More woodwork splintered as he delved into the church foundations. The bedrock buried beneath answered his geokinetic pleas, and a lance of stone slammed up through the grounds in the midst of the white-robed Purifiers. Bodies were flung left and right, and there was a crunch as one of the cultists was run through on the tip of the exploding rock.

  Santo dragged his hands free of the dirt and flexed his fingers, advancing on the momentarily scattered white robes. That was when the first energy bolt struck his chest.

  He faltered, stung by the glancing blow. A second followed, a beam of crackling purple lightning that earthed itself into his shoulder. He grunted at the impact, feeling his craggy arm abruptly go numb.

  He turned back towards the pews and realized his second mistake. It seemed as if some of the false parishioners had been armed as well. Half a dozen men and women had bulky energy rifles trained on him, their menace a disconcerting contrast to the pristine expressions on their masks.

  Santo clenched a fist, once more seeking out the rock beneath, but this time it was too late. With a buzzing crack and an abrupt stink of ozone, the Purifiers opened fire.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Danger Room had been activated.

  More than that, it was at Threat Level Alpha. The doors had been auto-locked and the heaviest defensive shielding both inside and out had come clattering down. The energy reroute was so intense it caused the lighting throughout the entire Institute to dim and flicker.

  Cipher knew that the other students lived in awe of such moments. Threat Level Alpha wasn’t something that even recent graduates were permitted to unlock. It transformed the Danger Room into a lethal chamber of destruction, one that would test the most skilled X-Men to their limits. The pupils of the New Charles Xavier School for Mutants would look up from their studies and marvel at the flickering lights or the tiny, barely perceptible tremors that ran through the subterranean base, and they would know that either a member of staff or a visiting guest was being put through the fight of their lives by the Institute’s systems.

  Even on its most lethal settings, though, the Danger Room had never impressed Cipher. Few of the students had even witnessed the chamber at its most lethal, but she had, on many occasions. Foot-thick steel, hardened concrete and energy baffles were no more a deterrent to her than red warning lights and “keep out” signs
.

  She’d turned it into a game not long after she’d first come to the Institute, entering the Danger Room when Emma Frost or Cyclops were using it and practicing the same course as them, dodging the same drone attacks and energy beams, invisible and undetectable by their side. It was supremely dangerous, but her injuries had only ever been minor, and not once had she been found out. No one knew of her extracurricular activities, not even Gray or Vic. That was how she liked it. They’d only worry.

  She watched now from above the chamber’s west entrance as the current engagement routine reached its climax. It had been initiated almost thirty minutes earlier, when the room had first gone into lockdown. Cipher had simply phased through the armored, reinforced door. Before her she’d found the fury of an X-Man unleashed.

  Cyclops was running rampant through the deadliest drills the Danger Room had on record. When inactive, the chamber itself appeared to be nothing more than a great, metal-paneled cylinder buried right at the very core of the Institute. When triggered however it morphed to fit its required drill. Threat Level Alpha was the most extreme. The floor, normally composed of glossy, segmented panels, shifted on hydraulic pillars into over a dozen separate sections divided at different heights, some rising almost to the domed ceiling while others dropped away abruptly, all of them in constant vertical motion. The wall plates extended to act as obstacles, moving flawlessly with the shifting floor to block off routes or create new ones as the advanced combat AI that governed the room determined. The space, once cavernous and empty, became a maddening, constantly shifting chamber of stress and illusion. And that was without the smite drones, holographic projections and laser beams.

  Cipher watched, maintaining a constant, phased hover above the closest floor plate, as Cyclops leapt across the space, battling his way through the maze crafted by the Institute’s systems. Initial attack drones, malicious little fist-sized aerial bots, came at him in flocks or individually, wheeling and buzzing about the ceiling or bursting abruptly from their concealed charging banks behind the wall panels. They spat energy bolts at the Institute’s principal, each one capable of a numbing sting. A whole volley of them could prove lethal.