“Four minutes ‘till touchdown.”
The stoic pilot’s voice, unchanged and unchanging, calmed Sebastian Sokal’s nerves with every word, until he thought he could breathe again. Things had gone bad out there, as bad as they got, and intelligence was chaotic and frayed. What was happening, what was waiting, waiting for SHIELD? It was mass destruction, mass panic, and mass death. Normal emergent flare-ups were a series of spontaneously violent crises. This one had been going on for the past four hours, showing no sign of letting up, and it was getting worse with each passing second It was exactly the kind of situation SHIELD was built for: a mutant who could not, or would not, shut himself down. The supersonic jet engines screamed through the splitting air, the Canadian Pacific coastline hurtling towards them.
“Standard stuff, Ororo. Just keep your head about you.” Sebastian looked over at the young woman strapped in next to him and smiled what he hoped was a confident, reassuring smile. Standard stuff. Storming an enemy barricade was standard stuff for every foot soldier in every army, that didn’t mean your hands ever stopped shaking when you were about to stare the barrels down. He hoped Ororo chalked his own tremors up to the vibrations of the plane, and not his scattershot state of mind.
Still though, she seemed to be holding herself together alright. Sebastian had kept forgetting Ororo had been stationed in Cairo before she had been recruited to SHIELD. No British collaborator stayed alive there a week without seeing some sort of action. He looked at her now, with that hard press to her lips and firm set in her eyes, and he wondered if that was Ororo’s military training finally peeking through. Just another foot soldier.
“Repeat them again.” Sebastian said, as much for his own benefit as for hers.
“I’m to stay in the jet, cover the situation on the monitors, maintain radio contact, and update the team as needed.”
Creed had thought it was time for Ororo to start integrating herself into the team, and Sebastian agreed with him fully. The more operational experience she had before she began throwing her power around was pure gold as far as Sebastian was concerned.
“You can handle it?”
“Should be fine.”
He nodded at the confidence, and tried again to quell his lingering nerves. Of course it should fine, but every single mission for SHIELD should have been fine. Sometimes they were, and sometimes everything went to hell. The fact they were going in blind, without any real idea what they were up against, told Sebastian this was probably going to be one of the bad times. Alright then. Ororo was going to have an electric first outing.
The jet had begun to quickly slow down, easing itself out of the mad rush it had been in. Up at the nose of the plane, past the rest of the team, Sebastian could see out the windshield towards pillars of gray smoke blanketing over the horizon. They were heading straight into the inferno.
In the back of his mind, he realized his hands had stopped
shaking.
Four hours
ago a midnight black Ford Mustang had rear-ended a motorcyclist stopped
at an intersection. Neither party had been injured in the initial accident,
and soon, shocked, angry threats were being hurled back and forth. In
a way, it came to nothing. The accident was never reported, would never
show up in any police file or insurance claim, and would actually be entirely
forgotten by history. This was because three hours and fifty-nine minutes
ago Richard Gill, the motorcyclist, had discovered he was a mutant, and
history would have other things on its mind.
One moment he had been nose-to-nose with the Mustang
driver, discussing the finer points of the man’s heritage, and the
next he had felt something… snap. It was like standing beneath a
waterfall, feeling the relentless drive of the water, hearing the roaring
crash of the basin. The other man had backed away, slowly, for only a
moment before he fell to his knees, and then to his stomach, cowering
there in a fetal position. Richard watched in fascination as the man began
digging trembling fingers into his own eye sockets. Then the screams started
from everyone, everywhere, in every direction. Good Samaritans who had
witnessed the accident jumped back into their cars, or just started running
down the street. A minivan cruising through the intersection veered onto
the sidewalk and into the mattress store on the corner. The driver never
hit the breaks, even after crashing through the pane glass windows and
into the cashier at the counter. Gunshots began to ring out sporadically,
one after the other in sharp report. Richard didn’t pay any of it
any attention. Something else was capturing all his thoughts. He felt it. All of it. He knew how scared the Mustang
driver had been when he had backed away. He had felt that fear consume
the man’s sanity, devouring it whole, and leaving only the broken
wisps of consciousness in its wake. But still, even the fragments had
been terrified, and when the man started to mutilate himself, Richard
had felt something else. Where the fear had been unfocused and ambivalent,
the pain was sharp and directed. It sent little tremors down Richard’s
spine, it shivered his skin, and made his legs weak. It reminded him a
little of the first time he had had good sex, or maybe a little of that
first shot of vodka. As soon as he felt it, Richard knew he never, never
wanted that feeling to end. But it was dying already. The whimpering little
ball at his feet was crying tears of blood, but that first taste, that
initial rush, was fading ever so slightly. Richard
had never thought of himself as an evil man. Not really. Not before he
took out his pocketknife with his quavering hands and flicked open the
blade. It was just he had to feel that way again. Had to. Two hours
later, when he reached downtown Victoria, Richard had abandoned all thoughts
of morality. He liked the way the sheep ran out of the front door of their
high-rises, right into his waiting arms. His bloody waiting arms. He liked
the way they clawed at each other, some trying to flee, others lashing
out at random with a disconnected viciousness that thrilled Richard. The
fires were also a nice touch, he had to agree. The best was when some
poor shmuck would run into the flames, too absorbed in their
own terror to feel the blistering heat. Young, old, man, woman, it didn’t matter. Some
part of Richard recognized he had lost his mind in the worst possible
way. But then, someone new would be stabbed, or crushed, or shot, or trampled,
or burned, or bludgeoned, and Richard’s toes would tingle and his
mouth would water. Victoria was dying, and Richard Gill had never felt so
alive. Victor Creed prowled the streets of Victoria, cursing
the acrid smoke that lay like an oily film across his every sense. He
listened to the slow, steady stream of information SHIELD was feeding
him with only half an ear. It was just the bureaucrats jabbering away
in their nasally little drone. His team on the ground was busy actually
doing their job, trying to minimize the damage as best they could. Of
course, if this didn’t stop soon, it’d be the equivalent of
giving a dead man a make-over: a nice gesture, but really, all you were
left with was a perfumed corpse. The effected area encompassed a rough oval nearly six
miles long. The team had been inserted at six different points, all over
the map, establishing a perimeter around Victoria. Each was to make their
own way to the epicenter of the disturbance, making sure the threat did
not slip out of the tightening noose. So far there’d been no real
word, except for Elisabeth muttering something about the air being thick
enough to choke on, and the noise to be deafening. Creed knew that eventually
they’d find the mutant and put an end to this insanity, but what
he didn’t know was how long it was going to take. And the suits
counted every minute against them. Something was happening in Victoria. People were dying
and property was being destroyed. But how? There were no wide swathes
of damage, no barren trail of desolation. Once, Creed had seen a comparison
between the destructive path of a tornado and the remnants of a mutant
on the loose. The differences had been negligible, but that wasn’t
the case here. This was little pockets of chaos, seemingly random, indiscriminate
in its violence and intensity. Entire rows of white picket fence houses
were left untouched, while across the road an auto dealership had been
smashed into rubble. And the people. Where were they? Where were the sounds
of cars, the beats of stereos, or even the barks of dogs? From what Creed
could see, Victoria was a city silenced. It was one of the more eerie
things the assassin had ever witnessed. But wait. There was movement down the road, and Creed
quickened his pace to get up to it, his black leather boots pounding on
the smooth pavement. It was a man, huddled up right in the middle of the
street, knees pressed against his chest, his head darting around in constant
motion. The closer he got, Creed could make out more details of the strange
sight. The local was holding something, but it was on the other side of
him, blocked from Creed’s view. The man’s clothes had obviously
once been very expensive, but now they had numerous rips and tears. A
fork. The man was holding a fork, or rather, wielding it like a sword.
When he saw Creed, that fork whirled to point at him, the man’s
arm outstretched, but his body still curled up on the ground. “I got ‘em,” the man said as he stared
at Creed with wide, feverish eyes. “I got all the little bastards.”
Beneath the tears in the man’s clothes, Creed could see smears of
blood. And amid that blood, all over the man’s body, were series
of three little puncture wounds. “Got all of what?” Creed asked, careful to
maintain a healthy distance from the man. The disheveled victim’s
moves were quick, fluid, and precise. The fork plunged down on bare pavement,
chipping up little flakes of asphalt on its impact, sending shivers of
reverberation up the man’s arm. The bloodied fool at Creed’s
feet held his weapon aloft again, giving the mutant a wide grin that showed
too many teeth, and too little sanity. “The spiders, man. Hairy, creeping, nasty little
buggers are all rotting now.” Creed moved on and never looked back, knowing he had
learned all he would from the encounter. He pressed two long, clawed,
fingers against his thick neck, activating the commlink. “This is Creed. It’s some sort of…
psychological neurosis. Hallucinations. Any recommendations, Elisabeth?”
Creed dropped his hands to his side and begin to trot again, the element
of time beginning to prey upon his mind. Only static met his ears as the
transmitter remained silent. “Elisabeth?” Nothing. It was then Creed realized that the radio had been quiet
for several minutes, and that he had been to preoccupied by that victim
to notice it. And there was something else to, something that raised Creed’s
hackles and tensed his every muscle. The smoke was still polluting the
air, still hazing over the horizon and blocking out most of the sun’s
light, but… Creed couldn’t smell it anymore. He didn’t
smell the trees by the curb, or the gas leaking from the ruin of a semi-truck.
What he could smell was the scent of human sweat, light and tangy, but
cloyingly far away. As Creed jogged, it quickly became obvious that it
was the scent of a single man, still impossibly distant, somewhere towards
downtown Victoria. Stray thoughts niggled at the back of Creed’s
mind that none of it made sense, but it didn’t matter. His mouth
began to water, his lips began to smile. Slow down, stop, think about what’s going on; Creed’s
mind whispered at him again and again. No. No slowing, no stopping, right
now he needed to hunt. Victor Creed wanted this mutant’s blood on
his hands, and he was going to get it. It was going to get a whole bunch
of it. And then, oh, how happy he would be. He would wring the mutant’s
dead body like a sponge, and it would pour out. He would bathe in it.
He would pour buckets and buckets of blood on Soren’s head, and
ask the director if he was finally satisfied. In that part of his mind that still made sense, that
part which controlled nothing now, that was boxed off and shut away, Victor
Creed saw what he was doing… and began to be afraid. His first indication of anything wrong was a single bead
of water falling from his fingertip. It was a small, tiny, thing that
was caught up in the wind-stream and went spiraling away, far behind Robert’s
progress. He wasn’t sure why he noticed it, but he did. Maybe it
was the way it caught the sunlight, flashing out brighter than anything
that size had a right to be. Then there was a second drop, and a third,
and soon it was a light shower falling to the street below. Robert looked
up at the sky, looking for clouds and seeing only the smoke from the fires.
As far as weather went, it was a clear, picture perfect day on the Pacific
coastline. He should have slowed up then, assessed the situation,
figured out what was wrong, but he didn’t. He didn’t believe
that it could ever happen to him, let alone during a mission. But it was.
The light shower was turning into a downpour, a river, a flood. Beneath
the diminishing, cracked layers of ice, he saw a flash of too-pink skin.
Clearly, Robert Drake was melting. When he fell, it nearly killed him. One of the support pillars in his frozen slide gave out,
its air pocked center collapsing in on itself, and the platform buckled
beneath Robert, sending him tumbling down. His momentum carried him well
beyond his own crashing debris, right at a gently sloping curb. He impacted
on his shoulder, where stray bits of ice still clung to him, and the pure
force of it shocked him well beyond the pain. He lied there several long,
agonizing seconds, staring up at the mockingly blue sky, unable to comprehend
his situation. He was naked, flat on his back, and he was… bleeding?
Robert gingerly reached down to dab at his scraped knees, taking a second
to feel the consistency of his own blood on his hands. This… wasn’t
supposed to happen. Robert Drake didn’t fall, he didn’t melt,
and he certainly didn’t bleed. It wasn’t so long ago that
every piece of his body had been vaporized in a fiery explosion that turned
a two story house into a pile of matchsticks. It had happened in a split
second, but Robert thought he could remember the exact moment he had felt
his legs, his chest, his eyes, disintegrate into nothing. But he hadn’t
died. He had simply… moved on. It was like putting on a new set
of clothes, once the old ones had become unserviceable. The blood on his
hands felt thin, insubstantial, like dew that could have gone to nothing
in a heartbeat. “Buddy? You alright there?” Robert looked
over to see a police officer approaching him carefully, his uniform spick-and-span
in a daily ironed fashion. The creases alone looked sharp enough to cut
the unwary soul. Unbelievable. Just… unbelievable. “Something’s wrong. I fell.” He actually
had to explain himself to this boyscout? Suddenly, Robert wanted nothing
more than to freeze that smiling face for all eternity, to send this man
on to a new life as an ice cube. Right then, nothing seemed more desirable,
or unattainable. “Well, lets get you up then.” The officer’s
sunny disposition rubbed Robert like he was wearing a suit of sandpaper,
chaffing his entire body right down to his ugly pink toes. He looked at
the cop’s offered hand with something like disgust mixed with hope.
People like this just weren’t the ones that were supposed to be
helping him to stand. “My commlink,” Robert said, his hand going
to his throat. Both the mic and the earpiece were gone, long since lost
between the fall and the… other problem. There must be another explanation.
Robert Drake didn’t melt. “I dropped it.” “Along with your clothes?” The chipper cop
asked, his tone gaining a slight edge to it, as if his patience was finite,
and Robert was beginning to test it. The offered hand jerked forward a
little, like maybe Robert hadn’t seen it in the first place. Wait a minute… why was this policeman just walking
around out here? Why was he taking the time to help a fallen man, when
the city was burning around him? “It’s you. You’re doing something to
me.” Now Robert looked at the officer’s hand like it was a
venomous snake, and he began to crawl backwards, away from the cop. “Excuse me?” “You’re…
manipulating this. It’s not going to happen. I won’t…
I won’t be one of them.” Drake spit out the last
word, forcing it out of his mouth almost violently. “What,“ the cop began, but never finished.
Drake sprang to his feet and lunged at the officer, grappling for the
man’s throat. The mutant was spurred on by anger, strengthened by
hate, but also weakened by it, and made reckless. SHIELD didn’t
teach martial arts to a man who could control the very air people breathed.
Robert overextended on his initial assault, was caught off balance, and
was sent sprawling back down onto the ground. A firm knee pressed into
the small of his back, and a callused hand gripped his shoulder, and all
the friendliness had gone out of it. “Jacobs,” came a garbled voice from the radio
on the officer’s belt, “You catch sight of that mutant?”
A slight pause, and then, “No. No, just more whack
jobs running loose on the streets.” Although Drake would never really appreciate it, there
was irony here. For a man whose body had been frozen for decades, it was
now, with his naked flesh-and-blood held down as securely as a newborn,
that he had never been so cold. “I dropped it.” Elisabeth Braddock frowned, unsure of what had just been
said. There was a buzzing in the back of her mind, a constant drone that
grated on her, and the closer she moved into Victoria, the louder it was
getting. She activated her own commlink. “Drake was that you?” She paused for a second
to allow for a reply, but none came. “Drake? Robert, you there?
Come in. Command, are you getting this?” “Copy,” came Ororo’s staticy voice,
“Orders are to continue with the operation. Primary mission is still
in effect.” “Even though this is starting to stink to high
hell?” Even with the usual white noise, Elisabeth could hear the
annoyance in Sebastian’s voice. It was an emotion she was beginning
to share. “Even though. And besides, this is British Columbia.
High hell’s a few hundred miles east still.” Elisabeth found herself nodding despite the tension,
appreciative of the touch. Good girl, keep it light, keep us relaxed.
One thing was certain, and that was the fact that Creed and Drake were,
above all else, survivors. They would be fine. She had her own concerns
to deal with, not the least of which was the damned incessant ringing
that vibrated her skull. She had to keep her concentration, or else it
would overwhelm her senses. There were people on the street. Survivors. Clothes torn,
faces haggard, they were huddled in a cluster along the white sidewalk.
Propped up against the curb, laying beside a storm drain, was a tiny body
that wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing, and was staring into
the smoke-filled sky with a slack expression Elisabeth recognized all
to well. It didn’t seem like the group heard the droning, and Elisabeth
knew at once that there was no noise. She knew it was all in her head,
this clanging, this shrieking, and it was something only she was fighting
against. “Is she dead?” One of the group, a fat, balding,
bespectacled man picked up a stick and began poking the tiny corpse. “God, living here beside us all along.” Elisabeth
stumbled, her balance giving way, the endless cacophony that assaulted
her leaping to new heights. She felt something wet dripping from her nose. “I’ve been telling you. I’ve been telling
all of you. The mutants-“ And then, in a flash of white light, the noise ceased,
and the small group was gone. No trace of them lingered there, they had
all simply vanished. The corpse, though, remained. Elisabeth walked straighter now, but each step was filled
with caution. She considered the possibility that the psychic assault
had simply moved on, the mindless power seeking out easier prey. But then
she came close enough to see the face of the dead girl, and Elisabeth
knew her defenses had been overwhelmed. It was Emily Stover, who had lived
three houses down from the Braddocks when Elisabeth was a child. She had
been struck by a snow plow while trying to shovel the front walk, at the
same time Elisabeth had been out licking icicles. Looking at all that
blood now, Elisabeth’s gaze was steady. She had seen worse. “You are not real,” Elisabeth whispered.
Stubbornly, Emily Stover continued to lay against that cement curb, oblivious
to her childhood friend’s wishes. Elisabeth turned her back on the scene, and was confronted
by another. More corpses. So many more. Contorted and distorted, some
of them rotting, others seemingly in the very last throes of life, they
lied end to end, all down the street. Her brother, Jaime, was in his funeral
suit, his lips sown shut, the rose she had buried him with still clasped
in his hand. The hole in Kurt Wagner’s skull, where the bullet had
torn away bone and brain, still dripped crimson. Beyond him was a mutant
who had died screaming, and another who had thanked Elisabeth for coming
to kill her. And the line stretched on. She closed her mind to the enormity
of it all, the sheer mass of them, and the numbers that met the horizon.
There were too many. “Ororo,” She said, her voice strangled, near
the edge of panic. “Come in.” “No,” Brian Braddock’s voice cut through
Elisabeth, her eyes reluctantly twisting towards it. “No, I think
you’d rather stay here. With us.” “You’re not dead.” But even as she
said it, Elisabeth saw the red line across Brian’s throat, and the
beads of blood welling there. “I know you’re not.” “Do you?” It was a simple question, his head
tilting in that habitual way, his dirty brown locks tumbling over his
eyes. It was a simple question, but one Elisabeth refused to answer. Instead,
when the flow from his neck became too much, and his knees began to give
out, she stepped forward, and held him close. The street melted from her
vision, and the sky turned to an inky black. Elisabeth Braddock sat down,
rocking her brother to sleep, and knew that now, she was alone. The three of them, Sebastian Sokal, Shiro Yoshida, and
Laynia Petrovna, met in a park, beside a sculpture of an elephant. After
they had lost Elisabeth on comm., they had agreed to rendezvous here,
in this place, to plan their next step. There was no question that they
would continue with their hunt, that this rogue mutant had to be brought
down… but how? It was clear that individually, they would never
get close enough. So they would stick together, supporting each other,
trusting their teammates to recognize these… psychic manifestations. For Sebastian, they began as whispers in his ear, the
voice of his brother, Jean, gently teasing him. Immediately, Laynia grabbed
his hand and began dragging him along. After a moment’s hesitation,
Shiro reached out and did the same. The voice became poison, slowly filling
with loathing, hatred, and rebuke. By the time Jean appeared in front
of him, the other two were carrying Sebastian by the shoulders. He could
have sworn he was walking, but the distant urgings of his teammates said
otherwise. Dimly, he heard Shiro beginning to shout something about
people dying. People bleeding and people burning, and that they had to
be helped. Laynia screamed for the Japanese mutant to come back, to help
her carry Sebastian… but then, soon, it sounded like she was shouting
another name, a Russian name Sebastian didn’t recognize, begging
someone else to come back and help her. Jean spit in his face, and the
saliva burned like acid, searing his cheek through to the bone. The rest of the world faded away. Shiro’s shouts
that there were to many, that he couldn’t save them, that they were
all dying, fell away into nothing. Jean’s accusing stare filled
Sebastian’s vision, and all that was left for him to do was to hang
his head and say that he was sorry.
Richard Gill threw away the severed toe with a casual
flick of his wrist, and had to look around for a new opportunity since
the old man at his feet, who still twitched spasmodically, was quite used
up. For the first time in many, long hours, no new victim was immediately
forthcoming. Richard rocked back on his heels, like a satiated glutton,
pushing himself back to observe a ravaged banquet table. Instead of pot
roast, there was a soccer mom whose exposed ribs poked out of her chest
in random directions. In place of cranberry sauce, Richard had devoured
a pair of tourists from Iowa. The list went on. It had been a most satisfying
experience, and he believed his hunger had finally abated. Then, down
the street a bit, Richard saw a small head of curly blond hair, and heard
the wailing of a little girl’s voice, and right there the mutant
decided that perhaps, just perhaps, there was still room for dessert. He stalked down the pavement, taking his time, knowing
there was no rush. These sheep ran about aimlessly, and often in circles.
He would catch up to her eventually. Richard began to hum to himself,
an old song that reminded him of his mother. All
around the mulberry bush. He rounded a corner, and saw the girl had entered the
lobby of an elegant hotel. Richard hoped the receptionist provided little
mints on the counter. He couldn’t get enough of those free samples. The
monkey chased the weasel. Had she been wearing a uniform? Perhaps, dare he hope,
a girl scout? Richard swung open the door, and stepped through with a
flourish. The
monkey thought, t’was all in fun. Inside he saw a bubbling fountain, marbled floors, and
plush leather sofas lining the walls. But no blond girl scouts. To his
left he heard someone cough, and Richard’s head whipped around like
a bloodhound’s. A man stood there. A big man with silted eyes, wearing
a black jumpsuit, and flexing his… claws? Pop
goes the weasel. “Hello?” Richard asked, clearly puzzled.
This sheep didn’t look as terrified as the others. Didn’t
look scared at all really, but more like a cat about to lick up a big
bowl of cream. “Aren’t you going to run?” “I have been running,” the big man purred,
taking a step closer to Richard, making him back up involuntarily, “I’ve
been trying to find you, rabbit.” “So… you’re not scared?” His
brain was slowly adjusting itself to the situation, and Richard didn’t
like what it was adding up to. Where had that little girl gotten to? “Terrified,” the man responded, casually.
And then, with a grace that seemed impossible, Victor Creed sprang forward
toward his quarry, long, deadly claws extended out. Richard reacted on instinct, moving with a speed he didn’t
know he had, sidestepping and spinning, his pocketknife flashing out against
the fluorescent lights. He had never moved so fast in his life, and had
never guessed people could move as quick as the two of them had. A thing
sliver of blood dripped down Creed’s cheek, and Richard could only
watch in disbelief as the cut closed up and disappeared, like it had never
been. Again, there was distance between the two. “But you want to know something? You want to know
what’s chillin’ me down to my bones?” This time, when Creed lunged, he didn’t go for
Richard’s body like he had before, but at the knifehand that was
brought up again. Muscle and tendon were ripped to shreds as those claws
closed in, Richard’s wrist went limp, and the knife fell to the
floor, clattering loudly. Creed spun on his heel, bringing Richard around,
and hurling him through the same pane-glass door he had entered through. “This idea, this disgusting little nugget that’s
been rattlin’ around in my head, eatin’ me alive?” Richard scrambled backward like a crab, bleeding from
a dozen different embedded glass shards, his wrist screaming in agony.
Creed was on him again in a heartbeat, the SHIELD member’s full
weight pinning him to the ground. Richard rammed his knee upward, nearly
taking Creed full in the groin. There was no leverage in the blow, though,
and Victor shrugged it off with barely a wince. Instead, he brought his
head down hard, crunching against Richard’s nose, sending out gouts
of blood. “It’s just this: I’m scared shitless,
that when I kill you,” One hand plunged into Richard’s shoulder, the bone
claws once again doing their viscous work. Creed dug them in deep and
then twisted, ignoring Richard’s screams, just like Richard had
ignored the screams of so many others that day. “I’m going to like it.” One last time those claws flashed, tearing at the jugular,
making a red ruin of Richard Gill’s throat, silencing the screams. Creed climbed to his feet, a grin on his face as big
as the moon. Time passed, and the lingering psychic effects of Richard
Gill’s terror-inducing hallucinations faded away. Thirty minutes
after all team members reported in to give the all clear, it was finally
deemed safe for the first recovery teams to be sent into the area. Ororo
Monroe was at the head of the column, mutely taking in the devastation
this one mutant had wrought. You heard the stories of course, and saw the pictures.
People could tell you their memories, and you could even feel that power
within yourself, stirring inside your chest, burning to get out. None
of it meant you understood, truly realized, the scope of it. Had it been
this bad in Boston? Philadelphia? Miami? Or, God, New York, a million
times over, New York? Yes. Worse even. With each passing charred, gutted
building, and each freshly maimed child, Ororo felted something inside
her harden. They had gathered outside a hotel she didn’t recognize,
their shoulders were slumped, their eyes looked hollow. Elisabeth’s
head leaned against Sebastian’s shoulder, neither of them saying
a word. Was it just her imagination, or did Drake look… bigger than
before? Like he had added a few extra layers of frosted ice to his mass.
Creed’s back was to her, but she saw the blood caking his hands
like a pair of dark, cracked leather gloves. Laynia walked over to her, and Ororo gave her a tremulous
smile. “So, it worked?” She asked the Russian woman.
Laynia took a drag from a cigarette she had been smoking, giving Ororo
a long, inscrutable look. Had she really just been thinking about how
disheveled the team had been? That illusion was gone now, Laynia’s
cool demeanor flashing out, brilliant against the streetlights. “Just like we draw ‘em up, Ororo. Mutant
dead, team alive, everyone happy. Textbook.” Ororo nodded, reassured and braced against the cold Canadian
night. Next Issue: We kick of the very first,
multi-issue event, “SHIELD: Extermination Force - Brotherhood of
Blood”.
January 2007
MARVEL 2000 PRESENTS...
"Alone"
Written by
Mark Walsh
Creed
Robert Drake sailed above the rooftops of Victoria’s suburbs, not
feeling the cool ocean breeze whip by him. He stood on a ramp of ice that
flowed out of his legs, glittering in the light, happy he was able to travel
his own way. Normally, SHIELD cracked down on displays of power like this,
saying that they incited panic among the locals. In this situation, it seemed
impossible they would riot more than they already had. So at least the day
wasn’t a complete waste.
