Now...
In
the dead of night, a large stealth jet quietly rested on its landing gear on
the snowy grounds of a clearing within the boreal forests of the Alberta
Rockies of Canada. Bright lights illuminating from various points on the jet
lit up the area just enough for its crew to see a few feet in front of them,
but hopefully not bright enough for the jet to be noticed from a distance. It
was from the ramp leading down from the jet that a young man and a young woman
stepped down onto the snowy ground surrounding them.
Bobby Drake - otherwise known to the X-Men as Iceman - was usually immune to
the colds of such an environment, but not tonight. He pulled on a large, black
jacket with a gold 'X' across it as he stepped onto the ground, quickly
zipping it up as he shivered from the cold. But Marie Charleston - Iceman's
teammate on the X-Men known as Rogue - was actually fairing well in the cold
with only a green trench coat, thanks to the highly adaptive nature of the
powers she absorbed from a woman long ago.
Both members of the X-Men turned on the heavy duty flashlights they held in
their hands, and Iceman couldn't help but whistle an eerie and familiar tune
as Rogue and he began to move their lights over the snow covered grounds,
trees, and shrubbery of the forest. He had a feeling that the truth was out
there...
"Ah know what ya mean, Bobb-o," Rogue said as they moved around the perimeter
of the Blackbird, getting a feeling for their surroundings before plunging
into the dark forests. "Walkin' around a dark forest like this, wieldin'
flashlights and tracking down long missing people... Feels like an episode of
the X-Files to you too, eh?"
"Nah. It's just that the mysterious act of blacking out and waking up with my
ass hurting made me reminiscent of the show," Iceman deadpanned, shooting a
half-embittered look to Rogue. "You know, like someone - or something - from
the great beyond abducted me and anal probed me?"
Rogue covered her mouth, not being able to help a fit of giggles. Iceman
cleared his throat and looked away from her, continuing to scan the area with
his flashlight.
"You oughtta consider yourself lucky," Rogue insisted as she did the same.
"After druggin' ya and kickin' ya in the butt a few times, we were gonna strip
ya naked and handcuff ya to a bed in a motel outside of Harry's, but then
y'know... we got the call from Scott and Hank 'bout everything..."
"Riiiight," Iceman said half-heartedly. "What happened to the days of tasteful
pranks? Not this perversity that involves roofies that screw with my powers."
"Ah, quit your whinin'," Rogue shot back, flapping her hand at him as they
moved deeper into the forest surrounding the Blackbird's extraction point. "Cerebro
says there isn't anyone else in the area for several miles, so it's not like
you're gonna need to fight off some baddies. Maybe some wolves or bears..."
"Say what you will, chica," Iceman remarked with the shake of his head, still
a little frustrated over the inability to use his powers. "But if ya ask me? A
little Bobby Drake with Infrared Vision action would be pretty useful at the
moment."
Before Rogue could come up with a snarky remark of her own, a rustling noise
in the area caught her attention. She couldn't quite pinpoint it, but it
suddenly like a movement over some leaves or nearby bushes.
"Shhh!" Rogue hushed with a finger to her lips, his eyes widening in response
to the rustling noise she had just heard. "What was that?"
"Aliens again?" Iceman suggested, quirking his brows up melodramatically.
"With anal probes?"
"Ah'm serious!" Rogue replied, her eyes darting about the area. The rustling
noise was heard a second time, but this time the two could tell which
direction it came from. "There it is again!" she said, pointing to their three
o'clock with her flashlight.
Iceman held up a hand to Rogue, motioning for her to hold in place for a
moment. He switched his flashlight into his left hand and reached down to the
tactical holster at his hip, taking hold of the handle of a tranquilizer gun,
and then nodding forward.
"Logan...?" Rogue called out quietly as Iceman and her slowly approached the
direction they had heard the noise. "Is that you, Logan?"
As the two closed in on the area the noise had came from, they directed their
flashlights over a dark area of snowy ground. Four familiar bodies, bloodied
and in torn clothing, laid prone just several feet before them, with one's
head stirring about ever so slightly. Iceman and Rogue were both unsure at
first, but then as they began to recognize who they were looking at they found
themselves momentarily breathless.
"Oh, lord..." Rogue commented in realization. Iceman released his grip on his
tranquilizer gun and reached up to a small device in his ear, pressing a
button on it.
"Scott, it's Bobby," he said into his radio before swallowing back the lump in
his throat and exhaling a long breath. "We've found them."
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MARVEL 2000 PRESENTS...
"LORD BYRON"
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Several hours earlier... "Ain't no body holdin' back in this one, ya hear?!" Wolverine screamed over the sound of Domino and the guards' gunfire, Jubilee's pyrokinetic blasts, and Cannonball explosive propulsions through batches of the facility's incoming guards. "Hold back and we're back being dissected in those test tubes, or worse!" Though Wolverine and Domino were the far more experienced members of the team, their physical abilities and mutations were still far more limited compared to their younger teammates, Cannonball and Jubilee. Cannonball's bio-kinetic blastfield had enabled him not only to fly at incredible speeds, but to be nearly invulnerable while propelling himself through large groups of security enforcers. Meanwhile, Jubilee's powerful energy bursts not only repelled the team's enemies, but their firework like nature also temporarily blinded them as well while Wolverine and Domino often went in for the kill with either claws or gunfire. Despite the onslaught being inflicted on their comrades, another half-dozen or so of armed guards rounded the nearby corner behind the four X-Men. Decked out in full body armor complete with riot-helmets, they set up position and began to open fire on the group. The four X-Men spun around to face the latest wave of attackers as the gunfire, but all each could do was dive for cover as the hot lead came. Jubilee was the first to react after taking cover in a doorway, gripping her fists and causing pyrokinetic explosions to randomly appear around the enemy's faces. The bright flashes of light blinded them just like they had so many of the others, and Cannonball took the opportunity to propel himself into the ground, striking them like a bowling ball would a set of pins. If the guards weren't thrown into a nearby wall from the powerful collision they were thrown into each other, being flung into the ground from the force. Sure they weren't going to get up, Cannonball turned around in mid-flight and deactivated his blast field, touching down on the floor of the corridor near his teammates. "Good combo you two got there," Domino said as she came out from behind her cover, nodding to her former pupil from X-Force. Cannonball took a deep breath and nodded to her. "You two should think up some dopey attack name for it like, 'July Forth Bowling ball Special' or whatever." Jubilee came out from around the doorway that she was hiding behind, nearly exhausted from the battle that had just taken place. Before she could ask Wolverine if he was okay, she caught his back as he slowly approached the latest batch of guards and picked one up by the collar of his uniform. "Hey bub, ya see your pal over there?" Wolverine said, thumbing in the direction of the decapitated guard slumped up against a nearby wall, his blood splattered across wall and floor. "Don't wanna end up like 'im, do ya?" Weakly, the guard turned his head in the direction Wolverine motioned towards and gasped lowly. Wolverine nodded his head slowly, sneering just enough to expose his sharpened canines. The guard winced and then closed his eyes, tensing up slightly and breathing faster and faster as he realized he was facing possible death. "Yeah, that's right, so tell me where the Algerian girl is!" Wolverine barked, pulling the guard in close and clenching his fist, causing three foot long claws to eject from his knuckles. "Tell me where she is NOW!" Before the team's leader could threaten to disembowel the Byron Agency flunkey, the man fell limp in Wolverine's hand and dropped his head to the side, slipping into an unconscious state from the traumatic beating he received. "Sonuva bitch..." Wolverine muttered in aggravation, flinging the unconscious guard to the side and standing up to his feet. He retracted his claws and bit down hard on his lip, trying to think of what to do next. "So is this the big plan?" Domino said as she walked up to Wolverine from behind, causing Wolverine to turn to her as she dropped the rifle to the ground and put her hands on her hips. "We're just going to run around killing everyone or knocking them unconscious until we're killed ourselves or there's no one left to interrogate?" "That ain't the plan and you know it, lady!" Wolverine shot back, shoving a finger in her direction. Domino narrowed her eyes at him in response as he continued. "We gotta find M. She can read the minds of these jokers even when they're out cold." "I want to find the girl just as much as everyone else, but what if she's already dead?" Domino asked pointedly, almost as if she were patronizing the team's leader. "We need to find out where we are first, or at least try to escape!" "She's our best chance of doin' both of those," Wolverine explained, his voice grating in emphasis. "And even if she wasn't we're not leaving here until we find her. Got it?" "Eat me, short-fry," Domino remarked callously. Wolverine cocked his head to the side and growled lowly, not liking her criticism of his leadership or her dissent. Domino flung her arms off to the side and said, "Why don't we take a vote?" "This ain't a democracy," Wolverine said coldly as he stepped forward, closing the space between Domino and himself. "And in a minute here I'm gonna forget that you're a lady and I'm a gentleman if you don't get in line." "You're the one who put us in this situation by ignoring Cyclops's orders," Domino said matter-of-factly, her words laced with just enough truth to sting Wolverine like acid. "Who says you're not gonna land us into even more trouble?" "Uh, guys?" Cannonball spoke up, warranting Domino and Wolverine both to shoot a look in his direction. He stood beside Jubilee, who was hanging her head low with her arms tightly around her chest. "Whatever it is we decide to do, I think a second wave might be here any minute..." "The kid's right. We gotta keep movin'," Wolverine said as he turned away from Domino and continued in the direction they were going before they were ambushed. "Everyone just shut up and keep your eyes peeled." Cannonball and Jubilee followed after him, but Domino just shook her head and sighed, frustrated not just by Wolverine but the whole situation in general. She knelt down to the guard that Wolverine inadvertently knocked unconscious and began stripping him of his weapons, then jogged after her three teammates. It hadn't even been an hour since Wolverine had freed his three teammates, and the four were already in battles for their lives. It had quieted down in those last few moments, however, likely due to the facility's commanders needing some time to regroup their forces and rethink their strategy of recapturing the four X-Men. For some reason, the negator field in Wolverine's cell had shut itself off and he was no longer receiving the constant flow of sedative from his IV, and that was the moment he needed to escape. Though he wasn't sure why both measurements seemed to fail at the same time, he wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth. He broke free, killed the guards, and went to free his teammates, and that was when the alarms went off. The only problem they encountered was that Jubilee had been left shaken from being held in captivity for so long, as well as from the various experiments that had been conducted on them. She was a strong and capable young woman, but she was still just a kid at heart, and so she wasn't as able to cut loose and face death in the eye as Cannonball, a more hardened and experienced youth, was. Speaking of Cannonball, as the four wondered about the corridors of the complex they were being held captive in, a sense of deja vu began to overcome him. "I know we ain't supposed to worry about where we are right now, but uh..." Cannonball trailed off as he and his teammates continued aimlessly down the cold and deserted halls of the complex. "Does anyone else think this place feels kinda familiar?" "Yeah, I know what ya mean, kid," Wolverine said, sniffing the air slightly as he let his eyes wonder around along the corridor's surrounding walls. "It's got that funky sterile smell... like space stations or post offices or somethin'..." "You don't think we're on Greymelkin, do you?" Domino suddenly asked, a bewildered lookg crossing her face. Cannonball shot her a look as if he was seriously considering the suggestion. "Hey, kind of a stretch, I know, but weirder things have happened..." "Eh, on second thought?" Cannonball said, raising a skeptical brow as he looked around and sighed. "I really don't know now. All this time in captivity, our minds might just be playin' tricks on us or somethin'..." Before Domino could agree or disagree, Wolverine raised a hand and stopped cold in his tracks, sniffing the air again. His three teammates stopped and turned their attention to him, noting his sudden uneasiness. "Hang back," Wolverine said as his eyes scanned the corridor suspiciously. "There's someone else in the area at the moment..." Wolverine's eyes fall on a closed door and he jabbed a finger at it, turning to Cannonball and nodding. Cannonball nodded back to the team's leader and took a step back, clenching his fists. He propelled himself towards the door at full speed, his blastfield in full force, and rammed the reinforced door straight off its hinges. Domino raised her rifle and marched into the room with her finger near the trigger, the first one in after Cannonball. Wolverine and Jubilee followed suit just as Cannonball's blastfield dissipated and he landed back on the floor, and the four found themselves in what appeared like a dark storage room of sorts. The only light illuminating the room were from the stasis tubes lining the walls, which were lit up from within and gave the transparent and bubbling, green fluids an eerie glow. Though four tubes lined the wall across from the door, only the center two were occupied by two young women, fully nude and with ghostly pale white skin. Even their body hair appeared as an off-white color, and black squares and lines littered their body in a pattern similar to that found on computer chips. In fact, it almost appeared as if the two young women bore a variant appearance of the alien race known as the Phalanx... "It's M!" Cannonball said, a mix of surprise and relief in his voice as his eyes fell upon one of the stasis tubes. "And I think the girl's been eating her wheaties..." Domino said as eyed the two stasis tubes, noting the significant change in her skin and hair colore, as well as body texture. Then she realized a striking similarity between the two individuals and was taken a back, dumbfounded. "Err, and asexually reproducing?" "Omigod!" Jubilee said in a horrific sense of realization, her eyes going wide and her mouth dropping open. "Neither one of them are M! Those are her sisters!" "How do ya know?" Cannonball asked as Jubilee moved past him, having never formally meeting either of them. "I met them when they were at the mansion a while back," Jubilee said as she slowly approached the stasis tubes, wanting to reach out to them but to afraid. Her lips curled into a snarl and she clenched her fist in anger. "What the hell has Sean done to them?!" With the completion of Jubilee's question, Nicole and Claudette's eyelids shot open, revealing cloudy pupils and blank irises. The four X-Men's eyes darted towards the two sisters just as they opened their palms up against the glass of their stasis tubes, unleashing a fierce yet small blast of energy. The glass exploded with a loud crash and the fluids rushed out of the stasis tubes, causing the four X-Men to quickly double back out of the way. "He's turned 'em into weapons!" Wolverine said and he clenched his fists, unsheathing his claws with a 'snikt.' "Get out of here now!" Cannonball put a hand on the reluctant Jubilee's shoulder and guided her to the door, the two breaking into a run down the corridor as they passed through the doorway. Wolverine and Domino kept their eyes trained on the slowly approaching twins, Nicole and Claudette, and then broke into a run out of the room and down the corridor as soon as they were sure that Cannonball and Jubilee had gotten a head start. "What are we gonna do?!" Cannonball asked, yelling back to Wolverine as he blasted alongside Jubilee down the corridor ahead of him and Domino. "Right now we just gotta put as much space between us and them right as possible!" Wolverine called back as he and Domino covered their rear. "If they catch up with us then remember what I said about no holdin' back!" "Wolvie!" Jubilee cried out, terrified at the idea. "They're just kids!" A loud 'boom' resounded throughout the as the room they had just ran out of became engulfed in flames and the doorway exploded in a storm of rubble and debris. The four flinched instinctively as they ran, Wolverine looking over his shoulder just in time to see Nicole and Claudette hovering out of the gaping hole they had just created with streams of vibrant energy cackling about them. "And we don't know what they're capable of!" Wolverine snarled as he looked back ahead to Cannonball and Jubilee, his teeth gritting together. "We're not gettin' surprised this time like we did back at the academy!" Cannonball couldn't help but shoot a glance back behind him, noticing that Nicole and Claudette had taken flight simultaneously, both following the four X-Men down the corridors at incredible speeds. "They're gainin' on us!" Cannonball said as he made a u-turn in midair, spinning around and shooting down the opposite direction his teammates were going in. "Everyone keep goin' while I drive 'em back!" "Sam!" Domino shouted as Cannonball rocketed past her and she skidded to a halt. Wolverine ran past her and grabbed her arm, trying to drag her along with him as he continued running after Jubilee. "Let 'em go!" Wolverine said as Domino jerked her arm away from him and hesitantly continued following him, at first not turning her head away from Cannonball as he engaged their followers. "He can catch up with us!" Jubilee kept running, running for her life, ahead of Wolverine and Domino. When she rounded the next corner of the corridor, however, her eyes fell upon a third figure - tall, shooting towards her and her teammates. She came to the startling realization that it wasn't life she was running for, but her ultimate death. "Shit!" Jubilee screamed, skidding to a stop and turning her head back to Wolverine and Domino. "There's three of them now!" Wolverine and Domino came to a halt behind Jubilee and saw their third pursuer. Aside from being taller and slightly bulkier, the figure looked almost identical to Nicole and Claudette. It could only be one person. "That must be M," Domino said, training the sights of her rifle on the seemingly Phalanx assimilated woman. She then spun around on the heel of her foot and directed her weapon at the other two. "And they've got us trapped!" "ARGH!" Cannonball cried out as he collided into the twins together, but some kind of force field shunted him backwards and sent him sprawling to the feet of his teammates. He clenched his teeth and fought through the pain, moving up to his hands and knees and preparing to go after the two again, but he wouldn't get the chance. With Domino and Cannonball facing the approaching twins and Wolverine and Jubilee facing their approaching older sister, the four were preparing to fight for their lives. However, the closer their foes got, the louder the sound of sizzling and cackling energy became. The three sisters put their palms out forward, tiny balls of energy materializing before each hand that grew in size rapidly as they drew in closer to their prey. "This is it!" Wolverine said as the bright flashes of pinks and yellows illuminated the corridor from the attack the three sisters were charging up. "It's comin' down to the wire. When I say go, we hit 'em with everything we got!" Wolverine, Domino, and Jubilee fell closer together, their backs together as their Cannonball stayed on his hands and knees, ready to rocket into action. The air began whipping up around them as the three sisters drew closer and their energy attack came to its final plateau. The final moments of the build u was upon them. "Ready?!" Wolverine shouted over all of the commotion and the four of them readied themselves. "NOW!" he ordered, but before the X-Men could fight back against their attackers, the entire corridor erupted in a surge of explosive energy and screams of torturous pain and agony... Now... The X-Men's
medical bay a few dozen feet below the Xavier Institute For Higher
Learning had not been as occupied as it was in a long time. They would have
to wait until one of them woke up first, and it was no wonder that one of
them in particular would be the first to come to. No, it was even expected
that Logan would be the first to wake due to the nature of his mutant
healing factor, but his reaction wasn't exactly one that they had
anticipated.
Though it had
been nearing the witch's hour in Washington, D.C., the phone to Helena
Weaver's office rang once again for the second time that evening. Helena
set down one of President Kelley's press releases that had been advanced
to her and sighed, picking up the phone next to her.
NEXT ISSUE: Wolverine, Domino, Cannonball, and Jubilee have been returned to the X-Men, but why now? What is Helena Weaver's grand scheme and does it fit in with what the Byron Agency has planned? Find out next issue!
AUTHOR'S NOTES
- Cory Wiegel,  |
