Set after the death of Captain America and Uatu the Watcher, X-Men 2099 carries on the tradition of a band of mutants trying to make a life for themselves in a world that doesn't fear or hate them, but are wary all the same. Working in the Savage Land to build a civilisation where man and mutant live in peace, the X-Men have redefined themselves as trouble-shooters, fixing problems when and wherever they arrive. If only it were that easy...

X-Men 2099

Issue #20

"The Sting"
SEVEN DAYS PART 2

by David Wheatley

Once known as the Desert Ghost, Xi'an Chi Xan is the former leader of the X-Men, now Head of the Xavier City Council. A man who works to keep the dream of Professor X alive, his mutant ability to touch something and heal with one hand or destroy with the other, added to his keen intellect and devotion to mutantkind, make him a force to be reckoned with.
Xi'an Chi Xan

Formerly known as Cerebra, the founder of X-Nation and driving force of the X-Men, now member of the Xavier City Council, Shakti's nervous system had been destroyed and her powers seemingly with them. Her nervous system has now been repaired by her father, the geneticist, Zail Haddad, but her powers are still gone and she has also been revealed to be pregnant.
Shakti Haddad

The human link in the Xavier City Council, Victor Ten Eagles is the voice of humanity in Xavier City. A master tech-smith, he sports a bionic arm of his own design, and is one of the few people who knew Xi'an in the old days, riding with him as a member of the Lawless.
Victor Ten Eagles

Formerly a member of Doom's cabinet, now a Council member in Xavier City, Morphine has the power to rapidly age whatever he touches. Bearing a striking resemblance to Gambit, and a name closely linked with Cyclops, Morphine is a wild card, whose game plan works out to the benefit of one man - himself.
Morphine Somers

Edward 'Eddie' Van Beethoven is the powerhouse of the X-Men thanks to his ferromorphic abilities. Once trapped in his metallic form, he has only recently regained the ability to return to normal.
Metalhead

The fastest man alive, leaving a blur behind him as he uses his power, Henri Huang went missing before the Phalanx War, somehow returning in time for the expedition of Earth's heroes in to space to breach the barrier surrounding the planet. How he returned and where he was remains a mystery.
Meanstreak

The ability to form crystals out of thin air, to her own requirements, makes Krystalin Porter a vital member of the X-Men, though not as dedicated to the cause as some of her friends, she is one of the original founders of the X-Men of 2099, joining at the same time as Meanstreak, her best friend.
Krystaline

Almost feral, Luna is the least trusted of the X-Men despite having proved herself many times. Possessing vast strength, dense skin and the ability to feed of the emotional pain of others via touch, she has begun to hunger for emotion more now that she has lost the love of her life, Tim Fitzgerald.
La Lunatica

A powerful psion with a life span of 150 years, he is a man who needs forgiveness from all those who have worn and now wear the X... including himself.
Dust

Tim Fitzgerald was Xi'an's last recruit into his band of X-Men. Possessed of the ability to absorb electrical energy and rechannel it in vast quantities, Tim was recently freed from corporeal form as he mutated into a being of pure energy, able to give himself form and mass.
Skullfire

Patriarch of the Theatre of Pain. Immensely powerful he has fought the X-Men to a standstill, and fled to fight another day.
Brimstone Love

The man known as Nathaniel Essex, transformed by Apocalypse in to Sinister, still lives in 2099, the ghosts of En Sabah Nur behind him
Sinister

'Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.'
- James Joyce

 

Xavier City was under attack and there was very little the X-Men could do.

It had started in the morning, without warning and caught everyone by surprise. the Theatre of Pain had attacked and Brimstone Love stood in the centre of the city, conducting it all, ensuring that every moment went out live to the masses, as the team ran interference with the Norns, however the X-Men had never fared well against the Theatre. Dust had managed to take out three of the Norns in the past, but he was incapacitated by an unknown force. Of copurse, these days there were only two of them, thanks to Morphine and the last time they met.

Then there were the fake X-Men created by Zhao to copy the original five X-Men. They'd had their powers amped since the last time they'd been fought and there were other additions. Sinister had obviously been busy, and there were a few more additions to the Theatre's arsenal.

A clone army.

The Hulk, the Punisher, Ravage, D'Monix. Heroes, villains, and those who fit neither, all created to serve the Theatre and that was the problem. The Theatre was not the unit it had once been, but with the additional firepower of the former names of the Second Age of Heroes. Sinister had been busy, but Luna had never heard any of these things in the weeks she had spent in the company of her family, but then again Sinister was not one to tell people anything he did not want them to know.

Now they were on the defensive, and the Theatre had the upper hand. Shakti had put in a call to their allies in Latveria and New York, but help would be a long time in coming and with the recent problems with Stark/Fujikawa, it was not good. She was keeping safe, because of the child and Victor was helping evacuate as many people as he could. Xi'an was out on the streets showing them why it was not wise to make an enemy of the man known as the Desert Ghost and Morphine... Shakti paused. Where was he? For a man who thought of this city as his own, he was nowhere to be found. That concerned her. Morphine wasn't much of a fighter, unless it was something he believed in, and for all his faults if there was one person who would died before he let Xavier City fall to someone else it would be him.

So where was he?

"You're dead, brother," said Luna as she leapt for Brimstone Love, who swatted her away with easer.

"You still haven't learnt," said Brimstone as he looked over her. "I cannot be defeated."

"You wanna leave her alone?" asked Tim as he arrived on the scene and hit Brimstone with as much electrical energy as he could, but Love fought back with a geothermal balst opf his own as fire met electricity.

"Aren't you dead, Fitzgerald?" sneered Love.

"Several times over," Tim answered, and tapped in to the depths of himself and redoubled his efforts, but Love simply teleported out of the way, sensing the disturbances in the electro-magnetic field of the planet as Tim powered up. "Shock!" he said, then he looked at Luna. "Did I hear you right?"

"Yeah," she said. "Apparently he's my brother, and then there's our father..."

"We so need to talk when this is done," said Tim. "But we have to do what we can to take out your brother. We stop him, we can end this, but he's the conductor of all this."

"What's happening out there?" asked Luna as they hurried to find the others.

"Xi'an, Eddie and Meanstreak are going after the 'dead' heroes. Krys is dealing with the rest of Zhao's X-Men, after I gave her a hand with One Eyed Jack and Psycho-K and I'm guessing you dealt with the Norns?"

"Yeah," smiled Luna. "They won't be coming after us anytime soon. How the shock do we fight the Hulk though?"

"Eddie's gone adamantium and they're trading blows," said Tim. "One hell of a fight, but whatever happened during then cloning thing, there's one thing for sure, he's not the Hulk that he could have been. I'm guessing you can't clone gamma radiation that well."

"Why?"

"Remember the old idea of the madder he got the stronger, etc?"

"Yeah?" she said, remembering the legend, and the myth that the Hulk proper had never truly been killed but been exiled to another dimension because they had not been able to destroy him.

"Not this time," said Tim, with a smile. "And it's getting him upset. So the real problem is Love." The main street erupted in a lava flow.

"Yeah, the Savage Land is based on the kind of thing he lives for," said Luna. "It's making him stronger."

"Yeah, well the Savage Land is in the Antarctic, and the Earth's E-M field makes me stronger here as well," said Tim and kissed his girl. "You be too upset if I kill your brother?"

"Just at it not being me that does it," she said, wondering where her father was and what exactly he was doing in all this. She would find out...

Nathaniel Essex looked down on the city, and frowned. The X-Men were good, as good as any that had borne the name, but they were not his concern. The concern was the Theatre of Pain. His concern was the clones. They were his, all his and he was not happy. He had sent his son to destroy the clone factory at Stark/Fujikawa, as soon as he had learnt of the attack on Miguel o'Hara by the Hulk. He had worked tirelessly to obtain samples of the metahumans that had appeared, for he had foreseen a time when humanity would rebel against them as they had done so once before, and then he had seen his work used against the world.

In hindsight, he should not have used Stark/Fujikawa, but Alchemax were not to be trusted and S/F had been manipulatable. Of course that was before the flooding and since then he had put them put of his mind, for he had believed his technological advances beyond anyone at S/F. Until they started using his work and that just would not do.

He had thought the data he had obtained was protected. Ghost Rider had told him it was so, after he had crushed D'Monix who had retrieved it from Transverse City, now located at bottom of the ocean. Either the Ghost in the Machine had lied to him, or he was not as omnipotent as he believed. Or he had set Sinister up, but that seemed unlikely, for he had never sensed any falseness in Zero Cochrane, and he had kept up with the developments in the evolution of life.

That was why he had kept a copy of the D/Monix programme, for they had never truly understood it's potential. The data within the megavaults would have been lost in the floods but the data was more than anyone had dreamed and had developed a consciousness, perhaps in part from the data it had gleaned from it's encounters with the Ghost Rider and it had taken on a life of it's own, but it had been trapped in a cybernetic form, and lacked the freedom that Cochrane possessed and it wanted it, and access to the Ghostworks. Ever since the creation of the Cerebro entity in the first Age of Heroes, Essex had known that another life from such as that could and would emerge, given the right circumstances and it had.

However Sinister knew that it had no place in this world or any other and he had destroyed it, keeping what he needed for himself, for the data it held was invaluable, and Cochrane had promised to keep it safe. Perhaps he had been betrayed, or perhaps something had happened. Either way, a new D/Monix was out there, with the capacity for destruction unleashed. Sinister frowned. This was wrong, but he knew there was little he could do about it either. Stark/Fujikawa had set this in motion, he knew it. He would have to go there and deal with them before it was too late. Then he felt something wrong and he turned to see a familiar face.

"I told you to leave Xavier City alone," said Morphine as he removed his hand from Essex's back. "Now you're dead." Sinister fell to his knees and he could feel his body start to age. He had thought he was immortal, that the Celestial technology employed by Apocalypse had changed him enough to deal with anything man could devise.

"This is not my doing," muttered Sinister as he writhed in pain, the years starting to catch up with him as he focused on his body, using his power and knowledge to fight back. "We have been betrayed."

"Damn right," said Morphine, as he lit a cigarette. "Goodbye, Essex."

Krys wiped the sweat from her brow as Wingspan finally fell to the floor. Taking him out had been a hard task. Exactly how the Fantastic Four had been able to defeat them so easily was something she needed to ask if and when they ever met again. Xi'an's ban on them from returning to Xavier City might be something they all regretted one day, but she knew that Richards was doing much to ensure that humanity became more than it was, from forging peace with Atlantis as Miguel O'Hara's emissary to developing a space programme for mankind and return them to the stars.

They were as cut off from the colonies as the colonies were cut off from them. Then she saw Victor running towards her.

"The evacuation is almost done," he said. "Our people are in the jungles, at the Alpha site we set up after the incident with Garokk and Exodus."

"Good," she said. "You came all the way back to tell me that?"

"No," he said. "I just don't know if we're going to get through this okay. Rosa's comatose, Dust is comatose, Shakti's incapacitated and the record of the X-Men against the Theatre isn't good. I just needed to see, you... just in case." Krys smiled.

"This from a member of the Lawless?" she said. "Didn't think you were like that."

"Xi'an changed, so can I," said Victor. "He and Shakti are to be wed, I was thinking we might tag along and make it a double wedding..."

"Why Mr Ten Eagles is that a proposal?"

"Yes," said Victor. "It is. Krys..."

"Well, well," said Brimstone Love appearing behind them both. "Two X-Men, alone and helpless..." Krys turned and covered Brimstone in a crystal casing but he simply broke free, sending shards everywhere. "Is that the best you've got?" he laughed. "The X-Men have been thorns in my side for a long time and nobody can save you now." He unleashed his powers against them and Krys blocked it with a crystal shield but the cracks started to show.

"Run," she said to Victor.

"No," he said. "There's nowhere to run to." He looked at her, she looked at him and they leant in to kiss, but the shield broke and the before they could cry out they were both incinerated in the intense heat.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" cried Tim, arriving too late. "Shock!" Power radiated from him and there was a subtle shift in the planet and Brimstone Love suddenly found he was unable to teleport out. He smiled.

"Then we shall do this the old-fashioned way," he said and he and Tim attacked each other, knowing this would result in the death of at least one of them. Blood demanded blood.

Xi'an weaved and dodged the attacks from the man known as the Punisher. Jake Gallows had been a honourable man once, and this perversion of who he had once been was a betrayal of everything that the man had been. He was now nothing more than an assassin in the pay of the Theatre of Pain and Xi'an knew how that felt. He had been there, he had been one of them and he knew the price he had paid in being freed by his friends from their thrall. He was the Desert Ghost and better men than the Punisher had tried to kill him.

None had succeeded and Xi'an was as good a fighter as the Punisher was. He was Public Eye trained, and has mastered many weapons, but most of those weapons were useless against one like Xi'an who had mastered them as well and Gallows was taking great care to avoid him, because he knew that as soon as Xi'an touched him, he was a dead man. The glove was off and Xi'an's power to break down molecular structures was active.

Meanwhile, Henri was running rings around the cybernetic monster D/Monix. It seemed to the entity that the mutant was trying to avoid him, for his blows against the metallic exo-skeleton were useless and D/Monix was far stronger, but in truth Meanstreak was looking for something else - the weakness in the machine. Henri was good with computers and technology but in the middle of a battle it was difficult to assess a situation, especially with the world class booms that were coming from the blows being exchanged by the Hulk and Metalhead. The very ground was shaking and it was all Henri could do to stay on his feet.

Then he saw what he was after and he smiled knowing that he would be able to defeat D/Monix. Whoever had created him had failed to see the one flaw in the creation - the port that allowed him to jack in to cyberspace was protected, but was still easily accessible to someone who knew what he was doing. If he opened it, there should be an interrupt in the processor of about a second as the computer processed the command to transfer to cyberspace. A forced jack in would create a bit of confusion and he hoped he knew what he was doing as he went to work.

He moved and braced himself as he hit the cover at speed, using the ball of his hand to knock the cover off and he knew that something had broken as soon as he did it because of the shooting pain that went up his arm, but he had no time to spare as he turned and moved and braced himself again, shoulder charging D/Monix and slamming him across the street. The blow threw the robot in to the path of the Hulk and Eddie quickly picked up on it as he avoided the Hulk, which trampled on the head of D/Monix, crushing it. Electricity shot through the green behemoth, staggering the Hulk, and the distraction it caused was enough for Xi'an to get a hold of Gallows and at his touch the Punisher cried out as his face began to melt, however they knew that as a clone he could return at some point.

That just left the Hulk who was recovering and was still going strong. The X-Men looked at each other and Eddie shrugged. They'd been exchanging blows, but nothing was coming of it, and the others were no match for the Hulk. There was a stalemate and then it happened - shots came from the skies and all around them as troopers came from the side streets, and the Hulk was met by dozens of energy discharges shredding his body, in a scene reminiscent of the fall of the first Hulk of 2099.

"What is going on here?" demanded Xi'an as the smell of burnt flesh came over them all.

"Stark/Fujikawa Special Operations. Mr Kaine sends his greetings and apologises that we're late."

"Does he?" said Xi'an. "Does he really?"

"We're under instruction to find and eliminate all threats to Xavier City," said their commander. "We're prepared to find and take down Brimstone Love himself." Xi'an was sceptical, but they needed the help. Love was formidable under normal circumstances, and this was far from normal.

"Follow me," said Xi'an and they headed in to town, were the crackle of Tim's energy discharges could be heard.

"Impossible," muttered Morphine, the cigarette falling from his mouth as Sinister stood, shaking but alive.

"Almost," said Essex, looking him in the eye, knowing how close that had truly been. "My debt to you is clear, Somers. If it were not for the fact I need you, I'd kill you here and now."

"You survived," said Morphine. "I'm suitably impressed, Nate." Sinister smiled. What Morphine didn't know was that he had done more than he could realise. Sinister was no longer the immortal he had been. Time would wither him as it did all men and in truth, he could be killed as easily as any man now. His shape-changing skills were still intact, as were his bio blasts, but he was not the man he had once been. His time was finite again, and for that he would have his revenge on Morphine Somers. He had grown attached to life, it was not something he wanted to give up.

"This has been a set-up," said Essex. "The hand of Stark/Fujikawa is in this..."

"Sons of bitches," said Morphine. "They stage an attack, then come in and clear the mess up, gaining support... First Civilisation..."

"They want Xavier City?" said Essex, in surprise. "Kaine grows bold."

"You know of Kaine?"

"Oh, yes," said Essex. "I know of Kaine. We have a common foe - he uses my tools for his ends, which includes your city. This will not do."

"I think it's time we paid a visit to Stark/Fujikawa," said Morphine. "I've had enough of this shocking affair."

"My thoughts exactly," said Sinister and opened a tesseract portal. "After you?"

"Together," said Morphine and Sinister nodded and they stepped through. La Luna looked down on them, wondering what they were up to and just as the portal was about to close she leapt down from her vantage point and followed them in...