Marvel Classic Novels--X-Men and the Avengers

by Greg Cox

  I mean, homicidal tee-shirts? he thought. Well, I’ll be an anthropoid’s antecedent…

  * * *

  YELLOW crime scene ribbons still cordoned off the back wing of the museum. The Vision glided right through them, leaving the banners untouched, but Iron Man and Captain America waited for the security guard to pull the tape aside before entering the site of the Scarlet Witch’s abduction. Curious onlookers lingered behind the yellow banners, watching the heroes’ every move through the viewfinders of clicking disposable cameras.

  The walls were conspicuously bare, except for mounted plaques describing the now-missing exhibits. Spotlights shone on empty hooks where once the puppets had hung. Iron Man noted some scuff marks on the floor, possibly from the tussle earlier that day, but he imagined that the museum probably got a fair amount of foot traffic in any event.

  I’m not even sure what we hope to find here, he thought. One could hardly expect puppets to leave behind fingerprints or samples of DNA. Unless they weren’t really puppets…

  “The police found some torn-out hair on the floor, plus a silver earring,” Rodriguez informed them, pointing to a spot on the tiles. Iron Man noticed a single speck of blood.

  “Wanda has numerous earrings that fit that description,” the Vision observed, his inscrutable gaze riveted to that solitary bloodstain. “My memory banks confirm that she was wearing a pair of silver earrings when she departed the Mansion this morning.”

  For someone with no more ties to his ex-wife, the Vision sure pays a lot of attention to her comings and goings, Iron Man noted. He also recalled that the Scarlet Witch had a fondness for bangles that reflected her gypsy roots.

  “Umm, yeah,” Rodriguez answered, still somewhat spooked by the Vision’s icy voice. “The cops thought the earring might belong to the Witch, but you’d have to check with them about that.”

  “We’ll be sure we do that, Mr. Rodriguez,” Captain America said. “Thank you for being so helpful.” As the guard departed toward the lobby, clearing away the assembled spectators, Cap searched the deserted gallery with his eyes, then turned toward Iron Man. “What do you think? Should we have those hair samples sent onto S.H.I.E.L.D. for analysis?”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” Iron Man agreed, remembering their teleconference with Nick Fury earlier that day. I wonder if Wanda’s disappearance has anything to do with those UFOs S.H.I.E.L.D. reported? “Fury owes us a favor or two.”

  Identifying Wanda as the victim wasn’t the problem, though; finding out who was behind those malignant puppets was. Puppets, dolls… hmm. “Give me a second, Cap, while I check on some of the more obvious suspects.”

  Without budging one inch from the desolate gallery, Iron Man used the satellite link in his antenna array to go onto the Internet in search of information. A quick link to the main Avengers database, accessible once he cybernetically keyed in the correct password, revealed that his old adversary, Mr. Doll, was still serving time for extortion and other crimes, but that Philip Masters, the so-called Puppet Master, was currently out on parole.

  Interesting, Iron Man thought, although Masters was usually more a threat to the Fantastic Four than the Avengers. Justice Department records, available to all Avengers via their executive-level security clearances, further informed Iron Man of the intriguing fact that Masters’ current workshop was located in SoHo, only about ten minutes away by subway. Could be just a coincidence, Iron Man reminded himself. As he recalled, the Puppet Master’s niece, the noted sculptor Alicia Masters, kept a studio down in SoHo, too. Sounded worth following up on, even if the Puppet Master’s M.O. didn’t quite fit the incident under investigation.

  In the past, the Puppet Master had always used his trademark figurines to control his victims’ minds, not attack them physically, but who else combined crime and puppetry? Django Maximoff, Wanda’s adopted father, had once transformed both her and her brother, Quicksilver, into marionettes, and later pitted animated mannequins against the Avengers, but the old gypsy was unequivocally dead; Cap and the others had helped bury him themselves after that fracas in Transia a few years back.

  That doesn’t leave many other likely candidates, Iron Man thought. Aside from assorted gods and demons, that is, whose doings and current whereabouts were not exactly the stuff of Web pages.

  A copyrighted Stark search engine led him straight to the Puppet Master’s personal e-mail address. An instant link to that address brought unexpectedly immediate results when Masters himself responded with a real-time transmission from his workshop.

  “Iron Man?” he asked suspiciously, as an image of the Puppet Master’s distinctive features, like a cross between Howdy Doody and Peter Lorre, were projected onto Iron Man’s retinas. His bulging eyes protruded from beneath a shiny bald dome. “What do you Avengers want with me? I haven’t done anything. Nothing at all, I tell you!” Saliva sprayed from his mouth as he sputtered vehemently, making Iron Man thankful this wasn’t a genuine face-to-face encounter. “Why, I haven’t left my workshop in weeks. My niece will back me on that, I assure you. Ask Alicia … she’ll testify that I have a perfect alibi!”

  “Calm down, Mr. Masters,” Iron Man said, although he couldn’t help thinking that the former villain was protesting a bit too much. Maybe I should advise the Fantastic Four to keep a closer eye on him, just in case. “No one is accusing you of anything.” He briefly recounted the pertinent details of the Scarlet Witch’s encounter with the rampaging puppets. “So you can see,” he concluded, “why I thought to contact you. Even if you aren’t guilty yourself—and no one’s saying you are—maybe you can point us in the right direction.”

  Without mentioning it to Masters, he immediately sent an urgent e-mail to Alicia Masters, checking on her perfidious uncle’s alleged alibi while keeping the line open to the Puppet Master himself. Thank heaven for the miracles of multi-tasking, he thought.

  Looking very much like a sinister ventriloquist’s dummy, Masters appeared somewhat mollified by Iron Man’s attempts to keep an open mind. “Living marionettes, you say?” he said, stroking his hairless chin. “Very intriguing.” Iron Man hoped Masters was not taking notes for his next criminal enterprise. “I’m afraid, though, that I can’t think of any, er, former colleagues who might be responsible for the young lady’s abduction. My own puppets, as you know, were constructed from radioactive clay found only on Wundagore Mountain. The clay had many unusual properties, but autonomous locomotion was not one of them.” He glanced down at whatever he working on, just out of the frame of the transmission, and Iron Man would have given a month’s profits at Stark Solutions to see what exactly the Puppet Master was fashioning now.

  Not another of his little mind-controlling toys, he prayed, and especially not a miniature Iron Man.

  “Now then,” said Masters, “if you don’t mind, I have to get back to my work.”

  “Fine,” Iron Man said gruffly, deciding it couldn’t hurt to put the fear of God into the man. He’d known a lot of criminals who had claimed to turn over a new leaf, like the Thunderbolts, and precious few who really had. “Just remember, Masters, if you’re hiding anything, the Fantastic Four isn’t the only super-team that’s ready to throw you back behind bars if necessary. We’ll be in touch—you can count on it.”

  “Your faith and trust touch my heart,” the Puppet Master replied sarcastically, cutting off the transmission on that rather adversarial note. Iron Man wasn’t too concerned about getting on the twisted toymaker’s bad side; as an Avenger, he’d made too many dire enemies to worry about one more.

  I can deal with Masters if I have to, he thought confidently.

  Unfortunately, his exchange with the Puppet Master hadn’t brought them any closer to finding Wanda.

  “No luck,” he reported to Cap and the Vision. “The only super-criminal puppeteers I could think of are either behind bars or appear to have alibis.” He wouldn’t know for sure until Alicia replied to his e-mail, but in his gut he suspected Masters was telling the truth. Why tell a lie that c
ould be so easily checked on? Masters’s niece was trustworthy, Iron Man knew, even if her uncle was not.

  Cap shrugged his broad shoulders, undiscouraged by Iron Man’s lack of positive results. “We’ll find her, one way or another.” Iron Man admired Cap’s unflagging optimism and faith; the old soldier never gave up, no matter the odds against him. “Besides, the Scarlet Witch I know is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. If there’s a way to get word to us, or even to escape on her own, Wanda will find it.”

  That’s true enough, Iron Man admitted. He recalled that Cap had personally trained Wanda and her brother when they had first joined the Avengers, right after the original team—Thor, Giant-Man, the Wasp, and Iron Man—had broken up. He glanced over at the Vision, hoping that Cap’s words would bring renewed hope to the synthezoid as well. The Vision floated a few feet above the floor, methodically searching the deserted gallery with his glittering plastic eyes. Iron Man found himself wishing he could offer some sort of consolation to the Witch’s former husband. But how did you ease the feelings of an artificial being who rarely admitted having any?

  Maybe the best thing I can do is follow Cap’s example and just refuse to abandon hope.

  Rapidly running out of leads and deductive leaps, Iron Man decided to fall back on the high-tech approach that usually worked for him. Activating his short-range sensors, he scanned the gallery all along the electromagnetic spectrum, searching for any anomalous readings. A beam from his chest projection unit swept the empty chamber; if there were any charged particles, unusual radiation, or unstable molecules in the vicinity, the beam would record their presence and transmit the data to the optical display in his helmet. At first, all he could detect was the solar-based bio-electricity that powered the Vision, but, after fine-tuning his instruments to compensate for the synthezoid’s presence, he was surprised to register something quite unexpected.

  “Well, I’ll be,” he murmured aloud.

  “What is it?” Captain America waited expectantly, clearly confident in Iron Man’s ability to provide a scientific solution to this mystery. “Have you got something?”

  The Vision waited stoically behind Cap, descending to a few inches above the floor. Whatever thoughts might have been passing through his cybernetic brain remained his alone.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Iron Man said, checking and recalibrating his sensors just to be sure, “but I’m picking up persistent traces of radiation. Not enough to endanger anyone, but pervasive enough to have been left behind by something very recently.”

  His mind instantly raced through the various exhibits he had glimpsed throughout the folk art museum: hand-carved weathervanes, decorative quilts, rustic needlework and water colors. He couldn’t think of a location less likely to be trafficking in radioactive materials. But there the evidence was, as clear as the illuminated read-outs before his eyes.

  “What kind of radiation?” Cap asked. It occurred to Iron Man that his fellow hero had actually attended the original atomic blast at Los Alamos, another piece of history in which Captain America had personally taken part. “Anything special?”

  “You bet,” Iron Man answered tersely. Every sensor confirmed the same ominous truth. “It’s gamma radiation.”

  The very force that created the rampaging, half-ton monster known as the incredible Hulk.

  * * *

  THE headquarters of the 6th Precinct was a two-story building on West 10th Street, only a few city blocks away from the park where Rogue had achieved such a dubious form of TV stardom. If any vital evidence had been left behind by her struggle with the mysteriously energetic tee-shirts, it would have been taken here.

  Night had descended on 10th Street, bringing with it a highly unusual visitor. Casing the police station from across the street, standing under the awning of a small antique store, the Beast shook his head and sighed philosophically.

  This would be ever so much easier, he thought, if I was still with the Avengers. Then he could have just waltzed right in, flashed his genuine Avengers I.D. card, and received the full cooperation of the N.Y.P.D., including unrestricted access to the evidence. As an X-Man searching for another X-Man, however, he could hardly expect the same sort of VIP treatment. Alas, our status as outlaws and renegades is the cross which all we merry mutants must bear…

  A palm-sized holographic image inducer, designed years ago by Tony Stark, allowed the otherwise eye-catching anthropoid to loiter inconspicuously upon the sidewalk; to anyone walking by, the Beast looked like merely another ordinary human—specifically, a studious-looking white male with trim brown hair, a tan trenchcoat, and slightly oversized hands. In fact, Hank McCoy had looked much the same when he was younger, before he metamorphosed into a more hirsute form of Beast. He had deliberately patterned the illusion to resemble his earlier self, for old time’s sake. Just to play it safe, though, he kept a safe distance from the overhead street lamps. The antique store behind him, like most of the shops on this unprepossessing sidestreet, had been closed for hours.

  A stately black limousine cruised past, steered by a serious-looking young man wearing opaque red glasses. The Beast nodded to Cyclops before the car turned onto Hudson Street, signaling to his fellow X-Men that he was ready to make his move. Buckling the belt of the rundown trenchcoat, he stepped out of the shadow of the awning and crossed the moonlit street towards the entrance to the precinct house. He had to force himself to walk normally, as any other human would, rather than bound along as he preferred.

  Easy does it, he thought. We’re not invading Asteroid M here, just doing a little low-key reconnoitering.

  The sound of youthful laughter, coming from the bars and outdoor cafes on Hudson, provoked a pang of nostalgia. He and Bobby Drake, better known as Iceman, had spent many fun-filled nights in the Village during their collegiate years, hanging out at Coffee-a-Go-Go and listening, with their girlfriends, Vera and Zelda, to the slightly incomprehensible, Beat-styled verses of Bernard the Poet.

  Frankly, the Beast concluded, that sounds like an eminently more appealing prospect than the mission on which I am presently engaged.

  A solitary flagpole rose from the roof of the squat police station, which was flanked on both sides by much taller brownstones. The Beast passed through a pair of glass doors emblazoned with the badge-shaped insignia of New York’s Finest and was immediately greeted by a large painted sign that read all visitors proceed to desk. Rather than doing so right away, he lingered in the entrance vestibule to inspect a directory posted on the wall. His eyes scanned the list of departments housed within the station house: Community Policing, Crime Prevention, Domestic Violence, Youth Officer, Auxiliary Police, Bomb Squad, Detective Squad, and something provocatively called a Rip Unit. Nothing about Aggressive Attire or Missing Mutants, which made his task all the more problematic.

  Let’s see—if I were evidence from a paranormal episode, where would I be?

  Perhaps the Bomb Squad was the place to start; the rambunctious Rogue had certainly left a big enough crater in Washington Square Park. Unfortunately, by the time Hank, Scott, and Ororo had arrived on the scene, the hole had already been trampled on and about by too many curious citizens, rendering whatever evidence the X-Men might have found there hopelessly suspect. Hank could only hope that the local constabulary had preserved their evidence in a significantly more pristine condition.

  “Can I help you?” a deep voice challenged, an intimidating tone belying the cordiality of its query.

  The Beast looked up to see an imposing-looking officer watching him with a less-than-friendly expression on his face. The Beast was impressed by the officer’s formidable physique … why, his fists looked like they were nearly half as capacious as the Beast’s own gorilla-sized mitts. The undercover X-Man hoped his current disguise looked innocuous enough.

  “Why, yes!” he improvised. “Is this where I go to get an exemption from jury duty? They’ve sent me a summons for next month, but you wouldn’t believe how inexpressibly impossible tha
t is. I’m much too busy, what with deadlines and sales conferences looming on the horizon, not to mention debugging all the software and getting ready for the end-of-the-millennium crunch…”

  As he rambled on, the Beast scoped out the lobby beyond, spotting a pair of stairwells located behind a metal barricade bearing a sign that read STOP, POLICE PERSONNEL ONLY.

  That’s surely where I want to go, he concluded. And with all deliberate speed.

  The officer held up a hand to cut the Beast off. “You want the city courthouse, down by Wall Street. But they’re closed for the weekend. You’ll have to report there in person, during ordinary business hours, Monday through Friday.”

  “Thank you, officer,” the Beast replied, even as he continued to take note of goings-on at the precinct house. “I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.”

  For late Saturday night, the station seemed strikingly calm and underpopulated; then again, he recalled, this had always been a relatively crime-free neighborhood, as much as any part of Manhattan was. Aside from a couple of German teenagers trying to report a stolen knapsack, all he saw were cops going in and out of the building. He glanced at an old-fashioned analog clock mounted on the wall above a convenient pay phone. It was 11:25 p.m. Almost time for the graveyard shift to come on.

  Hmm. That gives me an idea.

  Leaving the building, the Beast returned to the shadows across the street, then scanned one of the departing police officers with the “Record” function of the image inducer, storing the parameters of that particular officer’s appearance in the device’s memory. Then he sat back and waited.

  Sure enough, a little after 11:30, there was suddenly a lot more activity around the entrance, with several exiting cops meeting their nocturnal replacements on the way out. The turnover between shifts was obviously well underway; the Beast realized he would never have a better opportunity to slip into the station unnoticed.