by Greg Cox
But first, he thought, a little protective coloration.
Changing the setting on the image inducer, the blue-furred mutant shifted in appearance to a reasonable facsimile of an officer in blue. Hank McCoy’s youthful face morphed into the prerecorded visage of the officer he had just observed leaving, right down to the last mole and freckle.
You know, he reflected, considering the furry exterior hidden beneath the holographic disguise, this brings all new meaning to the faintly archaic vernacular appellation of “fuzz.”
Striding forward with the assumed confidence of one who truly belonged there, he joined the stream of fresh officers pouring into the station house. No one challenged him as he walked past the admissions desk and beyond the metal barricade erected to discourage further passage by civilians.
Upstairs or down? he wondered, trying hard not to look at all lost. Glancing around, he saw a large bulletin board labeled Crime Prevention Center. Black-and-white crime photos shared the board with maps and charts and clipboards, only a few feet away from what, quite mysteriously, appeared to be a Canadian Mountie uniform on display. If only the elusive evidence would just call out to him…!
“Hey, O’Donnell,” an unfamiliar voice addressed him, “I thought you left already.”
It took the Beast a second or two to realize the cop was speaking to him.
“Forgot something,” he muttered gruffly, hoping that his interrogator, approaching the disguised X-Man in a matching blue uniform, had not taken note of his momentary hesitation. “Cough drops,” he elaborated, throwing in a raspy hack for the sake of verisimilitude.
Will my rather underdeveloped acting abilities be enough to carry the day? he fretted. Talk about an impersonation devoutly to be wished…
“Yeah,” the other cop said with a shrug. He looked like he’d been on the force for years. The nametag beneath his badge identified him as FORRESTER. “Your voice sounds a little weird. Hoarse, kind of.”
The Beast issued a silent prayer of thanksgiving to Melpomene, patron muse of thespians, and started to step away. Unfortunately, the friendly officer seemed to be in no hurry to terminate the conversation. He loitered only a few steps away from the Beast; this cop and O’Donnell were obviously the best of buds.
“You know what really works for sore throats?” Forester said. “Vitamin C. You just have a coupla glasses of O.J. before you turn in tonight and you’ll be amazed how much better your throat’ll feel in the morning. There’s gotta be some orange juice in the fridge back home, assuming Brenda’s done her shopping this week.”
Who in the name of domestic partnership is Brenda? the Beast wondered. My wife? My girlfriend? My mother? It dawned on the beleaguered X-Man that he didn’t even know the first name of the man he was impersonating. He was reluctant to open his mouth for fear of blowing his cover through some innocent error. However does Mystique manage to pull off stunts like these with such aplomb? he thought, gaining a grudging new respect for the malevolent mutant mistress of disguise.
“Thanks for the tip,” he coughed, holding his fist before his mouth. “Well, see you.”
Upstairs it is, he decided, stepping decisively toward the beckoning stairwell. Anything was preferable to this torturous charade. “Hey,” his newfound buddy called out, “you want a ride to the PATH train?”
Who says NY cops aren’t helpful to a fault? the Beast thought, groaning inwardly. Was there no way to escape this oversolicitous officer without calling attention to himself? For all I know, he’s my partner of twenty years.
“No thanks,” he rasped. “I’ve got to make some calls.”
“At this time of night? Like to who?” For the first time, the cop eyed him suspiciously. The Beast fingered the controls of his image inducer, just in case the jig was up and he needed to discard his disguise. What was the legal penalty for impersonating an officer anyway? “You ain’t cheating on Brenda, are you?”
Heaven forbid, the Beast thought, looking past his chatty associate at the lobby beyond. The crowd of police officers was already thinning out as the transition between shifts neared completion; the longer he lingered here, the more he risked exposure.
“No way,” he promised. “I just want to order some movie tickets before they’re sold out.”
“Oh yeah?” Forrester said, looking much more curious than the Beast would have liked. The way his luck was going, the other cop would likely turn out to be a film buff. “What flick?”
“Um, Spider-Man: The Motion Picture,” he improvised, vaguely remembering a “coming soon” ad he’d seen in a magazine somewhere. Wonder if that wascally wall-crawler will see any slice of the proceeds from the box office? Probably not; the courts had long ago ruled that costumed adventurers were public figures and thus fair game for the media. If anyone ever films an X-Men movie, they’ll no doubt pitch it as a horror flick. “Beware the bloodthirsty Beast!”
“Oh, right,” the cop agreed. “I heard that was good.” The Beast expected him to launch into a lengthy discourse on the relative artistic pros and cons of the latest summer blockbusters, but, mercifully, the conversation began to show signs of winding down. The loquacious lawman peered down at his wristwatch. “Geez, look at the time. I gotta hit the road. See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah, you, too,” the Beast replied, breathing a sigh of relief. It looked like he was actually going to get away with this extraordinarily stressful exercise in infiltration.
Then another voice rang out across the lobby, sounding both surprised and aggrieved. “What in the world? That’s me!”
The Beast looked up to see the real Officer O’Donnell staring at him, wide-eyed, from the other side of the metal barricade.
“I mean, that’s not me!” O’Donnell amended, pointing accusingly at his doppleganger, who smiled weakly behind his false features.
Uh-oh, the Beast thought, uncharacteristically speechless.
Heads turned across the lobby as a roomful of New York cops took in the unexpected sight of twin O’Donnells. The chummy policeman with whom the Beast had been conversing for the last several minutes looked the most flabbergasted of all. His confused gaze swung back and forth between the two identical officers. He rubbed his eyes in amazement, but the paradox remained.
“Hey!” Forrester yelled. “What’s going on?”
What was the real O’Donnell doing back here? The Beast was nearly as startled as the befuddled onlookers. He’d felt positive that O’Donnell had left for the night.
Probably forgot his cough drops, the Beast theorized. How annoyingly ironic.
Realizing that he had been scammed, Forrester lunged at the Beast, but his ordinary human reflexes could not match the X-Man’s astounding agility.
“Nice talking to you,” the Beast said cheerily, taking the stairs six steps at a time while simultaneously kicking out with his feet to slam a fire door shut in Forrester’s face. He hopped up the steps with the utmost alacrity, realizing he had only moments before the entire precinct house would be in an uproar. Spotting a fire alarm mechanism at the top of the stairs, he briefly considered triggering the alarm to provide a much-needed diversion, but, upon rapid deliberation, decided that was simply too antisocial a ploy; what if there was an authentic four-alarm blaze going on elsewhere in the city? He’d never forgive himself if lives were lost due to a false alarm.
“Gangway! Coming through!” the Beast hollered as he careened down a corridor on the second floor, hastily scanning the labels on each door he passed. Plainclothes detectives emerged from doorways in a hurry, only to dive out of the way as the Beast bounced through the halls like an out-of-control rubber ball. One staunch officer, made of sturdier stuff than his fellows, attempted to block the disguised X-Man’s path, planting himself squarely in the center of the hall, beefy arms crossed atop his chest. Without even slowing down, the Beast launched himself from the floor and somersaulted over the detective’s head, landing on both feet at least a yard further down the hall.
“Alley oop!” he
exclaimed.
Sorely tempted to abort his increasingly disordered and quixotic mission, the Beast nevertheless continued to peruse the label on each door that came within view. If he abandoned his quest now, he knew full well, he might also sacrifice the X-Men’s only lead, however slender, toward discovering Rogue’s whereabouts. He could not in good conscience allow another X-Man to suffer captivity for one instant longer than necessary, not while it remained within his power to do anything about it.
Fear not, fair damsel, he vowed extravagantly. Help is on the way!
Footsteps and angry voices pursued him. Doors slammed open in his wake and more officers joined the pursuit.
“Thy chase had a beast in view,” he thought, quoting John Dryden, circa 1700 a.d. He was on the verge of giving up when he spotted the stenciled lettering on a glass-and-metal door at the far end of the corridor: PROPERTY ROOM.
“Eureka!” he exclaimed, grabbing onto the doorknob and throwing it open.
A uniformed officer, seated behind a cheap and chipped wooden desk, blinked in surprise, caught off-guard by the Beast’s enthusiastic entrance. “O’Donnell?”
Thank you, trusty image inducer, the Beast thought, grateful for the cop’s convenient case of mistaken identity.
Before the officer could even begin to reach for his gun, the Beast seized him by the shoulders, pulled him across the desktop, sending notepads and documents flying while the startled cop yelped loudly, and threw the officer out into the hall. Then he slammed the door shut, cartwheeled over the desktop, shoved the entire piece of furniture up against the closed portal, and turned it on one side, effectively barricading the entrance.
That should buy me a second or two.
Despite his acrobatic exertions, the mutant hero wasn’t even breathing hard; compared to the Danger Room, this was a leisurely stroll in the park. He quickly inspected the property room, seeing that the bulk of the physical evidence collected by the precinct’s officers was locked away behind a sturdy metal cage that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Peering through the steel bars, which were painted industrial black, he spied a stack of innocuous-seeming cotton tee-shirts resting on a shelf on the right side of the cage. Trying the door, he discovered that an old-fashioned combination lock protected the enclosure from intruders—in theory, at least.
Beyond the relocated desk, the door to the property room rattled in its frame. Determined fists pounded against the blockade as heated voices shouted through the doorway, among them the angry tones of both Forrester and the officer the Beast had just evicted from his post. “O’Donnell—or whoever you are—open this door right now! You’re not going anywhere!”
We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, the Beast thought, contemplating the cage. First, he needed to get at those shirts. Since there was clearly no time to attempt any elegant safecracking (which was more Storm’s specialty, in any event), he was forced to resort to cruder methods to gain access to the cage’s interior. Bracing his oversized feet against the floor, he took hold of the cage door with both hands and strained the ape-like muscles beneath his furry pelt (and holographic disguise).
While his brute physical strength wasn’t nearly in the same class as, say, Colossus or Rogue, it was nothing to sneeze at, either; the Beast figured he could easily arm-wrestle Spider-Man to a draw, which should be more than enough to overcome whatever elementary metal alloy the cage was comprised of. Fortunately, the N.Y.P.D.’s budget probably didn’t allow for adamantium furnishings.
The steel bars shrieked in protest as the Beast tugged on them with all his might, baring his jagged canines as he gritted his teeth. The door came free with a wrenching noise and the broken padlock crashed to the floor. Hurrying into the cage, the Beast went straight for the tee-shirts the cops must have confiscated at the scene of Rogue’s apparent abduction. On closer inspection, he saw that the top shirt bore an ugly anti-mutant slogan, and that the entire stack had been stuffed into a clear plastic bag to preserve and protect the integrity of the evidence.
Excellent, he thought. Let’s hear it for professionalism in criminal investigations.
Judging from the crashing sounds behind him, however, now was no time to conduct his own examination of the suspect shirts. That would have to wait for a more leisurely and private occasion. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw several arms and hands pushing past the barricaded doorway, trying to get a grip on the overturned desk. The grasping arms were uncomfortably reminiscent of a George Romero zombie flick.
Time to go, the Beast concluded.
Stuffing the entire sack into the deep pocket of his trenchcoat, he glanced about for a plausible means of egress, his gaze quickly landing upon the surprising sight of an antique, standard-issue, U.S. Army bazooka, with accompanying ammunition. I don’t even want to think what criminal or street gang they took that particular piece of hardware off of. His heart swiftly went out to Spidey, Daredevil, and the city’s other urban defenders, not to mention the embattled N.Y.P.D. Since when did everyday miscreants come complete with heavy artillery?
Still, perhaps society’s loss was his present salvation. Falling back on a bygone crash course in military ordinance conducted by none other than Captain America himself, the Beast loaded the bazooka as expeditiously as possible, then took aim at the ceiling directly overhead. A resounding explosion followed, blowing a sizable hole in the roof of the police station and raining bit-sized chunks of plaster and concrete onto the Beast’s bushy head.
“Oh, dear,” he murmured, wincing at the damage he had just inflicted on the building. “I’ll have to persuade Warren to make a generous donation to the police department on my behalf.” His billionaire chum could easily afford a whole new station house if necessary, let alone the cost of repairing a hole in the ceiling.
His conscience thus assuaged, the Beast returned the contraband weapon back to where it belonged, then crouched down beneath the newly-created gap, tensing the powerful muscles in his lower limbs. He sprang through the ceiling onto the roof—where he found what looked like an entire squadron of police officers waiting for him.
Well, this is certainly an unexpected and unwelcome development, he thought. I guess I wasn’t the only one who realized the only way out was up.
“All right, stay where you are!” a police woman ordered, taking a bead on him with her handgun. Several other officers followed her lead, the real Officer O’Donnell among them. He glowered at the camouflaged Beast with justifiable outrage in his eyes. “Freeze!”
“I think you have me confused with my friend and associate, the illustrious Iceman,” the Beast declared. Seeing no further point in his appropriation of O’Donnell’s identity and appearance, and hoping for some slight psychological advantage, he flicked off the image inducer in his pocket, appearing before the dumbfounded law enforcement personnel in all his shaggy, simian glory. “Behold, the bouncing, yet benevolent Beast, at your service.”
As hoped, his abrupt transformation provoked gasps and puzzled expressions. A few of the officers, including O’Donnell, stepped backwards involuntarily, the muzzles of their firearms dipping toward the roof beneath their feet.
“I don’t get it,” the Beast heard O’Donnell mutter. “I thought he was one of the good guys…”
And indeed I am, he thought, although this hardly seemed the most prudent moment to explicate the matter, given that he had just been caught red-handed, as it were. Or blue-handed, to be more precise.
Taking advantage of his would-be detainers’ momentary discomfiture, the Beast propelled himself across the open roof, his fists wrapping around the flagpole he had noticed earlier. Legs flying out parallel to the ceiling, he swung around and around the pole, his great feet knocking the guns from the hands of the nearest detectives and uniformed officers. He orbited the pole one more time, building up momentum, then let go, sending his furry form hurtling over the heads of the assembled cops and onto the eastern wall of the five-story brownstone bordering the police station. His
nimble fingers and toes found purchase in the brownstone’s red-brick exterior, and he swiftly began to scale the side of the building.
“Up, up, and away!” he chortled, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the police stranded on the rooftop below.
But, although taken aback by the fuzzy fugitive’s spectacular gymnastics, New York’s Finest quickly took action.
“Stop, or we’ll shoot!” a voice (O’Donnell’s?) commanded, followed by a warning shot that sent chips of stone flying off the brick facade only inches from the Beast’s skull. Laser sights surrounded him with dime-sized disks of blood-red light. The smell of gunpowder reached his sensitive nostrils.
Egads! the Beast thought, gulping loudly as a second warning shot peppered him with bits of stone and mortar. I wonder if it’s too late to rejoin the Avengers?
Suddenly, from out of a clear moonlit sky, a roll of thunder shook the night, drowning out the echoes of the gunshots. A jagged bolt of lightning struck the punctured roof of the precinct house, scattering the throng of armed police officers threatening the Beast and leaving a charred-black scorch mark upon the cement rooftop. A rolling, pea soup fog swept over the scene, instantly reducing visibility to near zero. Immersed in the thick, gray mist, the Beast couldn’t see a thing, but he heard a familiar dulcet voice calling out to him with an exotic West African accent.
“Are you ready to leave this place, my friend?” Storm asked from somewhere overhead.
“Ready and willing,” he confirmed, feeling the comforting weight of the purloined evidence in his pocket. Despite a few unanticipated complications, he had gotten what he had come for. “Thanks for the airborne assist.”
“Your exit could hardly have been more conspicuous,” Ororo chided him. Her strong hands grabbed his wrists. With no fear of falling, trusting completely in his fellow X-Man, the Beast released his hold on the brick wall and let Storm, assisted by a powerful gust of wind, carry him aloft.
It never hurts to have a mutant weather witch on your side, he reflected. His bare feet dangled in the air, high above the rooftop below. Lost in the fog, which shortly dispersed, the 6th Precinct receded beneath him, along with several understandably thunderstruck guardians of law and order.