by Greg Cox
At the west end of the laboratory, beyond the banks of monitors and computerized controls, a large plate-glass window looked out on the island and the sea beyond. Kurt twirled beneath the hoop, twisting his pointed tail, the better to savor the breathtaking view afforded by the window. The entire research complex was built atop a steep cliff overlooking Cape Wrath. From where Kurt hung, he saw a narrow strip of land extend for only a few paces past the base of the building before dropping off abruptly, falling dozens of meters to the rocky beach below. More cliffs flanked the harbor on both sides, their barren, gray faces hiding numerous small caves and crevices. Rolling green hills rose above the cliffs, dotted with abundant patches of violet heather and the occasional wandering sheep. In the distance, across the placid blue waters, Kurt could barely glimpse the Isle of Arran, their nearest geographical neighbor. Twilight gave the entire vista a rosy sheen. What beautiful country this is, he reflected. Why exactly did I leave it again?
He caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the huge pane of glass. Kurt Wagner’s appearance was just as striking as the rugged scenery outside, albeit in a radically different fashion. A coating of fine indigo fur covered a decidingly demonic visage, complete with pointed ears and lambent yellow eyes. Ominous shadows clung to his brow and the planes of his face, seemingly independent of whatever light source might or might not be available. Nor did his physical irregularities end with his satanic countenance or even his highly conspicuous tail; spotless white boots and gloves seemed to accent the fact that he had merely three fingers on each hand and no more than two toes per foot. The latter characteristic increased his resemblance to hellspawn by lending his feet an unmistakably cloven aspect.
That’s right, he thought wryly. I’m a mutant, with an obligation to help make the world safe for mutants and humans alike. And, as he had long ago discovered, there was no better place to do so than among his fellow X-Men, where he fought the good fight under the colorful alias of Nightcrawler.
“What about you, Kurt?” Moira called out, interrupting his autobiographical musings. “Are ye gettin’ bored yet?”
“Nein,” he insisted, his accent as German as his vocabulary. “I’ve been basking in the warm glow of nostalgia.” Swinging back and forth with his tail, he worked up enough speed to send him somersaulting through the air above Moira’s head. Just as gravity threatened to pull him down, he disappeared in a cloud of billowing black smoke that seemed to materialize from nowhere. A sulfurous odor suffused the air-conditioned atmosphere of the lab.
BAMF!
A second burst of smoke exploded between Moira and Bobby, and Kurt emerged from the fumes about four meters below his previous location, stepping lightly onto the tile floor. Well accustomed to Nightcrawler’s unique mode of teleportation, neither Moira nor Bobby appeared startled by his dramatic vanishing act, although Moira wrinkled her nose and fanned the acrid smoke away with her hand. “One of these days, Kurt Wagner,” she declared, “I’m goin’ to figure out why you leave such a bloody stink behind whenever you pull that stunt.”
“All part of my theatrical flair,” Kurt said, taking a bow. He had been a circus performer before he became a super hero, and some habits were hard to break. His dark blue uniform, similar in hue to his indigo fur, still sported flamboyant swatches of crimson better suited to life under the big top. “My apologies, though, for the pungent pyrotechnics. No doubt you’ve gotten used to a cleaner standard of breathing over the last few months.”
In fact, the noisome fumes were already dissipating. “To tell ye the truth,” Moira admitted with a smile, “I think I’ve actually missed the smell of brimstone in the air. The Centre has seemed awfully quiet and empty since Excalibur disbanded and you all went your separate ways. Brian and Meggan off being newlyweds, you folks back at Charles’s Institute… I have to admit the old place gets kind of lonely sometimes.”
“All the more reason to make a habit of these little transatlantic jaunts,” Kurt reassured her. “Have no fear, meine freunde, you couldn’t cut yourself off from the X-Men if you tried.”
Indeed, he recalled, Moira MacTaggert’s involvement with Professor Xavier’s crusade to make a better world for mutants predated the very creation of the X-Men. Her Genetic Research Centre had contributed greatly to modem science’s understanding of the causes and effects of human mutation, or so he had been told. Personally, he was more of a swashbuckler than a scientist.
“Thank you, Kurt,” Moira said, sounding slightly choked up. She dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her labcoat. “And you, too, Bobby. I cannae tell you how much ye all mean to me.”
Especially now that you’re dying of the Legacy Virus, Kurt thought, unwilling to spoil the moment by voicing so somber an issue. He could only hope that Moira’s own unquestioned brilliance could find a cure before her time ran out.
An ear-piercing alarm interrupted their poignant reunion, causing all three of them to look up suddenly. “Vas?” Kurt asked. “A jailbreak?” At any given time, he knew, a variety of dangerous evil mutants like Spoor or Proteus were kept under observation in underground cells beneath the Centre. Could one or more of them have broken free?
“I don’t think so,” Moira stated, running to consult a computerized control panel next to the open entrance to the laboratory. “Most of the remaining felons were shipped to the appropriate authorities after Excalibur disbanded. Plus, all the containment cells are automatically flooded with tranquilizing gas at the first sign of a disturbance.” She examined a lighted display and nodded her head knowingly. “Nae, ’tis an intruder alert.” With the press of a button, she silenced the blaring alarm, then keyed in a series of preprogrammed security commands. A heavy metal door slammed into place, sealing the entrance, at the same time that clanking steel shutters descended over the large glass window. More commands caused a row of television monitors to light up along one stretch of the wall. Kurt stared at the screens, which showed only incomprehensible displays of electronic “snow.”
“Who is it?” Bobby asked. “Magneto? Apocalypse?” Like the laboratory, he readied himself for action. The icy sheath covering his hand spread quickly over his entire body, as ordinary flesh and blood metamorphosed into translucent, blue-tinted ice that looked as though it had been sculpted into the semblance of a humanoid figure. Frozen spikes grew like stalagmites along his arms and spine, whilst the floor beneath his feet took on a frosty sheen. “I kind of hope it’s the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants again,” Iceman quipped. His voice, now issuing from a throat of ice, acquired a peculiar crystalline ring. “I haven’t flash-frozen the Toad for ages.”
Moira glared at the TV screens in frustration as her fingers worked the controls. “Bloody hell,” she cursed. “Something’s interferin’ with the video transmissions from the security cameras.” She scrutinized the readings on a lighted display panel and a puzzled look came over her face. “Gamma radiation? Where the devil is that coming from?”
Kurt peered over Moira’s shoulder at the security panel. He couldn’t make head nor tail out of the abstruse electromagnetic data, but he deciphered the primary security display easily enough; flashing red lights highlighted several locations on a mounted schematic diagram of the entire Centre. “Looks like we have multiple intruders,” he announced gravely, “including one directly below us, in the medlab.”
As team leader of Excalibur, the X-Men’s defunct European division, Nightcrawler had learned to make command decisions quickly. “Iceman,” he instructed his refrigerated teammate, “you stay here and guard Moira.” He breathed a sigh of relief that Rahne, Moira’s adopted daughter, was visiting friends in Edinburgh; that was one less person to worry about. Rahne had her own lycanthropic abilities to protect her, but she was still only a teenager. “I’m going to investigate. We need to know who we’re up against.”
“Got it,” Iceman agreed. His breath chilled the air as he spoke, producing hazy puffs of fog with every syllable. Technically, he had seniority over Nightcrawler, having been among
Professor X’s first generation of protégés, but he seemed content to let Nightcrawler take charge, perhaps recognizing Kurt’s greater familiarity with the premises. “Take care of yourself, pal.”
“Danke,” Nightcrawler replied. Closing his eyes, he visualized the medical facility one floor below him and wished himself there. As usual, he experienced a momentary sensation of intense heat, as if briefly passing through some infernal other dimension. He opened his eyes to find swirling black smog obscuring his view, until he arrived in the medlab, accompanied by the inevitable burst of smoke and noisy bamf. He winced at the explosive and pungent nature of his advent. So much for stealth, he thought, wishing, not for the first time, that his ’ports were less attention-getting.
As the inky fumes cleared, he found himself standing at the foot of an empty sickbed in the Centre’s main infirmary. A half dozen more beds were lined up in a row along the northern wall of the chamber. Sophisticated diagnostic equipment, looking like something out of Star Trek, was mounted over the head of each bed. Closed supply cabinets ran along the opposite wall, behind Nightcrawler, while the scuffed tile floor revealed the tracks of a rolling equipment cart now parked neatly between two parallel beds. Sterilized surgical tools and bandages, wrapped in sealed plastic bags, waited atop the cart, ready for immediate use.
Fortuitously, no patients currently resided in the medlab. A devout Catholic despite his diabolic form, Kurt prayed that the crisis at hand would not fill the empty beds with casualties. He helped himself to a scalpel from the equipment tray, wishing that it were a full-sized rapier instead. Alas, his favorite swords were all on the other side of the Atlantic at the moment, far beyond the range of his talent for teleportation. Serves me right for traveling light, he thought.
But where was the mysterious intruder? Scalpel in hand, Nightcrawler scanned the seemingly empty infirmary. With the overhead lights turned off to save electricity, the only illumination came from the open doorway to the hallway beyond, but the dim lighting posed no difficulty to Nightcrawler, whose yellow eyes easily penetrated the darkness. Yet the silent medlab looked as lifeless as a morgue.
Suddenly Nightcrawler heard the sound of heavy footsteps echoing from the corridor outside, heralding the unknown invader’s return to the infirmary. “Mein gott,” Nightcrawler whispered to himself. The intruder sounded big, whoever he was. Feeling exposed and vulnerable, Nightcrawler leaped upward, attaching himself to the ceiling like a spider on a wall. His dexterous fingers and toes dug into the minute seams around a pair of dormant fluorescent lights while he gripped the scalpel between his fangs.
Hanging upside-down as he was gave him an inverted view of the doorway, so that the ominous figure who suddenly filled the entrance, silhouetted against the light of the hall, appeared to be standing on his head. At first, Nightcrawler thought the inhuman outline belonged to Ch’od, the huge reptilian humanoid who served among that band of roving space pirates who called themselves the Starjammers; like Ch’od, the figure was at least three meters tall, with flared, wing-like ears and the muscular build of a gladiator on steroids. Despite the glare from the door, Nightcrawler glimpsed a scaly green hide, a protruding brow, and a mouthful of jagged, shark-like teeth.
What on Earth is Ch’od doing here? Kurt wondered. Last he heard, the Starjammers were light-years away from Scotland, fighting for truth, justice, and plenty of plunder in the distant Shi’ar Galaxy.
It came as a relief to discover, however, that their unexpected visitors were old allies, as opposed to vile enemies bent on revenge. No doubt the additional intruders detected by Moira’s security setup were Corsair, Raza, Hepzibah, and the other Starjammers. Kurt wondered if Cyclops knew his father was back in the Milky Way again; Nightcrawler himself had not seen Corsair and his valiant crew since Jean and Scott’s wedding many months ago.
Nightcrawler’s tail plucked the scalpel from his jaws. “Wilkommen, mein freund,” he called out, seeing little need for further discretion. Then the looming saurian figure stepped further into the medlab and Kurt realized he had made a dreadful mistake.
The silent newcomer bore a striking resemblance to Ch’od, it was true, but as Nightcrawler’s eyes compensated for the glare from the hall, he discovered significant differences as well. The intruder’s scales were darker than his alien friend’s, more olive-green than chartreuse, while the creature’s hairless skull was adorned by a plethora of bony knobs that Ch’od had never possessed. Even more significantly, the newcomer’s hostile sneer and malevolent red eyes conveyed an essential animosity that Nightcrawler would have hardly expected from the good-natured Starjammer.
The immense, lizard-like biped locked its gaze on the imprudent X-Man. “Subject designate: Nightcrawler,” the monster intoned. Its deep, gravelly voice had an oddly robotic cadence, at odds with its primeval appearance; it was as though the Creature from the Black Lagoon had spoken with the mechanical monotone of Robby the Robot—or a Sentinel. “Aggressive action is mandated to neutralize mutant interference.”
Spoken like a Sentinel all right, Nightcrawler thought with a sickening sense of recognition. But why the organic-looking scales and fangs? Who was the Sentinel trying to fool, and what exactly was it pretending to be? Now that he could see past the creature’s superficial resemblance to Ch’od, Kurt thought the Sentinel’s reptilian facade looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t remember from where. He looked a little like a Skrull, with the green skin and bulbous, segmented brows, yet Nightcrawler had never seen a Skrull so large and impressively muscled, nor was the invader clad in anything resembling a Skrull military uniform. Like the Beast, the hulking creature wore only a pair of drab blue shorts. Not exactly standard attire for Sentinels, he thought, but, then again, neither are crocodile skin and teeth.
The Sentinel (if that’s what it truly was) gave him little time to search his memory. Clawed hands seized the foot of the nearest sickbed, wrenching the bedframe from the floor, then swung it like a gigantic flyswatter at Nightcrawler, who had to do a backflip across the ceiling to evade the blow. Missing the X-Man, the metal frame shattered the overhead light fixtures instead. Sparks flared briefly and bits of glass and plastic rained onto the floor. Nightcrawler hoped for a second that the Sentinel might electrocute himself, but no such luck; the mutant-hunting monster was better insulated than that. Fiery blue traceries ran down the length of the bedframe to the robot’s clawed fists, yet the electricity sputtered impotently around the scaly green hands.
“Surrender, mutant,” the Sentinel commanded. Sheets littered the floor, along with a thin foam mattress, as the swinging bedframe pursued Nightcrawler down the length of the infirmary. Hoof-like feet ground the discarded blankets beneath the Sentinel as it tromped across the floor. “Surrender, mutant,” the behemoth commanded chillingly. “You cannot escape the Abomination.”
The Abomination!
Suddenly, Nightcrawler remembered where he had seen this particular lizard-man before: in the Professor’s comprehensive database of superhuman menaces, mutant or otherwise. The real Abomination, alias Emil Blonsky, was one of the Hulk’s regular adversaries, another gamma-mutated monstrosity who was supposed to be just as strong as the Hulk and twice as ruthless. Nightcrawler had never met the Abomination personally, but the genuine article had nearly killed two of Kurt’s fellow X-Men, Archangel and Marrow, less than a year ago, shortly before Nightcrawler rejoined the team. Kurt recalled Warren’s account of that incident with a shudder; his high-flying friend had described the Abomination as a particularly vicious foe. If this robotic facsimile of the Abomination was even half as dangerous as its inspiration, then they were all in serious trouble.
The Sentinel swatted at Nightcrawler with the metal bedframe, coming so close that Kurt felt the breeze generated by the makeshift weapon’s passage. He found himself being driven back into the northwest corner of the medlab: a dead end that left him little room to maneuver. The end of his tail remained wrapped around the handle of the scalpel, but the surgical tool seemed
hopelessly outmatched by the much larger bedframe. Nightcrawler realized he needed a brilliant tactical ploy—schnell!
His luminous eyes flicked toward the doorway at the opposite end of the infirmary, the only source of light within sight. “Dim lights. Corridors B1 through B12,” he shouted past the ersatz Abomination. Voice-operated technology responded immediately, lowering the lights in the adjacent hallway and throwing the entire level into shadowy darkness.
Kurt could see perfectly well, of course. They don’t call me Nightcrawler for nothing, he thought. Beyond that, the drastic reduction in illumination allowed him to take advantage of another of his natural talents: the ability to turn all but invisible in deep shadow.
Cloaked in darkness, he scurried on all fours across the ceiling and away from the corner. I need to get to the Communications Suite, he realized, and summon reinforcements. Just what the world needed, a more brutal breed of Sentinel. God help us all if every one of the intruders is fashioned in the image of the Abomination, with Hulk-like strength at its disposal.
Without warning, the saurian skull swiveled atop a nearly-nonexistent neck. Red eyes, now suffused with an unnatural red radiance, fixed with impossible accuracy upon the invisible mutant. “Infrared tracking initiated,” the Sentinel announced. “Target located.”
The bedframe crashed to the floor as, discarding its weapon, a scaly hand reached out for Nightcrawler with unexpected speed. Before Kurt had a chance to react, a vise-like grip closed around his ankle, squeezing his leg with bone-crushing force!
* * *
SOMETHING was scratching at the shutters. Something large and very persistent.
Perversely, the same opaque metal blinds that protected Moira and Bobby from whatever was outside the Centre also prevented them from seeing what exactly was trying to get at them. Considering that this particular lab was three stories above ground level, Moira MacTaggert realized, the would-be invader could either fly or was very, very tall. How else could it reach the now-barricaded window?