by Greg Cox
“Give it up, tin man,” the Hulk snorted. He could not resist giving the captured Sentinel the world’s most high-powered noogies, brutally rubbing his knuckles over the bony protuberances atop the fake Abomination’s cranium. “How you like them apples, robot?”
Unable to extricate his head from the crook of the Hulk’s immovable elbow, the Sentinel took a page out of the Hulk’s own recent playbook and stomped down on the Hulk’s bare foot with tectonic force. The Hulk’s toes survived the impact, but the floor did not; gravity seized hold of both green monsters as they fell into a pit of their own creation. Caught off-balance by the collapse of the floor, the Hulk let go of the Abomination as he fell, landing with a thud upon a hard cement floor one story below. Broken chunks of plaster and linoleum rained down on his head.
The basement where he had landed was dark, but enough light shined down from the hall above to let the Hulk see that his robotic adversary had also survived their crash landing. “Warning! Structural integrity of floor supports under critical strain,” the Abomination-Sentinel announced belatedly. “Disintegration of immediate infrastructure imminent.” One of his crimson eyes had cracked down the middle, exposing hidden circuitry. Dust and debris coated his olive-green scales. He tottered uneasily upon his two-toed feet.
Okay, the Hulk thought, rising to his feet and shaking off the residue of the collapsed floor, now you’ve made me mad.
And, as the genuine Abomination knew too well, the madder Hulk gets, the stronger he gets…
Trampling fallen chunks of flooring beneath his feet, the Hulk ran across the shadowy basement and delivered a mammoth punch, backed up by all his headlong momentum, to the Sentinel’s midsection. The ringing impact echoed through the basement, followed by the gratifying sound of delicate machinery breaking apart somewhere deep within the Sentinel. The robot did not fall, not right away, but it swayed drunkenly atop unsteady limbs that appeared to have lost their gyroscopic equilibrium.
“I am the Abomination … mination … mination …,” the Sentinel stuttered, like a scratched vinyl record, until the Hulk put it out of its mechanical misery by smashing his fist down on top of the robot’s skull and driving its head halfway into its chest. The tiny lights around the Sentinel’s exposed eye and ear went dead and froze in place like a wind-up toy whose spring had come unwound.
The Hulk stepped back to admire his destructive handiwork. Satisfied that the scaly mannequin was not going to start moving again, he looked around to inspect his new surroundings. What have we got here? he wondered.
The basement appeared to hold some sort of prison or zoo. Parallel rows of locked iron doors, each with a barred window installed at eye level, advertised the existence of at least a dozen cells, six on each side of a wide central hallway.
Looks like the X-Men’s own private Alcatraz, the Hulk thought, although the cells looked comfortably furnished enough, with beds, desks, computers, televisions, and other amenities. He stomped down the corridor, peering into each cell as he passed. Most appeared unoccupied at the moment, although in one cell he spied a huge, shaggy figure lying unconscious upon the carpeted floor. A hand-written label on the door identified the inmate as “Spoor,” and he looked dead to the world, snoring loudly and twitching occasionally in his sleep. Across the hall, in the opposite cell, was a bizarre, feathered creature that didn’t even look humanoid. The name on the labeled identified it simply as “Unknown Mutant #9.” It, too, was out cold. Probably drugged or gassed, he guessed, to keep them from escaping during the chaos upstairs.
Growing bored with Moira MacTaggert’s underground mutant menagerie, the Hulk turned to leave, then heard something stirring in the last cell on the left. A voice, with a pronounced German accent, called out from behind the closed door. “Hello? Vas is das? Is anybody there?”
His eyes adjusting to the gloom, the Hulk peeked through the small, square window in the door. To his surprise, the cell appeared empty, even though the disembodied voice grew louder and more demanding. “Moira? Bobby? Is that you?”
Either he’s invisible or he’s one heck of a ventriloquist, the Hulk concluded. His beefy fingers groped along the wall beside the locked steel door until he found a manual switch.
CLICK.
Lights came on inside the cell, the sudden illumination making visible a writhing figure trapped in some kind of metallic netting. Bound but obviously not gagged, the newly revealed figure had dark blue fur, pointed ears, and a tail that was currently trying to wriggle its way free of the thin metal cables that had ensnared it.
Hah, the Hulk thought, recognizing the frustrated prisoner now that the shadows had been dispelled. If it wasn’t the X-Men’s resident smurf…!
* * *
I know Scotland is supposed to be cold, but this is ridiculous!
Zooming into the lab in Storm’s wake, Iron Man was surprised to find that the spacious facility looked like it had been hit by a blizzard. Melting ice slides crisscrossed the room, along with, alarmingly dismembered pieces of Iceman. For a moment, he feared the X-Men’s human popsicle had met a ghastly fate; then he realized there were enough frozen limbs around to assemble a small army of Icemen, and he surmised the nature of the ruse the real Iceman must have attempted—unsuccessfully, it appeared. The chilling effect of all that ice and snow could be felt even through Iron Man’s armor, but a quick cybernetic adjustment to his internal thermostat maintained a comfortable temperature inside his iron suit.
Wary eyes, as well as on-line targeting programs, observed and evaluated the situation as he cruised below the high ceiling of the lab. Two hostages, enmeshed in wire nets, and two potential threats: Gamma Sentinels, just as Nick Fury described. The craftsmanship was impressive, Iron Man gave them that; the Sentinel impersonating Doc Samson was a dead ringer for the world’s strongest psychiatrist, while the Harpy, for all her feathers and giveaway green skin, bore a noticeable resemblance to the late Betty Banner. Then again, there was no reason not to expect the Gamma Sentinels to be near-perfect replicas of the beings they were modeled after. S.H.I.E.L.D. had long ago perfected, with more than a little help from Tony Stark, the art of making believable Life Model Decoys. It galled him to think that some of his own discoveries and techniques might have gone into the creation of these destructive, mutant-hunting monstrosities.
As for the hostages, Iron Man guessed that the attractive, middle-aged woman tied up on the floor was Moira MacTaggert. By process of elimination, he swiftly deduced that the unconscious young man lying not far from her, trussed up like a Christmas tree whose branches had been tied down for easy transport, was Iceman, de-iced. One thing for sure, the downed youth didn’t look at all like Nightcrawler. No tail, for one thing. His sensors picked up strong life-signs coming from both captives. That’s something to be thankful for, he thought, although it worried him that Nightcrawler was nowhere to be seen.
Storm was more than worried. The sight of her friends, bound and left to shiver on the icy floor, while their captors despoiled Dr. MacTaggert’s work at will, seemed to spark a righteous fury in the mutant weather goddess. “Sentinels,” she denounced them with fierce dignity. “I know your kind too well, and I will not suffer to let you abuse these people or this place a heartbeat longer. Feel the wrath of the elements at my command!”
Thunder boomed indoors and crackling lightning wreathed her head like a halo. Radiant energy suffused her eyes, hiding their distinctive blue coloring, and jagged bolts of electricity leaped from her fingertips. Iron Man’s environmental sensors instantly registered a sizable spike in the barometric pressure along with an unnatural increase in the ozone level. Talk about storm warnings, he thought, impressed by the lady’s manifest power. Having been on the receiving end of that power only just this morning, Iron Man was glad he and Storm were on the same side now.
Twin thunderbolts singled out both the “Harpy” and “Doc Samson,” striking the two Sentinels and engulfing each in a shower of sparks. With the two hostiles on the defensive, Iron Man too
k advantage of Storm’s literal blitzkrieg to look after the defenseless hostages. Activating the vari-beam projector in his chestplate, he used a magnetic attraction ray to lock onto the metal filaments binding the prisoners and lift both MacTaggert and Iceman off the floor and draw them to his waiting gauntlets. “Don’t worry, doctor,” he assured the wide-eyed woman. “You’re in good hands now.”
His chin sagging limply onto his chest, the unconscious Iceman muttered something that sounded like “Sentinels, gotta stop the Sentinels…”
First things first, Iron Man thought. Making sure he had a firm grip on both hostages, he retreated through the shattered window into the chill Scottish night. He hated leaving Storm alone with the Gamma Sentinels, but, with any luck, he could get back to the fight before too much precious time passed. Shooting past the edge of the seaside cliff, he dove at a 45 degree angle to the pier below, then executed a last-second change in his trajectory that let him touch down on the dock rightside-up. A diamond-edged precision blade emerged from the index finger of his right gauntlet, and he carefully sliced through the wires binding Dr. MacTaggert and Iceman. “About time!” the scientist said, with a definite Scottish burr. She shook her hands and feet to restore the circulation to her extremities. “Thank you, Iron Man. I have to say, I never expected to see you here.”
“The X-Men don’t have a monopoly on helping mutants,” he told her. “I’ve tangled with more than a couple Sentinels in my day. Now then, if you’ll excuse me.” Iron Man helped her into the quinjet, then laid Iceman across two of the passenger seats. “You should be safe here,” he said. Locking the aircraft behind him with a remote-control signal, he fired his boot-jets and accelerated back toward the lab.
Hang on a few more seconds, Storm, he thought fervently. I’m on my way.
When he reentered the razed and refrigerated laboratory, he found the whole place shaking like it was on top of the San Andreas fault. At least a 3.0 on the Richter scale, he estimated, and his seismic sensors quickly confirmed his ballpark figure. Crystalline ice slides vibrated to pieces, tinkling like a chorus of wind chimes, while whatever test tubes, slides, and petrie dishes had managed to survive the super-powered strife that had laid waste to what looked like a well-designed lab, succumbed at last to the violent tremors rocking the very walls of the science building.
Meanwhile, Storm was still making a valiant stand against superior numbers of Gamma Sentinels. The Harpy-Sentinel had taken to the air to fight the mutant heroine in the cramped airspace of the lab, blocking Storm’s lightning bolts with her own radioactive hellbolts. Polarized filters slid into place within Iron Man’s eyeslits to shield him from the strobe-like flashes being generated by the two women’s respective energy blasts. Granted, the Harpy-Sentinel wasn’t really a woman, but if it looked like a harpy, and acted like a harpy, Iron Man was more than willing to take the mythological she-creature on her own terms.
The Doc Samson-Sentinel added to Storm’s difficulties by snatching whatever heavy objects were at hand—lab-stands, stools, computer monitors, even hefty fragments of ice—and throwing them with superhuman strength at the X-Man. So far, Storm’s superlative aerial abilities had allowed her to evade both the Harpy’s blasts and the Doc Samson-Sentinel’s projectiles, but Iron Man knew it was only a matter of time before the dual assault overcame Storm’s uncanny maneuverability. Even now, as the Golden Avenger came zipping across the lab, a flying file cabinet, propelled by the Doc Samson-Sentinel’s synthetic thews, narrowly missed Storm’s skull, clipping off a corner of her black, tiara-like headdress.
That was too close for comfort, Iron Man decided, making the Doc Samson-Sentinel his target.
A well-aimed repulsor ray deflected the filing cabinet back at the muscular Adonis with the flowing green hair, who batted it away with a swipe of a larger-than-life hand. The cabinet rebounded into a wall-sized Cray supercomputer that looked like it had already been bored through the middle.
What a waste of good hardware, Iron Man thought. He knew how much a Cray cost. Perhaps, when this was all over, Stark Solutions could offer the Genetic Research Centre a good price on an upgraded computer network.
Leaving the Harpy-Sentinel to Storm, Iron Man rocketed toward the other Gamma Sentinel. This shouldn’t be too hard, he thought confidently. The real Doc Samson was, when you got down to it, just an overeducated muscleman with a natural punk hairdo and an Old Testament nom de guerre. No match for an Avenger, or even an X-Man.
Some of his self-assurance slipped away, though, when Iron Man spotted what the Doc Samson-Sentinel had chosen for his next piece of ammunition. No mere filing cabinet this time, the cylindrical sample containment vault was clearly marked with the universal symbol for highly biohazardous material.
Wait a sec, Iron Man thought, as the Doc Samson-Sentinel raised the dishwasher-sized vault high above his green-haired head, hadn’t the Beast said something, back at the Mansion, about Dr. MacTaggert searching for a cure for the Legacy Virus?
Instantly, Iron Man activated the airtight seals on his armor, switching to his internal air supply, and elevating all defensive systems to Level 4 readiness, suitable for protection from all known biological organisms.
If that mechanical maniac cracks open that vault, he realized, lord knows what sort of mutated viruses could escape.
In theory, the deadly Legacy Virus had no effect on ordinary humans (or Sentinels, for that matter), but Iron Man didn’t want to take chances. Furthermore, if an airborne form of the virus got loose, Storm and the other X-Men could be infected.
* * *
“PUT that vault down—carefully!” Iron Man ordered the Doc Samson-Sentinel, increasing the volume of his vocalizer to be heard over the Hulk-induced earthquake that was suddenly rocking the building. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”
Unfortunately, the Gamma Sentinel seemed to know exactly what he was about. “Targeting: mutant designate: Storm. Calculating necessary trajectory along x-y-z axis, compensating for gravity versus momentum.” Before the Avenger could raise a hand to stop him, the Doc Samson-Sentinel catapulted the vault at Storm.
“No!” Iron Man shouted. His navigational computer performed its own calculations, boosting the output of the appropriate boot-jets. The Golden Avenger shot between Storm and the pitched containment vault, which struck him squarely in the chest. Ignoring the impact, he wrapped both arms around the wide metal cylinder, hoping against hope that his chest-beam had cushioned the collision enough to preserve the structural integrity of the vault.
Upon closer inspection, he discovered that the vault had already been coated by a protective layer of solid frost. Iceman’s doing, he guessed. The frozen sheath had melted away in places, but that could be easily remedied.
Let it never be said I’m too proud to appropriate another man’s good idea, Iron Man thought.
A special rapid-freezing solution spurted from miniature nozzles in his gauntlets, undoing the damage that time and temperature had inflicted on the original icy casing. “That’s better,” he said, holding onto the vault with both arms. Now where the devil was he supposed to put the blasted thing?
He couldn’t leave Storm alone against two Gamma Sentinels again. That would be pushing their luck too much. Instead, he stayed where he was, hovering several feet above the slush, and tossed the vault out through the window to the bay below. Powerful servomotors within his armor amplified the force of his throw, so that the ice-packed container easily cleared the narrow strip of land between the building and the cliff, as well as the beach and docks below, splashing at last into the sea, where the cold northern waters would surely keep the icy seal intact—at least until Iron Man had a chance to retrieve the vault later.
Then a searing blast of atomic heat caught him by surprise, scorching him even through multiple layers of armor and protective insulation. Blast! he thought, cursing himself for his carelessness. I forgot about the Harpy-Sentinel.
It seemed the winged bird-woman had not limited herself (itse
lf?) to the division of labor that Iron Man had unilaterally drawn up among the combatants, switching her murderous attentions from Storm to Iron Man while the Avenger’s concentration was elsewhere. Iron Man felt like he was being roasted alive inside his armor, a situation made decidingly worse by the fact that he had just expelled most of his primary coolant in the course of refreezing the vault of viruses. Already he could feel first-degree burns reddening his skin.
Fortunately, Storm was alert to the Harpy-Sentinel’s intentions even if Iron Man had not been. A miraculous gust of wind caught the Harpy-Sentinel beneath her emerald wings, flinging her unwillingly to the opposite end of the lab. The potent zephyr also carried away much of the hell-bolt’s unbearable heat. The sudden cessation of the scalding radioactive hellfire, followed by the sweet relief of that cooling breeze, made for some of the best air conditioning Tony Stark had ever experienced.
I owe you one, lady, he thought gratefully.
He could think of no better way to pay Storm back than by taking care of the Samson-Sentinel, permanently. The tempest-taming X-Man had proved she could steal the wind from the Harpy-Sentinel’s wings; the Doc Samson Gamma Sentinel was his job.
He raised his gauntlets, palms up, and targeted his pulse bolts at the long-haired LMD, who had already torn out another chunk of the vivisected Cray to use as a missile. Iron Man wasn’t worried; at this range, his plasma pulses, perhaps the most devastating weapon in his armor’s arsenal, would reduce the rampaging robot to a pile of nuts and bolts.
“Have no fear, Doc Samson is here!” the Gamma Sentinel bragged unconvincingly.
Not for much longer, Iron Man thought, smiling grimly beneath his faceplate. Yet before he could discharge the devastating pulse bolts, the wreckage-littered floor of the lab exploded between Iron Man and his target, as a monstrous green giant, straddled by Wolverine in his blue-and-yellow costume, blasted through the lab like a Saturn rocket heading for orbit. The leaping Hulk (or was it the Hulk-Sentinel?), along with his luckless rider, tore through the ceiling on their way to the roof three stories above, leaving an open, raggedy-edged shaft that stretched the entire height of the building. In the snowy battleground the lab had become, a yawning pit now divided the chamber in twain.