First Team

by Robbie MacNiven

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  First Team, A Marvel: Xavier's Institute Novel

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  New Marvel Prose Novels

  Aconyte Mailing List

  First Team

  “And what about you, kid?” rattled the chill, deathly voice, right next to him. “You’ve been awful quiet on that phone.”

  Vic spun to his right, hard and fast, and brought the phone receiver crashing across the jaw of the man who’d been standing behind him. The blow sent him reeling. His buddy was dragging a sidearm from his waistband. Someone in the cafe screamed, and several dived for the floor.

  Vic leapt up onto the counter and lashed out with his tongue. The muscle, slick with drool, darted half the length of the cafe and knocked the pistol right out of the man’s grip.

  In such a confined space, filled with civilians, the odds weren’t the worst but getting people out without someone getting hurt looked impossible. He had no more than a second to choose. Fight or flight.

  FOR MARVEL PUBLISHING

  VP Production & Special Projects: Jeff Youngquist

  Associate Editor, Special Projects: Caitlin O’Connell

  Manager, Licensed Publishing: Jeremy West

  VP, Licensed Publishing: Sven Larsen

  SVP Print, Sales & Marketing: David Gabriel

  Editor in Chief: C B Cebulski

  Special Thanks to Jordan D White & Jacque Porte

  © 2021 MARVEL

  First published by Aconyte Books in 2021

  ISBN 978 1 83908 062 3

  Ebook ISBN 978 1 83908 063 0

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover art by Anastasia Bulgakova

  Distributed in North America by Simon & Schuster Inc, New York, USA

  ACONYTE BOOKS

  An imprint of Asmodee Entertainment Ltd

  Mercury House, Shipstones Business Centre

  North Gate, Nottingham NG7 7FN, UK

  aconytebooks.com // twitter.com/aconytebooks

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Grace Gaskell.

  Chapter One

  There was a fly beating itself to death against the window.

  Victor Borkowski tried his best to ignore it. He stared down at his exam paper, struggling to drag the answer from the neat black lettering glaring back at him.

  6) a. Write a short (500 word) essay on the primary causes of the Boston Massacre. Include references to secondary literature.

  He was one hundred fifty words in. Well, one hundred fifty-three. He’d counted it five times. A little over one hundred fifty words was all he’d been able to wring from a very vague knowledge of Britain’s “imperial crisis” in the 1760s. He remembered it mostly because the class had been interrupted mid-session by Glob throwing up. Seeing someone with translucent skin vomiting wasn’t something Vic was ever going to forget, and the shock appeared to have seared the entire lesson onto his memory.

  C’mon, Vic! Focus! Sam Adams. The Sons of Liberty. He’d watched the whole TV series over the last couple of days. That counted as studying, right? His other study plan – just talking to Graymalkin about the subject – hadn’t worked as well as he’d hoped. It turned out that Gray’s super-powers didn’t include a flawless memory and being born in colonial America hadn’t given him an omnipotent understanding of all events occurring in the year 1770. After Gray had started digressing about how the word “tricorn” was an inaccurate nineteenth-century invention, Vic had just let him talk, his own thoughts wandering to his acceptance speech for the student drama awards.

  Would a tux be overdoing it? Would Stryker be there this year? Would going chameleon halfway through be too showy?

  No! Focus! He glanced back at the fly, still slamming relentlessly off the window, its every effort apparently bent towards escaping the stifling, drab examination hall. You and me both, buddy, he thought. He began to write, just for the sake of it. Any answer was better than none. Samuel Adams, brother of John Adams. He didn’t like tea. No one in eighteenth-century Boston did. No stamps either. Damn, Glob’s guts had looked weird when he’d thrown up. All squirming and twitching. Was that what everyone’s insides looked like when they spewed? He’d never been happier about the fact that his own insides didn’t show up when he needed to go invisible.

  He stopped writing, sighed heavily, and scribbled an ugly, jagged black line through everything he’d just written. Back to one hundred fifty-three. How many words did that leave, three hundred forty-seven? Why was math so much easier than history? He’d aced that exam. Or fencing. Something exciting. Something he was good at.

  Bzz-thunk! Bzz-thunk! Bzz-thunk! went the fly.

  He looked up at it. The insect was resolutely attempting to headbutt its way through the reinforced glass of the large viewing window that lay between the exam hall and the war room. Its efforts were relentless, its head apparently unbreakable. At this rate it would be about as capable of sitting through an exam as he was.

  As though sensing his thoughts, the fly abruptly buzzed upwards and began a frenzied orbit of one of the hall’s cage lights, like a
dog chasing its tail. Vic forced himself not to stare at it, letting his gaze sit neutrally on the rest of the room spread out before him.

  Like much of the rest of the New Charles Xavier School for Mutants, the exam hall looked like a Cold War-era bunker that had decided to dress up as a high school for Halloween. It was a long, vaulted space of bleak and unyielding concrete, each pitted surface lit by the hard white illumination of the cage lamps overhead. To this austere, subterranean realm had been added a few half-hearted concessions to a bland North American school aesthetic. A large world map had been tacked to the wall, along with framed photos of previous graduations and a collection of rough-and-ready art class projects. Today the floorspace was also taken up by several dozen rickety desks and chairs, all of which bore enough graffiti to convince Vic that they’d come with the original base.

  It wasn’t somewhere that exactly inspired academic expression, and that was even before factoring in the infernal heat that materialized whenever more than a handful of warm, breathing bodies gathered in one of the school’s many underground chambers. There was an AC system, of course, but it produced the most grating rattle imaginable, so it was turned off for exams. Vic found himself seriously considering raising his hand and claiming his coldblooded inability to self-regulate his body temperature counted as an exceptional exam circumstance. It wasn’t often that he wished he could swap scales for skin that was capable of sweating, but this was one of those times.

  Bzz-thunk! The fly was back at the window.

  Sam Adams was definitely John Adams’ brother, right? Paul Giamatti had been great in that role. He should have watched more of the Adams series instead of trying to coax the knowledge out of Graymalkin.

  He glanced over at Gray, seated at the desk to his right. The lugubrious-looking youth was hunched forward awkwardly over his undersized desk, writing slow and steady, his expression one of tightly controlled focus. Apparently sensing Vic’s attention, he paused and glanced up. Vic grinned broadly at him and gave him both thumbs up. Come on Gray, give me something to work with. Graymalkin simply held his gaze for a moment, then blinked and looked abruptly back at his writing. The sheet of his answer booklet was full of long, elegant cursive that Vic would’ve struggled to read even if he’d been trying to – not that he was, of course!

  He looked away hastily, not wanting to catch the attention of Ms Pryde. She was stalking the aisles between the desks, air-walking with complete silence. Unlike the other examiners, you never heard her coming. Hell, she could even phase if she wanted to observe you without being noticed. Totally unfair. At least she was visible now, her back to Vic as she passed noiselessly between Pixie and Trance near the front-right of the hall.

  He took the opportunity to glance across at his other neighbor, Cipher. She had been writing furiously, but had now paused and was staring straight ahead, expression blank, one hand teasing subconsciously at the strands of her long locs.

  Vic felt a sense of undeserved gratification. It wasn’t just him, Ci was stuck as well. The sharpest girl in the class, the de facto head of school security and the most mysterious student in the whole facility was struggling just as much with the history of colonial America as–

  Cipher went back to writing, the renewed sound of her scribbling crushing Vic’s hopes utterly. He let out another sigh and slumped back in his chair, wincing slightly as it creaked.

  The sound of his own disconsolance had drawn the attention of Ms Pryde. She gave him a hard look over the bowed heads of the dozen students seated between them. He smiled back at her and straightened up.

  If he got through this, he would actually study next time. That was a promise. But now, he just had to put pen to paper and get it done. Gritting his teeth, he leant forward like everyone else and began to write. There had been disturbances between locals and soldiers just prior to the Boston Massacre. Street brawls, civil unrest. The tensions all contributed to the shootings. Keep expanding on that. You’ve got this. He paused to count up his word total again – two hundred twenty-one. Getting there. Practically halfway.

  Bzz-thunk. Bzz-thu–

  He blinked and realized abruptly that his fist was raised and clenched. The fly had been buzzing past, presumably with a splitting headache, and he’d just reflexively snatched it out of the air. He could feel it tickling his palm.

  He looked up. At the end of the hall Ms Pryde was looking at him again, her expression cold. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she shook her head. Equally slowly, Vic unclenched his fist. Freed from its abrupt prison, the fly zoomed back up towards the light.

  As if on cue, there was a sharp buzzing sound at the end of the hall. Several students jumped. Ms Pryde held up her communicator – a small, circular flip-device – and killed the timed alarm.

  “This examination session is ended,” she announced. “Everyone, please remain seated while we collect your script books. And double-check your names are on the front, in capital. Real or alias, whichever you prefer.”

  Vic realized he’d even forgotten to do that. Giving up on the essay, he shut his answers booklet and printed his super hero name, ANOLE, on the front, along with the time and date. To hell with it. He didn’t look at Ms Pryde as she she swept past and picked up the booklet.

  Chapter Two

  “The second session begins in twenty minutes,” Ms Pryde said as she returned to the end of the hall. “You’re all permitted to use the bathrooms and the break room. Dismissed.”

  The hall resounded immediately with the harsh scraping of chairs on concrete. Vic joined the chattering crowd of students as they filed out, trying not to think about the past two hours. If he didn’t ace the second exam session, he’d have to retake the course at the end of the summer.

  “Cheer up, Borkowski,” exclaimed a sing-song voice from amidst the crowd carrying him along. He looked up to see Megan Gwynn – Pixie – being her usual purple-haired, pointy-eared, grinning self. When Pixie smiled, it was hard not to smile back. Vic did his best though.

  “Tough one, huh?” she pressed as she fell in alongside him, her slender wings buzzing faintly.

  “We’ll see,” Vic said, not really wanting to talk about it.

  “What did you put for question two? The date of the Quebec Act?”

  “Tell me it was 1773?”

  Pixie hissed between her teeth and shook her head. “I thought it was 1774?”

  Vic groaned audibly and Pixie threw her arm over his shoulder, cutting through his misery with a short giggle.

  “It could be 1773! I was basically just guessing!”

  “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

  “Perhaps,” she smirked, removing her arm and giving him a nudge in the ribs. “Oh, Ben!” she continued, buzzing off to chat to the burning-haired Match before Vic could respond. He stepped into the break room after her, trying and failing not to look as miserable as he felt. He hated it when people knew he was down.

  The “break room” was the war room’s less aggressive title. When the underground labyrinth had served as the Weapons Plus Program’s primary testing facility, it seemed the circular chamber had indeed been as some sort of command-and-control center. Smaller than the exam hall, though still fashioned from the same grim, unyielding blocks of concrete, its banks of computers now sat stripped out and inactive and its monitor screens dormant. Scrapes on the floor indicated where a heavy iron chart desk had once been bolted to the ground, while scuffed warning strips and hazard markings helped to demarcate an armored exit hatch and emergency lighting.

  The military-industrial chic had been softened somewhat by the efforts of the students over the last few years. There were a few ratty old leather couches and chairs spread around, an old TV and a pair of chipped coffee tables, a row of prepacked cupboards and cabinets flanking a fridge and freezer that had been covered top-to-bottom with stickers – at some point it had become tradition for students to pla
ster them with images and cards from their travels. The space had assumed the status of an unofficial common room, especially for the students in the dorms on the west side of the cavernous danger room at the heart of the facility. It was soon loud with the chatter of the examinees as they swapped answers and commiserated with one another.

  Vic found Cipher and Graymalkin on the edge of the semicircle of chairs and couches that occupied most of the middle of the room. The latter was standing stiffly, listening to Ci as she perched on the back of a chair currently occupied by Triage, who was sitting facing in the opposite direction. The pair looked up as Vic emerged from the crowd.

  “Take it that went badly?” Cipher asked, her tone light.

  Vic managed a shrug. “Well, if the Quebec Act was passed in 1773, then…”

  “It was 1774.”

  “Then yeah, it went badly.”

  “You have my commiserations, Victor,” Graymalkin said. After a second, in what seemed like an afterthought, he reached out and put a hand carefully on Vic’s shoulder.

  Despite himself, Vic laughed. “You know, they shouldn’t really let someone who was alive at the time take the history exam,” he told Gray. “Does it even count as history for you? You were growing up while George Washington was a Virginia legislator.”

  “Simply living through an event doesn’t guarantee a nuanced understanding of it,” Graymalkin pointed out in his stiff, archaic accent. “And do we not study modern history also? Were not all of these students alive for the last four presidential elections?”

  Vic conceded the point with a wave of his hand.

  “Well, that’s my summer ruined, I guess,” he said. “Looks like I won’t get a chance to visit home after all. I’ll have to stay in this sweltering dungeon, buried in textbooks until I have to re-take it.”

  “I will maintain your company,” Graymalkin offered gallantly. “I have nowhere else to be.”

  “Yeah, welcome to the ‘school-is-your-home’ club, Vic,” Cipher added.