“What are you doing here, you idiot?” Xodus buzzed, anger now coloring his own voice. “I told you to wait with the truck!”
“The truck…” Vic mumbled, forcing himself to look at the prophet and not the man who had just been haranguing him. “The truck was attacked, O holy one. Seized. The X-Men.”
He knew he was coming across as a complete idiot, but he hoped that was what an average Purifier grunt sounded like. Perhaps his disheveled robes would lend credence to his on-the-spot invention? He wanted to know if the security guard was still behind him at the door, but he didn’t dare turn around.
“Which of the X-Men was it?” Xodus barked, taking a step towards him. “Was it the boy, or one of the less valuable mutants? Were they searching for the boy’s father?”
Vic caught himself. Less valuable? Father? They had to still have his dad. He suspected that part of the Purifiers’ efforts were being targeted at him deliberately, but hearing it stated like that struck home. Why him? Why were they going out of their way to find him?
“You really are a fool, Xodus,” said the man behind the desk. Vic realized with a sickening feeling that his voice was the same slick, horrible one he had heard over the phone at Esson Electrical.
“I’ve held off calling you one because I considered you to be at least a useful fool,” he went on. “Until now. I know Sublime Corp doesn’t bankroll any of you for your brains, but really? It surely doesn’t take a savant to work out that our visitor here isn’t one of your cultists.”
Xodus hesitated, appearing not to understand. The man at the desk went on, now with a terrible smile on his lips.
“The only question is, just who is he? Judging by the fact that he appears to have stumbled in on us without any obvious premeditated plan, I suspect it’s someone without experience. Certainly not a real X-Man. But someone with courage all the same. And, presumably, someone who has had a previous encounter with your underlings, Xodus, hence the robes and mask.”
“Preposterous,” Vic said, grasping desperately at a means to worm his way out of the situation. He backed up but butted into the security guard still at the door. “I am as faithful a child of the purification as any in this room!”
“Imposter,” Xodus growled at Vic, finally catching on. “I will remove his mask, Lobe, and make his true identity known.”
“Well?” the man behind the desk said, the words now directed at Vic. “This is what I assume you’ve been waiting for? Aren’t you going to strike?”
In the tiny window of opportunity afforded to him, Vic did the cleverest thing he could think of. He snatched his robes up over his head – taking the grotesque with them – and flung it all in a bundle at the closest Purifier. Then he ran straight for the bank of windows nearest to the door.
The room exploded in violent motion. Both the Purifiers and the guard at the door rushed at him, shouting.
“It’s the lizard,” Xodus bellowed frantically. Vic danced past the first white-robe and ducked beneath the snatching arm of the second. The window was right ahead, and beyond it, Manhattan. Vic didn’t contemplate what he was about to do. He just told himself it would all be fine and charged the glass pane.
He slammed into it head-first, his ridged, bony carapace doing its job. He felt the glass crunch and give, his X-suit and tough hide preventing him from being lacerated as his momentum carried him right through the window and out into nothingness.
Suddenly there was no floor, only the distant tarmac of thirty-four levels below. His stomach lurched and clenched up. His skin bristled, shifting instinctively. He would have cried out, but the wind of the sudden freefall tore his breath away.
In a few seconds he’d be a smear on the New York sidewalk, like one of those horrible pieces of artwork in the office corridor. He lashed out, blindly, panicking. His hand hit a surface with a shuddering impact.
Twist, hold. No. He’d struck one of the lower windows and halted his fall for a split second. It wasn’t enough. He was plummeting too fast, and the surface was too smooth. He lashed out again, with both his hands and his tongue this time.
A jarring impact. Still not enough – he was still falling, his hands and tongue ripped painfully free from the surface by gravity. But his desperate stranglehold had been enough to decrease the speed of the plummet. Still, his head spun. He couldn’t breathe. He struck out one last time and–
Suction. Grip. His body jolted as he was stopped, the windowpane beneath him juddering. He slammed his feet against it for good measure, desperate to banish that falling sensation. The window continued to quiver, but the glass held. His tongue had latched on too, smearing a great arc of saliva across the pristine surface.
As he clung there, his limbs locked and tense, he realized he looked through the window and into an office block beyond. Dozens of faces stared at him aghast from above monitor screens and work cubicles. Slowly, a thick wad of drool from further up the window dolloped down onto his head.
It wasn’t the sort of display he liked to put on for an audience but needs must. Grimacing, he detached his tongue from the pane and, carefully, began to turn. He had to get to the base of the tower fast, just not freefall fast. The grip was precarious though, and even for someone who didn’t suffer from vertigo, a head-first scurry down a sheer wall of glass to a concrete surface was somewhat daunting.
He worked his way carefully off the skyscraper’s flank. As he did so he found himself – ridiculously – thinking about the fact that since he’d come to New York he’d licked both a car park door handle and an office window. He was definitely going to catch something.
He heard someone cry out from below. People started to gather around the spread of shattered glass that had preceded him. One woman was pointing. He’d have probably said something sassy-terrible like “take a pic, it lasts longer” if he hadn’t been so focused on maintaining his ever-sliding grip on the building’s flank and not receiving a broken neck once he reached the ground.
Three floors, two, one. He leapt the last length, landing in a crouch, head bowed, glass crunching beneath him. Flawless. No time to savor it though – he leapt back up and cast about, reorienting himself with the Sublime tower’s front doors. The crowd that had initially gathered around him backed off with a gasp.
“Stop him!” shouted a voice. A section of onlookers parted hurriedly. The security guard from the front doors, accompanied by two others, rushed down the steps towards Vic. He was sure there’d be worse following.
Time to go. He slipped through the crowd, none of them daring stop him, and began to run.
•••
The Purifiers came to a stumbling halt as they saw Victor disappear through the shattered glass and over the window ledge. Wind blowing in from the hole snatched at their robes. Xodus turned his masked face back to Lobe, apparently frozen in shock.
Lobe hadn’t moved from behind his desk. He steepled his hands before him, his voice now filled with ice.
“The mutant can climb walls, my dear prophet. My people are already in pursuit. Get down there and bring that creature back to me, or not even divine protection will save you.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Victor ran for his life.
A spiky green lizard boy being chased through the streets of New York by bellowing security guards apparently wasn’t a shocking sight for the locals, at least not enough to clear him an adequate path. People gasped and jostled out of his way, but the pressure of the mass of bodies occupying the sidewalk still slowed him down. His sharp senses allowed him to duck and weave between stumbling people while his pursuers were forced to elbow them out of the way, but Vic still didn’t fancy his chances of making a clean escape. This had all gone very wrong very quickly, and right now he only wanted to put some clear space between him and everyone who wanted to kidnap or kill him.
It would have been nice to pause and trust in his chameleon abilities, bu
t there was too much movement and shifting light around him. He’d only attract more attention. Instead, he took to the road. Traffic slowed to a crawl as the late afternoon rush hour approached. He used that to his advantage, running past stalled vehicles before diving back onto the sidewalk whenever the cars started moving again. At one clogged intersection he took to the center of the road, his head down and limbs pumping. Cars, at least half of them bright yellow taxis, stretched away from him seemingly endlessly on either side, while the skyscrapers and tower blocks appeared to loom over him, a thousandfold windows peering down at him like magnifying glasses assessing a fleeing insect. Everything became a blur as he pushed himself faster, harder, even his unique physiology beginning to hit its limits.
The moment of focused flight was broken when someone opened a car door directly in front of him. He had the barest chance to react. He directed his motion towards the car itself and, knowing he had no hope of slowing his momentum, leapt.
There was a thud as he landed on top of the taxi, rocking it on its tires. Someone screamed. He carried right on, rolling off the front hood, his skin momentarily flashing bright yellow in sympathy with the bodywork. He landed on all fours and was up and running again in a single motion, his mind buzzing.
Reflexes, reflexes. He didn’t really know where he was going, except that it was away from Sublime Corp. He had to get back in control. Stop panicking.
He dared to slow his pace and wove back onto the sidewalk, throwing a glance behind him as he went. People stared after him and several vehicles he’d dashed past hit their horns in protest, but there was no sign of the Sublime Corp security. He dropped his pace further, feeling his heart rate beginning to ease off. There was no way they could have kept up with him.
The moment’s reprieve didn’t last long. He was quickly reminded that security weren’t the only ones after him. At an intersection a truck tore past, ignoring a red light. The open trailer was packed with half a dozen masked Purifiers, all armed.
Vic hissed, a reptilian instinct, his tongue flicking the muggy air. Xodus had a whole team in town with him, and now they knew he was here. He didn’t want to risk staying in Manhattan. He had to find a way to get out without drawing attention.
That was going to be easier said than done. Now that he’d slowed down, he was attracting more gasps and whispers. One kid being dragged along by his father even pointed at him and started shouting gleefully.
“X-Man! X-Man!”
Even without a powerful corporation’s security guards and a gang of religious fanatics hunting him, a scaly green kid running about New York in an X-suit was a recipe for disaster. He shifted as best he could and headed back out onto the street while the traffic light was still red. With so much movement and so many reflective surfaces about, getting an even half-convincing color-shift on was almost impossible, but it would be a lot easier once he’d hitched a lift.
He grabbed onto the rear ladder of a hefty oil truck as it idled at the lights, getting a face full of exhaust fumes as he clung to it. His body melded with the rust-streaked white of the main tank section, glad to have something solid and stationary to mimic. He felt the metalwork beneath him thrum and vibrate as it began to move, the lights now green. The shouting, staring people were left behind.
The vehicle turned at the junction, the abrupt lurch forcing Vic to grab onto the vapor venting pipe to his right and lock on to avoid being tossed free.
He was moving, that much was positive. He focused on staying shifted, trying not to stare at the vehicles on either side. If the map in his head was correct, he was currently headed south-east. He just had to avoid being noticed by any Purifiers, and hope the truck carried him to Long Island.
He tried to collect his thoughts as he held on. At a glance, his plan to infiltrate Sublime Corp had nearly ended in disaster – and it still might. Even if he escaped, the Purifiers knew he was in New York. That was the immediate negative. The positive was that he’d put a name and a face – well, a horrible, bloated head, anyway – to the position of Sublime Corp CEO. Lobe. What sort of a name was that anyway? It seemed as strange and unsettling as the man himself. Nobody had made Vic feel as uncomfortable in so short a space of time as he had, and that was saying something.
But all the big questions remained. Who was Lobe beyond his high-ranking business role, why was he supplying the Purifiers? Before Vic had crashed the party, it had sounded as though he was tearing into Xodus and the Prophet, himself so fiery, so intimidating, so full of strength and demented zeal, had been taking it. What sort of a man did that make Lobe? The obvious answer seemed to be “someone not to mess with.” But Lobe knew where his father was. And that made Lobe his new number one priority.
The oil truck lurched heavily again, turning on itself as it took a short loop road. Vic grimaced, realizing that in his haste to grab onto the back earlier he’d loosened one of the fume vents next to him. The turn had caused something that looked clear and smelled very much like oil to begin leaking down the back of the main tank and onto the road behind.
“Wonderful,” he muttered before pulling himself up the rear ladder and onto the roof of the tank, latching on hard. The last thing he needed was to get covered in exhaust fumes. He had no idea when he’d next get a chance to wash.
His new perch on the truck’s top afforded him a view of where he was going, along with a welcome sense of relief. Ahead, rising up like the window supports of a great, red-bricked cathedral, were the two stone arches that marked the entrance to Brooklyn Bridge. The Stars and Stripes were fluttering hopefully over them, red, white and blue in the smoggy, late afternoon sun. They were his ticket out of Manhattan and out of the net he sensed closing around him. There was no way the Purifiers had the numbers to cordon off an area as large as Long Island as well. He just had to get there then he could regroup and reassess.
He kept clinging to the roof of the oil tank as it rolled up onto the crossing from the curve of the slip road. The bridge was split along its length by a raised pedestrian walkway, the timber boards to the left just slightly higher than the truck’s roof. Vic could only hope the people crowding along it taking selfies didn’t clock the lizard boy glued to the top of the passing truck.
They’d just reached the first of the two great, cyclopean brick arches that framed the bridge when he felt the truck slowing. He craned his neck so he could see over the front cabin, hunting for the reason the traffic on the bridge’s three south-east bound lanes was decelerating. The answer wasn’t what he’d been hoping for.
The middle of the bridge had been obstructed. One of the ubiquitous, scrapyard-style Purifier trucks had just slewed across the lanes, almost causing a pile-up. Masked and armed cultists were piling out of the back and bellowing angrily at the closest stalled vehicles. One had even lit up a torch.
This was just what Vic had feared most. The way ahead was blocked, and if more Purifiers were coming from Manhattan, the route back was about to be as well. He shouldn’t have just gone for the closest bridge. He was supposed to be a good strategist. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
He glanced up at the pedestrian walkway running parallel alongside the road. No Purifiers up there yet, but it was now crowded with people taking pictures of the traffic jam and the sinister gang who’d caused it. Were there no cops? Nobody with the authority to make these zealots move? Vic knew it was pointless hoping for that. If the police were on their way, they wouldn’t get here before the Purifiers reached the oil truck. And once they did, even if they didn’t initially spot him on top of it, he was sure the crowd watching from the boardwalk just above and to his left would. There was no way there wouldn’t be a commotion, and then he was done for.
What if he leapt to the boardwalk right now? But that would also cause a disturbance in the crowd. What about hiding among the thick, tan-colored struts that supported the pedestrian section? But if he jumped for that he’d definitely be seen. The Purifiers had r
eached the Ford Focus directly in front of the oil truck. He was taking too long! Make a decision!
Just go now, he told himself. Get back along the bridge as far as possible, then get beneath the boardwalk. He turned and bolted for the end of the oil tank, dropping off it onto the asphalt. As he did so he narrowly avoided the oil slick that was spreading from the rear of the truck. It was growing larger by the second, flushing from the now-ruptured valve. That was a real recipe for disaster.
Turned out he was in the middle of a disaster anyway. His twist to avoid the oil carried him almost to the side of the truck, and right into the path of a Purifier questioning the driver of the Ford in front. The terrible silver mask turned and caught Vic in its leer.
Vic ran in the opposite direction. This time though, he didn’t get far. There were more black-robed bodies ahead, turning at the gasps and shouts that arose from the spectators on the boardwalk as they realized what was happening.
A gunshot rang out. The shouts became screams. Vic came to a full halt. Gunfire on a crowded bridge, and a rapidly spreading oil slick too – this had to stop, or a lot of people were going to die.
“Get back!” he yelled up at the boardwalk, then repeated it at the surrounding cars, rapping a fist on a windshield for emphasis. “Everyone get out and get off this bridge! Now!”
The people on the walkway weren’t taking pictures and videos any more. Pushing and shoving had started as they tried to scatter, confined by the railings. Those in the cars were slower to react, only a few people beginning to exit their vehicles. A few others simply opened their doors and peered out or lowered their windows. The realization that this was a lot more than just a traffic jam had only just started to dawn on them.
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