First Team

by Robbie MacNiven

  Vic didn’t know where to go. Up and onto the walkway? He wouldn’t put it past the Purifiers to open fire and mow down half the crowd. Over the side and into the river? He didn’t like the look of the fall, let alone the swim afterwards. Could he fight his way past them?

  “Come on, move!” he tried to urge the people getting out of their cars. “This whole bridge could go up at any second!”

  That got a better response. The oil truck driver had been hauled from his cabin by the Purifiers. They were letting people stream past them, but they were closing in. Some had firearms, including the same sort of energy weapons Vic had seen under the rail bridge.

  The cars immediately around him were almost all abandoned now, and the cultists had let the truck driver go. Vic moved to the struts beneath the walkway, intending to bolt through them to the other side. That was when he saw the Purifier carrying the lit torch. The man was gibbering some sort of prayer or incantation, waving the naked flame towards his kindred, as though blessing them.

  Time seemed to slow. He cried out in desperation, trying to get the fool to turn back. Too late. Far, far too late. The man, probably half-blind in his grotesque, stepped right into the slick that had spilled from the rear of the oil truck, passing through the fumes venting from the broken valve at the same time.

  There was a rushing whoosh, and blue flame ignited and soared from the puddle at the Purifier’s feet up to the loose valve. Vic flung himself behind the nearest vehicle.

  The explosion seemed to tear the very heart out of the bridge. Vic felt the heat before the sound and fury of the blast hit him. Without his gnarly skin and his X-suit, he expected it would have seared the flesh from his bones. Even though the car took the worst of it, he was still picked up and flung back against the lower struts of the walkway, his cry of fear and pain stolen away in the whooshing rush of vaporizing moisture.

  Then came the light and the sound, leaving him blind and deaf. He collapsed to the asphalt and rolled onto his back – it was scorching hot to the touch. He thought he was on fire, burning up, consigned to immolation. It was just like one of Xodus’s sermons. He tried to scream but choked instead.

  His eyesight returned, slowly and painfully. He wasn’t on fire, but the heat remained. Flames surrounded him, a conflagration that had engulfed the western half of the bridge, slicking across the concrete and eating up the stanchions and struts with terrifying hunger. The car that had saved him was a blazing, melting wreck with black smoke broiling from it. Row after row of other vehicles also caught fire, leading to another tanker down the way. When it caught flame, a second explosion punched a shockwave out over the structure, making all of the ignited vehicles shudder.

  Vic choked again and tried to summon some spit, raising an elbow to cover his mouth as he got up onto his knees. The exposed parts of his skin felt tender and sore, and his eyes stung from the smoke and heat, but he was still in one piece, and he wasn’t on fire, yet. That was a start, he tried to tell himself. He crouched, searching desperately for a route out. He found none. His entire existence had been reduced to a few dozen paces of blazing metalwork and rapidly dissolving asphalt, walls of flame sealing off any path either forward or back.

  That left only the sides. The river edge was several burning cars away, and he didn’t want to negotiate a passage through the combusting substances spilling from them. The walkway was at his back. It hadn’t yet caught light. It was his only hope.

  He dragged himself onto his feet and jumped for the struts holding up the boardwalk. He met the metal, and agony exploded along his fingers and palms. The struts were scalding hot. He let out an agonized moan, but his reptilian grip ensured he didn’t let go. He began climbing instead, hand over hand, scaling the scorching metal frame as quickly as possible. He didn’t get far before he felt something clamp around his ankle.

  He looked down and realized that one of the Purifiers had survived the initial blast. The man howled in rage, his robes ablaze from head to foot. Vic stared wide-eyed down into a silver mask that appeared to be melding with the face underneath. Fingers clawed at him, trying to drag him back down into the fires of hell.

  He kicked out manically, dislodging the cultist’s grip and sending him tumbling. Trying his best not to breathe in, he scrambled up the remaining struts and spilled up onto the timber boards above. Only then did he allow himself to drag in a desperate, choking gasp, one that was only half-free of the toxic smoke boiling up from below.

  How much longer before the boardwalk burst into flames too? He had to keep moving. A hand covering his mouth, he stood and turned towards Manhattan. The route to Long Island was completely blanketed in black smoke, and it was right next to where the tanker had gone up. He couldn’t risk pushing on that way. Before him the twin arches of the one hundred fifty-year-old bridge soared upwards, smoke coiling and rising from around their solid red bricks, the Stars and Stripes still fluttering above them. The flag looked small and forlorn, a little dash of color against the encroaching smog of fumes and ash.

  The smoke directly ahead of Vic eddied, disturbed as a shape moved through it. His heart picked up its pace as he saw a golden gleam through the ruinous miasma, and a heavy, black-clad bulk that materialized with it.

  Xodus had caught up with him. The Purifier advanced along the walkway towards Vic, emerging through the smoke like a demon summoned up from the infernal realms. The fanatic’s mask, ironically so angelic, seemed to gleam and shimmer in the firelight, staring directly into Vic’s soul.

  The hulking zealot halted and extended one powerful-looking hand. “Surrender yourself,” he intoned, his mask’s vocalizer buzzing. “Even the mutant is not beyond salvation if he submits and confesses his sins. Come with me now, or you shall be consigned to the flames.”

  “What does your master want with me?” Vic demanded, taking a step back as he tried to assess his options. The vehicle section of the bridge to his left was a cauldron of fire and smoke now, and it had touched off stationary, abandoned vehicles on the right-hand lane now as well. The walkway remained a bridge over a lake of fire, but he feared it would be seconds, rather than minutes, before the wooden sections combusted or the struts began to give out. His only route was back, likely into more flames, or ahead, into Xodus.

  “I answer only to the divine,” the prophet declared, his hand still outstretched.

  “Lobe didn’t look divine to me,” Vic shot back. The angelic mask offered no reaction, but the Purifier dropped his hand.

  “He is just another instrument of the Great Will,” he said. “Like all of us. Now, surrender. I will not offer you another chance.”

  Vic didn’t have time for further retorts. He crouched and leapt, landing gracefully on the walkway’s right-hand railing and attempting to spring past Xodus. The prophet responded with a savage, well-honed speed, and Vic caught the flash of steel just in time to launch himself from the railing and back onto the boardwalk.

  Xodus brought the blade he had drawn from his robes down to the en garde, the tip gleaming. Vic recovered his balance, taking in the sight of the medieval-style arming sword.

  “Seriously?” he demanded. “You’re not a knight templar, big guy. The Middle Ages want their aesthetic back.”

  Xodus lunged. Vic was driven back three, four, five paces, on his tiptoes now. He’d taken fencing classes in the Institute – heck, only Striker and a couple of others scored higher with a sword than he did in training – but he currently had nothing to meet the oncoming Purifier with. Besides, rapier versus broadsword on a narrow walkway in the middle of a conflagration wasn’t exactly a matchup he’d had much practice at.

  He knew his fists better, and his speed. Xodus seemed fast for his size, but he wasn’t Anole-fast. Vic kept retreating as far as he dared along the walkway, drawing him in before switching back to his front foot. He whipped in and snatched Xodus’s wrist with one hand, pinning the blade to one side. He went in pas
t his guard with a left hook, right to the angel’s face. Crack!

  He instantly regretted the strike as pain blossomed across his knuckles. He was committed now though. He let go of Xodus’s wrist with his right hand and slammed that one home too, then back in with his left. Crunch!

  The prophet reeled away, but got his blade back up before Vic could press his advantage any further.

  “You’re slow, prophet,” he taunted, panting slightly, hoping the brute couldn’t see the pain of his bruised knuckles in his face. “Shouldn’t have brought a sword to a fist fight.”

  Xodus emitted a raw, static-cracked bellow and threw himself back onto the attack. Vic had been counting on riling him up, but the speed and aggression almost caught him off guard. He had to backpedal fast, razor-sharp steel parting the smoke inches from his face.

  The Purifier paused his attack, appearing to collect himself after his momentary loss of control. Advantage Victor. He lunged in, again ignoring the tip of the sword, knowing that once he was past it, the Purifier was essentially defenseless. This time though, Xodus welcomed him.

  The prophet didn’t seem like the finest swordsman, but he had strength and size. Vic realized too late that he’d allowed him to bypass his blade, body-checking the mutant instead.

  Vic grunted as he collided with him, getting a face full of stinking black robes. Xodus grappled with him, trying to fix an arm around his neck in a choke hold. Up this close, Vic could hear the buzzing of his breath wheezing through his mask’s vocalizer, smell the stink of him, like stale sweat and brimstone, and feel the iron-hard potency of the muscles beneath the robes. The raw strength, the maniacal fervor there, left him in no doubt that he wouldn’t win the contest like this. Luckily, he had other plans.

  In fighting to keep down Vic’s arms and get a grip on his throat, Xodus had neglected his own face. Vic planted his toes and slammed his head up and forward.

  Xodus hadn’t reckoned with the thick carapace and bony ridges that plated Vic’s skull. There was a splitting, cracking noise as the center of his head met the Purifier’s mask. The grip on Vic instantly vanished as Xodus stumbled back. He attempted to follow up again, but a desperate, seemingly blind slash of the sword kept him at bay.

  Xodus recovered, standing firm, but there was a quiver in his blade now. His mask was cracked too – a fissure ran down from beneath its left eye. It looked as though the angel was weeping.

  Vic was about to summon up another taunt, hoping to trigger a fresh attack, when a crashing sound behind him forced him to turn. A section of the boardwalk had collapsed, the empty space filled with a great surge of fire, smoke and sparks. The fresh blaze of heat almost drove Vic back into Xodus, coughing and flinching.

  “Feel the fury of the fires of absolution, mutant scum!” Xodus declared, brandishing his sword triumphantly towards the rising flames.

  Vic couldn’t fight this. Smoke filled his lungs, making breathing difficult, and his body couldn’t regulate the intense heat rising up around him. He was out of time. Flames started to run along the boards at his feet. In desperation he leapt once more onto the railing bars and from there threw himself onto one of the metal beams that ran from the walkway across the top of the vehicle lanes underneath. The space gaping below Victor was a cauldron of fire, the heat and smoke almost overwhelming. The beam itself seemed practically molten, and every step was agony. He fought on, though, somehow keeping his balance amidst it all, trusting his abilities to stop him from mis-stepping and plunging into the inferno.

  To his horror, Xodus came after him. He had none of Vic’s youth, poise or reptilian skills, yet he forged onto the beam in pursuit without even hesitating. He was madman, yet he kept his own footing, even as part of his hem caught fire. The material had to be flame-resistant, for it didn’t spread further, but even stepping along the beam must have been like torture. Yet still he came, following Vic until he was standing on the very edge of the Brooklyn Bridge.

  The waters of the East River surged far below him, dark and bitter. He turned his back on the sheer drop, confronting Xodus as the Purifier bore down on him once again. How the man still stood, let alone fought in the midst of the heat and smoke, Vic had no idea. He just knew he wasn’t going to stop.

  Xodus lowered his sword, the tip barely a foot from Vic’s breast. Fire and ash broiled around him hellishly, sparks dancing across the visage of the prophet’s serene, cracked mask.

  “I have you now,” the broken angel snarled.

  Vic lashed out, as much for support as to drive Xodus back. He snagged the collar of the black robes in the claws of his right hand. Xodus tried to disentangle him. For a few breathless, furious seconds they grappled on the precipice. Then, with a bellow of effort, Xodus raised his sword in his other hand and slashed down, once.

  Pain the likes of which he had never known suffused Victor. He might have screamed. He didn’t know. The pain was everything, right up until he felt his stomach lurching and his world turning end-over-end.

  He was falling, he realized. Falling in agony, in despair. Falling to his death. He got a glimpse of the bridge soaring above him, engulfed in fire. The dark shape of Xodus stood, silhouetted against the inferno as he watched him fall. His world turned over again, and he stared down, down at the churning cold waters of the East River, rushing to meet him.

  An impact. An icy, penetrating chill. Still, there was agony. Then darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  When Victor had been younger, his mother and father had bought him a pet lizard. It was an obvious attempt at helping him come to terms with his unique biology, and it succeeded. The creature was a knight anole, the largest species of the Dactyloidae family of reptiles. Vic had bonded with it instantly. He’d perceived himself in its rough green scales and climbing abilities and had been fascinated by its neck frills and unblinking intensity. It had lived in a light box on his desk, a constant, cold-blooded presence in his earliest memories. He’d named it “Sir Anole” and had insisted on being addressed as its squire. At some point, he’d begun to address himself as Anole too.

  He dreamt of Sir Anole as he drowned, and afterwards too. It was a strange, listless dream. The creature was in pain, locked away in its little box, and he could not help it.

  “You are wrong,” the lizard croaked, for in this reality it could speak. “I am not in pain. You are.”

  “I’m fine,” he reassured it, his face pressed up against the light box glass. The heat lamp within pulsed and stuttered, its power fading on and off. “I’m fine, really.”

  But he wasn’t. None of them were. Mom, Dad, Gray, Ci, Santo, Cyclops, the Institute. Any of them. And certainly not him. He lied about not being in pain, because he was an actor, and what was acting but lying to a knowing audience? But it hurt so bad that a part of him was sure he was dying.

  Or already dead. Drowned.

  Vic opened his eyes and sat up with a gasp. He immediately regretted the sudden motion. Pain flared through his body. It felt as though his skin was on fire.

  Fire. He remembered that. Water too and just as unwelcome. Cold, dark waves that consumed him as greedily as the bright, scorching flames had. They all wanted to eat him up, until there was nothing left between them.

  He fought to shake off the fever-dream. What had happened? Where was he?

  He tried to take in his surroundings without moving too much. He appeared to be in a small, rectangular room composed of blue steel, the walls corrugated. It was stuffy and warm, partly because of the orange and black portable power generator and the two lamps and laptop it was rigged up to, set up on a foldout camp table in one corner. Much of the floor space was taken up by two inflatable mattresses and a foldout chair. There were several rucksacks stacked by what he took to be the door. He was lying on the only real bed, another foldout piece of camping kit. The mattress dug into his spine.

  He looked down, tentatively. He was still
in his X-suit. His head ached. He reached up to check his carapace, and as he did so a horrible realization dawned.

  The arm he was reaching up with was no longer there.

  He let out a cry of dismay. The pain across his body had been so general, and his confusion so total, that he’d only just spotted the fact that his right arm now ended just below his shoulder joint. The severed end was a semi-translucent mass of soft, tender-looking flesh. The sight of it made him feel sick and sent a shudder running up this back.

  “Oh my God,” Victor moaned, covering the numb shock he felt with vanity. “My acting career is finished.”

  “If you think you need both arms to be an actor then you really are an idiot,” said a voice from nowhere. Vic yelped with surprise and twisted in his bed, once more regretting the movement – his rough skin was tender, the presumed aftereffects of recently being caught at the heart of a raging inferno.

  “Ci?” he asked out loud. “Please tell me I’m not dead and this isn’t some sort of weird afterlife?”

  Cipher bled swiftly into existence, standing in front of the camp table and its laptop. She smiled, though Vic couldn’t help but notice the tiredness and concern beneath the expression.

  “Good to see you’re awake,” she said. “It’s been almost a full day since we fished you out of the river. Jonas was getting worried.”

  “The river,” Vic responded, his thinking still sluggish. He remembered falling, that terrible impact of icy cold. The East River. So, he’d survived it after all. Not fully intact though.

  “My arm…” he began before trailing off, looking forlornly down at his stump. Now that he was fully conscious, he was aware of the pain – it was a deep, dull ache, separate from the soreness of his singed scales.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Cipher said. “We don’t know how you lost it. There was no sign of it when we got to you.”

  “How?” Vic demanded, questions now beginning to jostle and compete with the misery of his missing limb. He fought the urge to reach out and touch her with his remaining hand, to check she was actually flesh and bone and not another dream or phantom. “How did you get me out of the river? How did you find me? And why are you here? Where’s Gray?”