First Team

by Robbie MacNiven

  “I don’t know,” Gray admitted. “I last saw him pursuing Lobe up the spire stairs.”

  “What about Xodus?”

  “I fought him a moment ago. His sword is now broken, but his white-robe servants saved him.”

  “We need to help Santo,” Cipher urged, “and try and reach Vic’s dad. We can’t keep this up for much longer.”

  “That may not be possible,” Gray said.

  Cipher could already see what he meant. The worst of the dust from the sacking explosion was beginning to settle, and she could almost see across to the opposite transept now. Dan’s pyre lay ahead, the rocks that Santo had thrust up to shield it partly toppled and collapsed. Purifiers were all over them, setting up defensive positions, pausing their assault to center their resistance on the mound of sticks and kindling. They knew the mutants were going after their captive. They had them just where they wanted them.

  “We need to regroup as well,” Cipher said to Graymalkin.

  “If my powers were at their height I could likely free Victor’s father, even in the midst of the cult’s defense,” Gray said. Cipher looked up at the broken dome overhead, through the remnants of the swirling dust and smoke. Sunlight still beamed through, albeit weak and slender.

  “It isn’t nightfall yet,” she said doubtfully. “We don’t have time for you to build your power.”

  “There may be another way,” Graymalkin said. “But you’re going to have to trust me.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Vic had a plan. It wasn’t his best, but it was all he had. None of them had predicted this. Vic had feared, at worst, that Lobe shared the fanatical views of the Purifiers, and was using his wealth and power to develop some sort of strain that would target mutants in an attempt to wipe them out. Never had he imagined the madman would be trying to replicate mutant genes, let alone bottle and sell them.

  He bounded up the steps. He knew he would hit a dead end when he emerged at the tower’s belfry. That couldn’t be helped. He’d have to face Lobe at some point. It may as well be atop the spire of an old, crumbling church in east-side Brooklyn.

  He burst up onto the timber boards of the bell platform. New York stretched out beneath him, Manhattan visible in the distance, the sun behind it sunk into the midst of a jagged nest of spires and towers. He turned, finding two great cast-iron bells at his back, suspended along with their ropes above a sheer drop that appeared to plummet away down to the east transept of the church’s interior. The sounds of gunfire and shouting from the still-raging battle echoed up through the opening, a constant, stress-inducing reminder to Vic that he had to hurry.

  Trying to stay away from both the interior and exterior edges, Vic snatched his communicator free from his suit and keyed it. “Lobe’s got my mutant powers,” he said, hoping that any of his companions could hear him. “He’s been gene-splicing–”

  He got no further. With a scrabble of claws on stone, Lobe burst up onto the tower, going from all fours to an upright posture. He grinned manically.

  “Going somewhere, Victor?” he demanded, and lunged. Vic had no more room to retreat and could only take the blow on his right side, a flurry of punches striking his larger arm. He cried out, dropping the X-communicator. It rolled across the floorboards, stopping at Lobe’s feet.

  “I wondered when I’d get my hands on one of these,” the head of Sublime Corp said, pausing to scoop up the device. Vic tried to lash out at him as he did so, but he darted back with the sort of speed Vic just couldn’t match.

  “You’re going to have to be quicker than that,” he said, killing the communicator’s transmission. “Sublime Corp found your special suits easy enough to replicate, but the communication hardware… We’ve been looking for a device like this to reverse engineer for quite some time. Perhaps it’ll even let us hack the Xavier Institute’s database. You really are invaluable to me, Anole.”

  “What do you want with me?” Vic pleaded as Lobe pocketed the communicator. “You’ve already taken my arm. You’ve got your powers. Just let my dad go and leave us in peace.”

  “You’re so petulant,” Lobe snapped, his dark humor abruptly vanishing. “I’ve taken one of your arms, yes. But I see that you’ve replaced that. It’s intriguing, I didn’t realize you possessed that level of regenerative ability. You and me both, now. But I’m going to need everything you’ve got, I’m afraid. I wish I could claim it’s going to be a quick, painless process, but it absolutely won’t be.”

  The attacks resumed, relentless now. Vic tried to color-shift, almost instinctively, but he had nowhere to hide. Laughing madly, Lobe changed too, becoming a blur as he drove Vic almost right around the bell tower. Vic favored his right arm in his defense, crying out whenever it was hit. His side already hurt from the clash in the cloisters, and trying to match his own powers was exhausting. Lobe seemed as adept at using them as he was – there was a viciousness to his speed, and a freshness to him that Vic, burnt out, couldn’t match.

  “Hurts, does it?” Lobe demanded, still shifted, panting slightly. “Not fully formed then. Tender. Practically useless. I almost feel bad, beating up a kid. Almost.”

  He grabbed Vic, but as he did so the arm that seized Vic’s shoulder rippled and became visible again. They both stared down at it, before Lobe snarled and slammed Vic into one of the pillars supporting the bell tower’s spire. Sandstone crumbled and gave way behind him. Vic struck Lobe with his left fist, catching him across the jaw, but it seemed to only enrage him more. He hauled Vic in the opposite direction and cracked his head off one of the mighty bells. There was a shuddering clang, and Victor went limp in his grip.

  “Pathetic,” Lobe growled, tossing him down onto the floorboards. Vic groaned and rolled onto his back, looking up at him.

  “You’re losing your powers,” Vic said, managing to smile. “The serum is only temporary. That’s why you need me to finish your experiments. To find a permanent solution.”

  “And we’ll find one,” Lobe said, the rage in his eyes no longer masked by mockery. He kicked Vic’s left arm, then reached down and hauled him back onto his feet, pinning him against the barrier that separated them from the sheer drop down into the transept. Vic tried to fight back with his left arm, his right hanging bruised and useless, but Lobe clearly still had enough of the serum left in his veins to hold him in place. He pinned the left arm by the wrist. An icy calm filled Vic.

  “You were born with your abilities,” Lobe snarled in Vic’s face. “I’ve earned mine through hard work, through merit.”

  “Through money,” Vic managed to say, his lips bloody. Lobe backhanded him.

  “Silence, boy! I’m a genius,” he barked.

  Vic, his head turned to one side by the blow, looked slowly back at Lobe, and this time his pink-stained teeth bared in a grin.

  “Not much of a genius if you still haven’t realized there’s actually nothing wrong with my new arm.”

  He paused, taking in and relishing the understanding, the horror, in Lobe’s eyes. Then, jaw clenched with the effort, Vic swung his arm – his right arm. The full force of the heavy, gorilla-like limb thundered into the Sublime CEO’s abdomen, slamming him backwards with such power that he crashed through the belfry’s external barrier and plummeted out over the edge of the tower. There was no scream – Vic doubted Lobe had any air in his lungs for that – but eventually there was a small crunching sound from far below.

  Vic turned away and wrung out his right hand, trying to work the pain from his fist. The urge to revel in vengeance was a strong one, but he didn’t give in to it. He peered over the edge of the belfry, down at the street below.

  Lobe was sprawled across the sidewalk. Vic couldn’t make out if he was still alive, but the CEO wasn’t moving. Vic readied to scale down the outside of the tower, when he realized something.

  The gunfire he’d heard earlier seemed to have died down. Was that a bad si
gn? Had the Purifiers overwhelmed the others? He battled with the need to ensure Lobe was finished over concern for his friends. The latter won out. If Lobe still lived, Vic doubted he was going anywhere fast. He had to get to the others, and to his father.

  He knew he didn’t have time to rush back down the stairwell. He clambered onto the edge of the barrier between the belfry and the drop into the transept and reached out, tugging one of the hefty ropes dangling from the bells. It creaked ominously but held. Cuffing the blood from his mouth and nose and wiping his palms on his X-suit, Vic launched out and caught onto the rope fully.

  The bell tolled, a great, sonorous peal that rang through the broken church and out over east Brooklyn. Vic shimmied down the rope, trying not to go too fast so he didn’t scorch his palms. As he went, he got a view down into the transept and the wider church beyond.

  The air was full of dust and smoke, but Vic could see that Santo’s pyre had been wrecked and that his father’s was still standing. Worse, his dad was still bound to the stake, and there were Purifiers in the shattered rocks and rubble all around him. He spotted Rocky almost directly below, sheltering behind one of the transept pillars. Ci was with him, and Gray was behind one of the supports further along, wreathed in shadow.

  Vic’s descent brought him down right into the middle of the transept, squarely in the sights of the Purifiers defending the pyre. While dust still hung heavy in the air, the bell’s tolling alerted them all to his presence. The roar of gunfire competed with the unheeded call to worship, and in seconds the air around Vic was alive with whizzing, cracking death. He swung perilously and let go, thumping down on all fours onto the flagstones like a feline. He immediately scrambled for the pillar Ci and Rocky sheltered behind, bullets and energy bolts chewing up the sandstone around him. One grazed his shoulder but didn’t pierce his X-suit, and he felt the passage of another lash right past his face. Then he was behind the pillar, panting. He hugged Rocky. The big guy looked in a bad way, his stony skin scorched and scarred, large chunks missing. Ci’s arm was bleeding too, and she looked bruised and worn. He supposed he didn’t look much better.

  “It’s good to see you, big guy,” he told Santo as he eased out of the hug. “Everybody still alive?”

  “We are,” Santo grumbled. “Can’t speak for the Purifiers.”

  “Where’s Lobe?” Cipher cut in. Vic shrugged, wincing at the pain the motion caused. He was pretty sure he’d broken something when he’d been flung into the cloister statue, and the jump from the bell rope had aggravated it.

  “Lobe took a fall,” he told Ci.

  “You couldn’t catch him?”

  “I’d have had to have been at the bottom of the bell tower for that, not the top. If he’s still alive, I doubt he’s going anywhere fast. I was worried about you down here. Xodus still has my dad, I see.

  “Jonas has an idea,” Cipher said, raising and keying her communicator. “But you’re not going to like it.”

  “If it involves none of us dying while we get Dad out safely then I’m going to absolutely love it,” Vic quipped.

  “That’s the ideal outcome,” Gray’s voice clicked over Ci’s communicator. “But there are… many potential variables.”

  “What is it then?” Vic demanded, frustrated, not understanding why they were hesitating. It was Cipher who spoke up.

  “Jonas wants us to collapse this part of the church. On top of ourselves.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Xodus ordered the last of the faithful to cease fire. A silence, great and terrible following the thunder of battle, settled over the church’s brutalized remains. He took a torch from the Chorister who’d just lit it, advancing through the ranks of his children with the burning light held aloft.

  “Behold your end, mutant,” he bellowed, his voice filling the void left in the wake of the Purifiers’ gunfire. “You can no longer deny the inevitable! Step forth and die with dignity, or watch your own misguided father burn!”

  He brandished the torch at the intact pyre and the old fool still tied atop it. This was what he’d been brought here for, to draw out these unclean monsters like rats to dead flesh.

  There was no answer from the east transept. Xodus growled and thrust the torch in amidst the base of the kindling. So be it, this conflagration was long overdue. He would have his pyre, and nothing would now stop him.

  Xodus hadn’t heard from Lobe since the mutants had first attacked. He didn’t care either. One swollen-headed fool and his money didn’t concern the prophet, not any more. He had what he wanted – a holy battle, a confrontation with creatures of horror and darkness. Lobe was hardly better than the mutant filth anyway. Xodus would deal with him as well, after he’d purified the ones before him. Fire and smoke and burning flesh, that was what he had craved for so long and that was what he would have.

  The flames took quickly. The prisoner tried to fight and cried out, but Xodus had bound and gagged him personally – he wasn’t going to escape, not that way. The sight of the rising fire beginning to gnaw at the lower bundles of the stack had the desired effect. Movement at the end of the transept caught his attention. The great rock mutant bounded from his cover behind one of the pillars, its smaller kindred scuttling behind it. Xodus briefly thought they were making for the center of the transept, apparently happy to be gunned down right in front of the Purifiers, but he realized they were instead heading for the narrow set of stairs in the far wall that led down to the church’s crypt.

  “Kill them,” Xodus screamed, brandishing the hilt of his shattered sword towards the deformed creatures. “Kill them all!”

  The thunderous roar of the gunfire was so loud Xodus thought his eardrums were about to burst. Individual shots and the many echoes of their reports melded together into one continuous din. The east transept seemed to disintegrate beneath the fusillade. Sandstone burst and shattered, statues toppled, carvings broke apart. An RPG streaked past the fleeing figures, impacting in the far wall and blowing a hole clean through to the outside. Xodus took in the destruction with the intensity of a zealot, eyes locked onto the mutant band, willing them to be struck down before him. The rock brute was hit multiple times, but carried on through the storm, shielding the others. They reached the entrance to the crypts, though the rock didn’t descend. Instead it hunched over, still defending the shadow one.

  Xodus snarled with frustration. He had fought that terrible creature earlier. It was a true demon of the darkness, and it had broken his holy sword. He’d sworn to plunge the remnants of the blade through its black heart.

  “Advance,” he bellowed over the barrage, gesticulating furiously at the Purifiers around them. “There’s no way out of those crypts! They’re trapped! Advance and finish them!”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Graymalkin placed both hands on Rockslide’s shoulders, looking up into the giant’s eyes. He was hunched over Graymalkin, turned away from the pyre and the Purifiers. There were audible cracks and clacking sounds, like pebbles bouncing down a craggy slope, as bullets flattened and rebounded off his scarred back.

  “I’m sorry, Santo,” Graymalkin told him. “I’m sorry for what you’ve had to endure through all this.”

  “I can take it,” Santo grunted. “You ready?”

  “I am,” Graymalkin confirmed, letting go and taking a step back. “Let us bring an end to this.”

  Santo nodded once and, with a roar, pounded his fists down into the flagstones one last time. Stone split and shattered as he delved down, reaching out both mentally and physical, communing with the stratum beneath the church. He’d already asked so much of it, but now he called for something more, something final. The rock answered.

  It began slowly, an almost imperceptible tremor that Graymalkin sensed through the soles of his feet. It increased rapidly, making the stones scattered across the broken floor rattle, then spreading its tremors up the walls. Soon the whole church tre
mbled. Santo’s voice rose with the power of the quake, going from low and grating to a powerful, drawn-out roar.

  Cracks ran up the wall, splitting it, arcing along like lightning to the vaulted ceiling. Graymalkin noticed with alarm that the splits formed in Santo’s own body over the course of the battle had started to worsen as well, as though in sympathy with the church. His friend was close to shattering.

  The trembling built to a roar, becoming one with Santo’s own bellow. A section of the transept roof close to the bell tower stairs gave way with a monumental crash, a weight of brickwork slamming down into the floor not far to Graymalkin’s right. He tried not to flinch. Suddenly his plan seemed altogether more desperate and dangerous than he had hoped.

  Rock punched up from the flagstones around where he and Santo stood, showering them both in dirt and grit. More of the roof caved, an ever-widening collapse now that spread inevitably over the transept. The bell tower started to go with it. One of the bells came crashing down with a reverberation that shook Gray to his core. His senses had become filled with dust and broken stone. It seemed as though his very bones ached at the seismic discord around him, as though just the sound and fury alone would tear him to pieces.

  He forced himself not to look up as the collapse in the ceiling reached them, locking his eyes onto Santo instead. The giant’s roar burnt out – he was silent now, his rough features set, his whole body trembling and shivering, on the cusp of splitting into pieces.

  Graymalkin placed a hand back on his crumbling shoulder. The rocks around them surged, and the roof came down, and the worst of Graymalkin’s night terrors returned.

  Chapter Fifty

  More than ever before, Vic was convinced he was about to die. He stood with Cipher as, around them, the crypts of the Church of the Seven Virtues shook and groaned, like a man caught in his final frenzied death-throes.