“So glad you could join us, Mystique,” Agent Shawn Cooper admonished upon the blue-skinned mutant’s late entrance into the darkened briefing room. Despite the lack of light in the small room, she made out the smug features of the twenty-seven year old FBI agent, who stood next to his older sister, Dr. Valerie Cooper.

Without a word, Mystique eased the door shut and found the last remaining seat beside her mutant-hunting associates. Domino and Black Marvel sat at her right, Polaris and Strong Guy at her left, all wearing pale faces abandoned of hope or care. The sole source of light in the room emanated from the slide projector sitting on a desk in the center of the room, firing a stilled, close-up image of a young, unshaven man, his blue jacket and white-streaked brown hair riding the wind, his left eye glowing gold.

“For those of you who just joined us,” Shawn Cooper continued to scold with a torturous grin, “we just received the details of your second mission from our superiors, and it’s been decided that Nate Grey is a dangerous mutant threat to the world.” As he spoke, Cooper called up various images of the mutant. “This much hated and feared freak popped up on our radar fairly recently, when we came into contact with representatives of an organization calling themselves the--”

“The Knights Templar,” Val Cooper interrupted. She had dealt with mutants in different capacities throughout her career, and knew them well, and she knew that Shawn’s belligerent tone grated on these mutants’ nerves. And so, she left her brother visibly unnerved, and continued in his place. “We don’t know much about these Knights, but both we and them are in agreement that Nate Grey must be captured, for the good of everyone. The Knights claim to have seen Grey killed in a confrontation several months ago, though they remain secretive about the details of that conflict, and his death.”

Another picture: this time Nate Grey appeared in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler.

Val continued to explain. “However, more recently, eyewitnesses across the country claim to have spotted Grey--alive and well--traveling with a middle-aged, male truck driver and a young female, identities unknown. The Knights began to track him before we ever even knew of his death--much less his “resurrection”--but they came to the conclusion that Grey would not be taken easily, so they came to us.”

“How they know about the existence of you mutant-hunters is a mystery,” Shawn interjected.

“The Knights seem to know a lot that they shouldn’t,” Val agreed. “At the same time, they seem to have gone to great lengths to hide their existence, so in the interest of cooperation, we have agreed not to publicly divulge their presence if they remain hush-hush about ours.”

“You mean the government’s hiding information from the American people?” Guido feigned surprise. “My word!”

“Anyway,” Val went on, “You are to meet with two of the Knights’ representatives at a nearby location, and from there, they will fly you to southern Florida to meet with the third Knight.”

“These people have names?” Polaris asked.

“None that they would tell us,” Val replied.

“Great,” the green-haired mutant sighed.

“Where’s Creed in all this?” Guido asked. “Getting his teeth cleaned? Manicure?”

“The higher-ups decided that he’s off the hook this time,” Shawn answered.

“What, he’s in these ‘higher-up’s’ good graces?” Mystique groaned and rose from her seat. “What sadistic scum do you answer to, anyway, Coopers?”

“Not you,” Shawn responded frankly. “Who we get our orders from is classified information--none of your business.”

Mystique sat down with her humble pie.

“I like this guy already!” Guido poked as he watched the fire-haired mutant force down every bite.

Flattered, Shawn excused the mutant mercenaries.

“Good luck, guys,” Val told them as they shuffled out the door.

Once they were alone in the room, Shawn said, “You’re too easy on them.”

“You’re too hard on them,” Val told her brother at the same time.

They giggled at their blunder, then, “They’re not your friends,” he replied.

“But they are,” she answered in a painfully hushed tone. “That’s what makes this job so hard.”

The Knights’ hi-tech jet wasn’t the only thing heading south. In its utter silence, the flight to Florida was a disaster.

The two Knights present had given the government’s mutant-hunters only the barest information about their organization: the Knights Templar were a clandestine order of many members devoted to learning the truths of the world. Pretty broad premise, and it in no way conveyed their reasons for tracking Nate Grey, until the Knights informed the mercs that Grey had been one of their own sometime back. No one had an answer to the question of who would acquire Grey upon his capture--the Knights or the government. The question wasn’t even addressed--the flight was bad enough without a shootout over unclaimed property.

An odd couple of folks, the two Knights were.

George Cain was a forty-something, self-proclaimed Sol System War Soldier, whatever the hell that meant. He was also the man in charge of the Knights in this task. Big guy. Well-defined, especially considering his age. The slight trestle of skin under his chin indicated that he may have once carried a few extra pounds, but now, he’d have odds in any barfight this side of Yancy Street. And if his physical stature and handsome face couldn’t keep him out of the ER, he carried guns. Two guns--a big one, and a really big one.

Betty-Sue Langford was another story entirely. A grandmother and former waitress, “fifty-five years young,” out of Macon, Georgia. As she told it, five years ago, her husband Walter--”God bless his soul”--bought it when his colon basically exploded one night at their local Hometown Buffet. He was dead to all the other diners, but somehow, Betty-Sue had still been able to talk to him. She’d kept him company from the corner booth to the ambulance to the morgue. For a day she’d gone on gabbing with her dead husband, until she couldn’t hear him curse that damn restaurant anymore. But when the other bodies in the morgue wanted their twenty-four hour’s worth of conversation, she knew she wasn’t as delusional as the doctors who had tried to save Walter had assumed. Since then, she’d helped close otherwise impossible murder cases through her uncanny ability, “...and I was on ‘Unsolved Mysteries’--twice!”

Needless to say, she’d been a bit more talkative than her companion, but her light heart wasn’t enough to stave off the awkward feelings flowing mostly from the mutant-hunters’ side of the jet. The Knights were just doing a job, and that was possibly what spurred the mercs’ envy. As far as they knew, the Knights were free to leave their organization without repercussion. The mercs, tortured pawns of the government, had not that luxury. They didn’t even have the spirit to fight for that luxury. The Knights, in all their free will, resided on Mount Olympus--the lowly mercs didn’t even have feet to climb the mountain.

And so, silence reigned.

Forty-five minutes after the last word had been spoken, “That’s a big...er...gun!” Guido remarked, examining the rifle George Cain brandished.

Cain merely shrugged, as if to say, “It’s no mantle piece.”

Guido had failed in his attempt to crack the treacherously frigid glacier, and the jet continued in reticence into the Florida morning.

The Sunshine state’s golden trophy beat down on the seven new arrivals, as they made their way from the grounded jet hidden in a field a few hundred yards out of sight. Moaning under the sun, they walked up to the parking lot of a truck stop between Here and There.

“Sunny Florida. Gotta love it,” Betty-Sue said, wiping an armful of sweat from her brow.

“Isn’t the Bermuda Triangle somewhere near here?” Strong Guy asked. His companions’ responses coming in the forms of furrowed brows and strange sneers. “Ah, I see how it is. Mutants, aliens, time-travelers from apocalyptic futures who look older than their fathers, those things you accept. But a portion of the world where things get sucked up and disappear like socks in the dryer...that’s a little too much to believe. Right. My mistake.”

Ignoring Guido’s rant, Mystique asked Cain, “This man we’re meeting, what did you say this guy’s name was?”

“Eduard Ramos,” he replied.

“Well, do you see him?”

Cain took a quick glance around the truck stop, then shook his head. “No, he hasn’t shown up yet.”

“Someone keep an eye on the road, then,” Guido said, heading toward the convenient store attached to the truck stop diner. “I’m gonna go round up something to wet our whistles.”

“Ramos won’t be driving,” Cain informed them, rather cryptically, “and for good reason.”

In the quaint, fan-cooled store, Guido toured the aisles, his massive arms brimming with Pepsi and Ho-Ho’s, with Polaris in tow.

“Y’know, I spent some time with that roomie of yours today after you left your apartment--she’s a cutie,” he admitted to Lorna.

“Yeah, well, you don’t live with her,” she told him. “’Is that what you’re wearing?’ ‘Why do I have to open the window when I’m smoking out?’” Lorna’s scornful imitation of Abigail Maggart was dead-on. “She’s definitely a character.”

“Well, I think she’s a cutie, and you can tell her I said that.”

“Note to self: never leave Guido alone in your apartment again.”

Guido chuckled as he dumped his items onto the check-out counter. When the old, wooden-Indian clerk looked up at him expectantly, Guido turned his gaze to Lorna. It took her a moment to figure it out.

“You’ve got to be kidding me, Guido!” she finally sighed as she pulled her wallet from her jacket.

“What? My costume doesn’t have pockets!”

Outside the store, Mystique read over the Miami Herald--the most local newspaper in the area--through the newsstand display case. Inquiring about a story on recent medical advances, she pulled fifty-cents from her side pocket and began to insert the coins into the stand’s slot.

“Forget it, you’ll never get your money back,” a voice to her side suggested.

Despite the warning, she dropped the two coins defiantly and peered up at her visitor. He was a young man--twenty-something--and wore dark sunglasses, an airy, white shirt, and black slacks over sandals. His hands rested in his pockets and his dark hair danced in the hot breeze. His smug grin reminded Mystique of Shawn Cooper.

“I’ll take my chances,” she said as she pulled the display case handle, and was met with resistance. She pulled again, to no avail. “Damn.”

“Hate to say I told you so, but...”

“Who are you?” Mystique asked the man, annoyed by his swagger.

“Name’s Eduard Ramos.”

“You’re Ramos? Where have you been the last five minutes?”

“I’ve been to a place where most men dare not tread. A place so dire and grim, the stories would not be fit for one so soft-smelling as yourself.”

Mystique replied with a cocked eyebrow.

“The outhouse,” he finished.

“Let’s get you back to civilization,” she said, leading him to the shade of the gas pump canopy under which the others stood, minus Polaris and Strong Guy. “So you’re a Knight Templar, huh? What’s your schtick?”

“I’m a blind seer, they call me,” he said, removing his sunglasses, showing the bare whites of his eyes. “I see the future. Thus, the warning back there.”

“That’s it?” Mystique scoffed. “You blind seers are a dime a dozen these days.”

“Yeah, well I paint, too!” He put his sunglasses back on.

“Ugh...artists,” Mystique murmured as the glimmer of an approaching eighteen-wheeler momentarily caught her eye. “So why couldn’t you travel down here with the rest of us?”

“My superiors wanted me to try to pinpoint Grey’s position as best I could before you arrived.”

“Oh yeah? How’d you do?” Domino asked.

“Something tells me we’ll be seeing Señor Grey very soon,” Ramos answered.

Just then, the truck Mystique had earlier seen pulled into the parking lot, some twenty yards away, and the driver hopped out of the cab. He wore a thick, handlebar mustache, a tattered baseball cap, and sported about a twenty-four pack beneath his dingy, flannel shirt. He danced anxiously toward the outhouse, clutching between his legs all the time. If not for the man’s panicked bladder, he and his two young passengers may not have garnered the attention of the men and women under the canopy.

Domino squinted in the direction of the truck. “Hey, those kids in the cab--don’t they--”

“It’s Grey,” George Cain confirmed, and led the charge toward the mutant. “Don’t let him escape.”

Already, the truck began to back out of its parking space--without a driver behind the wheel!

“What the--?” Black Marvel murmured.

“He’s a telekinetic,” Cain informed the group. “Things’ll get weirder.”

Indeed, they did, as the cab rose from the ground, first its front tires, then the trailer, until it hovered several feet above the parking lot, and out of the reach of the mercenaries and Knights below.

As Mystique began to grow white, feathery wings, a distant baritone cried out, “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s...a flying eighteen wheeler?!” Strong Guy rushed from the store to the stock-still scene, as the truck slowly continued its vertical ascent, and its ground-bound pursuers remained in check. “Ah boy,” he sighed at the absurdity of the situation--as well as the fact that he had to drop his purchases. He used his height and superior strength to take hold of the underbelly of the cab and force it downward, if only a little, supplying his companions with the means to climb aboard various sections of the massive vehicle.

“I’m losing it!” Guido grunted, as the truck pulled itself higher, and out of his grasp.

“Grey’s in your head,” Cain said, making his way from the top of the trailer toward the cab. “He’s making you weaker.”

“He can do that?” Strong Guy replied, strangely intrigued.

“Maybe so, but let’s see him try to stifle my control over the truck’s magnetic field,” Polaris challenged, firing a wave of magnetic energy at the floating truck.

She managed to hold the truck in place--even pull it closer to the ground, at first. But soon, for every five feet she lowered the truck, it was lifted another ten. The strain on her senses was increasingly unbearable--she was going face-to-face with a mutant reputed to be among the strongest-willed on Earth, after all. It was only a matter of time, she lamented, before her strength would give out, and nothing would separate Nate Grey from his escape.

Polaris collapsed, and the truck soared without opposition, higher and higher into the air. Domino, Mystique, Black Marvel, Cain, Eduard Ramos, and Betty-Sue Langford all struggled to remain atop the ever-climbing trailer.

And on terra firma, Strong Guy turned to see Polaris lying motionless in the parking lot.

“Lorna!”

Maverick’s night-vision goggles led him down a green-tinted path, and his gold-colored face mask insulated his senses from the overwhelming cloud of charcoal and pastel fumes that permeated the unlit, second story, Greenwich Village apartment. The mutant mercenary’s auditory senses had been naturally honed over the years--the target could not hide for his frightened breaths.

The target, the eccentric artist, Paul Paige, hid pathetically behind the easel occupied by a rather grisly painting. His face could not be seen behind the canvas, but his emotional state was manifest in his troubled voice.

“You’re going to kill me?” Paige panted.

“I have to kill you. You don’t know him, but Victor Creed hired me. You’re worth a million dollars...dead,” Maverick replied.

The painting resting on the easel displayed dark tones, black and two shades of grey, applied so thick that the scene pulled itself from the canvas. Two dimensions could not hold it. As if it was determined to reside in the real world.

“Why? Why me?” the artist pleaded.

“I don’t know. I suppose it’s because you’re crazy.”

If the painting could not have its way by the laws of physics, then it would settle for another scenario: assimilation, it seemed, as Maverick found himself engrossed in the bleak scene.

“I am crazy! You would be crazy too if you were visited by the nightmares that bang down my door every night, and reside uninvited in my subconscience every waking moment of my accursed life! It’s all I see! IT’S ALL I SEE!”

“What do you see?” Maverick asked, intrigued, though the answer began to creep upon him as he viewed the other tattered canvases strewn across the disheveled apartment.

Paige’s anguished voice splintered as he spoke. “So terrible. So much death. A wave of death. A black wave of death!”

“Lorna, are you okay?” Strong Guy asked, kneeling down beside his fallen friend.

She was too weak to speak, but nodded in affirmation. Already, she let her latent power take control, and manipulated the magnetic fields around them to lift herself and Guido into the air and toward the truck that fled impracticably along the airways.

“I almost had it!” Polaris growled. “If I can get a hold of the truck again, I think I can bring it down.”

“Okay, were you even here a second ago, Lorna?” Strong Guy chided. “Grey almost put the mental whammy on you! You’re about the only person around here I can talk to, so I’d hate to see you go vegetable on me.”

“Then what do you suggest we do?”

“Get me into that cab, and I’ll take Grey out the old-fashioned, two-fisted way.”

Altering the field around Strong Guy’s immense physical form, Polaris thrust him toward the truck’s cab, and used her ability to open the driver’s side door at the same time. From the passenger’s seat, Grey realized their plan, and telekinetically forced the passenger’s side door from its hinges, making way for his escape, and leaving his female companion in the cab.

Guido was left hanging onto the bottom panel of the cab’s interior, dangling perilously over the land a thousand feet below now, as the truck’s errant course took it toward the southernmost tip of the state. The Atlantic Ocean loomed ahead.

Grey’s escape provoked an attack from the mercs and Knights holding onto the edges of the trailer for dear life. Mystique, Domino, and Cain fired feeble rounds--both rubber bullets and laser beams--at the flying mutant, and Black Marvel took even more futile swings with his titanium asp, while Polaris floated nearby, magnetically securing them all to the top of the trailer, along with Ramos and Betty-Sue.

“It’s noble of you not to leave the girl behind,” Mystique poked at Grey as she fired another shot from her laser rifle, attempting to stun him into submission.

“We’re not looking to hurt you, son,” Cain said, as if to repair the verbal damage done by Mystique. “I represent the Knights Templar. I’ve come to take you back.”

“Knights Templar?” Grey repeated, confused. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about, but I’m not going back anywhere! I’m through with all of you, humans and mutants alike! You’re all crazy!”

“You’re right, kid,” Black Marvel growled, finally emerging from his self-imposed, brooding silence. “Speaking as just about the only normal human here, I’d say you’re a hundred percent correct: I’m crazy.” Without warning, Marvel leapt from the top of the trailer and tackled Grey in mid-flight. The mutant lost his equilibrium, and both men began to plummet toward the violent, blue ocean below.

The torment Paige endured became apparent to Maverick, as the mercenary glimpsed the other paintings that littered the apartment, all conveying scenes as identical in their unrelenting despair as the near-finished painting on the easel. And in those portrayals, Maverick knew just what Paige saw, what he had been compelled, or cursed, to paint.

“It’s the future,” Paige continued. “There is no civilization. There are no humans. No animals. Only...IT. Only The Wave of Death.”

Maverick noted the black swells that dominated each canvas. Like oil, spread across a barren wasteland, overseen by the perpetuity of thunderheads in the grey sky. The visualization of The End of Everything, Maverick imagined.

“It’s the future,” the artist repeated.

Black Marvel had caught the rim of the trailer’s massive tire, and had already begun climbing toward Mystique’s outstretched hand. As he did so, he glared proudly into the distance, as Nate Grey struggled to maintain his poise in mid-air.

“We’ve got to recover Grey!” George Cain insisted, hiding his anxiety well. He turned to Polaris, who continued to hover alongside the trailer, magnetically fastening her comrades to it. “Grey’s hold over the rig has been severed. Can you steer us to his position?”

As soon as he asked, she was extending her powers across the whole of the truck, and attempted to push it toward the helpless Grey, but found it stuck in its aimless course.

“It won’t budge,” Polaris said. “Grey’s better than we thought!”

“It ain’t Grey!” Strong Guy cried out, still clutching the interior of the cab.

“What do you mean?” Polaris asked.

“It’s...her!” Strong Guy pointed to the young woman who sat in the cab. “She’s all zoned out. I can’t get a word out of her! It’s gotta be her!”

Polaris floated toward the cab to verify Strong Guy’s claim, but when an ear-shattering creak rang through the air, her reflexes forced her back, and the cab became perilously detached from the trailer.

Given the emotional state of his target, and the circumstances surrounding that state, Maverick’s suspicions had been confirmed: Creed had not been entirely forthcoming when he’d hired Maverick to do his dirty work. Of course, Creed had been hired by an unknown party in the first place, and so he may not have known any more than Maverick did now.

Either way, there was more to this situation than was out in the open, and Maverick meant to get to the bottom of it all. The answers would come only from Paige’s death.

He approached the easel and pressed his automatic rifle against the canvas, where Paige could not elude his fire.

“Please...please...” the artist begged from behind the canvas.

“I’m going to rid you of your pain,” Maverick assured before he let loose a single round. The canvas exploded against the barrel, and Paige hit the ground without a shred of grace or dignity.

Maverick made his way past the easel, and looked down at the man, who wore a bushy, grey beard, as long as the burden he’d carried was large. And those eyes. Maverick looked into the wide, lifeless eyes of Paul Paige. What had those eyes witnessed to vex the man so. What had he seen?

As if unrestricted by the forces of gravity, the cab eased away from the trailer, and through the air. Polaris instantly took magnetic hold of the trailer to sustain it in mid-air.

“What happened?” Betty-Sue asked.

“Guido’s weight must have put too much strain on the cab,” Polaris said. “It broke off of the trailer! But it looks like he was right--that girl was in control of this thing! She’s still controlling the cab!”

“Then let them go,” Cain said. “Grey is our concern, and now that you can steer this trailer unopposed, take us to him, Polaris.”

“Believe me, sir, I would,” Polaris started, staring into the distance, “but...he’s gone.”

Cain’s head shot around, and his brow folded when he saw that, indeed, Grey was nowhere to be seen.

“Just head out there, Polaris,” Mystique said. “Maybe he just drifted out of our range of vision. He couldn’t have just disappeared.”

“Are you so sure?” Domino asked, gazing in the direction where the truck cab had last been seen. “Strong Guy and the girl are gone too.”

All who stood on the trailer gasped when they confirmed her finding.

“What’s going on?” Mystique asked, visibly shaken, as was everybody else.

A moment later, she found her answer, and the skies over the Atlantic Ocean--in the region of the world sometimes referred to as the Bermuda Triangle--were empty once again.