X-Force

Now:

Somewhere at the edges of Northern Quebec’s Magneto Territories--at the edges of sanity--reluctant warriors fought.

Mystique and Black Marvel had been ordered to the newly-formed mutant refuge by their own government in an effort to retrieve their fellow mercenary, Polaris, and the clandestine Hounds. When their attempt to cross the border without conflict had gone awry, they’d been forced to incapacitate the mutant officers at the border station. A tense moment later, they’d been confronted by the Territories’ leader, Magneto--and to their surprise, Polaris fought beside him.*

(*last issue - Silkee!)

The dark clad Marvel lunged at the hovering Magneto with his telescopic, titanium asp, but was flung aside with a flick of the Master of Magnetism’s wrist. Marvel rolled out of the snow and tried again--was met with the same result.

“Drop your asp, you fool--they’ll use it against you!” Mystique warned him. She had taken her own advice moments earlier and dropped her laser rifle in favor of a gargoyle-winged assault on Polaris. But Polaris’s inexplicable madness made her even more formidable, and Mystique’s attempt to incapacitate her was in vain.

“Where are your...teammates?” Polaris asked Mystique.

“Perhaps they’ve seen the light?” Magneto remarked.

“They ain’t our teammates, and we don’t need ‘em!” Marvel regretfully left his asp in the snow, but the fight in him remained. Noting the similarities in Magneto’s and Polaris’s powers, he growled, “Green your kid?”

From his eased, airborne position, Magneto smirked. “No, though my admiration for young Lorna grows by the moment.” Once again, he rid himself of Marvel’s nuisance. “I would love to call her my own.”

Polaris’s green eyes acknowledged Magneto’s congenial smile, and with an unprecedented force, she thrust a wave of magnetic energy in Mystique’s direction. The blue-skinned, fiery-haired mutant spun across the wind-torn sky, and then, in an impossible instant, she found herself frozen in mid-air between Polaris’s and Magneto’s conflicting magnetic fields--a victim of the very iron in her blood. And again, the two magnetic force-wielding mutants’ eyes locked conspiratorially, and Magneto spoke.

“I have a request--a demand--of you, Mystique.”

“Cram it, Mags,” a bestial grunt called out from the surrounding forest as Victor Creed charged into the open.

“Sabretooth?” Mystique gasped. She never imagined she’d ever be glad to see her feral, sociopathic former lover.

“Creed,” Magneto chortled. “Your characteristic recklessness is charming, but what do you propose to do against the likes of Polaris and myself?”

“Distract you,” Creed grinned.

And as cocked eyebrows and befuddled stares made their way across the icy battlefield, the rattatatt-tat! of gunfire echoed in the distance. With a surprised snort, Magneto arched back in pain before losing his magnetic platform and toppling into the snow. His magnetic hold over Mystique severed, she used her wings to keep her aloft as she, Marvel, and Polaris stood on-guard for the gunman.

Silently, out of the redwoods, a pale, brooding mutant brandished two pistols in her gloved hands. She kept her distance from the recovering Magneto, but there was no hint of boastfulness on her face--she was mostly just upset.

Magneto stood and shot a brooding glare at his assailant as he pulled a handful of projectiles out of the snow. “Rubber bullets. Impressive, Domino.”

Domino simply shrugged her shoulders and kept both Polaris and Magneto in her sights.

“But the guns are still mine to control!” he continued, unleashing a wave of energy in her direction. The steel pieces were thrust from her hands--but not before she got off four more shots. The bullets raced through his wave of energy and dropped him and Polaris with a series of thuds.

Mystique took the opportunity to grab Polaris by the neck.

“Don’t fight back, Dane,” she warned. “I don’t care why you’ve revolted, if in fact you have. We can all tell the Agents Cooper that Magneto kidnapped you and be done with it. No consequences. Just end this now.”

“You’re so cunning,” Polaris gurgled. “So conniving. And so...wrong.”

“So...you have turned against the Agents’ unknown agenda. Why? They’ll kill the only man you’ve ever loved--they’ll kill Alex.*”

(*Alex Summers...Havok!--Silkee)

Before Polaris could respond, Mystique felt vicious claws tear through her scaly wings, and she instantly let go of her prey to get a look at her predator.

Victor Creed stood over her, but he didn’t wear the smile that usually accompanied his malicious acts of violence. Instead, she saw an uneased confusion in his eyes, and it jarred her nearly as much as his inexplicable attack.

“Why, Victor?”

He tried to play it off, but the uninvited blood on his hands controlled his thoughts. “I...don’t know.” Then, he looked up, and his eyes widened. “Look out!”

Mystique ducked in time to avoid Polaris’s angry fist.

Meanwhile, Magneto began to tear the rickety border station trailer apart, magnetically flinging bits of the tin roof at Domino and Black Marvel, followed by the trailer’s remaining metal components.

“Come on!” Domino urged, grabbing Marvel by the hand as the two trudged through the snow for the cover of the woods. But she heard the incensed whistling of the airborne roof chasing them, and she knew they wouldn’t make it to safety. The tin sheet swallowed them, and they fell unconscious in its wretched grip.

As Magneto turned to approach the remaining mercs, Mystique picked up her rifle out of the snow and began manipulating the controls on its handle.

“This round goes to you, Magneto,” she ceded as she and Creed backed away. “But we’ll be back.”

With that, she tossed the rifle into the air as it overloaded with energy and exploded. As Polaris and Magneto shielded their eyes from the blast, Mystique and Sabretooth galloped into the dense forest.

Polaris floated into the air to pursue them, but Magneto’s hand stayed her.

“We both know Mystique doesn’t make idle threats, Lorna. She will be back. In the meantime,” he glared across the icy field at the two, incapacitated, tin-encased mercs, “I like our chances with these two.”

“Aren’t you going to drink, Joey?”

“I never refuse a drink, luv,” he smiled as he pulled a CD from its case--Jewel; he’d learned in America that chicks dig Jewel. “I’ll be right there.”

Japheth “Joey” Ananszi made his way across the hotel room to the CD player, and though his salacious guest waited on the bed across the room with champagne glasses in her hands, he couldn’t help but stop at the third-story window to admire the beauteous cityscape that comprised Cape Town, his adopted home.

He looked at the South African capitol, and he saw his future. The past--Magneto, Detroit, the X-Men--it was like it had never happened. This was where he needed to be. This was his place. Cape Town, with its unparalleled, exotic culture and its popping nightlife and its expansive beaches on both the Indian and the Atlantic and its casinos and its glorious, glorious, glorious women. To erase the embarrassment of his past, he would feed off of this city!

Oh...not literally, of course.

Back to his date. Jewel wreaked havoc on his ears, but he tried to ignore it by delighting in Sophie’s (it was Sophie, right?) Nordic features: her thin little nose, her high cheek bones, her blonde mane that danced in the breeze from the open window. Her short, white skirt rode up her thigh. She was perfect, just like the bird from the night before, and the night before that... She’d probably come down to Cape Town for the club scene, come ten-thirty eyed this tall black cat in dark shades; his lone lock of white hair caught her eye on the bustling waterfront. She’d approached him, and he did his thing. “Hi,” he’d grinned, “call me Joey.” An hour later, she was buying him drinks, and then she took him to her hotel room. And the rest was...now.

“Come, darling.” Her clear blue eyes were inviting. “Drink. Tell me where your name comes from.”

He took the glass she offered and sat at the edge of the bed. “Which name do you speak of, luv?”

“Something tells me your parents did not name you ‘Joey’.”

“Not very South African, is it? Nah, I took it from this bloke I used to...well, I s’pose you could say I knew him.”

“Mm, this Merlot is excellent.”

“Is it?” he replied. “Doesn’t look like you’ve touched yours.”

She looked up innocently. “I meant the year. It’s from my private stock.”

“Oh, yeah.” Joey put his ruby red glass to his lips before he heard a drumming at the door. “Who the--?” He stood and peered through the peephole.

“Why, who is it, darling?” Sophie asked, getting up from the bed.

Joey locked the door and cowered on the other side of the room. “Big guy coming for me.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say I’ve led an interesting life. If you want to live, I suggest you climb out the window.”

“I’m fine where I am.” Sophie took on a suddenly mischievous grin before she collapsed onto the floor, replaced where she stood by a menacing little man in a brown trenchcoat and that same damned grin.

Joey winced behind his sunglasses. “What the bloody hell is going on?! Who are you?”

“They call me Mountjoy,” the man replied. “I’m a body-jumper.”

“What do you want with me?!”

“To kill you, of course. I tried to poison you with the wine, but you wouldn’t take the bait. Plan B has that friend of mine outside tossing you out the window, or some such gruesome fate. Now, if he’ll please make his way in...”

A large, forceful boot pulverized the door, and from the debris stepped an imposing, armored figure behind a golden mask, carrying a large rifles in each hand.

“Who?!” both Joey and Mountjoy muttered.

He took aim at both men, but fired a sole pulse of energy.

“I’m not your friend.”

Mountjoy was nearly sent through the wall.

Joey stammered, “Aren’t you--?”

“Maverick,” the man confirmed. With Mountjoy out of commission, Maverick approached Joey. “I’m here to help you.”

“I don’t know what’s going on, but how do the Americans say...screw you!!!”

Joey tackled Maverick onto the bed, and the two rolled around ineffectively, oblivious as the disabled Mountjoy looked to the doorway and grinned. “There you are.”

Finally, Joey looked up at the cadre of freakish men and women suddenly in his hotel room. Some of them he recognized, but Maverick filled in the blanks.

Avalanche.

Uniscione.

Mastermind.

Pyro.

The Blob.

Vanisher.

And before them all, Toad.

“The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants,” Maverick muttered.

“Correction: the new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. You’re interfering in somebody’s business, mercenary,” the brood’s gangly leader, Toad, warned. “That business involves Mr. Ananszi, so we’ve been sent to kill you both.”

“I wish you cats luck for two reasons: one, my girls are hungry,” Joey said, removing his loud shirt and jacket to reveal a disfigured stomach from which two mechanical, slug-like creatures emerged, “and two, you’ve been sent to kill Maggot, and that ain’t all too easy!”

Domino awoke to a pounding headache, the stale cold of a near-pitch black, brick box, and Black Marvel’s gruff voice.

“We share the same dreams.” He knelt over her, his uniform hidden in the dark, and only the gleam of his blue eyes and the echo of his voice announcing his presence.

“What dreams are those?” Domino asked, groggy.

“Bad ones.”

“Where are we?”

“Some kind of cell. It’d be easy enough to escape, ‘cept I feel so damn--”

“Weak,” Domino finished. “Me too. A tin roof upside the head’ll do that to a person.”

“It’s more than that.” Marvel glared suspiciously into the blackness. “Magneto must’ve drugged us.”

“You’re close,” grumbled a baritone in the darkness. “Our cell is surrounded by power-dampening devices that even affect humans such as yourself to some degree, Marvel.”

“Who’s there? Stop cowering in the shadows and show yourself,” Marvel demanded.

“Are you sure? Once you see us, listen to us, your whole world will be turned upside down. Are you ready for that, Marvel?”

“That just means it’ll be right-side up again.”

“In that case,” the man started. Marvel detected eight weary footsteps as four curious appearing figures approached, their identities as much a mystery in the light as in the shadows. At the front stood a hulking black man, close to seven feet tall, dressed in a skin-tight, black outfit, like his companions. The Amazonian woman beside him had black hair, frazzled by too long a stay in the musty cell. At her side, a lanky man who sported an opaque, white bubble around his head, like a helmet--of each of them, his posture marked the most confidence. And behind them all, a brooding young black man with short dreads and colorful markings along his face, like war paint. He glared at Marvel like the caged animal he was. “Meet, Fixx, Archer, and Greystone,” the man continued. “And call me Stone. We’re the Hounds--at least, we were.”

Mystique and Sabretooth rested on the bank of a lonely, frigid creek at the base of a snowy, tree-covered hill. She lit a cigarette while he stood playfully on a large rock.

“You’re freezin’--let me warm you up, doll,” Sabretooth grinned.

“Don’t get near me, Victor. You’ve got some explaining to do.”

“Oh?”

“Why the hell did you attack me earlier? I nearly had Dane captured, and then--what the hell was that?”

“Sorry,” he shrugged. “What can I say? It felt right.” He was amused by his own obstinance.

“How do you figure?”

“Probably served you right. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that gleam in your eye, and that wicked little smile you carry around. It’s that same look you get when yer scheming. Don’t get me wrong--it turns me on. It’s what attracted me to you all those years ago--well, that and the thought of running my fingers through yer hair while the rest of yer head sat on my mantle.”

Mystique dropped her cigarette and shuffled in the snow uneasily. And then, as she was known to do, she put on a new mask--one of calm and confidence. “Well I’ll be damned, now you’re on to me. Between you and Black Marvel, now I know how the Clintons feel.”

“Heh. If the stiletto fits.”

“Yeah, well I just wish I was in on the conspiracy. Like the one that caused you to attack me.”

“No conspiracy. No worries. Just a glitch in the chip our bosses put in my head to keep me in check, I’m sure.”

Mystique looked in the piercing eyes of the man she once...loved, when she was a different woman, when her tastes and professional skills had been less refined. Back when she thought along his lines. Now, he was alien to her, and no matter how much he postured, he could never understand her. She was too smart to be understood, plus their sicknesses didn’t compare.

Of course, he’d changed, too. He was getting old, being overtaken by his rabid instincts instead of utilizing them. He truly did not know the reason for his attack, and it was this lone fact that kept her from retaliating.

“Don’t let it happen again,” she sighed. “Speaking of our bosses,” she pulled her cell phone out of her jacket and entered a series of numbers, “I just realized how we can convince Polaris to re-join us.”

“You’ve always got something up yer sleeve, don’tcha, doll?”

A moment later, Mystique feverishly responded to the greeting on the other end. “Agent Cooper, it’s Mystique. We’ve hit a snag, but we can still retrieve Polaris, and possibly even the Hounds. Now, I’m going to need you to pull some strings, and place a very important phone call...”

The dark man’s size was deceptive--he knelt down to the concrete floor like a storyteller around a campfire, his words and gestures inviting. Domino and Black Marvel couldn’t help but join the stranger, well aware that campfire stories were almost always scary.

“Call me Stone. My companions and I are mutants, and in many ways, we are like you. For the past few months, the Agents Cooper have assigned you to missions across the globe, to capture various mutants deemed dangerous by the United States government. And I’m sure that, by now, your task has become both tedious and frustrating. Yet you do it, for if you fail to comply with the Agents’ demands, one of your loved ones is killed.”

Black Marvel began to quake just thinking about the situation he found himself in every time his pager flashed a simple number, the number of the mission to which he was being summoned--they were in the twenties, now!--every time he had to leave his wife alone. “We know the deal,” he growled.

Stone remained patient in his narration. “The Hound program has seen many different members performing many tasks under many overseers, but our most recent incarnation was formed to assist the Agents Cooper in covering up the messes you mercs make in capturing mutants. Indeed, you have a government mandate, but the public doesn’t take kindly to people’s rights being taken away so blatantly...even those of dangerous mutants. So it is our job to ensure that you remain in shadows a shade lighter than our own.”

“If you clean up our messes, how come we’ve never seen you before?” Domino asked.

“We arrive on the scene after you leave. The Agents were afraid that if you knew that we existed, and that we worked so closely with them, you would try to procure information from us that you could use against them.”

Domino and Black Marvel eyed each other empathetically. They had both managed to cope as best they could with the government’s rancorous treatment of the mercs, but Stone’s revelation forced them to reconsider just how little they really mattered in Uncle Sam’s big scheme.

Stone addressed Marvel, “And for all you know, there is still a lot that you don’t. For instance, the mutants you’ve captured--almost every single one of them walks free as we speak. One must ask, if they aren’t being incarcerated, then what is the point of your work?”

“Well, what is it?” Marvel asked expectantly.

“That I don’t know.”

“It’s gotta be registration,” Domino said. “The government’s been trying to get mutant registration by the public for years.”

“Perhaps, but they could just as easily register mutants without their capture, one could assume.” Stone paused, letting the chill sink in. “There are other things you should know. You’ve probably suspected it for some time, since his inclusion on your missions has been inconsistent; Sabretooth is not one of you. You are aware that he has been implanted with a chip to curb his ferocious nature, but you should also know that in the case of your revolt, that chip will be disengaged, and he will kill you all. In the past, he has overcome such debilitating devices through his mutant physiology and the use of pain-killers, but this chip is different somehow, controlled by some suit in a smokey room in Washington, presumably.”

“For being so buddy-buddy with the Agents Cooper, there’s sure a lot you don’t know,” Marvel hissed. The revelation of the Agents’ betrayal of the mercs still fazed him.

“And that is my final message to you, friends. As closely as the Hounds worked with the Agents, there is much they would not tell us, out of distrust. And in talking to the Agents, one gets the impression that there is a lot that someone is not telling them, probably out of distrust. I’ve worked for the government before, and I thought I was jaded to the smoke and mirrors and deception and everything else that came with protecting the public. But then that same government turned on its people--turned on me, you, the mutants they force you to hunt. And to think that I actually did this on a voluntary basis. They never made me do any of it.” He paused in thought, then his wise and gentle countenance shifted into one of...accusation. “But then, I guess you really can’t make anyone do anything at all, now can you?”

“Why have you told us all this?” Domino asked.

“A need to confess? Repentance? Realizing all the injustice that has so blatantly passed before me in recent months, I so dearly hope to someday be reunited with the noble man I used to be.”

“Sounds more like a set-up, baiting us to rebel,” Marvel countered.

“And if so, would you bite?”

Before Marvel could respond, the simple, metal door of the small shack unlocked and opened, revealing a face only barely recognizable in the shadows, and in its demeanor.

“Come with me,” Polaris said, more authoritative than anyone had heard her of late.

“Are you releasing us?” the Hound named Fixx asked.

Stone put a soft hand on her shoulder, as if to say, “I thought I taught you better...”

“Magneto wants to see you in his chambers,” Polaris replied.

“So you’re his lapdog now. That how it is, Green?” Marvel spat.

She turned and pointed a threatening finger in his face. “You’re the one who always said we weren’t a team, so don’t go looking for any loyalty now. Especially not from me. Got it?”

“Then what is your intent?” Stone asked. His soothing voice would invite a more civil response.

“Magneto promised not to hurt you. He may be a valuable ally, and I want to know that his word is good.”

“So you may be throwing us to the wolves?” the bubble-headed Hound called Archer said.

Polaris emphasized her apathy with a masterful cruelty. “I may be.”

“Why?”

Once the mercs and Hounds arrived in Magneto’s chambers, a brunette woman handed Black Marvel his asp. More confounded than grateful, he examined his weapon carefully, and found that it had been cleaned to a healthy shine in his absence.

“I’m giving you two options, friends,” Magneto announced from under the massive, oval viewscape, joined by a burly, dark-haired man. As Magneto spoke, the woman placed Domino’s pistols in the merc’s hands, and a large firearm unlike any Marvel had seen before in Archer’s, “neither of which will steer you on the same course in which you’ve traveled in recent months. One offers calmer waters, and the other will doubtless take you through a storm of fury from which there can be salvation...if you have the will. Choose one, and you can keep the weapons that Lil has returned to you. Choose the other, and you will never need them again.”

“What are you proposing, Magneto?” Stone asked. It had been the unspoken consensus among the prisoners--”guests”, Polaris had claimed--that Stone would be the spokesperson for the group. Neither Domino nor Black Marvel were entirely comfortable with the idea, knowing from his own admission that Stone was not above deception.

“Stay with my people--your people--here in the Territories. Help me help other mutants just like you.”

“No disrespect, but I’m no mutant,” Marvel declared.

“So Lorna has told me,” Magneto replied, amused by the man’s surliness. “However, I’m sure we can house you, as well.”

At that, Marvel just growled.

“And the other option?” Stone asked.

“The six of you will return to the States and enact a rebellion against your overseers.”

“How do you know about our ‘overseers’?” Stone said.

“Lorna has told me almost everything about the demands placed on you by the Agents Cooper. Whether or not they, too, are taking orders, they are wrong. And as long as you continue to act out their orders, you are committing the greatest of sins against your own kind.”

“But...a rebellion?” Stone gawked openly. “You have no idea how big this thing is.”

“Bigger than your own conscience, sir, judging by your hesitation.”

Stone’s shoulders slumped forward. Magneto had broken him so easily.

Breaking the guests’ code, Domino spoke up. “Here you go again, Magneto; imposing your will on others, with only your own goals in mind. It hasn’t occurred to you that there would be consequences to us, no matter which of your options we choose. I’ve got kids at home that I’ll never see again, whether I stay here or fight Uncle Sam.”

“Damn right!” Black Marvel’s cheeks were red under his cowl. “I got a wife, and I’m not gonna give up on her so I can come live in this God-awful place, and I’m sure as hell not gonna sacrifice her to the Agents’ sniper rifles!”

“Frankly, I resent your presumption that your way is the only way, Mags,” Domino continued. “How dare you dictate to us the course of our lives!”

Magneto let the incensed heat die down, and then, “Yet you allow the Agents Cooper to do the same with such ease.” He let that sink in. “The idea of you as a parent brings me chills, mercenary, if subjugation is the example you are setting for your children.”

Lorna saw the anger flash in Domino’s fiery eyes, and broke in with an easy tone. “Erik--Magneto--it’s a little more complicated than you make it sound.”

“Is it? Then how have you taken a stand? Aren’t the consequences the same for you as for these two?” He gestured condescendingly toward Domino and Black Marvel.

“Well, yes, but my situation is a little different?”

“Oh? Don’t you love Alex Summers just as Domino loves her children?”

Suddenly, a flash pulsed across the chamber, and in the center of the room, a glowing, green portal offered three silhouettes. Out of the portal they stepped: Mystique and Sabretooth, unarmed, but always dangerous; and lastly, a fair-haired, a dashing man whose handsome charm could not dull the intense concern on his face--

Lorna gasped. “Alex?!”

Alex Summers, the X-Man long-known as Havok, shot a look of relief at Lorna Dane, his former lover. The woman whose influence he could not deny. After years of love, separation, reunion, and again separation, too often torn apart by the war their genetics forced them to fight, they still defined each other.

“Lorna, you’re okay.”

She ran to him, threw her arms around him, and he patted her green mane, shaking with satisfaction.

“Val Cooper explained the whole situation to me and had my old associate Fatale teleport me here. They want me to convince you to work something out with them.... If only I’d listened to you months ago, instead of brushing you off because I was worried about my job,*” Alex lamented.

(*check out Mark Bousquet’s LIGHTHOUSE series at the Epic Branch - Silkee!)

She clutched him tighter.

“I had a lot on my mind then, but I was a fool to turn my back on you. But I want you back home, now. If you can’t forgive me, I’d understand, but I at least want you safe.”

Tighter.

“We’ll work something out. Whatever will keep you out of this mess and keep me out an assassin’s crosshairs,” he smiled sardonically.

Tighter, until her nails nearly pierced through his jacket.

“Don’t worry, Alex. If an assassin doesn’t kill you--” she released him, then released the rage... “I WILL!!!”

With a magnetic force many months in the making, born of betrayal and fueled by determination, redemption, she thrust Alex across the chamber.

She approached him with numb footsteps, unfettered by opposition from the stunned spectators in the chamber.

“You did turn your back on me, Alex. Now I’m turning my back on this thing that passes for my life these days--and I’m starting with you!”

To Be Concluded!!!