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They are not willing government agents. They are not always on the side of right. They are not a team.
They are not X-Factor.
“Come back.”
Tiffany Wenrich stood over the bathroom sink, stared down the mirror. She was looking for someone.
“Come back, damn you. You did it before.”
It had been fifteen minutes since she’d stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around her tiny body, glanced in the mirror. Saw it. Fifteen minutes since her wet, stringy, blonde hair, her round, sleepless, blue eyes with too much gathered wool, her round nose and ever-flared nostrils, her thin, pursed, angry lips had been replaced for a startling instant by the face of...another.
Finally, she took her eyes off of her own reflection--and only hers--and dropped her head, gaped somberly into the sink. After twenty years of disappointment, abuse, and betrayal...
“I’ve lost it.”
With this realization, her mind wandered back to thoughts she hadn’t had in years. The thoughts of a teenage girl with dreams that even the fetid world around her could not squash. Thoughts of vindication. Thoughts of the happiness that would sustain her, knowing that everyone who had ever hurt her--her father, her mother, the kids at school, the whole damn world--would one day feel her pain.
The people she would kill.
“...Guido Carosella...”
She walked in a trance to the television set, where she found a face familiar in its natural charm--that deceptive charm. Guido Carosella, the mutant bastard who had fed her to the wolves months ago, handed her over to the government for his own sake.* Because of him and his fellow mercenaries, her nomadic livelihood had been taken from her, and she had been forced to return to her father’s house, living in constant worry that her parents would discover her strange powers as she had months ago. Because of Carosella and the mercs, she had to watch her father’s sick grin when he coerced her to tell him the details of the ordeal that had led to her capture and brief captivity. (Had her father gotten off on her story, or was he just glad that, now, he had a valid excuse to hate mutants and a story to incite his compatriots at the next Friends of Humanity rally?)
So now, Guido Carosella was on TV. An ad for a movie. She wasn’t surprised. Fitting, he had taken up acting--he deserved an award for his chicanery months ago. And there was only one kind of trophy that could be awarded for ruining a person’s life, and only one kind of person to present it.
Suddenly, Tiffany Wenrich was in a giving mood.
Her bedroom door swung open. Her father, with a cigarette hanging from his lips. She didn’t even try to cover herself--it didn’t matter anymore. “You deaf? Come help me change the tire on the jeep,” he barked.
She smiled for the first time since before Nate Grey had died. “I’m glad you’re here, Daddy. I have something for you...”
Act 2:
"'Fate was a beautiful ballerina.
Packing an Uzi.'"
by Sam Everett
MARCH, YEAR FIVE
Valerie Cooper hated to do it, but she had to pull herself out from under the sheets.
“Why do you want to leave so soon?” Edmond Atkinson asked.
She didn’t want to. She wanted to crawl back into bed, rest her head on his sturdy, rolling chest, let him run his creamy, dark fingers through her fair hair long into the afternoon. But it wasn’t a matter of what she wanted to do.
“I have to go, sweetie. Representative Primrose is already unhappy with the ‘work ethic’ of my brother and I,” she gestured quotations sarcastically as she buttoned her blouse, “so I’ve got to get on the ball, get these files over to Shawn.”
“Work ethic, huh?” Ed snickered.
“Yeah, Primrose has been on our backs since Polaris pulled one over on his plans two days ago. He’s got to blame someone for her loss -- might as well be me and my baby bro.”
“This Primrose is just an all-around great guy!”
Val giggled. “Sure. But I don’t worry about it. In fact, I haven’t let this whole mutant merc affair bother me much, lately. Sort of resigned myself to it, I guess. I’ve had other things on my mind.” She teased Ed with a lascivious smile. “I’ve got to stay on my toes, though.” Then, her airy demeanor disappeared. “You know the deal, right?”
Ed sat up in bed. “You mean how, if you step out of line, Primrose will have one of your loved ones killed.”
Val nodded solemnly. “Yeah. That. Only he won’t say ‘loved ones’. He uses ‘designate’--it’s all more antiseptic that way.” She stepped into her heels mechanically, afraid to say what Ed knew she was about to say. “It’s occurred to you, then, that my designate could be--”
“Me. Yeah,” Ed said sympathetically. “It’s occurred to me, anyway.”
“How do you feel about that?” Val asked.
Ed surprised her with a playful grin. “Look, if you recall, you and me were married before. I know that I’ve got more to fear out of a relationship with you than just some government hitman. Like your cooking. And morning breath.”
“That’s it!” Val laughed. “I’m outta here.” She made her way to the dresser across the room and grabbed the manila envelope that was waiting for her. “Dinner tonight? You cook?”
“I’m off work at five,” Ed said. “I’ll be here with oven mittens on.”
Domino’s rifle glinted under the murky Manhattan sun, and in her rifle shimmered the reflection of the beast who looked nothing like a scared young man. Primal’s hulking, reptile-like form quaked in its own fear and anger, and Domino found it hard to imagine that under the mutant’s grizzly exterior resided a boy no older than Ned Barrett’s teenage son. For her, it had to be hard to imagine--it made her job easier that way.
“You’re cornered, kid. Surrender and you won’t be hurt.” She noticed that, lately, she had begun to address her targets rather coldly and concisely. This new approach tended to get her home in time to set at least some mac and cheese in front of her kids at the dinner table.
“Why do you want me?” he moaned. “I didn’t do anything!”
She flinched at his outburst, and her finger tensed against the rifle’s trigger even tighter. She hoped she wouldn’t have to shoot the kid’s legs out from under him--he could fall off the ledge and land five stories later, dead or close enough to it. Who knew how many questions the Agents Cooper would have to ask her about that, how much paperwork would be involved. Fortunately, she had an ace up her sleeve, and it was taking aim on Primal from the rooftop across the street.
“Any time now, Mystique,” she whispered into her comm unit.
“Just appreciating the exchange, Dom,” came Mystique’s reply in Domino’s earpiece. “The kid’s crying--where are your motherly instincts?”
“Back in Pleasantville. Now take the shot.”
An instant later, a stream of ruby red laser rays incapacitated Primal, and he crumbled to the rooftop.
“Score one for the blue bombshell,” Mystique gloated.
“’The Blue Bombshell’? Don’t forget my assist,” Domino noted.
“Mission number twenty-something is in the books,” Mystique said.
“Twenty-nine, actually,” Black Marvel bellowed as he stepped out from the maintenance building atop the roof, behind Domino. His black uniform was meant for stealth, but in the daytime, he had needed to hide while the mercs hunted their prey. “I’ve been keeping track.”
“Good, then you can compile the stats, Bee-Em,” Mystique said from the opposite roof. “Just don’t forget who took the shot. Oh, yeah--and Dom’s assist."
“Right,” Domino agreed.
“I’m going to see about cleaning up your little friend over there.” Mystique disengaged the commlink between her and the other two mutant-hunting mercenaries and pulled out her cell phone.
Meanwhile, Black Marvel and Domino looked down on the unconscious Primal, their hearts brimming with an emotional soup that overcame them most missions, it seemed.
“Only stat I need to know is that this is the third mutant with no criminal past that we’ve captured recently,” Black Marvel said. “Does that seem right to you, Dom?”
“Right and wrong don’t exist in this job. Not to me, anyway. Not anymore.”
“So I take it you haven’t given Magneto’s words much thought lately, then?”*
Domino didn’t answer.
“Imagine this is your kid, Dom. Never did nothin’ to nobody, hunted and captured like a dog. I ain’t askin’ for a commitment to a...rebellion. I’m not sure I’m ready for that either. I’m just askin’ you to consider it with me.” He stepped closer to break through her reverie from under his black cowl. “I know you’ve got that much in you.”
“That much what?”
His eyes danced with hers. “Good.”
Val stepped off of the lonely elevator and into the empty corridor of her brother Shawn’s apartment building. Mid-morning, and everyone was working, including her. She opened the door to his apartment--she’d stopped knocking years ago--and chimed, “Rise and shine, lazyhead!” The place was dead, just as she expected it to be. No movement, and the only sound came from the curiously open refrigerator in the kitchen. “Moron...” Val said as she stepped through the living room and into the kitchen. She set the manila folder on the countertop and grabbed a bottle of water out of the cataclysmically disheveled fridge before closing the door.
“Hey! Bro! Don’t make me pinch your nipples. It worked when we were kids and it’ll work now, dammit. Get up!”
Annoyed by his slothful behavior, she started for his bedroom. She didn’t like to go in there without a little warning--if he wasn’t naked, he was with some floozy from the night before. Ah, that must have been what kept him this morning.
“Pull up your pants, bro, I’m a-comin’ in.”
A quick rap, then she turned the knob, and the door creaked open. There was no girl. Just Shawn lying on the floor next to the bed--and a lot of blood.
“Ohmygod! Oh...God!”
Val collapsed to her knees beside her brother and tried to assess his injuries. His eyes had rolled past his brow, and his dark brown locks had been scorched, revealing bubbling splotches of scalp across his head. And a oozing mass of red and white pulsing through his skull. Brains...?
She wanted to vomit, but instead, she cried.
“V-Val...it’s you...”
“Shawn! You’re alive!” She stood and reached for the telephone on the dresser beside his bed. “I’m calling the ambulance. You’re gonna be fine.”
He sat in disbelief as he felt his own postcentral gyrus in his palm. “L-Lookit this.... The bastards got me...”
Val held the phone to her ear, waiting for a voice on the other end. “Who, Shawn? Who did this?”
“I...I can’t feel...anything...”
With a sickening slushing sound, Shawn tried to stuff parts of his frontal lobe back into his head. And then came the realization that it wasn’t working, and that he was about to die.
“Shawn? Who did this?”
His head fell back against the floor with a climactic thud. Val dropped the phone and shook him. Shook him, as if to tell his ravaged body that she wasn’t done with him yet--not even close. She shook him long into the afternoon...
And as she gazed into the fading eyes of her little brother, she realized: Primrose had made his point.
Nighttime, and the beach was empty. The ocean’s calm was interrupted by the golden glove bursting up from the water.
Maverick drug Maggott’s body onto the beach. The young, South African mutant had not been able to withstand their extended stay in the waters of the Atlantic, but Maverick had to be sure that Toad’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants had not stuck around to watch their bodies wash ashore. Maggott was near death, but that was nothing new, and Maverick would save him.
Then he would save the rest of the world...
They didn’t just let anybody into the office of Representative Mickey P. Primrose. He was an important man in the Beltway, with positions on many significant committees, including the House Committee on Mutant Affairs. This made him a wanted man. Therefore, he couldn’t just see Mrs. Parker on Runned-Over Weasel Street back in Alabama whose toilet was leaking, or even the pathetic little interest groups out of Birmingham. Only politicians of the highest standing got into his office. Only reporters with name recognition. Then there was his staff, among them his secretary Molly, and the two coordinators of the government’s most recent incarnation of mutant-hunting mercs, while behind the scenes, he pulled the levers that controlled the mercs’ actions.
This afternoon, Molly saw one of those coordinators, Agent Valerie Cooper, walk past her desk with her purse slung over her shoulder. Nothing out of the ordinary.
But Valerie Cooper brought someone else with her...
Val coolly entered Primrose’s office, and saw his white Stetson staring up at her as he reviewed his latest piece of anti-mutant legislation.
“Oh, afternoon, Agent Cooper,” he greeted her. His chubby, pasty face glistened with the same smug grin he always wore. The grin all politicians wore when they weren’t on camera. His trademark bolo tie gleamed under the ceiling lamps, which made his white cowboy get-up stand out more than normal. His old, beady eyes looked around her curiously. “Where’s my other favorite agent?”
Val hastily slid an Uzi out of her purse and pointed it at Primrose. He leaned back, showed his hands non-chalantly, but it seemed as though he was expecting this to happen.
“Whoa, now--that’s a mighty powerful piece of weaponry for a little lady like yourself...”
“It belonged to my brother,” she replied with a morbid brooding in her tone, “before you had him killed.”
“Excuse me? What ever do you mean?”
She thrust the gun at him in anger. “You know damn well what I mean, you sick bastard. You hold me responsible for Polaris’s sabotage, so you had Shawn killed.”
Primrose seemed perplexed, his brow scrunching under the brim of his hat. “I swear, Ms. Cooper, I had nothin’ t’do with that.”
Val’s eyes jumped back and forth sporadically across the room as she replied with the breaking voice of a woman at the end of the world. “Why not? That was the deal all along, wasn’t it? You always said one of our loved ones would be in danger if we failed your cause--you just never said who! And we were too damned naive to suspect you’d play us off each other.”
“You’re absolutely right, Val. That was the...agreement...all along, but I never intended for Shawn t’be your designate, and vice versa, because of just this situation. Your brother was too close t’me t’kill him. I knew that if I arranged the assassination of someone else you love, we wouldn’t be actin’ out this little scene, cuz no matter what, you’d be afraid of what I’d do t’your brother if you acted out against me. He was the card I would never play unless I had to. He was the insurance policy on the insurance policy. So, yes, you were punished Ms. Cooper, but it wasn’t in my interest t’see your brother killed...”
She started to lower the Uzi as his words sank in. She knew she was mad when he started to make sense. But she still didn’t understand everything. “What do you mean, I’ve been punished?”
He looked around his desk, trying to think of the best way to say it--the best way to savor it. “Ms. Cooper, your ex-husband, Edmond Atkinson, was killed in his home this mornin’.” He still wore that grin.
With no one left to love, no reason to live, Valerie Cooper didn’t feel like a person anymore. That made it a lot easier to pump a million fateful rounds into Primrose’s chest until building security incapacitated her.
Besides the rustling of the morning paper, the mercs’ meeting chamber was silent, as usual. On one side of the long, reflective oak table, Domino tried to avoid eye contact with Black Marvel, like trying to push a thought into the back of her mind, but it persisted. She would have to do something about it soon, for the sake of her nerves, if nothing else. As usual, Mystique had the other side of the table to herself as she leaned back with her feet up, a Styrofoam cup of coffee between her legs, and the Post unfolded before her.
“How about that? They say Primrose is going to make a full recovery.... Hm.”
She looked over her paper and caught blank stares from both Domino and Black Marvel.
“What?” she shrugged. “Primrose? The politician? Some unidentified nut shot him a couple of days ago? I heard he’d taken enough bullets to knock down a house. At least the looney-toon who shot him was taken into custody, but they’re keeping it all hush-hush for the investigation. Still, I’m sure the nut’ll get the speediest trial imaginable...”
Nothing, save for a bit of contempt. The mercs had more pressing matters to worry about, like their ever-discomforting lives hanging in the balance on a daily basis, that the fate of some politician just seemed so...meaningless.
“Don’t you watch CNN? Jeez-us.” Amused by the sneers she received, Mystique struck back in her way: “You two look cute together.”
Even Black Marvel was too resigned to the morning and what the next mission would bring to bother with retaliation, verbal or otherwise.
“I guess Creed won’t be on hand for this mission either,” Domino noted. “But the Agents Cooper could at least show up on time. I’d like to be home to take my kid to her youth group tonight.”
Just then, the door swung open, and all of Victor Creed himself lumbered into the room with more flair--and more fashion sense--than normal. He boasted a three-piece suit, black with thin white stripes, and his stubble-filled scalp and ordinarily unruly goatee were groomed to a luster that would bring the mutant behemoth as close to urbane as he would ever come. He inexplicably carried a briefcase in one hand and an envelope under his arm, not unlike the Agents Cooper did.
“Niiiice suit, Victor,” Mystique ogled. “You come to sweep me off my feet all over again?”
“Fat chance, doll. Ol’ Sabretooth don’t make the same mistakes twice.”
Black Marvel, obviously nervous shifting in his seat, barked, “What’s this? And where are the Coopers?”
Creed popped open his briefcase, looked like a pro from the neck down. But the devilish grin, the Victor Creed Devilish Grin ©, convinced everyone at the table that things could get worse.
“As far as you need to know, the Agents Cooper have been...assigned elsewhere,” Creed answered. “From now on, kiddies, you’ll be takin’ your orders from me.”
Next Issue: Hot-shot newcomer Alex Fink brings you The Ghost and Justin Hammer. After his surprising arc, the mercs have a few more surprises in store...some from the future, and some from the past!
Contact Sam Everett at RooMil@aol.com
Sam Everett (4/21/2001)--Silkee Productions