Obligatory warnings and disclaimers:
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If reading this is in any way illegal where you are or at your age, or you don't want to read about male/male relationships, go away. You shouldn't be here.
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The X-Men and any related characters are property of Marvel Comics, trademarked and registered and copyrighted and all that. I'm using them without permission.
For those who read the comics and worry about such things, this story takes place in the (much simpler and easier to follow) Ultimate X-Men universe, and starts right around issue 54. If you don't want to dig out your copy, the team at that time is Jean Grey, Cyclops, Iceman, Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Angel, and Dazzler.
Comments can be sent to "dustyh75@hotmail.com"
Thanks.
Whatever argument Bobby was about to start ground to a screeching halt as the orange glow from far down the driveway lit up one end of the rec room. Bobby's mouth dropped open as he watched the explosion mushroom outward from the main gate, the fire already flaring out as Seth jumped up from the couch, the bag of M&M's falling to the floor and spilling all over the rug. Seth heard the glass shake in the window frames as the lights in the hallway blinked out, and then Warren let out a soft "Ow!" as he banged his wings on the back of the couch trying to jump up.
"Shit," Bobby whispered, glancing up at the dark lights on the hallway ceiling. Down at the gate, flames guttered, burning out against the stone, and there was a loud crash as something large and metal smashed through the bars.
"Security breach," a soft female voice sounded around them. "Intruders detected at main entrance. Two vehicles entering on main drive."
"What the hell?" Seth asked, looking around. He'd never noticed speakers in any of the rooms, but the voice seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
"We have to get downstairs," Bobby said sharply. "We need to call the Professor."
"Phones are dead," Warren said, holding the receiver out toward them. Seth hadn't even seen him cross the room. He felt like he should be doing something, too, but he didn't even know the house had an alarm, much less a talking one. If he didn't know something that simple, what were the odds that he knew something useful?
"Cell is jammed," Bobby said, walking quickly toward the hallway as he shoved his phone back into his pocket. He turned back at the door, almost completely hidden from the two of them. The only light in the room came from the moon outside and the dull flickering from the gate. Whoever had driven in wasn't using any headlights. "Are you two coming or what?"
"Yeah," Warren answered, grabbing Seth's arm. "Come on."
"Where are we going?" Seth asked, wincing as he banged a knee on one of the end tables. How the hell did Warren and Bobby know exactly where all the furniture was? Bobby and Warren were hurrying down the hallway, Warren's bare feet slapping on the floor.
"Command center," Bobby answered from ahead of them. He slid around behind the stairs and punched the down button for the elevator.
"That won't," Seth began, and Bobby cut him off.
"The power isn't really out, dumbass," he sneered. The elevator doors slid open in front of him, silently mocking Seth as they spilled light across the floor, and the three of them jumped inside as they heard a loud buzzing hum begin outside.
"The house has an internal generator," Warren explained, glaring at Bobby. Bobby stared up at the floor display as if neither of them were there.
"Then why aren't the lights on upstairs?" Seth asked. The elevator stopped on the bottom level, the lowest basement where the danger room, research labs, and the infirmary were located. Bobby started quickly down the hallway as that voice continued to drone in the background, letting them know that intruders were present at the main entrance, on the main driveway, and on the north lawn.
"Standard preset response protocol," Warren explained. Down here, all the lights were on, as if everything was business as usual. "Since the intruders think they shut off the power, everything upstairs is off for now."
"So the phones down here work?" Seth asked hopefully, following Bobby down the hall.
"Probably not," Bobby answered, passing the infirmary and stopping at a door Seth hadn't ever really noticed before. There were a lot of doors down here, leading to a lot of rooms he hadn't been in or even thought about yet.
Hell, he was still trying to figure out where all the rooms upstairs in the main house were. It would be forever before he learned the basement, sub basement, and second sub basement levels. There was a keypad next to the door, and Bobby typed in some numbers, but the illuminated buttons flashed red. "Shit!"
"Use mine," Warren said quickly. Seth felt a quick surge of glee at seeing Mr. know-it-all caught with his pants down. Once again he was reminded that Bobby was the youngest guy on the team, and frequently acted like it. "1-7-0-1."
"Thanks," Bobby said, typing it in. There was a loud series of banging noises from inside the door.
"The door has those bars inside, like a vault," Warren explained, turning to Seth again. Warren's voice was level, like Bobby's, but Seth could see that both of them were jumpy and trying to cover it up. Seth could understand, since he felt like he was about to pee his pants. The gate exploded, there were intruders on the lawn, the mansion had a command center that no one had bothered to tell him even existed, and the three of them were supposed to do what, exactly? Bobby was the only one of the three with any offensive powers, if it came down to fighting. Warren couldn't even flap himself off the ground, and Seth would have to get in pretty close to do anything.
"Why don't I have a code?" Seth asked as the door slid open.
"Because you wouldn't know what to do with it?" Bobby sneered, his voice taking on a needling tone.
"Bobby, cut the shit," Warren said absently, stepping inside. Bobby and Seth followed, with Seth keeping his arms pulled in out of fear of touching anything and blowing up the house by accident. What if it also had an emergency auto-destruct sequence or something? "Seth, you're not trained on this yet, so the Professor hasn't given you an access code. At least you'll probably remember yours when you finally get one."
"Whatever," Bobby said, rolling his eyes at the ceiling.
The command center looked like the bridge on a spaceship, with a wall of screens and a row of computers underneath. The door, which had looked normal from the hallway, was actually pretty thick, about a foot or so by Seth's estimate. Inside, everything gleamed, and there was a slightly antiseptic smell to the stale air. The whole setup was futuristic but utilitarian at the same time, all fluorescent lights and burnished steel walls, exactly what you would expect from a bunker. Warren spun one of the chairs around, sitting in it backwards so that his bound wings were clear, as Bobby hit a button by the door to close it. Seth heard the bars inside locking back into place.
"We're sealed in," Bobby reported, typing Warren's code into the keypad on this side of the door.
"I'm locking down the elevator," Warren said, typing quickly on one of the keyboards. "And shutting off that damn vocal. They don't need to know that we know they're here."
"Can we see them?" Bobby asked, staring at the screens. There wasn't much light on the lawn, so all the screens were showing were dark shapes moving across other dark shapes.
"Switching to night vision," Warren said, and half of the screens suddenly switched over to the familiar green and black that Seth had seen so many times on television. Now they had six dark screens and six screens showing two large trucks blocking the driveway. A group of men (or women) dressed in dark body suits stood near the trucks, surrounding a large machine of some sort.
"What the hell is that?" Bobby asked, squinting at the screen.
"I'm not sure," Warren said. "It's throwing off these really weird readings."
"Can the scanners tell us anything about it?" Bobby asked. Seth stood helplessly behind them, looking around for a phone or something.
"You're so lucky I paid attention when the Professor trained me on this," Warren said, typing away.
"Can we reach the Professor?" Seth asked. "Like on the phone or the radio or something?"
"Nope," Warren answered, not turning around. "One of those trucks has a jammer of some kind in it. We can't get a signal out, and they cut the phone and the internet ground lines."
"Are you sure it's not that machine thing?" Seth asked, nodding toward the screen. Bobby turned hopefully toward Warren, but Warren shook his head.
"No, that's doing something else," Warren answered, pushing his hair out of his eyes with one hand while he typed with the other. He chewed his bottom lip as he clicked on various icons with the mouse, muttering quietly to himself. "I don't know, it's, oh fuck."
"What?" Bobby and Seth both barked at once. Warren turned toward them, his eyes huge and his face pale.
"It's a force field," he answered. "That thing is making a force field around the mansion and part of the grounds. We're completely cut off."
All three of them were quiet for a moment, letting that sink in. Seth glanced at the screens again and noticed that the people on the lawn also had guns strapped to their backs. This was looking worse by the second.
"What about Kurt?" Bobby asked, his eyes ticking back and forth from screen to screen. "He should have been down here by now."
"Computer says he left a while ago," Warren answered. "He's probably out in the woods somewhere. I don't think he's going to be able to port back in."
"But he'll see what's going on," Seth said quickly. "And then he can call for help."
"If he gets back here before they get inside," Bobby said, staring at the screens again.
"What about neighbors?" Seth asked. He'd only been outside the grounds twice, and hadn't noticed any other driveways or anything, but maybe Bobby or Warren knew about some. "Maybe someone would see the explosion?"
"Nobody's close enough to see that," Warren answered. "Even if they did, most of them would probably look the other way. They're not big on the mutant freaks around here, especially if we're blowing things up."
"We need audio," Bobby said, still watching. The people on the lawn were pointing something at the house, handheld objects of some sort. "Who are these guys?"
"I don't know, but I think we have sound," Warren answered. There was a loud crackling, and then strange voices filled the room.
"Lost all three of them," a man said. "All three signatures were moving through the first floor, and then stopped registering."
"When we got in the elevator," Seth whispered. Warren nodded.
"It's shielded," Bobby whispered back. Even whispering he managed to keep a hostile tone, but he only used it on Seth. "So is the basement."
"Affirmative," the voice continued. "None of them read as primary target. Repeat, primary target Logan is not present."
"They're after Logan," Bobby said, still watching.
"Yeah, thanks, we caught that," Seth said, finally getting a dig in at Bobby. "He quit, right?"
"He didn't quit!" Bobby yelled, suddenly right up in Seth's face. "He left!
People take breaks, and it doesn't mean they quit."
"He's not here," Seth said carefully. An undercurrent of anger marked his tone, and for a second Bobby seemed to pause. "He hasn't been here the entire time I have, and Kitty says he left a while ago. I don't know what you call it, but I call it quitting."
"You don't know anything," Bobby said sullenly, turning away. "Sometimes people take a break, and it doesn't mean they're not coming back. Logan and Storm and Rogue, they're coming back, and everything'll be like it used to be."
Seth and Warren looked at each other for a second, wondering if they should say anything. Seth had an annoying feeling that Bobby's idea of "like things used to be" included not having him on the team, but now probably wasn't the best time to get into that. Fortunately the voices outside caught their attention, breaking the tension for a minute.
"Confirmed that neither psi is present," the voice from before continued. "Preliminary scanning showed the ice freak and two unknowns. We should be able to secure the house fairly easily."
"Secure the house?" Warren asked, glancing at the other two. Bobby swallowed, hard, and Seth felt a giant lump rising up in his own throat.
"Proceed with caution," a second voice advised. "Long range scans detected several underground levels with heavy shielding."
"They know we're down here," Bobby said quietly.
"We are so fucked," Seth added. "How long do you think it'll take them to get down here?"
"Depends," Warren answered, still watching the screens. "I don't know what kind of equipment they have with them, but once they get the elevator open they could just come right down the shaft, and then all they'd have to do is get through the door."
"They'll have the right equipment," Bobby said, his voice suddenly firm and calm. "If they're even half as prepared as they were last time, they'll have everything they need to roll in here, pick all three of us off, and then wait for the others to get back."
"Last time?" Warren asked. On the screen, the large group split into three smaller ones, one staying with their machinery, one heading back to the front gate, and one group of four creeping slowly across the lawn toward the house.
"Who the hell are these guys?" Seth asked.
"Weapon X, I think," Bobby answered. "What's left of Weapon X. We thought Weapon X was shut down after they captured us, way back after we first fought Magneto and everyone thought he was dead. S.H.I.E.L.D. was supposed to shut them down, but then right before you joined, War, a squad of them attacked Wolverine. They chased him all the way across New York, beat the hell out of him a couple times, and then when we finally tracked them down they all died before we could find out who was behind it."
"They all died?" Seth asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Their leader was this badass chick," Bobby explained, shrugging. "We had them surrounded, and she shot all the guys in the squad and then shot herself in the head."
"Jesus Christ," Warren sighed, glancing back at the monitors. The guys on the lawn were still moving carefully toward the house, as if they expected the team to come flying out of the windows any second now.
"Yeah," Bobby said, nodding. "They hate mutants, and they're willing to die if it wipes us out, too."
"And they're at the front door," Seth said, watching.
"They'll be in here before anybody gets back," Warren said. "They're going to kill us, take the house, and then wait for everyone else to get home."
"We can't stay in here," Seth said. "They already know we're down here. We have to get out of the house and get help."
"They have that force shield," Warren reminded him. "Even if we get out of the house without getting shot, we won't be able to get off the grounds."
"Then we'll have to shut that down long enough for one of us to get out," Seth said simply.
"How the hell are we going to do that?" Bobby demanded, sneering again. Seth felt a sudden urge to punch him in the mouth. "Warren can't even move without hurting himself, and you're not trained to do anything. We might as well stick a big red target right on your chest."
"So, what, you're going to do this by yourself?" Seth asked. "These guys, according to you, beat the hell out of Wolverine a couple times, and from what I've heard that's kind of hard."
The ceiling lights all flashed red for a second, and they spun back toward the screens as the four man squad unshouldered their rifles. They had those little flashlights mounted on the ends, and the beams all flicked on at once, trained at the front door. Without even trying the knob the guy in front shot the lock, the short rapid burst of gunfire making Seth jump. Even Bobby, trying to play the tough guy, flinched a little. The lead guy kicked the door open, and the group burst into the foyer in classic police S.W.A.T. team formation, two of them standing and two of them kneeling, their guns covering the whole space of the entryway.
"We're out of time," Warren said sharply. "I'll stay down here."
"Warren," Seth began, and Warren held up a hand.
"Bobby's right, Seth," he said, shrugging and wincing. "I can barely move. All I'm gonna do upstairs is slow you down, but down here I can at least help you a little. I can talk to you through the room speakers, and maybe slow them down a little with the door locks and whatever else I can think of."
"This is insane," Bobby said, crossing his arms. "Maybe if we wait down here-"
Warren spun around in the chair, an angry look on his face that Seth had never seen before or thought him capable of.
"If we wait down here all three of us are going to die!" Warren yelled. "We're out of time for talking this over, Bobby. You have to get out of the house and get help, and you're not going to be able to do it by yourself. Take Seth and go up the back stairs by the kitchen, now, before those guys get to that wing, and then freeze that force field machine solid."
"Warren," Seth began.
"Go!" Warren said sharply, typing something quickly on the keyboard. Seth heard the bars inside the door unlocking, and knew that Warren was right. Outside, they'd probably get killed, but inside they definitely would.
"We'll come back for you," Seth said. He tried to sound convincing, but this felt too much like a goodbye. Friends shouldn't leave friends behind, even if it was the smart thing to do.
"I know you will," Warren said.
Behind Seth the door swung open, and he followed Bobby into the hallway. The door closed behind them, and they heard the bars inside falling into place, one after another, like nails pounded into a coffin.
"This fucking sucks," Bobby said, his voice so low it was almost a whisper. He glanced at Seth, his jaw set and his face hard. "And you're probably going to get us killed."
"If worse comes to worse you can just use me as a decoy," Seth said, clenching his hands into fists.
"I was planning to," Bobby said, starting down the hall. Seth followed, waiting the whole time for someone to come bursting around the corner, spraying bullets across the hallway. "Warren, can you hear us?"
"Yeah," Warren answered, his voice coming from nowhere specific. "Stop being an asshole."
Seth smirked. Even locked up in the command center vault, Warren had his back. As they passed the laboratories, and then the holding cells, Seth wondered what they were going to do when they got outside. The house was surrounded by lawns on every side, a little island of green in the forest, so there wasn't a lot of cover anywhere. Sure, they had the pool and the gazebo, but those wouldn't offer much protection, any more than the benches around the grounds would. The best he could think was that Bobby could provide them with some sort of ice cover, maybe some barricades or something, but ice didn't really seem strong enough to stop bullets. At the end of the hallway they came to the stairwell door, and Bobby opened it carefully, both of them listening.
"Stairwell's clear, guys," Warren said. He'd turned down the volume, hoping to keep the sound from echoing and maybe giving the four men in the house a clue to what was going on. "Be careful. I'm getting some weird readings from the guys in the house."
"What kind of readings?" Seth asked.
"They're sort of ripply," Warren answered, and Seth could hear the frustration in his voice. "I'm trying to filter it out, but I think their suits might have some kind of stealth shielding."
"This gets better and better. Come on," Bobby said, starting up the stairs.
They sprinted up all three flights, neither speaking, and Warren flicked off the lights before they opened the door on the first floor. Bobby held a finger to his lips and pulled the door open a crack, glancing into the hallway. He turned back to Seth, still holding the door open. "I think it's-"
"Shut the door!" Warren yelled around them, but a loud clicking right next to Bobby's head froze both of them in place.
"There you boys are," a gruff voice said from the hallway, the beam of his gun-mounted flashlight falling across Bobby's face. The end of the barrel was leveled firmly at his wide open eye, less than three inches away.
To be continued.
Thanks to all the people who wrote to welcome me back.