X-Mans Tree: Blood Ain't Thicker Than Metal

by D D

The X-Mans must stop Magnetrick from destroying the city’s rail system, only to uncover the shocking truth about their mentor’s secret past with the villain.

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X-MansPart TreeBlood Ain't Thicker Than Metal Jeanetta typed the question mark. The secure portal accepted the new Wi-Fi password, reconsidered its life choices, and loaded. In the hallway, Reen leaned against one wall with his arms folded. Cyrus sat against the opposite wall, knees raised, trying to look as though sitting on the carpet outside a pregnant woman's bedroom was a deliberate adult decision. Downstairs, Professor Z stared at the router. "Why is everybody quiet?" "Because you named the password after our business," Jeanetta called. "The network required twelve characters." "Then use your social security number next time." Scambit's guest-room door opened half an inch. Rougie's gloved hand reached from behind it and pulled him back inside by the collar. On Jeanetta's phone, a white page appeared beneath the laboratory logo. A loading bar crawled across the screen. Her free hand settled on her stomach. PATERNITY RESULTS: VERIFIED. The bar reached ninety-eight percent and stopped. The space beneath the heading remained blank. Outside, Reen straightened when the mattress creaked. Cyrus stood so quickly his shoulder struck the wall. The bedroom door opened. Jeanetta emerged holding her phone against her chest. Her copper curls framed a face that revealed nothing. "Well?" Reen asked. Cyrus cleared his throat. "You do not have to tell us this instant." Reen looked at him. "Man, shut up." "See, that's exactly why neither one of y'all getting an answer tonight." Jeanetta walked between them. "One of you can't wait ten seconds, and the other one trying so hard to look patient he about to swallow his own tongue." Both followed her to the stairs. "Jeanetta," Cyrus said, "whenever you are ready—" Every metal object in the hallway slammed against the ceiling. Door hinges screamed. Picture frames flew upward. Reen's belt buckle yanked him onto his toes. Beneath the carpet, nails pulled through the floorboards in a rising line that raced toward the stairs. Jeanetta's phone tore out of her hand. "Oh, hell no." She caught it with her mind inches below the chandelier. The screen cracked anyway. A jagged black stain spread across the laboratory result. Reen's claws shot from his fists without permission and dragged his arms above his head. Cyrus grabbed the railing as the metal fasteners ripped out around his fingers. Professor Z's voice struck every mind in the house. Basement. Now. From below came Monsta's roar, followed by the sound of several thousand dollars becoming fragments. * * * The regulator had torn itself out of its charging cradle. It hovered above the basement floor, spinning slowly inside a cloud of screws, tools, pipes, and pieces of Professor Z's favorite wheelchair. Monsta stood beneath it with both blue hands locked around the control ring. His thick arms shook as he fought to keep the machine from rising through the ceiling. "Him activated it from outside!" he shouted. Stormisha swept into the basement wearing a satin robe, one silver boot, and an expression suggesting the emergency had interrupted something expensive. "Why my closet hangers stuck to the damn roof?" "Magnetrick," Z said. "Again? Don't that man have hobbies?" The outer wall exploded inward. Bricks and dust rolled across the basement. Stormisha threw up both hands, and a hard gust turned the debris aside before it struck Z. Beyond the hole stood Magnetrick in a new burgundy cape and the same ridiculous metal helmet. His wrists bore broken pieces of ceramic restraint. Beside him crouched something enormous. The man rose until his shoulders nearly filled the opening. He had dark skin crossed by pale scars, a heavy jaw, yellowed fangs, and a filthy fur collar around a sleeveless coat. Long black nails curved from his fingers. His tangled hair had been shaped into two high points that made him look like an angry house cat assembled at a truck stop. He sniffed once. "Blue one nervous," he growled. He sniffed again. "Bald one mad. Somebody upstairs pregnant." Stormisha tightened her robe. "And somebody down here smell like wet couch." The stranger's grin widened. Reen reached the basement stairs and stopped dead. "Sabertoof." Sabertoof turned toward him. "There go my favorite coward." For once, Reen had no quick answer. Magnetrick lifted one hand. The regulator ripped free of Monsta's grip and shot through the broken wall. Monsta lunged after it, but Sabertoof met him in the opening. Their collision cracked the remaining bricks from foundation to ceiling. Monsta drove a fist into Sabertoof's ribs. Sabertoof folded, laughed, and raked four claws across Monsta's shoulder. Blue blood darkened his shirt. Lightning flashed in Stormisha's eyes. "You cutting people in my house now?" She hurled a bolt through the opening. Magnetrick raised a shield of pipes, but electricity traveled along every piece. His cape smoked. Sabertoof's hair stood upright, making the two points considerably less dignified. "Retreat," Magnetrick snapped. "I just got here." The metal cloud closed around both villains. Stormisha called down a wind strong enough to strip shingles from the roof, but Magnetrick anchored himself to the city water main. Sabertoof grabbed the regulator under one arm. Before the cloud carried them away, he pointed one claw at Reen. "Tomorrow night. Rail yard. Come alone, or I follow that baby smell back here." The cloud surged into the darkness. Reen stood in the ruined basement, staring after it. Above him, Jeanetta looked at the dead black screen of her phone. "That ugly bastard broke my results." * * * By morning, the institute had three new drafts, no hot water, and a hole covered by two mattresses Monsta insisted were temporary. Stormisha sat at the dining table in a silk bonnet, adding columns to an invoice. BASEMENT WALL. HAIR DAMAGE. EMOTIONAL OVERTIME. Beneath those she wrote ONE GOOD BOOT and underlined it twice. Professor Z rolled in using the plain polymer transport chair. His chrome chair had contributed one wheel and most of its sound system to Magnetrick's escape. "You cannot invoice a supervillain." "Watch me." Monsta entered with his shoulder bandaged. "Di regulator is transmitting from di south rail yard. Him want us to find it." "It's a trap," Cyrus said. Reen poured liquor into a coffee mug. "Look at you earning that sweater." Jeanetta snatched the mug out of his hand with her mind and floated it into the sink. "You know that man?" Reen watched the liquor disappear down the drain. "Used to." "That ain't an answer." Sabertoof had belonged to the same wandering crew Reen ran with years before Professor Z found him. They fought for money, stole when there was none, and healed from choices that would have killed better men. During a warehouse robbery, Sabertoof had locked six workers inside and set the place on fire because one recognized him. Reen freed them and left Sabertoof beneath a collapsing steel beam. "Thought he died," Reen finished. Scambit spread jam across toast. "That's a dangerous amount of thinking to build a plan on." Rougie took the knife from him before he could return it to the butter dish. "You should not be advising anybody about plans." "My plans work. The consequences freelance." Z looked toward Reen. "You will not meet him alone." "He threatened Jeanetta." "Which is why you will not give him exactly what he requested." Reen pushed back from the table. Cyrus stood at the same moment. "Sit down," Reen said. "No." "This ain't got shit to do with you." Cyrus's jaw tightened. "He threatened Jeanetta and the baby. It has everything to do with me." The room shifted its attention toward Jeanetta. Her replacement phone lay facedown beside her plate. The laboratory had locked the report after the interrupted login and demanded that she verify her identity in person. Until then, the answer was trapped behind a security screen. She looked from Cyrus to Reen. "None of us know enough to be saying whose business that baby is." "You saw something," Reen said. "I saw a loading bar. Unless one of y'all the father of ninety-eight percent, I don't know shit either." Cyrus studied her face. She gave him nothing. Stormisha tapped her pen against the invoice. "While y'all auditioning for Maury, Magnetrick stole a machine that can pull the fillings out the whole south side." Z nodded. "We recover it tonight. Together." Reen left without agreeing. Stormisha watched him go. "That mean he doing something stupid before lunch." "Nine forty-seven," Monsta said. "Him ahead of schedule." * * * Reen took a city bus to the baby store because Magnetrick had ruined the van's transmission. He stood in an aisle surrounded by folded blankets, tiny bottles, and equipment that appeared designed to launch a child into space. He had come for a stuffed bear. Somehow he was holding a bottle warmer with six settings and reading the box as if it contained evidence. An employee approached carefully. "Can I help you find something?" "Need a gift." "For what age?" "New." She led him toward the stuffed animals. Reen selected a brown bear wearing a red jacket, squeezed its middle, and heard a soft lullaby. His face did something private before he forced it back into place. Then he smelled wet fur. The employee never saw Sabertoof arrive. One moment the aisle was empty; the next, Reen struck a shelf hard enough to scatter pacifiers across three departments. Sabertoof came through the falling boxes smiling. "You got soft." Reen's claws sprang out. "You got uglier." They collided beside the strollers. Reen drove Sabertoof through a display. Sabertoof bit into his shoulder. Reen shouted, buried an elbow in his jaw, and threw him toward the front windows. Parents fled with children clutched against them. An employee dragged the stunned cashier behind the register. "Everybody out!" Reen yelled. The store's security shutters slammed down. Metal shelving folded across the exits. Magnetrick descended behind the glass, the regulator floating beside him. Thin copper leads ran from its control ring to a black device in his palm. "You were invited alone," he said. Reen slashed Sabertoof across the chest. The wounds closed almost immediately. "I am alone. Unless you counting that helmet as a roommate." Magnetrick pressed the switch. Pain seized every bone in Reen's body. He dropped to one knee. The metal coating his skeleton vibrated at a frequency that turned his muscles useless. Worse, the cuts in his shoulder stopped closing. Sabertoof smelled the blood and understood. His first claw opened Reen from ribs to hip. * * * Stormisha found him because she had followed the storm cloud gathering above his head. Reen thought he had slipped out unseen. He had forgotten Professor Z could read minds, Monsta had installed trackers after the casino incident, and Stormisha had spent years recognizing the particular pressure change produced by a man determined to ruin everybody's day. She landed in the parking lot just as the baby store windows burst outward. Sabertoof emerged carrying Reen by the throat. Blood soaked the front of Reen's shirt. His claws dragged weakly against the pavement. Stormisha's white hair lifted around her shoulders. "Put him down." Magnetrick raised the regulator between them. "Call the others. Tell them the rail yard meeting has moved forward." "I don't schedule through men in capes." The sky split open. Lightning struck the parking lot. Magnetrick bent the frames of six shopping carts into a shield, but Stormisha curved the wind beneath it and flung him through the store's broken entrance. Sabertoof dropped Reen and leaped. Stormisha rose on a tight updraft. His claws missed her ankle by an inch. She sent him tumbling across the asphalt, then landed beside Reen. His eyes struggled to focus. "Healing ain't working," he whispered. That frightened her more than the blood. She pressed both hands over the wound. "Then don't you die. I am not explaining your nasty bedroom to the cleanup people." Sabertoof rose again. A red beam caught him across the chest and hurled him into a delivery truck. Cyrus ran from the institute's battered backup sedan with Monsta behind him. Jeanetta and Z remained inside the vehicle. Rougie and Scambit came around the opposite side. Cyrus knelt beside Reen. His face lost all color. "We need pressure on the wound." "Your dependable ass follow me?" "Apparently not closely enough." Stormisha tore a long strip from the hem of her coat. Together they bound Reen's middle. He tried to stand and nearly collapsed. "Get him in the car," Cyrus said. Magnetrick rose inside the store. Every security shutter ripped away from the building at once. "No," Z said. "Get everyone away from the metal." The shutters flew toward the parking lot. Jeanetta caught two. Stormisha drove three upward with a blast of wind. Monsta planted himself in front of the car and took the last across both forearms. The impact shoved his boots through the asphalt. Sabertoof burst from the damaged truck and charged Jeanetta. Cyrus turned from Reen and opened his visor. The blast struck Sabertoof squarely, but Magnetrick pulled a steel signpost across its path. Red energy split around it. One edge struck the black device controlling Reen's skeleton. It sparked in Magnetrick's hand. Reen felt his wounds begin, slowly, to close. "Rail yard," Magnetrick shouted to Sabertoof. The villains escaped inside another storm of metal, carrying the regulator south. This time nobody chased them. Stormisha kept pressure against Reen's side until the bleeding slowed. Her hands were red to the wrists. "You owe me a coat," she told him. Reen looked at Cyrus kneeling beside him. "You owe me a bear." Cyrus glanced through the shattered storefront. The stuffed bear lay in the parking lot, one red sleeve torn. He retrieved it before they left. * * * Monsta repaired the regulator tracker while Reen healed on the sitting-room couch. The wound had closed, but not cleanly. Magnetrick's pulse had disrupted the metal throughout his body. His healing came in uneven waves, leaving fever and deep pain behind. Jeanetta sat in the armchair across from him, furious enough to keep every loose object hovering several inches above the floor. "He said come alone, so you went alone." "Was handling it." "You got carried through a baby store by a man named Sabertoof." "Had a setback." Cyrus placed the damaged bear on the table. Jeanetta saw it and went quiet. Reen looked away. "Wasn't sure what color the room gon' be. Red work with everything." She picked up the bear. Her anger softened, but only around the edges. "You don't get to make yourself disposable because you don't know what that test said." Reen met her eyes. "This ain't about whose baby it is," she continued. "You live in this house. That means people got to come collect your stupid ass when you leave." Stormisha entered from the hall wearing a fresh white coat. "And some of us got jobs tonight." Z turned toward her. "You are not going to the club." "The Velvet Vault opens in forty minutes. Peaches already short three dancers and a section of ceiling." "Magnetrick knows where you work." "Magnetrick also know where I live, and that ain't stopped nobody from sleeping upstairs." She had barely finished when every television in the mansion flickered on. Magnetrick appeared on the screen standing between the dark rails of the south yard. The regulator pulsed behind him, connected to a switching tower. Freight cars surrounded the platform in every direction. "Professor," he said, "you have until midnight to surrender yourself and the mutant called Reen. Otherwise I will magnetize every rail beneath this city in opposing directions." Monsta stared at the readings. "Di trains would tear apart." Magnetrick smiled. "Bring the woman with the weather if you like. I have made arrangements." The broadcast ended. Stormisha slowly removed her coat. "Oh, he asking for me now." Thunder rolled above the mansion. "Peaches gon' have to find another midnight feature." * * * The south rail yard spread beneath a moonless sky. Magnetrick had welded freight cars into a ring around the switching tower. The regulator glowed on the upper platform. Its pulse ran through the rails, making every length of track hum beneath the team's feet. Monsta carried ceramic tools and a grounding clamp. Rougie and Scambit moved along the eastern fence. Jeanetta remained beside Z at the yard entrance, under strict instructions to conserve her strength. Reen ignored strict instructions by walking beside Cyrus with fresh bandages hidden beneath his vest. Stormisha hovered above them, white hair streaming in the wind. "I don't see Fur Coat," she said. Reen smelled him a second too late. Sabertoof dropped from a signal bridge onto Monsta's back. They crashed through a tool shed. At the same moment, Magnetrick pulled the freight-car ring inward. Steel walls slammed across every exit. Stormisha shot upward. Fine silver cables sprang from four towers and formed a web above the yard. When her wind touched them, the regulator flashed and pulled the energy down into the rails. Her updraft died. She fell thirty feet. Jeanetta caught her five feet above the ground. "I had it," Stormisha said breathlessly. "You was falling in cursive." Magnetrick stood on the tower platform. "Every gust feeds the regulator. Every lightning strike charges it. Tonight, even the sky belongs to me." Stormisha stood and brushed gravel from her uniform. "Sky don't belong to nobody, you overdressed refrigerator magnet." Reen and Cyrus moved toward Monsta, but Sabertoof erupted from the wrecked shed and met them halfway. He struck Reen's healing wound, dropping him instantly. Cyrus fired. Sabertoof twisted aside, seized a loose rail tie, and hurled it. Cyrus blasted the tie to splinters. Sabertoof came through them. His claws struck Cyrus's visor first. Ruby crystal shattered across the tracks. Cyrus squeezed his eyes shut, but a wild red beam escaped between his lids and sliced through two freight cars. Sabertoof's second strike opened his chest from shoulder to ribs. Cyrus fell. For one terrible moment, the entire yard seemed to stop. Then Jeanetta screamed. The force that burst from her lifted every loose object not held by Magnetrick. Freight doors, gravel, shattered glass, tools, and Sabertoof himself rose in a widening circle. Jeanetta's copper curls streamed straight upward. Blood ran from one nostril. "You touched him!" She hurled Sabertoof through the switching tower. Magnetrick lost control of the western rail long enough for Stormisha to understand the trap. The cables did not steal her weather. They conducted it into the regulator. "Monsta!" she shouted. "Can that machine choke?" Monsta emerged from the shed, blood running down his blue arm. He looked from the cables to the control ring. "If yuh feed it more than di ground can carry." Stormisha smiled without warmth. "Then let it eat." She raised both hands. The clouds did not gather gradually. They arrived like an army. Wind screamed between the freight cars, ripping panels from their hinges. Magnetrick tried to channel it into the web, but lightning came down in branching white columns—one, three, seven strikes at once. The regulator swallowed them. Its red core turned white. Scambit and Rougie reached the eastern tower. He charged a steel coupling with violet energy and tossed it into the cable anchor. The explosion snapped two lines. Rougie pulled off one glove and seized his wrist. His power poured into her. She charged the grounding clamp and threw it across the yard. Monsta caught it. Magnetrick sent a locomotive wheel spinning toward him. Reen stepped into its path. The wheel caught his skeleton and dragged him backward, but he drove all six claws through its rim and held on. His half-healed body shook. "Do the machine!" he shouted. Monsta climbed the tower. Below, Cyrus lay on the tracks with one hand pressed to his chest. Blood spread beneath him. His shattered visor sparked beside his face. He could not open his eyes without cutting through the team. Reen released the wheel and crawled to him. "Hey. Sweater." Cyrus's lips moved. "Jeanetta?" "She good. Mad as hell, but good." "The baby?" Reen looked toward Jeanetta. She stood with both hands raised, holding Sabertoof against the ruined tower while Magnetrick fought to pull him free. "Baby good too." Cyrus tried to rise. "Stay down." "You never do." "Yeah, well, look how I turned out." Sabertoof tore free of Jeanetta's hold and landed behind them. Reen stood between him and Cyrus. His claws extended, but his knees nearly failed. Sabertoof smelled the weakness and grinned. "Still protecting people who make you soft." "Nah," Reen said. "They make me hard to kill." Sabertoof charged. A hurricane hit him sideways. Stormisha had stopped fighting the cables. She compressed the wind below them, driving a horizontal funnel through the yard where the web could not catch it. Sabertoof flew across four sets of tracks and struck the inside of a freight car. Jeanetta slammed the door shut with her mind. "Keep that ugly motherfucker boxed," Stormisha said. The car rocked violently. "I can manage that," Jeanetta replied. Above them, Monsta reached the regulator. He locked the charged clamp onto its ring. Scambit's violet energy flashed through the mechanism. Magnetrick seized the clamp magnetically, but Rougie—still carrying a piece of his power from Municipal Plaza—caught the control ring from below. "This again?" Magnetrick shouted. "You still stealing our appliances?" Stormisha called the final bolt. It struck the tower with a sound that flattened the grass for a hundred yards. The regulator overloaded. Every rail in the yard flashed blue, then discharged into the ground. Magnetrick's helmet lifted from his head. Professor Z entered his mind. The freight cars stopped moving. The switching tower groaned and leaned. Monsta jumped from the platform as it collapsed. Jeanetta caught him. Stormisha caught the burning regulator in a column of air and lowered it into an empty gravel bed, where it cracked open with a disappointed hiss. Z held Magnetrick frozen on his knees. "You keep returning," the professor said. "You keep leaving the door open." Behind them, Sabertoof tore through the freight-car roof. Stormisha turned, exhausted. Reen crouched over Cyrus. Jeanetta's hands trembled from holding too much for too long. Sabertoof looked at the team, then at the dark tree line beyond the yard. "This ain't finished," he said. "Then come get your receipt," Stormisha replied. He leaped the fence and vanished into the industrial darkness before anyone could stop him. Reen did not watch him go. He lifted Cyrus carefully, one arm beneath his knees and the other behind his shoulders. Cyrus's blood soaked through Reen's vest. "Stay with me," Reen said. Cyrus's eyes remained tightly shut. "You smell like a distillery." "That's right. Keep complaining." "Your carrying technique is also inadequate." Reen started toward the waiting ambulance. "There he go. Dependable." * * * Cyrus survived surgery. The doctor used several careful words before admitting the claws had missed his heart by less than an inch. His chest was stitched and bandaged. His damaged eyes would recover, but until Monsta constructed a replacement visor, Cyrus had to wear a thick black wrap and keep them closed. Reen sat beside his hospital bed until sunrise. He had showered, but dried blood remained beneath his fingernails. The torn bear sat on the windowsill. Jeanetta had brought it with them and then fallen asleep in the family waiting room under Stormisha's coat. Cyrus woke to the sound of a bottle cap turning. "If you're drinking in a hospital," he murmured, "I hope it is disinfectant." Reen looked at the unopened water bottle in his hand. "Was considering it." Silence passed between them. "You came back for me," Cyrus said. "Don't make it romantic." "Wouldn't dream of it." Reen leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Back at that store. You could've let Fur Face finish me." "Yes. Then I would have been required to assemble every piece of nursery furniture alone." Reen laughed once, softly. His face tightened afterward. "You saved my life." Cyrus turned his wrapped eyes toward the sound of his voice. "You carried me out. We can consider the account settled." "Nah." Reen looked toward the window. "I owe you. Don't get comfortable with it." The door opened. Jeanetta entered carrying the torn bear. Reen stood. She touched his arm as she passed, then nodded toward the hallway. "Give us a minute." He studied her face, then Cyrus's. Whatever question rose in him, he swallowed it and left. Jeanetta sat beside the bed. "How you feeling?" "Like I lost a disagreement with farming equipment." "Your jokes get worse on medication." She set the bear on the windowsill, took his hand, and placed it against her stomach. The baby shifted beneath his palm. Cyrus went still. "The lab still won't open the report," Jeanetta said. "They want me to come in with identification and do some extra verification because the connection got interrupted." Cyrus exhaled. "So we still do not know." "Nobody knows. And after tonight, I ain't letting that answer turn either one of y'all into a bigger fool than you already are." In the hallway, Reen heard only the quiet movement of the room. He waited several seconds, then walked toward the waiting area without pressing his ear to the door. Stormisha sat there with her bare feet on a coffee table, white hair tied up, and an ice pack against her shoulder. Rougie slept against Scambit, who was awake and pretending not to be pleased about it. Monsta worked on a new visor beneath the light of a vending machine. Professor Z snored in his polymer chair with Magnetrick's bent helmet resting in his lap as evidence. Stormisha opened one eye when Reen entered. "Well?" "She talking to him." "And you ain't listening through the wall?" Reen sat across from her. "Nah." She considered him for a moment, then moved her feet so he could use the end of the table. Inside the hospital room, Jeanetta squeezed Cyrus's hand. "Whatever that report says," she told him, "this baby don't need two men trying to kill each other." "Agreed." "You agreeing because you medicated?" "Possibly. Ask me again when I can see." For the first time since the rail yard, she laughed. * * * Three nights later, Professor Z sat alone in the damaged basement. Cyrus was home from the hospital, asleep upstairs with a temporary visor Monsta had built from welding glass, two circuit boards, and something removed from a microwave. Reen had planted himself outside Cyrus's room under the claim that he was guarding the hallway. Jeanetta's laboratory appointment was still two days away. The regulator lay dead beneath a canvas sheet. Magnetrick was back in custody. Sabertoof was somewhere beyond the city. None of that was what kept Z awake. Magnetrick's bent helmet rested on the worktable. Inside its lining, Monsta had found a small brass key stamped with the number 78. Z rolled to the far wall and stopped before an old steel cabinet nobody else had ever seen him open. The key fit its bottom drawer. Behind him, the basement door creaked. Stormisha descended wearing her robe and carrying two mugs of tea. Her white hair was wrapped high above her head. "You think so loud I can damn near hear it without powers," she said. Z did not tell her to leave. The drawer opened with a reluctant scrape. Inside were cassette tapes, yellowed newspaper clippings, a burgundy scarf, and a square photograph with curled white edges. Stormisha picked up the photograph. Five young Black mutants stood outside a neighborhood club beneath a sign advertising live funk on Friday nights. They wore matching leather jackets. One was a thin young man with an enormous rounded afro, dark glasses, and his arm around the shoulders of a tall man in burgundy. The tall man had no helmet yet. He was smiling. Stormisha looked from the photograph to Professor Z's bald head. "Professor...is that you with the afro?" "It was 1978. Everyone made mistakes." On the back, faded blue ink read: THE CREW - FIRST NIGHT - SUMMER '78. Another clipping showed the same men eight years later. By then, one headline called them heroes. Another called them dangerous. A third had been folded so only two names remained visible: ZACHARY and TRICK MAGNUS. Stormisha's amusement faded. "Magnetrick was in your crew?" Z took the photograph from her and studied the young men they had been. "Before the mansion. Before the X-Mans. Before he became Magnetrick." His thumb moved across the image. "He was my best friend." Footsteps gathered on the stairs. Monsta appeared first, beanie crooked from sleep. Rougie and Scambit followed. Jeanetta came down slowly with Reen beside her, and Cyrus stood behind them in his temporary black visor. Reen looked at the photograph. "Why he dressed like a bootleg Temptation?" "Because," Z said, "he used to sing." Nobody spoke. Stormisha lowered herself onto a crate. "Oh, we definitely hearing this." Professor Z placed an old cassette into a dusty player. The tape clicked. Static filled the basement, followed by a bass line, distant laughter, and Magnetrick's young voice calling for Zachary to hurry up. Z looked around at the team. "If you want to understand why he keeps coming back," he said, "you need to know how we started." The cassette rolled backward through nearly fifty years. Then a young Professor Z began to speak.

X-Mans Tree: Blood Ain't Thicker Than Metal

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