X-Mans Da Fifth: Hide and Go Teek

by D D

The X-Mans hunt for the missing Teek family, only to face a lethal government squad protecting a secret that threatens all mutant-kind.

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X-Mans Da FifthHide and Go Teek The cassette clicked off. For several seconds, nobody in the basement moved. The old player sat on Professor Z's worktable with its reels finally still. Around it lay the remains of a life none of the X-Mans had known existed: yellowed clippings, curling photographs, a burgundy scarf, and the brass key stamped 78. The basement seemed smaller now that it held nearly fifty years of buried truth. Cyrus lifted one clipping closer to the light. His temporary black visor, pieced together by Monsta after Sabertoof shattered the other one, gave his face a severe expression even when he was only reading. The photograph printed beneath the headline showed a train platform at night. Professor Z and Monsta stood near the edge, younger but recognizable. Behind them, half turned from the camera, was a broad-shouldered man with heavy sideburns and the same irritated posture he carried around the mansion every morning. Cyrus looked over the paper at Reen. Reen leaned against a cabinet with his arms folded. He looked exactly as he did in the photograph. "So that's how you found Reen," Cyrus said. Professor Z nodded. "That article gave us our first reliable lead." "I don't age much," Reen said. "Can we move on before somebody start asking what moisturizer I use?" "Soap would be a promising beginning," Cyrus replied. Reen raised one claw halfway out. Jeanetta groaned and pushed herself from the crate. "I just sat through fifty years of trauma, bad decisions, and Professor Z having a whole afro. I am not staying for another argument between two grown men who might be my baby's father." The room went quiet in a different way. Her laboratory appointment was the following morning. Nobody mentioned it. Jeanetta climbed the basement stairs, one hand resting beneath her stomach. Behind her, Stormisha asked Z something about Misty Teek. The name followed Jeanetta into the hallway, but exhaustion had already softened its meaning. She crossed the dark mansion, passed the ruined section of wall covered by a temporary tarp, and continued upstairs. At the landing, cold air touched her face. One of the tall windows stood slightly open. Jeanetta moved toward it and looked across the front lawn. Rain had left the street shining beneath the lamps. On the opposite sidewalk stood an old man in a gray overcoat. He was thin, bent at the shoulders, and supported himself with a wooden cane. A narrow hat concealed most of his face. He was staring directly at the mansion. Jeanetta leaned closer to the glass. The old man did not blink. She opened the window another inch. "Can I help you?" A delivery truck crossed between them. By the time it passed, the sidewalk was empty. Jeanetta remained at the window, listening to the truck fade into the night. Down in the basement, the cassette player clicked by itself. * * * The prison had no bars. Bars were metal, and metal belonged to Magnetrick. The federal engineers had learned from the last three facilities, though each lesson had cost them a wall, several vehicles, and one unfortunate guard whose belt buckle carried him through a ceiling. The new containment wing lay beneath an abandoned salt mine. Its corridors were poured from dense white polymer. Its doors rolled on ceramic bearings. Guards wore cloth uniforms, plastic shields, and weapons constructed from compressed glass. Magnetrick's cell was a seamless white cube. No screws. No wires. No pipes. No springs. Even the toilet had been molded from a single block of industrial resin. Magnetrick sat on the edge of the narrow bed in plain burgundy clothes the prison had allowed only after testing every thread. Without his helmet and cape, he should have looked diminished. He did not. The door dissolved from opaque white to transparent. Professor Z waited on the other side in a new wheelchair Monsta had built without using a single magnetic component. Magnetrick smiled faintly. "They sent you in a plastic chair." "You have made everyone unusually creative." The door opened. Z rolled inside. It sealed behind him without a sound. For a moment, the two men studied each other as they once had across chessboards, rehearsal rooms, and battlefields. Time had spared Magnetrick's face. It had not spared what lived behind it. "Sabertoof remains missing," Z said. "Then I suggest you look somewhere unpleasant." "Three rail workers nearly died. Cyrus nearly died. You threatened Jeanetta and her unborn child." "I threatened leverage. There is a distinction." "Only to a man determined not to see what he has become." Magnetrick stood. Somewhere deep beyond the polymer walls, a warning sensor chirped. Even buried here, the prison feared what he might find. "You came to lecture me?" he asked. "I came to ask you to stop. No more regulators. No more attacks on the mansion. No more dragging innocent people into whatever grievance happens to possess you that week." Magnetrick gave a humorless laugh. "You always reduce my purpose to madness when it becomes inconvenient to you." "Random destruction is not purpose, Trick." The old name struck harder than shouting would have. Magnetrick turned away. His reflection floated in the glossy wall: the face of a man who had stopped aging while everyone he loved became memory. "Find Teek," he said. Professor Z's hands tightened on the chair arms. "Misty Teek disappeared decades ago." "You are a telepath with a mansion full of people who break into casinos, fly through storms, and survive being thrown through buildings. Do not insult me by pretending a missing woman is beyond you." "She betrayed us. She helped her father." "Her father manipulated everyone near him." "Dr. Dover killed our friends." "And I killed him." Silence filled the cube. Dr. Benjamin Dover was dead. Nothing could soften that truth, and nothing would bring him back. Magnetrick faced Z again. The fury in him had lowered, revealing something worse beneath it. "I searched for her after," he said. "Every city. Every name. Every rumor. I found graves belonging to women who were not her and children who had never heard of her. Then I stopped searching because hatred was easier to carry." "And now?" "Now hatred is boring." Z studied him. "If I find her, you end this campaign against my team." "Against your team, your mansion, your city. I will stop." "You will not approach her without her consent." Magnetrick's jaw tightened. "That is the agreement," Z said. "Not a suggestion." At last, Magnetrick nodded. "Find Teek." Professor Z turned toward the door. "Zachary." He stopped. "Do not tell her I begged." Z looked back at the oldest friend he still had. "You did not." * * * Scambit was banned from seven public databases and subscribed to three others under the identity of a deceased dentist. By breakfast, he had converted the dining room into an investigation center. Laptops, city maps, phone directories, and several items nobody wanted explained covered the table. Rougie stood behind him reading over his shoulder. Reen stood at the refrigerator drinking orange juice directly from the carton. "You nasty," Rougie said. Reen lowered the carton. "I ain't sick." "That ain't the standard." Scambit snapped his fingers. "Found something. Misty Teek used six names after 1989. Most are dead ends. One rented a room over a tailor shop in Baltimore for nine months. Same address later received school records for a boy called Noah Teek." Professor Z rolled to the table. "Where is he now?" "Depends who asking." "I am." "Then he lives in an abandoned church outside Bellhaven and owes two parking tickets. If the city asking, I ain't seen that man in my life." Reen wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "We leaving when?" "You, Scambit, and Rougie will go this morning," Z said. "Find Noah. Ask about his mother. Do not threaten him." "Why you look at me on that last part?" "Because I know you." Rougie closed the laptop. "What aren't you telling us?" Z looked toward the old photograph propped against the fruit bowl. "Misty could alter her appearance. Age, height, voice, even the arrangement of her bones. Her father's experiments strengthened the ability until she could become nearly anyone." Scambit glanced around the room. "How we know she ain't already in here?" Stormisha entered wearing enormous sunglasses and carrying coffee. Scambit pointed at her. "Question one. What your real name?" Stormisha removed the glasses. "Question two. You want this coffee poured on which part of you?" "That's her," Rougie said. Near the staircase, Jeanetta listened without joining them. She had not slept. Twice during the night she had checked the window. The old man had not returned. She decided not to mention him until she understood what she had seen. * * * Bellhaven had once been a factory town. Now its brick warehouses stood hollow beside a river the color of old coins. The abandoned church occupied the end of a narrow street where weeds grew through the pavement. Reen drove because Rougie refused to let Scambit touch the keys. "That misunderstanding in Delaware was one time," Scambit said from the back seat. "You sold the rental car while we were still renting it," Rougie replied. "I improved the company's cash flow." Reen parked beside the church. Every window had been painted black from within. He sniffed the air. "Somebody inside." "Human?" Rougie asked. "Mostly." They entered through a side door. The sanctuary had been converted into a home without losing the shape of a ruin. A mattress rested beneath the choir loft. Books filled wooden crates. Canned food lined the altar. Black fabric covered the stained-glass windows. A kettle on a camping stove was still warm. Scambit picked up a framed photograph. It showed a dark-blue child with oversized ears smiling beside a woman whose face had been scratched away. The lights died. Something moved above them. Reen's claws came out. Smoke burst from the rafters, black with a deep violet center. A figure dropped through it and kicked Reen across two rows of pews. Before Rougie could grab him, the attacker disappeared with a sharp crack and reappeared behind her. A tail wrapped around her wrist. Rougie's bare fingers closed over the tail. The stranger gasped as her power pulled at his strength. He teleported again, carrying her ten feet before the contact broke. They separated in another cloud of smoke. He landed on the altar rail. He was young, perhaps in his mid-twenties, though the tension in his face made him seem older. Dark-blue scales covered his skin and caught the weak daylight like wet stone. A black hoodie hung from his narrow shoulders. A fitted cap sat backward between two pointed ears. Behind him, a long scaled tail lashed through the air. His eyes were bright gold. "Who sent you?" he demanded. Reen rose from the broken pew. "Bald man in a wheelchair." The young man's eyes narrowed. "Government?" "No," Scambit said. "Worse. School administration." Reen gave him a look. Rougie raised both hands. "We came looking for Misty Teek. We aren't hunters." At the name, the young man's tail went still. "You need to leave." "You Noah?" Reen asked. Smoke swallowed the young man. He appeared directly in front of Reen and drove a fist into his ribs. Reen absorbed it, seized the front of his hoodie, and slammed him against a pillar. "I heal fast," Reen growled. "You don't know if you do. Calm down." The tail snapped around Reen's ankle and pulled. Reen hit the floor. The young man vanished before his claws could reach him. Scambit threw three playing cards into the smoke. Pink energy flashed across their edges. They exploded against the far wall, showering plaster without striking anyone. "Warning shots," he announced. "You almost blew up a baptism pool," Rougie said. "Then it was already covered for water damage." The young man appeared behind Scambit with a wooden cross raised like a club. Rougie stepped between them. "Enough! Professor Z knew your grandfather. Dr. Benjamin Dover." The cross slipped from the young man's hands. It struck the floor with a hollow crack. "You know Dr. Dover?" "Knew," Reen said. "He dead." Rougie glared at him. "There were gentler ways to say that." "Dead don't need extra words." The young man backed toward the altar. Suspicion remained in his face, but grief had entered beside it. "My mother said her father died before I was born. She never said how." "Misty Teek is your mother?" Rougie asked. He hesitated, then nodded. "That's what she called herself before I was born." "And you are Noah?" "Nobody calls me that." He pulled his hood over the backward cap. "Nightwalka." Scambit looked at the blackened windows. "You walk at night?" "People tend to scream less when they can't see me." The answer removed the last of Scambit's smile. Rougie stepped closer without touching him. "Where is your mother?" "I don't know. She left eight months ago. Said people from her past had started looking. She promised to contact me when it was safe." "Did she mention Magnetrick?" Nightwalka's golden eyes searched their faces. "Once. She woke up from a nightmare and said the name Trick. That's all." Reen glanced at Rougie. No conclusion passed between them, because there was none to make. "What about your father?" Scambit asked. Nightwalka's expression closed. "Never knew him. My mother never told me his name. Said some truths belonged buried." "Could Trick be-" "No," Rougie said firmly. "A name in a nightmare is not a family tree." Nightwalka picked up the fallen photograph. "Whoever my father was, he wasn't there. That's all I know." Outside, tires whispered across wet pavement. Reen's head turned toward the door. "We got company." * * * Three white vans sealed both ends of the street. Men and women in gray armor poured out carrying rifles with transparent barrels. Their helmets bore the symbol of an open eye crossed by a vertical blade. Scambit peered through a gap in the painted window. "Those don't look like meter maids." Nightwalka's face hardened. "Purity Division. Mutant hunters. They've tracked me for months." A amplified voice rolled across the church. "Noah Teek. Exit with your hands visible. Any persons assisting the mutation will be classified as contaminated." Reen cracked his neck. "I hate people with microphones." The first projectile shattered the window. It was not a bullet. A glass capsule burst against a pew and released a silver vapor. Nightwalka staggered as soon as he inhaled it. Rougie dragged him backward. "What is that?" "Suppressant," he choked. "Stops teleporting." The church doors exploded inward. Reen met the first hunter before the smoke cleared. His claws sliced the rifle in half. He drove his shoulder into the hunter's chest and sent him skidding across the floor. Two more fired. Ceramic rounds tore through Reen's coat and buried themselves in him. He kept moving. "That all?" One round discharged electricity inside his shoulder. Reen dropped to one knee. "Okay. That one had personality." Rougie pulled off her gloves and caught an armored hunter by the jaw. Strength and memory rushed into her. His body collapsed while images struck her in fragments: cages, laboratory lights, lists of mutant children, and a command truck parked behind the church. She released him with horror burning through her face. "They aren't here just for Nightwalka," she said. "They have a whole database. They're taking mutants alive for experiments." Scambit's eyes darkened. He charged a deck of cards until every edge burned magenta. "Then let's adjust they research budget." He flung the cards through the broken doorway. Explosions ripped beneath the vans, lifting two onto their sides. Hunters scattered. Nightwalka tried to stand. His tail trembled against the floor. "Stay down," Rougie said. "They'll keep coming if the command truck leaves." He pulled the backward cap lower, staggered into the aisle, and forced himself through space. The teleport came weakly. Smoke folded around him, and he vanished with a sound like splitting wood. He reappeared outside on the roof of an overturned van. The hunters looked up. Nightwalka smiled through the pain. "Y'all looking for me?" Every rifle turned toward him. He vanished. Their fire struck the van as he appeared behind them, tail sweeping two hunters off their feet. He teleported again, each jump shorter than the last, drawing the squad away from the church. Reen ripped the electrified round from his shoulder. The wound closed around his fingers. "Kid crazy," he said. "You sound impressed," Rougie replied. "Didn't say all crazy was bad." The command truck accelerated from behind the church. Nightwalka appeared on its rear bumper and dug his fingers into the doors. A hunter leaned from the passenger window and fired. The round struck Nightwalka beneath the ribs. He disappeared, then crashed onto the street twenty feet away. The truck raced toward him. Rougie ran, but she would not reach him. Reen did. He threw himself between Nightwalka and the truck. The bumper hit him with enough force to fold the hood. Reen vanished beneath the chassis. The truck lifted, twisted, and crashed into a light pole. Scambit walked from the church rolling one glowing card across his knuckles. "Everybody out the truck before I turn it into a convertible." The rear doors opened. Four hunters emerged behind transparent shields. Between them stood a woman in polished gray armor with a red stripe across her helmet. She carried no rifle. "Mutants are an infection," she said. "History will thank us." Nightwalka pushed himself upright, one hand pressed to his bleeding side. "History don't know you." The commander touched her wrist. Sonic emitters hidden along the street activated at once. The sound was too high to hear and too deep to escape. Nightwalka screamed. Rougie clutched her head. Scambit's charged cards fell harmlessly from his hand. Reen crawled from beneath the wrecked truck, blood pouring from his nose and ears. Nightwalka looked at the emitters. Six devices. Too far apart. Too little strength left. Then he looked at his new allies. He disappeared. The first teleport took him to the nearest emitter. He tore it from the pavement. The second dropped him beside another. His knees buckled, but his tail smashed the device. The third jump failed halfway. He struck the street, rolled, and forced himself up. The commander approached him. "You could have survived quietly." Nightwalka spat blue blood onto her boot. "Quiet ain't the same as living." Reen hit her from the side. They crashed through the command truck's windshield. Rougie recovered enough to seize a shield bearer, draining his strength and using it to tear a second emitter loose. Scambit crawled to his cards and slapped both palms onto the deck. Every card ignited. "Cover your church windows," he called. Nightwalka stared at the already shattered glass. "What windows?" Scambit grinned and sent the deck spinning beneath the command truck. The explosion opened the vehicle like a metal flower. Its armored panels flew harmlessly upward because Nightwalka, with the last of his strength, teleported Rougie and Scambit inside the church an instant before the blast. He appeared between them and collapsed. Outside, surviving hunters fled in the remaining van. Reen let them go. He stood in the ruined doorway, healing slowly, and watched until they disappeared. "They'll come back," Nightwalka whispered. Reen looked down at him. "Then don't be here when they do." * * * Nightwalka woke beneath a vaulted ceiling painted with clouds. For one confused moment, he thought he had died somewhere expensive. Then Monsta leaned over him, filling his vision with blue muscle, long dreadlocks, and a red-gold-green beanie. "Easy now, yute. Di medicine still working." Nightwalka's tail sprang upright beneath the blanket. Monsta stepped back. "Seen worse reaction to me face." "Where am I?" "X-Mans mansion. Safe enough, depending on who cooking." Nightwalka sat up. A bandage circled his ribs. Across the infirmary, Reen slept in a chair with his boots on another bed. Rougie stood at the window. Scambit was attempting to open a locked medicine cabinet with a playing card. "That is not yours," Rougie said without turning. "I was testing security. It failed." Professor Z entered with Jeanetta and Cyrus behind him. Nightwalka stared at Z's face. "You knew my grandfather." "I did." "Was he a good man?" Nobody answered quickly enough. Z rolled closer. "He was brilliant. He was also cruel, obsessive, and responsible for suffering that cannot be excused. You are not responsible for what he did." Nightwalka looked down at his scaled hands. "My mother spent her whole life running from his name. Guess I know why." "Did she ever tell you where she might go?" "No. She changed faces whenever we moved. Sometimes she was my aunt. Sometimes my father. Once she stayed an old woman for two years because the landlord gave seniors a discount." Scambit looked impressed. "That's financially disciplined." Rougie elbowed him. "Did she speak of Trick Magnus?" Z asked. "Only that one time. I don't know what he was to her. And before anybody asks again, I don't know who my father is. She never told me." "Magnetrick is not your father," Z said. Nightwalka studied him. "You sure?" "You were born long after his last encounter with your mother." Some tension left Nightwalka's shoulders—not relief, exactly, but the comfort of having one false answer removed. Cyrus cleared his throat. "The Purity Division took your records from several municipal systems. Scambit erased what remained." "And added him to a wholesale seafood rewards program," Rougie said. "Free shrimp after ten purchases. He'll thank me later." Nightwalka looked around the strange room at the strange people who had nearly died beside him. "Why help me?" Reen opened one eye. "Because you got attacked. Don't make it sentimental." Jeanetta smiled despite herself. Then she glanced toward the window. Across the street, beneath the afternoon sun, the old man stood with both hands resting on his cane. Her smile vanished. "Professor." Everyone followed her gaze. The sidewalk was empty. "There was somebody there," Jeanetta said. "Same old man I saw last night. He keeps watching the mansion." Reen rose and sniffed near the open window. His brow furrowed. "Smell perfume," he said. "Old kind. Flowers and smoke." Professor Z went very still. Nightwalka swung his feet to the floor. "My mother wore perfume like that." Outside, a city bus rolled away from the corner. * * * The old man stepped off the bus six blocks later. He walked until the mansion disappeared behind rows of buildings, then slipped into a secluded alley where no windows overlooked the narrow passage. His disguise vanished immediately. Wrinkled skin became blue, cloudy eyes burned yellow, and gray hair transformed into a vivid fall of red. Misty Teek had returned to her true form.

X-Mans Da Fifth: Hide and Go Teek

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