X-Mans 16: It Gotta Be Over By Now

by D D

Jeanetta escapes with her son, forcing her team to storm Apocalypto’s tower to rescue them from a dangerous and escalating conflict.

Comic Book

comedy

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62 scenes

X-MansPart Sixteen Cyrus smiled before he remembered to be afraid. Her fingers rested inside his hand. They were warm, and when they moved again he leaned toward her with the exhausted gratitude of a man who had spent too many nights making promises to someone who could not answer. “Hey,” he whispered. “There you are.” Jeanetta looked past him. The red in her eyes did not fade when she blinked. It filled them evenly, hiding the familiar movement of her pupils. Cyrus glanced toward the monitor, expecting an alarm to explain what he was seeing. Her heartbeat continued at its steady, indifferent pace. “I need my baby.” “He’s right here.” Cyrus turned slightly toward the bassinet. “He’s sleeping. Let me get the nurse first. You’ve been—” Her hand closed around his throat. For a second he thought she was reaching for support. Then his chair tipped backward, and his shoes left the floor. He caught her wrist with both hands. Jeanetta rose from the bed without looking down at the lines attached to her arm. Tape peeled loose. A tube snapped against the bedrail. The pale shirt beneath her hospital gown began to darken at the collar. Black spread through the fabric, sinking along its seams until the last patch of color disappeared. Nothing smoked. There was no heat. Cyrus could feel only her fingers tightening and the terrible ease with which she held him. “Jeanetta.” His voice scraped against her grip. “It’s me.” She finally looked at him. “I know.” The wall struck his back before he understood that she had thrown him. Plaster broke around his shoulders. He passed through the partition into the adjoining consultation room, hit a cabinet, and fell beneath a rain of folders and pale dust. Someone screamed. The sound seemed very far away. His last clear thought was that the baby was still beside her bed. Jeanetta lifted X-Boy from the bassinet with surprising care. He stirred inside his blanket, his mouth working once before settling against her chest. She adjusted the cloth beneath his head. Behind her, the monitor continued sounding for a body no longer connected to it. A nurse appeared in the doorway. “Ma’am, please put him—” The door tore free of its hinges and buried itself in the opposite wall. The nurse dropped beside a supply cart. Jeanetta walked past without looking at her. The hallway filled with people who did not yet know which direction to run. A visitor stood clutching two paper cups. A wheelchair blocked the turn beside the nurses’ station. Jeanetta raised one hand, and everything in front of her slid aside: carts, chairs, the station’s glass partition. A ceiling panel burst overhead. Water poured from a severed sprinkler line and hung for an instant above the baby before bending around him. X-Boy opened his eyes. His mother kept walking. * * * Monsta heard the damage before the alarm. A deep crack traveled through the wall behind his bed. The plastic cup beside his lunch tray trembled, and a picture of a lake tilted on its nail. He was already standing when the two security officers outside his room turned toward the far end of the corridor. “Stay inside,” one told him. Monsta stopped at the doorway. Beyond the officers, a bank of windows shattered outward. Jeanetta emerged through the falling dust with a bundle against her chest. He knew the blanket. Cyrus had carried it past his door that morning. “Jeanetta?” She did not turn. The officers ran after her. One lifted his radio; the other reached toward her shoulder. Red light swept across them. Their uniforms collapsed before Monsta understood what had happened to the men inside. A fine gray cloud drifted over the floor. The radio struck the tiles and continued transmitting a voice asking for a location. For a moment Monsta could not move. Then a woman stepped out of a room directly into Jeanetta’s path. “Stay down!” he roared. “Everybody down! Nuh move!” He burst through the half-closed door hard enough to tear its latch from the frame. The woman dropped. Monsta reached her as the wall above her folded inward, covering her with his body while fragments broke against his back. When he rose, Jeanetta was already at the end of the passage. He ran after her barefoot, hospital fabric pulling across shoulders that had grown broader since his admission. People pressed themselves against walls as he passed. He tried to make his hands look open, harmless, but there was no time to explain the difference between the monster behind them and the woman ahead. “Jeanetta! Look pon me!” She glanced back once. The pressure hit his chest like a vehicle. He slid across the wet floor, caught a doorway, and tore a strip of metal from its frame before he stopped. Pain spread beneath his ribs. By the time he could breathe, she had reached the glass pedestrian bridge between the hospital wings. The windows burst in a long, glittering line. Jeanetta rose through the opening with her son held close. Wind caught the loose edge of his blanket. She tucked it beneath her hand and climbed into the evening sky. She flew far away from the building. Monsta reached the ruined bridge and stopped short of the edge. Below him, people scattered across the courtyard. Above, the red light dwindled until he could no longer separate her from the darkening clouds. Behind him, someone was calling for a doctor. He turned back toward Cyrus’s floor. The room beside Jeanetta’s had lost most of one wall. Cyrus lay beneath a broken cabinet with his face turned toward the dust. Monsta lifted the cabinet carefully, setting it down instead of throwing it. He crouched and touched two fingers beneath Cyrus’s jaw. A pulse. Faint, but there. “Cyrus.” He cleared plaster away from his mouth. Cyrus coughed, tried to rise, and cried out before falling back. “Easy, bredren.” Cyrus caught his wrist. “The baby?” Monsta held his gaze. He wished there were a gentler truth waiting behind the one he had seen. “She took him.” * * * The lizard had lost the end of its tail. It dragged itself beneath a blackened axle while fuel burned above it. Heat pressed through the sand. Every few inches it stopped, throat moving, then crawled again toward the shallow service channel beside the road. Misty remembered the metal closing. Apocalypto’s grip had held her human shape long enough to make her believe she had run out of time. Then the folding truck struck his band of force. The pressure shifted. Her ribs compressed, her hands narrowed, and she made herself smaller before the next sheet of metal could meet the first. A gap beneath the chassis had been no wider than two fingers. She had passed through it with skin tearing along her back. Now the fire behind her had become a glow between stones. She reached a drainage grate set into the concrete channel and pushed her narrow body through. Cooler darkness closed around her. Somewhere above, an engine started, then receded. She had seen them carried away. Her son among them. The channel sloped toward the tower’s access road. Misty followed the thin current along its bottom, passing insects and a rusted bottle cap larger than her head. Her body wanted stillness. She kept moving until the air changed from burned fuel to damp concrete and warm machinery. At the junction beneath the tower, she climbed a maintenance cable into a service shaft. A guard paused above the grille, bending to check a pipe. Misty studied his face, then waited until he left before squeezing into a cupboard behind the pump room. Changing back hurt more than she expected. Her knees struck concrete. Her breath caught against bruised ribs, and for several seconds she could only kneel among the pipes with one palm pressed over her mouth. The wound across her back remained when the rest of her shape settled. She could disguise the skin. She could not make the injury disappear. Nightwalka would have tried to come back for her. She knew it with a certainty that made her want to tear every door from the building. Instead, she listened. Footsteps. Two sets. A complaint about a delayed shift. The scrape of a keycard against a reader. Misty shut her eyes and assembled the face she had seen through the grille. When she stepped out of the cupboard, the guard’s own mother could have mistaken her for him. * * * Z had not let Rougie move the van. Across the street, the police had begun carrying equipment into Claudette’s house. A detective had taken his number. Someone had offered him water. Ordinary gestures continued around a fact he could not make ordinary. Rougie sat behind the wheel with both hands folded in her lap. “We can’t stay here all night,” she said. “He knew.” “Who?” “Diabolical. He told me Devin was visiting her. He wanted me to know.” Z looked at the house again. The photograph was no longer visible; an officer had drawn the curtains. He had once imagined growing old within walking distance of Claudette. Nothing dramatic. An extra chair at her table. The ability to arrive without rehearsing what he might say. He had spent so long treating that possibility as something safely postponed that he had never considered it might be taken away. “Devin has to die.” Rougie turned in her seat. “Professor.” “I know what I said.” His hands tightened on the chair’s arms. He could feel the words he would have offered a student: grief, restraint, the difference between justice and revenge. He knew precisely how they should sound. None of them would bring her back. His phone rang. Cyrus tried to speak too quickly. Z heard a hospital alarm beneath his voice, then Monsta asking him to sit down. The account came in fragments: Jeanetta awake, red eyes, the baby gone. Z closed his eyes. “Where is she now?” “I don’t know.” Cyrus’s breathing caught. “She threw me through the fucking wall. I couldn’t even—” “Listen to me. Stay with Monsta. Let the doctors examine you. We’re coming.” He ended the call and looked toward Rougie. She had already started the engine. * * * Magnetrick answered Misty on the fourth attempt. She stood in an empty dispatch booth with a stolen handset pressed against her ear. Outside the glass, a freight cradle descended through the shaft. The operator she had copied lay tied beneath the desk, breathing through a strip of cloth. “Who is this?” “Somebody who told you she’d call.” Silence. Then his voice changed. “Misty.” She nearly sat down. Hearing her name spoken without an order attached to it undid something she had been holding together since the truck. “Listen before you start talking. We’re in Apocalypto’s tower. He took everybody. Noah’s alive, but I haven’t reached him.” “Are you hurt?” “I’m standing.” “That was not my question.” “It’s the answer you getting.” She gave him the coordinates from the dispatch screen, the nearest airstrip, the service entrance beside the drainage works. The freight lift required a badge and an operator’s code. She had both now. Patrol changes would give her a short opening the following evening. Magnetrick interrupted when she described the implants. “Don’t try to pull one out,” she said. “I overheard a medic. They’re tied into the nerves. Removing them could kill our people. We need Gorge.” “I am coming.” “Bring help. Call Z. And Trick?” He waited. “Don’t come in throwing the whole building around. Our people are inside.” “I understand.” She knew his voice well enough to hear what the promise cost him. After the call, she remained beside the handset for one unnecessary second. Then she changed her face again and went looking for her son. * * * Gorge had repaired half the gun by the time he noticed the transmitter. Apocalypto stood across the workshop inspecting a completed soldier. He turned his wrist, and the command panel beneath his armor brightened. At the same instant, Gorge’s left hand stopped moving over the bench. “Leave that component.” Gorge stared at his fingers. They rested beside a small receiver he had almost removed from the weapon’s housing. Apocalypto released him. The soldier behind the window shifted a crate without bending its knees. Its face was a blunt copy of its maker’s, stripped of curiosity. Gorge lowered his eyes to the damaged barrel. Along Apocalypto’s exposed wrist, pale filaments disappeared beneath living skin. This was not a remote control strapped over armor. Something had been built into the arm itself. He needed a closer look. “I need another pair of hands,” he said. Apocalypto turned. “The focusing cradle weighs more than I can lift while aligning the contacts.” Gorge kept his voice tired. “You want identical weapons. The first one has to work.” “Use a guard.” “They don’t follow technical instructions.” A guard beside the door shifted his club. Gorge pointed toward the alignment marks on the cradle. “One degree wrong, and it ruptures on the first shot.” Apocalypto studied him for long enough that Gorge could hear the assembly arms cycling beyond the glass. Then he touched his wrist. “Bring the one with knives in his fists.” * * * Reen lowered his head when the guards opened his cell. Scambit did not look at him. They had practiced that much without saying so: no sudden attention, no grateful expression, nothing a camera might mistake for hope. “Keep watching,” Reen murmured as he stood. Scambit rubbed his face with both hands. “Always do.” The guards took Reen down in the transparent elevator. Clouds slid upward behind his reflection. One guard carried the badge Scambit had described; the other kept his thumb over the club’s activation switch. Reen could have killed both before the doors opened. He pictured Nightwalka’s hands locking at his sides, Stormisha standing against her will. Apocalypto would not need to reach Reen to punish the attempt. He kept his claws in. Inside the workshop, Gorge stood beside a metal cradle. Reen recognized the gun beneath it, then the ranks of unfinished bodies beyond the window. “Ugly motherfucker started a family,” he muttered. Gorge’s mouth tightened. He did not smile. A guard pointed to the bench. “Lift.” Reen obeyed. For the next hour, they worked beneath cameras while Gorge spoke in measurements. Reen held components, turned the cradle, fetched a cable from a cabinet. His muscles made the labor easy. Pretending that somebody else had chosen each movement exhausted him. When a cooling unit roared to life, he leaned closer to the bench. “Chip don’t work on me,” he whispered. “Scambit knows.” Gorge’s tool stopped for less than a second. “Keep tightening,” he said aloud. Reen turned the fastening. Gorge bent over a contact near his hand. “Don’t let them see you decide anything.” “Been trying.” Gorge slid a diagnostic strip beneath the housing. A diagram appeared, showing the workshop relay and a command source identified by a moving pulse. He had expected a room. A console they could reach. The source moved when Apocalypto moved. Gorge blanked the display before the guard could see it. “We have a problem,” he whispered. Reen watched his reflection in the window. Behind it, hundreds of closed eyes faced the workshop. “Pick one.” * * * By the following afternoon, Cyrus could walk without Monsta’s arm, provided nobody asked him to turn quickly. The hospital doctor had wanted him admitted. Cyrus had allowed imaging, bandaging, and an argument he barely remembered. Nothing inside him was bleeding. Several things hurt badly enough to make the distinction feel insulting. He carried the empty baby bag into the van himself. Monsta followed in borrowed clothes that strained across his shoulders. A nurse stood near the ambulance entrance, watching him with an expression he could not read. He had returned to the damaged floors to move beds and clear a passage for the injured. Nobody had tried to stop him leaving afterward. Z waited beside the ramp. “I should have stayed,” he said. Cyrus shook his head once. “If you were there, she would’ve hurt you too.” The kindness in that answer was harder to bear than accusation. At the airport, Magnetrick waited at the gate with his helmet beneath one arm. He had booked everyone on the next commercial flight, all in economy. Hothead paced beside the seats. Lady Longnails checked her boarding pass. Jugga-knot stood beside a luggage trolley he had just bent trying to sit on it. “You fit through the door?” Monsta asked him. “Watch me.” They both examined the aircraft entrance. Hothead looked between them. “Plane got a weight limit?” “Get on,” Magnetrick said. Z waited until the others had begun boarding. “Diabolical knew Devin was at Claudette’s.” Magnetrick’s expression settled. “I am sorry.” “I want him dead.” For years, Magnetrick had imagined hearing those words from him. Their arrival gave him no satisfaction. “Then keep your mind on the people we can still bring home,” he said. Z looked toward the aircraft. Cyrus was helping Monsta negotiate the narrow doorway while the other passengers waited behind them. After a moment, Z moved toward the jet bridge. * * * The upper hangar opened before Jeanetta reached it. A seam divided the tower’s silver crown. Two immense doors withdrew into the curved walls, revealing a landing deck above the clouds. Inside, spacecraft rested in cradles along the floor, their narrow windows dark. Jeanetta passed between them with X-Boy held beneath her chin. Her feet touched the deck without a sound. Diabolical waited beyond the landing lights. Seeing his physical face brought a confused ache behind her eyes. She knew him from somewhere without walls, somewhere she had begged to leave. The ache faded as he approached. “You brought him safely.” She shifted the baby away from his reaching hand. “I’m staying with him.” “Of course.” He led her through an upper passage into his operating chamber. Beside the machine stood an adjoining nursery, visible through an open doorway. A white cradle rested beneath a soft lamp. There were clean blankets, bottles, a small chair. Everything had been arranged with a care that made her want to believe in it. “Put him down,” Diabolical said. “You’ve carried him a long way.” Jeanetta stopped at the threshold. “He’s fine where he is.” Apocalypto stood from a console across the chamber. His size should have frightened her. Instead, the machine’s low vibration eased the instinct before she could follow it. “Your son will be safe here.” “Then he can stay with me.” “They will come for him.” He indicated a screen showing photographs of the X-Mans. “They have seen what he can do. They will call him dangerous. When they cannot control him, they will kill him.” “Cyrus wouldn’t let them.” “Cyrus could not even stop you leaving the hospital.” Her grip tightened. She remembered his body passing through the wall, and beneath the red anger something small recoiled. Diabolical adjusted a dial. The doubt slipped out of reach. Apocalypto stepped aside, giving her a clear view of the cradle. “You can protect him here. You can see who approaches. You need only let him rest.” She entered the nursery slowly. X-Boy stirred when she lowered him, and she almost lifted him again. Then his cheek settled against the blanket. His fist opened beside his face. She remained bent over him until his breathing deepened. From the other room, Diabolical watched Apocalypto enter a private code into the nursery controls. Neither spoke of the lock. * * * Broteus arrived through the clouds without an aircraft. Purple light trailed along his arms as he descended toward a landing platform high on the tower. Guards raised their clubs. He looked at them with mild irritation until a voice from the door told them to stand down. “Broteus.” Diabolical waited inside, his coat untouched by the wind. “You took your time.” “Had family business.” “Yes. I heard.” Broteus followed him into a chamber lined with equipment Gorge would have recognized from Orukai. A reclining frame occupied its center. Thin metal contacts curved inward around the place where a head would rest. On the wall, a screen displayed a shifting network of red points. A woman stood in the doorway of an adjoining nursery. Beyond her, a baby slept in a white cradle. Broteus slowed. Jeanetta watched him with red eyes. Her black shirt looked almost ordinary until the light from the machine passed across it and seemed to disappear. “That the baby?” “Keep your distance,” she said. He raised his hands, smiling. “Wasn’t asking to hold him.” Diabolical touched a control. The contacts behind the reclining frame moved toward his temples. “She is protective,” he said. “That has been useful.” Jeanetta looked toward him. For an instant her face tightened, as though she had heard something beneath his words. Then the machine hummed, and the expression eased. Apocalypto entered through the far door. Broteus straightened. “The woman you entertained,” Apocalypto said. “Stormisha.” “What about her?” “She is here. She has seen too much, and her attachment to the engineer complicates his obedience.” Broteus’s smile disappeared. “Engineer?” “Kill her.” The room grew quiet. From the nursery, the baby made a small, sleepy sound. Broteus glanced toward Jeanetta, then back. “She won’t even know.” Apocalypto studied him. “I need her gone within the next hour.” Broteus left wearing Frank’s face. * * * Nightwalka had stopped trying to count the hours. Ice Tray sat on the opposite bed, tracing frost along his own fingertip. The implant permitted the tiny movement until the cold reached his knuckle. Then his hand cramped shut. “Petty-ass chip,” he whispered. Nightwalka watched a guard pass their door. The man slowed without turning his head. One hand touched the glass at waist height, hidden from the corridor camera by his body. For a moment the fingers became blue. Nightwalka stood so abruptly that Ice Tray caught his wrist. The guard looked at him. His face changed only around the eyes. Misty shook her head once. Nightwalka pressed a hand to his mouth. He had imagined her alive so often that he did not trust the difference between wanting and seeing. The guard moved on. At the next door, he checked a panel with professional indifference. Ice Tray leaned close. “What?” Nightwalka could not answer without making a sound the cameras would notice. He sat down, gripping the edge of the mattress until his fingers hurt. Across the corridor, Scambit watched the guard turn toward the lift. He saw Nightwalka’s face and understood only that something had changed. He looked toward the camera and began complaining about the food. * * * The service entrance smelled of wet stone and diesel. Misty opened it wearing the dispatch operator’s face. Magnetrick stepped through first, helmet on, and she caught his wrist before he could touch her shoulder. “Inside.” They moved through the gate into a freight chamber beneath the tower’s glass exterior. Z wheeled himself over a shallow metal track, with Rougie beside him. Monsta bent beneath the doorframe, followed by Cyrus and the Kings. Once the gate closed, Misty let her borrowed features fall away. Magnetrick took her face between his hands. He did it so gently that she almost missed the tremor in his fingers. “You said you were standing.” “I still am.” He kissed her forehead. She closed her eyes for one breath, then stepped back. “Listen. The cells are above the workshop. Diabolical’s higher up. Jeanetta’s with him. I saw her.” Cyrus moved toward her. “The baby?” “In a nursery beside her. Alive. She was watching him from the doorway.” He nodded, but relief had nowhere to settle. Misty described the implants, the cameras, the occupied floors. She had located an equipment bay with communications hardware, but a guard detail had kept her out. Gorge would know what could be used. “Get them out first,” Z said. Misty looked at him for a moment. “Good. We agree.” The freight lift accepted her badge. Its doors closed around them, leaving a view through the rear wall of the desert shrinking beneath the tower. Halfway to the holding level, the car stopped. Misty stared at the control panel. A red light replaced the floor number. Above them, a landing door scraped open. * * * The first club came through the gap before the guard’s face appeared. Blue current snapped across the lift’s handrail. Lady Longnails pulled Z clear as the metal brightened. Monsta caught the guard’s wrist and dragged him halfway into the car. A second guard thrust a weapon through the opening and fired into the floor. Magnetrick tore the weapon upward. Its discharge scorched the ceiling. “Down!” Rougie shouted. Cyrus folded over Z’s chair, shielding him from the gunfire. The car shook beneath their feet as Magnetrick spread the landing doors and bent the safety barrier away from the shaft. The alarm began before they could climb out. Jugga-knot braced one shoulder beneath the upper edge of the opening, making himself a step. Monsta passed Z up to Rougie and Lady Longnails. Hothead sent a narrow flame along the corridor ceiling, forcing the approaching guards back without burning the people climbing behind him. A guard struck Jugga-knot across the jaw. He barely turned. “You done?” He seized the man’s armor and threw him into the opposite wall. Misty was last out. She rolled beneath a closing shutter as Magnetrick caught it and held it overhead. The strain pulled at the seams along the wall. Somewhere above them, Apocalypto’s voice filled the speakers. “Contain the lower levels. All prisoners remain where they are.” In the workshop, Gorge’s hands flattened against the bench. Reen copied him. The guard beside them smiled. * * * They could not use the lift again. Misty led the rescuers into a stairwell where footsteps were already descending toward them. Electric clubs flashed through the railings. Rougie lifted Z from his chair and held him against her shoulder while Magnetrick brought the folded chair upward beside them. “Tell me before you turn,” Z said. “Hold on first.” She rose through the central well. A guard leaned over a landing and found Monsta coming up the stairs beneath him. The impact drove both men through the fire door. Monsta emerged carrying the broken door as a shield. Cyrus stayed behind Jugga-knot, firing only when the others had cleared his line of sight. He kept watching the upper passage, unable to stop thinking about Jeanetta lifting him with one hand. On the next landing, Misty met a guard wearing her own stolen face. He stared. She hit him before he could decide which of them should be surprised. The prison door opened onto a corridor full of red warning lights. Nightwalka stood behind the glass, unable to move his feet. Misty ran to him. Magnetrick pulled the locking bolts from their housing. The door swung outward, and she stepped into the cell. Her son’s arms stayed at his sides. “I’m here,” she told him. His face crumpled. “I thought—” “I know.” She wrapped her arms around him because he could not lift his own. His forehead dropped against her shoulder. She felt the breath he had been holding leave him in a shaking rush. “I should’ve saved you.” “You don’t owe me that.” Outside, another weapon discharged. Ice Tray flinched, trapped beside his bed. Misty held her son one moment longer, then turned toward the open door. “We can’t make them walk,” she called. Z entered with Rougie behind him. He touched Nightwalka’s temple and withdrew at once. The command had been imposed through the body, not a thought he could simply remove. Pulling against it sent pain along the nerves behind the boy’s skull. “They need the control system disabled,” he said. Magnetrick tore open the next cell. Stormisha stared at him from beside her bed. Relief moved across her face while the rest of her remained rigid. “About fucking time.” * * * The guards came from both ends of the corridor. Monsta held the stairwell entrance with Jugga-knot while Lady Longnails crossed between the cells, cutting restraint cables from the door housings. Hothead stayed near Ice Tray. He had started with a grin, something about finding better places to spend the night, but the expression faded when he saw the other man trying and failing to lift a hand. “Don’t burn my shoes,” Ice Tray said. Hothead glanced down. “Those your priorities?” “They the only thing in here I chose.” A guard’s weapon shattered the edge of the doorway. Hothead pushed Ice Tray behind the bed. The forced movement left Ice Tray trembling with pain from the implant’s resistance. “Sorry,” Hothead said. “Better than shot.” At the opposite end, Magnetrick stripped weapons from a squad and pinned them to the ceiling. One discharged as it bent. The shot tore through a water pipe and showered the corridor. Apocalypto’s voice returned. “Prisoners. Move to the transfer passage.” Stormisha’s knees unlocked. Nightwalka took a step past his mother without choosing it. Scambit emerged from his cell, eyes wide with anger. “They moving us,” he said. “Stay together,” Z called. “We ain’t picking!” The prisoners walked through a side door toward the upper containment rooms. Misty followed Nightwalka, but gunfire from the stairwell forced her behind a partition. The door sealed between them. Reen heard the order in the workshop and lowered the component in his hands. “Transfer escort,” the guard told him. “Both of you.” Gorge’s body turned from the bench. Reen went beside him. As they entered the service lift, Gorge pressed his thumb against a diagnostic strip concealed in his sleeve. He had copied the system map before the alarm. The moving command source still glowed at its center. He needed to tell someone what it meant. * * * The transfer passage ended beside a row of enclosed containment cells. Unlike the holding rooms, these had no outward windows. Transparent fronts faced a broad gallery; thick shutters waited in tracks along the frames. Each chamber had a recessed air inlet and a floor drain smaller than a coin. Stormisha stopped outside an open door. For several seconds she could do nothing except breathe. Then Apocalypto released the movement order. She staggered against the wall, hands suddenly her own. The others were being directed through another checkpoint farther down the gallery. Guards argued over which rooms remained secure. A familiar voice came from behind her. “Baby, I been tryna call you.” Devin stood a few feet away. The little mustache. The easy smile. A face she had once searched for in a crowded room because seeing it had made the night better. “Yeah,” she said. “I been busy.” He looked at the bruises along her jaw. “Who did that to you?” “How the hell you get here, Frank?” “I can explain. Come here a minute.” He glanced toward the guards. The last nearby guard followed the other prisoners through the checkpoint, leaving this stretch of the gallery empty. “We can talk right here.” “Baby, look around. You want everybody in our business?” She remembered Z showing them Devin McTagg’s photograph. Take away the mustache. The durag. There he was. Now he stood close enough for her to recognize the familiar scent of his shirt. She wanted Gorge. The thought arrived with startling simplicity: she wanted the man who had sat beside her without asking her to become easier to comfort. Devin touched her elbow. “Just a minute.” He guided her into an empty examination room opening off the gallery. The door remained open. He stayed on the threshold where he could see her. The lights softened. The alarm stopped. Stormisha stood in the motel room. * * * Z felt the false quiet before he found her. He had come through the upper stairwell with Rougie carrying his chair down the last short flight. Magnetrick and Monsta remained below, keeping guards away from the prisoners’ route. Ahead, the gallery lights flickered in time with a pressure Z recognized from the hospital. Devin stood alone in a doorway, watching someone inside. Z caught Rougie’s sleeve. “Stay with me.” He reached past Devin toward the frightened, familiar presence beyond him. Stormisha heard her name beneath the television. She stood beside the motel dresser. The curtains were the same tired fabric, one drawer still missing its handle. The television murmured behind her. She remembered setting her phone on the charger and letting herself believe she could rest. For one terrible second she wanted to sit down. Stormisha. Listen to me. Her fingers tightened against the dresser. Professor? What you see is not real. Keep looking at him. Do not let him know you hear me. Devin smiled from the doorway. “There you go. We good.” The room’s edges shifted. Beyond the dresser, something dark moved where the bed should have been. Apocalypto sent him to kill you, Z told her. She felt cold all the way into her teeth. Can you stop him? Only if we break his sight of you or get someone into the room. He will see us coming. I need you to move him. The dresser beneath her palms felt solid. Z gave her another sensation to hold: the actual edge of a metal examination table, cold and narrow. She found it beneath the illusion by sliding her fingers an inch to the left. “Frank,” she said. “Yeah, baby?” “Come here.” His smile widened, but his feet stayed in the doorway. “Come to me.” She let her shoulders shake. For once she did not have to pretend to be frightened. “Please. I don’t feel right.” * * * He stepped inside. Z wheeled himself across the threshold, breaking Devin’s hold on Stormisha. The motel room vanished. The examination table stood beneath her hands. The television became an alarm. Devin turned, purple light flaring beneath his face. Z struck at the surface of his perception. He could not hold him, only shift the doorway a few feet to one side for the length of a startled breath. Stormisha ducked past Broteus’s reaching arm. He pursued her into the gallery, then through the open containment doorway where he believed she had gone. Rougie hit the closure control. Glass dropped between him and the corridor. A shutter followed, cutting off his view. The impact of his body shook the frame. Z slumped in his chair with blood beneath one nostril. “Is she out?” Stormisha stood beside the panel, breathing hard. “I’m out.” From inside the cell came a familiar voice. “Baby? What the fuck was that?” Gorge arrived at the far end of the gallery between two guards. Reen walked behind them. One guard lifted his weapon toward Rougie. She crossed the distance before he fired, knocked his weapon aside, and punched him unconscious. Reen let the second guard turn toward the fight, then struck him once beneath the helmet where the cameras could not see. He caught the body as it fell and lowered it beside the first. Gorge stumbled as the command to keep walking ended. He could move on his own again—for now. He saw Stormisha. Then the occupied containment display. “Who’s in there?” “Devin,” Z said. "The man known as Broteus." Gorge looked at Stormisha again. She had never seemed farther from the woman who had smiled at his story about a mechanical bird. She turned toward the panel. “Can he see us?” “Yes,” Gorge said. Devin stood in the bare chamber, one palm against the glass beneath its metal cover. “Let me out.” Stormisha touched the side of her head where the implant waited. “Can I do this?” Gorge checked the panel. The containment room’s active suppression field was offline; its controller had been damaged during the alarm. The implant system was separate, its next command still waiting on Apocalypto. “For now,” he said. “Until he sends another order.” She looked at the small drain. “Close that.” Too softly for Broteus to hear, she added, “Imma make it rain on this hoe.” * * * The first rain touched Devin’s shoulder. He looked up, irritated. Water gathered along the ceiling, falling in a thin, steady curtain. Within seconds his shirt clung to his chest. “Stormisha.” She stood beside the sealed room with her hand raised. The air on her side of the shutter cooled. Moisture drew through the recessed ventilation duct into the chamber, thickening above him. The mechanism over the drain clicked shut beneath Gorge’s hand. Devin struck the glass. “Open the fucking door.” Water covered his shoes. Z watched from nearby. The voice in the room belonged to the boy from Claudette’s photograph. He had heard versions of it over the years, muffled through a telephone, called from upstairs. Recognition hurt worse than the purple face would have. Devin looked toward Z. Then back to Stormisha. His expression changed. “Baby. Come on.” Stormisha did not lower her hand. “I know you mad. I get it. We can talk about whatever they told you.” The water reached his knees. He rose a little above it, feet leaving the floor. “I love you.” The words found their old place in her body. She hated that they still knew the way. She remembered waiting for him after work, checking her phone between songs, telling herself he was different because he listened. Then she remembered Monsta coming back from the woods unable to speak like the man they had known. “You can stop pretending, Devin.” He went still. It was brief, but she saw it: the calculation abandoning his eyes. The discovery that she had known while he smiled, while he touched her arm, while he offered her a room where nobody else could see. His face twisted. Purple light split through the human features he had been arranging for her. He drove both fists against the glass, then struck it with his forehead. The next impact shook the cell. He rose toward the ceiling. Water climbed beneath him. There was nowhere to land that was not becoming smaller. Gorge moved closer to Stormisha without touching her arm. Her fingers shook. The rain did not weaken. Z could have asked her to stop. He thought of Claudette’s curtains drawn against the street. He remained silent. Inside, Devin struck the glass repeatedly. His voice returned in wet, gurgling bursts as he tried to call Stormisha’s name. Water choked off each word. His chest heaved for air that was no longer there; his hands clawed at the glass, slipping as panic broke his movements into frantic jerks. The chamber filled. His blows weakened, coming farther apart, until a final faint scraping. Stormisha kept her hand raised until the movement inside the cell stopped. Gorge checked the internal readings. Then he checked them again. “He’s gone,” he said quietly. Her hand dropped. The air around them warmed by degrees. Stormisha sat on the floor beside the panel because her knees would no longer hold her. Gorge crouched nearby. He did not ask whether she felt better. * * * In the upper chamber, Diabolical turned a security feed toward Jeanetta. Magnetrick stood outside an opened cell. Behind him, Monsta tore a weapon from a guard’s hands. “They’re coming up,” Diabolical said. “You know what they want.” She looked back at the cradle. “I won’t leave him.” “Then you will be fighting beside his bed,” Apocalypto said. “Stop them below this floor.” Jeanetta bent over her son and tucked the blanket beneath his feet. She backed out of the nursery, watching him until the angle of the wall hid his face. As she left the operating chamber, Apocalypto closed the nursery door. Locking bars entered its frame. A containment field brightened within the wall, isolating the room from the surrounding passage. He removed the access code from the local panel. Diabolical glanced at the sealed entrance. “She will want him back.” “Then keep her occupied.” * * * Z and Rougie returned to the holding corridor, where Magnetrick and the others were still fighting the guards. Jeanetta stepped out above the holding corridor. Cyrus saw her first. “Jeanetta!” He moved toward the stairs. Monsta caught his arm as the landing beneath her split from the wall. A wall of pressure drove them backward. Magnetrick caught the twisting metal rail before it could strike Z. Rougie lifted his chair clear as glass burst along the gallery. Jeanetta descended through the opening without touching the steps. “Where is my son?” Cyrus shouted. “Somewhere you can’t hurt him.” Her raised hand stopped his next step. She held him pinned against the wall while he struggled to break her grip. Z reached for her mind. He found the same darkened clouds, but beneath them he felt something new: the remembered weight of a baby leaving her arms. Jeanetta. Where did you leave him? Her eyes shifted toward him. They told you he was safe. Can you see him? Diabolical’s presence pressed against his, trying to close the connection. Z did not push farther. He let the question remain. Cyrus dropped to his knees as her attention slipped. Jeanetta turned toward the upper passage. For a moment the entire corridor seemed to draw breath with her. Then she rose through the ruined landing and disappeared above them. Monsta helped Cyrus up. Nobody tried to follow immediately. Across the corridor, a surviving guard lifted his weapon through the dust. * * * The last guard detail reached the holding corridor from below. Hothead saw the weapons before Magnetrick could turn. The first discharge struck the frame beside Ice Tray’s head. The second hit Hothead high in the chest. He looked down as if somebody had pushed him. Then the fire came. It filled the narrow approach, driving the guards back toward the stairwell. Monsta pulled Ice Tray clear of the doorway. Lady Longnails crossed the smoke with her hands extended, striking the men who tried to emerge through it. Hothead burned several guards to death before the last weapon fell silent. When he lowered his arms, his knees followed. Ice Tray was beside him before the others had crossed the corridor. The movement command had ended, leaving him just enough freedom to kneel. His hands hovered above the wound, then settled where he could press without hurting him more. “Look at me.” Hothead tried. His lips moved around a breath that did not become a word. Ice Tray cooled his palms, hoping the cold would slow something he could not see. Blood warmed them immediately. He looked toward Monsta, toward Magnetrick, toward anyone who might know how to make the next minute different. Hothead’s fingers closed weakly over his wrist. Then loosened. Ice Tray stayed bent over him until Lady Longnails knelt on his other side. Below them, Jugga-knot stood in the stairwell doorway holding a bent security barrier across his body. Impacts had dented it inward. He waited for another volley. None came. Magnetrick moved through the corridor, lifting abandoned weapons and folding them closed one by one. The guards who had made their last advance lay among the others. At the security station, Misty checked the personnel display against the silent channels. No answering patrol. No remaining guard detail. She looked toward Hothead and lowered her eyes. Jugga-knot eased the barrier down. For the first time since the alarm, they could hear the tower’s ventilation. * * * Jeanetta returned to a closed nursery door. She pressed the panel. Nothing happened. Through the narrow window, she could see the cradle. Her son’s hand moved above the blanket. “Open it.” Diabolical sat in his machine, curved metal bands pressed against his temples. “The safety system activated during the attack.” She tried the handle. The mechanism stayed fixed. Red light spread from her fingers across its surface, and the frame groaned. Inside, the cradle trembled. She pulled her hand back immediately. “You said he was safe.” “He is. You must remain calm.” Jeanetta struck the panel. Sparks burst against her palm. She could tear the door from the wall, but the cradle stood only a few feet behind it. Every movement she made reached him through the floor. X-Boy began to cry. “Let me get to my son!” The machine brightened. Diabolical drew a sharp breath as her fury pushed against his control. A crack traveled up the wall beside his chair. “Apocalypto,” he said, no longer sounding quite so certain. Across the room, Apocalypto stood before a wall of silent camera views. The guard channels showed no response. Broteus’s signal had disappeared. Prisoners occupied the transfer gallery, and the intruders had reached floors no enemy had crossed without permission. He enlarged one image. Magnetrick stood beside the dead, helmet tilted toward a young man kneeling on the floor. Apocalypto’s hand closed slowly. “Enough.” He opened a command channel the guards had never been permitted to use. * * * Cyrus reached the upper access door and stopped beside its narrow security window. He had followed the sound of his son crying through a ventilation grille. Through a narrow security window he saw Jeanetta at an inner door, striking its controls. Beyond her, Diabolical sat in his machine, curved metal bands pressed against his temples. “Jeanetta!” She turned toward the door. For an instant he thought she recognized him. Her mouth moved, and he pressed closer to the glass, trying to hear. Diabolical touched his console. The window went opaque. Cyrus struck it with the heel of his hand. He could blast the lock, but he did not know what lay immediately behind it. His son was somewhere beyond the inner door. He could not risk sending fragments into that room. He looked along the wall for another way in. Below him, the gunfire had fallen silent. That frightened him more than the noise. * * * Gorge stood at the gallery’s service console with Reen beside him. On a maintenance screen, the implant network resolved into a diagram he understood well enough to hate. The workshop relays repeated a signal. The arm supplied it. Beneath the armor, the transmitter shared power and living connections with Apocalypto’s body. “Breaking a wall console won’t do it,” Gorge whispered. “He carries the source.” Reen looked down at his hands. “Then we get close.” “He can make everyone else stop breathing before you reach him.” Reen watched Stormisha rise slowly beside the containment panel. “Then we better make the first hit count.” A second console carried an old Zolari service symbol. Gorge touched it. The network had a long-range channel buried beneath the local systems. He recognized the emergency sequence from Orukai. His finger hovered above the first entry. He had no reason to believe anyone remained to answer it. He entered the sequence anyway. A quiet transmission light began blinking. Then the floor trembled. * * * The sound came from below the workshop. At first, Monsta mistook it for machinery starting. A deep, regular impact passed through the walls, followed by another and another. He looked toward the stairwell. Jugga-knot was already lifting the barrier again. “Everybody back.” Apocalypto’s voice filled the tower. “My Afterborn. Awaken.” Below them, rows of eyes opened beneath white assembly lights. Completed soldiers lifted weapons from their racks. The unfinished bodies remained suspended in their frames as the first ranks marched past them toward the lifts and stairs. On the holding level, a broad blue-gray face appeared below the landing. Monsta saw Apocalypto’s features and knew immediately that something was wrong with them. There was no hesitation in the eyes, no anger. Only a direction to advance. The first soldier raised a power blaster, larger than the guards’ weapons. Its shot struck Jugga-knot’s barrier with far more force than the guards’ gunfire. The metal buckled. He rammed it into the lead soldier, driving the ranks back down the steps. “Go!” Misty pulled Nightwalka toward the gallery. His feet locked halfway through the movement. Apocalypto’s next command caught the implanted prisoners together. “Remain where you are.” Ice Tray froze beside Hothead’s body. Monsta lifted Ice Tray and carried him toward the gallery. Magnetrick cleared their path while Jugga-knot stayed at the stairwell entrance, holding his metal barrier across the doorway. The Afterborn fired their power blasters into the barrier. Each hit burned deeper through the metal. Jugga-knot braced against the doorframe, holding the soldiers back while the others moved away. For years he had trusted that moving forward would solve most things. Now he planted his feet and stayed. After setting Ice Tray down beyond the doorway, Monsta turned back for him. Jugga-knot shook his head. “Get them out.” The barrier glowed under the repeated blasts. Heat spread across his palms. Behind it, the soldiers kept firing at the same weakened spot. He looked once toward Lady Longnails. She had stopped in the corridor, staring at him. “Move,” he told her. The next blast punched through the barrier and struck Jugga-knot in the chest. Jugga-knot fell backward as the barrier shattered. Monsta lunged to catch him, but another blast threw Monsta into the corridor. Magnetrick hurled the broken shield down the stairs before it could strike the prisoners. The soldiers stepped over the wreckage. Magnetrick dragged his fallen companion clear with the metal fastenings of his armor. Lady Longnails caught him beneath the shoulders. She called his name once, then put a hand against his face. He was dead. Across the tower, the elevators began arriving on occupied floors. Reen stood beside Gorge, claws still hidden, while the locks clicked open in sequence. He could hear the prisoners trying to move behind him. He could hear Cyrus calling for Jeanetta somewhere above the gallery. Then the first Afterborn stepped into the light. Reen looked toward Apocalypto’s camera. He lowered his head as if awaiting an order. Inside his hands, the claws began to move.

X-Mans 16: It Gotta Be Over By Now

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