I do not own any Marvel characters named herein, and am only borrowing them for a tale meant for entertainment purposes only.
X-Men: Phantasm
By LJ58
1
He heard the fumbling even as the door swung back slightly on its oiled hinges.
He knew he had locked the door earlier. Just after they left.
He knew the outer door had been latched, too.
Someone was good. A real professional, like in the movies.
They had barely made a sound with the locks, and now they were stepping into the living room, looking around as the gleam of their night vision goggles gave the masked face a buglike quality in the darkness that surrounded them.
The goggled gaze swept the room, placing the furniture, and yet looked right past him.
He wasn't surprised. Not anymore.
If he didn't want to be seen, he wasn't. It was as simple as that.
The night, after all, was now his element. Maybe it always had been.
The faint crackle of a radio preceded the telling whisper as a gruff voice declared in a curt whisper, "I'm in. Get backup on the doors and windows. I'll confirm his presence, and neutralize if possible."
He resisted giving a snort.
His folks were gone. Had been for days. Ever since they realized what he was. Government hysteria was enough to make them literally flee his presence without looking back. Without caring they were leaving their own home, and all they owned. Or their own son.
He should have known the 'Cleaners' would be along soon after. His older brother probably dropped a proverbial dime on him the first chance he had the moment the little prick was out of the house.
Sure, he had threatened the little prick…. Well, big prick, he supposed, since Davie was all of eighteen, while he was only sixteen.
Not that it mattered.
To his family, he was now tainted. Unnatural.
Mutant.
He sighed softly, but the sound went unheard as the man eased down the hall, the floorboards creaking faintly under his feet as his right hand now lifted a gleaming semi-automatic machine pistol that he pointed ahead of him.
Wow. A lot of firepower for a single mutant. Looked like Davie had tipped them off to what he could do, or they might have tried the usual covert pickup. The kind where they take you for testing, and you never come back. He suspected you likely never survived.
He had heard of 'vaccinations' at school where kids were called to the clinic, and never came back, too. Little wonder he had left school not long after his long repressed mutant gene suddenly flared to life. And to think, he owed it to the very bullies that were so often preying on him. His brother chief among them.
He still couldn't forget that singular, defining moment.
The look on their faces had been priceless.
Until he was sent home, his parents heard his brother's story, and without giving him a chance to explain, they all bailed. Just grabbed his younger sisters, and Davie, the prick, and stuffed them in the car while his old man held a shotgun on him. Then they raced away like they were fleeing a zombie plague, or something.
He decided in the end that they were the freaks.
He was no different.
Well, not really.
He was still the same sixteen year old kid. Still had the same issues. Dreams. Desires.
Only now he had power.
And they obviously hated that. Loathed it.
Feared it.
He considered it for two solid days as he sat in the shadows of his locked home, and decided that was the true issue.
He had power. He, the supposedly powerless, now had the ability to resist all those that preyed on him, and should have been able to force him into whatever niche they desired. Only now they couldn't. Not anymore. Yes, he had decided. That was the true issue.
Conform, or die.
Submit, or be 'cleansed.'
He heard a short burst of gunfire down the hall, and almost chortled.
Someone was nervous.
Davie had definitely blabbed.
He knew from the news, and the usual gossip that most Cleaners usually went in hard, fast, and quiet, tranqed their victim, and disappeared. They didn't usually shoot on sight unless they were known 'resisters' like those weird guys in the colorful costumes that liked to go out and bust heads with their peers now and again for no reason he could honestly decipher.
He didn't see how their stupid battles helped anyone. Not in this country.
He continued to sit in the chair, wrapped in shadows, and heard the man swear softly now as he walked back through the house.
Sound carried so well at night, and in the stillness of the utterly silent home.
No, house.
This was no home. He wasn't sure it had ever been.
Still, without Sara's stereo, Davie's video games, or even his dad's ball games, the silence was almost palpable.
He sighed, and considered playing with the guy.
The urge was there, but he knew how well that would go over. They'd rush the house. Probably bomb the block, and wouldn't stop to care how many innocents were caught in the crossfire. Then, he knew, they'd blame it all on him, and walk away swearing their hands were clean.
Jerks.
Just another grade of bully in his mind just then.
So he sat there, quiet, and unseen, and heard the man stomp back, his frustration and simultaneous relief obvious as he called his superiors again.
"Get a team in here. He's not here."
He smirked as he heard the radio crackle, and someone say, "Where did he go?"
"Unknown. He was already gone when I arrived. Place is locked up, but empty."
"You're telling me a level three mutant is running rogue, and we don't know where he went," the other voice complained.
"Look, all I know is that he's not here. Looks like he must have bailed. There's not even a dirty dish in the sink," he retorted as he walked through the kitchen, obviously being thorough.
He gave an ironic thanks to his mother for making him always clean up after himself.
There came a profane retort, and then the other voice declared, "All right. We'll continue interviewing the family. We have to take one of the females anyway. She's got the mutant gene, too. If she's as potentially dangerous as the boy is reported to be, we'll have to terminate her. We need to question them all before we do, though, so we don't lose their cooperation."
He tensed in his chair as the man started for the door, and he now slowly rose.
They had his family. His sisters.
And they were going to kill one of them just because she might be dangerous?
His eyes flared, and his shadowy mask faltered as he stepped forward.
Not that it mattered. The man had already switched off his radio.
Before the man could react, he had already grabbed him, slammed him against the door, and ripped off his mask, goggles, and radio transceiver hidden in his ear.
"Hello, gov-clone," he growled in his very pale face. "Let's chat."
The man stared at the dark silhouette before him with wide, fear-rounded eyes.
"I'll bet you think you know what I can do, don't you," he asked, his swirling gaze locked on him.
"I know….you're a mutant freak," he hissed back at him, trying to pull his weapon from its holster. Only his hand had clamped down on that hand, and was slowly crushing it.
"I'm a freak? You're the ones about to kill a little girl because you're afraid you'd lose a pissing contest. Where is she? Where are they holding her?"
The man's lips thinned as they clamped tightly.
He laughed is his face now.
"You'll never find her," he sneered, braving the pain that had to be shooting up his arm by then.
They definitely didn't know anything about him, he decided.
Only what Davie likely thought he knew.
Sure, he had seemingly turned into a monster that had scared the piss out of him, and his bullying friends; literally. Only it was more than that. Much more.
He locked his still swirling gaze on the man's secrets, easily visible to him through his own wide stare, and saw the fears just within the man's bright gaze. He smirked, his flesh melting as the shadows around him fueled his gift to an extent even the afternoon's shadows had not allowed when he faced his brother, and his cronies.
The man whimpered as the five-nine boy grew suddenly, rising into a seven foot, bipedal thing that was a cross between a dinosaur, and a wolf, with lots and lots of teeth.
"I'm going to eat you a bite at a time until you start talking," the agent heard him snarl, though he didn't actually say a word.
The man saw those monstrous jaws gape, leaning toward his face, and he howled in genuine terror before he began babbling like a madman. In the midst of his rambling confession to God, begging forgiveness, he spilled the location of the girl being 'detained' for questioning with her family, and exactly where the assessment center was located in the building.
He smirked, shrank back down into himself even as he stepped into a darker pool of shadows, and simply vanished.
The man whimpered, slowly lifting the forgotten weapon in his good hand, and waved it at the corner where the kid had vanished before his very eyes.
He daringly reached for a light switch, throwing it, and bathing the room in the glow of unlawful hundred watt bulbs long since outlawed by the 'green police.' He didn't care about that. There, near the door, the corner where the kid had stepped into was empty.
No windows. No passages. Just blank walls, and…..nothing else.
He slowly reached for the fallen transceiver, and realized it was broken. Something had stepped on it before the kid had left. Something heavy, he realized, judging from the cracked, reinforced ceramic housing that looked as someone had crushed it a vise.
He whimpered, and jerked the door open after scooping up his mask, and rushed out to find his team to relay the message.
He found every one of the nine men outside out cold, their radios broken, and inoperable, too.
X
Angela lay on the cold bench, utterly naked, and trembling with fear.
Only just thirteen, she had no idea what was going on, and having paid no attention to anything beyond the latest teen fads, she had no idea why these men were doing things to her. They only said they needed to ask her a few questions, but after a few blood tests, and a few silly questions about Sammie, they had suddenly knocked her out, stripped her, and tied her down on this table.
She woke up with a man standing over her in a white coat that asked her even weirder questions.
When she couldn't answer them, he got mad. Really mad. He slapped her. Hit her. Made her scream.
Then another man came in, and stood right in front of her as he studied something on a paper. The other guy that had led her here from the room where her family waited a moment as the man in white told him something that made no sense to her ears, and finally the other man blandly told the man in white to terminate the specimen, and prepare her for transport for further research.
That, she understood.
She whimpered as the older man left, and the man in the white coat stared at her with cold contempt in his gaze. Then he lifted a large needle, and filled it with a blue liquid as he turned toward her.
Angela felt cold fear fill her as she shook her head at him, but he started to poke her with that needle, his expression promising her more pain.
She didn't even know why.
She didn't understand why her parents suddenly panicked, and dragged everyone out of the house. Everyone but Sammie. She had no idea why they ran off while dad even aimed a gun at Sammie, who just stood there staring at them as if they had gone crazy. He never said nothing. Never did nothing. She didn't know why Davie kept saying he was a monster. She didn't have a clue.
Her sister just complained she was missing Nickelodeon. Nine year old Sara had a very simple view on life, too.
"Don't worry, freak. This will hurt, but it won't take too long," the scary man promised her.
"Got that right," a low, ominous voice growled, and the man turned to see a featureless, silvery shadow step right out of the wall, hands studded with long scalpels. Then the man in white was screaming as the needle was pulled effortlessly from his own grip, and shoved into his own neck.
"Don't worry, Angel," he told her as the young, blonde stared up at her brother who didn't look scary to her as the man just seemed to fall down after his eyes bulged comically, and he just spasmed like he was being electrocuted. "I'm here to save you."
"What's happening, Sammie. I don't get any of this," she complained as he began to undo her restraints. "They even took my clothes off," she blushed furiously as she belatedly realized her brother was seeing her completely naked.
"Cause they're all pervs," he told her. "Don't worry, I'm getting you out of here."
"Just tell me what's going on," she begged as she sat up, eagerly taking the spare scrub top he dug out of a drawer for her. The only clothing to be had in the small lab room in the detainment center where their family was being 'processed.' "Mom and dad never said anything. They're still treating me like a kid," she pouted.
Apparently, the others in their family had been cleared, he discovered as he infiltrated the center, and now they were just waiting to get a line on Sam before they let them go. After, of course, they 'purged' the other mutant.
He could bet that his parents would soon be sterilized by the paranoid government, too, for having birthed not one, but two mutants.
She pulled on the top he held out to her, and eyed Sam expectantly as he went to the door, peered out, and saw several Marines in the corridor. None of whom looked their way.
"Do you remember that show we saw about mutants," he finally told her after closing the door again.
"Yeah? Where the government was killing….. No," she rasped. "But…..we're not monsters."
"No, you're not. Neither am I. We are mutants, though," he told her.
"M-Me," she squeaked.
"You haven't noticed anything…..unusual yet?"
She sighed.
"Me," she huffed again, still looking like his sister, and nothing else.
"You. You'll figure it out. Same as I did. If you live long enough."
"What…..? What can you do," she asked him as he eyed the door again.
"I'll tell you. Later. These guys may be back anytime, and I'd rather not hang around. We have to go, okay?"
"How," she asked, glancing at the man on the floor that was now very still, and very quiet. And then she looked back at the table where she had fully expected to die herself.
"Take my hand," Sam told her, and held out his hand to her.
She eyed him, but still saw only her older brother who always just sit quietly reading in a corner most times, and got picked on a lot because of it. He wasn't acting like his usual shy self, though, and she slowly took his hand.
"What about mom, and dad? Or Sara?"
He noted she didn't say anything about Davie. The prick was a prick even to his sisters.
"They won't bother them. They're norms."
"Then how….?"
"No one knows," he told her. "Remember? It just happens. We have to go, though. Now," he said, and led her toward the far wall after shutting off the light.
"But….. How," he was asked even as he stepped into the shadows away from the door. Then the world spun crazily, and she almost vomited before her head stopping spinning.
Angela blinked, and stared around her.
"Where….are we," she asked, staring around her at the dark forest that could be anywhere.
"Somewhere in the northeast," he told her. "A park. I saw a picture of it once, so I could use it to fix a destination we…..crossed."
"Crossed?"
"It's what I call it. Give me a shadow, and I can go anywhere if I know where it is, or even just saw a picture of it."
"Oh," she gasped, looking up at the night sky. "That is so cool," she grinned up at him.
"Yeah, it is, isn't it," he grinned. "Let's go. We need to find you some more clothes, and then someplace safe to hide."
"They're going to come after us now, aren't they," she said quietly as he led her through the forest. "Like in that movie."
"They'll try," he agreed.
"So, you can just…..go anywhere? I wonder what I can do," she wondered as she smiled thoughtfully as she followed him through the dark park.
"We'll figure it out," he told her, not bothering to tell her that his 'crossing' was just one more gift he had in his complete mastery over shadows. Be they real, or imagined.
"Sammie," she asked after a few minutes. "Why don't we just go home? We could get our own stuff, and….."
"Can't. There may still be bad people there. I left when they showed up," he told her, not saying any more.
"Oh."
He looked back at her, and asked, "You okay?"
"I….don't know. That…. That guy was really gonna kill me. Wasn't he?"
"Yes," he nodded.
"But I didn't do nothing," she complained, looking more child than not in the oversized scrub.
"Neither did I," he told her quietly.
"This sucks," she muttered. "And I'm hungry," she complained.
He looked around, and considered the hour.
"I can probably fix that. Find someplace to hide. Just in case. I'll go get some food, and be right back."
She looked around uneasily at the dark forest lit only by the faint sliver of the moon overhead.
"Are you sure you can find me again?"
"I can find you anywhere, squirt," he smiled, and gave her an impulsive hug. "I just don't want anyone else popping up to find you looking the way you are just now. Now, hide, and I'll be right back."
"Be careful," she rasped, even as she went toward a tree, and looked up, intending to climb it.
Even as she started to climb, she realized Sam was already gone.
Just….gone.
To Be Continued…