It had been eight days since that fateful ride, when he had stopped at the gas station and found out that his idiot cousin had turned on the countdown to the bomb and ruined his initial plans. Now, over a week after the events at the farmhouse that almost killed his family and another mutant (which could not be killed, according to Stryker), Leon Ellis sat in his office at Trask Industries in New York City, debating on his next step, the same question he had for the same amount of time. Already, in the time spent not worrying about his wife (who he heard was alive) and his sons, he had achieved more than he imagined. He had scored a huge victory that would ruin the mutant population and tame them for good.
His plans were government stamped and approved. Now, with the new office of Mutant Affairs being developed further, he could plan ahead and work this to his advantage. While the president was, of course, debating on the name of this nature and how to discipline it, Ellis pushed further in order to get his way, causing this new department to be made surely. He even showed his commander-in-chief what Stryker had gotten out of Magneto (or what Stryker was willing to give before his own meeting with the president), saying that Xavier was training the mutants to rally against the flag and destroy the American way of life.
"Look at my wife!" Ellis had cried, throwing his pitiful story to the wind and allowing himself to be portrayed as the victim. "She betrayed me! She ran off to that school with my children."
"One unborn until recently, so I heard," the president, George McKenna, remarked calmly, going through the photos and charts Stryker had created (some that even Ellis had written up recently too, from the looks of it), seeming to be uninterested in them.
"Five years ago, Danielle tried to kill me, Sir!" Ellis had cried out, turning to his cousin and his wife for details. While Peter stood there forlornly, like he'd rather be someplace else (and looking rather hung-over and sleepy for so early in the morning), Mary spoke up.
"Mr. President, it is true," Mary added encouraging, nudging her lethargic husband to attention as he nodded off without attracting any herself. "Danielle and her brother Jayden were sent by Charles Xavier to murder my husband's cousin and all who were in his company, including her own father, Henry Jones 'Chameleon' Mitchell, and Phineas 'Diamond Jack' Teller, a bar owner. It took us three years to determine why, but we have evidence that Xavier is building much more than an army of mutants to defeat the human race."
"It might be so, but where is your proof?" McKenna asked coolly to Mary, not willing himself to believe that the man behind mutant rights, the same man that had been talking reason for over three decades, was a monster that was working against American interests. Then, he turned to Ellis when Mary said nothing immediately. "Even so, Senator, why marry your enemy? She seems to be…fearsome, for someone willing to assassinate one so high in Congress. I would have thought her arrested and shot by now."
"I thought it more apt to marry her and end the hostility," Ellis said smoothly, although it was obvious to all that McKenna had his doubts about the statement. "It seems that she will not stop her treasonous and treacherous ways though. And through her, there are more. More mutants are willing to follow behind her and Xavier."
"And Private First Class Jayden Mitchell?" McKenna inquired, willing himself not to throw up over the graphic details of the man's service in Kuwait, words displayed on the pages in front of him, and his arrival back home as an outcast mutant and a widower, the former most likely the case. "What happened to him?"
"Shot himself the night he and his sister tried to kill us," Peter Ellis said almost sheepishly, earning another elbow shove from his wife when nobody was looking because of how stupid he sounded from drinking the night before. "I was there, Mr. President. Mitchell was in hysterics and thought that he was surrounded and shot himself as his sister watched. She blamed us for it."
"I see." McKenna, of course, did not, but that didn't matter. "Senator, Congressman and Mrs. Ellis, I have to say that the mutant problem has been prominent in more ways than one and for many years, at that. Currently, I am undecided as to how to handle the issue, but I will give this paperwork some serious thought. In the meantime, I have created a proposition for Congress, an office of Mutant Affairs, which is something you've been craving, Senator. I believe it the step in the right direction and one, I would hope, that should solve this prevailing issue. Senator, I would ask your experiences in this matter and have you draw names of possible candidates that would assist you."
To the three in the room, it was music to their ears, and one that did not require a response. Even though McKenna had meant well by it, Ellis saw the possibilities of manipulating the office and making it his own from the start, planning it right there before a plane could take him back to New York. Already, as McKenna gave him some responsibility towards it, and to help shape it in Congress, he drew up names for the department, aiming to have himself, Peter or Mary on the top of the list. Ideally though, he made the three names on the bottom, adding on the top some supporters of his in Congress that perhaps have stabbed him in the back and then some opponents too from the opposite party. He handed in the list the day before, giving it to an aide going to Washington, with some hesitation visibly, hoping that things would for once go his way.
As he sat at his desk writing a report for Trask on perhaps getting some funding from the government at long last (which had dwindled since Nixon's time because the hysteria died down for a while), Ellis turned to the person in front of his desk, his guest for the day. Normally, he would not have seen this person, since her husband was an assassin (and one that helped Xavier build his school with Hank McCoy, that traitor too) and could have tried killing him for being so near a person, but for now, Ellis had kept him occupied with Peter and his men.
Gagged, tied and kidnapped was his sister, Mae Ellis Mortimer.
Mae kept pushing against her binds, biting and spitting when she could as she struggled to be freed from her chair. When she noticed that Ellis had finally eyed her with little interest as he looked up from his paper, she managed to undo some of the cloth in her mouth and spit in his face from the short distance.
Good aiming…how I've taught her well. Ellis took a handkerchief out from a desk drawer and wiped his face with it, squashing any good childhood memories the two had together. Now was not the time to remember those days, now gone forever.
"Now, now, Mae, you know we've talked about spitting before," Ellis cautioned to his younger sister, knowing that he was seconds from a rage he could never recover from if she didn't stop her antics. "Mother had also said how unladylike it becomes you."
Mae managed to get the cloth out of her mouth with her tongue, the same Ellis had seen her seduce many times before Roger Mortimer married her after her little bastard son was born. "And you? What do you think she said about you after you came back from Vietnam?"
"I was an honorable man after serving my country," Ellis replied calmly, pushing away those distasteful memories as well. "And you were just starting to bar hop and run into peace rallies like the ragged hippie that you are. How unpatriotic of you, Mae."
"And Danielle?" Mae shouted at him, unaware that nobody heard her beyond the office walls and walls that most certainly would have disabled her and kept her in the gilded cage. "What have you done to your wife and children?"
"Only what was best for them, hopefully something better," Ellis only said in the same tone of voice, unwilling to reveal more to his sister. "Hopefully, Danielle's powers of Grim Reaper will be used and I'm sure they were. Already, I know that my son, Riley, has been born and probably will die. Danielle is somewhere nearby, most likely with Xavier and that mutant…Logan, I believe. However, I am also certain that she is visiting Riley as well. That much you can have, Mae, to satisfy your curiosity."
"And you have this information how?"
"Oh, from people here and there, little sister. I also know her little cover-up story. Very clever, I should add. Getting the anti-mutant groups and the police off of my back was a cinch, of course, and one that would have assisted me too. Having her make up a story about a thug in the house? Her experience alone made it too easy to believe."
"And your plans now?" Mae asked, nervously aware of the bomb that was possibly ticking away, something she always believed in when others did not, like Scott Summers.
"Oh, wouldn't you like to know?" Ellis asked her, pulling out the dreaded device out of his desk drawer and showing his sister the countdown, which was less than two days away from the explosion. "I think this would be a nice turn of events, don't you think?"
"You son of a bitch," Mae muttered, then turning her voice volume up. "You son of a bitch! How could you? Don't you've realized what you've done? Innocents could be killed, mutant or human! Revenge is all what this is about, revenge on mutants…and on me too. And all you can think about is that stupid war you want cooked up, one that you've been dreaming about. Aren't those Sentinels enough? Don't you think that guard system is enough for us?!"
"There is never enough tools to use against you mutants," Ellis replied to Mae, actually grateful that Peter hit the buttons by accident…this time. "When the mutant threat is gone, the human race can rest and find their own inner peace."
"Mutants are born all the time," Mae protested, feeling like she was talking to a brick wall, and one that had been there for years. "You cannot stop the human race from progressing forward in evolution, as it's always done. You most certainly cannot stop the gene from passing from parents to children."
"There's always a way around that. Trask is developing that now."
"Bolivar Trask and his company be damned! And damn the mutant that made him a martyr and a guinea pig!"
Ellis was stewing his anger inside and was going to handle this without violence, but had enough from Mae's mouth. Without showing that anger, he got up from his seat and went to his sister, slapping her hard across the face. The satisfying thud drew blood from her nose, but did nothing to break her. Mae was used to small bruises and cuts. There wasn't going to cut into her pride just yet. Ellis figured he would take his time torturing her before she screamed for mercy, just as she always had done.
"Let's hope little hubby Roger can sit on his own worry for a little while more," Ellis said insultingly, ignoring the blood Mae left on his hands from her nose. "Your husband is weak. He concerns himself with nothing more than lies and rebellion."
Mae was about to retort, but stopped when she heard something in the hallway, something akin to popping noises, like a child with firecrackers on the Fourth of July. Ellis heard it too, turning his head to the door like a quick whip, sniffing the air like he was outside somewhere. He tilted his head one way, as if interested by the change in events, and went to his desk, grabbing his service weapon and the countdown device. Pocketing both, he turned back to his sister.
"If this is what I think it is, then I pray to God that you aren't spared," Ellis said, making his way out the door and allowing the light system installed to detect mutants to blind Mae.
Imaging himself back in the jungles of Vietnam was not a problem. Ellis had that problem since he left the country many years before, sometimes imagining Chameleon having his back and pulling him away from danger. However, it was too close to home for him, especially since he was now acting as if the Vietcong was around instead of some pranksters with firecrackers, causing the sprinkler system and a red alert to sound off, like an intruder was really in the building. Yes, it had to be those. They weren't gunshots, he thought, but it was already sounding like it more and more as he went down the hallway. Yes, he was safe and it was all a prank…
When Ellis turned around a hallway corner to see the commotion, he heard the crackling noise and ducked, rolling behind a janitor's cart, thinking it to be a thick tree. Almost like slow motion, above him, several bullets flew over his head and then moved down another hallway, but there was no shooter. Ellis turned and shot a few of his own from his gun, but didn't think he hit anything. He ducked back into his hiding spot slowly again, feeling his surroundings turn back and forth from green lush humidity to pale blue air-conditioned office walls. He closed his eyes, rubbing the wearied sight back to reality, and opened them back to Trask.
When Ellis looked as the coast became clear, security crews were already in place, trying to find the perpetrator, but not seeing anything except debris. Several went in one direction and more in another, but a few stayed where he was, surveying the damage. Already, whispers were made that few were hurt from a minor explosion in the other building, but more were killed, executioners' style, in their offices, a bullet to their heads. Police and SWAT teams were on their way and they needed to clear the building. Federal teams were sure to be coming too.
"Senator!" one of them yelled, seeing Ellis from behind the cart. "Are you all right, Sir?"
"Fine, fine." Ellis hid his weapon in his jacket and smile, getting up to show that he was unhurt. "Any news on the intruder? I'm sure that was the case."
"We think it's a mutant, Sir," the other explained. "No other explanation. However, I want to know how one of them got in here and bypassed the alarms. Anything in here would have incapacitated it or showed us who he was."
"Indeed." Now, Ellis was interested. As he motioned the guards away to do their jobs (and ensured them his capability in taking care of himself), he went in the opposite direction, to where Mae was. However, when he entered his office, she was gone.
"Damn," he whispered, thinking again. An assassination attempt on him (and a few that happened to others, sadly enough) was normal, but an escape from a mutant was another.
Ellis then sat back down on his desk without a word and picked up his phone. He dialed security on the bottom floor as SWAT teams and police officers passed by, urging him to leave and offering to escort him out. While he waved them away too and showed his gun off (leaving it on the desk even), he waited patiently until someone picked up on the other end. It took some time, since all officers were busy, but he managed to get Dean Ferris, his best salesman, on the phone as he was also heading out the door.
"Dean Ferris, about to leave this building, at your service," he said politely (sarcasm in his tone of voice), thinking someone was calling outside and not in.
"Dean, this is Leon," Ellis replied, hearing the gulp on the other end when the introduction was made. "Have you seen two mutants leave premises or sneak around nearby, one of them being my sister Mae Mortimer?"
"No, Sir," Ferris said confidently, happy to know that inquiry was simple. "I didn't see anyone leave the building except employees and some bodies covered in sheets. Bad job, I say. Why?"
"I need you to do some tracking for me please." Ellis tapped his desk with his fingers impatiently and with boredom, wishing for someone else other than Ferris to do the job. "Check security tapes and follow the leads. I think who know who decided to play the hero today."
Since I intended my story to be between the 1st 2 X-Men movies, I thought it appropriate to use the same president. George McKenna makes an appearance in X-Men 2.