Graydon blew over his cup of coffee and stared out the hotel window. It was nighttime now and, for the most part, New Salem was quiet. If he'd gotten there a few hours earlier it would've been a different story but, as it was, the entire town was sleeping now.
Behind him two of his lieutenants were watching him, no doubt waiting for an explosion. He almost snickered at that thought. No, he'd had his explosion earlier, had spent his rage on the hapless fools who had been forced to carry the bad news of their team's failure.
It had been a bad day, and it didn't look like his mood was going to improve any time soon. They'd had his brother, the word felt like poison in his mind, cornered. Then his mother and uncle, two words which made him want to vomit, had come in and spoiled everything.
If the ground team had any finesse, they would've been able to salvage the situation, and he'd be rid of two of the taints in his blood. Instead, they had allowed themselves to be outclassed by teenagers of all things.
He walked a little closer to the window. The fact that the five teenagers were mutants was a little strange. He was willing to admit this. He was well aware that Charles Xavier, the wealthy, annoyingly intelligent mutant rights activist, had inherited a nearby estate. He ran some sort of school there.
Graydon had his personal suspicions about the school but, as far as he could tell, it was simply a private school which all but canonized the dregs of society, existing to lift those in poverty to a higher plane. He'd done a decent amount of digging on the school, and he couldn't find much of anything. He knew some people, like the industrialist Worthington, sent their children there, which meant the education had to be good. It appeared it wasn't all bleeding heart then.
Likely it was some sort of robbing Paul to pay Peter scheme, but it worked out. Perhaps Charles had taken in a few mutants too. It was the only explanation Graydon could have for a group of six mutants wandering around the ground together. Graydon had sometimes wondered if Xavier was a mutant himself. What was it about Westchester that attracted such freaks?
"We found a few people who said they saw a car heading down the road toward the school," one said, "But, um, we can't confirm whether or not it actually made it there. Xavier has the area pretty well fenced off."
Graydon resisted the urge to snort. He could've told his men that. However, he didn't. This mission was delicate enough as it was and, thanks to the efforts of that Wade freak, he only had 150 men at his disposal now, and time was running short.
He walked a little closer to the window. When he was younger, he'd grown up in blissful ignorance of his origins. True, he'd found out he was adopted at the age of 10 by the people who raised him, coincidentally named Creed. That hadn't been a problem, because his parents hadn't known about his origins.
Both his parents were fierce anti-mutant campaigners. His father was stronger than his mother, but she had been a silent, supportive force both in their household and their widening network. Graydon had used her techniques, coupled with his father's oratory skills and network, to create the Friends of Humanity.
Even after they had died Graydon had continued on quite happily for a few years, until he got a call from his great aunt. She'd been the one who had procured him for his parents and, at the time, had been dying of cancer.
She'd always been the soft one in his family, and he'd often watched in amusement as a child as she tried to argue with his father. He'd actually forbidden her from coming into the house at one point, lest Graydon catch any of her ideas as a child.
So he'd reluctantly obeyed a summons to her deathbed, only to have her tell him that his birth mother had been something of a friend to her and, as such, she knew she was a mutant. She'd gloried in telling him his father was a mutant too, that she'd only been waiting until his parents died to tell him the horrible truth. She'd had some fondness left for her sister and had no desire to cause strife.
What was worse was she'd actually shipped the information to a select few FOH leaders. He'd been too late to stop it from arriving. That had nearly led to his exposure and his dismissal, but a few of the leaders had actually recognized his potential as a public relations coordinator, orator and leader.
No one had seemed to remember that he'd founded them. No one had been grateful for what he'd done, any of his accomplishments. No. It was all about what use he could be to them in the future. Graydon sneered as he thought of that.
The compromise had been for him to simply get rid of everything that proved he was connected to mutants. This meant, in the FOH's eyes, his biological parents, his uncle, and any siblings he might have had. They really weren't concerned about anything further than that, although Graydon had the feeling they wanted to keep that for blackmail material.
He'd decided to start with his father, a mission which had ended disastrously. He'd found what remained of his men and felt so sick afterwards he hadn't been able to sleep. His father was unlikely to be taken alive, and he had to take that into account.
However, killing him posed its own problem. Through vigorous consultation, he'd realized there was no known way to kill Victor Creed. He had some time though and, of the two, he thought his uncle might be a little easy to capture.
But his uncle had proven wily, recruiting some of his friends from a government program. Perhaps trying to kill the Weapon X members had been a touch premature, but he'd needed information about both his father and uncle. Besides, having people around who could prove he was related to mutants was the textbook definition of a liability.
He'd been good at it too, until Logan had organized. He'd been set on going after his uncle when word reached that they had DNA samples of the three Brotherhood women. His aunt had been annoyingly vague on which one was his mother. One was already dead, so he'd hoped she'd been his mother, making things easier for him.
But no, it had to be the most disgusting of the three. He'd begun to pursue her too, only to find his uncle had coopted her into his little group. They'd been very proficient at avoiding him, using delaying tactics and hit and run techniques.
Graydon had begun considering smoking some of them out, researching any possible loved ones, when he'd heard some intelligence about his half brother. And he'd thought his mother had been disgusting. She was nothing compared to the creature she had spawned.
The past few months had been difficult. Kurt had been a stationary point, until he'd murdered someone and then disappeared. Graydon had reviewed the security footage of the area, and found someone had been with him that night.
Further review showed it to be a young woman with golden hair. He'd immediately thought of the young woman in his brother's foster family, and compared pictures. It was her, helping her brother's murderer escape.
Usually he preferred not to involve actual humans. Killing mutants was like killing rats: if you didn't man up and do it now, they would soon infest the entire place. There was nothing to it really, and it was one of the more simple things in life.
Humans were humans though, and it made him a touch uneasy. He could swallow it, right enough, but he knew his men had difficulty with that. It was made easier when he discovered, through some money and a great deal of sweet-talking, that she was lovers with his half-brother. If a woman wanted to lay down with dogs, then it only made sense she should wake up with fleas.
He'd told this to the men to comfort them, and they'd gone to collect her. A little bit of torture was likely on the menu, and he wanted to make sure they had the stomach for it. He knew he certainly did. Anything to make this nightmare go faster.
The more he thought about it, the more his conscience dwindled away when he thought of involving humans in this. The ones involved were like sheep, just begging to get into trouble. They, unlike him, didn't have to be involved. They had chosen to do so, and if they were hurt because of it, then what of it?
But things hadn't gone according to plan because his uncle had once again stepped in. He'd tried to pursue them for a while, but then he'd realized Wade and Chris were alone in their escapades. They were leading them on, leading them away from where they needed to be.
Graydon had gotten down to basics then, combing the area Amanda and Kurt had run after the murder. It had taken considerable effort, but he'd found one of them was headed toward New York. From there it was a laborious process, aided by a few sightings of his uncle, mother, and his brother's girlfriend.
So, when he was sure of the area his brother was in, he'd sent his men. He'd told them, in no uncertain terms, that they were not to engage his brother. He was to be used as a bartering chip to draw his mother and uncle in. She might have abandoned him, but his mother clearly cared about his brother enough to want to save him. It meant he would be useful.
That plan had been shattered as soon as his men had drawn their guns. They claimed the teenagers were fierce fighters, and Graydon wanted to bash their heads into the wall until their brains stained the wallpaper. Teenagers? Really? They had been beaten by teenagers?
Again though, he only had so many men, so he needed to take good care of what little resources he had. He took a sip of his coffee, as he thought it was finally cool enough to drink. It wasn't, and he grimaced.
Hiding his distaste, he slowly turned around. He saw one of the men flinch.
"We'll just have to be creative about getting in then," he said, "I've called for reinforcements. Attacking the school head on would be too risky. It's more likely we need to enter using an alternative route."
He blew on the coffee again. Who made coffee this hot?
"Sir," one of them said shifting his feet, "Are you sure about that? There are..."
He swallowed.
"Some of those children in the school might be humans," he said, "I don't know...I'm uncomfortable with the thought of killing human children just to get to a few mutants."
Graydon nodded, acknowledging his point. Then he threw the contents of the coffee on the man's face, and he howled in agony. The man next to him flinched to avoid the liquid, but didn't' help. Good. It seemed at least one of them understood.
He waited until the man's howls had turned to whimpers.
"Perhaps," he said, "But I'm through playing games."
A/N: Sorry everyone, but I'm going to have to take a hiatus of about three days. I'm also sorry to leave you on a cliffhanger, but the final battle's just around the corner.