Chapter Eight

I looked through the view-port as the building disappeared further and further into the distance. As I watched, Pyro hit the button that activated the explosives we'd planted. I couldn't hear anything over the distance, but I could see quite clearly the building erupting into an orange fireball that spat debris in all directions. They were little more than black specks against the landscape, but I could make out the shapes of the X-Men as they hurried towards the destroyed building, no doubt trying to help any human survivors. Idiots, I thought angrily. If they put half as much effort into protecting mutants as they put into protecting humans, maybe Marina would still be alive.
After a few minutes, Recyclo's voice came from the rear section of the aircraft, "The jet seems clean."
"Are you sure?" said Pyro.
"As sure as I can be. Any tracking device would have to include some kind of transmitter - and I can't find anything like that."
"OK, good. Now sit down."
Recyclo took one of the rear seats in the cockpit area, and Pyro turned to face him, "What the hell was all that about?!"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Don't play evasive with me! You know exactly what I'm talking about! You tried to kill at least three of the X-Men!"
"Of course. They're our enemies."
"That doesn't mean we can kill them just because we feel like it! They're mutants, dammit! How many times have I made it clear that we do not – under any circumstances – kill other mutants?!"
Recyclo opened his mouth to respond, but Pyro cut him off angrily, "Shut up! That was a rhetorical question! Recyclo, were you or were you not aware that I gave a direct order not to kill any of the X-Men?"
Recyclo said nothing; it was probably another rhetorical question. Pyro was still furious, "If you refuse to obey my orders, then fine – you can do things your way. But not with us. If you ever do anything like that again, you're out of the Brotherhood."
"He's out?" Gemini gasped.
"Shut up, Gemini! I hope you all realise just how serious this is! I know you think we've won a great victory, but if we have to kill other mutants to do it, it's not a victory at all! Remember – we don't let our kind die, no matter whose side they're on. If we let mutants die, we're just the same as the X-Men."
He was right. It was no good achieving dominance over our enemies, if we had to kill them in the process. We had to show that we were stronger not only physically, but morally as well. It was wrong to try and kill people who didn't even realise they were doing wrong. One day they would see the error of their ways, and all mutants would come together to form a world-wide Brotherhood. How I longed for that day.
Pyro obviously felt Recyclo had been suitably reprimanded, as he rose and headed for the back of the jet. Recyclo, silent and emotionless, resumed his place beside Vertigo. Idly I wondered what was going through his mind. It was never easy to tell with Recyclo. Was he angry at Pyro for yelling at him? Was he sorry because he knew he'd done wrong? Did he simply not care at all? I could only guess. Whatever he was feeling, I knew he'd never show it.
"Gladiator?" came a female voice.
I looked over my shoulder. It was Cassandra. She motioned me towards her, and I walked over, "What's up?"
Gemini was standing beside her, and Cassandra lowered her voice, "I just had a thought. I think I know who the traitor might be."
"What?! Who?"
"Sshh, keep your voice down," she hissed. "I don't want anyone else to hear. You and Gemini are the only ones I know I can trust. Well, and Pyro of course. I wanted to let you know what I was thinking before I told him."
"Go on."
"All right. When you were in the computer room last night and the traitor hit you, you said it felt metallic, right?"
"Yeah. It was like a lead weight smashed into my face. Why?"
She didn't say anything, instead turning her gaze towards the three figures who were still slumped unconscious on their seats. I followed her eyes, until I was looking where she was – at the adamantium fists of Mole.
"You think it's him?" Gemini whispered.
"I don't want to think of it being any of us," said Cassie. "But it makes sense. Here's something else: the three of them were meant to be guarding the front door, but it looks as if the X-Men caught them without too much of a fight. If Mole had used his fists like we know he can, there would have been more than one battered and bruised X-Man waiting for us."
"Well," I said. "You could say the same about Atlas or Scarab. There was no evidence that those two put up much resistance either."
"Ah, but here's the thing," Cassie replied. "Part of Mole's mutation is his amazing sense of smell – like a real mole's, I should think. He'd have been the first one to detect the presence of the X-Men. What if he deliberately didn't warn the other two, and let them get captured?"
My eyes widened slightly. It was possible. The way she'd put it forward, it made sense. Mole could be the one – but he hated humans as much as the rest of us, didn't he?
"I'm not sure," I said. "I mean, we all saw him fighting against the humans in the city that time, didn't we? In fact, he was the one who started that brawl."
"I know. That's why I'm not sure. That's why I wanted to talk to you guys about it before I suggested it to Pyro."
Gemini frowned, "What if Mole started that fracas so he could draw suspicion away from himself?"
"Why would he do that? We didn't even know there was a traitor then, did we?"
"I guess not," she said, then giggled. "But a guy with the name Mole – isn't that a bit of an obvious name for a spy?"
I shrugged. Cassandra said, "So you think I should tell Pyro?"
"Yes. He's probably thinking along similar lines. Not much gets past him."
We glanced over at our leader, who had opened up a panel in the wall and was fiddling with a part of the jet's mechanics. Cassandra walked over towards him, and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, and she began whispering to him what we had just been discussing. Cassie had obviously been giving plenty of thought to trying to work out who the traitor was. I felt it was actually easier to first work out who the traitor wasn't, and work from there. Well, I knew it wasn't me. I knew it wasn't Pyro. I had convinced myself that both Cassandra and Gemini were innocent. What about the others? Well, I could rule out Recyclo. However weird he might be, however much we didn't like him, there was no denying that he hated the X-Men every bit as much as we did. He had tried to kill Cyclops, Wolverine and Rogue – and almost succeeded – there was no way that he could be an X-Man in disguise.
As for the rest – well, there were no concrete reasons to rule them out. They'd all fought with seeming passion and determination against the humans that time in New York, but clearly one of them had been faking it. Was it Vertigo, who didn't appear to care about anyone or anything – or was that merely a clever way of hiding his true feelings? Was it Atlas, the paranoid, ever stressed-out one – was he feeling the strain of being a spy and losing his cool? Was it Scarab – tough, dependable, yet sadly lacking in any great intelligence – with his immense strength, he could certainly have packed a powerful enough punch to knock me out last night. Or could it be Mole, as Cassandra suspected? The evidence certainly seemed to point at him, but hey – there was plenty of evidence pointing at me – were we just jumping to conclusions? I didn't know. Hopefully Pyro would be able to work it out.
I went from thinking about the traitor to thinking about my sister, who I had just come face to face with. We hadn't come to blows – circumstances had dictated otherwise – and my feelings over that were mixed. In a way I was relieved that I hadn't had to face somebody who might have been powerful enough to defeat me. At the same time I wanted to fight Crusader; I wanted to prove that I was stronger, that we had nothing to fear from the X-Men. I wanted to prove myself to the rest of the Brotherhood, to Pyro, to Cassandra most of all – and to the X-Men as well. There was no doubt that while I had been at their school, I had been treated like a child. I wasn't a child – I was fourteen, practically an adult – and they hadn't respected that. Pyro had been the one to see my strength despite my age, and had given me the chance. If I'd stayed with the X-Men, I'd probably still be sitting in classes without seeing any action whatsoever. I was glad I had left them. There was nothing for me there now.

Despite our leader's refusal to get excited, we arrived back at the island in high spirits. Mole and the others had regained consciousness, and Gemini was busy describing the battle to them. I noticed that she left out one or two details, such as when she had been hit by optic blasts from Cyclops, and she could only skim over the parts she had missed due to being knocked out. I scanned their faces, looking for any indication that one of them wasn't pleased at the victory over the X-Men, but there was nothing. We landed, and Pyro called us to the meeting room.
"OK," he began. "First of all, despite what I said earlier, today was a victory. We accomplished our mission, we faced our enemies, and we suffered nothing more than minor injuries."
Gemini had been the worst off, with a nasty burn on her side where Cyclops' ray had hit her. Atlas, who was the closest thing we had to a medic, had used his horticultural knowledge to gather some herbs from the garden, and mixed them together into a healing solution, which had helped eased Gemini's pain.
"However," Pyro went on. "We are far from achieving our final victory. It's in our sight, but it isn't going to be easy. The X-Men and the humans will try to hinder us every step of the way. We've already proved that we can beat both of them, and we'll have to continue doing so if we want to succeed in eradicating the sub-creatures. Now, to business. I know the X-Men and they'll recover quickly from this setback. We have to make our next move while they're still uncertain. By that I mean we're leaving on our next mission within the hour."
I raised my eyebrows. Within the hour?
"We'll be going to Scotland," he said before I had to chance to think any more. "To Edinburgh, in fact. Should be familiar territory for you, Gladiator. You used to live there, didn't you?"
"Yeah. Why are we going there?"
"Because the human scum are holding a massive anti-mutant demonstration in Britain this week. They're starting at Edinburgh Castle, and marching down to Buckingham Palace in London. They feel that British legislation doesn't deal strongly enough with mutants, and they want to put their viewpoint across in a big way. As two of you will know already, in Britain it's already law that mutants have to be registered. These humans want to go one step further. They want mutants to be kept in secure facilities to ensure that we can't threaten them. They want mutants to be sterilised to prevent us from breeding. They want to fund research into pre-natal treatments that will reduce the chance of a baby being born with mutations. In short, they want to wipe us out – that's what their demonstration is all about. We're going to launch our own demonstration – and by some amazing coincidence, it's going to coincide with theirs," he finished sarcastically.
"What are we going to do, exactly?" asked the deadpan Recyclo.
"Kill the demonstrators, as simple as that. Them and anyone who is following them. These people clearly think that they can do whatever they like to mutants without any threat of retribution. The X-Men's pro-human stance is clearly making the scum overconfident, and too many mutants are living in fear for their lives. We will send a message across the world, to let the humans know that we will fight back when they try to hurt us, and to let our fellow mutants know that somebody is willing to stand up for them."
Gemini smiled. Mole was nodding his head and cracked his knuckles with a horrible metallic krak that made everybody wince. Recyclo asked, "Where do we hit them? In Edinburgh or in London?"
"Both if necessary," said Pyro. "Gladiator, you know Edinburgh, so you can help me decide where to launch our attack from. If things go wrong, we'll attack the scum again when they reach London. Recyclo, you're from London, so you can help me there."
I nodded. Recyclo made no response. Pyro switched on the projector and an image appeared on the wall behind him. I looked more closely, and saw it was a picture of a woman, probably about Pyro's age – however old he was, thirty-something.
"This is the leader of the demonstration," he said, pointing to the image. "Her name is Claire Stewart and she's a renowned anti-mutant speaker. We don't know why she hates our kind so much, but she's given numerous speeches and written several books on the subject, and doubtless made a lot of mutants' lives hell in the process. She is our primary target and must be eliminated at all costs."
Fine. No problem. Just another piece of human scum who didn't deserve to exist. As I looked at her picture, I wondered what she was doing right now, and if she had any idea that there were mutants – the mutants she hated so much – planning to kill her at this very moment. That thought made me uncomfortable for a moment – the thought that we were going to kill somebody who was just going about their life with no idea that that life was about to end – then I remembered that she was a threat to our species, a sub-creature, and had no right to live. I cast my doubts out of my mind.
Pyro switched off the projector and said, "OK. Item number two: our little spy. You'll be glad to know I've been busy with the problem, and I've narrowed down the list of suspects somewhat. Although it pains me and sickens me to think that any of you is betraying me after all I've done for you, there is no other explanation. I will be speaking to each of you individually, to give you all a chance to prove your innocence – and I expect to discover the truth before long."