Nathan stirred awake, completely healed now, and immediately shot a look over at Hybrid. He was still unconscious, breathing steadily. Nathan was glad. It would've been a shame if Hybrid had woke up before he had, decided he had a grudge and killed him. Nathan shuddered at the thought. The house reeked of rotten wood and mildew. There was a faint hint of urine and feces as well.
Charming.
It was still a step up from being in a cell, Nathan decided. Although he didn't think that too many mutants were in stuck in Sheol anymore. From what he'd heard through the whispers of the MCA, a terrorist group of mutants known as the X-Men had come to retrieve two of their own, who'd been recently captured. In the meantime, they'd set free every single mutant held there in Sheol.
Sounds like my kind of people.
His thoughts feel on Deadpool. How could he have betrayed him like that? How could've he have been planning this all along, playing Nathan for a fool.
I am a fool, to believe his lies.
What was he supposed to do now? Did he go and hunt down Deadpool, seeking out his revenge. No, that wasn't his style. He was much more pleased with the idea that Deadpool thought he was dead, than Nathan getting to pay him back. Nathan suddenly realized that he was free. It hit him like ton of bricks and he welcomed it with open arms. Now, he would finally be able to find his beloved, his Lindsey. He'd be able to know once and for all whether she was dead or alive.
How long had it been? Months? Years? No, it hadn't been a year yet. It was around seven and a half months, Nathan decided quickly. Oh how he longed to hold her in his arms, to hear the sound of her voice. It overwhelmed him with joy, a feeling he'd long forgotten since his time in Sheol, his training with Deadpool, and his betrayal on his first mission. His life had been a living hell for so long, he'd forgotten exactly what happiness tasted like. He could smell the aroma, waiting for him back home in Illinois—if she were still there.
She would've had to go into hiding of some sort or another. He was certain that the MCA were looking for her. She was smart and resourceful and as long as she traveled by night, she could be anywhere. It was both a comforting and troubling thought, that she could be anywhere. Anywhere included a place where she was safe from the MCA, and a place where Nathan could not find her.
He looked around the kitchen of the house for something to eat. He opened the fridge and choked back bile at the horrendous smell. The food had long since spoiled and there was all manner of mold and other green, fuzzy organisms growing on the food. It had been a while since he'd had a good meal, and he didn't expect to find it in this dump. He opened the cupboards and found that cockroaches enjoyed cereal as much as he would've at that point. He continued to look and found some unopened cans of ravioli. He looked at the expiration date. It didn't matter so much, because he didn't know the exact date anyway. He did know what year it was and to his surprise, the ravioli had not expired.
He looked around for a can opener and couldn't find one. He rolled his eyes at himself and tore the top of the can off with his bare hands.
"Ow!" he exclaimed as he cut his fingers on the aluminum can. In seconds, the healing factor kicked in and he was good as knew. He found a fork easy enough and did his best to wipe it off on his clothes. There was no telling what had crawled over the fork over time. He crammed several pieces at a time into his mouth, unable to steady himself. He ate the remaining cans with similar mannerisms. His hunger was not satisfied but it would hold him over until he could find something else.
He found the bathroom and relieved himself. The toilet flushed so he turned the shower on. Strangely enough, the house still had running water. It didn't get hot as the electricity had clearly been off for a while, but the idea that a shower was available to him was still tempting. He turned the water off and went back into the room where he'd left Hybrid.
I can't believe that Garrett is the Hybrid!
Then came another thought that hit him like a ton of bricks. This one wasn't as welcomed as the first. There were so many questions that he wanted to ask him, but they under the assumption that Hybrid didn't try to kill him as soon as he woke up. Nathan had some ammo and grenades with him, but other than that, he had only his bare hand to stop him. It was a good thing that he'd given him so many sedatives, he thought. Even a mutant as powerful as the Hybrid would have trouble rising to the occasion after something like that.
Hybrid was still on the floor, but he appeared to be stirring back to consciousness. Nathan kicked himself for not checking him for weapons. He seemed to be able to pull them out of his ears when they were in the condo. There was no telling as to whether or not he had more knives or a gun holed up somewhere up his sleeve. If there was still ought between them, the smartest thing would be for them to go their separate ways and meet another day, Nathan thought. He could only hope that Hybrid would have the same reasoning.
"Ugh…my head," Hybrid complained. He sat up and looked around, obviously disgusted by his surroundings.
"I don't believe we had enough time to get reacquainted before. How've you been Garrett?"
"Nathan? What the hell are you doing here? How do you know Deadpool?" Hybrid suddenly demanded.
"I could be asking you the same questions, Garrett. I thought you were dead. Everyone did."
"That's what they were supposed to think. The MCA staged my death so that they didn't have anyone coming to look for me. This was before the registration act came down, so they had to keep their operations on the down low," he explained.
"The MCA captured you?"
"Yeah, they said that I had potential to be in this mutant project called Weapon X, which you're obviously familiar with. I didn't take to the healing factor at all, my body completely rejected it. Even though I was a failure as far as that went, they saw a prize when I began my training with Deadpool."
"How'd you escape?" Nathan asked, wanting to get to the main parts of the story. It was clear that he didn't have too much to worry about as far as a fight brewing between them. Hybrid's tone was not hostile. In fact, it was almost cordial, as if he were happy to be catching up with an old friend.
"One day while we were training, I blasted my way out. I thought I had killed Deadpool, but I was wrong about that one. I went into business for myself, taking on the most impossible jobs that I could get my hands on. Pretty soon I made a name for myself and I started getting paid a lot of money to kill people," he replied. Nathan would normally be so opposed to such a lifestyle, but he had a new sympathy to anyone who'd been subject to the MCA's torture. What else did one have, after escaping such a place.
"What kind of people did you kill?" Nathan asked, before he realized it.
"Bad people: drug lords, slave runners, mutant oppressors, black market tycoons…those kinds of people…people this world doesn't need and will never miss," Hybrid defended his position. Nathan wished he hadn't asked; he didn't want to know and it wasn't really his business.
"And now you're here?"
"Yep. What about you? Let's hear your story, Nate," Hybrid said with a smirk.
Nathan started from the very beginning, with the attack and how he'd killed two officers. He touched some details about him hiding out in Lindsey's, the attack from the MCA, getting caught. He went into more detail about Sheol, and they exchanged a few horror stories about what they'd endured while on the inside. He gave him all the details about what Deadpool had done, including taking Nathan's identity. He was careful to touch base on the fact that he had saved his life. If there was any help at all that Hybrid could give him, Nathan was going to milk it for all it was worth. At the end, Hybrid gave a low, long whistle.
"It sounds like you've had quite a trip."
"I'd say you have no idea, but it seems our stories are pretty much the same one," Nathan replied. "Now what?"
"That depends. Clearly my safe house here is no longer safe, so I need to get out of here. It seems that I owe you a favor, for saving my life—though you did try to kill me."
"You didn't leave me with much option," Nathan protested.
"I'm kidding. You're welcome to come along with me to my safe house in Miami. You can get rest, a change of clothes and some food there. Then, I'll imagine that you'll want to get on with your life."
"I don't know how that is going to be possible, with this war and all," Nathan admitted dryly. It wasn't as if he could just buy a plane ticket and fly commercial to go home for his mom's cooking. The MCA would be hunting him at every corner. He was stuck in a rock and a hard place.
"My suggestion to you is this, find a mutant faction to join and take cover with them. We are more powerful in greater numbers, the MCA are less likely to kill us that way," Hybrid suggested.
"What about the whole lone assassin thing?"
"I thought I'd be able to keep that up, but I was wrong. The MCA got to me and now I'm going to have to revert back to my roots," he sighed.
"Your roots?"
"I was in the original Brotherhood of mutants," the response surprised Nathan. The Brotherhood of mutants was renown to be terrorists and criminals. What puzzled him even more was the word he used: original.
"What do you mean, original?"
"I don't know if you know the story behind the Brotherhood or not," Hybrid started.
"I don't," Nathan gave him permission with a wave of his hand.
"A woman named Raven Darkholme, better known as Mystique, formed a mutant task force known as The Brotherhood of Mutants way back in the day. She met and fell in love with a man named Erik Lenshurr, who we all know as Magneto."
Nathan shuddered at that name. Though Magneto had long since died, his memory lived on in hearts of those who had survived his attack with Asteroid M. There were all kinds of news coverage about that.
"Yeah, go on."
"She handed over control of the Brotherhood to Magneto and went on a rampage, trying to destroy the world with Asteroid M…old news. Anyway, after the X-Men stopped the Brotherhood and killed Magneto, they were forced to go into hiding.
"No one had any idea how powerful the Brotherhood had grown since Magneto had taken control of it. Mystique tried to rebuild and restart where Magneto had left off, but she didn't have the support of the entire Brotherhood. A man named Mindflare got the majority of the Brotherhood to follow him.
"With only the few founding members and a few stragglers and new recruits, me included, it didn't look like the Brotherhood was ever going to reach its former glory. I stayed and trained with them for a while before the MCA picked me up. I was always loyal to them, so I'm sure there's still a spot for me there," Hybrid finished.
"Aren't the Brotherhood terrorists?"
"Magneto always had a forceful way of doing things, I'll say that much. Mystique is a little more subtle, a little more toned down."
"Why don't you join a more honorable mutant group, like X-Factor, Alpha Flight or X-Men?"
"X-Factor broke up, Alpha Flight is all the way in Canada, they don't take new recruits anyway…they're a little different, and I don't have very good ties with the X-Men," he said.
"Why not?"
"After the attack, the X-Men captured Mindflare and one of his mutants. They held him in a cell so that he couldn't do anymore damage. A few months ago, I stormed into their headquarters and busted Mindflare out. I kind of roughed up their people. I'm not exactly on their good side now. Besides I…" he trailed off as if he couldn't find the right words.
"You what? Tell me," Nathan insisted.
"I have family there and I've worked so hard to die to my old identity. I can't afford to have Garrett coming back; I'm the Hybrid now—that's just the way that it is."
Nathan suddenly remembered something. There was a boy that came to youth group a few years back, Markas Bast. He was Caleb and Garrett's cousin. Caleb talked about Markas getting accepted to go to some sort of school for higher learning. It was only a hunch, but he figured that Markas had really been accepted to join the X-Men.
"Markas," Nathan took a guess. Hybrid looked up at him with surprise.
"Markas is there too?" he asked. He had a look of regret on his face, as if he'd said more than he had meant to. It was clear that he was talking about someone else.
"Who then? Rachel?" he asked, mentioning his older sister.
"Guess again," Hybrid replied, clearly seeing no reason to withhold. Nathan thought for a minute. Garrett's parents weren't mutants, and neither were Markas's. He wasn't sure that he knew anyone else in Garrett's extended family. It couldn't be Rachel…she wouldn't leave her family. He wasn't talking about Markas…so then who?
No…it couldn't be.
"Caleb? Caleb is with the X-Men?" Nathan demanded in disbelief.
"Yeah. I'm not ready to have him find out that I'm still alive and that I've become…well…this," Hybrid confessed. Nathan didn't understand his reasoning, but he respected it.
"Wow…Caleb's alive?"
"Yeah, he went into hiding when the MCA came looking for him. The Brotherhood and the X-Men got into kind of a feud over who got to recruit him and the X-Men won," he sneered, as if he were glad at the fact that Caleb had not joined the Brotherhood. Nathan was glad for it. The X-Men were renown to be respectable people. They were the ones who saved the world from Magneto after all.
"It seems it runs in your family to go missing, get assumed for dead, and then reappear without warning," Nathan pointed out.
"Yeah I guess so," Hybrid smiled. He stood up and stretched. Even though Nathan didn't figure he was a threat anymore, he still kept a watchful eye on every move that he made.
"You've been locked up for a long time, Nate. I guess you're curious as to who's still alive in your life and whatnot?" Hybrid asked. The question threw him off guard.
"I'm concerned about my brother, the MCA hauled him off only a few days before they caught me. I'm not so worried about my parents. Caleb's alive, I'm definitely going to have to touch base with him. My real concern is my girlfriend," Nathan replied.
"Hillary?" Hybrid asked. That was Nathan's ex-girlfriend, the one he'd dated before Lindsey.
"No, Lindsey. Hillary and I broke up after you stopped coming to youth. Here, I got the MCA to let me keep a picture of her," Nathan reached for the picture in his shirt pocket. It was picture of the two of them together, taken only recently before the attack. He showed it to Hybrid and his eyebrows raised.
"She's your girlfriend?" he clearly knew her by the way he'd said it.
"Yeah, you know her?" Nathan asked, thinking maybe they'd known each other beforehand.
"Yeah I fought her," he replied with a sneer. A grip of panic swept over Nathan. There was no way that Lindsey would be able to survive an encounter with the Hybrid. If she'd stood her ground against him, she would've certainly fallen.
"Is she…" he started.
"Relax, she's fine or at least she was when I left her. I roughed her up a bit, nothing too serious. She' something else!" he exclaimed. Nathan was so relieved to hear that he had spared her.
"What do you mean," he asked, puzzled.
"She was the hardest fight I'd ever had. I got lucky to pull one of my flashbangs on her. She hit me with some sort of weird energy…it was like falling into a bad dream. She nearly killed me," he confessed.
"Lindsey nearly killed you?"
"Oh, it's not Lindsey anymore. Her name is Nightmare now and she's an X-Man," Hybrid corrected. It all seemed so surreal. This day, despite Deadpool's betrayal, had been the best that Nathan could've hoped for—the best he'd had in a while. He'd received word from the most unlikely source that two of his closest friends were not only alive, but were well with the X-Men. The situation provided him with a blissful reunion and safe haven with a mutant faction.
Thank you God…you've have given to me, taken away and given again. Thank you.
"Well then, I guess I should be asking you how to get in touch with the X-Men, shouldn't I?"
"Come with me to Miami first, I have some people I want you to meet," Hybrid requested.
"Okay, I could use a good meal and a hot shower anyway," Nathan didn't see the harm in delaying just a little longer. He would be reunited with his beloved soon enough. Besides, Hybrid was his only connection in this place, and he didn't want to stay any longer than he had to.
"To Miami?" Hybrid asked.
"To Miami," Nathan confirmed.
A few days later…in Miami, Florida…"Nathan Henson, meet Raven Darkholme," Hybrid motioned to a large, bald fat guy in his late forties…not what Nathan had expected. He extended his hand anyway, sure that he had called Raven Darkholme a she before. Suddenly, the man began to change, morph.
She's a metamorph, Nathan figured instantly. She had midnight blue skin and glowing yellow eyes. Her hair was the most brilliant red that he'd ever seen—even more so than Lindsey's when she had freshly colored her own. Nathan couldn't help but give her a second look because she also had the most perfectly shaped body that he'd ever laid eyes upon.
"Pleased to meet you," her voice was definitely female, but it sounded as if she were speaking with more than one set of vocal chords. She was dressed in a long, white dress with boots to match. She grabbed his hand and shook it firmly.
"Likewise. Quite a gift you have there. Can you do voices too?"
"—Voices too?" she echoed using his own voice to answer him.
"Nice," he exclaimed.
"I hate to skip the small talk, but we have things we need to discuss, Hybrid," she switched her gaze to him. She sounded as if it were something of the utmost importance.
"Talk away," Hybrid responded, giving her permission to say what she wanted to say in front of Nathan, he figured.
"You remember our old friend Bolivar Trask?" she asked. The name sounded vaguely familiar to him.
"How could I forget?" Hybrid replied. Nathan didn't want to interrupt so he just listened, figuring the blanks would slowly fill themselves in.
"He's working directly with the MCA now, creating a new line of super-sentinels to enforce their mutant laws," she said. That's where he'd heard the name before. When Sentinels, giant robots as best Nathan knew, had been sanctioned to find a specific group of mutants in New York, they'd went haywire, killing dozens of innocent people, mutant and non-mutant alike. The X-Men had taken care of the incident, destroyed the Sentinels and stopped Trask, as the news had put it.
"You're kidding," Hybrid shot back in disbelief.
"I wish I were. I've been going on the inside, getting some intel on their new Master Mold. They're creating one Sentinel for every mutant in America—every man woman and child. They plan on sanctioning these things nationwide in a month or so," her face was grim. Nathan couldn't imagine on gigantic robot for every mutant in the country. That was millions!
"This is serious. We have to do something," Hybrid stated bluntly.
"It requires sources beyond what we can provide. We're going to need help on this one," she confessed.
"Are you suggesting we call up Mindflare?" Hybrid asked disbelievingly.
"I'd never suggest calling that treacherous villain! He's the reason we're all in this mess!" she objected.
"What do you suggest?" He looked at her and it seemed he got an answer from her by only the expression on her face. "You can't be serious, Mystique!"
"What other option do we have?" she threw her hands up.
"It's not like either one of us can just waltz in there and say, 'hello!'" Nathan was tired of being a spectator. He decided to speak up.
"Who? Who are you talking about?" he demanded. Mystique gave him an annoyed look and pursed her lips before she answered.
"The X-Men," she reacted as if saying them name send a shudder of pain through her entire body. "We don't have very good ties with them. They're likely to not believe anything we tell them."
"It's not like we didn't give them good reason," Hybrid admitted.
"We have to try," she came back to her original stance.
"They won't listen."
"We'll have to reason with them."
"They'll lock us in the stockade!"
"I'll go!" Nathan broke in.
"You?" Mystique looked him over and smirked with disbelief. "You're even worse…you're a total stranger. This isn't a time to be trusting people, Mr. Henson."
"I have ties there already. Three of my close friends are X-Men," Nathan shot back. Mystique looked at Hybrid to see if what Nathan was telling her was the truth. He nodded in confirmation and Nathan's defense. "I'd planned on going there shortly after here anyway."
"Okay then. I'm going to compile a packet for you. It contains all the information that Cyclops will need," she walked over to her desk and sat down before the computer.
"Who's Cyclops?" he asked dumbly.
"I thought you knew the X-Men!" she snapped.
"I know three of them, but I've never met any of the others in person. It'll work I promise. The X-Men have no reason to distrust me," Nathan argued.
"Very well," she gave in. "With this packet that I give you, also give Cyclops my best wishes. Tell him that the Brotherhood will come to his aid if he needs us in any way, though I don't think he'll take us up on that offer."
"Okay, I'll tell him," Nathan said, gathering his things from around the room. Mystique had the packet compiled in mere minutes. She handed him a sealed, eight-by-ten envelope.
"Guard this with your life," she said, handing him the packet. Hybrid had already given Nathan a car, guns and cash to make his departure. Nathan was on his way out when Hybrid stopped him.
"There's one more thing. You can't go up to Cyclops, claiming mutant pride and not have a mutant name," Hybrid pointed out.
"What do you suggest?"
"Super strength…something mythical…Hercules maybe?" he suggested.
"No…Hercules was just a god in mythology. There was something that even the gods feared, something completely unstoppable," Nathan began.
"The Titans…" Mystique replied.
"That's right…The Titans. I am Titan now; Nathan is no more," and so he set of for Westchester, New York. He couldn't have been a happier man, though he was delivering bleak news.
One week later…
He looked at the Xavier Institute, got out of his car holding the packet and he marched on, his mission nearly complete. He had no doubts that he'd be reunited with his love, his friendsand be taken in to the X-Men with open arms.