Chapter 8: The Base

Xavier's P.O.V

I jolted as the alarm began blaring. Hank and Scott were nearing their meeting point to return together, but something else was already here. "Beast, Cyclopes, hurry back. There is an intruder," I informed them as I hurried to the computer panel hidden in the wall and accessed the security feeds for our underground base. The automatic defence system would have come online if someone had breached the upper floors, so the threat was at least contained.

Yet some of the cameras showed the remainder of the X-Men suiting up and running to the primary alarm room, where our robotics detained anyone, while others had no visual feed.

"What on Earth is happening with the cameras today? Is the power supply damaged? Could the intruder be running site-specific interference?"

I checked the readings to be certain, but all energy outputs were within normal parameters. As I watched, more cameras lost their feed as others failed to turn back on. "Neither."

"Jean," I said, watching my team running through the halls with her in the lead, "do you have a visual?"

"No Professor, but the cameras seem to have been melted down."

"Melted?" I paused, admittedly floundering for a moment. The alloy composing the outer shell of the cameras was used across our entire underground facilities during construction due to its durability and resilience. Now someone could melt it within seconds. "Keep me updated," I told her.

"Yes Professor."

I rest my forehead in my palm briefly once my team vanished from view in the blinded hallways. Whatever or whoever they were facing, I would have to wait to find out and hope they could manage.

Scott and Hank were nearly back however, so their numbers would not be down for long.

Resentment still filled me as I rest my hands on my machine. "All I can seem to do lately, is wait."

3rd Person P.O.V

After exiting the round, windowless, metal room the tunnel led to, the shape on the wall had prompted Spider-Man to turn left. Any cameras he saw along the way he spat acid on, wary about any other security measures this place had. The tunnel itself had a contraption that had tried to force him into a metal straightjacket, of all things to exist.

It wouldn't be doing that again after he pulled the whole thing out of place, snapping something in the process.

When he reached the boxy structure he stood upright and leaned down to look at it. It had the standard shape of a computer, but there were no buttons to be seen on it unlike the cameras outside.

"Open sesame?" Spider-Man frowned, hesitantly tapping on it. It was worth a shot.

Six eyes blinked in unison as it opened into a touch screen right in front of him.

An impressed sound nearly made it past his tongue before it was swallowed down, a nervous check of the noise around him confirming that the mutant group hadn't reacted somehow. Spider-Man sighed, returning his gaze to the technology. As high tech as it was for a place like this, computers would forever contain information. With no further hesitation Spider-Man got to work opening files on it, leaning in to read with narrowed eyes.

While his vision was still superior to a human's, when his surroundings were bright things could blur together in the hexagonal frames that made up Spider-Man's new eyesight. New number, new colour, new angles, and new sensitivity to light. Not everything could be an improvement.

However, the brightness from the small screen and the hallway did affect his vision enough for a box requesting an authorisation code in the top corner to slip by. One further gentle tap of a claw was all it took.

Spider-Man's spider-sense began screaming at him and he jerked upright, listening to the people upstairs.

"Wh-?"

The alarm went off.

Spider-Man's P.O.V

With my head splitting, I ran.

My fur flattened as the wail of the alarm echoed off the metal walls. Why did I think I could outrun a sound?

"Stupid decision Spidey!"

By the time I realised I was running deeper into their base instead of back to the tunnel, it was too late. I couldn't very well stop now, with the group of mutants chasing after me. They had scrambled to get down here as soon as the noise started.

The noise that was still hammering away at what felt like everything.

"Not good…"

I blinked away fuzzy spots as my adrenaline rush abated, stumbling when I rounded another corner. Unbidden, I slowed to a stop and clutched at my head as the pain increased. Even with my claws over my ears it was too much. The sirens from the police car hadn't been this bad, but then again I hadn't been in a pit of them, locked underground.

Before I knew what I was doing I had stood upright, extra arms clutched tight to my body as I swayed.

"Am I going to pass out?" There was a different sort of fuzziness creeping in – but I couldn't. "They're catching up!"

I forced myself to take a step and leap to the ceiling.

Parker luck seemed to swing the right way this time.

I blinked as my claws touched the roof and the alarm was shut off. "Finally." My eyes closed, fur settling and headache subsiding. They shot open a few precious moments later, the thundering of a crowd of footsteps travelling down the halls. "I can't catch a break with these guys!"

Their place was like a labyrinth, and they were a herd of minotaur with a home front advantage.

I took off across the ceiling. The next corner came with the slight whir of a camera turning on a swivel. "Great." I built the acid up, tongue flicking against the notch at the roof of my mouth. A…not quite horrible – to me at least – acrid and too-bittersweet taste always stuck around for a brief while after I used it, but it was useful. Necessary in this case.

As soon as my head rounded the corner a short jet of it was flying through the air and coating the metal. I hurriedly opened my inner ears to listen for any other nearby cameras, turning left to avoid them at a crossroads. The roof of my mouth was beginning to feel flat, meaning that I was nearly out of acid. I would need to conserve the rest for an actual emergency if those people caught up.

Suddenly, lights started flashing above the many doorways.

"Something tells me that isn't good."

I dove through a doorway in front of me and landed on the floor just as a metal door slammed down.

"That was close."

The process then repeated itself.

"Even closer!"

I stood on all eights in another round, metal room with lots of doors. "What is with this place and metal?!" The stuff was everywhere!

Clearly it was used as part of their defences – the mutants were catching up thanks to the doors. I listened to them running here in two separate groups and was hit by a sense of deja-vu. A hazy image slipped through my mind as my headache returned. Had I done this before?

"When? When could I have been in a situation anything like this? Was it here, with them?"

Said group was getting closer. I growled, pushing away the problem for later. They could not find me in the middle of this room, out in the open.

"Pick a door. Any door!"

I chose the fourth one from the right, moving on autopilot. The little red arrow I jabbed easily with a claw, revealing a forest on the other side. An indoor forest was unexpected, but at least I would be able to hide for a while. As soon as I was through the doorway I turned to the lever suspended beside it in what appeared to be thin air. Hooking my claws over it and pulling, I webbed it in place, deeming myself safe enough for now. The door disappeared into the surroundings, once again making me question what kind of technology these guys had access to. It was powerful stuff, for sure.

Except when the door met the floor, my spider-sense exploded in my skull. I clutched my head in agony.

"What's going on?!" I whirled around, squinting to see anything through the trees.

Then a giant robot man shot a laser at me from above them.

I threw myself aside and looked up.

"Why can't I catch a break with these guys…"

(5 minutes earlier.)

Wolverine's P.O.V

The cameras were fizzling and smoking in melted clumps, so we didn't have any idea what we were going up against. Beast and Cyclopes had showed up a couple of minutes ago, still panting from sprinting back here.

There wasn't really a trace of our intruder (or intruders) anywhere aside from the destroyed robotic claws, melted cameras and an open access panel. The screen was flashing some kind of weird…formula, I'm guessing, constantly. That kinda stuff was mumbo-jumbo to me. A whole bunch of files and who knows what else was jumbled in the background.

Beast closed everything in seconds and hit the emergency lockdown, closing the doors and shutting the computer down. We paused for a tick. I sniffed, trying to pick up on anything that might give us an idea of where to go.

"How are we to proceed?" Storm asked, sparking a conversation behind me.

That was when I smelled it.

Pollution, dirt, grass.

"What the hell?"

I sniffed again to be sure, but my nose knows. It was exactly what I had picked up earlier this morning outside, but Beast and Cyclopes were behind me and still had their own scents over the other medley. The only other thing –

"That creature's in here," I said.

Everyone stopped talking, then all chaos broke loose. We still had no way to tell if it was only female-specific or not, but Scott and Gambit were trying to get the girls to go back because of the hypnotism thing. They were having none of it, protesting loudly as Hank was trying to breathlessly get them all to calm down. My heightened senses didn't like the extra-crazy input.

"We're makin' too much noise."

"Shut it!" I yelled over them all. "It won't be able to take us as a team. Let's rush it and make sure it doesn't get away with waltzing in here and wrecking our stuff. The girls can hang back with Beast and Gambit just in case; me and Cyclopes can go first. Good?"

They barely took any time to decide, nodding and falling in place at the improvised plan.

"Come on!" I took off in the lead to track it. That smell was faint and tricky, but it didn't belong in metal corridors. "Left, right…left? Yep…"

We were gaining on it – these hallways stopped at what was essentially a dead end unless you took the opposite path out. That's why we always split up to cover 'em both. I grinned, bursting into the room only to find it empty.

Another sniff had me at the door to the Danger Room. "It's in there," I growled.

"Not good, Ah left it on again," Gambit groaned.

"Deja-vu. What program was running?" Cyclopes asked.

My eyes narrowed as Gambit avoided looking at anyone. "… Deadly Sentinels."

"Again?!"

"Gee, sor-ee mon friend."

I scoffed, but before I could even open my mouth, Jubilee did. "Does that really matter right now?! There's something in there while it's on!"

Now that was discomforting, but nobody moved towards the door. "We can't risk setting it loose," I pointed out.

"Then let us hurry and turn off the program. We can lock the door from the access panel," Beast reasoned.

"Always a smart one."

We raced to the Control Room and looked through the one-way glass.

I stopped dead in my tracks, noticing the others doing the same around me. No wonder with what we were lookin' at.

The entire place was trashed. Sentinel parts were everywhere I looked. One was collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, and as we watched another Deadly Sentinel torso flew past the window from the right and landed on an approaching group of the metal soldiers. They abruptly exploded. Then one tin can off near the back suddenly went completely limp and fell backwards with a small boom, a hole in the side of its head.

"It can tear these things apart… What the hell is this?"

I tried to see – something smaller than the Sentinels, red eyes – but all I could catch was brief glimpses of a grey blur darting through the trees.

Spider-Man's P.O.V

"The bigger they are the harder they fall. – Joe Walcott. It's true, apparently."

This was kind of fun. There wasn't really any time for me to think; energy going into movement more than anything else. It was a good workout, but my metabolism would hate me for it later.

Maybe it already did. It had taken quite an effort to throw that torso, so I leapt into a tree to recuperate for a second before my spider-sense blared a warning. I sprung to the next tree as the last one was disintegrated by a laser.

The mutant group had entered some control room adjacent to this and were watching through a window that I couldn't see. "Part of the simulation." Giant robot men that attacked on sight would not stay put in a mansion, never mind the indoor forest that was too good to be true.

I could touch it all though, and my spider-sense never lied about danger.

"…This is a high -tech place."

I almost wanted a look at their systems and programming.

Then everything vanished. The robots, the forest, the sky, everything. The simulation was soon replaced by another round, metal room with a slightly purple hue. With no trees I had no cover, so I kept moving, immediately heading towards where I could hear the group before their window properly came into view. A jump took me part way up the wall and I kept some distance from the window as I climbed past and crouched above it, listening.

"They didn't see me."

I breathed, sighing in relief. Now I only have to wait until they leave that room so I can move – there were no cameras in here, just the window. I would still only have a minute or two to get far enough away before they made an appearance. "Gotta move quick." I braced myself on the wall, ready for the right time.

Unfortunately, they didn't all leave at once. A couple of them stayed behind in that room while the rest began running down. "Well, here goes nothing." This was the only chance I had left. I flicked the notch in my mouth again, angling my head forward slightly. Acid landed directly onto the window from my position and I pushed myself off the wall, diving towards the door as footsteps stopped, turning back the way they came. Landing on the floor, I spat what little acid I had left on the webbed lever and kicked the door down.

Before anyone arrived, I bolted from the room on all eights and dashed through the compound. Melted cameras left a good trail to follow all the way back to the tunnel I had used as an entrance.

"And the spider has left the building folks."

3rd Person P.O.V

Gambit and Storm exclaimed in shock when the window suddenly began melting right in front of them. The rest of the team heard, turning and rushing back.

"What happened here?!" Scott asked.

"We don't know," Storm replied, backing away with Gambit.

"Professor, we have a problem," Jean elaborated as she turned away from the loud discussion the others were having.

"It has probably left by now. The cameras have not been damaged any further in nor captured anything. Have Logan, Marie, Jubilee, Remy, and Scott check the corridors and the primary room for detainment just in case. You, Ororo and Hank should see if you can gain any information from the video footage before the cameras were destroyed," he replied after she finished.

"Yes Professor." Jean turned. "You five," she said, pointing them out, "the Professor wants you to check the corridors and the first room on route just in case. See if you can find out how it got in without setting off the alarm in the chute."

Nodding, Rogue, Cyclopes, Wolverine, Gambit, and Jubilee left. Jean looked to Storm and Beast. "We need to see if we can get anything of importance from the footage."

They instantly got to work, Beast going to one console for the Danger Room while the two women investigated the hallway feeds. He had a hunch that there was greater chance of the room capturing something of use than the structures which had once been functioning cameras.

(Half an hour later.)

The creature had indeed left the mansion. Both teams the X-Men had split into had something to report, gathering in the underground command centre where Professor Xavier was waiting for them.

"It's definitely gone," Wolverine said gruffly as he and his group appeared.

"Yeah, no sign of it anywhere. C'est disparu," Gambit added.

"We found out how it didn't trigger the alarm too." Scott rubbed the back of his head, taking a seat at the table. "The metal suit restraint mechanism was pulled out of place. The entire thing is wrecked, including the signal transmitter."

"Another repair job alongside everything else," Beast sighed. "However," he continued, "we also have something of interest to report. I searched through the Deadly Sentinel simulation logs while Jean and Storm accessed the hallway footage."

"And?" Logan grunted.

"We have a picture."

...

A.N: Well this chapter took a while to polish and at no fault of the computer this time. Work instead.

Thank you for your review Luvians - your support (and the support of everyone else reading) means a lot and motivated me to stay up and finish this before next shift. I hope you continue to enjoy it.