Part II: Ignition
Chapter 5: Welcome (Back) to Bayville
Bayville in February was just how he remembered it. Well, mostly.
A biting breeze rushed through the fur on his face, making it stand on end. He stuffed his gloved hands deeper into his pockets, wishing for once that the leather wasn't so thin.
To the outside world, he looked like a young blonde man dressed in a long brown coat. The hair of his Image Inducer hologram matched the styling of his real hair, if not the color: cut close to his head, but just long enough to show its slight natural curl… something he had to admit he'd grown fond of in the last couple months. Beneath the hologram, he wore a nondescript-but-still-militaristic black uniform, its pockets and belt laden with a slew of tools and devices to aid in his mission.
His orders were to infiltrate the GCD, and turn up anything that was a violation of either international law or basic human decency.
"And where better to begin," Nick Fury had said, shortly before pushing Kurt out of a helicopter three miles over Bayville, "than the place where it all began?"
Everything felt almost the same, like an echo, or a ghost. The downtown skyline had changed only slightly, with a couple new buildings rising up and one tower having mysteriously disappeared. The roads remained the same—he could still walk the path from the high school to the nearest Gut Bomb. Even the smell reminded him of days riding in Scott's convertible and fleeing from Kitty's cooking.
But even though the whole of it was so similar, the devil was in the details.
For example, the posters did much to remind him of what he'd missed.
As he wandered through downtown Bayville, hands in his pockets, he could not go ten meters without passing a sign, poster, or billboard that dealt with the "mutant menace." Many had Edward Kelly's face on them, the man wearing a confident expression as he gazed off toward something behind the camera. On those posters were slogans like "Mayor Kelly: keeping Bayville safe" and "Justice never sleeps, so that you can." One was the well-known picture of Uncle Sam, with the slogan "America wants YOU to protect our streets. Enlist at your local GCD station today."
One of the most distressing signs was one showing a familiar robotic form that got Kurt's heart hammering as soon as he saw it: a Sentinel stood tall in the frame, and next to it were the words, "Remember, the Mutant Registration Act requires all mutants to report to the nearest GCD station with all changes of address or living status. If you or someone you know is a mutant, it is your responsibility to keep the government updated."
Some of these posters looked pretty tattered and worn. Kurt wondered how long they'd been up.
Other things seemed off about Bayville. There was an odd quiet on the streets, even though it was afternoon. It was like something out of a movie: people seemed to look over their shoulders more, and stick closer to their loved ones. No one spoke above a low murmur, as if people raising their voices might be pinned as mutants and shipped off to the nearest facility.
Or maybe that was just Kurt's imagination. He hoped it was.
Occasionally, a small group in the black-and-blue uniform of the US GCD could be seen walking down the street, the crowd parting before them like the Red Sea. That, more than anything else, made Kurt feel like he'd been dropped into a militarized zone. Like the US government was holding its own people under barbed wire and barricades.
During his training, he had often wondered if he was still one of the good guys. This finally proved that he was.
Inevitably, his meandering route led him back to the grounds that had once been the Xavier Institute. He reached the familiar gate, but was surprised to find GCD guards stationed at it. Before they could spot him, he teleported into a nearby tree, and looked over the wall.
He wasn't sure what he expected to see: a crater, perhaps? When he'd fled the mansion two and a half years ago, it had been little more than rubble. Tanks had been rolling over the remains of the walls, and men in uniform had been tearing apart everything that looked vaguely dangerous to them.
But whatever damage they'd done, they'd apparently fixed, because a military base now stood where Xavier's Institute once had. It was a large, metal-lined building that sprawled across the grounds. Carrier vans with "GCD" on the side drove in and out through the gates. As Kurt watched, one van stopped at the front of the facility. Two figures hopped out of the front, drew guns, circled around to open the van's rear doors, then yanked out three figures who were chained together and led them at gunpoint into the facility.
With horror, Kurt realized that this was a GCD base.
He'd been briefed several times on the structure of the GCD. In every major city and most counties throughout the United States, there was at least one GCD station: a small building much like a post office or DMV where mutants could stand in line to register themselves. Then, they would be taken to a back room and tattooed with a number and barcode on their left arm. For those that dodged registration, or those that committed crimes, there were bases like this in every state—holding facilities, essentially. If a mutant was really difficult to track down and subdue, they sent the Sentinels.
The fact that the Xavier Institute, his old haven, had been turned into a mutant holding facility… Kurt had no words to do justice to such a violation.
Eventually, he teleported away from the site, cursing himself for being so careless as to just wander up to the place. No, he would not be identified in his current form, but civilians caught lurking around military bases raised suspicion, whether they were known fugitives or not.
That was another thing he'd seen while walking through town: wanted posters. His old team were all represented, both in groups and individually, himself included. Several other mutants that Kurt didn't know were also depicted, as were the Brotherhood, Acolytes, and even Magneto. One sign even depicted the Morlocks. Each wanted poster warned passersby to contact the GCD if they had any information on the location of these "rogue mutants," promising monetary amounts no doubt equal to the mutant's dangerousness. The former X-Men had the highest bounties out of all of them.
Kurt had mixed feelings about seeing so many people he knew with prices on their heads. On one hand, he was glad to see that they were all alive—the government wouldn't have put bounties on corpses—and more, that they hadn't given in to the government program. On the other hand, having their faces plastered all over would have made their lives very dangerous these past two-and-a-half years. They didn't have the luxury of Image Inducers and families in Germany.
He wondered if they were all still together. He wondered if they'd welcome him back as an old friend, or hate him for abandoning them.
He hadn't meant to. He had been injured and overwhelmed, trapped in the heart of the mansion by more men than he could hope to defeat alone. He'd seen Rogue and Ororo shot down, and X-23 had last been seen under a pile of machinery. Everyone else had been split up, and although he could still hear the sounds of battle dying off in the mansion around him, he'd feared the worst for the rest of his team. Panicked, in pain, and staring down the barrels of at least nine rifles, he'd given into his flight instinct and teleported to the relative safety of the forest.
The guilt that had torn him up at the time resurfaced now as he thought about the posters of those who had once called him a friend. He had returned mere hours later, after he'd had time to lick his wounds. But by then, the mansion was abandoned and in ruins. He'd picked his way through the rubble, but had seen no sign of bodies, neither friends nor foes.
He'd considered trying to go after the military forces, but only briefly before the hopelessness of his situation had driven him to his knees. What was the point? They were all probably dead, and he was alone. The only field role he'd known how to play was team support; he'd have no idea what to do or how to start to save his teammates by himself.
He'd prayed for their safety, then had walked toward the nearest airport with his tail between his legs.
It was his greatest shame, now, especially seeing that they'd been alive after all. Then again, if they'd been captured, they'd obviously escaped without Kurt's help. They hadn't needed him anyway, so perhaps he had done them a favor by going back to Germany.
No, he wasn't going to think like that. They'd been his friends and his home. They had cared about him, and he wouldn't let his own guilt sully his memories of them.
He found himself wandering through town again, milling through the crowds of people who didn't make eye contact or raise their voices. The sky above him was gray, but no more gray than the people.
Without much difficulty, he found the local GCD station in the center of downtown Bayville. It was a two-story construction between the city library and a bank. Pausing next to it and acting like he was checking his watch, he peeked in through the window. It looked just like a post office or bank, with a front counter and a long, disgruntled line. The only things that broke the illusion were the uniformed guards that were posted throughout. Kurt also spotted what looked to be surveillance cameras in the corners. He moved on past the station a moment later.
Bayville City Hall was only a couple blocks away. Two separate groups picketed outside. One seemed to think the GCD was monstrous and inhumane. The other, larger one, called for much stricter control of mutantkind. The two groups seemed to be shouting at one another more than at the city hall or at passersby.
Kurt spent a moment observing them from across the street. He scanned faces, recognizing some people in both groups from his classes or from around town, but no one he'd really known all that well. Then, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and moved on.
He did that for the rest of the day, wandering around town, just assessing the situation as he'd been trained. He could sense the paranoia that gripped the populace: fear of the mutant menace and the government both. He didn't see any arrests, although he did see a shakedown in a grocery store parking lot, where a woman and child were accosted by roving GCD units, checked for numbers, and then released. The woman walked away with her head down and her child pulled close.
Once he'd gotten a feel for the situation, he dropped by a fast food restaurant for dinner (not Gut Bomb… for some reason, he just couldn't stomach his old favorite right now), then checked into a hotel using one of several fake IDs he'd been provided. This one named him Gabriel Jaworski, a freelance writer living in New York City but originally from Poland, and had a picture of his current form with a reserved smile. It was one of the most in-depth of his identities, full with birth certificate, passport, and job records. It would stand up to all but the most in-depth investigations, and therefore must not be compromised. That also made it one of the safest to use.
Kurt walked into his hotel room, his eyes automatically running a sweep for cameras and bugs. He didn't expect a random single bedroom in a three star hotel chain to be monitored, but he'd been trained to take precautions, not chances. He ran a hand along the wall, checking for hollow spaces in odd places. Then, he swept through the room, checking behind the paintings, in the dresser and end table, in the corners under the bed, and every other space he could think of where a recorder or mic might be hidden.
He paused over the Bible he found in the side table drawer. With his lips quirked wryly, he flipped through it, then returned it to its original position.
After that, he checked the small bathroom and closet for bugs as well.
Once he was confident the room was secure, he fell onto the bed, picked up the remote on the side table, and flicked on the TV, skimming through the basic cable channels to the local news. He waited through the commercials and the program's opening music. Then, the first segment came on, showing Edward Kelly giving some sort of speech, and Kurt's ears perked up.
"The American public is still reeling over Mayor Kelly's speech yesterday," said a young female anchor wearing a burgundy suit jacket. "In it, the man who almost singlehandedly brought the Mutant Registration Act into public consideration says what we're doing is still not enough to stop the Mutant Menace. Drawing from personal experience, he warns that monitoring only 'dangerous' mutants is only delaying the inevitable."
The screen flashed to Mayor Kelly on a podium in front of City Hall. "…when I was their principal, it wasn't merely the 'troublemakers' that were dangerous. It was all of them. The students of the infamous Xavier Institute flaunted the rules of society and destroyed public property, then cried discrimination when the law tried to exact justice."
Kurt snorted a laugh.
"We must beware! If we allow mutants to walk free, with uncontrolled use of their powers, then they will gain a sense of entitlement! They will use their abilities to bully your children and steal your jobs, and they will see nothing wrong with that. They must be controlled now!"
The screen flashed again, and the anchor came back on. "These comments have generated backlash all across the country," she said. "Kelly calls for banning even registered mutants from using their powers. Violators would face fines, loss of privileges, and eventually imprisonment."
"Loss of privileges?" Kurt repeated. "I wonder what that means."
"All around the States, people on both sides of the issue have lined up around courthouses and government centers, but none more so than here in Bayville. The Friends of Humanity are, as usual, leading the charge for Kelly's reforms, pressuring congress to put Kelly's ideas into a proposal. Locally, the small group of terrorists known as the Bayville Underground has taken steps to hinder both Kelly and the Friends of Humanity, and there are rumors of a larger resistance movement forming nationwide to stop further 'mutant discrimination'. The CIA is unwilling to either confirm nor deny these rumors, but Sentinel production is set to be increased by twenty percent within the next two months. This is Danna Caleb, Channel Seven News."
The screen switched to a different anchor, who started talking about the results of a local dog show. Kurt turned off the TV and sat back against the pillows, clasping his hands behind his head. Then, in a swift movement, he sprang off the bed and headed out the door. He went down to the street and grabbed a copy of each newspaper out of the roadside dispensers, then went back to his room and spread them on the bed.
He had the local paper, the Onion, the New York Times, and a specialty arts and entertainment paper. He flipped through the local and the Times, interested in anything he could find about Edward Kelly's latest adventures and this 'Bayville Underground.' He found little that he couldn't have deduced just from listening to the news, but it was good to have it corroborated. He was annoyed to see that Edward Kelly seemed to be a well-known public figure, being mayor of the town where the "mutant menace" had been brought into the public eye.
Kurt smirked. "I wonder if behaving in school would have made any difference to you, Herr Kelly. Something tells me not."
The Bayville Underground was only mentioned in the local paper, named in an article as the suspected perpetrators of a recent break-in at the mayor's mansion. The article mentioned nothing more about them, and Kurt wondered if the public knew anything else about them.
His watch alarm went off, making him jump. He hastily dug his radio out of his pocket, slipping on the earpiece and microphone.
"This is the Cheshire Cat reporting from Wonderland."
The earpiece was silent for a couple seconds before the familiar Italian accent came on. "I hear you, Cheshire Cat. This is Alice. What is your status?"
"I'm just skimming the surface right now. I've got a couple ideas for ways to go deeper."
"Will you be needing extra gear?"
Kurt flipped through his fake IDs, pausing at one that had been prepared for a possible GCD integration. "No. I'm ready to dive."
"Good. Keep me posted, Cheshire Cat."
"Yes ma'am."
He returned the radio to his jacket with a suppressed sigh. He wanted to ask more… about his old friends, and about Kelly and his influence. But he knew better than to address something so specific over a long-wave radio. It was just too much of a risk that someone would pick up the signal and overhear.
He flipped the TV back on, scanning through channels. He grinned as he recognized the Adventures of Robin Hood on some sort of classic movie marathon, and sat back to enjoy a bit of dashery, Errol Flynn style.
The next morning, he'd have to start defining his own style of dashery, and he had a feeling it would be very little like being in a movie.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x
"Welcome, men, to the Genetic Control Division. I'm Lieutenant Matthews."
Kurt did his best not to make a face as Duncan paced down the small line of recruits. The guy was thicker and meaner than Kurt remembered from high school, and armed to boot. Laughing was probably not a good idea.
"You've all graduated boot camp, and somehow you got your asses stuck here, in Bayville, the mutie capitol of the world. I'm guessing someone either really likes you, or really hates you."
Judging by the smirk on the ex-jock's face, Duncan thought the joke clever. The eight recruits lined up in front of him did not twitch, including Kurt's newly disguised form at the end. Today, he was dressed in someone dark, ornery, and burly… just the sort of fellow who would fit in nicely with the GCD.
Kurt's military training served him well as he stood, listening to Duncan rattle off a welcome spiel about how this was the big leagues, and what they did was hard and dangerous, blah blah blah. Honestly, it was a step down from the lectures he had taken in SHIELD Basic Training, but he doubted the GCD would take it well if he mentioned that.
There was that smirk again, threatening to come out. Think of something serious, like what you're here for.
That did it.
"Our mission, which you should never, ever forget, is to regulate and control those damn muties. They may be freaks and weirdos, but they're dangerous freaks and weirdos. Some of the people kept in these walls could blast you to high heaven or turn your brain to mush with a thought. Never forget that."
The large lieutenant made his way down the line of recruits, and stopped right in front of Kurt. Kurt was very careful to show nothing.
"You. What's your name, soldier?"
"Michael Smith, sir," Kurt snapped back, his accent a very well-practiced American southern one. It was one of his more difficult ones, but it was better than trying a local accent; that would get him caught for sure.
Duncan leaned in, holding his eyes deliberately. "You ever fought a mutant, Michael Smith?"
"No, sir," Kurt lied. "I have not."
"Well, I have." Duncan leaned back, looking pleased to be able to say that. "In fact, I know more about mutants than any of you grunts will ever know." Yeah, right. "That's why I'm your commanding officer. And don't you forget that, either!"
It took all of Kurt's SHIELD discipline not to laugh in Duncan's face.
"These muties are sneaky bastards," the lieutenant said, finally pulling away and walking back up the line. "They're everywhere. So don't feel bad about roughing someone up who's giving you the stink-eye. They might be a mutie in disguise!"
And on it went like that, for a good half-hour. Kurt tuned it out for the most part, but even so, by the end of it, he kind of wanted to punch his commanding officer. Somehow, he doubted that would go over well, and headed off to core training with the rest as one subdued mutie.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x
It was in the mess hall during lunch that he started getting his real information.
He had half a mind to sit in a corner alone and sulk, but one of the other new recruits waved him over. The eight of them had been working drills together all morning, and Kurt was surprised to find that these recruits were, while not up to SHIELD standards, above the average work-a-day gun-jockeys. These guys had muscle, and knew how to throw it around. He was beginning to think that, in a head-to-head fight against GCD officers, he might be overpowered.
Kurt carried his tray over to the table and sat down next to the recruit who had waved him over. Tom Preston, he thought the name was. Two of their fellow recruits were talking animatedly right across from them.
"…and then, bam, next thing we know, she took out the MBT," Eddie Rivera was saying, gesturing with his hard roll for emphasis. "A freakin' tank, man. It must have unloaded ten shells into the little hellcat, and she turns around and kicks its ass."
"Did you at least catch her in the end?" asked hard-bitten Jake Keller.
"You crazy, man? We counted it a victory that some of us were still alive after she walked away. She freakin' shredded my unit."
"Yeah, my ex-wife was like that," chortled Dan O'Hara, one of the other recruits, as he sat down with his tack on Kurt's other side.
"Sounds painful," Tom said with a smirk toward Dan. Kurt concentrated on his food, taking care not to show just how closely he was listening to the conversation.
"Yeah, well, as hard as the muties you fought out west were," Jake growled, "the freaks here in the north-east? Big leagues."
"Well, that's not true. Mutants are popping up everywhere these days."
"Yeah, but this area is like their mothership or something. It all starts in this area… that Apocalypse thing… the thing with the giant fire bird…"
"The Phoenix," Kurt supplied absently.
"Yeah. And now this goddamned resistance movement. Something just draws the freaks here. It's like this area really is the mutie capitol of the world, like the Lieutenant was saying. As far as I'm concerned, Mayor Kelly is a goddamned hero for doing everything he's done to chase the freaks off."
Kurt was afraid to ask, but if he was going to go after these people, he needed to know every little detail. "What do you mean, 'chase 'em off'?" he asked in his carefully crafted southern accent. "I ain't heard him do much but give some speeches and pose for some pictures."
"On the books, yeah," Jake said with a grim smile.
Tom picked up the train of thought, peering at Kurt curiously. "You hadn't heard, Mike? There were some mutants hunkered down in the Bayville sewers a couple years back. Not really doing much but taking up space. Didn't attract much attention, except that they were all rogues who kept evading the Sentinels. Then, last year, there was some sort of big blacked-out file in the division with Kelly's name on it, and the mutants fell off the face of the planet. Not a peep from the tracers, or anything."
Kurt wasn't the only one giving Tom an incredulous look. "Man," Eddie groaned, "how the hell you know all that? Only thing I heard was that Kelly had gassed a bunch of the freaks, or something else that scared all the mutie-lovers."
Kurt hadn't even heard that much about Herr Kelly. He wondered why he hadn't been briefed on it. Then, belatedly, he realized that this should not have been his first reaction upon hearing that the Morlocks had been eradicated. God, Evan. And what had happened to the kids that had been among them?
Tom shrugged in response to the curious looks. "I used to be one of the GCD's paper-pushers, before I was promoted to field work. Got me a lot of access to some juicy docs, let me tell you."
"That's none of our business," Jake cut in abruptly, and turned a narrowed eye to Kurt, across the table from him. "Where the hell were you last year, that you didn't hear about one of the division's biggest scandals?"
Kurt shrugged, glad that he'd long ago worked out details to his cover story that made his obvious inexperience with the GCD plausible. "I was just transferred to the division last week from the Marines. I'd just come back from a tour of duty in Europe, and my C.O. tells me straight-out I'm either transferred to Genetic Control or discharged." He pretended to glare into his pudding. "Something about me not playing nice with the freaky locals."
The word 'freak' felt bitter and wrong on his tongue, but it seemed to be exactly what was needed to erase the doubt in Jake's eyes. God, this job was going to shred his soul to little pieces.
"Man, you think this Bayville Underground movement has any muties among them?" Eddie asked, prodding Jake with a spork.
"Who knows?"
"Wish I did," Tom put in. "But we're just grunts here. We don't get to look at Master Mold data."
Now, Master Mold, Kurt had been briefed on: it was the computer system that used ambient telepathy to detect unregistered mutants, and track rogues. It was the system that directed the Sentinels.
"If there were mutants among the resistance," Kurt tried, "wouldn't we be sending Sentinels after 'em?"
Jake laughed, startling all the assembling recruits at the table. "Okay, now I know you ain't been in the States for a while." He leaned over the table, smirking darkly into Kurt's face. "In most cases, yeah, a Sentinel's all it takes to bring a rogue in. But here? In Bayville? We aren't talking any run-of-the-mill freak. If there are muties in Bayville Underground, you can bet your ass that they'll be ex-X-men. And there ain't no Sentinel built that can take those fuckers down."
Kurt felt a stab of hope go through them, though he kept it from showing. And then, enigmatically, Tom said, "Not yet, anyway."
Kurt's heart dropped through his stomach.