DISCLAIMER: I don't own the X-Men . ALSO, ALL ART COMMISSION OFFERS FOR THIS STORY WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY DECLINED.
...
1986
NINE MONTHS BEFORE THE WORLD LEARNS OF THE EXISTENCE OF MUTANTS.
"You did so wonderful today, Scott..." came the English contralto of a woman's voice as Scott stared up into the bright lights on the gurney he was strapped to, the silvery, humanoid machines standing guard over him, a red diamond on the smooth, ovular head of each model.
"These test results are most encouraging. Soon we will unlock the secrets of how to fully control your gift..." said the slender, figure, obscured by the bright lights directly behind her.
"I...I feel nauseous..."
"The Mind Editor can leave feelings of Nausea...perfectly normal..." said the voice. "You'll be just fine. Your normal, morose self in the morning..."
The teenager tried to move but it felt like he was underwater.
"By the way...I know you won't remember the conversation, but I'm wondering how you feel about the installation of a pinball machine in your room. I figure it would be a good way to pass the time, and you're always so fantastic with projectiles..."
"Mistress, Perimeter Sensors have detected a breach..." one of the faceless, eyeless robots spoke as the red diamond on its head lit up.
"Breach?" The figure obscured by the lights asked, her voice just barely crossing into the edge of terse.
"At the very edge of the Orphanage. Electrical Disruption..." the Robot responded.
"Electric...?" the Woman trailed, turning over to the gigantic, almost steampunk-esque computer to bring up the security feed, only for a mass EMP Wave to strike at that exact moment, shutting off all the lights, the only thing that could be seen in the darkness was the red diamond on the robots, and the red diamond on the forehead of the woman, whose eyes lit up crimson soon after.
"Please return Mister Summers to his room in the upper level. Make sure to edit the last three hours of his life out..." the woman instructed.
"At once, Mistress..." the robots replied in their cold electronic voices all at once.
Scott, seventeen years old at this point in his life, felt the hand on his shoulder, and his glowing, golden eyes barely had the strength to stare into the crimson eyes looking down on him.
"I do apologize for having to cut our session short. I so appreciate our conversations during these hours of scientific advancement...try to get some rest, Scott. Think happy thoughts..."
The red eyed woman cloaked by the shadows of the room departed and the robots began moving his gurney...
Scott remembered the path they took, having begun to memorize the path as the memory editor had started to fail. As he realized Doctor Natalie Essex was something evil...
He felt the expected turn left, and that's when he finally popped that gel tablet of Essex's modified adrenal medication for mutants in his mouth and he started having a minor fit of spasming that caused the robots to stop and examine him...
His chest hurt as he willed the energy always threatening to escape his skull outward, catching most of the robots in the terrible lancing golden rays of his optic blasts, destroying them instantly...and cracking a large portion of the ceiling above him. It was sheer luck no debris fell on him. He launched another blast at the last remaining bot in his immediate area, before ripping his arms and legs free of the restraints, aided by the artificial adrenaline he had taken...
With what he had remembered, the logical thing to do would have been to just run as far as his legs cold carry him. It was not like during daylight hours, Essex forced him to stay in the Orphanage. But Scott knew he would be easy prey if it was just him on the run, and while part of his motivation here was self-serving, it was also, partly out of a sincere conviction that no one else here should be suffering. That everyone besides him should escape.
Scott Summers never liked leaving anyone behind since the plane crash.
His crimson, glowing eyes adjusted to the darkness as he moved around, the lanky but muscular teen wearing a white test jumpsuit as he crept through the uncomfortably high-tech looking passages now partly shrouded in darkness, running on emergency lights. That EMP device he had assembled from scrap, smuggled past the Orphanage's security piece by piece would only buy so much time.
He found the holding pens and immediately began blasting them open with one eye, every blast causing a shudder of pain through his body due to not giving himself time to rest as each sealed door lock was blasted apart, opening the cell, Scott trying frantically to wake some of the mutants, only to find many of them in a Stupor. Essex's Mind Editor had been used liberally on them. He was forced to leave everyone who didn't respond in the cell, panic growing as he heard moaning from one cell, stopped and realized who he was looking at, suspended on a strange gurney that was X-shaped, red emergency lights hitting his gigantic, bulbous body.
"Fred?" Scott called out, rushing to the gurney. Fred had gone missing weeks prior. One too many attempts to run away. Scott was both relieved Fred was alive and saddened that he was caught in the same boat with Scott. Fred was slightly older than Scott, and months from the legal point he would have to leave the Orphanage.
"No...no more lights...can't...take the lights..." Fred called out, his girth making him almost completely round in the middle, with thick, fat, heavy arms and legs. He had always been a giant of a young man, no real visible muscle, yet every Doctor who had ever examined him said he was totally healthy, despite his massive girth.
"Hang on!" Scott reassured him in a panicked whisper, undoing the restraints on his limbs and neck.
"Can you walk?" Scott asked as Fred almost slid off the gurney, a massive thud that shook the whole floor as his legs touched the earth knocking Scott off his feet.
"Where...IS SHE?!" Fred snarled suddenly, getting a little energy back as Scott pulled himself up from the ground, woozy.
"I don't know, and we don't have time to look..." Scott replied. "The two of us don't leave if we don't team up..."
"Yeah, yeah, I heard ya', Slim. And thanks for not fleeing the ship like a sane rat mighta..." Fred replied.
"Can you walk?" Scott repeated, wincing as the Mutant Adrenaline sent another spasm of pain through his body and he almost doubled over.
Fred tested his legs with a few waddling baby steps in the cramped cell, yet even these few mild, light steps threatened to throw Summers to the ground again.
"I can still move..." Fred confirmed.
"Can you fight?" Scott asked.
Fred Dukes cracked his knuckles...
"Oh, Scottie boy, no way on this earth I'm leaving without gettin' me some payback." Fred assured, the rage playing out on his face as to how he had been treated.
"Matter of fact, I think I might have a way of getting us an edge..." Fred trailed, rubbing his chin thoughtfully... "There's a cell I saw here, on a lower level..."
"Who's in it?" Scott asked as he poked his head out to look for security. None yet. He wanted to be sick. He felt like he was going to shake.
"No idea..." Fred answered with a shrug. "But I know the designation of the cell. 'MUTANT X'."
Scott turned to face him, his golden eyes brighter than the lights above as sweat poured down his face from his body under such severe stress.
"Mutant X?" Scott asked in a rasp.
"Trust, me, whoever is in there, Essex is terrified of going in alone." Fred claimed. "She's got robots down there all the time. But they ain't like the others. These ones are made of plastic...hey, you alright, Slim?"
"I had to take one of Essex's weird medications to snap out of the effects of her machines..." he explained. "Didn't really have time to read the warning labels. Now, why plastic?"
The girthy, potbellied giant shrugged. "Beats me. I only been here a few weeks. But Essex definitely doesn't want Mutant X to escape, whoever they are."
"If they're that dangerous, should we be taking the risk of releasing them?" Scott pondered, clutching his stomach as the chemical metabolized.
"You really want Essex to keep Mutant X? Who knows what that'll let her get away with." Fred dismissed, waddling out of his cell as he saw the oval shaped, lithe robots rounding a darkened corner to intercept them. The Alarm started sounding as they began opening fire with blasts of electricity from their hands. Fred roared, and punched the ground so hard, Scott was thrown to the ground once more, exacerbating the pain from the Mutant Adrenaline he had taken. The quake knocked the robots off balance, and Fred went charging in, fists smashing into silver steel chassis until the robots were scrap. while Scott struggled to breath occasionally, vision going woozy...
Fred immediately went to another cell and ripped it open with his bare hands, finding a scrawny teen with goggle covered eyes and messy brown hair with pale, slick skin as Scott followed close by, battling shakes.
"Mort! Mort, buddy, wake up!" Fred shouted, shaking the woozy Mortimer, who stirred.
"Fred?" Mortimer called out weakly, strapped to the same type of X-shaped gurney Fred had been strapped too. Mort was the youngest of them and had been their friend for as long as they had lived there.
"It's me. Scott's here too." Fred answered, tearing his restraints off, and helping the weak Mortimer slide off.
"It was Essex. She's some kinda monster! She experiments on people like us!" Mortimer exclaimed as he righted himself with Scott's help.
"I get the feeling she's been doing it a while..." Scott theorized, pale and sick and struggling not to throw up. "She uses a machine of some kind..."
"What's wrong with Scott?" Mort asked.
"Scott got desperate to bust free of Essex," Fred explained.
Scott paused as he heard the clanking of robot feet.
"Excuse me..." he trailed, poking his head outside and lancing off robot heads with a burst of gold beams from his eyes, then doubling over from pain as his vision went blurry
"That was more than last time..." Scott said, chest still hurting.
"Where's the exit?!" Mortimer asked in a panic as he went over and helped Scott up.
"I know it. But we need to make a quick stop before we flee...Fred here seems to think another prisoner, called Mutant X, can give us the edge we need." Scott explained through short, staggered breaths.
"Well then let's go!" Mortimer shouted, helping Scott out of the cell, he was given pause as he surveyed the damage.
"Wow, Summers..." he muttered in a mixture of genuine amazement and horror. "You got born with the ability to stare a city into submission."
"You mean into nothing..." Summers grumbled. "Stay behind me. I'll take point."
"Heck yeah, I'm stayin' behind you!" Mortimer exclaimed, looking over the damage again.
"Point the way, Freddie." Scott told Fred, who pointed right down the corridor.
"Elevator takes us down to where Mutant X is." Fred explained as the sounds of more Robots echoed through the halls, getting closer.
Summers began slowly walking forward, vision blurry and helped by Mortimer, the alarm growing loud enough as he unleashed another blast at the center of a group of robots trying to get target lock.
"I thought I was a freak..." Mortimer muttered as his long, green, muscular tongue lashed out into a crowd of robots that came from a separate passageway, grabbing a robot and whipping it around like a club against the others around him in the process, while Fred just applied pure, percussive force with his knuckles to robot faces, smashing through them like they were Styrofoam, sparks flying everywhere. Scott helped where he could, but he had to steel himself for the pain, every time.
"But after seeing your gift in action, Scott? I wouldn't trade my disgusting powers with you for all the gold in Fort Knox," Mortimer snorted as he spat a large glob of fast drying mucus onto an energy cannon that a robot had aimed at him, causing it to overheat and explode, taking the robot with it.
"Better a freak than an energy cannon." Mortimer added as an afterthought.
"If you only knew what I would trade for five minutes with no potential for destroying whatever I look at." Scott grumbled under his breath, the pain in his chest slightly lessening as he unleashed another few blasts on robots.
"How big IS this place?" Fred asked. "It's like a maze..."
"How could Essex hide all this from the authorities?" Mortimer questioned when he wasn't using his tongue to rip off robot arms and heads.
"Deep pockets..." Scott theorized as his gold beams lanced through another crowd of robots. The pain had definitely lessened now.
"Deep enough to afford actual, working combat robots?" Mortimer questioned as he let go of Summers "Even the army doesn't have these. Even Stark Industries or ReedTECH doesn't have these. Did Essex build them?"
"Maybe. She's smart enough to know how to experiment on Mutants. Who knows if Essex is even her real name?" Fred mused as his fat, meaty fist collapsed a robot skull.
Scott blasted open cell doors as they moved, while Fred and Mortimer would free Mutants of their restraints. Soon it was a full-on Riot as revived mutants began rampaging through out the strange, vast dungeon full of robots and other technologies Scott wouldn't see in use by the general public for another two and a half decades. Soon, with each blast, the pain in his chest had virtually disappeared, and he was launching blasts continuously now.
As the riot got worse Scott would occasionally catch people with abilities he noticed as somewhat useful and ask them to form up small groups of two or three to flank the robots and provide interference for the rest of the rioting mutants, others he would tell to protect the weaker Mutants. He wasn't sure if this last request was obeyed, but the Rioters did start to push deeper and deeper through the robot security, Summer's eyes destroying whole parts of the wall or ceiling, terrifying literally every other Mutant present. Scott began to notice with no small discomfort that as the riot went on and the other mutants saw what he could do, that he began to notice real fear in their eyes, many ducking out of his line of sight wherever he walked.
Even his own kind feared him.
The riot eventually got them all the way to the elevator. It would seem that they controlled this section.
"Hang on, I got this..." Mortimer said, tongue ripping open the biometrics panel and then going to work on its circuitry.
"Don't matter how fancy the tech is, there's rules it still has to follow..." he said proudly as what was left of the biometric security system announced they had clearance to enter. The elevator slid open.
Scott turned to the cheering mutants that still stayed as far from direct line of sight where he turned as possible.
"Listen! The escape route is a walkway leading up about a hundred feet above us! I need you all to wait here until we return. We have one more Mutant to rescue. Then we all make a concentrated push for the exit at the same time. It's our best chance to overwhelm whatever remaining defenses this Doctor Essex has cooked up...whoever she is. Hold the position around this elevator. If me, Fred, and Mort aren't back in fifteen minutes you leave without us!"'
No one dared challenge the orders of the teenager who could stare an army into submission.
Satisfied that he had gotten his point across, Scott, Fred, and Mort headed into the large elevator, though it creaked and groaned as Dukes stepped into it.
Scott and Mortimer gulped as the elevator began to creak and slide down in unsettling ways after Fred punched the number for the floor, its advanced alloys straining to hold all their weight, but especially Fred's.
"Sorry!" he muttered, blushing.
"It's alright Fred. Not your fault." Scott assured. "But one thing's for sure. We're taking the stairs on the way back up."
The elevator finally creaked to the floor they had wanted, and Scott was out first, followed by Mort and then Fred. This part of the complex seemed even more advanced and Alien looking than the previous floor. He saw laser turrets mounted on cameras.
"Yeah, this lady is definitely loaded. Like British Royalty Loaded." Mortimer snorted, spitting some of his quick drying mucus onto the floor.
"Must be a lot of money in experimenting on Mutants..." Fred trailed uneasily as he cautiously stepped forward. No robots yet. But the laser turrets on the ceilings fitted with cameras swiveled to Fred.
Powerful beams lanced through each turret in a sweeping arc that demolished a quarter of the ceiling ahead and above him. Scott's eyes blazed with a vicious power, terrible, thick beams of golden light lancing outward from his irises. He had been experimenting in secret. At first it had just been a struggle to lower the output. But he had lowered it enough to not totally destroy the facility in one blast.
"Let's make sure she doesn't make one more dime off our suffering..." Scott grunted quietly as the alarm started ringing again. During the walk he stopped, coming across what looked like some sort of lab. He noticed something familiar and blasted the door inward, walking in without a care.
"Hey, Summers! Mutant X is that way!" Fred exclaimed.
"Hold on, I've got to get something..." Scott answered, going to what he thought were the sunglasses Essex had made for him, the ones with the strange red lenses Essex had not cared to identify the material of, kept for some reason behind a container sporting some sort of Force Field, to his astonishment. Except they weren't.
These were altogether different. They seemed mostly composed of some sort of silvery gray metal on the exterior. One lens completely covered over with metal, making it uncertain how he was to see, while the other had some sort of special, medium sized monocle attached to the still somewhat exposed Red Lens, the monocle itself also sporting a red lens. The foldable frames of the visor were thick, and he could make out some kind of switch and buttons on one of the frame parts itself.
Scott looked for ways to shut off the force field. Fred gave the answer by smashing his fist into a nearby computer console, which deactivated the field.
Scott looked at Fred with a raised eyebrow. Fred shrugged sheepishly. Scott sighed and took the visor off the stand.
"Are those your glasses?" Mortimer asked.
"Essex modified them somehow..." Scott said, taking a good look at the visor, inspecting it from all angles before putting it on.
At first, there was only darkness, but a digital, crimson colored heads up display appeared, a simple targeting reticle following his eye movements on the monocle system mounted on the visor.
"What did Essex do to them?" Mortimer asked, hopping into the lab.
"She's added some sort of weird electronics to the insides. Thing's got some kind of targeting system..." Scott observed as he inspected it.
They all stared at each other as the implications of the device's purpose hit them all at the same time.
"Stand Back..." Scott said, finding the largest button on the sides of the visor. He turned his gaze to the floor, pressed the button, heard something click very quietly on his end, and then he unleashed his power.
The energy of both his eyes shot out through the monocle portion of his visor as a tight, focused red beam that was nonetheless still quite destructive. though it took the floor a few seconds longer to be obliterated at the impact point than it otherwise would have, leaving large gray clouds of dust in the air, making Fred sneeze and cough.
"Sorry!" Scott exclaimed as Mortimer started coughing.
Scott took off the visor off for a moment. "It's some kind of prototype, I think." he said, going over to papers on a nearby desk full of equipment he couldn't identify and read what he guessed to be the lab results.
"Huh, this report says the visor has been made with some sort of..." he stopped, reading the strange name on the report a few times before saying it out loud.
"Adamantium-Vibranium Alloy Composite. I've never heard of either of those metals, have you?" Scott asked the others, their answer being shrugs of confusion and bewilderment as they wiped the dust off their jumpsuits.
"Nope. Then again, I suck at school." Mortimer admitted. "Scott, we really gotta go get this Mutant X guy."
"Of course..." Scott replied, folding up the papers, and putting them away. "Fred, tell me you know a shortcut..."
"Follow me, I'm starting to remember it..." Fred admitted...
It was a few minutes later that they began to encounter the plastic chassis models of the robot guards that had been overseeing them. Scott had the strange lab visor on once more, unleashing a red tinted burst of his optic blasts through the Monocle system on the visor, finding it was more precise, much more controlled, and thinner than his normal beams. The visor allowed him to better target specific things at closer ranges on the fly and helped him better target smaller things at somewhat longer ranges. The only thing that was annoying to him was constantly hitting the button on the visor itself to use it. There was a LOT of room for improvement. but he began to snipe the robots much more efficiently.
Fred and Mortimer were content to stay behind Scott at this point, as it was clear none of these guards were a match for his eyes. The halls, and the mechanical minions all crumpled before Scott's relentless, unfeeling gaze until they at last reached Mutant X's cell. Fred ripped the door open and Scott went in first, fingers on the release button on his visor as he stared at the Prisoner on the X-shaped Gurney. He had some sort of strange metal collar on his neck and he looked to be in his early thirties, with a fair complexion and neatly trimmed, oddly white hair for a man in his age, and he even looked to be in his physical prime, highly muscular.
Scott approached slowly. "Sir?! Sir, can you hear me? Wake up!" he called out.
The man stirred, groaning. Then he shot awake, fear and panic written on his face as he started freaking out and screaming in German.
"Sir! SIR!" Scott exclaimed, shaking him gently to get his attention. The man snapped out of his freakout in a foreign language and stared at Scott with brown eyes still full of panic, like he didn't know quite where he was. Mortimer was very silent, studying the man carefully for some reason and Fred noticed.
"What's wrong?" Fred whispered.
"Not right now. I'll tell you later..." Mortimer answered back.
"Do you know where you are?" Scott asked the white-haired man.
"I'm...I'm still trapped in this miserable pit..." the man replied. "Get me out of here and I'll be in your debt."
"Deal." Scott said, blasting the restraints off to the white-haired man's surprise and shock.
"It seems I am not the only one born with a curse too terrible to contemplate..." the white-haired man observed.
"Now, Fred, the Collar..." Scott instructed the gelatinous looking Dukes to liberate the strange man.
"Stay still, Silver. Wouldn't wanna hurt ya' by accident..." Fred chuckled, breaking the Collar on his neck.
The White-haired man floated off the gurney and to the floor, arms folded, a stern look to his face.
"The less we know of each other, the safer we'll be in the long run..." The man spoke. "Get behind me."
Scott nodded and the white-haired man walked ahead with hesitance and caution, but also clear levels of rage as he engaged the next group of robots by himself, fists crashing through mechanical bodies, energy beams seemingly bouncing and deflecting off of him as he punched his way through the gang of robots at superhuman speeds, leaving none of the security force undamaged as he swung his arms and legs into two or three at a time, causing them to explode while Scott, Mortimer, and Fred watched in astonishment.
"I take it back, Summers..." Mortimer muttered in horror. "there's much worse powers to have than yours."
"That kind of power can make a dude go screwy..." Fred thought out loud, equally terrified of the white-haired man.
"It's his problem, not ours." Scott dismissed, only focused on securing escape. "C'mon, let's not waste any more time..."
The white-haired man was waiting for them at the elevator, a trail of destroyed robots in his wake.
"I am not often in the habit of offering thanks. But I am grateful for you three happening along when you did. Whoever our captor is, I regret to say they had me dead to rights. I simply had no way out on my own." the mysterious older man admitted, looking at his strange, high-tech surroundings a few seconds.
"Our mutual tormenter is a woman called Natalie Essex..." Scott explained. "She is the head of this operation, whatever it's supposed to be."
"I haven't had the pleasure..." the Man snorted. "Only robots have attended to me the entire time I have been here. At least, during the rare moments I've been conscious."
"Trust me, you don't want NONE of Essex. I'm not even sure what she's supposed to be anymore..." Fred warned.
"She's human enough in the sense that the process is more pleasing to her than whatever mystery she initially set out to solve or claimed to be trying to solve." The mysterious man dismissed with a subtle edge of contempt that threatened to become seething. "I know the type."
The Elevator arrived and Scott, Mort, and the white-haired man walked in. Fred grew hesitant.
"Uh, Guys?" Fred muttered, pointing to his massive, blob like girth.
"Fear not, my rescuer..." the Man said. "Step aboard. I will handle the rest."
The Man punched through the elevator ceiling and flew upward. Fred stepped on, noticing the elevator didn't creak when he stepped aboard, in fact, it went up smoothly without a sound until it reached the floor they had been on previously. Scott and his friends stepped out to the crowd of other Mutant prisoners waiting anxiously, followed by the Man floating down from the space on top of the elevator.
"What'd you do?" Mort asked the Man as he stepped out.
"Everybody here has their tricks, sir." he answered politely, looking at the other mutants.
"Wait here. All of you." he said, flying through the ceiling at high speed. The crowd of mutants heard massive explosions and the whole facility shook as whatever devastation the white-haired man was inflicting played out. The facility continued to shake violently, and parts of the ceiling came down as every mutant, Scott included, staired up in abject terror as the Man floated back down through the hole he had made. EVERYONE backed away from him, and it was telling he gave no reassurances that they need not fear him: Judging by his reaction, he was fairly used to it.
"It's safe now." he said in a quiet voice. "You can leave whenever you want."
The mutants ran for their lives, now more terrified of him than they had been of Essex or even Scott himself. Only Scott, Fred, and Mort were left.
"Aren't you going with the others?" The Man asked.
"Sir you should come with us..." Scott suggested. "Between the four of us, I'm sure we could better resist any attempt by Essex to recapture us."
The Man shook his head.
"I merely repaid a debt, young man. Besides, I'm ultimately more dangerous to you than Essex is. You would profit little from my company in the long term."
"I dunno, Silver, you don't seem all THAT unpleasant a fella." Fred remarked.
"It's nice of you to say that. But no. Hiding is the best option. Using my ability for anything but the most desperate of conditions such as this one would place too many innocent lives in danger, whether they are like us, or not. Why, even WHEN the most desperate conditions are actually present, it STILL might be too dangerous most times." the Man quietly insisted. "Be wary of your abilities, young Mutants, lest you destroy yourself physically and morally in the exercising of them."
With that the man floated back up the hole and disappeared. Scott led them up the walkway the Robots had initially brought him in through.
He had hoped it might lead back into the Orphanage, but he saw a devastation. An army of robots lay torn apart and smashed, weapons crumpled, walls and turrets carrying even larger laser cannons pulverized. The whole section smashed. The mutants Scott and his friends had rescued had booked it quick.
Mortimer hopped ahead in a distinctly frog like fashion.
"That guy was totally right. More headaches than he's worth..." Mort thought, noticing a fly and catching it with his tongue and munching on it.
"Now we got another problem. Where do we run?" Mort asked. "We got no means of support, definitely no money, and no place to stay."
"I can solve that issue..." claimed the sultry voice of a woman leaning behind some wreckage in baggy black jeans, an orange T-shirt, and a maroon, sleeveless denim vest. She stepped out of the shadows. She had a lovely tan, and had supermodel looks, save for a visibly damaged left eye, with brown hair in an almost pixie cut.
"Mighty impressive, setting up an EMP device all by yourself with Essex watching your movements. How long did it take you to smuggle and assemble the parts in the orphanage above us?" she asked Scott, folding her arms.
"Three weeks" Scott answered stoically.
"Sounds about right," the woman replied, her green eye raking the trio over. "I've been watching this facility for months. Was planning to hit it, but you beat me to the punch."
"To help us, or hurt us?" Scott asked.
"I'm a Mutant." the woman answered. "The name's Callisto."
"Callisto. What kinda name is that?" Scott asked. "You ain't one of those pretentious musician types, are you? The ones with only one name?"
"It's my Mutant name. We all get one where I'm from." Callisto explained patiently. "Cops will be here in fifteen minutes, I can arrange for an escape, if you're all willing to trust me for a short while."
"You look familiar..." Mort trailed.
"Used to be a Fashion Model," Callisto replied. "Never made that big a splash unfortunately before this happened." she added, using her thumb to point to her eye that was covered by the patch.
"What do you propose?" Scott asked.
"I'm head of a group of our kind living in the abandoned sewers and tunnels beneath the cities of the world." she answered, stepping a bit forward, hands held slightly up.
"We call ourselves The Morlocks...we help Mutants survive, stay in hiding, and provide food and shelter to mutants through our underground network."
"And who is the Eloi, in this scenario?" Scott asked.
"You've already met one of them." Callisto spat in disgust. "Natalie Essex. By our standards, she is a War Criminal, profiting off our tissues, experimenting on us without consent. Horribly altering us surgically us beyond recognition or any hope of recovery in the same type of labs you just escaped. I've been trying to bring Essex to justice for years."
She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.
"What irony..." she glowered. "What bitter irony a Mutant Riot should aid in her escaping us once more."
"You wouldn't have been happening to catch me practicing, would you?" Scott asked, suspicious at the way she seemed to want to stay out of direct line of sight.
"I have." she answered. "And barring what I just saw the man with the white hair do, your Mutation is the most terrible, destructive thing I have ever seen," Callisto admitted without hesitation in a very calm voice.
"Then you know that if you double cross us, you'll be a sight for sore eyes." he warned calmly, icily, eyes glowing suddenly with golden hued power.
"I'm not your enemy. I'm your only way out of the facility without the police intercepting you at the state lines like they'll intercept the rest of those mutants."
"Then its them you should be worried for," Mort muttered in open disgust.
"Thirty mutants may well be recaptured. But I would be willing to sacrifice a hundred Mutants to make sure they never get your friend on their radar," Callisto said to Mort patiently.
"No single person is worth a hundred people, human OR Mutant." Scott insisted firmly, revulsion playing out across his young and handsome features.
"They are if there is a new form of arms race on the Horizon. One that will define winners and losers for the next three centuries, possibly." Callisto replied. "Do you think power such as yours will be immune to scrutiny? Everyone will fear you should they witness what I've seen on these security feeds. Human? Mutant? It won't matter. They'll still fear you. And they'll be right." Callisto asserted.
"So why help him?" Fred asked, realizing Scott was who she was really here for.
"Because regular humans already have their champions. We will need ours," Callisto answered dispassionately.
"We can't let those Mutants get recaptured. We should go after them, intercept them before the police make their first encounter." Scott suggested.
Callisto shook her head. "I'm sorry. But that's not going to be possible. See, I wasn't planning on hitting this facility until another month or so. Your jailbreak upended all of that. I would have come in with a team, we could have safely disabled the security, freed everyone and made an organized retreat into the sewers and possibly caught Essex. But due to your Improv Routine...I only have enough time to save you three..."
Scott looked crestfallen.
"Are...are you saying I doomed all those people anyway?" he asked, stricken inside as he started to understand the depths of his error.
Callisto sighed. "No one was expecting some kid to come up with some Four-Star General-quality plan under such conditions. It sucks, I know, but by that same margin, you're also one of the only Mutants to successfully initiate these in one of Essex's facilities, which, I assure you, is extremely difficult to do."
Callisto folded her hands behind her back.
"Time to choose. You can either trust your fellow Mutant, or the mercy of any human policeman who intercepts you."
Scott, still stricken as he realized he may have doomed all the people he tried to save, only gave a nod of his head and started walking with her as she gestured for the others to follow...
Scott was still silent as he walked in the dank, dark paths of the sewers, led only by Callisto. Fred and Mort were also quiet. He was wearing the visor to hide the distress in his eyes, thinking about those Mutants he had unwittingly freed without having a backup plan, giving his visage a cold countenance, the single round ruby lens of his strange visor shining a red glittery shine from any light it picked up.
"How many of you are down here?" Fred asked.
"On average about two to three hundred coming in and out through hidden routes all over on a daily basis..." she answered quietly. "We've made life comfortable here, or at least as comfortable as we can make it for a Morlock."
"So, are we Morlocks now? Is there some kind of Initiation ritual?" Mort asked excitedly.
Callisto shook her head as they stopped in front of a brick wall. "Nothing so elaborate. Morlock is more of a nickname we picked so we don't have to use 'Mutant' all the time. It helps us forget our situation. If you're a Mutant helping us, you're a Morlock. If you're a Human helping us, you're a Morlock. Keeps things simple." she answered as she kicked a brick on the wall with her shoe three times.
"You have humans helping you?" Fred asked as he watched the brick wall split open on some hidden hinges with a hiss. Mort whistled, completely used to the stench of the sewer.
"Of course. Trusted Humans, who we compensate appropriately to function as go-betweens for us and the surface world." Callisto explained as she stepped into the hidden passage beyond which led to a spiral staircase of wrought iron with curious mechanical components Scott couldn't identify. "Many who join the Morlocks have highly visible mutations that immediately mark them out among non-mutants. We had no choice but to compromise on this. Without them, we would have to resort to theft, and if even one crime involving a mutant goes wrong AND public, there goes our advantage."
"So why don't you worry about more than thirty mutants possibly about to get recaptured?" Mort asked as he hopped along after the others.
"If those Mutants have any sense and look even remotely human enough to pass an up-close inspection, at least for a few minutes, they have a shot at possibly keeping concealed. Other Mutants will naturally do all they can to avoid recapture, because most of them will be as deathly afraid of being discovered as most of us down here are." she replied as she led them down the steps, though she felt her heart jump into her throat as Fred took a step on the staircase and it buckled at the slightest pressure from his foot.
They looked at Fred, who blushed in embarrassment.
"Er, I don't suppose any of you nice folk got a ramp, do you?" Fred asked sheepishly, scratching the back of his head.
"Not to worry." Callisto said, gesturing for everybody to step off as she hit what looked like some sort of nearby modified light switch. The spiral staircase folded its steps into itself and retracted into the floor below and a shaft of soft blue light emitted from above.
"Step into it." she said, walking into the shaft of light and slowly lowering to the ground as if on strings.
"Whoaaa!" Mortimer exclaimed as he hopped in a second later and floated down.
Scott looked at Fred. "After you, Dukes."
Fred stepped in, and lowered to the ground slightly faster than Mort or Callisto did. Scott stepped into the light and didn't move a muscle as he was lowered, still running it all over in his head again, wondering how he could have done it different.
Scott stared at the ramshackle facility before him. It appeared to be a long, abandoned subway tunnel and station that had been crudely modified with strange machinery in certain places that almost reminded Scott of what he had seen back in the Labs. Mutants of horrendous looking physical appearances in donated clothing milled about fixing electronics, rushing food and clothing and medicine over to certain other parts of the Abandoned station.
"Looks old. Nineteenth century I'm betting. Totally forgotten on the blueprints, or did 'ya have to grease some palms to make those go away?" Mort asked wryly.
"Oh, palms got greased alright. But it wasn't by me..." she said, looking at a bald man in a white business shirt and a red tie, clinging loosely to his collar with brown wool slacks and leather shoes that looked much too expensive for down here came walking up to them. His face had strong chiseled features and serious looking green eyes.
"It was by him." she clarified a second later. "Hey Charlie."
"I'm relieved to see you returned to us Callisto. And I see you brought unexpected company." Charlie said in an upper crust English accent that reminded Scott, oddly enough, of Essex as he turned to face Scott and his friends.
"I'm Charles Xavier. It's a pleasure to meet you three." Charles said as he held out his hand to Scott. Scott didn't take it.
"The famous geneticist? The one who cured Wendigo Syndrome?" Scott asked.
"The very same. I take it you've read my work?" Charles inquired politely.
"No. But the News didn't stop talking about you for a year straight," Scott grunted.
"Are any of you injured? I was a field surgeon in the war. I can medically tend to you; I've set up fully operational facilities." Charles promised.
"I'm fine." Scott replied stoically.
"No, you ain't! You took that artificial Mutant Adrenaline earlier!" Mort said. "His chest hurt real bad for a while."
"Artificial Mutant Adrenaline! This Doctor Essex truly is an unscrupulous sort to keep such a thing," Charles said in surprise. "You should let me examine you, sir. No telling how it could react to your bloodstream down the road. Any damage to your internal organs must be detected as soon as possible."
Scott was silent a moment. He had already screwed up once. He didn't need to compound it with a second error.
"Alright...We're already pretty messed up. That Adrenal Stuff wasn't the only piece of nightmare in that place. She used something to make us forget. Something called the Mind Editor." Scott admitted.
"Then we should also do a scan of your brain..." Charles replied. Please, follow me..."
As Charles gestured for them to join him, Scott looked at Callisto.
"Is he human? One of your Go-Betweens?" Scott asked.
"One hundred percent fully human," Callisto said. "We were very fortunate a man with his wealth, his position, his selflessness has chosen to be in our corner."
"Hmph, we'll see." Scott grunted as he and the others went to follow Xavier...