The Trial of Marrow, Part One
Written by Fred Garber.
About a month ago:
D'Gard surveyed the crowd gathered before him, and the three members
of his tribe bound in front of him. Hemingway, huge and gray, mutated into
truly monstrous form by the Dark Beast, who took most of Hemingway's
formidable intellect as payment. Vessel, green and gold, with the sacks on
his back all deflated, as no one's soul had been harvested for some time.
Vessel glared at D'Gard through the tangle of beaded, braided black hair that
covered his eyes, and his hate was clear and strong. D'Gard turned to Reverb,
with his gold, thin skin showing underneath the cracked armor, wearing the
two knives of Marrow's that he plucked from his chest.
D'Gard gathered his red and gold robes, and clutched his staff for support as he listened to the emotions of the crowd.
~ Flatscan-lover! ~
~ Traitor ~
~ Betrayer! ~
Obviously, the crowd was not pleased.
"Silence!" he roared. "I am D'Gard. I lead this community. Who challenges that right?"
"I do!" cried a young mutant from the side. With white hair and blue skin, she wore a sneer under her long nose. Loss. D'Gard frowned. They're not making this easy.
"Then state your reasons, and choose your battleground."
"I needed no reason to challenge on The Hill!"
"We are no longer on The Hill. People die in this world. I will not see any of you wasted for a foolish challenge. Now state your complaint."
"Fine. You talk of freedom for our people, for a right to exist in our own way. Yet you change the way, and say humanity is no longer the enemy." Loss spat. "You say that we are to determine our own destiny. Yet these three are being returned in chains to the American government, for what? 'War Crimes,' the diplomats say. Yet we are no longer at war with the human world."
"In order for the Rwandan government to allow us to live in peace, they want to offer something to the United Nations, and the United States. These three are responsible for the slaughter of thirty-three people." D'Gard sighed. He had explained this last night in the village meeting.
"Flatscans."
"People, Loss." D'Gard put a hand to the metal plate in his head that helped him amplify his empathy. It always ached when so many people were filled with anger and bloodlust. "And they attempted the murder of two hundred and fifteen more. If Sack and Marrow were still among us, they would return with these three. Be careful that you do not take their place."
"You are no longer fit to rule!" And with that, Loss shimmered and vanished, employing her mutant power of invisibility. D'Gard crouched and warily moved in a slow curve to his left. "You may be invisible to all five mundane senses, Loss," D'Gard called, loud enough for the crowd to hear. "But my empathy can still sense your presence." D'Gard whipped his long staff around and felt it impact upon Loss. With a quick twist of his wrists, he slammed the butt into where he assumed her chest would be, and was pleased to see Loss shimmer into view. D'Gard had aimed too high, and Loss was clutching her throat. With a quick movement, D'Gard knocked Loss' hands away and placed the staff at her neck. "Yield!" he cried.
"I... I yield," Loss croaked. D'Gard stood, and motioned for the healers of the village to take Loss away.
"I rule the Gene Nation!"
"Long live D'Gard!" the crowd cried, energized by the fight. D'Gard smiled, and turned back to wait for the S. H. I. E. L. D. unit to come take these troublemakers off his hands.
--------------------
The morning after X-Men 79:
"So, Dolinsky, where you working tomorrow?" The tall, fat cop with
the shaved head called Detective Dolinsky over, hoping to catch up on gossip
before Dolinsky left.
"Howdy, Ballson. Meyer. I got bathroom duty. Asked for it, actually." Dolinsky was a Homicide detective, and was always talkative. He sat on the edge of a desk to talk with the two beat cops.
"Checking for bombs?" Meyer was barely past the height requirement, with perpetual ketchup stains on his black tie and greasy fingers.
"Yeah. I figure it's safer than working crowd control. I can't believe they called me in to flatfoot duty. No offense, guys, but I'm Homicide, not General duty..."
"I hear the Captain is trying to keep all of us with ties to the Friends outside the building, and all of the mutie lovers inside." Ballson rubbed his bald head.
"Well, you know me. There's good muties, and bad muties, and it's my job to catch the ones that kill people in my part of town." Dolinsky shrugged.
"We'll get you to a Friends meeting yet, Dolinsky."
"Whatever. What time they got you showing up tomorrow morning?"
"6 AM."
"Jeez! How early is that! I don't have to do my sweep until 9."
"Yeah, sucks, don't it. They want us to take up positions early. Place is gonna be packed, more than usual."
"Nah, I heard they're closing down the rest of the courthouse until the trials are over."
"Even for the vegetable." Meyer added. "What does he call himself? Reverb? Think the freak's faking it!" Dolinsky leaned forward.
"He was all right a couple of weeks ago."
"He just collapsed a while ago, screaming a bunch of bull about 'damage to the astral plane,' and been all messed up since that."
"Think he's trying for insanity? Last thing we need is another mutie trying to cheat the system."
"Speaking of muties out there, have you talked to Simony, Dolinsky?"
"No. What's up?"
"He's talking to those two guys that said they met another mutant terrorist in the park last night."
"A little green guy?"
"Nah. A pink girl. Bones poking out of her. Really freaky. They won't shut up about how she's living with the X-Men now. The X-Men said she's gonna be a hero. Damn mutant vigilantes."
Behind Dolinsky's eyes, the terrorist body-stealing mutant known as Sack narrowed his thoughts. Marrow was dead, wasn't she? Killed in combat by Storm. He'd have to talk to this Detective Simony, tonight.
"Hey, Dolinsky! Where you going?"
"I got to talk to Simony. I want to know all about that little terrorist that might be still out there."
--------------------
MUTANT TERRORISTS TO FACE TRIAL TODAY
The headlines screamed out at Storm as she entered the kitchen.
"Ah think you'd better read this," Sam Guthrie, a.k.a. Cannonball, said around a mouthful of cereal. "Sounds like Gene Nation finally coughed up the three mutants that killed all of those people in the club."
"Three? I remember five. Hemingway, Vessel, Reverb, Sack, and Sarah as leader."
"When D'Gard accumulated his lists of wounded, healthy, or casualties, Sack was listed amongst the dead after the attacks by Humanity's Last Stand. And Sarah is currently residing in our basement, unbeknownst to the outside, non-mutant populace." Dr. Henry McCoy, the brilliant big blue furry former Avenger known as "the Beast" was balancing four muffins on his left knee as he ate, taking a quick break from his experiments on Legacy.
Storm rapidly skimmed the article, and set it aside. "Hmm. They never found Sack's body. History has shown us that a villain's ability to cheat death is uncanny. Should we maintain a presence at the trial?"
"Could Sack have employed some kind of ruse to avoid capture? And what happens when our malicious yet maturing Marrow discovers out her childhood compatriots are being held for trial?"
"Yeah, Ah was hoping you'd tell her, ma'am. Last night when Ah dropped her off she actually said she'd miss me, without any talk of evisceratin' or nothing."
"Ag, mate. Cheney, Meltdown, an' now Marrow. What you got that makes all the 'wild' frails want you?" Maggott, the South African mutant who was one of the newest to wear the costume of the X-Men, added his own commentary.
"Jus my natural Kentucky Charm, Ah guess. And how'd you know about them?"
"I hear the talk, mate, and read the files. We have got to share lines some time, eh?"
"I will tell her after I make some calls." Storm changed the subject back to serious matters. "The Professor had some friends in the legal profession, and maybe we can use their help. And we are not without political allies." Storm headed off to the phone installed in the Professor's old office.
"They're all full of words, pretty mutants laughing," Marrow watched from the doorway to the basement as Maggot wandered off to find something for "his girl" to eat, Beast headed back to the lab, and Sam went upstairs to finish packing. No one was left to see Marrow creep to the table and read the newspaper. Pulling a spike from her head, she spiked the article into the refrigerator door, as a way of telling the X-men she'd seen it. Then she crawled back down into her lair, to think about what to do next. . .
--------------------
"Hey, Dolinsky! What's up? Who's that?"
"Hi guys. You lock up the prisoners?"
"Yeah. They're all under inhibitor cuffs. The big gray one still might cause some trouble, but he's promised to behave."
"Well, I found this lizard woman in one of the stalls," Sack led a handcuffed Tether into the room. "She claims she's a cleaning woman, and I wanted to keep her in with your guys until the trial is over.
"Sure, but those cuffs will hold her? We don't have any more inhibitor cuffs. It was hard enough calibrating the three we had to work, though I don't know why we bothered with the yellow one."
"She's promised not to cause any trouble while we call her boss. What's the deal with the yellow one?"
"He was some kind of psychic, you know? He's a mind reader, and could see you coming down the hall and around the corner, that sort of thing. Anyway, about a week ago he suddenly screamed and fell over. He's been drooling ever since. Psych says he'll be committed."
"As long as he's not back out on the streets, I don't care what the hell happens to him."
"Right on. So, just put her in one of the cells over there, OK?"
Dolinsky led Tether around and into a cell. "Remember, deviate from the plan I told you, and we'll both be in here, along with your husband Boost. I can get to him at any time." He bluffed, whispering.
"I underssstand, Ssack. I will tear out your lungss for threatening me, but not until Boost and I are ssafely away."
"Now, don't worry, lady." Sack stood, and said loudly. "I'm gonna go call your boss, and you'll be back on the job in no time, if your story checks out."
He walked back to the on-duty guards and whispered "Of course, I'll call her boss. Right away. After I get another cup of coffee, finish my sweep, and take a good, long crap." Sack smiled and walked away as the two guards, laughing, failed to notice Tether's electrified tail snaking towards Vessel's hands in the adjacent cell.
Within minutes, it was over. Once free, Vessel was able to dismantle Hemingway's cuffs, and before the officers turned around, they were the first prisoners the Gene Nationals caught. Sticking to Sack's plan, they went straight for the courtroom, seizing the audience, including the mayor, and leading them back down into the holding cells. A few people ran from the courthouse, screaming.
"Attention NYPD," Vessel used the PA system in the courthouse to talk to the officers outside. "This is Vessel, of the Gene Nation."
"Huh?"
"How'd they!"
"Somebody call the Chief!"
"We have taken hostages, including your Chief of Police, Mayor, and his wife. We are willing to negotiate. We want to talk to Detective Dolinsky, and only him. Send him in, and no one gets hurt. Otherwise? Well, we have forty flatscans captured this time..."
After Dolinsky was let into the evacuated building, he headed down into the holding area. As soon as he entered the room, Vessel slammed him up against the wall. The detective's breath whooshed out of him.
"Tell me again, Tether, why we're listing to this upworlder."
"Vessel. Leggo. Pulse shallow. It's me, Sack." Dolinsky gasped. Vessel let him slump down onto a bench. "Glad to see you too."
"Sack?"
"After the attack, I used Tether to get out of the village, and once we landed in New York, I was free. When I heard about you guys coming to stand trial, I grabbed this cop and started my plan."
"Thought you were dead, like Marrow."
"Got news for you babies. Marrow's alive, and with the X-Men."
"No way!" Hemingway chimed in. "She's surrendered to the Enemy?"
"Yup. And we're gonna use the X-Men to bring her right to us."
Walking upstairs, and slipping out a side door, Sack walked around to Trish Trilby, who was resting, waiting for a report from the police. He whispered briefly in her ear, and she jumped up and motioned to her cameraman to start filming. Gradually, the other networks noticed, and soon cameramen were scurrying all to point their cameras at Trish and Dolinsky.
"This is Trish Trilby, live from the steps of the New York County Courthouse, and I'm here with the designated negotiator, Detective Ray Dolinsky. Detective? Why are they talking to you?"
"Ms. Trilby, that's not important. They have specifically asked me to present their demands, and they seem pretty fair to me."
"What are the demands of these terrorists?"
"The big green one tells me that their leader in the attack on the club is currently being harbored by the vigilante X-Men. They will release the hostages when she is delivered to the courthouse to stand trial along with them."
"That's certainly unusual. They don't have plans to escape?"
"They've said that they've had a lot of time to think in Africa, and they want to face the consequences for what they've done. But they depended on one mutant's leadership to tell them right from wrong. They don't think it's fair that she go free while they stand trial."
"Well, that's... " Trilby floundered for only a moment. "X-Men, if you're listening, please help us. We've seen what these terrorists can do when they're angry. Please, help us resolve this, and bring the terrorist in to stand trial." She listened a moment to her earphone "I'm being told that this demand will be rebroadcast every 15 minutes, until we have more news for you. Thank you, Detective."
"If you'll excuse me, I have to see to some details," Sack walked back inside, and down to where Vessel guarded the hostages.
"What happened? Did it work?"
"I sent out the call. They won't risk the hostages, and they'll turn Sarah over to us."
"I still don't understand. Marrow joined the X-Men? What happens when Marrow returns to us?" Hemingway asked.
"She will die, for betraying our cause." Sack chuckled evilly, and moved Dolinsky back to work as Vessel went back to watching the door.
--------------------
"Marrow? You down here, girl? We know you saw the article, and then heard the news."
"If I stick another knife in you, will you go away?" came a voice from the darkness.
"I ain't here to pick a fight with you," Wolverine deliberately stood in the doorway, outlined, making himself an easy target. "I just wondered what you were going to do about yer friends."
"Let me guess. I turn myself over to the upworlders, or there's no place for me in the shiny, pretty X-men anymore."
"We ain't askin' you to blindly turn yerself in. What we're askin' you to do is take responsibility for yer actions."
"So I can be punished for my time as a mutant terrorist?"
"You set yourself up as the leader of that little gang. Right or wrong, it's up to you to put things right. No one said redemption was gonna be easy, kid."
"And you're gonna make me do it alone."
"Nobody said anything about alone. Storm and Beast are gonna cover your back."
"Is the big, bad, Wolverine afraid? Or does he just not care about me?"
"I got some...personal business to take care of, overseas. Won't take that long. When we get back to the mansion, we'll play a game of Tag in the woods. I'll show you some black ops tricks I know."
"Don't need your help, old man. Maybe I'll show you something. Put that healing factor to the test." In the dark, Logan could just barely make out her smile. He counted to ten, and reminded himself that this was how Marrow showed affection.
"We'll see about that when I get back," Logan stepped back into the mansion proper, and closed the door behind him. "Stupid kid."
"Remind you of someone, dear friend?" Storm stood, waiting for him. "I seem to remember a hairy mutant some years ago who had a similar attitude."
"'Ro, why do I always end up with kids? How come they always bond to me? I ain't pretty. I ain't that great of a teacher. I ain't never asked for this kind of trouble. Kitty, Jubilee, even Maggot a bit, and now Sarah... "
"Is it really that heavy of a duty? Besides, you love it so."
"Yeah, well, don't tell Scott. Ruin my carefully constructed reputation." Logan sighed, and ran a hand through his bristly hair.
"Hey, mates!" Maggott called from the kitchen. "You want in on the betting? Ten gets you in, and we're pickin' how long they gonna put Marrow away." Logan and Ororo both sighed, and went back upstairs. After they had gone, Marrow left her room and headed for the tunnels to think.
--------------------
THOCK! The knife quivered in the throat of the man-sized target. Marrow stood in the center of the deserted Morlock Alley, a forgotten bomb shelter beneath the streets of New York City. She began to run though her practice routine, skewering the targets Callisto had helped her set up. At her feet was the pile of knives she had grown over the last few months. That was her mutant power: in addition to a healing factor (though not as great as Wolverine's), her bones grew amazingly fast. Often they broke the skin, and had to be broken off with a whole lot of pain. Usually, the fragments could be sharpened as knives. In addition, she had learned from Callisto how to grow plates of bone to serve as armor.
"Don't know where you are now, Callisto." Callisto, the mutant fighter who had founded the original Morlock colony living in the tunnels, was the closest she had to a mother, teaching her how to control her rage, and it was at her request that she had sought out the X-Men. Now she was gone, out there in the city somewhere, and probably still not fully recovered from her battles with Prime Sentinels.
THOCK!
"But, well, I'm with the X-Men now, like you wanted. They gave me a new belt buckle."
The bone growths gave her a bizarre, savage appearance. Combined with her purple hair and bright pink skin, she'd never be accepted as normal in the outside world. And yet she had to play by the outside world's rules, now that she'd returned to her home dimension.
THOCK!
"Now I gotta decide if I want to hide, or fight. It used to be an easy choice, but I didn't have anything to lose, then." After Mikhail Rasputin had taken the Morlocks to an alternate dimension, his insanity was evident. He had established the rules of a new, more violent Morlock society, at the urgings of the Dark One. From the age of six, she had grown up with constant war in a world where no one ever died, and time moved far more quickly. Now, about a year since the Morlocks were transported, they had returned, when Storm had convinced Mikhail to bring them all back.
Marrow was now a young adult, and learning that everything she learned growing up about the surface world and it's human occupants was probably wrong. Like the Dark One. There he was a hero, and a deified wizard. Here, with the X-Men, he was known as the Dark Beast, and was a refugee from an alternate future, a near perfect duplicate of the X-Men's Beast, and a villain.
THOCK! THOCK!
"What would you want me to do? What'd make you proud? I guess I'm thinking you'd say something like: 'If you run from your past, you'll be running forever.'"
THOCK! The last knife quivered in the shoulder of a target. Except for the first throw, every knife had impacted in a non-lethal portion of her target, yet one that would severely injure any victim.
"Very, very good, Sarah. Nice throwing, and nice soliloquy." Sarah turned, and saw a pale mutant with lavender hair standing in the doorway to the Alley watching her, one that she found very welcome, hopefully.
"Boost!" She dropped into a crouch. "You and Tether gonna gang up on me?"
"Relax, Marrow. I'm not here to fight. Not like last time."
"You two and the X-Men, are the only ones who know I'm still alive." And of course, Callisto. But Callisto had specifically asked Sarah not to mention her existence in these tunnels to any Morlocks Sarah found. "So you must be working with the upworlders to let them know I was alive."
"It wasn't me. It might've been Tether. But she's not the ringleader now. It's Sack."
"Storm said he'd died." Sarah stood up, and began to collect her knives from the targets.
"He didn't. He used Tether to come to the States. He was inside her during the battle with Humanity's Last Stand. I should have known from how bloodthirsty she was acting, but, well, I didn't. By the time the Brotherhood set us up down here, he had already slid out of her and escaped."
"Your problem. You feel guilty for helping him?"
"Nope. I would've brought every last one of us back to these tunnels rather than stay in that blasted, wasted oasis."
"Then why come here? What's your angle with me?"
"It's Tether. She's with him now, in the courtroom. He's threatened to turn us both in to the flatscans unless she helped him to free your old friends. I want her out of this, and unharmed."
"I'll see what I can do. No promises."
"Oh, you'll do it. Because I'm going to help you." Boost leaped inside Marrow, and she felt instantly supercharged, as her wounds vanished and her full combat array of knives sprouted fresh from her back. "You see, with my help, you can take all four of those losers at once, free the hostages, and get back to the mansion before anyone knows you've gone."
"Nope. I'm gonna tap those lines over there, and make one quick call. I'm a 'grownup' now, and I don't want the X-Men getting into this, and getting hurt." Sarah put her terrorist training to use.
After leaving a message with Maggott, she flexed her arms, did a few knee bends, and her eyes glinted with the chance to cut loose and fight. "Let's get it on, then." Marrow smiled, and headed up to the surface world, and the courtroom.
--------------------
"She did what?" Storm was incensed. "How could she be so foolish as to head off to the city on her own?" She whirled on Maggott, who was hanging up the phone.
"Frail's crazy. We all knew that, no? Lucky she called us at all."
"Maggott, you head down to the Morlock Alley to wait for her return. Keep in touch with the mansion." The phone rang, and Storm scooped it up? "Hello? Who is this? What do you want?" Storm stopped, and handed the phone to Beast. She was in no mood to deal with the impersonal telephone.
"Sorry about the inconvenience. This is Dr. Henry McCoy at the Xavier School of Higher Learning, how can I help direct your call?"
"This is a secure call from Washington D.C. Please hold." There was a series of clicking noises, and then a new voice came on the line as Beast pressed a button on the phone so Storm could hear too.
"I'm sorry, but unless she has some unique information or talents to offer the American government, I'm afraid I cannot endorse any appeal for immunity from the courts." Dr. Valerie Cooper, former FBI Special Agent, and currently head of the Mutant Relations special congressional committee, apologized.
"What? Val, we were hoping for some assistance from your department." Beast argued. Storm took a deep breath, and willed the clouds gathering over the mansion to slow and drift apart. A thunderstorm that leveled the mansion would not help Sarah.
"Unless she can do something for Mutant Affairs, there's nothing Mutant Affairs can do. I don't know much about this Marrow, but you know what my coworkers did with Sabretooth. I have to be really careful with her, considering her training and past. Sorry again." There was a click, and the phone went dead.
"Hmm." Beast was thinking already. "I think I may have something like what Dr. Cooper desires. Something about Marrow's last physical is stimulating some forgotten neurons in my memory,"
"Fine, Hank. Keep working, to get Sarah free of this legally. As soon as you have something, bring it to me at the courthouse. I'm going to try to stop this, personally, before it gets out of hand."
----------------
Continued in Part Two.