X-Men of Tomorrow
By Ben Church
The X-Men are owned by Marvel Comics. Mulder and
Scully are owned by either Ten Thirteen Productions or
Fox. The Tomorrow People are the property of
Nickelodeon Studios.
Chapter 4
Georgetown, Washington DC
April 16
6:00 p.m.
Mulder snatched up the phone as soon as it rang.
"Hello?"
"Hey Mulder!"
"Hi Frohicky. You got anything?"
"Well I looked up this friend of yours, Gyric. Are
you ready for this?"
"What have you got on him?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? I thought you could find anything."
"That's just it Mulder. I can. He's got no record
with the US government, and no birth certificate. For
all intents and purposes, this guy doesn't exist!"
"Thanks Frohicky." Mulder numbly hung up the phone.
First giant robots and now this. He was going to need
help. He pointed his lamp towards his window, and
turned it on the masking tape forming an X in his window
would do the rest. While he waited, he reread the file,
in case he missed anything. When he finished that, he
watched TV.
An hour later, the phone rang. Mulder turned of
the TV and snatched up the phone.
"Hello?"
"Mr. Mulder." the familiar voice said. "I'm afraid
I can't help you. You've stumbled onto something very
big Mr. Mulder. And for once, you know more than I do.
One thing I can tell you however, is that this Mr.
Gyric does not have any place in the government."
Grounds of Xavier Institute
April 15
1:00 p.m.
Hotshot stood with the others in front of the spot
that Changeling and the other X-Men had disappeared. He
had one of the mini-Cerebro units strapped to his wrist.
"You worried?" Jubilee asked. She had the other
Cerebro on her wrist. Hotshot did not think she was
qualified to lead a group, but he didn't think it
prudent to point that out.
"Of course not." he retorted. "The X-Men are
missing, so is Shaw, and we're about to step into an
alternate dimension, or timeline that we know nothing
about. Now why would I be worried?" With that, he
stepped into the portal.
For a moment, he found himself suspended in midair.
Then he fell into the ocean. He kicked up to the
surface and found himself alone, in the middle of the
ocean off the coast of a small island.
"Okay," he said, treading water. "Now I'm
beginning to worry."
Somewhere in the Atlantic
April 17
9:00 a.m.
"Someone's here!" Kevin cried.
"What?"
"Someone's here. A teleporter! Can't you sense
them?"
Adam and Megabyte concentrated for a moment.
"You're right! I do sense them! Let's go!" Adam
headed for the exit followed by the others.
Somewhere in the Atlantic
April 17
9:00 a.m.
Hotshot stumbled from the water, slightly
bewildered.
"Hotshot!" Shaw called. Hotshot looked up the
beach, squinting against the sun. Changeling had
changed back into his human form.
"Shaw? What the hell is going on? Where's
everyone else?" He turned around, looking towards the
ocean, but no one seemed to have come through after him.
"I don't know, but there's something else you
should know. I followed a scent to the portal, it was
the scent of a Sentinel."
Hotshot frowned. "But there was no sign of a
battle, how could a Sentinel capture the X-Men without
so much as a blade of grass being disturbed?"
"It gets worse. I lost the scent after I got
here."
"What the hell? Completely?"
Adam shot out of the hatch. After a while one got
used to it. In fact he and Megabyte had engineered a
way of having a bit of fun with it. They'd taken to
teleporting over the water right at the height of their
flight. It was a great way to cool off on a hot day.
He landed on the sand and rolled out of the way to
avoid having Kevin and Megabyte land on him.
"Well what do you know?" Megabyte exclaimed.
"There's two of them." And a cat, he realized.
"Not necessarily." Adam said. "Maybe one of them
is just along for the ride."
"So where'd you find the cat?" Hotshot asked. Just
noticing the feline sitting in the sand next to Daron.
*He didn't. I found him.* A girl's voice sounded
in his head.
"Oh boy." He was about to ask what a cat was doing
with telepathic powers, but suddenly three boys shot out
of the ground and sailed over his head. It was then he
noticed a strange structure projecting out of the sand.
"This just keeps getting better and better." he
grunted.
The three boys talked amongst themselves for a
moment and then approached them.
"Let me guess," the tall brown haired boy said.
"You have no idea how either of you got here."
"Yes and no." Hotshot said. "We know how we got
here, just not why we ended up here. And everything
else is just a big mass of confusion."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You'll think I'm nuts."
"Not much sounds crazy to us anymore." the red
haired boy said. "I'm Megabyte, that's Kevin,"
indicating the short boy. "And that's Adam."
"I'm Hotshot, that's Changeling, and that's," he
pointed to the cat. "That's um...that's the cat."
*I'm not really a cat. My brother turned me into
one.*
Adam's eye's widened in surprise. Indeed, truth
was stranger than fiction these days. "Well I see we've
found our teleporter." he said.
*Teleporter? 'Fraid not. Just a telepath.*
"So what is this place?" Hotshot asked. "And what
do you mean, teleporter? Do you have mutants on this
world?"
"This is the wreck of an ancient alien spacecraft."
Adam said. "I don't know what you mean by mutants but
if you mean we have supernatural powers, yes. We're the
next step in human evolution. Whenever someone first
discovers their teleportation powers, and uses them, the
ship brings them here. It's become our own little
hideaway."
"And all you teleporters are telepathic too?"
Hotshot asked.
"Well, only with ourselves." Adam explained.
"But each of us also has our own unique power. We call
ourselves, the Tomorrow People."
"So that's why you thought we were teleporters?"
Changeling asked.
"We heard the cat communicating telepathically,
and assumed you were teleporters." Megabyte offered.
"Well that explains why we ended up here." Hotshot
said, satisfied.
"It does?" Changeling asked.
"Sure. When the cat went through the portal, the
ship sensed her telepathic powers. Since she was coming
from somewhere else, the ship assumed she was
teleporting. You came through at the same time, so you
came with her. Obviously the portal was still rerouted
to this spot when I went through. As for the others, my
guess is that the effect wore off by the time they went
through. Or they didn't come through. Which I'm
willing to bet they did. So they're probably in New
York."
Westchester County, New York
April 17
9:00 a.m.
Jubilee and the others stepped through. Nothing
happened.
"Oh great." Jubilee said. Why does this always
happen to me? The damn portal closed before we got
through." She turned back to the Mansion. It was gone.
"Or not." she amended.
To be continued...