2043
The Super-Adaptoid lies on an examination table. It’s missing an arm and separated at it’s waist, shoulders, and neck. A web of wiring connects it to a nearby computer bank, where a lab-coated technician works furiously at data charts, computer simulations, and electronic blueprints.
One of the automatic doors to the room sweeps open and Kelly Gyrich, a tall, business-suited redhead in her thirties, walks in. Under her arm is tucked a thick dossier.
“How are we doing?”
The technician glances up at her, briefly, unwilling to interrupt what she’s doing even for those few seconds. “I think we’ve isolated the hardware responsible,” he says. “We’ll start the testing tonight. After that, it should just be a matter of days before the first assembly units are refitted to build them.”
“Good.” Kelly smiles. Her father’s goals are her own now. “The Shifter Sentinels are almost ready for trial, then…”
She turns, and leaves.
***
From the journal of Jack Marlowe
New York ain’t what it used to be. The rebuilding teams haven’t got enough finance to do any real salvage work. I reckon it’ll take a fair while before they do.
See, NYC was always the place the most superhumans hung out. That made it home to the biggest concentration of mutants on the planet.
That meant when the Sentinel War began, New York city was the place they hit first.
The Avengers struck back, of course; the FF and the New Warriors too. They knew how stupid it all was, knew how evil it really looked, too. And you’d expect it of the X-Men…
But then Kang showed up, and Doctor Doom, and the usual suspects, and the other heroes got… distracted… and the balance of power stopped being so… well… balanced. The X-teams began to fall back, began to die in earnest.
It must have been round this point, I figure, when the statistics finally brought it home to the bureaucrats; new mutants keep being born. Their enemy got reinforcements all the time, and while most of them went down easy, once in a while you’d get a mutant who could take the Sentinels down as they came for him. So there’s casualties on either side, but the Sentinels cost a lot to build. They keep upgrading the bastards, but we’re just about managing. Or at least, me and the rest of my team are; Clan X, as Erica insists on calling us. There’s me, of course; you can call me Theurgist. I’m a wizard; cross me and I’ll hex you till you glow. There’s Erica – Springboard; she’s got a thing for stupid names, but she’s handy in a fight because she’s fast enough to take care of problems as they come up, and nimble with it – and Jackson, of course; the light-man. Opens his mouth, he can make light blasts come out of it. Claims to be related to Dazzler, but most of us think that’s bull.
Alan calls himself Plastique, and it’s an accurate enough name; he explodes on demand, then pulls himself back together. Now there’s a power for dropping Sentinels…pow; goodbye, head.
Last, though, there’s Pierre. He goes by the name of Knuckles, and he’s about as subtle as his nickname. Strong, tough, and slow, that’s Pierre.
We do our best for this burg, when we can take the time out from just trying to survive, and if anyone reads this – and let’s face it, that’s why I’m writing it – then yes, we know we’re gonna die. We’re just trying to postpone the inevitable. But when the mutants finally win out, we’d like to be recognised, at least; we did the best we could, I can promise you that now.
***
“There remains the matter of a suitable test subject,” Kelly said. She was sitting on the opposite side of a desk to her superior, a fiftyish man with a taste for Armani.
“Subjects,” he corrected her.
“What?”
“Subjects,” he said. “Virtually no mutant capable of resisting even the Sentinels we have currently out there works on their own. They’re all huddled into groups, so they can always have someone watching their back. It’s sensible enough, but it means we’ve got to be able to take out teams of them.”
“So?”
“So, get one of the assembly units ready. We’ll try sending groups out after their groups.” He picked up the Shifter dossier that lay on his desk and handed it back to Kelly. “I’ll find a suitable trial group myself. Report back here in five hours.”
“Sir.” Kelly rose and left.
Her supervisor leaned back in his chair and turned to face his computer monitor. Tapping in a command, he began to study surveillance tapes…
***
One of the giant Sentinels flew overhead. Jackson opened up his mouth and screamed concussive white light.
The impact scorched into the robot, ripping along it and knocking it off it’s course. Yet another of New York’s tallest buildings lost it’s upper floors as the Sentinel smashed into it. But no one inhabited the towers anymore; they just weren’t safe.
As the Sentinel impacted, a panel in it’s chest cavity automatically disengaged. Human-size Sentinel Rangers dropped from it, regulating their descent with boot jets.
Theurgist concentrated, flinging one arm toward the sight in an effort to help his magicks, and a number of the boot jets failed. Sentinels began to plummet, crashing to the ground like stones and exploding on impact.
Others, however, managed to reach the ground. Knuckles and Springboard surged forth from the Clan’s hiding place, ready to deal with them. Plastique followed more cautiously.
The two fighters picked their target. Knuckles continued charging toward it, a dead-on collision run, while Springboard began to move out to the side, watching it carefully and waiting for an opening…
Plastique just headed for the largest concentration of Sentinels.
Knuckles chose his time, ducked a blast and dived into the robot’s chest, pinning it and working on prizing a panel open. He’d just got one side bent free of it’s moorings when the Sentinel caught him a blow to his side and brushed him off, rising unsteadily to finish the job…
And then Erica moved in from behind, forcing a jagged chunk of rock through the gap in the Sentinel’s armour and blowing it’s system. Knuckles nodded approvingly and the pair moved on to their next target.
Plastique, on the other hand, was just laughing, dancing around as the Sentinels tried to blast him, stepping in just close enough to each one in turn to take a step closer, then skipping away. Every so often a shot would graze his clothes, burning a strip bare across his shoulder or down his leg, but he tried not to let it get to him. He was a joker, a comedian; he saw himself a mediaeval jester, telling the world the truth about itself, and the thing about the jester was that you couldn’t touch him for it.
And if he wanted that worldview to stay working, he had to avoid getting touched.
Step by step, he drew the Sentinels into him. Jackson’s light blasts flashed around him, and occasionally a robot foot would meld to the road with a faint glimmer of magic. They’d try to take another step and stumble forward, tortured metal tearing, fracturing…
But still they came onward, those that survived the onslaught of his teammates; drawing ever closer in. And then Plastique closed his eyes and exploded.
Knuckles made it to the floor just before the blast passed over him. Springboard, by contrast, was just bouncing backward, keeping a step ahead of the shockwave.
Then it stopped, and began to retract, boiling back to it’s point of origin, reforming into a semblance of humanity wrought of cinder and ash… and then back to actual humanity. Plastique stood again, now in the centre of a circle of destroyed Sentinels, and he threw back his head and laughed.
***
Kelly watched the CCTV recording impassively. “So these are our targets?”
“That’s right,” her superior said.
“I’ve never heard of them.”
“No? No, I’d forgotten… you’re not as thorough as your father. Read all your reports, Kelly,” he smiled. “Read all your reports. Know what you’re dealing with.”
He stood, adjusted his tie, and left. Kelly remained, sitting in the office of Cameron Hodge, back from the dead once more – and now, broken by age, reduced to allowing Sentinels to do what once he would have attempted himself.
So… A man who exploded, someone who was simply faster than average, someone stronger than average, a man who shot light from his mouth, and… what? She didn’t really understand what the fifth had done, yet he had seemed to be in charge. What was his power? Would it prove to be any use?
She got up and left for her own office. She was going to try and find those reports, see what she’d been missing…
***
“They’re easing up,” Erica said. “The Sentinels. The human hunters aren’t doing much these days either.”
“Not round here, anyway,” Carl Jackson contributed, slightly more astutely.
“Yeah,” and a crack of knuckles – from, indeed, Knuckles, or Pierre Saliere as he was more legally known. “We goin’ after them or are we sticking around and making sure they don’t come back?”
“The second,” their leader said. “Definitely the second.” He made another note in his journal, and looked up. “Oh, come on,” he said. “Let’s face facts. Jackson can deal with Sentinels on his own. But if he tries, one of them will shoot him in the back. That’s why he’s with us. Alan, you blow them up. You blow them up well. You also blow up when you get jumpy, and when we’ve just persuaded a hunter that, in fact, his mutant detector isn’t working properly and we are normal human beings, that tends to attract attention and trouble. Further, you’ve got Jackson’s problem; you need someone to watch your back. You don’t really qualify as someone who can watch people’s backs, because if they’re not ready they’ll get caught in your blast too. You, Knuckles, and you, Erica, work well as a team but either one of you will get creamed by a man-size Sentinel on your own, because you’re just not as strong. And up against the big guys… well, you’ve got as much chance as I do, which is none bar sheer blind luck. Even as a team, we get by on luck as much as anything else. Now, this is our home city. We can’t protect all of it; we’ve already accepted that, remember? That big argument? What we’ve managed to do is make our little part of the city almost – but not quite – Sentinel-free. Now I say we keep doing that, rather than try and stretch it and end up with more to handle than we can manage. That’s a surer way of getting ourselves killed than the one we’ve already got.”
Jack Marlowe fell silent, and watched as his comrades thought his words over. He knew they’d come round, in the end; they always did.
That was why he was still in charge, after all…
***
“All normal Sentinel operations have been suspended in their area,” Hodge said. “The Shifters are going to be deployed on the prime entry route, and will just enter this circle,” indicating an area on the map, “and search until they find the five. Then testing will begin in earnest.”
Kelly nodded. “So… if the Shifters don’t work…”
“If the Shifters don’t work here, they’re back on the drawing board until you can give me a much improved version,” Hodge said. “The whole point is that we’ll have something more effective than what we’ve got. So if they can’t deal with this lot, we may as well continue with established Sentinel designs until you’ve got something better, rather than messing about with assembly lines and more expensive product.”
***
Clan X was back out on patrol, waiting and watching for the onslaught of the robots. But they didn’t seem to be biting tonight…
“Which normally means the human side of the mutant hunt comes through,” Theurgist noted. “But they aren’t, either – hello…” His voice trailed off as a squad of purple and green coloured man-size robots appeared and began to approach. “I think, gentlemen, that the evening’s work has arrived…”
***
NEXT ISSUE:
The Shifters go into action. How well will Clan X fare in combat against the latest mutant-hunter?