CLAN X: VIVE LA DIFFERENCE

ISSUE 3

***

Plastique laughed, and laughed; and as his eyes reopened, a blast of Jackson-style white light smashed into his gut, knocking him backwards and leaving him dazed.

***

"OK, boss…" Jackson grunted as he dropped Theurgist’s unconscious form onto the floor in the safehouse. "Looks like we’re-"

The sentence was cut short by the powerful connection of metal hand to Jackson’s back. He was knocked forward, sprawling, with a tingle running down his back. Turning, he saw five of the purple-and-green Sentinels standing before him.

One of them had a strange white glow developing in it’s mouth slit…

Panicking, Jackson opened his mouth wide. But not to yell.

Jackson’s was the power to project concussive bursts of white light from his mouth. One of the Sentinels beside the glowing-mouthed robot lost it’s head.

Then the mouth ceased simply to glow-

"Christ!"

Jackson grabbed the steel table beside him and yanked, fear lending him strength. It smashed down into place between him and the Sentinels just in time to bear the brunt of the blast; a slit was torn through the table, but the Sentinel’s mouth wasn’t wide enough to strike more than the area of that slit at a time.

He stuck his head up above the table and blasted again, and another Sentinel fell; but then he noticed that the remaining three had glowing mouthpieces, and dived back down. He wasn’t happy with the odds on this firefight; not at all.

The Sentinels exchanged glances during this pause in combat. Data-packed bursts of light leaped from eye to eye. Consensus was reached, a decision was made…

And one of the robots turned abruptly and left the room.

Jackson heard the sound he’d been hoping not to hear; the groan of a man returning to consciousness.

The groan of his boss that told the Sentinels that hey, here was another living mutant to blast…

***

Jack Marlowe opened his eyes and took in the scene around him.

"Jesus!"

By the time his mouth had closed again, he’d vaulted up and over the steel table, narrowly avoiding a light blast. Now hunkered down in comparative safety, he looked across at his team-mate, Carl Jackson.

"Jackson," he said. "Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t that blast look a lot like yours?"

"Yeah," Jackson said. "I reckon they’re power duplicators… shifting powers into their system as they come across them."

"Oh. Oh, great," Marlowe said. "So if they beat us, then the next set of mutants they find has to beat the Clan X Sentinels?"

"Pretty much."

Marlowe shook his head in disgust. "I really don’t like that idea."

"We’ll be dead; who cares if our names get mixed up in it?"

"We’ll be dead. That’s the part I have problems with." He risked another look over the top of the table, but ducked down almost immediately. "Bad news."

"Like what?"

"Another five of ‘em."

"Eight? Oh, Je-"

"Eight?" Marlowe sounded puzzled. "No, seven. I reckon, though, they’re coming straight out of the factory, and the factory only makes five at a time."

"Seven? Then where’s the other one gone?"

A moment’s silence.

"I really wish you hadn’t asked that."

***

He kicked out at the Sentinel, and connected solidly. There was a loud CLANG and the robot was actually driven a few feet back. Knuckles wasted half a second in twisting his mouth into a grim smile; those few feet could make all the difference.

He turned back to the lamppost and ripped the service panel open, then grabbed hold of the thick power cable within. Pulling savagely at it, he ripped it loose. As the Sentinel came at him again, he thrust the exposed end though the dislodged armour plate and closed his eyes. And prayed.

Prayed that the surge protectors on man-size Sentinels were as bad as ever on this new model.

Sparks flew.

Knuckles prayed…

His prayers were answered.

The arm of Knuckle’s shirt burst into flame as the Sentinel ignited. He let go of the cable and started hastily to scramble away, hindered by the injuries this Sentinel had done him… It had been a much tougher opponent than those he had faced before. Blood from a myriad cuts and grazes plastered his shirt to his back, his arm still burned…

The Sentinel exploded, but he was out of range of all the major shrapnel. He paused, now that he could, and ripped the burning shirt arm from him. Then he stood still, just for a few seconds, regained his breath, and did his best to counter the whirling sickness rising within him.

There’d been another wave of these things. That meant there was probably going to be another, and yet another. But they had to be coming from somewhere.

And Knuckles was going to shut them off at the source.

***

Another waking groan became the only sound in the room. Theurgist and Jackson froze for a moment, until Jackson realised who it was.

Erica!

"Springboard, go!" he yelled, hoping it would snap her enough out of her daze. "Get out of here! Save yourself, for God’s sake!"

"And save us," Marlowe muttered. He let himself, for the merest moment, imagine the seven Sentinels arrayed against them armed with Springboard’s speed and agility as well as Jackson’s searing concussive blast. It wasn’t something he wanted to think about any further, so he shut the visions out.

They heard the sound of a window shattering and the cry of an injured woman, then the impact of a body hitting the ground. The scene didn’t really need reconstructing. Marlowe just hoped he and Jackson could get out, too, soon. But it didn’t seem likely. The robots seemed content to wait and starve them out, and Marlowe wondered at that, too. Why hadn’t they just blasted at the table until it was reduced to rubble?

It didn’t seem likely he’d ever know the answer, and he realised he didn’t really care, except as a guide to how he might escape. It was preserving his life for the moment, and that was – being honest about it – what he found most important. As long as there was life, there was the chance of preserving his sorry carcass further.

Marlowe had assembled the group now known as Clan X purely as an exercise in extending his life expectancy. He was sometimes forced to act the hero as a result, but it allowed him to keep this motley crew of other mutants around him – and they each added a little to his survival chances. All in all, it was worth the gamble.

Usually.

***

Erica hit the ground and rolled. Not a bad landing, though she’d been cut heavily by the window’s glass… but that had to be better than getting caught by Sentinels. She stood up slowly, inventorying the damage. It was pretty bad, but she didn’t think she’d sliced anything major open, so with any luck she’d be able to cope. And she had to keep going; she didn’t think those new Sentinels were going to stop coming any time soon. But she was sure Clan X could pull through… if they could cut the supply off at source. Then Jackson could mop the remaining robots up…

She headed back to their first point of contact with the Sentinels, to try and pick up the rest of the team, but stumbled. Shaking her head to clear it, she picked herself up and kept on going…

***

Knuckles rounded a corner into the street along which the Sentinels had approached, and started up it. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the backs of five purple and green robots marching down the street toward the fight he had left. He wanted to charge them, get the drop on them from behind… But he knew he couldn’t afford to be delayed like that. He turned away from them and continued walking toward his goal.

***

"How long you reckon we’ve got before they drop the passive act?" Jackson asked.

"Exactly as long as it takes for us to stick our heads out again," Marlowe said. "I think they’re perfectly willing to stand there and let us starve to death if necessary. Where else are we going to go, after all?"

Jackson shrugged. The Theurgist had a point.

"Reckon we should chance an attack, then?"

"Not yet," Theurgist said. "We’ve survived, and thus far Springboard’s still around; so there’s a reasonable chance that the others are up and kicking, so we hope Erica can find them. We ought to be reasonably safe from Alan’s blast behind this table, but that lot won’t be. Always assuming the one with your blast who left doesn’t just make himself a squad of crack snipers…"

His voice trailed off. It was left to Jackson to break the silence.

"Why do I wish you hadn’t said that?"

"Because, like myself, you’ve got a very visual imagination."

***

Plastique came to, and – for the third or fourth time in the two years Clan X had been active – thanked his stars that Jackson’s blast had less effect on organic targets than it did on Sentinels. None of the team had ever figured out why, but then they didn’t exactly have any scientists on the team to figure this sort of thing out.

He stood, slowly, shakily, wishing he didn’t have to. Like Knuckles and Springboard, he was operating at a level of pain that would have left him to just lie back and relax were it not for the continuing threat.

His chest was blistered from the impact, the remnants of the top that sufficed for his costume charred in a circle around the blast area. Pain spiked through him.

Well, he could deal with the physical, even if the pain would linger on, and dealing with the physical was probably a good idea...

Plastique exploded.

Reforming, he noted smugly that the blistering on his chest had vanished; his body always restoring the status quo.

Now, then…

The situation he was in involved a Sentinel with Jackson’s power, ready to shoot him if he showed his face. And if he didn’t show a considerable amount more than his face, he’d never be able to catch the Sentinel in his blast wave…

Oh, great.

***

Erica picked her way through the cracked streets – and then she stopped, listening.

Absolutely nothing.

The young mutant stood on one of the roads of New York City, 2043, and she could hear nothing. Even the sussurus of distant vehicles seemed unusually muted, and the roar of Sentinels overhead was absent.

This sort of thing just didn’t happen. But then, Sentinels didn’t try to attack you with your team-mate’s powers, either. There was something wronger than usual about this situation…

But she needed to know who was still around, who could be counted on to help her. God knew the way she was feeling just then she couldn’t exactly take on the source of these Sentinels…

So she kept going, kept walking. Emerging onto the street where battle had been joined, she saw…

Destruction. And one lone Sentinel still standing there, studying the fragmented façade of a nearby building… why?

The answer hit her like a bucket of cold water to the face. She stepped back for a moment, steadying herself.

One of the Clan was in there, and they weren’t dead. And the Sentinel knew that.

And it was just waiting…

Did someone chip a malevolence circuit into these guys? Or were they just not all that when it came to adapting to new situations?

The scorched forearm of another Sentinel lay on the tarmac. She edged closer, picked it up, and began to strip the circuitry and armour from the central skeleton, the central ‘bone’. It was sharp at the protruding end, and at a pinch it would serve as a weapon. Erica knew she needed one…

The quiet of the city took on a subtly different tone, one Erica’s subconscious knew well; servos were whirring into gear.

***

Alan heard the servo change at the same time as Erica. His hair stood on end; something had made a Sentinel nearby bestir itself.

Either it had decided what to do with him, or it had been called away, or…

Or one of the Clan was being attacked.

Whatever the case, that was a situation which demanded action, or so Alan thought. Had it been Jack Marlowe hunkered down in the first-floor wreckage of this abandoned tower building, the third cause would not have aroused action.

In any case, Marlowe would still have been dealing with the physical after-effects of the Jackson-blast* and not in the best state to help. Plastique, however, had dealt with the physical, though the pain still besieged him.

He stood up and ran to the smashed window, the cavity now opened wider by the effects of the Sentinel that had duplicated his powers.

Hoisting himself up onto charred brickwork, he balanced for a second and took in the scene.

The Sentinel had half-turned to face Springboard, but hadn’t completed the movement. Plastique was still in sensory range, and so the robot hesitated, torn between two targets.

Alan had no such hesitation. The Sentinel would absorb the blast travelling toward Erica, so…

BOOOOM!

The blast took out the brickwork on which he’d been perched. Reforming, he found himself now three feet above ground…

"Whoa!"

"Thanks," Springboard said as Alan picked himself up. She continued to work at the arm. "I owe you."

"Yeah, well, it all balances in the end," Alan replied. "Look, we’ve got to get these shifters out of the way…"

"I know," she returned. "I want to do it without letting them dupe my power. Hence being able to hit them without skin contact," she continued, holding up the iron spike for emphasis.

"They came from down that way. Let’s go."

***

When the two mutants reached the outskirts of their usual patrol territory, they found the source of the Sentinels. They also found an embattled Knuckles, grappling with five Sentinels.

"Oh, man…" Alan moaned. "They’re all going to have super-strength now, even more than they did!"

"Yeah," Erica said, "and he’s not looking too good. I don’t think he can take much more of this-"

"I’m surprised he’s been able to take this much!"

"Yeah," Erica continued. "But we’ve got to take out the big box beside him, not him. So look… I’m going to do my best to help him and keep those five occupied. You get in that factory and explode, and we’ll take it from there. Got it?"

"I… Sure."

***

BOOOOM!

***

Knuckles lay in a stolen hospital bed, still comatose three weeks later. Springboard, in the bed next to him, wasn’t much better.

Jackson, Theurgist and Plastique had been watching and tending them in shifts since Plastique had dragged them out of the rubble – factory shrapnel and malfunctioning Sentinels – that had both further damaged them and cushioned them from his blast – and into the Clan’s second safehouse. Since he had bailed his leader and Jackson out of their situation.

And it didn’t seem to be helping.

***

From the journal of Jack Marlowe

Marlowe closed the journal and shut it back away. If any of his team saw what he’d written, they’d probably kill him for the flagrant lies within.

His team knew him by now, however much they pretended they didn’t. How much they needed to pretend they didn’t.

The remaining members of the Clan knew it was just an exercise in trying to live through the Sentinels.

And they’d settled for it.

***

THE END