KILLING TIME

Part II

By Wesley Overhults

The Axis

“What should we do with her?”

The Revengers looked at Pixie and thought about Sunfire’s question. Both Sunfire and Yellowjacket had seen Pixie’s earlier noncompliance though no one knew what she had done to preserve Wasp’s soul. Pixie nervously looked at the floor even as the Revengers followed Jules and John to the lower levels of the building they were in. Something was happening inside her, changing her. She sometimes experienced a temporary change if the soul she absorbed was too pure or too corrupted. She had come to expect such changes but they never lasted so she had developed the habit of simply riding them out. This felt different though. Kate was always a fighter, tough as nails with a sense of determination that couldn’t be matched. Just like everything else in her life, she wasn’t going to go quietly and fall in line with something she didn’t agree with.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” mumbled Pixie, feeling a queasiness in her stomach that was unlike anything she had ever felt before.

“I think we’re going to make it worse if you don’t be a good girl and keep quiet,” promised Scarlet Spider cruelly. “I say we take a vote, boys and girls. I mean we’re still civilized human beings, right? Who thinks we should just kill her and drop the dead weight? I think you already know which way I’m voting.”

“Her mind is too jumbled to get a good read on,” noted Xavier. “I’m unable to tell exactly what she’s thinking.”

“She stole my kill,” added Yellowjacket.

“All of you shut up if you want to continue breathing,” ordered Jules as the group came to a halt and waited for the elevator to open its doors. “How much further, John?”

“The elevator’s going to take us there,” promised John.

“Good,” said Jules, knowing full well that his best friend would never lie to him.

The wheels in John’s mind were turning as he tried to figure out a way to get out of his predicament. In his old life, John had been just as crafty and devious as Jules was now but that was a survival tactic and nothing more. Life in the Axis had made John soft, had forced him to cultivate new ways of thinking and behaving. He had to shed that new self now and return to his old ways if he and his mortal charges were going to have any hopes of surviving this encounter. John couldn’t believe that Jules could sink so low. He couldn’t believe that the fellow Timebroker would take things this far, would endanger all of existence just to get his revenge and prove his point.

In truth, John should have always seen this coming. The red flags were there, the biggest one being when Jules got his whole team killed upon learning that Eterna had left him. Yet John was always the best friend, always the one to believe in those he loved even when they were clearly beyond such redemption. He mistakenly thought that the time Jules spent in exile would have cured his madness but if anything it only heightened it to such a frenzied degree that the Timebroker could no longer think rationally about anything. Whatever goodness John had seen in Jules when they began their friendship had died a long time ago.

“There will be guards at the door waiting for us when we get off this thing,” said John matter-of-factly. “You know as well as I do that The Council won’t let you get away with this little coup.”

“Why do you think I have my team with me?” inquired Jules with a condescending smirk plastered across his face. “Whatever The Council has waiting for us won’t be enough. Their blind, idealistic pacifism has led them to their destruction. They are weak, John, and it’s time the Axis fell under new, stronger management. Do not fret, old friend. I still possess enough compassion to offer you a place in my new regime. Your help won’t go unnoticed.”

“Tell that to them,” suggested John as a cadre of armed guards met them as they stepped off the elevator, just as John had predicted.

“Revengers, please show them the error of their ways,” ordered Jules.

The Revengers wasted little time in tearing into the contingent of Timebrokers. Their security force wasn’t well trained in the slightest due to the fact that their culture didn’t know how to fight. The Revengers, on the other hand, knew all about fighting and even though they couldn’t really kill the Timebrokers, they could incapacitate them without too much resistance. Jules knew that too and he also knew that the Timebrokers couldn’t use their abilities against any of the mortals while inside the Axis unless those mortals were tied to the Timebrokers by the Tallus or some other means. That was why Jules couldn’t use his powers on the Exiles because John disconnected their Tallus.

“This isn’t a challenge,” decided Sunfire once the Revengers had made quick work of the Timebroker security force. “If your race is defended by weaklings such as this then it’s a wonder you’ve survived this long.”

“They don’t matter,” stated Jules, motioning for John to lead the way. “After you, my old friend.”

John made his way down the corridor, getting closer and closer to the goal his friend sought so fervently. The Revengers were salivating as well because all of them knew that if Jules got what he wanted then they would get what they wanted. However, one of them had second thoughts on things and was beginning to find it difficult to not speak her mind about it. Pixie felt something inside her mutating, changing and warping who she was. It was like being nauseous only the part of you that was sick wasn’t just your stomach. She had never had such a reaction to any other soul she had absorbed. It was starting to make her tremble. She tried to keep the tremors under control to keep her companions from noticing but whatever was going on inside her wouldn’t be denied any longer.

“The child is having a fit,” said Xavier, telepathically sensing the struggle going on inside Pixie. “Some other presence in her mind is trying to take control. Restrain her before she endangers this entire operation.”

“I believe this calls for a more permanent method,” decided Sunfire, warming up a blast of plasma that would scorch the skin off of Pixie’s body.

“You killed me,” snarled Pixie except the voice wasn’t hers. “I told myself I would never kill anyone because that’s not what a hero is supposed to do. I think I might have to break that promise.”

“That sounds like…” began Yellowjacket but she didn’t have time to finish the sentence.

Pixie flew towards Sunfire and the air was alive with the crackle of energy as her soul daggers materialized in her hands. They were dazzlingly brilliant, much brighter than they ever were before. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Megan realized that Kate was the one in control of her body. Kate’s soul was trying to assert itself and it was bringing out Megan’s own inner goodness. The two girls thought as one inside Pixie’s mind and moved as one inside Pixie’s body. She struck Sunfire with a slash across what would have been his throat if he still had a physical body. The dagger’s glowing blade stuck fast in Sunfire’s throat and the fiery Revenger went down in a quivering heap as Pixie sucked the life from him.

“We need to kill him,” said Pixie to herself.

‘Heroes don’t kill people,’ reminded Wasp inside Pixie’s mind. ‘Make him suffer but let him live. We need to get to the others and help them.’

Pixie nodded to herself and teleported away in a puff of pixie dust. She had to find the others and undo the damage she had done. It was the only way to make amends for the heartache she had caused.

“Well, it looks like the brightest bulb in the box has finally burnt out,” noted Scarlet Spider casually, not even batting a eye at the attempted murder that had occurred in front of him. “Would it be too soon to make the obvious joke about flaming?”

“Take Xavier and Yellowjacket and find her,” ordered Jules, ignoring Scarlet Spider’s words. “Cripple her and any of the Exiles that are alive but don’t kill them. Bruiser, you stay with me at all times.”

Molly Hayes nodded her head while the rest of the Revengers moved to accomplish their task. Jules looked distastefully at the unconscious form of Sunfire before kicking it out of frustration. He didn’t mind the flames in the slightest and they didn’t do him any harm at all. However, the momentary relief of stress that he felt passed quickly while the frustration still remained. Apparently, he was the only one capable of doing what was required. He knew he shouldn’t have counted on mortals so much. That flaw would be corrected once he harnessed the power of the Axis for his own purposes.

“Today just isn’t your day, old friend,” commented John. “Those mortals do have ways of surprising you, don’t they?”

“Shut up and keep going,” ordered Jules. “My Revengers have already killed enough of your pets, John. Best make sure they don’t continue their work.”

John stayed quiet but he was far from inactive. His mind was reaching out to the Tallus that Amelia Voght still wore on her wrist, the one that was attuned to his powers from the start. She was unconscious but still alive and John was reaching out to her mind with his, yelling at her to wake up and get back into the fight.

Goblin grimaced in pain as he cracked the bones of his neck back into their proper places and checked himself to make sure there were no other injuries. His healing factor had healed the broken neck before it had a chance to set back into place correctly so he had to break it again and then realign it. It took him a few minutes to get used to it working properly but it didn’t dull his sense of urgency. For the moment, the battle was over and he knew that couldn’t be good for his team.

“Did you get hit by the same truck I did?” asked Daredevil, the crimson-clad mutant stumbling into the room.

“Yeah but I’m not the one that looks like shit,” noted Goblin, seeing that Daredevil’s costume was worse for wear.

“You’re an ugly bastard anyway,” shot back Daredevil, grinning through bloody lips and then taking off his tattered mask. He could tell the lenses in the cowl had been broken and he decided to just leave it off rather than risk pieces of them sticking into his eyes. “Are we the only ones left?”

“Check on the two X-Men while I see about the others,” ordered Goblin.

Harry swiftly moved across the room, trying to find any trace of his other teammates. He felt something crunch under his feet and looked down at the shards of glass strewn all about the floor. If he had the ability to draw breath, he would’ve gasped because he realized that the glass was once Sandman’s body. That wasn’t the only horror the Revengers had left in their wake.

“Kate,” whispered Harry under his breath as he flew into the hallway where he had last seen her. “Kate!”

He saw her broken and burnt body lying still on the floor and felt more humanity well up in him than he thought still existed. He couldn’t shed tears but in that moment it was more a blessing than a curse. Kate Bishop, his teammate and possibly his closest friend at the moment, was dead. He cradled her body in his arms and stared into her dead, lifeless eyes. He pressed her forehead to his, murmuring words that she would never be able to hear again. He should have watched her back more, should have been there to protect her when she needed it the most. He should have told her how much he cared about her but how could he have when he didn’t even know it until now?

“I’m here,” croaked a voice and for a moment Goblin swore to God that it was Kate’s.

“Were you the one that killed her?” inquired Goblin, glaring with hate at Pixie.

“Harry, I’m in here,” said Wasp through Pixie’s lips. “I . . . Kate saved my life so I . . . Megan saved mine. Please help me, Harry. I’m . . . she’s . . . we’re both in trouble.”

“You took her soul with your daggers,” realized Goblin. “Why?”

“Kate was always nice to me,” explained Pixie. “Megan . . . I don’t want to do what the Timebroker says anymore. She wants to help.”

Pixie struggled to assert herself inside her own mind and soul. Wasp could be overbearing at times, stubborn and determined to no end. Yet Pixie didn’t want to cooperate with her because she was afraid of losing herself. The two girls weren’t used to being one entity and it was hard to coordinate themselves.

“One of you needs to be in control so you can make sense,” decided Goblin.

“Kate wants,” began Pixie but stopped herself before finally speaking again in a voice that wasn’t hers. “I know it’s weird, Harry, but I’m in here. Megan and I are going to take turns or something. We’ll work it out. Right now, we have to take care of the others. The Timebroker, Jules or whatever his name is, is crazy and wants to kill all of us. Whatever this place is, it has a power that’s bigger than anything we’ve ever seen before. Jules wants it for himself and we’re all in trouble if he gets it.”

“Daredevil and I are the only ones up right now,” said Goblin before gesturing to the glass. “That’s what’s left of Will.”

“If we could find some sand then we could help him reform himself,” said Wasp. “The desert where we all first met . . . do you think that could work?”

“Worth a shot at this point but how do we get there?” wondered Goblin aloud.

“I think that’s where I could come in,” said Voght as she, Sean Madrox, and Daredevil joined the two Exiles. “Your Tallus was disconnected but mine’s still active. It has to be because John’s been yelling at me inside my head and forcing me to get up again. If John can talk to us through this thing then I don’t see why we can’t do the same.”

“There’s no guarantee you’ll go through the right door,” warned Goblin as Madrox got some of his duplicates to pick up the glass shards. “You think you can just talk to John through that thing and get him to help you pick the right one?”

“In a word: yes,” retorted Voght. “If you want him back then this is the only way to do it.”

She took the glass shards from the duplicates and made her way into the conference room. She stood there for a moment and debated about which door to choose, the glass cutting into the arms of her costume but not deterring her in the least. She held the Tallus to her ear and listened intently. John wasn’t going to give her any advice since he had problems of his own at the moment. She decided it was time to send him a message.

“If you can hear me then you need to get us to the desert where the Exiles first met,” said Voght to the Tallus. “Please just get me through the right door.”

Voght listened intently for a few more seconds before she went with her gut and picked a door. She opened it and stepped through it. Voght felt the heat beat down on her almost immediately. She realized she was in the right place and promptly dropped the shards of glass into the sand. The leader of the X-Men held her breath and waited patiently. She stared at the shards, burning a hole in the pile with her gaze. Slowly but surely, the sand began to shift. It rose up and fleshed itself out into the form of a human. Its features became clearly defined and Sandman stood before Voght.

“My body really doesn’t feel right,” he told Voght. “This stuff isn’t sand or at least not any sand that’s from Earth.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Voght. “Your team needs you. We need you.”

“No time to waste then,” decided Sandman, moving through the open doorway and back into the conference room. “Who’s still with me?”

“All of us,” said Goblin before looking at Pixie. “Well, more or less.”

“Kate is in here,” said Pixie, her voice switching back to her own. “I don’t have time to explain it. I’m sorry, you should know that.”

“Always thought you were a good kid,” said Sandman. “Alright, where’s the Timebroker and those psychos?”

“They’re down where the power battery is,” explained Pixie. “Follow me and I’ll show you where.”

Sandman nodded and the contingent of heroes followed Pixie to the elevator. However, the Revengers were just stepping off the elevator and eagerly awaited their impending rematch with the Exiles. This time, however, the odds were in favor of the Exiles. Only Scarlet Spider, Xavier, and Yellowjacket stood against them. The Exiles had double the numbers even without factoring in Madrox’s clones. Sean created three of them who immediately opened fire on the Revengers. Scarlet Spider weaved through the storm of bullets and hit all three of the duplicates in the face with globs of impact webbing. The balls of webbing expanded on contact, enveloping the heads of the duplicates and smothering them within minutes. The Exiles wouldn’t be outdone though. A blast of sand scattered the three Revengers and left them disoriented. Daredevil jumped and kicked Xavier into the closed elevator doors, punching him in the face to keep him off balance so he couldn’t fully employ his telepathic powers. He felt his danger-sense go off and moved to avoid a vicious kick from Scarlet Spider.

Peter buried his foot in the elevator door, puncturing it with the strength of his kick but catching it in the hole he had created. Daredevil took advantage and smashed Scarlet Spider’s head into the elevator door to knock him senseless. Peter cursed under his breath as he ripped his leg free from the door and whirled it around to connect with Daredevil’s jaw. He didn’t have time to celebrate his achievement. Goblin hit him with a blast of hellfire that blew him through the hole in the elevator door. Peter clung to the wall to keep himself from falling down the elevator shaft and was ready to fling himself back into the fray.

“You can’t keep a bad spider down, Harry,” he jeered as he glared at Goblin from across the shaft. “C’mon and show me what you and Daddy are made of.”

Goblin flew into the elevator shaft and barreled into Scarlet Spider, pummeling him as hard and as fast as he could. To his credit, Peter managed to block a few shots but the ones that slipped through did some serious damage to him. The fact that he had to keep clinging to the wall or risk falling down the shaft hindered his movements greatly and with each blow Goblin landed it made avoiding the rest even harder.

“You were my best friend in another life,” reminded Goblin. “You saved my life. How could you have turned out so wrong?”

“You know the old saying,” retorted Scarlet Spider, kicking Goblin away from him to get some breathing room. “With great power comes great homicidal rage.”

Goblin noticed the cables of the elevator begin to move, indicating that the car would be rushing up to greet them at any moment. Scarlet Spider noticed it too and dove towards Goblin, wrapping himself around the Exile so he could stay in the air while still punching him in the head. Goblin flipped himself over in mid-air and then propelled himself downward. Scarlet Spider tried to untangle himself fast enough but there was nowhere to go. His back hit the top of the elevator car as it was coming up and the impact was enough to knock him out.

“Are the rest of them down?” asked Goblin as he heard the Exiles get into the elevator.

Vapor wafted up through the cracks in the elevator car and Voght appeared beside him before taking his hand and teleporting both of them back into the elevator. Goblin looked at the rest of his teammates and realized that this was going to be the biggest fight of their lives. If Jules got control of the Axis then he would become even more of a god than he already was. Harry thought his father was the most evil being he had ever encountered in his life. Now he had seen the face of true evil, the face belonging to a being so vile that he couldn’t be reasoned with or controlled. Jules had to be stopped because there was too much on the line to let him succeed.

“I know that we probably won’t come back from this,” said Sandman. “Realistically, there’s no way we can stop Jules but we have to try. All of us have tried to make our worlds better places even if we come from different backgrounds or have different methods. All of us believe in doing the right thing. Now we need to do the right thing and stop Jules. All of reality is counting on us.”

“Don’t go getting sentimental on me, boss,” warned Daredevil with a grin. “Save the big speech for when we actually fight the guy.”

John stared at the keypad in front of him and held his breath. His fingers trembled as he touched the keys but he couldn’t get them to punch the correct sequence. It would be a betrayal that would cut his benefactors to their very cores because they were the ones who had given him a life of peace and freedom as opposed to his old life of savagery. He looked back at his oldest friend Jules and reaffirmed his belief that mortals were a good race at their heart. They weren’t the only ones capable of atrocities though Jules seemed to think otherwise. The proof was staring John right in the face.

“You’re stalling,” said Jules. “My Revengers were given instructions to find the girl and to further cripple your friends. If you don’t keep our bargain, I will make them kill the Exiles and what’s left of your precious X-Men.”

“No, you won’t,” realized John. “You need me, Jules. You’ve always been too scared to admit it but I’ve always been your better half. I’m better than you. I wish Eterna could’ve seen that before you hurt her but she realized the truth in the end. Mortals aren’t the problem, Jules. You are.”

“Kill him,” ordered Jules, looking to the youngest of his Revengers.

Molly Hayes looked at him with a flicker of the girl she used to be gleaming in her eyes. That ghost promptly faded away as a cruel and cold deadness filled her. She was used to death. Her friends had killed people in their takeover of Los Angeles and Bruiser had helped them perform such evil deeds. Molly didn’t mind the killing, even less so now that her friends were gone. She knew revenge came with a price and now her employer wanted her to kill what, in her eyes, was a god. Never let it be said that those of her generation weren’t ambitious or without lofty goals.

“I don’t know what Jules has told you but I’m not the enemy,” said John as Bruiser moved towards him with murder on her mind. “You’re too young to understand what’s going on here, Molly. There’s more at stake here than just your revenge.”

“Are you calling me a kid?” inquired Bruiser, a terrifying grin spreading across her face. “Go on, tell me how I’m just a kid and I don’t understand things. I’ll tell you what I understand. That guy said if I do what he tells me to then I get to go to a world where my friends are alive. I get my family back if I kill for him. It seems pretty simple to me. Maybe I’m a lot smarter than you and everybody else thinks I am.”

John opened his mouth to say something but Bruiser hit him in his ample gut and sent him to his knees gasping for breath. He hadn’t expected her to really hurt him but she was stronger than she looked, perhaps even stronger than she was aware of. It didn’t matter though. For the first time in his life, John wasn’t going to give Jules what he wanted. He was sick of always covering for his best friend, always defending him from whatever punishment The Council sought to inflict upon him. It was never a true friendship because Jules was too emotionally scarred and mentally unstable to ever be anyone’s friend. John thought he could gloss over these facts but now they stared him dead in the face and he couldn’t run from the truth.

“That one hurt,” admitted John in between gasps for air.

Bruiser became angry at the fact that he was still breathing. She kicked him in the jaw and watched him fall backwards to stare up at the ceiling of the room. Yet still, John continued to live. It infuriated Molly Hayes so she continued punching him and kicking him, trying in vain to get him to stop getting back up again. Jules watched on in silence, a smirk plastered on his face as he saw his supposed best friend put up little to no resistance against the beating. All of this was just a distraction from his ultimate goal. He needed to get into the power battery room and he needed to do it now.

“Give me the code, John,” he ordered even as Molly landed another blow to John’s skull.

“Never,” said John defiantly. “She can’t kill me, Jules. We both know that. I’m never giving you what you want so you’re out of options.”

Jules snarled a curse and made his way to the keypad. He furiously pounded on it in a futile effort to get the door open but the slab of metal refused to comply with his demands. It stood there silent and still, mocking him and driving him mad with frustration. Jules began punching in random combinations, trying desperately to get his way into the power room without John’s help.

“What’s the code?” he cried out to his best friend even as Bruiser kept beating him down.

“Go to hell,” retorted John.

“You think you’re so damn smart,” railed Jules as he glared at the keypad. “You didn’t pick the code, The Council did. There’s only one number that would ever matter to them.”

Jules pressed his finger against the button marked with a zero and punched it three times before hitting the enter key. He grinned triumphantly as the door clicked and began to open. Zero was the only number that would ever matter to The Council because it was the beginning. Now that same number would be the end of everything. It was time for him to become a god and start doing what needed to be done.

“I’m not going to let you do this,” assured John as he broke away from Molly and ran towards his former friend. Jules stepped into the power battery room and tried to close the door on John but the pudgy Timebroker powered his way into the room as well.

The door closed behind them just as the Exiles entered the corridor and ran towards the door. There wasn’t anything in the room. There was just light and energy. Neither of the two Timebrokers had been inside the power battery room before. It was a room built around nothing but a nexus of raw temporal energy. This was the heart of the Axis and the two Timebrokers were now standing inside of it.

“Give me the power,” ordered Jules even as the bodies of the two Timebrokers began to break apart as they were assaulted with the energy. “Give me all of it! I want it all!”

“He said I would get my friends back if I killed you,” said Bruiser in her defense, readying herself to fight the Exiles once more.

“He promised everyone a lot of things,” reminded Pixie. “I know that you’re a lot like me, Molly. Trust me, things will get much worse for you if you keep going this way. I’ve already screwed up my life too much. Is this really the kind of person you want to be?”

“I want my family back,” stated Bruiser, her fists clenched tightly in the frustration she felt at being denied her heart’s desire. “If you think you can make a better offer than him then fine. It’s pretty obvious he’s not going to give me what I want anyway. Chances are that he just killed himself and your friend too.”

“Not if we can get them out of there,” said Pixie. “How are we going to open that door? I don’t think I want to teleport us through it.”

“It’s locked and I don’t think me or Voght can slip in,” said Sandman as he studied the heavy metal door. “Never had to crack any safes before, at least not the real way. Usually I just punch my way through.”

“If we could just punch through the door then he would’ve made me do it already,” said Bruiser.

All the Exiles turned and noticed that the door was opening by itself. They watched in horror as Jules made his way out of the power battery room, his whole body glowing with temporal energy. This was exactly the thing that they didn’t want to happen. This was the moment of truth, the final showdown with everything on the line.

“I am the most powerful being in all of creation!” bellowed Jules. “My body is saturated with the power of the Axis and time itself bends to my every whim! I am your god!”

“Maybe so,” relented Sandman, “but we’re still going to take you down.”

Next Issue: It’s the Exiles against Jules for the fate of all reality as “Killing Time” reaches its explosive conclusion.