RECRUITMENT DRIVE

Part II: Enter The Neo

By Dino Pollard

Black Womb HQ; New Guinea

The man dressed in the black and silver uniform is named Archer. The uniform he wears is similar to the same uniform worn by all the X-Corps operatives, but with some slight differences. The major ones being the opaque helmet with an M engraved on it which conceals his face, the nightstick held in a sheathe fastened to his back, and the gauntlets he wears.

He comes from the far future, some seventy to one hundred years in the future, to approximate. He was a soldier then, and despite his efforts to live a normal life with a family, he finds he has become a soldier once again.

He holds the nightstick in his hand, and he has already begun to focus the photoelectric energy his body is capable of transmuting into through his nightstick. He stands ready, prepared for any attack his opponent may launch.

She calls herself Dominia. Her purple hair is shaved on the sides of her head, and her face is a pale white and adorned with red markings of some sort. Archer cannot discern if the markings are natural, tattoos, or warpaint. A chain of energy links her two hands together and at the end of this chain is a hook composed of the same energy.

“I read the file on you,” says Archer. “Seems you gave Wolverine a run for his money, even though he still ended up on top.”

“He was a fine warrior,” says Dominia. She begins to twirl the chain behind her while she circles Archer. He circles as well, keeping the distance between them. “But ultimately, he was just lucky.”

“That’s what they all say,” says Archer. “Why are you getting in our way? Your people have suffered more than anyone under Black Womb. We’re both trying to destroy this organization, why not work together?”

“In war, you don’t stab your enemy in the back,” says Dominia. “You attack him head-on. Your attempts at subterfuge and guile mark you as a coward.”

“Don’t even try to lecture me on war, I know all about it,” says Archer.

Dominia lashes forward with the energy chain. The hook goes flying, and Archer leaps away from it. He launches forward, converting to energy as he does so and his form becomes corporeal behind her. He brings his nightstick to strike her, but she grabs his arm before he can and crushes one of his gauntlets beneath her grip. Without the gauntlet, he is unable to channel his energy through it as a concussive burst. Still holding a grip on his arm, she demonstrates uncanny strength by flipping him over her and slamming him against the ground.

“Black Womb doesn’t die tonight,” says Dominia. “They still serve a purpose.”

Dominia places her foot on Archer’s chest, keeping him pinned to the ground. The energy flares up in her hand and it quickly shifts into the form of a dagger. She looks down at Archer and smiles. He tries to shift to his photoelectric form, but finds that his body isn’t responding. He tries to reach out with the psi-web, but he gets no response from his teammates.

“This is war, spike,” she says. “And though I respect you, sadly, you must be one of the casualties of that war.”

Even though power to Black Womb has been cut, Maverick still sticks close to the walls. When you’ve been trained in espionage, it becomes a part of you. His teammates wear contact lenses that allow them to see in nightvision. For Maverick, nightvision is built into the lenses of the gold mask he wears to conceal his face. Although it is a bit of a contrast to the black and silver uniform of X-Corps, he prefers to keep it with him. It is a symbol of who he is.

He hugs the wall at the edge of a corner. The earpieces of his mask amplify any sound that enters them, enhancing his own hearing. He listens carefully, and he can hear the footsteps of guards as they carefully move through the corridor in his direction. He brings up the semiautomatic weapons he holds in his hands, and as their footsteps get closer, he leaps from his hiding spot and opens fire on the guards. Through the nightvision, he watches them hit the ground one by one as his bullets strike their mark.

{Archer, approximately how much time do we have before they fix the power?} he asks through the psi-web established by his teammate, Mimic.

He receives no response.

{Archer, do you copy?}

Still no reply.

{Mimic, what’s going on? I can’t reach Archer.}

{I’m as lost as you are, Maverick,} replies the Mimic. {I can’t even locate him. Maybe he’s in a psi-proof room?}

{Let’s hope that’s all it is,} says Maverick. {Move fast, people. We have no idea how long it’ll take Black Womb to get the power up and running again.}

Almost on cue, the emergency lights for the facility turn on, illuminating the corridors. Maverick now knows it is only a matter of time before power is fully restored.

“Shit…”

Elsewhere in the facility, Rictor and Shatterstar stick to one another. Ever since their time in X-Force, these two mutants have always been close friends, and in X-Corps they continue to watch each other’s backs. The two stand side by side, Shatterstar with his swords drawn. Rictor has his hands linked together, with his index fingers extended, prepared to focus his seismic powers on whatever comes his way.

“Power’s back on,” says Rictor.

“I see that,” says Shatterstar.

“That’s not good,” says Rictor.

“Of course it is,” says Shatterstar. “Now we can see our enemies as we defeat them.”

{How much do we actually know about this place?} asks Rictor via the psi-web.

{From the intel gathered by X-Corps Asia, this is primarily a research facility,} comes Maverick’s reply. {After the Neo fiasco as well as Fantomex’s little rebellion, my best guess is Black Womb is trying to find a way to ensure that their persons of mass destruction don’t rebel.}

“Do you hear that?” asks Shatterstar.

“Hear what?” asks Rictor. He focuses his hearing and the sound of metal footsteps clanging against the metal floor begins to ring through his ears. Rictor steps back as does Shatterstar. Two humanoid robots that resemble Sentinels step forth from the shadows.

“Oh great…” mutters Rictor. {Maverick, we’ll get back to you later, looks like we’ve got some vintage Sentinels to tangle with.}

Before Rictor has even finished his transmission, Shatterstar is moving in on the decommissioned Sentinels. He leaps in the air, and Rictor directs his hands towards the ground and channels seismic waves through the land to keep the Sentinels off-balance. With the Sentinels staggering, Shatterstar knocks one of them away from the other and tangles with it. He dodges the robot’s strikes, and counters with his own swordstrokes.

The second Sentinel moves towards Rictor. Julio directs his seismic waves on the ceiling above, and some rubble falls to separate him from the Sentinel. In that time, Rictor moves around and knocks the Sentinel to the ground. He grips the Sentinel’s head with his hands and channels seismic waves into it, causing the head to crumble.

“We have the target located,” says a Black Womb soldier into the earpiece he wears. “We have him tracked through the air vents.”

“Use caution, beta team. Target is to be regarded as extremely dangerous.”

“Roger that,” says the soldier. “But I don’t think one, lone mutie’s gonna give us too much trouble.”

“Just be sure to guard the command center. We can’t risk any of Black Womb’s information getting out.”

“Acknowledged,” says the soldier. “Don’t worry, nothing leaves this room alive unless it’s carrying a Black Womb ID.”

The soldiers silence the chatter as they hear a noise above them.

“He’s up there…” says the soldier. He lifts his gun up, prepared to open fire. The vent drops to the ground and the beta team opens fire on the spot instantly.

“HOLD YOUR FIRE!” exclaims the leader. “HOLD YOUR FIRE, DAMMIT! THERE’S NOTHING THERE!”

The soldiers halt their gunfire and move to reload their weapons. In that brief instant is all it takes for the invader to spring forth from the open airshaft. As soon as he hits the ground, the beta team opens fire.

The lanky, bald young man with a feral appearance moves with ferocious speed, dodging past bullets unleashed by the beta team. He returns fire in his own unique way – cutting through their flesh with the razor-sharp claws on the tips of his fingers.

Kyle Gibney, under the codename of Wildchild, had once thought this behavior to be behind him. He has fought long and hard to gain control over his animalistic nature, to tame the savage beast inside him. However, the experiments Black Womb conducts on mutants remind him of his own unpleasant experiences in laboratories.

He has no qualms about unleashing the animal on Black Womb, or the people who fight to protect it. As far as he is concerned, this is not murder. By removing the scum here and now, he feels he is doing the world a service.

Blood flows freely from wounds. The soldiers barely know what hit them as Wildchild’s claws shred them to ribbons. Once the security team is dispatched, Wildchild continues to move forward, the rage still within him.

He enters the door the security team was guarding and looks around the small room. A large, Cray computer sits against the wall. Wildchild steps up to it and tries to bring up some files.

{Mimic, you reading me?} he asks.

{Loud and clear, Wildchild.}

{Good, get ready to download this information into Cerebra’s memory banks as I feed it to you,} says Wildchild.

Kyle opens several files, searching through Black Womb’s database. What he sees within the files causes his eyes to grow wide with horror.

{Oh man… this is worse than we thought. You getting all this, Mimic?}

Kyle continues reading the file as he waits for Mimic’s reply. After a few minutes of silence, he retorts back.

{Mimic? Still there?}

Wildchild grits his teeth in pain and looks down at his body. Bullets grazed his body during the battle, and his healing factor repaired the damage. But now the wounds are beginning to reopen somehow.

“What the…?”

His attention immediately diverts to the entrance to the room. A man in a suit stands next to a woman with short black hair and red markings on her face.

“No need trying to resist, Mr. Gibney,” says the man. “Static here has disabled your powers, and now she’s slowly reversing them. Your healing factor is working in the opposite way it should, increasing the damage those wounds have done to your body.”

Kyle begins to feel faint from the loss of blood and he loses his footing, collapsing to the ground. The man in the suit steps up to him and places his foot on one of the wounds. He then presses down on it, and Kyle howls in pain.

“You were an idiot to try and take on Black Womb.”

{Wildchild, do you copy?} asks Mimic. “Oh fuck.” {Maverick, we’ve got a situation here. I’ve lost contact with Wildchild.}”

{And we’ve already lost Archer,} says Maverick. {Who’s still online?}

{Rictor here. Shatterstar and I are busy with these Sentinels right now.}

{Proudstar in, I’ve broken past the first line of defense and I’m venturing into the sublevels as we speak.}

{Fekt, they were no challenge…}

{Well, we were busy with Sentinels…}

{Mimic, you’re closest to Archer’s last known transmission,} says Maverick. {Get over there and see what you can find. I’m not far from where Wildchild last reported in from.}

{Right,} says Mimic.

Calvin Rankin is with X-Corps for reasons other than most of the operatives. After spending his recent escapades as a terrorist standing against the X-Men and their various factions, he has since had a change of heart. Opting instead to work once more on the side of angels.

He reverses his course, running towards the last known location of Archer. When the psi-web is active, the operatives of X-Corps Australia were fully aware of the location of each operative within the complex. Now it’s just a matter of finding the last place Archer was in before he somehow became disconnected from the psi-web. The Mimic comes to a wall blocking his path. He extends his hands and calling on the powers of Iceman, he freezes it, making it brittle. He channels the telekinetic energy commanded by Marvel Girl around his fists to add more punch to his superhuman strength and, combined with an optic blast, strikes the wall and crashes his way through. Inside the small generator room, he sees Archer pinned down by Dominia, the leader of the Neo’s warclan.

“Another spike,” says Dominia. “Good, this one was too easy.”

She moves off of Archer and turns her attention to the Mimic.

“Archer, you okay?” asks Mimic.

“*kaff* just peachy…” mutters Archer. “Careful, she’s just as tough as her file says.”

“So am I,” says Mimic. Dominia generates a sword composed of psionic energy and moves foward to bring it down on the Mimic. Calvin quickly throws up a telekinetic shield to protect him from the assault. With Archer in range, Calvin mimicks his teammate’s powers and transforms his body into photoelectric energy. He travels through Dominia and converts back to flesh and blood behind her. A barrier of solid ice rises up, surrounding Dominia.

“Should hold her off,” says Mimic. He goes to help Archer to his feet, but before either of them has a chance to move, Dominia crashes through the ice barricade. Mimic reaches out with his innate talents and attempts to copy Dominia’s own mutagenic signature. But when he tries to mimic her abilities, something blocks him out—there is a feedback of sorts that causes his own powers to overload. He staggers back, clutching his head in pain.

“You okay?” asks Archer, running to Mimic’s side.

“I can’t…” replies Mimic. “I can’t access any of the powers.”

“What did you do to him?” asks Archer. He turns his attention to Dominia, but sees that she is also crouched low and gripping her own head. She looks at the two of them with her teeth clenched.

“…no,” she says. “What did the spike do to me?”

“Nothing…” mutters Mimic.

“Junction!” exclaims Dominia. A tear in space appears and a dark-skinned woman with similar markings on her face as Dominia emerges from it. She takes aim with her hand and a beam of golden energy envelopes Dominia. The warrior woman fades out of existence, and Junction follows.

The elevator descends down to the lower sublevels of the facility. Inside the elevator is a Black Womb agent, decked out in full gear. The elevator comes to a stop and he moves through the facility freely. Through the earpiece in his helmet, he hears details of the attack on the facility by intruders.

He ignores the transmissions.

He locates the area he is searching force—the prison block. He overheard some of the other soldiers complaining about being forced to guard the mutant here. He enters the prison block and sees two guards standing before a cell.

“Emergency situation,” he says. “The commander needs all available units to the upper levels to aid in pushing back the intruders.”

“Why weren’t we informed via commlink?” asks one of the guards.

“Communications are down,” he replies. “I’ve been ordered to take over your post here.”

“What is this?” asks the other guard. “Who are you, what’s your—”

His sentence does not even finish before the soldier slams the guard’s head against the wall. The other guard brings up his gun, but in what seems like the blink of an eye, the soldier is behind him. He drives his elbow into the back of the guard’s head and knocks him out. The soldier takes a keycard off of one of the guards and slides it into the slot on the wall. The door to the cell opens up and inside is a young man with short, brown hair and a black M tattooed over his right eye.

“What the…” mutters the soldier.

“What now?” asks the prisoner, looking up at the soldier with contempt. The soldier pulls off his helmet.

“My name’s James Proudstar,” replies the soldier. “I’m here to help you.”

“Huh?” asks the prisoner.

“Trust me,” replies Proudstar. “What’s your name?”

“Scorch,” he says.

“Scorch?” asks Proudstar as he raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah, Scorch,” he replies. “You got a problem with that?”

“No, it’s fine,” says Proudstar while pulling his helmet back on. “Let’s just get out of here. {This is Proudstar, I’ve located a prisoner.}”

He gets no response and he finds that he does not sense the rest of his teammates.

“Just perfect…” he mutters. “This mission is going completely south…”

Maverick carefully steps into the room where Wildchild was before contact was lost with him. Unfortunately for him, the room is now empty. Maverick takes notice of red splotches on the ground. He bends down and stares at it. He reaches a hand up to his mask and taps a spot behind his ear. It switches the view of his lens and he examines the red splotches.

“Blood…” he mutters. “Great, as if things weren’t bad enough as is…”

He steps up to the computer strikes a couple keys, bringing up various menus. He scrolls through them, trying to locate the one that he needs to. However, it seems as if most of the information in the computer is now encrypted, save for information on several mutants. Mutants Maverick has never heard of before today. Mutants with quite a bit of potential. He reads over the information as quickly as he can, knowing that it can still be retrieved from his short-term memory by Cerebra.

Once he’s satisfied, Maverick is about to bring his weapon up to destroy the computer. Before he can, a bright light appears before him, separating him from the computer. A woman with dark skin and red marks on her face appears in the center of this light. Also appearing are two other men. One is dressed in a suit of green armor and the other has long, black hair.

“Seth, the computer,” says Junction. “Barbican, deal with the interloper.”

Barbican, the man with the long black hair, steps forward and places his hand against the wall while Seth in the armor moves to the computer. At Barbican’s touch, the entire room begins to change shape, and a wall rises up between Maverick and the rest of the Neo clan. Maverick looks around and sees that not only that room, but the entire facility is beginning to shift. He moves quickly through the facility, trying to find whatever exits he can. As Maverick runs through, he sees a small opening that is quickly closing. He slides across the ground and through the opening just before it closes up.

{Maverick, you read me?}

Maverick lets out a sigh of relief as he feels the presence of the Mimic within his mind.

{Yeah, I’m here,} says Maverick. {What’s our status?}

{Proudstar freed a prisoner and all other operatives are accounted for. Well… all operatives except for Wildchild.}

{You can’t locate Wildchild?} asks Maverick.

{Nowhere,} replied Mimic.

Maverick looks back at the facility, now completely sealed off from any sort of entrance.

{Okay, there’s not much we can do for him now. We have to get back to homebase so we can read this information off my short-term memory. As bad as it sounds, there are more things at stake here than just Wildchild. Black Womb is beginning to recruit.}