Former X-Corps Facility
New Mexico

The remains of the X-Men were far from enjoying breakfast when carbonadium tentacles tore through the roof of their base, creating a new skylight for them. Three figures, each with an omega symbol on their uniforms, entered. One was clad in red, tentacles from his wrists. The female was in black and had tentacles coming from a housing in her chest. And the third was dressed in white, his head encased in a dome with energy tendrils coming from his eyes and circling around his body.

“X-Men,” said Omega Red. He activated his powers, releasing death pheromones from his body.

The team immediately began to feel their strength sapping. Xorn was the X-Men’s resident healer. The gravitational power of the star in his head allowed him to hover above the ground and his eyes glowed brightly. His healing abilities worked to restore the group and allow them to fend off the effect of Omega Red’s death spores, but it required an incredible degree of concentration to maintain that.

“Enough of this shit!” shouted Avalanche. He clapped his hands together, sending out vibrations that threw the three members of the Omega Clan back.

The Clan recovered quickly. Mimic used a combination of optic blasts, ice blasts, and telekinesis to try and keep the tentacles of Omega Red and Omega Black away from them. Fantomex drew his firearms and began firing wildly, dodging and flipping to avoid the tentacles and help his teammate in keeping them back.

Wisdom stood in front of Ecstasy and Tessa, stretching out his hands. His fingers grew to sharpened points that glowed with white-hot energy. They launched from his hands, but provided almost no barrier to the tentacles. Tessa reached for the gun at her hip and drew it, firing energy blasts from the small pistol.

“What are we looking at, love?” asked Wisdom.

Tessa’s sunglasses were cybernetically controlled and they fed her information as she scanned them. “DNA scans match that of Arkady Rossovich, Omega Red.”

“Wonderful,” said Wisdom. “Betsy, can you—?”

His question died in his throat when he looked across the field. Psylocke had sprung right into battle, but now she was held by Omega White’s energy tendrils.

Pyro grabbed Wisdom’s cigarette lighter from the kitchen table and flicked it up. He manipulated the flame, causing it to grow and shift, becoming a lion composed of fire. The creature pounced on Omega Red, who tried to extinguish it with his tentacles, but Pyro just kept the flame growing.

“Hell yeah!” said Avalanche, laughing as he saw what his old partner was doing. He raised his arm and a part of the ground shot up, wrapping around Omega Black. Avalanche waved his arm from side to side and the earth responded, mirroring his movements.

Omega Black’s tentacles broke free of the bonds and she reached out for Avalanche. He tried to raise earth-shields to protect him, but she smashed through them and soon he found himself ensnared by the tentacles.

Ecstasy moved around the room and pounced on Omega Black, landing on her from behind. She gripped her enemy’s face, using her control over pheromones. But Omega Black could infect her as well and there was a feedback between them and they both screamed.

Mimic swooped in on the wings of the Angel and used the strength of the Beast to pull Ecstasy away. His eyes crackled with crimson energy and he fired an optic blast to knock Omega Black away.

“Someone get Psylocke!” shouted Wisdom. He fired his hot-knives at Omega White, while Tessa aided with her gun, but their attacks just passed right through his body.

“She grows weaker,” said Omega White and Wisdom could see what he meant. Psylocke’s body went slack and she was even beginning to age rapidly right before his eyes.

Mimic struck at Omega White with his telepathy and it was enough to distract the villain. Fantomex sprung at him from behind, firing shots at Omega White’s head, cracks forming in the helmet. Ecstasy, increasing the adrenaline in her own body, charged at Omega White, delivering some well-placed blows to draw his attention completely free from his target.

Psylocke’s eyes opened wide and psionic energy swirled around her head, forming into her butterfly signature. She tightened both hands into fists and telepathic energy formed around them, shaping into sharp points. Betsy threw her arms over her shoulders, plunging her twin psychic knives into Omega White’s head.

The psionic backlash caused Omega White to collapse, his energy tendrils vanishing from Psylocke. She locked eyes with Wisdom and the mark of the Crimson Dawn branded over her left eye flashed. The shadows came to life, waiting to accept their passengers.

{Let’s go!} she ordered telepathically.

Fantomex, Tessa, Ecstasy, Mimic and Wisdom were the first ones through the portal. Avalanche and Pyro lingered to pound on the Omega Clan some more, but then they retreated to join. The only ones left were Psylocke and Xorn.

{Hurry!}

Xorn seemed to snap out of his trance and retreated. Psylocke stepped into the shadows next, the Omega Clan staring her down. She flashed them a quick smile.

“Sorry to cut this short. Let this be a lesson—ring ahead before popping by for a visit.”

Psylocke jumped into the shadow portal. The Omega Clan tried to pursue them, but the portal closed, leaving them alone in the facility.

ALPHA & OMEGA

Part II

By Desmond Reddick and Dino Pollard

“At least it was close,” Emma Frost said. The white high heels on her feet rested on the table as she filed her fingernails.

“Eighty-seven billion dollars of black budget cash doesn’t pay for fucking ‘close,’ Frost!” Colcord stood from the table and walked to the window.

Emma whistled at the amount.

“That’s a lot of six hundred dollar hammers…”

Colcord ignored her. Insubordination was in her nature. If he didn’t allow her an inch, she would surely double her efforts to take a mile and pull the X-Factor Initiative out from under him.

Colcord ran his tongue over his teeth. They had dried while he watched his Omega Clan fail against the X-Men because his scarred face was set in a rictus grin of expectation. Now that he was facing out the window toward the expansive parking lot, he was twisting what remained of his lips. There was not much left to feel of the flesh that stretched across his face, and much of it had gone number than usual while watching the surveillance video.

The room fell into a dull silence, the only noise being the scraping of Emma’s nail file.

“Bohannon!”

The white haired man in the corner stood and snapped to attention.

“Sir?”

Frank Bohannon had the body and demeanor of a man much younger than he looked. He looked maybe sixty. In reality, he was closer to one hundred. As a mutant with the power to remain at peak human physicality, Bohannon’s age showed only in his hair color: the shock of white atop his head that contrasted powerfully with the black suit. But beneath that suit, his body was mostly cyberntic. At one point, he’d been the perfect human soldier. The cybernetics made him more than perfect.

“The EVAC team will bring the Omega Clan back. We’ll roll them back into the team after some reprogramming. Is X-Factor ready?”

“More than ready, sir.”

“Good,” Colcord said while turning around, “prep them and a strike team immediately. Your mission is a go.”

Bohannon saluted and turned to leave the small office.

“Oh, and Crimson Commando?”

Bohannon made eye contact with Emma Frost, his direct superior and head of operations.

“Make sure that the team knows it’s cleared for wet work. Prisoners are only expected if they surrender to you, and even if, only when it is safe to take them,” Frost said.

Bohannon nodded and left.

“Altering mission parameters on your first mission, Emma?” Colcord asked.

“With Summers dead, the X-Men have become useless to us,” she said, “and now we have a chance to wipe the rest of them off the face of the earth at a time, politically, when the public will approve almost unanimously. So, yes, Malcom, consider the mission parameters altered.”

Looking back out the window to the parking lot, Colcord’s face twisted into another smile. Sometimes you had to give someone an inch in order for them to take the mile you wanted them to take.

The team emerged from the shadow portal, finding themselves in a furnished apartment. Avalanche looked around the room and went to the window, looking outside. “Where the hell are we?”

“Safehouse,” said Wisdom, fishing a pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket. He stuck one between his lips and patted down his body, trying to find his lighter. Wisdom sighed and looked at Pyro. “Allerdyce, you mind?”

“I’ll need it back,” said Pyro, tossing him the Zippo. “Without my flame-throwers, it’s the only thing I’ve got.”

Wisdom lit the cigarette and placed the lighter in his pocket.

“Hey, what’d I just say?”

“You’ll get it back when you need it,” said Wisdom. “Make yourselves at home.”

Mimic took a walk around the apartment, checking all the rooms. He opened the refrigerator and found a case of Newcastle Brown and helped himself to one of the bottles. Popping off the cap with the strength of the Beast, he started sipping the drink.

“How many safehouses do you have, Pete?” he asked.

“Enough, I hope.”

“Anyone else wondering just what the fuck those things were back there?” asked Ecstasy.

“Scans confirmed they all possessed DNA similar to that of Arkady Rossovich,” said Tessa.

“Rossovich is dead,” said Psylocke. “Killed by Scott Summers.”

“What? The boy scout killed Omega Red?” asked Pyro with a chuckle. “How about that. Never thought the bastard had it in him.”

Psylocke shot him a glare and the butterfly effect appeared over her eyes. “Tread carefully, Allerdyce. Just because I’m part of this team doesn’t mean I’ll tolerate your shit.”

As the two enemies-turned-teammates argued, Xorn stumbled a bit, bracing his hand against the wall for support. Ecstasy went up to his side and helped him stand. “Hey, take it easy. You okay?”

“A little…tired,” he said. “Those things back there…it took almost everything I had to prevent their death spores from infecting us.”

Ecstasy looked over her shoulder at their new teammates. Only her, Xorn, and Avalanche were part of the X-Men before this new group Wisdom assembled. Avalanche seemed happy to be working with his old partner, Pyro. Fantomex, Psylocke, Wisdom, and Mimic she’d all known in some form. They were all members of the now-defunct X-Corps organization. But she’d decided that she didn’t like Pyro and Tessa made her uneasy.

“How are you feeling?” asked Xorn.

She shrugged. “Black got me pretty good, but I hit back, too. Your powers helped me but it’s not somethin’ I’m eager to try again.”

Xorn looked back at Wisdom, who was now addressing the group. “It seems we’re doomed to be hunted for the time being. We should have assumed escaping from Sandstorm would just be the beginning.”

“Here’s a question,” said Wisdom. “Who would not only have the resources to clone Omega Red but also know where to find us and be interested in wanting us dead?”

Avalanche scoffed. “Just ‘bout every single one of our enemies. And these days, that’s a pretty long list.”

“I’ll examine the possibilities, see if I can come up with a shortlist,” said Tessa.

“First thing’s first,” said Wisdom. “We’ve gotta go dark. Tessa, love, I’ll need you to do that voodoo you do and get us off the grid.”

“Understood,” said Tessa. “I’ll establish a satellite triangulation, try and create a blackout zone for us to operate in.”

“Oh how I miss the days of being invisible to electronic scanners,” muttered Psylocke.

doot doot

The notification stirred the man awake. He had been trying to nap behind the wheel of his parked ’91 Coupe de Ville. Tan on burgundy wasn’t an amazing color choice for the car, but it was literally all he had to his name when he walked out of the prison gate.

A text message was a rarity for him being that the vast majority of his social circle lived behind a razor-wire topped concrete wall, so he knew exactly what it meant. His phone’s screen said ‘Clarity,’ so he clicked on it with his thumb to open the message.

Lockdown smiled. He had become better at reading latitude and longitude since dealing with his new associate. He had a long way to go, but he knew his hometown’s coordinates pretty well. The car shook to a start, and he pulled it away from the curb.

Detroit was an eight-hour drive away, but if he hustled, he could be there in seven. Lockdown lit a cigarette with the built-in car lighter and pushed an EPMD tape into the tape deck as he gathered speed.

“I’ll see you soon, Stacy,” he said to his own delight.

To be continued…