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Chapter 63: The Stare... It's Menacing
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[NOPE. NOPE. NOPE. HE JUST WALKED OUT THE WINDOW! AURA!]
[HE DOESN'T CARE IF SHE SEES! WAIT! Everyone can see!?]
[The suit looks even cooler in daylight! The tentacles are alive! Like hentai!]
[He's definitely trying to show off, my man!]
The tentacles moved with synchronicity, two anchoring to the building's side, others coiling and releasing to propel him in a powerful leap across the skyline.
He wasn't flying, not like Iron Man; it was a brutal, arachnid-like traversal, leaping toward an invisible target.
He didn't care about witnesses. Secrecy was a luxury he could no longer afford.
No, it's better to say that secrecy doesn't serve him well. It doesn't serve [Information] well.
His destination was a patch of empty sky. As he reached the apex of his arc, the air shimmered.
The Blackbird, its advanced chameleon camouflage disengaging for a split second, became visible. A hatch opened below it.
A familiar telekinetic force, gentle but firm, wrapped around him and the several sealed metal crates his tentacles carried, drawing them smoothly inside.
[Jean's TK airlift! So cool!]
[He's going to war.]
[Ohhh, I'm on the edge of my seat! Show us some blood and violence!]
Inside the Blackbird's cramped hold, the atmosphere was grim.
The core team was there: Wolverine, a silent volcano of rage with his claws half-unsheathed; Beast, piloting with grim focus; Nightcrawler, praying quietly; Colossus, and so on.
They couldn't help but be surprised at the sinister, technological appendages now retracting and folding against his back.
From what Jean said before, it seems that they're still unsure about where William Stryker had taken them, but they have some leads, so he asked, "Beast, Forge's data."
A hologram projected from the console. Forge had isolated energy spikes and suspicious military vehicle movements converging on the northern part of the state.
Adam didn't wait. One of his tentacles snaked out, its tip interfacing directly with a data port on the Blackbird's console.
Another tentacle opened one of his crates. A couple of palm-sized disc drones shot out, hovering in the bay. His Mechanical Force engulfed them, and his Technopathy ignited.
Multiple holographic screens erupted in the air before him, each one a live feed cycling through surveillance systems at blinding speed; traffic cams, private security feeds, satellite phone triangulation, even the internal diagnostics of passing commercial airliners.
The X-Men watched, stunned, as he painted a digital portrait of the state in real-time.
"How is he… those aren't public feeds," Beast muttered, his scientific curiosity momentarily overriding his worry.
What they realized, especially Beast, is that Adam somehow has access to a decent chunk of the state's surveillance systems.
[HE'S TAKEN OVER NEW YORK'S DIGITAL NERVOUS SYSTEM!]
[Project: Panopticon is live! Big Brother Adam is watching!]
[That's so smart, or maybe just common sense, but few characters follow common sense nowadays.]
Alice's voice, filtered through his suit's comms, spoke in his ear, correlating data.
"Pattern match detected. Converging military convoy signatures, encrypted comms consistent with Blackwater-level paramilitaries."
"Terminal location: The Alkali Lake Dam. Facility schematics from 1975 onward have suspicious redactions."
Adam's eyes snapped open. "Alkali Lake Dam. Northwest. 10 minutes at your current speed, Beast."
He wasn't surprised. The audience and his knowledge of the plot had prepared him. But he couldn't rely on the plot.
This was reality. A universe where Stryker had succeeded in capturing Xavier. Where the details could be different, crueler, the defenses deadlier.
Even without accounting for the butterfly effect, Adam would still not rely on the plot, for he wasn't even sure what Marvel universe he was in.
Everything could be different.
He turned to Jean, who had been watching him work with a mixture of hope and anxiety.
He put his hands on her shoulders, his touch pressing. "Jean. Listen. Go back to the school. Now. Your job isn't here. It's there. Protect the kids."
"Seal the grounds. If anyone approaches, no matter how friendly, how familiar, how pathetic they seem… You send them away."
His grip tightened slightly, his gaze boring into hers. "If they argue. If they take one step past the gate…"
He leaned close, his voice a deadly whisper only she could hear, "…kill them. Please."
The word "please" hung in the air, a chilling, rare word in Adam's dictionary.
Jean's eyes widened. She wanted to protest, to say her power was needed for the rescue.
But she saw the absolute certainty in his heterochromatic eyes. He wasn't asking her to be a soldier; he was asking her to be a guardian.
The most important role. She swallowed hard and nodded. "I understand." Whatever she must do, she shall. She couldn't afford to disappoint him.
Jean disembarked after the blackbird stopped, giving Adam one last, long look before turning and sprinting toward the school, a psychic aura already flaring around her.
[He sent Jean back! That's… actually really smart and responsible.]
["Kill them. Please." That's the most terrifying polite request ever.]
[Dude, that's so smart. If I were Mephisto, I would definitely target the school.]
[Imagine Mephisto actually shows up. Any world where he isn't just deleted by the fucking Phoenix Force?]
[No chance, right? But he's too cunning to show up.]
Some of the others shifted uneasily at the extreme instruction, but no one voiced dissent. The stakes were too high.
Wolverine hadn't moved. He sat in the corner, head bowed, his fists clenched so tight the adamantium bones creaked. A low, continuous growl rumbled in his chest.
Adam knew why. His past. William Stryker must've reminded him of the torture, his rebirth as Weapon X.
The name alone must've awakened many memories, and not good memories.
Adam turned to his remaining crates. The tentacles sprang to life, unlatching them with meticulous clicks.
Inside were not more drones, but weapons. Custom-built, vicious-looking things.
A heavy, boxy cannon. Pods of micro-missiles. Grenades. And components; lots of components.
Adam Cypher began to assemble his tools.
He was preparing for war.
The Blackbird's hatch hissed open, revealing the imposing concrete face of the Alkali Lake Dam under a slate-grey sky.
The X-Men disembarked, a tense unit ready for infiltration.
Adam descended last, not jumping, but being lowered smoothly on two of his mechanical tentacles, which planted themselves on the rocky ground like arachnid legs.
He stood there, arms crossed, suspended above the ground, a frown etched on his face as he listened to Beast's rapid-fire briefing.
"...Primary objective is extraction of the Professor, Scott, and Ororo, but Stryker's history suggests he's after more than prisoners."
"He's obsessed with 'curing' the mutant gene. I fear he intends to use the Professor's telepathy in some..."
"You think he has access to something similar to Cerebro?" Adam asked, genuinely curious how William could have access to such technology.
"It's... It's possible," Beast was hesitant, seemingly unsure, "But they likely won't care for side effects and drawbacks, so it should be easier for them."
"I see, then we don't have much tim..."
His words trailed off. His cybernetic eye, enhanced by his Mechanical Force, was processing the environment at a near abstract level.
He saw the heat signatures, the residual energy, the faint psychic static in the air.
He saw the micro-distortion in the light three feet to his left.
His reaction time and prediction were inhuman to what was about to come.
Two of his free mechanical arms snapped forward with whiplash speed. Their tripod ends captured their prey.
With a deafening SCREECH of metal on metal, they clamped shut, arresting the forward momentum of two gleaming, razor-sharp adamantium blades inches from Adam's face and inches from Beast's furrowed brow.
[WHAT THE HELL JUST APPEARED?!]
[The fucking action in this show is insane!!]
[Those blades, that Aura, the Whispers… That's DEADPOOL!]
The source of the blades manifested from the shimmering air. A man. Or what was left of one.
His skin was a roadmap of scar tissue and keloid flesh, puckered and angry.
Thick, black marks encircled his eyes like a macabre mask. Most horrifying was his mouth, crudely sewn shut with thick, black thread.
He was powerfully built, muscles coiled under scarred skin, but his form spoke of brutal surgical enhancement, not natural growth.
He was a weapon, stripped of voice and sanity.
Deadpool. The name surfaced in Adam's mind. But not the merc with a Mouth that spews more bullshit than Adam.
This was a muted, miserable abomination. Weapon X's most successful and most damned experiment.
The man; Weapon XI; had simply appeared. No BAMF of teleportation, just a silent, deadly materialization.
Nightcrawler, a teleporter himself, hadn't sensed a thing. Beast was frozen, a single bead of sweat tracing a path down his temple towards the adamantium point.
It had all happened in less than a second.
[He's holding back adamantium blades with polymer-steel tentacles! How?]
[The Mechanical Force, I think.]
[This is a mute Deadpool! Wait!]
[Wait! Deadpool is a fellow fourth wall penetrator!!]
[Wait! Two penetrators have met! Tf is gonna happen?]
[Definitely gay shit.] [...]
[I'm so looking forward to it! The fight, not gay shit.]
[Hey, I feel some judging up there!]
[Really? No judging here, trust me. I'm not gay, but I've done gay shit, that horse dick tasted like trash.]
[??????????????????????] [???] [Tf?] [Lmao!] [I know, right?]
[Agreed, that shit tasted rancid, aghhgh.]
Weapon XI's sewn-shut face showed no emotion, but his body moved. He tried to retract the blades, to twist free.
The X-Men erupted into motion behind Adam; Wolverine snarled, his claws springing free with a snikt; Colossus' skin turned to organic steel; Iceman's temperature plummeted.
But the confrontation between Adam and the abomination was already entering its next phase.
Adam turned his head, his heterochromatic eyes locking with the dead, black-pit eyes of Weapon XI.
It was a cold, clinical assessment. Adam looked down from his suspended height, a judge regarding a flawed tool.
The stare was menacing.
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