The Avalon Project:
Chapter 1: Rubicon
Part III
by Chris Campbell
February 2, 1995. 3:30 p.m. I-65, near Dayton, Indiana
"Eviscerated, huh? Never been pushed quite that far before."
"We thought you were dead, but you came back. You always came back."
Creed looked at her. "Get that hero worship out of your eyes, girl.
You're just gonna disappoint yourself."
"Hmph. What do you care?" she mumbled.
"I don't; it's just insipid and annoying." She shot him an angry look.
That wasn't reactive; he meant every word. She looked out the window and
wondered where the Creed she knew was. Was he even alive? Did Bishop's
coming somehow erase his timeline? She thought for a moment. Why was she
doing this?
Whatever Creed was, he was someone different now. Why should she change
him? Was he even worth it?
'Nice job Creed. Someone treats you decently and you run them into the
ground. Ah well; serves her right. I'm not responsible for her
expectations. If she'd just leave me alone instead of trying to make me
into some kind of hero, things would be fine. I'm not a hero; never have
been, never will be. The sooner she learns that, the better things will be
for everyone.' He saw an off-ramp for Dayton, and figured it'd be the
perfect place to dump the car. Indiannapolis had been hairy, and he didn't
want to go through that again in Chicago.
Two hours later, they arrived in Chicago. Creed stopped the car and
said, "Alright, look. I'm gonna be laying low for awhile 'til some of the
heat on my ass dies down. Afterward, I'm heading for Mexico. If you wanna
come, be my guest. But quit with the alternate reality bullshit. If you
start that again, you'll be a memory."
She shot him a look that would freeze magma. "Fine."
They headed upstairs to his second floor apartment. The roof was being
repaired, and the smell of tar and pitch was overwhelming. the place didn't
look like much, but she'd slept in worse. He opened the door and headed in,
with her right behind. As she passed the threshold, something hard slammed
into the back of her neck and she crumpled to the ground.
Creed turned around at the noise, and found himself facing a man whose
arms ended in miniguns. "What the hell?"
A thin man with purple hair spoke from the other side of the room.
"Greetings, Mr. Creed. We've been waiting for you to show up."
Creed cursed silently. The smell of the tar had masked their scents,
and he'd been too unfocused to catch any sounds. "What the fuck do you want?"
"Oh, not much. Just your mind, body, and soul."
He'd had better offers. There was no way he could escape, not with
Puff the Magic Dragon staring him in the face. He was royally fucked. It
didn't matter. He really didn't care anymore.
February 2, 1995. 10:02 P.M. Colorado Rockies.
Malcolm heard footsteps behind him and glanced at his watch. 59
minutes. Essex was always punctual. He wondered at their odd relationship
over the years, one born of mutual respect and more than a bit of fear. To
call them friends was a bit of a stretch, but they had many common goals and
had worked together in times past.
"My work has been interrupted recently. Whoever this interloper is, he
is quite skilled. Which files of mine were copied?"
Encarres gestured toward the screen in front of him. On it was a file
listing, all in code. Essex approached and entered the command words to
decode the information. He cursed, and Encarres leaned forward with
interest. "Full genetic maps; impressive. This could get you a Nobel."
"Possibly. I'm not sure how much I want to let them have, however."
"Of course." He glanced through the other files. "Stark
International? They're not your usual crew."
"It's a curiosity, really. Teleportation, especially on this scale,
isn't really taken seriously as a possibility." He sighed. "Cheney does
it, and Wagner does it, and a dozen others do it. And yet, no one really
capitalizes on it. It's all too fantastic for them, I guess."
Malcolm smiled. "You think to elevate their awareness of such things,
making their final fate less traumatic?"
"Stranger things have happened."
"True." He popped the drive and gave the disk to Essex, then inserted
one of his own. "These are the other sites that have been accessed."
Essex peered intently at the screen, stroking his chin, and frowned.
"This is disturbing. I find it surprising that anyone could leave so many
areas so compromised."
"Indeed. Pay close attention to the files viewed in the Baxter
database." Essex did, and the light of understanding lit his face.
Encarres continued. "Now, with systems this compromised I see few options.
Even if the infestation is minimal, this kind of technology would allow them
to strike at their leisure and there is little we could do about it."
Essex nodded, then smiled ruefully. "En Sabah Nur would enjoy this
immensely, what with all of his posturings about survival of the fittest.
It's a pity he never really understood the principles he thought himself
fighting for." His smile disappeared. "Now I suppose he'll get his wish,
even if it's post-humously."
"Not necessarily. I have an idea. It will cause a lot of damage, but
I think it's our only choice." Malcolm outlined his plan, and when he was
finished Essex nodded resignedly.
"A drastic measure. However, I can see no other options."
"I had hoped you would." He sighed. "I'll get started with the
preparations in the morning."
"As will I. I hope we will speak again, old friend."
"Yes. Good night."
February 3, 1995. 9:42 a.m. Denver, Colorado.
Creed opened his eyes and wished he hadn't; The sudden sense of
vertigo he got was nauseating. He was in an alley somewhere, he didn't know
where. It wasn't Chicago. He closed his eyes, hard, then opened them
again. His senses were all muzzy, and thinking was hard. He groaned, then
grabbed the wall next to him and hauled himself to his feet. His head swam
for a few seconds, then cleared up some. 'What the hell happened to me?'
He staggered down the alley, heading for the main street at its mouth.
It appeared to be early morning, though he had no idea how much time had
passed since ht ran into the yahoos from hell. He reached the street, tried
to turn the corner and nearly ran into someone. The guy started to protest,
but Creed just snarled and the guy backed off. He felt so disjointed...not
weak, really, just out of sorts. like looking through a camera with a
smeared lens.
He saw a newspaper vender half a block ahead, and stopped to look at
the newspapers. The Rocky Mountain Times and the Denver Post. Colorado.
How'd he get here? He checked the date, having to force his mind to focus,
and saw that only a night had passed since his abduction. How did he get to
Colorado overnight, and why would they grab him and dump him, just like
that? He also wondered a bit about the kid. Where was she, and was she in
a similar position? 'Who gives a damn. Let's just move.'
The street was crowded with mid-morning traffic, and Creed looked
around to see what his options might be. He started off again, staggering
now and then, and wandered about for a bit. Two hours later, he stopped.
Confused as his senses were, one scent kept coming back to him. He turned a
corner, and the scent followed. Someone was tailing him, and he wasn't in
the mood.
He continued on, and finally half-walked and half-fell into another
alleyway. He held himself flat against the wall, until the scent came
closer. He lashed out, quicker than any human had a right to, and grabbed
the scent's owner. The man had a look of surprise on his face as Creed
slammed him agianst the wall, and Victor snarled, "I don't like being tailed
on the best of days, and this is not one of 'em. Tell me a story, man, give
me a reason not to tear you apart."
The man smiled, giving Creed a look of calm superiority. "Alright.
You have within you a Brood embryo. When it completes its transformation of
you, it will gain all of your abilities and you will become a Brood warrior.
You will then assist us in the task of transforming this world into a
replica of the Brood homeworld. In the meantime, you will be confused and
disoriented, and you will find that there's nothing you can do about it."
He smiled an ingratiating smile.
Creed just stared. Then he laughed. "Who the hell are you? Why is it
that the last few people I've run into are even crazier than I am?"
"My name is Morden. And I'm afraid you give us too much credit."
Creed felt two pinpricks in his back, then his body caught fire as the shock
of the taser tore through him. Then he remembered the intervening hours of
the night before.
Morden took a cellular phone out of his jacket, then dialed and said
"Three passengers, ready for transit." The three dissolved, melding with
cyberspace as they travelled to the Brood's base of operations in Denver,
Colorado.
February 3, 1995. 8:47 a.m. San Diego
Mike tore up highway 163 on his way to Cybernet, rejoicing in the warm
San Diego sunshine. Two things he loved about Southern California: parking
lots and sun. Thoseeast coast folk hadn't figured these things out yet, and
he pitied them. He goosed the throttle on his bike and took the Kearney
Mese turnoff, heading for the offices. As he pulled into the Cybernet lot,
he saw Holly heading toward the building. He tackled her in a bear hug, a
maneuver not unexpected from him, and got a vicious elbow in the ribs in return.
"OW! Hey, what's up?"
"Can it, Mike. I'm not in the mood."
"Well yeah, I can see that." "He rubbed his bruised ribs. "Mind
telling me why?"
"Yes." She stalked into the building.
Mike watched her go, then said to himself "Fine, lady. Whatever you
say." Something had her pissed, and it wasn't a flying tackle. Ah well.
She'd spill it when she was ready. He headed down to the Hot Zone and
rustled up Dave, who he dragged into a Street Fighter II Turbo match.
Holly stabbed the elevator button, heading up to the penthouse offices.
She'd have to apologize to Mike later. He didn't deserve to be yelled at,
especially since he was just being Mike. It was hard to be nice when you
were involved in decisions that could affect the course of life on earth,
though.
'Tiger Uppercut! Sagat wins!'
"Yes! Sagat beats the upstart punk Ryu, once again! Let's see, that's
5-3 now, isn't it?" Mike smirked.
"Give it up, cowboy. It was luck."
"So sayeth the loser."
"Yeah, yeah. What's the run about today?"
"I dunno, some diagnostic crap again. It's getting boring, to tell the
truth. Set us in Hong Kong this time."
"Nah, Brazil. They should have been here awhile ago."
"Bastich. Who?"
"You know, our employers?"
Mike frowned. "Good point. Yo Ben!"
Ben looked up from another console. He'd come in a few minutes ago, and
was reading the news on the net. "What?"
"What's taking everyone so long?"
"Eh, looks like Encarres will be running the show today. I dont' know
much about it; he's just got his own setup for today."
Mike and Dave looked at each other, and shrugged. "Whatever."
A voice from behind them said "A fifty thousand dollar interface, and
you use it to play arcade games. Unbelieveable."
Mike turned to see Mr. Encarres behind him. He smiled. "Cray. There
is no substitute." Malcolm sighed, bemused. "So chief, what's up?"
"I want you to try something a little different today. Holly's going
to access a remote terminal and transfer a number of files here. I want you
to intercept them and move them to another location."
"Sounds simple enough. Where we accessing, anyway?"
"The primary database of the Mossad."
Dave and Mike looked at each other. "Wow."
"No shit," Dave replied.
Holly tore through the Mossad database's defenses, and was impressed at
the IC she ran into. This was even stiffer than DoD's shields, and those
were tough. The Israelis didn't play around. they were nothing to her,
though. They were designed for defense against remote terminal access, not
someone who amounted to a ghost in the machine. She began to grab 50 years'
worth of data on her quarry, the keystone to Encarres' plan. She sifted
each piece, then sent it hurtling back to Harlequin to file away in his 250
terabyte local drive.
Mike sat in cyberspace, his avatar a white-haired man in black wearing
Raybans and black leather gloves. The room around him was a great hall with
filing systems taking up one wall. Thousands of bytes circulated around
him, normal operating systems and incoming and outgoing files. All he had
to do was sift through the incoming files and find any labelled Lensherr and
stick them into a directory of the same name. He set up a warning
subroutine which would label and derail files with the appropriate header,
moving them from the Harlequin mainframe to another one down the line. One
little bypass portal and he was done. This was too easy. He hoped Seth
would make things harder in the future.
February 3, 1995. 11:04 a.m. Brood Base of Operations, Denver Colorado
The haze surrounding Creed's mind was pierced by a high-pitched scream.
He opened his eyes, shook his head, and looked around. He was in a cell,
with a high-powered force screen on one side. Copycats. Through the screen
he saw another cell, and on the floor was Blink. Apparently, she'd tried to
teleport out. Big mistake. Creed cleared his throat and spoke.
"So, kid, did you get one too?" he rasped.
"No." Her voice was small, and wracked with pain. "They aren't going
to infect me unless I can be useful to them. They say I'm dead, and have
spent their time trying to pry information out of me."
"Huh. Bummer." His senses were still hazy, but he was lucid enough to
know one thing: no cage would hold Victor Creed ever again. If the
X-whiners couldn't do it, no one on the planet could. A cold, cruel rage
filled him, driving away some of the haze and spurring him to action. He
hurled himself against the force screen, determined to make his way through
it. The shock of impact sent him sprawling, and he landed near the back of
the cell. He passed out for a minute, then came to and dragged himself to
his feet. Again he hurled himself against the field, and again he went
sprawling. Again he rose, his movements jerky from the shocks, and threw
himself against the field. After half a dozen tries, his nerves had
attenuated to the point where he didn't even feel it. If not for his
healing ability, he would have been dead by now 50 times over.
He felt the worm inside of him, trying to make him sit still so it
could complete its metamorphosis. His body was repulsing it, and it would
take time to complete the invasion. But he ignored it, mastered it, and
flung himself at the field yet again. No more cages. No more bonds. He
wanted freedom from the insanity of it all, from the sanctimonious bastards
who claimed moral superiority and didn't know what they were talking about,
from the megalomaniacs who wanted to take over the world, from people like
his rat-fucked son who thought they'd make the world better for everyone by
being hypocrites and general fuck-ups. He wanted to go back to the Canadian
wilderness, where he could get away with gutting someone if they pissed him
off and there weren't enough people around to give a damn. Stop the world,
folks, because Victor Creed is getting off.
He slammed into the field a dozen times more, and a dozen beyond that,
until finally his body couldn't take any more and he just collapsed,
panting, whining like a trapped animal who's been stepped on one too many
times. He could see Clarice's face across the cell, eyes wide and full of
pity. He was gonna tear her head off for that look.
He heard footsteps down the hall, and Morden came in. "Mr. Creed, this
is mildly upsetting. You'll injure the embryo if you keep this up." That
ingratiating smile made Creed want to kill him by inches.
"You can't stop me, you little fuck," he rasped. He hauled himself up
once again, lunging at Morden. The field caught him, and he saw a flash
from Blink's cell as she tried to teleport again. Both fields went out, the
building's power supply shorted out from both fields being so active at once.
Morden looked at the two near unconscious prisoners, and mused "Hmmm.
We'll have to do something about that."
Clarice, more awake than she seemed, said "Yeah, you'll have to." She
and Creed disappeared, leaving Morden with a bit of explaining to do. For
his part, he just frowned and shook his head irritably.
February 3, 1:42 p.m. Cybernet Industries, San Diego
Mike was bored. The runs lately had been dull and humdrum, and he had
nothing else to do for the time being. Maybe he'd try college again
someday... At any rate, now he was restless, and he decided to see just what
his netrunning abilities could really do. He couldn't run the system
himself, naturally. That wasn't too much of a problem, though, since he
could talk Ben into looking the other way and Dave would run interference
for him. He'd make something of the afternoon if it killed him.
The information highway looked like just that. He saw nodes and
datalines everywhere, just like a normal road, with information streams
running to and fro in an incredible multicolored swirl of lights. He surfed
around a bit and was checking out the pentagon when an idea hit him: why not
poke around at home? He was curious about just where Holly planned to go
with his cybernetic interfaces, and he wanted to check out Harlequin anyway.
The home system was a slick set-up; he wasn't surprised, though he was
impressed. Holly really knew her stuff. He poked around the Cybernet
structure, and was delighted to find that for all of Harlequin's
sophistication it still lagged tremendously compared to a direct user
interface. He got in with minimal difficulty and began to glance over the
goodies. Why *was* all that info from Mossad important, anyway? Who was
this Lensherr character? He dug in to find out.
"Let's see here..." The Man In Black opened the file on Lensherr and
thumbed through its contents. "Born a while back...death camps...Nazi
hunter, cool...wait-a-minute...Magneto?!? Eric Magnus Lensherr is Magneto?
What the hell?" He dug around some more and found all of the pertinent info
on Magnus; his attempts to take over the world, his involvement in mutant
affairs, his feud with Charles Xavier, anything and everything. The Mossad
files were just the capper. Every element of Magnus' life was here.
Pictures, video footage, the whole bit. Why was this here? What was
Cybernet's interest in Magneto, especially since he's dead?
He wondered where Holly was. Quickest way to find out, he figured, was
to hack into the security system and ask. It wouldn't do any harm,
especially since he wasn't a real intruder. Harlequin disagreed. A
jester's face appeared next to him, looking hilarious and serious at the
same time. "Snooping's a no-no, Michael. You don't need to know any of this."
"Feh. Go away, funny man." He'd snoop if he wanted to. He wove his
way into the security system, and punched into the video surveillance.
'Hey, it's got audio too. Kewl.' He found Holly in the conference room
with Sarah and Mr. Encarres. 'Let's see what's going on.'
Holly said "I've started archiving essential files in hardened sites;
some medical, financial, and law enforcement info. I'm still not sure about
this, though. We're going to cause a lot of damage doing this, and I'm not
sure it's worth it."
"Worth it or not, it's the only option we have. If we don't use Magnus
to destroy our enemies, they'll take us down. Our only hope is to destroy
them, restore what we can and regain control. It's messy and unfortunate,
but it's the only option we have."
'Holy shit! They wanna use Magneto as a weapon! It makes sense, too.
With his abilities, they could control the net, maybe even the world. He'd
have the perfect chance to stake a claim anywhere on the planet. I can't
believe Holly's going along with this. I've gotta warn someone.'
"I'm sorry, Michael, but I'm afraid I can't let you do that."
"Beat it, laughing boy. I've got things to do." He tore off down the
highway, and Harlequin did the only thing he could. He alerted Holly.
"Damn. Mike's always been impulsive."
"Can he get through our locks to warn someone of our plans?"
"Probably. If we could explain to him..."
"There's no time. You won't catch him before he gets to someone else."
Malcolm thumbed an intercom. "Anderson!"
"Yes sir?"
"It's imperative that Michael be removed from cyberspace immediately,
both for his own safety and that of a great many other people. I don't care
what you have to do, just get him out of there!"
Ben paused, then said "Alright, I'll drag him out."
Holly looked at him. "Malcolm, that could hurt him. Badly."
"Do you see another option?"
She dropped her eyes. "No." Damn, Mikey, why do you have to be so
damn impulsive? She faded into cyberspace, following him and hoping with
all her heart that she would be able to keep him from harm.
Feedback is always welcome! Please send e-mail to sankarah@ix.netcom.com
Last updated 4/10/96.
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