By his advance calculations, the motley assortment of costumed crusaders must have converged by now for their most dire consultations, most likely at the Avenger’s ostentatious townhouse in Manhattan. Unless the Hulk had grown significantly dimmer since their last encounter, always a possibility where Banner’s endlessly mutable metamorphoses were concerned, he had to assume that his brutish nemesis had already detected the Leader’s hand at work in the oh-so-distressing disappearances of the Scarlet Witch and Rogue, and shared that inevitable insight with both the X-Men and the Avengers. It was considerably less likely that the puzzled heroes had yet realized that Wolverine had been abducted as well, given that the feral X-Man had been snatched in the middle of his beloved wilderness, far from public view. That missing piece of data would cost all concerned dearly, particularly as his master plan continued to play out.
The Leader had no fear of immediate discovery. Correctly attributing their present difficulties to the Leader was one thing; finding him would pose a more challenging puzzle. To his certain knowledge, the only semi-sentient souls who knew of the location and existence of his current domicile were his militaristic partner and his loyal lieutenants. And even should the united acumen of “Earth’s mightiest heroes ” bring them close to uncovering my new address, the Leader recalled with smug satisfaction, my partner will be waiting to strike at their ranks from within.
A chime sounded from his control panel, reminding him that it was time to check on his involuntary guests. How time flies, he reflected, when you’re plotting the downfall of all you despise. He pressed a lighted pad on the arm of his throne, and the entire seat rotated 180 degrees, bringing him around to face another set of controls, as well as a transparent pane of reinforced glass.
Through this picture window—in reality, the obliging side of a one-way mirror—he spied his unwilling test subjects: Wolverine, Rogue, and the Scarlet Witch. Shorn of the garish costumes they usually affected, the three captives wore matching orange jumpsuits, which looked rather more flattering on Rogue and the Witch than it did on their hirsute throwback of a companion. Each mutant specimen was confined to his or her own high-tech sarcophagus, lidless to permit easy inspection by the Leader from the adjacent control chamber. Wires and electrodes were connected to key junctures on their body, while I.V. lines provided them sufficient water and nutrition, along with medication as needed. The Leader was proud of the design of the containment sarcophagi, which had completely eliminated the risk of transporting the specimens from cells to lab and back again. Automated equipment provided him with the means to perform any experiment without ever leaving his chair, let alone having to deal with the predictably irate subjects in the flesh. He had heard enough defiant superhero rhetoric over the course of his career, and felt no need to subject himself to any more.
Per his meticulous estimations, his mutant guinea pigs had been allowed sufficient time to recuperate from the last round of admittedly demanding tests. Before commencing a new slate of experiments, the Leader decided to take a few moments to review the results of his findings to date.
It is always important to keep one’s ultimate goals in view, he philosophized, lest one lose sight of the vision amidst the vivisections.
For many years now, his paramount objective—his utopian dream—had been to create a new race of gamma-mutated beings to populate a world of his own design, with himself reigning like a god over a more evolved species of human being. In the past, this had led to such ambitious endeavors as infecting New York City with a contagious gamma gene, detonating a stolen gamma bomb in a major population center, and even attempting to gamma-irradiate the primordial soup from which all terrestrial life would eventually evolve. As laudable as such enterprises had been, they had all suffered from the inherent randomness of genetic mutation. For all his unquestioned sagacity and expertise, he had thus far remained unable to predict whether any given specimen, exposed to sufficient quantities of gamma rays, would evolve into a being of superior intelligence and sensibilities—or a Hulk. The best he could do was irradiate a multitude of individuals and hope for one or two specimens whose mutant traits proved worth preserving. A rather time-consuming and inefficient procedure, to say the least.
These new test subjects, gathered by his partner’s highly versatile lieutenants, potentially held the key to a better, more elegant way of achieving his aims. If his current experimental campaign bore fruit, he would soon acquire a power he had long desired: to induce specific genetic mutations at will. These captive mutants—in particular, the two female specimens—possessed a singularly tantalizing combination of innate talents, talents he hoped to combine and duplicate to great effect. Imagine! No more animalistic hulks, abominations, and harpies; instead he would engender a new breed of proud, green supermen and superwomen created in his own omnipotent image.
Consider: the ill-bred, backwater swamp trash known only as Rogue. Her unique mutant ability consisted of the power to absorb and assimilate the equally unique attributes of other mutants and mutated beings. In essence, she could somehow isolate the genetic template of any super-being and transfer the essential elements of that template to another specimen, namely herself. It required only the slightest of conceptual leaps to imagine refining this process in order to imprint a chosen mutant trait onto as many subjects as desired. True, at present, the “Rogue effect” tended to be temporary, except in rare instances, and had unfortunate negative effects on the original mutant donor. It also appeared that the process resulted in serious psychological trauma to the recipient of the trait selected. Still, the Leader was convinced that he could eliminate such unwanted limitations and side effects in time.
Who knows? he thought. It was even possible that the data his Gamma Sentinels were now extracting from the Genetic Research Centre might hold the secret to bringing Rogue’s “wild talent” under more precise and scientific control. A man could dream, couldn’t he?
Consider also: Wanda Maximoff, popularly known as the Scarlet Witch. On a fundamental level, genetic mutation was a matter of probabilities, the random rearrangement of agitated chromosomes into new and potentially superior configurations, and probabilities were what the Scarlet Witch’s notoriously ill-defined powers were said to control. Contrary to Einstein’s famous aphorism, ultimately invalidated by the findings of modem quantum physics, God did indeed play dice with the universe, but the Scarlet Witch possessed a knack for weighting the dice. Her power alone, tamed and made to produce specific and reproducible results, could finally allow him to induce precisely the mutant characteristics he sought to instill in his followers, without relying on the fickle dispensations of chance.
A thrilling prospect, even if one as yet still beyond his reach. The Leader frowned, contemplatively stroking his bushy black mustache, the only trace of body hair remaining on his immaculate body. So far, if he was to be brutally honest with himself (and to whom else could he so candidly confide?), his tests upon the Scarlet Witch and her trademark “hexes” had produced conspicuously mixed results.
Hexes. The very word provoked a contemptuous scowl from the Leader. How could one expect to identify the scientific basis of the subject’s enigmatic abilities when the entire world had conspired to swaddle the Scarlet Witch’s genetic gifts within veils of superstitious hogwash? That there were mystical forces at work in the universe he could not deny, not in a space-time continuum that included such entities as Dr. Strange and the Asgardian gods, but there was mutation, and there was magic, and, in his experience, the one very seldom had much to do with the other. He had no doubt that there was an underlying scientific theory behind Wanda Maximoff’s demonstrated capacity to manipulate the laws of probability, even if the subject herself seemed to take all this fuzzy-minded “witchcraft” business a little too seriously. But what could you expect from an ignorant gypsy raised in the backwards recesses of the Balkans?
With a tap of his finger, he called up a statistical breakdown of his experiments with the Scarlet Witch to date. The
data was projected between him and the observation window by his own specially-designed holographic emitters. He shook his capacious head as he reviewed the statistics, which were just as he remembered: The Witch could affect probabilities, of that there was no doubt, but the effectiveness and reliability of her hexes varied significantly depending on her emotional and physical state. Even more discouraging, the results were even more erratic when her hex powers were transferred to Rogue via direct physical contact. Rogue was able to mimic Maximoff’s tricks, but with less control and precision. It was as though some crucial component of the Scarlet Witch’s powers remained ephemeral and impossible to quantify.
Magic? He resisted the notion with every fiber of his logic-loving being, but he was starting to wonder.
Still, such minor impediments and irritants were a small price to pay to acquire the god-like puissance he sought. Only by combining the harnessed powers of Rogue and the Scarlet Witch could he: a) produce the mutations he deemed worthwhile, and b) transfer those mutations from one subject to another.
That consummate facility would more than justify his time and trouble. Why, the creative potential was practically unlimited, nor need he limit himself to the nearinfinite possibilities of the human genome. Soon, very soon, he aspired to mix and match the genetic characteristics of both human and alien donors. His gaze lingered on the Southern-born woman in the central sarcophagus, the one with a striking white streak running through the center of her copious brunette locks. How would Rogue’s mutant physiology react to the absorption of extraterrestrial traits and abilities? He looked forward to conducting that very experiment in the near future, perhaps when the Leader’s partner returned from his undercover assignment. That, he thought, quoting the estimable Bard, is a consummation devoutly to he wished.
But what of his third lab rat, the atavistic man-animal who went by the highly appropriate name of Wolverine? In truth, the pugnacious X-Man was less essential to the Leader’s grand design than his female associates. His mutant healing factor, however, had intrigued the Leader for a number of reasons, chief among them its provocative similarity to the Hulk’s own dismayingly remarkable regenerative powers. Too many times the Leader had personally witnessed the accursed jade goliath’s near-instantaneous recovery from what should have been mortal injuries; it was his devout hope that, by subjecting Wolverine’s healing factor to intensive scientific analysis, he might find some chink in the Hulk’s all-encompassing immunity to physical harm. Moreover, even if this much longed for hope proved in vain, he might at least come away with some useful techniques he could employ to speed the recovery of future test subjects.
Hidden behind the reflective anonymity of the one-way mirror, the Leader watched his captives stir fitfully in their gleaming sarcophagi, as stimulants introduced to their I.V. lines roused them from exhausted repose. The trouble, he reflected, with conducting trial and error experimentation on fragile living beings was that they so seldom survived the experience.
“Gambit?”
Rogue awoke from Cajun-spiced dreams to find herself confined in the same cold steel casket she had been trapped in before. Shoot! she cursed inwardly. Here 1 was hopin’ this was all just a bad dream. No such luck, I guess.
Groggily, she blinked the sleep from her eyes. Unfortunately, that didn’t improve the view much; she was still staring at her reflection in the long horizontal mirror facing her, crammed like an Egyptian mummy into an upright coffin full of candy-colored wires and little blinky lights and other snazzy sci-fi gizmos, along with (how could she forget?) a hypodermic needle injected into her arm. Metal clamps, sturdy enough to resist her super-strength, held her flat within the casket, which was propped up at a forty-five degree angle to the floor. A clamp around her neck kept her from turning her head, but by moving her eyes from left to right she could spot the reflections of her two fellow prisoners, each stuck in an identical coffin on opposite sides of Rogue. She heard Wolverine breathing hoarsely a few feet to her left; to the right, the Scarlet Witch was silent, maybe even too silent.
Good thing Storm’s not here with us, Rogue thought. With her claustrophobia, this would probably be Ororo’s worst nightmare. Not that the rest of us are having a grand old time, that is.
She inspected herself in the mirror, not liking what she saw there. Dark, puffy circles ringed her tired brown eyes, giving her an uncomfortable resemblance to a raccoon. Greasy bangs, white in the middle and russet brown on the sides, dangled before her forehead. Her complexion, usually a picture of ruddy health, looked uncharacteristically pale and wan.
I look awful, she realized. Not too surprising, considering; getting poked and prodded like a New Orleans voodoo doll, while cooped up tighter than a heifer in a henhouse, wasn’t exactly conducive to a gal’s beauty sleep.
From the looks of them, her partners in captivity weren’t doing any better. Wolverine growled in his sleep, his face twitching angrily, his jagged teeth grinding noisily together, almost drowning out the constant low thrumming of the machinery surrounding the prisoners on all sides. Silver claws snikt’d in and out of his clenched fists every few seconds, flashing strobe-like beneath the harsh overhead lights.
Rogue was getting worried about Logan. Wherever his head was now, it wasn’t a good place to be. His personality had been regressing ever since they first woke up in this antiseptic hellhole, like he was losing his civilized inhibitions and reverting to the wild animal inside him. She knew why that was, of course; when their faceless tormentor forced her to absorb Wolvie’s memories and powers, she’d gotten a real taste of what he was going through now. This whole setup was dragging up all his buried memories of that other time up in Canada, the original “Weapon X” experiments, when a bunch of no-good government scientists filled him full of adamantium, torturing him to the point of insanity. All those bad days, and the bad feelings they left burrowed in his soul, were coming back now, stronger than ever, and Rogue wasn’t sure how much longer Logan would be able to hold it all together. She’d felt the unreasoning savagery, the sheer animal frenzy, building up inside him, and what scared her the most was just how irresistible and intoxicating that primal fury was.
How can Wolvie possibly keep that under control? I don’t think I could.
She squirmed within her unyielding bonds. How long have we been trapped here anyway? she wondered. Prickly stubble carpeted Logan’s cheeks, what looked like at least a days’ worth, but who knew with that hyped-up metabolism of his? Rogue always figured he just shaved with his claws whenever he felt like it. Beyond that, the sterile chamber seemed locked out of time, with no way to tell day or night, let alone chart the passage of hours. Even the gravity felt funny, like she didn’t weigh as much as she should. She glared at the translucent I.V. tube feeding into her elbow; the meals here weren’t much to speak of, but she couldn’t have lost that many pounds already, could she?
A soft groan came from the right. Rogue’s gaze shifted to the captive reflected on the other side of her own coffin. She scowled in sympathy for the woman in the mirror; if anything, the Scarlet Witch had it worse than either she or Wolverine. Not only was she encased in the same sort of raised, lidless sarcophagus, Wanda was also blinded by an opaque metal visor, so as to keep her from focusing her witchie powers on their prison. Likewise, polished silver hemispheres covered her hands, trapping her fingers so that she couldn’t begin to make anything resembling a mystical gesture.
Rogue knew from personal experience just how oppressive the blindfold and the metal mitts were. The sadistic mastermind behind their imprisonment had previously imposed the same restraints on Rogue, for as long as she had involuntarily possessed the Scarlet Witch’s powers, although the visor and such had slid back into hidden recesses within the coffin once the transference had worn off.
Her cheeks flushed with shame as she remembered how she had been compelled against her will to sample Wanda’s memories and abilities, the automated machinery pressing their uncovered hands together, the touch of skin on
skin being all that was needed to effect the transference, draining the Scarlet Witch’s most private thoughts and secrets as surely as a vampire sucked its victim’s lifeblood. Rogue felt like a vampire, too, even if Wanda’s essence had been forced upon her. Bad enough to inflict such an invasive personal violation on a friend like Logan, someone who already knew and trusted her; how much worse to impose so unwanted an intimacy on a woman she barely knew, a woman who didn’t even like her.
There was bad blood between Rogue and the Scarlet Witch, dating back to the old days, years back, when Rogue ran with Mystique and her Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Wanda Maximoff still blamed Rogue, with good reason, for what the young mutant outlaw had done to her close friend, Carol Danvers, the former Avenger once known as Ms. Marvel. On that one terrible occasion, Rogue’s absorption of her opponent’s mind and attributes had been permanent; it was Ms. Marvel’s exceptional strength that still resided in Rogue’s limbs, Ms. Marvel’s defiance of gravity that granted Rogue the power of flight, and Ms. Marvel’s memories that still lingered at the back of Rogue’s mind. Carol Danvers, recently returned to the Avengers under the name of Warbird, had never been the same after her tragic encounter with Rogue, and the guilty X-Man doubted that Wanda Maximoff could ever forgive Rogue.
Especially now that I did to Wanda the same thing I did to Ms. Marvel, just less permanently.
The ironic thing was, Rogue mused, now that she’d melded with the Scarlet Witch’s mind, experienced the world from her perspective, she was surprised to discover just how much she and the Avenger had in common. Although raised on opposite sides of the world, they had both suffered the early pain of being mutant outcasts, both had been lured into a life of crime by a villainous parent.
Heck, we both started out in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Rogue realized, before getting afresh start in the Avengers or the X-Men.