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xp_logsX-Force gets their second shot at Pestilence, and this one has to count.
The smell in the New York Stock Exchange was enough to make Emma consider vegetarianism.
While she found Remy generally irritating, she had to admit that he was quite remarkable at what he could do. Following his footsteps and careful instructions had managed to get five people, one of whom was not entirely in touch with current reality, past a legion of Mastermold's collection squads, through a cordon of twisted meat-creations and in through the back door to face what the Russian had turned the NYSE into.
If this, thought Emma, was what the mutant takeover was going to lead to, she was quite willing to keep the laws of humanity in place. Humanity was less sticky. Definitely less drippy. And, except for a small number of bathrooms she had been forced to use in third world countries, considerably less malodorous.
"Dude, Clive Barker called, he totally wants his special effects back." Jubilee breathed softly, looking around with sick fascination.
She'd never thought anything could smell quite as bad as the docks in Madripoor, but she'd been wrong. The smell had a living quality to it, and she had to brace herself for a moment in order not to lose her lunch. She'd never been so grateful to have had so little to eat before.
In front of them lay the NYSE, but terribly, horrifically mutated into a pulsing, thumping mess of oozing, corrupted flesh and brackish liquid that almost seemed to move under their feet. Computers that had only days ago ticked with the finances of the world, now seemed chained together by thick bands of flesh, a living super computer.
"Shut up, Jubilee." Remy said tightly. This was no time to be funny. Ignatova, trapped in an energy straved facility with forty year old Russian computer technology had nearly killed all of X-Force the first time they faced her. Now, she had support a million times more powerful, and he had three people to work with at best, and a man trapped inside.
"'yana, tell Bravo we're making de attack. If dey don't hear from us, flatten de NYSE wit' everything dey got. Dere won't be anything left to rescue." The Russian girl teleported away, and Remy pointed to a couple of areas. "Living alarms in de walls, spare meat spores in stasis on de walls. Dis is a deathtrap. Remy going to make some noise to de left, draw dem away from de Pens. If you two can use de distraction to get dose people out of here, dat will at least take away any materials to reinforce wit' from Ignatova."
Emma turned to Doug, touched his face lightly to focus his attention on her. "Douglas," she said, "you know what you have to do." She kissed him gently, the lightest touch of lips on his. "Good luck." She turned back in the direction of the Pens, her body becoming diamond as she turned, knowing this fight was going to be purely physical. Heartbeat after heartbeat she held it, waiting for Remy's distraction, Doug's next move.
The kiss from Emma brought Doug a bit more back to his senses from the hazy fog he'd been in while following the group into the stock exchange. It wasn't entirely clear whose influence he was acting under, though. "Yes, Emma," he replied in a startlingly crisp tone, and took off at a run straight for the interface they had already identified for him, his laptop bag bouncing against his back.
The floor of the NYSE used to be packed with day traders and computer stations, as the tickers overhead flashed endless lines of kabbala-like symbols which represented the wealth of the world flowing across them. Now, the space was unrecognizable and alien. The floor had been smashed through, and stacks of servers and mainframes sat wrapped in fleshy polyps. the heat was wet and fetid, sour with the smell of decay. In the middle of the shattered room was a noxious smelling pool, and in it, a grotesquely swollen mass of brain tissue grew slowly. There was tired screams from people still attached to the mass, slowly being absorbed into the mass, their flesh breaking down and changing even as they howled.
Ignatova's creatures were everywhere. Primes pulled people from the makeshift cells along what used to be offices, and carried them to various parts of the rooms, crudely butchering them and tossing the new genetic materials to points which clutched at them greedly, turning the flesh into extensions of itself, wrapping thicker lines of slimy pink flesh around complex electronics. Even as Doug snuck in, an alarm picked him up and sounded, a screaming wail from a fleshcrafted form on the wall that had once been a child.
The interface that had been identified as being best shielded from Ignatova was in the far corner, over masses of fever hot flesh and strange viscous pools of liquid. Luckly, the pens were opposite it, and most of her minions were there. With luck and speed, it was clear enough to reach ahead of any opposition.
The screaming alarm startled Doug as he sprinted towards the interface. He stumbled, then kept moving. Pulling his laptop out, he patched a cable that was already connected to it into a port in the wall. "Come on," he muttered, tapping at the keys. "Come on, you crazy bitch."
As before, Doug lasted maybe thirty seconds before the interface went dead. It simply wasn't possible to challenge Ignatova's instinctive coding through an interface like a computer. No one could type faster than the speed of thought, which was how the meat computer communicated and controlled the network. Obviously, the genetic material being added to her had a corresponding effect on her processing speed. Already, they had noticed the meat spores becoming more numerous, a little more agile and faster on the streets. Once she was of the size to take on the complexity of the NYSE system as a whole, there would be no way to stop her.
"Shit!" Doug kicked at the wall, stepping back and squirming in disgust as his toe hit an organic flesh component and not solid wall. He glanced around the converted trade floor, his eyes taking in the pens, the meat spores, and the polyp-encrusted mainframes, looking for another access point to attempt to engage.
The Primes moved quickly to secure him. Unlike the meat spores, the lumbering superstrong Primes only looked unwieldy, but moved with deceptive speed. There simply wasn't enough room to move despite the size of the hall, and Doug found himself trapped in his corner.
Doug backed up against a wall, as though attempting to spontaneously manifest Kitty Pryde's power so he could simply go through it. But that was not the case, and the Primes quickly and efficiently immobilized him despite his struggling. He lashed out weakly with one foot as one of the Primes wrapped its arms around his chest to keep him still, and another grasped his wildly flailing legs to deny him any sort of purchase with which to escape. They carried him over and dumped him unceremoniously in a vat that then irised shut around him.
Struggling in complete darkness, Doug pounded against the top of the vat as it filled with whatever chemical Mastermold was using to process what she needed out of the human forms being fed into her. The pounding became weaker and weaker, and Doug fell down into the abyss.
--
* En prise - French, literally, engaged, within grasp; of a chess piece : exposed to capture
The smell in the New York Stock Exchange was enough to make Emma consider vegetarianism.
While she found Remy generally irritating, she had to admit that he was quite remarkable at what he could do. Following his footsteps and careful instructions had managed to get five people, one of whom was not entirely in touch with current reality, past a legion of Mastermold's collection squads, through a cordon of twisted meat-creations and in through the back door to face what the Russian had turned the NYSE into.
If this, thought Emma, was what the mutant takeover was going to lead to, she was quite willing to keep the laws of humanity in place. Humanity was less sticky. Definitely less drippy. And, except for a small number of bathrooms she had been forced to use in third world countries, considerably less malodorous.
"Dude, Clive Barker called, he totally wants his special effects back." Jubilee breathed softly, looking around with sick fascination.
She'd never thought anything could smell quite as bad as the docks in Madripoor, but she'd been wrong. The smell had a living quality to it, and she had to brace herself for a moment in order not to lose her lunch. She'd never been so grateful to have had so little to eat before.
In front of them lay the NYSE, but terribly, horrifically mutated into a pulsing, thumping mess of oozing, corrupted flesh and brackish liquid that almost seemed to move under their feet. Computers that had only days ago ticked with the finances of the world, now seemed chained together by thick bands of flesh, a living super computer.
"Shut up, Jubilee." Remy said tightly. This was no time to be funny. Ignatova, trapped in an energy straved facility with forty year old Russian computer technology had nearly killed all of X-Force the first time they faced her. Now, she had support a million times more powerful, and he had three people to work with at best, and a man trapped inside.
"'yana, tell Bravo we're making de attack. If dey don't hear from us, flatten de NYSE wit' everything dey got. Dere won't be anything left to rescue." The Russian girl teleported away, and Remy pointed to a couple of areas. "Living alarms in de walls, spare meat spores in stasis on de walls. Dis is a deathtrap. Remy going to make some noise to de left, draw dem away from de Pens. If you two can use de distraction to get dose people out of here, dat will at least take away any materials to reinforce wit' from Ignatova."
Emma turned to Doug, touched his face lightly to focus his attention on her. "Douglas," she said, "you know what you have to do." She kissed him gently, the lightest touch of lips on his. "Good luck." She turned back in the direction of the Pens, her body becoming diamond as she turned, knowing this fight was going to be purely physical. Heartbeat after heartbeat she held it, waiting for Remy's distraction, Doug's next move.
The kiss from Emma brought Doug a bit more back to his senses from the hazy fog he'd been in while following the group into the stock exchange. It wasn't entirely clear whose influence he was acting under, though. "Yes, Emma," he replied in a startlingly crisp tone, and took off at a run straight for the interface they had already identified for him, his laptop bag bouncing against his back.
The floor of the NYSE used to be packed with day traders and computer stations, as the tickers overhead flashed endless lines of kabbala-like symbols which represented the wealth of the world flowing across them. Now, the space was unrecognizable and alien. The floor had been smashed through, and stacks of servers and mainframes sat wrapped in fleshy polyps. the heat was wet and fetid, sour with the smell of decay. In the middle of the shattered room was a noxious smelling pool, and in it, a grotesquely swollen mass of brain tissue grew slowly. There was tired screams from people still attached to the mass, slowly being absorbed into the mass, their flesh breaking down and changing even as they howled.
Ignatova's creatures were everywhere. Primes pulled people from the makeshift cells along what used to be offices, and carried them to various parts of the rooms, crudely butchering them and tossing the new genetic materials to points which clutched at them greedly, turning the flesh into extensions of itself, wrapping thicker lines of slimy pink flesh around complex electronics. Even as Doug snuck in, an alarm picked him up and sounded, a screaming wail from a fleshcrafted form on the wall that had once been a child.
The interface that had been identified as being best shielded from Ignatova was in the far corner, over masses of fever hot flesh and strange viscous pools of liquid. Luckly, the pens were opposite it, and most of her minions were there. With luck and speed, it was clear enough to reach ahead of any opposition.
The screaming alarm startled Doug as he sprinted towards the interface. He stumbled, then kept moving. Pulling his laptop out, he patched a cable that was already connected to it into a port in the wall. "Come on," he muttered, tapping at the keys. "Come on, you crazy bitch."
As before, Doug lasted maybe thirty seconds before the interface went dead. It simply wasn't possible to challenge Ignatova's instinctive coding through an interface like a computer. No one could type faster than the speed of thought, which was how the meat computer communicated and controlled the network. Obviously, the genetic material being added to her had a corresponding effect on her processing speed. Already, they had noticed the meat spores becoming more numerous, a little more agile and faster on the streets. Once she was of the size to take on the complexity of the NYSE system as a whole, there would be no way to stop her.
"Shit!" Doug kicked at the wall, stepping back and squirming in disgust as his toe hit an organic flesh component and not solid wall. He glanced around the converted trade floor, his eyes taking in the pens, the meat spores, and the polyp-encrusted mainframes, looking for another access point to attempt to engage.
The Primes moved quickly to secure him. Unlike the meat spores, the lumbering superstrong Primes only looked unwieldy, but moved with deceptive speed. There simply wasn't enough room to move despite the size of the hall, and Doug found himself trapped in his corner.
Doug backed up against a wall, as though attempting to spontaneously manifest Kitty Pryde's power so he could simply go through it. But that was not the case, and the Primes quickly and efficiently immobilized him despite his struggling. He lashed out weakly with one foot as one of the Primes wrapped its arms around his chest to keep him still, and another grasped his wildly flailing legs to deny him any sort of purchase with which to escape. They carried him over and dumped him unceremoniously in a vat that then irised shut around him.
Struggling in complete darkness, Doug pounded against the top of the vat as it filled with whatever chemical Mastermold was using to process what she needed out of the human forms being fed into her. The pounding became weaker and weaker, and Doug fell down into the abyss.
--
* En prise - French, literally, engaged, within grasp; of a chess piece : exposed to capture
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