Mechanisms of Revenge: Vindicta

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

Pete Wisdom finds himself alive, more or less, and facing a new and difficult choice.



It was a cup of tea, in a white ceramic mug, steaming gently on the bedside table near where Pete Wisdom lay. An odd thing to awake to following a brutal assault. The room was quietly lit, obviously avoiding harsh lights, but the pools of shadow were punctured with LEDs and small instrument lights and displays of all manner of colour and size. It might have felt like a sick room, but it looked more like an emergency bed parked in the corner of a nuclear reactor's control room.

A figured puttered with a device on the opposite side of the room, his back to the bed. He was small, and misshapen, with a hump so pronounced that it hid the back of his head from view. Save for the odd whirring and electronic noise, the room was silent and still.

Pete's eyes flickered open. He glanced around the room, eyes widening as he took in the figure across from him, then began to pat himself down with his right hand, silently. A look of annoyance flickered across his face when he found the collar around his neck, replaced by a look of alarm as he came to check his legs, at which point he started to sit upright in bed.

"What.." he croaked, the tried again, slightly clearer. "What's going on?"
"You were shot, during the attack. Do you remember it, Mister Wisdom?" The figure turned, and Wisdom got a full look at the nightmarish face; twisted, wrinkled, sickly yellow and dominated by two large eyes, almost popping out of the face, and so pale grey to be nearly colourless. It was hard to imagine it was human. It was also a face he'd seen before.

"The rounds penetrated your abdomen and your spine, severing your spinal column in two places. The damage was quite extensive, and I'm afraid that I've only had time to partially repair it before allowing you to wake." He motioned to the cup. "Tea?"

-0-

"Coffee, Mr Smith?" Pete pushed the door of his office open, not looking where he was going? "Sorry I'm late, a couple of colleagues needed to bend my ear about my character flaws, but what can I do..." He trailed off as he finally took in who was standing before him. Before blinking and resuming.

"Sorry. I imagine you're used that that sort of reaction, but sorry. What is it you want, Mr Smith?"

"Pay it no mind. It's to be expected." 'Mr. Smith' was fantastically ugly, wizened, his skin a jaundiced yellow, and his features misshapen. The large sunglasses, wide-brimmed hat and scarf concealed it enough at a distance, but up-close, there was no hiding the almost inhuman face and body of the man. He shrugged off his coat, and his pronounced hunch and short stature could have made him a fantasy creature, like a dwarf from a Nordic saga.

"You are Peter Wisdom. Late of British Intelligence, although your official designation is considered high level access only, and you were one of the ones responsible for bringing down Apocalypse last month."

Pete's eyes narrowed as he sat down.

"And yet I haven't the first fucking clue who you are squire, and if you've done your homework that well, you're going to have something really good up your sleeve if you play cards like that for an opening. So let's hear it before I decide you represent a serious security risk."

"My name is Blaquesmith. Apocalypse required the first of his followers to give up our old human names in favour of a name that represented our new mutant ascension, before abandoning the practice. My real name doesn't matter any more, no more substantial than a scrawl in the sand, before the coming tide." The man shook his head, as if pulling himself back into focus. "As I was saying, you can call me Blaquesmith, and I make impossible things."

He held out his misshapen hand, and above the palm, tiny motes whirled. "Cameras, Mister Wisdom. The size of a dust mote, and transfer information back using EPR through a quantum gate. Really, an application of the principle of quantum nonlocality using infinitely advanced technology. That was what Apocalypse made of me, at the expense of my body. I don't know that I appreciate the cost."

Under the desk Pete's fingers twitched, just slightly, at the mention of Apocalypse.

"Right. Impossible things. Of course. So: you signed on with Apocalypse, got screwed over, and you've come to me."

He took a deep breath.

"A few weeks ago, that would have been the mutant equivalent of suicide by cop. Today, I'll let you keep speaking until I decide if I've interested in whatever you're selling, but right now, I have already worked a 14 hour day, and you need to be very convincing very fast."

"Apocalypse won't stay captured for long, Mister Wisdom. He might be a madman, but he is a cunning one. Eventually, he'll be freed from whatever prison that confines him, and he'll once again raise an army of followers. The next time, perhaps you and your friends aren't as lucky. I know this man, Mister Wisdom, as keenly as I know what he did to make me an outcast forever. I want revenge." The pale eyes burned with intensity as he stared at Wisdom.

"I watched your battle with him. I thought you looked like a man who would understand what his threat means, and take the steps to end it, permanently. I still believe you are that man. I want Apocalypse dead, and I'm prepared to offer whatever is in my power to give if you agree to make that happen."

Pete didn't respond at first. He simply sat and stared at the misshapen man in front of him, his expression frozen in a scowl, but his eyes distant.

"Alright, yeah. But for now, this stays between you and me. He's in custody right now, and as much as we might both want him dead, we are not going to go charging in. We do this in a way that means that no-one dies that doesn't deserve it, you understand?"

-0-

"I'm afraid it's made from tea bags. I haven't much time to shop lately." Blaquesmith said. The man was fussing about, like the world's ugliest nurse, before he finally pulled a short stool over to near Wisdom's bed and settled himself on it. "You know, you very nearly died, Mister Wisdom. It will take months and months of regenerative therapy to fully correct the damage in your spine, and I'm afraid that I cannot afford to give you that time at the moment. Once our business is concluded, I'd be happy to complete the therapy."

Pete pulled himself more fully upright. "So, just to recap: you come to my office, you feed me a line about Apocalypse, and then you have me nearly killed. And then you talk to me about business. Where are my friends, you fuck?"

"Please, Mister Wisdom, calm down. Your friends are safe. They were near death when I used a statis field to temporarily freeze their condition until I could get them here and stabilize them. Their injuries are quite extensive." Blaquesmith peered at Wisdom for a moment, and picked up a small tool, shining it into his eyes. "Yes, it was only luck they weren't killed."

He made a thoughtful noise and put the tool away again. "You were ambushed by a group of mutants dubbed the Dark Riders, by Apocalypse. They were an elite field team; sadistic mutant mercenaries that he contracted for work which he did not necessarily want to be connected with. They are very good at their job, which is why I'm amazed that you all were not killed outright. They had a new member, a savage feral-like mutant that I don't believe I've seen before. He seemed to be in charge of the attack."

"Just for the sake of argument, say for now that I buy you had nothing to do with the attack. Why not just take us back to Charlie's place? And why am I the only one sitting in a room with you?"

"Two reasons. First of all, your friends are in no condition to be moved, and it will be some days before they could even survive a non-sterile, totally controlled and machine assisted environment. The second, well--"

Blaquesmith got up, and walked over to a monitor which he clicked on. On it, Wisdom could see a recording off the attack, the brutal wounds issued to all four of them. "I saved your lives, Mister Wisdom. Seeing as we already have an agreement that Apocalypse should die, I feel that this opportunity is a way to fast track our goal. Your friends have remarkable abilities, ones that I can make better suited to bringing Apocalypse down. Considering the little I've been able to find of your record, it seems that you are the exact kind of man to make best use of them to succeed."

"So, you've got me over a barrel, and I either drop everything, and get this job done or they're all fucked is about the size of it, right?"

Pete rubbed at his eyes with one hand, then pinched the bridge of his nose, then took a deep breath.

"Alright sunbeam. This one time, we play it your way. But after this, you do *not* just vanish into the night. You do that, and I will find you, and end you. After this one, you work for me when I call you."

"Bring me Apocalypse's head, and you can have whatever you want, Mister Wisdom. Now," He touched the screen, and the grain on the table beside Wisdom flickered and disappeared, revealing a series of interfaces. "shall we talk about him?"