The flickering screen of an oversized computer monitor is all that lights the room when he walks in. "Beth?" The young man speaks up, "You've been at this for hours when are you going to take a break?"
"There are no breaks in this business," she answers, "I hope that hour long lunch you took was enough to get the readouts from Sarah."
Chris Bradley stammers, "You think I was gone an hour?"
"That's what it feels like; I can't tell which time zone I'm in anymore."
She rubs her tired eyes, pushes the sliver of white hair from her face, and stretches face with a yawn. Standing to promote the blood to move out of her legs she looks him in the eye and waits for her vision to adjust. "It's always so dark in here."
"When you stare at a computer monitor for six hours straight, I can see why."
She smirks at the boy, "Chris, what do you have for me?"
He pulls a brick of paper, copied from the files from their intelligence section, "All the readouts on all the available freelancers out there."
"This can't be all of them."
Chris smiles, "I took the liberty of taking people like Spider-Man and the Avengers off the list."
"You're a good man, Chris. How's Sarah? Is she still fawning over you?"
He nods, "Yeah but Fury's orders keeping her put kinda puts a hold on anyone wanting to date her."
"Do you have a thing for felons or just a history of dating nice girls?"
It was a hell of a question to ask, and Chris looked to the ceiling as he thought, "Nah, I just have a thing for blondes and she's about the only one around here anywhere near my league."
She thought back and remembered the odd sort of friendship the two struck while Sarah Ryall was incarcerated after the Genosha incident. Though he'd never admit it, Scanner took Fury's offer to join up the S.H.I.E.L.D. department only because Chris asked her to, they were both private people but there was little that escaped notice in this place. "We have a lot of work to get done before the night is out."
"Jared and Jimmy are on their way, and they told me that if you're still here they plan to take it out on me. So do us both a favor and get a few hours of sleep."
Being the youngest member of any squad couldn't be the easiest thing, Beth knew Radius well enough to know that he respected Chris as a contribution but there was still the matter of ribbing and being the butt of the joke that the former New Warrior constantly endured. "For your sake, I'll be out of your hair. Tell Sarah I said hello the next time you see her."
"Sure thing, try to sleep. Summers won't know what hit him tomorrow, Rogue."
She smiled and let the doors close behind her.
"Jesus," he muttered before slamming the stack of papers fall onto the table. He reached over to flip on the overhead lights and the room exploded with florescent bulbs that stung his eyes as they adjusted out of the darkness. The table would be too small to spread out all the entries Rogue wanted him to look through; but it wouldn't be a tough thing to disqualify a number of candidates right off the bat. It was amazing to him as he read through the criminal offenses that S.H.I.E.L.D. ensured were forgiven, if the individual heroes had been held responsible for even half their offenses over the years, it'd be a wonder how each one wasn't confined in some prison somewhere.
Within the matter of an hour, Chris had separated the documents into a number of piles and just in time for two other of his teammates to walk into the conference room. "How's it going guys?"
"God, she finally left?"
Chris laughed under his breath, "Yeah, Jar, she's been gone for a while now. I got a head start on things."
"Good man, whatcha got?"
Jared Corbo took a seat next to the former New Warrior and was almost impressed about the narrowing down of the potential candidates. "You know Summers is going to come in and ruin all this, don't you?"
"The pompous ass won't agree with anything we give him, everything is about to become his way or the highway."
"That's Scott in a nutshell," the door closed as Tabitha finished speaking. "Mind if I join the party?"
"You've been around the block enough," Corbo said as he jabbed Chris in the ribs, "sure why the hell not."
"Might've been around the block, but at least it was nowhere near your street." Meltdown took her own seat while Proudstar kept to himself. "What's with the brooding, Jimmy?"
"Don't see the point of all this effort. If we're going to go to all this work by putting together, a group of freelancers for a mission like this only to have Summers pick it all apart. Why not just let him do all the work?"
The other three looked at each other randomly and Corbo shrugged his shoulders, "This bullshit is for our benefit. I for one like Rogue in charge, she listens to me and to all of you. If we don't show Fury that we're going to be professional about all this jackassery then why not bet on having Summers around full time and doing things his way."
"Oh for fuck's sake." Proudstar grumbled, "Fury doesn't trust him enough to give him that kind of shot."
"So says the felon still wanted for crimes against the Genoshan state."
Proudstar mumbled something to himself and Tabitha laughed as he grabbed his own stack of papers. He hadn't been fond of the any of the Summers clan though he hadn't dealt with any of them directly for very long, Tabitha wondered to herself about the possibility of bad blood. "You guys are high if you think the Cajun is going to make the cut with who our boss lady is."
Corbo shrugged, "a candidate is a candidate."
"Emotional baggage much?"
"We let you join, and you've been emotional baggage since you mom let you out of her trailer."
"You can lay off, Corbo," Proudstar jumped to the woman's defense. "You could at least pretend like you have some class."
"Yeah, I could, but look what company we're talking about!"
"Its okay, Jimmy." Meltdown spoke up, "I appreciate it, but I don't need you to be my knight in shiny armor."
"So Gambit's out." Corbo surrendered and offered up a truce if only for the moment, "We've only got three hours to get these candidates put together and start forming a plan of attack to give Fury."
"Crunch time, then." Chris offered, "Think we need any more help?"
"No, Sarah can't help, you'll just be distracted."
"Damnit."
The quartet of occasional superheroes now on S.H.I.E.L.D.s payroll shuffled through their respected stacks of biographies and records, dismissing more than their fair share for their own reasons. Finally coming upon a respectable grouping of paperwork they compared notes for the next hour dismissing more and more with each turn to speak. As the senior most representative Corbo stood from the table and decided on a new course of action. Moving to the projection screen painted one of the walls, Corbo used magnets to pin the first group of eight freelance mutants and went over their statuses according to S.H.I.E.L.D. "Guys, this really isn't going well at all. We've tossed out more candidates for petty shit."
"Being dead isn't petty."
"I'm telling you Colossus isn’t dead."
"He died, I’m telling you."
"No seriously, he's with the West Coast Avengers."
Tabitha shut her mouth and allowed him to move on, "Drake and his cronies just got burned by S.H.I.E.L.D. and aren't supposed to be operating in any capacity, perhaps we can offer them some sort of deal?"
"No good," Bolt shook his head, "They're not doing anything illegal. Just policing mutant town since the NYPD won't go near them."
"Damn, Pryde would've been a nice asset."
"She was one of them, you know." Bolt picked out her file from the stack, highlighting the paragraph that backed up his claim. "I don't think we could trust her anyway."
"Probably not."
"What the fuck is a Slinger?"
"Wannabe Warriors," Bolt chuckled, "good kids though."
"They've got their own problems, Tabby."
"We've got two hours; c'mon people give me something here!"
The list they produced was not something Jared Corbo was pleased to look at by the time limit he gave his team. As it was, there were still several people left incarcerated after their games with Xavier, Fury would certainly like the idea of sending them on a suicide mission as a first wave, as Corbo mulled it over he still wasn't sold on the idea. "Avalanche is a keeper for sure, I'm not exactly sure I'm sold on this Rolling Thunder character, she seems a little too amateur for this kind of situation." Corbo sighed and took in another breath, "So that really leaves us with these two plus the group of us. Unless of course Deadpool drops his prices a little, I'll spruce this up with a list of possibilities to submit to Fury."
"Yeah, fat chance on Deadpool, though nice try." Tabitha laughs.
Corbo rubbed his eyes, "Yeah, still a possibility, not like it's going to come out of my paycheck. Go get some sleep; I'll take care of the rest of this."
He didn't have to offer another word and the group took to their feet and walked out of the room, leaving Corbo alone with a large scaled marker board and topographical maps of Ecuador and its surrounding border countries. He stood back from the photos and processed it all, "No teleporters, too much of a hike to make it in without being detected."
"Air drop." A new voice entered itself after the team left, Radius turned to see the red sunglasses Scott Summers always had plastered to his face.
"You think?"
"It's a stupid move, tactically unsound and that's exactly what X-Corps is counting on."
Corbo looks back to his maps and doesn't like the idea in the slightest. Shaking his head, he ponders over the idea versus the other possible places of entry, finding no single best-case scenario to exploit. "Whoever is leading this charge, they're doing everything right." Summers speaks up, "Mental coercion to take us off guard, using our friends against us. The terrain is perfect, they have all the satellites mapped out, know exactly when they pass over so our intelligence on their actual numbers is frighteningly scarce."
He nods, Corbo points to a section of his maps, a heavily dense area of jungle land, "If we were to airdrop in this vicinity, we could use the cover of darkness to conceal."
"It's possible, but we have no idea what mutant powers are watching the perimeter, but I like how you're thinking."
He paused a second, thinking to himself that Scott Summers was supposed to have this elitist mindset, "Can't believe the list of people we can trust is so small."
"The only options we have, and it's exactly why you keep your enemies as close as you do. Because when it's in their benefit you can trust them to be totally untrustworthy."
"That's a hell of a statement; do you always talk so cynically?"
"Do you always find and exploit the faults in others?"
Corbo nods, "Touché'"
"I wasn't planning to add too much to your roster in the first place, but I do have something of an ace up the sleeve." Summers boasts, "Something that no one would expect to find in their front yard early in the morning. Besides, if I can convince Fury to allow Scanner away from his watch for this mission, we’ll have the best real-world intelligence any commander could ask for.”
“Got that right.”
“Bolt won’t be a problem, will he?”
“Nah, the kid is good in a fight.”
Scott shakes his head, “I’m more concerned with involving Scanner, the two are involved aren’t they?”
“Yeah, that’s the rumor, but he’ll be good to go.”
“I hope so, I’m not expecting to get out of this unscathed, and I just want to make sure you’re all ready for this.”
Corbo looks back as the door makes a grinding noise as it opens, with Rogue standing in the entryway Corbo slaps Summers on the shoulder, “Thanks for the pep talk, I imagine I’ll see you at the mission briefing to get Fury’s green light.”
“Yeah, I’ll be there.”
Corbo leaves the room and closes Rogue inside the room with her former leader. The pair of former X-Men look at one another in silence for a number of minutes and keep to themselves. The tension thick in the air, Scott breaks the silence first, “Why S.H.I.E.L.D.?”
At first she doesn’t answer, then taking in a sigh and releasing it, she pulls up a chair and never takes her eyes off Scott. “You can only go around in circles for so long. When Betsy died, there was so much chaos and so much tension between Remy and I, I had to get out.”
“The team was in shambles.”
She agreed with him but only nodded, “Xavier wanted me to lead a team before this mess started, but I didn’t think I was up to it.”
“Doubting yourself?”
“Not here, I don’t.”
“Fury doesn’t seem to trust you.”
She shakes her head, “Fury is fine, it the policy makers that are screwing with him. They’ve insisted on you, I put this team together and we’ve done some good things, but the policy makers only see the one black mark on my record, not the ten gold stars.”
“Emma?”
“He told you?”
“I read about it. That was a lot of collateral damage.”
Her head dropped, “they’re still not sure if Rictor will make a full recovery or not. How do you come back from that sort of thing?”
“It’s the job, people get hurt in our line of work, and at least he can still walk.”
“Only on crutches.”
“Don’t let it bother you, Rogue.” Scott stands up to leave and stops just inside the doorway, “At least his friends didn’t turn their backs on him.”
“Well, Tabitha…”
“She’s an opportunist anyway, not much of a team player. You’ll find that out given the time.”
The door closes and Rogue sits in the empty room. Her head leans back against the back of the chair as she looks up at the ceiling. Nothing but the metallic surface, there is no shine to it; it’s all so dull and gray. Dull and ordinary with no missions left on the docket for the time being until this mess was cleaned up, there was no telling when Fury was going to give X-Factor its next shot at the sun.
He sat alone in the near darkness for several hours before he uttered a word. Clearing his throat out of reflex Scott Summers walked to an oversized white board and pulled the top off a black pen. Scribbling down the names of the current operators S.H.I.E.L.D. had in X-Factor he went over the names with his eyes and shook his head with disapproval. “This won’t be enough.”
He spoke to himself, it was something he’d become accustomed to. There was paperwork and briefings and sleep for the regular X-Factor members to attend to, but for him, nothing except perfection would do.
“Sarah,” he called out after pressing a button on the intercom. “There’s a problem, we’re going to need a lot more people. Who do you think you can snag for me?”
Silence for the first moment and her voice comes through the intercom, “Cyclops, I’m not authorized to do anything without Fury’s approval.”
“Let me worry about Fury and Cooper, just do what I ask you.”
“Alright,” she spoke with a labored voice, not sure whether to trust him or not. “I have a list of two-hundred coming through to the computer at your present location. It’s the same list I gave to Chris before.”
“Okay, thanks.”
It wasn’t so much of a list rather than the entire official S.H.I.E.L.D. biographies of two-hundred individual mutants. “Scanner,” he spoke into the intercom. “I want everyone.”
“There isn’t enough time in the day to go through all that data.”
“Just do it, I have a few names in mind.”
“Like who? Let’s expedite this instead of reading through an easy terabyte of information.”
“Carl Denti comes to mind.”
“The Executioner? Are you out of your mind?”
“This is a lethal operation, I need mutant hunters.”
The intercom went silent for a few moments, from his end he could hear her typing through the computers and muttering under her breath. “Carl Denti is inactive, he gave up being the Executioner a few years ago, right now though he’s on S.H.I.E.L.D.s payroll as a contractor.”
“Good to know, activate him and send his orders to whatever department he belongs to.”
“Done.”
“Good girl, who else do you have for me?”
“There’s a wrestler currently in federal prison that made a transition from television to murder he looks like he’ll foot your bill.” She paused and a light laugh came from her end of the intercom, “Paul Botham, otherwise known as Mister Clean.”
“Is he bald and sporting a gold ear ring?”
“No, full head of hair. He has a laundry list of federal crimes that he’s sitting in prison for, not surprisingly he was never charged with the killing of five mutant college students in Little Rock, Arkansas. I don’t know if Fury is going to approve this one, he’s not a fan of white supremacists.”
“Yeah,” Scott’s voice trailed away as he read and ignored Scanner’s complaints. “You let me deal with Fury and send a request to Val Cooper for his cooperation.”
“He’s not going to want to help us.”
“But he’s going to want to fight mutants, look at his record. He lives for violence, he’s been in prison for two years, likely, he’s itching to get out and possibly escape from our clutches. His motivation will be there.”
She sighed, “Request sent. Anything else?”
“Send in the release requests for Avalanche and Rolling Thunder. Plus I need the following names recruited, kidnapped or otherwise talked into this operation:”
“Holding.”
“Cain Marko. Paul Provenzano. Mary Burkett. Leyu Yoshida.”
“Mary Burkett, there’s a complication with her.”
“Her powers would be an asset, what’s her issue.”
“Her relation to one of your friends.”
He stopped speaking and searched through the woman’s file. Her immediate family had no one to concern him, the Mutant Town district location and her relation to Bobby Drake on the other hand was something that struck a nerve in his gut. “What Bobby doesn’t know, won’t hurt him. If she has the level of powers this write up says, her light based and illusionary powers will be too much of an asset to us, her cousin is the least of my concerns.”
She paused, letting the anger in his voice seep away, “Will that be all?”
“For the moment, yes.”
The typing ceased, and Summers spoke through the intercom, “And Scanner, I need these folks in the next twenty-four hours. We’re on a limited window of opportunity. X-Corps is on the move for something large scale.”
He didn’t like it, too many loose cannons and no one to trust, but he needed the numbers. X-Factor couldn’t handle this operation on its own backbone, and there was no telling what he would be facing. So many mutants had vanished in the last year, and no one ever seemed to notice, least of all S.H.I.E.L.D. as it was going through it’s own reputation restructuring.
Dialing the cellular phone Cooper had given him just before her departure, Scott waiting to the ringing to stop and her voice. “I need Juggernaut.”
“Summers, I can’t authorize that at three in the morning.”
“If you want this operation to go off the right way you need to give me everything I asked for. That was the deal, right? I do this for you, and I did it my way. No questions?”
“Jesus, Summers, Botham is murderer I can’t approve this.”
“I’m not really interested in your principles, Cooper, just get it done.”
The connection terminated as Summers closed the flip top phone and stuffed it into his pocket. Progress was being made, he told himself, he didn’t like it but it was progress. He sighed and almost took a seat to gather his thoughts, but with little time to himself he walked out of the briefing room with his list in hand. Still wondering if Fury would approve of paying Deadpools’ fees, he let the thought go. He was too much of a loose cannon.
“Scott?” Rogue rubbed the food from her mouth, “what is it?”
He handed over his list, “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. How much do you trust Radius?”
“More than most, surprisingly.”
“Good, then he’s leading team three.”
Her eyes widened at the names on the list. “Three teams, how are you going to get these people?”
Scott smirked, “S.H.I.E.L.D. is good at that sort of thing, let them work their magic. I need you in the briefing room at seven, make sure Radius is with you.”
She nods, her eyes still captivated by the list and the many names she didn’t readily recognize. “Sure, Scott. Sure thing.”
Her voice trailed away by the time she looked up. He had already began walking back to the briefing room.