The Cracks of Doom - Part 3

Posted on Mon Nov 11th, 2024 @ 2:03am by Connor Bruin & Hank McCoy & Kurt Wagner & Hayden Davis & Ethan Hale & Aurora Summers & Kennedy Kelly & Maeve MacKenna & Meja Vikström & Kayleigh Marshall & Bliss Hawkins

5,872 words; about a 29 minute read

Mission: Episode 5: Days of Fortune Past
Location: Castle Doom | Latveria
Timeline: November 8th, 1990

The team scrambled into the oversized elevator, its metallic walls humming as the doors slid shut, sealing them from the chaos above. Connor quickly tapped a sequence into the control panel, activating the descent. The heavy groan of machinery filled the air as they began to drop into the depths of the secure labs where the Winter Guard could not follow—at least not without hacking Connor's new command access code.

Everyone took a moment to catch their breath, their faces reflecting a mix of relief and apprehension. The sterile chill seeped through the elevator walls, and soon they felt the biting cold intensify as they descended deeper into the temperature-controlled environment awaiting them below.

The doors finally opened with a hydraulic hiss. They revealed a cavernous lab complex. Bright, white fluorescent lights cast an almost sterile glow on rows of machines, monitors, and medical equipment, all arranged along stainless steel counters and workstations. The air was frigid, and faint tendrils of mist trailed from their breath.

Before she departed the elevator, Kennedy noticed the faint smudge of blood below Maeve’s nose. She opened up the pouch strapped to the opposite leg of her quiver and produced a tissue after a moment of rummaging.

“Here.” Kennedy offered Maeve the neatly folded white tissue. “For your nose.”

Accepting the tissue, Maeve smiled and said, "Thank you, Kennedy." It was a kind gesture, and she truly appreciated it.

Hayden exited the elevator behind Kennedy and looked around. She didn't like this part of the castle any more than the other parts. Perhaps even less. There were so many labs, so empty, so silent, so cold. She watched her breath as she exhaled. "Why does this place feel more like a tomb than a research facility?" she murmured, her voice echoing softly in the stillness.

"IT IS COLD AND EMPTY LIKE THE GRAVE," Connor signed, though whether he was answering or agreeing was left vague.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Aurora responded as she looked towards Connor before looking away again.

"Reminds me of old Irish castles." Maeve mused aloud.

"I've never been someplace like this," Ethan interjected, "but it's creepy as hell."

At the center of the lab stood a lone figure, hunched over a workstation. The man wore a green winter coat, the hood pulled up to conceal most of his face, and a transparent face shield over his scarred, disfigured visage. His shoulders shook with visible shivers as he huddled against the cold, lost in his work. But as he noticed the group, he froze, his eyes widening in shock and a mixture of fear and recognition.

He took a few steps back, his hand instinctively rising in a defensive gesture. “No… no, please! I will finish! Don't punish me!” His voice was a brittle whisper, laced with dread. Then his gaze fell on Hank, and something clicked in his memory. He seemed to sway on his feet, his mouth trembling. “Hank… Is it… really you?”

Hank squinted, a flicker of familiarity crossing his expression. "Yes… Victor, isn’t it?" Hank’s voice softened as he recognized the man, though the memory was a faint, painful one. “We… worked together, didn’t we?”

Victor’s face crumpled as he fought back tears. “You remember! Oh, thank the stars, you remember me! Please, Hank, you have to take me away from here! The Master… he’ll be furious if he finds you here. You must leave, or… or take me with you!” His voice trembled, his desperation palpable.

Connor watched with furrowed brows as Victor’s words echoed in the freezing lab. “WHO IS ‘THE MASTER’?” he signed with one hand, his device voicing the question aloud.

Victor’s gaze darted around, his voice dropping to a frantic whisper. “He… he should never be named... Ad Sinistram Apocalypsi.” Victor’s voice broke with reverence and fear. “The left hand of Apocalypse, the one who bends life and death, lord of this castle…”

"A lord most sinister, indeed," Kurt mused aloud, pondering whether the Latin was meaningful or merely pretentious.

Bliss’s expression hardened, and a glimmer of defiance sparked in her eyes. She shot Victor a fierce look. “'Lord Sinister' can take a hike. We’re the X-Men; we serve nothing and no one but the greater good. You can play lackey to some power-hungry psycho, but count us out.”

Connor cracked a small smile at her words, a sense of pride filling him as he realized she truly understood what the X-Men stood for.

Victor’s gaze turned to Hank, pleading. “Please, you have to help me, Hank. I’ve been here for… I don’t even know how long.” He shuddered. “The things I’ve seen. The things he’s made me do.”

Hank nodded, his expression resolute. “We’re here for a reason, Victor. I need access to my old workstation. We’re retrieving information on some… regrettable research involving nanotechnology, things I was forced to do.” His voice held a grim determination. “We’re here to set things right.”

The desperation in Victor’s eyes subsided, and he nodded shakily, a spark of hope flickering in his gaze. “Yes… yes, I can help. Follow me.”

As Victor led them deeper into the lab, he muttered feverishly to himself, his words half-formed fragments that hinted at the terrible secrets hidden within these walls. “Prime Sentinel nanotechnology… mutant control collars… research into… the primordial fire… death and rebirth…”

Hank’s attention sharpened, his curiosity piqued despite the ominous nature of Victor’s words. “Primordial fire?” he echoed, frowning.

Victor’s gaze shifted nervously, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Yes… there’s… something… something beyond life and death. Some kind of... cosmic spark, or… the fire of rebirth. It’s in the cells… biological traces in one unique test subject. I’m not supposed to know…” His voice trailed off, his eyes filled with fear.

The team exchanged glances, a sense of unease settling over them as they approached Hank’s old workstation.

"Give me a moment..." Hank approached his old workstation with a grim expression. He was as apprehensive as could be. It felt like his body shirked at the very muscle memory of standing in that spot. In truth, he felt like he had walked over his own grave. But they had come so far. He would not falter now.

"You must hurry!" Victor shrieked. "If he catches you..."

“Is he here?” Kennedy dared to interject a question for Victor as she continued to examine the lab and its equipment. “You’re so worried about us getting caught but is he in the castle? The whole thing was practically deserted when we arrived.”

Hayden turned around slowly and searched every corner of the room, looking for something, anything, heinous. Listening to Doctor McCoy and Victor talk was like listening to an old radio horror show. The ambiance or ramblings did nothing to add to that mental picture, either. "What is this guy even going to do to us? Like Bliss said, we're the X-Men. We're a team."

Victor’s eyes darted wildly around the lab, the terror etched on his disfigured face intensifying. He swallowed hard as his voice trembled in reply to Kennedy. “Here… there… everywhere. He’s always watching.” His voice lowered to a haunted whisper, his gaze darting to the shadows in the corner. “M'Lord need not to be present. He has eyes, ears… everywhere. He sees things we can’t even imagine.”

Voice cracking, he pulled his green coat tightly about himself. “You think you’re safe because you’re the X-Men?” He let out a nervous laugh that held no real humor, only fear. “You don’t understand… He has servants, followers… and they’re as twisted as he is. Not all of them are flesh and blood. Some… some are made of things you wouldn’t believe. He has creations, creatures… they’re like nothing you’ve faced.”

Hank’s expression tightened as he listened, his hands still working to extract the data from the workstation, but Victor’s words were starting to sink in. There was a strange blend of pity and dread in his eyes as he looked at the broken man.

Victor took a step closer to Hayden now, his voice a pleading whisper. “He’s obsessed with control, with bending everything to his will. If he finds out you’re here, he’ll hunt you, and it won’t stop until he gets what he wants. He doesn’t just punish… he wants you to suffer, to watch as he breaks every piece of you.”

Hank looked up from the workstation, his face as resolved as it was grave. “We’re here, Victor. We know what we’re facing… and we won’t back down. Whatever abominations you've created, we’ll stand together against it.”

Victor nodded slowly, but his expression didn’t soften. “I hope you’re ready. He’ll know, soon enough. And once he does…” He looked back at the dark corners of the lab, a haunted look in his eyes. “There’s nowhere to hide from him. Nowhere at all.”

“Like a nightmare” Aurora’s voice echoed in the background as she looked around. “Who is this...Sinister? What does he want?”

"He wants power and dominion!" Victor shouted, then covered his mouth in horror at the outburst. "M'Lord forgive me..."

Connor had been wandering around the lab, taking note of the various rows of equipment. He saw some discarded dewars near a cluster of vapor tanks. Both were used in cryogenic storage. One of the dewars lay on its side, which compelled Connor to cock his head and look at it from that angle. There was a name on it which practically leapt off the label.

"BEAST," Connor signed. "TAKE A LOOK AT THIS."

"Not now," Hank replied with only a fraction of his attention. "I almost have it."

"IT IS ABOUT JEAN." Connor said no more, knowing that should get Hank's full attention.

"Noooo!!!" Victor cried. "The Winter Guard doesn't come down to this level because they are just the Soviet Union's primary strike force, but their leader can and will make you wish you were never born! He is a fellow servant, as myself but he is mighty and terrible! Touch the Phoenix samples and there will be nowhere to flee where he can't find you!"

"I mean, we're not exactly hard to find anyway if we don't take them?" Maeve said with a slight shrug. "X-men and all that," she gestured towards the group. "Besides, he's bound to find out we were here; his goons will inform him. We might as well make it count for something... and I don't trust this guy. He's overly dramatic," Maeve stated, giving Victor a peculiar look.

Aurora looked towards Victor. “Phoenix? What is that? Some new mutant your master has been cooking up? And what’s it got to do with Jean?”

“The Phoenix will be the death of all of us.” Victor said as his eyes went wide and wild. “If you were wise, you would dispose of this Jean as soon as possible and spare us all from our horrible fate.” He flinched a little as he finished, half expecting for his Lord to suddenly appear and smite him for his blasphemous words.

“My word in heaven…” Hank gasped as he rummaged through the records for all the cell samples connected to Jean. “Stem, bone, blood, muscle, adipose, nerve, epithelial, and gamete. They took as much as they could.” Hank looked over at Connor and the row of vapor tanks that held cryogenically frozen samples. “Destroy them all, please Connor.”

“He’ll kill us all!” Victor was practically crying as the severity of their intended actions sunk in.

Hank moved past Victor and down the hall to open the doors to a second laboratory space. Turning on the lights, he audibly gasped at the horrors he found inside.

Massive specimen tanks lined the room and each one contained nightmarish creatures with distorted hellish features. Twisted and deformed, they were some sort of hybrids between humans and the demons of Limbo. A frequently seen trait amongst the specimens was scarlet red hair, an indicator of what human samples had been used to create these monsters.

Horror soon turned to rage as Hank took in what was happening in the lab. “X-Men! Destroy it all!” Beast growled as he exited the lab and looked at Victor.

“Hank, please, no!” Victor dropped to his knees as he begged. “You mustn’t touch them.”

As Connor moved toward the tanks, a cold, deep voice resonated through the lab, stopping him in his tracks.

"And what do we have here? Interlopers so intent on tearing down what they don’t understand. You should feel proud—few make it past the Winter Guard.”

They turned to see a man standing in the doorway, his piercing gaze sweeping over them with both disdain and curiosity. In the cold, sterile light of the lab, he struck an imposing figure wrapped in a long, dark coat lined with fur around the collar. The heavy fabric hung off his broad shoulders, giving him a silhouette that was both regal and menacing, like a soldier from some lost age. His face, partially hidden beneath the coat’s hood, was sharp and angular, each feature chiseled in a way that seemed almost inhuman. A network of scars etched across his jaw and brow, hinting at countless battles fought—and won. His eyes, a chilling pale blue, held a dangerous gleam that spoke of a man accustomed to wielding power, and his mouth was twisted into a thin line, barely concealing disdain. The scars and icy demeanor made him appear more specter than man, as if he had crossed realms no one else dared tread and returned to tell the tale.

That face was familiar only to Victor, who staggered back, a strangled cry escaping his throat. “Mercy, Lord Mikhail! Have mercy!”

Mikhail Rasputin raised a hand, silencing Victor without a word. “Mercy?” he mused, his tone almost amused. “I am not here to grant mercy, only summary judgment to those who foolishly trespass.” His gaze settled on each of them in turn, then shifted to the tanks and samples, his eyes darkening.

With a subtle flick of his hand, Mikhail’s powers surged. The walls and floor seemed to twist and ripple, bending the very fabric of space around them to his will. The tanks wavered as if they were underwater, suspended in midair as he forced the room to hold its shape, preventing any chance of destruction.

"Did you think I would let you touch these samples?” he sneered. “My Lord Sinister’s work is invaluable. You, however—” he gestured with an air of finality, and the space around them thickened, tightening like invisible shackles. The air felt heavier, nearly suffocating, as Mikhail’s powers pressed down on them, forcing their limbs to lock in place.

“You are not worthy of Lord Sinister’s attentions. No,” he said, his voice a mocking blend of praise and contempt, “I will spare you from him. Consider it my gift—a swift, merciful end.”

The pressure increased, every breath a struggle as Mikhail’s voice echoed ominously, “Your transgressions have brought you here, and they will keep you here—permanently.”

With Connor's limbs locked in place, he was effectively cut off from giving commands to the team. He grunted and yelled fiercely at the man. ~This man is incredibly powerful. The manual gesticulation suggests that he requires considerable concentration. Perhaps if he can be distracted~

"It was courage which brought us here," Hank countered, similarly immobilized. "Courage to undo the terrible evils that have been wrought in the name of science and discovery. I escaped this place once. What's to say I wouldn't do it again?"

"Insolent fool." Milkhail covered up his anger with a forced chuckle at Hank, though the amusement itself was sincere enough. "We let you go. So many low tier projects that we control only to put against each other for sport and live testing needed your assistance. Nanotechnology, power dampening devices, the Omega Chair in Niagara Falls, did you really think, X-Man, that you were the only common denominator among them? Had you remained in thrall, you would have seen the grander design in time. Alas, you will die like a dog with the rest of your whelps, frail in your ignorance."

The air rippled as it began to shift into liquid. Turgid water began to swirl about them in thick concentrations. Breathing was labored for everyone as their lungs began to reject the liquifying atmosphere around them.

Hayden had fallen down to her hands and knees in the struggle to breathe as she tried to listen. What he was saying faded into the background of her mind as she focused on controlling her breath. She could see the others around her and shook her head. Was this it? Was this her final round? Was the certain about to fall?

Then it happened. The air became liquid...swollen and thick water that began to full her lungs. Water that she quickly removed and pushed away from herself as she stood. Hayden immediately pushed the liquid away from the entire team, creating a space of breathable air as she separated some of the molecules. They had to cough up their own water, though.

She turned her attention to the giant of a man who'd just messed up their escape. Hayden continued pushing the liquid against him in the hopes of turning the pressure back on him. Then hopefully they'd have a fighting chance.

As Hayden’s control tightened, the thick, murky water surged around Mikhail in relentless waves, building with such force that even his imposing figure began to shift and stagger. The pressure differential shifted with a sudden intensity, compressing the air and water around him and effectively driving him back. Mikhail let out a strangled roar as the powerful currents of wind turned water pushed him further from the group, forcing him back through the threshold and into the main lab area.

With a desperate, gasping breath, Hank clutched his chest, dragging air back into his lungs as the liquid atmosphere cleared around them. His eyes darted from Hayden to the door, assessing the slim window of opportunity her powers had created.

“Excellent work, Calypso,” he rasped, his voice tight with urgency. “Everyone, move, and quickly! That surely won’t hold him for long.”

The rest of the team coughed and wheezed as they scrambled to their feet, freed momentarily from the oppressive grasp of Mikhail’s powers.

“Keep pushing him back,” Hank urged, his voice cutting through the lab’s echo. He placed a hand on Hayden’s shoulder, both in support and in appreciation of her resilience. “Your control may just buy us the time we need to secure the data and escape.”

A low, resonant vibration shook the walls as Mikhail fought against the flood pressing him back. His mocking laughter echoed from the other room, dark and thunderous, even as he struggled. “Run while you can, X-Men. There is nowhere I cannot reach you!”

Hank scampered back to the main area where he hoped the download was complete. A moment's glance told him not yet but it was close.

"Keep him busy," Hank called over his shoulder. "Nightcrawler, prepare to teleport us out of here as soon as the download is complete."

"Understood, Beast," said Kurt as he began bamfing team members into random areas of the lab in order to break up the group target they had presented.

Mikhail grabbed hold of a power pylon and absorbed its arcing energy until it flowed between his hands. When he had reached his fill again, he began shooting blasts from his palms at whoever his gaze fell upon.

Maeve saw what Mikhail was doing, it wasn't exactly subtle. The energy flaring in his hands was accompanied by an increasingly sinister gleam in his eye. As he unleashed the energy blast toward her teammates, Maeve promptly raised the earth to form a protective barrier in front of them.

While the diverse minerals contained within the composition steel and equipment components of the lab formed a makeshift barrier, the energy cast by Mikhail didn't ricochet or soak into it. Rather the earthworks summoned by Maeve turned to glass and shattered on impact into a million shards.

"TRANSMUTATION," Connor signed as he took shelter from the flying glass. "HE CAN CHANGE MATTER ON AN ATOMIC LEVEL FROM ONE THUNG TO ANOTHER."

It was a keen observation but he didn't have any immediate ideas on how to combat such power.

Bliss upturned a metal research table and flung it end over end at Mikhail, but he merely made it stop in midair, reverse trajectory, and return to sender, only this time aflame.

"Oh that is such bullshiiiit!" Bliss ducked back so far she would have won a limbo contest. The flaming table flew mere inches over her face.

Meja had ducked, dodged and stayed silent up until that point. The flames on the table where intensified by her power as she breathed out. What was left of the metal clunked to the floor as it became almost liquid. "Not much of anything if it's liquid!" She snapped back, deep breaths heaved over her form as she watched the table melt.

“How about an energy barrier?” Aurora concentrated on forming a Telekinetic shield to protect everyone, there was no matter in her shield for Mikhail to affect.

Ethan was a pretty powerful force in one on one combat, and he was virtually fearless. But he lacked any real ranged attack So, there was little that he could do, but hope to survive and look for an opportunity to get up close and personal and add another scar or two to add to their adversary's face.

Knowing that she couldn’t and wouldn’t dare to get into the middle of that fight, Kennedy focused more on the environment of the lab rather than on Mikhail. He had used the power pylon to draw in energy so she would take that away from him. Lifting her bow, Kennedy fabricated a kinetic arrow and fired it into the pylon.

The arrow crackled and exploded upon impact and in a flurry of sparks and metal the pylon was destroyed.

But Kennedy didn’t waste any time watching to see what Mikhail would do now that his power source had been taken away. Instead, she took a few steps out of the lab and back to the cryo tanks that Hank had requested be destroyed. Four golden arrows were fired in rapid succession and the storage tanks were leveled into mangled metal and plastic, their liquid nitrogen lines now leaking into the hallway, the sublimated liquid creating a dense, cold fog that covered the ground.

“Destroy the lab!” Artemis reminded the team as only a few of them could actually take on Mikhail directly, the others could easily ruin the samples and equipment of the mad scientist’s laboratory.

"No!" Mikhail howled, his eyes somehow glowing black in his fury. "Curse you!"

In his rage, the the walls, floor, and ceiling began to contort and ripple in the waves of energy he was emitting. Somewhere, Victor von Doom shrieked in terror, fearful of being punished for his work being destroyed. But through it all, Hank's download was complete.

"Eureka!" cried Beast in jubilation. "Nightcrawler, extract us!"

Kurt bamfed next to Hank and whisked him away in a puff of smoke. They didn't make it past the ceiling, as they had never fully left this dimension. Both mutants crashed into the ceiling and fell back to the floor. "Nein," Kurt groaned. "Zhere is somezhingk anchoring us to zhis place."

"You fools!" Mikhail shouted. "You cannot escape me! A god am I!"

"Blasphemer!" Kurt shouted. "It is written, 'I hef said ye are gods and ye all are children of ze Most High, but ye shall die as a man'!"

"I will show you the most high!" Mikhail floated into the air with orbs of energy encircling his fists. One by one, they sought out each X-Man like a homing beacon.

"Nein!" It was all Kurt could do to teleport in a rapid succession, moving each teammate out of harm's way a split second before impact. The orbs did not explode or incinerate; they simply disintegrated whatever they touched, as if the object had never been. While the others had welcomed Kurt's intervention, Connor waved him off.

"HELP THE OTHERS," Connor signed. "I HAVE A PLAN."

Connor’s mind whirred into motion as the first crackling sphere of energy spiraled from Mikhail’s outstretched hand. Having learned to spot Iris through focusing his mind's eye on her location, Connor had a hunch that they were viewing Mikhail all wrong. The demonstration of his power led Connor to understand that the transmutation was manipulation of the eigenstates of local quantum fields, which directly controlled spacetime, and as spacetime flowed, so did the particles subject to it.

Some would call it a gamble, but Connor saw it as a calculated risk, and he liked the odds. Instead of moving side to side, Connor focused on the idea of not being there at all—of stepping forward in time just enough to dodge the blast without shifting in any other direction. He pictured his position in a sequence: here, then not here, like flicking through frames in a reel of film. He took a deep breath, locking in his focus, and felt the room shift, almost imperceptibly, as he braced himself for the sensation of moving within the utterly twisted eigenstates of their immediate vicinity.

The blast passed through the air where he’d been a fraction of a second before. As his focus flickered back into the present, Connor’s vision recalibrated, his awareness a second ahead of the room around him. With each heartbeat, he repeated the cycle, shifting forward just enough to sidestep Mikhail’s attacks while remaining rooted in the space around him.

Mikhail’s eyes narrowed, clearly irritated as his orbs of disintegrating energy sliced through only empty air.

In reply, Connor smiled tightly, feeling the momentum of his own four-dimensional rhythm building. In this way, he was dodging not by reflex but by absence, blurring through the spacetime distortion caused by Mikhail in order to remain just ahead of Mikhail’s every move. Another blast careened toward him, and Connor mentally repeated his new sequence, feeling his presence expand just past the edges of the present moment.

"How are you doing that?!" Mikhail's face turned aglow, his rage manifesting in a powerful emission of energy that measured in the kilowatts.

"EIGENSTATES," Connor signed, as he continued his dance toward Mikhail. "YOU ARE MANIPULATING QUANTUM EIGENSTATES. I SEE YOU, VILLAIN, AND I WILL 4-D PUNCH YOU."

Before he could close the distance, however, the air rippled and Mikhail was gone. In the blink of an eye, he stood in the four corners of the lab area all at once. "You are not the only one with a four-dimensional mind!"

The ground beneath Connor's feet vanished, leaving him to fall into an empty void.

"Gotcha!"

Bliss had taken to the air and snatched Connor from the jaws of death. But the situation had become rather grim. One by one, the sections of the floor began to vanish, leaving no ground for them to stand on.

"I have it!" Beast shouted. When Connor mentioned eigenstates, that unlocked the entire situation in his own mind. As powerful as Mikhail was, his Achilles heel had been exposed to Hank who then knew what he had to do. With the destruction of the lab in retaliation for what their actions, Mikhail was weakening the barrier that kept Kurt from teleporting them all to safety. All that power had to go somewhere. Mikhail's capacity was not infinite, and so Hank would merely have to overload him with a near infinite power supply. "Nightcrawler! Make ready!"

Not knowing what Hank intended to do, Kurt could only nod in acknowledgement.

Hank moved quickly, pulling himself up to the main control panel with a fierce determination.

"A classic case of Icarus," he muttered under his breath, his fingers dancing across the keys to override every safety protocol. "Our ambitious friend here shall learn the danger of drawing too close to the sun." He redirected every watt of energy stored in the lab’s emergency reserves, the core generators, and the experimental plasma reactors. With each override, the lab’s lights flickered and dimmed, while red warning lights blinked and blared. Energy levels surged past safe thresholds, crackling in the air around them as the entire system teetered on the brink of collapse. "Or, rather, too much from the sun."

Mikhail, sensing the titanic surge of energy, began to draw it toward himself with a maniacal gleam in his eye. His form seemed to swell, threads of dark energy spiraling around him, as he greedily absorbed the charged particles—far too much, far too quickly. The quantum fields he manipulated flickered wildly, their states colliding and misaligning, like a web tearing itself apart under unbearable tension.

"‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on,’" Hank recited, voice steady, even as sparks leapt from the consoles around him. "But some dreams, Mikhail, are nightmares." With a final keystroke, he initiated the full overload, releasing a cascade of uncontrolled energy toward Mikhail.

Mikhail’s triumphant expression faltered, then twisted into horror as his body struggled to contain the surging power. His own manipulation of the quantum fields backfired, collapsing in on itself. Reality around him began to distort, gravitational pull spiraling toward his form as he became a living singularity—a black hole in the making.

"Now, Nightcrawler!" Hank shouted.

But Kurt didn't need to be told. His eyes told him it was time to go. The singularity’s pull grew, warping the lab and dragging equipment, walls, and everything not bolted down into its maw. The lab trembled as the floor buckled beneath them, tearing apart around Mikhail’s spiraling, consuming mass.

Just an instant before he was sucked into the singularity, Victor von Doom felt a lone tear streak down his scarred cheek. His torment was over. "Oh, thank heav—"

In a blur of sulfurous smoke, Kurt pulled the team together and in one massive bamf, he teleported them all from the collapsing lab just in time, leaving Mikhail to his fate in the cataclysm of his own making.

---

When they reappeared, they were in the stately residential wing where they had made entry. The floors began shaking from the devastation in the lab below.

"I... I am... so veak..." Kurt faltered for a moment before he collapsed to his knees.

Hank scooped him up over his shoulders and began hopping toward the secret tunnel. "I recommend all haste," he said to the rest of the team.

"RETREAT," Connor signed, doing a head count on everyone. They all had made it. He hung back at the entrance to the tunnel, ushering each exhausted teammate back through before he himself made to follow.

The trek through the undercity was more perilous than before. Earthquakes challenged every step as it seemed the terrain itself was angry and seeking their demise.

Keeping the liquid pushed back and pressure applied had taken a toll on Hayden. She was exhausted, her breaths coming in shallow gasps, and now they had to run. Her reserves were drained, and the strain left her legs feeling like lead. But she had to run, her very life depended on it.

Meja was half a pace behind Hayden, noticing the falter in her stride, she scooped her athletic shoulder under Hayden's left arm and smiled very slightly as she began to stride forward. Sure that it was not much more than pure adrenaline fueling her hasty exit, she kept her strong stride up all the same as they neared the Blackbird.

Aurora was feeling more tired than she’d ever felt, but like everyone else she had to keep going to flee to safety.

The cobbled stone floors of the castle became an uneven and unpredictable surface as the building collapsed. While Kennedy was fairly surefooted she wasn’t able to guess when the floor beneath her would suddenly shake or drop before it crumbled. She stumbled and tripped in a hole and scraped her knee in the brief fall. Scrambling to her feet and running even faster, Kennedy exited with the rest of the team.

When they reached the stairwell at the opposite end of the undercity, nobody had the energy left to run. They climbed the steps, almost literally, and reached the hatch, Bliss flew many of them the rest of the way to the Blackbird. Everyone clambered aboard, relieved at last to be off their feet.

Hayden practically dropped into her seat, quickly buckling herself in before slumping down as far as the harness would allow. She leaned her head back against the seat Closing her eyes for a moment, she tuned out the chaos outside, focusing only on taking a brief, much-needed rest.

Meja exhaled shortly, making sure that the heat escaping her mouth was minimal as she entered the Blackbird. Hayden seemed to be squared away, looking around, it seemed everyone else was too. Finding one for herself and strapping in, she concentrated on calming down after the craziness that was this mission.

Aurora was grateful to finally reach the Blackbird, boarding she made for her seat to sit down and rest, it took a lot out of her using her telekinesis more so now she was in the later stages of her pregnancy. She buckled up and lay her head back as the others boarded.

Only when Kennedy was settled into her seat did the stinging sensation from her skinned knee finally appear. With a slight wince she pulled the knee up closer to examine it. She had ripped her uniform and the abrasion was dirty and bleeding. Kennedy grumbled at the minor injury, it hurt but wasn’t an urgent issue. Considering everything that had happened in the castle, it could have been a lot worse.

After the team boarded the jet and fastened their harnesses, Hank and Connor set the aircraft to vertical liftoff and began their flight from Latveria. Passing over the mountains, they could see the capital city of Hassenstadt with its military parades of troops and tanks in the streets. A flurry of activity rushed toward Castle Doom. The imposing structure rattled like an earthquake, its once impressive walls splitting and cracking like an eggshell. Just when it seemed the tremors couldn't become any more fierce, the ground was stilled and all was well.

And then Castle Doom crumbled, falling upon itself within its own footprint, the once proud spires and turrets lost to the abyss of time and space that had opened up beneath it.

"Oh, my stars and garters," Hank whispered.

 

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