Chapter Text
Heroic Age Year 13, 4 years ago, San Francisco
I’m jerked awake by the sudden movement as the intercity bus comes to a stop, the lights of a Sentinel’s eyes through the window sending sharp hairs rippling across my body with the adrenalin spike as I fight to keep passing for human!
It takes me a moment to realise that no alarm is sounding, no robotic voice is announcing “Mutant Threat Detected”, none of the humans travelling with me are screaming and pointing. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes reveals that what I had thought were sentinel eyes were just unfortunately placed streetlights.
“Oi! Hoodie girl! This is my last stop. Time to get off!” The driver’s call echoes down the empty bus.
I scramble down the bus as quickly as I can, clipping my ankles a couple of times in my rush, clutching my tent bag close to my chest. “Sorry. Asleep.” My English still isn’t very good but I’ve picked up more words, like ‘sorry’ and ‘please’, on my journey. Take that mean pink haired boy!
The driver shakes his head and mutters as he shuts the door behind me before driving off. Now that I am not half asleep the bright streetlights are a comfort as I walk through the city, searching for the border and safety, unfortunately from this street level I can’t see which direction the pacific is and I was asleep when the bus was entering San Francisco.
Maybe I could climb one of the buildings and search from the high ground? But I’d need to transform to do that, supposedly San Francisco used to be a safe place for mutants before the war but the Jean Grey School was supposed to be safe as well. No. I can’t risk a human calling O.N.E. or getting spotted by patrolling Sentinels.
Everyone else walking the streets looks just as stressed as I feel, keeping their heads down, casting furtive glances at strangers and the O.N.E. vans on every other street corner. I don’t know if any of them are mutants in hiding like I am but a part of me, a cruel, angry part of me that I try not to listen to, hopes they are. It hopes that they are suffering as much as I am, having personhood held like a prize that they can only have scraps of if they conform and hide who they are.
The Jean Grey School said that I wasn’t mutant enough, part of my DNA neither human or mutant but something other. That I needed to push down and hide that part of myself to fit in, then when I failed they flunked me out and said it was my own fault. None of the human cities I’ve passed through on my way here have been any better, forcing me to pass as human just to survive, fighting off Sentinels and local superheroes long enough to run and hide again.
Hot blood pulses under my skin, my hidden arms begging to push through my sides so I can lash out and make them see me, force the world to acknowledge I exist, but I need to stay calm. Deep breaths. I don’t want to hurt people, I just want somewhere I can be myself without being attacked.
Every time I try to approach someone or call out to them they rush past me, no one wants to risk being out after curfew I suppose, especially not once it starts to rain. I’m still no closer to finding my way to the border, the unfamiliar city streets leaving me lost and often crossing my own path. I should try and find a spot to hide myself, I used the last of the cash I stole to pay for the bus fare here, I won’t be able to afford any kind of shelter.
Eventually, after an hour of getting increasingly lost and cold among the darkest alleys, I find an encampment under a freeway willing to let me set up my tent.
“I’ve not seen you around, did you just get thrown out or are you new in town.” One of the older women asks me as I join a group huddled around a wind-up flashlight under the freeway, all of us bundled up in multiple layers.
“Out of town.” Can I take the risk to say why I’m here? Well, if I made the journey to San Francisco despite the O.N.E. presence they can probably guess, most people are travelling away from the border if they can. “Going to Utopia.”
Utopia. The mutant homeland. An illegal terrorist compound according to the government. A paradise according to some of the rumours on the street, a place where everyone has food and water and beds and there are no Sentinels. The teachers at the Jean Grey School all said the opposite, that it is a dour island fortress constantly under siege and ruled by a suicidal mad man who is provoking the world to kill us all. I’m not sure the world needs an excuse.
There is a chorus of grumbling and complaints of ‘another one’ at my answer but no one tries to push me out of the freeway into the rain so that’s a good sign.
“You’re lucky you found this camp, girl.” The same woman says. “Some others have been reporting mutants that come here to the feds in exchange for a warm meal and a bed, or a fix. It's wrong, but some people are desperate.” Some people always are.
“That’s no excuse!” the only man group whispers harshly. “I heard horror stories about the old camps that O.N.E. used to run in New York ‘fore the x-men came here, and the ones they run down on the mexico border now. It’ll never be okay to give people up to those fascists!”
“Of course! I didn’t say it was justified, just that some people can’t help themselves, they aren’t in control!” The woman's defensive words seem like they might ignite a full argument for a moment before the last member of the group, another older woman, cuts in.
“Siddig, you know that Jill agrees with you really, she’s just got a soft heart for everyone. Jill, you know how quibbling over details like this upsets Siddig. We all agree that no one is turning anyone into the pigs. Sorry about that honey, we never even got around to asking your name.”
Her last sentence is addressed to me and sets the same fire running through my veins the question always does. The singular name, carved into my DNA by my creator, etched into my mind so deeply it is the only name I can think of to describe myself.
“Gwen.” I speak up, “It’s Gwen.”
“Well, nice to meet you Gwen. I’m Patty, this is my girlfriend Jill and our friend Siddig. Sorry to say that if you want to reach Utopia you’re probably out of luck. The feds have the port and the beaches locked down tight. Only a few cargo and fishing ships are let through nowadays.”
“And they are all inspected by the big purple robots first.” Jill interjects. “I’ve seen a few brave ones try to swim across or push out on small boats. The sentinels blast them from the sky every time.”
“Why try to stop us?” I ask, not for the first time. “They don’t want us here.”
“Control, they didn’t care too much when utopia was 200 refugees on the verge of extinction, they didn’t like it but they didn’t bother to stop it.” This is the first time anyone has actually answered me though, Siddig’s speech captures my attention, eager to finally have some kind of answer for why O.N.E. and their Sentinels keep hounding me. “But now there are over a hundred thousand mutants there with more on the way? The government is scared, Utopia fought the Avengers to a draw with just 200 mutants, no one knows why but we could all see it, who knows what they could do with thousands.”
Patty nods. “I remember watching with Jill when that helicarrier went down in the bay! It was so loud, like a ship collision but even bigger!”
“I don’t want to fight!” I protest, not for the first time. “I just want to live.” It’s all I’ve ever wanted. I didn’t ask to be born, all those months ago back in New York, I barely remember the first few days of my life. It was all a confusing swirl of violence, sound, lights and pain. I’m told that just by existing I was causing harm, a house sized spider sending people stampeding over each other in fear and scaring cops into shooting me as I simply tried to find a space away from all the noise and pinpricks.
Spider-Man and the Jean Grey School X-Men took me down and the School took me into their custody. They healed me and taught me simple English and math. They gave me the concept of family. Then they threw me out, said that I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t mutant enough, that I was a failure and a monster made by villains. Maybe I am a monster, maybe Scott Summers is a monster as well like they say, but if the Jean Grey School doesn’t like him then I’ll at least give him a chance.
“We know, kid. You ain’t done anything wrong.” Jill tries to comfort me, her touch on my hand making me realise I’ve let my spider hairs and my claws out. I hurriedly retract them, as much an instinct to look human and avoid trouble as to prevent any injury to the others. Jill must have been able to feel the stiff, sharp hairs of my spider-self but she doesn’t say anything.
In the morning Jill, Patty, Siddig and I go their separate ways, Jill to play music on a streetcorner while Patty apparently has a proper office job, she laughed when I said I’d never actually seen an office before, Siddig has a repair job to do and I need to find my own street to beg for money on. They wish me the best in making it to Utopia but warn me not to put myself in too much danger.
San Francisco is a bit more generous then some of the other cities I’ve begged in on my way here from Salem Center, unfortunately the food is also more expensive so I’m still hungry when I get back to the underpass camp.
Eventually I do manage to find the coastline and catch a glimpse of Utopia, it’s honestly not as impressive as I expected. The Jean Grey School made it sound like a dour fortress and the news screens made it sound like the root of all evil, I was expecting a huge castle with spikes and red light glowing beneath black stone, instead its a tiny island - not much bigger then the other island called Alcatraz I can see from the opposite shore - covered with short and round metal towers.
I can see why the others were warning me about the O.N.E. forces blocking the way though, Sentinels are everywhere - I have a couple of close calls when their scanners almost catch me - I couldn't even make it to the shore to attempt to swim, not that I could make the swim, the island is way too far out to sea.
After a week Siddig approaches me in the morning after Jill and Parry have left. “You still want to go to Utopia, kid? Even knowing the risks? Jill wasn’t wrong when she said some die in the crossing.”
“Yes.” I say as I struggle to wrestle my tent back into its bag. “I don’t want to keep hiding. It makes me sick.”
A small smile flickers across Siddig’s face. “Good answer. Mutants have been good to this city, better than the feds in O.N.E. certainly. Before H.A.M.M.E.R. forced them out onto Utopia they used to run soup kitchens and shelters for us. Even after they left the mainland they kept funding shelters and their super heroes kept cops from harassing some of us.”
Siddig leads me confidently to the docks, walking casually past O.N.E. check points with an easy smile that turns to a scowl as soon as we are out of earshot. “Its not just mutants that life has gotten harder for since O.N.E. showed up. Couples like Jill and Patty used to be able to walk together openly, now they need to be careful not to be too affectionate or agents will bust them for public indecency. People like me get picked up and shipped across the Atlantic for being ‘illegals’ just cause of our skin colour, even if we’re born here.”
I didn’t know that humans treated each other like that, like they treated mutants, the Jean Grey School had never mentioned it, they said that one day humans would accept us and treat us the same as everyone else. Wasn’t that meant to be better?
“Sorry.” I mumble, keeping my eyes low to avoid eye contact with any O.N.E. officers, the check points getting more and more frequent as we get closer to the docks. “For causing this.”
The taller man grunts and comes to a stop as we round a corner, the bay suddenly filling my view. “I wasn’t saying that for pity points, just trying to give you some perspective. No offence, but you seem a little sheltered. It’s not yours or any other mutants' fault the government is full of bigots, or any muslims’ or queers’ fault either for that matter. Don’t let them make you apologise for existing, kid.”
Siddig’s stare digs into my eyes, I do my best to not flinch or avoid his gaze as he points out one of the fishing boats. “Now, the next part’s very important so listen closely. I’ve got a friend who runs a fishing boat out of these docks. I do day labour for him, sometimes I bring some extra help that needs the coin. He doesn’t ask and I don’t say anything, neither do my new friends. Trouble is, the sea’s rough job, sometimes people fall overboard and we come back to port with less crew than we left with. It’s a tragedy but what can you do right? You still want the job?”
The thought of the sea dragging me down, the boat blasted out from under me by a Sentinel blaster, the cold sapping my strength as I struggle to breath is almost enough to dissuade me. I don’t want to die.
“What about Sentinels?”
“The lower hold is leadlined, no scans have seen through it yet.”
But the truth is, I don’t have anywhere else to go. Life for a mutant isn’t safe anywhere except maybe the Jean Grey School, and they already kicked me out. Even if I stayed on the mainland and hid as a human, I have no money, no education, no skills, not even an official identity.
“I want this.”
Like Siddig promised, there were no questions after that from the crew of the boat we boarded. I was hustled aboard quickly but calmly, everyone tense but not confused, they were used to this. I was given a quick lesson on how the crew worked while I was bundled into a heavy thermal coat and life preserver.
The plan is that the boat will drop me off on the other side of Utopia island, after it has passed the checkpoint at the big bridge and sailed out of sight. The crew will leave me with a flare gun, I’m to wait until they are a deniable distance away before shooting it. Until we get there I’m to stay in the lower hold, they apologise for the rotting fish smell but I honestly don’t mind. I've never understood why humans and other mutants don’t like the smell of partially digested food, I don’t mention this though, they might think I’m too much of a freak and reject me like everyone else.
I wait in the hold for what must be more than an hour before the boat even starts moving, the vibrations are almost deafening this close to the engines. Somehow, the journey between the docks and the big bridge feels even longer, the sounds of the crew on the deck above sounding muffled and far away through the thick metal. The ever present knot of tension in my chest grows tighter by the moment as the boat makes its agonisingly slow journey from the docks to the checkpoint.
Eventually the muted robotic voice of a Sentinel signals that we have reached the check point, I curl up in the deepest, darkest corner of the hold I can find, making myself as small as possible. Please let it work, please let it work!
It doesn’t work.
The crew start screaming, the engine suddenly roars where before it was purring and then the entire ship groans in pain as the giant hands of a Sentinel pry open the hold doors to stare at me with its scanner eyes.
“Mutant Threat Detected.”
This is my last chance, there is nowhere to run and nowhere else to hide. This time I don’t hold back the fear, instead I use it, armour myself in it. Plates of chitin slip over my skin, sharp hairs poking through them allowing me to taste the air even as my tongue curls and fuses into a feeding tube. My clothes are shredded to pieces by my armor plated body and sharp hairs.
Four additional limbs sprout from my sides, spreading my weight across the deck as I quickly grow to match the Sentinel in scale, my body tipping forward to rest on all eight limbs. My head retracts into my upper chest, my waist pinching and separating my torso into a cephelothorax and an abdomen.
My jaw separates into four parts, each larger than the Sentinel’s entire head. Before it can react I bite down, crushing its circuits and sensors between my maxillae and chelicerae! I push forward, my cephelothorax emerging through the hold opening facing towards the back of the ship along with my pedipalps and first pair of legs.
Around me the crew is rushing to and fro, yells of ‘make for Utopia’ ringing across the deck, unconscious, I hope, O.N.E. agents are pulled to one side, tied down and disarmed as I use my palps to push the Sentinel wreck off the side of the ship. The big bridge is rapidly shrinking behind us, even as O.N.E. ships and Sentinels start to give chase.
“You okay kid?” Siddig asks, wild eyed and laughing despite his bleeding scalp. “Shit, you’re a huge one aren’t you?”
I can’t speak like this but I try to simulate a laugh by grinding my maxillae together. He doesn’t react at all, accepting a gun from one of his crew mates and rushing to the railing. As the crew starts dumping barrels of fuel and boxes of food overboard I pull as much of myself out of the hold as I can, eventually getting all of my legs and my entire cephelothorax through the doors but my abdomen remains stuck. Still, now that my waist is free I can rotate my upper body to dodge or aim.
Which becomes very important as the first three Sentinels chasing us start blasting! The ship rolls to the right, the crew barely holding on, one guy even falling over for a moment before one of my legs catches him and pulls him back.
I hope this works, I’ve never tried to shoot this far before and never while I’m moving! As the ship starts to roll leftwards I try to focus my eyes on the lead Sentinel in that special way. Eight rays of crimson light cut through the sky above the bay, contrasting against the green glow of Sentinel blasts firing the other way.
Sadly none of my optic blasts hit the first time, or the second, or the third. They do force the Sentinels to dodge though and that seems to help. I really hope it helps.
“We’re almost half way!”
“Just a little further”
“Look! It’s the X-Men!”
I know that I shouldn’t do it, that I should stay focused and keep shooting the Sentinels chasing us. But I can’t resist, I turn, just enough that one of my eye pairs can see behind us in my peripheral vision and see seven lights flying through the air towards us.
My wonder is cut short when a Sentinel blast pierces through my rear left leg, severing it and blasting right through the ship's hull! Gallons of blue blood pour from the wound as I slump to the deck, my weight causing the ship to tilt dangerously.
The last thing I see before passing out is a wave of crimson light, far brighter than my own, cutting through all three Sentinels in a single swing.