Cover Up The Sun

Chapter 5

Mystique kept up her assumed form until she reached New York City; there she shed the guise of the stocky, middle-aged gardener and switched instead to a bland, dark-haired businessman The subway terminal was chaotic enough that no one noticed the change, and she was able to melt into the crowd as just one more of a thousand, ten thousand commuters hurrying about their day. All of them so wrapped up in their pointless little lives, their narrow little worlds; all of them too blind and closed-minded to even look around them. She walked among them, but she was not of them - and while once that thought might have filled her with fear and shame, now she felt only triumph.

One day, mankind would know their betters. One day, she would never have to wear any human skin. For now she still had to, but it was out of duty and devotion, not out of humble anxiety to please. It was not the camouflage of the prey that cowered, but the stealth of the predator that stalked. She was the wolf among the sheep, and none of the poor little lambs saw her comings and goings at all.

She changed forms several more times as she made her journey: from New York City down out through Newark, down across the New York border into Pennsylvania. She stuck with the public train system as far it would take her, and when that ran out, she shifted into a beautiful blond bombshell and hitchhiked out on Route 80. When the thick-neck, sunburned trucker who stopped to pick her up got a little too wandering in the hands, she smashed his face into the steering column, threw him out the door of the moving truck, and took over the wheel herself.

By the time the sun made long shadows across the Allegheny mountains ahead of her, she had reached the remote abandoned farmstead that the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants was using as a headquarters. Now abandoned, she thought with a smirk, as she drove up her purloined truck to park beside the other vehicles in the dusty barnlot. As she climbed down from the cab of the truck, she felt a great relief as she shifted back into her native skin at last.

"I'm back," she announced as she stepped in the doorway; a few of the lurking shadows in the corner of the farmhouse snapped to attention when the door creaked, then relaxed as she came into view. Mystique ran her eyes over each menacing figure as it loomed out of the shadows, identifying her brethren; Mortimor Toynbee, that suckup known as The Toad, and Jamie Madrox, although for a change there was only one of the Multiple Man visible. There was no sign of Mastermind or Pyro; most likely they were out on missions of their own.

Only one figure had not jumped to attention when Mystique came in, and as usual her attention snapped to him, letting the others fall by the wayside. Erik Lensherr, also known as Magneto, the greatest and most powerful mutant of their generation. His silvering hair and cool demeanor, as always, lent a feeling of centering and calm to Mystique's seething roil. "Welcome home," Magneto said calmly.

He put aside his current work - a tablet and a large map of Washington that he'd been poring over - and looked up at Mystique expectantly, his hands folding in front of him. "What did you find at the school?" he asked, and Mystique's pulse beat a little faster at the weight of his expectation - the desire not to disappoint. She felt like a lioness returning to the den, meeting the expectant weight of the pride leader's golden stare, waiting for her to display her kills.

Fortunately, she had plenty of spoils to share. She reached into her jacket - her real jacket, skin-tight and hidden from sight under all of her disguises - and extracted a wad of flimsy papers wrapped around wafer-thin flash drives. "Potential," she said. "There's a new group of students at the school, and a few of them would make very good recruits - here are their profiles."

She peeled the layers of paper open and handed Magneto the memory cards; he set them aside for later. Mystique unfolded and flattened the papers she'd brought onto the table, where Magneto bent his head over them. "This one is especially interesting," she said, pointing out a doe-eyed teenage girl with a cloud of fuzzy dark hair in the corner of the picture. "Rumor has it that she's being groomed for the next X-Men slot, so I've been taking note of any potential weaknesses. It's all in my report."