First Team: A Marvel: Xavier's Institute Novel

By Robbie MacNiven

Marvel’s mutant heroes return when a remarkable student rushes to save his family but ends up in a whole heap of trouble, in this gripping Xavier’s Institute novel

Victor Borkowski – aka Anole – has adjusted well to life at Xavier’s Institute, gaining control over his reptilian mutant powers and the respect of his fellow students. However, when he discovers that his parents have been kidnapped by anti-mutant extremists, the Purifiers, Victor’s discipline and trust in the X-Men is strained to breaking point. Setting out alone in defiance of his instructors, he’s quickly in serious trouble. It isn’t just the fanatical Purifiers threatening his family, there’s a villainous scientist waiting to get hold of Victor himself. Maybe he can’t do this by himself after all…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aconyte
• Release date: Mar 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781839080630

Robbie MacNiven

ROBBIE MACNIVEN is a Highlands-native History graduate from the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of several novels and many short stories for the New York Times-bestselling Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Age of Sigmar universe, and the narrative for HiRez Studio’s Smite Blitz RPG.

Book preview

Chapter One

There was a fly beating itself to death against the window.

Victor Borkowski tried his best to ignore it. He stared down at his exam paper, struggling to drag the answer from the neat black lettering glaring back at him.

6) a. Write a short (500 word) essay on the primary causes of the Boston Massacre. Include references to secondary literature.

He was one hundred fifty words in. Well, one hundred fifty-three. He’d counted it five times. A little over one hundred fifty words was all he’d been able to wring from a very vague knowledge of Britain’s imperial crisis in the 1760s. He remembered it mostly because the class had been interrupted mid-session by Glob throwing up. Seeing someone with translucent skin vomiting wasn’t something Vic was ever going to forget, and the shock appeared to have seared the entire lesson onto his memory.

C’mon, Vic! Focus! Sam Adams. The Sons of Liberty. He’d watched the whole TV series over the last couple of days. That counted as studying, right? His other study plan – just talking to Graymalkin about the subject – hadn’t worked as well as he’d hoped. It turned out that Gray’s super-powers didn’t include a flawless memory and being born in colonial America hadn’t given him an omnipotent understanding of all events occurring in the year 1770. After Gray had started digressing about how the word tricorn was an inaccurate nineteenth-century invention, Vic had just let him talk, his own thoughts wandering to his acceptance speech for the student drama awards.

Would a tux be overdoing it? Would Stryker be there this year? Would going chameleon halfway through be too showy?

No! Focus! He glanced back at the fly, still slamming relentlessly off the window, its every effort apparently bent towards escaping the stifling, drab examination hall. You and me both, buddy, he thought. He began to write, just for the sake of it. Any answer was better than none. Samuel Adams, brother of John Adams. He didn’t like tea. No one in eighteenth-century Boston did. No stamps either. Damn, Glob’s guts had looked weird when he’d thrown up. All squirming and twitching. Was that what everyone’s insides looked like when they spewed? He’d never been happier about the fact that his own insides didn’t show up when he needed to go invisible.

He stopped writing, sighed heavily, and scribbled an ugly, jagged black line through everything he’d just written. Back to one hundred fifty-three. How many words did that leave, three hundred forty-seven? Why was math so much easier than history? He’d aced that exam. Or fencing. Something exciting. Something he was good at.

Bzz-thunk! Bzz-thunk! Bzz-thunk! went the fly.

He looked up at it. The insect was resolutely attempting to headbutt its way through the reinforced glass of the large viewing window that lay between the exam hall and the war room. Its efforts were relentless, its head apparently unbreakable. At this rate it would be about as capable of sitting through an exam as he was.

As though sensing his thoughts, the fly abruptly buzzed upwards and began a frenzied orbit of one of the hall’s cage lights, like a dog chasing its tail. Vic forced himself not to stare at it, letting his gaze sit neutrally on the rest of the room spread out before him.

Like much of the rest of the New Charles Xavier School for Mutants, the exam hall looked like a Cold War-era bunker that had decided to dress up as a high school for Halloween. It was a long, vaulted space of bleak and unyielding concrete, each pitted surface lit by the hard white illumination of the cage lamps overhead. To this austere, subterranean realm had been added a few half-hearted concessions to a bland North American school aesthetic. A large world map had been tacked to the wall, along with framed photos of previous graduations and a collection of rough-and-ready art class projects. Today the floorspace was also taken up by several dozen rickety desks and chairs, all of which bore enough graffiti to convince Vic that they’d come with the original base.

It wasn’t somewhere that exactly inspired academic expression, and that was even before factoring in the infernal heat that materialized whenever more than a handful of warm, breathing bodies gathered in one of the school’s many underground chambers. There was an AC system, of course, but it produced the most grating rattle imaginable, so it was turned off for exams. Vic found himself seriously considering raising his hand and claiming his coldblooded inability to self-regulate his body temperature counted as an exceptional exam circumstance. It wasn’t often that he wished he could swap scales for skin that was capable of sweating, but this was one of those times.

Bzz-thunk! The fly was back at the window.

Sam Adams was definitely John Adams’ brother, right? Paul Giamatti had been great in that role. He should have watched more of the Adams series instead of trying to coax the knowledge out of Graymalkin.

He glanced over at Gray, seated at the desk to his right. The lugubrious-looking youth was hunched forward awkwardly over his undersized desk, writing slow and steady, his expression one of tightly controlled focus. Apparently sensing Vic’s attention, he paused and glanced up. Vic grinned broadly at him and gave him both thumbs up. Come on Gray, give me something to work with. Graymalkin simply held his gaze for a moment, then blinked and looked abruptly back at his writing. The sheet of his answer booklet was full of long, elegant cursive that Vic would’ve struggled to read even if he’d been trying to – not that he was, of course!

He looked away hastily, not wanting to catch the attention of Ms Pryde. She was stalking the aisles between the desks, air-walking with complete silence. Unlike the other examiners, you never heard her coming. Hell, she could even phase if she wanted to observe you without being noticed. Totally unfair. At least she was visible now, her back to Vic as she passed noiselessly between Pixie and Trance near the front-right of the hall.

He took the opportunity to glance across at his other neighbor, Cipher. She had been writing furiously, but had now paused and was staring straight ahead, expression blank, one hand teasing subconsciously at the strands of her long locs.

Vic felt a sense of undeserved gratification. It wasn’t just him, Ci was stuck as well. The sharpest girl in the class, the de facto head of school security and the most mysterious student in the whole facility was struggling just as much with the history of colonial America as–

Cipher went back to writing, the renewed sound of her scribbling crushing Vic’s hopes utterly. He let out another sigh and slumped back in his chair, wincing slightly as it creaked.

The sound of his own disconsolance had drawn the attention of Ms Pryde. She gave him a hard look over the bowed heads of the dozen students seated between them. He smiled back at her and straightened up.

If he got through this, he would actually study next time. That was a promise. But now, he just had to put pen to paper and get it done. Gritting his teeth, he leant forward like everyone else and began to write. There had been disturbances between locals and soldiers just prior to the Boston Massacre. Street brawls, civil unrest. The tensions all contributed to the shootings. Keep expanding on that. You’ve got this. He paused to count up his word total again – two hundred twenty-one. Getting there. Practically halfway.

Bzz-thunk. Bzz-thu–

He blinked and realized abruptly that his fist was raised and clenched. The fly had been buzzing past, presumably with a splitting headache, and he’d just reflexively snatched it out of the air. He could feel it tickling his palm.

He looked up. At the end of the hall Ms Pryde was looking at him again, her expression cold. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she shook her head. Equally slowly, Vic unclenched his fist. Freed from its abrupt prison, the fly zoomed back up towards the light.

As if on cue, there was a sharp buzzing sound at the end of the hall. Several students jumped. Ms Pryde held up her communicator – a small, circular flip-device – and killed the timed alarm.

This examination session is ended, she announced. Everyone, please remain seated while we collect your script books. And double-check your names are on the front, in capital. Real or alias, whichever you prefer.

Vic realized he’d even forgotten to do that. Giving up on the essay, he shut his answers booklet and printed his super hero name, ANOLE, on the front, along with the time and date. To hell with it. He didn’t look at Ms Pryde as she she swept past and picked up the booklet.

Chapter Two

The second session begins in twenty minutes, Ms Pryde said as she returned to the end of the hall. You’re all permitted to use the bathrooms and the break room. Dismissed.

The hall resounded immediately with the harsh scraping of chairs on concrete. Vic joined the chattering crowd of students as they filed out, trying not to think about the past two hours. If he didn’t ace the second exam session, he’d have to retake the course at the end of the summer.

Cheer up, Borkowski, exclaimed a sing-song voice from amidst the crowd carrying him along. He looked up to see Megan Gwynn – Pixie – being her usual purple-haired, pointy-eared, grinning self. When Pixie smiled, it was hard not to smile back. Vic did his best though.

Tough one, huh? she pressed as she fell in alongside him, her slender wings buzzing faintly.

We’ll see, Vic said, not really wanting to talk about it.

What did you put for question two? The date of the Quebec Act?

Tell me it was 1773?

Pixie hissed between her teeth and shook her head. I thought it was 1774?

Vic groaned audibly and Pixie threw her arm over his shoulder, cutting through his misery with a short giggle.

It could be 1773! I was basically just guessing!

You’re just saying that to make me feel better.

Perhaps, she smirked, removing her arm and giving him a nudge in the ribs. Oh, Ben! she continued, buzzing off to chat to the burning-haired Match before Vic could respond. He stepped into the break room after her, trying and failing not to look as miserable as he felt. He hated it when people knew he was down.

The break room was the war room’s less aggressive title. When the underground labyrinth had served as the Weapons Plus Program’s primary testing facility, it seemed the circular chamber had indeed been as some sort of command-and-control center. Smaller than the exam hall, though still fashioned from the same grim, unyielding blocks of concrete, its banks of computers now sat stripped out and inactive and its monitor screens dormant. Scrapes on the floor indicated where a heavy iron chart desk had once been bolted to the ground, while scuffed warning strips and hazard markings helped to demarcate an armored exit hatch and emergency lighting.

The military-industrial chic had been softened somewhat by the efforts of the students over the last few years. There were a few ratty old leather couches and chairs spread around, an old TV and a pair of chipped coffee tables, a row of prepacked cupboards and cabinets flanking a fridge and freezer that had been covered top-to-bottom with stickers – at some point it had become tradition for students to plaster them with images and cards from their travels. The space had assumed the status of an unofficial common room, especially for the students in the dorms on the west side of the cavernous danger room at the heart of the facility. It was soon loud with the chatter of the examinees as they swapped answers and commiserated with one another.

Vic found Cipher and Graymalkin on the edge of the semicircle of chairs and couches that occupied most of the middle of the room. The latter was standing stiffly, listening to Ci as she perched on the back of a chair currently occupied by Triage, who was sitting facing in the opposite direction. The pair looked up as Vic emerged from the crowd.

Take it that went badly? Cipher asked, her tone light.

Vic managed a shrug. Well, if the Quebec Act was passed in 1773, then…

It was 1774.

Then yeah, it went badly.

You have my commiserations, Victor, Graymalkin said. After a second, in what seemed like an afterthought, he reached out and put a hand carefully on Vic’s shoulder.

Despite himself, Vic laughed. You know, they shouldn’t really let someone who was alive at the time take the history exam, he told Gray. Does it even count as history for you? You were growing up while George Washington was a Virginia legislator.

Simply living through an event doesn’t guarantee a nuanced understanding of it, Graymalkin pointed out in his stiff, archaic accent. And do we not study modern history also? Were not all of these students alive for the last four presidential elections?

Vic conceded the point with a wave of his hand.

Well, that’s my summer ruined, I guess, he said. Looks like I won’t get a chance to visit home after all. I’ll have to stay in this sweltering dungeon, buried in textbooks until I have to re-take it.

I will maintain your company, Graymalkin offered gallantly. I have nowhere else to be.

Yeah, welcome to the ‘school-is-your-home’ club, Vic, Cipher added.

You guys really didn’t have any summer plans?

He caught Gray’s glance at Cipher, the dark-skinned young woman far better at not giving anything away. He raised an eyebrow at them both.

Well, there were some plans in consideration, Graymalkin admitted, looking almost sheepish. We had thought we might… travel.

A vacation, Cipher elaborated for the eighteenth-century kid. We were thinking about going on a road trip. The three of us, after you’d been with your parents for a few weeks.

Where to? Vic asked, genuinely surprised. He’d never really considered either of his friends to be road trip types. Cipher disliked the unknown and was practically wedded to the school’s security systems, while Graymalkin still seemed to struggle somewhat with the modern phenomenon of travelling for recreational purposes.

We were thinking the Rockies, Cipher said. Maybe drive north to south for a week or two. Gray wanted to see them, and I wanted to get a nice postcard for the common room fridge.

The finest mountains on the continent, Graymalkin added with what amounted to an enthusiastic smile.

You always say you don’t really like living in the school, Cipher went on. We thought it’d be good for all of us to get out for a bit. Change things up.

Let’s see if I’ve got this right, Vic said, shifting on the chair’s back. You two were planning a surprise road trip for the three of us to celebrate the end of exams? A trip that I’ve just ruined by bombing the history exam?

The examination is only halfway complete, Graymalkin consoled. There is yet time for you to wrest it back.

The second half is about emancipation and the civil rights movement, Cipher added. And before you ask, the Emancipation Proclamation was 1863. Same year as Gettysburg. You know the start of the Gettysburg Address, don’t you? Four score and seven years. That’s eighty-seven years since the Declaration of Independence. Easy way to remember it.

Easy! Vic exclaimed. How was anything you just said there supposed to be easy to remember? What the heck’s a score? How am I supposed to know how many that is?

A score is twenty, of course, Graymalkin said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Vic, shut up, snapped Mark Sheppard. The raven-haired student was standing beside the old television that had been linked up to one of the room’s many monitors. He was working the tuning dial, trying to resolve an image on a display dashed and distorted by digital static.

Vic abruptly realized that the idle chatter which had filled the break room had grown quiet. Everyone’s attention was on the monitor, and the words now coming in over its speakers.

Early reports indicate that there are a further five rallies planned across the Midwestern United States in the coming weeks. We can go live to our correspondent right now in Columbus, Ohio, where the self-styled Prophet Xodus is leading what he dubs ‘a sermon for his congregation.’

The screen resolved itself fully just as the camera switched from a CTV news anchor to a crowd in Columbus Commons. As the live reporter narrated the gathering behind her, Vic felt a chill run up his spine. He knew what this was. They all did.

The view changed again – now it was a wide shot of the head of the rally. A stage had been erected in front of the crowd, topped by a lectern that was draped in black cloth and emblazoned with a white cross-and-circle crest. A large timber rendering of the same emblem had been raised behind the lectern, framing it.

Nine figures occupied the stage. Four stood flanking the lectern, clad in long black robes that had been embroidered with the same white cross-and-circle. They had cowls raised, and their faces were concealed by silver grotesque masks. The remaining figure stood between them. He too was dressed in black robes, though his grotesque was golden and fashioned differently to the leering harlequin faces of those flanking him. It was angelic, expressionless and serene. It gleamed brilliantly in the stage lights.

The audio cut from the reporter’s voiceover to the words booming from the mics rigged up to the lectern. The words rebounded around the break room, the tone powerful, stentorian, and riven with a raw, tangible hatred.

Make no mistake, my children! Be not in doubt! A reckoning is coming! A judgment long overdue! Your prophet is here to herald it, to give you fair warning! When the fires come, they will not only burn the mutant. The unrighteous will go up in the inferno with them!

The large figure struck a palm flat against the lectern, then did so again, emphasizing each sentence with a fresh blow. All who have aided them, all who have abetted them! Any who give shelter to their depravity or approval to their deformity! All are unclean, all with be remade in the fire! So says Prophet Xodus!

A brazen cheer swelled furiously from the crowd just as the image cut back to the live reporter. Struggling to be heard over the uproar, she went on to describe how the rally was set to be repeated in states along the East Coast.

The report began to distort again as the static returned, chopping up and crazing the image of the rally. Sheppard tried to adjust it, before giving up and angrily hitting the off switch. The screen blinked to black.

The silence that followed seemed absolute. Nobody spoke. Vic found himself glancing back at Cipher and Graymalkin. The latter looked blank, an expression Vic had come to recognize as the mask Gray drew down whenever he was troubled. Cipher looked furious, and for a second Vic thought she was going to phase out.

He could understand why. This wasn’t the first rally that had made the news. For the past two months the Purifier cult had been resurgent across the northern United States and southern Canada, carrying their quasi-religious anti-mutant vitriol to every town and city. And it wasn’t just angry gatherings, burnt-out cars and cross-and-circle symbols daubed on doors and windows. The parents, friends and family of half a dozen of the students at the Institute had been attacked. There were even rumors of abductions. Vic had found himself worrying more and more about his parents, regretting how little he’d seen of them since he’d enrolled at the Institute. Now there was an added threat, the looming uncertainty of civil unrest, he found himself thinking about home almost every day.

Worst of all, it looked as though the authorities were powerless to stop the outpouring of hate. Arrested cultists seemed capable of affording the best legal counsel money could buy, and several police chiefs had spoken about their desire to avoid riots in the streets and full-fledged civil unrest. As far as Vic was concerned, they may as well have just released a press statement saying, go ahead and target that mutant minority, just try not to upset their neighbors while you’re at it.

He looked at the rest of the class in the break room, seeing a bitter mix of anger and fear. Nobody met his eye. Somehow that made him feel even worse. The silence was unbearable. Think Xodus would do well in our history exam, he said slowly. He sounds like he belongs in the eighteenth century.

Nobody laughed, but then he hadn’t expected them to. The words had the desired effect, breaking the silence that had taken hold of the room. Conversations restarted, though they stayed muted.

How can we stay down here while those lunatics are taking over half of North America? Vic muttered under his breath.

Ms Frost and the rest of the X-Men are dealing with them, Graymalkin said without much conviction, his expression guarded once more. They will do what is best.

And when will it be our turn? Vic said, trying not to let Gray’s stoicism get to him. He found staying detached in situations like these almost impossible. To hell with history exams. History’s happening right now, and it’s not going the way it should be. You want students like us to be reading about the successful Purifier uprising in fifty years’ time? If there’s even any mutants left, that is.

There’s nothing we can do right now, Cipher said, sounding exasperated. I wish that wasn’t the case, Vic. There’ll be a reckoning, but right now that’s not up to us.

One day it will be, Vic said, standing up. He saw Graymalkin and Cipher exchange a look, but neither replied. They knew he was right. One day they’d all be X-Men, and things would start to go very different for Prophet Xodus.

There was a buzzing sound from the direction of the exam hall. The twenty-minute interval was up. Not speaking to anyone, Vic joined the flow of students leaving the break room, his thoughts turning over darkly.

•••

The fly was gone. Vic knew he’d have been able to detect its maddening buzzing from the other end of the hall. Had it found an escape route through the AC, or had it finally pulverized itself to death against the exam room window?

He forced himself to look back down at the page, to read those unblinking, death-stare letters.

1) a. In what year did the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation take place?

Was it 1862? What had Ci said? Four score and seven years. A score was eighteen? No, twenty. Gray had said twenty. So twenty times four plus seven. That was eighty-seven. But eighty-seven from what? The Declaration of Independence? That was 1776. He’d seen the musical. So, 1776 plus eighty-seven was… 1863. That sounded right.

He scribbled it down. Next question.

1) b. Give a brief (200 word) description of the work of Frederick Douglass.

He knew that one too. Triage had played Frederick Douglass in a roleplaying exercise during class. Vic didn’t think he could’ve done a better job himself, which was probably for the best as he suspected the real Frederick Douglass hadn’t possessed a ridge of bony scalp nubs or a prehensile tongue.

1) c. Give the rough percentage of African-American soldiers in the Union Army by the year 1865.

He had no idea. Maybe the next question would be better? Nope. He didn’t know the winner of the 1876 presidential election, let alone how it had impacted the Reconstruction era. He sat back, trying to think. Don’t let your mind wander. Focus and you’ll get through this.

He turned to look at Graymalkin. The pale, shaven-headed youth paused and looked back at him. Just as before, the fellow-mutant’s face remained inscrutable. This time however – and clearly unsure about the gesture – Graymalkin slowly raised a single thumb.

Ordinarily Gray’s tentative effort at something so recognizably modern would’ve left Vic battling laughter. This time though he just nodded and looked away. He felt sorry for Gray. Sorry for everyone. None of them deserved this. To live underground, hidden away in an old, derelict military facility, unable to do anything but watch as the world caved into hatred and discord. If they stayed here over the summer, what would they be emerging into after? What would be waiting for them once the fire and brimstone had died away? Would there be anything recognizable left? Anything not burnt or blemished by smoke and ash?

Snap!

The pen in Vic’s hand shattered. He looked down at the black ink dripping slowly over his hand and down onto his answer sheet. He watched it drip and spread gradually, his expression blank. Then, abruptly, he dropped the shattered pen and stood up. The scrape of his chair echoed, cold and lonely, through the hall.

Heads turned. He ignored them as he signed and dated his ruined sheet and carried it to the front. Ms Pryde watched him approach. He held her gaze as he laid the sheet on the desk at the end of the hall.

She said nothing. Vic turned and left.

Chapter Three

It was almost midnight when Vic heard a familiar knock at his door.

He’d been avoiding reality since leaving the exam hall, making a quick visit to the cafeteria to boil up some pasta before locking himself in his dorm room. Like all of the accommodation in the Institute, the space was cramped and overwhelmingly subterranean. A small window – which Vic had shuttered – looked out onto the corridor, presumably added in an attempt to lessen the claustrophobia. Thankfully, the confined nature of the room had never really bothered him. He’d made the space his own, even more so after his roommate had moved out last semester. Movie posters and autographed actor headshots adorned the walls, while an Xbox hummed softly in one corner beneath a TV screen. Since the start of exam season it also seemed as though a library had been upended inside the room. Books were stacked in teetering piles by the bed or spread in arcs across the floor, some lying open, pages stuffed with note tabs. Late nights studying – or, as often as not, procrastinating – had also ensured that there was a regular student detritus of stale clothing and even staler plates and ready-meal packets scattered around.

Clutter wasn’t like him, but he’d been too deep in the stresses of studying to tackle the mounting mess. Now he was just too on edge. He tried to read for a bit after picking at his pasta, but it felt as though the history textbooks heaped across his desk were judging him. He fired up his Xbox and sank into the beanbag at the end of his bed, losing himself in button-mashing for the next few hours.

It didn’t do much good. He tore through four or five levels of Total Combat – ones he’d completed dozens of times before – but it didn’t banish the thoughts that had been with him since the break room. In the solitude of his cramped dorm, it was impossible to deny that there was more to his frustration than just news of the Purifier rampage.

It had brought back memories. The shadows of a time Vic thought he’d put behind him. He remembered his childhood: the struggles, so often unspoken, faced by his parents. How the hell did you go about raising a mutant kid in small-town Illinois? How did that turn out OK?

He knew the answer. It wasn’t just that his parents had fought his corner from day one, though they certainly had, unflinchingly. They had come through because the town had been with them. Dan and Martha Borkowski were members